Flights of Angels (Exit Unicorns Series Book 3)

by Cindy Brandner

  Shura was to the point, a trait Jamie appreciated.

  “It is a matter of embarrassment for her, I believe. There is no way to explain to you what it was like in this room that night. I have known strange things, some of which I have shared with you, things that have no explanation in the rational light of day, and I will say to you, that night was one of the strangest I have known. We will all deny it now, but there was someone else here in the room with us, invisible but undeniable. She came because you needed her, and your need of her was in all possible senses. You know what happened, I am certain. You can see why it might be of embarrassment for the woman whose body is used as substitute.”

  Yes, he could see quite well how it might be from her point of view. He was more than embarrassed from his own limited view. He had no need to speak of it further because there were, perhaps, things he was not ready to know.

  Shura went on with his work of grinding, the warm scent of herbs hovering in the air against the crackle of the birch in the stove.

  Jamie was still tired and prone to dropping off into a heavy sleep without warning, but this afternoon he felt alert enough to allow his thoughts to drift along the plane of sunlight that arced across the infirmary floor. What had happened apparently was not merely a dream, unless, of course, he was still stuck fast in the amber of fever, paddling in place, and only dreaming that he was awake.

  How far could time and space bend, and could both become a function of the human will and heart? What did he himself believe? Viewed from either a religious or a scientific angle, it was possible. Even if one had to go out to the bleeding edges of current scientific wanderings to make it possible, still it was. He could hear Father Lawrence’s quiet, careful tones inside his mind telling him it was so, and was glad today of the Jesuit’s mold and grasp upon his own mind, for it was steadying in his current state.

  “Shura? I must ask a question of you.”

  The dwarf went still, his head bent over his mortar and pestle. He answered before Jamie could find the words to ask his question.

  “She did not suffer, Yasha. By the time her throat was cut she was entirely oblivious.”

  “Thank you.”

  Shura turned, dark eyes curious.

  “It matters to you?”

  “Yes, it matters. I did not love her, but it matters.”

  The Tale of Ragged Jack, continued.

  It was a fair autumn, with long, light-spilling days that stretched to the farthest edges of the horizon. The fields were heavy with bounty, the stalks of grain bowed down with weight, the apples dropping fragrant as perfume along the roadside. The chestnut trees handed down their fruit directly into Jack’s hands, so weighty were their boughs.

  Along the way there were others who had seen the Crooked Man, or thought they had, though their memories seemed oddly porous and so they were never truly certain they had seen him. Maybe it was only a story they had heard told on dark, chilly nights by the fire. It was always this way, Jack thought with frustration—whispers, hints and small traces on the wind of a scent that lingered and then was gone before you could name it, or register it in memory. Something dark with a moral at its center to frighten children in from the dark, or to make them avoid isolated pathways.

  He wondered at times if he was mad to continue on this journey, to follow a man who only left a trace upon the air. What was the worth of a few dreams anyway? Surely he could live without them, slightly diminished, but alive.

  The snow fell on the night of Hallow’s Eve and it continued to fall for four days and nights after. It was achingly cold, the wind blowing the snow up into whorls, where they hung like frosted diamonds upon the air. The cold had stiffened Jack’s hands and he could no longer feel his feet. Even Aengus was cold, his coat frozen into frosted tufts that stood up across his back making him look like a silver-dipped hedgehog. A fringe of ice hung in the dog’s eyes and both of their breaths furled out upon the air, freezing into small sailing ships that skimmed off along the ice and disappeared.

  He did not know how much further they could keep going, for he was very tired and could feel the same exhaustion echoed in Aengus. The thought of lying down and simply allowing the snow to cover them both in a final blanket was almost dizzying in its appeal.

  By late afternoon of the fourth day, the snow was coming down so hard that Jack knew they would have to stop for the night. They had lost the path some way back, the snow filling it in great drifts. Where to stop was the question, for nothing looked familiar or sheltering.

  Then something caught his eye, a puff of steam—though surely it was only the snow stirred into a whirligig by the incessant wind. But there it was again, and it was unmistakably steam.

  He blinked the snow from his eyelashes, unable to believe what he was seeing. There at the roadside, was a huge copper teapot and a column of steam emerging in great clouds from its spout. He thought he was hallucinating, even down to the sound of a rolling boil. But as he drew close and could smell actual tea and feel the heat of the enormous copper pot, he knew it was real.

  There was a cup there, with a small note fixed to the side. Jack took it out and carefully unfolded it and then read the few lines it contained.

  Please drink if you will

  ‘Til you’ve had your fill

  But leave a jot in the pot

  For the next vagabond

  That comes along.

  The cup had a spider or two inside, but Jack shook these out gently near the heat of the teapot so that they might not freeze. He got a glare from each for his pains, before they scuttled off on hairy legs to the dark and warmth under the pot.

  The next problem was how to pour the tea out. There was no way for him to move such a huge pot and he risked giving himself a scalding shower if he tried. But they simply had to have something warm if they were to survive the night and unless the note was designed as some special sort of torment, there had to be a way to get the tea out. The scent of it was overwhelming, making his mouth water and his stomach tremble.

  Several minutes later, he was ready to kick something in frustration. It didn’t matter how he approached it, there seemingly was no way to get at the tea. The sides of the pot billowed above his head, too slick and far too hot to climb. He sighed and sat down in a pile of melting snow, feeling utterly defeated.

  “Try stickin’ the cup under the spout, ye wee eejit.”

  Jack thought he was hearing things at first, for the voice seemed to issue straight out of the teapot itself. Though this was a strange thing in a strange land, still he didn’t think teapots would talk, no matter where in the universe they found themselves.

  “Over here. Are ye blind as well as thick?”

  Jack looked toward the irritable words and found, to his great surprise, the head of a frog, or a very small unhandsome man, sticking up under the edge of the teapot. He crawled forward on his knees to peer more closely at the strange being.

  There was a big gap under the pot—under the fire as it were—impossible as that seemed. In this gap stood the frog, or man, for even up close it was not clear which he was. In this world perhaps one did not need to be either, but could exist as something in between.

  “It’s the Hanging Fire of Wick. You don’t know of it? This fire came from the original Wick Fire, deep in the heart of the Perilous Peaks. My own grandsire brought it back with him from the Wick Wars and it has burned from that day to this.”

  Jack placed the cup beneath the spout, and the hot tea poured out, filling the cup to the brim. It was scalding, but his hands relished the warmth, and his senses filled with the scent of black tea with cardamom to warm the blood. He took a sip. It tasted delicious and his stomach growled at him to send it down.

  The frog spoke again, startling Jack into spilling a little of the tea onto the snow. A small fire started where the drops had landed.

  �
��You and your dog will have to come in out of this weather, for it’s a dark moon and the night will be terrible cold as a result. Neither beast nor boy will survive it without fire. Come, give me your hand. I’ll pull you in.”

  Jack hesitated. Was the frog proposing to pull him through the flames?

  “It will not burn you, not even singe the gold of your hair. It’s special so ‘tis, an’ not made to burn the flesh of a child nor any other innocent creature.”

  Jack wasn’t sure if this could be true but they would have to risk it, for if they stayed out another night in the cold they would surely perish. The wind beyond the teapot was howling, a ravening beast waiting to swallow small boys and dogs alike.

  The frog-man had surprising strength and Jack tumbled into the hole, straight through the Hanging Fire. That it wouldn’t singe him hadn’t been quite true, for the frog had to beat out sparks lighting in his hair. Aengus tumbled in behind him and landed in a furry mass on his lap. He smelled slightly smoky but was none the worse for wear beyond that.

  It was beautifully, intoxicatingly warm beneath the pot, though it occurred to Jack that he had left the cup of tea, mostly full, up above.

  “Not to worry, I’ve a pot on the stove a-brewin’. Come with me.”

  The frog-man lit a reed off the Hanging Fire—a curious violet color when seen from below—and indicated that Jack and Aengus should follow him.

  The walls seethed with chill vapors, oozing a strange liquid that glowed a sludgy green in the dark. The light from the Hanging Wick fire was strange, pulsating rather than flickering the way a normal fire would.

  The frog-man was most odd looking. His nose looked exceedingly frog-like, as did the glistening folds of his head, yet he walked upright, even if his legs were springier than a man’s would be.

  “You needn’t pretend not to stare. It’s as you think, I’m neither this nor that, neither man nor frog.”

  The frog’s home was merely a hollow dug out of the ground, part cave, part earth, shored up by thick, gnarled tree roots.

  The frog gave him a hot drink as soon as they entered. It smelled odd, a hot, bitter smell like the drinks his father sometimes had after dinner. He had a strong feeling that to drink it, despite his thirst and hunger, would be a grave mistake. He poured it down the wall behind the bench upon which the frog had bid him sit, hoping the earthen floor would soak it up.

  He wasn’t comfortable in the frog’s home, for it had a shifty feel about it, and he could swear that things moved about when he wasn’t looking, He was certain an old copper pot with a strange insignia had been on the second shelf when he first sat down and now it was on the floor. Small bits of metal and strangely twisted pieces of wood cluttered every surface.

  He caught the frog giving him odd looks as the night wore on—half sly, half wondering, and wholly worrisome.

  The frog chattered away about all sorts of things, but Jack was so tired he could hardly make sense of the words, much less answer the questions the frog posed. Still, he had a strong sense that he musn’t fall asleep here. He would have to wait until the frog himself slept and then sneak away into the frozen waste of the night.

  The evening seemed terribly long. Supper consisted of a thin soup and bread. Jack watched to see if the frog would eat and when he did, determined these two things, at least, were safe. It seemed as though days passed by the time the fire had died to embers. The room was so dark that Jack could only make out the frog’s outline, and the strange lambent glow of his eyes. The silence was so thick that Jack could hear the frog breathing, heavy hissing breaths and each exhalation releasing something vile and cold.

  “My home is humble and is only this one room,” the frog said, breaking the silence, “but you and your dog may sleep on the settle nearest to the fire, for let no one say I am not a good host.”

  The settle was uncomfortable and the thin blanket that he drew over him smelled strange, like soured smoke and dirty copper. Jack feigned sleep, though every cell in his body shrieked in protest at the idea of closing his eyes or turning his back on the frog.

  The house was silent except for the hissing of the fire and the pulsing of something else there in the night, something dark and slithering, something waiting for him, Jack, to fall asleep and leave himself vulnerable. It seemed as though an aeon passed before he heard a sibilant snore issue from the frog where he lay on the hearth.

  Jack had clutched his bag to his chest when he lay down and over the last hour had slowly slid his hand inside. He took a pinch of the salt and put it on his tongue. He wasn’t sure what the woman had meant by clearer sight, but he knew he had to do something and hoped the salt would help him decide what that might be.

  His vision went entirely black, causing him a moment of horrible panic, but then it cleared just as suddenly. Everything looked different and quite awful. The shelves were still cluttered, the floor still shiny, but not in the way he had seen it before. The various pots, medals and bits of copper were now skulls and bones, of small animals and of children. The floor was sticky with blood and other matter that Jack had no wish to identify.

  He slid his hand back into the bag of salt, heart pounding and his breath caught hard in his throat. He felt rather than heard the frog slide off the hearth, the sucking pop of his feet against the sticky floor, and knew the frog meant him great harm, that he would be the next skull on the shelf, his blood the freshest layer on the revolting floor.

  He could feel Aengus straining at his side, ready to attack or to bolt. He dug his hand deeper into the bag, clutching it into a fist, feeling the crystals of salt cut into his palms. Then as the frog leaned down, his breath a fetid swamp upon Jack’s shoulder, the long webbed fingers trailing the nape of his neck, Jack turned quick as a whirlwind and flung the handful of salt into the frog’s wide, staring eyes.

  The frog howled in pain and reeled back. Jack and Aengus bolted, running for the hole above which the teapot sat. The tunnel seemed infinitely longer than it had on the way into the frog’s lair. Jack was terrified that he had taken the wrong way and would be hopelessly ensnarled in blind tunnels, running until he collapsed, and then the frog would be able to claim him as yet another victim.

  He dug in his bag for the bones and held them out in front of him, knowing they were not a real defense against such evil as the frog possessed. Yet there was a strength in them that hummed through the skin of his hands and steadied him as he began to navigate his way through the dark. As he chose the left branch of a tunnel rather than the right, he began to realize that the bones were guiding him, pulling in one direction insistently, telling him where he must go. Still, it felt like hours passed and he was certain more than once that he felt the frog’s hot breath on his neck, the strange penetration of those pupilless eyes. After what seemed miles of endless muck-oozing walls, the ground beneath his feet began to rise toward the upper world.

  They came out into the sun, to fields that were green and flowering with wee paintbrush blooms in all the most delicate spring shades. Jack reeled back in shock. How was this possible? He had gone into the frog’s hole only hours ago, in the teeth of a terrible early winter storm, and now it was spring.

  He and Aengus paused only long enough to put the bones back into the bag and then they ran far and fast, to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the opening to the underworld.

  They did not stop until the sun was sinking into the west, a mass of carnelian flame against a background of dark pointed firs. Jack was still dizzy from the passage of time whilst they were with the frog. He had felt entirely off balance all day, unable to understand how so much time had passed, and frightened of what it meant. Was he losing his grip on reality altogether?

  The field where they finally sat to rest was sweet with the smells of timothy hay and the twitter of birds putting their young to bed. Aengus lay beside him, long snout on his paws, a wo
rried look in the deep eyes. Now that he looked at him, it seemed to Jack that Aengus had grown remarkably. More than just a gangly pup now, his chest was deep as a ravine, his bones more solid within the pewter-silk fur.

  Jack decided they would sleep there in the long grasses that smelled like lavender honey, for he had not the heart, nor the legs to go any further that night. He lay back, hungry, but at least not thirsty for they had come across a tiny stream earlier in the day, and he had filled his leather water sack. He and Aengus had drunk until the water made their bellies ache.

  Aengus curled into Jack’s side as he did each night, his solid ribs and big paws a great comfort. Soon the dog was asleep, though from the way he twitched, his dreams were troubled.

  Sleep did not come for Jack right away. He sought comfort in the constellations, and then realized to his horror that he did not recognize any of the formations in the sky. They had changed once again. The stars, bright as they were, blurred into a mass of cold fire that smeared the sky from horizon to horizon. The tears in his eyes were hot and prickly, but there was no one to see nor mind so he let them fall unchecked for he was so tired and confused. The tears seemed to let a little of his sadness out, as if it could be absorbed into the ground and he could leave it behind in the morning.

  He put his hand into his pocket, something he did for comfort, even though he knew his dreams were no longer there. But something was, something that he did not remember being there before. His fingers curled around smooth shapes, cool as spring water, and drew forth three perfect white pebbles that gleamed with the soft luster of pearls.

  Where on earth had they come from? For if the frog had slipped them into Jack’s pocket he knew he would have to get rid of them immediately lest they were some sort of scrying glass through which the frog could trace him. Yet they did not feel as if they were anything other than ordinary pebbles, unless one counted their polished glow. Holding them was oddly comforting, as though he had regained something that he had thought lost forever.