The man nodded curtly. “You have my word,” he said, extending a hand.
Shane gave him the name.
As their hands locked, Shane felt a jolt, from his fingertips all the way into his heart.
We stood in a world of purple mist rising up from primordial ground. There were sounds around us in this world of vapor - scuffles, whistles, grunts and stomps. None of them comforting. But I didn’t care about any of this at the moment, as I stared into Shane’s blank eyes. They looked past me, rather than at me.
“So, that’s your secret?” Eve asked, grinding her boot heel into the earth. “You got off pretty easy. Meanwhile, I bared my soul to everyone.”
“That wasn’t all you bared,” Paul fired back.
“You’re one to talk, Guitar Hero.” Eve glared.
“Convenient, isn’t it?” Michael asked me. “He’s a dreamwalker and we’re in a dream world. It’s fortuitous that the portal picked one of his more noble moments to showcase.”
“You suggesting I had some control of this?” Shane asked.
Michael shrugged “I’m just suggesting it’s convenient, that’s all.”
Shane stepped forward, handing me his cowboy hat. “I’ve had enough of your arrogance. And your suggestions. And you ogling my wife. Yes, she’s my wife.”
“She was my wife first.”
“Only in that failed little cult of yours.”
“I was ordained in that cult, and my ordination married you. Still want to squabble about technicalities?”
Shane took his hat back, pulling it low, his eyes still on Michael. “You know what’s really convenient? The fact that you haven’t had your turn inside the truth chamber yet.”
“My heart’s right with God.”
“But it’s not right with me.” Shane looked him up and down, his lip curling. “I can’t wait until it’s your turn. I want to see you squirm.”
“It’s never good karma to wish harm on others. I believe that’s true in every religion, not just in my cult.”
“Stop it,” I said to them both, before things escalated further. “Let’s just be glad we passed through another portal without a problem. We need to focus now.”
“Maggie’s right,” Merry said, pulling Michael a few steps in one direction while I herded Shane in the other.
I studied my husband - the way his eyes drifted, his palms clenched, and his shoulders fell. This had nothing to do with Michael. Shane was still reliving his portal memory.
“What happened to Asha?” I asked.
“I don’t want to talk about it.” Shane said.
“Please. I’m your wife. Tell me.”
Shane tilted his head to the side and inhaled a long breath through his nose. “You don’t want to know. Trust me.”
“Oh, no,” I said, stepping back.
The others heard, and walked over.
“They killed him?” Merry asked, her hand at her chest.
Shane’s words lingered on his tongue, and we held our breaths. It was like watching a drop of water on the tip of a faucet, waiting for it to finally break free. “They killed them all,” he said simply.
They killed them all.
“No,” I protested, remembering Asha’s eyes and his sister’s smile. “The captain promised they’d be safe. Are you sure?”
Shane turned his hands over, studying them as if they had done something wrong. “They wanted to stop them before they could carry out the raid – now that they had the location. They took out the compound in the middle of the night. The children were… collateral damage.”
He shoved his hands into his pockets and turned away.
I didn’t know what to say, because I didn’t know how I felt. I had vowed to love him no matter what I was shown, but at the moment, I felt sick.
Michael walked past, muttering. “They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I guess they’re right.”
“This must be where the Beatles came up with their song, ‘Nowhere Man,’” Paul said.
“They probably didn’t need portals to the Netherworld in the 1960s,” Ruth Anne joked. “Just a reliable lighter.”
We did our best to lighten the mood as we slogged through our new setting. The air smelled like new rain falling on a stagnant swamp. The mist hindered our vision. Birds whistled and cooed, but we couldn’t see them. The area was almost prehistoric, sans the man-eating dinosaurs. At least we hoped so. I found a stick and tapped it on the ground in front of me, to feel my way forward.
“If this is Shane’s world,” Ruth Anne said, “the question begging to be asked is: Shane, are you afraid of marshes?”
“Yes,” he answered, colorlessly.
I reached for his hand but he pulled away, pretending to pick something off his shirt.
“He okay?” Merry asked me.
My husband hadn’t spoken since the portal. The muscles in his cheeks twitched as he marched forward, lost in his own head. I couldn’t even guess at his thoughts. He was shielding me.
“He’ll be all right,” I said, wishing I had The Star card back for reassurance. Its absence made me feel somehow vulnerable.
“It would have ended badly for Asha no matter what,” Merry whispered. “The boy would have been killed delivering the message.”
“Can you tell him that? He trusts your intuition.”
“It won’t matter.” She smoothed her hair from crown to shoulder. “He won’t hear me on this. This is his cross and he wants to carry it. It’s what keeps him going.”
I knew she was right. If Shane could view it objectively, he would see it, too. It didn’t take any special intuition to know that Asha had been doomed from the start, but at least the village had been saved.
But what if it were Montana? Or June Bug? How would I feel then? Could I offer up one person l cared for, to save a hundred people I had never met? I wasn’t sure what was fair anymore, or what was right and what was wrong. The right- and left-hand paths edged dangerously close to one another, in some matters, at least.
We continued on, looking over our shoulders as invisible creatures clicked and chittered around us. Shane no longer seemed concerned about our direction, and I looked to the ankh, hoping for verification. We forged through these wetlands, picking our way along whatever dry ground we could find, my imagination conjuring all sorts of slithering beasts watching us from the mist.
The marsh eventually eased into a waterway of thick mud, canopied by hanging trees and heavy vines. We could see again, though there wasn’t much to see. It was a world of brown sludge from earth to sky. The further we walked, the heavier I felt. The animal sounds receded, and only our labored breaths and slogging feet could be heard.
“I can’t keep going,” Eve said, losing a designer boot to the slurping suction of the mud. She reached down, made a face, and plucked it out. She continued on, one foot bare while she worked on cleaning the mud from her shoe.
“It won’t be long,” I assured her, holding out my arms to keep steady.
“There’s no time here, Maggie. Every moment is long.”
I wasn’t sure if Eve’s logic was sound, but I understood it. “We must be on the right track. We keep hitting the gates.”
“Ever think this world is just screwing with us?” Eve asked. “That it delights in embarrassing us for its own amusement? Or maybe that once we all go through the portals, the whole cycle will start again?”
I had considered this, but I didn’t admit to it. If we were the Netherworld’s reality show, we were probably getting very high ratings. Our group was falling apart. Eve and Paul now only exchanged insults; Shane walked far ahead of us without saying a word; Michael kept to himself; and Merry grew increasingly agitated about her impending portal. Only Ruth Anne seemed in good spirits, pointing out her ‘flora fun facts’ as she walked. And this only added to Eve’s ire.
“So this is hell?” Merry said, ducking beneath a slimy vine.
“More like purgatory,” Paul said.
“
Gotta hand it to you, this is some landscape,” Michael called to Shane. “Is this what Montana looks like?”
“Fuck you, you arrogant asshole.”
Three thin bolts of blue lightning simultaneously flashed around us. One cleaved a small tree completely in half.
Had Shane done that?
“His mood seems to be affecting this landscape,” Ruth Anne noted. “Not his fears.”
“Reminds me of you, Maggie,” Merry said. “Good thing there aren’t any light bulbs he can blow out.”
“I’d kill for a light bulb right now,” Eve said. “Anything but this drabness. Even the plants here are brown.”
Hmm. If Shane were drawing on my abilities, perhaps I could draw on his, shaping this realm as we did in our shared dreams?
I looked at the sky, willing it to change to sunny blue, or even dull blue. Nothing.
Maybe I need to be closer to him. I increased my pace, catching up to Shane. I tried again for a sunny sky, without success.
“Don’t think about it,” Merry said. “Feel it.”
Feel it? Feel what? Hope, my inner voice said.
I remembered The Star card, with a picture of a woman at a well, looking up at a morning star. She wasn’t focused on the empty well, but on the rain that would eventually come. And that was what sustained her.
I stared beyond Shane, beyond the gunk and the grime. I stared into my intended future, where I was safe in Dark Root, married, raising Montana, visiting my sisters and running Mother’s shop. I saw sunshine and blooming flowers and a happy childhood for my son. I was calm. Serene. At peace.
“Maggie!” Merry gasped, tugging on my arm. “There’s light ahead!”
“And I hear something besides sloshing mud,” Eve added.
Yes, it was the sound of a gurgling brook. We watched as daylight moved towards us, cutting through the gloom, bringing clear skies and color to the world again. It spread in all directions, washing this world clean.
Only Shane remained within the mire, inside a ten-foot column of despair. He turned on me, his eyes angry, still standing in his mud. “What the hell did you do? This was my landscape. My burden. You can’t just take that away from me.”
“This may be your burden, but it’s not ours,” I said. “I love you, Shane, but I won’t let you pull us all down with you.”
“Don’t you get it? I was responsible for that boy’s death, and his sister’s, and who knows how many others?” Shane covered his ears, as if trying to block out the voices in his head. “If I hadn’t given them the location, all those people would still be alive.”
“You know that’s not true. That boy was given a bum deal from the start. What you did may have saved a lot of other people. Shane, no one blames you. You were trying to help.”
“Was I?” His hands dropped to his sides. “I’ve been over this a million times. Did I enlist to help others, or was I there for my own ego?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve always had this ability. That’s one of the reasons I loved visiting Dark Root - I felt normal there.” He stretched out his hand and wriggled his fingers. “I wanted to prove I wasn’t a freak, and that maybe this ability was actually a gift. No… that’s not entirely true,” he continued, dropping his eyes. “Part of me really wanted to be a big shot.”
“We all want to feel special. It’s human.”
“Uncle Joe warned me against my pride, many times. ‘We use our abilities to serve the world, not for personal glory,’ he told me. Asha’s death is my karma. And it will haunt me till the end of my days.”
“Stop it, Shane. I won’t let you talk like that anymore.”
He laughed, shaking his head. “I can still think it.”
“Fine. But leave us out of it. I have a baby to think about. And if you’d stop being so self-absorbed for just a minute, you’d be much more help. You want to save a child? Save mine!”
“Maggie, that’s just it,” he said, looking me in the eye. “I let Asha down. What if I let you down, too?”
“The only way you’ll let me down is if you give up,” I said, getting in his face, joining him in his murky bubble. “Face your demons later. I’ll help you. But don’t give up on me now.”
Shane sighed, looking me in the eye. Eventually he spoke. “You’re right. My demons will have to wait.” He slid his fingers through my short hair. “You’re beautiful,” he said. “This new cut really frames your face.”
The gloom was scrubbed clean by the rays of bright silver sunlight, and Shane’s demons fled. For now. There was an important conversation we would have one day, far in the future when we were back home. But for this moment, there was only sunshine.
“Maggie, can we talk?” Merry asked, gently coaxing me away from the group. Everyone’s mood had improved, all except for Merry. Her energy was nervous and erratic, and I knew why – either she or Michael would be next through a portal.
We found a place to sit on the stream bank, dipping our toes. “It feels so good,” I said, scooping a handful of water up onto her legs. She splashed me with her foot in return. Soon, we were both laughing and Merry began to relax.
“June Bug and I used to do this back in Kansas,” she said. “We would go to a pond when Frank was away at work, and spend the day feeding ducks and splashing around. I miss that.”
“You miss the ducks? Or Frank?”
Her smile wilted. “I don’t miss Frank. For a while, I thought I did, but then I realized it wasn’t him I missed. It was the stability he provided me and June Bug. He made me feel safe, at least in the beginning. Then, it was just easier to stay than go.”
Merry pulled up a dandelion and blew the seeds into the air. “I hope I get to see June Bug again.”
“You will!” I said, standing up and wiping the dirt from the back of my legs. “Even if I don’t get Montana, I’ll get you home.”
“Maggie…”
“Don’t Maggie me,” I said, helping her to her feet. “You’ve done more than I can ever repay you for. You’ll see June Bug again. I promise that.”
My sister touched a strand of my hair. “I agree with Shane. This cut suits you.”
“You’re coddling me,” I said, inspecting my reflection in the water. I looked pale without my long locks, and my mouth was thinner than I remembered. But my eyes popped, as green as clover.
“Hey, Merry!” I said, bending over and searching the ground around us. “Make a wish.”
“There are no stars out,” she said.
“No, but I’ve got something better.” I plucked up a four-leaf clover and presented it to her. She clapped her hands and laughed like a little girl. Merry had often spent her childhood days chasing rainbows and searching for leprechauns. But only once had she found a four-leaf clover – the thrill of a lifetime – and she’d willingly given it to Eve, who had just lost her favorite doll. She never found one again.
“Maggie! That was truly magical.”
I blushed. “Not sure how much luck it will bring you, as I have a feeling these fields are now full of them.”
Merry twisted the clover between her fingers, considering her wish as three ducklings waddled past. She crouched to pet them. “I have to admit, there is a part of me that loves this world”
“I could do without the gargoyles and the haircut,” I said. “And Gahabrien, too.”
Merry and I looked over our shoulders, eyes wide. Just saying the name of a demon could be enough to bring it around. She cast a protective circle around us, three times, just in case.
“Let’s vow to always be close, and stay together until we are crones on our porch swing, casting curses and swigging tea,” Merry said.
“I promise. But I don’t ever want to be a crone,” I said. “That word needs a makeover.”
“I’ll be a crone three years before you!” Merry said.
“Yes, but you’ll be eternally young,” I predicted. In my mind I watched Merry’s face transform through the years. Her flaxen hair would lighten
further and the ends crinkle a bit. Her plump cheeks would soften and a few lines would frame her eyes. But there wouldn’t be much else to mark her journey through time. Her brightness and optimism rendered her ageless.
“How are you feeling now… about going through the portal.” I asked, as we walked back.
She swallowed, tugging on her sleeves. “I’m still not sure I can do it, Maggie. I’m a coward.” She wiped her eyes, forcing a smile. “Maybe I’ll be spared?” she asked, hopefully. “My heart is mostly clean.”
“Whatever you did, Merry, it can’t be as bad as what I’ve done in my life. Do you remember, Eve and I killed Leo?”
“That was an accident.”
“But it happened.”
“And you made amends for it.”
“And I’m sure you have, too, whatever it is.”
“Maggie! Merry!” Shane called, interrupting us. He walked briskly, the others in tow. “The next portal is up. Are you ready?”
Merry swallowed and put her head on my shoulder. “Promise me you won’t hate me, Maggie. I couldn’t bear it.”
“Not a chance in the world.”
Shane pointed to a fork in the river I hadn’t noticed before. “The gate’s just beyond it.”
As we reached the portal, Merry hugged Michael, harder than necessary. They were in love, I knew for sure, but did they know themselves?
Merry broke their embrace and turned, head high, walking through. She was taken right away, and the rest of us were pulled in after.
16
The Devil
“Goddammit, Merry! Let me in!”
Merry slumped against the front door, feeling her heart break with every desperate slam of his fists. He couldn’t stay there all night. Could he?
“Just go away, please!” She called, her voice cracking. She caught sight of herself in the mirror by the coat rack. She was green around the gills, as her Aunt Dora would say. She couldn’t let him see her like this. She couldn’t let him see her at all.
Her phone vibrated in her purse on the floor. She thought about ignoring it, but what if it was Frank? She reached down and looked at the screen, seeing the name ‘Jazz Shoes’. She hit ignore and dropped it back in her purse. Looking through the peephole, she watched him put his phone away and punch the porch rail.
The Shadows of Dark Root (Daughters of Dark Root Book 5) Page 24