by DM Fike
As it turned out, I didn’t have control over that outcome. Darby met me at the edge of the homestead property, stroking Jortur’s fur. “So, you decided to come back.”
It figured she saw me leave. I decided to play it cool. I flipped her off as I walked past.
“Fechin followed you!” Darby shrieked at my back. “You won’t be able to hide from this one!”
Given that I had come to the same conclusion, the threat didn’t faze me. In a way, Fechin’s tattling would be the best outcome anyway. It would bring Guntram and Tabitha home faster, if only to punish me.
I made my way to the forge, hoping to catch Sipho and give her the update too. A string of smoke rising from the cabin’s chimney indicated she’d be there. As I pushed the large half door open, though, I found not only Sipho and her two mountain lions, Nur and Kam, but Baot as well. He lounged on a stool, leaning backward so his elbows rested on a table behind him. He glanced over at the same time Sipho did, polishing the hilt of a sword at the workbench.
And what a sword it was. Its blade shined under the various lantern lights in the room, almost like melting ice. The hilt had a metallic sheen with intricate sigils carved down the sides in clumps. It looked big enough to require two hands to swing it effectively.
“Whoa.” I whistled. “You’ve been busy.”
Sipho picked up the sword with one of her beefy arms, showing its length to be nearly as long as one of her cougars. “One cannot be too prepared for a vaettur like the mishipeshu. Especially not while we protect the vitae orbs.”
“You should have watched her hammer, chica,” Baot interjected. “This beaut’s a masterpiece. See all the sigil etchings? Depending on how Sipho holds it, the sword can channel either fire, earth, water, or air pith. It’s genius.”
“It’s a general-purpose tool of war,” Sipho explained modestly, although I could tell by her fluttering eyelids that Baot had flattered her. “It’s the kind of weapon any forger can create, but given the circumstances, I wanted to make sure I could aid in defending our land.”
I’d witnessed Sipho’s exercise routine. She ran miles most every day, could lift heavier barrels than anyone I’d ever met, and often used just her farm tools and muscle to demolish old junk she thought she didn’t need anymore. I would hate to be at the other end of her sword arm.
I said, “I think you’ll defend the homestead just fine, Sipho.”
“And what about you, Ina?” she asked. “I’m not the only one who has been busy. Where have you been? Darby informed us that you left the homestead.”
Of course, she had. I raised my hands in surrender. “Look, I know I’m in big trouble, but I found the mish…”
Before I could get the cat’s name out, both mountain lions perked up, growls low in their throat. Their heads swiveled toward the door. Nur rushed out of the forge first, fur raised on his beige neck. Kam quickly followed, her claws sticking out like little daggers from her paws.
And then the ear-shattering scream reached us.
All of us scrambled after the mountain lions, Sipho clutching the sword in her hands. Baot drew a quick sigil that created a bubble around his body. He had gathered ambient humidity as a steady supply of water for a fight. Racing through the grass, I also brought up my hands. I felt a twinge of electricity in the air and considered absorbing some lightning. Then I realized the foolishness of that action. I couldn’t control the lightning pith.
And more importantly, there shouldn’t be any lightning pith at all.
My stomach lurched as clouds formed at the edge of the homestead to the south. They blocked out the dawn’s rays, casting a dark purple hue in the sky that would have been the envy of any Hollywood villain.
The mishipeshu had found us.
“Jortur!” a second scream cut through the thickening atmosphere.
The mountain lions halted in their tracks behind a terrified Darby. She held her hands out to Jortur a hundred yards away, right at the edge of the trees. Sipho, Baot, and I watched the deer dryant’s knees knock as the tips of trees swayed beneath the swirling clouds, the mishipeshu approaching. A boom of thunder caused Jortur to flinch, his body angling toward another section of the forest, ready to flee.
I recalled escaping from the vaettur myself. The only reason I’d survived was that I’d used the trees as obstacles. I opened my mouth to scream at Jortur to run.
Sipho must have figured out my intent and grabbed my shoulder. “Don’t frighten him. He’s safe.”
I gaped at her. “Safe? The mishipeshu’s going to devour him.”
Sipho’s grip tightened painfully, her nails biting into my skin so I’d get the point. “As long as he stays out of the trees, he’s within homestead boundaries. The homestead’s defenses will cloak us. The mishipeshu will not be able to get through.”
Even Baot stayed skeptical. “Are you sure, Sipho?”
Sipho nodded firmly. “It will hold if we remain calm.” She let go of me to inch next to Darby. “Do you hear me, child? We need to keep Jortur out of the trees, even if the vaettur reveals itself right on top of him.”
But Darby had that waking-nightmare look on her face that indicated she was living out some awful scenario inside her head. “Tabitha put me in charge of Jortur. I’m responsible for him. Nothing can happen to him.”
“And nothing will,” Sipho cooed softly. “If we all just stay still, everyone will be fine.”
A bolt of lightning lit up the sky, blinding the homestead for a moment. As the light abated, a dark figure stuck its bobbing head out of the forest, left of Jortur. Its piercing cat eyes came into focus, staring seemingly straight at us.
Everyone stiffened in fear, except for Sipho. “It’s okay,” she repeated. “It can’t sense us in any way as long as we stay on the homestead property. All it sees is an impenetrable mountain.”
After an eternal moment, the panther snarled as it shifted his head away from us. It appeared confused, pawing at the air, but not giving any indication that it knew we crouched right there in terror.
But it did not leave. The panther sniffed, growling as it swiveled its head around, looking for something. Baot frowned at its behavior. “It smells something.”
“It’s tracking a scent,” Sipho said. “Wondering where it has gone.”
The impact of those words cut me to the core. Of course, the mishipeshu smelled vitae. As Guntram had said earlier, I had the stink of it on me. It would want that more than any marten, no matter how tasty.
Yet, I clung to a glimmer of hope as the panther slunk back into the forest. Sipho was in charge of the homestead for a good reason. Not even a vaettur as clever as the mishipeshu could break through her illusion. We might make it out intact after all.
And we would have too, if not for a random lightning strike. It hit a tree not far beside me, causing it to explode into tinder bits. All of us shepherds yelled and jerked away from it but stayed within the boundary lines.
But not Jortur. That was the last straw for the nerve-wracked deer. One moment he huddled in absolute shock, the next he took off, away from the explosion.
And into the trees, straight toward the mishipeshu.
“NO!” Darby screeched as the forest enveloped Jortur into its embrace.
Nur and Kam discharged as if from a revolver, speeding across the distance with the rest of us inferior humans struggling to catch up. The mountain lions leaped into the foliage at the same time as a terrible racket sounded up ahead, co-mingled sounds and shredding prominent in between a loud thunderclap.
The thick stands of trunks made it difficult to navigate up ahead. We had to split up just to reach where the attack was taking place. Sharp feline cries, some high and some low, ripped around us, an indication that Sipho’s cougars had found their prey. I made my way toward them, mentally preparing to absorb lightning pith from the sky once I had a clear shot.
I heard Darby stumble next to me, then fall down behind a fern. I would have left her there to recover on her own except sh
e let out an anguished scream. When she reappeared with blood on her torso and hands, staring down at the ground, I knew what she found before I could get there.
She crouched next to a mound of exposed flesh and fur. It took me a second to locate Jortur’s antlers, twisted at an odd angle behind his head. The mishipeshu had taken a good hunk out of his side, bits of rib poking through. His eyes had lost their green vitae glow.
Darby desperately went to work, knees digging into the dirt to absorb earth pith from every possible source, as she scribbled sigils furiously above Jortur.
But he was way beyond healing.
Something came crashing toward us, striking a tree not far away and crumpling to the ground. With Darby’s attention on the dryant, I sprinted forward to find Kam lying on her side, a jagged gash down one shoulder. I thought for a horrible moment she too was dead, until she attempted to stand, whimpering in pain.
Before I could do anything to help her, a guttural war cry cut through the thunder booms. Sipho shot through the forest, muscles bulging, as she attacked the outline of a dark form in the thickening rain. I did one last quick check on Kam, ensuring she’d be okay without me, before running to help.
It was difficult tracking the fight with so many trees in the way, but I caught glimpses of creatures taking shots at each other: the large panther, the sword-wielding Sipho, and occasional streaks of Nur with claws raking at any vulnerable spot along the enemy’s belly. Something about how the mishipeshu struck back seemed different than before. It had grown taller and become unnaturally fast, its raking claws hard to follow with the naked eye. It dawned on me that this was probably the result of sucking in Jortur’s vitae.
It had given the vaettur a supernatural energy boost.
Sipho dodged every swipe from the beast, though just barely. She shifted the grip on the sword handle, her blade glowing with an explosion of earth pith there, a burst of air pith there, but didn’t really get a chance to carve her enemy. She used the blade mostly for defending against its claws.
I kept hearing splashes of water. Although I couldn’t see him, Baot had joined the fray too, striking the panther’s face every time it took a swipe at either Sipho or Nur. Without that support, the panther would have likely already struck them both down. He must have known that, which is why he couldn’t launch a full water banishment sigil.
Lightning surged in the atmosphere. I might wound it at least, if I could only get a good shot in. The problem was all the trees. Whenever I came close to absorbing the storm, the panther would duck out of sight. I did this several times until I realized I needed a better vantage point to hit the vaettur.
I ran around the perimeter of the fight, searching for a better angle. At one point, the mishipeshu landed a solid strike on Nur. The cat howled as he fell. I took a few steps to help, but Sipho, face full of fury, darted forward to defend her friend, blade alit with fire. She thrust it toward the panther, who retreated to avoid getting burned.
Sipho had the upper hand, but I’d already attacked this thing with fire. It wouldn’t work.
Baot appeared next to me, an intense frown of concentration on his face. The ring of water he’d formed around himself grew in the increasing rain, a shield made of gobs of water that floated around him like little bees.
I waved at him. “I’m going to absorb some lightning and take out this cat.”
Baot shook his head furiously. “You’ll hit Sipho.”
“Then what’s your bright idea?”
He slid into a sigil stance by crouching lower to the ground, feet slightly more than shoulder length apart. “Don’t worry, chica. We got this.”
I had no idea what he meant until Sipho suddenly let out a battle cry, stabbing at the panther’s right eye. She missed, but sliced a bit of its cheek nevertheless. As the cat howled in pain, she leaped backward.
“Now, Baot!” she yelled.
Baot unleashed a water banishment faster than a finger snap. Every bit of moisture for a quarter mile—not only his floating gobs, but the clouds, the rain, even the humidity itself—rallied behind Baot’s attack. They all convulsed in a beautiful arc that smacked the mishipeshu straight in the face, a solid strike.
The mishipeshu wailed and skittered backwards on its haunches. The storm above us eased, breaking the clouds and allowing bits of sunlight to streak through. For a moment, I thought Baot and Sipho might have pulled off the impossible.
They might have sent this jerk back to Letum.
But the mishipeshu did not return to its own world. It clawed upward, swiveling its angry head toward us, fangs bared in a snarl. Then it shot off into the forest, limping, but at a faster pace than we could match.
“Come back, you coward!” I yelled. I absorbed the remaining lightning pith in the air and forced all that energy through a banishment sigil of my own.
Too late. The panther had already fled behind a large cedar tree. The lightning hit the trunk, shattering into fragments of splinters. We all ducked and covered to protect ourselves from the blast. As the last shard fell, the mishipeshu had long since escaped.
“Dammit!” I screamed in frustration.
I made a motion to go after it, but Baot stopped me with a sad tilt of his chin. He motioned toward Sipho, who stumbled toward the fallen Nur. I remembered Kam, then Darby’s anguish over Jortur.
We couldn’t pursue the panther now. Not when we had our own injured to attend to.
CHAPTER 19
I’D NEVER WITNESSED the corpse of a dryant, and I prayed I never would again. Surveying Jortur’s bloodied, matted fur rent open at the chest made me want to vomit. Survival had kept me moving before, but now, faced with the deer’s vacant stare, sadness threatened to choke me. Darby’s heaving sobs didn’t help, her face buried in his thick stag mane, pith causing bits of rock to tumble up and down around her as she unconsciously moved the earth in her grief.
Sipho tended to her mountain lions, leaving Baot and me to take care of this. I didn’t know what to do or say. We couldn’t leave Jortur here. His dead body, tendrils of vitae clinging to it, would undoubtedly entice the mishipeshu back. We’d already witnessed what the mishipeshu could do with just a whiff of that stuff. I shuttered to think of what it could do after a full-course meal. But I also utterly sucked at consoling people, and even though I wasn’t Darby’s biggest fan by any stretch of the imagination, her cries cut deep into my soul.
Fortunately, Baot took charge, kneeling beside her. “I’m so sorry, kid,” he whispered.
Darby jumped backward, almost smacking Baot in the face. She hadn’t even realized we were there. She forced herself to swallow back tears to ask, “Is there anything you can do?”
Baot shook his head softly. “No amount of pith can bring the living back from the dead.”
“But maybe he’s not dead.” She flattened her palm against the earth to absorb pith. The ground shook from the intensity of her pull. “He might not be gone yet.”
Instead of telling her to stop being ridiculous, like I might have done, Baot simply nodded. “We can try.”
From the tears gathering in the water shepherd’s eyes, he had already accepted Jortur’s death. Still, he gathered earth pith alongside Darby, and they pressed their opposing hands near Jortur’s flank. Between their fingertips, a bubble surfaced under Jortur’s fur, a bad sign. It meant that Jortur wasn’t absorbing anything, and the earth pith pooled inside an empty cavity.
At the sight of the bubble, Darby broke down into fresh sobs. Baot rubbed her shoulders, consoling words spilling from his lips. The longer I stood watch, the heavier the weight in my chest. The mishipeshu had followed me back to the homestead.
If not for me, Jortur might still be alive.
Darby apparently concluded the same thing because she caught a glimpse of me behind Baot. Her face contorted in rage, and she broke out of Baot’s embrace to draw an earth sigil. The dirt beneath my boots collapsed, forming a quicksand-like mud. I scrambled to get out, but a second suctioning force pull
ed me farther downward.
She meant to bury me.
I’m sure Darby would have succeeded if Baot hadn’t interrupted her sigil with a light shove. She stumbled, and in doing so, I only sank up to my knees.
Baot rounded on Darby. “What are you doing?”
Darby pointed an accusatory finger at me. “It’s her fault this happened! She brought the vaettur here!”
I couldn’t refute that point, but I did explain myself. “I sensed weird lightning pith in the middle of the night. I just wanted to confirm that it was the mishipeshu.”
Darby took that as confirmation of my guilt. “And in doing so, you brought it here to kill Jortur.”
“I came back to warn everyone.” My face flushed as Baot stared at me with an unreadable expression. “I didn’t know it tailed me.”
Darby thrust her hand back into the dirt for another round. “It doesn’t matter what you thought. You killed Jortur.”
In a way, Darby was right. My reckless action had inadvertently caused Jortur’s death. The quicksand crept up to my thighs, and I decided not to fight it.
Maybe I even deserved it.
But Baot splashed water in Darby’s face with a quick sigil. As she sputtered, he declared, “I don’t care who did what right now. Our duty is to conceal Jortur’s body before anything else gets to it. The augurs can decide everyone’s fate later.”
Baot released a series of earth sigils that allowed me to step out of the quicksand. Then, eyeballing us both as if he expected us to betray him, he gave very clear instructions on how to use earth pith to roll Jortur’s corpse back toward the homestead. He put himself between Darby and me, making it difficult for either one of us to attack the other without going through him. Then slowly, we coaxed the earth into sliding the deer back home.
* * *
After everyone made it back safely to the homestead, I holed up in the library. I told myself I needed to research the mishipeshu, but I was really avoiding the uncertainty on Baot’s and Sipho’s faces as they tended to the mountain lions. A knot formed in my gut that wouldn’t go away. I shoved it down deep and buried myself in books, looking for answers.