by F. E. Arliss
Emery leaned into Dorothea’s bony arms and whispered, “Her power comes from death and fear. It needs to be constantly fed and is lessening as her followers dwindle due to her lack of compassion.” Dorothea, looking Emery in the eyes with surprise at her insight, simply nodded and hugged the exhausted girl to her. For once, Emery didn’t mind Dorothea’s strangely musty, old-lady smell and hugged the bony woman back.
The helicopter took off and the endless green jungle soon fell away as the chopper swooped out over the sea and made its way to the welcome, dry heat of Canyon de Chelly.
When Emery climbed out of the chopper and waved it and its three remaining occupants off - she never had met the pilot - Dorothea, Circling Wind and Eagle Rising also were there to send them on their way.
Emery took one look at all three of them and burst into tears. “What a horrible, horrible place,” she sobbed. “I hate the jungle.”
Dorothea hugged her again, thanked Eagle Rising, then flew home with Circling Wind at the controls of the battered little plane they’d dragged out from under the old camo net. Emery stayed two more weeks, the weeks she should have remained in Calakmul, and did nothing but ride donkeys, meditate in the sun, and thank the Mother for desert.
Emery was grateful every day that the rickety aluminum lawn chair didn’t dump her on the ground as she basked in the sun trying to empty her mind of the fact that someone had tried to kill her. They’d tried to kill her out of jealousy. Who killed a sixteen year-old girl out of jealousy? Well, clearly, more people than Emery had imagined.
Eagle Rising had another purification ceremony for her. The elderly Navajo women who came to join them chanted and prayed. Purifying herbs were burned and the smoke sent Emery into a far away land of green peaceful forests and a bed of the softest moss. By the time they dunked her under the tiny, cold waterfall, she felt far more settled. Still, she was never, ever, going to the jungle again.
Chapter Fifteen
Where to Next?
When Emery had returned home from Canyon de Chelly, the crones had apologized over and over. Bertha and Letty had cried. Dorothea had been grimmer than usual. Each explained that while they knew Calakmul would be hard, they had no idea the priestess had lost her moral compass to such an extent. She spent the months of fall describing every little detail of her jungle horror story to the three women.
Through the winter, she finally got more practice scrying with fire and water and was quite accomplished by the time the following spring break rolled around. Most of what she saw was completely inconsequential, like her doing a crossword puzzle, or raking leaves. That was frustrating. It was all just everyday life. What good was scrying if you didn’t see anything worth knowing?
Once in a while something important would come through, but again, it wasn’t anything she could do anything about. To her surprise, she’d seen that one of her teachers at school had cancer and that one of her classmates would be killed in a car accident. These types of depressing scenarios had shaken her to her core and it had been, rather startlingly, Letty, who had helped her deal with it.
“You have to remember girl, that much of what you see will come true on a timeline that we don’t really understand. Your teacher may have cancer now, or he may get it when he’s ninety and all old men have prostate cancer anyway.” This had led to the requisite round of snickering from the crones. “It will all happen. You just don’t know when it’ll happen. Your classmate may die next year, like you saw, or maybe he’ll die the year after his granddaughter graduates from high school.”
“The most important thing is that almost all of what you see is benign. Like seeing the face of the priestess. That happened, but you had no idea if it would be good or bad. It was bad, but big deal, maybe the rest of it will all be good. You just don’t know and you can do nothing about it,” Letty had concluded with a sharp nod of her frazzled grey head. “Nothing at all.”
For some reason, that flat logic helped her realize that none of it really had to do with her. She was out of the equation. The equation happened whether she saw these things or not. That took away the fear and pressure.
There had been a lot of discussion about where the crones should send her on her spring break. Emery firmly stated, “Nowhere!”
Letty thought she should be sent to the “badlands” for “elemental work” whatever that was. Emery had a deep suspicion now of anything that sounded like something she didn’t know anything about. Face it, “badlands” sounded, well, bad.
The King cousins brought up Germany and elves, fairies and ogres. Emery was pretty sure they were pulling her leg, though you never knew. Who would have thought that there was still a cult of jungle priestesses in the Yucatan? It was all a little out there, as far as Emery was concerned.
Letty finally acquiesced, as Dorothea had pointed out that elemental work took more than a week. Whereas, a week was plenty of time to meet elves, fairies and ogres. So, Germany it was.
This time Emery packed the same clothes she’d taken to Canyon de Chelly, but added a silver emergency blanket. She’d never gotten to use the one Dorothea had given her the first time, but she’d sure needed it. Though the blanket of living bats had been nice enough, the tiny silver blanket might come in handy if there were no bats around.
She also threw in a pair of super-gripper gloves and had been the recipient of a dull green backpack - a far cry from the shiny bright blue one she was hoping for. Seeing as how her fellow students had stolen her last one out of her room at the fortress, any backpack was better than none. All she’d arrived with when she stepped off the helicopter at Canyon de Chelly had been the clothes she had on, the cell phone stuffed in one pocket of her cargo shorts and the turtle-shell rattle the young snake-bite victim’s family had made for her.
She packed her antler hat too, as that had been the only thing the pillaging acolytes had left on her stone bed ledge at the fortress. No doubt too worried about their long, gleaming black tresses to wear some filthy antler hat.
Emery had snatched it up and crammed it on her head as she’d ghosted out of the fortress and down to the bat cave. She’d forgotten she even had it on until Dorothea had said, “You looked like an ancient pagan goddess from prophecy coming up out of that river path with your cloak of living bats and your antler hat crown. You gave me the shivers girl! It was wonderful!” The old lady had sighed with bliss and hugged Emery again when she’d said this.
To tell the truth, Emery had given up worrying about what other people thought of her. She’d survived Calakmul and that was about as good as it got. Now she knew why the old ladies had debated about sending her there so long and hard. She was wiser for the experience. On the other hand, none of them had known how dangerous it would become.
When her mother and sisters found out she was going to Germany, there was some serious consternation, most of it having to do with where the King cousins got the money to send Emery abroad. To be honest, Emery never really thought about the money and had explained numerous times that none of the facilities she stayed in cost money. They were people’s homes, usually, and not very nice ones at that. Having reminded them that both of her last trips had consisted of housing with an outhouse and no running water, had mostly shut them up. Though there was still some grumbling about how much a ticket to Europe cost. Emery simply ignored them.
The flight to Germany was long. Emery was in Economy class and was still excited enough about the trip that she didn’t mind the close quarters. If one had slept on a narrow stone shelf for three months, a seat of the same size, nicely padded, seemed pretty ok.
Chapter Sixteen
Wood Wose or Fairies; House Elves or Erdhenne?
When Emery’s plane touched down in Stuttgart, Germany she quickly reviewed the description of the woman that Dorothea had arranged for her to stay with. Her name was Albertina Wolf and whether she would be the person picking her up was, well...unsure. These trips always seemed a little uncertain and Emery had learned that she might as well
just “go with the flow” as the saying went.
She’d hoisted her backpack onto her shoulders and made it through the customs line. They hadn’t been terribly nice, but at least they hadn’t insisted on searching her backpack. The dog had sniffed it thoroughly, leaving a damp trail of nose moisture along the flaps. Her clear delight over the dog and his beautiful coat, eased the way and she was soon waved on by the officers.
Once she’d cleared customs, she came out into a brightly lit greeting area where a line of people with signs loitered about alternatively holding their signs high, or barely making them readable, depending on how the passengers exiting the customs area looked to match the descriptions of whomever they were picking up.
At the far end of the line of suited chauffeurs and tie wearing tour guides, stood a very short, very disheveled man with an enormously bulbous head. In the States he would have been called a “little person”, and to Emery’s surprise, he was holding a battered piece of cardboard box that said, “King girl.” She supposed that was her, though that wouldn’t have been how she described herself.
Edging nearer to him, Emery lowered her eyes to meet his and said softly, “I’m Emery. I was sent by Dorothea and Bertha King. Are you the person I’m supposed to meet here?”
The little man nodded, stuffed the piece of cardboard into a trashcan he’d been leaning on, then stumped off towards the exit. His legs were so short that he swayed dramatically side to side as he covered the ground in a quick, shambling trot. Emery walked fast to keep up.
Emerging into the parking area, the sky was leaden and gray, threatening to rain. The small man disappeared briefly between a row of cars and Emery ran to catch up, losing sight of him momentarily as he rounded the edge of a battered, stripped-down Land Rover of an age that may have survived the Great War. Inwardly groaning, Emery hoped that wasn’t their ride.
Of course, it was. Or at least she imagined it was, because the door on the far side opened as if by magic. A moment later the rounded dome of the man’s forehead appeared between the steering column and the top of the steering wheel. Emery trudged to the passenger side, slung her backpack into the footwell and climbed once more into a vehicle which had long ago given up any pretensions of having a shock system.
To Emery’s amazement, though she should have known it if she’d thought about it, the Land Rover had been modified to accommodate the small man’s short legs and small arms. Strange looking contraptions made of long pieces of rebar and flat pieces of iron had been bolted to the existing pedals. One for the brake and one for the accelerator. It appeared as if they could be removed if the vehicle needed to be driven by a person of ordinary height.
The steering-wheel had the most ingenious gadget on it that Emery had ever seen. It was a smaller wheel, mounted to the bottom of the original steering wheel and included a set of three extending hydraulic rods that ran from the larger steering wheel into the base of the small wheel. As the small man turned the miniature wheel, the rods expanded or contracted insync and moved the larger wheel. It was a marvel of invention, though Emery did have to admit that at first she waited, each time the little man cranked the wheel, for one of the delicate-looking hydraulic rods to snap in half and the whole of the battered Land Rover to go spinning out of control, crashing them into whatever was on the verge of the road.
At first the drive out of Stuttgart wasn’t too bad. The Germans had exceptionally good roads! About an hour and a half into the drive, they turned off the main road onto a graveled blacktop with a rickety sign saying, “Oberwolfach” on its worn face. That road wasn’t too bad either, matching the type of roads Emery was used to in her poor rural village. Then came the really tough stuff. Wheeling the Land Rover over a small ditch at the side of the road, the vehicle scraped through a tangle of underbrush, the sound very much like fingernails on a chalkboard, and emerged onto a dirt path that meandered into a dark wood.
Looking back toward the blacktopped road, Emery couldn’t see any break in the undergrowth they’d just rammed through. So far, the only words she’d heard from the tiny man were his name, she supposed at least, as he’d simply said, “Max Erdhenne,” then said no more.
She’d returned, “Thank you for picking me up, Max. I’m Emery.” Figuring it didn’t hurt to repeat her name as he’d been focused more on the name of the King cousins than on her at the airport.
It seemed like ages that they crawled along the soft, quiet track in the woods. Everything was green and lush and much of the time the sky wasn’t visible due to the toweringly enormous trees that created a wall of forest in every direction. Dorothea had told Emery that she was going to the Black Forest and Emery could see why it was called that. No sunlight pierced the heavy canopy of treetops and since the rain had come about an hour ago, all the tree trunks were drenched and a dark brown, almost black, color.
Finally, the ancient four-wheel drive forded a merrily burbling stream and halted beside a long wooden bridge. Only wide enough for one person, Max gestured for her to cross it and as soon as she’d stepped out of the vehicle, he drove on and disappeared into a thicket of brush. She would have thought he’d left completely if she hadn’t heard the rickety Land Rover grind to a halt and a door slam shut.
Walking tentatively across the long, narrow bridge, Emery couldn’t help but think about the Grimm’s fairy tale about trolls living under bridges. Anyway, she made it across unscathed and staring around at the small clearing the bridge had deposited her in, made out a faint trail leading off into the undergrowth. She proceeded to investigate and another hundred yards up the trail came into a large clearing where a timber and thatched-roof house, leaning precariously to one side, seemed to slumber silently under a sodden sky.
Two milk cows munched contentedly to one side of the front door and a two-wheeled cart, resting on its handles, leaned up against the far wall of the house. Emery could see the same creek she’d taken the bridge across dancing among a series of boulders and stones at the base of the clearing. A lopsided barn stood behind the house, its rear portion swallowed by the woods.
Assuming she’d arrived, Emery walked to the door and knocked tentatively. Nothing happened. She knocked again, more firmly, and waited. Still no answer.
Walking around to the side of the house, she peered at the barn. A small glow seemed to be coming from the depths of the open barn door, so she ventured closer, stopping a few yards out and calling, “Hello? I’m Emery. Dorothea King sent me.”
To her surprise, a figure came rushing out, enveloped her in a woodsy-scented hug and said, “Oh, thank Goddess you’re here! We’ve been waiting! Haven’t we girls?” the woman, long white hair twirling around her green linen-clad shoulders, glanced at Emery, her blue eyes twinkling with delight, then looked over her shoulder towards the barn. At first, Emery didn’t see anything at all. Then slowly, a trio of tiny figures emerged into the midday gloom. They were only about a foot tall and dressed in clothes that looked like they were made from milk-thistle down and moss. Each miniature head held a hairdo that made Dorothea’s upside-down bird nests of tangles look like a salon-perfect coiffure.
“I’m Albertina Wolf and these are Tory, Cory and Lory. They’re Ruebezahl or wood wose. I suppose you’d call them mountain spirits. They live in the woods and guard our beautiful forest-covered mountains.” Then her handsome hostess grabbed Emery by the hand and pulled her forward. “Let the girls see you!” she demanded, sliding the dull green backpack off Emery’s shoulders, and shoving her down onto a cut log stump.
The small figures seemed to float forward, one of them suddenly appearing on Emery’s knee and examining her face closely. “Hi!” Emery said a little breathlessly. “I’m Emery. Pleased to meet you. Are you Tory, Cory or Lory?” she asked, trying to see if there was anything different about the three miniscule sprites.
“I’m Cory,” the one on her knee said. “I’ve got braids on my head like a crown.” Emery could see that was true, she looked at the other two and could see that each ha
d some sort of distinctive braiding woven into their hair. “The one with the long braid down her back is Lory, and the one with the three braids woven together is Tory,” the small woman on her knee stated, patting Emery on the nose to get her attention again. “We’re trying to decide on what to do with your hair,” she added, the other two wood wose nodded agreement. “Thank Mother it’s long enough to do something with.”
Albertina laughed, “Well, you girls can think on it, but you’ll have to make sure it’s ok with Emery before you do it, ok? No having her suddenly wake up and you’ve shaved her head like you did last summer’s apprentice.
Emery’s eyes widened and she quirked an eyebrow at Cory. “Really, you shaved her head? What did she do?” Emery asked, her curiosity abuzz.
“She screamed, then she cried,” Tory, the one with three braids said, solemnly. “I felt very bad about it later,” she added, shaking her head disconsolately.
