It was well past midnight and the only light within the cave beneath Annie’s secret clearing was the acidic-green luminescent moss and its reflection on the stagnant pool beneath it.
“Changed your mind about joining me, Doctor?” Annie said. The words echoed strangely around the corrugated oblong expanse and the lake’s surface.
“It wasn’t a change of mind so much as a change of insurance. Sandy knows I’m down here.” I left my shoes, a hand towel, and a change of clothes near the hole in the roof I had descended from. I padded over to the poolside.
“How wise,” Annie said. I could hear his mocking smile disappear beneath the water’s surface as the green reflection on his hair dropped lower.
“Hey,” I said, smacking the crest of his head with my foot. I waited for his ungraceful reentry from below the depths and for him to snort water out his nose. “You were the one who invited me. Don’t wisecrack or I’ll put my sweatpants back on.” I didn’t like wearing shorts. My knees were already knobby-looking with jeans on, and the damp cave air just made them quiver.
Water lapped at the sides of the pool as Annie swam back from the edge to allow me some room.
“I still don’t understand why you’re so obsessed with this place,” I muttered, dabbing a toe into the frigid blackness.
“That is the point of this exercise,” he replied. I smiled at the choked quality of his speech, knowing my kick had sent at least a bit of water down his throat.
I sat on the edge of the pool, cringing as the water washed over my hands and thighs. “It’s cold as shit! How do you do this?”
“Get in all at once, and the movement will warm you up.”
“I guess I meant ‘why do you do this?’”
“I already said, ‘you’ll see.’”
In the past, Annie had gone out of his way to climb back into the pool regardless of his health and wellbeing. His skin had been so fractured and waterlogged, his body so comatose, that mushrooms had actually managed to grow on his skin and moss in his hair.
Since I’d healed his decaying body, he could no longer support his corpse agriculture project. Now he was forced to grow a garden of mushrooms deeper within the solace of the cave, where a tiny fracture within the earth allowed indirect light to hit the caps.
Despite taking up a less destructive hobby, he still occasionally ventured into the pool to fall unconscious in the sweep of its magic. He told me he could talk to his ancestors through it. I would believe it when I saw it.
I pushed off the stone and slipped within the depths like a knife into its sheath. When I resurfaced the air froze my cheeks and I was panting for breath, shaking in the tiny divot I had made for myself within the water.
“Move around more,” Annie said. His slickened hair reflected luminescence as he drew a tight lap through the lake. It was very deep, but at a guess, only ten feet across.
My teeth chattered. “Cold—So cold!” I managed. It felt like I needed to keep my limbs pulled tight to keep the warmth preserved at my center. My feet moved in tight circles to keep me afloat.
It took a while for my body to adjust before I could say anything beyond a couple words at a time. “When are we going to see the spirits?” I asked.
“When you stop complaining.”
Annoyance rivaled the chill rising up my body, making me shudder.
“Good.” He rested against the far side of the pool. “Now, get out of the water.”
“What? Why did you make me get in?” I spat.
“Because I thought it would wash away your sarcasm.”
“Wonderful,” I said, shaking my head as I climbed out.
“Clearly, I was mistaken.”
“Mhm.” I was barely listening, overtaken by a seething irritation.
“No, it was necessary for the ritual,” he said. “Whereas I am taking a voyage, you,”—He raised his leg out of the water and pointed his toe at me—“are taking a vacation.”
“Put your dirty foot away,” I grumbled. My teeth were chattering.
The foot sunk below the surface. “You can start a fire now, if you need it.”
“Of course I need it,” I spat.
As I got to work attempting to light the damp sticks in the pyre, he told me how things would go. I would fall asleep, still soaked in the magical water and that would be enough to allow me a short trip into the spirit realm. Once my clothes dried, I should wake up from the coma like normal, but just in case, Sandy was instructed to check on me tomorrow morning.
“Shit!” I said as the soaked hem of my shirt wept onto the embers that had started to smoke. They went out.
“What do you plan to do when you are there?” Annie asked.
I paused the wringing out of my shirt. “I want to ask the recently deceased kin if they know anything about a face-changer or if anyone from the Tribe of the Calling Owls can give me more background information on Vermillionsky.”
“And what will you do with this background information?”
I rearranged the tinder and picked up the flintstone. “I will either learn enough about them to read their minds, which would make it impossible for them to hide whether or not they are the killer...”
“Or…?”
“Or, at the very least I will know why they left in the first place. If one of them was banished, say, for killing someone, then that narrows down our search drastically.”
“Very clever.” There was no sarcasm in his voice.
“And what will you do when you’re on your ‘voyage’? I imagine you want me to wake you up?”
“Give me at least a week to do what I need to.”
“Which is…?” The fire lit and I threw my flint aside.
He didn’t immediately respond, so I waited, crouched by the tiny orange warmth.
“I am going to the Nightlands to talk to Asphyxia.”
“Pfft…” I said. “You’re going to talk to a god?”
The Nightlands was the name for the territory where Asphyxia’s garden and castle lay. It was supposed to be deep within the center of the spirit realm, where the Black Forest and the White Prairie collided. It was aptly named, for it was a shadowy place where the souls who did not deserve a peaceful death were tortured under a sky of forever-night.
“I’ve talked to gods before,” he reminded me.
Sometimes I forgot that most of the moonkin of the six tribes had the privilege to meet some of the gods on their fourteenth birthday. Annie was only here because he wanted to protect Jacky on her journey to the Beyond, not because he had been fated to live here.
The way Annie’s arms were relaxed along the poolside behind him, I could see the sharp shape of the gemstone mark embedded in his upper arm. The lost mark was usually hidden by the sleeve of his shirt.
He shouldn’t even have one of those. He chose to come here with Jacky, he chose to never go back.
“It’s not as great as you’d expect,” he continued. “Talking to the gods, I mean.”
I crawled over to the wall and leaned against its cold surface, stretching my legs near the fire. “Yeah, well, it’s better than being banished,” I muttered.
“Not necessarily. It depends on who you’re banished with.”
I sighed and shook my head. “You’re not talking about me, are you?”
He shrugged. “I’m not entirely not talking about you.”
“Keep saying stuff like that and I’ll start to think you love me or something.”
He chuckled. Then quietly, “Good night, Chrissa.”
“Good night.”
It took a while for me to fall asleep. The fire finally warmed me up enough to stop me from shivering, but my clothes were still uncomfortable and damp when I finally drifted off.
The first thing I saw was a dark blue jelly-like substance surrounding me. I was standing. When did I stand up? And I wasn’t in the cave anymore. I wasn’t really anywhere. Everything around me was a grey blur.
The floating blue substance congealed into a human-like shape. My shape. As I found myself able to move my limbs, they were a cobalt blue in tint and waded through the air like astronauts in zero gravity.
Where am I?, I thought.
I tried to get my eyes to focus on my surroundings but I felt like I was nearsighted and everything was too far away to make out. I was the only color in the world.
After a moment, a coral-orange point of light appeared in the space in front of me. It expanded until it was as large as I was and twice the width. One by one, colors faded into existence within the shape of light. White fleece. A green poncho. A brown nose. Yellow eyes with pink lids. Bronze bells dangling around the figure’s wide waist.
My mouth fell open. Was this a god?
It was a humanoid figure with the legs, horns, and facial features of a ram. Their hands were clasped together in front of them, their rectangular pupils swimming in a golden serenity.
“Chrissa,” the figure said with a meditative voice.
“Y—yes?”
“It is not your time. You have work to do, I am sure.”
“What do you mean?”
“You are a caterpillar yet to molt, Chrissa,” said the god. “Your time will come, but it has not yet arrived. May your time arise for conciliation, regardless of your faith.”
“Can’t you be more blunt?” I complained. “Conciliation of what?”
But it was too late. I woke up to Sandy’s gentle cooing as she shook my shoulder. “It’s mid-afternoon, Chrissa. You need to wake up.
”