12:5
Kim started for the house only to notice Siobhan staring intently at the ground. More specifically she was staring at the exposed earth. There was a clear delineation between the rolling green of the grass in the cherry orchard and the open dirt apron in front of the house. She hadn’t really paid any attention to it what with the wooden soldiers approach but now, yeah, with Siobhan looking at it she found herself studying the bare ground.
“Siobhan?”
Siobhan looked up at Kim’s question. “Hmm.”
“What’s up.”
“There should be plants here. A garden. I can feel like there was one but its missing.”
“Is that an important detail?”
“I don’t know. It’s just wrong.”
“Then it’s probably important.” Kim turned to Dan. “Dan? Thoughts?”
Dan held up a finger then flipped through his book. “Should be plants.”
“Yeah. This earth has definitely been disturbed.” It took literally no Magick for Kim to be certain of that. “But is it important?”
“Isn’t everything important?” Abe asked. When Kim turned to look at them they shrugged really big. “It’s ARFA. All this,” they waved at the landscape, “is telling a story. Details matter.”
“Good point. So,” Kim turned back to Dan. “Anything from the original story that makes you think we need to do anything here?”
Dan shook his head. “The story goes that Gerda is pulled from the river by the witch who takes her into the house. Nothing about a garden.” He flipped a page and focused on the words written there. “Yet.”
“Yet?”
“Garden is important later but not at this point.”
“How?”
“The witch removed the roses from the garden.”
“So, do we need to find the roses?”
“Uh,” Ivan stuck his head out the door and looked at the group still hanging outside of it. “I know where the roses are.”
“Yeah,” Ben added. “Inside. Lots of roses.”
“Okay.” Siobhan scuffed the bare earth with her toe then looked up at Ben still hovering at the door. “Then we move on.” She turned her head to look at Kim. “You got the soldiers.”
“I got the soldiers.”
“Then,” Siobhan focused on the others, “We should go into the house.”
“But, if we do and the door closes will we be able to come back to address the bare ground?”
Siobhan gave the petite woman a measuring look. “That is a point.” She looked to Dan. “Dan?”
Dan looked up from the book. “Yes?”
“Does it make sense to enter the house or do you think we are missing something here?”
“I think if we are missing something ARFA will loop us back to it. The story needs to be told.”
“You keep saying that.”
Dan scratched his neck. “It’s something I’m reading. Best way I can explain it.”
Siobhan gave him a long measuring look then nodded. “Magick?”
Dan shifted his toothpick left to right. “Magick.”
“I’d say it’s an easy answer,” Dempsey said, “and it is. But doesn’t mean it isn’t a valid answer.”
Patti shot him a finger gun. “True. For myself I’m okay with using Magick as an answer to a lot of the questions I have about all this.” She swept her finger around the area, lingering for a moment on the floating soldiers. “I think Dan is right. If we miss something important and ARFA wants us to do it I think it will go all Deus ex Machina on us.”
“Deus ex…?” Gwen asked.
“God in the machine. Like literally the perfect phrase for this moment. All these moments. ARFA is pretty much the definition of the idea. I’d argue the imitation crab of it all but what’s the use? Come on.” That said Patti strode forward and entered the house.
“Imitation crab?” Prairie looked at Kim with confusion.
“Don’t ask me. No clue. But I kind of feel similarly. Not the crab part. But the fact that we’ve been being driven along a path by ARFA this entire time. Kind of makes me chafe at being manipulated.”
Gwen bit her lip. “Religion is full of stories of individuals called by God to do things and some of them really sucked. Is this that much different?”
Kim blinked. “That’s–”
“Blasphemous. I know. All of this is making me really question things I’ve always taken on faith.”
Kim’s heart sank at the despair in Gwen’s voice. “No. You can’t let this do that to you.”
“Really?” Gwen spoke to her feet. It hurt Kim’s heart to see her sunny friend with such a cloud of uncertainty weighing her down. “How else am I supposed to respond? Everything I believed about God and just everything is all wrong.”
Siobhan walked over and placed her hands on Gwen’s shoulders. “Gwen.”
Gwen kept looking at her feet. Siobhan repeated her name with more force, “Gwen!”
Gwen looked up. “What?”
“I understand. I really do. This has rocked all of us on our foundations. But instead of thinking of this as a complete implosion of your beliefs maybe think of it as a pivot.”
“A pivot?”
“Sunny said there was a God, right?”
“Yes,” Gwen’s answer came very slowly.
“Is it that all of this,” Siobhan jerked her head to indicate the world around them, “is making you question if God exists? Or if ARFA is God?”
“That just feels wrong,” Gwen whispered, staring at her feet once more. “I’ve believed in God my whole life. My whole life.” She looked up into Siobhan’s face, her expression stark. “It feels really wrong to question it but how can I not? We have literally been told that the creator is a machine. A machine that we may or may not be inside of right now.” She shook her head hard. “That we are inside of right now.”
Kim walked over and cleared her throat. “Okay, but that doesn’t mean the machine is the creator capital C.”
Gwen turned to look at Kim. “Huh?”
“I’m kind of squishy on the details and definitely on the theology but Sunny said that there is a creator that created their world and created the people who lived in that world and then the people in that world created ARFA so at best, far as my logic says, ARFA is a creation of the creator, capital C.”
There was a creak from the house. Kim shifted her gaze over to it and saw that it was leaning towards them a little. Like it was listening. Well, all right. In a world of weird that was only about a five point oh on the weirdness scale. Maybe only a lowly three point five.
Abe wandered over and joined their circle. “It’s like one of those dolls that has dolls inside of it and then more dolls inside of those dolls.”
Gwen shifted her attention to Abe. “What?”
“Uh,” Abe rested their hand on the back of their neck and looked down for a moment. “The creator capital C as Kim said is the outer doll. Inside that doll is ARFA who created this world.”
“That’s only two dolls.”
“Maybe the one that created Sunny’s world was a doll within another doll. Who knows how many dolls deep we are.”
“Dolls deep.” Gwen gave Abe a narrow-eyed look. “That is a really weird measurement.”
Abe shrugged. “It is. But it’s the image that came into my mind and it makes sense to me.”
“Actually,” Gwen’s features smoothed. She didn’t smile or brighten really but she no longer looked like she was going to melt into sorrow. “It makes sense to me too.” She stepped closer to Abe and threw an arm around their friend’s shoulder. Siobhan, still with her hands on Gwen’s shoulders, was forced to do a quick side-step to keep contact with Gwen. This brought her nudging up against Abe who gave her a beaming smile.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Ben grumbled from the doorway. “Existential crisis averted?”
Gwen looked at Ben. Gave him a real long look. Then she smiled. It was soft. Maybe a fifty percent Gwen smile. But it was a smile. “For now.”
“Fantastic. Can we get this going? My ass is becoming one with the wood of this door.”
“Well,” Gwen’s smile broadened, “This I have to see.”
She reached up with her free hand and squeezed one of Siobhan’s hands then dropped her arm from Abe’s shoulder and shimmied to get out of Siobhan’s grip. Siobhan dropped her hands and stepped back to leave Gwen room to skip over to the door. Once there she stopped and made a big point of craning her neck to stare at where Ben’s back met the door.
“Seems pretty intact to me. But maybe I should give it a squeeze to be sure.” She reached a hand out like she was going to do exactly that. Instead of shying from it Ben turned slightly to lift the half of his ass closest to Gwen and gave it a wiggle.
“Test away.”
“Good god and all the fairies,” Dempsey snapped and stepped in to grab Gwen’s groping hand. “Let’s just get moving, m’kay?”
Gwen slanted him a look from under lowered lashes then turned her gaze on Ben and mouthed, “Next time.”
Ben lifted his brows and pursed his lips, blowing her a quick kiss. Dempsey made a gagging noise and pushed past Ben and into the house. He definitely threw an elbow into Ben’s gut as he passed. Ben grunted and pressed a hand to his stomach, thrusting out his lower lip.
“I almost died you know.”
“I know.” Dempsey’s voice drifted from inside the house.
“So, you have to treat me gently.”
“Didn’t get that memo.”
Gwen grinned at Ben and stepped over the threshold. Then Abe and Dan followed, leaving Prairie, Siobhan, and Kim to follow. Kim held back until the end then turned and whispered to the wind, Thank you.
An air lady separated from the air and wended around Kim then wrapped her arms around her in a tight hug.
“Can’t breathe!” Kim gasped out dramatically.
The lady reared back, booped Kim on the nose, then unwound herself to flow back to her sisters holding the soldiers aloft.
Kim spared them another glance then headed into the house. Once she was clear of the threshold Ben stepped in. He didn’t even flinch when the door clapped shut behind him. But he did turn and give it a quick stare before turning back to the interior of the house.
The sun filtering through the stained-glass windows set high in the walls cast blocks of red, blue, and yellow light on the stone floor. There were windows in the wall with the door and windows in the adjoining walls. Kim couldn’t tell if the back wall had the same as the view of that was blocked by a giant pillar of roses. The stalks pushed through the cracks between the stones of the floor, widening the gaps so the stones buckled and crumbled where they would normally meet.
The pillar took up the large majority of the space with stems of multiple roses weaving to form a structure that shouldn’t have been possible without a trellis. Or at least that was Kim’s take from her limited knowledge about plants and flowers. Two distinct rows of rose projected out from the central spoke of the structure, spreading across the floor and coming to rest against either side wall. It effectively blocked forward movement.
Siobhan stood right next to the structure, hands dusting the air, head tilted forward as she probed the foliage with her gaze.
“Siobhan?”
Her friend turned at Kim’s call. “Yes?”
“Shouldn’t that need a trellis or something?”
“It should.”
Before Kim could reflect more on that ‘should” her gaze was drawn upwards to what could arguably be described as something more bizarre than the rose wall.
Gwen walked over to stand next to Kim with her head craned upwards. “Is that rain?”
Hmm. Kim lifted a hand and caught some of the falling fluid. Some instinct kept he from engaging her Magick to test it. Instead she did what any semi-sensible person would do. She licked it.
“Salt.”
She let her gaze drift up to where the fluid fell from and her breath stuttered in her chest.
“I think I know where the witch is.”
Gwen tilted her head back to follow Kim’s gaze. Kim could tell the instant Gwen saw the figure suspended on the ceiling as Gwen gasped and pressed her hand to her chest then her knees buckled.
It was hard to make out details as the majority of the figure was enshrouded in roses but a single hand stood out pale against the green leaves and red roses and Kim could just see the curve of a cheek and the thrust of a nose framed by more green.
Kim tracked her gaze from the hand to the center mass of the figure suspended on the ceiling, then back again. Then she shifted her attention to the mass of roses taking up the majority of the space in the room. She followed the offshoot of roses that branched towards the wall, then ran her gaze up to the ceiling again.
Red, yellow, and blue light filtered through the stained-glass windows casting the ceiling in a weird light. If she squinted she could just make out the form of an arm buried in the branches. She shifted to the right and followed the other offshoot of roses abutting the right wall of the room.
“She’s spread-eagled. I think.”
Ivan came over to stand beside her and made a similar visual survey. “I think so.”
Kim shifted her attention back to the slightly revealed curve of cheek. From the general area of the flower-bedecked face a steady stream of fluid fell. It was this that formed the “rain”.
Tears, Kim corrected. That rain was tears.
Kim wasn’t fast enough to catch Gwen before her knees hit the stone floor. But Dempsey dropped his shield and dove forward, catching Gwen under the arms just before she hit.
Gwen’s chin fell forward, resting against her chest, and she drew a ragged breath. “It hurts so much.”
Her eyes rolled back and she slumped against Dempsey who shot a look to Kim and then Siobhan. “Help?”
Siobhan turned her head to look then shot a glance at Prairie. “Prairie?”
Prairie was already moving as Siobhan said her name. She fell to her knees next to Gwen and started checking her over with clinical efficiency. After a moment she rocked back on her heels and shook her head at Kim. As Kim crouched down next to her Prairie placed one hand on Gwen’s forehead and the other on her chest. She closed her eyes and breathed out. A long moment passed then she opened her eyes and looked at Kim.
“She’s unconscious but still there.”
“That’s good?” Kim let her tone rise on the last.
“It is. Or at least better than the alternative.” Prairie rose to her feet and dusted off her hands. “I’d suggest placing her somewhere comfortable. I believe she was overloaded emotionally and will come to when she no longer is.”
“That’s horrifying. I’ve never seen Gwen not be able to handle someone’s emotions.”
Dempsey stooped down and scooped Gwen up in his arms then moved her back to a clear space against the wall and next to the door. The sun must have shifted outside because a rectangle of yellow light slanted to flow over Gwen’s lax features. Prairie came over and sat down next to Gwen, placing her hand on their friend’s chest.
She gave Kim a nod then closed her eyes and rested her head against the wall. “I’ll keep an eye on her.”
Nothing else to do to help Gwen, Kim shifted her attention to Siobhan who still stood next to the thicket of roses. As she watched Siobhan stooped down and placed her hand on the stone next to where the stem of the rose bush thrust out. She lowered her head for a moment then blew out a breath and the stem drooped sideways, resting on her shoulder. Reaching up her hand she gently pulled and the stem separated from the stone.
As soon as the stem cleared the stone another jetted up in its place. So fast that Siobhan fell back on her ass to avoid being stabbed by its thorns.
“So,” Siobhan pushed up to her knees and leaned forward to release another stem from between the stones. This time two stems came flying out of the ground to replace the one Siobhan removed. “Huh.”
Looking back over her shoulder Siobhan met Kim’s eyes. “I don’t think this is going to work.”
“Looks like.”
“So we have to find another way.”
“Seems like.”
Ivan stepped up to the wall of roses. “We could cut it.”
Siobhan shook her head. “You could try but I think it would just grow back.”
Dan wandered over. “The rain.”
“Tears,” Kim corrected.
“Tears. They are watering the roses.”
“Okay.” Ivan gave Dan a measuring look. “So, we stop the tears.”
Abe joined them at the rose wall. “How about this?”
They cast their hand up and ink flowed from it forming an umbrella that blocked the fall of liquid from the ceiling. Everyone looked at the wall of roses. It didn’t so much as twitch.
Ivan pulled a small knife out of his jacket. “Let’s try now.”
He stooped and cut one of the stems off just above the floor. It lay in his hand, unmoving. He rocked back on his heels and looked up at Siobhan. “That worked.”
“Watch out!” Abe cried out and jumped back as a stream of tears flowed across the floor and oozed into the space between the stones of the floor where Ivan had cut the stem. Up shot two more stems. Ivan wasn’t fast enough to avoid being stabbed. He slapped a hand down on his thigh where a thorn was firmly embedded and got stabbed again for his efforts.
“Here.” Siobhan reached down and gently extricated the stem from Ivan. With a gentle hand she guided the stem back to the wall of roses where it instantly dove in and twined with the structure.
She cast a look over to Abe. “You might as well pull back the ink. That isn’t the answer.”
Abe nodded then lowered their hand. The ink pulled back and flowed into their palm. Some tears landed there as well and seemed to suck into their skin along with the ink. They let out a startled squeak and scrubbed their palm with their other hand.
“Ouch.” Their lower lip jutted out far enough a bird could have landed on it. And then a tear slid down their face. Followed by another. And another. In the space between one heartbeat and the next they started sobbing. Silently. Their features crumbled and they buried their face in their hands.
“Abe?” Dan tentatively tapped Abe’s upper arm. They lowered one hand to give him a stare from a single eye.
“Everything is awful!”
That said they replaced their hand over their eye and proceeded to cry hard enough their shoulders shook.
“Uh.” Ivan took a quick step back from the roses and stared at Abe. His expression was that one guys got when they knew they should do something but it was not something they had in their toolbox. “Abe?”
Suddenly Abe lowered their hands from their face. The pout was gone. In fact all the sadness weighing their features down was just gone. “Yes?”
“Are you okay?” Ivan dragged the word out like they hurt.
“Yes. Totally!” Abe shook their head so hard their hair flopped everywhere. “One hundred percent okay!”
Ivan cast a look up at the ceiling and at the rain of tears flowing down to water the roses. “Don’t touch the tears.”
Kim raised a hand. “I touched the tears.”
“And nothing happened.”
Kim considered a moment then shook her head. “No. Nothing.”
“Weird.” Ivan looked around the group. “There has to be another way to get rid of the roses.”
“Guys?” Patti was staring at the wall just below where the arm of roses pressed.
Ivan turned to her. So did the others. She pointed at a space slightly below the line of stained-glass windows.
“Gargoyle.”
Ivan walked over to stand next to her and looked up. “It is.”
“The gargoyle is crying but the tears aren’t falling down. I think they are falling up?”
“Huh.” Ivan craned his neck back and focused on the figure. “You are right.”
Kim walked over and stood next to Patti. Then she shifted to look at the others. “Any other gargoyles?’
Dan walked over to the right wall and pointed a pencil. “There’s one here.”
“Is it also crying?”
“Yes.”
“Guys?” Abe was pointing at the wall above where Gwen lay. “There’s eight gargoyles here.”
“All crying?” Ivan asked.
“All crying.”
“Tears not falling?”
Abe shaded their eyes and stared up at the gargoyles. “I think they are going up the wall and across the ceiling to the center. See? You can kind of see liquid flowing over the stained-glass.”
“Same with this one,” Patti said.
“Same,” Dan added.
“Well, that seems significant.” Ivan lifted his hand towards the gargoyle in front of him. He was tall enough that he was able to brush it with his fingers. “Let’s try this.”
He slid his fingers over the face of the gargoyle and covered the eyes. Instantly he collapsed forward. His head hit the wall and then he slid down to his knees. He pressed his cheek to the wall, pounded his fists against it, and wailed like he had lost his best friend, his dog, and the entirety of his family in one swoop.
Then he fell to his side and curled into a ball. The sobbing didn’t cease. In fact it got louder. His entire body shook with his sorrow.
Patti stared at him for a mikro then dropped down on her knees next to him. “Ivan?”
Ivan did not stop crying.
“Ivan?” Patti shook his shoulder. He shrugged it off and curled up tighter, rolling so he was facing the wall. Patti looked up and back, her expression full of confusion and a hint of fear.
Prairie looked between Gwen and Ivan then shot a look to Siobhan who pulled back from the roses and sat down next to Gwen and placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. She indicated Ivan with a lift of her chin. It was all the permission Prairie seemed to need to rise and move over to him. She lowered herself down and placed a soft hand on his back.
“Ivan?”
All she got was sobs.
Undeterred she repeated. “Ivan? What did you do to the gargoyle?”
More wah and ah.
“Ivan did you use your Magick on the gargoyle?”
This time Ivan shook his head up and down. He sniffled and then laid into more tears.
Prairie rocked back and looked at the others.
“No Magick.”
Kim frowned. “You sure?”
“Did you use your Magick when you touched the tears?”
“No.” Kim’s frown doubled. “It didn’t feel right.”
“What? Your Magick.”
“No. The water. Tears. I think,” she stopped and worked it over in her brain before finishing the thought. “There was no water in it. Or no touch of water? Like if I touch water I feel it. It’s intrinsic. But when I caught the tears they didn’t feel like water. They felt unnatural. My Magick recoiled? I think my Magick recoiled. But I touched them. The tears. Why didn’t I start crying? Abe did.”
“Magick.” Abe wandered over to stand next to Kim. “The tears mixed with my ink and I think went into me so that’s why I cried. But it was maybe diluted because I wasn’t using my Magick on the tears? Just near them?”
“It’s as good an idea as any other,” Siobhan said. “So, no Magick.” She peered intently at the roses. “And I can’t pull the roses because they grow back. Even stronger. And the tears are watering the roses. Probably. So we need to stop the tears if we want to tackle the roses. Any ideas?”
Dan walked over to lean against the wall where Siobhan sat. She looked up at him. “Do we assume the gargoyles are the source of the tears?”
He shifted his toothpick and looked at the gargoyle above Ivan on the wall. “Not enough data.”
“If we can’t use Magick,” Ben said. “Then how about this?”
He sauntered over to the gargoyle Dan had found on the right wall, took a run, and parkoured up the wall so he vaulted high enough to reach the gargoyle. At the apex of his leap he slashed out with his daggers. The metal rang as it came into contact with the stone of the statue. And a spray of tears flew out of the gargoyle’s face and hit Ben square in the face.
He went liquid while still air bound, his limbs splaying wildly on the air. Dempsey cursed and dove across the room but he wasn’t fast enough and Ben landed with an audible thud on the stone floor.
“Shit!” Kim dashed over to where Ben lay sprawled face down. She shot Dempsey a look. “Is he–?”
Dempsey squatted down and gently turned Ben’s head. His eyes were closed. Tears poured from them, matting his lashes on his cheeks.
“He’s out,” Dempsey said after a moment.
“And crying,” Kim added.
“I’d cry too if my head hit the floor that hard,” Patti shot back.
“Valid. But I don’t think that’s the reason for his tears. Or not the only one.” She looked over at Dan and Siobhan. “I think we can safely say that the tears or the gargoyles or the combination of the two is doing this.”
“Folks?” Abe stood facing Dan and Siobhan, their neck craned back to stare at the wall above them. “Did that gargoyle just change? Uh,” they shifted their focus further down the wall. “Did all the gargoyles just change?”
Kim jerked around and focused where Abe was looking. “What?”
“I think,” Abe paused and peered intently at the wall, “I think that one looks like Gwen.’
“What?” Kim hurried to stand next to Abe so she could see what Abe was looking at better.
“And that one,” Abe pointed slightly to the right of Dan. “It looks like Dan. See its got a toothpick!”
Dan pulled away from the wall and turned to look where Abe pointed. He shook his head like he was trying to clear his eyes, then cocked it and focused more intently on the gargoyle.
Abe spun to look at the wall above Ivan. “That one definitely looks like Ivan. And I bet,” they turned quickly to look at the gargoyle Ben had slashed, “Yep. Looks like Ben.”
Kim turned to look there. And Abe was dead right. That was Ben, in gargoyle form, right down to the mischievous grin and the sardonic lift of brows.
“Whoa!” Patti’s shout drew Kim’s gaze to her. It took about a mikro to realize the reason for it. Roses formed beneath Ivan’s curled form and before anyone could react, beyond Patti’s ‘Whoa’, runners wrapped around him and he was lofted at the ceiling. A column of roses in the shape of his body stretched beneath him.
Patti threw herself at the column but Prairie grabbed her at the last mikro, holding her back before she got a face full of thorns.
“Prairie!”
Prairie didn’t even blink. “You’ll hurt yourself.”
“It’s Ivan! He’s on the ceiling!”
“I can see that.”
“Why aren’t you upset?”
“I am,” Prairie’s tone didn’t flex. She remained calm. Secure. “I just show it differently. But hurting yourself isn’t going to help him.”
“Ah!” Dempsey’s shout had everyone turning in his direction in time to see him throwing himself on top of Ben as roses sprouted under the other man. Dan and Kim dove across the space. She grabbed Dempsey’s arm and Dan grabbed his leg and they yanked him off of Ben a mikro before the column of roses shot for the ceiling and pinned Ben there.
Dempsey freefalled for a mikro then landed heavily on Kim and Dan. Kim fell beneath his weight but Dan was able to brace and hold him up enough that he didn’t crush Kim. Scrambling on her ass and hands, Kim shoved free of him then sat there on the floor switching her attention between Dempsey and Ben on the ceiling.
“The actual fuck?” As she watched roses creeped over Ben, enshrouding him so all that was left was a Ben-shaped lump trapped against the ceiling. The Ben gargoyle grinned from just beneath the Ben flower cocoon, adding an extra level of fuckery to the image.
Patti and Prairie moved away from the Ivan-shaped column of roses, backing up to the center of the room across from where Gwen still lay sobbing against the wall.
Kim looked at Ben on the ceiling then looked at Ivan on the ceiling then at Gwen on the floor. “Why isn’t Gwen on the ceiling? Or have a column of roses?”
“What?” Dempsey gave her a look that questioned her sanity. Get in line, Mr. Dempsey. Get in line.
Kim swept a hand towards Gwen. “She’s crying but she’s on the ground.”
“She didn’t touch a gargoyle.” Abe stopped their perusal of the wall of gargoyles above Siobhan and Gwen. They looked at the Ivan gargoyle and then at the Ben gargoyle then focused back on the group. “Ben and Ivan touched gargoyles. And–” they swept their hands up towards the ceiling. “Zoom. I think its different but kind of the same.”
“Expand,” Dan prompted.
Abe turned to Dan. “I think Gwen’s Magick latched onto the sadness all over here.” Abe swept their hand out to encompass the space. “And she shut down. But she didn’t go near a gargoyle. Or the roses. Ivan and Ben clearly interacted with the gargoyles and now they are up there.” They pointed up like anyone would forget Ben and Ivan hoisted up there a mero before. “We have to remove Gwen from the equation when trying to find a solution.” They wrinkled their nose. “I think. If that makes sense?”
“It makes a lot of sense.” Prairie took up a spot next to Abe and looked up at the wall of weeping gargoyles.
“Look!” Abe pointed at one of the gargoyles. “That Prairie one is pretty cute. For a gargoyle. That’s crying.”
Prairie looked where Abe pointed then giggled. “It do–”
She trailed off then whispered, “Did it just stop crying? Wait. No. It’s crying still. I guess I imagined it.”
“You didn’t!” Abe stared at the gargoyle that looked like Prairie. “It definitely stopped.”
Patti took up a position next to Abe. She planted her fist on her cocked hip and stared hard at the Prairie gargoyle. “Why?’
Abe shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Sass peeped, loud enough that it drew most of the eyes of the group. Those that weren’t closed or crying for sure. Then it shoved its way out of the house on Patti’s belt and ran down the leg of her jeans.
“Sass!” She stared at the mouse who stopped for a moment while on her shoe and looked up at her. Then it peeped again and ran for the wall of roses under the witch. Patti lunged in that direction but Sass was surprisingly fast for such a small creature and very easily eluded her ‘mama’. It came to the wall of roses then stopped and turned around to look at the group. It planted a paw on its hip in a mirror of Patti’s previous position, drawing a chuckle from Siobhan.
“Uh,” Abe turned their head to look at another one of the gargoyles on the wall above Gwen and Siobhan. “The Siobhan gargoyle just stopped crying.”
“What?” Siobhan spun on her butt so she could look at the wall.
“And it started again.”
“Peep!” Sass demanded their attention and they all obliged. Because why not, right? Why not?
Sass acknowledged their stares with a couple head bobs. Then it picked up two rose petals. It held one in front of itself and one behind itself. And then it shimmied. And shimmied again. Held its mouth open like it was smilling and that mouse done did shimmy.
Kim snorted. Patti outright laughed. And Abe spun, head on swivel.
Then they turned and yelled, “Patti!”
Patti turned to look at them, chuckle still on her lips.
Abe pointed at the Patti gargoyle which was distinctly not crying. Not an ounce of water oozed from its stone eyeballs. Patti’s chuckle sputtered to a stop as she stared at the gargoyle. And the waterworks restarted, tears coursing from the gargoyle’s eyes and up its cheeks to run across the ceiling.
Turning with wide eyes and an expression that screamed “hmm”, Abe focused on Sass’ antics. The corner of their lips kicked up and then they giggled as Sass leaned forward and back doing a shimmy-shake and flashing the rose petals like the most experienced of fan dancers.
Siobhan’s gaze darted across the wall of gargoyles. She looked at the one that looked like Abe then at Abe. Then she looked at Sass. Really looked. Really hard. Then she smiled and a moment later outright laughed as Sass turned around, stuck their tiny mouse ass out, and shook it like it owed them money.
Laugh on her lips, Siobhan spun and looked over at the gargoyle that looked like her right down to a flower crown and a shoulder bag. The gargoyle smiled. Not a tear poured from its eyes. Then Siobhan took a deep breath and scowled at the gargoyle which instantly shifted its expression from joy to sorrow and tears flowed double time up its cheeks and across the ceiling.
Kim followed this all with her eyes. Testing the same theory she suspected Siobhan of she stared directly at the gargoyle cradling a flame in its talons and giggled. Giggles didn’t feel natural to her but by all that was good and just she would damned well giggle. As she did the gargoyle with the flame straightened and its tears stopped pouring up.
“Sass!” Patti cried out. “You genius!”
Sass peeped and shaked its ass harder.
Patti started singing something about pouring sugar. And Sass danced. Patti’s lyrics were a bit garbled as she was laughing and they became more so as she jumped around so she was facing the group and standing next to Sass. And then she started shaking her ass. Kim looked at Gwen’s suppine form and bit her lip. Her friend was going to be so upset that she missed this. It was such a Gwen moment and it felt wrong having no Gwen involved. But, she could be an honorary Gwen. She could!
She dashed over, turned her back on the roses, and started shaking it for all she was worth. She wasn’t worth that much and honestly she was glad for her jog bra because otherwise she’d probably be really hurting in the boob region but the jog bra was doing it job and she was putting her all into her shimmy and her shake and her booty bumping just like Gwen would want.
“Gwen?” She kinda heard Siobhan over the laughter and the singing. “Honey?”
“Who started the party without me?” Gwen’s voice was slurred and kinda fell off but good gracious googly-moogly it was music to Kim’s damned ears. “Help me up!”
There was a thump and when Kim looked over she saw Gwen sitting on her ass looking off into space. Something in her said to put some extra wiggle in her wiggler so she did. She wiggled. She jiggled. She even cavorted. Cavorted!
She looked up with a huge grin when Dempsey came stomping over, took up position next to her, and shook his big ass. Then he turned around and shook his ass in Gwen’s direction.
“Woo!” Gwen wheezed. “Hoo! Shake that thang! Shake it! Help me up!”
Kim watched as Gwen poked Siobhan in the shoulder. Siobhan rolled her eyes, laughed, and gave Gwen her hand. Between her yanking and Gwen’s pushing they got Gwen on her feet. As soon as she was someone upright she reached over, snatched Prairie’s arm and hauled her forward to join Patti, Sass, Kim, and Dempsey’s raggedy jiggle line.
“C’mon, Dan!” she yelled in the man’s direction. “Shake that thang!”
Dan braced his feet then lifted his hands to about rib height and made jiggly jiggle motions which sent Abe into paroxyms of glee. They bounced around, moving from the front line to weave around Dan and then over to the left wall where they shook it under Ivan before skipping to the right wall and doing the same to the Ben cocoon.
“Get hype!” Gwen yelled through a laugh and kicked one foot than the other before making crazy jazz hands at Siobhan. Siobhan let out something between a giggle and a laugh and flared her hands back at Gwen. And all along the wall Kim could see their gargoyle counterparts stop their sobbing.
“Siobhan!” Kim stopped her singing long enough to holler. “The roses!”
Siobhan darted a look at Kim then with a broad grin and a little shake she danced over to the wall of roses under Ivan and stooped down. A moment later she rose holding a rose vine. Kim kept her shaking, her shimmying, and her bopping and danced over next to Siobhan. She didn’t stop her movement but did slow it enough she could lean down to peer at the spot Siobhan had cleared. No new roses bloomed from it. There was a clear empty space in a crack in the floor. Without slowing her roll Kim sent her Magick into the floor, calling to the stones and the earth, and closed the crack.
Shimmying her shoulders a bit and giving a sharp laugh, Siobhan nodded to Kim. Then she went back at the roses with a vengeance and a swing of her hips. Crouched as she was she didn’t have a ton of mobility but she managed something like Walking the Duck as she pulled vine after vine from the structure under Ivan.
She turned her head slightly to the dancing group in front of the main flower wall. “Dempsey!”
Dempsey looked over. He rocked his shoulders forward on a shake. Rocked them back. “What?”
“Ivan!” Siobhan shimmied the shit out of her shoulders while looking up at where Ivan was cocooned against the ceiling. She couldn’t really say more without breaking her laughter but it seemed she got her point across as Dempsey sauntered over, bopping and booping and clicking his fingers.
Dan came that way too with less booping and bopping. Instead he moved his hands back and forth like he was a mole digging a hole or maybe an Egyptian on a jaunt. He planted himself to the front of the Ivan lump. Dempsey took the back. And then Siobhan tugged really hard and Kim watched as a long vine unraveled from along Ivan’s form and Ivan came close to plummeting to the ground.
She called an air lady close. They’d been hovering. She’d seen them in her peripheral. Grooving and shimmying was one of air’s favorite activities. So, of course, the ladies had been doing their part on the sidelines. But now she needed them to stop Ivan’s descent because even with Dempsey and Dan being strong as they were Ivan was a big guy and gravity and impetus and all those other science-y things could prove their undoing if Ivan hit them right.
Two ladies wove around Ivan, taking the majority of the force from his downward dive from the ceiling. They let him drift into Dan and Dempsey’s raised hands then retreated once the two other men had Ivan secure.
They lowered him to the floor. Tears still streamed from his eyes and Kim knew with absolute certainty that had to stop or Ivan was going to be growing another rose launch and would be ceiling bound in no time.
“Turn–” she got out between laughs, “him!”
“Keep laughing!” Siobhan rose with a shimmy of her shoulders then started dancing her way across the room to the right wall and the column of roses holding Ben to the ceiling.
Dan shifted Ivan so he was facing the main column of roses where Gwen, Prairie, Patti, Sass, and Abe were merrily getting their groove on. At first Ivan kept sobbing but then there was a hiccup and a hitch and then a watery chuckle. Kim shot a look over his head to the gargoyle he’d touched. It now sported a very suave goatee and as she watched it pursed its lips and waggled its brows at her. She wiggled her hips and shook her shoulders back at it. Then she looked at Ivan and jerked her head back to indicate the group dancing in front of the roses. He tracked her motion, his gaze settling on Prairie who was at that very moment leaning forward and shaking her shoulders at Sass who flared their flower petals at their friend.
Kim reached down a hand to Ivan and threw her weight back to try to haul him to his feet. It was a losing proposition, but the point must have gotten across as he got his own damned self on his own damned feet. Then, laughing, he moved over to join the revels.
Kim wasn’t fast enough to catch Ben before he fell out of the roses and hit the stone floor. He was still out from the last hit he took to the head which was sort of a blessing but having his head smack the stones a second time probably wasn’t doing his brain any good. Luckily for him there was a pretty decent carpet of dead roses on the floor, so they kind of cushioned his fall. Unluckily they were roses, so thorns.
She looked at Siobhan. Siobhan looked at her. Shook the dead roses in her hands like maracas. Then she carefully laid them on the floor, pulled a potion from her shoulder strap, and poured it into Ben’s mouth.
“I got caught up in the moment,” Siobhan explained as she rubbed Ben’s throat to trigger him to swallow.
“Okay.” Kim bit her lip.
“I should have thought.”
“You have a lot on your mind.”
“Still no excuse.”
A few mikros later Ben sat up with a gasp. He lifted a hand to the back of his head. When he pulled it back there was blood on his palm.
“Oops.” Siobhan pulled a different vial from her strap and poured a salve into Ben’s hand. “Apply that.”
Ben looked around with confused eyes as he complied. “What’s going on.”
Kim shimmied her shoulders. “Spontaneous dance party.”
“Spontaneous.” You could tell when the salve did its job because Ben’s expression lightened and his tongue stopped slurring. “Is that a conga line?”
Kim turned to follow Ben’s gaze. Yep. That was definitely a conga line. Patti held Sass in her palm at the front of the line. Prairie was behind her with her hands on Patti’s hips. Abe followed Prairie. Behind them was Gwen. All those kind of made sense. It was Dempsey, at the back of the line, hands on Gwen’s shoulders and legs kicking out every third step that stopped Kim’s brain for a mikro.
Siobhan narrowed her eyes. “Conga lines are so suss.”
“Suss?” Kim turned to look at Siobhan.
“That Dempsey has some rhythm.” Ben’s grin went ear to ear.
Kim mouthed “suss?” at Siobhan before turning back to look at the group.
Dan and Ivan were doing some kind of ballroom dance thing, face to face, hands held up near Dan’s shoulder line. Kim blinked. Those hips did not lie. Nope. They did not.
“Damn, Dan! Great moves!”
Ivan shot a look over his shoulder at Kim. “What about me.” He put some extra hot sauce in his salsa and Kim found herself transfixed by his ass. She started to shy her gaze because it felt disrespectful of his personhood but then Ivan gave her another look before popping his hip and shimmy shaking twice to the left. “Are you looking at my cake?”
Kim bit her lip and didn’t respond but that was okay because Ben was there for that lift. “That is some mighty fine cake!”
Ivan swished his hips to the right and double popped. “Wanta take a bite?”
Ben laughed and then rose to his feet. “Boy, I have waited my whole life for you to ask.”
Ivan snorted and twirled so Dan’s back was now central focus.
Ben sauntered over and plastered himself to Dan’s ass before reaching his arms around so he could grab on to Ivan’s shoulders.
Dan turned his head to look at Ben then gave a shrug and turned back to looking at Ivan and following his lead in the dance.
“Kiss me on the mouth,” Ben sang.
“Love me like a sailor.” Ivan replied.
“Uncomfortable,” Dan said in a slow drawl but made no move to wriggle free of Ivan and Dan’s loose embrace.
The conga line wove around the Ben and Ivan sandwich and laughter rang through the room. Siobhan planted her hands on her hips and shook her head but she was laughing right along.
Kim squinted at the group then at Siobhan. “Is there a hallucinogenic affect to these roses?”
“Not that I can tell. I guess its an argument that laughter is contagious.”
“Seems to have stopped the gargoyle tears.”
“And that stopped feeding the roses so I could pull them up and get Ivan and Ben out. Now,” Siobhan dusted off her hands and turned to the central column of flowers. “Time to get the lady of the house down.”
Enter The Woods 