6:11
The stairs around the tower were much easier to navigate now that their surface wasn’t uniformly black. And, also, now that they weren’t being chased up them by an omnivorous shadow. That, specifically, made the climb up to the next level easier.
It also made it very easy to see the shining yellow tentacles that slithered over the landing and slinked down the stairs towards them. Shining like they were lit from within. Shining through the flowers woven into their strands so the petals seemed to glow.
Patti and Prairie, in the lead with their lights, were the first to see the things. Prairie started. Patti went “Whoa!” and dropped back a step, ramming into Dempsey’s shield and causing him to have to brace in order to not go cannonballing down the stairs into Kim who was behind him.
“Is that-?” Patti peered down at the tentacle that was inching towards her foot. “Hair?”
Prairie nodded. “I think we found our Rapunzel.”
No sooner had she said this than a questing tendril of hair, because of course it was hair, wrapped around Prairie’s ankle. She was yanked off her feet and over the landing before anyone could react.
“Ahhhh!” she screamed and yanked her daggers out. She was being dragged so quickly across the floor that her arms were flung out at her side, forming a T with daggers extended. Ivan dove around Dempsey, hand outstretched but he was too late to do more than snatch at the empty landing.
Pushing past Patti without a word of apology Ivan dashed over the landing and into the room, only to come to an abrupt halt as his brain tried to process what it was seeing. The room was full, absolutely full, of writhing, shining golden hair piled about three feet deep across the entirety of the floor. Like a colander of spaghetti, if the spaghetti was animated and sentient and could turn with something resembling interest at Ivan’s entry. As the hair writhed and wriggled on top of itself a cloud of flowers puffed up from it, petals torn off to drift like a haze above the mass.
How could anyone have that much hair?
Yeah. Irrelevant.
The important thing was that Prairie had completely disappeared beneath the mass of shining, writhing stuff. Ivan could sort of guess her location by the way the strands bulged and twitched about halfway to the figure that was standing against the far wall of the tower room, their back pressed to the stone and hair surging from their scalp like some kind of ancient curse that invoked snakes and paralysis.
Though, thankfully, it seemed that paralysis was not on the table as Ivan was still moving despite the tentacles… tendrils… things snapping for his face. Brandishing his sword, he snatched one of the tendrils from the air, held it taut, and slashed it with the weapon. The tendrils parted beneath the sword and the hair in his hand went limp and stopped glowing. The woman against the wall gave out a fearsome scream as the part of the tendril still attached to her retracted into the writhing mass.
Seeing he finally had something he could affect by the blunt application of force, Ivan strode over the threshold, screaming defiance with hand outstretched for another tendril. Ben charged in almost immediately behind him, going low and to the left with a dagger in one hand and a ball of shadow writhing in the other. He flung the shadow at the center of the mass of tendrils. Their light flared and engulfed the darkness, snuffing it out with a sizzle and causing Ben to gasp like he’d taken a kick to the junk.
He grunted, bending forward to absorb the hit before pulling another dagger from inside his jacket. Straightening with a wince, he fell to hacking at the hair that was snapping at him.
“Prairie!” Ivan screamed as he hacked and slashed several tendrils of hair, only to have more flow into the small hole he’d formed in the mass. Flower petals exploded, hanging on the air like confetti from a cannon. Damn it! Where did this stuff end?
From beneath the hair something grabbed his leg and he instinctively kicked out, only to stop the full force of the hit when he heard a delicate grunt from under the hair.
Hollering “Prair?” down into the hair, Ivan pulled back to the door, dragging either the hair that was grabbing his leg or Prairie – still uncertain – towards the stair.
Dempsey stepped into the room to the right of the door, his shield held out to block the reach of the hair near Ivan. Patti went to the other side, swinging her punch shield out at arms-length in a sweeping gesture that rebuffed several thrusting tendrils. Kim reached over Patti’s shoulder, snapping her hand to send a fireball spiraling into the tendrils which fell back smoking and emitting the distinctive smell of burning hair. Even the aroma of the flowers swirling like snow flurries did little to alleviate the acrid stink.
Ivan reached down and wrapped his hand around Prairie’s where it clasped his ankle and yanked her completely off her feet, leaving her dangling about two inches off the ground.
“Ow!” Prairie reached up to clasp her other hand around Ivan’s forearm, alleviating the strain of dangling, and spit her hair from her eyes. Ivan let her down quickly with a look of consternation.
“Sorry, Prair.”
“I’d rather have my arm yanked by you than my entire body by that stuff.” She jerked her head to indicate the writhing hair.
Dan stood behind Dempsey, bobbing his head, in search of a target. He loosed a crossbow bolt, only to have the tendril he was searching at writhe away from it, leaving an after trail of flower petals. After he tried another bolt and failed in a similar way he dropped back with a frown. “Like trying to shoot the wind,” he muttered.
“Here,” Siobhan said, stepping into the spot he abandoned with a potion held over reared back to throw, “Let me!”
Her potion flew true, arching over the reaching tendrils to land in the center of their mass with a hiss and a release of smoke. Where the potion landed hair pulled back from a smoking scorched circle on the floor.
Kim did a rear back and turn with her head to look at Siobhan. “Damn!”
“Acid. That’s why you always count the dots,” Siobhan said, deadpan.
Dempsey, shield still held steady, gave her a look that combined crinkled brow and scrunched mouth. “Dots?”
“Uh, huh,” Siobhan nodded and dug in her bag for another vial. She gave it a cursory look and tossed it back in, digging deeper for another. This one she shoved into the strap of her bag across her chest. “One dot healing. Two dots energy.”
“No dots keep your fucking hands off,” Kim quipped before throwing another fire ball at the hair which was rapidly flowing into the space Siobhan cleared. “Not sure we’re making a dent. Where is all this hair coming from?”
“Her.” Patti parried the thrust of another hair with her shield and jerked her chin to the girl standing against the far wall.
Gwen was running her hands rapidly over Prairie who was leaning against the wall of the stair well and lamely fending them off. “I’m okay!”
“I’ll say when you’re okay!” Gwen narrowed her eyes on Prairie then went back to her probing.
Ivan leaned against the other side of the stair well, arms crossed, and watched Gwen check Prairie for injuries. He tuned out the sound of the fighting. They’d call if they needed him.
“Yes,” Siobhan said, pulling a round ceramic globe with a waxed sealed cork in it from the depths of her bag. It resembled an ancient grenade, the kind that were named after pomegranates based on their shape. “Kim?”
“Yeah.”
“Can you make a puddle of water over there?” She pointed to a spot around the center of the room but over to the left.
“Maybe?” Kim drew out the word, scrunching up her face.
“Try?”
Kim focused on the spot Siobhan had pointed to. Her expression switched from animated to a resting state and then to one of sorrow. She drew a hard breath through her nose, swallowed, then said, “It feels like it worked.”
“Okay.” Siobhan pulled her arm back, then tossed the globe so it arched over the roiling sea of hair before dropping neatly into the space she’d indicated. There was the sound of shattering ceramic and then a “whoosh” as the mixture in the globe hit the water and then a jet of fire flared for the ceiling, mercilessly driving the hair back from the spot. Ash from the flowers swirling on the air fell down like a nuclear sunset.
They all stopped what they were doing to stare. It was the kind of thing you just had to do, like when you tell yourself you won’t look at the car crash on the side of the road because you aren’t a sheep and then… bah. Since cave times humans had a fascination for fire and this fire was, well, the King Kong of fire. The Godzilla of Fire. There was no Tokyo because Fire.
Even the hair seemed shocked stupid by it.
“Siobhan?” Kim said real tentatively, “It isn’t going out.”
Siobhan made a hum of acknowledgement, assessing the flames and make quick mental notes. “That’s the major drawback of using that formula. Water ignites it, so you can’t use water to put it out.”
“Is that Sea Fire?” Dempsey asked, speculation and respect in his tone.
Siobhan nodded and watched the water burn. “Or, close enough. No one has the original formula. Alchemists like to tackle it as a thought exercise. I just took it a step further.”
“And you were carrying that around in your bag?” Ivan asked from where he’d stepped up behind her.
Siobhan nodded.
“It isn’t going out.” Kim stated the obvious, again.
“It will. Eventually. But for now that side of the room is clear.”
“Is it safe for us to go near?” Ivan asked.
Siobhan shrugged. “Probably- No.”
Kim eyed her from the side of her eye.
“What?” Siobhan asked. “It’s okay for you to set stuff on fire but I do it once and it’s a problem?”
Kim gave her a look that questioned her intelligence. “How do you put it out?”
Siobhan shrugged. “Sand. Usually sand works.”
Apparently the hair, or the girl from which the hair was emitting, had enough because it suddenly reared up in a wave and the fight was on once more with everyone – and the hair – avoiding the still burning puddle of water to the left. It wasn’t the worst for the non-hairy combatants since it took almost no time to realize that the way to end the fight was to get to the girl and the girl was far enough away from the conflagration and its potential spread. Of course, it did mean there was more hair concentrated in a smaller space making it that much harder to evade. And more flower petals obscuring their vision. Balance.
“What we really need,” remarked Dan from behind where Ivan was swinging his sword through hair, “is a net.”
“A hair net,” Gwen said, “Bwahahaha.”
“Not helping!” Ben called, dancing away from a hair that tried to snag his leg.
“Wah!” Kim cried as a hair snaked past Patti’s shield and snatched Kim’s wrist. It yanked her forward hard enough her shoulder ached before she was able to dig in and start fighting it. “What I would give for a damned laser about now.”
“Here,” Prairie slid around her and sliced through the hair with a dagger.
Kim wrung her wrist and then dropped back a step, indicating Prairie should move forward.
“You sure?” Prairie asked.
“You’re going to be way more effective than me with those daggers.”
They inched forward until they’d cleared enough from space from the door that hair closed in behind them. Seriously, how long was this stuff?
Ivan dropped to the back, turning so he could keep the hair back with sweeps of his sword. Ben dropped to his right and held the hair back there. In this way they formed a sort of tortoise with Prairie at the vanguard as the ‘head’, Dempsey and Patti to each side creating a barrier with their shields that held the hair back, Siobhan and Kim behind them tossing fire and potions, and Ben and Ivan covering the rear with their weapons. Gwen and Dan, in the center, looked at each other.
“Feel like a fifth wheel,” Dan said.
“Welcome to my party,” was Gwen’s reply. “Healers always end up as the cream-filling in the truffle of life.”
“Because you’re important!” Siobhan called.
“Because you’re squishy!” Kim followed with.
As they drew deeper into the room and closer to the girl on the far side they could see the fear contorting her features.
“We’re here to help you!” Patti called to the girl.
“Leave!” was the girl’s response, followed up by a thrust of her arms from behind which her hair flew with renewed vigor. It seemed for every hair they cut, burned, snatched, and, uh, cut two more grew. Like the Hydra of Lerna that sprung two heads from the stump of one.
“Will she ever get tired?” Ben grunted.
“Yeah,” Kim muttered to Siobhan, “This might be working but I think we’ll get tired before it does.”
Siobhan hummed an agreement. “Does anyone have any ideas.”
“Come around from the side that doesn’t have the fire?” Ivan suggested. “Then we’re only fighting on one side.”
“It’s a lot more distance to cover though,” Dan pointed out. “And we’re already tiring.”
“I’d say a push,” Dempsey suggested.
“You have it in you?” Dan asked, “You’d be driving it.”
Dempsey hefted his shield and nodded.
“You call it,” Siobhan said, throwing the lead to the large man.
“On three!” Dempsey said, “One, two, three.”
On three he surged forward with Prairie falling to his right with daggers slicing out to hinder the hair that came arrowing in from that side and Patti on his left bump-checking the hair on her side with her shield. Everyone else rushed after them, with Ben and Ivan double-timing it backwards in a coordinated move that spoke of long familiarity between the two friends.
The wave of them rolled at the girl too fast for her to redirect the hair to defend her. It snapped and surged to the side and the back but did nothing to slow their forward rush. What did that was Dempsey colliding heavily with the girl, pulling back at the last second so when he slammed her with his shield it only knocked her on her butt and not through the wall.
She screamed as she fell. Her head snapped back, sending something heavy flying from her head into the wall. As soon as it did the hair stopped. Dropped. Died. Pick an image. Whichever one you do make sure it references dark blond hair limply pooling on the ground without a hint of glow or movement. Ragged flower petals and a few still intact buds drifted to settle on the quiescent hair.
Gwen crawled across the space and started to gently check the girl for injury even as Ben called out, “What was that?” and dived in the direction the clunk had come from. He pushed away hair and flowers and petals, digging with both hands in search of the sound. Deep down, something metal rested where the floor met the wall.
“Ha!” He started to grab it, then thought better of it and gently pushed the tip of a dagger under it and flipped it to the top of the bed of hair. It was a comb; the kind of decorative thing women wore to show off their wealth more than their hair. Not quite a tiara but pretty-damned close.
It had to be four inches across, made of some either bronze or brass, with prongs that had to be about two inches long protruding from a subtle arch on which precious stones were embedded. Not semi-precious. Precious. His eye quickly picked out deep-toned sapphires and what might be either be lighter-colored ones ranging all the way down to cornflower or potentially could be blue diamonds from the spray around the star sapphire at its center. He assessed the piece at roughly a butt-ton of money. He’d need a loupe to make a more educated guess.
“What you find?” Patti asked, having waded through the hair to his side.
“A comb.” He slid it into one of the interior pockets of his jacket. “Must have popped out of her hair when Dempsey sandbagged her.”
“Tackled. Gently,” Dempsey corrected.
“With his shield.” Kim added. Super helpfully.
Gwen rocked back on her heels as the girl, Llora, at least that was the hope, groaned and shifted her head.
“Hi!” Gwen said with a wave as the girl opened her eyes, only to fall back on her butt as those eyes proved to be, well, freaky. No pupil, no sclera. Just a swirl of royal and cyan with a touch of gold and stria of either dark navy or black from corner to corner.
The girl’s “Hello,” was immediately followed by her unfolding the hands that had been neatly clasped over her heart and spreading them wide to release a percussive blast that drove Gwen scuttering across the hair-slick floor and knocked Kim, Prairie, and Siobhan, who had been closest, staggering to trip over the hair and fall on their backs. Ben and Patti, close to the wall, braced their hands so they didn’t get driven into the stone. Dan, Ivan, and Dempsey faired a little better, bracing into the blast to – barely – retain their footing.
Sparks danced on the air as Llora, or probably not Llora though potentially Llora’s body, rose as if lifted by the wind, only to stop and scowl at the heavy hair hanging from her head and spooling out from her like lengths of cloth. She stooped next to Prairie, who was still a bit dazed and was staring at the ceiling contemplating getting to her feet sometime in the next hour or week, and picked up one of her daggers.
“Thank you!” Llora said that rang in the tones of a girl but had the intonations of someone much older. Like dirt old. Like dinosaur bones turned to oil old. That old. She rested the dagger against her collarbone and sliced outward, slashing through her hair so it fell like wheat around her.
All this took around five seconds. Five seconds in which no one could respond because their ears were ringing and their vision was swimming and their heads felt floaty from the impact of the percussive wave.
Llora dropped the dagger in the pile of hair and shook her shorn head. “Better.”
“Weird eyes. Weird eyes!” Gwen mumbled, squinting to see through the haze washing her own eyes. She turned, following the sound of movement and bellowed. “Weird eyes!”
“Huh?” Ivan shook his head and tried to focus on Gwen. The ringing in his ears made her sound like she was talking under water. He raised his voice to be heard over it, “What was that?”
Llora headed for the workbench built into the wall, traipsing delicately through the piles of hair with her skirt held above her ankles. Once she reached the bench she kneeled and started pulling a trunk from under it. She hummed under her breath as she flipped the lid and began riffling the contents.
Over her shoulder she tossed, “Thank you for your service. You can leave now.”
“We can’t.” Patti pitched her voice to carry, adding a slight vibration underneath to catch Llora’s ear. “Your mother asked us to find you. She misses you.”
“My mother is dead,” Llora said, lifting bottles and replacing them then moving on to other vials. “She has been for,” she cocked her head, “perhaps hundreds of years. Be gone.”
With this she tossed a jar from the chest in Patti’s direction. It hit the hair-covered floor and shattered, releasing something that burned the hair in a neat circle for about two feet.
Patti drew back, eyes wide. Well, crap.
Ben, who was closest along with Patti, shot a look to Ivan, then pointed at himself, pointed at Llora, and punched his hand into his palm. Before Ivan could translate the pantomime Ben surged up, flew across the distance separating them, and tackled Llora from the side.
“Touching me!” Looking at him with curled lip and creased brow, Llora smashed a glass globe against Ben’s temple. It released a puff of dust which glittered on the air before adhering to his skin. His eyes rolled back in his head and he slumped into the bed of hair.
Llora went back to digging in the chest. She didn’t even shrug in commentary of Ben’s state. Just ‘oh, look, a yoyo!’.
Patti stared, mouth agape, then swung to look at Ivan. Then at Dempsey. Then at Dan. Like “did you see that?”
Clearly Ivan had because he rushed in with on a bellow and grabbed Llora in a bear hug from behind. Patti saw what was coming a mile off. A blind mole just out of the ground could have seen it coming. Ivan, clearly driven by some heroic ‘arrrr!’, did not.
So, when Llora casually bent her arm at the elbow and snapped her hand back to smash another glass globe against Ivan’s pec, releasing a cloud of sparkly dust that coated his goatee in pale pink, shiny particles he was unable to avoid the hit. Whatever was in the particles made him go completely limp, so Llora didn’t even jiggle as his bear hug released and he went plunk over backwards like a drunk at last call.
Two down. In about twenty-two seconds. Not good odds for the rest of them.
Without getting up from the floor – that hair made a comfy bed – Kim turned her head to look at Siobhan who was also still laying next to her. Siobhan turned her head at the same time and their gazes connected, both telegraphing ‘we are very fucked’. Okay, so Siobhan’s may have telegraphed ‘well, fiddlesticks!’ but Kim’s definitely used ‘fucked’.
Llora rose from the chest, clutching a number of bottles, jars, and vials in her arm. She dropped the load on the workbench then turned to go to the bench against the left wall, only to stop and cock her head when she saw the fire still burning in the puddle.
She stooped to examine it closer. “Sticky Fire. Rudimentary, but effective.”
Rising she skirted the puddle and started tinkering with something on the workbench.
Kim propped herself on an elbow to watch the movement. Siobhan slowly sat up, her gaze trained on Llora and Prairie rolled over to her stomach and looked at Gwen.
“When you said weird eyes,” she whispered to Gwen, “did you mean her eyes look like labradorite?”
“What’s that?”
“Stone. Swirly colors. Gold, cyan, blue.” Prairie explained.
“Yes, yes, and yes.” Gwen nodded. “Totally that.”
Prairie turned to Siobhan. “She’s possessed.”
“I thought you got rid of all that earlier,” Siobhan whispered back.
“I thought I did. Guess not.”
“Okay, so we need to-”
Llora turned and looked at where Kim, Gwen, Siobhan, and Prairie were ranged across the floor. “Are you still here? Why?”
Patti, who’d started crawling over to the central mass of women froze her movement so she was crouched over the hairy floor like a turtle. “Because your mother misses you?” she ventured, wincing even as she said it.
“No mother!” Llora yelled and threw a jar towards Patti. Patti dropped and rolled, cradling her hand over Sass in her cleavage so she wouldn’t crush the mouse. She barely avoided the jar which smashed down where she’d been and set the hair alight. Hand pressed to her nose to staunch the stench she duckwalked over to drop down next to Prairie. “That bitch is crazy!”
“That bitch,” Prairie corrected, “is Possessed.”
“So,” Patti made a grand gesture of yanking with her hand, then thought better of it when the smell of burning hair seared her nose hairs. “Get it out.”
Sass wiggled beneath her hand. Patti lifted her hand from Sass’ head and the mouse pressed both hands to its nose, its face a study in mousy discomfort.
“I don’t think she’s going to volunteer for the process.”
“Then we make her.” Patti’s tone suggested ‘d’uh’.
“I have to touch her to channel the energy,” Prairie explained.
Thankfully Llora was back to her puttering and stewing and some complicated mixology involving several of the jars and bottles she’d retrieved from the chest. It gave the group breathing room and time to plan. It also gave Dempsey and Dan time to carefully saunter over and join the rest of the group. Dan crouched, while Dempsey took up a position standing in front of the group with his shield propped in front of him..
Gwen crawled over to Ivan and Ben and checked their status, then crawled back to report. “They’re okay. Just asleep. Anyone got something for that?”
One by one the group shook their heads in the negative.
Siobhan continued to watch Llora work. And reflect on the potion that Llora had hit Ben and Ivan with. She knew it was wrong to admire it, because ‘friends! Hurt!’ but that clingy powder effect? That was something. Her mind was already working out the way to incorporate that into her own work.
She also knew it was wrong to maybe let whoever it was possess Llora for a little longer, just so Siobhan could maybe pick their brains. So. Wrong. Darn it. But, for the first time in days, since she’d come back from her abduction, she felt excitement again.
No. Wrong. Who knew what lasting effects the possession could have on Llora. They needed to help her.
“We need to help her.”
“Agreed.” Dempsey contemplated Llora’s movements along the bench. “How?”
“She’s Possessed,” Prairie said for Dan and Dempsey who may have missed her earlier proclamation. “I might be able to fix her but I need to be close and also I’m concerned that she’s not going to, well, work with me.”
“More like she’s going to smash potions on you,” Patti said.
“Yes,” Prairie nodded, “that. Which will make it pretty hard to help her. Really,” she waggled a hand, “pretty much impossible.”
“So,” Dempsey summarized, “we need to restrain her so you can do your thing.”
“Yes.”
“Anyone have anything that will work?”
Dan stared at his knuckles, at the word Hope written across them. “Maybe.” He looked up. “I have a Bind Reading but she’d have to hear the words.”
Dempsey nodded. “Which means getting closer.”
“Even then I’m not sure how long it will hold,” Dan expanded.
“You can do it more than once?”
“Each time I do it will have less effect. That’s the way my Magick works. Like, when you are correcting a kid and you say “No!”. That first ‘No’ is much more effective then if you follow it up with ‘no! no! no!”
Siobhan nodded in understanding. She knew that lesson all too well.
“I might have something.” Patti rubbed her palm with her thumb. “But it could really backfire. Take us all out.”
“Okay.” Siobhan nodded. “We should keep that in reserve.”
Patti nodded like a bobble-head and dropped her hand. “Sure.”
“Maybe?” Kim eyed the still burning puddle to the left. “I might have something. Experimental.”
“But will it work?” Siobhan asked.
“Maybe.”
“I’m hearing a whole lot of ‘maybes’,” Dempsey said, “but not a whole lot of ‘let’s do this thing’. How long you figure before she remembers we’re here and takes us all out?”
“Oh,” Llora said, turning with a smile. “I remember you’re here. All the little whisper whisper whisper,” she pantomimed a mouth moving with her hand, “is really intruding on my thoughts. So,” she reached behind her without looking and grabbed a jar from the bench, then threw it at Dempsey, “if you could be quiet. That would be great. Thank you!”
Dempsey raised his shield in front of his face and the jar smashed against it. As smoke rose from the shield Dempsey muttered some words beneath his breath. The edges of the shield glowed white and the smoke stopped.
Kim did a double take and pushed up to her feet to look around the side of the shield. There was no evidence of the potion hitting it, not even a wet spot. Or a powdery one. “Nice shield.”
“It is.”
“Can you get me and Dan over to that fire?”
Dempsey eyed the distance between them and the fire. “Sure.”
“Cool.” Kim dropped back behind him and looked down at Siobhan. “Time to throw some spaghetti.” She turned to Dan. “If you can hold her for a short time I think I can get something going that will do it for longer. But it’s not going to be something that Prairie will be able to touch Llora through. Someone else needs to come up with what to do after she’s contained.”
Siobhan eyed the fire. Eyed Kim. “How big a chance is there your solution will cause a massive explosion.”
“Define massive?”
Siobhan’s look answered for her.
“Depends on if she’s holding potions and if those potions are explosive and-” she shrugged, “other factors?”
“Come along for the adventure, they said,” Dempsey muttered, “There might be things. They didn’t say the things were explosions.”
Kim grinned. “Explosions are things.”
Dempsey squared up his shield, shook his head, and sighed. “So, after I get you to the fire, and she’s focused on me, I attack her and draw her away from the bench.”
“Will the shield protect you?”
“We’ll see.”
“Still don’t like you,” Gwen muttered, “but that’s pretty baller.”
“Thanks.” Dempsey turned to look at Dan and Kim. “Ready?”
Dan rose to his feet and cracked his back. “Ready.”
Kim nodded. “Born that way.”
Dempsey spared a look for the others. “You should stay back. Just in case.”
“Sure.” Siobhan rose to her feet and offered Prairie her hand. Gwen got up slowly, then swung her plunger experimentally before saying, “If Dan can hold her for a minute, I can knock her out with the plunger. Then we don’t have to risk an explosion.”
Kim nodded. “That’s probably a better plan than me potentially blowing us all up.”
“We’ll call that one Plan B.”
Kim shrugged at Siobhan’s offer. “Whatever works.”
“So,” Dempsey said, “the plan is now get Gwen and Dan over to her. Dan restrains her. Gwen knocks her out?”
Dan nodded, running his finger down the edge of the book he’d pulled out of his vest. “Yep.”
“Yep.” Gwen echoed.
“Go!” Dempsey charged forward with his shield in front of him. Gwen and Dan ran behind. They skidded to a stop as Llora turned, potions raised in two hands. She threw the first and Dempsey juked to catch it on his shield. A flare of sparkly pink powder released on impact, swirling up and around the edges of the shield.
“Well, damn,” Dempsey muttered as the cloud made its rapid advance. Then he winced and drew in a deep breath. The particles seemed drawn like a magnet to the inhalation, slamming into his face like one of those aliens from that movie. Dan and Gwen dodged around his falling body, Dan reading rapidly from the book and thrusting his Magick forward and Gwen lunging so she was situated somewhere roughly behind Llora.
The Word caught Llora rearing back for the next throw, binding her elbow to her rib so the potion was held right next to her ear. As they watched the arm vibrated, like she was pushing hard against a restraint.
“It’s not going to hold!” Even as he announced this Dan scanned the book, ready to toss another Word at the girl.
“Got it!” Gwen wound up and slammed her plunger against Llora’s temple. For a moment the Bind held, keeping her upright, but then it popped and she fell to the ground with her eyes rolled back in her head.
Gwen dropped to her knees and pressed her fingers against Llora’s temple. Llora’s eyes snapped open and she smashed the potion she’d been holding in such easy reach right into Gwen’s forehead. And then Gwen was down too.
“Plan B!” Siobhan screamed. Kim pursed her lips and blew towards Llora, shoving Magick into the action and causing a wind to snap forward and push Llora back across the floor. It caused her to pant as she ran but it was worth it to buy her the time she needed to reach the Sea Fire.
Siobhan ran behind her, potion at the ready if it was needed though she really hoped it wasn’t needed as she didn’t have any cool knock-out gas powder in her bag. All she had was healing, energy, and kaboom. Again, she questioned if she could expand her repertoire.
‘Later!’ she counselled herself even as her brain contemplated grabbing one of the pink sparkle powder jars.
Reaching the Sea Fire, Kim braced herself and shoved a finger into the edge of the puddle. Without pausing she flicked the burning water forward, picking up the stream with her Magick and sending it like a burning lasso across the space between her and Llora. She snapped her finger around in a circle, directing the fire to form a corral around the girl in a three-foot circumference, then released it to flare up in a narrow wall of fire.
“Woo! That worked!” She fist pumped with her free hand while keeping the finger firmly pointing at the flame wall, causing Patti, who had run up behind Siobhan to give her a narrow-eyed look, and snap, “Now what? Prairie can’t get through the fire!”
“Now you do your thing.”
“My thing!” Patti’s voice rose, not quite a screech. “My thing?”
“Yeah,” Kim grunted, “your thing. And if you could do it fast? This fire really wants to move in on Llora.”
“My thing is singing her to sleep.”
“Sounds cool.”
“It will also affect everyone else.”
“Can we cover our ears?” Siobhan asked in a hurried voice.
“Maybe. I think so?”
“Then do it!” Kim cried through gritted teeth. “Fire. Hungry. Bad. Seriously, Siobhan, this stuff is really strong.”
“Can you hold the fire and cover your ears?” Patti asked.
“Nope.”
“Then it won’t work!”
“It will. I’ll redirect the fire down the stairs. She’s out of potions so she’ll have to move to grab something else if she wants to hit us. You just have to thread that needle between the fire moving and her moving.”
“Thread the needle with a song!”
“I got about a minute of juice left. Can you do it?”
Patti’s expression became one of concentration. Sass “squeed’ and patted her on the chest. “Yes.”
“Well, here goes!” Kim made a slamming motion with her arm, whipping the line of fire from around Llora and shooting it for the stair and away from the group. As she did so Patti opened her mouth and out of it poured Golden Slumbers by the Beatles.
Kim raised her hands to her ears but it was too late. The Song took hold with the first words, weaving an enchantment around her brain and she drifted off listening to Patti sing the next line.
Hands pressed to either side of her head, Siobhan could do nothing except let Kim fall. At least the hair cushioned her impact a little. When Llora succumbed a second later, Patti stopped singing and mimed zipping her mouth so Dan, Siobhan, and Prairie knew it was okay to uncover their ears.
Prairie ran over to Llora and dropped to sit criss-cross-applesauce behind the girl. She gently picked up Llora’s head and placed it in her lap then took a deep breath and closed her eyes.
Leaving Prairie to her Magick, Siobhan viewed the veritable blanket of bodies on the ground and shook her head. “Just once I would like to go on an adventure that didn’t involve two-thirds of our group losing consciousness.”
Dan nodded, stuck a toothpick in his mouth, nodded again. “Yep.”
To her “Why do we always have to be the adults?” Dan just shrugged and walked over to look at the fire burning in the stairwell.
Siobhan’s gaze skated over the sleeping girl they’d come to rescue. Something had been bothering her about the way their final move against her played out. She struggled with the impulse to ask, then gave in to it.
“Dan? Why didn’t your binding hold? I’ve seen you do that working at least a dozen times with no effort.”
Dan looked down at his hand, the one with Hope tattooed across the knuckles; flexing the fingers so the word appeared to move. “Since I got this my Magick has been-” he stopped, worked the toothpick left to right, “different. Things I used to be able to do aren’t working right. Then there’s other things that-” He shook his head and rotated his wrist, “I dream things. Like I’m trying to find something. Never anything big. Sometimes its information. Sometimes its a book that I lost when I was a kid. When I wake up its in the house.”
Siobhan’s eyes went wide. “That’s-” she searched for a word, came up with, “amazing.”
Dan flexed his hand again. “I can’t do it when I’m actively trying to.” His mouth formed a hard line and he shifted his gaze to the fire in the stair. “How long is this going to go?”
Instead of pushing further Siobhan stepped up next to him, also assessing the fire but with a different eye. “Long as it wants to?”
He worked the toothpick to the corner of his mouth. “Probably should have shot it somewhere else.”
Patti went and sat next to Prairie, carefully pulling Sass out of her cleavage and petting its head to soothe it. Or her. Maybe both. “At least she didn’t set any books on fire,” she offered after a moment’s contemplation.
“Or made anything explode,” Prairie said, opening her eyes and smiling. “It’s done. Any idea when anyone is going to wake up?”
Siobhan shook her head and stepped away from the stairs. “When they do. I’m going to check out to see if there’s any other potions in that chest.”
Dan wandered over to one of the benches which was piled with books. “I’m going to read.”
“I’m going to do absolutely nothing.” Patti said.
Prairie pressed her head to Patti’s shoulder and smiled a tired smile. “Sounds good. Me too.”
In that way they passed the time until eventually everyone awoke. And then after some explanations and emotional soothing from Gwen, for not only Llora but Ben too because he was still kind of foggy on the what was real and what was not, they made their way slowly back down the levels of the tower.
In the library area Dempsey slipped a few books under his jacket. Siobhan would have made comment but she was busy doing the same and from the side of her eye she saw Dan had slid a few into his vest. The place was a literal trove of knowledge and Siobhan made herself a promise that once the dust settled she’d return to plumb it. For now, the small cache of jars and vials she’d shoved into her bag along with the books would have to tide her over.
The promise of them buoyed her steps as she lead the group out of the tower and back towards Nona’s where Nona and Llora had a tearful – on Llora’s part – and joyful – subdued on Nona’s part – reunion. Nona pulled Siobhan aside as the group prepared to leave.
“I owe you, girl.”
Siobhan nodded. “You do.”
Nona gave her a real eyeball. “I pay my debts.”
“I’m sure.”
“Return here next week. We’ll talk.”
“Maybe.” Siobhan’s smile didn’t reach her eyes. “I have some sleep to catch up on. I will send you word.”
The wily old alchemist watched the group leave, then looped her arm around her daughter’s waist and lead her into the double-wide. From the shadows around the side of the glass menagerie the darkness moved, resolving into a figure with a hoodie pulled up to conceal its features. They pulled a pen from their pocket, reached above their head, and tore a hole in the air. The edges peeled back, furling like the pages of a book, riffling back together as the figure stepped through the space.
Enter The Woods 