Teeth in the Mist

by Dawn Kurtagich

  “Eve, stop.”

  “What is it?”

  “I can’t read. Not just Latin. I can’t read at all.” When she says nothing, he pulls away, makes to get up.

  She grabs his arm. “No! Do not leave!”

  “I cannot stand your judgments—”

  “I do not judge you, I only feel—”

  “I will not bear your pity either!”

  “I feel angry, Adam. I feel angry that so much was taken from you. Please, love. Stay.”

  His breathing remains rigid and fast, but his muscles relax.

  “Listen to me,” she says, taking his hand. “I will never judge, nor pity you. I shall rage beside you. And I shall love you. No more and no less.”

  His eyes flash with something she cannot name, but which is familiar in the way that her own spirit is, and then he kisses her—hard.

  She pulls away once more and pushes him back. “Now, practice stoicism and let me read you this book, you knave!”

  He grins, eyes narrow and piercing. “I prefer the other option.”

  “I’m certain you do.”

  “As do you.”

  She laughs. “Yes, I do.”

  His grin is wide and wolfish, and he nods for her to proceed.

  She takes the book from him. “After I jumped out the window, when I woke on the mountain, I had this book with me. I have no memory of taking it. Seamus was there.”

  “Seamus? But you said he had been taken.”

  “I know. When I was in the house and Cage was… He was trying to cleanse me.”

  Rapley jerks violently.

  “In the moments afterward, when he left me alone, I saw Seamus. I mean, I saw his essence, his spirit—I don’t know what to call it. He was lost. But he would talk to me.”

  Rapley blinks several times. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  “Do you really want to know why? Isn’t it obvious? I didn’t trust you.”

  “What did he say?”

  Roan lifts the book. “He was reading this.”

  “I think you’d better tell me what it says now.”

  Roan nods. “It tells of how one man, a man named Fostos, made a deal with the Devil himself, and how, in exchange for long life, he sold his soul.”

  “Fostos… The Faustian legend? Maudley told me the story once. It’s true?”

  “And there are a list of dates, written in by hand. They’re sightings. Sightings of Fostos himself.”

  “Pant Tywyll?” Rapley says, frowning. “Is that what it says?”

  “Yes.”

  “But that’s here. It’s the folk name for the mountain, before it was renamed Meddwyn. It means Devil’s Peak.”

  It rings a bell. Roan gives a mirthless chuckle. “I do love subtlety. So these catacombs—we’re sitting on top of them?”

  Rapley pales. “I have a feeling we are. It would explain a few things.”

  Roan gives him a pointed look.

  “In there. It talked about Conjures. I’m almost certain I’m this one.” He points to the symbol for Sighter. “What did you say when you pointed to it? Visions? Seeing things. Seeing things that were once alive?” He nods. “Me.”

  “Adam…”

  “You were right. It does concern me. I first saw one when I was a child. It was my mother, Daphne. She was standing in the kitchen, smiling at me. I pointed to her, called her. My father said she was asleep upstairs. I just remember the look on his face when I shook my head and pointed, insisting she was in the kitchen.”

  “She had… passed?”

  Rapley nods. “I saw another when I was older. Then again at eight.” He looks at her. “With you. You helped me to find them. You showed me not to be afraid.”

  “I never saw anything.”

  “But you believed me.”

  “Of course I did.”

  “When I came here, there were more sightings. One every few months. It was like that for ten years.”

  “And then the three of us showed up.”

  He nods. “You showed up. Then I saw them every day, all day. They would gather under your window.”

  Roan’s spine runs cold as ice. “My window? God help me.”

  “Always there. Standing. Looking up. I tried to keep them at bay. It worked.”

  “Your vigils.”

  Rapley looks at her sharply. “You knew?”

  “Of course. You sat under my window almost every night. There’s a window seat that I hid on every night. I would watch you.”

  His jawline and neck flush, and it is the prettiest thing she has ever seen on a man.

  “Thank you.”

  He nods, silent. “They gather around you,” he says at last, “hundreds of them. But they’re not all. There are other things. Darker things.”

  She nods. “I know. But hundreds? Why are there so many? There is nothing here. We are the only people for miles.”

  “The tale of the miller must have some truth to it.”

  “Oh, I agree. The way Seamus was taken… Maudley’s disappearance.”

  He looks at the book again, at the crudely drawn map, which they had found hidden in the back of the Unbound Book. “We need to find this place. This hidden cloister within the catacombs.”

  Roan takes the book from his hands. “It says the entrance is hidden in rock and air.”

  “How can an entrance be hidden thus?”

  Roan shakes her head, and then closes her eyes. Perhaps she may sense something, the way she had known someone was Conjuring in Mill House. Her senses snake outward like the mists on the mountain, and she is surprised when they do not go far.

  Her eyes snap open. “It’s here.”

  Rapley leans closer. “Where?”

  “Here, in this cave. Hidden in rock and air. Rapley, we’re sitting on it.”

  Rapley hesitates only a moment, and then he is on his feet, searching. Roan finds it first. At the back of Rapley’s small cave, a boulder stands unnaturally tall in the corner. A blanket is folded in front of it. Roan can feel something here. Old magick.

  She doesn’t need to speak. Rapley removes the blanket and rolls away the boulder to reveal a narrow corridor, crudely made, leading farther into the mountain. It is blacker than the blackest night and reeks of clay, magick, and mildew.

  She sees a shudder run the length of Rapley’s spine as he takes it all in.

  “I’ve been sitting on this for years. And I never saw.”

  Roan shakes her head. “You were drawn to it. This cave. That much seems clear.”

  He spits a laugh. “Drawn to it indeed. Like a moth to hellfire.”

  She puts a hand on his arm, still thrilling at the contact of her flesh on his. “We are what we are,” she reminds him. “Now we find out why.”

  Rapley gives her a stiff nod, but there is a warmth in his eyes that was never there before, and she takes it. Each and every sign of life within him as their days together pass, she devours with a hungry relish. But gently, oh so gently.

  Come out, dearest. I am waiting for you.

  He gives her hand a squeeze before he lets go and steps back.

  “We’ll need supplies,” he says pragmatically, “if we’re going to go down there.” He reaches for the cloth map. “If this is anything to go by, it could take time. It’s… labyrinthine. And this map is old. We don’t know what we’ll find down there.” He pauses. “Are you certain you want to go? I could go alone, see if—”

  She snatches the map from his hand and begins to roll it up.

  He grimaces. “I thought not.”

  “One can dream,” she says, grinning sweetly.

  That cracks his exterior, and she sees a small smile appear on his unyielding lips.

  “Ah!” she gasps, leaning close and squinting. “I saw it! Not much of it, but I’m sure… yes. I’m certain. A smile.”

  He raises his brows and fixes his lips firmly. “You must still have fever.”

  She laughs and hands him the map. “If we’re to go, the
map goes too.”

  “And much else, besides.”

  By the time the pack is ready, it contains canisters of water, dried meats, bread, candles, spare clothing, and—

  “Matches,” Rapley says, packing them securely in their own little pouch. “Without light, we’re dead.”

  The temperature drops as soon as they cross the threshold and the moist, telling air of deep compression wafts up to greet them. Rapley glances back at Roan again.

  “No going back?”

  She steps around him to lead the way. “No.”

  At first the lanterns reveal little besides the rocky walls of the mountain, the cave stretching thinly in a narrow, jagged pathway deep into the heart of darkness. Roan can scarcely believe it herself; that Rapley has lived on the mountain all of ten years and never once knew upon what he wandered.

  “Go carefully,” he warns from behind her, and Roan nods. Beneath their feet, the rocks lie twisted and fallen, misshapen by years of corrosion and movement. Here and there slick patches of lichen and moss drape themselves artfully over hidden boulders so that they slip and have to touch the walls close by on either side to maintain balance.

  Then, gradually, the ceiling begins to shrink. Lower and lower they have to bend, until Roan is forced to lie down upon her stomach to get through a small space, leaving her lantern for Rapley, who hands it across to her with his own lantern before he himself follows.

  Deeper and deeper and the ground slants down at a noticeable angle, so that they both cling to rocks to keep from going too fast. Every now and then they stop to consult the map, and choose left-leading tunnels, Roan’s instincts telling her to move before the map confirms it, always careful to mark their progress on the map itself and with strips of material tied to rocks upon the floor.

  At one moment, both of the candles gutter alarmingly, and simultaneously a sound far ahead and below moans, a low kind of rain.

  “Nothing is stable,” Rapley says, his voice tight.

  Roan avoids adding that she does not think they’re very welcome, pushing away the thought, once more, that the mountain is very much aware of them. And is hungry.

  Devour us not, she wills it, grabbing her knife and poking the side of the rock walls. I will give you indigestion!

  Rapley is behind her in moments. “What is it?”

  “Just having a chat with the mountain.” Roan eyes the wall. “We understand each other.”

  Roan feels his grin in the air behind her. “Fey witch,” he mutters, and kisses the top of her head.

  They continue on.

  “Here,” Roan says after a long, winding walk. She points to the part in the map where the tunnel indicates a shaft going directly downward.

  She lifts her lantern and spies a stairway cut like a ladder into the rock wall.

  She steps up to the rim.

  “Don’t,” Rapley says, touching her arm.

  “There are answers down there. There must be.”

  “I won’t fit. I can’t follow you.”

  Roan nods. “I know. Pass down the lantern when I’m in. I’ll be fine.”

  He hesitates a moment and then, knowing her resolve will not be challenged, nods stiffly.

  And so she goes

  D

  O

  W

  N

  DEEP

  IN

  THE

  BELLY

  OF

  THE

  MOUNTAIN

  AMID

  THE

  RUMBLING

  WALLS

  SHE

  FINDS

  THE

  PLACE

  WHERE

  THE

  DEVIL’S

  TONGUE

  WAS

  FIRST

  SPOKEN

  AND THE ROCKS GROAN IN THEIR WAKING

  AND BEGIN TO RAIN DOWN

  LIKE THE END OF THE WORLD UPON HER.

  My belly swells with the passing months and I delight. Nothing has been found of the missing men excepting some torn cloth and a great pool of blood. Huw and the others believe they did not light their fire high enough and were found by wolves in the night. I cannot fathom that to be the truth, since we heard no howls, nor screams, nor massacre.

  I have been watching the ram amongst the goats. He has been watching me also with a preternatural gaze. It is a strange kind of creature to stare at me so! I wish there were two, so we might put this one to death and eat of its flesh. Then I could be rid of its ever–watchful gaze.

  I dream strangely of late. I sleep long, strange hours, and wake crying out. I dream of my babe suckling at my breast, and I am filled with a wonder so strong I praise God for it. But then I look down upon her, and she is a goat, not a child, and her teeth are those of a wolf, and my breast is half–eaten.

  What a thing to dream! If it is not the devil himself putting such images in my head then I must be well and truly mad.

  FROM THE DIARY OF

  HERMIONE SMITH,

  SEPTEMBER 1584

  ZOEY

  NOW

  Chapter 33

  …AND I LIKED IT

  I didn’t sleep well. Len was awake before me, sitting in the hole in the wall, staring out at the foggy morning.

  She doesn’t understand why I have to pay a blood price for my Conjures.

  I told her it was more than a blood price. “If I lie after I Conjure, then I bleed. The price is honesty. So I add my blood to my spells as a kind of… sacrifice. To show that I mean what I do and don’t do it lightly.”

  “Don’t,” she said. “Don’t use your blood again. The Conjure can be easily corrupted. Like with me. You didn’t mean to call me out, but you did. You might have called out something much, much worse. Using your blood is a way for the Conjure to trick and hurt you.” She stops. “Honesty is a price?”

  I nod. “My father was the same. His price was memory.”

  “Memory?”

  “Every time he… Conjured, he’d lose a memory. Usually one of me.”

  “That’s… harsh. But you see, that’s exactly what I mean about blood.”

  “What?”

  “Conjuring doesn’t have a price. It’s as natural to an Unclosed as it would be for a normal person to have a drink or take a drug. Addictive, but not costly like that. The only way this could have happened is if someone in your line, someone among your ancestors, cast a blood curse.”

  “You think this was done to us?”

  She nodded. “I don’t pay that kind of price.” She paused, and then said: “Show me.”

  I told her it was a bad idea. She had no idea what would happen… none.

  “Maybe it’s something you’re doing,” she told me. “Maybe I can fix it.”

  She took my hands. “Show me.”

  And I found that I was powerless to resist.

  What do I do if I don’t use blood?

  Focus. Think about something specific that you’ve lost. Something small. An object. Close your eyes, and see it. And then call for it.

  I did exactly what she said, picturing a green pin that I lost when I was six. It was my first merit badge and I lost it on the way home from school before I could show Dad. Then I open my eyes.

  That’s it?

  Should be. So what now? You have to be honest?

  Yes. For a few hours. Especially about what I’ve just done.

  What did you Conjure?

  A photo. A photo I lost.

  She smiles at me. Good. Now we wait.

  I bite my lip for the lie I have told. Now we wait.

  Everything is

  dark.

  Everything hurts.

  Oh God.

  It hurts.

  There’s something in my

  eyes.

  Len found me sometime in the night. I was shaking, shivering—wet. I was so wet all over. And cold. It hurt everywhere.

  It was dark and I couldn’t see. When would the sun rise? I needed to get warm, but I couldn’t mov
e. I was standing in a corner of a room somewhere.

  I heard footsteps. Thought it was Poulton come to save/comfort/help me like old times. Was I in my bed? Was I dreaming? I reached out as though he’d be next to me, but there was only cold, dark, empty space.

  Then a flashlight in my face; I cringed back. So bright. So brilliant.

  The light fell. There was a crack.

  “Lord preserve me,” Len whispered in a choked kind of way. “Oh, Zoey.”

  And then there was a lot of movement. I was aware of being covered, of being wrapped tightly, and then she was hugging me. She was hugging me, and she was—was she crying? No. No, but she was speaking.

  Her hug was so painful… but I didn’t want her to let go either.

  “I should never have asked,” she said softly, tears in her voice.

  Be okay. I wanted her to be okay.

  “It’s fine,” I told her, trying to make it all better.

  And then she was crying, holding me so tight I hoped she would never let me go, but it was painful. It was so, so painful, and though I tried not to, I cried out a little, and suddenly her arms were gone.

  She led me back to the Green Room and stoked the fire. I sat huddled in front of it, wondering why I couldn’t get warm. And the whole time I kept thinking—where is Poulton?

  “I might go to sleep,” I said. “You don’t have to worry. I’m feeling much better.”

  She brought over bottles of water and one of Poulton’s towels. “No. You’re going to tell me about your father.”

  “My dad?”

  She let me talk for a while, and I told her about the rabbits I make because I’m his little Rabbit. I told her a million other little stories, while she washed me down with a damp towel. She got up several times to get more water, or change the towel, but I couldn’t stop talking.

  When I finally ran out of things to say, I was wrapped in blankets and there were three bloody towels in a pile by the fire.

  Len was rubbing her hands.

  “What did it look like?” I whispered. My hair was cold and damp, but I felt cleaner.