Page 55 of A Serpent in the Garden

You’re not likely to meet anything. We’re still a while off from the gates. We’re going to take the longer route, which means getting a jump on the day.

I’m assuming the longer route might better allow for stealth?

Yes. No alcerin, It said, as I began rooting through my bag for it in a routine sort of way. Not anymore. Fill your waterskin from the stream and let’s be on our way.

It was still dark by the time I’d filled my skin, washed yesterday’s grime off my face and arms, finger-combed my hair, and braided it back off my face. The fogs here were playful, tugging at my shirt, curling about my ankles as I knelt by the stream. I thought about changing into my less filthy set of clothes but It was anxious to get going.

It’s not a beauty contest. Nobody in Hell will give a shit what you look like.

It’s not about beauty, it’s about not feeling like a wallowing pig, I said, though I heeded his words.

Keep left. Past the tunnel. We’re following the water to get to the river.

I started off, slipping over the wet stones lining the stream. My bag was lighter these days, which I both appreciated and feared. Lighter meant I could move faster, but it also meant low food stores. If I lived to see the curse broken I would starve the entire journey home. Maybe that was how I’d die.

Starvation isn’t a sudden death. Do you really think I would let you starve? I would blink you back to Monde’s End to save you the journey. If I’m allowed to, I guess.

Am I supposed to know what you mean by blink me back?

Our method of travel outside of Hell. It’s like it sounds. As quick as a blink.

I have to go back through the wood. I have to look for Serich. Even if he got away from the mist he would still be somewhere in here. I looped the strap of my satchel around my shoulders as I walked toward the tunnel so I could carry it upon my back.

I felt him tip his head back and sigh at the roof of my mind. I have never known a human to court death so relentlessly.

And have you known many humans?

Only dead ones.

I rolled my eyes, adjusting the strap of my satchel as I walked, a cold tendril of fog sliding about my ankle. And then it gave a mighty tug and dragged me backward through the tunnel.

No! It shouted, and I had never heard him so terrified as the opening of the tunnel glided away, shrinking into a gray speck in the distance. Nononono—

It seized control, twisting me onto my back as I slid to a stop. Something made of a denser darkness than the interior of the tunnel had a grip on my ankle and loomed above me, seething. And It tried, but he wasn’t strong enough when the smoke descended slowly, coyly, and enveloped me entirely.

A howl of sound, a whirl of lurid, febrile images splattering bright bright bright across my mind’s eye, but I recognized none of the pictures.

Unfamiliar faces. A wild, infinite midnight spangled with stars so vivid they couldn’t be real. Frost in my bones and a harmony of voices and it was all so cold and loud and brilliant I thought I’d fly to pieces. It felt like I’d been struck like a bell, my bones and blood and brain humming beneath the strain.

But It did not seem so frightened anymore, bewitched in some alarming, surreal way. He didn’t speak but I could feel him as instinctively as he had always felt me, and he was going loose with relief, or was it pleasure?

I tilted my head back, squinting through the screen of images and churning smoke toward the tunnel’s back end in the distance. I fumbled for a blade at my waist, tried slicing through the smoke though I knew it was stupid. I might have just laid back and let it have me for all the good it did.

I pushed myself up with my elbows and struggled upright, smoke pouring into my every orifice, though it didn’t sting or choke me, even as it filmed my eyes and stormed my nostrils and pervaded my mouth. I felt nothing now, nothing at all but for It and his bizarre lack of fight.

A havoc of pictures pouring through my mind, viewed as if from the wrong end of a telescope. A small girl with hair like starlight bouncing on a lap. Dark-haired men, several of them, but one featured prominently and he was beckoning me or It or someone, his eyes like burning coal, hair like an ink spill, a crooked smile perforated with sharpish canines that would charm every one of those gigglers back in Monde’s End. I knew he couldn’t be entirely human because something red flared in his eyes, as though a flame leapt within them.

Memories or visions? Whatever they were, It seemed to like them. But the images were growing fainter and something told me fainter wasn’t good; it meant he was draining away somehow, and he ignored me when I called for him, disregarded my fear in a way I knew he would never do.

I stood. The smoke matched my movements as if it were a grotesque version of my own shadow. I could run, and it would follow me like some monstrous halo all the way to the exit, but would It still be there when I made it?

The creature was faster than you would expect smoke to be, It had said, but how fast, exactly? Faster than three sprigs of alcerin? Could it outmaneuver the agility of wulfsnare? The light was growing brighter at both pinpricks in the distance that marked the ends of the tunnel. Daylight would come soon if I could only make it out.

Are you okay? I shouted down the fraying connection as I fumbled for the herbs in my bag. I did not expect a response and I did not get one as peppermint and incense broke out across my tongue. My heart responded instantly to the alcerin; the roar of my blood filled my ears. Wulfsnare was sneakier, guiding my feet in a dizzy, complicated quickstep which confused the creature enough for me to duck out from under it and race away, running as fast as I did whenever It was at the helm. I burst out at the end of the tunnel, my satchel banging against my back, clean air rushing into my lungs.

I didn’t chance a look over my shoulder to see if the smoke had somehow breached the dawn to give chase. I just ran, ran as if my life depended on it, though I didn’t think it did. I felt it more likely that it was Its life in the balance.

Flying over rocks and earth and grass, gray and green blurs flashing past on both sides, I wondered if any demon who may have spotted me would mistake me for one of them. Are you okay? I repeated every minute or so, vaulting over deadfalls and dodging trees with an unnatural agility. Are you there?