Page 11 of A Fae’s Guide to Tactical Botany

He didn’t bother to set up his tent or his sunshade, just set the Jeep’s parking brake and popped the tailgate door, then dragged out the pieces of one of his siege towers and leaned them against the Jeep. He sat on the tailgate to put on his armor—legs, codpiece, hip skirts, and hell, he slung on his gambeson and arms as well. He’d tried to make his carpentry as stable as possible, but there was always the chance he’d fall, land on one of the cacti he was trying to avoid. He should be prepared.

Of course, if he landed head-first, he’d be fucked. He never brought his padded steel helmet out for botany quests.

He was beginning to think he should start.

Once he’d shouldered his backpack of water and tools and slung his padded black drone bag on top of that, he gathered the rest of his equipment and started the trudge toward the cactus barrier. Fuck, his gear was heavy. He’d considered himself relatively fit compared to the other hardsuit fighters he squared off against every Tuesday, but clearly he hadn’t been lifting enough weights. It didn’t help that the sand of the wash was loose, shifting treacherously under his feet with each step.

Thankfully, he’d already planned his strategy. Once he had reached the base of the hill and the mysterious wall of cacti was in sight, he put everything down, sat cross-legged in the sand, set up his portable sunshade, and opened his drone case.

The drone had been one of his most expensive purchases back when he’d been assembling his overlanding rig, and the licenses and certifications had been a pain in the ass, but it had been worth it. He was a decent photographer—had to be, in his line of work—but still photos could only do so much, especially now that generative AI was faking evidence for everything from cute baby peacocks to celebrity endorsements. People were numb to appealing images now that they were everywhere. Drone footage, though—that continued to impress. And in the world of academia, where impressing donors was more important than groundbreaking research, effective teaching, and all the mundane measurements university teachers were asked to record, a soaring sweep of a grand landscape was golden. He didn’t like it, chafed at the entire sucking-up-to-mundanes culture, but at least he was good at it.

Ethan carefully set the drone itself atop his siege equipment and ran through the checks and switches and buttons to get it set up for filming. He wanted to get some general footage of his discovery, something he could use when he eventually presented his findings at a research conference, but today the drone could give him something more—an aerial view of the obstacles he would need to overcome to get to his destination. It wouldn’t do him any good if he got past the thick ring of cacti only to be trapped in an impassable cul-de-sac of cholla, the nastiest of the desert plants. While he knew intellectually that “jumping” cholla stems did not actually jump, they were still damn pernicious. Worse, the plants could be tall, making the only way past them around.

If anything could make Ethan believe in the devil, it was cholla. And they were fucking everywhere on this hill, dripping evil beads of spines down to the earth.

He set the drone whirring upward, using the controller to send it high into the sky and studying the video footage displayed on the screen. He started the drone on a wide circle to begin, surveying the entirety of the hill from a distance.

He whistled in awe. “There you are.” He wasn’t quoting the movie now—didn’t feel the rightness of the words in his gut—but if he’d had any doubts that he was in the right place, this footage would have crushed them. He felt as light as the drone itself, like he was soaring in the sky along with it, taking in the uncanny view.

The screen on the controller wasn’t very large—smaller than his iPad—but even at the reduced size, the brilliant swashes of color across the hill were stunning. There was a slight haze over it all, dust or pollen, and with the sun approaching its zenith there were few shadows for the colors to hide in. There was more than he had seen from the ground, far more. The hill was crowned with flowers, from the lower reaches where he’d first seen them all the way to its crest and down the other side.

The very top of the hill held a grove of blossoming ironwood and mesquite trees, several of them in a circle, canopies of pink and yellow, and the splendor radiated outward from them like a labyrinth, twists and turns that seemed to create a path through the colors, winding down and out to the edges. It reminded him of something, and when it struck him he laughed aloud.

“It’s like a crop circle,” he murmured, nudging the drone higher, aiming the camera straight at the ground. The pattern didn’t have the rigid symmetrical structure of a traditional European garden, but there was purpose in all of it. He could almost trace the intention, spiraling and radiating out from the central grove. “It’s not natural. It’s planned.”

He couldn’t decide if that was good or bad. Probably bad for his research, if the phenomenon was the result of someone else’s science. But…maybe good?

It depended on who was doing the planning. And if they were the asshole who’d been trying to keep him away.

He sent the drone on long loops, recording the desert vista from as many angles as possible. But he couldn’t stare at the aerial view of the hill all day. The drone could only fly for so long, and he had work to do. With a final distant circle, he turned the drone’s focus on finding the safest, easiest path to get uphill.

There was the place he’d crossed before—his footprints were gone, but he recognized the terrain. He sent the drone along the path he’d taken, almost feeling the steps echo through his thighs again. That was the first plant he’d sampled, and the second…and there was the dip in the sand where the woman had slept. Except there was no sign that a body had lain there, no hint that the earth had ever been disturbed.

He’d torn up huge gouts of sand after she’d disappeared, dug as deep as his bare hands could manage. Abraded his skin, ground dirt beneath his close-trimmed fingernails, some of which was still there despite his motel-room showers. His heart had pounded with desperation, horror, shock. Just remembering it made his stomach clench. Even if he’d hallucinated the woman, he knew he hadn’t hallucinated his own actions, reactions. He’d tried to rip the soil apart to get to her, adrenaline giving him strength.

But now, it was like it had never happened.

He shook himself. “Back to business,” he grumbled, sending the drone back toward the barrier, high enough he could assess the terrain. There had been no sign of the woman—or any person whatsoever—on his display screen yet, and she wasn’t what he was looking for, anyway. “You have a job to do.”

There. If he crossed just a few yards north of his earlier attempt, he’d have a relatively clear path to proceed. Not one cholla, secure rock footing, a few tight spots but nothing his armor couldn’t handle. And at the barrier itself, there seemed to be stable earth on both sides of his crossing to support his jury-rigged siege tower. Perfect.

He recalled the drone, tucked it back in its case, and loaded up for another trudge, circling the hill until he found his desired crossing point.

When he’d gone to the home improvement store, he’d had a dozen different medieval siege engines whirling around in his head. This wasn’t a situation for trebuchets or catapults, of course. Battering rams didn’t fit his strategy of passing but not damaging the cacti. And there were no vertical walls to simply scale. No, he needed to go both up and over, like crossing an inverted moat.

He needed a bridge.

And so he made one.

First came the up part of the construction. He unfolded the tall stepstool and settled it on the most level part of the ground, wedging the legs into the soil until they were secure. It still leaned downhill a bit, but it was climbable, and the fifth step was well above the cactus barrier. He slung sandbags over the bottom rung of the support for extra stability.

Next came the over. He’d had the store associate cut sheets of plywood lengthwise into long planks, and in the motel parking lot he’d screwed two-by-fours beneath each long edge as support. He’d drilled holes in the support beams at each end to accommodate industrial-strength ties. The planks were just slightly narrower than the stepstool supports.

Grimacing with effort, he slid this plank over the top step of the stool, extending it past the cacti until the far end landed on clear earth again. He tied the plank to the footstool securely and tested the stability of the structure. Solid as…not a rock, because it had a little give, but solid enough to bear his weight. He hoped.

He gathered his bags, climbed the stepladder, and walked across the plank.

Definitely not solid as a rock. It shifted precariously a time or two as he crossed—which was not surprising. He knew how much he weighed. But the stepstool remained in place, and the plank held, and then his feet were on the ground again.