The albino girl. She's waiting here for you.
Deliver us, Elandrion.
Beneath the cypress log, she rolls her eyes and picks her teeth. She imagines the shadows doing their best to menace the girl, playing like they're the next worst thing under heaven, and all the while they're whining into the night for deliverance. Ought to leave the lot of them to whatever the kid's got in mind, she thinks, but then she hears another voice oozing down through the stagnant water and the slime.
– an old evil which lay a thousand years in the mud at the bottom of the river-something drew you here-that's the one I've come for-
And under all the bluster, the girl child's so scared she's about to shit herself, but still…
How long since anyone or anything called her out?
How long since anything dared come looking for her?
And, besides, there's really no point denying that she relishes the way the shadow things in the old church simper and bow to her and offer up all their darkest, most laughable prayers. Once, they even lured a couple of teenagers into the church and then kept them there for her. When she was done with them, the shadows buried what was left in the overgrown cemetery. It'd be a shame if the rumors were true and the albino girl went and killed them all off.
She has a knife, one of the shadows whimpers.
Elandrion, she's something terrible. Something mad. There's angelfire in her eyes, Elandrion.
She squints into the silt and gloom at the bottom of the pool, considering that last part and recalling that one of the egrets said something about angels, something about purifying fire. But she hadn't given it a second thought. Egrets say all sorts of crazy things.
– something drew you here-that's the one I've come for-
She pushes the bullhead's stripped and needle-spined carcass aside and disturbs a fat, tasty-looking slider concealed inside a thicket of eelgrass. Any other time, she'd have snatched the turtle as it tried to slip away to find some other hiding place. But she hesitates, listening to the voices filling the Georgia night, and the slider escapes. But that's alright, she tells herself. The albino girl will fill up the empty nook in her belly that the turtle would have occupied, that nook and then some. It's been years since she last tasted human flesh, which is almost as sweet as the wild boar piglets she finds in the swamp, from time to time.
Will you squeal for me, sweet angel child? she thinks and grins there beneath the cypress log. Will you squeal just like all the little pigs?
And then she kicks off with her broad feet and rises slowly towards the shimmering surface.
She who has no name, not that she can recall, the one the cowering shadows in the church call Elandrion. The ancient she-thing that the black-brown men and the pink-white men out gigging frogs or checking their traps for muskrats and beaver have glimpsed, moving swiftly between the trees. They've called her lots of things-the demon of Hopekill Swamp, witch, haint, monster, freak, the gator woman. They have no end of names for her. At least the red-brown men knew better than to give her any name at all.
She squats in the water lilies and rushes at the edge of the pool, considering once more everything the birds have said, the careless chatter of warblers and blue jays. The air is still filled with the whispered calls of the cringing church shadows. And that other voice, which must be the girl's, frightened but bold, the voice of someone who believes things she's better off without. Then, the one whose name is not Elandrion gets to her feet and, moving quickly on her long legs, follows a deer trail out of the swamp and up to higher, drier ground, and every living beast and insect falls silent as she passes.
X. Rites of Blood and Fire
Never before has one of the red witches been permitted within the walls of Kearvan Weal, and now not one but two of them have come, have been welcomed through its gates, after they slipped across the Dog's Bridge on horseback only four days before the Weaver's army streamed over the vast span of bone and wire. That alone is enough to make Kypre Alundshaw suspicious of their intentions and allegiances, despite the things he's told the Glaistig. That these two somehow managed to survive the journey from their far distant temples on the river Yärin, that they traveled the Serpent's Road unmolested, must either stand as evidence that they're in league with the Weaver or that their stone idols have more power than the alchemists of the hublands would ever have dared believe.
Evil times demand strange alliances, the alchemist reminds himself and wipes sweat from his forehead before it can drip into his one eye. It's very hot in the small chamber that has been prepared for the Nesmians' ritual, a great fire burning inside a brick-lined pit set into the floor at the center of the circular room. There's a low stone table pushed against one wall, its upper surface freshly engraved with runes that few, if any, men can read, and there's a long iron sluice running from the table to the fire. Everything's exactly as the red witches have asked, and Alundshaw whispers a hurried prayer that he hasn't simply invited some greater atrocity into their midst. The chamber is crowded with all the court astronomers and the other alchemists who have accompanied Alundshaw in his descent from King's Hale.
He begins to speak, but then there's a loud grinding sound from the bowels of the Weal, and the floor rumbles treacherously under them.
"Alundshaw, there's no time left for you to waste," Pikabo Kenzia says impatiently. "The Seraph is free, and already the Dragon's waking beneath our feet." Her violet eyes glimmer in the firelight, and Alundshaw tries hard not to let his dread of her show. Both women wear the simple crimson robes and grey-green skullcaps of their order, but he's well aware that Kenzia is no common adept, that she's next in the line of succession to be Mother and Voice of all the red witches of Nesmia Shar. She's a beautiful, fearsome woman, a warrior and accomplished sorceress, an uncompromising zealot and a scheming politician, and Alundshaw knows that she was counted a worthy adversary by the King of Immolations. The unruly tangle of her chestnut hair, just beginning to go white at the temples, puts the alchemist in mind of a lion's mane, and, gender aside, the comparison seems all too apt.
"Do you have the feather?" she asks, and he takes a paper envelope from a vest pocket and passes it to Pikabo Kenzia, almost dropping it before she takes it from his trembling fingers. She scowls at him and opens the envelope; inside is a single feather pulled from the wing of the captured Seraph.
"Will it be enough?" one of the astronomers asks her, a nervous old bastard whose name Alundshaw can never recall.
"Possibly," Pikabo Kenzia replies, holding the large grey feather up in front of her face. "Probably. Regardless, I suppose it will have to be, won't it, Ezcha?" and then she turns to face the other Nesmian, a much younger and plainer woman with none of Kenzia's fierce presence.
Ezcha doesn't reply, but merely smiles and nods her head before she goes to stand beside the stone table. "We should hurry," she says. "I'm ready," and the witch removes her crimson robe. She's wearing nothing beneath it, though her skin has been painted with elaborate runes which match the ones carved into the table. Ezcha folds the robe neatly and lays it on the floor, then takes off her cap and places it on the floor, as well.
"You will return these to my sisters," she says to Kenzia.
"Ezcha, you know that I will," the elder Nesmian replies, and Ezcha nods her head again. Then she climbs onto the table and stands at the mouth of the iron sluice, facing the fire.
Pikabo Kenzia takes a deep breath and draws a dagger of black volcanic glass from her own robe. "I would ask that you all leave us now, excepting, of course, Lord Alundshaw. He may remain, if he so desires. I would not wish your Queen or her agents to harbor notions that we're working some secret enchantment against her."
Kypre Alundshaw hesitates, not wanting to be alone with these peculiar women and their heathen ways, but then he motions for the others to leave the room, and, relieved, they obediently file through the door to wait together in the cramped antechamber.
"You will not speak," Kenzia says to the alchemist, and the t
one in her voice is enough to prevent him from even asking why. The red witch closes her eyes a moment, then opens them and glances up at the naked woman standing alone on the table.
"We ask nothing of you, daughter, that you have not already pledged," Pikabo Kenzia says, then looks down at the dagger in her hands. "You are brave, and you will shame us all with your forfeiture. By your sacrifice might this world be saved. By your grace and willing death, might others live."
And if he were not now too afraid to move, Alundshaw would join the rest and damn his mistrust and the Glaistig's suspicions. Well, I can shut my eyes, he thinks. If nothing else, I can at least shut my eyes.
"The body of woman is like a flash of lightning," Kenzia says, "existing only to return to nothingness. Like the summer growth that shrivels in winter. Waste thee no thought on the process, for it has no purpose, coming and going like dew."
I can shut my eyes.
And the floor rumbles again.
"Like a wall, a woman's body constantly stands on the verge of collapse," Pikabo Kenzia continues, speaking faster now, as if she's afraid there won't be time to finish. "And still and always, the world buzzes on like angry bees. Let it come and go, appear and vanish, for what have we to lose?"
The woman on the table spreads her arms wide, as if in welcome, and Alundshaw can see that there are tears in her eyes, tears streaming down her cheeks. Pikabo Kenzia leans towards the fire pit and drops the Seraph's feather into the flames. For only an instant, the fire burns a brilliant, exquisite blue, and the chamber is filled with the screeching of eagles and a blistering wind that reeks of gunpowder and battlefield carrion.
Don't watch it, Alundshaw thinks, his mind gone desperate and wild. Don't see what's coming, but he can't seem to remember how to shut his eyes.
The awful grinding sound comes again, and this time bits of masonry are shaken free of the walls and the stone table wobbles.
"Leave this place forever, you murdering son of a whore," the red witch growls and swings her black dagger around, slicing her companion's belly open. "Be gone, and take all your foul brethen with you!" Ezcha's blood spills into the sluice, and hisses when it reaches the fire. She screams, and the second time Pikabo Kenzia's blade sinks deep into the younger witch's gut, the alchemist finally finds the will to close his eyes.
XI. The Dirty Work of Angels
The shadows gathered in the old church on Dry Creek Road have kept Dancy busy for the better part of an hour. Rushing her suddenly from behind, their not-quite insubstantial fingers tearing at her shabby clothes or snatching strands of her white hair, then darting away to safety again. They've taunted and jeered and mocked, hurled threats and mildewed hymnals, and they've promised her, again and again, that she won't live to see another sunrise. There are scratches on her arms and face, the best they can manage with their shadow claws and teeth, a few drops of blood to whet their appetites for what's to come. They've backed Dancy all the way down the narrow aisle to the pulpit, where she stands with her back to the altar, her carving knife held out and glinting faintly by the unsteady glow of their will-o'-the-wisp eyes. She's noticed that their eyes have gotten a lot brighter, as if tormenting her has stoked some furnace hidden within them.
"Would you run, child, if you could?" the wolf-woman shade asks Dancy, and then, addressing all the others-"Brothers and sisters, if we took pity on this poor, misguided ragamuffin and let her leave now, would she even have the good sense to go, before Elandrion gets here?"
For an answer, there are ugly gales of laughter, hoots and whoops and uproarious fits of giggling.
"Do what you like," Dancy tells them. "I'm not going anywhere until I've done what I came here do to." But this only makes the shadows laugh that much louder.
"Oh, little girl," the wolf-woman shade snorts, "you're so preciously earnest. Such a stalwart little urchin, you are. It's a crying shame there's just the one of you. A pity you won't last longer. If only we could bottle you, I dare say none of us would ever go hungry again."
And then Dancy hears something behind her, and she looks over her right shoulder to see the monster glaring down at her from the pulpit. Its gnarled fingers grip the edges of the lectern, fingers that end in sickle talons, and they sink into the rotten wood as though it were clay.
"You're Elandrion?" Dancy asks it, turning to face the monster, and it grins and stands up straighter, though its bandy hind legs and thorny, crooked spine hardly seem suited to standing upright at all. It's so tall that its head almost scrapes against the sagging sheetrock a good ten or twelve feet above her.
"That's not my name," the monster replies. "I let them call me that, but you, you should know better than to believe I have a name." And Dancy thinks the monster's rheumy mud and blackwater voice must be the very soul of the swamp, this swamp and every other swamp and bog, every single marsh and slough that has ever been since the first morning of Creation, the creeping, impenetrable spirit of every quagmire and bayou and bottomless, peat-stained lake. Since the days of dinosaurs and screeching pterodactyls and dragonflies big as herons, this thing must have lain waiting for her in the wet places of the world, biding its time, murmuring her name in its sleep.
It's too much for me, she thinks, but Dancy knows her angel believes otherwise and has no intention of coming for her until the monster's dead.
"Am I?" it asks, feigning disappointment, and the monster grins even wider than before. "But I've heard so many stories. All the birds know your name. The birds, they think you're the goddamn Second Coming or something. Yeah, they tweet and twitter and squawk your name just like you're the bloody Virgin Mary her own damn self, come down from Paradise to put matters right."
Dancy backs slowly away from the thing behind the pulpit, sparing a quick glance at the shadows. They've all fallen silent now, but have moved in closer to her. They loom up around her, stretching themselves tall and thin, made bolder by the monster's words, by the sight and stench and sound of it.
"No, you're something special," the monster says, and it's wide, unblinking eyes remind Dancy of hardboiled eggs-no pupils or irises in there, just those two bulging white balls poking out below its scaly brow. They loll lifelessly from one side to the other as it speaks and leak viscous rivulets into the hair sprouting from its gaunt cheeks.
"I remember one like you, long time ago, five hundred fucking years if it's a day. A red Indian boy, but I don't recollect what they called him. He came looking for me, too. Thought he was toiling for the gods, just like you. I still got a few of his teeth stuck up under a rock somewhere."
"I didn't walk all the way out here just to listen to you talk," Dancy says, gripping the knife as tightly as she can and wishing again that it were her grandfather's Winchester shotgun, instead. The monster stops grinning and hunches down so the end of its flat nose is only inches from Dancy's face.
"No, I reckon not," it snarls, and she can feel its voice rattling about inside her chest. Dancy thinks it's probably some sort of miracle her heart's still beating after the force of those four words inside her.
"You come here to lay me low," the monster says, "to show me what for and make the night safe for decent folks, ain't that about right."
"Something like that," Dancy tells the monster the shadows call Elandrion, the thing her angel had no name for. It flares its nostrils and sniffs the air around her.
"Then I guess we'd best get to it," the monster sighs and stands up again. "I got other business this night besides killing you."
All the shadow things suddenly withdraw, pressing themselves flat against the crumbling walls of the church or retreating into the foyer or the exposed rafters. And Dancy Flammarion stands her ground and waits for the monster to make the first move.
XII. PensacolaBeach (December 1982)
Held fast in invisible currents, Julia Flammarion drifts away from Santa Rosa Island towards deeper water. She's almost weightless now, suspended here in the twilight realm between two worlds; above her, the clamorous lands of sunlight
and seagulls, and far below her feet, the silent, lightless lands of cold abyssal solitude. There were a long and terrible few seconds of panic when she opened her mouth and the sea rushed past her teeth, forcing its way down her throat, flooding her lungs and stomach. Her head and chest seared with that alien, saltwater fire as her life streamed so easily from between her parted lips, racing back towards the shifting mirror surface, a dancing line of bubbles like the silvery bells of jellyfish. But then the panic passed, because the dead don't need to breathe, and the pain passed, too, and now there's the most perfect peace she's ever known. Dimly, Julia thinks she must be sinking, and more dimly still, she wonders if the angel was right after all and maybe the gloom below her is only the yawning entrance of the burning Catholic hell that awaits all suicides. Not that she ever really doubted it, but it would be nice to learn that it was all bullshit, her mother's god and Jesus on his cross and the angels and all the rest. It would be nice to float a bit longer, neither quite here nor quite there, not dead and not alive, and then her consciousness pulling free at last and nothing to take its place but compassionate oblivion.
She would ask no more of heaven than that.
Julia's eyes flutter open as something that might have been a fish darts quickly past her face.
So, she thinks, at least I'm not alone.
And she's hoping that the fish comes back, that there might even be more than just the one, when a point of blue-white light appears in the murk far below her. Hardly more than a flicker at first, but then the water around her grows suddenly warmer, buoying her upwards as it rises, and the flicker blossoms into a dazzling wheel, so wide she can hardly even see its edges, spinning counterclockwise in the deep.
And then the wheel of light is gone, just as abruptly as it came, but the sea about Julia no longer seems peaceful or merciful or kind. And even half-awake, half-awake at best, she knows without knowing how she knows that something has come out of the wheel. The same way she knew she wasn't alone that first day in the clearing in Shrove Wood, the same way she always knew whenever the angel was about to start talking to her. And the panic returns, much worse than before, because this isn't simply pain or death, this is something unseen rising up towards her, and if there were a patron saint of suicides she'd pray that the unseen thing is only a shark or a barracuda, some great eel or stingray or sawfish, only sharp teeth and snapping jaws to take her apart, to tear her limb from limb and be done with this slow death.
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