Accession

by Terah Edun

  “What did you see?”

  “Black thorns,” whispered Cecily before she because fully aware.

  When Cecily’s gaze snapped back into focus, she shook her head as if to dispel a dream. Leaning forward unsteadily, she tried to stand. She made it, but only with the help of Katherine’s hand to balance her as she stood. Puzzled, Katherine looked up at her and stood as well.

  Cecily looked shaken...as if this wasn’t something she had done dozens of times before. Katherine had watched her. She would sometimes be disoriented, but she never snapped in and out of a conscious state like that. Never.

  “Are you all right?”

  Cecily shook her head. “I’ll be fine.” She was lying, Katherine could tell.

  “You know what? Let me just go get a glass of water to clear my head.”

  Katherine watched as she went to the shop sink. As Cecily drank from the fountain, Katherine decided to try to dust the chalk off her jeans.

  “What did you mean by black thorns?” Katherine asked.

  Cecily turned her head slightly but kept her form bent over the sink. “What did you say?”

  “I was asking about what you saw,” Katherine.

  Cecily turned around fully, a little pale. “You know I never remember everything I see. That’s why I have you.”

  “Yeah,” Katherine said while watching her cousin and friend carefully.

  The next moment pounding knocks on the door startled them both.

  “We’re closed,” Katherine shouted at the door without turning around.

  The knocking persisted.

  Katherine went to the door and yanked it open, prepared to give the person a piece of her mind about disturbing her family in their time of grief.

  The expression on the fire marshal’s face stopped her cold.

  Desperation was written in the stressed lines of his brow and the squint of his clear blue eyes. He held his rumpled hat with tight hands.

  “Fire Marshal Ford, what can I do for you?” Katherine said.

  “I can’t get up to your house to see your sister, Katherine. Do you have any idea where she is?” he said tightly. “Rose was supposed to be at the town bridge an hour ago. The trolls are getting restless.”

  Quietly, Katherine said, “Rose died this morning, Fire Marshal.”

  He sucked in a tight breath as Cecily came over.

  “Fire Marshal Ford,” she said with a curious nod.

  He glanced over at her and nodded before turning back to Katherine. “I didn’t know, Katherine. Your family has my sympathies.”

  “Thank you,” she said, prepared to smile and close the door.

  He still didn’t budge except to wipe a sweaty brow with a cloth that had seen better days...and way too many oil changes.

  As she eased the door closed, he stuck his foot out in a hurry.

  “But there’s still a problem to be handled.” he said with a lick of his lips. “I wouldn’t normally be so forward, but we need Rose. And if she has passed, then we need you.”

  “Me?” Katherine said, staring at him as if he were crazy.

  Everyone in town knew that if you needed anything political, you went to Rose or the queen. If you needed anything magical, you stayed five miles away from Katherine with a couple of buildings in between for good measure.

  He sighed. “Yes.” She could feel the reluctance in his tone and tried not to take offense.

  “This is really the duty of the heir. Never the queen,” he continued.

  “Ever?” said Katherine sarcastically.

  He glared at her. “Ever. But don’t fear—your powers aren’t needed here. Just your heritage and your ears.”

  Katherine’s eyebrows rose to her hairline as she fought to keep a neutral expression on her face...and failed. He was kidding, right?

  He didn’t flinch.

  “Could it wait until tomorrow?” Katherine asked, expecting an affirmative.

  “No,” he said. “Depressed trolls aren’t really something you want to leave to their own devices. And they’ll only listen to a witch of the Thompson line.”

  Katherine blinked at him, wondering if she had heard him right. Depressed. Trolls. Could trolls even get depressed?

  She cleared her throat and turned to Cecily who shrugged. Katherine was hoping for her cousin to say something along the lines of, Yes, he’s clearly insane and I’ll call the police. Instead her cousin threw her to the wolves.

  “Rose did a lot of odd things for the town,” Cecily said.

  Then it dawned on Katherine. Rose was dead. Rose was the heir. With the heir dead, the next person in line inherited this small dipshit town in the middle of nowhere. Horror overtook her face with the realization that the next person in line was her.

  She was now Queen Bee of Sandersville.

  Chapter 9

  Her jaw dropped as she stared at Cecily, and all Katherine could say was, “My life’s officially gone to hell now.”

  Being the good friend and cousin that she was, Cecily quickly took over. To the fire marshal, she said, “The bridge, you said?”

  He nodded.

  “We’ll be right over,” Cecily said firmly while taking the door in her hand.

  The fire marshal didn’t look too comfortable with that. He probably didn’t want his only possible solution slipping away.

  Cecily’s voice turned to butter. “There’s only one bridge in town, Fire Marshal. Only five minutes to get there. We just need to close up the shop quickly and phone Katherine’s mom to let her know we’ll handle it.”

  He brightened at that. It was good to keep the queen informed. “Then I’ll see you two ladies in ten minutes.”

  He backed away and Cecily closed the door behind him.

  Katherine turned to her cousin and grabbed her shoulders. “Did he say what I thought he said? What the hell am I supposed to do with depressed trolls?”

  “We’ll find out when we get there,” Cecily said firmly while handing her the pink cell phone. “Now call your mother and tell her we’re on the way to the bridge while I clean up this mess.”

  As Cecily walked away, Katherine said, “Well, she did say I was to ‘take care’ of things while she dealt with Rose’s death.”

  As she swept, Cecily said, “That makes sense. If the heir dies, the next one needs to get up to speed, and fast. What better way than throwing the fat into the fire.”

  Catching Katherine’s expression, she quickly said, “So to speak.”

  Katherine gave her a weak smile and dialed her mother. Aunt Sarah answered.

  Their conversation was short, sweet and to the point: “Don’t mess this up.”

  With a click the conversation was cut off, and Katherine was left listening to an empty line. Her aunt sure had a way with words. Katherine let out a harsh sigh. “We’ll take care of this but need to find out what happened to Rose. What did you mean by ‘black thorn’?”

  Cecily avoided her eyes. “I wish I knew. I’m sorry. Sometimes my visions are just symbols, or flashes of events.”

  Katherine noted internally that this was the second excuse Cecily had given in regards to what she saw. First it had been that she didn’t remember. Now it was she only saw a flash of it. Which was true?

  “So you saw a black thorn?” Katherine persisted.

  “I think so. But I’m not sure,” Cecily said, hurrying to finish. “Why don’t we lock up here, go see about the trolls, and come back in ten minutes to finish what we started?”

  Katherine grimaced, but she could see that it was a good plan. Besides, if Cecily wanted to realize analyze the vision without rushing, they had a better chance of getting some clear results.

  Aloud, Katherine said, “We did promise to get over there quickly.”

  “And it shouldn’t take too long,” Cecily answered with a nod as she swung open the shop door with the keys in her left hand.

  As they headed out the door, Katherine got into the driver’s side of her car as she thought of something that was
bothering her. Looking over at Cecily while putting the gear into reverse, she said, “Trolls? Really?”

  Cecily shrugged.

  Katherine groaned. “I really wish today would go back to being normal.”

  “Don’t we all.”

  Katherine looked at her cousin again. She was acting strangely. But today was full of the strange, the morbid, and the depressing. And it was only mid-afternoon. She could only handle so much at once. Putting the SUV in reverse, she drove out to the bridge, hoping whatever it was happened to be a simple fix.

  Maybe the trolls needed some herbs from the shop?

  She tried to think on what a troll would eat. Couldn’t figure out a bloody thing. A crypto-zoologist she was not.

  As she parked on the town side of the gorge which divided Lancashire County from Buckstone County next door, she asked Cecily, “Are trolls vegetarians or omnivores?”

  Cecily unfastened her seatbelt and got out. “Have you seen their teeth?”

  Katherine shook her head.

  “They’re as pointed as a barracuda’s. Definitely meat eaters.”

  “Great,” grumbled Katherine while wrapping her scarf more tightly around her neck and stuffing her hands in her pockets. It was starting to snow.

  They rushed to the edge of the bridge, where two police cars had the entrance blocked off. Peering to the other side, Katherine saw police tape cordoning off the other entrance as well. Quickly she and Cecily got out of the car, searching for the man in charge. When she spotted the fire marshal who had been knocking on the door of their shop minutes before she plastered a smile on her face and walked over.

  To the fire marshal, she asked, “What’s going on?”

  He shouted back over the wailing that started echoing up from the gorge, “Trolls are on strike.”

  “Strike? I thought you said they were depressed!”

  “They’re depressed and they decided to protest.”

  “Fuck me,” said Katherine. “Why? What are they protesting?”

  He grimaced. “Something about some ritual that people forgot about. Supposed to have started this morning.”

  “Ritual?”

  He grimaced. “You’ll see.”

  Katherine sighed. “Am I supposed to go down there alone?”

  “No,” said the fire marshal, “two of the uniforms will escort you.”

  She nodded and headed toward the embankment.

  “Word to the wise,” he called out.

  She looked back over her shoulder to see the fire marshal and Cecily standing next to him.

  “Bring a guardian next time.”

  Katherine didn’t comment, but she thought, Having a guardian didn’t seem to help my sister this morning.

  With the uniformed police officers behind her, she climbed down the side of the gorge using the steel ladder embedded in the wall. One of the officers offered to float her down with his witches’ gift, but she didn’t know him. He could be excellent or completely sucky at using his powers. And she would rather not end up as flat as a pancake on the bottom of the gorge, thank you very much. As she climbed down she occasionally looked back up at the steel suspension bridge that hovered overhead. She never looked down. If she did she knew she’d be too petrified to move, and then she’d be stuck clinging to a ladder rung.

  After twenty minutes of bitter cold, stinging winds, and occasional small rocks tumbling past her, Katherine made it to the bottom and promptly stuffed her gloveless hands into her coat pockets, wishing all the while that her witches’ gift dealt with heat or fire or lava. Anything that would warm her up, really.

  Turning around to look for the trolls, she saw nothing but large boulders in an empty riverbed all around her. The officers soon made it down next to her. One said, “They’re over there, ma’am.”

  He was pointing west.

  “Okay, then,” she said, trying to sound brave.

  She was not easily frightened, but you try entering the lair of a pack of depressed trolls without being a tiny bit nervous. As she walked forward, the eerie wailing ceased. Not a sound echoed in the gorge except the footfalls of Katherine and the two policemen by her side as well as the occasional tumbling rock. One of the officers walked in front of her to shine his light when they started weaving around large boulders.

  They came around the last boulder to find an open area directly underneath the bridge and a pack of trolls staring them down. Six, to be exact. Of all different sizes too. One was as big as the car. Another as tiny as a house cat. And four more ranged between them in various sizes. All different colors. Some with tusks curving out of their jaws. Others with small, serrated teeth emerging from their crooked jawlines. Every single one of them was crying.

  Taken aback, Katherine walked forward slowly with an officer on either side.

  When Katherine and the officers got within fifteen feet of them, the trolls started howling. And they didn’t stop even when she stood staring at them less than a stone’s throw away.

  Finally Katherine couldn’t take it anymore. “Stop!”

  They halted. Tears flowed.

  “What’s the matter with you lot?” she asked in exasperation.

  The trolls looked at one another in uncertainty.

  Helpfully, she added, “I’m the daughter of the Queen of Sandersville. The new heir. I’m here to help.”

  One of the trolls, the smallest said, “We know.”

  She sighed in relief. “So you can talk.”

  “Of course we can talk,” said one of the medium-sized ones in an outraged voice.

  Katherine held up a hand. “Don’t get your panties in a bunch. I’ve been waiting for you to stop wailing for nearly ten minutes. After ten minutes of that, anyone would question your ability to speak.”

  The littlest one sniffed. “Well, we can. We just chose not to.”

  Curious, Katherine asked, “What did you mean you knew who I was?”

  The trolls looked at each other and back at her. “The blood has passed. The power has shifted.”

  That didn’t answer her question. She tried another as she looked from one to the other. “What do you want?”

  The second smallest one rose up from where it crouched on its hind legs with its ears flapping. “The ceremony. The great ceremony was supposed to commence. You did not come.”

  “I wasn’t supposed to come. My sister was.”

  “That one died. You were supposed to come,” pointed out the large one.

  “‘That one’ was my sister,” said Katherine tightly.

  “Yes, we know,” they all said.

  Katherine was getting a headache.

  “How is the ceremony commenced?”

  They looked at her and back at each other.

  The little one spoke up again, “We sing.”

  “Yes, we sing!” said another one, “and you enjoy.”

  Katherine stared at him with a disbelieving expression on her face. Abruptly she turned around. “I’m out of here.”

  She didn’t get two steps before the wailing started up again and a uniformed officer—the warlock—was in her face.

  “Get out of my way,” snarled a fed-up Katherine.

  “Wait, please,” he pleaded, “you don’t understand.”

  “I understand perfectly,” she said. “They want me to listen to them sing. I don’t have time for this nonsense.”

  The troll wails were doing more than giving her a migraine. They reverberated through her like a pounding pulse that went through the rock and the earth surrounding them, as well. She needed to get out of here.

  The officer stopped backing up and pointed to the small rocks falling all around them. “Look!”

  She stopped, looked at the gorge wall and then back at him. “Look at what?”

  “The rocks are falling for a reason. It’s because the walls are trembling. Why is the gorge trembling? It’s because of the trolls. Their wailing gets stronger by the minute. The stronger the wail, the louder the pulse.”

 
; Katherine grabbed the front of his shirt. “Why should I care?”

  She growled and then said, “Forget that question. At least tell me if that’s why you have the bridge closed.”

  “Yes, but it’s not a simple as that. We’re not doing this just because they’re upset,” said the other officer watching her.

  She threw up her hands. “Then why?”

  “It’s because it’s the fact that they’re upset which will ultimately cause the bridge to fall. They’re deliberately trying to bring the gorge down around all of their ears. Their depression is driving them to this. To suicide.”

  Katherine looked at him and then looked back at the trolls. Their tears still flowed.

  “How?” Katherine scoffed.

  “The reverberations from the howls are destabilizing all of the earth around us. It won’t be long before the ridge crumbles and the earth softens and folds in on itself. Taking them and the gorge bridge with it.”

  “Their wailing is strong enough to do that?” she asked, uncertain.

  “Stronger with every passing minute,” one of the officers confirmed.

  “And you’re saying if I listen to them sing, they’ll stop.”

  “Not only that, but their singing has the opposite effect of the wails. It reinforces the bridge and the structure around it.”

  “Singing good. Wailing bad,” said Katherine with some irony.

  The warlock officer nodded. “Once a year, one of the Sandersville Thompson line comes down here and listens to them sing. Praises their strength and their dedication to the bridge. They’re happy. We’re happy. The bridge doesn’t collapse into the gorge. Got it?”

  Weakly, Katherine said, “Got it.”

  “So make nice and show them you appreciate them please,” he said tightly.

  The new heir to the Sandersville throne turned around, pasted a smile on her face, and sat on the hard ground to listen to a pack of six trolls serenade her for two hours with traditional troll folk music.

  Chapter 10

  As Katherine stood up politely at the conclusion, the smallest of the trolls came up to her and presented her with a small rock that he had picked up along the way. As he walked forward in skips and jumps she watched the round piece of rock he juggled in his hand. She wasn’t nervous. Just attentive. With each step the rock took on a luminescence that was otherworldly. By his last step it glowed a white so bright that it was like moonlight. With a brilliant smile on his face, the troll that came no higher than her knee presented the glowing rock to her with both hands upheld as if he were giving her the greatest gift on Earth.