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It was easier to say things like this to an animal. They never judged you for it. Beverly, for her part, didn’t seem to give a fuck.
In the distance, I heard running water, and Beverly made an excited chirp. She pushed the back of my legs with her nose to get me to hurry up, but I was selfish. I kept my pace so I would have a bit longer with my beaver friend.
When we reached the riverbank, I stepped aside to give Beverly room. The Silver River wasn’t very big here, more like a creek. But it widened as it neared the ocean, so Beverly should be able to find a good spot somewhere.
She dropped her twig, glanced up at me as though to say bye, then slid down the short bank and splashed into the river. She did what she couldn’t in the wading pool in her cell. She sank under the water so that only the top of her head was above the inky blackness. Safe.
“I’ll miss you,” I called to her.
Fuck, I hoped I was doing the right thing and the cops wouldn’t catch her and drag her back to prison. I’d have to burn that whole place down if they locked up an animal again.
I turned to go and came face to face with an old woman. The purple of my magic flame danced in her dark eyes like a coven’s fire on Beltane.
My magic surged forward to protect me: a swirl of purple tendrils filled the narrow space between me and the woods witch.
She didn’t flinch, didn’t blink. Though her magic didn’t appear in the world around her, I felt it. Tensed and ready to strike behind her skin, as vast as the nothingness outside a bubble dimension, as tall as the trees before humans cut them down. The air around her smelled of soil and rain. Her magic promised storms that could flatten forests.
She was something primordial, something ancient and unknowable, like the ocean.
Despite the power in her, she appeared as a hobbled old woman with a woven basket hanging from one arm.
“Your eyes are the color of water,” she said, “but they burn like fire.”
“I contain multitudes,” I said dryly. “If you knew I was here, why didn’t you create an illusion maze like last time?”
“Because this time, you bring not discord but a friend.” She leaned to the side to look down at the river. “Nice beaver.”
“Thanks, I just got her wet.” Despite the danger Evanora posed to me, relief welled in my chest. She had called Beverly a friend. “They locked her in prison. They might come looking for her.”
“Many look when in the forest, but few find what matters.”
Oh great, she was a fucking riddle-speaker as though she was so fucking clever, like Yoda, who never said anything smart either. “I’ll just be going now.”
But Evanora didn’t move from my path. “Reality stretches, opens, and sometimes tears, like a hymen.”
“That’s the dumbest metaphor I have ever heard.”
“But it is a metaphor,” she said. “And those hold more truth than plain words.”
“No, they fucking don’t.” But still, my mind spun on her dumbass riddle. Reality opening and tearing. My heart sank. “Fuck, portals are opening up in Silver Springs, aren’t they? It wasn’t just someone trying to get my attention at the prison?”
Evanora handed me her basket, ignoring the magic I had weaved between us as though it could never harm her. Given the depth of magic behind her eyes, she was probably right.
“What is in the basket?”
She ignored my question. “Many have been pulled through portals—”
“You mean consumed by giant vaginas when their hymens stretch open?”
“Yes,” Evanora said. “No one who has entered a portal has been seen again.”
I realized that her stupid metaphor had softened the reality of her words. Portals were sucking people into bubble dimensions.
And they weren’t coming back out.
My blood ran cold, and I dropped the defensive magic I was holding between Evanora and me. “Shit. Shit, fuck. Fuck, shit. What am I going to do?”
It was bad enough when I had to rescue Juniper and the Eclipses. But now random supes and humans? Who could be anywhere in an infinite multi-verse?
