by Jean Lee
Captain’s sea-scream sets the whole ground quaking, but her target doesn’t just shake— the Hisser’s middle is pulverized into grains smaller than the sand upon the beach. Its head of petals falls to the sand behind Charlotte, motionless. “So is this one of the murderous creatures you spoke of in the Library?”
“Kinda yeah. More yeah than not yeah.” Once Charlotte crawls ankle-deep into the water alongside Captain, she sees that Liam has just finished beheading another Hisser. He looks, sees her off-land, exhales.
Looks down.
The cicada buzz is growing.
Charlotte flaps her arms with a big-mouthed, “Can you!?”
“What are you doing?” Captain asks while re-rigging her net-rope.
“Getting them over here, but,” Charlotte looks at Aine squirreling like crazy atop her mom, at Arlen trying not to wade into the grass. There is still too much space between him and Cairine to hand Aine off. Cairine, circling like mad, snapping at another It. “Where can we go?”
“I am sorry now I broke your boat,” Captain says with a slow double-blink. “Stay here.” She starts walking onto the sand with cautious feet.
The petals of the beheaded Hisser upon the beach are moving. They wriggle, thin, crook—now they are spider legs, and new petals grow from the center with new little teeth as the beheaded Hisser scuttles like a beetle along the lakeshore towards Captain.
But the Hisser will not enter the water.
A boat! “The Hisser things won’t go in the lake!” Charlotte jogs a few paces away from Captain’s stand-off where the sand is still smooth and line-less from the Hissers. Arlen’s satchel makes a soft thud in the sand alongside her as she burrows her hands into the sand lapped by the lake’s edge and thinks. Okay, Rose House, you did this before, and now I need you to do it again. Please, I know you can hear me from over here, because you’ve got to.
The Voice inside her heart gets the bellows moving. Press on, and quickly.
Charlotte takes a deep breath. We need a boat, something big enough for all of us, we need a boat…
19
Never One for Pruning
All noxious buzzing ceases when Captain unleashes another sea-scream at the scuttling Hisser. This seems to finish the job, all petals blown to dust.
If only Liam’s eagle-cry worked as well.
He sees Charlotte kneeling in the water by Captain—hurt?
No time to think on it, because now Aine jumps from her mother into the reeds.
“AINE!” Cairine and Arlen cry together.
Liam breathes deep, hisses, “Whelp diabhal!” and readies to run—only to slide to a halt. Two more Hissers shoot up before him, each with their flowers of teeth in full bloom.
Cairine gallops deeper into the grasses roaring for her cub. One of the Hissers swings round, poison dripping from its bottom petals.
Liam doesn’t hesitate. His blood sword pins the other Hisser into the soil and Liam unleashes his heart’s fire from body to blade to burn its flower of death to dust.
Liam does not see the third Hisser rising quietly at his side. Its bloom opens. Aims.
“LIAM!” Arlen leaps. Thunder rumbles from his belly to throat, emitting a growl to strike fear in darkness itself. Arlen grabs two of the petals and keeps them pried open, prohibiting the other petals from doing their work. Arlen is pushed backwards, his heels sliding into Liam’s side, but his hold does not weaken. Despite all the beatings inflicted by Campion and the Incomplete, Arlen does not let go.
Liam looks up from the ground, and for a moment, he is the small child who played with bees, who ran from the terrors so alive in the halls of his nightmares. Who had but to look to Arlen and know himself safe.
Could it be that sparks burn beneath Arlen’s skin? That tongues of violet flame spill down his arms in the moment Arlen roars, stark and vicious, and rips the petals clean off their vine?
Liam blinks. The sparks and fire are gone.
The Hisser careens back with a shriek, whips itself about.
The Hisser does not have time to aim again. Liam’s blood sword finishes the job.
Arlen throws the petals down like garbage, and spits for good measure.
Cairine roars in desperation. She thrusts her nose into the reeds time and again for a sign, any sign, of her daughter. Even Aine’s screams seem to echo from every direction—
Liam checks the lake again. Sergeant and two other Stellaqui guards have appeared on the surface to rally around Captain. “What do you see?” he calls.
Captain points at the sand in both directions. They all bring their net-ropes to bear.
Damnú air, what in Aether’s Fire is Charlotte doing? Water and sand shine diamond-bright at her feet.
Arlen’s bruised body may shudder, but his eyes and ears are hunter-sharp. “Another is mimicking Aine,” he says, “confusing Cairine. Take me up, and we’ll find her from the air.”
“I will go up. You go to Charlotte.”
Despite the cicada-buzz swelling beneath sand and grass, Arlen turns slowly to Liam with dark determination. “They are my family, Liam.”
You’re not seeing him ever again, boy. He says you failed him, boy
“I won’t lose you again!” Liam’s voice cracks like a child’s, though his grip on Arlen’s arm could snap a bone.
Grass bends in a back-and-forth wave—a slitherer’s path, towards Cairine.
Arlen slaps his hand on top of Liam’s and squeezes tight. “Nor I you. Any of you.”
Three more of Hissers spire up from the grasses between them and Cairine. Their cicada buzz presses down on their ears, smothering their senses—
Until a howl overpowers it all.
“Aether’s blessings on a rogue’s luck, Dorjan!” Arlen rolls and dodges one of thorned heads. He runs on and away from the Hissers to give Liam just enough time to leap, transform, and grab Arlen by the shoulders. One Hisser strikes out, the tips of its petals grazing Arlen’s leg, while another Hisser snaps at Liam’s wing.
“Don’t tempt your mark crippling your wings!” Arlen calls. “Just evade, and I’ll—yes! I see her! Cairine, I see Aine!”
Liam spots the small cub running in a circle as another Hisser slowly tightens its thorned vine, shrinking the space.
Cairine follows their flight. One Hisser grows in her way.
This is a mistake.
Cairine’s rage fills her paws with such power she tears the vine in half before it can even blossom.
Liam drops Arlen next to Aine and transforms before he lands upon the ground, ready to unsheathe the blood dagger—
A monolith of a bud shoots out of the ground and opens.
It holds what once looked like a woman. The skin is pale and hangs about her loose like an old hag. Her breasts dangle shriveled beneath hair muddy and oiled. Even the thread used to sew her face back on looks thick, dirty, poor. Her claws look brittle. Her snake-self, from the stomach down, is sick and molting.
Liam digs his heels into the ground to keep from rolling into his ex-lover’s grasp. Inside the shrinking coil of one Hisser, Arlen grips Aine, who cries, cries, cries for Cairine who roars at the Hisser’s head, daring it to strike her. It merely hisses and tightens its coil just a little more.
Orna laughs.
Liam doesn’t.
He summons his blood sword and takes the offensive, lunging for Orna’s molting belly. But her serpent body is quicker than it looks, stronger too, and suddenly she’s towering over him, darting back and forth faster than Liam can blink.
“This can all end today, Beloved,” Orna says with the same sweet smoothness she used that first night he found himself alone in the Pits, ostracized by the commoners, so bloody angry with Arlen. “Come below and end this all.”
“LIAM!”
Arlen, trapped, calls for him. Him.
Liam blocks Orna’s lightning-fast claws with the flat of his blade, whirls round and strikes. He misses her shriveled neck by inches, piercing her arm instead.
&nbs
p; But Orna grabs Liam’s other arm. The black pits of her eyes have even lost their stars. Her jaw separates wide enough to swallow Liam whole—
Black fire blindsides Orna’s flank. Dorjan tears Orna away, leaving Liam with Orna’s arm still hanging on his his own. Violet veli quickly loses its sparkle as it commingles with oil that should be blood.
Dorjan transforms for a quick head butt and kick to Orna’sbelly. “Take a hint, lady, jeez. Stalking’s very unhealthy.”
Liam whips the shriveled arm off and runs for the coil.
Orna springs past Dorjan with jaw unhinged. She slashes at Cairine with her remaining clawed fingers as she speed-slithers towards Liam and the coiled Hisser, starless eyes fixed upon her target.
“E-NOUGH!” Cairine slams one paw down on the end of Orna’s tail and strikes her stitched face with another. Bones pop as Orna’s head spins round and stops, now facing Dorjan behind her. Her head falls to one side, her tongue now dragging on the ground.
“Mah, mah, mah, mah.” Orna’s mouth opens and closes, sound gargled and short as though she’s but a mere broken toy.
Dorjan winces. “Now that’s gross.”
Liam calls back the heart’s fire that burned so bright in moments spent in Arlen’s garden and with Charlotte’s smile. His love’s flame is a torrent, and he drives flame through the blood sword and into the vine. White-gold flame envelopes the entire Hisser until every petal is engulfed in smoke. Ash falls pathetically to the ground.
Dorjan runs through the remains and helps Arlen to his feet. “I presume the juniper had a positive effect,” Arlen says.
“That and the dried wishing well velifol Mrs. Blair had left in the basement for some bizarre potpourri project. Thank Aether’s Fire for the Midwestern craftswoman. Where’s Charlotte?”
“With the Stellaqui,” Liam answers.
The cicada buzz hums in the distance.
All their heads turn.
The grasses ripple in one, two, three, four, five more places. The ripples are not slow. Not by any means.
Dorjan’s blue eye flashes bright with danger. “Never did care much for pruning.”
“Aine, Lake Aranina. NOW.” The thunderous depth in Arlen’s “now” could have rivaled Cairine’s roar. Aine whimpers, begs at her mother’s side.
Cairine swipes the broken Orna toy down with a paw and snorts impatiently. “I’m going to have some very hard words for you, child, presuming we survive all this.” She grabs Aine by the scruff of her neck and limp-gallops alongside the others as they run through the prairie grasses, the cicada buzz fast on their heels. The beach comes to view, the water-folk, Aranina, and the barge.
Barge?
Charotte still kneels in the water, shaking, but her hands no longer rest on sand but on a long, wide barge as white and smooth as the boat had been. Sand and water come together in a bordering light about the barge, a light that creeps outward extending—no, it is building the barge.
Surely Rose House’s reach extends much further than I could have imagined, if it works the magic of two elements so far from its doors. Captain’s fin waves at the sand, now lined with rows as though plowed.
More Hissers have been waiting for them.
“We’re coming!” Liam shouts.
“Uncle, get onto my back,” Dorjan says as the blue-black fire spits to life upon his ankles. “My magic won’t burn you this time. I swear I’ve worked that out.”
“I’m well enough to ruuun—”
Liam shoves Arlen over as Dorjan bends forward, sending Arlen into a roll up and onto the giant fire-wolf’s back. “Sorry, Arlen, this isn’t a debate. Now!”
Liam’s foot hits the sand first.
Three Hissers burst forth, drowning the sky with oil and sand. One blossoms and lunges for Dorjan, but the fire-wolf leaps over the blossom in time while Liam slides and drives his blood sword into one Hisser’s vine just beneath the blossom. It hisses and reels upward, taking Liam with it dozens of feet into the air. The second Hisser smells him hanging, spinning its teeth into that maddening buzz while the third’s blossom spirals downward towards Cairine barreling through the sand.
“LIAM!” Charlotte starts to run but stops herself when a fourth Hisser emerges from just beyond the lake’s reach.
Captain does not hesitate. “Sergeant, the bears!” She launches her net-rope over Charlotte and ensnares it. The Hisser cracks itself like a whip, yanking Captain out of the water—
Sergeant lassos the third Hisser’s blossom while his fellow guard unleashes a sea-scream at the vine. The vine explodes over Dorjan as he runs, a war’s howl high in his muzzle. Arlen grabs the net-rope, the sparks of its magic burning his skin, yet Arlen swings the netted blossom like some flail of the old wars, striking the Hisser from which Liam still hangs by his blood dagger.
The first Hisser is knocked backward and away from the second. Liam propels himself out of his hanging position onto the vine and lands feet first just behind the blossoms and all their thorns. One swift strike with the sword’s wing of fire sends the blossom into a plummet while oil and fumes spew all over the sand. Liam jumps through the fumes, over the twisting river of oil, aiming to unleash another wing of fire at the blossom of the second Hisser.
Arlen rolls off Dorjan and sprints, leaving Dorjan’s back free for Liam to land upon feet-first. Dorjan leaps, Liam’s feet running up the fire-wolf’s spine to launch off Dorjan’s neck and slice half the fourth Hisser’s spinning petals. Captain sea-screams before it can whip her again, blasting the last of the blossom to dust.
Dorjan changes the moment he steps in water. “Since when does a Velidevour scorned gain super-powers?”
The border between grass and sand begins to shake.
“Cairine, up!” Charlotte yells.
Arlen and Dorjan each take two of Aine’s paws, which is unfortunate, as her screams overwhelm even the incessant cicada buzzing in the ground. “Take Aine, I’m too big!”
“Like hell!” Charlotte motions Cairine along and presses down on one corner of the barge to make it easier for the massive bear’s stubby legs. “It’s all or none.”
Liam stands guard on the wet sand, every taut muscle of his upper body gleaming in the sun. Four small streams of soil begin to trickle down from the ridge where the Wild Grasses end. Just a little bit of soil. A little at a time. Smelling us out, perhaps, to see if their prey remains in reach. What veli you must have hoarded to wield such dark magic upon River Vine, Orna, I cannot fathom.
Charlotte and Captain speak in rushed tones behind him. Something about the net-ropes and the barge corners. A flood of sea-speak, and Liam hears the Stellaqui rippling through the water.
“Could you wait until all the injured uncles and bear cubs are aboard, please? Not to mention skittish wolves…”
“Stop stalling and scramble up there.” Charlotte’s wading in behind Liam now. Her fingertips grace his arm light as dandelion seeds. “We gotta go.”
He can feel every light in her eyes shine upon him, feel the warmth in her voice thick and sweet like honey. But he does not savor it. “Why, why does Orna wield all this power now?” he asks himself as much as her.
The sand stops spilling.
All is still upon the beach but Liam’s eyes, storming. Waiting.
All is not still upon the water.
“Aine, for all of creation, keep STILL.”
“Shall I ask if the Stellaqui can part with a length of rope, Aunt?”
“Certainly not!”
“Works on dogs well enough.”
“DORJAN! That is your COUSIN!”
“And?”
The cicada buzz swells to drive back Aine’s whining. Stellaqui double-blink and keep their eyes shut as they pull blindly towards the lake’s center. “Come on!” Captain’s words barely register in the air.
Four eruptions send up enough sand and oil to block out the sun. Every Hisser soars high, higher. Their blossoms spiral, tilt down towards Charlotte and Liam.
Liam a
nd Charlotte run through the water, their strides strong but awkward.
One Hisser strikes the sand at the lake’s edge. Another’s blossom narrows. Spins.
The third rips through the air past the beach and over the water.
Charlotte belly-flops in time. The poison dribbles onto the lake’s surface like any other oil, only no other oil will steam into nothing at water’s touch.
The fourth Hisser is rocketing downward—
Don’t look back don’t look back. Charlotte yanks Liam under water just as the blossom freezes a few inches above the water. The image of the Hisser’s petals breaks and reforms, breaks and reforms, the water never still as the blossom hovers over them. A few bubbles escape Charlotte and Liam’s noses and swim up to the surface. The blossom breaks open, spins its teeth closer, closer, closer—but does not touch the water. It can only loom over them as they lay under water, waiting. Waiting.
Charlotte shoves her hand into Liam’s armpit and starts frog-kicking and paddling as best she can under the water. The other Hissers come to wait, and soon two begin snapping at each other like crows competing for roadkill. Liam tries to mimic Charlotte’s kicking, but he can’t keep his feet down. His toes breach the surface, but the in-fighting prevents the fourth Hisser from catching Liam before he pulls his feet back under.
Two new hands with the grip of granite take hold—Captain and Sergeant, clicking rapidly. Charlotte hasn’t a clue what they click to each other, but Captain double-blinks and breaches the water surface as Sergeant continues to pull Charlotte and Liam along. Underwater, the sea-scream sounds like a tornado trapped in a shark, jagged and deadly. Sergeant allows them all to resurface. Liam and Charlotte gulp air and stare at the shore, now several yards away. Only two Hissers remain, retreating from the shore. A woman-like form stands at the edge of the Wild Grasses, hand reaching out, head cocked to one side as though her neck is broken.