9:9
“What are we missing?” Prairie whispered to herself.
“That is the question I was waiting for.”
She did not expect a response so when a voice, a foreign voice, answered from behind her she spun around with wide eyes and raised fists. Her eyes got wider and her fists lowered as she took in the shade of an elderly woman with pale hair drawn up into a pompadour hairstyle.
Prairie frowned. She felt no sense of her Magick working. Usually she had to expend Magick to see Shades, a blessing as otherwise she’d be dodging people only she could see all day long. Usually it was just voices or phantom touches, feeling melancholy or rage or feelings on the middle range of the emotional spectrum not her own and fielding shy requests or blatant demands for attention that she could allow or ignore. And there was always a moment of lethargy when she opened contact as the spirit sipped a small amount of her vitality so it could interact with a world that had moved on without it.
As she’d said to Gwen her Magick was predicated on consent. She’d given no consent and yet here stood this Shade, more defined and ‘there’ than any she’d encountered before.
Stray curls escaped the spirit’s updo, forming a halo around a face with full cheeks, soft chin, and a cupid’s bow mouth drawn up in a close-mouthed smile. The smile pushed up the cheeks, forming little pillows under the softest, palest blue eyes.
The paleness was, of course, emphasized by the sheer nature of the apparition. It was possible they were a deep-blue but Prairie had gotten pretty good at translating spirit shapes to the ones they had left behind in death.
Also pretty good at reading intent from the spirits that presented themselves to her, rather than just drifting through and away. It helped that this spirit wasn’t digging tendrils into her, that usually for sure indicated desperation or rage. Instead she, the spirit was definitely a she, seemed content to await Prairie’s address if the way she folded her hands in front of her aproned belly and softened her smile into one that projected welcome, lighting her eyes literally from within, was an indication. When she tipped her head slightly Prairie caught a view of the small cap nestled in her pompadour.
Oh, Prairie knew who this was. “Granny?”
The apparition tilted her head. “In a sense. But no. And yes.” When she opened her mouth to talk her teeth were revealed. Her very sharp, very not human teeth.
“Your, uh, teeth,” Prairie offered on a soft breath.
“Yes?”
“They are very big?”
“Oh,” the apparition curled her lips over her teeth, then pulled them back to show blunt herbivore teeth rather than, well, wolfish ones. “Better?”
Prairie winced a kind of agreement.
Granny slicked her tongue over her blunt teeth then gave another soft and “Granny” smile. “Do not fear, Daughter. I mean you no harm.”
She held out her hand, palm forward. Prairie eyed the blunt teeth again then looked up into the lantern glow of otherwordly eyes.
“Yes,” Granny broke the “Granny character” momentarily, injecting a note of humor in her tone, “I have big eyes too. But, truly, I mean you no harm.”
Still Prairie hesitated. She’d been fooled by spirits before. Not all that looked innocent and sweet was any more than what looked scary was dangerous.
“Why me?”
“Besides the fact that you are the Spirit Talker of your group? Because you were once kind to a harp.”
Prairie blinked, visions of her first adventure with the group playing through her mind overlaid by a web of hundreds of glistening gold strands. “Arfa?”
The apparition tilted its head, its smile speaking of the comfort of a warm hug on a cold winter night as a cup of hot cocoa was pushed into your chilled hand. “Yes. And no. Much like you answered then. Both yes and no and definitely some maybe.”
“Oh.”
With that and with no further hesitation, Prairie pressed her palm to the ghost’s palm. Feeling nothing but good intent from the spirit, she stepped into the circle. She felt Gwen start and turn to look at her.
“It’s okay,” she whispered back at Gwen. “I need to deal with this.”
Gwen squinted into the center of the circle, then slanted a confused look at Prairie.
“It’s ghost stuff,” Prairie whispered.
Gwen’s mouth formed a silent “oh” and she nodded her head then turned back to face the encroaching wolves, taking a few steps to the right so she evened the space between Dempsey and Kim who slid over at her movement. The circle tightened, closing the gap left by Prairie.
“Oh, look at you,” the spirit said, drawing Prairie’s attention back to it. It was never good to ignore a spirit. Again, she didn’t think this one meant harm but sometimes they could change mid-conversation and suddenly take offense to a disrespect like ignoring them.
Considering Prairie had the feeling that this spirit’s sudden entry into their predicament just when she was questioning their purpose there was pointed, she definitely didn’t want to offend with any inattention.
“You shine so bright.”
“Who is the old lady?” Ivan’s voice rumbled from behind Prairie.
“Guessing Granny?” Kim answered.
“They can see you?” Prairie whispered to Granny.
“As I am in contact with you, yes, for you act as a conduit for my essence. They do not see me as well as you, but they do see me.”
“Oh.”
“Is she safe?” Ivan and Kim must have continued the conversation.
“Are any of us? Watch out!”
Prairie was jostled from behind.
“Sorry,” Ivan said and then the press of his body was gone and Prairie was concentrating on ‘Granny’ again.
“I offer you help.”
“At what cost?” There was always a cost when dealing with spirits.
“What is the cost of knowledge?”
Prairie remained calm but firm. She pressed her palm harder to the spirit’s, “You use philosophy to evade. I ask again, at what cost?”
“Once you see you can never unsee. You stand on a threshold, one that you can choose to step over or step back from.”
“If I don’t?”
“Then you remain here forever, fighting a battle that can’t be won and will never end.”
Prairie wrinkled her nose. “Then is there really a choice?”
“There is. To remain frozen on the precipice of growth, trapped in an eternal winter, retaining your innocence at the cost of your life outside this place.”
Prairie drew a hard breath through her nose. “There is no choice then. I accept your help.”
She pressed hard against the spirit’s palm then lowered her hand. She kept steady eye contact, afraid to look away for fear she might miss a subtle nuance that might tell her how to proceed with this conversation and its implied bargain.
Granny brushed Prairie’s hair back and kissed her forehead, then waved her hand in a gesture that encompassed the clearing. “Look.”
Prairie turned to follow the movement of the apparition’s hand, her eyes getting wider and wider as she took in the landscape which was now laced with golden strands. They overlapped; in some places the weave so tight Prairie would swear she saw figures picked out in the ephemeral tapestry.
Glee unlike any she’d experienced since childhood swelled inside of her. It was too big. It just kept growing. It pressed against her skin, filling her like a balloon. She feared she might burst if she didn’t let it out.
She giggled and spun again, her arms out at her sides and her fingers delicately tracing the cords in the center of the circle. She looked down at her own abdomen where strands like mycelium erupted from the region of her diaphragm. They carried weightlessly on the air, connecting her to her friends.
Curving her hand so her palm was up she gently gathered up a set of strands that flowed to Ivan. When he turned his head and looked at her, his eyes wide, she dropped them and gave him a sheepish smile.
Once he gave her features a quick once-over he turned his attention back to the threat outside of the circle. Wonder expanding the balloon in her chest, Prairie swayed to the side so she could see beyond his wide shoulders. The strands connecting her to him continued through him, spreading out like a broom that expanded across the clearing. When they met additional ones that came from Kim’s side and Sibohan’s they wove over and under each other, forming gossamer light pieces of what looked like the sheerest of silk cloth.
Another spin showed Prairie all the other threads going from her to the others in the group, then carrying through them to form more of the silk-like essence. She looked down expecting to see herself cocooned in shimmering threads, woven around her as she spun and spun but they seemed to shift with her movements, becoming insubstantial then reforming so she always had a steady stream of cords coming from her abdomen but not wrapping her endlessly in a warp of threads.
She turned to look at Granny who had moved a short distance from her to allow her to move freely. “What is this?”
Granny gave her a loving smile, her features soft in opposition to her bright, sharp, focused gaze. “That which binds. Look to Roanne.”
Prairie blinked. “Roanne?”
“The Wolf.”
The Wolf. Oh, that made a sad sense considering the story they had read. Prairie shifted her attention to where Kirby continued to wrestle the wolf within the retaining circle of Kim’s fire creatures.
For several mikros she was transfixed by the thick skein of golden strands that erupted from Kirby’s back and spread across the distance between them. She ran her fingers over the strands emitting from herself, feeling the ones that connected her to Kirby. They were so very bright and contrasted harshly with the dark strands writhing from the wolf.
It was like she saw with her Magick, not her eyes. There was simply no way from the distance she looked, through the rippling air around the fire creatures, she should be able to see the point from which each of the dark threads erupted from the wolf and the bright fluid, more plasma than blood, that oozed out from each of the wounds.
Because they were wounds. Wounds so large she could not see how Roanne stood for surely her blood loss was profound. Prairie winced in sympathy, curling her lips over her teeth and clamping down so she didn’t cry out.
The dark strands looked like heavy black rope, pulled taught as if adhered to an arrow that shot out across the clearing at discordant angles. Where the golden threads wove together when they met each other, the black cords rebounded when they hit the gold silk of the bindings and then at that point they fell apart, their essence cascading to the ground like spent ash.
“So many wounds.”
“Her soul bleeds.”
“The gold is that which binds. What is the black?”
“As I said. Her soul bleeds.”
“But why is her soul not gold? I assume that the threads, what you call what binds, is our souls. So why is hers black?”
“Someone has altered the course of her story.”
Prairie gave up staring at the abomination of Roanne’s body and the soul strands tearing free of her and turned quickly to stare at Granny.
“Her story?”
Granny’s mouth parted, her smile changing to a near grimace, revealing the sharp peak of carnivore teeth. “You all have stories.”
“Who tells them?”
“You do. In most cases, that is. Your stories should be your own, changing as you move through the world but always yours. What you see on my poor child, Roanne, is what happens when someone edits your stories.”
Prairie frowned and shook her head, trying to absorb what felt like the very quick arbitrary telling of some very major truths.
Granny tilted her head and softened her smile. The sharp teeth flowed back to blunt herbivore ones. “I reveal too much. I lose my understanding of communication the longer I am alone. I do not seek to overwhelm you, Daughter.”
She leaned forward to press her forehead to Prairie’s, closed her eyes, and took a long breath. A wave of peace swept through Prairie, starting at the point of the contact and swiftly carrying through her and out her back in the region of her ribs. She arched her head back and took a deep breath, calm settling through her like warm honey and blunting all the jagged questions that had seized her.
“There,” Granny leaned back. Her gaze went inwards, her features suffused for a mikro which such a sorrow that tears pricked Prairie’s eyes in sympathy. “Someday you will be ready but for today understand only what you need to.”
Prairie frowned and blinked her eyes. Inside of her mind or heart or her very essence she felt a numb area around which her essence flowed, a rock in a stream.
“What did you do?”
“I cocooned the knowledge. The cocoon will break away eventually, drawn by the threads to flow into those that are bound to you, and when you are all equalized the knowledge will release and you and your cohort will share the burden of it. It is too much for even you, my Daughter, to be the vessel for. And then when the knowledge becomes greater and overflows your cohort it may flow into others they bind to until it becomes part of the universal story. Until then know the part you need. Roanne bleeds from a violation of her story and it is for you to resolve it.”
“Me?” Prairie’s voice was little but a whisper. Oh, she knew that what Granny said was big and scary and important and she should be feeling so much more about the knowledge and the burden of it but that cocoon, the numb spot in her, made it easy to leave the big stuff for later and focus on what Granny said. Which was she, Prairie, a girl who was so often overwhelmed by the largeness of her gift that she just shuttered her thoughts from the responsibility of it needed to open those shutters. Often the burden of her own sanity seemed too much to carry and now she was going to, what, gather close someone else’s bleeding soul?
“You.” There was no hesitation in Granny’s reply. Her confidence in Prairie, a person she’d just met or, Prairie frowned, maybe not just met… Prairie shook her head. This was so much to process! She prided herself on her ability to adjust. She was a trauma nurse! Adjusting and reacting was kind of a major skill set. But, this was… it was a lot.
She shifted her gaze to Roanne, the wolf, and tears prickled her eyes as she saw the damage done to the girl. How could she not help someone who was bleeding out before her eyes?
Instinctively she reached her hand out and shoved her Magick out in the direction of one of the black strands jetting from Roanne. It responded to her call, adjusting its trajectory and thrusting through the air with the speed of a striking snake. Prairie almost recoiled but then she firmed her jaw and concentrated hard with her Magick. The black cord flew at Prairie’s head level, stabbing through the space between Ivan and Siobhan before lowering its trajectory so its end hit Prairie’s outstretched hand.
Prairie curled her fingers around the cord and used her Magick to spool the part in her palm into a tight knot that made her grip on it more secure. All of this was instinctive and she looked to Granny for reassurance that what she was doing was the right thing.
Granny gave her a tight nod and her lips split on a sharp-toothed smile that shouldn’t have been reassuring but somehow was. Once the cord settled into a ball in Prairie’s hand the length of it went taut so Prairie could feel the resistance of where it stabbed out of Roanne. Prairie gave a tentative tug and Roanne howled. The pain of it warbled on the air, more pain than Prairie had ever heard in another’s voice. She instinctively went to drop the cord but the ball in her hand unraveled and snaked out of her palm to wrap around her wrist.
She jerked a wide-eyed look at it then looked up at Granny.
“It’s trying to help me, isn’t it?” Again tears pricked in her eyes. She blinked to contain them.
“It seems so.”
“How do I free her?”
“You must cut the corrupted lines of story.”
Prairie reached her free hand down to grab and dagger, bringing it up to slash the cord. It made no obvious impact on the cord but the grip on her wrist where it twisted tightened.
Lifting her gaze to Granny she gave a brief pained smile. “That is too easy, isn’t it?”
“You learn. She is bound by Magick and it will take Magick to free her.”
“Magick?”
“An axe. As in the story. An axe frees those consumed by the Wolf. Were it a different story it would be a different object but for this it is an axe.”
Prairie tracked her gaze back to Roanne, who stood frozen, her chest from which the cord or line of story erupted pulled slightly up and towards Prairie. Kirby stood next to the wolf, his heads turned to look at Prairie.
My one?
Roanne is the wolf, Kirby. And she is hurt.
Then we must help her! Bunny howled.
We must. Prairie sniffed and nodded. She turned to Granny. “How do I find the axe?”
“You don’t. That’s another’s job. Yours is to wield it as instinct demands.”
As instinct demands. Well, that was very instructive. By Granny’s tone she knew she wasn’t getting any more than that. Pressing for more details might only offend the spirit and send it away sooner.
Prairie lifted her voice to be heard over the sound of the fight that continued around her outside of the protective circle. “We need to find the Woodman’s Axe.”
Siobhan threw a potion, then turned to look at Prairie over her shoulder. “Okay. Why?”
“To cut her free of the corrupted lines of story.”
Siobhan jerked back around to look at the exterior of the circle when Ivan stepped in front of her, sweeping her shield arm to block a wolf’s lunge at Siobhan. “Thanks!”
Ivan proved he’d been listening as he asked without turning around, “What lines?”
“The cords connecting everything. I’m guessing you don’t see them?”
He lunged forward to hit a wolf then dropped back. “No. No cords.”
“Only you see them,” Granny said. “My time here grows short. Trouble approaches and I must attempt to hold it off to allow you time to free Roanne.” She touched the shoulder of the arm the line wrapped around. “Goodbye, Daughter. Until we meet once more.”
So saying she began to fade.
Prairie looked down at the line wrapping her arm then back at Granny’s fading figure. She had so many questions. What was she supposed to do with the line? Or the information Granny had imparted to her? Sure she sensed that there was a lot more walled up around the numb place inside of her but even the little she had was overwhelming.
Like why did Granny call her Daughter? Was she supposed to hold the line? Drop it? She couldn’t cut it but, she glanced down at where it tightened, could she let it go?
Before she could even start to ask Granny faded both from her view and the touch of her Magick. There and gone and Prairie was left literally holding the cord of Roanne’s corrupted soul in her hand. She curled her lips over her teeth and looked down at it, then sniffed, squared her shoulders and repeated. “We need the Woodman’s Axe.”
Ivan made another sweep at a wolf then asked, “Any clue where it is?”
“All I know is its someone else’s job to find it.”
“It’s Magick?” Dempsey asked from his place beside Gwen.
Before Prairie could answer Dempsey stepped forward and blocked a wolf arrowing in to grab Gwen’s arm. Gwen swept her plunger forward and clocked the wolf upside the head and it broke up into smoke and shadows and wisped away.
With her new view of the world Prairie could see the black threads connecting the wolf to Roanne. When the wolf broke into particles the thread drew back to Roanne before another erupted from her and another wolf formed to run back to its pack and their endless attack on the group.
“The axe,” Dempsey repeated, “It’s Magick?”
Prairie considered for a mikro. “It must be.”
“Then I can find it.”
Dempsey spread his feet, taking up a stance that would withstand an attack, then shifted his focus to somewhere near his feet. His shoulders tensed and his head dropped back slightly on his neck. Then he took a deep breath and shook his head and shoulders.
“I need to get to the cottage.”
As he said this a black cord arced out of the mass of wolves and wrapped around Dempsey’s chest. Once, twice, the end reared back and dove into him. Prairie gasped, eyes wide and lunged towards him. The cord receded and Dempsey began shuffling slowly towards the pack of wolves.
Oh. That was what it looked like!
As Prairie stared, transfixed by the thick, pulsating length of the cord wrapping Dempsey Gwen spun and slapped her hand on his chest. Right over the dark pulsating cord of Roanne’s soul. Where Gwen’s hand collided with it gold erupted along the cord, turning it from a black cord to a gold thread. The gold chased up the length of the cord a short distance and then the black cord snapped and flashed back into the mass of wolves.
Prairie’s mouth fell open and her eyes went so wide they stung. “Oh, that’s beautiful.”
Gwen snapped a look back at her. Prairie gave her a tentative smile. Gwen’s gaze searched her face a mikro. Prairie shifted the tentative to kind. “Your Magick is beautiful.”
Gwen twisted her mouth and lifted her eyes. “You can see it?”
“Yes. Now I can.”
“Okay.” With that Gwen turned back to the fight.
Siobhan threw potions with both hands, flinging them in an arch. They landed in the midst of the wolves and they flew back several feet. “We need to get to the cottage?”
“Yes,” Dempsey answered.
“Then we need a plan.”
Enter The Woods 