The Wildest Woods

by S. K Munt

  I wanted to smash and shatter things- especially myself- but that would be a cowardly act so I went into the room that I’d been told was mine, knelt by my bed, closed my eyes against the framed photographs of my twin and I that were hanging all over the walls and began to pray again. Not only that God would forgive my sins- but that he would forgive my brothers too. Maybe Eden was too small for all of us to co-exist in together, but there had to be room for all of us in Heaven, right?

  Cheered by that prospect- of us all one day knowing peace- I took a deep breath and threw in another prayer for Larkin Whittaker as well. God knew that she needed him more than anybody did.

  9.

  Hope Station

  Larkin

  People looked relieved to see Sam and I re-enter the station intact, but it was clear that I’d spooked them a little by screaming at him and taking off in front of them all, because they gave me a much wider berth upon my return than they had upon my arrival, and averted their eyes accordingly.

  ‘Do I want to know what they’re thinking?’ I asked Sam as he helped me up onto the platform.’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Didn’t think so.’

  Bastien came over to greet us, gave Sam a funny look that I responded to before he could. ‘We’re fine,’ I said stiffly, holding up one hand. ‘I know all, and I’ve agreed to not set him on fire just yet.’

  ‘Good. I’m glad- I’m certain that this arrangement will benefit us all.’ Bastien took my arm and led me to the side, pointing towards the back of the station. ‘There’s a bath ready for you, and something comfortable to sleep in. Leave your clothes on the table next to it, and we’ll have them washed quickly so they can dry by tomorrow. When you’re finished, I have accommodations and a solid meal ready for you, all right? Take as long as you want- the residents have already had their turn in the washrooms, and the other newcomers were just rushed through while you were… disposed. A few of the men have to take their turn yet, but they’re happy for you to go first.’

  I felt awful to think that the other people that had walked all of that distance with me that day had been hurried through the process of bathing in order to give me privacy, and guilty over the fact that I was going to probably get a better bed and a bigger meal than everyone else... but I sighed and nodded, thanking him. I wanted to start off my leadership by demanding to be treated as an equal but then again, I’d probably had a much harder week than anybody on earth and was therefore, too tired to argue. Instead, I vowed to be as quick as possible for the sake of the males that were still waiting instead.

  I followed another woman that passed me by then towards the washrooms, and was pleasantly surprised to see what a nice set up it was. Three steel drums like the ones that they were keeping the fires in in the main room had been cut in half and set out in two rows of three, and all were full of water with a folded towel positioned on small tables beside them. The room was shivery, dark dank and draughty, but two smaller fires had been positioned between the two rows, keeping the area lit and warmer than it would have been without. It hurt me to strip off my clothes but I managed to get them off, yet when I put my toes into the water, I cringed to find that it was only lukewarm.

  I didn’t want to get into a bath that would turn cool by the time I got out because my teeth were already chattering, but then I realised how stupid I was being and leaned over further, easing my fingertips into the water and closing my eyes in concentration. I tried to get good and mad enough to make the water boil but once again I was too tired, so then I tried just imagining the water getting warmer and suddenly there was a bubbling sound, accompanied by a rush of warmth around my fingers.

  I did it! My lips parted in astonishment when I saw that my fingertips were glowing as red as a stove element and causing the water around them to bubble and boil. I can change the temperature of things too! How amazing!

  It took only about a minute for the water to grow uncomfortably warm and I hurriedly got in after that, moaning as I folded my limbs into the short but deep bath. There was a cake of odd-looking soap on the towel beside me and I lathered myself up quickly, washing everything from my toes to my hair and then sinking under so I could rinse it all off, sniffling when I scented cinnamon and something grassy. It was a bad way to wash hair and I could practically hear Maryah clucking her tongue at me for rinsing with dirty water and not using conditioner after, but I mentally gave her the finger as I had Sam. For the first time in my life my looks had gone from being the most important thing about me to the least and I was going to take advantage of that.

  Once I was clean, I took a moment to recline and close my eyes, allowing my poor muscles to soak up all the heat that I could while occasionally using my power to heat the water again. The crude bath was actually heavenly, but it wasn’t long before my eyelids started to feel so heavy that I had to struggle to keep them open, so before ten minutes had passed I groaned and forced myself to sit up and wring out my hair. I reached for the towel and wrapped it around my head and then began to stand up and made the mistake of looking down at myself… and then coloured the air with curses that would have made Sam blush.

  The brand. I had been going out of my way to not look at it, but now that I was clean I could see it shining on my skin, and it made me contract away from it, straining to escape my own body. When I realised that that wasn’t going to work, I tentatively touched it with my fingertips, and though I was glad that I could barely feel it at all, I was still resentful of the fact that I could see it- that Satan hadn’t taken it off me. Surely she had the power to right such a wrong?

  Next I looked down at my stomach and was a bit surprised to see that there was still a thin pink line there just above my pubic mound. I touched it tentatively, but it didn’t hurt either. That should have been a good thing, and yet the numbness of the area both on the surface and beneath reminded me of the fact that I was empty in there- hollow inside. I’d gotten the tracking device out and that was definitely a plus, but the poison that had been inside that little cylinder had had almost two years to do its damage and I knew that there would be no undoing that. I was free, but I was still never going to be able to have a child- a fact that seemed fitting seeing as how I was pretty sure that I was never going to allow a man to touch me again, but more depressing now that the door had opened on so many other possibilities.

  Satan had left those two scars there for a reason, and I knew it. She would have been able to find a way to heal them both but she’d left them there to remind me of what the Barachiels had done to me on the off-chance that I would forget my rage and abandon her cause by doing what I’d always done- and forgiving them. Well, she’d been right to do that I supposed, because seeing those scars made a furious heat flare up inside me that would have easily set Eden on fire if I’d let it loose- but she’d been foolish to leave me with a reminder that she would always, always put her needs ahead of my own. That like Sam, she could be interesting company, even affable and helpful- but she could not love me, and in that sense she was not a better guardian than God… but very much his indifferent equal.

  I opened my fist and stared down at the amber stone, mentally shifting Satan, Sam, Martya and Bastien into the same: ‘Proceed with caution’ pile. I was never going to let another being hurt me again- regardless of what colour their feathers were.

  And that sounded more than fair to me.

  *

  By the time Bastien had led me to the smallest, emptiest cabin on the train, he practically had to hold me up. I was wearing a long, one-piece jumpsuit that was made of flannel- a fabric I’d heard about but had never worn- and I was amazed by how warm and soft it was. I didn’t want to know how many people had worn it before me because it was practically threadbare, but I was tired enough to be more comforted by the hand-me-down than suspect, so I got into it and then into my animal-pelt bed without a fight, and then allowed Bastien to prop me up with pillows so that I could eat.

  He insisted on feeding me manually, and althou
gh it was a bit embarrassing, I let it happen because I could see that he was desperately trying to make up for seventeen years of absent parenting in one day. It wasn’t going to work but his heart was in the right place so I accepted spoonful after spoonful of the warm, potato and cream based dish while fisting the amber stone in my hand so I could safeguard my thoughts from Sam, who’d gone off to sleep by himself somewhere removed from the rest of us- but not as far as required for him to be able to block out my thoughts. I knew that he’d reminded Bastien to feed me earlier after hearing my resentful inner dialogue, and I was fairly sure that he’d given Bastien some conversational tips as well, because as he fed me, the shepherd started talking about the people that lived outside of Calliel’s boundaries, starting with the mermaids, continuing to the witches and then, moving on to the pirates. I knew that I was being manipulated into liking the man, but that didn’t do anything to douse my curiosity so I listened, fascinated by every word that he had to say, even if they were all almost impossible to believe, and even though his soothing voice was quickly lulling me into a hypnologic state.

  As it turned out, the witches and mermaids were both sects that related back to the eleven dark originals that Satan had created. Sam had told me that different titles had been assigned to different demons, but Bastien expanded on that, referring to the demons by familiar names and stunning me with the revelations. The mermaids had descended from the dark angel Lilith- a name that was thrown around a lot as an example of evil, but never in accurate detail. Apparently Lilith fed off the energy produced by lust, and had made a habit of assuming a mermaid form when she’d still been on earth, because it had given her access to many a sailor. In that form she’d fed not only off men’s lust but the men themselves when they turned out to be violent or cruel, and she’d rescued women that had been treated the same way by other men, turning them into mermaids when the urge overcame them, and back into humans so that they could flee the area after they’d raised enough hell.

  They’d been content to go on doing that forever, but when God had returned to earth for Armageddon, he’d come across Lilith and her pod of water nymphs in that form and as punishment, he’d turned them all into mermaids permanently- trapping their legs within those tails and their bodies under the water by giving them gills. Lilith had panicked at the idea of being bound like that forever so she’d called out repeatedly for God to return and save her and when he did, she quickly surrendered her soul to him in exchange for an invitation to Heaven. He’d obliged, but Lilith hadn’t bothered to ask for help for the other mermaids and in their anger, the mermaids had turned their backs on Lilith and God alike and had screamed for Satan instead.

  Satan had returned to help them, but there had been nothing she could do to dissolve God’s magic, so in the end, all she’d been able to do for the mermaids was to give them the ability to breathe above the surface again, and the ability to walk on legs for a few hours a day. The mermaids had turned on her then too, renouncing any allegiances to God and Satan both and swearing that they would take the oceans for themselves and leave them to the ruins of earth.

  That had been over six hundred years ago so although Bastien did not doubt that those original mermaids were long gone, he’d heard enough rumours about them mating with human men to understand that their population had probably increased a lot- and enough about them eating people to know that their resentment of every race outside their own had increased with it. They still probably hated Satan too, but Satan always found a way around an individual’s dislike of her to get what she needed out of them, so he didn’t doubt that the mermaids still served her- for a price- and that was probably why they’d helped a young, drowning Nephilim boy for her. They were neither light nor dark, but a shadowy entity unto themselves that were best avoided. They shied away from populated shorelines, but made it their business to keep the unpopulated ones that way, and Bastien admitted that he was actually more frightened of them then he was of pirates.

  The shepherd didn’t believe that the mermaids actually ate men though- the supposed mermaid ‘victims’ that he’d seen had only ever had flesh missing from their throats, indicating that they’d killed for the sake of killing, and not for feeding which contradicted Sam’s story a little. It was strange, but I felt better after he said that. I’d always thought of mermaids as beautiful fairytale creatures, and although I could be all right with them killing evil men, I wasn’t thrilled by the cannibalistic element as it took a lot of the romance out of the fantasy for me… but when I relayed this to Bastien, he looked at me like I was a bit crazy, cleared his throat and ask that I not go swimming without him. Then he changed the subject. I supposed that given my recent experiences, he was afraid that I’d leave Satan’s camp and join the mermaids and I had to admit to myself (as I squeezed my thought-blocking stone) that I’d probably be a lot more comfortable ripping out men’s throats with my teeth than leading them, so he was probably right to be paranoid.

  ‘But don’t worry Bastien,’ I said softly, smiling. ‘If I was going to be any sort of fairytale creature, I think I’m more likely to end up as a dragon, than as a mermaid.’

  ‘As a father I’m relieved to hear that you’d prefer getting around in armour and breathing fire over drawing men into the sea with bare breasts and a siren song,’ he said, returning my smile, and I nestled more deeply into my pillows, glad that he ‘got’ me.

  Like the mermaids, the witches were a sect that had originated from one of Satan’s originals, Hecate- another female. That name was notorious too but like with Lilith, her story had been misconstrued a lot so that by Armageddon, she’d been considered to be more of a fictional demon than an actual angel from hell. But Hecate had been the dark archangel that Satan had assigned to watch over those that had gifts of the magical variety, and because she’d never returned to the earth, God had not managed to get her under control and so she still lingered in the underworld and could still be invoked by those that had absolute faith in her- apparently. Bastien had never been to Hell himself so he could not vouch for knowing anything about it with certainty.

  The witches that lived with The Sequestered had that sort of faith in her, and spent most of their time performing rituals in Hecate’s name. I had been spooked by that, but to my surprise, Bastien had nothing but nice things to say about our resident spell casters, and went as far as to say that they were an asset to the community because they worked more for a common good than they did for individual gain. Witchcraft was a word that had a lot of evil connotations, but Bastien insisted that magic was one of those things that could only be defined as being light or dark according to the intent of the person working the spell. He assured me that not only was magic more about harnessing and filtering energy before redirecting it than it was about the worship of anything or anyone, but it was something that we all practiced in some way every day whether we knew it or not. To demonstrate, he lifted my scratched knuckles to his lips and kissed them gently before saying: ‘Kissing someone better is practicing magic, Larkin- just as saying ‘Bless You,’ when someone sneezes is. The witches here have certainly done some odd things in the pursuit of a specific outcome, but they’ve also brought my attention to the fact that practicing ritual magic is an every day occurrence for all of us. Closing our eyes when we pray to God is one of the more common rituals, blowing out birthday candles while making a wish is another, and breaking a bottle of champagne over the hull of a new boat is yet another. The witches here do everything with a sense of ritual, from when they sweep the floors to when they kill animals for meals and when they draw baths and although witnessing that sort of thing can be an unsettling sight, I must admit that this camp has been a healthier, more prosperous and peaceful place since they joined us three years ago and started applying their beliefs to our everyday lives. I’ve seen tribal groups doing the same sort of thing over the years and it always seemed like nonsense, but it actually works for these people, so what can I say? I’m a believer now.

  I d
on’t actually know that they’ve descended from Nephilim though. It seems as though everybody has the potential to tap into whatever it is that they fool around with, and that potential can be honed more expertly by dedicating oneself to the practice. As people they are kind and thoughtful, if not a little eccentric and outspoken, but they could be classified as evil to many because they worship Hecate above God.’ He paused, weighing whatever he was going to say next carefully before he added: ‘They can be good company, however I should warn you that there are two that are quite odd. Arial- the one that wears her long grey hair in a braid- has psychic gifts, and she has an unnerving habit of blurting out your fortune without being asked to give it. She’s frighteningly accurate too- but she’ll only speak when she’s inclined to, and it’s almost always in riddles.’

  I swallowed the mouthful of sauce and indicated that I’d had enough to eat with my hands even though the truth was that I was too fascinated to be interested in my food now. ‘What does the other one do?’

  The Shepherd scratched his head and made a face. ‘Skia is the oldest one- she has a face like a raisin, and a voice like a seagull so you won’t miss her. She seems to be the most gifted spell caster, and will have a go at making anything you wish for come to pass… but for a price. Not a monetary one, mind you, but you’ll end up wishing that it was, because after she’s considered your request, she’ll usually tell you that she can do it, but not until you’ve fetched her the specific items that she needs in order to help her to accomplish the task- items that are usually harder to get than the thing that you want is, especially around here.’