My blood ran down my finger as I steadied my breath. Curling my fingers over my palm, I caught the blood-trail and the drops. I placed my other palm flat on one pile of dirt and said, “Okay. Step two.”
From the King James Bible, T. Laine said, “For, behold, the Lord cometh out of his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity: the earth also shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain.” She had assured me that this was not a sacrilege or a blasphemy, to use scripture to cleanse the earth, though I knew most members of my church would see it that way.
I shook off my uneasiness and sank my consciousness into the earth. I hadn’t read deeply in weeks, hadn’t searched for the sleeping sentience, the soul of the hills. It hadn’t occurred to me to search here at all, so far from the mountains, so far from home. But I dove deep, just beyond thedeath and decay, reaching through loam and clay and shattered rock, through limestone riddled with holes and full of water, through ancient riverbeds with rounded stones and curved boulders, farther, deeper, into the dark. I touched the sleeping sentience, the presence of the Earth, or one of them.
When I was certain that it was deeply somnolent, I placed my blood-filled palm onto the other small pile of farm dirt.
T. Laine was saying the biblical quote over and over, her words rushing like water across dry ground. My blood soaked through and touched the land beneath. Lights crackled and sparked and the energies of the land below me came alive. It was a three-dimensional palette of spinning bright green,churning dark red, and the almost painful deep purple of bruises.
Thedeath and decayspun like a top, swirling like a fire devil. It rose up, hot as liquid glass, yet glacier cold. Alert, but not attacking. Not sentient, not self-aware. It was blind and seeking, sizzling and fiery, frozen and shattered. But not alive.
It was death. Emptiness.
But so very powerful. A burning frozen black hole where no life was, or could ever be.
The energies of death rolled closer.
It was like watching opposites attract, the positive light and joy of fecund life and the brittle burning/icy opposite, the negative darkness and emptiness ofdeath and decay.My own power, the power ofyinehi, of nature and earth, reached out toward the death energies, thewrongenergies.
Carefully, I held my magic back. Not letting the energies touch.
When the conflicting energies were stable, only inches separating them, I sank into the earth. Deeper. Getting a feel for the parameters ofdeath and decay, how wide its reach, how deep into the soil.
Slowly I wrapped and wove my magics into threads and then skeins, the soft spring green of leaves, the dark burgundy red of summer flowers, the deep purple of grapes and berries. I pulled in the browns of soil and the sparkling reflections of falling water, the powerful black of local marble and the charcoal of local granite, the greens and grays of limestone.
I twisted and knotted my energies together, weaving a basket of life, vines and roots and thorns and rocks and soil, strong, alive, and healthy. The power of the Earth. Though there was no light so far beneath the surface, colors glimmered and flashed, the cool green, green,greenwrapping like roots, circling around the burning emptiness that was death. I slid the weaving through the ground, pulling and shifting it until it surroundeddeath and decay, fencing it in. But not touching it. Not letting it touch me, though the emptiness searched, my blood calling to it as it flowed.
Time passed. And I thought I had won.
I held it there. All of it, cupped and wrapped and twined in my magics.
But... something was wrong. There was a pain. I slitted my eyes open to see Occam, kneeling beside me, his blade flashing and cutting, slicing and sawing through icy blackness coiling around my fingers. “How...?” I tried, but no sound came. Thedeath and decayhad found me. I sank back into the earth and scanned the energies trapped there. And I saw the tiny hole, a spot of blackness against the vibrant colors.
It was no bigger than the tip of my pinkie finger. The tendril of the blackness had found it, had pushed through the hole and slid along the outside of my magics. Up to the lines of energies that flowed from me to my basket. And into me.
Pain flared, branding hot and cold as space. It swept up my arm and into my chest. I heard a moan. Felt a weight, heavy, pressing.
Realized that on the surface, I wasn’t breathing. Knew that moan had breathed out my last bit of air. I fought back into myself. Up along the pathway of energies.
Death and decaycrawled and oozed, a sickly green now, as it digested my life force.
My magics weren’t enough. Not against this.
I forced my body to take a breath. And I screamed. And screamed. Until the screaming stopped.
I reopened my eyes. Cat-Occam was face-to-face with me, so close I could feel his cat whiskers on my cheeks. His fangs were bared, only inches from my face. His leopard was snarling.
EIGHTEEN
“Occam,” I whispered, my voice hoarse from screaming, my mouth dry as drought-parched dirt. But my cat-man heard. He pulled back enough for me to focus on his amber cat eyes and on the people around me. FireWind and Rick were slashing and sawing at the vines of death. T. Laine was stabbing null pens into the ground around me, still repeating her scripture.
“The cabbage. Now,” I whispered.
Lainie said, “Done that, Nell. It withered and died. You got anything else to suggest?”
I licked my lips. “Soulwood. Blood. Bindings.”
“Son of a witch,” she said. She drew a silver blade. “LaFleur. Gimme your fingers.”
