Milk & Croakies

by Sam Cheever

  He nodded.

  “Bessy?” I asked, wondering if he’d found the cow too.

  “She’s home. Along with two other cows. We were looking for her when you came through or I could have taken you back too. By the time Wicked and I came back through, you were gone.”

  Blithering bat booty! If only Slimy and I had stuck around the breach… “Okay, great. Then take yourselves and Adelaide home. Slimy too. I need to find Walt.”

  “Not going to happen, Miss.”

  I looked at the hobgoblin, shocked by his refusal to listen to me. I’d told him he was a free man when he’d come to live at Croakies, but he usually listened to me anyway.

  I just realized I didn’t like it when he acted like a free man. What did that say about me?

  Bad Naida, ugly Naida!

  “It’s not safe here, Hobs.”

  Pain slashed across my ankle. I jumped away from Wicked’s claws and glared down at him. “Ow!”

  “Yeow!” he yelled, clearly not on board with my suggestion that they leave.

  “There’s no reason for all of us to be stranded here. If Hobs can jump back and forth, he can come back and get me later.”

  Hobs shook his head. “The fold in the dimensions has altered the landscape. There will be no way to know where you are once it’s severed.”

  Despair filled my chest. I would be stuck in Plex forever. I’d have to get used to thick, silver water, weird trees, entire families that looked like clones of each other, and weird Seers whose living rooms look like mountains.

  But…Walt.

  I sighed. “I can’t leave without helping my friend, Hobs.”

  His huge blue eyes softened. “I know, Miss. And we’re going to help too.”

  Realizing we were wasting valuable time arguing, I sighed, beaten. “Okay. But I’m not sure what I’m going to do for a living in a world without magic.”

  Wicked’s tail snapped on the air. He made a grumbling noise that sounded like censure, though I had no idea what I’d done to annoy him that time.

  “Let’s go. Walt’s been with them too long already. I’m really worried that we’re going to be too late.”

  Watching my cat stalk away, Hobbs nodded. “Do you know where he is?”

  “Erm…mmfff.” I started off after Wicked, counting on his impeccable instincts to save me from monumental embarrassment. After the battle I’d put up trying to get them to leave me to do the job all by myself, I was determined not to let them know how truly useless I was in the search.

  Hobs fell into step beside me. “Try looking with your keeper magics,” he told me, proving he hadn’t been fooled by my non-answer to his question.

  I thought about his suggestion, but I had no idea how to search for a non-artifact with my energy. Still, he’d been right about Plex’s effect on magic. Maybe it would work.

  I stopped, closed my eyes, and thought about tugging my energy forward. It nestled inside me, safe and happy in the spot deep at my core where I stored it. At first, the energy resisted my call. I wasn’t surprised by that since I could give it no magical direction for an artifact. But I pictured Walt and it slowly unwound, streaming toward my fingertips on silvery threads. Energy erupted from my fingers, sending a burst of deadly power into the ground in front of Hobs and me. Dirt and rock flew into the air and ahead of us. My cat yowled his displeasure.

  “Sorry, little man,” I yelled.

  I shared a look with Hobs, energy spreading over my hand and halfway up my arm. I glowed like a torch in a dark cave. “Oops,” I said softly.

  Hobs chuckled. “Mirror magic.”

  I took a deep breath and lifted my arm, sending the energy straight up into the sky so it could pick its own direction. The silvery energy shot skyward like a rocket, burst through the thick blanket of darkness like fireworks, and whirled away in sizzling streams that whistled shrilly as they cut through the murky dark.

  I waited, listening for the telltale clang that proclaimed the discovery of an artifact…in this case Walt.

  The first clang sounded in the distance. I turned to my right. “I think we might be going the wrong wa…”

  Clang.

  Clang.

  Clang.

  Clang.

  My gaze followed the sounding of each discovery chime, my pulse shooting skyward as they built. There definitely weren’t six Walts so…

  Clang.

  Clang.

  Clang.

  I frowned. “I don’t think the magic is working,” I told Hobs.

  His head had been on a swivel, following the direction of each chime. “What’s that, Miss?” he asked.

  Something glowed with dull amber light in the distance. I narrowed my gaze at the object as it flew closer, the whisper of its passage through the air almost too soft to hear.

  I realized too late that the object wasn’t slowing down. It slammed into me a few seconds later and fell to my feet, smoking as if it had just come through the atmosphere.

  “Ouch,” I murmured, rubbing my shoulder where it had hit. “What is that?”

  Hobs and I bent over it, but it was Slimy who identified the object first.

  “A wand.”

  I narrowed my gaze at what looked like a simple stick. But I could see the glow of its tip beneath the soil. “A wand? What the…”

  Another object soughed through the air and smacked into me, hitting me in the solar plexus and doubling me over in pain. I struggled to pull air into my lungs, wheezing loudly.

  “Meow?” Wicked asked, sitting on my feet as I finally pulled air noisily into my chest.

  “What in the world?” I wheezed.

  Hobs picked it up and held it in front of his face. He pressed a button and vacuum sounds emerged. He giggled. “A hand vacuum, like the one Miss Lea has behind her counter.”

  “A vacuum,” I said, rubbing my stomach. “What in the world would I do with that?” All I could think of was the rogue vacuum artifact at Croakies. It liked to eat books and shoes and people if I wasn’t careful.

  A sound like several arrows passing through air brought my head whipping up. I yelped in fear, “Incoming!” Crouching low, I covered my head, pulling Wicked into the protective curl of my body.

  Hobs jumped away from us, and the whirring sound stopped a beat later. Silence reigned.

  I risked an upward glance, finding several items, including a witch’s athame and a deadly looking sword, hovering on the air around me.

  Realization hit. Wicked. His presence had honed and focused my rogue magics and made them bow to his will. I kissed him on top of his soft head. “Good kitty.”

  He whacked me on the cheek with a paw, claws mostly sheathed, and sauntered out of my clutches, tail whipping.

  The artifacts all slammed to the ground in a perfect circle around us. I looked at them, finding a large, burlap bag and a woman’s purse in addition to the two blades. “Who would have guessed there’d be so many artifacts in a non-magic dimension?”

  I sighed. “There’s nothing here that will be any help finding Walt though.”

  Hobs bent down and smoothed his spidery fingers through the sandy dirt, uncovering something I hadn’t noticed. When he picked it up, I thought it was a sundial, but as he handed it to me, I saw that the four directions were depicted on the surface of the dial. It was a compass.

  I smoothed a finger over it, brushing sand away to find the four seasons depicted inside the directional symbols and the four elements inside that. It must have belonged to an Earth witch.

  I pricked my finger on something on the face and blood smeared its surface before I could pull it away. “Ouch!” I lowered the artifact. “Okay, I’ll admit, I have no idea how to read this. I’m lost.”

  The compass vibrated in my hand, a bloody aura rising from its surface. I looked down at it and peered through the strange, red light, seeing the triangular blade in the center start to rotate. “Hey, this is doing something. The gnomon is moving.”

  Hobs moved closer. “It’
s blood magic, Miss.”

  I didn’t like it. But however innocently I’d done it, I’d engaged the dial with a drop of my blood. Then, I realized there was probably a tiny blade somewhere on the surface of the thing for just that purpose. If we ever made it back home, I’d show it to Lea and get her opinion about the thing.

  The gnomon stopped halfway between North and West, hovering on the line between earth and air. “I wonder what it’s pointing to?”

  “Meow!”

  Wicked was heading into the night, a glow surrounding him as he walked in the same direction the compass was pointing.

  Either he knew something I didn’t…not an unusual occurrence if it was true…or he’d decided to trust the dial to help us find Walt.

  Or…there was always that third option…Wicked had no idea where he was going, and I’d just be going along for the ride.

  12

  Between your hopes and expectations…

  The ground rose slowly as we walked. So slowly, in fact, I didn’t notice it until my calves started to ache and I was panting as I breathed. Wicked was well ahead of me, Hobs had shot away a while back and I hadn’t seen him since. I was pretty sure he was just doing the Road Runner thing, tearing around leaving a visible cartoon trail behind him, and was hoping he wouldn’t decide I was Wile E. Coyote in training.

  I was carrying the artifacts I’d drawn with my keeper magics inside the burlap sack that had come with them. If the bag was an artifact as I had to assume it was, I had no idea what purpose it served. But it did come in handy for carrying the other artifacts, since I didn’t feel I could leave them lying around after I’d enticed them to one spot.

  I jolted to a sudden stop with a yelp as a wall loomed up in front of me. It took me a moment to figure out that I was looking at an enormous ridge which appeared to rise straight up into the sky, nearly as far as I could see.

  From somewhere high above my head, I heard the hobgoblin cackling and my cat giving an answering yowl. The moist night seemed to swallow up Wicked’s meow. If I hadn’t already figured out where they were, the rock that tumbled down the ridge and hit me between the eyes would have been a pretty good clue.

  I should have never let them run ahead without me. “Hey, you two!” I whisper-yelled. “Get down here right now before you kill yourselves.”

  A hearty breeze flared up, sending my long brown hair swirling into my face and blinding me. As the breeze died down, a butcher shop stench sifted past, and I grimaced under its power. “Ugh! You guys, come here.” A stout sense of foreboding fueled my whisper, turning it into a louder-than-I’d-intended whisper-shout.

  Flames shot out of an opening in the rocky wall. I shifted the burlap sack, grabbing hold of Slimy as I leaned back to look up. The terrible twosome was halfway up the wall, standing on a path that wound along the rocky face and looked too narrow to support anything bigger than a hobgoblin or a cat.

  I certainly wasn’t going to try to cart my wide boohind up that path.

  Rain bounced off my upturned nose and splashed into my eyes. I closed my eyes and rubbed them hard, the water stinging like sand in my tender baby blues.

  “Yeow!” Wicked told me with the kind of snotty tone that only a cat can achieve.

  I looked up again, prepared to yell at them for not coming down. Were they higher than the last time I’d looked up? Dribbling dragon slobber!

  “Come down here, you two.”

  Rain arrived with a deep-throated rumble, lightning flaring sideways across the leaden sky as it had before, and the stinging drops drove me to seek cover. Thunder vibrated in my teeth as I pressed closer to the wall in a fruitless attempt to escape the deluge.

  A blood-curdling scream sliced through the rain and thunder. My gaze shot upward, and I clocked the back of my head against the wall as I took in the fire blasting from the opening near the top of the ridge.

  “Walt!” I breathed out in horror, rubbing my head. What were they doing to him?

  There was a soft thump, and a furred form hit the ground. I glanced over at Adelaide, who’d clearly fainted from the scream. I’d forgotten about the little goat. “Sorry, girl,” I whispered.

  Another jolt of lightning illuminated the cat and the hobgoblin above. They’d nearly reached the opening. I wanted to scream at them to stop, but I knew they wouldn’t listen even if they could hear me over the thunder and rain.

  Draping the handles of the sack across my torso, I carefully placed Slimy inside so he’d be safe and my hands would be free.

  It would be a miracle if I survived the climb along that narrow winding path, in the dark, over a rain-slick surface.

  A miracle.

  “You’re right, you shouldn’t try it,” Slimy agreed to my unspoken thought. “You’re very wide and the path is pretty narrow.”

  I stuck my tongue out at the bag.

  “I saw that,” the frog said.

  “You did not.” I looked at the path, sighing. The frog was right. I was so much wider than that track. But having no other choice, I found the bottom of the footpath and started climbing.

  Five feet up the path, I slipped and nearly plunged back to the ground. Digging my fingertips into the craggy rock face, I managed to keep from falling. But I tore some painful gashes in the tips of my fingers in the process. I took a deep breath and started climbing again, moving more slowly.

  My butt took a hit and I shrieked, flailing my arms in an attempt to keep from falling. It was no use. I tumbled the six feet I’d managed to travel, landing on my feet with a colorful word on my lips.

  I looked up into the sweet face of the goat.

  “Ahhhhhhhhhh!” she screamed.

  I shushed her. “You’re going to bring the Demon hordes down on our heads.”

  She blinked at me, her jaw making the usual chewing motions. Then she started up the path on nimble hooves, apparently forgetting about me altogether.

  I sighed and started up again.

  A sizzling sound from above preceded another rush of flame from the cave opening. I listened in dread for another scream, but there was only silence. That was a very good thing because the cat and Hobs were no longer climbing the wall. I had to assume they’d gone inside.

  I tried to climb faster, nearly falling two more times before I bumped up against the goat and couldn’t go any further.

  Adelaide stood happily on the narrow path, nibbling leaves off a scrubby tree that clung to the rocky face. “Move, goat! I need to get up there.”

  She ignored me, plucking another leaf from the little tree.

  Rain pelted us from above. The occasional flash of lightning only served to highlight the ferocity of the storm around us, and a blustery breeze had kicked up to turn my wet skin to ice. My teeth were clacking together as I huddled as close to the rock as I could get. A particularly violent shiver nearly toppled me off the path.

  I contemplated trying to step over the goat, but decided that way lay suicide. All she would need to do was start moving while I had a leg over her back and I’d be toast.

  “Adelaide, you need to move.” I couldn’t shake the thought that a loud noise would mean her death too. If she fainted on that narrow path, there’d be only one way to go. Down. Far down.

  I patted her boohind and she finally got the idea, breaking off another leaf before turning and heading up the path again.

  As we neared the cave opening, the horrible stench I’d smelled before grew until my eyes watered from it. The scent was familiar, but I couldn’t quite place where I’d smelled it before. It smelled like a combination of rotting fish, dirty socks and biological substances.

  The path ended just below the opening. It was two feet beneath the cave, and I’d need to step up to get inside. The goat stopped a foot away and went to work plucking leaves off another scrub tree.

  I leaned against the wet, slippery surface to listen, hearing nothing inside.

  After a moment, Adelaide turned and hopped the space between the path and the cave, disappearing ins
ide just before another plume of fire sprayed the entrance.

  “Adelaide!” I screamed before I could stop myself. I jumped into the cave, rolling away from the edge and keeping a low profile in case fire filled the opening again.

  I didn’t even realize I’d drawn the wand until I looked at my hand and saw it there. The tip glowed with pinkish light, sending spots of illumination dancing over the walls. I shoved to my feet, prepared to do battle with the Demons to save my friends.

  But I was destined to be disappointed in that.

  The cave was empty except for Adelaide, who was snorfling along the wall as if searching for more leaves.

  What in the…?

  “Ahhhhhhhhhh!”

  Flames shot out from a shadowed corner in the back and I dove to the ground, sliding across the rocky floor on my belly. The flames illuminated the cave and I saw a huge form huddled against the wall. The thing had a long, elegant head, small ears, and a large, spiked body that tapered to a long tail. The tail was curled around the body and a pale face with wide, terrified eyes was folded inside the appendage, trapped within the spikes.

  A dragon! No wonder I’d remembered that scent. I’d stumbled into a dragon’s nest one other time, and it was hard to forget the experience.

  As the flame died down, the dragon and its prisoner disappeared too.

  “Meow!”

  A soft head bumped against me. “Wicked. You’re okay. Thank the goddess.”

  “Miss? The magic here is strong.”

  I climbed to my feet, adjusting the bag over my shoulder.

  A muffled voice came to me from its depths. “Let me out of here. You nearly killed me with that last move. Crazy lady.”

  Slimy! I’d forgotten about him when I’d flung myself to the floor. I quickly dug him out, holding him in front of my face. “I’m sorry. If I hadn’t jumped, you and I would have both been Dragon BBQ.”

  He made a sound of disgust. “Don’t ever talk about being cooked to a frog.”