by J. M. Frey
A bustling festival mood has gripped the main street, where villagers in what appear to be their celebration best travel in pairs and family groups toward the ruin on the hill. It covers the sound of our footfalls as we slink down the alley between the Pern’s small stable and the neighboring row of shops. In the distance, over the wooden roofs of Gwillfifeshire, I can see that they’ve lit a bonfire at the apex of the knoll, and as we slide past yet more revelers on our way around a corner, I realize that each household seems to be carrying with them an unlit torch wreathed in fresh meadow flowers.
Fire Flower Festival, I remind myself. For whatever it is that means.
We take more back alleys and squeeze through fence slats, following a circuitous route that only makes sense to the boy. Finally, we arrive in an older, crumbling part of town where the houses lean against one another like limping beggars and the square is frosted with the refuse of what appears to be a butcher’s market. The breeze gifts us with the odors of old meat and blood, spilt marrow and bowels. Mixed with the lavender of my shirt, it is bile-inducing. I clamp my mouth shut against the taste of it, absurdly glad for the lemon cream.
If Kin is nauseated, I can’t tell. Dammit, I should have offered him some of the ungent. Thoma doesn’t seem to even notice the smell. Kin scans the square, but all the houses appear empty. The festival has pulled away all the residents. Hmph. That’s an unexpected blessing.
In the center of the square, bathed in auspicious and melodramatic moonlight is an ancient yew tree. Its circumference is at least twice the span of Kin’s arms, and the light from above filters through its creaking branches, casting the well tucked into the lee of the thick trunk in ominous shadow. The wall is crumbling, lopsided, and rough. It would come to Thoma’s waist if he was standing beside it, and it seems the roots of the tree have crowded it so bad that the ground around the yellowed stones has buckled and heaved, shoving the well into a motley array. A small pulley-rack is planted into the ground beside the wall, a fresh rope threaded over the wooden block and attached to a slim, clean bucket.
“Of course it’s right out in the open,” Kin grumbles.
We stop in the last patch of shadow afforded by a narrow alleyway before the exposed air of the square. Kin leans against the wall of the building and scratches the back of his head, thinking. I settle in beside him, watching the well warily while Kin is distracted, as I always do. Someone has to remain alert and ready.
“She’s in there,” Thoma says, rather pointlessly, as that much is already obvious. He steps out of the slice of shadow and thrusts his finger at the well.
“Yes,” I hiss, and drag him back. “Thank you, Thoma. You should head home now.”
“What?” the boy yelps, eyes large and wounded. Writer, I do not want to wrestle with a child having a tantrum right now.
“You’ve been very helpful,” I say quietly, crouching down to meet the boy’s eyes. “And we thank you. But things are about to get dangerous, and I think your mother would be happier if you were not here with us when they do.”
Thoma’s brow wrinkles, and he frowns fit to resemble the arches of Kingskeep’s gates. “Dangerous?” he repeats, incredulous.
“There’s a ghost about,” Kin says, and he speaks with the tone that makes it clear he thinks Thoma is a stupid child. Thoma is grown-up enough to take umbrage with being spoken to in that way, though, and puffs out his chest.
“I ain’t afraid,” he insists. “She ain’t scary.”
Kin makes a sound at the back of his throat that I know is muffled disbelief, and then covers it with a cough. “All the same, young Master Thoma,” Kin says, without turning to the boy, “you’ll go now.”
“No, I won’t!” Thoma brandishes his twig sword. “I’m a hero, and I ain’t scared of nothing!” He waves the toy in a wide arc and I have to duck to avoid its swing.
It’s stupidity and bravery like this that gets people killed, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to watch it happen to a child. It’s dangerous work, adventuring. And it’s not for the innocent, the uninitiated, the small, and the weak. I have stood beside too many graves and attended too many wakes, mourned for more of our companions than I can count on both hands. I will not attend one more.
As the boy flails, chest thrust out and chin forward, I grab his wrist. It’s harsher than I should have been, but I’m annoyed. The boy yelps and drops his wooden sword. It clatters against the cracked flags and both Kin and I suck in a breath at the volume of the sound.
The world goes quiet. Thoma whimpers. Kin and I scan the area, ears open, eyes darting. When nothing jumps out at us, I uncurl my fingers one by one, slowly enough not the startle the boy. As soon as he’s free, Thoma yanks his arm out of my reach and cradles it against his chest. The skin’s red, but there’s no bruising. He looks betrayed.
“You’re mean,” Thoma hisses, whispering because Kin has raised a finger to his own lips. “You’re not nice, or smart, or courageous, or anything like the stories. You’re terrible, and you’re stupid, and I want you to go away.”
“We’ll go when the ghost is destroyed,” Kin hisses.
Thoma gasps, eyes bulging, and takes a step back so swiftly that his narrow shoulders slam into the brick wall behind him with a muffled slap.
“No!” he says.
The word is freighted with such horror that I whip around to spot whatever is coming up behind Kin. But I find only empty air over Kin’s shoulder, and turn back to look at the boy, wondering if it is something only he can see. That’s when I realize that his gaze isn’t trained on some invisible creature, but on Kin himself.
Thoma sees a monster. But it isn’t the ghost.
“No,” Thoma says again, and this time he takes a step forward, glaring. “I won’t let you!”
“Let me?” Kin snorts. He looks as if he’s about to palm the boy’s forehead, to hold him away and out of punching range like a schoolyard bully. I shoot Kin a warning look and Kin heaves a sigh, crossing his arms over the pommel of Foesmiter instead. We share another conversation of facial twitches and almost-gestures and agree that whatever spell this ghost has cast upon the Goodwoman of Pern, it must also have cast on her son.
Monsters often enchant their human slaves into loving them. Love means that the slave will sacrifice themselves to save the creature, or betray the people who have come to rescue them. And that means Thoma can’t be here.
“Go home, Thoma,” I say. “Please.”
Thoma crosses his arms in deliberate imitation of Kin, mulish. “No. I like Mandikin, and I won’t let you hurt her.”
A sharp blast of grave-cold air rushes through the alley. I groan. Kin runs his hand through his hair, puffing out an irritated sigh.
“Perfect,” I mutter. “You said her name.”
Another chill blast rushes past, and this time the origin direction is clear. Kintyre spins around and faces the well, Foesmiter leaping into his hand. I press my back to my partner’s, feeling the slide and bunch of muscle, reading Kin’s readiness and wariness in the shift of balance and the heat of his skin. Kin will watch my back as I try to drum some damned sense into Thoma and get the little brat to hide.
“Thoma,” I hiss through the rising wind, pushing the strands of hair flapping into my eyes out of the way. It stings. “You should never name a ghost so close to its grave, or midnight.”
“It summons them. I know,” Thoma says, and peers at me as if I’m the one who’s the idiot. When he realizes how worried I am, Thoma’s grin grows wide and his eyebrows pull down into the eternal expression of a child willfully about to throw himself into mischief.
It is so like one of Kintyre’s expressions that I’m momentarily poleaxed. I raise my hand, to silence, to muffle, but my surprise makes me too slow.
“Mandikin, Mandikin, MandikinMaaaaaandikiiiiin!” Thoma calls. “Mandik—umunf!”
I slap my palm over the boy’s mouth. But it’s useless. The wind, pulsing with half-hearted blasts, grows steadily stronger, and cold enoug
h that my next exhale hangs in front of my mouth like a specter itself. Thoma digs his fingernails into the back of my hand, whining high and shrill between my fingers, but I grit my teeth and hold on.
The alley is no longer a defensible position. Too many shadows. Too many walls that a creature of air could corner us against, with too few handholds for climbing away.
Without me even needing to say it, Kin gallops forward into the open air of the square. I wrap my free arm around Thoma’s shoulders and drag the gagged brat into the square behind Kin, once more taking up my position at Kin’s back, facing out, waiting.
The boy kicks my shins and swears under his breath, but I hold on. The last thing I’m going to do is let the boy wriggle away and run. He’ll be cut down by the creature. Or worse, join it and turn himself into a hostage, leverage, a shield and a distraction.
The breeze is freezing. It grows into a gale, and my fringe cuts at my eyes. I squint, unwilling to let go of Thoma until I know which direction is safe to push the boy toward. The freezing wind turns the lingering dampness of my shirt into an icy punishment.
And then the gale stops. Just like that, our clothing and hair drop limp, the night air suddenly unmoving. It’s like those summer nights when it’s so hot that even the breeze can’t bear to stir, but it’s chill. Wrong, in every and all ways.
Goosebumps march up my spine, and I take a deep breath, forcing myself to ignore the eeriness around me and focus. I narrow my eyes, watching the debris and mist kicked up by the wind slide slow and molasses-like through the butter-thick air. It coalesces, dancing like dust motes in a library sunbeam that’s cold, so cold.
“There,” Kin says, but doesn’t point. Doesn’t need to. Didn’t even really need to speak, except that our world is too quiet, all of a sudden. It needed shattering.
Thoma goes still. I spare him a glance, worried that the boy will be limp or statue-like, eyes glowing, mouth parted in a grimace, or any of the other horrid things I have seen humans become while under spells of compulsion or Words of Obedience. But the boy seems fine. Irritated, fuming, but otherwise fine.
Carefully, I release him, my free hand curled, ready to shoot out and nab the kid by the back of the collar if I need to. Thoma shuffles a few steps away, but doesn’t seem inclined to throw himself at the ghost, or on Kin’s sword, or at me. He only glares mutinously, tiny jaw thrust out, thin arms crossed over a skinny chest. He seems to have totally forgotten that he has a kitchen knife threaded into his belt, and for that I’m grateful. I don’t need a child flashing around a blade on top of everything else. I should have taken it away at the inn. Fool.
I risk looking away from Thoma and at the monster.
It’s a woman, or at least, it’s womanish-shaped. I get the sense of white, white, and white—long hair, long scarf, full-length sleeping gown, all of it trailing into frosty mist, flakes of the ghost breaking off and falling like a never-ending drift of sparkling snow, but never piling up at her feet. Fingers of ice crawl out along the paving stones toward us. The wall of the well grows rimed with ghost-frost.
It seems, at first, as if the ghost cannot, or does not see us adults. Kin’s grip on Foesmiter shifts as two tendrils of frosty mist reach out toward Thoma. They don’t grab, they just . . . reach. Invite. It’s not seductive, or dangerous, it’s . . . maternal. Parental.
Terrifying.
My stomach tries to crawl up my throat, and I swallow hard, my heart fluttering. The pose is the exact same one my brother takes when he’s beckoning the twins over for cuddling. And nothing dead should look so inviting.
“Back, wretch!” Kin snarls, rocking up on the balls of his feet, Foesmiter held at its most menacing angle. Starlight tumbles down Foesmiter’s keen edge, a threat and a promise both. The ghost startles, straightening a bit and scowling. It beckons again, agitated. Thoma inhales, obvious and indicative. I dig my fingers into the back of Thoma’s coat seconds before the boy tries to break into a run.
“Mandikin!” he squawks, when it’s clear that I have no intention of letting him go.
Only then does the ghost straighten fully. She scowls harder, fierce and furious, hair lifting, scarf and nightdress whipping about in a hurricane wind that neither I nor Kin can feel. She reaches for the boy, arms out and issuing ghostly tendrils that remind me of the menacing tentacles of a kraken.
They writhe and reach. Foesmiter cuts, but the mist only parts like pipe smoke, coalescing again as soon as Kin’s blade has passed, unharmed.
“The phials! Bevel, the Words!” Kin prompts, but I don’t have enough hands to hold Thoma and my sword, and root into my pouch.
“Writer’s calluses!” I snarl, and shove Thoma down hard, hoping the daft brat will have the presence of mind, or at least the willpower, to stay where he’s put. The boy cries out, a sharp yelp that seems disproportionate to the mild pain of landing arse-first on cobblestones, and I belatedly remember the knife.
If the kid’s been hurt . . . no, worry about the ghost first, I scold myself.
Sword up, I keep an eye on the ghost and Kin, and get Thoma flipped onto his hands and knees with one foot, putting enough weight on the wriggling little brat’s back to keep him pinned in place. The ghost hisses in displeasure, probably annoyed that I keep manhandling its slave instead of letting the boy go to her, and I duck quickly to tug the knife out of the boy’s belt.
I lift it by the pommel, point down, looking for blood. There isn’t any on the blade, and neither Thoma’s clothing nor flesh looks slashed. There’s no dark stain on his trousers, thank the Writer. I take my boot off the kid.
And that is when the ghost howls. It points a finger that’s slowly growing sharp at my face, at the knife. The sweet, womanish face transforms into twin black pits and a sucking, terrifying wound of a mouth.
“I’m fine, Mandikin!” Thoma yells from the ground. “I’m fine, see?” He kneels up and holds out his palms. They’re scratched and dirty, but there’s no blood.
The sharp finger, the accusatory point aimed at me, curls into claws and suddenly, immediately, I understand.
Mandikin’s not trying to hurt Thoma. She’s trying to protect him.
Protect him from Kin and me.
I look down at the knife in my hand, at the boy, then up at the ghost.
“Oh hells,” I mutter, and fling the knife away. “Kin, stop!” I yell, but it’s too late. Kintyre is already lunging at the thing, muttering Words of Repellence. He’s rat-arsed rubbish at Speaking Words, always has been. The ghost wavers and shifts a bit back toward the well, but is otherwise unaffected.
“Get the boy to safety!” Kin shouts over his shoulder, lunging again. Is he really trying to make himself a human shield between me and the specter? Apparently, he is. It would be so easy for the ghost to cut through him, to step through him, hells, to even just step around him, and . . . I’m reminded very suddenly why I’m often the one who has to do the planning in this partnership.
“Kintyre!” I call again, but Mandikin’s howling has risen to such a pitch that I doubt Kin can hear me. “Kin, stop it!” I lunge forward, sheathing my sword and grabbing on to Kin’s bicep, only to be shrugged off as Kin whips Foesmiter through the ghost’s non-existent skull. “Kin, stop! Writer, for once, will you listen to me?”
Just as I guessed she would, the ghost smokes through the gaps in our bodies and reforms behind us. Thoma stands and smiles, but Mandikin doesn’t go to him. Instead, she turns to the hill outside of town and rushes away along the cobbles, down the main thoroughfare. Her hair is whipping around behind her, loose and flapping with the trail of her scarf, the fluttering hem of the modest, incorporeal nightdress diffusing like smoke rings against the starry sky.
“Follow!” Kin growls and, being the faster of the two of us, pelts after it. As always, I follow. And if I fall behind, I’ll follow Kin’s footprints.
“No, wait!” Thoma cries, and I can hear the clatter of the boy’s boots fall away behind me. Thoma is a smart boy—smarter than me, it
seems—he’ll catch up.
I shoulder through the rough, narrow gap between two wattle-and-daub houses, and suddenly I’m in a muddy field. The sky bursts into full radiance above me, deep indigo and black splattered with a cornucopia of constellations, and in the distance, capping the hill, the firefly wink of torches.
The Fire Flower Festival, I realize. Mandikin’s not running from Kin. She’s going for help!
The ghost flees up the hill, and I catch up to Kintyre just as he begins to climb it, Foesmiter slashing wildly and stupidly at her trailing scarf. We’re perhaps a giant’s stride behind when the ghost stops. She is standing beside someone, female, but beyond that, the finery of the lady’s festival attire makes her difficult to recognize.
“Ma!” Thoma cries from somewhere behind us, voice sharp and loud for such a small pair of lungs, and the woman beside Mandikin turns to its source. The ghost points at Kin and me, steaming up the hillside, Foesmiter naked in the starlight.
“Mandikin? What are you—good gracious! Thoma!” the Goodwoman of Pern hollers. “Master Turn, Master Dom! Whatever are you doing?”
“Back!” Kin roars, skidding to a halt and menacing his already-proven-to-be-useless blade in the ghost’s face like the dumb lump he is. “Stay back, away from that thing!”
“Kin, wait—” I try again, reaching out to grab for my partner’s bicep a second time. Kin actually smacks my hand away and I dance back, both my knuckles and my pride smarting.
Kin again mouths Words, and a fission of terror shivers down my spine. Words of Banishment, and, with Foesmiter so tuned to the ghost . . . no wonder Kin was cutting through the fog. He wasn’t trying to hack at a specter, he was aligning Foesmiter to the ghost’s energies.
“Writer, Kin, stop!” I shout.
Then Thoma barrels past both of us. At first, it seems as if the boy is heading to bury himself in his mother’s skirts, but he swerves and throws himself at the ghost instead.