by Alyc Helms
“Ow!” I jerked back, cradling my hand. Her sharp canines had grazed the skin, leaving two angry, red scrapes along the back. “What. The hell?” That’s what I got for trusting foxes.
“You’re welcome,” she said with a sharp, yipping laugh. And with a flick of her tails, she disappeared into the trees.
I took several deep breaths, preparing myself for re-entry. Pasting a big smile on my face, I opened the door and entered.
“Missy! You’re just in time. The tea’s ready. Mrs Hu was just about to go get you.”
“Is everything all right?” Mrs Hu cut off Jill’s enthusiastic greeting. Her lip curled, and the thing in the corner shifted its glare to me.
“Wonderful. You have a lovely garden. So peaceful.”
“You are ready for tea now?” she snapped. The suspicion hadn’t budged. Well, I guess there was one way to gain her trust. I nodded and took my seat next to Jim, bracing myself for what would come next.
The cousins ooh-ed and ah-ed as Mrs Hu plunked the cups and pot on the bare table. Even Gunther looked impressed, and Jill was in awe. I tamped down on the irrational envy that my friends might be witnessing the illusion of a formal tea ceremony being performed by a master.
Swampy-looking water sloshed over the sides of our cups as Mrs Hu poured out. Yellow foam floated on the surface, and I thought I spied… yup. Those were larvae of some kind. Something I’d learned during my brief stint on the streets: if you were hungry enough, you could eat just about anything. Problem was, I wasn’t hungry. Not this hungry. I swallowed down my bile as I stared into my cup.
While Mrs Hu poured, her man-thing plunked plates in front of us. Each one sported a fibrous leaf smeared with mud. The spread looked like the tea parties I used to throw for my grandfather in our garden: muddy water and leaf-surprise. Unlike my grandfather, I couldn’t get away with pretend sipping.
“Well, eat,” Mrs Hu snapped. Knowing I’d lose my nerve if I had to watch the others chowing down, I snatched up one of the mud-leaves. Maybe the hag would mistake my haste for eagerness.
Before I could think too much about what I was doing, I bit down. I had a fleeting sense of tasting compost, things long dead and rotting, iron, grit, and the juicy pop of earthworms, and then it was gone. The earthiness turned sweet like yams, the pop became the crunch of dough fried to a light crisp. I pulled the treat away, looking at it in astonishment. I wasn’t sure why I expected it to taste bad. Red bean paste pancakes were my favorite.
I put the pancake down and lifted my tea, taking a deep breath of the floral brew. Not jasmine, that would have been trite.
“What is this? Chrysanthemum?” I asked, sipping from the delicate cup.
“Lotus blossom, dear,” Mrs Hu responded, her eyes bright. She winked and bent over me, her whisper loud enough for all to hear, “but don’t tell my secret, or all the other tea houses will run me out of business.”
“Not likely,” Claire said, leaning forward to talk past Gunther’s bulk. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a nicer tea than this. Don’t you agree, Anita?”
“Oh yes. I wish we could lure you to Suffolk, Mrs Hu. Lucy would turn green with envy.”
Lucille is the head of the Ladies’ Auxiliary,” Claire said. “She’s Anita’s arch nemesis.”
I nodded along with the others as Mrs Hu bustled around us, refreshing the treats with cheerful industry.
Cradling my cup, I settled into the warmth of camaraderie, happy to let my attention drift between conversations. The cousins and Gunther debated the merits of obscure poets – or, at least, poets I’d never heard of, so maybe not that obscure. Mr Hu dozed in a chair in the corner, while Jill and Mrs Hu exchanged herbal tonic recipes. Like me, Jim seemed content to play observer to the conversations. Except his brow was furrowed.
“Jim? What’s wrong?”
He smiled, but it faded again into a frown. His eyes darted about, like he was looking for something that he thought should be there, but wasn’t. “I don’t know. Nothing. Right?”
I didn’t want Mrs Hu to see his distraction and take unintended insult, so I nudged him to face me, lowering my head so the others wouldn’t catch my whisper. “Jim?”
“I just… there’s something…” He paused, chewing on his lip. “About buses? I’m not sure.” He glanced down at my hand on his arm, and his vague distress sharpened. “Missy, what happened to your hand?”
“Huh?” I glanced down as well. Two long, red scrapes marred my skin. “Huh. I wonder when that happened. It must have been…” I tried to think, but it was fuzzy. I shrugged. It couldn’t have been that important.
“It was when you were in the garden.”
“Garden?” I echoed. “I don’t remember any garden.”
“You don’t…” Jim trailed off as Mrs Hu appeared between us to fill our cups. Jill plopped down on my other side to extol the virtues of some hot pebble wrap she’d just learned about from our hostess.
“Bad continuity,” Jim kept mumbling, his sharp eyes darting about the room. He took a sip of his tea, then grimaced as if he’d tasted something foul. I tested mine before turning to Jill with a half-shrug. Jim was weird. The tea tasted fine to me.
* * *
Our cozy party gabbed well past dark, but Mrs Hu was kind enough to offer us lodging in the loft above. Nothing fancy, she warned, just some old hammocks strung between the beams. We happily accepted whatever she could offer. I had just managed to nod off in spite of the hammock’s creaking and swaying when Jim’s poke startled me awake. I jumped, and my stomach lurched as my swaying bed threatened to overturn me. I struggled onto my side.
“Shouldn’t you be dangling next to your bride?”
“Continuity errors,” he whispered, as if this explained everything.
“Huh?” I said, because it didn’t.
“Anita is allergic to nuts, but she ate the nutcake, and when I asked her about it, she said it wasn’t nutcake at all, it was fudge.”
“Somebody’s a nutcake,” I muttered, but he ignored me. He was on a roll.
“Jill’s vegan, but she ate one of Gunther’s sausages. You have scrapes on your hand, but you don’t remember going out to the garden.”
Jim ran a hand through mussed hair. The look he gave me was almost mad. Pleading. “Something is wrong. We missed the bus.”
“Jim.” I struggled to sit up, then abandoned the effort in defeat as my aching shoulder protested. The hammock swayed, refusing to grant me purchase. “Go back to bed. We’ll talk about this with the others in the morning.”
“No!” he hissed. “They want to believe everything is fine. You knew differently. You knew, and then you came back, and you didn’t know anymore.” He grabbed my wrist, shaking it. “What bit you? What’s happening? Why can’t you remember? And why doesn’t it bother you that you can’t?”
“I…” He had a point. Every time I tried to think about the scrapes, or what had brought us here, or why I wasn’t able to recall these things, my thoughts broke into a million fragments, all distractions. I remembered being shot, could still feel it like a sore muscle, but I couldn’t recall how I’d gotten the fresh scrapes on my hand, or where I was, or how I’d gotten there.
“I can’t think,” I whispered, the beginnings of panic crawling up my throat.
Jim nodded. I struggled to rise again, but the hammock held me fast. The more I struggled, the more the mesh tightened around me. “Help me!”
Jim tried to steady the hammock, but my struggles left me cocooned in the netting. With a curse, he pulled something out of his pocket. A tiny blade snicked open, and he began cutting through the individual strands. A hole widened at the bottom of the net, and I wormed my way out, falling onto my injured shoulder. My yelp pierced the cobweb-festooned rafters.
“You OK?” Jim hoisted me to my feet. I dusted myself off, shooting an irritated glance at the hammock. I froze at what I saw.
“Jim…” his name was more strangled whisper than anything.
“I se
e it. I don’t believe it, but I see it.”
The hammock had morphed into a thick wrap of grey, sticky webbing, too much like something a spider would weave around its prey for my tastes. I shuddered and swiped my arms again to brush away phantom remnants of the webbing.
“We have to free the others.” Jim turned, and I realized mine wasn’t the only cocoon. Dim light flashed off his pocketknife, and I caught sight of a familiar fleur-de-lis logo on the side.
“Always be prepared,” he said with a self-deprecating smile and a two fingered salute before he went to work on Jill’s pod.
Waking up entrapped and having to struggle free did a lot to convince the others that something was wrong. Enough to start unraveling the hag’s illusions. I’d spent a few moments puking in the corner of the loft after recalling what I must have eaten, but the others were spared that memory. They were seeing the truth for the first time, and they were cowed by it. Even Jill had set aside her bouncy optimism, shoulders sagging as she huddled against her husband’s side.
“How did you know?” she whispered to him as we spied on the room below. It looked empty, but the hag and her man-servant had to be somewhere. I wanted to know where before I led us back to the shrine.
“Continuity errors,” he repeated. His mantra.
“Jim, this isn’t a movie. Life doesn’t have continuity errors.”
“Exactly.”
“What do you think she was going to do with us?” Claire asked. She clung to Anita.
Gunther was shaken enough not to care. “Hansel und Gretel,” he said, his florid complexion gone pasty.
“Gunther?” Anita touched the back of his hand. He flinched.
“When I was a boy, I would always have the same nightmare since my nana read to me the story of Hansel und Gretel. I have not dreamed that dream in many years, but I dreamed it tonight.” He wiped a hand over the haunted look in his eyes, then nodded at Jim and me. “The witch is gone. I say we go now, before she returns and tosses us in her oven.”
Anita and Claire nodded; Jill reached for the rickety ladder.
“Wait,” I said as Jim steadied the ladder and Gunther helped Claire follow Jill down, then Anita. Nobody paid me any mind. “She could be anywhere.”
“Well, she’s not here. Besides, she’s just one old lady,” Jim said. “Jill could probably take her. Hell, I could probably take her.”
“Notice he rates my ability to kick ass above his own,” Jill called up.
“I call it like I see it.” Jim climbed down. “Why do you think I married you? I needed a stalwart protector.”
“This is a bad idea,” I muttered, following Jim.
Anita cracked the door and peeked out into the night. “I think it’s clear,” she whispered over her shoulder.
“Allow me to go first,” Gunther offered, pulling her back. He opened the door and charged out before any of us could stop him.
“I guess we’re going then. Ladies?” Jim linked arms with Anita and Claire as though they were going on a Sunday stroll and led them out after Gunther. I glanced over at Jill when she sighed. A sappy grin had replaced her anxious frown. Any woman seeing that look would feel a pang of envy, so I didn’t feel too guilty about mine.
“He plays fantasy football with the guys at work. He thinks magic is just special effects or mass delusion, and that the things Argent Aces can do is just corporate hype. And the main reason my mother likes him is because he’s the first guy I brought home who didn’t reek of patchouli.”
I grinned. I knew what she meant. Scratch the surface, and Jim was a keeper. “You’re a lucky, lucky girl.”
Her sappy grin faded. Her knuckles were white on the door frame. “Only if we survive.”
“Then let’s move.”
Darkness shrouded the clearing. What little moonlight there might have been couldn’t pierce the canopy. Ahead of us, Gunther stumbled and cursed.
“Which way?” he muttered, eyes wide and unblinking. His head swiveled as he searched for some path.
“Here, let me.” I could see in the dark almost as well as the day, one of the perks of my inherited powers. I moved past Gunther, taking his hand. “Link hands everyone.”
I struck out through the trees in the direction the huxian had taken. The train of people behind me shied and jumped at the darkness around us, but I could see the shadows for what they were: just shadows. Wherever our hostess had disappeared to, she wasn’t here.
“Are you sure this is the way?” Gunther asked. His hand was clammy, his grip finger-crushing.
“As sure as I can be. We need to get back to the shrine. There’s a… guide there who will take us back.”
“What?” “Back to the monastery?” “What guide?” “How do you know?”
I grimaced at the barrage of questions, in part because answering them would require too much exposition, and in part because the raised voices would give away our position. Not that the hag needed any help.
“Look, let’s just get to the shrine. I’ll explain once we’re – oof!”
“Missy!”
My hand was torn from Gunther’s as something the size and shape of a Pittsburgh linebacker charged into me, lifting me and slamming me into the trunk of a tree. Pain arced down my arm. I doubled over my attacker’s shoulder, struggling for breath.
“Run,” I tried to gasp, but it was just a soundless movement of lips. The linebacker ground me into the tree, giving me a good idea of what a literal rock/hard place situation felt like. My friends huddled together in the middle of the path, trying to make out what had become of me. Beyond them, her toothy smile gleaming razor-sharp to my eyes, stood the yaoguai.
“Run!” I found enough air to croak the command. I set my dangling feet against the trunk, wormed my forearms against the shoulders of the meaty giant, and kicked back with all my strength. It wasn’t clean or graceful, but the hag’s ogre was top-heavy. He stumbled back far enough to release me from the pin. I fell hard on my hip and rolled to one side, rising to a crouch. I drew a breath to yell at my still-dithering friends when the ogre opened his mouth in a hideous bellow.
It wasn’t the sound that was awful. It was the yawning chasm of green, glowing nothingness. I shied away from the blast of heat and the stench of sulfur, shielding my eyes from the glaring light. It flooded the clearing, giving the others their first look at what had been threatening us.
If this was the thing the hag had kept hulking in the corner, it had grown since we went to bed. Its skin glistened in the green light, moist surface and shiny grey-brown underneath, like mud packed into entrails. Knobby protrusions – truncated horns of some sort – jutted out over beady, black eyes. The creature was all torso and muscled arms, cartoonishly so. If the cartoon in question was made by Rob Zombie.
One of the cousins squeaked in fear, and the demon-thing swiveled at the sound of easier prey. He took a step in their direction.
“I said run!” I snapped a kick at the back of the demon’s knee. It stumbled hard to one side. Roaring again, it tore up two huge clods of dirt and hurled them at me. I skipped to the side of one and ducked under the other, spinning into a kick aimed at the monster’s jaw.
I cried out at the impact. It was like kicking a slab of granite. Only my boots saved me from a broken foot. Thank Doc Martin for steel toes.
My cry spurred the others to action. Gunther wrapped an arm around each cousin and crashed ahead into the brush. “Go! We go!” Jim had his arms around Jill, restraining her from rushing to help me.
“Get her out of here!” I shouted. The demon rose, shaking his head and blinking. Well, at least my kick had hurt him too. He rubbed a meaty fist against his jaw, wiping away a dribble of glowing green ichor that I hoped was blood. The ichor hissed and smoked where it hit the ground.
“You should worry for yourself.” The demon’s mouth moved, but it was the hag’s voice that emerged. My gaze flicked back to her, still huddled in the shadows of the brush. Both of her hands were raised, fingers twisting
in a familiar pattern. It took me a moment to place it. Puppetry. I’d seen marionetteers work the sticks just so.
Her left hand twitched and the demon responded with a devastating roundhouse. I tried to dance out of the way, but his fist clipped me on my good shoulder with the force of a truck, slamming me face-first into the dirt. I tried to roll up to my feet, but the world lurched, and I only managed to flop onto my back. I curled my knees to my chest and thrust up with both feet as the demon loomed into view, catching him under the chin with my heels. His head snapped up and he stumbled away, letting loose another roar. Acidic ichor flew in a spray, hissing with little tracers of smoke wherever it landed. I smelled burning rubber and leather. My Docs weren’t going to survive this, even if I did.
“You, you’re doing this!” Jill cried, worming free of Jim. Snatching up a deadfall branch, she flailed away at the hag. A good thing for me. The demon halted mid-lunge, jerking around in a macabre dance. More ichor flew. I considered kipping up to my feet, but I wasn’t sure I had it in me. I rolled upright, doing my best to avoid the acidic blood.
“Go away, stupid girl!” Unlike her minion, the hag wasn’t all that sturdy. Jill and her branch were routing the old witch. Unfortunately.
Snarling at Jill, the hag thrust out her hands. She spat something in a Chinese dialect I didn’t recognize. The demon lurched away from me and stumbled toward his mistress and her attacker.
“Jill, look out!” I jumped on the demon’s back. With my arm barred across his thick neck, I tried to steer him aside or knock him out. My shoulder ached as I called on muscles I’d left recuperating too long. Acid-blood burned through the sleeve of my coat, down to my arm underneath. I clenched my teeth against the fire and tugged harder, but my yanking did no good. The demon juggernauted at Jill.
Jim tried to pull his bride away, but Jill stood stiff with fear, branch held out in futile defense. The hag cackled and flicked her fingers. The demon threw me from its back. I slammed shoulder-first into the hard ground, and for the second time in as many minutes I was left struggling to breathe around pain blooming like a red lotus through my back and chest.