Lightbringer

by K. D. McEntire

  “What do you want?” Wendy asked flatly, ashamed of her outburst. She crossed her arms over her chest, keeping well away from the woman.

  “A truce.” The wind blew in a harder gust; Wendy was downwind of the White Lady and nearly gagged at the rich, thick scent of rot that filled her nose and watered her eyes, filling her mouth with the strong, sour taste of bile and coppery salt.

  “You want a truce?” Wendy spat, trying to clean her mouth of the foul taste. She could hardly believe her ears. “What kind of truce?”

  The White Lady threw up her arms in disgust. “The kind where you and I call a cease-fire. You don't attack my Walkers and I don't have them attack you and yours for interfering in my business. Truuuuuce. It's a simple enough word, haven't you ever heard it before?”

  “I'm not stupid,” Wendy snapped.

  “Hmm, I wasn't so certain.” High above them seagulls cried, their noisome calls bouncing off the jetty and echoing around the cove. “Excuse me a moment,” the White Lady said, and stood, hem whipping about her feet. She gathered up a handful of sand and shells and rolled the damp mess in her hands until it was firmly compacted into a lopsided sandball roughly the size of her palm. “I do hate gulls.”

  “They're too far,” Wendy pointed out. “It'll never make it.”

  “That, my dear, is the beauty of dreams,” the White Lady said serenely and flung the ball hard in the direction of the seagulls' calls. It soared up and out, traveling impossibly far, retaining its firm shape as far as Wendy could see. The call of the gull broke as if severed, ending in a strangled cry followed by a sickening wet thump far distant down the shore.

  The White Lady wiped her hands free of the last clinging grains.

  Wendy turned her face away, sickened. “You're foul.”

  “No, just practical. They do make such a noise. A lady can hardly dicker for peace with a ruckus like that going on in the background,” she said, rucking up the arms of her cloak to the elbows and holding out hands with palms turned up. “So how about it? Let's make a deal.”

  “I don't deal with the likes of you.”

  “The likes of me?” The White Lady pressed mottled and rotting fingers to her chest in a gesture of dismay. “And just what is that supposed to mean?” When she moved her hands the skin began flaking away from her bones in a shower. Wendy could spy yellowed sinew and slim cords of tendon holding her bones together.

  “I don't deal with ghosts,” Wendy said. “I don't deal with cannibals like Walkers. And I definitely won't deal with a ghost who's got Walkers taking orders from her.”

  “A little high and mighty, aren't we?”

  “They're foul. They eat children. And I don't know how you're healing them, but if you were any kind of decent human being when you were alive, you'll stop helping them out.”

  “Ah, teenagers,” the White Lady sneered. “You all think you know everything. Look, dear, let me tell you a little something about the real, adult world. You work with whoever you have to, in order to get shit done. You get it? I worked with worse than Walkers when I was walking the living lands, that's for sure. And, by the way, enough with the attitude. A simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ will suffice. I don't need lectures from a kid barely out of diapers, thanks.”

  “Fine. You want an answer? Here's your answer: N-O. No. I've got my own business to attend to, lady, and if your Walkers happen to be in the area while I'm doing my thing, then that's just too bad for you.”

  “Oh, really?” The White Lady clasped her hands demurely together. “So that's the way you want things to be, then?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Fine. That's the way it's going to be. Oh-me-oh-my I do believe I've been TOLD, now haven't I?” The White Lady laughed then, a burst of racketing hyena mirth that echoed loudly.

  Whoever she was before, dying made her go crazy, Wendy realized. Deep cold overwhelmed her with the thought, as if she'd dipped her hands and feet in snow; licked at icicles until her lips and tongue were numb. Wendy shivered and turned her face away from the woman, digging her toes in the sand, seeking the comforting stability of the earth beneath her feet. She took one step back and then another, when her ankle slammed into something sharp and pointed that dug deep into her skin, pricking her. Startled by the unexpected pain, Wendy yelled and fell backwards on the sand, catching herself with her elbows. Sparks of fierce tingling heat flared up her arms, stealing her breath.

  The terrible laughter cut off.

  “Well then, I think I'll just have to keep you, won't I?” The White Lady hiked up the hem of her robe, lifting the cloth high over knees seeping clear, whitish fluid. “If you're not going to talk business now, then we'll just have to negotiate after you've been my…guest for a while.”

  Sucking in a deep breath and holding one scraped and stinging elbow in the other hand, Wendy glanced around, confused and bordering on hysteria.

  The open beach was gone as suddenly as it had appeared. Birds chirped in the trees and the mist vanished; the sky was a blue bowl dotted with shell-shaped clouds. The White Lady's boat was still only a half dozen feet away, moored up against a large and drooping willow tree, but they were enclosed in a large copse of trees, their branches so tightly packed together that Wendy knew she'd never be able to wriggle through.

  What remained of the shell doorway was gone, but in its place was a large concrete circle marked with a hopscotch grid. At the end of the grid was a box writ with the number 13 over and over again in a chalked rainbow of colors, some faded, some fresh. A lush carpet of green grass stretched out in all directions; nearby the wind tossed the tops of trees to and fro, setting the empty swing set into a jangling metallic cacophony.

  There was no path, no opening, no easy way up or down. She was trapped.

  A foot or so away, where Wendy had tripped, was a cheerful red picnic blanket laid out with square white plates and napkins shaped like swans, matching chopsticks stabbed artfully into each swan's back. A bottle of soda chilled in a bucket of ice and beside it was an old-fashioned picnic basket, one corner spotted with blood. A large Chinese takeout container lay on its side beside the basket, huge clumps of white rice spilled across the corner of the blanket.

  Crawling on hands and knees, Wendy approached the blanket. At first she thought it was her eyes, but the rice was indeed moving. Maggots and silverfish.

  Overwhelmed, Wendy turned her face aside and dry-heaved.

  “A feast for my honored guest!” The White Lady cried, approaching from behind. She stepped around Wendy's side and crouched down, the gull she'd beaned flopping from her fist by one rotting leg, and dipped the remains of its head in the puddle. “Even in dreams, a girl's got to eat, yes? Not seasoned, but we'll make due, won't we? Nothing like an impromptu BBQ, that's what I always say.”

  “You sick bitch,” Wendy gasped, pushing away from the White Lady and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “You can't keep me here!”

  “Tsk tsk, manners! Keeping you here, what nerve! You're my guest! My guest until we sort out some sort of truce, my most honored opponent. Yet here you are, insulting me! What, were you raised in a barn?” The White Lady threw the gull to the ground and stood. “Surely your mother taught you better than that!” She paused, tilted her head. “Or did she? Didn't teach you much of anything at all if you honestly think a mere ghost like me can truly trap someone who ‘won't deal’ with her in a little ol' dreamspace. Shame on her.”

  “Don't you talk about my mother,” Wendy growled, staggering to her feet and balling her hands into fists. “Don't you fucking dare.”

  “Oh yes, Mommy Dearest is wandering our streets, isn't she?” The White Lady threw her head back and laughed and laughed and laughed. “My ears might be falling off, but they hear rumors just as well as they did before I ended up here. What you do is some kind of family business, yeah? Mother to daughter, that sort of thing?”

  “Shut up.”

  “And not only that, but rumors say that Momma Dearest has been out of
the picture for a while now. Since this summer, am I right? What happened, Lightbringer? She up and quit?”

  “I said, shut up.”

  “Oh, I'm just fooling you! Everyone knows how you've been blowing off sending those pitiful Shades on to search high and low for her. Not having much luck, are we? How do you think dear ol' Mom feels about that?”

  Wendy felt her throat go dry. “How…”

  “I suppose it'd be a real honest-to-goodness shame if one of my Walkers found her lost little spirit before you did, hmm? If I'd, say, sent them out looking for her?” The White Lady held out one rotting hand before her as if checking her nails. A finger fell off and she tsked, scooping down to pick it up and set it back on. “‘Be subtle! Be subtle and use your spies for every kind of warfare.’ Sun Tzu.” She chuckled. “Every leader needs a few flies on the wall here and there. Know your enemy, and all that. Even if your enemy is a snot-nosed kid.”

  “You…you…” Wendy sputtered.

  The White Lady sighed. “Yes, me, me. Be a dear and let's make this truce work, hmm? I'll leave you alone to search for your mom's ghostie; you leave my Walkers alone when you come across them on your hunt.”

  “I can't do that.”

  “And why not? If they chase you, you run, what's so hard about that? They're weak compared to the likes of you, and it's not like they could hurt such a mighty ghost-killer, right?”

  Slowly Wendy straightened, squared her shoulders, and took a long, measuring look at the White Lady. Despite the obvious instability of the White Lady's personality, something she'd just said was pinging around inside Wendy's skull. “You're trying awfully hard to keep me away from your Walkers,” Wendy mused. “You start hassling me in my dreams, out of the blue, and you're making all these threats that you then claim that you can't back up if I'm really so very mighty.”

  “Sarcasm. They teach you all about it in school, I'm sure.”

  “Thing is,” Wendy said, ignoring her, “it really is my dream, isn't it? My…what did you call it? My dreamspace.” Wendy grabbed a handful of maggots off the ground and concentrated at them. One by one the maggots transformed into butterflies, yellow-winged and delicate. Only the centers were still maggots, wriggling and white. “You've got some control here, but ultimately…it's still my space, isn't it?”

  Wendy flung the maggot-butterflies into the air and they massed in a brilliant golden-yellow cloud, momentarily obliterating the great blue bowl of sky. One, however, had a partially crushed wing and waved feebly at her from her palm. The wings fluttered and drew inside the body until it was just a maggot again, big and bulky and hot in her hand.

  “I'm leaving,” Wendy said. “And if I find out that you're stalking my mother or you know where my mother is, this conversation…I…you won't like it, okay? I'll come for you and I don't care how long it takes.” She turned away.

  “You can't walk away from me!” The White Lady snapped, grabbing for Wendy's arm. “We're not done here!”

  “Oh yeah? Watch me.” Dodging the skeletal fingers, Wendy strode to the hopscotch grid and threw the hot maggot to the concrete, grinding it beneath her heel. It bled thin, sticky ichor that seeped into the ground, obliterating the chalk outline and revealing the door of seashells. The jangle of metal chains became the hooting of the foghorn, the twittering of birds faded into the wash of constant grinding waves.

  The mist was gone and with it the boat, Wendy noted, leaving only a swatch of scraped sand as testament to its appearance in her dream. A feathered gull flew overhead with a shining, scaled fish caught in its beak. The beach was beautiful once again.

  The White Lady was gone.

  Friday evening found Wendy forgoing patrolling for her mother in favor of staying inside. Part of her knew this was pure lunacy—Wednesday afternoon and the disturbing dream that followed must have been some sort of delusion. But the touch of Piotr's hand, the bittersweet wariness in his eyes, and the obvious insanity of the White Lady convinced her differently. Piotr was real and so was his dilemma.

  Come hell or high water, Wendy intended to help.

  When they got home after school, Wendy gathered an armful of cleaning supplies from under the kitchen sink. Ignoring Chel's incredulous look and Jon's curious questions, Wendy marched upstairs and gave her room a quick but thorough onceover.

  “Is Eddie coming over?” Jon asked from the doorway around the second hour of her frantic whirlwind spree. He wrinkled his nose theatrically and snagged a handful of M&Ms from the candy dish on her desk. “It smells like Mr. Clean hemorrhaged to death in here.”

  “Very funny,” Wendy grunted, shoving the last of her (now stuffed) shoeboxes under the bed. The box slid through Jabber, who territorially hissed and took a swipe at her with his claws. Wendy snatched her hand back just in time.

  “Can't a girl just want a nice room every now and then?”

  Pouring an entire handful of M&Ms into his mouth, Jon struggled to chew and swallow before answering. “Using you and Chel as examples? No.”

  “Beat it,” she replied, not unkindly, and threw him the shopping bag full of rags she'd dirtied. “And throw those in the washer while you're at it.”

  “Yes mon capitan!” Jon saluted, tapping his heels together. “Anything else your highness desires? Cake, perhaps? Possibly a virgin to sacrifice?”

  “For you to stop being so nosy,” Wendy said and tossed the final rag his way. “Shoo!”

  Shrugging, Jon left, taking the bag of rags with him along with another handful of candy. Maneuvering around Jabber, Wendy straightened the throw pillows on her bed, made sure her abundance of ratty stuffed animals were out of sight, and turned once around, examining the room. Everything looked okay, but that didn't mean she hadn't forgotten something important, like panties poking out of a drawer. Piotr seemed relaxed and his clothing was very nondescript but there was no telling when he'd died or what might offend him. He could come from some super-repressed century for all she knew, and Wendy was unwilling to risk chasing him away.

  The room passed inspection, however. At a loss for something productive to do in lieu of her normal routine, Wendy sat down to finish her homework early. An hour passed. Two. She completed the last line of her geography paper, stretched until her back crackled, and sighed in relief.

  “I don't remember going to school. It looks tedious.”

  Stifling a shriek, Wendy started out of her chair like a frightened cat. Every hair felt as if it were on end, every nerve tingling with shock and surprise. “What the hell are you doing here?!”

  Piotr rose from her bed, where he'd been sitting. He flushed, embarrassed, looking as if he was worried that he'd done something wrong. “Yzveenee, my apologies. I did not mean to startle you, but you asked that I visit you and I thought—”

  Wendy held up a hand for silence, shushing him. They heard footsteps pad down the hall and a gentle tap on the door. “Wendy?” It was Jon. He opened the door a crack, letting in a waft of sugar-scented air. “I thought I heard you yell. Are you okay?”

  “Leave her alone, Poindexter!” Chel yelled from across the hall. She was breathless and the speedy beat of her feet on their mother's treadmill almost drowned her out.

  “I'm fine, Jon,” Wendy said. “Just stubbed my toe.” She raised her voice. “And don't call Jon ‘Poindexter,’ Chel! It's not nice!”

  The whirr of the treadmill paused and their parents' bedroom door slammed.

  Shaking her head in annoyance, Wendy glanced at Piotr and belatedly realized how ridiculous it was to shush one of the dead. It wasn't as if Jon or Chel would be able to hear Piotr talking anyway, not even if he'd shouted at the top of his lungs.

  Jon shrugged, set a fresh-baked sugar cookie on the vanity, and shut the door. Wendy waited until Jon's footsteps had faded to smile apologetically at Piotr. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be rude.” Grabbing her stereo remote, she flipped it to her favorite station and turned the volume just high enough that it would drown out her low-pitched voice. “You just
sort of snuck up on me. I was expecting you to come up the tree.”

  Piotr glanced out the window. “I can, if that would make you feel better. But the door, it is very thin, and this home is very new. Easy to walk through.”

  “Right,” Wendy agreed. “I should have thought of that before.”

  Shrugging, Piotr sat on the edge of her bed again. “Net, it's understandable. It's not something the living must think about.”

  “No. We don't.” Wendy hesitated beside her desk, uncertain whether he would find it weird if she sat beside him on the bed or if she should just sit back down on the chair. But it was her bed. She could sit where she wanted!

  As if sensing the train of her thoughts, Piotr pushed further back so that he was almost resting against the headboard. “My apologies. I am stealing up your space.”

  “No,” she said, flushing, “it's cool.” Collecting the sugar cookie and nibbling on the edge nervously, Wendy drifted towards the edge of the bed, obliquely glad that she'd taken the time to neaten up. Piotr looked strange but somehow right in her room, with his dim shoulders outlined against the hot pink puffy pillows and the chipped black headboard. It was as if her life had been leading up to this moment—a ghost among her private things, as casual as if he belonged there, as if he were alive.

  Wendy wondered if she were truly going crazy.

  “So,” she asked too brightly, searching for some topic to break the odd awkward tension. “Any word on the hat? Or the holes in it?” No longer hungry, she set the cookie aside.

  At first it seemed he wouldn't answer, and Wendy began scouring her mind for some other topic, when Piotr said, “None of the others knows what it means. Lily is frantic.” He reached to pet Jabber but snatched his hand back when the cat aimed an ill-tempered swipe at his wrist.

  “Aren't there any, I don't know, ghostly acids or something that could have done it?” Wendy asked.

  “Things, objects, sometimes pass over into the Never but I have never heard of such a thing.” He grimaced. “It is possible, I suppose. But unlikely. It is a blessing, I suppose. Such an acid in the wrong hands would make…a deadly weapon.”