Relics--The Folded Land

by Tim Lebbon

  The gangster walked forward a few steps, glancing at Angela and Vince as he went. The shadow stopped and changed shape, and Angela realized she’d been carrying something slung over her shoulder. Now she pointed the shape at Meloy as he approached.

  Someone had brought a gun, at least.

  Meloy and the woman met. She could hear them speaking, but their voices were too low to catch the words. Lilou paced nervously back and forth. Of Ahara there was no sign.

  After a couple of minutes Meloy turned and walked back toward them, the woman a few steps behind him. She still had the gun aimed at his back. He didn’t seem to care. Angela guessed he’d had guns pointed at him before. As he approached she stopped a dozen steps from them and kept the rifle at waist level, pointing in their general direction. Meloy looked at Angela, smiled, nodded.

  “Meet Jolene Jameson,” he said. She seemed comfortable holding the weapon, casual, as if it were a permanent fixture. She was tall and thin, gray-haired, but it was difficult to discern her true age. Her skin was smooth and uncreased, but her eyes were old. She moved like someone with aches and pains, or old injuries that had healed badly. Her clothing was loose and brightly colored, an explosion of rainbow shades across her short-sleeved shirt, trousers a bright red. There were shapes knotted into her hair. Angela thought they might have been small ribbons.

  “People call me JJ,” she said. “Or, you know, just Jay is fine if you don’t wanna waste your breath.”

  “Evening, Jay,” Angela said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Frederick tells us you might be able to help.”

  Jay looked back and forth between them, and then her gaze settled on Lilou, and the older woman’s breath caught in her throat. The rifle barrel wavered, dropping lower until it was aimed at their feet.

  “Holy shit,” Jay said.

  “Hello,” Lilou said. She must have been used to this reaction, but she sounded uncertain. Perhaps people only ever saw through her mask when she allowed it. Jay saw past it without any effort.

  “What’re you?” Jay asked.

  “A nymph,” Lilou said. “A napaea, to be more precise.”

  “Right. Russian guy offered me a napaeae’s left tit once. Least, that’s what he said it was. I didn’t believe him. He was prone to selling false shit. Dead now, found in a ditch in Minnesota. Best place for the motherfucker.”

  “We’re kind of in a rush,” Angela said. “There’s a Kin-killer close by, and he’s kidnapped my niece.”

  “She Kin?”

  “No.”

  “We don’t know for sure,” Vince said. “But this is much more complex than that.”

  “Yeah, Meloy told me some of what’s up. And you need my help.”

  “If you can help?” Angela said.

  “Sure I can. Where’s this Kin-killer taken the kid?”

  “Up into the hills,” Meloy said. “We’re not sure where.”

  “So how are you following?”

  “With my help,” Ahara said. The wisp manifested close to Jay, and Angela was worried that the older woman would panic, swing the gun, squeeze the trigger. But she didn’t even twitch.

  “Wisp,” Jay said. “Seen a couple of your kind before. Knew one a few years back, little place just north of Chicago. Name of Bale. You know Bale?”

  “No,” Ahara said. “Wisps keep to ourselves.”

  “So why’re you helping these folk?”

  “Help them, I help myself,” Ahara said.

  “Right,” Jay said. She nodded again at Meloy. “So, Frederick, you still collecting?”

  “No,” Meloy said. “Well, maybe. In a way. I’m helping the Kin that are alive, but stopped gathering bits of those dead. I like to think I’m collecting friendships.”

  Jay stared for a while, then broke into a loud, harsh laugh.

  “Friendships!” She bent down and rested the rifle barrel on the ground, using it to lean on while she guffawed even more, strong, helpless exhalations. “You Brits!”

  After a while she stood upright again, wiping tears from her eyes and shouldering the rifle.

  “We need to leave,” Angela said. “Do you know these hills? Can you guide us?”

  “In the dark? No, no way. Get lost out there and you’ll wander around for a week, then die raving and drinking your own piss. No, I can’t help you on my own, but there are those who’ll help me help you.”

  “Who?” Vince asked.

  Jay uttered a long, low whistle. More shadows moved around them, and shapes came out from the dark spaces between trees. Emerging from hiding.

  Angela heard the unmistakable clop of hooves. Beside her, Vince gasped. Memories of the brutal satyr Ballus flashed across her mind. This was no satyr, however. The centaur stepped closer until it was almost at Jay’s right shoulder. Angela could smell it, a familiar horse smell with a more subtle, mysterious underlying scent, a warmth that reminded her of cooking and sex. The wonder of what she saw smothered the disbelief and the rush of questions she knew she should be asking, like How is this possible, where does it live, how has no one ever seen it? Maybe later there would be time for answers.

  The centaur stomped one of its front hooves, the movement more bullish than equine.

  A shorter, more humanoid figure stood further back, squat but strong. She could see that it was naked apart from several wraps of cloth, weak moonlight glimmering from muscles and damp skin. Its face was wrong. The dimensions were untrue, confusing to her brain, used as it was to seeing a certain aspect. Only when it blinked did she realize the creature had one large eye above the bridge of its nose.

  The sight took her back to Vince’s rented London apartment, paid for by the gangster Fat Frederick Meloy so that he had a base from which to mount his relic hunting missions. That was when her world had been knocked askew. There she had unwrapped the parcel in the apartment’s bath to find the mummified head of an infant cyclops, after which the creature began haunting her with visions in which it opened its eye.

  This cyclops seemed to be staring right at her. She feared it could sense what she was remembering, smell the scent of a dead infant on her hands.

  Something passed by overhead. Startled, scared, Angela ducked down, as did Vince, Meloy, and even Lilou. A shadow drifted past and swerved around, floating over the centaur’s head and approaching the tree line on their left. Branches and leaves rustled as the creature took to its roost. Wood cracked as claws gripped. The Kin was large, at least human sized, but she couldn’t yet make out what it was.

  “Any questions?” Jay asked.

  “One or two,” Angela said.

  “But not for now,” Lilou said. “Meloy says you’re willing to help, and I trust him.”

  “You do?” Jay asked, raising her eyebrows. “Well, okay then. That’s good. I see he’s worked his magic.” She chuckled as if sharing a private joke.

  “How much has he told you?” Vince asked. “You’ve heard of Ascent?”

  Jay grew serious. “The worst idea in the history of bad fucking ideas. It’ll be the end of the Kin, doesn’t matter how powerful this so-called fairy is.”

  “Not ‘so-called,’” Lilou said. “She’s real, and that’s an interesting take on things. The way I see it, Ascent would be bad news for humans more than Kin.”

  “Yeah, well, whatever. You’re in the USA now. My friends here…” She waved a hand. “They’ve survived well enough out in the wild. Your mad fucking angel does his thing, then everyone with a gun and delusions of fame will be up here. It’ll be open hunting season. You ever seen a dead Kin, girl?”

  She was speaking to Angela.

  “Plenty.”

  Jay grunted, looked her up and down. “They’re not things meant to be dead.”

  Angela nodded her agreement, and in that moment she felt a connection form with this strange woman.

  “So of course we’ll help,” Jay continued. “Me and these three friends of mine. Let’s talk while we’re walking, huh? This place may be remote, but th
is time of day you’ll get kids coming up here to take drugs and fuck.” With that she headed right toward the line of trees and the mountains and endless wilderness silhouetted beyond.

  27

  I never believed Aunt Angela was a murderer, Sammi thought. Despite the news stories, the dreadful reports from London, the international search for Angela and Vince, and her dramatic escape from a police station in Boston, Sammi’s father had never believed it either.

  Right then, she had to believe that Angela was there to help, and that made her more determined than ever to help herself.

  She pushed the man’s arm away from her, smooth and quick. Digging her nails into his skin, she gouged and twisted, careful to stay away from the curved blade still clasped in his hand. It was a stupid move, but for whatever reason, she was certain that he didn’t want to kill her. Not yet. He needed her as some sort of bait.

  Gregor shouted something incomprehensible. He jerked the truck’s wheel left, then right. Sammi moved in her seat but tensed, grabbing hold of his arm even tighter. She felt blood dripping from where her nails bit in.

  “Not again, you stupid little bitch!”

  She shoved, leaning forward and banging his arm against the dashboard, trying to dislodge the knife, grab it, stick it in him and jump from the moving truck before it crashed or rolled. He was stronger than she thought.

  Still driving, Gregor let her push his arm forward, then slammed it back into her face. An explosion of white-hot agony erupted in her nose. Her eyes watered, and pain filtered out across her cheeks, blazing tendrils setting fire to nerves and blinding her. She tried to cry out, but he struck her again. She fell back into her seat and waved her arms in front of her, trying to ward off the killing blow she feared from the knife.

  She hit his arm, his hand, then something cool and sharp. Her hand went numb, then a flare of pain bloomed across the meaty pad of her thumb and she felt warm blood, cooling as it flowed.

  “Calm down!” Gregor shouted.

  Sammi couldn’t calm down. The things she had seen, the things she’d touched, all conspired to steal away her calmness, her sense of things being normal, and shred them to pieces in the falling darkness.

  She could still smell Mallian. He wasn’t human, however much her mind tried to attribute human traits to him, and humanlike appearances. He was huge, and the scent of him was something animalistic, like the whiff of a forgotten tomb or the aroma of magic.

  She could never forget the woman, head ripped from her shoulders by Mallian’s right hand while he still grasped Sammi in his left. The splash of blood she’d felt speckling her cheek and throat, the slumping body, the head tossed to Gregor, and then…

  And then the other people being killed.

  Most of it she’d only heard, but that had been bad enough. Then she’d seen the hairy, stocky man, fists and forearms coated with gore, climbing from the ditch with part of the dead woman in his hand, part of her in his mouth as he chewed and grinned.

  “I only need you alive,” Gregor said. “That doesn’t mean whole. Got it? Got it, girl?”

  “Don’t call me girl,” she said.

  “You are a girl!”

  “My name’s Sammi. My mother and father called me Sammi.”

  “So?”

  “My aunt calls me Sammi, too. She’ll come for me. She knows what this is, more than you think.” Somehow Sammi was sure of that. It was all to do with why Angela and Vince had been falsely accused in the news. Hidden stories, hidden histories… somehow, Sammi felt at home with them.

  The pain still burned in her face and blurred her vision, but feeling blood dribbling from her nose seemed to drain some of the pain, as well.

  “She knows nothing,” Gregor said. “She won’t have time to learn.”

  “She’s smart. She’ll learn. Then she’ll take that knife and stick it up your ass.”

  Gregor took in a sharp breath and tensed, and Sammi had to use every ounce of strength and composure to not squeeze her eyes shut.

  So fighting won’t work, Sammi thought. It’ll have to be something else. I won’t end up like that old woman with her head ripped off. I won’t die and be eaten. Wherever he’s taking me, whoever the fairy is and whatever the Fold is, I’m going to win.

  * * *

  Soon after, Gregor pulled the truck off the road and drove into the woods, the vehicle bouncing on uneven ground and scraping past trunks. It soon stopped and he killed the engine. “We walk from here,” he said.

  Sammi had been banking on that.

  He climbed out and pulled her behind him. This time she didn’t resist.

  Standing beside the truck, the only sound she heard was the hot engine ticking as it started to cool. “It’s snoring,” her mother used to say when a younger Sammi asked about the noises coming from under a car’s hood. “Going to sleep after a long drive.”

  Sammi was ready to run, but she had to choose her time carefully. Just out of the truck Gregor would be cautious and alert, expecting her to do something stupid. She had to wait until he wasn’t so prepared. He kept one eye on her as he shrugged on a jacket and shouldered his backpack. He didn’t ask if she was warm enough. He didn’t care.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “Nearly there,” he said.

  “Nearly where? Where are we going?”

  “Somewhere amazing. Somewhere I can finish my journey.” He paused, looking at her as if ready to open up, divulge. He shook his head with a snort and grabbed her arm, pulling it out straight. “Hold your hand up… like this.”

  “Why?”

  Instead of replying, he took a ball of thick twine from his jacket pocket and wrapped it a dozen times around her wrist. He tied it tight.

  “Ow, that hurts!”

  “Pull on it and it’ll hurt more.”

  He passed the twine ball twice around his waist, knotted it off, and flicked the tense string between them. He’d left six feet of string, no more. If she tugged hard enough maybe she’d snap it, or maybe not. Either way it would hold her back long enough for him to use his knife.

  “I only need you alive. That doesn’t mean whole.”

  “Let’s move it,” he said. “It’s getting dark. We’ll move as far as we can, then wait until dawn.”

  The landscape here was heavily wooded, rolling, remote. The roads were rough, and she’d seen lots of signs for camping grounds and picnic areas. A couple of times when the road crossed a ridge or came to the top of a hill, she’d looked ahead and around. A sea of green extended into the distance ahead of them. Sammi loved the woods, but here and now she felt isolated and alone.

  “You’re looking for the Fold,” she said. She’d remembered part of the conversation she’d heard back on the road. “Maybe I can help you find it.”

  “You don’t even know what it is.”

  “Sure I do. I’ve been to one before.”

  He frowned. “Keep your trap shut, kid.”

  She’d rattled him. That was what she wanted. Heading into the forest away from the snoring truck, she made sure her mind was alert and prepared. With Gregor still carrying his blade and not averse to using it, she’d only get one chance.

  28

  Angela wondered at the history between Meloy and Jay. They obviously knew each other, but she got the impression that they hadn’t actually met before today. If Meloy was larger-than-life, Jay was on a whole new level.

  Leading the way into the dense, dark forest, away from the parking lot and any signs of civilization, the woman seemed entirely in her element. She’d slung the rifle onto her left shoulder. That reassured Angela less than it should have. Just because Jay didn’t appear to sense immediate danger didn’t mean it wasn’t out there.

  She’d never met Mallian.

  An urgency scorched at Angela’s heart, a burning need to hurry, not go slow. Rush ahead rather than be cautious. The time for caution was over. Hours, minutes, seconds were ticking, counting down. She’d made contact with Sammi, and with that
contact broken again Angela felt even more bereft than before. Responsibility hung heavy, and she felt to blame for what had befallen the girl and Jim, her poor dead father.

  It had to be Sammi’s connection with Angela. Why else would she be targeted by Grace? The fairy must have remembered Angela’s role in her release. Then when Sammi came close to the creature’s final eternal home, her “Fold,” it had piqued her interest.

  But why?

  There was no figuring out such a creature. Even Lilou said that the fairy was beyond understanding, as different from the rest of the Kin as the Kin were from humankind.

  “Hills’re coming,” Jay said.

  “Huh?” The words startled Angela from her thoughts. The dark forest was heavy around and above them, its shadows wrapping them in its embrace, warm and somehow cloying. Soft branches brushed her hair, shoulders, arms, like tentative fingers testing and tasting. Fine webs broke across her face and forehead.

  “Up ahead,” Jay said. “Easy bit’s over. Gets harder from here. Save your breath.” It was a strange thing to say, because Angela hadn’t been talking. Now, though, with the woman walking beside her, a hundred questions vied for space.

  “Your friends…” Angela said, and that seemed to be question enough.

  “Ah, yeah, them, my friends,” Jay said. Her voice still managed to be gruff even though it was barely above a whisper. She scanned ahead, left and right, up and down, pausing every now and then and holding up her hand. The others watched for her signal. Vince and Meloy walked behind Angela, Lilou further back and to their right. Ahara was nowhere to be seen, but Angela knew she was there, taking her own route through the trees and the darkness.

  “Well, I’ve known them for some time. Some time.” She paused and held Angela’s arm. Her hands were rough, fingers calloused, and Angela wondered just how old she was. “You like the Kin?”

  “No.” She surprised herself with the answer. She’d never really considered it a yes or no question, because the concept was complex. She was fascinated by the Kin—enrapt, scared, troubled, and sometimes terrified. Sometimes she pitied them, too. But like them? She thought not.