Page 44 of A Serpent in the Garden

“I need no thanks for doing what’s right.”

“I was taught to thank those who do me a kindness. Not many people would have volunteered for this. It means a lot that you did.”

The half-smile widened into a full one. “Perhaps it’s not all because of kindness. Imagine the stories we’ll come back home with. The things we’ve seen already. The information we can bring back to educate the community. Most of what we thought we knew was wrong. An overview of the range of the lands in this place; it’s even larger than we thought. The plants that snap, those hideous mushrooms. I can accurately depict the effects of a succubus, having been under one’s spell. What we saw with the faeries, how they move and fight. The demon of the water—I couldn’t describe him, but you could. All those potions and the herbs the hag grows in her garden, all the witchcraft she’s capable of.”

“Must you tell them of Blathilde?” My heart sank a little at the thought of her details spreading like wildfire across the village. “She was kind to us. All she wants is a quiet life. There seems little harm in her.”

“Even though she took your youth?”

“I freely gave it.”

“That’s true.” I felt him gazing at my profile for a few moments. “If you want to keep her secret, we won’t mention her.” Then I felt a twitch, as if It were rolling his eyes. “And what man living can say they’ve ever been to Hell and back?” Serich continued with a rueful grin. “Truly, I would have been a fool to pass up the opportunity to see such sights.”

The alcerin goaded us onward for most of the day, a whisper of faster, faster, faster, rushing through our blood. Is this like coffee? I wondered, and made a mental note to tell Livvy, should I ever see her again. Alcerin made my eyes so wide they felt pinned open, my entire body screaming for movement. The herb’s entire crusade boiled down to one thing—momentum—and it did not like to give it up.

We stopped for water though the alcerin wanted us to ignore the itching in our throats. Damp black stone, reflective as a looking glass, shimmered all around us as we stood beneath an arched rock formation. I flinched away from the image it threw back in my face. I looked unearthly, like everything else in this wood. So pale my veins glowed beneath my skin, my eyes as gray as the water demon’s puddles. A smear of dirt I didn’t remember brushing against lay upon one of my cheekbones like a bruise. The shirt beneath my cloak was tarred with mud. God, I thought with a shiver. I’m like one of these weathered old trees in the wood. How soon can we leave these rocks?

You’ll be grateful for the rock soon enough. If you’re lucky it’ll be your shelter for the night. You see how wet the ground is? There were grottos here when I was a child. Several of them, if they haven’t caved in yet.

The dissonant harmony of a murder of crows heralded dusk. We had come upon the grottos It had promised by then, but lurked outside for a while for fear they were occupied by something more menacing than bats and insects. Serich had lugged a pile of boulders to the entrance so that we might have some cover once we were inside overnight, though it didn’t seem likely we could completely obscure the hole. We wouldn’t have full protection from the cold.

We jittered from the alcerin, and the sky turned from a vicious violet to charcoal to ebony before anything happened.

How characteristically Hell, It said with perfect disdain as torrents of bats gushed forth from the grottos, spiraling blindly toward the sky. Their membranous wings beat the air silently, their little bodies silhouetted against an incandescent moon. Now get inside before anything smells you.

Inside, it was blacker and denser than I could have imagined, a darkness so thick I wanted to cut through it with one of my blades. I groped slowly along the jagged rock walls. How far would I get before hitting standing water?

Serich kept close but I wasn’t aware how close until he startled me with the proximity of his voice. “Should we risk a fire, just to get our bearings? I’ve got iron and flint in my bag, a few drying bits of wood.”

“All right,” I said, when It offered nothing but a tapping talon.

I felt Serich drop to the ground, rustling through his satchel. When he’d managed a feeble flame, it threw orange tendrils everywhere, igniting icicles of dripping stalactites, serrated walls of rock, a small, still pond of water in the center. The grotto was so deep the fire couldn’t illuminate the end of it; all I found was a gaping black gullet waiting to receive us. I tipped my head back to rake the ceiling with my gaze, but no straggling bats clung to it, no glowing eyes glared back. Nothing stirred from the throat of the cavern, but would it? Everything here was steeped in silence.

Serich looked up at me from the marshy earth. “What do you reckon? Should we stay?”

“This isn’t like I’d expect a bat colony to smell.” I tucked my arms around myself. “The musk, the urine—there is none. It’s too clean.”

They drink only blood, and they don’t excrete an ounce of it.

“Ah.” I realized I’d said it aloud when Serich, still kneeling upon the ground, quirked an eyebrow up at me. “It said they only drink blood. That’s why it doesn’t stink in here. They don’t make waste.”

Serich’s eyes pulsed orange in the flickering flames. “I find no issue with that if it means we won’t reek come morning.”

“Unless they come back home hungry a little early and find us,” I said, revolving on the spot to take in more of the grotto.

“Leave before dawn?” he asked. “Just to be safe?”

My blood ran cold as a chill swept past the mouth of the grotto, cooling the sweat on my hairline that the alcerin had worked up. It would be another frigid night, despite this area of the wood being warmer than the last.

“Yes. I can’t imagine they’d take kindly to us borrowing their home,” I said, and knelt to cobble together a makeshift nest for the night.

The air may not have been as bitterly cold as it had been in the tree, but neither was it a friendly breeze. Serich and I dragged on every bit of clothing we had, interred beneath the blankets. We could at least stretch out atop our cloaks on the boggy floor of the grotto if we had a wish to, but it was warmer curled up together like puppies.

How much longer? I asked It, a breath struggling to escape my lungs from behind the cage of Serich’s arms. I’m not sure how many nights like this I have left in me. The cold will sicken us if it keeps up.

Two, maybe three more days. It gets warmer the closer you get to the entrance. Tomorrow night should be better.

Serich’s chest shifted behind my back. “Am I holding you too tightly?”