Merry glanced over her shoulder and said, “less talk, more run!” and then put on speed and left Abe to catch up.
He had caught up and they were several more minutes into their dash to catch up when Merry pointed toward the horizon. The sun was setting spectacularly ahead of them, just starting to dip below the rolling hills, and directly ahead was a massive tree with a canopy that seemed to span the entire horizon. It stood alone atop a rise, blocking out the sun so much that there were no other trees around it. “Look,” she said, and Abe stopped beside her and looked, thinking she only meant to point out the beauty of the tree thrown into silhouette by the sun setting behind it.
And then he saw the two shapes similarly outlined. One was slender and the other stretched out on long spidery legs supporting an otherwise human body. The only living beings they had seen since leaving winter behind, of course it had to be Mud and the Woodsman. And if he had to guess based on the Woodsman’s height, Abe estimated the tree was six or seven hundred feet high. Which couldn’t be right.
Abe pulled his gun out and flipped the chamber free to reload. There were two bullets, and it wasn’t until he reached for his pocket to get more that he realized his jacket was gone. He slapped the chamber closed and didn’t mention it. “So how far’s the fountain?”
Merry looked sadly at the distant tree. “They’re going to be there soon.” She turned her eyes to Abe and she looked scared. “A lot of old stories call it the summer fountain, and we’re well into summer by now.” She reached out and touched Abe’s nose, pulling her finger back and flicking a drop of sweat from it.
“So, we’d better hurry,” Abe said. He was breathing hard already, but they would have to be even faster if they wanted a chance. Abe was no great hand at trigonometry, but if he was anywhere near correct about how tall that tree was he could tell from the reach of the shadow across the valley that they had a mile or more to go just to get that far.
“And what?” Merry said, “Get there exhausted and useless? Even if we caught up before they reached the fountain, what could we do? We’re no match for Mud and Wood in ideal circumstances, Abe, and these are not ideal circumstances. I can’t do anything until we reach the fountain. This,” she stepped into the mud that ran along the channel in the brings, “isn’t going to give me enough energy to fight for five seconds, and the best I could do in Underton, when I was strong, was to help stop the Woodsman.”
“Well—“
“For a few minutes, Abe! At my best! And now I’ve got nothing, I don’t even have shoes, and you have, what, three bullets?”
“Two,” he said meekly.
“Two! We may as well just go find something tasty to eat. Maybe we can get a good seat to watch.”
“I had been hoping to get dinner with you,” Abe said with a smile that Merry did not return. He stopped smiling and squatted down to touch the mud. “Are you serious about the five seconds, though?”
“What?”
“Can you legitimately get any magic from this…?” He rubbed his muddy finger and thumb together.
“A little,” she said slowly. “Why?”
“Enough to get us there?” Abe nodded toward the tree, where the silhouettes of their quarries were no longer visible.
Merry squatted down beside him and reached down to lay her fingers on the brick. The mud was thin and wet against her fingers. She nodded. “Yeah,” she said, “yes. But that’s all. Once we get there, we still can’t stop them.”
Abe smiled. “Nope.” He turned the gun over and held the handle out toward her. “But we don’t need to stop them, right? Just wreck the fountain. They’ll focus on me, right? Because you’re going to be useless.”
Merry closed her hand on the gun. “Can’t wreck a fountain with magic you don’t have.” She tested the weight of the revolver in her hand. “It won’t change anything, though, not for us.”
Abe nodded. If anything he figured it would make it worse. Denied the chance to make the world suffer, the monsters would see that Abe and Merry, at least, paid for it. He morbidly thought that they might be so angry that it would be quick, at least, and in considering that hope he realized that he was ready. “We’ll be dead in ten minutes either way, but we might save Tym and that bastard McCallister Roods. And our parents and… everyone.”
Merry kissed him so hard and so fast that he nearly toppled backwards. He threw a hand out behind him to stabilize himself and felt her hands holding his face gently as she pressed her lips against his. They were warm and soft and salty, her lips, but it was impossible to guess if it was tears or sweat or both.
“What was that for?” Abe asked. “Not that I’m complaining mind you.”
Merry scooped up a big handful of mud. “If we’re going to die, I want to have done that before we do. And,” she held up the handful of mud, “I thought you might prefer me to do that before I do this.” She drew a deep breath and closed her eyes and stuffed the handful of mud into her mouth. Her throat convulsed as she fought the urge to gag. This time there was no mistaking the tear that welled in her eye as she forced herself to keep her mouth closed. She stood up resolutely and grabbed Abe’s hand with hers.
Abe saw a glimmer in the air, the shine suggesting the arc of an arrow from where they stood to the tree across the valley. The curve went taut, then, and they flew.
2.
Every child sees birds or insects flying through the air and thinks it would be a grand thing. Abe was no exception. All his life he’d thought it would be marvelous to be able to fly, but now that it was actually happening all he could think was no. He thought it hard and he thought it repeatedly, like a mantra, as he tried to shut his eyes but found the force of the wind against them made it impossible. He tried to scream it but found that opening his mouth to do so allowed the wind in and made his jaw ache as the speed of their travel forced his mouth as wide as it could go. All he could hear was the roar of the wind and all he could see through his stinging, watering eyes was the enormous tree rushing toward them impossibly fast.
Just as he was sure that they were going to crash into the enormous trunk, their mission ending ignominiously and messily, they stopped. Abe’s nose was a paper’s width from the bark of the tree, the rest of him stretched out behind his head. He blinked and breathed, hanging in midair. Finally he said, “cutting it rather close.” He was aiming for deadpan, but it came out panicky and more than a little scared.
Merry dropped to her feet. “I wasn’t entirely sure we’d stop,” she said. She waved her hand and Abe fell to the ground, landing hard on his chest.
He took a minute to recover the ability to speak, then stood up and dusted himself off with as much dignity as he could muster. It wasn’t a lot, as he was covered in grime from head to toe. His shirt had a gaping hole over the stomach that was ringed all-around with bloodstains, and over top of that was a generous soaking of rain water and sweat. He unfastened his empty holster slowly and deliberately and was trying to think of something clever to say as he did.
He was spared the effort. “Wow,” said Merry.
Abe turned toward her and then followed her gaze into the valley below. “Wow,” he said as well.
It was all there was to say. Below them was paradise. The fountain was small and elegant, a greening stone grown thick with vines and surrounded by exquisite mosaic that seemed to catch and cling to the last of the sunlight. Four small, gnarled, perfectly manicured trees grew around it, one in each cardinal direction, the green leaves spreading out in a canopy overhead. The shade was complete except for a perfect circle above the center of the fountain, which was shaped like the mouth of a fish and from which water trickled slowly. At the bottom of the stone was, equally spaced, a series of small holes that emptied onto the bricks that came from a dozen different directions to meet there. The bricks were grown over with moss, and the water dribbled where it should have flowed, but it was still magnificent.
Beyond the mosaic, the grass was thick and green and the symmetry that s
urrounded the fountain itself fell apart. Trees and flowers, bushes and herbs, birds and insects and small innocent creatures all sprawled contentedly in the fading sunlight… or they had been before those that could fled from Mud and Wood.
The Woodsman was steps from the fountain.
“Good luck, I love you,” Abe said before he thought about it. He took off down the hill at a run, feeling mortified at what he’d just done, which kept him from being terrified, at least. He flung his legs out ahead of him as he nearly fell down the hill. “Hey!” He yelled.
Wood and Mud turned as one. “Hey,” Abe shouted, “We’re not done, sir!”
Wood muttered, “oh, we are done,” and nodded to Mud. The creature launched itself from the ground, a step from the mosaic, and as it flew toward Abe it spread open like a net.
Abe threw a punch uselessly as he was engulfed, but Merry was already down the hill, her muddy feet kicking up grass as she sprinted past. Mud snaked out a tendril-like arm for her but she skipped over it, all exhilaration, with a smile on her face that was entirely Abe’s fault.
No rushed confessions of affection were going to keep her smiling for long, though. Not when she sprinted the final few steps before her feet hit the mosaic and she raised the big clumsy gun to fire just in time to see the Woodsman kneel down beside the fountain and lean in for a drink.
3.
The bullet hit the Woodsman squarely in the back of his wooden head, gouging an ugly furrow that he ignored completely. He threw his head back, water spraying out from his face, and said, “ah,” with no apparent relish (though he was trying very hard).
Merry was still running toward him, and she shifted her direction as he came up from the water and jumped as high and as far as she could past the Woodsman, gun pointed toward the floor of the fountain. He reached his arm out to stop her, hands spread wide open. He wasn’t close enough to reach, but that didn’t matter, he had drunk from the fountain.
She fired her last shot at the fountain, and the Woodsman’s hands did not sparkle. Her flight was not arrested in midair, and the muscles on the Woodsman’s face were no longer stretching in an effort to smile.
“No.” he said as emphatically as he could.
Merry’s momentum carried her into the fountain, and she hit the central column hard, doubling over and dropping the useless revolver. The Woodsman looked at his hand and then at the fountain. There were massive holes in the bottom, two of them, with cracks joining them together. Water was seeping out quickly.
He grabbed Merry’s shoulder and yanked her back from the edge so hard that her small body went flying into the air.
Where it stopped.
Merry froze in place and turned while in midair. She pushed her wet hair back from her face and swallowed a mouthful of water and licked her lips and smiled.
“How?” the Woodsman said coldly. “It’s just water.”
Merry touched down lightly on the grass. There was a glow about her. “It’s not for you,” she said.
The Woodsman lunged with preternatural speed, fingers closing into a fist as he leapt. Merry did not move, but nevertheless she was not there for him to strike, and his hand passed through her like a ghost. The momentum of the swing turned the Woodsman around, and bright pink light erupted from Merry’s hand as she sent him flying across the grass.
“You killed most of my friends,” she said and then she looked at her hand and said, “pink? Really?” She rolled her eyes at her hand and then stepped up close to the fountain. It was losing water quickly, but she had not come to drain the fountain, she had come to destroy it. Merry knelt down and dipped her hands into the water, raising it up to her lips and drinking deep, and then she stood up and pointed her palm at the fountain. She averted her eyes.
The way that magic worked, in Merry’s experience, was that she simply tried to impose her will in a certain way. She got a sense as she did whether or not she would be able to do it and how hard it would be, and invariably she was forced to shift her desires from what she really wanted (the Woodsman to blow up, for example) to what she could manage (to push him away). She did not expect that she would be able to destroy the fountain, for surely something so deeply rooted in the magic of the world would be strong indeed, and so she had let loose her wildest desires to end it with every expectation that she would have to compromise.
So when the earth swallowed up the fountain entirely and then, a moment later, the ground shook with explosions as the remnants of the fountain were consumed in the bowels of the earth, only to be shot out in spectacular, fiery fashion… well, needless to say, she was taken aback.
The collapse and explosion of the fountain was remarkably contained, and Merry was still standing on the edge of the mosaic as the world calmed. Turning toward Abe, she was very nearly caught by the Woodsman as he rushed toward her once more.
He stabbed at her with the jagged stump of his arm and Merry waved her fingers. The stump began to burn so fast and so hot that it was ash by the time it reached her, falling to the grass uselessly. The Woodsman’s arm was burnt to down to a black nub at his shoulder. “You don’t want to do this,” said Merry.
The Woodsman looked from his stump to the pit that had been the fountain. “No,” he said. “I don’t.” He straightened up, dropped the key, and said, “Enjoy it while you can, Merryanna Richards. Your friend is dead.”
Merry turned and saw Mud hugging Abe tightly, completely covering his face. Abe wasn’t moving and Mud was just beginning to peel away.
The blast of bright pink fire that caught the monster as it rose buried it in the side of the hill. It hit the monster so fast and so hard that Mud had no time to scream. Abe hadn’t breathed for some time.
Chapter Thirty-Three: Funerals
1.
Abe was turning blue for the second time today, though this time it was from lack of oxygen rather than the cold. As soon as he was down the hill, Mud had been upon him like a malevolent sheet of fly paper, angry and sticky and impossible to fight. He had struggled and pushed, but leverage was impossible to find when his enemy could stretch and shift in any direction. Mud went for his nose and mouth just as it had in Highmark, but this time Abe had no weapons to use against the creature. His nails dug in and he fought with all his might, but the gummy, air-tight surface of the monster covered his mouth and his nostrils nonetheless.
It was all he could do to keep a hold of the creature, to try and buy Merry every precious second. He had no illusions about how this was going to end, and he was comforted as he felt his grip start to weaken knowing what his last words had been. If his eyes hadn’t been covered with the clay-like flesh of the creature that was killing him, he would have seen his vision fade not long after hearing the Mud-muffled sound of gunshots.
It was a minute or an hour or a lifetime later when his eyes slid open and he felt clammy and had the unexplainable impression of having been drowned in pink, like the time he’d blacked out when playing with a couple of his girl cousins and the pillow fort collapsed. Merry was holding his nose as he woke up spluttering, and his face was wet from hers and his lips were strangely warm. He spluttered and coughed and Merry helped him turn over while a few distressingly large chunks of what looked like clay flew out of his mouth.
She settled back to sit on the grass and smiled to see him changing from blue to red. He wiped his eyes and flopped back and said, “you saved me with a kiss…?” His voice sounded distant and dreamy to him.
“It was mouth to mouth,” said Merry. “And a shitload of magic.”
“Oh,” Abe said. He reveled in his ability to breathe for a moment and then said, “why aren’t we dead?”
“Don’t sound so disappointed,” Merry said. “Did you just say you loved me because you were about to die? Encouragement sort of thing?”
“No,” Abe said resolutely.
“Good.” Merry went and retrieved the key the Woodsman had dropped. She stood by the hole that had been the fountain in her ruined black dress with tears an
d mud and blood all over it and her hair wet and sticking to her face. “When you’re ready, we have a long walk.”
Abe rolled onto his side and tried to get up. He slumped back after a moment. “Can’t you just magic us there?”
Merry shook her head. “It’s dispersed now,” she said. “The fountain’s gone.”
Abe lifted his head and saw that it was. “How?” he asked. And Merry told him while he regained his strength, leaving out the part where she used all the magic she would ever have to put breath back in his body.
2.
There was no sign of Mud or the Woodsman, and while Abe was hopeful that they had died, Merry didn’t believe it for a moment. They were not mortal beings, and she wasn’t convinced they could die, but even if it were possible, they had survived worse.
After a bit of a rest, they went to follow the path of the bricks back the way they’d come. The bricks were gone, but like the fountain they had left a pit in their wake, and it was even easier to follow the great furrow in the earth than it had been to follow the bricks.
They found Abe’s jacket where it had been, and though it was drenched they eventually argued over which of them would get to wear it as the weather shifted back to cool. It was fully dark in Hemina when they reached the snow, and thankfully the moon was full enough that it was easy to find their way. Tired as he was, Abe insisted on carrying Merry through the snow since she had no shoes, and he was too sore to notice the extra strain.
The snow had kept falling since they’d left, thankfully obscuring the blood, but they couldn’t miss the bodies. Together they fetched Tym, who was in terrible shape, and Merry used the key to open the door which had, previously, not even been there.
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