Becoming Crone, page 5
I blinked. Rubbed my eyes. Repositioned the magnifying lens. Re-read the lettering. Yup. That was what it said, all right. Knock three times—and below that, more writing, even smaller. Twice on the gate if the answer is no.
I fumbled the pendant and almost dropped it. Who in the world would write words that mimicked the lyrics of an old Tony Orlando and Dawn song on a gatepost in the middle of nowhere? And why? I straightened and glared into the surrounding woods. I was the only person I knew who would even admit to liking Tony Orlando and Dawn anymore. This was a joke. A prank. It had to be. There was no other explanation.
But neither was anyone around. No one hiding in the bushes, watching for my reaction. No one recording me for posterity. No one...and no reason. What in heaven's name was going on?
Gripping the pendant in a tight fist, I stared at the plaque, at the gate, at the path beyond. Once again, caution urged me to turn tail and run. Once again, I stood my ground. Then, feeling intensely foolish, I raised my free hand, curled my fingers into my palm, and rapped on the plaque—once, twice, a third time—the words and melody of the old song looping through my brain as I did so. Knock three times...
Nothing happened.
I waited a full minute, counting off the seconds under my breath and flexing tender knuckles. The gate stayed closed. Nothing moved in the shadows on either side of it. The woods stayed silent but for the buzz of cicadas and chirping of crickets behind me. I tightened my lips and raised my fist again. One, two, three raps.
Another minute.
Another three raps, hard enough to make my bruised knuckles protest and the breath hiss from me.
A third minute of waiting.
My sense of foolishness increased. Was I, a grown woman old enough to know better, really standing in the semi-gloom of the forest, knocking on a stone pillar? And worse, expecting someone to answer? A breeze whispered through the trees and under my shirt, carrying with it the scent of damp earth and pine trees. I shivered in its chill. I seriously needed to get moving if I wanted any daylight left for my walk home. I slipped the pendant chain back over my head.
One last time, my inner Edie-voice insisted, and then you can go.
My inner Edie-voice was as much of a pain as the real thing. But I lifted my hand and knocked again. Once, twice—
"Goddess above, woman," rasped a voice like gravel scattering across stone, "I heard you the first time. It's not like I can hop down in just a few seconds after being stuck up here for decades. A little patience, please!"
I yelped, fell backward over a tree root, and landed on my rear end amid dead pine needles and twigs. My head snapped back, and my gaze zeroed in on the huge stone gargoyle slowly uncurling itself to stand upright on the gatepost—at least double in height than the mere three feet I’d thought it.
My brain froze, refusing to accept what my eyes said they saw. I blinked, squeezed said eyes closed, blinked again. The gargoyle jumped down from the gatepost, landing with a whump that shook the ground beneath me. Stone feet sank up to their ankles into the soft earth. A massive head tilted first to one side, then the other, as the gargoyle stretched its neck. It heaved a deep sigh.
"Better," it said. Then it stared down at me with blank stone eyes devoid of pupils. "Well?"
"Uh," I said.
The gargoyle raised what wasn’t quite an eyebrow. Its stony—no pun intended—gaze raked my sprawled form from head to toe. It heaved a sigh.
"Well?" it said again, "Are you going to lie there all night, or are you going to unlock the gate?"
I looked past the hulking form to the gate. "I don't have the key," I wanted to say, but no. No way was I going to start conversing with what I now had no doubt was a hallucination. I was going to pick myself up from the ground, get back to the road, and get my butt back home as fast as I could manage. And first thing in the morning, I would call my doctor and—
I squeaked and scuttled backward on my butt as the gargoyle reached for me, certain I was about to be crushed. But with surprising dexterity, stone claws lifted the chain from around my neck, and then the gargoyle turned to the gate and fitted the pendant into an indentation on a flat panel I hadn't noticed. A pendant-shaped indentation. The latch disengaged with a rusty protest, and the gate swung inward on hinges that squealed from disuse. The gargoyle looked back over its shoulder.
"You're still on the ground."
I scrambled to my feet and shot a look toward the road, which had almost disappeared in the encroaching dark. How late was it, anyway? And just how long had I spent poking about, staring at a gargoyle and knocking on a plaque inscribed with a nonexistent address? Merlin would be starving, and Edie was supposed to come by for tea on the porch after dinner, and...I looked back at the waiting gargoyle and the open gate. A faint glow, with no discernible source, illuminated the path on the other side. I swallowed.
"Keven," said the gargoyle.
"I beg your pardon?" I responded out of sheer surprise.
"My name," said the gargoyle. "It's Keven."
"Ah..."
Stone hands—paws?—settled onto stone hips. Haunches?
"Nice to meet you, Keven," it coached. "My name is...?"
I wondered what it meant when a hallucination started coaching you on manners. I sidled toward the thicket that stood between me and a pell-mell run to safety. "It's..." I mumbled, "it's...ah...Claire. My name is Claire."
"Lady Claire," it said, sounding very much like it was correcting me. I blinked.
"I—what?"
"You are Lady Claire now." It handed the pendant back to me, and I accepted it automatically. "You are Crone. You are Lady Claire."
I shook my head and shifted another step away. "You're mistaken. I'm not who you think I am." Belatedly, I bristled at the unveiled insult. "And I'm not a crone."
"Not a crone. Just Crone.”
“And that’s different how?”
Keven frowned and countered, “How is it not different to serve the Morrigan?"
Serve—I backed into a thistle and bounced forward again with a yip. I wouldn't wait until tomorrow for medical attention, I decided. I'd call Paul when I got home, and he could take me to the hospital. I was pretty sure they had a psychiatrist on call in the emergency ward. Or maybe I could ask Jeanne to take me. Having a nurse along might expedite things, get me seen faster and—
The gargoyle turned and stomped through the open gate. Despite myself—perhaps because, on some level, having an imaginary sentient gargoyle keeping me company in the shadowy gloom seemed preferable to finding myself alone—I called out, "Wait! Where are you going?"
Its gravelly answer floated back through the night. "The house," it said. "Follow or not, as you please, but I'm tired of standing around talking. I'm hungry."
Hungry.
The living stone gargoyle was hungry.
Because of course it was.
And I was a crone—sorry, I was just Crone—serving something called the Morrigan, and—and what did gargoyles eat, anyway?
I stared after the stone figure that had continued down the path and disappeared around a corner into the trees. The gate remained open. Dark crept closer, until it felt like the shadows themselves breathed down my neck. I swallowed. Dear God, when I decided to lose my mind, I didn't hold back, did I?
A twig snapped behind me and I jumped, clamping a hand over my mouth against the squawk that wanted to emerge. I needed to go home. Now. But while I’d stood there waffling, the moonless night had swallowed the road and woods in their entirety, and—
Something rustled in the leaves to the left.
Insects, most likely, my Edie-voice reassured me.
Or that dog/wolf you thought you saw earlier, my not-Edie-voice suggested. The really big one that might or might not belong to a serial killer and/or want to rip out your throat.
I eyed the faintly glowing path. The gargoyle had mentioned a house. But what kind of house? The way this hallucination was playing out, it could be anything from a door in a hollow tree trunk to a shining castle à la Disney.
The leaves rustled again, and this time whatever moved there sounded big. Huge. That did it. I skittered forward in the footsteps of the gargoyle. Any kind of house was better than staying out here in the middle of nowhere by myself. Maybe my brain would conjure a phone, and I could call Paul and have him send out a search party. I paused at the gate and wrapped my arms around myself against the chill night air.
For all I knew, I was already lying in a psych ward, hyped up on hallucinogens and dreaming this entire thing, with no idea of when or how I turned such a dramatic corner in my mental health.
And on that cheerful thought, I slipped past the wrought iron bars and onto the path.
The gate clanged shut behind me.
The house at the end of the path, as it turned out, was neither hollow-tree hovel nor shiny castle. Instead, it was a small stone cottage sitting in the middle of a clearing, light spilling from its windows and the open front door. It looked utterly charming, warm, and welcoming—and was it shimmering?
I peered at it, but the impression of a glow surrounding it had been fleeting and was gone now, leaving just an ordinary building. Albeit one that looked much like I thought Grandmother's cottage would have looked to Little Red Riding Hood.
Speaking of which...
I glanced over my shoulder into the dark woods through which I'd come. I’d halted twice along the path, my heart surging into my throat, certain that something in the shadows was moving parallel to me, but every time I tried to look closer, it was gone again. Other than the goosebumps rising along my skin, nothing moved in the night.
"In or out," bellowed a voice from the cottage. Keven the gargoyle. "I'm not keeping dinner for you forever!"
I blinked at the open front door and the invitation—if it could be called such. Dinner. My stomach rumbled. Were all hallucinations this detailed? This considerate? An idea flitted through my head and I chased it down. I'd come across an old television show a few months ago, a British series—Life on Mars—about a cop who was hit by a car and fell into a coma. He’d woken up thirty years earlier and lived a whole other life in the new time and place, never quite sure if it was real or all an elaborate hallucination.
I frowned. Wait. Hadn't he turned out to have a brain tumor or something? Was that what was going on? I had a brain tumor and I was lying in a coma on the floor of my kitchen, dreaming all of this?
A bulky shape filled the cottage doorway, casting a long shadow over me. "Well?"
A warm, meaty scent drifted from the house, and my mouth watered. Tumor or not, a woman had to eat.
"Coming," I said, and the doorway cleared again. After a last glance at the trees edging the clearing, I walked up the path, stepped up onto the flagstone porch, walked into the house—and came up short against a warm, broad, and very solid chest.
I froze, taking stock of this new surprise. Male, I decided. And tall. And was that chest hair tickling my nose? It smelled woodsy, like the trees I’d just come through, and—
I took a hasty step backward and tripped over the door sill. Strong hands clamped onto my upper arms long enough to steady me before letting go again.
"Milady," a deep voice rumbled as the man swept a low bow.
"Mi-what?" I squeaked, my gaze glued to tawny hair heavily streaked with gray and pulled into a man-bun at the back of his head. I abhorred man-buns.
He straightened, and I tilted my head back to look up at him. My jaw dropped. Tall was an understatement. He had to be almost six and a half feet, with a full beard as graying as his hair, the broadest shoulders I’d ever seen, and—
My gaze dropped to the blousy, snow-white shirt he wore open at the neck. And yes, that had been chest hair my nose had been buried in. I blushed.
I was sixty years old, a grandmother, and years beyond experiencing the kind of hormones that made one blush, but I still managed it. Amber eyes danced with amusement.
"Milady," he repeated, and my hormones shivered. "You are the Lady Claire, are you not?"
"I—I—"
"I am Lucan," he said, sweeping another low bow. "Your protector."
My gaze followed his movement, lingering on the hardened swell of shoulder muscles, then the chest revealed by the gaping of his shirt. Holy Hannah, but he was built. Maybe I didn't have to hate all man-buns?
"Goddess preserve us, mutt," Keven's voice grumped from somewhere behind the man towering over me. "I said show her into the dining hall for dinner, not turn yourself into dinner."
I closed my eyes against another wave of mortification. Forget the tumor. At this rate, I’d die of sheer embarrassment. I took a deep breath and curled my fingers into fists so tight that my nails bit into my palms.
The pain surprised me with its realness, and I zeroed in on it. If I could hold onto it and stay focused, maybe when I opened my eyes again...
The man regarded me, his head tipped to one side. Shit. Shoot, I corrected myself.
See? More proof that none of this was real, because despite Edie’s efforts, I didn’t swear, damn—darn it.
"You are perplexed," the man said. Dear heavens, but his voice was deep. Mind you, given the breadth of his chest, was it any wonder?
I yanked my gaze away from the latter yet again. Hallucinating or not, I had no business thinking about a strange man's chest. I lifted my chin. I was getting tired of this. I wanted to wake up, or go home, or do whatever it took to get back to reality.
"I need to use your phone," I said. In the television show, the actor had been able to communicate with his other life by phone sometimes, so it was worth a shot, right? Preferably before I resorted to hysterics.
"There is none."
"No—" I broke off. Now that I thought about it, there had been no telephone poles along the road, or any sign of wires. "What about a cell phone, then?"
"Sorry. There’s no signal here."
Wonderful. Just—
"Dinner!" Keven's faint voice prompted.
"Dinner?" the man suggested, offering his arm.
I had no appetite anymore, but neither did I have any idea of what to do next, and so I nodded. But I was darned if I’d take the offered arm.
Holding my head high, I sidestepped him and started in the direction of Keven's voice—only to come up short again. Were there no limits to my hallucination?
I gaped at what had been hidden behind the man—Lucan, he'd called himself. My protector...from what? But no. I wasn't going there. Not now. Not when faced with this.
Slowly, my gaze panned the enormous foyer in which we stood, from soaring, vaulted ceiling supported by massive stone pillars to polished flagstone floors, oak doors that stood to the left and right, and twin suits of armor standing guard on either side of a wide, central stone staircase. Real armor. Flanking a staircase rising to a second level that had most definitely not been a part of the cottage's exterior.
Lightheadedness swept over me, rising from my toes like a hot flash but without the heat. My head spun, and I swayed on my feet. Before I could topple, Lucan took my arm and steered me toward an ornately carved bench beside the door. He pushed me onto it and ordered, "Head down," even as his hand guided me to comply. Then he crouched beside me. "Breathe."
I am breathing, I wanted to say, but the words wouldn’t manifest because, nope, I actually wasn't, because I couldn't. Not past the snarl of panic that had risen in my chest, and not past the overwhelming terror that I’d been right. I had well and truly descended into madness. I squeezed my eyes shut, certain that this was it. I was going to die in a nightmare. I was going to die because of a nightmare.
But I didn't.
Instead, a gentle hand rubbed circles on my back between my shoulder blades, and bit by bit, the knot behind my breastbone eased. I tried a tentative breath, then another, then a third. My head stopped spinning. The panic receded. And the madness...
I forced open an eye. An amber gaze met mine, warm and concerned.
The madness remained.
Lucan frowned. "You weren't expecting any of this, were you?"
I considered him for a moment, then opened the other eye. "Expecting...this?" I gestured at the foyer. "What reason could I have possibly had to expect a talking gargoyle and a cottage that's like the Doctor’s phone booth?"
He glanced over his shoulder, then put the back of his hand to my forehead, as if feeling for a fever. His frown deepened. "This looks like a phone booth to you?"
I pushed away his hand. "Of course not. It's just—oh, never mind. It was a television reference."
His brow cleared and he nodded. "Doctor Who. I remember. But you were saying about not having expected this...?"
I snorted. "How could anyone expect to go insane in the middle of a walk in the woods? Although it actually started this morning, I suppose. With the newspaper."
"This morning," he repeated. He exchanged a glance with Keven, who had somehow managed to approach without my notice—an interesting trick for an enormous stone creature—and now hovered a few feet away. The gargoyle’s head shook, and massive shoulders lifted in a shrug. Lucan cleared his throat. "Ah... are you saying this is the first magic you've encountered? That you've never...?"
"I've never what?" The rest of his words registered, and my voice rose in pitch. "First what?"
Man and gargoyle both stared at me, their expressions thunderstruck.
I stared back. A bubble of hysteria replaced the earlier panic. Lucan had not just said what I thought he—
"Well, isn't this just fecking grand," muttered Keven. "She knows nothing? Has no training, no history? She should be a midwitch by now. What, by the goddess herself, are we supposed to do with her?"
Midwitch. Training. History. My head went woozy again.
"I haven't any idea." Lucan sighed and climbed to his feet. "I say we start by feeding her, and then you can explain—"
"Oh, no. You're her protector, you explain."
There was that protector word again. I looked back and forth between them. I knew my mouth was hanging open, but darned if I could make it close. This was too much. They were too much.
