“Now, look, Flora, I’ve been thinking,” the Butcher said, making no move to open the lock.
“Ayah?” I said warily. Whenever people say they’ve been thinking, they have never been thinking anything good.
“Maybe you never heard of me in the future, but surely you’ve heard of Hardhands. He’s a great hero. The Warlord’s Fist.”
“Hmmm?” I said evasively.
“Tell me what happens to him. I gotta know.”
“That wasn’t part of our deal.”
“It is now. Tell me, or you are on your own to finish that mission.”
“That’s not very rangery of you!” I said indignantly. “You can’t change a pinkie promise!” Now her true colors were coming out—trying to change a pinkie promise!
“I don’t care. I have got to know. Tell me. And the truth, too, don’t make anything up, like I can see you trying to do. Ranger’s honor. Please.”
“Nini Mo said it’s not good to know the future.”
“I don’t give a fike what Nini says,” the Butcher said fiercely “I want to know what you say. You said you never heard of me; does that mean Hardhands kills me?”
I didn’t know what to tell her. If I told her the truth, she’d be devastated. But if I lied, she’d go forward unprepared. She might grow up to be a traitor and a killer, but now she was going out on a limb for me, and didn’t that deserve something? “I don’t know...”
“Tell me: Is Hardhands dead?”
Surely that couldn’t hurt. “Ayah.”
“Well, that’s something. Does he die happily in his bed?”
“No.” My blood went cold as I realized that earlier I had told her that Hardhands was still alive—that he had refused to help Nini Mo. Pigface, what if she noticed my slip? You gotta keep your lies straight, Nini Mo said.
But the Butcher was so pleased at the thought of Hard-hands dead that she swallowed my lie without question. “Ah, that’s good news. Tell me how. Was it painful?”
“Very painful,” I said, desperate to get on with it. “Excruciating.”
“But how?” she persisted.
I cast about for the most painful, embarrassing thing I could think of “A rat crawled up the pot, bit him on the hinder, and the wound festered. Satisfied?”
“Oh yes,” she answered, clearly delighted with my lie.
The Butcher pressed her index finger, still encircled with the Bilskinir Key, against the tiny keyhole on the sarcophagus’s lip. The lock clicked as its tumblers turned over. The hasp popped open, and the Butcher flipped it up. She grinned at me, triumphantly. “Come on, put some back into it.”
We braced ourselves as best as we could—which wasn’t very good at all, with the ledge being so narrow—and grasped the edge of the sarcophagus. We heaved. And heaved. And heaved. Pushed and grunted, and grunted and pushed. All the blood rushed to my head in a dull pounding swell; my hands burned and my muscles screamed. The lid did not lift.
“Put yer back in it,” the Butcher said through gritted teeth. Under the smeared black, her face had turned tomato red.
“I am,” I gritted back. My hands slid off the marble, and I almost lost my balance. The Butcher grabbed me just as I began to fall, and I steadied myself in her grip.
“On the count of three,” she said.
“Maybe we need a lever?”
“I felt it move. Let’s try again. One, two, three.”
Again we heaved and strained, and this time I felt the marble move slightly. I closed my eyes, put my back into it, and felt another little movement. Another grunting push, and—the lid flew up so smoothly and easily that the Butcher and I both almost tumbled in. This time I recovered first, and grabbed her before she ended up flat on her face.
Inside the sarcophagus was a plain black wooden box, nailed shut. Green chalk marks were scrawled across the lid, but they were faded and impossible to read. A funeral prayer probably, or maybe a Protection Sigil. From somewhere on her person, the Butcher produced an extremely large knife and began to pry up nail heads. I dug my penknife out of my dispatch case and did the same. The air inside the sarcophagus was stale with old perfume and a musty, decaying smell, which was making me mighty uneasy I was beginning to get the strong feeling that Georgiana Segunda was not so fresh. But when I voiced that worry to the Butcher, she scoffed at my squeamishness and I let it go. If she could take the stench, so could I.
After several broken fingernails (me) and spurts of horrific swearing (the Butcher), we had all the nails out and the lid loosened.
“Ready?” the Butcher asked. It was hard to tell under the black paint, but I thought she did look a bit green about the edges. Ha!
“Ayah.”
But still we hesitated, staring at each other. Georgiana may be disgusting, I told myself, but she was dead. She couldn’t hurt us. The Butcher must have been thinking along the same lines, for she said, “‘Never flinch,’ Nini says,” and I think she was trying to persuade herself as much as me.
“Dare, win, or...,” I responded.
“Disappear!” we chorused together.
We heaved up and over. The lid flew right out of our hands, then hit the ground with an appalling thunder. If Paimon didn’t hear that, he was stone-cold deaf Or absolutely knackered from providing The Tygers of Wrath’s galvanic juice. I’d take either one, as long as it kept him away.
I looked down into the coffin. And there was Georgiana Haðraaða, covered with a thin funeral drape, lying on a bed of red springy stuff—her hair, which either had been extremely long or kept growing after she died. The hair spilled out from underneath the funeral drape, filling the coffin almost to overflowing.
The other Haðraaða dead had looked merely asleep, their flesh still firm, their clothes still bright, as though they were only waiting for the dinner bell to wake them. Georgiana Segunda’s funeral drape was almost transparent, and it could not hide the sunken cheeks, the livid, twisted mark around her neck, the deep sockets of her eyes. She wore the Pontifexa’s tiara, a thin band of silver from which sprang two blue-and-green enamel feathers, one on either side of her forehead, like antennae.
“Paimon should be punished for allowing Grandmamma to look so bad,” the Butcher said. “She wouldn’t be happy She was very carefUl to always look her best.”
“Gorgeousness ends at the grave,” I said, which is what Mamma said to Udo once, when he had told her that he was going to die young and leave an exquisite corpse.
“Not for Haðraaðas,” the Butcher said. “He killed her, you know, Hardhands, the fiking rat’s bane.”
“I thought Georgiana Segunda killed herself rather than submit to the Warlord,” I answered. The Butcher shot me a poisonous look.
“Who gave the City to Florian? He did. Hardhands. He gave her no choice. Better to kill yourself than to submit. There’s no honor in submission.”
“Better to retreat and regroup than to rout,” I said. “Didn’t Nini Mo say?”
Another poisonous look. “I never heard Nini say such a thing; I don’t think she ever would. Grandmamma hung herself from the Tree of Woe, with her dressing-gown sash, but it was Hardhands’s betrayal that made her do it. So he killed her. And he would kill me if he got a chance, but he’s not going to get it.”
Much as I hated to admit it, I was starting to feel a twinge of pity for the Butcher. No matter how annoying they were, I did have my family, and the dogs, and the horses, and my friends. Who did she have? A servitor nurse and a servitor plushy Pig. A murderous husband. And she was not going to live happily ever after.
The Butcher carefully drew back the funeral drape. Georgiana’s clawlike hands were folded on her chest, her spindly fingers wrapped around a small black book: her Diario. Finally! A hopeful, triumphant feeling washed over me. There was the object of all my efforts, within my grasp. With Nini Mo’s help, I would return to Lord Axacaya—Lo, the Conquering Hero Comes!—and he would be proud of me, and together we would save the City.
Suddenly, jarringly,
the Pontifexa’s thick black lashes fluttered open, and her hands trembled. Her eyes shone like glassy marbles, and their whites were not white at all, but a muddy brown. Her throat spasmed, and she gasped as though she were choking, then swallowed hard.
“Tiny Doom,” Georgiana Segunda said thickly. Her tongue protruded wormlike from her bloody lips. She opened and closed her mouth a couple of times, as though to make sure that her jaw still worked.
The Butcher and I were transfixed on our precarious perch, hardly able to move for horror. Or at least, I was hardly able to move. The Butcher looked less horrified, more strangely joyful.
“Grandmamma!” she cried.
“Help me up, my darling,” Georgiana Segunda croaked.
The Butcher gingerly reached out and took the Pontifexa’s arms. The Pontifexa’s eyes rolled wildly, and then they stared straight ahead. As she sat up, the Diario slid toward me. I grabbed it and slid it inside my dispatch case. Neither Georgiana Segunda nor the Butcher noticed.
Georgiana Segunda turned her head slowly in my direction, and the diamonds on her tiara jiggled. The enamel feathers now looked black, insectile, like the antennae of a cockroach. Mold crept down her cheeks, like greenish blush, and beneath it, her skin was mottled black and gray. But the Butcher didn’t seem to mind. She hugged the Pontifexa, her hands leaving red marks on Georgiana’s bare shoulders. Georgiana Segunda tried to raise her arms, but they wiggled, bonelessly, and fell away.
“Grandmamma, he stole my House from me!” the Butcher complained.
The Pontifexa answered slowly, “Who stole it, darling?”
“Hardhands! He stole my House.”
“Shame on you for letting him.”
The Butcher looked taken aback; I guess she expected sympathy. “But I was only a kid. How could I stop him?”
The Pontifexa coughed, gratingly, and a little trickle of white oozed out of her mouth—a fat wiggly worm. It fell onto her neck and then disappeared into her cleavage. I swallowed hard.
“A Haðraaða doesn’t make excuses,” the Pontifexa slurred.
“But—”
“Kiss me, darling girl, I’m feeling slippery again. Can I see you?”
The Butcher leaned forward, but her grandmother flapped a limp hand at her. “Not you, Tiny Doom. The other girl, the last one. Kiss me, darling girl.”
I did not want to touch those dead lips, puffy and black. “Uh—”
“Kiss her, Flora,” the Butcher said urgently. “She needs our strength.”
Indeed, the Pontifexa was already looking more wobbly, as though her bones were dissolving and she would soon collapse into a puddle of empty skin. But I did not want to kiss her—now that I had the Diario I just wanted to scarper.
Then, at a sudden bright pulse of pain, I jerked back. As fast as a striking snake, the Pontifexa had bitten my arm. I jumped down, landing on the marble floor with a heavy bone-jarring jolt. That was nothing compared to the throbbing in my arm; the Pontifexa’s sharp teeth had sheared through two layers of clothing to reach flesh.
“Grandmamma!” the Butcher protested. “That was mean.”
The Pontifexa grinned at her, a trickle of blood—my blood—dripping from the corner of her mouth. Her wormy tongue licked her lips, and she closed her eyes, savoring my blood. When the Pontifexa opened her eyes, they had changed to red—even the sclera—and when she spoke, her voice was much clearer. “I’m so glad that you came to see me, darlings. So glad you thought to let me out. I’ve been trapped for so long.”
“What do you mean, Grandmamma? Are you stuck in the Abyss?” the Butcher asked. She was still up on the plinth, awfully close to the Pontifexa’s sharp teeth. Too close.
“No, my darling. My flesh is my tomb. And this box has been my trap. But now you have let me out, my bungalow baby-doll. And I am hungry”
The Butcher was slow on the uptake, but I immediately realized what that meant. Georgiana Segunda was a ghoul. Her Anima remained trapped in her corpse, in a kind of living death. I couldn’t imagine a worse fate. Your body decaying while your mind stayed active. Lying like that for years, stuck in a coffin, while the worms nibbled at you and your entrails congealed into goo—it made me sick just thinking about it. Unlike zombies, ghouls have Will and Aptitude; they are not mindless animated corpses. They know what is happening to them. And they are ravenously hungry, always craving human flesh.
And what else was there for Georgiana to eat here but us?
“Butcher—I mean Tiny Doom—I think we should get out of here,” I said urgently The Butcher ignored me, still staring at her ghoulish grandmamma.
“Grandmamma, can we help you?” she asked.
“I am hungry and I want to eat,” Georgiana said, and reached out one long bony arm. The Butcher remained transfixed. I ran forward and yanked her boot; she tumbled off the plinth, landing heavily on me, and then rolled to her feet, protesting.
“Come on!” I shouted. “Tiny Doom, RUN!”
Georgiana was standing, her red hair falling about her like some wiry galvanic cape. “Come to me, my little poppet!”
“But Grandmamma!” the Butcher wailed. I grabbed her arm. Georgiana’s movements were jerky, but swiftness made up for the lack of grace. She clambered down the side of the sarcophagus, spiderlike. In a blur of motion, she was almost upon us, clawlike hands outstretched, mouth a gaping maw of rotting black teeth.
Thirty-Six
Trapped! A Burrow. Desperate Measures.
WE RAN LIKE jackrabbits out of the clearing and into the maze. I was huffing and puffing; I should sign up for track at Sanctuary and work on my wind. The Butcher’s wind was fine. She sprinted like a trooper doing triple-time with an entire company of Flayed Riders behind her, quickly outpacing me.
Though our drumming feet made too much noise to hear the sounds of pursuit behind us, I knew that Georgiana was hot on our heels. She was hungry, and we were fresh and sweet; who knows when she’d again have the chance for such a yummy snack?
Up ahead the maze forked; the Butcher had already torn down the right-hand path, even though the blaze indicated we should go left. I tried unsuccessfully to grab her, but she threw me off, kept going. I followed, not wanting to be left behind, even if we were going the wrong way.
“Darling girls...” The mournful cry echoed unnervingly close behind us. I tripped on a root, and the Butcher hauled me back onto my feet. We hit a dead end, turned around in a jumble, and made it back to the junction before Georgiana did. We plunged down the other pathway—but now she sounded much closer.
“Pig!” I puffed. “Set him on her!”
“I don’t want him to hurt her,” the Butcher puffed back.
“She wants to eat us!”
“She’s my grandmother!”
“She’s a ghoul!”
“It’s not her fault! To the right!”
Behind us now, we could hear the shuffling slither of Georgiana’s robes, the wet slap of her feet. “Baby dolls, a little nibble. I promise you, just a tiny nibble...”
The moans were getting closer, as was the stench of disintegration, strong enough that even the funeral incense couldn’t hide it. We turned a corner and ran down a long leafy passageway I looked over my shoulder and saw the shuffling shape of Georgiana, bony arms outstretched, her hair crackling and writhing around her head. She was gnashing her blackened teeth, which, though wobbly, looked more than sharp enough to shred our flesh.
“Darling lonely only,” Georgiana slurred. She was fast, only a few feet behind us now, close enough that I could smell—could taste—the rancid puff of her breath as she wheezed air in and out of her lungs, not to breathe, of course, but to speak.
The Butcher sped up and pulled me with her, my lungs turning to painful bellows.
We turned another corner, and then another, and then saw up ahead—a dead end. If we doubled back now, we’d run straight into Georgiana. She hadn’t caught up with us yet, but she was going to soon. Oh Nini Mo, help us now, please.
“
Fike! Fike!” the Butcher gasped. “We are fiked. Completely fiked!”
“Language!” I panted. I noticed that near the ground some of the branches in the maze wall were bent enough to make a small opening. I slapped at the branches and discovered a burrow just big enough for the two of us. Quickly, we slithered inside.
We lay in the burrow, hardly daring to breath, and listened to Georgiana stagger by, muttering. The burrow smelled strongly of coyote, which hopefully would mask the smell of us. My heart was pounding so hard that it seemed as though my blood would pump right out of my ears. The Butcher pressed tightly against me, trembling, her quivery breathing echoing in my ear, her breath damp on my hair. Her presence was comforting. At least I wasn’t in this alone. Also, she was closer to the opening, so she’d get eaten first. Gradually, the sounds of Georgiana’s progress grew fainter. A near escape, said Nini Mo, is better than no escape at all.
“I need a cigarillo,” the Butcher whispered, after a long, long time.
“I need to pee,” I whispered back.
“What do we do? We have to free her from the ruin of her body Send her on through the Abyss. We can’t leave her like this.” The Butcher sounded anguished.
“We’ll have to call Paimon; he’ll know what to do.”
“I can’t,” she moaned. “Hardhands will kill me. He’ll kill us both if he knows that we opened the tomb. He made her like this! He hated her, and he made her into a ghoul. We have to do something!”
“But what can we do?”
“You must know some sigil or something that will free her. You are a ranger —do something!” the Butcher hissed. No longer was she so cocky; now she was looking to me for a plan, and I was realizing the downside to lying through your teeth. What if you came to a point when you needed to prove yourself and could not? For a while Georgiana’s crashing had been distant, but now it was starting to sound closer again, and the stench of the ghoul was growing stronger.
Flora's Dare: How a Girl of Spirit Gambles All to Expand Her Vocabulary, Confront a Bouncing Boy Terror, and Try to Save Califa from a Shaky Doom (Despite Being Confined to Her Room) Page 24