Grandmother Az heaved a small sigh and touched Cerise’s hair. “Sometimes there are things that are best to be done and things that are right to be done. We all know which is which.”
Murid slid her chair back. “That settles it.”
Cerise watched them go and a sick feeling of guilt sucked at her stomach. Nausea started low within her belly and crept its way up. She was tired of the last dinners before the big battle. Tired of counting the faces and trying to guess how many more she would lose.
A hard, heavy clump of pain settled in her chest. She rubbed at it.
Her grandmother’s fingers ran through her hair. “Poor child,” Grandmother Az whispered. “Poor, poor child ...”
WILLIAM strode down the hill, carrying the Mirror’s bag. Gaston chased him.
“So that’s it?”
“That’s it. We get our shit together and go fight the Hand.”
Gaston mulled it over. “Will we win?”
“Nope.”
“Where are we going now?”
“We’re going to make sure that this insane family doesn’t get wiped out, if we win.”
Gaston frowned.
“Insurance,” William told him.
“Wait!” Lark’s voice rang behind them.
William turned. Lark dashed down the slope, skinny legs flashing. She braked in front of them and thrust a teddy bear into William’s hands.
“For you. So you don’t die.”
She whipped around and ran back up the hill.
William looked at the teddy. It was old. The fabric had thinned down to threads in spots, and he could see the stuffing through the weave. It was the same one she had up in her tree.
He pulled his bag open and very carefully put the teddy bear in. “Come on.”
They walked down, away from the house, deeper into the swamp.
“ ‘ Where the fisherman waits,’ ” William quoted. “What does that mean to you?”
“It could be a lot of places. There is a whole bunch of Fisherman’s this and Fisherman’s that in the swamp.”
“Vernard wouldn’t know many places. This place has to be close. Some place your family would go often.”
Gaston frowned. “It might be the Drowned Dog Puddle. It’s a bad place. The thoas used to come there to die.”
“Tell me about it.”
“It’s a pond. There is a hill on the west side of it, and it kind of hugs the pond. The water is pitch-black because of all the peat. Nobody knows how deep it is. You can’t swim in it and nothing lives there except snakes. The hill and the pond open to some swampy ground, cypress, mud, little streams, and then the river eventually. The family goes there to pick the berries for the wine each year. They grow all around that hill.”
“What about the fisherman?”
“There is an old tree growing by the pond, leaning over it. People call it the Black Fisherman.”
“Sounds about right.” William looked around. Tall pines surrounded them. He couldn’t see the house. Far enough. He dug in his bag, taking care not to damage the bear. “How’s your handwriting?”
“Um. Okay, I guess.”
William got out a small notebook and a pen and handed them to Gaston. “Sit down.”
Gaston sat on the log. “Why do I need those?”
“Because Vernard’s journal is very long, and my handwriting is shit. I need to write it down because I don’t understand any of it, which means my brain will forget it soon.”
The kid blinked at him. “What?”
“Write,” William told him. “The art of medicine, as ancient as the human body itself. It began with the first primitive, who plagued by ache, stuck a handful of grass in his mouth, chewed, and found his pain lessened ...”
TWENTY-EIGHT
WILLIAM crouched on the deck of the barge. Before him the shore loomed, black and green in the weak dawn light. Cerise stood next to him, her scent twisting and turning around him. Behind them the Mars waited.
“Are you sure?” Cerise asked.
“Yes. We go our separate ways here. If I take out Spider, the Hand will break.” But to get to Spider, he’d have to have a distraction and the Mars were it.
“Don’t die,” she whispered.
“I won’t.”
He pulled her to him and kissed her, her taste so sharp and vivid, it almost hurt. So this was it. He’d known it was too good to be true. He had her and now he would lose her.
The barge swung close to the shore. He leaped, clearing the twenty-foot stretch of water, and took off into the woods.
Twenty minutes later William went to ground on the crest of the hill behind the Drowned Dog Puddle. The sun had risen, but the day was gray and dark, the sky overcast. In the weak light the swirls of green, gray, and brown on his face blended with the dense brush cover of the berry bushes. He’d molded himself into the hill so deep, he tasted mud on his lips. He was all but invisible to Spider’s agents busy below.
The hill cradled the pond in a ragged crescent, dropping down in a sheer cliff, made soggy and slick with recent rain. Bushes and pines sheathed the hill, but nothing grew down by the pond, save for a lonely cypress. It rose above the water, a gnarled and grizzled veteran of countless storms. The cypress cast no reflection. The water of the pond beneath it was pitch-black.
The entire place emanated an odd menacing calm. The sloshing of the Hand’s agents did little to disturb it, no more than a grave digger would’ve disturbed the serenity of a graveyard.