Honeyed Words (17 page)

Marybeth asked after you just this week. You know she’s had her third child. Boy this time. Gabriel is pleased, of course. He had been fearing being overwhelmed with women.

Gabriel had been a tall boy, gangly and shy. My father thought the world of him, hoped I would have married him. I didn’t mind Gabe, but I knew I wasn’t going to make no preacher man’s wife, or any man’s wife, for that matter. Gabe was a deacon at sixteen and was preaching once a month by the time I’d gone off to college.

Marybeth had been my best friend since we moved to Crescent Ridge. First girl I ever kissed. I hoped she and Gabe were happy together.

Megan is having some trouble with a couple of the boys at church. She punched the older Abernathy boy, said he was getting handsy. She reminds me so much of you it hurts to look at her sometimes. I miss talking to you. You remember when you couldn’t sleep? How we’d get out the cookies and milk and talk the night away? You had some pretty big dreams back then. I miss your dreams.

I was crying by then, damn it.

I’m losing her, Sarah. Like I lost you, only worse. She blames us for driving you away. Says hateful things from time to time, which I can forgive, but she’s a whole different kind of trouble. Your father and I agreed to let her go over to the public school this year, though it worries me. I fear she’ll take up with some of those heathen boys, and get into Lord knows what kind of trouble.

“Heathen boys” were any boy, as far as I could tell. Leastways, boys that weren’t Gabe, if I remembered correctly. That was one thing they never questioned. I had no interest in boys, heathen or otherwise. Ma always said I was a good girl. If she only knew the truth.

She’s not talking to your father or I at the moment. Calls it a strike. She tried a hunger strike a while back, went seventeen days without eating, but we put a stop to that. Now she just won’t talk to us.

Last thing she said was that she hates me and wishes she’d run away with you. I’m at my wit’s end, Sarah. She worships you even more so since you’ve been gone. Built up this hero image of you, making up all sorts of adventures and such to explain why you’ve never come home. Five birthdays, five Christmases and Thanksgivings. Plays and soccer games … Yes, did I tell you she’s playing soccer. Your father about exploded, but I saw how much it meant to her, so I put my foot down.

That was a rare occasion. I’d have liked to have seen that.

Anyway, I don’t want to lecture, but I think you’ve been mighty selfish. I can see you are still mad at your father and me, but Megan didn’t do anything but love you.

Won’t you come see her?

I pray you read this, though you’ve never answered a single letter I’ve written in the last five years. Maybe the good Lord will see this one through.

Christ first among all things,

Momma

Damn, damn, damn.

I couldn’t help it. I cut out the light, crawled into bed, and cried myself to sleep.

Twenty-three

Skella kept the mirror open as the dwarves trudged back from their night’s foray. Three had been to Memphis, which had been extremely dangerous, but they’d insisted it had to be done.

Gletts argued with the leader of the dwarven clan, an old man named Krevag, trying to explain again why the idea of selling the potions to the dragons was foolhardy.

He was not winning.

Kraken and Bruden, the two most adept at blood magic, laughed, calling Gletts a coward and a fool. Skella wanted to defend him, but she needed to keep the ways open, keep the eaters at bay.

Finally, when the final party returned from Dublin, she closed the mirror and collapsed with exhaustion. Distance had no meaning when traveling the ways, but the shields and protections needed to keep it safe were taxing.

“We should kill the bard and take all the blood at once,” Bruden bellowed, seeming to reach the end of his rope.

“Nay, brother,” Kraken mewled, oily and soft. “Let us continue to bleed the lad, taking our drips and spinning an empire.”

Krevag barked with laughter. “You believe the lies of that deranged whelp of Duchamp’s, that necromancer he fancies himself. What proof do you have that these potions will work as you describe?”

Kraken cast his languid gaze at Krevag. “You are venerable, old man, but these are not the days of old. We do not fear the dragons. We will rise above them, casting them into the shadows, where they belong.”

Fools,
Skella thought.
Drunk on dreams of glory.

“What if we refuse to help you any longer?” Skella said, rising to her feet. “What if we leave you in the ways for the eaters to hunt down and consume?”

“Skella, no,” Gletts said, stepping between her and Bruden, who acted as if he’d strike the young elf girl. “She doesn’t mean it,” he said, spreading his hands and looking at Krevag. “We will help you, as is our bargain.”

“I think we need a new bargain,” Kraken said, nodding at Bruden. “What think you, brother? Perhaps these whelps need a bit of motivation.”

He spun, clipping Gletts in the side of the head with his large fist.

Skella shouted and ran, but Bruden ran her down, tripping her feet, sending her sprawling.

“’Ware,” Krevag shouted. “If you harm them, you will break compact with their kin.”

“The compact be damned,” Bruden said, kicking Skella in the chest. “It’s time we put the whole lot under lock and key. See how you like threatening us then,” he yelled, kicking her again.

Skella held her hands over her face, trying to ward off the blows that fell on her like hammers. After the third blow, she blacked out.

Twenty-four

I went down to Katie’s on Sunday. We had lunch and talked. I told her about the letter, showed her the picture.

“Wow,” Katie said, studying the photograph. “She looks just like you.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Seriously,” she said, handing it back to me. “No one would doubt you were sisters. She even has your sullen look down.”

I glared at her a couple of seconds, then looked down at the picture. She was much prettier than I ever was.

Maybe it was because Katie learned more about Megan and what I was going through with the letter that we talked for a couple of hours. She finally opened up about what happened to her and Julie when Duchamp snatched them in May.

“I had gone to the smithy to look for you, and was talking with Julie when the dragon attacked. He didn’t even bother to see who was there, just flamed the place and sent in trolls to ransack everything. They took the safe with all your swords and smacked me around.”

She paused, remembering. I knew it was painful, but she needed to get it out. I sat, watching her, willing strength to her.

“Julie fought them.” She had a feral grin at that. “Took down one of the trolls, before we were overwhelmed.”

“We’d been pounded on pretty hard. I blacked out a while, and woke up in a van. Next we were dragged onto a helicopter and flown out to cabins on the edge of Lost Lake.”

That’s where I fought Jean-Paul at the end, where I finally killed him. He’d been hiding out there. If I’d known that, I would’ve waited until he burned them all down before challenging him.

“Duchamp had a young man there, crazy bastard. He made one of the giants break Julie’s leg, just so he could taste her pain.”

I held her, her back pressed into me, snuggling.

“Jean-Paul wouldn’t let him touch me,” she said, shuddering. “He beat me, humiliated me in front of the others.” She stopped, pushing away, turning to face me. “But he never raped me, no matter what he said.”

I reached out and touched her face, tracing the tears. “It’s over.”

I felt a ball of pain vaporize at that. I’d feared the worst.

In the end, she’d fought him so much that he just knocked her around and left her in disgust.

If I hadn’t shown up at the movie shoot, she was sure things would have gotten even uglier. The young man, whom she could not describe, had tortured Julie, then decided to give us both over to the giants and trolls to play with for a while.

Then the call came in to trade us for the sword. That’s when things stopped being quite so ugly.

She cried as she told me everything, kept her face down, choking out the words when the emotion was too strong. There was rage there, anger and hurt.

I held her as she wailed, let her purge the poison that had been laying dormant inside her for so long, then rocked her when she calmed.

I had a moment of melancholy—bittersweet and heavy—wishing I’d been faster, done more to stop all that from occurring, but she sensed it.

“Don’t you dare sink back into that,” she said, her voice raw. “I needed you strong, needed you whole so I could finally share this. Please don’t fall back into the trap of what if. Just hold me and tell me everything’s going to be okay.”

What could I do? I loved her, damn it. Heart and soul. How had I ever lived before her? “Of course,” I said, my throat aching from wanting to cry. “We are going to be more than okay. I promise: we’re safe.”

And she lay in my lap and cried.

We spent the rest of the afternoon tangled in her bed. I held her while she cried, then held on for dear life as we made love. She needed the release, needed to purge the pain, override it with the good and whole.

We spent hours that way, raging and making love with reckless abandon. I led, coaxing her to release over and over until she found her confidence, taking control and driving me to my own climaxes. Finally we just couldn’t take any more, and we let exhaustion take us down into sleep.

Hours later I headed back to my place. I know the fight with the dragon had been hard, had cost all of us more than we’d ever imagined, but I think it would begin to fade now. We’d purged some demons today, conquered them with sex and love. I was feeling wrung out, but happy.

Frank had called and left a message with Julie. He had some things to take care of in Cle Elum this week. Just as well. Mary didn’t really have any more work for us over at the Circle Q. We’d need to move on to other farms, and Frank really wasn’t open to driving farther afield.

Which, it seems, was why he thought maybe I should drive out to Chumstick and visit Anezka. Chumstick was way the fuck out there, frankly—north and a lot east of Seattle—out Highway 2 over Stevens Pass up beyond Leavenworth. Anezka had offered to help out with some of Julie’s regulars. I’d never met her before, so I thought it would be interesting. Frank had said she thought differently about smithing—mentioned she had some funny notions about Julie’s smithy burning the way it did. I couldn’t wait to pick her brain on all this. Made me a little anxious, even. Like thinking about the first day of school.

Julie didn’t know her much either, just that she was an artist these days. She’d given up farrier work and only did commissioned iron work for gates, railings, and such. High-end work, with lots of flair.

Seemed like somebody I could learn a thing or two from. Would be good to expand my circle of contacts, too, expand out beyond my comfort zone.

And speaking of comfort zone. There was something I decided I needed to do.

I waited until after Julie had gone to bed before I acted. It’s not like I’d forgotten what happened in Vancouver. Hell, Ari was still missing. But the elves, Skella and Gletts, there was something funky going on with them. They could’ve killed us, but they hadn’t. Neither Katie nor I had suffered any long-term consequences of the poisoning, and Skella had told me how long the poison would last. Fair and foul. I needed more information there.

I pulled the mirror out from behind the couch.

I propped it against the coffee table and sat in front of it, cross-legged with a hammer at my left side. I watched for three hours, willing Skella or Gletts to make an appearance. I had my iPod on, listening to Stiff Little Fingers and thinking about how the elves could’ve been wrapped up in Ari’s kidnapping.

They didn’t appear. Not sure why I thought they’d show up at my mental urging.

When it became apparent they weren’t coming, I went to plan B. I rummaged through the bathroom for one of Katie’s old lipsticks. It was a dark blue. I remember the night she’d worn it, all dolled up in a punk-rock outfit, hair teased like a metal groupie. We’d gone to a party, friends and new lovers. I’d been a total wreck, but we’d ended up having a blast.

I took the lipstick into the living room and wrote on the mirror, marking each letter precisely and, of course, backward.