“This one can, sister,” a second female said. “Her mind says she speaks the truth.” Her voice echoed from the ground, a few trees away, probably hiding behind the thick trunk to my left.
“This huldra,” the second, more wispy voice continued, “is the mother of war. Of the dark things, the roots, hidden beneath soil, begging to push through the surface and be greeted by the moon’s light.”
Chills ran down my spine. In the last week or so I had been attacked by Hunters, had my energy drained by succubi, took part in a kumbaya with the mermaids, and learned Marcus was a Hunter. But nothing compared to the creepy sensation of having my mind read by a rusalka. As though long, glowing fingers ran through my hair, massaged my scalp, and parted my brain to look inside.
“You are right, sister,” said the first, soft voice. “I can see that now. Though she cavorts with the enemy.”
Shit. They knew about Marcus. I scolded myself for thinking about him while traipsing through rusalki territory.
“But she does not come to harm us,” the wispy voice reminded.
“My huldra ancestors hadn’t come to harm you either, but your kind didn’t seem to care then,” I said without thinking. The more I traveled, the shorter my fuse became. Not that I’d had a particularly long fuse to begin with.
“Your ancestors sought to create an alliance, to use our abilities for their own gain,” the wispy voice said.
I kept my hands out in front of me and allowed tiny buds of branches to grow from my fingertips. I had to be ready to turn and fight with less than a second’s notice. I had been concentrating on their scents, the slightest sound of their movements, so I hadn’t noticed two more rusalki, accompanied by a pissed off mermaid, approach from my right side, from the lake.
A short, thin rusalki with milky pale skin and black hair so long that it swished across the backs of her knees peered up at the female in the tree above me. “This mermaid was trespassing,” she said before she noticed me and froze.
I looked down. Every exposed piece of my skin was covered in bark, thus her difficulty in seeing me at first.
“It’s public land, not yours. I’m not trespassing any more than you are,” Gabrielle argued. “Let me go!”
With all eyes on Gabrielle’s temper tantrum, I shot out from underneath the fir tree and stopped on the rock patio of their earthen home, turning my body to face everyone.
The soft-voiced rusalka crouched on the branch above where I’d stood earlier. She watched me with ice blue eyes and brown hair about as long as her sister’s. The female standing beside the thick trunk narrowed her light green eyes and swept a strand of her long auburn hair from her cheek. The dry rusalki wore short animal-skin skirts and a necklace of long fern branches to cover their chests. On their heads were crowns of woven grass, tiny pine cones, and dried flower petals. The females clasping Gabrielle’s hands behind her wore nothing but bone necklaces and seaweed crowns that dripped lake water down their shoulders and chests.
“They cannot let you go,” the green-eyed female said, stepping away from the tree. “Your intentions are not admirable. You have not come for the same reason the huldra has come.”
Twenty-Two
I snapped my head from the green-eyed female to Gabrielle. My eyes widened. I thought Gabrielle and I had been on the same page this whole trip: unite the Wilds and rescue our sisters and mothers from the Hunters.
“Don’t believe them, Faline,” Gabrielle pleaded. “They live in a hole in the ground. They swim in filthy water. They wear animal skins. You know me. You know my sisters. You know we want nothing more than to see all Wild Women thrive. These rusalki are delusional; they’re out of their minds.”
“Yeah, but they also read minds,” I reminded her.
The naked female holding Gabrielle’s right arm reached over the mermaid’s head in the blink of an eye and within half a second held a long strand of black hair out in front of her face.
“Goddess, no!” Gabrielle yelled. She flung her elbows to push away. The rusalka pinned the mermaid’s arms tighter to her back.
“No! She’s with me,” I said, rushing toward the threesome. Branches shot out from my fingertips. “Don’t do it!”
The two rusalki holding Gabrielle didn’t flinch. Their arms gripped her tightly. They wore smiles of tranquility despite the angry mermaid. Their skin glowed iridescent, making their white teeth look dark. The other two rusalki joined their sisters, standing on each side, creating a line of four glowing beings with a trapped mermaid in the middle.
“Faline! Stop them!” Gabrielle writhed and screamed. “I can feel them; they’re in my head, all of them!”
I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t take on four Wild Women at once. But I had to try. I shoved my arms in front of me and willed my branches to grow longer, stronger, from my fingertips. My fingers separated, creating a V on each hand causing the vine-like branches from each finger to join the other and double up in strength. They shot out farther until a woody vine wrapped around each rusalki neck. Still, they smiled and glowed.
I tried to tighten the branches around their necks, but for some reason I couldn’t. I didn’t want to. I shook my head and my vision blurred. The feeling of long, cold fingers massaging my scalp returned.
“Stop,” I pleaded. “I’m not the enemy.”
Then don’t become one, a female said into my mind. She has betrayed you. The mermaid has made herself your enemy.
With blurred vision, I looked toward the iridescent light, bright figures in the surrounding darkness.
“How?” My fuzzy mind failed to grasp a whole sentence.
The female answered, but I couldn’t understand as my consciousness floated on what seemed like clouds heading for the stars. My eyes eased shut without my consent and geometric patterns rose and fell behind my lids, starting as pin pricks and growing out. I tried to pull myself away from the mandalas multiplying behind my eyes, but they only doubled in size and brightness. I fought through it, barely. My vision returned slowly.
Gabrielle opened her mouth as only a short squeak left her lips. Her wide eyes and pleading stare lasted less than a second, though the image burned itself into my being, and returned my senses to me and plucked the massaging fingers from my mind. I blinked to see my dark-haired mermaid friend crumbled in a heap on the dirt.
The soft-voiced rusalka held a wooden pair of scissors in one hand and half a strand of Gabrielle’s hair in the other.
I wanted to lunge forward and somehow tear the rusalka’s head from her body—my own form of killing by hair cut—but something in me, a knowing, told me to be still. My bare feet anchored to the roots of an old oak tree. My feet tingled. I looked down at real vines growing from my toes and rooting into the ground.
“You just killed my friend,” I said with a shaky voice. I balled my fists and swallowed down the acid rising in my throat.
Their skin dimmed. Their relaxed facial expressions told me they were unconcerned.
“She was no friend of yours,” the soft-voiced female finally said. “Not a friend to Wild Women.” I waited for her to explain further, but she only stood there, staring, as though that one piece of reasoning had been enough.
It hadn’t. Not for me.
“She was trying to help me save us!” I screeched through a burning throat. Tears filled my eyes.
“Yes,” the wispy-voiced female said. “That was half of her intentions. But she also had another half—secretive and vile.”
I scratched my scalp to remove the tingles left by whatever they’d used to pry my thoughts from me in what I assumed was an effort to realize my intentions. “This doesn’t make any sense.”
The wispy-voiced rusalka walked toward their home, and the others followed. “Come,” she said to me. “Come inside. Sit, rest, and I will explain.”
I shook my head and scoffed. How could they read minds and yet still be so clueless. “I’m not going in there,” I said, motioning to the entrance of their home, decorated with
sticks and rocks.
“We will not harm you. This is not a trap,” another female said without looking my way.
Could what they were saying be true? What could they have possibly read in her mind? I needed to know. I’d come this far, I couldn’t walk away without knowing more. “Are you missing members?” I asked, wanting to complete the reason for my visit and put this place behind me. “Were they taken?”
The green-eyed female stood in front of the small square make-shift door and turned on her heel. She cocked her head. “You know the unknown as well?”
“She does not,” another female sang. “Or she would have killed the mermaid days ago.”
My scalp tingled again and I gave an irritated groan. I should have kept my mouth shut. The mind burglary didn’t last long, thankfully.
A female opened the small door and bent low to enter the hole in the front of a mound. The others followed. “Come, huldra,” one said from inside.
I gazed at the animal bones beside the door and hoped they symbolized a respect for life rather than sacrifice. The rusalki’s abilities would be amazingly helpful in an attack on the Hunters if they agreed to help in the war they said I would be the mother of. I wondered what they would find in Marcus’s mind if given the opportunity to explore it, if they were able to explore the mind of a Hunter.
I peered at Gabrielle’s body, void of life, crumbled on the ground. Had she really betrayed me? What was her second plan, if not to help the Wilds? Maybe even more important, had she been acting on her own or with her whole shoal’s consent?
I turned to the earthen home, what looked like a mound of hollowed out den with a small makeshift wooden door propped open for me. Four females waited inside. If those four females didn’t agree to help, this whole mission could implode before it got off the ground. I couldn’t settle on an exact plan to attack the Hunters until I saw how each Wild group worked with the others. But we had to do it the day my coterie showed up at the complex for our monthly check-in. If the rusalki was able to sneak up on me and Gabrielle, they could do the same to the Hunters, which would be incredibly helpful to our cause.
Unless, because of the rusalki, this all fell apart. The mermaids would hate the huldra for letting one of their own die. The harpies would hate me, too. Unless, they were also in on it. Gabrielle had spent plenty of alone time with them the night Marcus and I were together. Had she already taught them how to use their siren’s song, enabling them to turn on us? No, she’d said it didn’t work on Wilds.
In less than a day I’d gone from feeling supported by many to feeling absolutely alone. I caught myself gnawing my inner cheek. There was only one way to find the answers to the questions creating a tornado in my mind.
“I’m sorry,” I said under my breath to the fallen mermaid as I passed her empty body.
I bent to crawl into the rusalki’s underground den. Once I entered I had to stand with a hunched back to keep my head from hitting the dirt ceiling. Moss carpeted the small, round space. Wood lined the walls and chopped tree trunks made up the table and chairs. Bundled branches hung along the wall creating shelves. Red paintings, like those you’d find in ancient caves, decorated the wooden walls with images of the moon’s cycles, and their Russian goddess, Mokosh, growing from a great tree, raising a bowl and a horn above her head with what looked like the full moon behind her.
The four rusalki sat on short tree stumps along the rounded walls in a circle, leaving two open. The green-eyed female motioned for me to sit on the stump beside her. The two previously naked females had since covered themselves, one with a large animal skin wrapped around her shoulders, and the other with a fern skirt and top.
“She thinks us odd,” one said to the others.
They stared at me as though I was the odd one for thinking that.
“My name is Faline,” I said, eager to begin the discussion.
“We know that,” the green-eyed female said with a smile.
Their knowing smiles and eager eyes gave me chills.
“You’re scaring the huldra,” another said and the green-eyed rusalka’s smile dropped.
“She is Drosera.” The female with ice blue eyes and black hair pointed to the green-eyed female. “She is Vernonia.” She pointed to the female with light hazel eyes and dark brown hair, one of the rusalki who held Gabrielle hostage. “She is Daphne.” She pointed to the other female who’d held Gabrielle, the one who wore the bone necklace. “And I am Azalea.”
“I’m confused,” I admitted, leaving out the other more pissed off emotion I felt in an effort keep the peace long enough to get their help. “You do realize you just made what I’m trying to accomplish even more impossible?” I needed the mermaids’ assistance in rescuing my sister and these rusalki just built another major hurdle between Shawna and me.
“Confused is one step better than scared,” Daphne said.
I rubbed the palms of my hands on my jeans as a calming technique. “I prefer to be neither.”
“She’s angry. She wants to know why we killed the mermaid,” Vernonia told the others.
I worked harder to smother my growing resentment for the women rummaging through my mind. After Shawna was home and safe I planned to remind her of this exact moment as proof of my selfless love for her.
“We didn’t kill her friend, we ended her physical life,” Drosera said lightly.
“The huldra doesn’t know the difference,” Vernonia said.
I was beginning to see why other Wilds avoided the rusalki, aside from their ability to kill with swiftness. They seemed to live outside of reality and be recluses at the same time—suffering a disconnect with the world around them. And their communication skills needed help.
“Faline, all life is continuous, whether it be in the physical form or not. The mermaid still exists, only you cannot see her current form.” Azalea stood, though not completely, and walked to a tall stump holding a hollowed-out wooden pitcher beside hollowed-out wooden cups. She poured water and offered to pour me a cup.
For Shawna, I accepted the drink as a peace offering. “Yes, please,” I said, realizing I was parched. “Let me be honest. I’m not interested in your coven’s beliefs on death and life. What did you see inside of Gabrielle’s mind? What was the second plan, her back-up plan you talked about?”
Azalea handed me the cup and sat. “We have lived here, in peace, without outsiders or any trouble, for many years.”
I forced myself not to roll my eyes in frustration.
Azalea continued. “We do not possess the same sense of smell you huldra have. And we weren’t expecting the men when they came.”
“The Hunters?” I asked.
“We too suffer the monthly screenings offered by the Hunters,” Azalea said.
I moaned inwardly at getting her off track.
“Oh, we don’t suffer much,” Vernonia offered.
Azalea spoke to me. “We are able to make them think they’ve tested us properly when we visit and that our results prove that we have not been using our abilities. Our great grandmothers taught us from a young age to invade their minds at each screening.”
“But we did not see that they planned to take two of our sisters,” Azalea said. “They must not have planned it.”
“They came whilst we slept,” Vernonia said, shaking her head. “Tossed a small metal contraption into our home. It blew a foul-smelling smoke at us.”
Azalea nodded. “I was able to reach into the nearest Hunter’s mind before the smoke pressed its sleep upon me. A mermaid had given him our location in exchange for her shoal’s continued freedom. She’d told him the best way to rend us powerless. I succumbed to their smoke before learning why or where they were taking our sisters.” She sighed and put her head down. “We have moved since then.”
Daphne rubbed Azalea’s back. “You did well,” she consoled her sister.
“So you’re saying Gabrielle was behind the abductions?” I stood to pace, but hit my head on the dirt ceiling and sat to nurse
a budding headache. Bits of dry dirt sprinkled down around me.
“Yes,” Azalea said as she raised her head to look at me. “Her and her shoal.”
Twenty-Three
My heart raced and anxious energy twitched my muscles. “Then why was Gabrielle helping me to gather the Wilds if she was also helping the Hunters?”
“She thought she was being clever, helping the Hunters and the mother of war at the same time. No matter the outcome, she would find her and her shoal on the winning side,” Azalea answered. “Never underestimate a mermaid; they are a cunning kind.”
“But why tell the Hunters anything to begin with?” I asked. “If she hadn’t given them the information, they wouldn’t have been able to take our sisters, and there’d be no war.” It didn’t make sense. Unless. “Their technology is making it harder for us to hide our identities. If we changed our names, there’d be a paper trail leading the Hunters back to us. And staying off the grid is nearly impossible when every electronic transaction, from credit card to internet to cell phone use, is stored and monitored. Even functioning without those things, only using cash and living off the land, won’t secure the mermaids’ safety for long because of the recent advances in satellites and facial recognition technology.”
“She knew it was only a matter of time before the Hunters would no longer need her intelligence. She had to act before it was too late to align with them. While she had something they did not,” Daphne said in a quiet voice.
“But they attacked her island anyway,” I explained. “While I was there.”
“There was nothing in her mind about that occurrence,” Azalea said. “So I cannot answer your statement.”
“The Hunters attacked. She’d said they must have used drones to find the mermaids. I killed two of them that night.” I had to get home. I had to warn the others.
“Yes, we see that in your mind.” Azalea took a sip of water.
“Your mother and sister have been taken captive,” Daphne said, staring into my eyes.
Wild Women Collection Page 19
