“Naethin’.”
“Nothing, Bill,” I said, holding my hands up in submission. “It’s okay. He didn’t do anything to me.”
“Then why are you crying?” Bill asked, his anger still evident as he continued spearing Tallis with his glare.
“It’s a long story,” I answered as another round of tears fell from my eyes. I must have been experiencing an emotional breakdown after enduring so much in the last … I didn’t even know how long. When Bill threw his arms around me, I realized how much I needed the consolation, and dropped my head on his shoulder.
“Listen to me good, Black,” Bill started, anger tainting each word. “You ever make her cry again an’ you’ll have me ta deal with! Capiche?”
“Aye,” Tallis said in a monotone.
It wasn’t much of a threat, especially since Tallis could grind Bill into mincemeat in two seconds flat, but I appreciated his intentions all the same. “Thank you,” I whispered as he nodded and held me tighter, even leaving a kiss on the top of my head.
“No one messes with my nerdlet.”
***
We trudged through the snow in complete silence. Tallis led the way, with Bill and me two paces behind him. As I’d expected, the forest floor swallowed our tracks as soon as we lifted our feet.
I found my attention settling on Tallis’s broad back as I watched him carve the way through the forest. He wove this way and that, back and forth through the endless trees. The reflection of moonlight on his black hair made it look so glossy, it almost seemed liquid. For once, he wore more than just a kilt—a black T-shirt and boots. The boots looked like he’d turned an animal pelt inside out and stitched it into the shape of two socks.
The large sack he’d brought with him into the cabin was now securely fastened to his back, looking like the ancient relative of the backpack, and it was full to the brim. Above that, he’d fastened a silver, oval shield that was really quite beautiful. The moonlight made the raised circles and diamond patterns stand out until they almost looked like jewels. Both my sword and his were in their scabbards, strapped across his chest. The gashes in his forearms were still visible although the cuts seemed a little less crimson than before, and his flesh didn’t look quite as swollen. I still didn’t know why he’d made himself bleed, or what his blood on my sword meant. How could bathing my sword in his blood protect me in the Underground? I chalked it up as one of those mysteries which might never be solved. I only hoped that whatever lengths he’d gone to wouldn’t be for naught.
As our footsteps brought us ever closer to the Underground City, my nerves were more than present and accounted for. My heart beat frantically and a solid lump of angst was rapidly forming in the pit of my stomach. I assumed Bill felt the same thing because he was strangely quiet for once. The only sounds were our footfalls crunching on the snow.
“Wait!” I blurted, my heart lurching into my throat as I came to an abrupt halt. Bill faced me curiously, but Tallis never broke pace. I looked at Bill, my eyes wide. “I forgot the book!” I admitted, aghast. “I forgot Dante’s Inferno in the car!”
Shaking his head, Bill began to smile while patting his back pocket. “Figured we might need it.”
“Thank God for you!” I chirped happily, relief pouring through me, even to the farthest of my extremities.
“Amen ta that, sistah!” he replied with a large grin.
Seeing Tallis much farther in front of us, I inhaled deeply and jogged to catch up to him, Bill right beside me. I pulled the fur Tallis had given me tighter around my shoulders to ward off the frosty evening air. Despite my efforts, I was still freezing. Clad in only the black leather pants and long-sleeved, red T-shirt Jason Streethorn packed for me, I would have frozen, were it not for the fur. As for Bill, because he was an angel, he couldn’t feel the cold. Lucky him.
“Be cannie,” Tallis announced when we reached what looked like a cliff.
I figured that meant to be careful. I watched him remove the swords, and place them on the ground. Leaning forward, he gripped the side of the cliff and jumped down to what must’ve been a ledge of some sort below him. He landed in a crouched position, with both his hands on the ground. Then he glanced up at me, motioning for the swords, which I handed to him. He leaned them along the ledge before scaling down the face of the rock wall again.
“I’ll bring up the rear,” Bill said, winking at my butt. He dropped behind me as I unwrapped the fur shawl from my shoulders and handed it to him. Then I looked over the edge of the cliff. Tallis was already on another ledge of rock, waiting for me to reach the first ledge so I could hand him both swords again. Only a few shelves of flattened rock led down the cliff to a sandy beach alongside a river. It was mostly just a sheer precipice with a long drop. If I had to guess, I’d say it was maybe five stories tall. Figuring there was no time like the present, I got down on my stomach, and using the toes on my boots, I searched for a toehold on the rock face. I felt Bill’s hands on mine and found him smiling down at me.
“I got ya, honey nips! Just find a place to put your toes and descend slowly. The first ledge is maybe another ten feet down.”
I nodded as my toe found a footing, and I carefully lowered myself. Once my entire body was flush to the rock face, I felt for the next toehold. Pulling my hands from Bill’s, I took my time as I scaled the cliff. Glancing down, the ledge was now maybe only eight feet down. Finding two more toeholds, I descended still further. After several more repetitions, I reached the ledge. When I felt the ground, unimaginable relief washed over me. Reaching for both swords, I had to kneel over the edge just to hand them to Tallis since he was so much further below me.
“Nicely done, Pippi Long Legs,” Bill said as he materialized directly beside me. I frowned at him, irritated that he just Mary Poppins’d right down with little or no effort while I’d had to struggle for the last ten minutes, at least. There were definite drawbacks to being merely human.
“I didn’t know you could do that,” I grumbled.
Bill shrugged. “Neither did I. Usually only works in the Kingdom. Go figure.”
“Nae time fur dilly-dallyin’,” Tallis yelled at us. Placing the swords on the ledge, he started down the cliff face again.
The moonlight was suddenly eclipsed by a large grey cloud, leaving us in near pitch darkness. “I can’t see anything!” I yelled to Tallis.
“Aye, jist bide ’til the clood passes.”
“I’ll wait with ya,” Bill said with an encouraging smile.
“Thanks,” I muttered. “Can’t angels fly while holding someone else?”
“Sorry, Skipper, but no can do. I ride solo, hot cheeks.”
“It figures,” I murmured. The cloud eventually passed and allowed the iridescent moon rays to light our way again. I glanced down the cliff side to find Tallis already on the beach, waiting for me. I had two more rock ledges to conquer. The next one seemed relatively close, but the last one was a fair distance away. Heaving a sigh, I dropped down onto my stomach before pushing my legs off the end of the ledge, to search, yet again, for another foothold.
After a few minutes, I felt flat ground, so I hopped down and took a deep breath just as Bill materialized next to me again. Gripping both swords, I dangled them over the edge, unsure how Tallis could reach them when he was still at least thirty feet away.
“Jist droop ’em, lass,” he called out. “Try tae froow ’em sae the blade sticks in th’ sand!”
Feeling more concerned with my own safety than either of the swords, I didn’t argue. I hastily flung my sword over the edge, flipping my wrist as I launched it in the hopes that it might help to make the blade sink into the sand. The sword responded by crashing onto the face of the mountain before bouncing into the rocks at the base of the cliff.
I heard Tallis expelling an exasperated breath. Then he addressed me. “Bludy hell, Besom! Dinnae goo frowin’ mah sword willy-nilly.”
Irritated to even be in this position to begin with, I gripped his heavy sword and sort
of just dropped it over the ledge. And what do you know? The blade sunk straight into the sand as Tallis looked on with a smile.
Two ledges down, and one really far one still to go. Getting down on my belly again, I threw my legs over the edge and tried to ignore the jagged rocks scraping against my stomach. I assumed my shirt had to be ripped to shreds, but I didn’t care. Getting down from this cliff in one piece was the only issue on my mind.
I found another toehold and settled my foot into it as I clung to a rock that jutted out. After I made the mistake of glancing down, I felt fear radiating through me. It was probably a good twenty feet to the next ledge. And from there, at least another ten feet to the ground.
Joy is of the will which labors, which overcomes obstacles, which knows triumph. I repeated the famous quote by Yeats in my mind. Yep, Yeats was so right. If and when I made it off this cliff, joy couldn’t even begin to describe the bliss I would feel. Maybe more relief than joy …
“You’re almost there, Lily,” I encouraged myself.
“Just take it slow,” Bill advised from where he stood on the ledge above me. I half-wondered if he, as my guardian angel, could save me if I happened to fall? I could only hope the answer was yes, although I didn’t dare test my theory.
Locating another toehold, I continued down the cliff, although my fingers were beginning to ache from grasping the rocks so tightly. It probably also didn’t help that the air was so cold, I could see each cloud of my breath.
Something shifted underneath my foot and I gasped. Scrambling to find another toehold, I thought I had one until the rocks crumbled away beneath my foot. Now panicked, I tapped for another crevice, grateful the foot currently supporting my weight was still snugly wedged into the rocks. Suddenly, the rock beneath my right hand began to loosen, and before I could find another grip, the rock pulled free from the mountain’s face.
Then I felt nothing but weightlessness and cold air rushing past me.
Everything that happened next occurred within mere seconds. I faintly heard Tallis yelling something in Gaelic before a huge gust of wind blasted my face and I had to close my eyes. No sooner did I blink when I felt myself hitting something, or was I landing on something? Bracing myself for a painful collision, I was surprised to find there was no pain at all—no bone shattering agony like I expected. My eyes snapped open to see Tallis’s face barely five inches from mine. He was panting. Shock overtook me, and after a second or so, I managed to catch my breath. Miraculously, Tallis had caught me.
“How,” I started, but was unable to form the rest of the words. It felt like my lungs had collapsed because I found it near impossible to take a breath.
One of Tallis’s arms supported my back and the other my legs, so that he was holding me bride style. Neither of us said another word, but just stared at each other while struggling to catch our breaths. I didn’t know why he didn’t put me down.
“What did it mean?” I asked at last. My lungs still ached as I tried to regulate my breathing. “What did you say?” I continued, referring to the Gaelic I’d heard him yell as soon as I fell. My voice sounded raspy.
Tallis still didn’t set me on my feet. “Ah ordered ye ta sloow an’ ta faall awa’ frae the mountain,” he answered in an equally breathy voice. “Had ye fallen straecht doon, the roocks wood hae scraped yer face tah ah bludy mess an’ yer … breasts.”
“Oh,” I said, unable to tear my eyes from his. At the mention of the word “breasts,” something blossomed deep inside me, a feeling of yearning, a stinging that I wasn’t familiar with.
Tallis didn’t say anything more as he continued to study me. Our eyes were locked, riveted by an invisible force. No matter how hard I tried to look away, I couldn’t.
Suddenly, Tallis cleared his throat before quickly setting me down on my feet. It seemed as if he was uncomfortable with what had been and was transpiring between us. As to just what “it” was, I had no clue. I certainly had never experienced anything like it before. Except in a contest, I’d never stared so long at someone, and I’d never lost myself in someone else’s eyes before, not like that. I suddenly felt cold and shivered.
Tallis took a few steps away from me and I saw fresh blood on his arms. At first, I thought it was my blood, that the rocks had scraped and cut me, until I remembered his forearms. “Your wounds,” I said softly, reaching for his arms.
He jerked away immediately and his lips went tight. “Ah am fine.”
I didn’t respond. The weight of Tallis’s fur fell onto my shoulders, and when I turned around, I found Bill smiling at me.
“Cirque Du Soleil hasn’t got shit on you two!”
“Well, I guess that answers my question of whether or not you could protect me in the haunted wood,” I grumbled.
Bill shrugged. “Hey, I tried. I guess my mad skills aren’t so mad in this fucked up place that Conan calls home.”
Speaking of the bladesmith, I turned to face him, and found his attention on the river ahead of us. The moonlight emphasized the water’s darkness, which only appeared in patches beneath a fog so thick, it looked like a dense layer of whipped cream. I doubted Tallis found the fog so intriguing, so I continued to look at the river, while trying to understand what he was so focused on. Taking a few steps forward, I had to take a few more before I was shoulder to shoulder with the enormous man.
“Ah moost summon heem,” Tallis said quietly.
“Summon who?” I asked just as the answer dawned on me. “Wait, is this the river Styx?”
“Aye.”
“Then you have to summon Charon, the ferryman?”
“Aye.”
“Well, get on it with it, Conan,” Bill interjected from behind us. Stepping up beside me, he stood on my left side, with Tallis on my right.
Tallis frowned at Bill before bending down on one knee and closing his eyes. He said something in a foreign tongue, which I figured was Gaelic.
“What? The ferryman doesn’t speak English?” Bill asked as he elbowed me in the ribs and laughed at his own joke.
Tallis didn’t hear him, or maybe just ignored him because he continued to chant something with his eyes closed. When he opened his eyes, he reached beneath his kilt and produced a dagger. Before Bill or I could say another word, he brought his arm straight out in front of him and slit the top of his wrist. Rotating his hand, he allowed some of the drops to sink into the sand.
“Jesus, what the hell happened to Conan’s arms?” Bill asked in shock, having just noticed the gashes. From my vantage point, they looked quite a bit more healed.
No one answered Bill’s question and it was just as well because no sooner did the sand absorb Tallis’s blood before something appeared in the distance, hovering over the river. At first it looked like a tree or something that fell into the river and was now making its way toward us. The harder I looked at it, though, the more I saw it was no tree, but Charon, the ferryman. He stood up in the center of a small wooden boat, his figure and head shrouded by a dark cloak and hood.
“Shit just got real,” Bill whispered and then elbowed me in the ribs again. I was about to snap at him to quit it when he motioned to something just behind me. I turned around quickly and couldn’t help but gasp. I glanced over my other shoulder, awed to find that we were completely surrounded by what appeared to be ghosts. They looked like whitish puffs of steam that trembled this way and that as the wind rode through them. There had to have been hundreds of them, maybe thousands. All were nearing the river although none of them ventured beyond the icy tide.
“They must be waiting for the ferryman to take them across,” I said in a mere whisper, my gaze still fixed on the specters, none of which seemed to notice us. For that matter, they didn’t even notice one another. From what I could see of their faces (which wasn’t much considering the background of trees showed right through them), they stared straight ahead, not speaking. There was no emotion on their faces.
Tallis eyed both of us with tight lips before focusing his attention on
me. “Ye will sit in th’ rear ah th’ vessel.”
“What about them?” I asked, glancing at the myriad souls who obviously wanted a place on the boat.
“Dinnae boother aboot them,” he answered, shaking his head as if to reiterate the sentiment. “When ye enter th’ boot, dinnae spick, an’ dinnae loook th’ ferryman in th’ face.”
I didn’t even imagine I could have spoken if I’d wanted to. Instead, my heart had taken up residence in my throat. I couldn’t remember being more frightened in all my life. Tallis turned back toward the river and I noticed the top of his wrist was now healed. As to why his forearms hadn’t healed more quickly, I still had no clue.
I watched the boat approach us and then stop about four or five feet from the shore. The ferryman moved slowly, turning toward us as he nodded to Tallis. None of the spirits made any attempt to approach the boat.
As to looking the ferryman in the face, I didn’t have to because he didn’t have one. There was nothing but darkness under the hood, air. I glanced at Tallis, who simply nodded back at the ferryman before facing me.
“Lass, ye will enter th’ vessel first.”
With a nod, I took his outstretched hand when he offered it. He led me into the water which was so cold, it felt like a thousand tiny mouths biting my ankles. Bill was behind me and I silently thanked my lucky stars that for once, he was obeying Tallis’s command and not making a sound.
The boat was still a good two feet away. I inched forward, the water now up to my knees, and smarting just as much as when I’d first stepped into the river. When we finally reached the boat, Tallis tugged on my hand to tell me I wasn’t supposed to get into it yet. Fishing inside the sporran he wore on the front of his kilt, he produced the small sack of coins he’d taken from the pine box earlier. He opened the satchel and dropped three gold coins, each the width of a small apple, into the palm of his other hand. The ferryman extended his cloaked arm, but there was nothing visible where his hand or arm should have been. Unfazed, Tallis simply dropped the coins into the open air of the ferryman’s cloak. I expected the coins to drop straight into the arctic water, but they simply vanished upon making contact (or not, in this case) with the ferryman’s invisible hand.
Better Off Dead: The Lily Harper Series, Book 1 Page 14