by Tina Smith
“She was the warrior huntress of the great forest, she is a powerful symbol.” Tisane spoke smoothly to calm her guest. Touching her softly.
Lila huffed. “And here I thought it was just a picture,” she mumbled, swaying. Visibly struggling against the effects of the herbs.
Tisane unfolded some blankets “No she was a huntress, the best there was until Zeus sent Hercules to find his children on earth. Hercules knew that to catch her, he would have to become as good a hunter as she was.” She helped her guest from the couch over to the stretcher as she spoke in a soothing tone. “When she thought of something it would just come to her. She was in tune and respectful of the forest and all the animals and plants in it. When she realized that he was hunting her, competing with her to be the best, she lost sight and he became the better hunter. When she realized this, she saw what she had done. Artemis knew that she had lost the knowledge of the earth and she apologized to all the flowers and creatures, one by one, and slowly she regained what she had lost.”
Lila pressed her lips together. Tisane realized as the girl drifted off that the bow and arrow-wielding woman on her arm was Artemis, the first great hunter, protector and warrior of Shade. Lila began to utter unconsciously.
“I hadn’t realized…how they knew…that it was me, how they were all so sure all of a sudden.” Her words were slightly slurred and whispered and she heard them as though someone else had broken the quiet. As the white witch tenderly stroked her head, lovingly considering the girls rambling’s.
Lila recalled the first day at school. They knew who she was on the first day in class as she cowered at her desk tense, innocent and frightened. When Bianca caught the glimpse of the ink on her arm she must have quietly panicked in her seat next to her sisters, knowing what it meant. Then a realization hit Lila as she dreamt. Did they think she knew what she was? Did they think she had come for them to take them out one by one? All at once embarrassment hit her and a flush prickled her face and fell slowly to her gut like a mudslide. How funny they must have thought it was when they realized she didn’t have a clue. They had tested and toyed with her, everything she had come to believe was not the truth. Lila’s instincts had been right the day they gathered around her in the cafeteria. Something had told her their intentions were sinister, and she hadn’t listened. She knew it all along in her human heart - they were manipulating her, yet somehow she still felt hurt and deceived, embarrassed and then it began to ignite into anger - fuel for the hunter.
Tisane watched Lila’s face flush. She became concerned.
“You look, faint. Please.” Tisane tried to help her lie back; Lila resisted her like a drugged patient and shrugged her off, so she backed away. Lila slumped down again into the pillow, with a jerking movement, like a mortally wounded deer, lying in the grass.
Lila felt the woman tuck the thick blankets over her body and surrendered to fall asleep in this stranger’s house. Sure Tisane’s charity would either lead to recapture, or her mother and the police when she awoke.
“You don’t know me.” She stirred and tried to mumble something before passing into a deep sleep. Tisane looked at the young girl’s feet cut from the glass in the pantry, wiped them and applied some ointment.
I dreamt I was walking along the road to Sam’s cabin in winter. The agapanthus had turned brown and dried. I touched the crunchy seeds between my fingers and they sprinkled onto the dark moist earth. I focused my eyes on the agapanthus head and it began to bloom one tiny flower head after the other and my feet tickled as I gazed down to witness the seedlings sprout, between my toes.
26. The Door
I was in the grass at sunset under the open sky, looking at Cres in the yellow sunlight through the green blades of wild wheat, warm and happy. Something in the air, burning, caught in my throat. I swallowed and cleared it a little. I opened my eyes. The heavy blankets anchored me to the thin mattress. I made out a woman, ahead, across the room; she came into focus to the smell of cedar wood and toast. I slid up in the concave mattress. It was very early; the sun was only beginning to peek in the window, but perhaps the heavy cloud cover made it seem earlier than it was. I was parched, hot and sweaty, but no longer clammy, from exposure. My dress was gone and as I felt for the knife, I discovered it too, was missing from my chest. I had been swathed in a large soft T-shirt. I pushed aside the covers and a draft cooled my skin from the wide-open front door. I saw the graze on my shin had begun to heal and was coated in some acrid smelling sticky substance. The woman was lighting a stove fire, and I had been woken by the clunk of dried wood as she pushed the logs in and stoked the flames. It was still dim outside and I considered my options. I felt so relaxed and warm that it was hard to think. Cres would be out looking for me with Reid no doubt – and with a wolf and a premonition-gifted hunter on my trail I was dead meat soon, anyway.
How long could I stay here?
I automatically began to think about the wolves on my trail. I knew if they were smart, they would simply wait. Time was quite possibly on my side and like a sign from heaven this white witch had come to save me. She was surely just a human, unable to know what I was really doing and even if she did know, I had the feeling she would not stop me if I ran. Besides, she had claimed the opposite, something I desperately needed: a safe hideout and assistance, but it was surely too good to be true. Cresida would have been here by now though, surely?
“Is there anything I can get you?” she asked, startling me.
“Newspapers,” I said, noting my knife on the dresser.
Tisane had some old papers in a cupboard above the linen. She pulled them out – a clump of old local Valley Reel papers. I thought maybe I could find information on something that would lead me to a wolf pack, any suspicious missing persons. I scoured the pages for anything that stuck out. There was nothing but school social photos and articles about how to grow Azaleas. Frustrated, I went to get some fresh air. I quietly took the jeans slung over the couch, not caring if they were for me. They hung loosely from my waist and I held them up in the front with my fist. Tisane was in the kitchen, stirring and tinkering. She seemed not to notice me slip from the bed and out the open screen door to the verandah. I felt the cool morning air on my skin. I looked at the woman through the windowpane.
Bizarrely, in front of the house the old Ford still sat awkwardly where I had parked it. For the moment it appeared I was safe and here was as good as anywhere to hide and regroup my thoughts - and eat before I would run again. I had stuck around for the vegetable garden, remoteness, lack of people and fresh running water. Considering the situation I now found myself in, perhaps I should have fled. Cresida was surely involved with this woman? I was confused but coherent enough to be weary. Where on earth was I? Hunters Road, I recalled shaking my head in disbelief.
When the woman glanced up as she set the table, still in her nightdress covered by an apron, she quietly reacted, and I watched, as she looked sad that the bed was empty. Disappointed even. She walked towards the lounge room and when she spied me on the verandah through the open door, she actually smiled shyly with her tightly knit teeth.
I called quietly, “I’m still here.” I was unable to avoid smirking back slightly, due to her delight, as I re-entered the front door.
She blinked.
“I'm glad.”
“Why?” I said warily, as she glanced at my pants.
“I saw the jeans on the couch?”
“Good,” she breathed, nodding.
“Where are my clothes?” I enquired timidly.
“The dress? In the wash, I hope you don’t mind, you were very dirty.”
I knew she was being polite. I looked down at the white cotton T-shirt, which swamped my taut body.
“Thanks,” I said unsurely. Wondering when I might have to explain myself.
Tisane had to say something about the situation and I started to make a mental note to get out of here soon, before she called the cops, or returned me to Cres. If she didn’t know anything and I w
as smart, this woman might buy me a couple of days. I lifted my ankle to scratch the sand flea bites on my hairy leg.
“Sit down,” she told me in a cheery voice. I watched as she went over to a drawer and scratched about in it, pulling something out.
“I know you have come to me for a reason bigger than we can understand right now and I want to follow the divine path, but I must ask you the things anyone would.” She knelt down in her nightdress meeting my gaze. “Sit.”
I frowned, but found myself slowly sitting as she had asked me to. She began to roll up my pant leg, with steady warm hands. She then slipped her finger into a jar and applied something cold and slimy to the red area on my ankle. I noted it stung a little where the skin was broken.
She had a kind face.
“How far am I from Shade?” I asked looking away.
“About forty-five minutes’ drive away,” she said smoothly.
I must have been on the very edge of the Valley.
“I’ll be gone by tomorrow morning.” I assured her.
“Please don’t go.”
“I have to,” I replied, suspicious of her.
“Why?” she asked innocently.
I thought for a moment of what to say. “You could get hurt,” I warned, perplexed as to why she would want me to stay. I noted there was a framed photo on the sideboard of three women. Maybe someone was coming after me.
“By what?” she said toward my ankle.
I was surprised at her lack of concern. “Do you live here alone?”
She looked over her shoulder in the direction of the picture frame. “Yes,” she breathed.
“You had a sister?” I enquired, toward her downcast eyes.
“Yes,” she answered with her eyes remaining downward in thought.
“I saw the pictures.” I looked at the table across the living area ornamented with dusty purple and blue candles that had been burnt and scattered with various trinkets.
“She’s gone now.” Tisane moved away to the table and sipped her steaming tea, I heard a sadness creep into her words.
I wanted to ask what had happened to her. “When was the last time you saw your sister?” I wondered whether the wolves had taken her in the forest that stretched for miles around to the coast and back towards Shade and the mountains. Maybe I could get some Intel on the werewolves.
“In the flesh?” She looked up, thinking. “Over two years.” She nodded.
Was she a missing person, like me? “Do you know where she is?”
“Yes, in the Cult.” Her voice was matter-of-fact, but it cut the air like a knife. I noticed she winced. Looking into her teacup, Tisane sipped her cooling green tea. “Lost to those brainwashing monsters.” She glowered.
I was surprised how she had used the word monster. I shifted.
“A Cult?”
“Yes.”
“Could you show me a photo of the Cult or the members?” I hadn’t ever heard of them.
“Of course.” Tisane quickly went over to the drawers in the kitchen dresser, ironically where I had rummaged once before, perhaps too hurriedly.
“Here.” She handed me a white envelope.
I opened it. The newspaper clipping read: ‘Cult Kidnappers’, and it hadn’t been in the papers which now lay on the fold-out bed, because, I realized, Tisane had removed the articles. There was a picture of a building from above and most notably my eyes rested upon a face I recognized, even without his glasses, a man: the leader who had played Lily’s father at the funeral. He had the same long ponytail and high forehead. It was him and my blood ran cold.
The Cult was officially known as The Born Again Beings. Everyone in the area simply referred to it as ‘The Cult’. Pictures of some of the missing, who had joined despite their families’ pleas, were printed like passport photos along the bottom of the page. Amongst others was Shelly Bealy, previously employed as a teacher at Shade Valley High.
“When was this printed?” I asked amazed.
“That article is the most recent; it’s last fortnight’s paper. That’s my sister, Narine.” Tisane pointed to the photograph next to Mrs Bealy.
“Tisane, I think I know this man.” I pointed to Dieter Pawston’s sneering smile as I felt cold goose bumps rise over my skin.
Tisane seemed to perk up.
“What? Dieter Pawston?” She leant further forward, listening.
“I mean I know of him, he’s known to me…” I trailed, absorbed in the paragraphs, and I began to read, with fervour, the exposé on the hidden Cult of the Born Again Beings. But I could read between the lines. It was ingenious. Rather than hide the pack, the leader had placed them in plain sight but had them labelled and feared as something other than what they were and it had seemed to work. And better yet I was right nearby, sitting next to a ‘member’s’ sister. Tisane watched me unblinking, waiting.
I absorbed the possibilities this now presented me. The Cult was not without its limitations and risk because they lived forever un-changing. Their limitless lives put an expiry date on the charade and almost damned them to exposure. It was crazy. My first bullet would have to be for him, their alpha dictator. I studied his features again in the smug black and white photo.
Some force had brought me to here. I snuck a look at Tisane’s expression; she was waiting.
“Who carved this on your door?” I walked onto the verandah and looked over the wood-coloured indentations running through the old blue paint. I pretended seeing the image didn’t unsettle me.
Tisane followed me and looked over my shoulder at the carved lines as the sunlight cast over it, which broke between our two shadows.
“My great grandmother, or her mother.” She looked at me and then ran her eyes over the door as though she hadn’t actually taken a look at it in a long time. “It’s an ancient symbol of protection. The ancients used to know it as ‘the hand of Agrotera’.”
“Agrotera?”
“It means huntress.”
“What does it protect you from?” I whispered, as a breeze rustled the trees hovering over the house.
“It’s just a fable. I think it brings good luck.” Reassuringly she gave a kind straight-lined smile.
“Is that why she has wings?” I said to the door, touching the sun-heated wood.
I looked up at the thin lines resembling feathers.
“My mother added those.”
I thought about what she said and huffed. “Could you just wait a while before you call the cops?” It was silly to believe Tisane knew about the underworld. Her innocence didn’t hide anything. She was clueless, and her watery blue eyes were blank.
“I told you, I wasn’t going to,” she reminded me, sounding annoyed I had not believed her.
“I will be gone as soon as I’m able,” I lied. I could have run then.
Tisane invited me back inside and I stood in the doorway as she took the food she had made from the kitchen bench and handed me a plate. I was between the comfort of freedom and the ache of entrapment as the three beasts were tracking me down somewhere in the valley.
The morning sun began to fade behind a heavy cover of ash clouds. Spring rain poured in heavy fast droplets soaking the gravel road as the wind gusted more heavily before we retreated behind the carving, in to the cabin. I hoped she indeed would protect me.
27. Cupid’s Arrow
Meanwhile the heavy drops of rain bounced off the leaves of a mangrove inlet. Amongst another group of identical trees, sand and coiling mangrove roots, Reid who was ahead, stopped running and transformed back into human form. The rain pelted down and through heavy breath he waited with a heaving chest for Cres to catch up. They had hit a dead end. Quicker than he had anticipated, she came into view and stood in close proximity, sucking in air. He was silently smug that, though she had almost kept pace through the thick trees, she was tired and breathing heavily - much to her frustration.
The rain was deafening. He spoke loudly through droplets on his wet lips. “She’s gone.” He imagined
she had got a car; they were near a human campsite.
Cres only nodded, leaning on her knees with her palms. Amazingly, Lila had evaded them for four days and now even the heavens had conspired in her favour, washing away every trace of scent and tracks in cascades of water. Lila had relied cleverly on the stench of the mangroves and changing tides, its mud and sand to cover her, the trees and salt water to hide her - under their noses. They had no choice now but to give up and take a different tack.
It didn’t help that Jackson refused to search. They could have used his help but he sulked that Lila had attacked him like a wild cat. Under the guise of anger he licked his wounds, unhappy with Cresida and any huntress, now, that one had dug her nails into his thin neck and gashed open his eyebrow with a gun. He was lucky to have survived the confrontation, but instead of rejoicing he simmered and was quietly humiliated that the little human had not only bested him but left him worse for wear. Pistol-whipped by a girl; though neither Reid nor Cres had jested at his expense – they were too worried about the repercussions of losing Lila.
Cres leant on a tree, defeated. The bite of decaying crab and seawater burnt her nostrils. All of a sudden Reid was against her with his body and his hot pallid sienna skin, inches from her face. She pushed him off and attempted to walk away, but he was not so easily deterred. His large palm seemed to wrap itself around her neck and he swept her body back towards his, her hands pushing on his chest as he lay his rain-wet lips upon hers and despite herself, for a moment she let him, inhaling the smell of the cold water and salty sweat from around his soft tawny lips. Then she tensed and pushed him away stiffly, remaining in his arms facing his light brown amber eyes which begged and questioned her all in one pleading gaze. Quickly, she pushed him away forcefully and took off running. After a few paces she morphed into the quivering shape she detested. Her sopping clothes tore away and sneakers landed in the sandy mud. Morphing was a strategy to evade him, if he dare follow, and she knew eventually he would. Cres didn’t head home though. She knew her aunt would be worried about where she was, and Reid would find her there too.