I screamed. That preternatural calm I’d been experiencing shredded and in that movement I felt a horrible fear bubbling up in me like the water from the spring. I screamed and retreated back into the spring as the creature stood there, looking bewildered and oddly…apologetic. He backed away, making noises that had the cadence of speech but not the meaning.
Marus came running to see what was happening and when he saw the creature, his expression darkened.
“Allard, no,” he yelled, aiming a kick at the beast.
Allard cowered back, his paws (hands?) raised in a defensive gesture.
He was still making those strange gabbling noises and whatever he was trying to say just made Marus angrier. He rained blows down on him, driving him back and away from the spring.
I was horrified. It was like watching someone beat a clumsy puppy. “Stop,” I said finally. “You’re hurting him.”
Marus turned to me and his amber eyes were mean. “You were screaming,” he said. “I thought you were in distress.”
“I didn’t mean to scream,” I said. “I was just taken by surprise.”
I looked straight at the thing he called Allard. “I’m sorry,” I said to him. “You scared me.”
Allard looked at me with his sad eyes and made another one of those apologetic-sounding noises.
“What did he say?” I asked Marus.
“Who knows?” he said. “He is like a parrot. He can mimic speech but make no sense of it.”
I decided right then that host or not, I didn’t like Marus very much.
He looked at me, taking in my towel-clad form and I didn’t much like the way he was looking at me. And I again got the feeling that he knew what I was thinking, but all he said was, “Just leave your things. They’re ruined and mother will have something for you to change into.”
Without waiting to see if I was following, he turned and headed for the cottage again. I looked at Allard who gave me a helpless shrug.
You’re a lot of help, I thought. Clutching the towel more closely around me, I stepped barefoot onto one of the paving stones. But when I got to the edge of the paving stones there was still a good five or six feet of mud I’d have to cross. I looked down at my bare, freshly washed feet and sighed.
Suddenly Allard was there, scooping me up in his hands (paws?) and carrying me like a baby.
Or like King Kong carrying Fay Wray, I thought, although he smelled like a clean, wet dog. When he reached the door of the cottage, he set me down gently before backing away.
“Thank you,” I said to his retreating form, although I wasn’t sure if he heard me.
Syla was alone in the cottage, which was odd, but I was more than happy not to be around Marus. His ferocious treatment of Allard had unnerved me.
She was reading a leather-bound book that looked as ancient as she was. She looked up when she heard me and smiled.
She was missing a tooth.
“You look much better,” she said. “Are you hungry?”
“A little,” I said, which was true. I hadn’t eaten before the party and I’d left without eating so much as a pita chip. “But I’d really like to change—”
She interrupted, “Is the hunger a cramp in your gut that makes you want to hunch over?”
“I’m sorry—” I began, but she cut me off again.
“Or is it the pinching kind of hunger that makes you weak?”
“I’m fine,” I said, a little weirded out by the cheerful intensity of her odd questions.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “The hunger eventually goes away.”
She looked at me as if she expected a response.
“That’s good to know,” I said slowly, thinking, I’ve got to get out of here.
“You can’t,” the old woman said, as if I’d spoken aloud.
I looked at her in surprise. “Why not?” I asked.
“You died when you crashed your car.”
No, that’s not possible, I thought.
“She’s going through the stages,” the old woman said to Marus, who had come back into the cottage through a door I hadn’t seen before. He was carrying a bundle of clothes, which he tossed to me.
I couldn’t catch them without letting go of the towel, so they dropped at my feet. Some sort of tunic thing and what looked like hospital scrub pants.
I bent carefully and picked them up.
I can’t be dead, I thought.
“She’s in denial right now,” Syla added.
“I always forget what comes next,” he said. “Anger or bargaining?”
“Anger,” she said and stared at me expectantly.
And then she started laughing maniacally and her son joined in. “We’re just fooling with you, Hilde,” he said. “You’re not dead, you’re in the Verge.”
“It never gets old,” Syla chortled. “You’re dead,” she said, which sent her off into a fresh round of merriment.
You are insane, I thought, and I didn’t much care if she heard that thought or not.
I looked around for some place I could change in privacy. There didn’t seem to be any rooms in the cottage, just a big open space with two beds and a table with two chairs and a kitchen area.
Marus didn’t seem inclined to look away so I finally just pulled the tunic on over my head then pulled the towel off as I tugged the pants on.
I really wished I’d gone back into the car for the keys to the trunk. The idea of walking back to the crash scene in my bare feet was not appealing.
I wondered if I could summon the stag like an Uber.
I wondered when I was going to wake up from this nightmare.
“You’re not dreaming, Hildegard,” Syla said.
“So you can read my mind,” I said.
“Yes,” she said. “It’s one of my many talents.”
I stared at her.
“Who are you?” I asked, but that wasn’t the question I wanted to ask her.
“Do you mean what am I?”
I nodded. She smiled that hag smile of hers and this time there was absolutely nothing kindly in it.
“I’m a witch, Hildegard. And I’m your aunt.”
CHAPTER FOUR
I gaped at her as she gestured for Marus to leave the room.
As much as I wanted to simply run from the cottage, if she could tell me about my mother, I was willing to stay and listen.
“Sit,” she said, and I pulled out one of the chairs and sat at the table. She frowned. “That’s my chair,” she said and I almost laughed. She frowned again and sat in the chair opposite me. There was an earthenware teapot between us and two cups. She put her hands on the teapot and pressed and there was a glow.
Steam came pouring out of the spout. She looked at me. “Another of my talents.”
She smirked as she poured us both cups of an herb tea that was nearly as dark as coffee and just as bitter. Chicory, I thought, maybe yerba mate. Taking her cup in both hands, she inhaled the steam, then took a big slurp. I took a tiny sip out of my own cup, thinking that I was probably tasting Syla cooties since I didn’t see any sign of a dishwasher. The liquid was blistering hot and burned my tongue.
“So, you want the tale that only I can tell.”
I realized belatedly that she was asking me a question and said, “Yes. Please.”
She looked at me over the rim of her cup, her eyes hooded and black.
“Your mother and I were twins.”
“What was her name?” I asked.
She grimaced, not happy with the interruption. “Alys.”
Alys? And Syla? “Your name is Alys spelled backwards?”
“Alys is Syla spelled backward,” she corrected me. “We were born with cauls over our faces. Do you know what that means?”
“That you were born still in the amniotic sack?” I said, vaguely recalling a lesson from freshman biology.
She looked annoyed. “It means we were marked as special,” she said. “Gifted as well as beautiful.”
Humble too, I thought.
“We were witches. Self-taught but very powerful. And we wanted to dance with the fairies on the summer solstice so that we could learn fae magic and grow even more powerful.”
“What could possibly go wrong?” I said.
Syla looked at me and snapped her fingers and I felt a pinch on my cheek. “Ow,” I said.
“I’m telling you a story,” she said. “Don’t be rude.”
“Sorry,” I said and had another sip of the vile tea.
“We knew there was a place in the forest where the fae were rumored to gather on the solstice and so when we were eighteen, we went there, and offered our spells and the Verge opened to us and we entered.”
“The Verge? Where we are now?”
“Yes,” she said impatiently. “Will you listen?”