He opened his mouth and screamed loud and monotone: “Ahh.” It sounded more like a sigh than a scream, largely unlike the former only by volume.
“Hot damn, it’s working,” said Merry. She started to circle around the wooden man as he fell to his knees, his sawdust colored suit starting to fall away as ash. Merry looked from the burning man to her hands as if completely surprised at herself for being able to do what she was doing.
“Told ya,” Begonia said. The flames shooting from her hand were denser than those Merry was producing, and she stepped closer to their languishing adversary with supreme confidence. “Stupid Woodsman.” The little girl stuck her tongue out at him and he retorted by falling onto his face.
He was just lying there burning, and Abe got to his feet with an ear to ear smile on his face. He had been fairly certain that the bulletproof man was going to force him to eat his own revolver or something and the only bright side to the proposition was that the girls would have gotten away while he chivalrously got murdered. As nice as chivalry is, Abe was rather pleased with the decidedly unchivalrous resolution of cowering while the girls fought his enemy.
Or not cowering. At least not anymore. By the light of the flaming person Abe was actually sort of beaming. Even though he hadn’t done anything, really, he felt he was somehow responsible for this triumph, too. He looked down at his hand and saw that it was, in fact, bloody, but not nearly so bloody as he’d expected. His cheek stung, and the tears running into the cut were probably not helping.
Merry’s flame petered out, and she looked down at her palm as if it were a lamp that had just guttered out for lack of fuel. “Huh,” she said, touching her hand with her finger tentatively, like it might suddenly reignite.
Begonia was still blasting away, grinning somewhat frighteningly as she moved around to the front of the smoldering body. The Woodsman had long-since stopped moving, and the flames were dying down even though Begonia was pouring it on as much as ever. It looked as if it was the clothes more than the man that had ignited, but he was blackened and unmoving as Begonia torched him.
“Na na na na na-na, you’re on fi-re,” she sang to the unmoving body. She squatted down and blew a raspberry at the charred and smoking creature, and the Woodsman rolled over swiftly and effortlessly and shot her with the glowing-red gun it had taken from Abe.
2.
The flames erupting from Merry’s hand immediately reappeared, brighter and fiercer than before. She stared wide-eyed as the fire engulfed the Woodsman while Begonia lay perfectly still. Abe got to his feet and grabbed the unmoving girl, half-dragging her back from the bonfire that was getting larger and larger as Merry continued to blast away.
The flames were progressing through the spectrum of colors as they grew hotter and hotter, culminating in a purplish crescendo in direct opposition to the frozen emotionlessness on Merry’s face. The Woodsman had resisted at first, and he had even pointed the gun at his new attacker. The barrel melted in the red-blue flames, however, and when he pulled the trigger with his smoldering finger there was dull click before the entire weapon began to flow red-hot and melted over his hand. After that he quickly lost the will to fight and fell down on his face, blackening without catching fire, little bubbles hissing on his wooden skin and bursting with the smell of burning sap.
Finally Merry’s hand stopped shooting fire and she fell backwards, sitting heavily with a grunt which seemed the height of understatement. Abe thought she seemed particularly unmoved, but when she turned toward him her face was wet with silent tears.
“How is she?”
It was an effort not to admit the truth – that he had no damn idea – but Abe managed. “She’s still breathing at least.”
“Well did you heal her?”
Abe blinked. “Um.”
“Just got down... right,” Merry said under her breath as she climbed with some effort to her feet. The enormous backpack she’d been carrying effortlessly now seemed to weigh her down and to throw off her balance so badly she almost fell over. She actually teetered for a second before she took a step toward Abe and she didn’t kneel beside Begonia so much as to fall to her knees in a half-controlled way.
“Are you all right?” Abe asked, his hand moving to her shoulder and meeting surprising resistance as if she was about to fall forward completely.
“I don’t have one of your bullets in me if that’s what you mean.” There is a saying about pretty girls being even more attractive when they are angry, and it is, in Merry’s case, patently untrue.
She glowered coldly at Abe for a second before she looked down at Begonia. Her hands fluttered over the wounded girl and then began to rip at the clothes over her stomach. The paper thin burlap dress tore like... well, paper (or burlap)... but in the dim light it was hard to see where she was shot.
Rather, it was hard to see precisely because she looked like she was completely covered with blood. Merry bit her lip – pretty when she’s worried, though, thought Abe, and immediately felt like a jackass – as she looked over the hurt girl and then very gently put her hands on Begonia to feel for the wound.
Begonia inhaled sharply through her teeth and flinched away from the touch. Abe had to look away, but he tried to at least do something comforting. The only thing he could think of was to brush Begonia’s straw-colored hair away from her forehead and say “shh.”
“Hopeless,” said Merry, and she swung her backpack down from one shoulder and onto the gravel beside her. A moment later she had a bottle in her hand and was pouring it over Begonia’s stomach. Begonia jumped again, weakly, and made a noise that might have been a scream if the person trying to scream hadn’t had a proper breath in five minutes. She couldn’t pull away very much, though, and the water at least let Merry (and a barely-willing-to-look Abe) see the damage.
Which was extensive. The Woodsman’s body had stopped burning by now, so there was only the faint glow of the derailed train to see by. In the poor light it was possible to see a hole that was much larger than seemed reasonable for the size of the gun. Abe couldn’t be sure if he was actually seeing the bright white of bone or if he was just imagining it.
Merry let her backpack fall beside her and dropped the now-empty bottle. She was almost as pale as the bone that Abe may or may not have seen. “What the hell was that loaded with?”
“Bullets,” said Abe before he realized that the question was rhetorical. He was rewarded for his candor with another withering glare. “Sorry,” he said weakly.
Merry turned her attention back to wound and drew a shuddering breath. She put her hands over the wound and closed her eyes. It took a second before the reddish glow started and Abe had a moment of heart-leaping panic that Merry was doing the fire-thing again. This glow was paler and gentle, though, and it grew lighter and brighter as Merry focused.
She was dripping sweat from her brow, and the light from her magic cast her face in sharp contrast, making her dark hair black and her pale face white. It was more than the unkind lighting that made her look so old just then, though, as if she were channeling years of her life into trying to fix Begonia.
The light grew brighter and brighter, and Abe excused his staring at Merry by telling himself that if he were looking directly at her hands he would be blinded. Brighter still, though, and Abe was forced to turn his head away entirely, raising a hand to shield his eyes from the glow.
And then it was gone. Almost total darkness and Abe blinked repeatedly to banish the burned-in image of Merry’s face from his eyes.
When he turned back Merry was slumped over, looking very much in need of a long sleep. He looked down at Begonia forced himself to assess her wound. It didn’t look any better to his untrained eye.
“Well...?”
Merry shook her head, unable either emotionally or physically to meet his gaze. “I couldn’t do it,” she said finally, quietly, her voice heavy with exhaustion and shame.
Tears welled up from her eyes and Abe looked down at Begonia and considered. W
hen he finally spoke, it had been long enough for Merry to have nearly run out of tears. “Can you walk?” he asked quietly. He was already starting to get to his feet as he said it.
Merry nodded weakly. “Sure.” Her response sounded anything but sure.
“Well, nothing for it, then.” Abe shrugged his shoulders and turned his head to one side and then the other, hoping for a few of those impressive, tough-sounding cracks. All he got was a bit of a pinching sensation in his shoulder that made him wince, though. “Hope she’s not heavier than she looks,” and he bent down and put his arms around Begonia and lifted her up.
She was not heavier than she looked, but Abe was not used to picking up girls after a day spent running and jumping through Underton, and as a result he felt another of those painful pinching sensations, but this time in his back, as he straightened.
Begonia groaned quietly before settling. She still had her crossbow dangling from her hand and seemed unlikely to release it.
“What are you doing?” Merry was still slumped on the gravel near the charred remains of the Woodsman.
“Moles are that way, yeah?” Abe nodded toward the train. Merry swallowed and nodded.
Abe carried Begonia a few steps past Merry before he turned around. “Are you gonna show me the way?”
“You know how pissed off she’ll be if the lowmen heal her?” Merry said as she got to her feet. “She hates moles.”
“More than she hates being dead?”
Merry shouldered her pack as she hurried to get in front of him.
Chapter Eight: Moles and worms and medicine
1.
Begonia was the fattest girl in the entire world. Abe would have been prepared to swear to this fact within ten minutes of beginning to carry her. That he had virtually no experience carrying girls (or anything, really) was irrelevant – the ladies at the office rarely had any reason to look beyond Abe to get a jar open, so he assumed he was mighty indeed. And if he was as strong and manly as that, then surely the slight girl in his arms was secretly obese or had pockets swelling with gold, because why else would he be straining?
They hadn’t even made it past the front of the admittedly very long train before Abe and Merry found themselves joining a stream of others. The train hadn’t seemed terribly full, but as long as it was it apparently held an awful lot of people, all of whom were now shuffling along beside the useless tracks toward the next station.
Most of the people appeared to be Underton-dwellers, and as such there was some degree of stumbling and generally sticking close to the deepmen amongst them, even though the glow of the train provided ample light and, as they were in a tunnel, there was really only one way to go.
“Nobody uses this stop,” said Merry, leaning over toward Abe conspiratorially. “Nobody but the deepmen anyway.”
“I thought this was your stop.”
“Nobody but the deepmen and their criminal agents.” Merry’s smirk made it pretty clear that she was being facetious, but between the low light and the struggle to carry Begonia, Abe didn’t pick up on it.
“You’re a criminal agent? I heard ‘drug runner’.”
She shrugged. “You say potato…”
Abe grunted as he shifted Begonia in his arms. “I said ‘drug runner,’ actually. And I also heard runaway and a few other unsavory things.”
“I didn’t run away. Lady Darbyshire brought us all down here, the entire class.”
Abe looked incredulous. “So this is a field trip? How long have you been here?”
“Three or four months.”
“Three or four months!?”
“It's a boarding school, Abnerssen. I haven't seen my parents in two years.”
“Well, you’re going to see them at the wedding, I gather...” Suddenly Abe wondered just how old Merry was. He had been under the impression when this began that he was going to retrieve a school girl, but she certainly seemed older than that. Perhaps he was being blinded by all the drug running and magical, fiery destruction she was involved with, though. “You've only been away at school for two years?” There was a hint of fear in his voice, as if he were bracing to be ashamed of himself for thinking she was attractive.
“I've been at this boarding school for three years. Before that I was Sister Clara's.”
Relief washed over Abe as he heard that familiar name. “Ah, I know Sister Clara's.” It was a school that only accepted girls between fourteen and eighteen years of age, so she was at least seventeen and more likely within a few months of Abe's twenty-two years. “Why did you leave?”
Merry blinked and looked away for a second. “I was, um... I got a scholarship.”
“To someplace better than Sister Clara's? My uncle's a judge and my grandfather was mayor, but my cousin is just on the waiting list... What school could possibly bet better–”
“Oh, look!” Merry pointed toward the front of the line. “It looks like we're getting close to the station. We'd better hurry and get Begonia some attention. Come on!” And Merry set off at a walk that was quite a bit faster than Abe could match with his current burden.
He couldn't catch up to her until she was on the steps that led up to the platform of Glowworm Station.
2.
The lowmen were perfectly happy to tend to Begonia. She was, it turned out, not so badly hurt at all. There was a great deal of blood, but once that was cleaned up it seemed as if there was no wound at all.
Abe assured Merry that this was because of her efforts, which had clearly been more effective than either of them knew, but she wasn't convinced. “I know what it feels like when I'm healing someone, Abe. And I didn't feel it. It was like I couldn't do anything... Like I was hitting a wall, sort of.”
“Or like you don't have any powers at all?”
Merry put her hand on Abe's leg and gave a squeeze. “Come on, now... you know that's only because you just got here. It took me more than a day before I could do anything...”
“Is that a long time?”
Merry shrugged. “I guess. I mean, I came down with the rest of my class, and all of us were doing the lights,” she held up her hand and it glowed a bit by way of demonstration, “inside of a week.”
“All of you are from Highmark?”
Merry nodded. “All but Begonia, I think. The Undertoners can all just do it...” She trailed off and gazed into space before saying, “...I think.”
Abe looked up to where she'd been looking as if she'd seen something. “What do you mean?”
“It's just... It just occurred to me that I didn't really meet very many people from Underton. Just Begonia and Spirit House and a few lowmen.”
“Could they all do... you know... magic?”
Merry shook her head. “Lowmen don't have magic.” She leaned close and made a snorting gesture with a finger alongside her nose. “Too much spirit,” she whispered.
“And Spirit House?”
“Well of course. He's a troll.” As if that should have been self-evident to Abe, who had no idea anyone could do magic before this afternoon.
“Of course,” he said weakly. Before he could think of anything else to say, there was a crash from the other room and a familiar-sounding voice raised to a yell.
“Get the hell away from me, mole!”
Abe smiled at Merry. “Well, she sounds better.”
Another crash.
“We better go,” said Merry as she got to her feet.
Inside the small room was a couch and two lowmen, both of whom were on the far side of the room from Begonia, who was standing on the couch looking furious, her hand raised and glowing.
“Begonia!” Shouted Merry as she came into the room.
Abe, more quietly, asked one of the lowmen, “What was the crash.”
He pointed at Begonia's feet. “Her shoe,” he said. Abe did not need to ask what the second crash was as she was wearing neither shoe.
“You brought me to Moles, Merry!” She turned her anger on Merry. “I hate Moles and you know I
hate Moles!”
“I understand that's racist, and I apologize sincerely for my friend,” Abe whispered to the lowman closest to him.
Merry took a halting step closer to Begonia. “I know you don't... care for them, Begonia, but we didn't exactly have a lot of options.”
“Well,” Begonia said reasonably, “if you didn't have a lot of options...” She dropped the facade and yelled, “Was stabbing me to death off the table!? Leaving me to die!? What options did you think were worse than this!?”
Abe looked helplessly at Merry, and he could swear that she was... no, she was definitely smiling.
3.
“They’re a bunch of liars, to begin with. They squint and walk around like they’re blind when they’re out in the light and act like they barely understand you, but you watch ‘em when they’re alone. Waxin’ eloquent and havin’ wide-eyed starin’ contests, they are. Not a grunt to be heard.
“Also, they’re mean. Folks tell their children to be good or they’ll send for the moles, ‘scuse me Lowmen, to come and eat the family kitty. No, no, I know. You think it’s a... whatsits... urban legend. A boogey story to scare kids into behavin’. Well, it ain’t. I don’t mean to say that they’re on call with every family in Underton, ‘oh, Sally’s been naughty, so pop up and eat the cat,’ or anything... but they do eat ‘em.
“Cats.”
Abe looked at the lowman who’d come in through the doorway just as Begonia’s rant began. The man had frozen in midstride when she’d first started to answer his ‘why do you hate them so much, anyway?’ question. The man had been standing there with a tray of food the whole time, looking more and more uncomfortable. Abe was giving him a run for his money in the looking-uncomfortable-off that was taking place.
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