“Well, here we are. Donny here can queue up whatever you’re looking for. Now, if y’all will excuse me, I gotta go run a network.” Leland guffawed and lumbered good-naturedly out of the room.
Donny, a squirrelly, pimply-faced intern smiled widely. “So, what can I help you with, Chief? We’ve practically got Gless Inlet’s whole life in pictures here. Digitally mastered and stored in HD brilliance!”
He proudly patted the top of his computer monitor.
“Oh, yeah,” David gave a half-grin. “Well, see if you can tap into some of that brilliance and show me the footage of the Godmarsh Toad spot that ran last week on the five o’clock news.”
“You got it, Chief!” Donny snapped to it, his long fingers flying across the keyboard so fast they were a blur. I stifled a chuckle as the Chief stared in awe. He was more the hunt-and-peck type.
“Voilà!” Donny suddenly exclaimed and swiveled his chair to afford us a full view of his monitor screen. There, in living color, was Millicent Pond, resplendent in her spiky green hair and a dress of…slime? What the…
Millicent was covered in a viscous, opaque film that stretched like rubber with every emphatic arm shake she was giving to the person standing opposite her. The angle of the camera was such that I couldn’t see much more than the shoes of the mystery figure who was receiving the brunt of Millicent’s tirade. The surroundings looked vaguely familiar, however. I thought I caught a broad leaf of a pokeberry plant near a crumbling foundation at the edge of the frame. One thing was for certain. For a spokesperson, it did not at all appear that Millicent possessed people skills.
Nope. She pretty much just looked downright possessed. Her eyes sparked with a fevered energy like she was being driven by some powerful, internal force.
The ground around her seemed to swell and recede, but I couldn’t be sure if it was just a trick of the light. A butterfly flew into the frame.
“Wa-a-a-it for it…” David drawled.
GLOP!
A fat, sticky tongue shot in front of the camera and the butterfly was gone! Just…gone! I gave a little gasp.
Suddenly, the moving ground came into sharp HD focus. Toads! Hundreds upon hundreds of hopping, squatting, pulsating Godmarsh Toads! There were so many of them crawling across the ground; I’d nearly missed the familiar crooked cobbled path leading up to Portia Fearwyn’s ancestral home. Gaunt Manor. The camera angle widened to reveal a stern-faced Portia standing rigidly on her stoop, wand in hand, the Gorthland Swamps bubbling and menacing to the left of the foreground, while Millicent continued to rail.
It didn’t seem to matter to the environmentalist that she had at least ten of the affectionate but adhesive amphibians stuck to her person. Her jaw worked furiously. And it was readily apparent from the rapid flapping of her lips that it was not a civil conversation, but we couldn’t hear a word.
“Hey, Donny. Mind giving us some volume?”
“What? Oh, sure thing, Miss Jenkins!”
Millicent’s dark, sandpapered voice rasped out of the speakers. “The Godmarsh Toad cannot help itself! It is up to people like us to give it a hand…”
Millicent plucked a quick, sticky tongue from her right hand.
“We must give it a voice…”
She was immediately silenced by an unexpected, amphibious French-kiss.
Yeah. You see. That would have sealed the deal for me right there. The Godmarsh Toad would have been on its own. But, Millicent was persistent, if not annoying. She removed the probing tongue with some degree of difficulty and kept at it.
“The Godmarsh Toad’s habitat is dwindling! Developers are draining the swamps and bogs that are home to the toad and the places where they lay their eggs! I am making a motion to the SPCA that this entire area be declared a wildlife preserve and suggest that they bring qualified scientists in here to study the life cycle and mating habits of the toad in an effort to better understand this misunderstood creature and hopefully give it a chance to proliferate.”
As far as I could tell, the Godmarsh Toad seemed to be proliferating just fine. One toad hopped up on another's back and started doing something I will avoid detailing here.
“The Godmarsh Toad is an endangered species and must be protected!”
Portia, who had remained stoically silent throughout Millicent’s entire monolog, suddenly leaned in, an intense green glow in her beady eyes. It didn’t help that the camera pushed in for an extreme close-up. Her pale lips parted in a slow, sibilant hiss.
“The only thing I see here that’s endangered is you, Ponds!”
A crackle of green lightning arced from the tip of Portia’s wand and, suddenly, the camera went black.
“Wait! What happened? Where’d the picture go?” I cried, shaking Donny’s thin shoulder.
“That’s it, Miss Jenkins. There isn’t anything else. Whatever Miss Fearwyn did killed the camera.”
David leaned back and scratched his chin thoughtfully. “I guess now the only question is did she kill anything else?”
“Portia does like her privacy. And Millicent was threatening to have all sorts of folks tromping around her swamp,” I suggested. “And Maude did say that it was no ordinary lightning strike that killed Millicent. Did you see that freaky lightning sparking from the tip of Portia’s wand?”
David nodded and glanced at his watch, tapping it several times in rapid succession before a puzzled look settled across his features. “Huh. Stopped working. Second one this week.”
He looked back at me. “Well, anyway, it’s not safe to travel out to the swamps this late, Hat. In the morning. Then, maybe we’ll find out.”
“Find out what?”
“If that freaky lightening show makes Portia guilty.”
Yeah, I thought, an anxious band of worry tightening in my chest as I rubbed my still tingling fingers together and looked at David.
Guilty as charged.
Chapter Seven
I could be a morning person. If morning started around lunchtime. However, when Jet pounced on my head at 6:00 AM, I wasn’t given much choice in the matter.
“Hattie! Hattie! Hattie! Rise and shine!” He kneaded Grammy Chimera’s quilt with all four paws as if he was trying to assist my blood flow into wakefulness. All it did was drive me deeper under the old patchwork blanket and into the mound of down feather pillows I had been nesting in.
“Aw, Jet! Come on! What day is it even?” I grumbled from my cocoon.
“It’s Hump Day!” he responded excitedly.
“Jeez, Jet. Come back when it’s Saturday. After Monday and Tuesday, even the damned calendar says WTF!”
His rough pink tongue lolled out, and he rolled back in a fit of raucous laughter. He gave several hearty bounces on my full bladder. “Come on, Hattie! You have a date with Chief Trew this morning! Hump Day! Hump Day! Hump Day!”
“It’s not a date. It’s an investigation.”
“To-MAY-to, to-MAH-to.”
“Oof!” I groaned, instantly regretting the protein shake Millie had forced me to suck down last night when I returned from the television station with David.
“You haven’t been getting near enough nutrition lately, Hattie,” Millie had insisted. She had shoved the tall glass under my nose within seconds of me entering the shop. “The human brain needs protein to function at optimum levels. All the experts say so. High-protein foods help to balance blood sugar and ensure a steady supply of glucose to the brain. Plus it might help with skin conditions such as .... well, that.” My assistant pointed at my cheek where the fading fungal attack from the Town Hall bird droppings was still apparent. I rubbed at it subconsciously.
High-protein foods? It looked like she’d taken a clump of the front lawn, thrown it into the blender, and served it up with a couple of ice cubes.
Sniff.
Yep. Definitely grass clippings. I had wrinkled my nose.
Millie had stamped an impertinent foot. Grammy Chimera may have passed on into the Divine years ago, but I swear! Sometimes I
think my herbal assistant was channeling the old girl.
“Come on, Hattie! You don’t want your brain turning to mush now, do you? Or, maybe you do,” she quipped snappily. “Who knows? You could room with Cressida Dreddock.”
I had shaken my head vehemently at the thought of the poor old, addled twin sister of Nebula Dreddock. The Midnight Hill resident was occasionally lucid enough to offer helpful tidbits of information here and there, but, for the most part, she was a stark, raving loon. Misuse of Ravingsbatch could have that effect on people. I sighed, defeated. Millie beamed widely, confident she had driven her point home.
“No? So, drink up. There’s wheat grass and spirulina, some kale, spinach, and a scoop of soy protein.”
One Front Lawn Hi-Ball. Bottoms up.
“I put a little Calea za cate chichi in there, too. You know. To help you relax.”
“The Mexican dream herb?”
Jet swooned. “Aw, man! The humans always get the good stuff. If she doesn’t want it, Millie, I call dibs!”
“It’s not for you, Jet. It’s for Hat.” Millie smiled mischievously and shrugged.
“Who knows? Maybe you’ll have a super lucid dream about a particular guy who tickles your fancy.” She giggled. “And, if you’re lucky, maybe he’ll even ‘tickle your fancy.'”
I was a touch uncomfortable with Millie discussing any of my lady parts. Fancy or plain. Metaphoric or no. I had squirmed a little on reply. “Are you talking about Chief Trew or Gideon Shields?”
“Yes!” Millie had giggled, but her laughter was cut short as Jet leaped onto the counter and nearly spilled Millie’s concoction.
“Of course Hattie’s not interested in that towering Adonis. Gideon Shields. Pah!” Jet laughed a little too loudly. “Hattie’s her own person. She doesn’t need some knight swooping in on a horse to carry her off to some high castle in the clouds! She needs someone a little more down-to-earth. Someone who appreciates her for who she is. We all know where Hattie’s heart Trew-ly lies.”
Jet scrambled for traction on the slick counter surface as he received a hefty hip bump from Gloom…and fell, flailing, to the floor.
“Yup!” Gloom had stated. “Right between her lungs, Genius.”
My only female cat sniffed with her usual loftiness. A guarded glance passed between Gloom and Onyx, the latter of which had been watching events unfold from the other side of the room. Onyx dipped his chin at his sister.
“Bee-tee-dubs,” Gloom muttered over the edge of the counter at Jet. “Gravity works.”
"Yeah. Thanks for the P.S.A., Sis,” Jet grumbled and moped along to the far corner of the room, pausing wistfully at the catnip.
I had been so exhausted, I didn’t really care if I dreamed about The Jolly Green Giant, which, after I had reluctantly sucked down the entire, green, gritty mess, I supposed might just have been a very realistic possibility. I thanked Millie, sent her packing for the evening, kicked off my shoes and crawled into bed, clothes and all.
What I had dreamt that night made a hundred foot tall green man seem very commonplace.
It was one of those dreams that you had a hard time separating from reality. The ones where you wake up and have to check in with your brain. The sights, the smells, the sounds are just so vivid; it seems more like an actual memory than mere multisensory hallucinations brought on by random firings in the neocortex.
In my “multisensory illusion,” I was back on the beach on Cathedral. At least, it looked like Cathedral with the foreboding black cliffs rising like ebony, stone-faced sentinels in the background. But, something was different. A yawning cavity gnashed out angrily from the crags, sucking at the surrounding day. It swallowed the surrounding light into its inky blackness.
Shush. Shush. Click, click, click.
That sound again! Even in the dream there was clear recognition. This time there was no dead body to distract me from following it. I headed in the direction of the noise.
As I moved toward the rough-hewn lava staircase, up toward the anonymous cave, the crystalline sand shifted in quiet crunches beneath my sandaled feet. Strangely, the same sandals Maude had roasted in the lab. But, yet, here there were. Good as new. Tiny little crystals of white silicon dioxide and finer grains of crystalline carbon sticking in the textured soles. I wiggled my painted toes to dislodge a few random granules that had wedged between my digits.
It was funny. I couldn’t remember coming back to the green isle at all. If that’s, indeed, where I was. I drifted through the fogginess in my head. Why had I come? I suppose it was to meet Gideon. He had promised me a dinner.
No. My memory balked. There was something else. Something I couldn’t see.
But, it was something I could hear.
The deep rumble of thunder rolled in the distance, pulling my gaze toward the slow-boiling nimbus on the horizon’s brim. Nature’s cup was threatening to run over.
I had to hurry. The storm was coming.
But, hurry to do what? I steadied my climb with the frayed twist of splintered twine I'd used before. In this lifetime? I felt confused.
Shush. Shush. Click, click, click.
I had reached the top of the staircase. I found the hauntingly familiar warning sign, only this time it wasn’t warning of an undertow or dangerous riptide. This time there were only three words lettered in a dire, arterial red.
“Hic Sunt Dracones.”
The short phrase tugged at an important memory. I’d seen those words somewhere before.
Suddenly, a strong, searing wind blew through the trees above my head. Thick trunks bent and creaked, as Nature leaned down to whisper a warning through her rustling leaves.
This storm was bringing more than rain.
Thunder rumbled ominously
This storm was bringing danger.
Another sound drifted on the air. A lilting, sing-song melody in a child’s voice. It almost sounded like “Rain, Rain, Go Away.” Appropriate, I thought, given the approaching weather. I tried to catch the words.
“With his blue and lapping tongue, many of you will be stung. Snip, snap, dragon.”
Snapdragons. I remembered the bright, cheery flower in Grammy Chimera’s flower bed. She had always planted red ones.
“Red snapdragons give positive energy,” Grammy used to say as she’d have me help her gather up bouquets of the heavy-petaled flowers to brighten up the shop. She would hum along with the fat black bumblebees as she clipped the fragrant stems.
“I like snapdragons,” I would say while dodging the bobbing bugs. “I think they’re my favorite flower. They’re so pretty.”
Grammy Chimera would waggle a gnarled, knuckled finger at me, one eye squinting low.
“That may be, but be wary, girl. There may come a time when snapdragons will serve you well beyond just being a beautiful flower. Every flower has a history. Every single one has a life's purpose too. You just need to listen.”
“You’re just joking, Grammy. Flowers can’t talk!” I had laughed. Grammy Chimera had clucked her tongue cautiously.
“Oh, but they can, girl, and you’d be wise to listen. Tulips can be a declaration of love. A seven-petaled rose will mean order and balance. Snapdragons? Snapdragons tell us things are not always what they appear to be. And be careful where you stick your nose because magic is in the air.”
Grammy would often joke about many things. Magic wasn’t one of them.
Maybe I wasn’t so fond of snapdragons, after all, I had thought at the time. I remember waving my hand across a swath of bright, yellow puffs tucked in a far, secluded corner of Grammy’s cottage garden. I snapped a single blossom free and had skipped over to her.
“What about this one?” I declared, thrusting the yellow button of a bloom under her nose. She had immediately swatted it from my hand. It had fallen to the dirt. Grammy Chimera had crushed it under foot.
“The tansy is a deceitful flower, child. It looks happy enough, but the friend who offers it is no friend to you at all.”
&nbs
p; Grammy’s face twisted into a severe frown.
I had shuddered. “Why? What does it mean?”
“Someone gives you a bouquet of tansies, child; it’s not because they care for you. No. Not one whit. Not a single iota. A tansy… is a declaration of war.”
That such a cheery-looking, pleasant flower could carry such an insidious message had chilled me, even remembering it in my dream, but then so did the childish singing drifting on the wind. An explosive rumble of thunder rolled through the sky. A sudden sense of urgency fluttered my heart. If a child was out alone when this storm hit…
The air became increasingly oppressive. My breath punched angrily at my lungs. My feet slowed in their march toward the singing, the soles of my shoes sinking into the sandy path. I could still hear the eerie melody, rolling over on itself, again and again.
I finally came to a clearing where a small boy danced around a golden bowl of blue flames. I thought I could see something in the bottom of the bowl, under the tongues of fire. The boy skipped merrily around the fire, singing his odd little tune, then suddenly stopped.
“Hi, Hattie!” he called happily. His familiarity caught me by surprise.
“Come and play!” he beckoned eagerly, like a childhood friend, and plunged his hand into the fire.
“Don’t! You’ll get hurt!” I cried. But, no sound came from my throat. But, the warning was unnecessary. It was as if he couldn’t even feel the searing heat of the licking pyre. Like it was cold and not hot. He withdrew his hand without a single burn or blemish. He stared at me intently with ice blue eyes.
“Snip snap dragon, flee fast with your wagons,” he sang and began his merry little dance again.
Another figure came strolling up the hill into the clearing. Gideon! Oh, thank the Lord and Lady!
“Gideon!” I called out. “Gideon! Help!”
Gideon smiled and nodded. He raised a long arm toward the horizon. “A storm is coming.”
I turned. The encroaching clouds were barreling down on the island like a freight train. I turned back to Gideon. “I know! I know!”
The Black Diamond Curse (Hattie Jenkins & The Infiniti Chronicles Book 4) Page 8