SPARX Incarnation: Mark of the Green Dragon (SPARX Series I Book 1) (21 page)

Holly slipped into the water and the mayhem. A new demeanor washed over her, cold and placid. Moments later, the Stout looked down in terror at the strangely swirling water and the subtle splashes around him, unnerving and phantom-like. A ghastly whiteness spread across his face.

The hag looked about, uncertain.

From behind the hag, Holly raised a waterlogged stick, long and jagged. It was especially solid, and the jagged edge especially sharp. She took careful aim and plunged it through the wretch’s back. Gariff observed the stick punch through, beneath the hag’s ribs. She arched backwards and screamed. Gariff stumbled back as the hag released the tendrils around his face and neck. She fell into the shallow bog water. The old woman’s eyes went wide in disbelief. She stared, gaping, at the ooze-coated point of Holly’s stick protruding from her belly. The hag spun her head around to face her attacker. It was the only time she ever appeared fearful, for all that she beheld was the serving girl’s disembodied face set atop a blurred, dripping form. Holly wrenched the stick free and stabbed the hag again, and then many more times for good measure. Holly could not have stopped herself if she tried. Each time the wretch jerked and writhed. After a flurry of piercings, exhausted, the Flipside girl ended it all with one final thrust to the neck, then she let go of the stick. Her arms dropped.

It was Gariff’s turn. The Stout took over and grabbed the beaten creature with strong, determined hands. She still had tendrils on him. He carried her as she writhed and moaned. She tried to pull the stick out of her neck. Held fast by a knot in the wood that had passed straight through the wound, the stick would not draw free. Eyes glazed, and in senseless desperation, the dying hag rolled the stick in small circles, inscribing an invisible cone in the open air. Stretching the hole only served to open the wound. Thick, dark liquid pulsed out.

“She’s not done fer yet,” said Gariff. A level of sternness that only Stouts possess infused him. He laid her down and tore at the hag’s twisted tendrils, severing the last remnants of her hold on him. Then he lifted her above his head and firmly carried her to a half-submerged log, spiked with a rat’s mouth of jagged old branches. Gariff thrust her down upon the broken tips, impaling the wretch. The despicable bog thing did not so much as twitch after the impact.

Full of battle rage and with one opponent down, the Stout turned his aggression to the remaining hag, the parrot, and charged after her. But that hag was still within the pool where Bobbin had disappeared, continuing her dives to find him. When she caught sight of the berserking barbarian, and after she beheld the dismal fate of her sister, the parrot-no-more hag slipped under the mosses and disappeared. Gariff stopped at the edge of the bog pool and stared into the moss-filled depths. He knew better than to enter. The ripples in the water faded with Gariff still standing there watching, waiting. He looked back to where he’d last seen Holly; she was gone too. Gariff jumped a nervous jump when he heard a girl’s voice so near.

“Come here,” said the voice.

Gariff spun left, then right, then all the way around. It sounded like she was standing right next to him, but where?

“Holly?” he said to the wind.

He spotted the eyes first. On meeting her floating gaze, he realized it could only be Holly in her elderkin cloak.

The serving girl had already gained a full appreciation of the benefits of invisibility. As long as she kept the hood closed, everything about her was hidden. But if she wanted to see the outside world, she had to reveal at least her eyes. And the cloak worked in water as well as air, apart from the displacement of fluid around her physical being, which could not be helped.

Holly Hopkins opened her cloak to Gariff and revealed herself fully, beckoning him to join her in the safety of its confines. She was shivering.

“Wow, that really works,” said Gariff, dumbly.

Holly nodded. “We have to hide. Hurry, come in.”

Gariff obliged. They crouched down and hid together for a time, and fixed their eyes upon the scene where Bobbin had dove in. Together, they peeked through the hood of the cloak. There was plenty of room for two in there. He kept her warm. She kept him hidden.

The impaled hag remained motionless, and the other never returned. Bobbin never came up for air either. Kabor, Nud and Jory were long gone. The Shadow in the Water was nowhere to be seen either. It was almost
too
calm, eerily calm, with only the gentle drone of insects breaking the twilit silence. The two waited together a bit longer.

After a time, they convinced themselves that there were no more dangers lurking anywhere near. Holly and Gariff abandoned their hiding place. Gariff emerged from the cloak, and both scanned the bog from the trail’s edge to the horizon for signs of those gone missing. They saw little evidence that their friends had even been there.

There were many tufts of grass, mounds and stumps to provide hiding places, so they called out for their companions as well, mindful of the possible consequences of drawing attention to themselves. Their voices bellowed out into the quaggy expanse and were lost on the absorbing mosses. There was no response.

Defeated, Holly bowed her head and walked along the trailside to where Bobbin had dove in. She stepped out onto the moss and gazed into the night-shimmering pool.

“We have to go back to town for help now,” said Gariff, “We’ve done all we can. I can’t cross the water or search underneath it.”

“I can,” said Holly. Gariff took her hand.

“No,” was all he said.

Holly looked to the skewered hag, then up at Gariff, sobbing. “We as good as killed her, didn’t we?” she said.

“We did what needed to be done… besides, she looked half dead already, right? I mean, she wasn’t really alive to begin with… a bog queen from down under is unnatural. She couldn’t have been a
regular
living thing,” said Gariff. “And I’m the one that finished her off. Remember?”

Holly nodded and wiped her eyes. “That stupid hag,” she said, then painted her face with a forced smile.

“We have to mark the spot,” said Gariff.

Under the darkness of a new moon, the two survivors set out for Webfoot together and reported the incident to the first guard they met at the Long Wall. A search party was quickly organized, and many hands deployed to the bog even before the rising sun burned off the mists of the new morning.

 

 

 

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