For one long, horrifying moment Penny could only stare up at the flailing bodies of her friends as she waited to die, and then a rush of air floated past her on all sides, slowing the freefall. A flare of light burst up and Penny felt a hand grab onto hers.
At first all Penny could see was a rushing river of stars in her eyes, but as they dissipated she could see that everyone hung around her in midair, all falling together with their hands haphazardly linked, but so slowly Penny thought she must be dreaming again. She realized then that the shooting stars were glowing runes emitting from Hector’s hands. Penny took a great gasp of icy cold air and saw Simon had lost consciousness from the magic drain, and Annette was crying, her tears fluttering upward in the wind.
“Look!” Hector cried. Out of the gloom and the ocean mist, Penny could see a dark mass of land with clusters of light glimmering in the distance. Below them loomed the black ocean and miles above was the Airship, still beating its huge wings and shooting off beams of light. Penny could not believe they were plunging from such a dizzying height. She braced herself for the inevitable as they neared the surface of the ocean.
The waves that had been mere spots of foam from the height of the airship were now thundering masses of water, crashing and exploding in eruptions of spray as they plunged into the sea, the churning surface feeling like a bed of blades on Penny’s skin.
Penny was ripped away from the others as they were tossed by the merciless currents, the saltwater stinging her eyes and nostrils. She knew her only hope of survival was to get to Simon’s wand. Breaking the surface, she fought her way through the waves and plucked the wand from Simon’s limp body before he could sink. Not knowing what to do and feeling control of her motor functions slipping due to the cold, she willed the puffy cloud that Simon had summoned before in the graveyard to appear before her eyes. As if the silver wand had been listening, the white cloud blossomed out from the tip and pushed Penny and Annette up from the churning waves.
Penny screamed as she saw Hector and Simon slipping away into the sea, knowing they had only seconds before their lives were claimed by the depths. Hector swam forward, spitting water, and heaved Simon’s body toward them. Annette and Penny yanked him onto the cloud and turned back for Hector. Penny’s hand grabbed onto his slick one and Annette caught his wrist. Penny’s chest tightened when Hector’s hopeful expression turned into one of acute horror. Penny heard it before she saw it; an unnatural disturbance beneath the waves, accompanied by a venomous hissing.
From the dark depths of the ocean a creature’s head burst from the water, its gaping orange eye glowing in the darkness. Its teeth were huge and long, like long swords of bone, and filthy green hair grew from the top of its scaled head.
In a lightning fast motion, the creature sank its long, crooked teeth into Hector’s midsection and he let out a scream of utmost terror and pain. Overcoming her horror, Penny lurched forward and jabbed Simon’s wand into the center of the creature’s face. She felt the tip of it drive into the soft eyeball with a sickening puncturing sound, and the creature shrieked as blood flowed from its eye. It stopped gnawing on Hector’s convulsing body long enough for Annette and Penny to pull him onto the cloud. Penny commanded the wand to bring the cloud higher and they shot into the air, the chill cutting into their damp skin. When they were a suitable length away from the surface of the restless waves, Penny allowed herself to breathe again. She commanded the cloud to travel toward the land mass only a few miles in the distance.
“P-Penny! Hector, he―!” Annette choked in hysterics, grasping at her chest as she hyperventilated. Dripping and shaking, Penny looked down at Hector. Even in the darkness she could see he was drenched in his own blood and lay motionless. His chest was still rising, but only just.
“What are we going to do? He’s going to die!” Annette sobbed.
“NO! He’s not going to die!” Penny shouted back, trying her best to keep her mind clear as she steered them toward the shore with all the speed the little cloud could manage. The fog became thicker as they got closer, making it difficult to see even a few feet in front of their faces. Penny was quite close to losing her mind from fear when she saw a gathering of lights.
Lights! Lights mean people! she thought, directing the cloud forward. In less than a minute the lights were just a few feet away and the water below changed to sand. Penny urged the cloud to let them down, but instead of dropping them softly, it disappeared and they crashed into the sand several feet below.
Penny got to her feet, aware she was caked in sand and blood and dripping with seawater. A fierce determination pulsed through her as she turned to find the lights she had seen from shore, but when she caught them in her sights crushing disappointment buried her like an avalanche. She dropped back down to her knees.
The lights were souls. The very same type of glowing entities Penny had seen flitting about between the gravestones in Lindenvale. There were at least ten or fifteen of them drifting above their heads. Penny was seconds from collapsing in hopelessness; they were stranded, and maybe miles away from any city.
Without immediate help Hector is going to die. If we stay in the cold in this condition for too long we are all going to die. And it is entirely my fault, Penny thought, sure that she would not be able to keep her tears back this time. She buried her face in her hands and resigned herself to at least being close to Hector in the last moments of his life.
The sound of footsteps shifting through the sand roused her and Annette from their silent despair. A light was coming toward them.
“Hello?” a voice called out from the haze. Annette gasped, her sobs shuddering to a stop. Penny was stricken with fright; the voice had not addressed them in Gobblish, but Andronian. Through the thick mists, the vague shape of a slouching human form advanced on them.
“Help us! Please! We’re over here!” Annette cried.
From the veils of fog stepped a man, an eidolorbe in his hand.
Penny’s heart filled with dread at the sight of the approaching stranger. A black bandana obscured the lower half of the man’s face and another wrapped around the top of his head. Wind-swept silver hair hung around his face and curious eyes peeked out from the space between the fabrics. The eidolorbe gripped in his bony hand was full of souls swimming and bouncing around inside their cage. The light emanating from the souls acted as a flashlight as the stranger brought it close to Annette’s face and gave a strangled gasp. She was covered in Hector’s blood.
“Our friend is hurt! We’re stranded out here―please help us,” Annette begged, hands clasped together.
The man pocketed the eidolorbe and rummaged around in the voluminous black jacket he wore before pulling out a tiny glass vial that appeared to have a few drops of water inside it. He shook it and sighed.
“I was saving this, too,” he muttered. His voice was flat and held no note of shock or worry, which puzzled Penny. With a small start, Penny noticed that his irises appeared to be bright yellow in color, just like an owl’s. He uncorked the vial and turned the mouth of it toward the sand, pouring the water out in a spiral shape.
Everything was still for an instant, and then the sand around them erupted as if something underneath the ground had exploded. The sand began swirling around in a rapid tornado until the world disappeared into the torrent. When the wind died down and the sand blew away into oblivion, they found themselves standing in a small apartment.
Penny goggled at their new surroundings. From the walls to the floor were cluttered strange, otherworldly objects and decorations. The ceiling was strung with small colored lights, paper lanterns, shimmering stones, and a dingy chandelier. In one corner of the room was a spiral staircase leading up to a loft and beside it a closed door. The walls were an explosion of paint splotches, scraps of wallpaper, posters, masks, and something that looked like a large collection of ticket stubs. It was as if a dingy, battered rainbow had crash-landed into the room many years ago and been left to disassemble itself and collect dust.
“Hey, Gorra, it’s me. I need a surgeon and an alchemist here immediately. It’s a life or death kind of thing,” he said in heavily Andronian-accented Gobblish, showing he was originally from the Nation of Men.
Annette raised an eyebrow at Penny, but she was too busy watching Hector’s still form to acknowledge her. He was bleeding out all over the floor, his breath shallow. The silver-haired man joined them and looked over Hector, nudging the folds of his tattered shirt aside to inspect his wounds.
“Fomorian bite?” the man asked.
“Uh-huh,” Annette burbled. The man glanced sideways at Annette once more, as if checking on something, and then cast his gaze away, the skin behind his bandanna almost as pale as his hair. He reached into his pockets and pulled out two cross-shaped pieces of wood.
With a rattle and a shake two small objects, each about a foot tall, rose out of his deep pockets as if animated of their own accord. Controlled by the man’s twitching fingers, they floated up into the air and over to Hector with blank eyes and frozen smiles. A chill ran up Penny’s spine; they were grotesquely bizarre marionette puppets.
She dove to protect Hector, and the man shook his head.
“They won’t hurt him,” he said, and she edged away just enough that the puppets were able to grab Hector, one by his shoulders and the others by his ankles. Still controlled by their master, the puppets carried Hector upstairs and into the loft, his blood dripping as they moved. Penny shot a nervous glance at Annette as the man called the puppets back, set them down, and glanced at where Simon lay unconscious on the floor. His eyes were closed and his mouth hung open as he took rhythmic, rattling breaths.
“He okay?” the stranger questioned.
“He just fainted,” Penny said in a thin voice. The man regarded them for a moment, then went off to search among his collection of things until he found a pillow and a few blankets. He helped lift Simon onto the makeshift bed and handed two more blankets to Penny and Annette, who wrapped themselves up.
Moments later a knock sounded at the door. Annette and Penny drew closer to each other as the door opened, revealing two female goblins. They were dressed in similar robes to the ones Armonie wore, except these colors were darker.
“Where is the patient?” one of them asked the man in Gobblish. He stood aside to let the goblesses inside and they followed the man up the staircase, glancing back at Penny and Annette. Penny was bewildered as to why, and then realized they were both sopping wet, covered in blood and sand, and wearing their nightgowns.
Once the trio disappeared up the spiral staircase, Penny and Annette were left alone in a ringing silence. For a long while they stood, listening to the low murmur of voices and footsteps above their head. After it appeared the goblesses were not going to be back down for a while, the girls sat at a table with an assortment of old, mismatched chairs encircling it.
The full weight of dread was sinking in. Penny was sure that she was coming out of some form of shock, and that cold reality was preparing to tear her to pieces. The two puppets rested on the table beside them, eerie in their stillness. They each wore strange clothes that looked as if they had been sewn by hand, and their sculpted faces looked like something out of a half-formed nightmare. Each appeared to be humanoid, but more like twisted caricatures than accurate representations.
Losing what strength she had left, Penny covered her head with her hands, trying to work out what had happened, guessing that during the course of the vivid nightmare she had somehow started sleepwalking. This rationalization bothered her, because she had no history of being a sleepwalker. It was as if the masked entity had taken over her entire body.
The notion tormented her. She had chosen not to tell anyone about her dreams, chosen to ignore them, and because of this everything she cherished was now in jeopardy.
Penny’s miserable thoughts were broken by the sounds of footsteps. The man was returning. He descended the staircase, feet now bare, and removed the bandana that previously hid his nose and mouth.
Penny had assumed from the color of his hair that the man was quite old, but seeing his face for the first time she was startled to realize he was probably in his mid-twenties. Beneath his startling yellow eyes Penny could see grayish purple discoloration―a sign that this was someone who lacked sleep. A golden earring was set in one earlobe, and gray trousers clung to bony legs. The large jacket seemed tent-like over his skinny frame. Despite his aquiline nose, his face looked as if it could be quite handsome if not for the lifeless, exhausted look to it. He studied the girls, crossing the room to join them at the table. His eyes strayed again to Annette, and after being stared at for too long, she grew agitated.
“What?” she spat. To Penny’s surprise the man grinned, showing a single crooked tooth in an otherwise impeccable smile.
“It’s really you,” he murmured. “You’re Annette Deveaux, aren’t you?”
“You know who I am?” The anger in her face disappeared and a wave of dull shock replaced it.
“Everyone knows you,” he said with a lopsided grin.
Penny frowned, wondering how such trivialities could matter to them at a time like this. “Excuse me, sir, hate to interrupt, but is Hector okay?” Penny demanded, feeling her voice growing hoarse.
“So his name’s Hector, is it?” the man wondered aloud, sounding somewhat interested before he shrugged. “I don’t know yet. Looks like he got chewed up pretty good, but if anyone can save him, it’s those two. Oh, and by the way, my name’s Argent. No need for that ‘sir’ crap.” He leaned back in his chair, observing Penny with interest. “What’s your name?”
“Erm, it’s Penny.”
“And how is it that you know each other? Oh, and how is that you fell into the ocean? And why is it that you’re all…in pajamas?” Argent inquired, not waiting for them to answer as he got up, shuffled over to the kitchenette and began rummaging through the cupboards.
Penny and Annette shared a befuddled look, both lost for words. Argent leaned back to confirm they’d heard him, giving them both an imploring glance with his queer eyes as he set a dusty kettle on the wood-burning stove.
“It’s a long story,” Annette murmured in a voice that communicated she had no intention of telling him anything. Argent swept back to the table, his bare feet padding along the dusty floor of his apartment. He grabbed the control of the puppet, and with a careful twitch of his hand, it sprang to life and began moving around the kettle, gathering cups and sugar as Argent’s hand commanded. Penny was transfixed by his skills as a puppeteer and watched, mesmerized, until Argent spoke again.
“Well, I’m not going anywhere anytime soon, and I assume you’d like to stick around until there’s news about your friend,” Argent said, his hand still commanding the puppet with practiced ease.
Annette frowned again. “Well, what were you doing on the beach in the early hours of the morning?” she challenged, seeming to think a taste of his own medicine might cure him of his curiosity.
Argent lowered his heavy eyelids, the ends of his mouth twitching up into the same lopsided grin. “I was collecting souls. What were yooou doing?” he asked, imitating her previous intonation.
“Collecting souls!? Whatever for?” Annette shot back as Penny started to doubt the morality of their would-be savior.
Argent made a small tutting noise with his tongue and shook his head. “Now, now. You can’t expect me to go rambling on when you’re keeping all those secrets to yourself. First, tell me what you were doing in the ocean―other than trying to get yourselves killed, of course,” he pried, his yellow eyes blazing behin
d his calm exterior.
“We fell from an airship and our friend Hector saved us by using a bit of magic to slow the fall, but we landed in the sea. We got away with using his wand―” Penny jerked her head in the direction of Simon snoring on the floor, “but Hector got attacked by the fomorian. Is that good enough for you?” She huffed and Argent’s smile broadened. He looked down toward his pocket for a mere moment, and then back at her with something reminiscent of admiration.
“Indeed,” he approved. “I was collecting souls so I can make some more of these.” Argent laid his hand on the other puppet and it shuddered under his white fingers.
Penny shivered. “You…you put people’s souls inside those things? How horrible!”
Argent shrugged. “I don’t force them in. I only take the ones that want to come, the ones that aren’t ready to leave yet. They’re free to go any time they please, right Kasper?”
The doll shuddered again, and a hatch in the midsection opened of its own accord. A faintly purple wisp oozed out like incandescent mist and circled around Argent’s shoulders before finding its way home, back inside the hollow body of the puppet.
“How do those things work? What do you use them for?” Penny asked, now enthralled.
Argent looked pleased by her interest, which seemed to perturb Annette. She crossed her arms over her chest and her lips puckered into a pout.
“Why were you on an airship all the way out here with someone like her?” he asked Penny in response, honing in on the fact that he was not going to get any answers from Annette.
Penny sighed. “We were going to Hulver to see King Yulghrat on official business from Iverton,” she offered.
Argent raised an eyebrow as he glanced back down into his pocket. “Now that…is an unusual bit of news,” he said as the other puppet brought mugs of steaming tea to Annette, Penny, and himself. Argent took a quick sip of tea and made a face as it burned his tongue. Penny grabbed hers up, enjoying the cup’s warmth that stung her frozen hands.
The Angel of Elydria (The Dawn Mirror Chronicles Book 1) Page 28
