The Reign of the Departed

by Greg Keyes

  “I’d like some water, please,” she said.

  “Nellie, run get her a drink,” Jake said.

  “I don’t see why—”

  “Because I’m in charge,” he said.

  Nellie went and got the water. She didn’t look happy about it.

  The water came in an old, chipped clay cup. It was cool and delicious, with no chemical taste. She listened to the girls chatter, hoping to learn something useful, but it was all about boys and dresses. Jake didn’t say anything; he took out a knife and started to whittle.

  After a while, Aster felt the call of nature and told the girls so.

  “The outhouse is out back,” Nellie told her. “By the woods.”

  “I’m scared to go back there by myself,” she said. She knew Jake would have followed her anyway, to keep her from running off, but maybe this way she could score some more points with him. He wasn’t that smart, and without the girls around he might let something slip.

  “I’ll keep guard,” Jake said. “Come along.”

  He led her around the house to where she could see the outhouse, a little shack a hundred feet behind the main building.

  “I bet you’re pretty good with that gun,” she said.

  “I reckon I’m a better shot than most.”

  “Did your father teach you to shoot?”

  “We don’t do much shooting on Sunday,” Jake said. “Mostly I learned from Jobe.”

  “You only see your father on Sunday?”

  He looked wary. “I ain’t supposed to talk about that.”

  “Who says?” Aster asked. “You just said you’re in charge.”

  “Well, I am. And I don’t expect I’m going to talk about that, you hear? Now there’s the outhouse.”

  She remembered outhouses, now. She had used them when she was little. This one, at least, was more than a hole in the floor. It was a little shack with a door, and inside was a bench, about the height of a toilet, with a hole in it, corncobs for toilet paper and a bucket of sand for covering up after. She closed the door and latched it and stood in the darkness for a moment, still wondering what she ought to do. Why would the adults only be around on Sundays? Where were they the rest of the week?

  She proceeded to use the facilities, such as they were. It didn’t seem dark, as her eyes grew accustomed to the ample light leaking in through cracks between the boards. Up in one corner she noticed a small wasp nest, but the insects didn’t appear disturbed by her presence.

  From the verge of her vision, she glimpsed a movement, a change in the light. It took a few seconds before she realized Jake had his face pressed at a knothole in the wood.

  She tried not to react, tried to pretend she didn’t know he was there. She felt revolted, weak, and exposed. She wished she could shrink to the size of a bug.

  None of this was going as she had planned. She had entered the Kingdoms unconscious, and had been either insensible or weak since. The companions she had conjured to help her had run off with someone she didn’t know at all to fight some monster Jobe and his tough guys were afraid to take on. They might never return, and if they did they would probably consider her too weak to lead them. Now this indignity.

  Enough. She was Aster Kostyena. She had power.

  She turned her gaze straight at the knothole.

  “What is wrong with you?” she snapped. “You little pervert.”

  Jake bumped into the board; obviously he hadn’t known she knew he was watching her. She saw, through the cracks, him backing away. But then he came back.

  “I want you to take it all off,” he said, “so I can see you naked.”

  Well, that’s a first, she thought, unexpectedly amused. Certainly no one had ever asked that of her before. The idea that he wanted her to do a strip tease, in an outhouse, and show off her twiggy legs and mosquito bite breasts was so ridiculous she actually barked out a rough laugh.

  “Don’t you laugh at me!” he growled. “I’m in charge. I’ve got the gun.”

  She heard something dangerous in the margin of his voice.

  “Let me finish this in peace,” she said.

  “And then?”

  She didn’t say anything, but he backed off, and she finished up her business. Then she reached up for the wasp nest.

  “Me kelbede,” she said, softly. “Me Gelede.”

  The insects, disturbed, flew a few orbits around her hand before settling on her fingers. She winced at the first sting, but held still until they were all done. Then they returned to their work.

  When she opened the door, he was two yards away, gun raised.

  “Now do what I said.”

  “Why in there? Why not out here? Or in the house?”

  His eyes widened; his command had obviously been an unplanned impulse, a reaction to her catching him in the act of peeping. A way to save face. He hadn’t thought through all of the possibilities yet. Looking into the dark outhouse from the bright outside, he could probably barely see her.

  “Alright,” he said, gesturing with the gun.

  As they walked back toward the house, she remembered reading that rape wasn’t so much about sex or attraction as it was about violence and control. Jake probably hadn’t started out planning to rape her, but he might well be coming around to it now. There were no adults around, no older kids, and the girls wouldn’t be able to stop him even if it occurred to them.

  “Jake?” she said, as they reached the door. He had dropped the barrel of the gun toward the ground so he could undo the latch.

  “Yeah?”

  “You’ve got something on your face.” As she said it, she brought her hand up, not too fast, and brushed at his eyes. He was so surprised and her gesture so non-threatening, that his only reaction was to blink, so her fingers lightly touched his lids.

  “Eza gela,” she whispered.

  Jake screamed as her fingers stung him. He dropped the gun and slapped his hands to his face. Then he fell to his knees. Aster suddenly realized he was after the gun. He almost got it before she seized it and backed away.

  “Now,” she said. “I’m in charge. And you are going to tell me where my friends went.”

  “What did you do to me?” he howled.

  Aster heard someone gasp and turned to see Nellie and the other girls staring around the corner of the house before they darted off.

  “Hurry,” she snapped “Tell me, or I swear I’ll shoot your foot off.”

  “Don’t do it,” he pleaded. “They went to the cave down by Ashy Creek. North, on the trail.”

  “You’re coming with me,” she said. “You’ll lead the way.”

  “I can’t see,” he bawled.

  “You can give directions,” she said.

  “Leave him be,” a quiet voice from behind her said. She turned, bringing the gun around, but he caught it with his hand.

  He had dark skin and golden-brown eyes. His hair was curly and as black as obsidian.

  He had a pistol in his other hand.

  “Ease up,” he said. “I’ll take you to your friends.”

  SIX

  SATURDAY NIGHT

  Errol reached for the latch on his head and found it, just before his arms stiffened and refused to obey him. Again he experienced the dizzying shift of perspective as his consciousness fled the large body for the small one.

  He pushed at the face and it moved, but only a fraction. He put all of his strength into it, but that wasn’t very much. It opened just enough for him to get one arm out. Moments later, greenery covered the face, and he couldn’t see anything.

  He slumped back against the inside of the wooden skull, glumly examining his polished white limbs. He figured that since they were bone or maybe ivory the spell that was turning his wooden body into a tree hadn’t affected this one. That was good, but it could also be very bad if he never figured a way out. It wouldn’t take long to go crazy in such a small cell.

  Hours passed, and although he tried everything he could think of to pry the face the rest of
the way open, he was forced to admit that it wasn’t possible. To make matters worse, what little light coming through the foliage surrounding him started to fade. He remembered Dusk, fierce and beautiful, and tried not to imagine her dead, meat for the Snatchwitch.

  He worried about what would happen to Aster, when he never returned.

  “The story of my life,” he muttered to himself. No matter what he did, not matter what he tried, he didn’t make a difference. Not to his father, not to his friends. He might as well never have lived at all.

  He wondered what he would do now, if he had a bottle of whisky and some pain pills.

  He started when something creaked and his dark little room shuddered. Had the witch come back for him?

  Everything shook again, and suddenly wind stroked his face, and the face swung open. An enormous, moonlit visage suddenly filled his view. He balled his fists, thinking if he could put out one of her eyes, he might have a chance.

  “My, Errol,” Veronica said. “You’re just so awfully cute like this.”

  The relief actually made him a little dizzy.

  “You came back,” he said.

  “You could say that,” she replied.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “The witch has Dusk—” he began.

  “Oh, her,” Veronica pouted. “She’s still alive, or at least she was when I last saw her.”

  “You’ve seen her?”

  “Sure. While you two were bravely getting creamed, I slipped into the witch’s cave. She never knew I was there.” She paused and looked thoughtful. “I think she can’t see me.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Errol said.

  “Well, she looked right at me a couple of times. I was holding still, but she should have seen me.” She held out her hand. “Come on.”

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  “Back in the cave,” she replied. “The witch is asleep. I want to show you something.”

  They’re already after us,” Billy said. That was his name, the boy with the copper eyes. He didn’t talk a lot, and when he did say something it was with a slow deliberation, as if every word had to be considered several times before speaking it.

  “Why?” Aster asked. They were making their way along a narrow hillside trail through the woods. Her breath felt like fire in her chest, and her head pounded. She was weaker than she had believed, and she was slowing Billy down, she could tell.

  “They want to stop us,” he said.

  “Stop us from what?”

  “No talking, now,” he said. “It’s getting dark. Things will hear.”

  “But—”

  “If you want to see your friends again, listen to me.”

  She nodded, having used what little wind she had left, noticing as she did so that Billy’s feet made no noise on the forest floor—nor, to her even greater surprise, did hers.

  She still didn’t hear any signs of pursuit, but a few minutes later, Billy took her by the arm. His grip was sure, but it wasn’t hard. He guided her through a maze of grapevines and into the hollow of a huge tree. Then he pressed a finger to his lips.

  She never heard them, but after a bit she saw movement back up along the trail, and after that she sorted out Jobe and some of his boys, most on horseback, moving along at a trot. It seemed like a long time after they passed, before Billy gently prodded her to come out from cover and continue, this time in a different direction.

  The sky was silver. Night was near. Off in the distance, something made a sound like nothing she had ever heard, or wanted to hear again.

  Errol rode on Veronica’s shoulder. Now he figured he knew what a pirate’s parrot felt like, except that a parrot had claws and didn’t have to cling to the pirate’s hair in order to not fall off. Veronica didn’t seem to mind, however.

  The cave smelled worse than the clearing, and he was glad he couldn’t see clearly why. The moonlight spilling in showed mostly a few large shadows, and one seemed to be the witch. He caught at Veronica’s ear when he saw something moving.

  “It’s Dusk,” she whispered. “She’s still stuck to the witch.”

  “Oh,” he said. Then he remembered. “We heard someone in here, a girl—”

  “Yeah,” Veronica sighed. “It’s sort of too late for her. Probably the reason Dusk is still alive.”

  “Oh.” A hard chill passed through him. Someone had been alive yesterday, and they weren’t now, and he might have saved her.

  But he hadn’t, of course.

  The sting of it soured in his belly, and he felt nauseated. But he couldn’t do anything about that either.

  “Come look here,” Veronica said.

  He numbly watched as she squated down by what he could vaguely make out as a grotesquely clawed foot. Was that really what Veronica wanted to show him?

  “Is this really what you want to show me?” he whispered.

  “There,” she said. “Look.” She pointed toward the heel.

  He did see it, then. The witch’s skin glowed a faint reddish color, but only in a patch a few inches across. The patch was shaped like an eye. It was kind of disgusting and he wanted to look away, but he kept staring, and it seemed to him something was moving, deep down below the translucent skin.

  “Okay,” Errol said. “That’s nasty.”

  “I think it’s her weak spot,” Veronica said. “I’ve looked all over her and I think this is it.”

  “What makes you think she has a weak spot?” Errol asked.

  “Well, if she doesn’t, we can’t kill her,” Veronica said. “If she does, this is probably it. Really, Errol, can’t you follow the simplest logic?”

  Errol guessed he couldn’t, but he didn’t say so.

  “If you stab her and it doesn’t work, it’s going to wake her up,” Errol pointed out.

  “That’s why you’re going to do it,” Veronica said. “You can scurry off and hide.”

  “I thought she couldn’t see you.”

  “If I try and kill her, she might become more attentive, but that’s not really the problem. The problem is, I think it has to be something magic. I tried to pick up Dusk’s sword, and it hurt me. On account of my nature, I think.”

  “Well I can’t pick it up,” Errol said. “Not like this.”

  “No, but you could use this,” she said, rising again and walking a few steps to where something glittered.

  “It’s the spearhead,” Veronica said. “She yacked it up a while ago. I think it must have been hurting her stomach.”

  “It’s in a pile of vomit,” he muttered.

  “It might have been worse,” she said. “She might have passed it through. Anyway, I can’t touch the spearhead either.”

  “Fine,” he sighed. She put him down and he waded into the stuff. It smelled something like dog food and something like rotten shrimp, but he got the spear head. It was almost as long as he was, but it was light, and he managed to lift it.

  And, typically, that was just when the witch chose to wake up.

  She yowled like a beast and bounced to her full height as if she’d been sleeping on springs. He heard Dusk yelp. He stood his ground, gripping the blade, defiant, ready to do what fighting he could.

  But the witch’s purposeful stride took her away from Errol, not toward him.

  And then he heard Dusk hollering.

  “Aster, run!”

  And then Errol was running, stumbling and slipping in God-knew-what, as the witch grew more and more distant. It would take him forever to reach her . . .

  But then Veronica scooped him up. He heard her gasp as the cold metal of the blade brushed her hand, and he held it up and away from her.

  Outside was confusion. He heard Aster yelp, and someone else, a male voice. He didn’t see either of them.

  He thought they would make it; but at the last instant whatever had protected Veronica failed, for the Snatchwitch suddenly turned and swatted her away. Errol went spinning through the air—still holding the spearhead—before slapp
ing into something sticky. When he got his bearings he saw the witch above him, her eyes glowing red embers. She snatched, but he darted, and there it was, her ankle, and the flushed eye-spot, and with an inarticulate yell he flung himself at it, stabbing down, a gnat attacking an elephant.

  The blade sank in, and then clawed fingers closed around him, lifting him up, bringing his tiny body toward her gaping maw.

  Then she dropped him and toppled without a sound.

  Once again he smacked into the earth, and once again things were different when he got up. Dusk was free, and she had her sword raised. The witch was still alive, feebly clawing at Dusk. She drew back the weapon to cut.

  Then thunder boomed, or so Errol thought, until he realized it was a shotgun. He followed the sound and saw Aster holding the weapon.

  “Stop!” she shouted. “You can’t kill her.”

  “And why not?” Dusk asked, tersely.

  “Because,” a male voice said. Errol saw him step forward. He couldn’t tell much about him in the moonlight except that his eyes were a sort of amber color.

  “Because she is my mother.”

  The shotgun was louder than Aster had imagined, and her shoulder ached from the kick. Dusk hesitated, her gaze flicking to Billy, then back down to the felled witch.

  “Your mother?” Errol said. He was in his bone-corpus, so his voice was tiny. Aster wondered what had happened to the automaton. If the Snatchwitch had torn it up, that was going to be a bother.

  “Yes,” Billy said.

  Aster noticed Dusk was now looking at something behind her, and quickly turned.

  “Just loosen your hold on that shooter,” Jobe said, as he and his boys entered the clearing.

  Aster thought about that for a second, but instead she pointed it straight at Jobe’s head.

  “You’re way outnumbered,” Jobe said.

  “That may be,” she said. “But if you come another step closer, you won’t care anything about that.”

  She tried to hold the weapon steady, wondering if she could really do it.

  The boys next to Jobe inched away a bit.

  On the ground, the Snatchwitch moaned.

  “She’ll get back up,” Jobe said. “And when she does she’ll murder us all.”