Soul Shock, page 11
“Can I go skate?” Secret asked brightly as I opened the car door.
“No, stay close,” I told her, but she still popped out onto the pavement wearing her helmet and holding her skateboard in the crook of her arm.
“Joy’s not here. I’ll be quick!” Secret dropped the board and immediately rolled toward the skate park.
“How do you know that?!” I hollered after her.
Secret lifted her arms in an exaggerated shrug before skating between two cars. My heart momentarily tightened until she reappeared and skated through the park’s open gate. I growled; explanations were not one of Secret’s strong points.
“Park is in our territory. We might sense her if she crosses into it,” Victoria said, shading her eyes from the unrelenting sun despite the sunglasses she wore.
“Might.” That would be the operative word. “That’s not an assumption I want to discover wrong the hard way.” I watched Secret roll through the wire fence gates and curve up into the half pipe, taking deep breaths through my nose. Not a trace of Joy’s scent hung in the air; then again, the fey knight had a strong scent at the Gala, but it didn’t seem to travel far.
“Oooooh, that’s probably not a good sign,” Victoria said, and I finally took my eyes off Secret to peer up at the butte. I immediately agreed with her. The towering lone pine had found some friends. Three trees, each no taller than ten feet or so, had sprung up among its roots. Each had a trunk that split off into two main branches, like arms.
“I hope one of those isn’t Gary,” I muttered.
“Hopefully that means she’s been back here. Come on.” Victoria strode toward the road and I followed. A few of the park’s original trees survived along the edge of the park, and their branches served as tie points for yellow “do not cross” tape. Beyond them lay their fallen fellows, their trunks broken two or three feet from the ground and their interiors charred through. In the shadow of the huge pine something moved and I felt the weight of eyes. Both Victoria and I clutched the yellow tape in our fists. I couldn’t bring myself to lift it and step under.
Not ours. Wolf-me huffed.
She’s not here, I argued back, but the tape didn’t yield.
Victoria let go of the tape with a, “What the hell?”
“I think…” I let go of the tape and stepped back, “We need an invitation.”
“We’re not fey. They shouldn’t be able to ward us out.” She glanced up at the tree.
I didn’t have an explanation for her. “They drove us out with our tails between our legs. Maybe that’s a bit like a promise? Just a guess.”
“Why don’t they hand out pamphlets?” Victoria stepped right up to the tape and sniffed several times. “Nothing.” She grimaced. “If I had a corpse, we could send it in.”
“I thought you couldn’t do that anymore.” My voice climbed with my surprise.
“Oh, I can.” She grinned. “Just not for fun anymore. I need a good reason. Giving that thing up there a chew toy probably doesn’t qualify. Maybe I can smell something? I can’t be sure like this.” She glanced at the road, which had a steady pulse of cars. “Be right back.”
She walked down the street to the RV lot, broke line of sight with the road, stripped and shifted to her wolf form. Once she returned, I took the bundle of clothing from her jaws as she paced outside the seemingly flimsy barrier. Wolf me watched enviously as the lithe jackal wolf snuffled at the ground, not even panting in the heat.
After ten minutes, she lifted her muzzle and let out a frustrated whine. Nothing.
I scratched her wilted ears and wiped the dirt from the ivory bone where her nose had been. “Plan B, then. We’ll go check the burned lots and see if there are any more drum circles. The Mayor said he’d have someone rope them off.”
We went back to the car, and I opened the passenger door for her. Having gone full wolf, it would be at least an hour before it occurred to her to shift back. After we crossed the street, I called to Secret, who appeared to be in a heated conversation with two other kids at the top of a ramp. On hearing me, she dropped her board and skated for the edge of the park without the slightest delay. I raised my eyebrow. Getting her to leave the skate park usually took a bit more energy than that.
“Stupid boys,” she muttered as she stomped on the end of her board, then looked up at me with a face full of vexation. “I’m not cheating because I don’t fall down! They’re clumsy!”
“Nope, not cheating, unless you’re using glamour,” I agreed as she hopped into the backseat.
“I don’t need to use glamour to skate! They said I’m too good for a girl!” she exclaimed as she tossed herself into the car. This resulted in a rather deep discussion of gender norms as we drove back to where the drum circle had been.
Or tried to. I missed the turn twice and when I circled back around, I found myself well north of the area. The third time, I queued up the address on my phone and attempted to focus on its directions, but that landed us right back at the skate park.
“Glamoured.” I spoke the word like a curse.
“Yep!” Secret agreed from the back seat. “Same kinda thing Rey put around our house.”
I waited for her to volunteer more information and when she didn’t, I sat there and thought for a moment. Rey’s ward detected ill intent towards us so it rarely affected the postman, although Amazon packages usually landed at a neighbor’s.
“We have to get through it somehow. Let’s fetch the crowbars out of the trunk,” I proposed, observing Secret’s face in the rear view mirror. She’d captured Victoria’s phone and prodded the screen with her furry fingers.
“If that worked, then all those bad guys in their metal vans would have found our house.” She said without looking up.
Victoria huffed as I sighed. “We need a way through, Secret. Otherwise, we’re just chasing our tails here.”
Her lower lip thrust forward into a pout. “Humans ward against fey. Fey ward against humans. We’re both, Vicky is not.”
I tapped the steering wheel and thought. That had implications. Victoria’s thought about sending in a zombie might have merit but also meant Joy could find our house without effort if she penetrated our territory. “So another fey could penetrate this glamour.”
“If they’re strong enough.” She shrugged.
The Green-Tailed Lady had driven Joy off last night. Another reason to ask her for help. Just a question of what she’d want for it. She might not be Rey anymore, but I doubted any creature related to her did things for free. That would be tonight’s adventure. I had one more idea.
I gripped the steering wheel and shifted us back into drive. “We’re just wandering,” I told Victoria and Secret. “Not going anywhere in particular.” Taking a deep breath, I started driving, letting go of a specific place as our destination. Within moments, I spotted Marsha’s house and Gary’s across the way. Their blinds were drawn across all the windows, but I wondered how they were doing. I parked; Victoria cocked her head at me as I stepped out of the car. “Be right back.”
Marsha opened the door with an awed, “Well fuck me sideways. What you doing back here?”
“Hi. Was in the neighborhood and figured I’d ask how Gary is doing?”
She glanced over her shoulder. “He looks like an overcooked lobster. Poor man’s asked me to kill him three times today. If he keeps bellyaching about the smell of the ointment the doctor told me to slather him with, I might consider it.”
I laughed, “Probably don’t want to tell him that. Listen, I’m glad to hear he’s doing okay. Do you know anything about the others who were with him?”
Her pale lips pressed together and she cast her eyes up the street. “I ain’t heard much, been busy with Gary, but Damian, that’s one of the fellows who was looking…. Shite, green, yah know? His wife stopped by today, asking how I snapped Gary out of it. He’s burned, too, so he’s not moving great, but, well, all he can talk about is his drums. I don’t suppose you could ask your partner to do what she did for Gary?”
“Afraid that might have been a one-time thing,” I said.
“Aw fucks, saw what it took out of her. Hey, where you based? Does she like strawberry pie? I got one almost ready to go. Come inside. Get you a drink, you’re looking mighty sweaty out there…”
Nearly ten minutes more passed before I escaped Marsha’s profanity-laced prattling. Afterward, we roamed the neighborhood, trying not to go anywhere in particular. It sorta worked. We surveyed several of the burned-to-the-ground lots. Most were empty; one had a couple setting up for a BBQ which I firmly directed them to host elsewhere. Stepping into these areas, the earth felt spongy and loose, like a field waiting to be planted. Still we didn’t stumble on the drum circle lot, and there seemed to be holes within the map. Places we kept missing.
It all confirmed that we needed to pay a visit to the Green-Tailed Lady.
17
The Garden of the Green-Tailed Lady does not appear lovely after dark. Even in clear moonlight, the pathways appear as canals of shadow which even my vision couldn’t pierce. Crackles and pops, too quiet for human ears, drifted from beneath the leaves, the plants growing at a rate you could almost see if you stared. Four sentries walked the sidewalks that bordered the garden, circling its four sides. Each carried an aura of quiet menace and walkie talkies that they breathed into as they reached the corners of the square. So protective of their miracle.
Victoria and I sat at the street corner opposite the temple park, watching. I panted in the warm summer night while she posed statue-like, only the slight movement of her ears and eyes betraying the illusion of stone. Secret stood between us, one hand gripping my fur. I breathed in a deep breath and howled out a greeting to the Green-Tailed Lady, We are here, we are coming. We come in peace.
Victoria echoed my song, We are three, we are pack.
The nearest sentry stopped in her tracks and pointed a blinding light in our direction. As we crossed the street, she raised a stout cudgel of twisted wood in a shaking hand. Secret popped up onto my shoulders and we simply walked around her. Leaving her urgently whispering into her walkie talkie. We threaded ourselves down the paths, occasionally hopping over the knee-high hedges. The four glass side-by-side doors that made up the entrance to the overgrown tower were dark, but still more than a dozen humans boiled out of them. They all wore cloaks secured by the golden Ivy Leaf brooch.
Victoria chuffed beside me. Bad idea?
Follow, I responded, watching the humans as they positioned themselves between us and the doors. Several of them had pistols, and fingered them uncertainly.
“Halt! No further.”
I debated whether to simply push through them. I didn’t want to talk, not with them. Yet, making enemies of the entire society would be a bad idea. Still, I shifted my form enough toward human to make speech possible, and endured their various reactions to the sound my bones made. Secret slid down behind me as I stood.
“Y-you’ll have to come back in the morning if you’re here for a spelling, I mean blessing,” the largest cloak said. “We’re closed to visitors.”
I smiled down at him. “We are not here to see the Green Lady’s Society. We are visiting our friend the Green-Tailed Lady, and she isn’t one for appointments.”
The man got a look of panic. “Only the initiated are allowed inside the temple without prior permission.”
A growl escaped me and I heard the click of several safeties being turned off. “You don’t seem to understand. We’re visiting our friend tonight; if she wants to tell us to fuck off that’s on her. Not you. You do not own the Green-Tailed Lady. If anything, she owns you.”
The man’s jaw bobbed as he mustered his courage to object, while one of the hooded people behind him reached back and opened a door. The hinges squeaked.
At the sound, the man whirled around, “Taya! What are you doing?”
“Stopping you from getting blood all over the garden,” the woman hissed back, the voice confirming she was Cliff’s younger sister.
The man whined something about rules as I stepped around him, entered the building, and immediately smelled fresh human blood. Alarmed, I padded down through the entrance hallway, and nearly tripped over a person slumped over a thigh-high semicircle of stone that separated the hallway from the jungle of plant life beyond. The man clasped a bloody bandage around his wrist. Beyond the stone lay a collection of flowers: tulips, irises, and roses, all the vivid scarlet color of blood. Instinctively, I knelt to the man. His dilated eyes opened and he emitted a wordless gasp as he stared up at me. Pale from blood loss.
I was reaching for a nonexistent medical bag before I realized what I was doing. So much for not caring about how the Society did what they did. “You, sir, need to go to the hospital right now. Ask Taya to drive you.”
“But he still has so much more to give, Abby.” A voice snaked out from the Jungle. Rey’s voice, but synthesized by an orchestra of crickets and katydids.
“He can’t give more if he’s dead. I thought Fey didn’t benefit at all from death.” I stepped over the altar, trying not to step on any of the flowers and failing. The floor was thick with them. I signaled to Victoria and Secret to stay put.
“Does this smell of Fey?” The voices asked as I shouldered my way through the dense twisting of vines that tangled together in moss-covered ropes.
I inhaled, tasting the air. The forest smelled of Rey’s musk, but twisted and interwoven with sap, nectar, earth, and a heady punch of flowers. The barest hint of glamour pulsed through it. “Smells of Rey, certainly.”
“Rey is dead! Long live the Green-Tailed Lady!” The voices buzzed around me as the vines coiled away from my touch.
“Fey don’t die,” I said as the dangling vegetation thinned out, revealing the massive trunk of the temple’s central tree. Last time I had been here, a stairway led up into a hollow within it. The stairs were gone now, but the hollow remained. The same eyes I had seen at the rose garden blazed within. “They change or calcify. You told me that. Remixed and reborn. Just as Rey herself had been born of Reynard and Inari. Funny thing is that the merger didn’t free Rey from the oath he had made to the Puss in Boots.”
A growl reverberated from the hollow and the branches above shook. “Rey pledged to be your handmaiden till her end and she has ended. I, the Green-Tailed Lady, owe you nothing.”
“Good,” I said, sitting down on the moss-covered ground. “I think about that night often. Particularly the moment you were born. Rey sang out her treachery and cast it aside for love. It’s a beautiful memory. It also impressed on me that it is far better for us to be friends and equals rather than being bound by oaths.”
“Friends? Equals?” A light laugh followed the scoff.
“Equals. Yes, you are Goddess of a City and I’m a single individual, but…” I lifted my hand to display the silver ring I had made of the first silver bullet that had wounded me. It glowed faintly. “I’m not alone. We are very different, so let’s not concern ourselves with who’s stronger, and recognize each other as equals. Then we can be friends who help one another.”
“Foxes do not have friends. We have mates and we have our kits but we roam solitary.” A slight sniff echoed from the hollow.
“Cindy has blossomed since the night she and you lay in that hollow. I wonder what’s happening to her; she smells like a fox now, and has grown a little sly herself, but she is happy. But…” I drummed my claws on my thigh, “I also worry for The Green-Tailed Lady.”
“Worry? Why would you worry about me?” The eyes pulsed and moved closer to the edge of the hollow. I saw the hint of large triangular ears in the shadows of it.
I looked down at my own clawed and inhuman hands as I gathered thoughts. “You were born of Rey’s love for Cindy when Rey realized that to love a person like Cindy, you can’t just stand by when people need help. Yet, after that moment, you gave your heart to Cindy. All your passions, all your desires. I’m worried about how that’s left you.” I stood.
“Your worries are misplaced. I am growing a new heart.” She growled, but there was a shakiness to it. “Thousands in this city pray to me. My temple’s ranks swell every day. I grow stronger.”
“It’s your followers who worry me most,” I said, taking a few steps toward the tree. “Cudgels, guns, protecting you as if you’re a fragile treasure that could be taken from them. A man bleeds himself to within an inch of his life in sacrifice in your garden. How is that a tribute to a goddess of life and renewal?”
“I… take what I am given. Foxes are not picky when they are hungry.” The eyes narrowed as I stood below the hollow and set one foot on a thick root.
“A fox can choke down food that isn’t good for them when they see no alternative or don’t know any better. You do, though. There’s no reason to act like a starving fox,” I said and took a deep breath, envisioning Rey as she first strode into this building, flush with the power that was also washing away what she was. With one hand placed flat against the smooth bark, I sang as her song came to my lips.
From the shadows of dawn and dusk
She calls this city her home
The moss pads her steps.
As she rooooooams.
The song swelled up from the forest that surrounded me, a chorus of bird, frog, and insect voices. Drips of water drummed on the leaves and I smiled. The eyes peered up into the branches, flickering uncertainly. The lyrics in my memories rang, but they didn’t match the moment of Rey’s triumph. Nor the happiness in her inhuman eyes when I wed her and Cindy. Those lyrics had been the seed from which this being had called forth the courage of the city and then wielded it against the rot. I rocked my jaw from side to side and wet my lips before singing out something new.
Life springs from every step
She calls this city to dance
To battle,
to life
To live
To grow
So she may roam.
“That’s not how it goes!” She surged from her hollow to snarl down at me, and I finally saw what held those green flames. A long canine head composed of vines and leaves, patches of white skull clearly visible through the vegetation. Her huge eye sockets were too big for her head, rendering her child-like, but I had no doubt the thorn teeth that she bared at me had bite.
