“I can,” I said, still looking at Jerome. “Maybe not before your hand touches that rope, but before I fall in, I’ll fry you like a strip of bacon.”
“You no have to.” Jerome made a concession by lifting his hand a full twelve inches off the rope. “You no need fall. You no fry me. Promise you take. I let you off.”
“Do it,” said Tony.
Carlos said, “No. Stand back. I’ll do it.” He pulled out his Glock and took aim at Jerome’s head. “I’ll drop him like a stone. Lilith, you should duck, though. This might blow your eardrums out.”
“Carlos!” I turned and gave him an elbow to the gut, dropping him to his knees. “Okay, look.” I returned to Jerome. “You can come with us. I promise. No tricks.”
He eyed me with unwarranted suspicion. “Yes?”
“Yes. Really.” I reached my hand out again.
“You swear witch’s honor?”
“Witch’s hon... How do you know about that?”
“I get round.”
“Fine. Witch’s honor.”
He reached out, shook my hand and then backed away to let us pass. I crossed over onto solid ground. Carlos was still on his knees, blocking Ursula and Tony’s passage, but he appeared to have caught his breath.
What happened next, I swear happened in slow motion. I mean, maybe it didn’t, and it only seemed that way, but I know that in the ES, anything is possible.
I had just turned around after stepping off the last rung, when Carlos, in an attempt to stand, inadvertently reached up and grabbed the hand rope above his head. The bridge immediately buckled, the sleepers dropped out from under Tony, Ursula and Carlos. Almost as quickly, Jerome lashed out with his tail, striking Carlos’ hand like a whip.
Involuntary reflexes took over. Carlos’ hand came off the rope as if struck by lightning. The bridge reacted in kind, whiplashing back into position like a rubber band and catapulting the three of them up onto the ground in slingshot fashion.
I ran to Ursula first. She seemed shaken, but unscathed. “You all right?” I asked, helping her back to her feet.
“Aye,” she said, after standing and brushing herself off. “But for the softness of the ground I might have broken a bone.”
“Soft ground, my ass,” Carlos complained. “You landed on me!”
“Tony?” I went to him next. He was slower than the others in getting back to his feet. “You okay?”
“I’m fine,” he said. I helped him over to a large boulder where he sat and began working a sprain in his ankle.
“Jerome,” I said. “That was quick thinking. For a moment, I...” I turned around, but he was gone. “Jerome?”
“Hey, where’d he go?” asked Carlos.
Ursula looked about. “I cannot but imagine.”
“He was here a second ago.”
“He’s still here,” I said. “I bet he’s hiding in plain sight. Camouflaged.”
“He is?”
“Jerome?” I started toward the most obvious hiding place, the green foliage immediately to the left of the bridge. “It’s okay, Jerome. You can show yourself. We’re not upset. You did a good thing. Isn’t that right, Carlos?”
“Yeah,” Carlos answered. “Although you didn’t have to hit my hand so hard. I think I have a barb stuck in it. Have you had your rabies shots?”
“Carlos!”
“Just asking.”
“Jerome, what you did was good. You saved their lives. I’m going to forgive the blackmail thing. What do you say we just start over fresh, all right?”
“You mean?” came a voice from a completely different place than where I was looking.
I turned and headed toward a scrawny scrub of brush beside the boulder Tony was sitting on. “Yes. I mean it. Now show yourself.”
Amazing how the little shit could do what he did. Until he moved, I could only see dried twigs and dead branches on a backdrop of pebbles and dirt. When he stepped out onto a patch of ground surrounded by live vegetation, he stuck out plain as day.
“Amazing,” I said. “How do you do that?”
“Is hunting trick. No thing fancy.”
“Effective. I don’t suppose you go hungry much.”
“You make joke?” He stepped back and splayed his arms. “Do it look I eat well?”
I raked him over with my eyes. “No. You look like a bag of antlers. What’s up with that?”
He turned his gaze to the ground and kicked at the dirt with his foot. “I not good hunter.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Dat my job, I hunt. We all have job. What is hard for understand?”
“Who’s we?”
He pointed at his bony chest. “More like me.”
“More from your village?”
“No village. Unit.”
“I still don’t get it.”
“Is complicated. You no mind.”
Tony said, “I’ll tell you what’s complicated, figuring out where to go from here.” He got up from his seat and hobbled over to me.
“You sure you’re okay?” I asked him.
He set his hand on my shoulder, but didn’t shift much weight onto it. “Yeah, I’m sure.” He gestured into the dense patch of trees before us. “Which way now?”
I looked at Jerome. He pointed into the thick of it with his spiny tail. “That way Dark Forest.”
“Then we go,” I said, stepping aside for Jerome to pass. “After you.”
“Why for after me?”
“Because, I can’t keep an eye on you if you’re following.”
“You no trust Jerome?”
“No.” I palmed the back of his lumpy head and pushed him along. “Trust, my half-pint piñata, is something you earn. You’re not there yet.”
Trekking through the Dark Forest was not exactly what I imagined. First, it wasn’t nearly as dark as the name implies. In fact, it was lighter there than anywhere else in the ES.
I realized that although there was no obvious light source, namely no visible sun or moon, all matter in the ES had a unique quality of auto-luminescence. That’s not to say that everything glowed. It didn’t. Yet everything in existence possessed the ability to present itself to the eye in a phantom light as if illuminated by unseen exterior sources.
The second thing that struck me was that, even though there were no set trails or beaten paths to follow, our direction of travel seemed oddly predetermined, and not just because Jerome was leading. We were nearly a mile into our walk when the little trail blazer asked me what we were doing.
“What do you mean? We’re following you,” I said.
He glanced back over his shoulder with the same look Tony gives me when he learns I’ve polished off the last of the double chocolate fudge ice cream. “No. Why you here? You evil?”
“Evil? No. I get a little pissy sometimes, I’ll admit.”
“You no sent here?”
“No. Nobody sent us here. ”
“Then why you come?”
“We’re on a rescue mission. We came to save a friend of ours.”
He stopped in his tracks, turned and looked at me as though he were talking to a ghost. I suppose in his world I was. “You come by self?”
“That’s right.”
“No one send?”
“Uh-uh.”
He pointed his crooked little finger at the others. “All you come by self?”
“Yes. We all came here on our own to find our friend and take her back.”
He seemed most amazed at that. “How you can go back?”
“Well, you see we don’t really know that yet. I mean that’s the problem, isn’t it? We’re mostly just winging it, taking things one step at a time.”
“Friend at fortress?”
“Yes. That is we think so. We believe a bad man is holding her there against her will.”
I could see the wheels in his lumpy head spinning. “You find her. I know secret.”
“Another secret? What is it?”
“I kn
ow how get back.”
“Tell me.”
“You take me?”
“Back to Earth? I don’t think so.”
He turned and started walking again.
I took the first step to follow him when Tony pulled me back. “Lilith.” He spoke in a hush too softly for Jerome’s ear. “You have to get him to tell us how we can get back.”
“Tony, we can’t take him with us.”
“I know. I’m not suggesting we do. Just tell him you will so that he’ll tell us the secret.”
“What if he makes me promise witch’s honor?”
“Then you promise.”
“I can’t do that. I’ve never broken a witch’s promise before. I don’t intend to start now.”
“Okay, then we’ll take him.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Lilith, you can promise to take him, just don’t promise to take him alive.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean we can take him back if he’s dead. We’ll bury him in the woods behind the research center. Who’s to know?”
“Know what?” Carlos asked.
I turned and found the big lug hovering over me like a dark cloud. “Gees, Carlos! Don’t do that.”
“So what’s to know?”
Tony said, “She’s going to promise Jerome he can come back with us when we leave here. Isn’t that right, Lilith?”
“We’re taking the little shit home with us?”
“No,” I said. “We’re not taking anyone except Leona home with us.”
Ursula joined in the huddle. “What plans hath thee what counts me not?”
“We’re taking the little shit back with us,” said Carlos. “I get dibs on keeping him.”
“You don’t get dibs. You don’t even like him.”
“So. I still called it.”
“We’re not taking him!”
Jerome, who had snuck back into our fold said, “Take who?”
We all straightened up and flattened our hands to our sides. I know that my painted smile looked convincing; I’ve practiced it enough in front of Tony. Can’t say as much for the others though. If Jerome had as much sense as he had cunning, he’d have seen right through them.
“You,” I said. “We’re not taking you home with us unless you tell me the secret to getting back?”
“You change mind?”
“Yes. I changed mind... I mean I changed my mind. Tell me how we can get back and we’ll let you go with us.”
“Witch’s honor?”
I gave Tony the I-told-you-so glare. He gestured a subtle nod for me to continue. I shook my head no. I just couldn’t do it.
Carlos stepped in. “Yes, Jerome. Witch’s honor. Now tell us how we get back to our universe.”
Jerome pointed to Carlos. “You witch?”
Carlos acted insulted. “Of course, I’m a witch. Why, just last night I pulled a flame out of a fire with the point of a finger and rode a floating rock around the campsite like a merry-go-round. Tell me what non-witch can do that.”
Jerome peeled his lips back and smiled. “Difermium pellets.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Are you talking about the stuff people use for currency?”
“Why you think valuable? Difermium is ticket out. All the one wants difermium. Is rarest mineral. Hard to get. Not for me. I know where find.”
“You can get us some?”
“More you can dream. I know cave full. Difermium all the where. Walls, floor, ceiling. All the where difermium.”
“That’s good,” said Tony. “But what are we going to do with difermium? We can’t buy our way out of here? Can’t hop on a plane and fly home? Money means nothing in this hellhole.”
I could see Jerome was only just beginning to appreciate the depth of our ignorance on the subject. He gathered a similar look of perplexity from Carlos and Ursula before returning to me.
“Is no money. Difermium is catalyst.”
“What do you mean?”
He laughed. “Is what all the one wants. You get lots, make hot with fire, charge with lightning, go boom. TDT.”
“Wait. Did you say TDT?”
“TDT.”
“Trans-dimensional travel?”
“Is way home. Yes?”
“What’s he saying, Lilith?”
I turned to Carlos. “I believe he’s telling us the reason difermium pellets are so highly sought after here is because it’s a mineral you can manipulate to harness the energy needed to force trans-dimensional travel.”
“It can get us home?”
“Apparently.”
“And he knows where to find this stuff?”
“That’s what he’s saying.”
Carlos pushed me aside, knelt down, put his arm around Jerome’s shoulder and pulled him in close. “Jerome, mi amigo. ¿Como estás? Tell me about this difermium cave of yours. Is it close?”
“Carlos.”
“Lilith, please. This is important.”
“Cave not far,” Jerome answered, pointing with his tail. “I show you now.”
Tony cleared his throat. “I think maybe we should just keep going. Let’s get Leona, and then we can worry about getting out of here.”
“But, Tony, he says the cave’s right over there. It’s on the way.”
“I don’t know, Carlos. I’m afraid to lose any more time.” He turned to me. “Lilith, what do you think?”
I gave an honest shrug. “I don’t see the harm in it, not if it’s on our way. I mean, it’d be nice not having to backtrack through these woods after rescuing Leona.”
I looked around at the stand of trees that I swear had grown taller and thicker in the short time we had been standing there. “Fact is, I’m not so sure we could even find our way back to town.”
Jerome said, “Good. We go now.” He wiggled out from under Carlos’s arm and swaggered off.
Tony gave me the high brow that said I had better be right. I leaned in and kissed him on the cheek and whispered, “I’m right.”
He smiled back and presented a path with a sweep of his hand. “After you then.”
I started walking. The others fell in behind.
Contrary to what Carlos thought, the cave was not right over there. Even Jerome had stretched the truth some when he said it wasn’t far. We traveled for what seemed like miles through heavy woods, often cutting through canopies of low-hanging branches and spider webs as large as bed quilts.
And then there were the sounds, strange ominous noises that we all tried to ignore, but couldn’t: twigs snapping, wisps of hissing air fluttering about our heads and deep, low-level grunting that crept along the forest floor like ground fog, reverberating through our ankles and up our spines.
I asked Jerome several times if we were almost there. Always, he gave me the same answer. “Cave not far.”
Finally––and if he hadn’t said it first, I would have––Carlos asked that we stop and rest. We were all tired, thirsty and hungry. I worried about Ursula, always quiet, never complaining. She looked half-dead, walking with slumped shoulders; her arms limp, forging ahead, one step in front of the other without really looking where she was going. I knew she would rather drop than ever ask us to hold up for her. I wished I had noticed earlier.
Tony, my tower of strength, my man of steel, didn’t look much better. I hadn’t noticed because he was behind me the entire time, but he was hurting, too. He told me his ankle was all right. Clearly it wasn’t. He favored it, shifting his weight onto the other as he walked and creating greater fatigue on the rest of his body.
We sat down in a roundabout clearing with a footprint the size of a small house. There, the ground was soft, blanketed with deciduous leaves the color of autumn. If we were back on Earth, I would have thought it about mid-day for the time it took us to get there. But for the cold that settled in, I guessed it was already nightfall––again.
I lit a fire using witchcraft, snapping my fingers and flicking the flame
onto a pile of combustible leaves. It would have been a neat trick, guaranteed to delight any audience, if not for the fact we were in the Eighth Sphere where almost anyone could do the same thing. As it was, even Jerome seemed unimpressed.
Some of the sounds that had followed us through the woods were absent now. Others weren’t, among them, the snapping twigs. I know that Carlos worried about malodytes sneaking up on us, jumping out from behind the trees and ripping our heads off. He had rambled on for twenty minutes about all the God-awful things they would do to us. I finally had to tell him to cram it.
The truth was, I wasn’t afraid of malodytes. I’ve been around awhile; even lived in the woods for a few years earlier in my life. I knew that creatures much smaller than malodytes were responsible for the snapping twigs. The problem was that there were more than a few. Jerome knew it too. I could see it in his eyes, the way they darted through the deepest shadows, expecting... something. I don’t know what.
“So, Jerome,” I said, hoping to deflect attention away from what sounded like a hundred little campfires crackling all around us. “You never told us why your mother didn’t give you a name.”
He shook his head. “Not know mother. Mother leave Jerome.”
“She abandoned you? How awful.”
“No abandon. Is what mothers do. She leave me with kumoru. I hide. Look like kumoru. No one find me.”
“Who is Kumoru?”
“Kumoru is plant. Kumoru protect me.”
“You camouflaged yourself to look like a plant?”
“Dat right.”
“How did a plant protect you?” asked Tony.
Jerome seemed surprised at that. “Kumoru is kumoru. You know.”
“No, I don’t know.”
“Kumoru bad. You step, make boom.”
“I don’t understand?”
“Wait,” I said. “I’ve read about that in the Grimoire. Only the Grimoire calls it the Comora plant, but I’m sure it’s the same thing. It’s a broadleaf lily that blends in with the ground clutter. It can vaporize a person just by stepping on it.”
“Like a land mine?”
“Exactly. Natures land mine.”
The others immediately began searching the ground around us, like they might spot one of the infernal plants just by looking at it.
“How do we know if we’re near one of them?” Carlos asked.
8 Gone is the Witch Page 12
