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CHAPTER 12
The thicket broke about twenty yards from where we were standing, opening up into a clearing around a small lake or large pond. I wasn’t sure which, and I didn’t care. Whatever the case, water made me nervous. As we tumbled out of the briars and vines, the scent of brackish water filled my lungs, and I winced. Whatever the source, it wasn’t free-flowing, or it wouldn’t smell like that. Camille winced, too.
“Good gods, that’s an awful smell. Look—the surface is covered with algae.” She pointed to the water.
We could easily see the other side, but there was no way in hell you’d pay me to cross it without a sturdy boat. For one thing, I couldn’t swim. Not really. For another, the lake was covered with a thin slime of greenish algae. Pond scum. Delightful. Oh yes, I wanted to go mucking around in that Jacuzzi just about as much as I wanted to get into a four-legged race with Speedo, the neighbor’s basset hound. Speedo not only bayed all night long, but he told me secrets I really didn’t need to know. Such as his owners had a thing for spanking. Each other—not him. Too much information, I’d told him, but he was intent on figuring out just what they enjoyed about being smacked on the butt when it was so clearly a punishment for him when he forgot his manners and piddled on the carpet.
After a quick check around the immediate vicinity, which produced only hazards of the normal kind, namely spiders, snakes, and a snarling tuskwort, Smoky and Morio stood back, letting Iris take over.
Camille and I sat on a log. We were as good as useless when it came to hunting herbs. Camille grew an herb garden, but it was tidy and neat, and she knew what everything was because the seedlings had come with labels. I was hopeless when it came to plants. I didn’t even like eating them. Vegetables weren’t my forte, and Camille had to bribe me to eat my broccoli and carrots.
Morio walked alongside Iris, while Smoky kept a watch over the forest, making sure we weren’t taken by surprise by anything nasty. The morning wore away into noon, and the sun was shining, though not particularly warmly. As we listened to the low thrum of insects, I realized that we weren’t hearing the incessant pounding of traffic, or the blaring of the television or stereo, or even the hum of electricity that rolled through the wires.
“I haven’t heard it this quiet since . . . since we first left.” I leaned back, closing my eyes, savoring the silence.
Camille nodded. “I know. I miss this. But I’d miss things from Earthside, too. I’m afraid that if I was forced to choose where to live, I’d have a hard time making up my mind. I’d probably pick Otherworld, of course . . . but . . .”
“But Mother’s homeland has rubbed off on you,” I said, giving her a rueful smile. “Me, too, I’m afraid. And Menolly likes the dark city streets.” I kicked a stone with my foot, watching it roll down the embankment, into the pond. “Do you think we’ll ever come back here to live? Permanently?”
Camille frowned. She stared at the water, breathing so softly I could barely see the rise and fall of her chest. Finally, she said, “I don’t know, Kitten. Truthfully, I don’t know if any of us will live through the coming war. We’ve had a lot of close calls already, and who’s to say that one day . . . one slip and . . .” She shrugged. “I think we should just enjoy each day as it comes.”
“One day at a time, huh? I didn’t know you were a philosopher,” I said, grinning.
She blinked. “A year ago, I wouldn’t have been. But with everything that’s happened . . . Today we revel in the fact that we’re home in Otherworld, even if it is only to hang out in Darkynwyrd. Tomorrow, we’ll enjoy being home with Maggie, in the city. It’s the only way I can see for us to keep our sanity.”
Iris waved from a patch of thick grass, twenty feet to our left at the edge of the water. “I found it! Delilah, come here.”
I slowly rose, dusting my hands on the butt of my jeans. “How’s your hand doing? You aren’t getting too tired, are you?” I asked as I reached for Camille, offering to help her to her feet.
She jumped up on her own, shaking her head. “It stings, but it’s healing. I’ll be okay, Kitten. Don’t worry about me. Sharah knows what she’s doing. Now go talk to Iris.”
While she joined Smoky on guard duty, I meandered over to where Iris had parted a large patch of wild grass. She was pointing to a large plant. The leaves reminded me of a geranium’s leaves—scalloped and fuzzy, not shiny. The smell was musky, thick and close, rising from tiny purple blossoms on spiked flower heads. The plant was a good three feet high, and almost reached Iris’s chin.
“This is the Panteris phir plant? Looks a lot like rose geraniums. Siobhan has them on her balcony.” I knelt beside the plant, examining it. The roots were thick and ropy, the stalk of the plant had lignified for the first foot out of the ground, and I had the feeling that as it grew, the remainder would turn woody and hard, too.
“Aye, this is the Panteris phir. Panther’s fang, when you translate it from the language of the northern elves. This is a potent plant, Delilah, and you can’t take the entire thing, or it would punish you for doing so. You must take several cuttings—I’m positive I can get at least one of them to take root—but you have to leave an offering in its stead.” She produced a trowel and a pair of cutting shears from her backpack. “I can’t do this for you. You were told to harvest it yourself, and so you must do it.”>“What is it?” Iris said, her voice low.
“I don’t know,” Camille said. “I sensed . . . back there I sensed something connected to the Corpse Talkers. It felt like some rite. Trust me, we do not want to witness whatever dark rituals they pursue.”
“Corpse Talkers?” I shuddered.
Lips to lips, mouth to mouth,
Comes the speaker of the shrouds.
Suck in the spirit, speak the words.
Let secrets of the dead be heard.
As children, we’d sung the rhyme to chase away the bogeys, but like so many nursery rhymes, legend had its foundation in fact.
Only the women of their race ever became actual Corpse Talkers. Only the women were ever seen. It was rumored the mysterious race of misshapen Fae lived in some underground city built of bone and ash. Able to speak for the dead, Corpse Talkers offered their services for a bloody price, and they were worth every penny—worth every heart that they ripped from the victims to seal their communion with the dead. Always cloaked in long robes, only their glittering eyes showed through the gloom of their hoods.
“You’d better stay well away from them,” I told Camille.
Witches and Corpse Talkers dare not touch one another. If their powers collided, the resulting sparks could produce an explosion big enough to blast a good-sized crater in the ground. Along with good-sized shrapnel wounds in anybody who happened to be near.
As I spoke, the shadow grew larger, looming closer over our heads. Hell, and double hell. Please, don’t let it be one of the Corpse Talkers. We had no idea how they journeyed. They might be able to fly, or teleport, or maybe even run as fast as Superman for all we knew. What I did know is that stumbling in on one of their private rituals in the middle of Darkynwyrd couldn’t be good.
