“Sounds like a plan.” I grabbed her green sleeve and helped pull her to us. Each of us hanging on to one of Kato’s horns, we floated down the river and kept ourselves hidden under the cliff’s rocky shelf. An hour of floating later, both Griz and our hiding place were gone. The high canyon walls ended abruptly, the depth turning shallow as we floated up to a beach.
I desperately wanted to get out of the water. My skin was beginning to resemble the withered figs. Clawing through the sand, I hauled myself onto the beach. Blessed land. I closed my eyes and savored the feel of the fine grains beneath my hands. “Thank Grimm.”
When I opened them again, a pair of sightless, milky-white eyes held captive in a wrinkly and decapitated head stared back at me.
“Excuse me,” the head said. “Could you give me a hand? I seem to have lost mine.”
Shrieking, I scrambled back into the water—away from the grotesque head—treading over Rexi and dunking her underwater in the process.
“What is with you?” she sputtered.
I raised a shaky hand and pointed. “It talked. How can it be talking? It’s a dead head.”
Rexi shoved me off her. “Obviously not too dead if it’s talking.”
Minor details. I turned away and froggy-paddled down the shallow part a bit. “I think I’ll float a little farther downstream and find another head-free beach.”
“Helloooo? A little help if you please?” the head cried plaintively.
Against my better judgment, I looked back. While I was freaking out, Kato had jumped out of the water and gone to play on the beach. He was batting the head back and forth between his two massive paws.
Rexi shrugged. “At least he’s not trying to eat it.”
“I’m getting quite dizzy,” the head complained, the milky eyes rolling around, probably not on purpose.
With the poutiest lips, I gave Rexi a pleading look. No effect. I switched to what I hoped was a steely yet regal glare.
She shook her head. “Sorry, but I don’t work for you anymore. Your High and Mightiness will just have to clean up after her own pet this time.”
“But I really, really don’t want to.” While claiming ownership of him earlier, this was not what I had had in mind.
Though I’d gained fifty pounds in the form of my waterlogged dress, I reluctantly slogged up the beach again. Grimacing, I picked up the head by its scraggly, sand lice–infested gray hair.
“Um, is there someplace in particular you’d like me to put you, Ms. Head?” I wrinkled my nose and held it out as far as my arm would stretch.
“Call me Hydra. If you would be a dear, my cottage is just up the beach a bit.” Her milky eyes still rattled around the sockets a bit.
My whole outlook perked up at the thought of a place to rest. It helped me combat the ick factor by dreaming of hot tea and getting dry in Hydra’s nice, warm cottage.
Turns out “cottage” was a bit of a euphemism. Shack probably would have been a wee bit closer to the truth. There was a small stovepipe coming out of the roof. Most roofs are similar in shape to a witch’s hat—this one looked a bit more like a bowl because the point was sagging down in the middle. There were windows on either side of the building with shutters hanging mostly off—attached by a single piece of gum. The door looked like it had been carved directly out of the tree, and it was open.
A frumpy headless body in a housecoat ambled out, whacking into the door on its way.
“Holy hex!” Rexi splashed back into the water. “I’m just gonna stay way over here, if that’s all right with you.” She looked at the body and shuddered. “And if it’s not, I’m still gonna stay over here.”
“Coward!” I shouted, secretly desperate to do the exact same thing.
“Better than being zombie takeout.”
Kato used one of his wings and herded the body in our direction.
“There you are. Poor dear. Did those mean doggies hurt you?” Hydra consoled her hunchbacked body as it wandered blindly toward us.
The body hefted the Hydra head onto its shoulders. Nothing magically knit the two back together, and I couldn’t see a zipper or anything. There was only a slurpy sucking noise, and if you asked me, the head still looked wobbly at best.
“That’s just wrong,” Rexi called from the water.
Yeah, I didn’t need the observation, thank you—I had the full, creepy view up close. I threw Rexi a weary look. “If you’re not going to help, you’re not allowed to comment.”
Though part of me hoped she’d come up just so she could keep making snappy quips, Rexi held up her hands and mimed sealing her lips.
Hydra finished checking over her newly found extremities and wandered farther up the path.
I followed at a safe distance, in case the head lost its balance or something. Polite conversation tamped down my urge to run away, screaming. “I heard you say something about dogs. Did they do…um”—how to say this delicately?—“did they knock your head off?”
“Heavens no. What a silly idea.” Hydra rooted around in a weed-infested garden. She pulled some bloodroot from the ground and ambled back in my general direction, using a broken garden hoe like a walking stick. “It was a witch who played croquet with my head. The dogs just rolled me down to the beach.”