A Witch's Rite (Witch's Path Series: Book 5)

by N. E. Conneely

  I continued looking around her, trying to determine exactly what she was stuck on. While there were several sizable branches, I was not sure I was seeing the item that was holding her. In order to get a better idea what was preventing her progress, I started tracing her back, legs, and stomach with my hands. My fingers hit something. Even though I was unable to see it, I could feel a stout branch pressed against her middle.

  “Stay very still. I think I can get you free.”

  Reaching in with my other hand, I got a solid, two-handed grip on the branch and pulled. It slowly bent in my direction. Though I still couldn’t see what I was holding, the rhododendron shifting in response was clearly visible. Digging my feet into the ground, I pulled again. Whatever it was that I was yanking on cracked, sending me tumbling back.

  The doe darted forward. The last I saw of her were her heels kicking up as she vanished through the hedge. From the other side: Thank you. Help you?

  “If you could find a way to help me escape this place, I would be most grateful.”

  Come through same place?

  I quickly shouldered my pack and started bending back branches, trying to find the hole I knew she had left behind. After a moment it was clear that whatever spells were holding me here were still in full effect. Being in contact with her had done something to suspend the effects of the spells, but knowing I was spelled did nothing to help me escape.

  “I cannot. There are some spells still holding me here.”

  Sorry. Help if I can.

  “Thank you. Be safe.”

  There was one last flicker of acknowledgment, and then she was gone.

  I sighed and looked around. As far as I could tell, there were no other creatures sneaking up on me, and with night beginning to fall, it was time I rested. Since I doubted there was any part of the maze that was much better than another, I started making this my temporary home.

  As I settled in, I pondered what I’d learned. The maze most definitely had a mental component. While I was unsure of how it worked, I had some suspicions. It seemed to be actively preventing me from connecting with the person I cared about most or using my abilities. That spoke to something that was reacting to my desires or had some type of feedback from me. Then there were the maze walls. Since I had been unable to see what was holding the deer, it stood to reason that the rhododendrons were magically enhanced and perhaps obscuring some of what had been there before them or even what was actually in that location.

  All of those were spells that Michelle should be able to combat. Though her abilities would depend on her being able to counteract the magic on her mind. If the mind spells were preventing me from using nature, hers would prevent her from using magic, or at least useful magic. If we were together, there was a chance she could work through me, but we had to find one another first.

  No amount of logic or belief in her ability to take care of herself would ease my concern. Finally I prayed to the earth, asking her to keep Michelle alive and well. Even if we failed to rescue Gudger and Wells was lost, I needed Michelle to be safe. She was my entire world.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Patrick

  Inadequate was a good word for how I was feeling. I’d even tell someone that, but there was no one there to tell. I was all alone in this godforsaken maze because I was too clumsy to keep up with Michelle. If I ever got out, I was going to claim that the ground rose up and grabbed my foot. There was no circumstance in which I’d admit to Wells, Gudger if I ever saw him again, or the rest of the office, that a witch wearing a giant backpack had outrun me.

  That was embarrassing enough, but to add insult to injury, I’d been looking for Michelle or any of the others for hours without success. The only thing I’d managed to do in all my searching was get so lost I couldn’t have found my way back to the last spot I saw Michelle if I wanted to. And I was pretty sure I’d seen the possum that had caused Michelle and me to fall off the cliff. As soon as I saw its backside scramble under some bushes, I’d turned around and found a different path. One run-in with that creature was enough.

  The worst of all this was that I had been invited along because of my magical ability. That was it. If Gudger and Wells were still around, I was sure they would be regretting choosing me. My magical abilities had been almost useless, and it was clear that I didn’t have enough on-the-job experience to handle a situation like this. At this very moment, Wells was probably carrying out some grand plan to rescue Gudger. All I’d done was bumble around and have Michelle save me.

  Sighing, I looked at the giant rhododendron walls all around me. There had to be something useful I could do. The problem was I didn’t have a clue how to be useful when I didn’t know where I was, never mind how to find anyone else.

  A strange shape at the base of the maze wall caught my eye. The shadows were so deep I had to lean down to get a good look. Just a clump of dirt. Straightening, I gave all the rhododendrons near me a once-over. While I didn’t see anything else that merited an investigation, it was getting difficult to see. The sun was low in the sky, and these high maze walls cast deep shadows. It wouldn’t be long before I was bumbling around in the dark.

  I couldn’t decide if I should keep moving through the night or find a place to bunk down. While I could use the rest, I didn’t think I would be able to relax enough to get a good night’s sleep. Ned had sent enough trouble after us when we were awake that I didn’t want to know what he could manage if I were asleep. On the other hand, I hadn’t exactly been making progress during the afternoon, so a couple of hours of downtime wasn’t likely to make the difference between us getting out of here and being stuck a little longer.

  I took another look around and decided this wasn’t the best area. There was nothing wrong with it, but I had the strangest feeling that I should keep moving. Hoping I wasn’t making a mistake, I adjusted my backpack and kept going. The corridor turned and dumped me into a clearing. My eyes caught on a rusted old fire truck. The body shape declared that it was from the 1950s and proud of it, while the little red paint that hadn’t given way to rust proclaimed it hadn’t been taken care of in a long time. How it ended up out here was an excellent question, one I didn’t plan on finding the answer to.

  Darting back into the maze, I kept glancing behind me to see if anything was following me. When I was a good distance away and nothing bad had happened, I started to relax. Relaxation was quickly followed by fatigue.

  Before long I was going to have to stop for the night. Desire wasn’t an issue anymore, but I wanted to be well away from the fire truck before I tried to sleep.

  A few turns and a long corridor later, the view up ahead looked different. In the low light, it was hard to tell what was going on over there, but I didn’t think there was a hedge wall at the end.

  The logical part of me knew it was likely a trap. However, that didn’t stop me from hoping I’d found the end of the maze, could rescue Gudger, free the rest of the group, and go home. I didn’t care if we had to walk all night, it would be worth it to get off this damn mountain.

  As much as I wanted to run forward and get out of there, I knew better. Pulling my wand out of my arm sheath, I got ready to defend myself and crept forward. Every few steps I would pause, check behind me, and give the ground a quick scan to see if there were any traps.

  I went down half the hallway like that, and as far as I could tell there were no monsters after me or traps waiting to catch me. As Michelle would say, I didn’t trust this stretch of good luck to last.

  The sunlight was fading, and the shadows were obscuring what was ahead of me, but I could hear splashes that sounded like moving water. Giving the path ahead of me one last check for traps, I hurried forward. The rhododendron walls fell back, and I was in a sizable clearing with a gently tumbling stream.

  It wasn’t the exit. That much became clear rather quickly. The far bank of the stream was lined with rhododendrons. As disappointed as I was that I was still stuck in this place, water was a welcome sight. I
was down to the last couple of ounces in my canteen.

  As I made my way over to the stream, I kept glancing around, waiting to see if there was something out of place. As far as I could tell, it was a very lovely area with much-needed water and not a single trick. I was well aware that something could leap out of the rhododendrons at any time, but that was true of anywhere in this place. So all in all I was doing well.

  There was a large rock at the edge of the stream. Normally such a thing wouldn’t have caught my attention, but I couldn’t see another rock of that size in or along the stream. It wasn’t enough of an oddity to discourage me from getting water, so I shrugged out of my pack, unclipped my canteens, and slowly approached.

  Walking over to the stream, I couldn’t take my eyes off that rock. There was something about it that just didn’t look right. For one, the shape was odd. Now, I knew rocks could have some crazy shapes, but this one reminded me of something alive. A creature just lurking in the shallows.

  Reminding myself that danger could come from anywhere, I looked around, examining my surroundings carefully. It was just me. Me and that rock.

  Trying to shake off the feeling that there was more going on than what I was seeing, I kept moving closer to the stream. I edged into the long shadows cast by the hedges and paused to give my eyes time to adjust. When I was used to the dimmer light, I looked at the stream again. That rock wasn’t a rock. It was a person.

  The canteens fell out of my hand as I raced over to the stream. That was a naked man. As I knelt down next to him, I realized it was Wells.

  He was draped awkwardly, his face just above the water. Grabbing him under the arms, I heaved him onto solid ground and laid him on his side. His skin was cold, but that didn’t mean he was dead. I hoped he wasn’t dead. Wells had always been good to me, helped me learn the ropes. I didn’t want to see him like that.

  I sucked in a deep breath and checked his neck for a pulse. It felt like it took forever, but I finally found one. It was faint and widely spaced, but he was alive. Closing my eyes, I thanked the good Lord above. It was a short prayer of thanks. If Wells was going to stay alive, there was more work to do.

  Rolling him onto his back, I checked to see if he was breathing. Sure enough, he was taking slow and steady breaths. I quietly debated what to do, but there was still a chance he’d swallowed some water, so I rolled him back on his side in case he tried to cough something up.

  Wells was alive, but I had new concerns. The temperature had been falling steadily, and as soon as the sun went down it, was going to get cold. I needed to get Wells warm, build a fire, make clean water to drink, and prepare some food.

  Some of those things were going to take more effort than others. After checking Wells’s pulse one more time, I hunted down the water bottles, filled them up, and dropped an iodine tablet in each of them. With that taken care of, I unfolded the emergency blanket and laid it out on the ground next to Wells. I dragged him onto it, rolled him up, and propped him on his side. It was a little surprising that he’d stayed asleep through all that, but I didn’t know what had happened to him before I stumbled upon him.

  Now that Wells was working on getting warm, or at least not getting any colder, I started looking for wood. Most of the deadfall in the maze was pretty small, something else that was strange about this place. I gathered together what I could find while staying close to Wells.

  When I’d finished collecting wood, I found a couple of rocks and used them as makeshift shovels. It wasn’t long before I had a hole about two and a half feet in diameter and a few inches deep. I piled the soil along the edges of the cleared ground before hunting down some rocks and setting them in a ring around the fire pit.

  I checked on Wells again. He was still breathing and had a pulse, but he hadn’t awakened. Figuring there wasn’t a good reason to move him until I had the fire going, I quickly stacked twigs in the fire pit. Now that I was ready to light the fire, I went digging through my backpack. I might not be as well prepared as Michelle, but I did have matches.

  Luckily, the kindling caught with the first match and I was able to coax it into a small but reasonably sized fire. When it was doing well enough to be left alone for a little while, I hauled Wells over, checked his pulse and respiration again, and went back to growing the fire.

  This time of year the nights got cold, cold enough that hypothermia and death were a possibility. In his condition, it wouldn’t take much to finish Wells off. While the fire would help, I didn’t have enough wood to keep the fire going long enough to get Wells good and warm, never mind keep us cozy all night. Gudger and Wells had been carrying the two tents, so the emergency blanket was the closest thing we had to a shelter, and it was busy keeping Wells alive. Once he dried off, I could put him in the sleeping bag, but until then I needed to find more wood.

  Reluctantly I started venturing farther away from Wells in my search for wood. It was slow work, and the entire time I worried about him. Unless there was an injury I hadn’t seen when I examined him, he should’ve awakened by now. While I had a first aid kit in my bag, it wasn’t going to be a huge help. I could put ointment on his cuts, but I didn’t have advanced equipment with me. Internal injuries were out of my league.

  As I started back to camp with an armful of deadfall, I decided I would try to wake him up if he was still out of it when I returned. The last emergency medical training was still fresh in my mind, and I knew that there were plenty of reasons to leave him alone, but this wasn’t a typical situation. At any point Ned could send something after us. Michelle and I hadn’t gotten any warning before the tractor came bursting out of the hedge. Something like that could happen again. Wells needed to be alert enough to react if we were attacked.

  When I returned, it didn’t look like he’d so much as twitched. I tended the fire, dug a small pot out of my pack, filled it with water, and set it just out of reach of the flames. My remaining food required hot water, preferably boiling. The fire could do its thing while I tried to rouse Wells.

  I walked around to the other side of the pit, then squatted down next to my friend. “Wells, wake up!”

  He didn’t twitch.

  I shook him gently. “Wake up, Wells. Wake up!”

  He groaned faintly.

  “That’s it. Wake up. We need to problem-solve. Ned is still out there, and we aren’t going to die in this…” Not only was there a code of conduct that specifically addressed the inappropriate nature of profanity on the job, but my grandmother would be irate if she heard me talk like that. “…this place.”

  Wells blinked a couple of times and groaned.

  I breathed a sigh of relief. “How are you feeling?”

  “Westmoreland, is that you?” Wells’s voice was scratchy and faint.

  “Yes, sir.” In the firelight it was hard to tell, but I thought his pupils looked equal. That was a good sign. “How are you feeling?”

  “Considering all, not bad.”

  My eyebrows shot up. Looking at him, I wouldn’t have said that. “Does anything hurt?”

  “Patrick, everything hurts, but since my last memory was of dying, I’m feeling better than I’d anticipated.”

  “What happened?”

  “It’s rather a long story. Do you have anything to drink? Food would be good too.” He pulled the blanket away from his skin. “What are the chances that I could get some clothing?”

  I smiled as I handed him a canteen. If he was hungry he couldn’t be feeling that badly. “Food is going to take a little bit. I’ve got some freeze-dried meals, but I need the water to boil before I can fix them.”

  Wells nodded and took a long drink from the canteen.

  “Clothing is a maybe. I’ve got an extra set of everything but boots.” I eyed him through the blanket. “Should fit you well enough.”

  He sighed. “We’ll make it work. I don’t fancy being naked out here.”

  I couldn’t blame him.

  We waited in comfortable silence for the water to boil. When
it was ready, I quickly dumped it into the bags of freeze-dried food before sealing them up. In a few minutes we’d have a nice big meal, a treat for both of us after this terrible day.

  Wells’s day had been even worse than mine, but his color was coming back, he was more alert, and overall appeared to be bouncing back rather well.

  Leaning against my pack, I asked the question he’d already brushed off once. “How did you end up in the river?”

  Wells sighed. “A lot of stupidity and a little luck. Elron and I found a pond, and there was a woman in it who seemed to be drowning. I couldn’t think about anything but helping her. It was the most important thing in the whole world. Elron tried to stop me, but I charged right into the water. Next thing I knew, she was dragging me to the bottom of the pond, trying to drown me. I remember starting to run out of oxygen, and I shifted. Don’t know what I was thinking. My parents told me from the time I was a kid that shifting into an octopus in freshwater would kill me.”

  Wells shook his head. “I’m really not sure what happened after that. I’m guessing I only partly shifted or didn’t stay shifted long. I must’ve floated downstream and ended up here.”

  “Wow.” I didn’t even know what to say. “Any idea what kind of creature tried to drown you?”

  “Maybe a nixe.” He shrugged. “But I can’t be sure.”

  Sending the river a suspicious look, I said, “Well, hopefully she’s got other places to be tonight.”

  “Amen to that.” Wells took a deep breath. “Is the food ready? I really need to eat some salt.”

  Leaning forward, I opened up the bags of food and poked a spoon around. “Looks good.” I passed him a bag and a spork.

  Wells took a bite and groaned softly. “I needed this.”

  My mouth was too full for me to say anything, but I nodded. Most days freeze-dried stew wouldn’t be exciting, but tonight it tasted like heaven.