Solatium (Emanations, an urban fantasy series Book 2) (32 page)

“Nick took a shine to Alison, and one day, when John was out of the house, Nick cornered Alison in the kitchen. He … how shall I put it?”

“Met with her approval?” I said.

“And got to know her in the biblical sense?” Terry said.

“Exactly. He was a big, strapping fellow, just what she liked. So they squeezed in a quickie right there on the kitchen table, but they barely had time to finish before John got home.

“From that point on, they met whenever possible, but they never had time for a really satisfying encounter. John was suspicious of his wife and kept a close eye on her.

“Things might’ve continued this way for quite some time, but another young man, Abner, saw Alison in church and fell passionately in love with her. He began to court her, singing outside her window and sending her terrible poetry. He wasn’t at all her type, and he made quite a nuisance of himself. Worst of all, John couldn’t help but notice Abner following his wife around like a puppy, and once he did, he kept an even closer eye on her. The extra attention put a crimp in Alison and Nick’s affair.

“Nick was getting more and more frustrated, so he hatched a plan to get Alison all to himself for a full night in a real bed.

“He sat John down and told him his studies had uncovered a divine prophecy: god was going to send another great flood, and only a carpenter and his family were destined to survive. The carpenter would escape the waters, Nick explained, by building three large tubs and raising them into the rafters. When the waters came, the carpenter would cut the tubs loose and float to safety.

“John immediately decided he must be the carpenter in question and set about making the tubs. Once they were ready and suspended in the rafters, John, Alison, and Nick each climbed into one. The two young lovers waited until the old man fell asleep. Then they climbed down and got into John’s own bed for a long night of passion.

“But as luck would have it, Abner chose that night to serenade Alison through her bedroom window. It irritated the two lovers to no end.

“Alison threw the window open and told Abner to leave, but he swore to stay until she gave him a kiss.

“‘Abner, dear, your love has convinced me at last,’ Alison said, trying to hold back a giggle. ‘Come and get your kiss.’ Then she stuck her ass out the window.”

“Now we’re talking!” Terry said.

Mizzy grinned. “Abner, overjoyed, grabbed her and kissed her deeply.”

I said, “Gross!”

Terry said, “I hope ‘deeply’ means plenty of tongue.”

Ida made a sound that attempted disapproval but ended up being mostly laughter.

Mizzy grinned. “Alison closed the window, and Abner drew back, confused. ‘Something isn’t right, here,’ he said to himself. ‘Women don’t have beards.’

“Nick heard him. ‘A beard!’ he said, barely able to speak, he was laughing so hard. ‘Good one, Alison!’

“Abner heard them and realized he’d been tricked. He gagged and spat. He grabbed handfuls of grass from the side of the road and rubbed his face until it was raw. But nothing could erase the shame.

“‘I’ll get them back,’ he said to himself.

“He went straight to the blacksmith’s shop down the road and took a red-hot iron out of the forge. Then he returned to Alison’s window. ‘My dear,’ he said, tapping on it, ‘your last kiss was so sweet I must have another!’

“Nick couldn’t let Alison have all the fun, so he opened the window and stuck his ass out.

“‘Where are you, sweetheart?’ Abner said. ‘I can’t see you in the darkness. Speak, so I might find your lips.’

“In response, Nick farted thunderously. Poor Abner was almost struck blind by the force of it. But he gathered his wits and, quick as you please, jabbed Nick with the red-hot poker, right between the cheeks.

“‘Ahhh!’ shouted Nick at the top of his lungs. ‘Help! Water! Water!’

“Up in the rafters, John woke to cries of ‘Water!’ and thought the flood had come.

“‘Alison, my love,’ he cried, ‘now we must save ourselves to repeople the Earth!’

“He cut the ropes holding up his tub, and down it fell, all the way to the floor.

“The neighbors heard the commotion and ran over to see what had happened. They found John lying in the wreckage of his tub with a broken arm. Nick and Alison claimed he was insane and obsessed with Noah’s flood, and all the people of the town ridiculed him.

“And so the carpenter was thought a madman, Nick was burned on the pooper, and Abner kissed an ass.”

“And Alison got away scot-free?” I could feel the big grin on my face. That story had been exactly what we needed.

“Indeed she did,” Mizzy said. “The smart ones often do.”

“Told you she was my kind of girl,” Terry said.

“You’re gonna end up like Abner,” Ida said.

“Come off it! I’m Nick, all the way.” He paused. “Well, not including the burned-ass part. Just up to the fart.”

Ida shook her head, smiling.

“That was a great story,” I said to Mizzy. “Did you make it up?”

“Oh, no. Chaucer came up with that one.”

My mind skipped back through high school English and came up blank. “Who’s Chaucer?”

“An English poet from the late 1300s.”

“That story is six hundred years old?”

She nodded.

“Wow. They had more fun back then than I realized.”

Mizzy chuckled. It was a rich, naughty sound. “People have always had fun.” She shot a glance at Williams, up on the guard platform. “Well, most people, anyway.”

My humor drained away as I studied her expression.

Since the turkey attack, Mizzy’s approach to Williams had changed. She didn’t try to flirt with him anymore. Instead, she took little digs at him.

It had taken me a few days to notice. After all, I took digs at him in my own mind all the time. Hearing more of the same echoed back seemed normal. I actually noticed the absence of flirting before I noticed what had replaced it.

It shouldn’t have been weird. After all, he’d accused her of … something. I’m not sure exactly what. Shirking her responsibility, at the very least. Maybe some kind of subterfuge. And he’d done it in front of her friends. Of course she’d be angry about that, and picking at someone you’re mad at is pretty normal.

But this didn’t feel normal.

Maybe a better way to put it was that it didn’t feel
natural
. Her flirting had felt performed, and so did the angry digs. Acting mad instead of actually being mad … I couldn’t figure out why she’d do that.

I leaned down and focused on scraping a glob of dried mud off my ankle so Mizzy wouldn’t read my thoughts on my face.

I liked her. I wanted to think she might become a friend. But something seemed off.

The journey through the highland rainforests continued for another two weeks. I got to practice my Baasha a lot, but that was the only bright spot. It rained constantly. Copper got a terrible case of thrush, and I came down with a hacking cough. The cracks on my feet got infected. Ida healed the problems every night, but they kept coming back.

We saw plenty of dinosaurs, including a few predators, but were never attacked again. It’s as though they dinos had spread the word about our party —
well defended, look elsewhere
.

Other travelers weren’t so lucky. On our next-to-last day in the rainforest, we came upon the aftermath of a recent attack. The survivors — if there’d been any — had moved on, but the dead were still scattered over the road. There’d been children, this time. One of the dead faces staring up into the pelting rain reminded me of my oldest niece, Tiffany. The girl’s clothes lay mostly flat in the mud. She’d been eaten right out of them.

I’d seen some bad things in the preceding months and didn’t get sick easily anymore, but that did the trick.

I felt tremendous relief when the rains tapered off, the trees began to thin out, and traffic on the road increased. We began passing several walled towns per day, and the oppressive sense of danger lurking all around us in the darkness finally lifted.

In mid-morning on a day in late October — I’d lost track of the dates — we crested a last hill and looked down onto a city. It wasn’t a metropolis, by any means, but it was a great deal larger than the towns we’d encountered so far.

“What is this place?” I asked Mizzy in Baasha.

“It is called Kye Wodor.”

“Water City?”

She nodded. “As you see.”

Indeed, the city ran down a long, gentle slope to the banks of a great river. I’d never seen such a big one, actually. It dwarfed the Mississippi up where it borders Wisconsin, and the Hudson certainly couldn’t compare.

“Do we have to cross that?”

“Yes. The ligature to Ancient Inland is on the other side.”

I could see plains over there — a long smudge of pale green beyond the river. I remembered Serhan saying they flooded in the rainy season.

“Where does the river go?”

“It flows into the Atlantic. The ligature to Blue Seas is right at its mouth.”

“That sounds nice.”

Mizzy tilted her head. “It is one of the most beautiful strata I have seen, but warm seas such as those are perilous.”

“Are there sea monsters?”

“Sea monsters.” She smiled. “Yes, that is an apt description.”

“Would you tell me about them?”

“A monster story?” she said, laughing. “I do know a tale. I will tell it as I heard it. But I warn you, it is not for the faint of heart.”

I grinned. It was a promising beginning.

“Many years ago, when I was little more than a child, my mother’s sister fell in love with a man from the Dragon’s Tail.”

“The Dragon’s Tail?”

“It’s a sea stratum,” Terry said in English. “It’s got a long archipelago that looks like a tail.”

“He had long hair as black as ink,” Mizzy continued, “and he wove silver rings into it so that he brought music with him wherever he went. His skin gleamed like alabaster, and he smelled of fresh spray off an ocean wave on a windy day. Without a doubt, he was the most beautiful man I have ever seen or ever will. How sad to have been forced to bestow that title at so young an age.”

Idly, I wondered if Cordus had been hanging out in the Dragon’s Tail about then. But no, his skin wasn’t like alabaster.

“They lived together for a time, and my aunt bore a child, a sweet boy who looked just like his father. For a time, the three were the happiest of souls. But alas, one day the boy fell from a tree and struck his head. He lay asleep for days, growing thinner and paler. The local healers could do nothing. To his mother, it seemed he was fading from life before her very eyes.

“Desperate for help, the boy’s father rode to the nearest lord and begged for his healer. The lord agreed, though I cannot imagine what my aunt’s lover had to promise in exchange — that lord was not a kind man.

“But the father’s efforts were in vain, for on the seventh day, the boy opened his eyes and smiled up at his mother. Then he turned his face to the wall and died. That evening my aunt’s lover returned with the lord’s best healer, but one cannot heal the dead.

“The light went out of the man’s eyes. I remember understanding, even in my youth, that he would never again look upon my aunt with joy. She was, to him, only a source of grief — a reminder of what was lost. After a short time, he left her.

“If the death of her son had wounded my aunt to the core, the loss of her lover destroyed her. She would not eat for days, and we feared she would die. She did not, but neither did she return to life. She existed, yes, but she was as a rock fixed coldly in place while the lively stream eddies around it. Time and love and life moved on without her.

“Eventually, my mother suggested she travel to the Dragon’s Tail in search of her lover. Perhaps time and separation would have softened his grief and changed his feelings toward her.

“My aunt agreed to the plan but could not seem to bring it to fruition. Day after day, she sat in silence as her home decayed around her. Finally, in desperation, my mother declared that we would all go. She could see no other way to jolt her sister from her stupor.

“The journey to the coast was uneventful, as were our first days at sea. Then we passed through the ligature to the Dragon’s Tail. I remember standing at the ship’s rail, watching as the water’s color went from gray to green to blue. The birds around us changed, and the sailors became more vigilant.

“I saw the long-necked and bull-necked sea creatures for the first time in those waters. Most had learned that striking at passing ships was not only useless, but painful, for sailing without barrier-makers is as unthinkable as sailing without workers of water. Still, sometimes they tested the hull. They are not the smartest of animals. But I enjoyed seeing them and was not afraid.

“On our fifth day in the blue water, a cry went up from the lookout in the rigging. We all went to the rail, curious to see the latest creature. At first we saw nothing. Then a great shadow darkened the water around the ship. I looked up, expecting to see a sudden storm cloud, but the sky was clear. The shadow was within the water, not upon it: something vast was swimming beneath us. It persisted for a time, then faded away into deeper water, only to resurface beside us.

“I cannot easily describe the creature. It was almost as long as the ship and as thick as a house. The upper portion of its hide was black, and its belly white. A fin taller than the tallest man rose from its back. It rolled a bit to the side as it paced us, and I saw teeth as big as my head in its open mouth.