“Any of you have a problem with that?” asked Schafer. Only silent shaken heads bobbled in the dark.
Knocks wiped the blade on his cap. He looked around bitterly. “I lost my mother last night. My real mother. I have no people. Will you let me kill with you tonight?”
The redcaps grunted, raising their pikes, howling in unison. Yes.
“Thank you,” he said. He put the cap atop his head, pulling it down tightly, covering his ears. Once again, the redcaps cheered.
Schafer spat. “I can’t come with you and you know why. But you know what to do.” He narrowed his eyes and pointed a single, bony finger at the pack. “Bring ’em back in pieces.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
DAYS LIKE A PASSING SHADOW
Though the woods were dark, the bright moon provided just enough pale blue light for the boys to see where they were going. Colby and Ewan walked briskly, each anxious about the few remaining hours before being separated indefinitely. They were deep within the forest, but Ewan knew the way by heart.
“So what do you think it’ll be like?” asked Colby of Ewan.
“What what will be like?”
“You know, being a fairy.”
“I don’t know,” said Ewan. “Dithers says it will be like being a big boy, that I’ll have big-boy responsibilities and will have a very important job that will be explained to me one day.”
“Wow, that sounds cool.”
“Yeah, I don’t even know what kind of fairy I’ll get to be.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I’m going to turn into a fairy.”
“Yeah?”
“Nobody told me what kind I’ll become. You don’t get to choose.”
“Oh,” said Colby. He sounded disappointed, as if turning into a fairy wasn’t as cool as he’d initially thought. “What would you like to be?”
“Well, I wouldn’t mind being a Bendith. Dithers is great and I’d love to be able to run that fast and swing from trees. I also really like music and he plays the most beautiful music in the whole world.”
“He does?”
“Oh yeah. When he plays, fairies come from miles around and dance all night. There was one fairy—her name was Dragana—she was real pretty. She used to dance all the time. But she died.”
“How’d she die?”
“Wild Hunt got her.”
“What’s a Wild Hunt?”
“It’s a bunch of people on really mean goats who hate fairies and kill them and then drag them to Hell. One of them told me I was gonna die. She was real scary.”
The two shared a moment of quiet as they walked, Ewan suddenly sad, Colby unsure of what to say about it. “What else would you want to be?” asked Colby, trying to steer the conversation back on course.
“Oh, a Sidhe I guess,” said Ewan.
“What’s a Sidhe?”
“They’re really pretty fairies in nice clothes. They talk really funny and use a lot of big words, but there’s this girl and she’s kind of a Sidhe.”
“How can you be kind of a Sidhe?”
“Well, there are different kinds. I don’t know the difference, though.”
“Oh,” said Colby.
“Whatever it is, I hope I’m not a redcap.”
“What’s a redcap?”
“They’re these really ugly old dwarves with knives for fingers and metal boots; yellow, ugly teeth; and wet, red, magic hats.”
“Wet hats?”
“Yeah, they’re red because they have to dip them in blood. If their hat ever dries out, they die. So they have to keep killing things. Sometimes it’s just deer or rabbits, but they’re always looking for people because apparently people blood dries slower than animal blood. But if you can steal the hat off their head, you take their strength with it. They’re really mean and smelly and stupid.”
“Yeah, they sound mean. I hope you’re not one of those,” said Colby.
“Excuse me?” came a voice from the woods. There was a rustling in the bushes and footsteps on uneven ground. The boys’ faces whitened with panic and they looked at each other, trying to figure out what to do. Then from the bushes she sprang, tackling Ewan to the ground. Ewan shrieked. He looked up into the eyes of the little girl pinning him, realizing that he knew them well. “There’s this girl?” Mallaidh asked coyly.
“Uh, no,” he answered nervously. He looked to the side, trying to avoid eye contact.
Ewan tried to sit up, but Mallaidh gently pushed him back down into the dirt. She stood up, dusting herself off, giving Colby an interested look. “And you must be the boy I’ve heard so much about.”
Colby licked his hand, just like he’d seen on television, and tried to slick his hair back over his ear. Instead, he managed to part his hair in a terrible cowlick. Unaware of his appearance, he continued with his suave, mature older man routine. “The name’s Colby.”
Mallaidh giggled. Boys were silly. “I’m Mallaidh.”
“What are you doing out here?” asked Ewan, picking himself up off the ground.
“Following you,” she answered matter-of-factly.
“Oh,” said Ewan. He could not for the life of him figure out why she wanted to tag along.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“The Great Stage.”
Mallaidh’s jaw went slack. “Are you mad?”
“No,” said Ewan, shaking his head. “I’ve been there before, you know.”
“Yeah, but not this way you haven’t!” Mallaidh pointed ahead of them into the dark woods.
“What’s wrong with this way?” asked Ewan.
“Yeah,” repeated Colby “What’s wrong with this way?”
“This path takes you deep into the heart of the woods, where Black Annie’s cabin is!”
Ewan looked dismayed—almost embarrassed. A sheepish grin crept slowly across his face, trying to stay hidden, but stepping foolishly into the open with the upturned corners of his lips.
Colby cocked his head to one side and then turned to look at Ewan. “Who’s Black Annie?”
“Only the meanest, scariest, foulest creature in all the Limestone Kingdom,” Mallaidh announced. “She’ll snatch you away in the night and skin you alive. Then she’ll drape your skin outside over a tree branch until it dries to leather and then she’ll wear it as a belt so she can keep you close to her forever! She’ll scatter your bones so you’ll never be at rest, and before she’s done she’ll eat everything else left of you. And this path takes you right through her hunting grounds.”
“I’ve never seen her,” said Ewan to Colby, as if to suggest that she might not exist.
Mallaidh corrected him. “That’s because Dithers never lets you out at night where the forest bogies can feed on you,” she said. Then she crossed her arms, turning her head away, giving him a withering sideways glance.
“Oh,” he said. “Maybe this way wasn’t such a good idea.”
“I don’t know,” said Colby. “I kind of want to see Black Annie. She sounds sca-ree.” He drew out the last syllable as if selling the others on how much fun it is to be scared. They weren’t buying it.
Mallaidh shook her head definitively. “We’re not going.”
“You don’t have to come with us,” said Ewan.
“Yeah,” Colby agreed. “We didn’t invite you anyway.”
Mallaidh huffed, shooting the boys an icy stare. What do you mean you didn’t invite me anyway? Both boys took one noticeable step back. Ewan had never seen the intimidating Mallaidh before; it was clear she was not to be trifled with.
“Okay, okay,” he said. “We won’t go to the Great Stage.”
“Then what do we do now?” asked Colby.
“Now we find something else to do,” said Mallaidh. “Do you know any people games?”
“Duh! Of course I know people games,” said Colby, rolling his eyes. Stupid girls.
“Oooh! What can you teach us?” asked Ewan.
Colby shrugged. “Do you know how to play tag?”
&
nbsp; “What’s tag?” asked Mallaidh and Ewan in unison.
“Jinx!” shouted Colby. Both children stared at him, dumbfounded.
“I don’t get it,” said Mallaidh.
Colby looked at her as if she was speaking Russian. “Get what?”
“You just shout jinx?” she asked.
“Nooooo!” said Colby with mock exasperation. “You said the same thing at the same time and I was the first person to say jinx, so you owe me a Coke.”
“That’s a stupid game,” said Mallaidh. “Why’s it called tag?”
“That’s not tag!”
“Well, what’s tag?” she asked.
“Tag is where I touch one of you.” He walked over to Ewan and tapped him on his shoulder “And say ‘you’re it’ and then you’re it.”
“What’s it?” asked Ewan.
“It is the person who has to tag someone else.”
“So we just stand here touching each other?” asked Mallaidh, not sure where the fun in this game was.
“No, you’re supposed to run and chase each other. You’re not supposed to make it easy to get caught.”
“Oooooooooh!” said both Ewan and Mallaidh together.
“Jinx!” said Colby.
“I don’t understand that game,” said Ewan.
“Neither do I,” said Mallaidh.
“All right,” nodded Colby, “one game at a time.” He pointed to Ewan. “You’re it.”
Colby took off running. Ewan looked at Mallaidh and straightaway made for her. Mallaidh arched her back to dodge Ewan’s incoming hand—his swiping paw passing inches above her shoulder—and then she too took off running into the night. Ewan smiled; he liked this game. He knew that Mallaidh knew the woods quite well and that over uneven ground he had an advantage over Colby, so he scanned the ground for tracks, discovering the direction in which Colby’d run.
“Uuuuhn!” came Colby’s voice through the dark, followed immediately by a thud and the scuffing of a sliding body on soil. He’d tripped, most likely over the loop of a tree root or a dug-in chunk of limestone. This game was too easy, thought Ewan.
But as he rounded a tree, to where Colby should have been scrambling to his feet, he instead saw him sprawled out on his back. Knocks sat squarely on his chest with a large piece of stone held aloft in both hands over his own head—ready to crush Colby’s skull in a single swing. Ewan—with only a second to react—charged Knocks with a flying tackle to the side of his head. Already unbalanced by the rock, the rush sent Knocks reeling into the dirt. Ewan grabbed Colby by the arm, helping him to his feet. “Come on,” he said forcefully. “We need to go!”
Then, a soft grumble came from the dark of the woods, a guttural growl that started out low, then became a bestial bellow that sounded the arrival of the redcaps. First there came glowing eyes in the dark, like embers flickering up from a dying flame; then shadows; then the glint of metal in the moonlight; then chaos. Shrieking redcaps stormed out of the woods, their pikes held high and their slobbering mouths gaping wide.
The hunt was on.
The children ran.
“Craaaaaaap!” yelled Colby, his little legs carrying him as fast as they could.
“Redcaps!” yelled Ewan. “Mallaidh!”
ELSEWHERE, YASHAR AND Dithers stumbled back to camp together, both a little heady from a few too many bottles of wine. Dithers strummed his lute, drunk enough that singing seemed more than appropriate, but not so inebriated as to hamper his skill. Yashar smiled, remembering for the first time in decades why he used to spend so much time with the fairies. The fire was warm, the company warmer, and the night was becoming a blur of fuzzy cartwheeling stars.
But as they walked up to Dithers’s cave, two things sobered them instantly. First, the boys were no longer asleep in their beds—nor anywhere to be seen, for that matter. Second, Coyote sat cross-legged between where the two boys should be, worry painted convincingly on his face.
“Where are they?” demanded Yashar.
Coyote pointed out into the night. “The boys are out in the wildwood.”
“Why aren’t they here, asleep?”
“They wanted to spend some time together before you and the boy were banished at sunrise.” Coyote raised an eyebrow as if asking you didn’t know that?
Yashar looked at Dithers. “Why are we being banished?”
Dithers shrugged, his malformed head bobbling with confusion. “This is the first I’ve heard of it.”
“The council,” said Coyote, “felt that the boy was somehow a threat to the Tithe Child.”
“The Tithe Child? You didn’t mention that you had a . . . ,” began Yashar. Then he realized what he was saying. “Oh.” He looked squarely at Dithers. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Dithers looked back at Yashar unapologetically. “If you know what that is, then you know that I couldn’t say anything.”
Yashar nodded. “I know,” he said. He looked out into the night. “Let’s go get them before this gets any worse.”
COLBY AND EWAN sprinted as fast as they could, the forest behind them a wall of rustling bushes, as if the trees themselves were stampeding.
“We can’t outrun them,” said Ewan breathlessly.
“Yes, we can,” huffed Colby. “Keep running.”
“No. They’re faster. You can never outrun a redcap.”
“Then how do we kill ’em?” asked Colby.
“We don’t,” said Ewan, as if that was the stupidest question he’d ever heard. He looked back over his shoulder and saw Colby falling a little behind. “Run faster!”
“Then how do we stop them?”
Ewan shook his head. “The only thing that stops a redcap is scripture.”
“What’s a scripture?”
“I don’t know.”
Mallaidh called out from the woods, running as fast as she could to keep up with the boys. Her breathing was fine, and she spoke as effortlessly as if she were sipping tea instead of running. “It’s holy words. From a book.”
Redcaps emerged from the darkness in front of them. The patter of footsteps continued behind them. They were surrounded. The children stopped, looking around for any way out of the ambush, but they were surrounded.
“What kind of book?” asked Colby.
“What?” asked Mallaidh.
“What kind of book is a scripture?”
“Like a Bible or a Torah,” she said.
“So, words from the Bible?” asked Colby, as if that were too simple an answer.
“Yes,” she said, concerned more with the swarming redcaps than answering his stupid questions.
The redcaps clacked their talons together in unison. Clack. Clack. Clack. Clack.
“Oh,” said Colby, the redcaps slowly closing in. Then he spoke quietly to himself for a second, catching his breath as he did. “Bow down. Lightning. What . . . I, uh . . .” He tried desperately to find something deep within him—to dig out a memory, dust it off, and read it aloud. And then, like water bursting through a dam, it came. “Lord, bow down thy heavens and descend. Touch the mountains and they shall smoke.”
He spoke confidently, from memory, as if reciting from a page. “Send forth lightning and thou shalt scatter them. Shoot out thy arrows, and thou shalt trouble them. Put forth thy hand from on high, take me out, and deliver me from many waters: from the hand of strange children . . . something something . . .”
The redcaps recoiled in horror. They grabbed their ears to block out the sound, but their clawed hands only dug deep into their flesh, and, unable to muffle the verse, instead tore out chunks of their own faces. Each fell writhing to the ground, suffering from terrible seizures. But as Colby came to the end of what he could remember, the pain subsided and they looked up, raging, ready to tear him limb from bloody limb. Colby came to attention and began again from the beginning.
“Lord, bow down thy heavens and descend. Touch the mountains and they shall smoke. Send forth lightning, and thou shalt scatter them. Shoot out thy arro
ws, and thou shalt trouble them. Put forth thy hand from on high, take me out, and deliver me from many waters. From the hand of strange children!”
He was yelling now, driving the redcaps backward as they scrambled away from the sound, iron boots kicking divots in the earth as they fled. “Lord! Bow down thy heavens and descend! Touch the mountains and they shall smoke! Send forth lightning! And thou shalt scatter them! Shoot out thy arrows! And thou shalt trouble them! Put forth thy hand from on high! Take me out! And deliver me from many waters! From the hand of strange children!”
The redcaps could not bear it any longer. Their insides were boiling, bubbling up, forming blisters on the surface of their skin. A few of them tore out their own beards, tangles of wiry, white hair coming out—root and all—with bloody patches of skin, meat dangling off the ends. Others pounded their skulls with clenched fists, trying to dull one pain by replacing it with another. One by one, they each stumbled back to their feet and ran away, screaming to block out the sound; any longer in the presence of these words and they would incinerate in place, leaving only a pile of ashes in their iron boots. Better to flee in terror than meet a fiery end.
Dietrich stayed the longest, kneeling stoically before a now screaming Colby, defiantly waiting for him to stumble over the scripture, turn to run away, or finally run out of breath. But he didn’t. Colby stood firm in his resolve, repeating the verses over and over again like a broken record, the words beginning to lose meaning, the repetition becoming a blur of syllables.
Dietrich stood up on wobbly legs, teetering like a dying dandelion waving in the wind, ready to burst in the face of a single strong gust. His skin was bubbling, his blisters popping, the sores were oozing pus. He snarled a low, dull, angry growl against the pain; he was a dog on a taut leash, pulling, tugging, waiting rabidly for that leash to snap. There was nothing he wanted more than to kill Colby where he stood, but even he had his limits.
His eyes swollen with blood, his face dripping, he screamed at the top of his lungs and turned to run, joining his friends in their flight. Colby was left standing alone, his friends staring at him, amazed by what they’d just seen.
“Wow!” screamed Ewan. “That was . . . that was . . .”
Dreams and Shadows: A Novel Page 15