Serpent's Kiss

by Melissa de la Cruz

  Anne’s bare feet dragged as the guards led her to the village. She was having trouble walking, most likely after having been kept in the small, cramped cell. She finally got to her feet, straining to keep up pace, holding her head high. They were far away enough now for Freya to run and gather her cap in the field. She would bring it to Anne as a show of her friendship. As she leaned over to pick it up in the grass, she felt a presence behind her, and a large hand, stained black around the fingers, grabbed at her wrist.

  She turned toward the stranger crouched beside her in the grass: a man in a floppy black hat with an arresting face, large catlike eyes, an almost indescribable color—perhaps the pale yellow-brown referred to as tiger-eye—a broad mouth, a five o’clock shadow along the chiseled jaw, and golden-brown hair nearly reaching his shoulders. He wore a loose shirt of jute, open at the chest. His skin was taught and tanned like a laborer’s.

  Freya almost let out a friendly “Hello!” but she saw nothing but ire in his eye, which stopped her short.

  “What are you planning to do with me wife’s cap?” he asked her.

  She let out a sigh of relief. “Mr. Barklay, I am here to help. I want to see Anne free.” She handed him Anne’s cap, which he took and brought to his lips, inhaling it, and for a moment she thought he was going to burst into tears; his chest shook, then he got a hold of himself and rose to his feet.

  He set out through the field toward the village, and Freya moved into step with him, walking in tandem. It was difficult to walk fast with all these skirts, their heavy weight. She would sink straight to the bottom of the ocean if someone chucked her in.

  “Woman, she won’t confess!” Mr. Barklay said to her. “There is not a thing you can do for poor Anne. These people have nothing but blackness around their hearts. It is they who are consorting with the devil. They have got it all backward.”

  “I can give you money. I have gold.” She was reaching inside the belt of her skirt, ripping the seam Joanna had carefully sewn. “Perhaps we can come at night and get the guards to release her; give them money. I can take you elsewhere. I have the means,” she said, thinking how much happier he and Anne would be in the twenty-first century.

  He stopped in his tracks and looked her up and down, then laughed heartily. “You certainly don’t look it. Who are you?”

  Joanna had dressed her as a peasant woman so as not to draw too much attention. She pushed a fist at him, held it open, showing him a handful of gold. “I’m a witch,” she said, taking a chance.

  He laughed at her. “A witch! There is no such thing; even Anne will tell you so. Keep your money, woman. Anne is proud. Why do you think they are dragging her to the stocks in the town square? If only she would break down and tell them what they want to hear!” His eyes shone and he strode away hurriedly, but not before Freya had done a bit of sleight of hand, placing the coins in the pocket of his loose pants; they could get quite far with that once they got Anne out.

  “I appreciate your trying to help. My name is John. Yours, Goody Witch?” he said, not unkindly.

  “Freya Beauchamp,” she replied, curtsying as she walked. “At your service, and I wish you would let me help you. I think Anne has an important message for my mother.”

  He glanced at her as if she were batty. Everyone had begun to shout in the village, and a chant of “Witch!” rose from the square.

  “I have already lost too much time with you!” John took off fast through the field. “Anne must be hungry. I brought her food, and she needs water,” he shouted back as he sprinted. Freya ran after him as fast as she could.

  It seemed everyone had come out of the houses to gather in the square, where they had chained Anne to a large oak instead of placing her in the stocks. It was clear they wanted to make a spectacle of her body, displaying it in as lascivious a manner as they could, her arms pulled back so that her breasts jutted forward, the chain wrapping around her curves to reveal more of her form. Luckily she was shaded beneath the oak. It was about noon now, and the sun beat down. No one would notice Freya as a stranger with everyone outdoors—and the crowd was frenzied, too focused on Anne.

  “She signed the devil’s book with her blood!” someone shouted.

  “She has the mark! See—above her lip!”

  “No, that’s not it. They shaved her! It must be somewhere else. Show us the witch’s mark!”

  “Show us the mark!” people began to chant.

  John had pushed past the crowd and was asking one of the guards flanking the tree for permission to be with his wife.

  “She dances with the devil at night, John. Why do you still want her? You are a fool!” a young woman cried. It must have been Sally Smitherstone.

  The guard solemnly shook his head at John. Freya saw her opportunity to show him she was on his side, and she struggled through the rioting townsfolk. When she got to the guard, she slipped him a coin, and after he looked down at it with a smile, he pushed John forward toward his wife.

  John placed Anne’s cap back on her shaved head, whispering in her ear. She gave him a pained smile and moved her cheek toward his. He poured water inside her parched lips.

  “That woman! That woman is a witch!” cried a man from the crowd. For some reason, Freya turned to the voice, which had immediately made her skin crawl. It was so familiar. He was pointing at Freya, singling her out, not Anne.

  “What do you say, Mr. Lion Gardiner?” someone shouted back at the accuser.

  The man, with a black mustache and goatee, in a brown hat, his white collar pouring over a majestic black cape, stepped forth. It was obvious he was wealthier than those around him and held sway over these villagers. They had suddenly quieted at hearing his name.

  “I saw that woman falling from the sky as I came in on the boat today from the Isle of Wight. I couldn’t find her when I got here, but I recognize the clothes, plain as day. We must take her to the magistrates to see if she has the mark.” He said this calmly, matter-of-factly.

  “Witch! Witch! Witch!” the people chanted, now pointing at Freya.

  No. Not again. Why had she volunteered for this? She felt faint, so light-headed. She had had nothing to eat or drink since she had arrived. She didn’t know how much time had gone by since she had passed through the portal. There was no telling. A few seconds? Hours? Days?

  She tried to get away, but her skirts were too heavy, and there were too many hands holding her down.

  chapter fifty-one

  Mood Indigo

  Ingrid stood in the back of the library in the cordoned-off area, hovering over the mythology section of the reserved book collection, none of which anyone was allowed to check out. You had to ask for permission to enter this area, either from Ingrid, Hudson, Tabitha, or Jeannine, the new intern. Usually one of them supervised, trying not to appear too much like a vulture circling overhead.

  She put her cell phone down. She didn’t want to be out of touch with Joanna and Norman for one second in case they needed her. Freya had still not returned, and Ingrid had been growing increasingly worried about her sister traveling to that particular blight in time.

  She perused the A section for books on Álfheim (one of the nine worlds, Norman had told her) and álfar (elf or elfin) and perhaps she would also find something on the áss (“I think it’s their word for Aesir,” Joanna had said, which did narrow down the type of god they were looking for). Ingrid found it amusing that most of these books were written by gods themselves, witches and warlocks turned scholars, like one Norman Beauchamp, PhD. She grabbed a few of her father’s on the nine worlds, hither and thither. Mostly she needed to look at maps.

  She ran an index along the books’ spines, continuing to scan the titles. Her parents had filled her in on gaps, but she liked poring over the written words and images; she retained things better that way. She was a visual person and mental snapshots always helped.

  The cell phone buzzed on the metal shelf. She glanced at it, juggling the books. Curious. It was Matt. Her heart pounded. S
he grabbed the cell and walked over to an isolated carrel and set the books down, taking a seat, bending down to hide her head.

  “Hello?” she whispered.

  “I’m calling to give you a heads-up,” Matt said, his voice devoid of emotion.

  “Um … okay,” she replied, letting her own voice flatline.

  “There’s a tail on you. If you’re still hanging around those homeless kids, they’ll be found and deported if they’re not citizens.”

  “Deported? What on earth are you talking about?”

  Matt exhaled into the phone, and she had to pull it slightly away from her ear. “You told me they were foreigners. Remember? I wrote it down in my notebook.”

  Great. They were speaking in code. Notebook with emphasis—or was it aggression?—was a flagrant reminder of the piece of paper with the girl’s name on it and of Ingrid’s snooping around.

  Matt continued. “You called them, quote, ‘foreign,’ close quote, and you said, ‘They don’t know this culture.’ I have it written down.”

  “Impressive,” Ingrid said flatly.

  “Well, the chief read my notes because I’m in—”

  Ingrid waited, then couldn’t wait any longer. “You’re in what?”

  “Never mind,” he said. “I just wanted to warn you, Ingrid.”

  She was about to lie again, proclaiming the pixies were gone, but she was tired of this game. She tapped her foot. “Okay,” she said coldly.

  “Okay,” echoed Matt. She couldn’t tell if it was an angry okay. Perhaps a little sad. No. It was just a plain, boring okay.

  They both waited for the other to hang up, and it took so long, Ingrid started to feel a bit wistful, missing Matt, so before she actually softened and broke down by saying good-bye, she hit the End button and returned to the books she had set down in the carrel.

  chapter fifty-two

  Holding Out for a Hero

  “Freya, Freya, wake up!”

  Freya felt a hand tapping at her face. She lay supine, arms stretched out at her side, the long skirt a heavy weight on her limbs. All the aches and pains and knots in her neck were back, as they had been when she arrived in 1640. There was sand beneath her, and she could hear the waves crashing in the near distance. She opened her eyes. It was dusk, and she saw a face she recognized, a face she dearly loved. A smile spread on her lips.

  Killian. He looked pale and drawn, leeched. She sat up and hugged him with all the strength left in her body. He kissed her face, her neck, burying his nose in her hair.

  “Am I home?” she said hopefully.

  He shook his head and removed an energy bar from his pocket. “Eat. Get your strength back,” he said, ripping the package open, burying the wrapper in the sand.

  Freya was glad to have it, even if she’d always dismissed them as cardboard before. She was famished. Her throat was dry. It was hard to swallow, but after a few bites, she felt her body begin to renew itself again; it would be enough until she had a decent meal. “How did you get here?”

  “I felt something shift inside me … sort of like an alarm … I could feel that you were in danger. Now that we’ve found each other again, I’m attuned to your spirit. So I followed you through the portal into the timeline,” Killian explained. “I had to do a few more shifts to get you safe. My gift, by the way, space and time, moving objects about, manipulating the passages, which means screwing around with the continuum—like reconstructing the greenhouse so fast.”

  He caressed her face. “Since the bridge collapsed I can’t do it very easily, so I’m glad I saved most of what is left for this. We’re not supposed to do this. It upsets the natural balance: chaos theory, the butterfly effect. A long time ago we had posted guards to keep the timeline safe, but they’re gone now, so I had to be very careful. Why would Joanna and Norman send you back here?”

  She explained everything to Killian in a hurried breath. “For you, Killian. We need to find Anne. She might be able to help us. When is it?” Color had begun to spread through her cheeks, and she had become frenzied, worried that it was already too late, that Anne had been hanged.

  “It’s the night of the day I found you except things are a little different. You never made it to the square. I don’t think you ever met John Barklay,” he said to answer her question.

  “Fuck!” said Freya. “That means he never got to talk to Anne while she was chained to the tree. Never got to put her cap back on or give her water.” She slipped a hand inside her skirt and the pouch of gold coins was still sewn into the seam. She had all her gold again, and that was disappointing. “This is so confusing,” she said. “We need to get you in proper clothes, then find Anne. Can we go back in time a little more?”

  “I don’t want to risk it, I have to make sure I have enough power to get us back home. Whatever we need to do, we need to do now.”

  chapter fifty-three

  Smoke on the Water

  The treasure expedition was nothing at all as Freddie had envisioned. He had anticipated something exciting, walking about the deck with wind and ocean spray in his face, rigging, pulling, feeding lines, winching, cleating ropes, and such—the thrill of unfurling the sails, catching the wind in them, then harnessing it. Freddie loved to wear himself out physically, using his body to maximum capacity until it was sore and he collapsed from all the effort he had expended. Kind of like sex. That’s how he had pictured it.

  It was nothing like that.

  First, they had taken all his effects from him, including the new cell phone Joanna had bought him. He’d barely had enough time to text Freya and his dad to tell them he had gotten the job. Then he and Captain Atkins, along with a rough-and-tumble crew of young men, had flown in a private plane to what Freddie had gathered was a Caribbean island; he overheard “St. Lucia,” as much as they tried to keep him in the dark. After a drive, during which Freddie was blindfolded, they boarded an eighty-foot-long, three-mast schooner, which was beautiful, but then Captain Atkins kept Freddie confined to his berth under lock and key as they weighed anchor. It wasn’t in an unkind way, though. The captain said it was for Freddie’s own good. He wasn’t to know the exact spot where the treasure was to be excavated until they arrived close to it. The only view Freddie was afforded during the trip was through a little porthole where he could see water rushing and frothing past, but that was all. He did enjoy the occasional swell, about five to six feet high he judged—a calm sea.

  The schooner had been rocking in place for a while when Captain Atkins finally came to Freddie’s berth. He handed him a wetsuit to don and told him to come up to the deck once he had it on, then he left the door unlocked.

  The view of the island from where they had set anchor took Freddie’s breath away, a towering volcanic peak partly covered in rain forest with nary a sandy beach but craggy black cliffs lifting from the turquoise-green waters—the jagged peak like a black diamond, the trees clusters of emeralds. It was a perfect day, the sun warm but not overbearing, a soft tropical breeze, just hints of clouds in the cerulean sky. Captain Atkins and a scruffy-looking crew member helped Freddie into the scuba gear.

  “You can scuba, right?” the captain asked. “You are trained and certified I presume.”

  “Absolutely,” he lied, but he wasn’t worried. “Breathing underwater? No problemo.” Not only was he a natural swimmer, a natural athlete with excellent hand-eye coordination—he was also one with all that was sun and sea.

  Harold smiled. “Well, not to worry, we have this nifty little thing.” The captain placed what resembled a watch on Freddie’s wrist. “It’s a top-notch, state-of-the-art dive computer. Even someone with zero experience would be able to follow rate of descent and ascent on this thing. Plus, we are giving you Nitrox in case you need to stay down there longer than anticipated. I’ll explain it all. No worries—you’re a strong boy. You’re going to love it, but don’t let yourself get too distracted by the colorful seascape.” He gave Freddie a pat on the back, then nodded at the scruffy guy with an Ita
lian accent, letting him know they needed to be alone. “Come sit with me for a bit, Freddie. We need to look at the map.”

  Finally, it was time to dive. Freddie swam following the instructions to a T. The prize was Hilly, so he was anxious to complete his mission and do it well. Beneath the water, the rock of the island continued for seventy or more feet deep. There was an array of caves and yawning craters beneath him, all encrusted with DayGlo coral reefs and orange elephant ear, netted barrel, and green finger sponges. It was like another land, the colors so vivid. He hadn’t ever seen anything like it before, not in all the other eight worlds.

  He glimpsed a reef shark peering out from between rocks and kept going, then followed a hawksbill turtle, going in the correct direction according to his compass. He saw adorable sea horses and frog fish. It was wonderful to be back in the ocean again. This could certainly become a hobby for him and Hilly once they were together, he thought. He wished she were here now, sharing it all silently.

  That was the thing; it was so peacefully quiet in the ocean depths. The twenty-first century was great, but it could get so loud, especially New York City—where Hilly said she wanted to work at a magazine once she graduated from college—always some noise somewhere. If it wasn’t cars and horns honking, it was a jackhammer or pile driver making one clap hands over the ears. Maybe Hilly and he could move to the Caribbean instead. He wondered if she would be agreeable to that.