Lilith's Children

by Rachel Pudelek

  Marcus slapped his knee and laughed. “God, I would have loved to have seen that conversation.”

  I replayed the discussion with Gabrielle before my first time flying. My stomach twisted. She may have been cavorting with the Hunters, but I still held onto the notion that she’d had a good reason, that she wouldn’t have sold us out in the end. Maybe it was wishful thinking. I liked the mermaid, and I thought she’d liked me too. Gabrielle had been my first Wild friend outside of my own kind. In my mind, there was something to be said for that.

  The plane’s descent into Bangor, Maine brought back more memories. Being back on the ground helped, and it didn’t. The drive to the rusalki’s forest, the one where Gabrielle and I walked only weeks earlier, gave me a nostalgia more painful than pleasing. This time, though, I had Shawna. This time I wasn’t fearing for her safety, worrying we wouldn’t get answers, wouldn’t get help in time. I grabbed my partner sister’s hand and squeezed it tight, thankful to have her by my side.

  Celeste, though, she felt all those things. I saw it written along her scrunched brows and in her hurried steps. In the way she scanned the forest with the intensity of a starving wolf on the hunt, her head snapping one way and then the next, her gaze swinging from tree to tree. She was starving, all right, for answers to help reunite her with Marie. And the more time I spent with Celeste in this hurried and worried mode, the more I realized Marie was not going to be a temporary fixture in my coterie’s life.

  “These trees look familiar,” I said, pausing to examine an evergreen that seemed to have separated early on and grown two trunks from one. “I remember this one. Their home isn’t far.”

  We’d caught an afternoon flight, headed to the Portland International Airport shortly after leaving the incubi and gathering a few things from the succubi’s apartment complex. The last-minute tickets weren’t cheap, but we’d managed by dipping into our emergency cash savings we had tucked away. We’d arrived in Maine in the early morning hours, shortly after midnight and headed straight to the rusalki.

  Abigale caught up to Shawna and me, and wrapped her arm around her daughter’s shoulder. Shawna slowed her pace to match her mother’s until they hung back behind the rest of us, trudging through the dark forest.

  Marcus reached to hold my hand, but then pulled away right as I reached back. I narrowed my gaze at him. “What? What’s wrong?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “I forgot you might need your hands, branches and all.”

  I accepted his excuse with a nod, but his monotone voice gave me the impression his answer held a deeper layer.

  “You doing okay?” I asked. “Being so close to so many Wilds? In the car, on a plane, tromping through the Maine forest around Moosehead Lake?”

  He didn’t look at me to respond, only kept in-step with me and looked ahead. “I wish you’d stop asking me that.”

  “What?” I snapped back with a harsh whisper, knowing full well my coterie could hear everything we said. Still, whispering gave me the false sense that our private conversation was just that—private. “Asking if you’re okay? I’m sorry that I care.”

  “Is that why you’re asking?” he shot back in a low voice. “Or is it that you’re painfully aware that I’m a Hunter and you can’t help but remind me of that fact?”

  I almost stopped mid-step, but Celeste wouldn’t have it, so I kept stepping over ferns, dripping from an earlier rain, and weaving past tangled bushes.

  “The fact that you’re a Hunter and I’m a Wild Woman isn’t my fault,” I answered, no longer whispering. Screw it. It’s not like my coterie weren’t already privy to our heated conversation. “It’s a blaring fact of life that we can’t pretend out of existence.”

  “Tell me how you really feel, Faline,” Marcus said, shaking his head and looking away.

  “What?” I asked, exasperated. What the hell was his problem?

  “Is that it?” Celeste exclaimed, running out from behind me, pointing to a pile of dirt and sticks in the distance. “Is that their home?”

  “Yes!” I yelled with more enthusiasm than I felt, but happy to change the subject. “They could have moved, but this is where they were last time I visited.”

  We jogged to catch up to Celeste and stopped short of stepping onto the square shape of stones that made up their “porch.” After the stones stood a door made of sticks tied tightly together, covering a hole leading down into the mound, into their den. And I knew from my last visit that in their den sat shelves made from sticks, and chairs and a table made from tree stumps, with moss for carpet. I had no intention of entering their home during this visit, though. One night spent underground had been enough for this huldra.

  I looked up to scan the tops of the trees around the rusalki den. They should have made their presence known by now, called out to us, stretched invisible fingers into our minds to see what we were up to, and maybe told a parable or two. That is, if they were here. And from what Shawna had mentioned about them helping her upstairs in the Hunter’s cabin, as though they were all in water…and how they’d mentioned the higher energy frequency of water…I figured we wouldn’t find them in their home or hiding in trees.

  I pivoted and ran toward the lake. The same lake Gabrielle complained about having to wade through in search of the rusalki last time we were here.

  My coterie and Marcus stopped at the lake’s edge less than a minute after the steel toes of my boots barely touched the water. I didn’t need my boots anymore, my vines were more helpful if given free rein to grow, but old habits die hard.

  It’s as though my accomplices knew not to speak, knew, in the same strange way I now understood, we were encroaching on something sacred.

  It didn’t take long before the tops of three heads broke the surface of the murky lake, followed by the faces of what was left of the rusalki coven. They stared at us, blankly. I waited to feel them rummaging around my mind, but felt nothing. I shot a look to Shawna and she only shrugged. Apparently, they weren’t sorting through her mind either.

  “I am sorry to interrupt you,” I said cautiously.

  “The water takes what she has given, but she also grieves her loss when her creation is removed from her realm,” Drosera, one of the rusalki said on an even tone.

  “We know you’re mourning your sister, and we wouldn’t have come if it wasn’t an emergency,” I continued.

  The three rusalki didn’t so much as blink.

  “You can read my thoughts if it’ll help,” I offered. Never in a million years did I think I’d request rusalki enter my mind, and now I hoped they would. Mostly because they’d get way more information than by mere words alone. And also there was a part of me that felt unnerved by their morose stillness, their lack of desire, the blankness in their eyes that I’d seen all too many times while interviewing families of murder victims in my hunt for skips. The look of vacancy.

  “I haven’t the energy,” Drosera answered in what was probably the most direct statement I’d heard from a rusalka.

  My thoughts stuttered over how that was even possible.

  “We need your help in saving the succubi,” Celeste blurted, nearing the murky water with hurried steps. The rusalki didn’t recoil, or move at all. “They attended check-in and the Hunters detained them all! Probably over suspicion with what happened at the Washington Hunter complex. They’re in danger!”

  Without so much as a head-turn or a muttering of sounds, the rusalki lowered back into the water in much the same way they’d emerged, the tops of their heads being the last of them we saw and soon even that disappeared seamlessly, not even causing more than a wrinkle in the top of the lake.

  “No, they can’t just ignore us,” Celeste seethed, walking deeper into the water as though set on going after them.

  Lake water gathered around Celeste’s ankles, soaking her slip-on shoes and the bottom of her fitted jeans. She took another two steps and it reached her knees. “Celeste,” I called to her. “You can’t go in there. They’re mourning t
heir sister. The space, they may see it as sacred.”

  I doubted they’d do to my sister what they’d done to Gabrielle, but I refused to take that chance. Celeste hadn’t seen what I’d seen. She didn’t know how quickly they strike and how deadly the snip of their birch scissors could be. Her bravery in confronting the rusalki was partly based on ignorance of their abilities.

  A thought bloomed in my mind. I’d figured out that the Hunters had been keeping us ignorant of other Wilds, teaching us incorrect history of our kind as well as the others’. But had they also kept us ignorant for another reason? Fearing other Wilds kept us from joining together for so long. But not knowing the abilities of other Wilds gave the Hunters another advantage. If the Wild Women were to ever war again, we’d be at a disadvantage in not knowing how to protect ourselves, how to counter the attacks and abilities of other Wilds. Hunters lower in their hierarchy probably only knew the truth about the Wild Women in their state, the women they were trained to police. John had specifically stated as much when I’d asked him for help in finding Shawna. But the higher-up Hunters probably knew about each kind of Wild Woman, her weaknesses and her strengths.

  Celeste’s response pulled me from my plotting. “But they just left us, without answering.” She didn’t step deeper into the water, but she also didn’t leave it for land.

  Damn. Love could really fuck with the mind—my love for Celeste and her love for Marie. It had to be love she held for the succubus because why else would I be forced to trudge into the murky lake to retrieve her? I pulled my boots and socks off in a hurry that grew with each thud of my heart. I’d seen the rusalki’s response to Gabrielle and me entering their territory of forest. How much worse would they respond to Celeste entering their mourning space? No, I wasn’t completely sure that’s what they were doing, but I’d made an informed guess and that was enough to freak out about.

  “What are you doing?” Shawna asked me.

  I didn’t turn to answer, only flung my socks to the side and headed into the water a little more than irritated that Celeste had forced my hand. “I’m retrieving our sister who is refusing to come back to land,” I grumbled.

  I didn’t need to see Marcus to know he too readied himself to come in after me. I didn’t turn toward the shore as I added, “Don’t follow me in. Especially you, Marcus.”

  Celeste’s brow furrowed, first in indignation, and then in concern as her eyes widened. Her torso leaned forward as though she were trying to take a step toward me, but didn’t. “I can’t…I can’t move,” she exclaimed.

  “Shit,” I yelled as I ran to her.

  Others in my coterie began moving toward the water and I flung my hand up to stop them. “If one of us can’t get her out, all of us won’t be able to do it,” I reminded, trying to keep my voice and breath steady. Causing my sisters and aunts to fear wouldn’t help anything. It’d only distract them and right now they needed to stay alert.

  Celeste struggled to move and fell forward, soaking her whole body. I grabbed her arms and hoisted her to stand. She pushed her body to move forward again, disregarding my advice to remain calm. As though whatever chains had held her in place broke in an instant, she fell forward with force and her feet sprang from the water as her chest broke through the surface.

  I reached to pull her up and run her to the shore, but my feet now refused to budge. “What the hell?” I yelled.

  Celeste pulled herself from the lake, sopping wet, and sprang to grab me.

  As though my legs were being pulled out from under me, becoming liquid in the process, my body slipped under water, toward the center of the lake. My coterie and Marcus ran for me, and before my face followed my body below the surface I exhaled sharply, “Don’t follow me!”

  Nineteen

  I fought the pull, thrashing my arms and legs to make it back to the surface; the surface that grew farther and farther from my line of sight with each second. Cold fingers pressed into my right ankle, pulling me deeper. I kicked to loosen the fingers, but to no avail. I peered down, set on prying the fingers from me, when I stared directly into the glowing eyes of Drosera. Like seaweed, her hair floated around her, bouncing on the waves my movement caused. Nothing short of pure moonlight glowed from her skin and stars from her eyes.

  Her otherworldly appearance stunned me into stillness. I watched, awestruck, as she turned her eyes away from me toward where she took us, her glowing fingers still gripped to my ankle. The fact that I could still breathe occurred to me, as though air circulated around my face.

  Drosera picked up her pace and rapidly pulled me deeper, straight down now, as I lifted my hand to my face and found what felt like a pliable bubble beginning at my forehead and extending to my chin. What looked like the light of hundreds of yellow, flickering candles glowed beneath a dome below us. I watched in stunned stillness as Drosera maneuvered me through her grasp on my ankle, toward the dome where her sisters waited.

  As we neared the dome—its exterior a glowing blue layer of light—its dry contents became clear. The body of their fallen sister, Azalea, lay atop leaves and cut fern branches. Wild flowers created a circle on the ground around her and a crown made of vines and twigs sat atop her head. Flat stones rested over her closed eyes. No fires blazed as I’d thought I’d seen, no candles either. The rusalki lit the bubble with their glowing skin. Only one rusalka, the one laying in the center on the leaves, failed to add any brightness. The pale skin of what was once Azalea reminded me of how ashen and unnatural Gabrielle’s skin had appeared after she’d met the birch scissors. So lifeless.

  Drosera pulled me through the exterior of the bubble, my exposed skin feeling the lack of moving water the moment it entered the dome. Once my face entered the dryness, the bubble enabling me to breathe burst and I fell toward the ground.

  I landed in Drosera’s arms as she cradled me for a quick moment before setting me onto my feet. I tripped forward and then back, before gaining my footing.

  The questions that should have been running through my mind gained no traction past my repeating thoughts at the sight of Azalea. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered.

  At the Washington Hunter’s cabin, when Azalea had been killed by the Hunter’s daughter, Clarisse, her body had disappeared. Now, seeing the reality of her fate brought a heavy pit to my stomach. My throat threatened to close in on itself. “I’m sorry,” I repeated, this time to Azalea more than to her sisters. Tears filled my eyes. In rescuing my sister, theirs lost her life. “You didn’t deserve this; this shouldn’t have happened to you.”

  “It was a fate I chose freely,” Azalea reminded.

  I jolted and peered in the direction of the voice. An iridescent version of Azalea, naked, peered back at me. Her lips tilted in a smile. I could barely see the crinkles of skin around her bright eyes. She wasn’t see-through, but wasn’t covered in flesh either. A glowing violet hue pulsed from her being.

  I rushed to hug her. Rather than the feeling of matter pressed against me, tingles vibrated my skin wherever she touched in her returned embrace.

  “Are you a ghost?” I asked after pulling away to get another look at her.

  “We are all souls,” she answered. “Some more hidden than others.”

  “The huldra coterie and the Hunter have come for assistance in helping the succubi,” Drosera told her sister’s soul, who smiled lovingly at us all.

  Azalea nodded.

  “The timing is difficult for us,” another rusalka said, Veronia. “The energy of grief is a healing balm to the mind, if used correctly, however it leaves little energy behind for other tasks.”

  “Such as the one you wish us to complete,” Drosera added.

  Despite me learning this from the rusalki, this made perfect sense to me.

  Tears filled my eyes again. My partner sister stood, whole, living, on land; their sister could not. “Azalea,” I said after clearing my throat. “You’ve given your life for my sister. What can I give to help your sisters?”

  Azalea glowed a
little brighter. “I am always with my sisters, unseen by others of the outside world. And my soul energy is pure and so very strong. But it is not the energy they lack.”

  “The succubi are imprisoned,” I reminded. “They’re the only ones who can help with energy.”

  I turned to gaze at her lifeless body in the center of the dome, but Azalea’s soul placed a violet glowing hand on my arm and gained my attention. Warmth and tingles penetrated my skin and bones. Once she had my full attention, she spoke. “In my more realized connection with our Goddess, Mokosh, my sisters have been forced to lessen their own, due to grief.” Her gaze bore into my eyes and my heartbeat quickened. “Bridge that gap.”

  “Anything,” I muttered, transfixed on the depths of everything and yet nothing within her glowing eyes.

  She gave a nod and her living sisters stood around me in a circle. At once, all three sets of hands pressed onto my head. My heart skipped a beat and then beat wildly, my pulse thrumming in my ear. My huldra arched and stretched within me, causing an ache to push out from my center, followed by an unnerving strength that pulsed from my center, to my skin and back again, over and over. This pulsating picked up pace until it pinged around my body so violently that it had nowhere to go but out.

  I gasped as vines shot from my fingers and roots burst from the soles of my feet and buried themselves deep into the lake bed beneath us. The rusalki began whispering and before I could register their words, my roots traveled through the dirt desperately in search of others of similar kind. One root separated from the rest and latched onto the root of a lake plant; the rest pushed further until they found tree roots and fern roots to tie around.

  The deep sigh of what I instinctively knew was a tree reverberated through my roots and into my body. The flash of a battle scene played behind my eyes, of powerful huldra warriors protecting their forests from those who sought to steal its trees to build fires with which to burn human women. Another scene flashed—an aged huldra, wrinkles worn as badges of wisdom from a life fully lived, white hair framing her face like the veil of a high priestess. The old huldra changed her skin to bark and seemed to sink into the oak tree before she disappeared within its bark. Another flash and a black snake coiled up a different tree, wrapping around its trunk in what I oddly sensed was an embrace.