Shadow Hand

by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

The well was green and black, a witch’s caldron of bubbling evil.

  The child can’t live, some piece of her mind argued. Not in that. He’s drowned already. You cannot help.

  Dive! Dive!

  Or die!

  Daylily bared her teeth and plunged feetfirst into the water.

  The surging froth and closing darkness was full of malevolence. Daylily felt it immediately, as thoroughly as she felt the cold. Water filled her nose, for she had not thought to take a proper breath, and she struggled upward for air. Her skirts closed around her legs, binding them. But she broke the surface and gasped a half breath.

  Something caught her ankle. Something pulled her down.

  It was like being caught by waterweeds, slimy and clinging but stronger by far. She was pulled into a blackened world, and even when she opened her eyes, her vision was filled only with stinging murk. She struggled and kicked at whatever held her, but to no avail. Her sumptuous underdress weighed her down, and she sank farther than she would have thought possible into the coldness of the well. She thought her lungs would collapse with the need to breathe.

  First, there were bindings upon her wrists. Second, she found that air was given her, though she did not know why or how. She breathed it in desperately, then opened her eyes.

  Two white lanterns pierced the darkness of the well. Daylily looked into the face of Mama Greenteeth, who grinned, her fangs gleaming in the light of her own expressionless eyes. Then the apparition swam away, and Daylily followed the trail of light left by her eyes to see where she went. Across from her, not many feet away, was the stone wall of the well, perhaps man-made, perhaps lined with homey care by Mama Greenteeth herself.

  The child was bound to the wall. Daylily saw he wore over his mouth a flower gleaming pale green in the light of the monster’s eyes. A similar flower covered her own mouth, and she wondered if this provided the source of air. The little one was unconscious, she saw and was grateful for his sake.

  Mama Greenteeth made certain of his bindings, then poked him cruelly. With that, she pulled out from some crevice a handful of wafers and began to eat them. But the light in her eye as she studied the child said that she preferred warm meat to wafers.

  Horrified, Daylily strained against her bindings. She could not see her hands, tied above her head. Her hair floated across her face, blinding her still more. But as it waved to and fro, she caught a glimpse of something at the very bottom of the well.

  A leafy plant grew in the center, its big leaves stirring of their own volition. And from this grew, like a stalk or stem, the sinuous body of Mama Greenteeth herself.

  Daylily’s eyes stung with the murky water, and she could see nothing else clearly. But this she saw with the clarity of noonday, and she fixed her gaze upon it even as she worked her hands against her bindings.

  Dive and die! Dive and die!

  Daylily gnashed her teeth, tearing the flower the monster had secured over her nose and mouth to keep her alive and her blood fresh. Mama Greenteeth was still gnawing at her wafers, but one long finger and longer thumb pinched the child’s arm, testing.

  The time must be now. Now!

  Daylily pulled. With strength she had never before possessed, she tore her hands through the bindings, shredding her skin and filling the well with the taste and scent of her blood.

  Mama Greenteeth’s slitted nostrils flared. She dropped the child’s arm and turned. She saw her prisoner, struggling against the encumbrance of her wedding rags, swimming for the rooted plant at the well bottom.

  Daylily grabbed a stout leaf, and though it waggled against her hold, she pulled herself down and wrapped her hands around the very base of the plant, right down to the roots. She did not look up, even when the roar of Mama Greenteeth reverberated through the water and struck her with a hammer force. She braced herself against the muddy floor and, using her own weight as a lever, pulled.

  Mama Greenteeth reached her just as she pulled, and a clammy, claw-tipped hand struck Daylily across the face, tearing streaks down her cheek. But Daylily did not lose her hold, and she pulled a second time. Mama Greenteeth screamed and shuddered as the plant came partially loose. She lashed out again, tearing the flower from Daylily’s face.

  Immediately all was dark and drowning and the life-ending pressure of deep water. Even the lantern eyes of Mama Greenteeth vanished, and Daylily felt she was alone in the well, and her last moments were upon her.

  A wolf in her mind. Bound to four stakes. Paralyzed by a stone of bronze. Only the red rolling of bloodshot eyes.

  And then—a snarl!

  Daylily snarled. One last time, she hauled on the plant, putting all the strength of her remaining life into her effort.

  Roots sprang up from the mud.

  The wail of Mama Greenteeth exploded from the well in a geyser rush. The sobbing women around the well clutched their children and pulled them back, and the men running from the village stopped in their tracks, eyes wide at the sight. Sun Eagle stood hidden in the jungle shadows, watching all, and his face was like a rock, but his mouth moved as he whispered: “You’ll live. You’ll forge the bond.”

  The great fountain of Mama Greenteeth’s shriek fell back in a splash all around the well. And when it flowed away and the people gathered dared look once more, they saw a strange figure lying partially draped over the well stones, clinging to land.

  It was Daylily, her red hair flattened across her blood-streaked face like a veil, her undergown clinging to her limbs. She held the child in her arms.

  She must be dead. But this was not the Netherworld, where the dead wander, this place of swirling darkness and pain. Or perhaps it was. After all, the last time she stepped through Death’s gateway and descended the long road into his world, she had been one of the living. Perhaps the pain and darkness were saved only for the truly dead.

  Then her body convulsed.

  Daylily coughed up a flood of dark water. Her ears swam with wet and distant sounds, but they were living sounds. And the thud of her heart, painful against her breastbone, told her she was not yet passed to the Realm Unseen.

  The women of the village held back from the well even after the burst of water left the two sodden figures lying like drowned corpses upon the edge. Then the skinny young girl gave a cry and sprang forward, reaching for the child and for the strange ghostly maid who was his rescuer.

  But Sun Eagle was there first. He took Daylily in his arms and held her upright in time for more water to cascade from her lips in a sickening gush as her stomach heaved and lungs burned. She pushed her heavy hair back from her face and, though she did not yet remember what she sought, instinctively looked for the child. She found him mewling in his sister’s clinging arms. He was alive.

  “I saved him.”

  The worlds crashed and danced in Daylily’s mind as she clutched Sun Eagle and lay upon the bank. Her body, relearning to breathe, shuddered and shivered even in the heat. But her thudding heart soared to the heavens. “I saved him!”

  “You did, Crescent Woman,” Sun Eagle replied, and she blinked without recognition up into his triumphant face. “You have proven yourself. You are a warrior.”

  The men from the village, tools brandished like weapons, swarmed down the incline, joining the women and children. They hesitated at what they saw. Should they attack these strangers, this otherworldly girl with her bright hair, this savage youth with blood on his hands and face? But the skinny girl, her sibling held close as though she would never let go, caught Daylily’s hand in her own and kissed it again and again. Then she began to speak, garbled and quick. Daylily wondered if it was the sobs that made her words incomprehensible, or if she spoke another language entirely, an older, wilder language.

  Sun Eagle, still crouched with his hands supporting Daylily’s shoulders, said, “She wants to know how she may repay you.”

  “Repay me?” Daylily ineffectually wiped water from her eyes. “No,” she said, her voice a whimper. “No, no payment.”

  A
woman and a man reached them now, the parents of the two children. They put their arms around the girl, helping her to her feet. The mother grabbed the little one and held him, weeping, to her shoulder. But the skinny girl would not release her hold on Daylily’s hands. She continued speaking earnestly, tears flowing down her cheeks.

  “No, please!” Daylily said, frightened somehow by the intensity in those words she could not understand. She turned to Sun Eagle. “Please, tell her I want no payment!”

  But Sun Eagle shook his head solemnly. “You cannot deprive her of that right,” he said.

  Then he addressed the parents, speaking with swift assurance in their language, or a language very like it that they understood but Daylily did not. But Daylily watched the expression on the mother’s face change, so full of relief one moment, so full of devastation the next. She reached out and put her arm around the skinny girl, drawing her to her side.

  On the girl’s face, all expression vanished.

  The father stood by, unmoving save to adjust his grip upon the weapon in his hand, a wooden club set with a sharp stone at one end, a crude hammer. Sun Eagle, his voice low, even gentle, said his piece, then stood looking from father to mother.

  The man stepped forward, his hammer upraised, and would have brained Daylily on the spot.

  It was over before Daylily could react. By then, the man lay in screaming agony, his arm twisted too far behind him, so far it must be broken, and Sun Eagle’s foot upon his neck, pressing his head into the ground. The mother screamed and dragged her children back, and the villagers all exploded in shouts and screams as well. Only then did Daylily find her voice.

  “What are you doing? Let him go!” she cried. Though weak from her ordeal, she flung herself at Sun Eagle as though to drag him off. But she found the gathered crowd of villagers closing in, and she saw from their faces that she and Sun Eagle both would be torn apart in a moment.

  Sun Eagle dropped his hold on the man, stepped away, and then took hold of the bronze stone about his neck and lifted it high. It flashed in reflective fire from the sun, so blinding that even Daylily shielded her eyes.

  “In the name of my master!” Sun Eagle spoke in a language unknown but understood by all. “In the name of the Sacred Mound! By the bonds uniting the Far and Near, and the blood that must spill to make all things whole, I say to you: Stand down!”

  The villagers drew back. Though they kept tight hold on their tools, their fists clenched in wrath, their eyes were full of terror, and they crowded against one another in their efforts to back away.

  Sun Eagle took hold of Daylily, who was near collapsing once more. He supported her, keeping her upright until she found a tentative balance. The crowd parted with frightened murmurs as they made their way through, every man and woman bowing their heads as though to some dread sovereign. Only the children dared look, and they from safe hiding behind their parents.

  Sun Eagle half carried Daylily, but he made her take each step, however slow, all the way back up the incline. Only once they had reached the sheltering jungle and were hidden from the villagers’ eyes did he allow her to sink against him with a moan.

  Gently, he helped her to kneel, then waited until her body stopped heaving up more water and sickness. He stroked the back of her head like he might stroke a dog, even after she had finished and merely sat unmoving in the dirt. Her once white underdress was brown, and leaves and bits of bracken clung to it.

  “I’m sorry,” she gasped at last.

  “No,” said Sun Eagle. “It was your first fight. You are brave.”

  Daylily wiped her mouth, shuddering with sickness, with fear, and even, she realized (and this was most strange), with pleasure. A sickening, sensational pleasure such as she had never before known. She looked up at Sun Eagle. “Why did that man try to kill me?” she asked.

  “He did not want to pay the tithe,” said Sun Eagle. “But he will. Following the Circle Ceremony, they will all pay their due.”

  14

  FOXBRUSH STOOD ON THE EDGE of the gorge, exhausted, panting, seeing nothing familiar around him and yet—he rubbed his eyes so hard that sparks burst behind his eyelids—and yet he knew where he was. Only it was impossible, so he could not know it.

  He swayed a dizzying moment as his eyes cleared of sparks. The jungle was still there, thick and moist and full of dreadful sounds. Enormous trees, trunks too broad for him to put his arms around, branches as thick as his waist, draped with starflower vines so dense that he could scarcely see a half dozen paces into the shadows . . . it was all too vivid. But none of it could be true.

  “I’m still dreaming,” Foxbrush told himself. “I’m lying at the bottom of that gorge and I’m dreaming, and I’ll wake up in a minute with a splitting headache and . . . and by all the stars of the heavenly host, I’m going to pound that Leo when I see him!”

  This last vow, accompanied by a string of curses, sapped Foxbrush of whatever energy remained to him. His knees buckled and he sat down beneath the spreading fig tree growing on the edge of the gorge. With a groan he bent forward until his forehead pressed into the ground, and sat in this broken attitude, unwilling to move ever again.

  Something tickled his face. On reflex Foxbrush smacked, hitting himself but missing the tiny wasp, which flew out of his range and disappeared. Dropping his hand and blinking several times, Foxbrush tried to breathe.

  Something tickled his neck. Once more he smacked, once more he missed, and another wasp flitted away.

  Foxbrush closed his eyes, wondering if he could make himself sleep and perhaps wake up in the gorge where he should be, escaped from this nightmare. He drew three long breaths, hoping to calm his racing heart.

  Something fist-sized and spherical landed hard on the back of his head, exploded, and filled the world with the fury of a hundred and more tiny wasps.

  With a yelp, Foxbrush was on his feet and running from the tree, covering his ears, closing his eyes as the wasps followed him in a cloud. They stung his neck, his ears, his shielding hands; they stung any exposed skin they could find, and he screamed as pain like fire flowed under his skin.

  He ran into a tree, fell in an agonized bundle, and lay at the feet of a tall stranger.

  “Great hopping giants, you fool!” a rumbling voice bellowed. “Have you no sense?”

  Foxbrush, however, did not understand the words, for they were not in a language he knew. He yelped and rolled, desperate to escape the wasps. The tall stranger, whom he had not yet seen—for the wasps were diving at his eyelids for all they were worth—leapt over Foxbrush’s prone form and strode toward the fig tree, shouting as he went:

  “Call them off, Twisted Man! Leave the dragon-kissed fool alone!”

  A voice (that was in no measure human and spoke without words but that, somehow, Foxbrush understood as he did not understand the stranger) replied:

  “He disobeyed! He violated! He lay upon my roots!”

  “And it hasn’t hurt you, has it?” the stranger replied.

  “He violated! He broke treaty!”

  “Well, he’s sorry enough for it now. Call off your wasps!”

  “Then pay his tribute!”

  With a sigh, the stranger plunged a hand into a leather pouch at his side and withdrew a fistful of dried petals—water lily petals, had Foxbrush been capable of noticing. These he tossed at the roots of the tree under which Foxbrush had lain, shouting in a tuneless chant:

  “Oh, Twisted Man, whose bark is thick,

  Who plunges rocks for wells to find,

  Here is tribute! Here is tribute!

  Take it, Twisted Man, and quick!”

  Completing this odd ritual with a clap of hands and a turn in place, the stranger ended with a bow in the tree’s direction. The next moment, the branches stirred without a breeze and thick leaves rustled and buzzed as though a million wasps sang at once in reply. The wasps surrounding poor Foxbrush suddenly lifted as a single unit and flowed through the air in a swift stream, past the stranger and back
into the shivering leaves of their tree home.

  “Thank you,” said the stranger with a wry smile. He saluted the tree once more, then turned to Foxbrush, who lay gasping where he had fallen, his eyelids red from the poisonous stings, welts covering his hands, his neck, and his face. The stranger grimaced, though Foxbrush could scarcely see it, so thickly were his lids swollen.

  “Don’t you know better than to lie beneath a black fig tree?” the stranger said, approaching Foxbrush and crouching beside him. Again, though he heard concern and even kindness in the stranger’s voice, Foxbrush understood none of his words. He sat up, touched his stinging face, and groaned.

  The stranger clucked, shaking his head, but he frowned as he looked over Foxbrush’s clothing. “You’re not from these parts, are you?” he said.

  “Please, sir,” Foxbrush said thickly, for even his tongue seemed to have been stung and now swelled in his mouth. “I don’t know what you’re saying. But . . . but thank you for . . . for whatever it was you did for me.”

  The stranger rose from his crouch and stepped back in surprise, his hands up as if in self-defense. He stared down at the young man before him, and his heart began to ram against his throat. Then he spoke in a different language altogether:

  “You speak like a Northerner.”

  The accent was a little thick, a little harsh to Foxbrush’s ears, and the cadence was unlike any he had heard before. But the words he knew.

  The stranger knelt again, peering eagerly into Foxbrush’s face, studying the complexion and the features, which were scarcely recognizable anymore, and frowning the while. “You’re not a Northerner,” the stranger said, “yet you speak like one. Do you come from the North Country? Did King Florien send you? How did you find the Hidden Land?”

  Foxbrush’s head swam with fear and poison. He opened his mouth, intending to introduce himself, to make some explanation, some apology, perhaps. But all that emerged was a sad little gurgle as he toppled to one side in a faint.

  There was something sticky on his face.

  Foxbrush disliked sticky things, particularly anywhere near his face. He raised a hand to wipe it off only to discover that—dragon’s teeth!—his hand was sticky as well. In fact, as awareness slowly returned to him, bringing with it a monstrous headache, he discovered that stickiness covered the greater portion of his body, accompanied by a sweet smell that might have been pleasant under other circumstances. Under these, it made him gag.