Soul Shock, page 27
I blinked, and the mouse disappeared.
Next, Secret took up the golden coin and hefted it on her palm, which it eclipsed entirely. “The last remnant of the Ogre’s wealth, that momma tricked and slew in the service of the boy she made a Marquis. Forged by the Sun and stolen by a leprechaun. It brings luck and fortune.” She flipped it into the air, it arced high over our heads, shining golden even in Luna’s pale light. It tumbled back toward her and she snatched it from the air. “Until it doesn’t.”
Clutching it in her hand she frowned at it before, with an effort, she opened her fingers and held it out to me, “It can be given, it can be lost, but never spent. I give it to you, Abby.”
I peeled it from her palm and found it almost painfully warm to touch. “What do I do with it?” I asked, slipping it into my bag.
“Don’t know. Depends on how the story goes from here.” Secret spoke with distant eyes, as if she read the words from a script.
Sophie rumbled, one ear flicking.
“Sorry, momma’s third treasure is still on her feet.” Secret’s own ears wilted. “She’s up there because I was a bad kitten. I wanted to see the court that I could only visit while I slept. Last All Hallows Eve, I heard whispering from cracks. While momma slept, I snuck out and found a gateway. Bad stuff happened and momma tried to save me.”
The puma’s eyes narrowed in what might have been confusion, but rose with a huff, walking past Secret toward the tower. Reshouldering her backpack, Secret and I followed. Caution resumed, and each step felt like a push through a sweltering jungle that didn’t want us here. I really hoped the tower itself had air conditioning. We came up to the carpeted tower’s wall, this patch a well-scratched nappy green-blue. No doorway presented itself. Instead, Secret peered upwards and pointed. About two stories up, a two-panel portrait window sat between two circular stained glass masterworks. If the circular windows were eyes, the window was a small mouth open in a scream. I could just make out the nose of a catnip mouse poking over the sill. Both Secret and Sophie swiftly climbed up to it but my human, if long, nails found zero purchase on the carpeting.
Secret reached it first and opened it fully. She flashed me a single finger to bid me to wait and disappeared inside, Sophie following. In a moment an orange ball filled the window. I heard Secret mew with effort and the ball popped out and tumbled down toward me, trailing a line behind. I stepped out of the way, and the ball bounced once and rolled to rest against a tree. A giant ball of orange yarn, one strand half the thickness of my fist. I gripped it, so very soft. I stifled my laugh to a snort and tested the line. It went taut between me and the window. After wiping my sweaty palms on my white leather skirt, I climbed up to the window and hauled myself inside.
I found myself, along with Secret and Sophie, in a room filled with giant yarn balls even bigger than the one Secret had pushed out the window. A pair of enormous knitting needles speared the top of the pile. Secret had tied the orange yarn I had climbed up around one. The room’s walls were lined with rough rope, and a large circular opening waited for us at the far end. Sophie peered through it, hiding all but her head within the wall. Secret hustled to join her and crawled over the yarn boulders to see what waited for us.
The cavernous interior of the Tower stretched both above and below us. Ivy covered nearly every surface; a woody coil extended up through the center of the space. From it creepers spread out to choke out the original architecture. With a bit of staring, I realized that beneath us sat a cat jungle gym gone fractal. Box-like rooms, sized from the one we stared out from, to ones I could scarcely fit a finger into, clung to the walls. All connected by a crazy scaffold of platforms and beams, now dripping with greenery and scattered flowers.
My eyes registered movement among those flowers, a lazy fluttering. They weren’t flowers, not all of them at least, but the wings of tiny figures lounging among the vines. Pixies, dozens of them within my field of view alone. Sleeping in the heat? Secret’s tail lashed against my leg as she made a soft chattering sound. Guess pixies and cats don’t get along.
With all the pixies, if this was the least guarded path to the top of the tower, then it must be the only path to the top of the tower. Even if they were all sleeping, it’d be too easy to accidentally step on one. A quiet squeak drew my attention to the central vine that had invaded the tower. The catnip mouse perched in a small hole in the stem. A leaf-covered landing extended from the room we stood in. That still left a ten-foot jump to the stem. The cats both stepped gingerly over the platform and cleared the gap, adhering to its surface like a pair of geckos.
The mouse ducked inside the hole. Secret clambered up to it and peered inside.
“It’s hollow!” She mouthed excitedly at me. In a blink, she shifted to her cat form and squeezed her little self inside.
Well that worked for her, but there was no way I’d be fitting in there. Sophie climbed up and after a moment of staring, attempted to bite at it. She tore off a strip of thin bark before huffing in frustration and looking at me expectantly. I backed up to get a running start, trying to rouse wolf me enough to turn my useless nails back to claws.
Too hot. Sleep. Wolf me rolled over, leaving me stranded. Summer’s heat, combined with something about the cat court itself, suppressed her completely. Luna’s power flowed, comforting as always through the rivers of my body, but useless without wolf me. Or was it? The current eddied through the silver jewelry I wore. Maybe? I took the half-moon bracelet off, pooled it and the chain into my palm and clenched my fingers around it.
Help me move Secret’s mother somewhere safe, I prayed to the metal and the power within it. The crescent moon mark on my left breast paled to the point of luminescence and the bite on my arm throbbed as the metal folded within my grip. Slowly, a crescent blade hooked out of the bottom of my fist. Bands of silver joined my ring in encircling my fingers, short spikes extending between them. Opening my hand, I found this strange combination of silver knuckles and a dagger. That would work, if it didn’t break all my fingers.
A chiding chirp sounded from the vine. Secret had begun to climb without me, and Sophie regarded me with her own impatience.
“Coming,” I mouthed at them. Shook myself out, bolted to the edge, and leapt. The dagger sank into the wood easy as a watermelon rind, and the weight of my body tore open a three-foot gash before my other arm hooked a branch. The vine shook with the impact and the tower sounded with the rustle of leaves. I allowed myself a breath of rest before turning the blade sideways and cutting a horizontal slit across the stem. It cut as easily as paper with a fresh razor. Sliding my blade back to the corner formed by the two slits, I pried it out. Beneath bark I found no wood, but an inch of paper pages, as if I had cut into a book. The interior of the vine glowed softly. I pushed myself inside.
A tunnel composed of books greeted me. Overlapping like disorganized scales were thousands of books. They varied in color, size, and thickness, but their covers all advertised the same story: Jack and the Bean Stalk. I recalled when Rey had shown her true form, a patchwork fox, composed of hundreds of different stories. Fey are made of stories. If they needed a big vine, where else would they get it but Jack and the Bean Stalk?
Secret’s mew got me moving, and green eyes greeted me from further up. Fortunately, there were plenty of hand and foot holds to brace against as I climbed toward her. Sophie pushed in behind me and gave a surprised chirp.
Despite being small, Secret set a pace that I had trouble keeping up with. The heat seemed to increase the higher we got. I reshaped my knife blade to extend hooks from the knuckles when my sweaty fingers started to slip. The heat wasn’t solely my issue, either, Sophie’s heavy breaths were audible below me, and she took frequent rests. Once she moved, though, she caught up to me in no time at all.
Eventually, after the climb had gone far beyond either the mountainside or the mountain wolf’s back, the tube of books curved from vertical to horizontal. A now-familiar squeak sounded, and I lifted my eyes from the wall of children’s books to see Secret had Odin held between her front paws while her rear paws scratched at the hapless toy.
I whispered her name. She quickly released the animated toy and spun around to a sitting position, blinking attentively.
“How much further?” I asked.
She shifted and tapped the space in front of her. “We’re here. Cut us a hole.”
I did so and dropped into a place that I recognized. The hall of cat doors where Secret and I had escaped the Knights of both winter and summer. The vine ran along the ceiling, extending snakes of ivy down either wall. Each side hosted a huge variety of openings, from windows, cracks in the wall, pet doors, storm grates, and any other opening a cat might possibly squeeze through. The ivy choked every single one, tendrils growing thick and woody to close off the passages.
Squeak. The one-eyed catnip mouse sat on the floor and Secret scooped it up.
“No,” she whispered, “I didn’t promise you anything. You volunteered.”
Squeak. The mouse sounded a bit disappointed, but didn’t protest when Secret tossed it back into her bag.
“Almost there.” She gestured for Sophie and me to follow her through the tangle of vines. We did, Sophie with much more success, slipping under most vines, while I had to duck and crawl. On the other hand, the vines provided cover when we finally reached the entryway to the cat-hedral and spied the Knight of Summer who guarded it.
39
Here the vines were no less thick, spiraling around the soaring columns, covering the huge stained glass windows. The broad leaves covered almost every icon of the cat court, hiding them from view as a parasitic vine hides its host from the sun. Only the highest skylights remained uncovered, framing stern feline faces wreathed in gold and silver crowns.
Instead, my eyes were drawn to the massive man who lounged in a hammock strung across the center of the room. Fists the size of watermelons, a nose larger than my head, and legs wider than my shoulders. The only thing small about him was the saucepan on his head, which appeared to be his sole piece of armor. A tarnished sword the size of Cliff leaned against the nearest pillar. A cloud of Pixies struggled to fan him with a giant ivy leaf.
Alongside the hammock a banquet table stretched, arrayed with a wealth of icy drinks and cut fruit. Rings bearing huge gemstones decorated his fat fingers, which plucked an apple from a bowl and tossed it into his mouth as if it were a single blueberry.
“Momma,” I heard Secret whisper, and I saw the Puss in Boots. Approximately where we’d had left her six months ago, but the vine coiled around her like a snake. Only her head remained free of the greenery, although that wasn’t a mercy. The cat woman looked up at an anvil suspended above her head, hanging from a loop of red yarn. That red strand stretched up over the spoke of a chandelier and back down to the banquet table, where it had been tied around a leg with an overly large bow. The taut string of yarn passed very close to the giant knight’s head; I had no doubt he could snap it in an instant.
As we peeked out around the leaves, the giant gave a discontented groan as he wiped his sweaty brow. “Oh, Tibbles. Has Joy been mangled by that mongrel yet?”
One of the pixies zipped over to the table to the one object that did not contain food, a crystal ball set in three golden prongs. It hovered close to it, peering through the beads of condensation that had settled on every surface on the table. “Not yet, Sir Lawrence!” Tibbles answered in a sharp, tinny voice.
He smacked his meaty lips, “Why do I get all the boring jobs? Guard this, guard that. I could make this court into a proper outpost. Force all these cats to clean the floors with their tongues. It is my domain now.” Sir Lawrence yawned, his mouth opening wide to display the yellowed teeth within before closing with a loud snap. “I should do that. Maybe when it’s cooler.” His massive hand delicately lifted a multilayered cocktail from his table and drained it dry through a bent straw. With a sigh of satisfaction, he set the glass down and it sank into the table top. Closing his eyes, he settled back into his hammock before reaching up to idly pluck at the string with a fat finger.
“No!” The word squeaked out of Secret, and the three of us shrank back into the greenery. Secret slapped her hands over her mouth way too late.
“Fe-fi-fo-fum,” the knight called out with a lackadaisical growl. “I smell nothing but cursed cats. Even so, Tibbles, go see if a mouse has come to play with all the cats stoned away.”
“Distract him!” Secret glanced up with pleading eyes but didn’t wait for my agreement to dash beneath the Greenery.
I had no time to protest as the pixie streaked overhead and looped to a stop right in front of me. “Intrud-”
Sophie smacked it out of the air mid-shout with a large paw, sending it tumbling to the floor. I pounced on the little winged figure and seized it by the wings.
Tiddles was about half the height of a barbie doll and clad in clothes shaped from green leaves. She hung limply in my hand, arms and legs twitching like a bird that had run into a window.
Sophie brushed up against my leg in a feline you’re welcome before looking up at me with a question clear in her amber eyes. Now what?
“Hahahaha!” The giant’s laugh boomed from the cat-hedral space. “I heard that. Who’s there? Who smacked poor Tibbles?”
I looked down at my tiny hostage. “Just back me up,” I whispered to Sophie before standing up from our cover with as much confidence as I could fake, and walking through the entrance of the cat-hedral. The hot thickness of the air there nearly made me gag.
Sir Lawrence sat up in his hammock, watching me with interest. Coughing once, I cleared my throat. “Just a poor mortal who’s stumbled into a very poor reenactment of Jack and the Bean Stalk.” I held up the insensate fairy. “I suppose you want this back?”
The jagged grin grew unsettling, his face stretching to accommodate it. “Heh. Poor time to be a knight of winter, you mean. Ha, Ha, hAaaa.” He flopped back into the hammock. “I am Sir Lawrence, Knight of the indolent summer. The title’s a bit of a joke; I am very fierce and formidable. I will best you easily, but why rush? Come have a drink.” He gestured magnanimously at his table of beverages, the glasses all glistening with cool condensation as sweat streamed down my neck and back, pooling between my breasts and other crevices. My eyes fixed on a tall glass on a short stem, filled to the sugar-frosted brim with a pale pink slurry; strawberry slices poked out of the froth.
A soft clunk sounded and I blinked, found myself halfway across the length of the red carpet to his table. My hand grasped nothing. On the floor Tiddles lay, frozen in stone, one wing snapped.
“Guess you don’t care about her,” I said, trying to focus on anything other than the banquet and the mind-melting heat the fey brought to bear. Sweat dripped from my very fingertips and I took another stumbling step closer to the water.
“Ha. Plenty of Tibbles where that came from.” Sir Lawrence tossed back an entire pitcher of ice water. “So tell me why Mab is throwing away a knight into my jaws?”
The question brought a heaviness with it. “I’m here to…” I trailed off, the thought itself evaporating from my brain. “Here to…” Salt stung my eyes, and I wiped them on my saturated sleeve. It did nothing. I blinked and my vision blurred. Motion attracted my eyes and I focused beyond the Knight. There Secret desperately attempted to claw the vines off her mother. “Secret. Her mother, wants.” Words oozed from my lips.
“Ha ha, the half-blood, Mab wants her mother? Queen Titania gave me the Court of Cats. You think I’ll let you have her?” Sir Lawrence drained another glass, and my soul cried out for it as my bones threatened to melt.
“I…” Think, think, Abby. Desperately I clawed for functioning brain cells. So hot here, like the sun. Golden sun, gold. Spinning gold arcing through the air and I clutched at the thought. “Buy her,” I gasped and fumbled for my bag. Plunging my hand inside, my fingers closed on a hot metal disk. I yanked it into the open and held it out to the knight.
His eyes gleamed gold, “Where did you get that?”
“Does it matter?” I asked. The coin danced in my hand, leading my fingers to roll it enticingly across my knuckles. The surrounding heat relaxed as his attention focused on the coin. “I have it.” I flipped the coin up into the air. We both watched it tumble upwards toward the vaulted ceiling and the looming skylights. Through their multicolored glass, Luna’s waning smile shone faintly. A shining knife in the dark.
A realization struck me. I stood in the wrong spot in the wrong clothing. I had let winter clothe me, lending her brand to the Dream as her agent. Yet winter is but a small part of what I am.
The coin fell back edgewise along the back of my hand, rolled into the gully I made with my wrist, and stilled there for a moment. Luck and fortune that cannot be spent, only given or lost. Lowering my hand, I let the coin travel past my knuckles, where I trapped it between two fingers. I looked up at the giant’s perplexed frown. “I have it, and you don’t.”
He recomposed himself and grinned magnanimously at his table of refreshments. “For a coin such as that, I will trade any of my delicious pleasures to you.”
Humid jungle air pressed down on me, making every breath like sucking hot pudding up my nostrils. Only the cool trickle of Luna’s power kept me standing. Yet I still smiled; the worst summer day couldn’t blot out the simplest of thoughts.
“No,” I breathed out in heavy pant.
“A bargainer, I see.” He hooked a sopping wet cloth out of an ice-filled bucket and rubbed his neck. “Two refreshments, then. There’s no need for you to suffer in this heat.”
The sweat was streaming from my skin now; my knees knocked together in prelude to my collapse. My tongue shriveled into a piece of dried jerky. Still I croaked, “No.” I opened my bag to put the coin away.
Those eyes of his swirled with color, the grin tightening to the point that his teeth creaked from the strain. He laughed between the cracks. “Hahaha! Clever, clever winter knight. A wager it is. My table for your coin. What shall our contest be?”
