The combination of self-doubt and our bullshit encounter with the supernatural light was wearing my nerves to a razor’s edge. The only reason I didn’t go over the edge was the fact that Kinsey was counting on me. It was important for her to believe I knew what I was doing. Otherwise she might just panic herself. I’m the outdoorsman, not her.
The air was dead, not even the slightest wind. We used out phone lights to pick our way through the forest. Both our legs were shredded from the wild rampage through the forest, and Kinsey had twisted her ankle. She leaned on me as we trudged slowly through the forest.
The night was completely still. No wolf howled in the distance, no crickets chirped, not even our escort of fireflies remained. The only living things were the two of us as we crashed and stumbled through the underbrush.
We marched for over an hour, stumbling and panting, before we finally ran into the stream that cuts through the edge of the Kingdom. On yet another gamble, I decided that home was downstream and we turned in that direction. When we saw a slight glow through the trees we assumed it to be the porch light and started moving as quickly was safe through the dark forest that was fraught with even darker underbrush. But soon Kinsey grabbed my shoulder and tugged me to a halt.
“Listen,” she said quietly.
I heard it. Strange sounds that didn’t belong anywhere near our home. Gentle chimes that didn’t sound quite natural. Laughter that sounded like a child, and yet unearthly. And a woman’s voice that was unfamiliar to either of them.
“What’s going on?” Kinsey whispered. There was a definite tremor in her voice.
“I don’t know, but we have to find out.” I hissed back. “I’m pretty sure it’s coming from the Kingdom.”
Kinsey was terrified. Even in the darkness I could see it plainly on her face. But she could never be called a coward. After a hard gulp, she nodded her agreement.
Together, we crept forward. As we got closer we could smell… it. A sweet smell that was so compelling and yet so completely foreign. The chimes called to us, soothing and relaxing our minds like a lullaby. It was as if all the sensations to be had near the Kingdom were designed to put us to sleep.
My jaws clenched and teeth bared at the fresh assault against my mind. Rage at having our lives endangered, kept me from falling into the spell. I could see the strain in Kinsey’s face as she focused her own willpower against the alien enchantment. Her eyes were shut tight and a vein on her temple throbbed as she pushed her mind past the unnatural sensations.
Once we could see into the Kingdom, the sight again tested our wills. The entire Kingdom was gently lit by some light that seemed to come from everywhere, yet nowhere. Nine-inch-tall human looking creatures buzzed all around the Kingdom on their two sets of gossamer dragonfly wings. They wore a material that was an airy and diaphanous cloth, either white or pale earth tones. Most dashed about in such speeds they were a blur, but a handful hovered in place. Their naked bodies were absolute perfection under their transparent clothing as they channeled some sort of energy into the tree we call the King.
I almost staggered when I got a clear look at the face of the blonde woman kneeling before the king. It was an image I could never forget. All those years ago, all the trauma she caused me when I was a child in the protectorate. She was the ghost-girl that I saw when I was fifteen. And she hadn’t aged a day.
That face caused me to lose myself in the rage that had been my shield against the soothing enchantment. Like a wild boar, I barreled out of the forest at the miniscule, kneeling blonde. I didn’t notice the little creatures turn to look at me in surprise. I didn’t notice my sister charge after me trying to get me to stop. I didn’t even notice the way the tree seemed to open from its base to its lowest branches, like a great sideways mouth. I only noticed the ghost-girl turn to me, her blonde hair flying wildly as she looked at me in shock and horror.
I slammed into her so hard it took the breath from both of us. My weight drove us both back into that into that gaping maw, her hands clawing vainly at its edges. Seizing my belt, Kinsey tried to pull me back. But I had too much momentum. She was yanked forward as well and the three of us fell headlong into that strange void.
The Swamp
Slowly, I blinked the sky into view. It was a beautiful, pale sapphire set with white lace of thin, textured clouds. I had a split second of comfort, my addled mind believing we were still in the safety of the Kingdom. Then the stench of rot and decay hit me.
I sat up to find myself on a small, grassy island surrounded by a stinking fetid swamp. The island was about 30’ by 40’, the surrounding water so heavy in sediment and minerals that it was night-black. At the center of the island was an ancient, gnarled white tupelo tree whose branches reached out low as if to push the foul water away. Forming the points of a perfect equilateral triangle around that tree were three off-centered pyramid shaped stones. With the exception of the type of tree, and the surrounding swamp, it looked exactly like the Kingdom.
To my left, Kinsey was already stirring. I pulled myself up and walked to her.
“Hey,” I said, kneeling at her side. “How are you?”
“Ok, I guess,” she said groggily. Then she looked around in confusion. “Where the hell are we? And how long were we out?” Her eyes gazed at the sun-lit foliage above us.
“Dunno,” I said, checking my phone. It was dead from the brackish water. Kinsey found hers destroyed as well. “Whatever happened, I’m guessing she can tell us.” I jutted my jaw toward the unconscious blonde woman. She lay on her back with her hips turned. Her blonde hair was spilled across her face. As I approached, I pulled my sidearm. I gave her a nudge in the ribs with the toe of my shoe, but she didn’t move.
“Hey!” Kinsey said staggering to her feet.
I ignored her and nudged the woman again, harder this time.
“Stop!” Kinsey shouted and grabbed my shoulder, yanking me around. “And put that damned thing away. Does she look like a threat to you?” I looked back at the woman and grunted.
My sister brushed past me in the kind of huff I hadn’t seen in years, but still made my skin prickle. She knelt next to the unconscious woman and placed a hand on the blonde’s shoulder.
“My, God!” Kinsey gasped. “Look at what she’s wearing,” Her other hand covered her mouth in shock.
The woman’s clothing looked like it was fashioned to resemble some high-end garment you might pick up on Rodeo Drive. It was an off the shoulder, form-fitting dress that reached the halfway point between her hips and knees. But it was the material that caused the stunned attention. The entire dress was made up of different kinds of leaves. Star shaped maples of vivid red, green, and gold cut alluring lines and thin elegant willows crisscrossed as though woven into a belt. A single shoulder strap of crimson heart-shaped leaves from the empress tree angled their points toward her chest.
I reached down and grabbed one of the star shaped maple leaves and it came away as though I’d picked it up off the sidewalk. Silken skin showed underneath. My finger touched her skin and found no sign of glue, thread, or anything else that might hold the leaves in place. Some invisible force held them tight against her body.
As we loomed over her, the woman’s eyes fluttered open. Shock and fear registered on her face when she saw us and she skittered back, her eyes wide and mouth open.
“Easy,” Kinsey said. “We won’t hurt you. My name is Kinsey and this is my brother Jake.”
“What happened?” the blonde woman stammered. “H-how did you get here?”
“We were going to ask you the same thing,” I growled. Nobody could have missed the frustration and anger in my voice. Kinsey certainly didn’t. She shot me a dark look as she placed calming hands on the woman’s shoulders and cooed maternally.
The blonde looked around, only now seeming to realize the swamp. Even more terror lit her eyes. “We have to get out of here, now!” she said scrambling to her bare feet. “We’re in terrible danger.”
“Why?” I as
ked narrowing my eyes at the woman. My hand tightened on the pistol. “Where did you take us?”
“The fairies were supposed to gate me to the Weald, not the Ebon Swamp. We must leave!”
“Fairies?” I scoffed, giving the absurd woman a derisive snort.
“Jake, please!” Kinsey admonished. Her eyebrows were knitted together in aggravation at my attitude.
“Really? She’s talking about fairies and you’re pissed with me? One thing she said is true: this is definitely a swamp. I can’t tell if this is Dragon Run or the Great Dismal, but either’s going to be full of water moccasins, black bears, alligators… oh, and disease.”
Dozens of feet away a group of blue herons drank at the edge of one of the many islands. As if to make my point, there was a sudden eruption from the edge of the water, and one of the herons was dragged into the murky depths by a hungry alligator.
The blonde woman looked around nervously. “Those reptiles aren’t the true danger of the Ebon. This swamp is the home of the Liskoja. Heartless reptilian predators that hunt anything that bleeds. If even one of those beasts finds us, a dozen more will be on our trail within minutes. Soon after a hundred. They’re pack hunters that care about nothing other than filling their bellies. We have to get out of this swamp now!”
Of course I didn’t believe her. Her story was ridiculous. I figured that she was most likely a wacko, and I certainly didn’t believe her story of a bunch of lizard monsters. But I couldn’t ignore the terror and sudden paleness in her face. And she was right about one thing: this swamp was not a place we wanted to stay in too long. Especially since I’m terrified of snakes.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s move.”
“We should go northeast,” the woman said quietly, not waiting for a response. “The only Lei point in the swamp is close to the northeast edge.” She didn’t wait for a response and moved off at a slow jog. Kinsey looked from her to me in indecision.
“Hold on,” I commanded, my left hand reaching instinctively for cuffs that weren’t there. Both women stopped and looked at me questioningly as my left hand groped my back. “Just don’t get too far ahead.” I looked right at the woman as I spoke, sliding my pistol back into its holster.
The woman said nothing. She stared icily at my pistol like it was the anti-Christ, then started off.
“So, we never got to be properly introduced,” Kinsey said as she sped up to the woman. The blonde didn’t hesitate to step into the foul water, and her foot sank all the way to her knee. That horrible stench of rot and decay intensified from the disturbed water. To her credit, the strange woman didn’t bat an eye at the smell.
“I remember. Jacob and Kinsey Martin. My name is Melina.”
“We didn’t tell you our last names or my first,” I growled. “How about you start with telling us how you know that.” My foot dipped into the water, and after a few inches of the disgusting black liquid, mud enveloped it. Step after step, mud sucked at my feet. In five steps I’d lost both my shoes and had to dig them out. I tied the laces together and hung them around my neck with the socks inside.
“I should know you,” Melina said as she fought her way through the mud. “We met several years ago.”
“That was you!” I roared. “I knew I wasn’t crazy!” There was more than a little triumph in my voice as I trumpeted my validation across the swamp.
“Keep your voice down!” she said. “We don’t want the liskoja to find us.”
I snorted at her ridiculous bullshit. “Tell me about our meeting. What were you doing at our home back then?”
“I’m an explorer of sorts. Elvin explorers use Lei points to travel to other worlds. We learn about other cultures, civilizations, and peoples. Sometimes we find something that’s mutually beneficial to both worlds, other times we find little. I was sent to your world ten years ago. Unfortunately, I showed up in the middle of a thunder storm. When I saw the house and you inside, I rushed to the window. But when I called to you, you fainted. I am sorry for that.”
“Wait,” Kinsey said. “Elvin? As in… an elf?”
A slim, fair hand brushed her blonde hair back revealing one delicate pointed ear. “The ears tend to give it away.”
“And the tiny flying people we saw?” Kinsey asked. “Those were fairies?”
“Yes, and they can be very devious. They’ll keep their word once given but, if they feel offended or threatened, they’ll often pervert the request given them. Such as dropping me here in the Ebon Swamp rather than the Weald where I should have been. Likely, it was in response to your intrusion into their ceremony. Its fortunate the Ebon Lei Point is close to the small border the swamp and Weald share.”
I looked at Kinsey as we fought through the thick and disgusting water. “You’re not buying into all this shit, are you?”
“How else do you explain all this?”
“I can’t. But elves, fairies, Lei Points? She’s nuts. She must be making things up.”
“I know it sounds impossible, but nothing else makes sense.” Kinsey said. Her voice was almost pleading. “Look at her ears!”
Of the two of us, Kinsey had always been more of the open minded hippie type. I was worried her addiction to fantasy games was clouding her judgement. “Maybe a birth defect?” I said.
“And what about the miniature people we saw flying around… back there.”
I said nothing. I wasn’t prepared to admit I saw something like that. Not even to myself. The only thing that made sense was the bullshit the woman was spewing, but that was impossible. Nothing she said was possible. I let the matter drop and we lapsed into an uncomfortable silence.
For several minutes, the only sounds were the slosh of water around our feet and our grunts as we fought through the mud. Thankfully, the stench in the air was thinning. Only barely, but with each step we were gagging less.
The slowly coloring velvet sky I could see through the foliage of emerald swamp trees told me night was coming quickly. Something about those swamp trees had been bothering me and, as I gazed through the multitude of different kinds of leaves, it suddenly hit me. This swamp was full of Bald Cyprus, White Tupelo, Red Maples, Sundari, Weeping Paperbarks, and dozens of other species of trees I couldn’t identify. Problem was, several of those species were found on different continents. None of them should be here together.
I glanced over to Melina, intending to interrogate her about the trees, when I noticed her unnaturally rigid posture. She hadn’t stopped moving, but her body language screamed alertness, danger. I sped up to her side.
“What is it?” I whispered to Melina. She didn’t speak. Her head was forward, but with eyes fixed on a point off to our left.
“We’re being followed,” Melina said quietly. “They’re paralleling us about seventy feet to the north.”
I glanced out the corner of my eye in that direction. Nothing but trees and ebon water. Not even a sound. “I don’t see anything,” I said. “I don’t hear anything either. You know, I think you’re just screwing with us. I think you’re…”
The words died in my throat when a host of strange roaring keens broke from the north. We froze as three man sized creatures burst from under the black water. Looking like some sort of lizard-human hybrid, they cut through the water on two feet just as easily as a human would on dry land. Stained yellow teeth were bared and iridescent golden eyes seared into us with murderous hunger as the beasts charged our group. Their six inch long snouts were open and drooling at the feast caught in their gaze.
They were fast. They were ungodly fast. I only just got my pistol out of its holster and up before they were on us. My pistol barked and flame erupted from its barrel. A cloud of red mist exploded from the back of the lizard beast closest to me. It fell limp into the water, its body slowly sinking into the black muck.
I wasn’t fast enough to get the next. It barreled into me, driving my body into a maple. Air exploded from my lungs, and I only barely brought my hand up in time to block its vicious attack. Thr
ee inch long serrated claws raked my shoulder and knocked the pistol from my hand. My metal lifeline landed with a thunk in an old hollow tree stump. The beast raised its other hand, all five retractable claws seeming to glow in the light. My chest burned as I gasped for air and brought both hands up in a feeble attempt to deflect its massive clawed hand.
I’d have been dead if not for Kinsey. Her screaming charge drew its attention. As the creature turned toward her, she brought her arm up and locked her hand behind her head. Her right elbow formed a battering ram with her entire body weight behind it. There was a colossal impact as the two bodies collided. Kinsey bounced back as much as the creature, holding a shoulder that almost gave out from the impact. But the lizard gave a long, deep wheeze as it dropped to a knee. Likely, she’d broken something inside the beast.
I dove, grabbed my pistol, and skidded to a stop half off the island. The lizard was just rising to its feet, eyes focused on Kinsey. I felt my hips sliding deeper into the sucking mud as I took aim. Another loud bark sent the creatures brains spraying into the swamp. Its body floated for just a few seconds in the disgusting liquid before disappearing beneath those ebon waters.
I looked to Melina as I fought my way out of the sucking ooze, sure the woman was dead. But she stood, hand stretched out toward the last lizard creature. It writhed in vines that had erupted from the stinking swamp water. The vines were thick with huge thorns that shredded the creature as it struggled. They wrapped its arms, legs, and chest, lifting it into the air and tightening each time the creature exhaled. The sharp ends of the vines whipped at the lizard’s exposed head as its body was slowly crushed by the tightening strands.
It gave several strained screams in the strange high-pitched wail we’d heard earlier, each weaker than the one before. Slowly the final scream died away as both its blood and air were drained from its body. When the creature stopped thrashing, Melina dropped her hands. The vines fell slack, dropping the useless wreckage into the stinking water. Seconds later it too was gone, as were any signs the creature was ever there.
A New World Page 3
