Switchblade Goddess

by Lucy A. Snyder

  I crumpled, insensible, unable to move after such a catastrophic stroke. Miko carefully disconnected us and lifted me from the floor, carried me to the portal, and pushed me back into the living world.

  I came to on the uncomfortable cot in Madame Devereaux’s house and wept myself to sleep in the faint light of the crescent moon.

  chapter

  thirty-one

  Sap Daddy

  I dreamed I was a child again. I ran through our old house, calling for my mother, crying; at last I found her in the laundry room. She was washing something in the deep utility sink.

  “I did a bad thing,” I sobbed. “I did a bad thing and I don’t know what to do.”

  Mom smiled at me and patted my head with her damp hand. “It’s okay, honey. It’s just your brain. It’s very dirty. Here, I’ve got a clean one for you. Hold out your hands!”

  Mom reached into the sink and pulled out a big white brain. She dropped it into my outstretched palms. I squeezed it, and realized it was made of foam rubber, damp and slick with soapy water. I stared down at it. I couldn’t think with rubber, could I?

  “Mommy, I don’t think this will work,” I said.

  Suddenly we were standing in the kitchen, right where I’d found her cold body after the Regnum agents executed her. They had made her death look natural. The coroner told us she’d had an aneurysm that burst.

  The sponge brain in my hands had turned into a trembling cancer, dark and stringy like the shadow devil’s remains. I wanted to drop it, but my hands wouldn’t move.

  Mom sighed. “I’ll have to go to the children’s hospital. The doctors say they can’t operate on you, but I know a thing or two.”

  “No, Mommy, don’t go … don’t do it! They’ll kill you!”

  She didn’t seem to hear me, and I tried to run after her as she turned away to fetch her purse and keys, but my legs were stuck to the floor and I screamed for her to stop but she was out the front door, gone, gone forever—

  I woke with a start, breathing hard. So much for sleeping. But I was too exhausted to get out of bed. I lay there until midmorning, and when I finally rolled off the mattress I didn’t feel the least bit rested. It hurt to stand, it hurt to think, and the pain of doing basic things like washing my face and brushing my hair made me angry and frustrated. At least tonight the swamp beast would finally be ripe, so I could take my second energy potion. I hoped it was still good.

  Madame Devereaux broke the news to Shanique as we all sat down at the yellow kitchen table for a lunch of red beans and rice and collard greens: “Well, you should probably take a nap this afternoon, because I need you to lead Jessie out into the swamp tonight to find Sap Daddy.”

  The girl squinted at her grandmother suspiciously. “You told me I ain’t supposed to go out there with nobody but family.”

  Madame Devereaux didn’t miss a beat. “You can think of Jessie as my cousin, which means she’s also your cousin. And don’t talk back.”

  “Yes’m.” The girl shrugged and finished her greens.

  After we finished eating, Shanique planted herself in the living room to watch Iron Chef America while Madame Devereaux took me to a back workroom that had been outfitted in mismatched kitchen counters and cabinets with open shelving above. The old woman stood upon her tiptoes and pulled down a cardboard box that she set on the Formica work surface.

  “This here is what you’ll need for the collectin’.” She opened the box and pulled out a copper-clad glass jug with a black rubber stopper and a galvanized steel funnel. Both looked like they had come from some backwoods moonshine still.

  “And this is what you’ll need for the cuttin’.” She pulled out a burlap bundle as long as my shinbone and unwrapped it to reveal what I guessed was an African ceremonial knife. It had an elongated, leaf-shaped ferrous blade with a dark hardwood hilt and matching scabbard. The weapon looked positively ancient, and I could feel a faint magic emanating from it.

  “Should I fill the whole jug?” I asked.

  She nodded and pulled an old blue nylon gym bag that had to date from the 1970s down from another shelf. “As close to full as you can get, but don’t take more’n that, and don’t waste none. Sap Daddy is a genuine gold-egg goose for us, and we need him healthy. Well, healthy as a thing like him can possibly be, I ’spose.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I agreed.

  “All you got to do is get him to settle down and cut one of the little heart-vines.” She peered at the bag’s white shoulder strap and gave it a couple of yanks; apparently satisfied that it would hold, she began to pack the items from the box into the bag’s round compartment. “But he don’t always come along easy; Shanique is good with spell-song but she’s still just a girl and don’t have her real powers yet. If the beast gets rambunctious, don’t you dare burn him with that hand of yours,” the old witch admonished. “You might just kill him. And don’t you go dropping this here knife over the side of the boat, or I’ll make you go diving to find it again, you hear?”

  “Yes, ma’am. How do I find him?”

  “Well, y’all should use the old pole boat I got in the shed out back—motor noise will scare him off—and take it up the stream that runs behind my property. Shanique’s real good at finding him, so don’t worry none about that. Just hang onto your boots and get the jug full up and bring it back here, lickety-split.”

  I took my last energy potion out in the backyard at sundown, sipping it in mouth-burning swigs instead of chugging it, and this time I didn’t flip out. Feeling properly energized, I dragged the old flat-bottomed skiff to the shallow water just after 11 P.M. and tied it to the old tree stump that served as a mooring. There was no breeze to speak of, and the piney haze in the air was just enough to slightly dim the stars. Without a moon, the stream bank seemed truly dark. I turned off my flashlight and blinked through to an ocularis view that gave me night vision, the world around me appearing in ghostly shades of green and gray.

  “So, once we find this thing, how do we catch it?” I asked Shanique as we carefully stepped into the boat with our gear.

  “I sing to him, and he gets still,” she replied, setting her waterproof, hand-crank LED lantern on the wooden seat beside her.

  “For real?” I put the old blue gym bag down in the cargo area, checked my shotgun, and stowed it along the inner hull. Madame Devereaux had warned me that we might encounter some fairly large gators.

  “For real.” She dipped her paddle into the water.

  I untied the boat and pushed off the bank with the long white fiberglass pole. “Show tunes, or lullabies, or what?”

  The girl rolled her eyes. “It likes old Spanish Christmas songs like ‘Venid Pastores.’ I guess they used to sing that stuff to him back in the old days.”

  “So, no Ricky Martin?”

  Shanique gave me a sidelong squint that would’ve made Clint Eastwood proud. “Uh, no.”

  “That’s good. ‘La Vida Loca’ isn’t really in my range.”

  “You’re weird,” she said.

  “You have no idea,” I replied.

  The girl fell silent, and I kept pushing us along. The only sound was the faint swish of the water and the frogs calling to each other in the cattails. A few fireflies flitted to and fro, blinking come-hithers that seemed impossibly bright through my stone eye.

  Someone laughed, right behind me it sounded like, and I nearly dropped the pole in surprise. The boat rocked as I whirled around. The frogs went silent, startled by the sudden slap and splash of the hull. Nobody was there.

  “What’s the matter?” Shanique frowned at me.

  “Did you hear that?” I held my breath, trying to listen, blinking through other ocularis views as I scanned the weeds and dark water. Still nothing.

  “Hear what?” she asked.

  “That laugh.”

  “Uh, no …” The girl was staring at me as if she wasn’t sure if I was messing with her or not.

  “Seriously, you didn’t hear that?”

  “No, m
a’am.”

  I swore under my breath and pushed the boat off again. “Never mind. Just my nerves, I guess.”

  Problem was, I didn’t think I’d been all that nervous. Not enough to start hearing things, anyway. Pal’s life depended on the success of our mission, and that was no small amount of pressure, sure … but this was something a nine-year-old could do. Had done several times, apparently. So how bad could it be?

  “Oh, there’s plenty that could go bad tonight,” said a voice behind me. Miko’s voice.

  I swore and turned again, holding the pole like a spear. My heart was thudding. “Where the fuck are you?”

  Her head broke the surface a few yards behind the boat, just beyond my pole’s reach. She smiled at me. “I’m right here. Or am I?”

  “What do you mean?” My voice shook.

  “Maybe I’m not here at all.” Miko smoothly breast-stroked forward, graceful as a naiad, still keeping her distance. Her long black hair fanned out in the water behind her. “Maybe I’m just a hallucination. Maybe the viruses have finally started eating away at your brain, and you’re going crazy.”

  “Uh, ma’am, who are you talking to?” Shanique sounded worried.

  I swallowed, my throat suddenly dry.

  “Or maybe I’m here, and your songbird just can’t see me,” Miko continued. “And she won’t see me even when I cut her skinny little throat.”

  “Leave her alone.” I gripped the pole with my left hand and bent down to pick up my Mossberg with my right. I trained the shotgun on Miko, who just laughed at me.

  “What’s going on?” Shanique sounded genuinely scared. “Is—is someone out there?”

  I looked back at the girl. Her brown eyes were huge, and her cheeks were wet with frightened tears.

  “Don’t worry,” I said, trying to sound calm and confident. “There’s a problem, but it’s my problem, okay? Just get us to Sap Daddy.”

  She nodded and wiped her face. “Okay.”

  “I might say some stuff to my friend in the water,” I continued. “Just … just ignore it, all right?”

  The request sounded stupid the moment I made it, but Shanique simply nodded again, all her eye-rolling sassiness gone. One good thing about kids who’ve been raised around magic is that although they might be annoyingly cavalier about everyday spells, they know to take things seriously when real monsters come calling. Or at least they’ll go with real monsters as plausible, and not immediately assume that the responsible adult in the boat with you has just transformed into a hallucinating, gun-waving lunatic.

  “A lunatic without a moon to howl at.” Miko laughed again. “How ironic. How sad.”

  I set my shotgun down and began to quickly pole us away from her, my shoulders straining with my effort, but the death goddess easily kept pace with the boat.

  “Fuck off, Miko,” I said. “I’m really not in the mood for this tonight.”

  “I know.” Her voice was husky with fake sympathy. “You’re just heartbroken over your familiar, aren’t you? Here you are, trying so hard to save him, and every minute that ticks off the clock is a minute he’s closer to death. He’s suffering so much, Jessie, so much more than you know. And you’ve put his future in the hands of a little girl and an old witch. Do you really think they can save him?”

  “Do you have a point?” I said.

  “I think it would be a mercy to put him out of his misery,” she replied. “And take his soul for safekeeping. We can find a cute new ferret body to put it in once you’ve seen reason and accepted the position I’ve offered you.”

  “Go to hell.”

  “Perhaps I should put the old woman down, instead. Perhaps I’m at her house, right this very minute, and before you can get your little boat turned around I’ll have her scattered all over her garden. And you can watch Palimpsest die horribly tomorrow.”

  My heart was pounding so hard that my vision was shaking. I stared at Miko, who was floating on her back, just her face and naked breasts clear of the water. “Why would you do that?”

  She shrugged. “Because I can. Because you need to know that I’m determined to help you see reason. And as far as I’m concerned, your familiar is just a distraction.”

  “If you hurt either of them,” I growled, “I will not rest until I’ve destroyed you. I will see you burn. And before I’m done, you will wish you’d stayed down there in that deep-sea trench.”

  Miko laughed uproariously at that, splashing merrily, and I decided that ignoring her was probably the best thing I could do. So I focused on poling the boat as quickly as I could while Miko began to detail all the grotesque ways she would kill my loved ones, and their loved ones, if I failed to submit to her will. I wished I had a pair of earplugs, but part of me suspected all this was happening because she’d wormed her way into my brain. And if she was inside my head, not even a jet engine would drown out her voice.

  We reached the mouth of the stream, which opened into in the dark maze of a bald cypress swamp. The tree limbs dripped with Spanish moss. The water here was stagnant, the surface thick with duckweed and drifting mats of ragged algae. I could smell rotting vegetation and the rankness of reptile dung, either from gators or from something much bigger.

  “… in Tepes’ time, a good impaler could hammer in a stake without destroying any major organs,” Miko was saying, “and a young, healthy victim could suffer for two or even three days before he died. But I’ve heard that with modern piercing techniques and saline and penicillin injections you can keep your playmate aware and in agony for nearly twice as long. I think I’ll try that with the Warlock—he seems pretty strong, don’t you think?”

  I was still ignoring her, but when she said that a terrible image rose in my mind, a psychic sucker punch: the Warlock hanging screaming from a huge wooden spike that someone had rammed up under his rib cage and out through his shoulder. My senses spun with vertigo, and I fell to my knees in the boat. Fortunately I didn’t lose my pole. Or my dinner.

  “What’s the matter?” Shanique looked even more scared than before.

  “Just got dizzy.” I blinked to try to clear my vision and got to my feet. “Where do we go from here?”

  “That way.” She pointed out into the dark bayou. “He’s northwest of us. I can feel him.”

  I kept on poling the boat through the debris and cypress knees as Miko’s descriptions grew even more horrifying and vivid. Sometimes the water around us turned into a lake of blood and dismembered bodies, even through my ocularis. Vegetal rot turned to a charnel house stench. Sometimes the Spanish moss transformed into festoons of steaming entrails, and the trees became a thousand crooked gallows decorated with the corpses of the condemned. Sometimes the entire landscape around me looked like a Hieronymus Bosch nightmare.

  After another half hour, “sometimes” became “always.” I tried dispelling the vision by speaking various old words for “clear sight,” but my magic did nothing. Nothing, and nothing, and nothing. I was getting really good at nothing.

  “What, don’t you like this change of scenery?” Miko whispered in my ear. “But you’ve got such a talent for killing! Don’t shy away from it … embrace it. Don’t be a coward, Jessie. Just admit to yourself what you are, and your life will be so much easier.”

  My clothes were drenched in sweat, and my anxiety was driving my fire up to the cuff of my glove. The hell with Sap Daddy; if Miko kept mind-fucking me I was going to accidentally immolate myself before the night was over.

  “I’m … having a hard time seeing straight,” I finally told Shanique. “Make sure I’m going the right way, okay? If it seems like I’m going to wreck the boat, say something. Please.”

  The girl looked back at me, and I flinched. It looked like someone had scraped her face off with a length of razor wire or an equally crude tool.

  “Are you okay?” she asked, and the part of my head that was buying Miko’s illusion marveled at how well the girl could enunciate without any lips.

  I shook my head. “Not
so much, no. But … it’s my problem, not yours. Just don’t let me wreck us.”

  A little while later, I heard Shanique inhale sharply.

  “What is it?” I couldn’t glimpse anything but the landscape of carnage.

  “It’s him … he’s here, I know it.”

  “Where?” I strained to see past the bloody veil.

  “I dunno, I can’t—”

  The girl shrieked and something big and strong rammed the bottom of our boat, knocking it sideways, and suddenly I was plunging into the warm, sticky gore. I went under completely for a moment, fighting against what felt like a dozen dead hands grasping my arms and clothes, but I managed to surface, spitting foul gore from my mouth. The lake boiled around my flame arm, the stench of the smoke and steam like the toxic emanations of a rendering plant in the pit of Hades.

  Shanique was still screeching in panic. The girl definitely had a sturdy set of lungs.

  “It’ll be okay!” I hollered up at her, part of me wondering if I was telling her a terrible lie. I still couldn’t see the beast, but I could feel the vibrations of something huge pulling itself across the muddy swamp bottom. “You know what to do … sing to it!”

  I heard her take a deep breath, and I figured she’d just start screaming again—hell, if I’d been in her situation when I was nine they could have strapped me to the roof of a fire truck and used me as a siren—but what came out was a beautiful soprano note, a little shaky at first, but it got stronger and stronger and became a sound of such transcendent clarity you could compare it to the purest stream in the mountains above Shangri-la or the gleam of Caladbolg’s steel or the glitter of the Hope Diamond and all those other things would seem mundane and unimpressive. Shanique had the kind of voice that could make the most cynical, hard-minded atheist instantly believe in a benevolent higher power, believe in anything, really, and in that moment I realized that my father was helping Madame Devereaux stay hidden not for the old witch’s sake, but for the girl’s. She wasn’t even old enough to bleed yet, and she could sing like this? Oh my god. She was a Talent rare even in the world of Talents, and a whole lot of people would have loved to get their hands on her.