Mud nodded once, firmly, the way her sister always did. She took his hand. It was heated and steady. Eli’s magic flowed into her like a gift. It was human-man magic combined with the queen’s magic, and Mud’s own power reached out to him through the palms of their hands. “Okay,” she said, feeling steadier. “Okay.”
He swung her onto his back and looped his elbows through her knees, piggyback. Her belly and boobies were pressed against a slender backpack and the climbing gear instead of his back, which relieved Mud for reasons she didn’t fully understand, except they might have something to do with the way she had grown up, in God’s Cloud of Glory Church. Polygamy in the church made women different from modern women.
Eli stepped forward. One step, two. He adjusted Mud’s weight with a light upward shift of his knees, tossing her body upward. Then he ran.
He was fast, faster-than-human, maybe as fast as a vampire. He ran the way the bloodsuckers ran, except Mud knew Eli didn’t have to suck blood or hunt humans and he was out in the daylight, and wasn’t on fire. Her hair streamed out behind her like a horse’s mane. The wind tore at her face, almost burning. The air roared. She had to close her eyes and duckher head into the space between Eli’s neck and shoulder, which smelled nice but felt weird.
Her leaves grew larger, more lush. Mud pushed against her gift and stopped growing the leaves. It took concentration, especially with all the running, but it was important. Her sister, Nell, had once turned into a tree and nearly didn’t turn back to human. Mud knew that could happen to her too, if she wasn’t careful.
The worms in her belly started crawling again, so she concentrated on her gift, reshaping it, drawing on it, shifting it around inside her. She reached for her tree on Soulwood, the first tree she had marked with her own power, with her handprint. Dozens of her trees grew now, all subtly different from her sister’s trees, yet linked together. There was power in the trees and in the land where a forest grew. Humans had forgotten that. Instead of communing with them, humans used the trees, cutting them down too soon, before the wood and roots reached age and wisdom and their own power. Humans were, in general, stupid.
Power flowed into Mud, coiling through her, banishing the worms, whispering in her leaves. Her tree reached for her across the miles. The land filled her.
The Green Knight of Soulwood appeared in front of her, the sentient life of the tree her sister had created with her blood. He was wearing armor, sitting astride his pale green horse. No saddle. No banner. Just a long pole in one hand, pointed on one end, like one of those jousting spears she had seen in old movies. The horse shifted on his feet and blew through his nose as if excited at the thought of battle.
“We’re nearly at a crack in the earth,” Eli said, barely heard over the pounding of his feet and the sound of the wind. He slowed. “There should be tackle in place to descend a rockwall. I’ll strap you to me and we’ll rappel down. You okay with that?”
I’ll strap you to me. Mud was already strapped to him, so she figured he meant something worse, something more physically close. She wondered if she should be upset about it, but she had her tree at the ready, soil in her pocket. She could defend herself if a man wanted to hurt her; If she so much as scratched him, she could kill him from anywhere.
“I’m ready,” Mud said. And she was, her power green and bright within her.
Longfellow swooped past, and she heard a, “Meeeep,” as it flapped by.
Eli’s pace slackened to a creep, silent, his feet not cracking sticks or crunching leaves. Greenbrier vines hooked thorns into his heavy canvass pants. He pulled steadily against the thorns and if they hooked through the pants to his flesh, he didn’t react. No birds called, no squirrels barked or chittered. Everything around her was green, green, green. Rock walls began to rise at their sides as they descended a few feet to a level place, and then fell away, a narrow, V-shaped chasm opening at their feet.
There was climbing gear permanently installed at both sides of the central V’s rock walls, steel hooks and circles and bolts.
Eli dropped his arms and let her down to stand. He ignored her as he loosened the straps and the biners and knelt in front of her. Holding the straps out, he said, “Step in and I’ll cinch you up.” The words were professional and calm, almost detached, which helped.
The straps were shaped to go around her waist and between her legs. Mud was sincerely glad she no longer wore proper churchwoman dresses or skirts. This would have been embarrassing in every way. Pants meant she wouldn’t flash anything private. She stepped into the climbing gear and Elicinched it tight. His actions were practiced, to the point of seeming bored, which helped Mud relax even more. Until he hooked her to him, face to face. Mud blushed, unable to say anything.
Eli chuckled softly, but it wasn’t making fun. It was kind. “Yeah. I know. Sorry kiddo. But it’s the only way I can protect you from hitting the walls and keep me from slamming you into the rock with my full weight.”
In her mind, the Green Knight tilted his head, watching. He was wearing that metal hat thing with the full face, cheek, and nose pieces. He looked a little like the tin man from an old movie Nell and her husband Occam watched one night. The tin man wasn’t real bright, not that Mud let that thought come through to the knight.
Eli stepped off over the cliff edge and walked down the rock face, the rock wall at her back, her nose buried in his chest. His legs and feet pushed off from the walls and his hands worked the ropes.
As they descended, Mud heard the sound of a drum, steady, repetitive. It was a two-beat sound, like a heartbeat. There was power in that rhythm.Magic.
A cat screamed and Mud flinched. That was the Beast-call of the queen, fighting. Eli sped their descent, plunging down the wall with smooth kicks of his legs that swung them out over nothingness.
The drums pounded louder and Eli said something into his head gear. Mud didn’t hear it, but his tone was firm, issuing orders.
They stopped halfway down. The ledge where Eli stood was moss-covered, the moss so thick and damp it was like a huge, soft, wet sponge. Ferns grew from cracks in the rocks, lichens were everywhere, some poisonous, mosses grew in all the cracks, shaping the wall into stone puzzle pieces. Watertrickled down the stone’s face, leaking from the earth. A tree hung, limbs down and broken, once growing above, now dead, fallen.
The heartbeat of the drum was like the heart of the mountain beneath them, deep and compelling, commanding Mud’s attention, demanding her magic join in. It was just enough like the magic of the spirit of the deep, the soul of the Earth,that she wanted to connect with it, merge into it.
The Green Knight poked her with his pointy stick.
Jousting Lance. The words were thought at her. She hated it when the knight talked into her mind. She preferred the pictures he usually sent her.Do not hear the enemy. We do battle, he said.
Okay. Got it. Don’t listen to the drum.
As the silent conversation took place, Eli unhooked her and placed a thin mat on the moss. He touched one finger to his lips, reminding her to be quiet. “Sit,” he mouthed at her. Faster than she expected, he dropped below her, the ropes in front of her face. She sat and scooted back against the wall, the rock wet and cold at her spine.
Mud looked down. She saw the queen.
Jane Yellowrock was a skinwalker, a shapeshifter who could take almost any form of a specific size, if she had enough DNA, or maybe RNA. Or both? Mud was rattled and she couldn’t remember. The drum beat against her body and brain.
