22: Above and Beyond

When raising cattle, the weather is something you have to think about, especially towards year's end, when simple things such as grazing and walking and staying warm become a lot harder. The wind and those precious trees capable of breaking the brunt of the chill start to matter more and more. And when you get early storms like the one that arrived on Halloween, you pay even more attention. With the advent of cellphones and increasingly reliable weather equipment, it was becoming a lot easier to pick up the days when the weather would turn from bad to worse.

Not so, in the Mid. The weather was what the weather was going to be, and neither Dakota nor myself had any true idea what "season" it was, or if seasons even existed here. The nights weren't unpleasantly cold, not for my blood anyway, and the forest leaves were thick and richly colored, leading me to believe it was perhaps the end of spring or early summer here, though I couldn't say for sure. This could be what the weather was year round. I had to keep reminding myself I'd been here a little over a week. It felt like a lot longer.

Whatever the case may be, the lovely morning tumbled into a darkening afternoon.

Clouds rolled overhead, the grey-green pale of an impending storm. A bad one, if it was anything like those skies folks claimed they saw before tornadoes. I'd never seen a tornado nor a storm bad enough to warrant one, though I had seen by boat the fiery storms dredged up from the heart of Aleutian mountains. This sky made me uncomfortable, though thunder had yet to roll and not a single drop of moisture stained the ground. A hair-rising current filled the air, air  thick with moisture and seemed to worsen, despite the cloud-cover, into a dank humidity that made my back weep.

Dakota did not glance skyward like I did, however. She lacked that instinctual warning for weather I'd developed growing up around the cattle. In fact she so busy sweating through the forest, focused so hard on pretending to be scared and promptly listening for a response that  when something did finally reach her, I was worried she'd forget what to do and run for the hills.

Aware that a Lord could come from anywhere at any time, I was careful to watch my back, to leave minimal markings when passing, knowing full well that if he could track our scent, we were both doomed. At some point, when Dakota had stopped to get fresh water for herself from a trickling stream, again ignoring the heaven's dire reflection, I took a chance and lingered a couple minutes after her to splash some mud on my limbs and face. The earth beside the running water didn't smell particularly fetid when I slathered it on, but it carried a subtle tang that bothered my nose. It wore off as I relocated Dakota trudging through a weedy clearing, but by then I'd already experienced the stirrings of a mild headache.

As we delved further into foreign territory, the terrain only seemed to grow warmer. The ground held an almost porous quality, spongy and mossy and a bit more like the swamp where Dakota claimed she'd seen another girl get swallowed by the mud. With that in mind, I eyed my sweat-streaked paint job and kept a lookout for signs that we were approaching a true swamp: dead trees, decaying odor, still water and insects...But for now we were absent everything, except glimpses of waning sunlight in weedy patches before the wind whisked it all away.

A nagging pain chipped away at the back of my mind as we trekked on toward nightfall. The sky's belly had swollen thick and full. Even Dakota was aware of the threat now. In the past half hour she'd stopped drawing attention to herself and from the look of it was working on finding a safe place to ride out the storm. My stomach felt unsettled but not unfamiliar, as though gripped by that subtle knot of hunger when you've skipped a meal you shouldn't. Maybe we should have fished some more before setting out.

Nature, of course, was filled with innocuous treats I wasn't sure I could eat. We walked past several types of berries, more gemstone-bright lizards and fork-tongued rodents with smooth skin, but I couldn't stop for any of it. Watching Dakota parade about in her bare feet, I thought I glimpsed the strain of hunger on her face, too. The woman in the white dress headed for a narrow clearing, where the trees were just a bit shorter than the other giants, and if she didn't stop soon I planned to call her back and look for shelter there.

But she stopped. Her head tilted. Pebbles around her toes bounced and skipped away.

About forty yards behind, feeling the same reverberations, I stopped, too.

The headache strengthened, a sudden squeeze of pain behind my eyes. I gripped the nearest tree for support, resting my head against cool bark for a moment. As my forehead brushed the rough dim surface a sharp pain pulsed through my body, so severe I thought for a second I was shrieking, but it was just in my head.

Or on the wind.

Some type of animal, maybe one of the curious rodents, maybe a lizard, screeched a warning through the branches. Within seconds nearby trees and bushes echoed the same shrill cry, rustling louder now, as if the wind sought fast escape from what was coming. Checking the area around me, I crouched further, pressed myself against the bark like a chameleon among the swaying brush, and waited. Pain reverberated around my skull, calling my name, desperate to get my full attention.

In the wake of the shuddering gale leaves flipped across my face; I focused on this velveteen distraction instead of the wailing voices in my head, peering past the foliage toward Dakota. The woman, who did not have the luxury of staying hidden if we really wanted this plan to work, grabbed her self-fashioned spear in both hands. Even in the gusting wind the white-knuckled grip betrayed her fear. Yet she stood as she was, strong and able, taking tender steps backward toward a trunk as I had.

She knew better than I that the Lords weren't the only monsters to hunt these woods.

If that were the case, I was ready to help- and I eased forward now one step at a time, always crouching though the muscles in my legs began to ache and protest.

We'd developed a signal in case she needed help: scratching an itch on her arm, just below her right elbow. And of course, if she didn't get a chance to signal, I'd use my best judgment or she'd blow my cover and scream for me, simple as that.

The wind blew through us in another shuddering gasp of humidity. Dakota's dress fanned around her legs; with one hand she held pinned the fabric and in the other she pointed the spear towards something I could neither see nor hear as I crept forward through the rustling gloom. A fresh-sweet smell pattered the leaves between my view and her: wide raindrops sent to herald the incoming storm, warning us one final time to get out of the way.

Lightning flashed across burnt clouds, and again a sharp pain struck through me. This time it heard so bad I could barely stand, and again, clearer this time, I heard voices. A man's voice, echoed faintly by two others. He spoke in a rising, breathless tide of words in a language I didn't recognize, Latin, maybe, and they were calling my name as if it were a chant.

"Tay Wilson. Tay Wilson," they said.

"Tay!" Dakota screamed. Dirt, snapped roots and leaves exploded into the air. Something with the speed of a train barreled underground straight towards the woman. Spear abandoned, she scrambled into the low branches of the nearest tree and hung like a leopard on the bough. The tree gave a shudder louder than the skies and started to sink as if someone had opened a drain to the underworld. The woman had only seconds to brace herself on the wet bark and then she made a mad leap for safety. Higher branches collapsed as she sprang. The tree lurched onto its side as it fell, catching her lower half. Pinned between the tree and soil, she screamed again.

For a just moment the massive creature emerged from the earth to snort a breath of air -a mud-slicked, blind animal with the razor tusks of a boar and powerful claws for digging- and then its naked head burrowed back toward Dakota.

I was sprinting hard as I could, losing sight of her as I slipped and dodged around anything I couldn't hurdle over. My head hurt so bad I was seeing double.

The voices chanted louder, "Tay Wilson. Tay Wilson," and over them came that strange man's endless stream of foreign words, pulling me back, slowing me down.

Dakota clawed and kicked to free her limbs from the heavy boughs. The tree groaned, and sank fully into the hole the mole-beast had created. She barely had time to get to her knees when a great grey creature swooped upon her, smashing her chin into the pliant earth. Talons sank into her shoulder, ripping her from her position as the mole's curved tusks splintered wood and only wood. Flapping madly, the winged creature started pulling for the skies. She beat at its haunches with her fist, plucking feathers and screaming obscenities. Against the blackening sky the creature -owl, man, harpy?- veered into the closest tree and brushed the top of the next, and the next as it grappled with its furious prey against the glaring sky. Confined to the ground but not resigned to surrender its potential meal, the burrower pursued.

I'd gotten my fingers around Dakota's abandoned spear when what felt like an iron first grip my spine and jerked me backward. My nerves burned as if set afire and then there was nothing.

The screaming, churning windy chaos vanished.

I blinked.

The Malumbrian Oaks faded into cheap oak panels. Overhead, a fan hummed in soft revolutions that set dancing several candles around the room, but I couldn't feel the breeze it generated. Rain dripped from my clothes and vanished into thin air. There was a hushed darkness about the place, and when I realized the height of my vantage point I looked down.

I was standing on a table. The surface of the aged wood was carved with several rings and primal designs. On top of it, near the center, just at the edge of my toes, a bronze bowl contained the charred remnants of something that put an odd spice in the air.

The man, and I knew somehow instantly that it was his voice who'd blistered the inside of my skull, released the hands of the two chanters.

"Let me go," I said. The candles flared bright and extinguished.

His head shook. A sharp burning sensation again tingled through my veins. I wanted to move, and yet there was no where to go; I couldn't even turn without feeling that inner iron fist pressuring my spine.

The eyes he opened were milky white; glowing faintly without a single light in the room to illuminate them. "She's here," he announced in a rattling hiss. His hand reached into his pocket. Using a lighter, he re-lit the candle closet to him: a delicate, black taper that bled red wax. "What would you have me ask?"

Dumbfounded, I stood there, dripping water and mud that never hit the table below my feet. Was I....Had I been summoned?

Breath rose in puffy clouds from the couple he was with. Ignoring the pain of capture, I turned my head, bent closer to get a look at them in the swaying candlelight.

It was my mom. Her and Ajax, my stepfather. Goosebumps covered Mom's arms. Her brown eyes widened. She stared around the table as if I was floating near the ceiling and not standing an inch away from her astonished smile. "Tay?" Her voice rose in a pitchy whine. She clutched Ajax's arm with both her hands, almost as if to encourage him. "Are you really here, sweetie?"

"Give us a sign of your presence," the man commanded.

My hand reached out immediately to touch her face, but my fingertips passed straight her. I tried Ajax. My fingertips slid through his greying hair and disappeared. Confused, I stepped back and in that single movement the fascination wore off. I turned toward the man with the white eyes. He didn't need pupils to look at me, just like he didn't need his hands to have a grip on my spine.

"Let me go!" I demanded, and kicked the incense bowl across the room with a force that surprised even me. The bronze bowl smashed into the oak walls. Ajax flinched.

"Fuck this shit," he said, hauling Mom from the table. His breath came in heavy, wild snorts, frosty puffs that flicked past the black candle. "If there's a Great Beyond, I'm not messing with it."

Mom pulled his arm. "It's not an 'It," she pleaded. "It's Tay. Trust me, it's Tay."

"Tay ain't a demon," Ajax said tiredly. The gruff, loving father who'd raised me like his own had a voice steeped in fear. I'd seen him back a grizzly down from twenty feet away. And here he was, pulling my mother from the table, toward the thin seam of light that marked a distant door. Rightly so, in my opinion. The candle made his shadowed gestures loom large against the oak panels. "This, this is demon shit."

"What would you have me ask?" the man repeated. If he was disturbed by Ajax, he didn't show it.

"Let me go!" I hissed. This time the table shook. Mom gasped, and at any other time I would have cared, but I had to get back to Dakota. Had to.

Mom's eyes searched the empty air. "Honey, I am so sorry. I should've told you," she said, quickly now as Ajax had gotten her halfway to the door. She strained against his grip. "I know where you are. I'll get you back!"

"She wants you to let her go," the man said in reply.

"See? I told you he'd have nothing to say. Lining your pockets with a grieving mother's dollars. Criminal."Shaking his head, Ajax ripped open the door. Light streamed across the table. Finally, the man turned his head to acknowledge my stepfather.

"I speak for the dead," he said simply, extinguishing the candle on a short breath. "It is not my fault that many want the same thing for their loved ones."

"I'll get you back!" Mom shouted over him, and then, and I wasn't sure if it was me or the man who did it, but the pressure in my spine released. Like the peak of a roller coaster, time moved in slow motion and then I hurtled through a dark space with a loud but oddly pleasant pop.

*

I took a giant gasp beside a mushroom-covered log. Rain poured into my ear. I pushed myself up through the slick ground and vibrating puddles, shaking my head, wiping water from my eyes. Dakota was still screaming profanities off in the distance, but with all the water in my ears her voice could very well have been imagined.

With my legs still working out how to move again and my brain clueless as to what the hell just happened, I stumbled after the long line of torn earth.

Hey guys! Yet again I'm having trouble responding to comments for some reason, where I just keep getting an error trying to post them. Please do keep leaving them! I love to read them! Once I get it figured out (again) I'll reply to this chapter and the two chapters I missed so you may get some belated comments! <3