Bubbles and Troubles (9 page)

“Ah, it’s all starting to make sense now,” Carmen seethed. She pointed an accusing finger at Brock, whose feathery, ash-grey hair stood wildly on end. “You came to these woods when you were just seven years old, Brock. Sure, you’ve lived for over two hundred years, and, what’s that you said? Age means nothing to you?” She laughed mercilessly. “Age means nothing to you because you are still a
child
, Brock. You want what you want, and fuck your family and fuck me if we happen to want something different. You believe you know best and you don’t give a shit what anyone else feels.”

Gavin raised one hand and silence fell in the candlelit cavern. His face was as cold and stony as the rock walls above the rushing underground stream. “No one can say that I do not love my children,” Gavin said calmly. “I have hewn a home for them in these woods and devoted myself to their safety. Brock, you have violated the trust I have placed in you. By bringing this woman to our home and then permitting her to bathe in this place, you have forever broken the bond between us.”

The colour drained from Brock’s caramel-brown skin until he looked as pale as a glass of skim milk.

“You are banished, Brock. You are no longer welcome in my home or in these bathing caverns. Be gone.”

Brock’s jaw worked and cords of strained tendons stood out on his mud-spattered neck. “It’s a mistake, Father,” he argued. “You need me to save the woods, and you need Carmen, too.”

Gavin took one menacing step towards the mudbath. “Get out,” he ordered.

Slowly, Brock rose. Carmen caught a glimpse of his finely sculpted body, slickened with mud, before he splashed into the underground stream. Briskly, he scrubbed the silt from his nude body and climbed out on the rock bank of the stream. Korbin handed him a pair of rough grey wool trousers, a long-sleeved thermal shirt, and a pair of brown leather boots. After dressing hurriedly, Brock paused to look at his siblings and father.

“Goodbye, then, family. I wish it hadn’t come to this.” Only Korbin looked sympathetic. Paloma, Lowell and Gavin stared coldly back at him. “And good luck, Carmen. I never meant to hurt or offend you. I just believed that it would be easier to make you one of us first and explain it all later.” He chuckled sadly. “Maybe I am just a child, after all.”

He took a deep breath and exited the cavern.

Carmen, still soaking in the warm mud bath and seething about Brock’s actions, waited for one of the others to speak. The silence seemed to amplify until it became unbearable. “So, what now?” she asked at last.

Gavin shook his head. “You cannot leave, that’s for certain. Not now. Your future is tied forever to Fair Woods and to the Living Waters. To live elsewhere would mean death. True, you are new to magic and young in mortal years. You do not require a daily visit to the waters as we do now, but you must still bathe here every few days, or else your life will ebb from you as the traces of Healing Waters and Living Earth fade away. We will teach you our ways and make a home for you here. We will feed you and clothe you and teach you our ways.” He gritted his teeth. “Perhaps one day you will even learn to like it here. Regardless, you must stay. Brock has made that decision for you and for all of us.” He turned and began to walk towards the cavern’s exit.

“Wait a minute, Gavin,” Carmen called out. “If living elsewhere means death for me, then doesn’t it mean the same thing for Brock?”

Gavin’s stony gaze remained fixed on the exit tunnel. His broad shoulders lifted and fell with a ragged breath.

“Like, I understand that he’s a pain in the ass, but he is your son, after all. Did you just sentence your own son to death, Gavin?”

“You understand nothing, woman,” Gavin retorted. He wheeled about and bellowed at her, “Time and time again, Brock has endangered all that I’ve worked so hard to build here. He ventures into Charade to observe humans, including you, I suppose, for his own amusement, and has come close to revealing our secrets on numerous occasions. He pushes the boundaries of where he may safely travel and still visit the Healing Waters and the Living Earth on a daily basis. He pesters me for greater contact with the mortal world. He doesn’t understand that out there is only pain, loss, disease and death.” He threw her own words back at her. “As you said, Brock is a child. He is a child who endangers the rest of our lives and I will no longer tolerate his presence.”

Carmen rose, clothed only in a thin layer of shining brown silt. “You know what I think, Gavin?” she challenged him, dripping, with her hands on her hips. “I think you’re a real asshole.”

Gavin’s eyes narrowed dangerously.

“I think you were devastated when your wife died, and I’m sorry for that, but dude—it was two hundred years ago! You’ve locked your kids away so that the only company they have is elves and gnomes and trees and maybe a squirrel or two. How are they supposed to grow up when you hide them away from the world? You don’t have to date, although, frankly, you seem like one guy who could do with a good pleasure-fuck if I’ve ever seen one. What you
do
have to do is give your kids, who are now over two centuries old, by the way, a little more freedom and access to the world.”

Carmen stared down the massive patriarch of the family.

Gavin scowled back at her. “You may not tell me what I must and must not do, woman,” he growled. “Since you are so eager to defend Brock, you may follow him into the woods. You’ve sealed your own fate with your rash words. I’ve no doubt you’ll live to regret them when you’re wandering far from this place and your life is slipping away. I have been told that the pain is excruciating.”

“The fact that you would send your own son to die in such a manner shows your true character, Gavin,” Carmen said, “and, in case you missed it before, you’re a real asshole.” She walked to the edge of the stream and jumped in. After hurriedly rinsing the dirt from her hair, face and body, Carmen emerged and dressed herself in her discarded clothes. She felt the others’ eyes on her as she yanked her jeans up over her damp skin, but was too furious and disgusted to care.

“You guys can stay here if you like,” she directed at Korbin, Lowell and Paloma, “but I’m going to go try to save your brother. He may be a self-centred child, but he doesn’t deserve to die alone in the woods.”

Carmen dashed from the flickering cavern into the darkness of nightfall. She heard Gavin’s enraged bellow follow her, “Best save yourself while you’re at it, woman!”

Moonlight glimmered on the calm surface of the pond. Carmen stood and listened. She heard the muffled padding steps of an opossum, the soft rustle of a corn snake, and the dive-and-snatch of an owl on the hunt. She caught traces of thistle and honeysuckle in the air, and felt the cool, moist air brush against her cheek. Her senses seemed more powerful than before—they flooded her with sensory input, but Carmen had no time to think about that. She needed to find Brock and find some way to get him back to the Healing Waters and the Living Earth before it was too late.

Carmen squinted and scanned the ground for signs of Brock’s path, but found no hint about the course he’d taken. “Brock! Brock, where are you?” she yelled. A coyote’s shrill howl answered her.

“Great,” Carmen muttered. “Just great. All I need to do is search the entirety of Fair Woods completely by myself to find a bratty two-hundred-year-old before he dries up and—dies.” She felt a furry bump under her palm and looked down. Dax gazed up at her with a loyal, concerned expression. “Okay, then,” Carmen said. “Not entirely by myself, at any rate. Come on, good boy.”

Dax chuffed and followed Carmen into the blackness of Prescott Woods.

* * * *

Four hours later, Carmen felt ready to cry. Her bare feet—
why
hadn’t she thought to grab her shoes when she’d stormed from the cavern?—were sore and bloodied from innumerable scratches. Her voice was a raspy caw from hours of yelling in vain for Brock. She was exhausted, thirsty, frantic and utterly at a loss about what to do. Dax whined beside her. He seemed to sense the urgency of the situation.

Carmen’s gaze fell on an enormous live oak tree. Its wide branches spread far overhead and mingled into the foliage around her. At its base, the roots created an inviting hollow that was filled with dry leaves. Just looking at the cosy nook made a yawn sneak out of Carmen’s throat. Dax, her canine enabler, left her side and planted himself on the ground next to the tree. He cocked his head at her as if in invitation.

“All right,” Carmen gave in. “Just for a few minutes, just to gather my strength.” She nestled into the pile of leaves and leant back against the tree’s furrowed bark. It felt like the most divinely feather-plumped, silk-upholstered bedding imaginable. Dax settled against her and placed his heavy head on her thigh. Carmen fell into a deep, delicious sleep.

Chapter Eleven

Hours later, sunlight filtered through the treetops and fell on her closed eyelids. Carmen adjusted her shoulders’ position on the wide trunk of the tree and drowsily stroked Dax’s golden fur. Her brow creased slightly as she considered the pros and cons of gaining consciousness. Something stirred importantly under the heavy blanket of sleep—something troubling and time-sensitive. A life-or-death matter…

“Brock!” Carmen shouted. Distraught, she sat up and looked about. Dax jumped to his paws and barked with concern. Carmen raced into the woods and resumed her search. Dax, ever loyal, matched her step-for-step throughout the long day. Carmen caught fleeting glimpses of curious, inhuman faces in the shadows as she searched, but she had only one face on her mind. “He may be a self-centred brat,” Carmen muttered, “but he doesn’t deserve this.” She paused only to relieve herself, munch a few apples from an opportune tree and drink fresh water from an overland stream. However, as the sun began to go down, Carmen had still seen neither hide nor hair of Brock. She cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled at the top of her lungs, “Brock! Brock!”

A shrill sound erupted at Carmen’s back. Just two feet away, a minuscule person laughed uproariously. Carmen’s eyes widened when she saw the misshapen creature. Beneath a tattered leather dress, wide hips and the faint curve of a bosom revealed that the strange being was female. A long beak of a nose curled down over a pair of thin lips, and a sharp chin jutted out above a skinny neck. Through the dirt-brown snarls of hair, Carmen saw that the ears—though both enormous—were shaped entirely differently. One was long, with a flabby, pendulous earlobe, and one was squashed and plump like a cauliflower. Like the gnome who’d brought refreshments on the lawn of Castle Speranza, this creature’s hands were twisted and knobby at the end of scrawny wrists. A wide stripe of fur rose on Dax’s back and he took one step backwards.

“She dersen’t worry about the poochie,” the gnome squeaked in a high voice. “Poochie sees but a wee skunk, that he does!” She giggled so hard that she snorted. “Poor poochie dersen’t know why a skunk can speak like his mistress, though! Poor poochie!”

“Poor poochie, indeed,” Carmen muttered, and resumed her desperate cries. “Brock? Can you hear me?” she screamed. “Where are you?”

“She’s looking for someone, then? Someone in need of her help, yes! Poor somebody, all alone and groany-moaning in the woods!” The gnome fell on her back and rolled from side to side, clutching her stomach in mockery.

“You’ve seen him?” Carmen asked. “Where? Take me to him!”

The gnome rolled her eyes and writhed in faux-pain, then burst into laughter at her own joke.

Carmen squatted beside her. “Take me to him, please!”

“Aye, then.” The gnome quieted. She fixed a bright, clever eye on Carmen. “She’s new to the magic, and new to the ways of the wood, so perhaps she’s not knowing the way of things. The people of the fine castle order us about, yes, and lord over the wood, yes, but perhaps they dersen’t say the thank yous that they might be saying. They dersen’t show kindness to the older folk of the wood.” She knelt and pointed one gnarled finger at Carmen’s chest. “Perhaps she can make the fine castle folk be kinder to the old folk of the wood, yes?”

“Oh, ah,” Carmen stuttered. With effort, she kept her expression steady, although the blast of foul breath from the gnome’s mouth was horrendous. “I—I can certainly try. It’s just… I haven’t known them for long. I don’t know exactly what I can do to help you and I’m not at all sure I can make them listen to me, anyway.”

The gnome woman raised her shaggy eyebrows and stood. “Ah, well. More’s the pity for her, and pity-more-the-greater for yon feller in the wood, growing wrinklier and sicklier by the minute. She can do nothing to help? Well, aye, then, neither can I.” The gnome skipped around the back of the great live oak tree as the last rays of sunlight faded from the woods and were replaced by the glow of a bright, full moon.

“Wait!” Carmen shouted. “I can help! I will help, I promise!”

The gnome leaned around the tree trunk and assessed Carmen. “She promises?”

Carmen nodded with enthusiasm.

“She promises that the fine castle folk will invite us to use their bathing place, since it was first ours anyways?”

Carmen agreed.

“She promises that the fine castle folk will speak to us gently, by our names, and never more a rough hand laid on us?” The gnome leant forwards and raised one horny-nailed finger. “She promises that the fine castle folk will give us some of them fine chicken eggies we’ve been smelling?”

Carmen bit her lip to keep from smiling—who’d have guessed what lifesavers Scarlett, Suellen and the rest of the flock had turned out to be?—and agreed wholeheartedly.

“She understands that breaking her promise to me means an end to her? A very ugly, bad business of an end, too, that I’d not wish on the foulest troll.” The gnome shuddered.

“Yes, yes, I promise!” Carmen said.

“She comes, then,” the gnome whispered. She darted away into the woods. Carmen, with Dax at her heels, scrambled to chase her through the dark, dense growth of trees.

* * * *

Twenty minutes later the gnome stopped and pointed down into a shallow ravine. “Yonder he rests,” she whispered.