…and he threw the bones into the river.
I heard a high-pitched scream come from the rushing water. “What the hell was that?!”
“It’s the toad bone!” Gus said, and promptly jumped into the stream, slipping on a submerged tree root.
He fell on all fours, completely going under the water, but he quickly emerged and regained his footing, holding on to a large rock to help him stand against the current.
“Do you see it?! Where is it?”
I looked around. I was on higher ground than Gus, so I had a slightly better view. Gus was looking for the one bone that would go against the tide and float upstream. Although, with the strength of the current, I doubted anything as lightweight as a toad bone could fight its pull.
But in the moonlight, I thought I saw a small shadow coming toward me, spinning off one of the rocks.
“I see it! At least, I think I see it!”
“Where?!” Gus asked, splashing around.
“There! By the roots of that river birch.”
I slid closer to the stream. I could barely see a small, shovel-shaped piece of bone in the moonlight. It was standing still. I wasn’t sure if it was caught on something, or if it was resisting the pull of the stream.
“I think it’s stuck.”
But then the bone began to move. It was definitely going upstream!
“It’s moving! Hurry!” I yelled, completely focused on the bone.
Gus pushed through the current towards me, fighting hard to keep moving forward, swimming through the deeper sections, wading and running through the shallower sections. Finally, he made it to a nearby grouping of rocks.
“It’s just ahead of you, slightly to your right.”
Gus lunged for the bone, but his foot got stuck in one of the rock piles. He fell forward, cursing. “Son of a bitch!” he howled in pain and anger.
“Hurry!” I said, all thoughts of Aunt Tillie and her warnings completely out of my head. All I could think about was getting that toad bone.
I slipped and slid up the bank, trying to keep the bone in sight. “It’s moving faster!”
“Ow! Fuck!” I could hear Gus splashing, as he waded through the water towards me.
I glanced over at him. The water was up to his chest and rising.
“This stream is freezing cold.”
So was the night air, for a change. My teeth were chattering and I was shivering, for the first time in weeks.
“Gus! The weather’s turning. We have to get out of here.”
“I’m not leaving without that bone!” He grunted.
“Look to your left! It’s in that shaft of moonlight.”
He lunged, grabbing it up with a war whoop. “I’ve got it! Mara! I’ve got the toad bone!”
I heard a shriek—I don’t know if it was from Gus or the bone or the churning water—as the stream seemed to rise up and shove him. He fell backwards, his feet losing their purchase on the bottom.
The current was angry and moving faster than I’d ever seen it. It slammed his body downstream, bashing him against rocks and roots.
“Gus!” I slid down the hill, trying to follow him as quickly as I could.
Gus’s screams made my blood run cold. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him make sounds like that in his entire life. Not even when the cats were carving him up. I didn’t want to think of the damage the rocks were doing to him.
The stream had turned into a writhing, living thing, punishing Gus and dragging him under the water at every opportunity. If I didn’t think of a way to save him soon, Aunt Tillie’s prediction was going to come true. I would lose him forever.
Lightning strikes lit up the sky, rain pounded down and a big, thundering book shook the ground under my feet. The hill seemed to shrug, and the next thing I knew, I was tumbling into the water.
Gus was rapidly heading towards the river birch and I was following close behind, spinning off of partially-submerged rock formations. I had to do something, before the stream killed both of us.
Without thinking, I opened my sight, turning my entire body into a conduit. The world looked different, like a weird, surrealistic representation of itself. In the sky, I could see electrical energy crackling through the clouds,
I reached up and called on Hekate to help me.
Hekate’s fire, Guide my hands,
as I this bolt of lightning send…
I gathered the spirit of the electrical sparks, and threw it as hard as I could, into the river birch. The tree moaned and shrieked, swaying in the wind.
Lightning struck the tree, in the same spot, and the trunk splintered. The tree fell across the stream, stemming the tide.
Gus caught himself on the trunk, seconds before I slammed into him.
“I’ve got it,” he said, weakly, holding up the toad bone. “I’ve got it.”
I nodded, trying to catch my breath, and felt a cold chill run through my body.
Gus may have the bone, but nothing ever came without a price tag—whether it was for a pound of currency or a pound of flesh. If Gus had the toad bone, who now had us?
Chapter 40
The rain petered out as the storm cell moved on. Gus and I hugged the tree, using it as a lifeline to get up to the shore. I climbed out of the stream, my feet squelching in the mud. Gus tried to climb out but fell back into the water. I grabbed onto his arms and dragged him onshore.
“We can’t climb back up the hill. It’s too slippery. We need to keep going forward, down to the old willow tree and over to the east side of the forest. Even if it’s muddy, the land’s flatter there and there’s a back way to the cottage that’s not as steep.”
Gus nodded. He tried to stand up and yelped.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“It’s my knee. I must have bashed it into the rocks or twisted it.”
“Can you walk? Here, lean on me.”
“Forget it. I’m a man. I’m hardwired to eat pain for lunch and keep going. I’m not going to lean on a pregnant chick.” He said, wincing.
I picked up a downed tree limb that looked like it could double as a walking stick. “Can you use this without losing your he-man status?”
Gus nodded. “Thanks.”
He took it from me and, with some cussing, used its help to step out of the muck and go further up the bank.
* * *
As we got closer to the tree, I noticed the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen. The toadstool mushrooms under it were huge. And by huge, I mean enormous. Like, house-sized.
“Holy crap! Are you seeing what I’m seeing? That’s fucking amazing.” Gus said.
“Oh, my gosh. They are so pretty.” I know it was an inane comment, but I was struck with it all of a sudden. Toadstool mushrooms are generally pretty, but wow, when they’re twelve feet tall, they’re really gorgeous.
“Did they grow or did we shrink?” I asked Gus.
“I don’t know,” he said, examining the ten-foot wide stem. “Is this a door?”
I looked to where he was pointing. At first, I didn’t see anything. But when I shifted my vision—like with those weird three-dimensional pictures—I could see lines in the stem intersecting to form a door.
“It definitely could be.”
“I’m going in.”
“Wait!” I said, putting my hand on his arm. “This seems like a really bad idea.”
He shrugged. “When else are we ever going to have the opportunity? Can you imagine telling the baby about the time we went inside a toadstool?”
I couldn’t. Not unless the sentence following that declaration was: we were so stoned, completely out of our heads on some kind of bizarre acid trip. This was way beyond the scope of normal, even for my life.
“This kid’s going to grow up and have us committed,” I muttered. “What color do you want your rubber room to be?”
Gus frowned. “There’s a reason that pessimists don’t rule the world. Life is all about optimism, baby. So get on board the Sunshine Express.�
�
I snorted. “I’m not a pessimist. I’m a realist.”
“We’re about to go where no man has ever gone before. We’re like the Star Trek captains of witchery. Kirk and Picard. Janeway and Archer. Mara and Gus.”
“Did you just call me Janeway?”
“Seven of Nine and the Borg Queen.” Gus pressed his hand against the door, but nothing happened.
He tried knocking against it with his walking stick. It just dented the door for a few seconds, before the fleshy skin of the mushroom sprang back.
“Try the toad bone,” I suggested. After all, if anything should unlock a toadstool door, it should be a toad bone, right?
Gus took the bone out of his pocket and pressed it against the door. It solidified into wood and swung open.
* * *
Inside, was the cutest little cottage I’d ever seen. The floor was dirt and the furniture was made of twisted and gnarled branches of living wood, as if it had grown in those shapes and was still humming with vitality. Even the cushions were thick plant growth—soft moss, leaves and flowers. There was even a table-shaped tree, with a giant flat rock balanced on top of it and sturdy-looking mushrooms providing seating around it. Beeswax candles were nestled into candle holders made of crystal formations. Everything seemed alive. Even the hanging lanterns were made of spun sugar.
Gus pushed me, “Ladies first.”
“Stupidity before gender,” I said, backing into him. “You opened the door, you go first.”
“I need to bring up the rear, in case anything attacks you.”
“Like the Travelocity gnome, maybe?” I asked. “Or a fairy on steroids?”
“Don’t mock the Fae. They can be terrifying.” Gus said.
Knowing Gus, I was sure he had first-hand knowledge of that.
“Coward.” I stood at the threshold, looking around in wonder.
In my wildest dreams, I had never seen anything like this cottage. In the kitchen, the sink area was a small waterfall that fed into a round, flat basin, large enough to bathe in, and then down a smaller waterway that went under a small arch, out of the house and probably re-emerged in the back garden.
Suddenly, something shoved me, hard, and I was all the way in the cottage. I turned my head, furious, as the door slammed shut behind us.
“Why did you do that?!” I hissed at Gus.
“I didn’t do anything!” Gus protested. “Something shoved me.”
He looked around. “Talk about landing in the Enchanted Forest. Could this place get any creepier?”
“It’s adorable,” I said.
“You need to get your head examined. It’s like the forest is absorbing the cottage. The wild things are taking over.”
“Don’t you think you’re exaggerating? I’d love a little hideaway like this on our property.”
Gus shuddered. “Count me out.”
“Whatever happened to boldly going were no man has gone before?”
“We went, we saw, let’s go back. This place gives me the creeps.” He turned around to open the door, but it was gone. In its place was a smooth expanse of wall.
Gus tried putting the toad bone against it, but nothing happened. Then he got irritated and whacked it with his walking stick. The wall boomed and the sonic wave threw Gus backwards, bouncing him off the table and onto the ground.
Chapter 41
“Ow!” Gus howled in pain. “Son of a bitch!”
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“No, I’m not freaking okay.”
“Can you stand up?”
“Give me a minute,” he grunted. But as soon as he tried, his right leg started buckling, and he collapsed on one of the mushroom seats. “It’s my fucking knee. I can’t put any weight on it.”
His knee was exposed under the shorty wetsuit and it looked even more swollen than it had been before. There had to be something I could do to help him.
I had been reading up on energy healing and quantum touch while Gus was in Chicago, figuring it would be useful when the baby arrived. Maybe it was time to put theory into practice.
I looked around. There was a wooden pail next to the fireplace. I filled it with water from the miniature waterfall in the kitchen, and brought it over to Gus. I centered myself and focused on pulling energy up from the ground, through my body and into my hands. Then I rubbed my palms together, increasing the vibration of the energy.
“What are you doing?! Don’t touch my knee!”
“I have to touch it, you big baby. I’ll be careful.”
“Forget it!” He shook his head. “Not while you’re pregnant. Healing spells are dangerous. I don’t want you accidentally harming the baby.”
“Either this is one kick-ass hallucination or we’re inside a freaking toadstool, in the Faery Realm of the Otherworld. Anything could happen. I need you ambulatory. The baby and I can’t get out of this place on our own.”
Despite his misgivings, he finally agreed to let me try. When my palms were tingling, I laid them on Gus’s knee. As my fingertips explored his skin, I used my ‘sight’ to see what was going on. The spongy layer under the knee was torn and bulging, and a secondary ligament on the outside of the knee was partially torn. That explained why the front and side were swollen and hot to the touch.
I visualized the pain Gus was having as a living object, a black ball of agony. I gently coaxed the ball of pain up and out of his knee. Then, holding it carefully, I plunged it down into the pail of water and held it there, drowning it. Gus shuddered, a small cry ripping out of him and dying off with the pain ball’s submersion into the pail.
Gus opened his eyes. “Wow. You did it. My knee feels better.” When he tried to stand up though, it buckled underneath him. “Better than it works, apparently.”
“We’re not done yet. I need to rock your leg back and forth just a little. Don’t worry, it’ll be a gentle movement.”
Gus made a face, but closed his eyes and let me manipulate his leg. I visualized the interior of the knee as a liquid environment and used it, along with the motion, to ease the white, spongy meniscal disc back into place. Then, I flooded the knee with warm, healing energy, increasing the blood flow and pushing the tendon into repair mode.
As the ligament knitted itself together, I could feel my own energy levels depleting. Damn. I hadn’t been able to draw up enough outside energy. Soon the working would be pulling it from my personal stores and then the baby’s. I couldn’t let that happen. But when I tried to disconnect, I felt something sinewy wind around my hands, holding them in place.
I opened my eyes and saw that vines had come up from the floor of the cottage and wrapped themselves around my hands and Gus’s knee, anchoring us together.
“Gus, help!” I yelled. I wrenched backward with all my strength, but the vines held fast.
He opened his eyes and saw my predicament. He tried to pull the vines off, but they got tighter. “I told you this place was creepy!” he snapped. “I need a knife.”
I could feel the cottage cringe when he said that, and I knew there wasn’t a knife to be found on the premises—even if we had the ability to go searching for one. “If you can magic a knife up out of thin air, I’ll be really impressed.”
“Be ready to be amazed.” Gus said. He unzipped a small pocket on the thigh of his suit and pulled out a Leatherman all-purpose multi-tool and a waterproof lighter.
“Don’t damage the vine, if you can help it,” I said. “I think it’s tied into the rest of the cottage somehow.”
“Fine. Fire before steel.” He lit the beeswax candle and held the flame to the vines—close enough to singe the plant without actually lighting it on fire.
The vine shrieked and let go of us, descending back down into the dirt floor.
“I knew this pocket would come in handy,” Gus said, sounding pleased as he zipped the lighter and Leatherman back into it.
“Good planning,” I agreed.
I felt kind of fuzzy. I leaned against the table, feeling wooz
y and a little nauseous. The room seemed darker than before, and slightly out of phase, like there was actually multiple rooms, all on top of each other, but they weren’t quite lining up anymore. It was starting to make me dizzy. Sleep sounded really good. I just needed to take a nap. Like, maybe for a year or two, and I’d be fine.
“Don’t you dare, Mara!” Gus said, forcing me to wake up. “Don’t you dare fall asleep in a faery realm! You could trap us here.”
“Just for a minute. I’m so tired.” I yawned.
“Mara! Don’t make me throw that bucket of pain water at you.”
I shuddered. That was the last thing I needed. Gus enveloped me in his arms, pushing energy into me, rubbing my arms and back, trying to get my vibration rate up.
“Don’t,” I croaked. “You need that energy to heal.”
“So I’ll limp a little. My knee feels great. I can’t go dancing on it yet, but look at me—I’m standing! I can walk!”
I smiled. “Yay, me.”
“Come on, Mara! Knock it off. You need me to be walking, and I need you to be awake, to help me find a way out of here.”
I nodded, trying to open my eyes. It was just so difficult.
“Mara! Listen to me. That little witchlette inside of you doesn’t want to be stuck in your womb for the next six decades. You need to stop fighting me and wake up! Now!”
He slapped me and the sudden pain jolted me awake.
I pushed away from the table, still a little shaky, but better than I had been.
“Now what?” I asked, shaking my head to clear it.
“Since we can’t go back, we’ll have to keep going forward.”
I nodded and rubbed my eyes to get the last of the sleep out. A sudden movement caught my attention. “Did you see that?”
“What?” Gus looked around.
“I think… Grundleshanks just hopped into the back room!”
“Seriously? Grundleshanks is here?” Gus asked, his voice strained. “Why do you think it was Grundleshanks?”
“It was a giant toad wearing a witch hat. And whenever I think of Grundleshanks, I see him wearing a witch hat. Whoa! Do you think we accidentally ingested some of the mushrooms? Or got hit on the head with a falling branch? Maybe this is just one giant hallucination. I mean, toads don’t generally hop around with witch hats on their heads, in any realm. Do they?”
Somebody Tell Aunt Tillie We're In Trouble! (The Toad Witch Mysteries Book 2) Page 17