Poppy eyed the old woman, “Chocolate,” she said, and gave Miss Redd a brown smile.
“Oh, that nice,” said Miss Redd, proffering the girl a pearl white smile. “Chocolate yum-yums? So, you like some tea?”
“Some tea would be lovely,” said Lucy.
“I make fresh pot. And I’ve some gingerbread fingers cook-hotting in the oven. I fetch them too,” said Miss Redd, as she walked through the door to the kitchen.
Lucy watched the strange woman as she left the room. It must have been the light outside, but I could swear she’s taller now. And she seems younger somehow. How could I have thought she was sixty? She’s barely fifty. There’s hardly any grey in her hair at all, and her face is smooth not wrinkled.
A proper little conundrum you have there, Gayle, said Intuition.
Shut up.
Tsk, tsk. Not very nice. Not very nice at all. What’s wrong, Gayle?
That name again. She hated being referred to as Gayle. Her surname brought forth rotten memories of school and her tormentors there. Bartleson and Bertram had made her life hell and now Intuition was calling them back like vengeful harpies to bite and claw at her mind once more.
Just shut up. I was really hoping you’d gone.
Me? Oh no, I’m still here.
You’re part of the Dimn, aren’t you?
Well done, Gayle. Got there eventually, didn’t you? Yes, I’m an observer for him.
How did you get in there?
I’ve been here since the very beginning. I was around when you entered this world. I’ve just been biding my time, hiding, waiting for the opportune moment. And you gave it to me when you met your third companion. It was actually a little too easy, Gayle. Just a bit of reverse psychology, and you laid waste to your own prophecy.
You’ve been in my mind since the beginning?
I got in when the Dimn caught you in the mirror world. He ripped part of you away and left a small piece of himself inside you. Basic contact-force physics. When you push something, it pushes back. When you pull something, it pulls back. When you rip something, part of you is ripped too. Elementary really, giggled the spiteful voice. Tiny tendrils like wispy fingers were left inside your mind. They coalesced, and here I am: little old Intuition.
You’ve killed Conscience, haven’t you?
Yep—shot him like a dog. He begged for mercy at the end, just like the coward he was.
She was numb. She had known, somewhere deep inside, that Conscience was gone, but it still hurt to hear the words.
I shot him in the head and watched his brains fall out. Then, I stole his boots and ruined your quest. Murder, theft and, after that, prophicide. I think that’s all I’ve done today. Intuition’s voice was gleeful.
There will come a point when you will need me. A moment when you’ll want something from me, my cooperation, or for me to save your life. Something like that will happen because it always does on quests and adventures. And when it comes, I will let you go and watch you burn for what you’ve done, growled Lucy.
Oh, don’t be like that, Gayle, said Intuition. Remember, I’m the good guy in all of this.
How can you possibly think that?
I’m on the opposite side to you or haven’t you realised which side you’re on?
Lucy paused for a moment. Whose side was she on?
You’re on the side opposite the Dimn, the governor of this world. You’re on the side of the Bestia Sancta—the beings that kidnapped you and forced you to do their bidding. Basically, you’re aiding rebels and terrorists to overthrow a government which is helping the people of this world move out of superstition and into an age of reason, explained Intuition.
What? she asked.
Magic, will allow the Bestia Sancta to be powerful again, and then they can challenge the Dimn and force him out and put this world back to where it was before, in a dark age of superstition, he continued. That’s what you’re doing. So don’t give me that, “I’m on a noble quest” rubbish. You are doing this for your own selfish reasons, because you want to get home, and I can’t blame you for that. Even so, don’t think for one minute that you are on the side of good. You’re on the side of rebels who can’t move with the times.
Yes, the Dimn is an autocratic leader, but he will get results. This world will be better off. He will bring them technology and science, and everyone will benefit. The people’s lives will be easier and better because of what the Dimn does here, and you are trying to stop all that from happening.
Could that be true? Could the Dimn actually be a force for good in this world? Was her perspective so badly skewed? Lucy had to admit she hadn’t really thought about what she was doing in such a way.
You should be grateful, continued Intuition, not only have I saved this world from your folly, I’ve probably saved your life. That tin man was mad. He’d have killed you as you slept. Slit your throat and opened you up just to see what colour your liver was.
You tricked me, Lucy insisted.
Tricked you? Don’t be so ungracious, he said in indignation.
This world needs magic to survive. Haven’t you seen the weather? The world is dying, she thought at the spell.
Rubbish. Weather is weather. It’s unpredictable at best. Have you never heard about the butterfly effect and chaos theory? Honestly, Gayle, do I have to keep on repeating myself? I’ve just explained all this to you. You’re wrong, and I’m right.
Lucy had stopped listening. Intuition’s mind was made up on this subject. He was part of the Dimn and would remain on that side of the argument. She had stopped listening to what he was saying, but she had not stopped listening to the way he said it.
How long have you been doing that? she asked.
Doing what? he asked in confusion. What am I doing? I’m not doing anything.
You are contracting your words, she thought at the spell.
No, I’m not.
There, you did it again.
Pig spit! Intuition exclaimed. Anyway, so what if I am? It’s…it is a free existence.
It’s something that Conscience started to do after a while. I assumed he’d developed a personality, going beyond his original intended function. If that’s true, then so have you. You’re no longer just a part of the Dimn, which happens to be in my head. You are an independent being.
Piffle, I’m part of the Dimn! he shouted.
Oh, don’t be like that, Intuition, she said.
I am going to enjoy this, Gayle. I will take pleasure in watching the veil lift from your eyes. This is going to be so very, very sweet.
What do you mean?
You’ll find out, he taunted, as Miss Redd re-entered the room.
The old woman carried a large square tray with jangling china on it. Hot steam rose from a teapot covered with a cosy shaped like a heart and the word TEA lovingly embroidered on it in shoddy black stitching.
“Here we is, dearies,” said Miss Redd, in her broken manner, putting the tray down on a fudge stool, “some nice warm tea. Just what you folk need on chill-cold evening like this.”
The bone-china cups rattled in the old woman’s knobbly hands as she poured. She finished and handed the trembling china to the party.
“Here you go, dearie,” she said, passing Lucy her cup. “Nice tea, sweet tea, drink it all, slurp-slurp, before it goes all clotty and cold.”
Lucy took a polite sip, hoping that she wouldn’t scald herself on what must be boiling liquid. It tasted wrong. Vague metallic over tones coupled with a thick dripping sensation in her mouth overflowed her. It tasted as if someone had liquidised an iron bar in some golden syrup. This cup wasn’t full of tea!
Lucy examined the liquid, only to discover that it certainly looked like tea. It was the brown of old leather. Her nose told her it was tea, pungent herb scents hung on the air above the cup.
Miss Redd stared at her. The old woman’s fingers twitched, once again reminding Lucy of a piano player without a keyboard. Hesitantly, Lucy took another sip and this time i
t tasted of tea.
All right, she thought to herself, this is getting too weird.
“Everything right, dearie?” asked Miss Redd. “Nice tea, good tea. Drink it all up. Chit-chit, just like companions, and then we see about dinner.”
Lucy looked over to Talbot and Poppy. Both had drained their cups as if they had had no water for a week. She took another quick sip from her cup. This time it tasted wrong again. It was now half-way between tea and the original taste.
Something is wrong—very, very wrong, she thought.
Miss Redd had changed again. The woman who sat across the room from her couldn’t have been more than forty. Her dark brown, almost black, hair had one brilliant streak of grey in the centre of her bun. Her face was also less wrinkled. When she had opened the door, Lucy thought she looked like an apple that had spent too much time in the sun. Now, her skin was tight and firm across her prominent cheek bones as if she’d had extreme cosmetic surgery whilst preparing the tea.
Lucy could hear Intuition laughing in her head.
“Come, come dearie,” said Miss Redd, “finish your tea, and then it be supper-munching-time.”
Miss Redd suddenly raised her head and sniffed.
“Ah!” she exclaimed, in a firm voice, “I think gingerbread fingers ready. You stay here, dearie, I go and fetch them from the hottening-oven and then will be suppertime. If you not finish tea, dearie, my childlings have to play with you. Oh, tasty treats, such tasty morsels.”
Miss Redd continued to gibber to herself as she strode from the room.
“Right, we have to get out of here,” said Lucy, to her companions once Miss Redd had left the room.
“What?” asked Talbot, yawning. “What do you mean? Why? Why do we have to…” he yawned again, “leave?”
“It’s wrong here. It’s all weird. Haven’t you noticed? Miss Redd keeps getting younger, the tea tastes like iron, and this house smells like a cave.”
“I like it here,” said Poppy, munching on a handful of honeycomb that had, until recently, been acting as wall insulation. “It’s a really nice gingerbread house.”
Ah, there you go, Gayle. It’s a gingerbread house, said Intuition.
Talbot stretched his arms. “I’m tired of walking. This place is as good a place as any to have a rest and sleep.”
“What?” Lucy exclaimed, “Just a moment ago you wanted to get out of here too.”
Talbot’s head lolled to one side.
“I am agreeing with you,” she said, “this place is strange and there’s something going on here, and I don’t like it. We need to leave.”
“We need to rest. We can go in the morning,” said the faun. His eyes rolled shut, and his head dropped onto his chest.
“I thought you were leaving? Don’t you need to go before the full moon?”
A loud snore issued from his flopped head.
Oh dear, Gayle. I fear you’ve missed the point. It’s a gingerbread house.
“Poppy,” Lucy barked, in panic, ignoring Intuition. “I need your help. There’s something wrong with Talbot. We’re probably going to have to move him ourselves.”
Poppy pitched head first through a spun sugar table with a loud crash.
Lucy stood up as fear and adrenaline took over. Something was very, very wrong here, and she’d wandered right into the middle of it.
Gayle, it’s a gingerbread house, said Intuition, in a sing-song voice.
A heavy weight, like a large hand, fell onto Lucy’s shoulder. She turned her head but saw nothing. There was a sharp needle pain as if a hypodermic had been stabbed into her. An icy numb feeling coursed through the blood in her right shoulder.
“Miss Redd! Miss Redd!” Lucy shouted, in the direction of the kitchen. “Miss Redd, something has happened to my friends.”
“Yes dearie, I knowings, they get ready for supper-scrumptious.”
Lucy felt another invisible hand, then a needle sting, on her left calf. Her entire leg went numb as the ice ran through it. She lurched towards the kitchen.
Intuition was laughing in her head.
Oh dear, Gayle. You really are quite thick. Well, maybe not thick—just, terribly unobservant. Do I have to do all your thinking for you—join all the dots? This is a gingerbread house, Gayle, and who lives in gingerbread houses?
“Miss Redd, what’s going on?” Lucy asked, as she staggered to the kitchen, leaning heavy against the doorway.
The room was high and vaulted. It felt to Lucy like the inside of a rib cage. Large portions of salted meat hung from the walls, which were also lined with kitchen paraphernalia. Pots, jars and ladles all hung from hooks.
Miss Redd was bent over the kitchen’s great iron stove, which sat enthroned like an emperor, dominating one whole wall. She was pulling out the cookie fingers from a large, oven tray which was warped and blackened by the heat.
Lucy’s stomach lurched. A quick, queasy feeling arose inside her. She wretched as a new wave of nausea hit her as if she were a fishing boat being buffeted by a swell. She spat a thick white string of sputum which splattered to the red-tiled floor.
“Miss Redd,” Lucy moaned, as her stomach went into a spin cycle, “I don’t feel well.”
“Is right, dearie,” said Miss Redd, without a moment’s concern.
“And my friends, they’ve collapsed. I think they’re unconscious.”
“Well, yes, dearie. They drinking the tea,” said Miss Redd, moving gingerbread fingers from the tray to a china plate. “If you finishing your cup, you go sleep too. But you a stubborn, chitty, one, so, childings biting you. Gnash, gnash, all sicky. Think, I had enough pretend—let you see how world really bubbles.”
Miss Redd snapped her fingers and the gingerbread house drained away as if it were only a painting and someone had thrown turpentine on it.
I tried to tell you, said Intuition. You had all the clues, but you are stubborn. You knew, deep down, in your heart what this place was, but you didn’t believe it. Now, look at what you’ve run into.
The high vaulted room no longer just looked like the inside of a rib cage. It was the inside of a rib cage. Large bones of some gigantic, long dead creature acted as buttresses supporting the weight of the room. The huge portions of meat hanging from the walls were human legs, blackened and salted. The kitchen paraphernalia were actually torture devices. Thumb screws, pokers and vast, bent, knobbly pieces of iron hung from callous hooks. The fetid smell was heavy in the air, like a cloud of thick smoke.
Lucy beheld a large cauldron of bubbling blood and knew why the tea had tasted funny. She’d drunk that! Her stomach lurched again. She’d been drinking blood all this time.
Miss Redd stood by the open oven holding a tray of lightly toasted human fingers, the nails upturned and black with the cooking. Her top half was still a woman, but from her waist down her bustle engorged into an enormous jet bulge that crept up the wall and mingled with her shadow. It was no longer just black either, there was a large red spot in the middle of it. Six extra limbs curved from under her bulbous skirt ending in cruel talons. She was a fat, black spider-witch, and Lucy was in her larder.
Huge cadaver shaped cobwebs hung from the ceiling on threads. Miss Redd turned her gaze back to Lucy and advanced. Her voice hummed in several pitches at once as she inspected Lucy with her eight eyes.
“Can see me now, dearie?”
Lucy sensed something move on her leg. She looked down. A black spider, the size of her fist, was clamped onto her left leg. Its mandibles were already embedded deep in her calf, sucking the blood from her. She noticed something move out of the corner of her eye. She turned and saw a second fist-sized spider reared up on her right shoulder. Lucy would have screamed, but there was no time. The spider struck at her face, fangs digging deep into her cheek, and she felt the icy venom surge into her. The spider’s front legs wrapped around half her face—one in her ear, the other planted firmly over her eye.
Lucy pulled the spider from her face, feeling a tearing sensation as she
dug its fangs from her cheek. Blood welled up in the gash as the spider struggled in her palm like a newborn infant. A large crimson blob of Lucy’s cheek still clung to its mandibles. Blood dripped freely from her face and spattered on the floor. She threw the baby spider into the corner only to watch it, and several of its brethren, scuttle back towards her like an oncoming tide.
She lurched back towards the room her friends were in.
“Run, run, as fast you can,” chortled Miss Redd behind her.
Lucy realised she wasn’t in a house at all. It was a hole. The hallway didn’t lead to rooms. It went down to chambers. The walls were made of clinging, stinking earth and cobwebs.
She clawed her way to the side chamber with Talbot and Poppy in it. They were both wrapped neatly in spider-silk. Only their faces were still showing. Their eyes were open but both of her friends had a vacant, glassy stare.
The icy venom washed through her veins, even eclipsing the coercion spell’s constant thud. Embracing numbness closed in around her, like a raven’s wing. She fell to her knees. It was simply too hard.
Goodbye, Gayle, you are going to die now, said Intuition.
Lucy could hear the scuttle of the thousands of little spiders coming closer and, behind them, the louder scrape of the giant spider-witch. Lucy shut her eyes and embraced the darkness as the first spiders clambered up and began to wrap her in silk.
Chapter 25 Moonlight Supper
Good night, sweet Childe, may no flights of angels torture you with odes to your deeds.
The Epitaph of Childe Alice,
Year After Ice 16003
I stand alone,
in the night,
a litany of all my deeds,
weighs heavy round my neck,
like a stone.
I stand alone.
My friends are,
nothing now,
sacrificial pawns,
in a game of chess.
Stanzas in my tome.
I stand alone.”
“I stand alone”
By Childe Alice,
Year After Ice 16001
Lucy was…somewhere. She really hated this flip-flopping between realities. Slipping between universes was doing her no good whatsoever.
Ravens and Writing Desks: A Metaphysical Fantasy Page 32
