by Jean Lee
The beast, whom he was meant to kill. A mother and her child so…cared for…by…
“Who is this, Arlen?” Liam’s question rumbles slowly out of his lips.
No more evasion.
The beast’s teeth wave and dance in the heat, but not Arlen. His body remains rigid, silent, so bloody silent about them always.
Listen to your mother
Rid yourself of them
“The truth!”
Something whine-growls behind him. Charlotte runs around Liam and out of sight. The growls stop.
Sand blackens, whitens in the space between Liam and Arlen. The sand is melting.
The beast takes a step back from the burning ground, and murmurs, “Tell him, Arlen.”
Arlen breathes. “Cairine…”
The name skips as a stone. It shatters the sandy glass and Liam’s memory. The sea burning pink with sunset, the beach a garden, Arlen’s voice as gentle as the flowers he held for Liam to learn, Arlen’s hands tucking him into bed, Arlen’s laughter when Liam flew into the roof. The flowers, the sea, the laughter, the bees, the sun unbound by the horizon, no screams, no “come here boy,” no “listen to your mother”…
“…is my wife.”
Charlotte watches the blood sword fall first. It clangs against the sand-glass, bounces and shrinks. It lands with a noiseless thud and a cloud of sand. The cub scratches at her as it did in the lake just a few days ago, breaking her pendant’s cord and sending it wherever that black weed came from. I’ve got Arlen’s kid in my arms.
His kid.
Trapped to drown for three damn centuries.
No wonder Arlen was always showing up places sopping wet. No wonder She-Bear—Cairine—no wonder she barreled after them with teeth drawn. Who wouldn’t try to tear apart a stranger with a weapon around her child?
Any restraint between cub and parents suddenly feels like the worst kind of crime. Charlotte sets the cub down. It kicks up a spray of sand in her face when it bolts for its parents.
Charlotte bolts for the blood dagger, for Liam.
For Liam is falling.
His whole body seems to shrivel without the magic blade in his hands. He’s looking at the sand like he wants to fall face down.
But she’s not going to let him. Charlotte slides baseball-style and halts right between him and the sand, her eyes catching his—oh god what has crushed you inside—in the heartbeat before her hands feel his arm and ribs, bruised, too soft. His waning strength, it frightens her.
Yet Liam’s fall ceases, his body barely pressing into Charlotte’s hands. They both look, and there stands Arlen, the collar of his worn black coat blowing up around his neck, his hold upon Liam’s other arm as firm as the set of his jaw.
When Liam looks through his blowing curls, he can almost see his teacher again, as steadfast as a mountain.
Mountains are not meant to vanish.
11
Scouts Deliberate
Charlotte sheathes the blood dagger and spins to fill the upside-down V between Liam’s ribs and arm. “We gotcha,” she says, matching Arlen’s steps as best she can to reach the thicket. A high branch shivers in the wind. The leaves closer to the trunk rustle.
Something travels on the tree into the thicket.
Voices travel, too. One drags itself through gravel.
“Your pack could be one hundred strong. Lady Orna and the Incomplete will shred them all before they can piss.”
The other dances with a cello’s timbre.
“Devyn, you’ve nailed it! Our secret weapon is wolf piss. That stuff positively reeks, and when it’s on you, oh, it is on you for ages. Orna’ll prefer life in the Pits in no time.”
“Aether help us, where is your uncle...”
Charlotte quickens the pace as they enter the shadow of the trees. The thicket is not so thick on the inside—ash and elm flourish thickly above, but their massive branches cover the thin quiet space inside, where several others sit or stand as Arlen’s nephew Dorjan and the scout leader Devyn discuss The Lady and wolf piss. The space is just big enough that if necessary, the She-Bear could join them.
Arlen’s wife. Remember that, Charlie. That bear is no ordinary bear.
Did Liam know?
The way he winces at Arlen’s touch, Charlotte guesses not.
A small squeaking critter jumps off the branch above her. A cloud poofs out of nowhere, sending dust and fur flying. Uh oh. Charlotte pushes Liam and Arlen aside just in time.
“Here here here!” Poppy’s humanish form lands square on Charlotte’s back and thuds them both hard into the grass and roots. Which hurts. A lot. “See? She’s here! Charlotte’s here! Isn’t this great?! We’re all here now and together and it’s like a happy reunion and Rose said there’s nothing happy about today but I said of COURSE today can be a happy day because we’re alive and not The Lady’s dinner and Remus said if I don’t shut up he’ll make me HIS dinner and I said that wasn’t funny and ow ow ow!” Dorjan may look lankier and more frayed than Arlen, but he’s got no problem pulling Poppy away by the ear and pushing her into Devyn’s grey frame.
“Heart’s Fire, chattermouth, let the girl breathe.” Some tips of wavy black hair blow into his mouth. He spits them out and says, “Leave it to Charlotte to be dragged into another realm and come out all peachy while the Velidevour looks like roadkill. Damn, now I owe Ember a muffin.” He pouts and grabs what Charlotte is certain is the most perfect of muffins out of a satchel near the base of an ash tree and practically inhales it with his nose.
“Those are not yours to wager,” Arlen says with a tisk. “I made those before we left Rose House for Charlotte. She’s the one who actually requires edible sustenance.”
“And I said—blast, I really wanted to eat this—” Dorjan presses the muffin to his cheek.
“There’s no raw duck in it, is there?” Charlotte asks.
“What? No, though that’s a delicious thought for next time.”
“Dorjan!”
Charlotte plucks the muffin out of Dorjan’s hands before he can lick it—which was most certainly a part of his plan— and sits opposite Arlen by Liam’s shoulder. The air grows close, hot, humid. She smells nothing but saliva and hunger. Feels nothing but eyes. Hears nothing but clicking tongues and cracking knuckles. Charlotte tries to focus on the sweet texture of the muffin in her mouth, but the sunlight highlighting Liam’s injuries sours it all. She scarfs the thing down while Arlen inspects Liam’s darkest bruises.
“Dorjan, my satchel. Devyn, I’ll need my last ration of velifol to strengthen his bones.”
Worry creases Devyn’s dark skin. “It is the last ration for all of us. We cannot wait any longer to fight back.” He nudges Poppy into a huddle of Velidevour Charlotte’s hardly seen. A few look like they’re on break from a community theater presentation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, what with the leaves in the hair, chesty tunics, and ass-happy pants. Then there’s the jailbird versions of Raggedy Ann and Andy, and that old man with white hair tipped up at the corners like Vulcan ears. One looks like he’s made of silly putty, stretched into odd lengths with a paunchy middle. And how the hell did a pipe-smoking sunbaked sandcastle of a woman survive the Pits?
“How do you propose that, exactly?” Dorjan’s green eye flickers caution while the blue shines bright, eager. “For the umpteenth time, there’s too many of you on the ground to protect. Commoners haven’t the skills for hunting fellow Velidevour. Orna’s Incomplete may stagger about, but she’s a bloody rattlesnake. You’ll not see her bite until she’s swallowing you whole. The flyers can avoid danger, but what’s Nettle supposed to do, or Lily? Leave this to the princeborns,” Dorjan says, straightening his back despite Devyn’s incredulous look, “And that human. Thing. Whatever she is.”
“Hey!” Muffin crumbs poof from Charlotte’s mouth and land on Liam’s chest.
Arlen takes a small pouch from Devyn and catches the knife-length leather scroll tossed by Dorjan. “Some archangel too, Uncle. He looks bl
oody awful.”
The leather scroll unwinds, revealing a few dozen pockets of crushed or dried plans. “Ember, a quick reconnaissance, if you please. And summon Cairine and Aine as you go,” Arlen says with eyes fixed on pinches, leaves, and petals.
“Of course, Sir.” Ember rolls to her good side, slowly gathers balance onto her good leg. No one, not even Devyn, holds out a hand to assist her. By the gritting squint on Ember’s face, Charlotte figures any past hand offered had been slapped away. She looks tired, too. Damn tired.
Goodness knows how long she spent flying over the lake after Charlotte and Liam were taken. “Thanks for spotting us and getting the word out,” Charlotte says.
Ember smiles—well, by Ember standards. “Thank heart’s fire I saw you fall in. Arlen was ready to face Orna himself without weapons or magic, not to mention some other self-destructive fools.”
Does her stink eye hit Devyn, or Dorjan?
Probably both.
“What about me?” Paunchy Putty honks as Ember exits into the sunlight. “I could scope out as far as you like. To the borders of Saskatchewan, I could.”
Charlotte’s not seen blue fire often, but she does now in Dorjan’s eye. “No need to go that far, you Christmas dinner.” He snaps his teeth in front of Paunchy Putty’s face for good measure.
“Enough! For the love of—I’m starting to remember why I kept the herbarium closed to visitors.” Arlen mixes one pouch of glowing velifol with the herbs and presses them gingerly into Liam’s wounds. Liam shudders at the first application, but Charlotte enfolds his hand in her own and squeezes tight.
“Everything’s okay now, we’re with friends,” she says, voice shaking. Arlen’s Gaeilic moves quietly over Liam, like a breeze through a meadow, and Liam’s body soon stills. Steam hisses where magic knits bone, exchanging the smells of lake and rust for the sharpness of betony.
“And just how, Princeborn Rogue, do you propose we live while you prance about with your piss and teeth?” Cranky Vulcan asks.
Poppy unleashes a spittled laugh. “Ew, those would be the smelliest teeth in the world! Just like the ones I saw once down down down down in the dark dark dark Pits—”
“Poppy, silence that mouth or I’ll eat that first!”
“De-vyn, Remus is gonna eat me!”
“I’m going to eat you if you don’t pipe down, pipsqueak.” A wild ginger-haired woman of the Midsummer cast shoves Poppy down into the laps of the jailbird harlequins. “You stole my last ration, admit it!”
Poppy whimpers a “S-sorry.” But Ginger-Hair still pulls her leg back to kick—
Charlotte lunges and grabs Ginger-Hair’s ankle to push her backside down into the sandy grass. “Knock it off. Poppy’s just a dumb, hungry kid.”
“I’m not dumb, Willow’s dumb, they’re all dumb! They never think I can do any—!”
“Shut UP!” hallelujahs the scout chorus.
Ginger-Hair Willow holds herself up and stares at Charlotte, violet irises swirling. She growls and barks in the animal-speak Charlotte often heard in the Pits.
Someone’s teeth click. Another grumble-barks.
“Cease speaking Mawdre at once.” Cairine calls over her shoulder. Her nose quivers on the breeze. “If you’re to speak of the human, then you speak in her tongue so that she may defend herself.”
Willow grimaces at Cairine but acquiesces. “What I want to know is, why Miss Precious Human Charlotte wasn’t upstairs with all the other humans?”
“Ol’ Hoot’s shaking his head, Willow.” A rather muddy Midsummer guy reaches out for Willow with a confused look on his face. Charlotte almost does a double-take; his face and build are too damn similar to the Studchin guitarist from her bus across Wisconsin. “I wouldn’t work on her, anyway. She’s all fuzzy.” He points to Charlotte’s forehead.
“Don’t you go poking around in there.” Charlotte grabs the blood dagger and stands, back straight, jaw set. She holds the blood dagger in a ray of sunlight so the feathers burn their stares. “Wanna know why? This is why. I don’t need it to toast you like some god damn marshmallow, but since it’s handy—”
“Simmer down, She-Ra.” Dorjan pulls Charlotte to one side of the thicket, where Cairine sits, silently presiding over her husband’s magic. “Charlotte’s just as much a target as the rest of you for Orna’s appetites,” he says to the rest.
“Thanks for the reminder,” Charlotte says with a jab to Dorjan’s arm.
Devyn’s grip presses Willow down into a slump; his glare sets all the churning eyes and clicking teeth into silence. “Fellow scouts, I know you are starving. We had a taste of strong velifol with Master Liam’s tree, but Lady Orna’s betrayed us all. The princeborn Dorjan is right—you are not all fighters.”
“Speak for yourself, dearie.” Sunbaked Sandcastle blows a small cloud of pipesmoke into the air above her head. The cub, Aine, is attempting to climb the tree behind Sunbaked Sandcastle’s back. She only makes it a couple feet before her paws give and she plops back down with an oof in the old Velidevour’s lap.
“Even badgers need their teeth to fight, Nettle,” Dorjan mutters.
“Don’t you tell me what my chompers can and can’t do, you little rogue.”
Devyn holds up his hand before Dorjan can retort and says, “The remains of your ‘chompers’ would do you well enough beyond the wall, Nettle. Every commoner can hold their own as beasts hidden among the typical humans. So, that is where you all must go.”
“And eat how, exactly?” Jailbird Boy asks.
“I didn’t make it through all the torture down in the Pits to have this,” Jailbird Girl holds up her wrist, marked by a moving tattoo of vines, “strangle me for swallowing some veli outside the Wall.”
“You don’t have to swallow out there. Just hunt out there.” Dorjan drops to one knee and pulls up a fistful of grass with every name: “Bear Creek. Maple Creek. Deer Creek.”
“Oooh, one for me.” Another Midsummer scout, this one a girl with thick features, coos and smiles.
Dorjan rolls his eyes. “Fine. Yes. Deer Creek for Deer Lily, you’re welcome. Three towns, all within a day’s journey, with several farms in between. You go in groups to avoid overlap, gather whatever veli you can—”
“In what, exactly?” Remus says with an obnoxious purr.
“I don’t know, steal the Blair’s jelly jars, they only have five dozen in the pantry. You use instincts. What’s left of them, anyway.”
Paunchy Putty sticks his head in, smile stretched as the rest of him. “Does the water road from the border family’s well connect? Because then I could go to Saskatchewan with hardly a flap.”
“I swear upon the ashes of the kingborns, Pete, if you bring up Canada one more bloody time—”
“And it’s PEAT! I can hear it in your voice you’re thinking the idiot human spelling. You always say my name wrong on purpose!”
“There’s no other way to say your bloody name!”
Birdsong, wild and frantic. Ember transforms the moment she cuts through foliage and lands heavily on her lame leg, but that doesn’t stop her from reporting. “Sir, half dozen, searching, South. West. Not. Normal.” If not for Devyn’s swift hands, Ember would have collapsed onto the Jailbird Duo.
Arlen looks up from Liam but doesn’t break his spell. Cairine speaks for him. “What do you mean, ‘not normal’?”
“Like. In the Pits. Thorned. But now Bigger. Worse.”
Pause.
Cranky Vulcan goes sickly pale. “Perhaps the princeborn’s got the right idea, eh, Devyn?” A small, fuzzy cloud builds around his legs, overtaking him one moment and revealing a scrappy calico cat the next.
The Jailbird Duo share a look. “Shit, not those things,” says the boy.
“We’ll hit Bear Creek. Judoc, you comin’?” says the girl.
The Midsummer guy nods. “I know the Stellaqui can’t net me in a creek. I’m in.”
“Me too, me too!” squeaks Poppy.
“Hunt as far as you can and r
eturn tomorrow before midday with veli to spare.” Devyn’s pointing, calling orders as Lily falls forward and becomes a doe, as the Jailbird Duo poof into raccoons—guess I can’t call them Jailbirds anymore, Charlotte thinks. Were the Velidevour even listening? They run in all different directions, with little Poppy squeaking after the raccoons, the cat, and even Nettle, whose massive badger-self waddles like she’s got four arthritic knees. How in the HELL does something like that climb the Wall?
Poppy finally squeaks up at Peat. “Oh for you, Poppy, anything. At least SOMEone respects my family name.”
Dorjan drags his hands across his face. Ember’s breath, finally even, allows her to say, “You must fly, exposed, above the treetops. I don’t trust their arms. Blend too well with branches.”
“I have no idea what that means, but okay,” Peat says as Poppy the mouse crawls up his back. After giving her a light pat on the head, he turns one eye on Dorjan. “Sure you don’t want me to fetch a taste of home, Princeborn?” His paunch jiggles as he leaps out of Dorjan’s reach and explodes into a flurry of brown feathers. He has got to be the loudest goose I’ve ever heard.
Arlen’s spell fades into a whisper, then nothing. “I’ve removed the poisons. The rest is up to Liam now.” Sadness lines his face. Only when Aine toddles over to Arlen to bat his beard does he smile again, even as tears brim along the edges of his eyes.
Charlotte returns to Liam’s side. She rests the blood dagger between them to weave her fingers through his. His face is contorted with nightmares. Stroking your temple’s all I can do, Liam. I want to reach in, pull the nightmares out, and stomp the shit out of’em. But I’m just me. All I can do is hope my touch calms those storms.
The whole thicket stinks of nightmare, an acidic, anger-tinged sadness. Dorjan’s blue eye shines murder while the green eye smolders with shame. He leans against a tree, crossing his arms as if that could make him invisible.
Cairine growls softly, “You must not concern yourself, Dorjan. You know Peat is much too cowardly to fly near Durant lands.”
