Chương 311: placid island; black infinity - 2-1.7

Muadhnait wasn't very pleased that I'd met her goddess in a dream. (I was, though mostly because I'd won.) She didn't hide her distress very well — which was an impressive feat, for a woman hiding every other inch of herself inside a full-body suit of magically sealed armour. She was first to spot the absence of the statue, after myself; our Templar Nun clanked like a miniature car accident as she woke up, drew one of her swords, and sprinted over toward the empty plinth on the little projecting jut of headland.

What she thought she was going to achieve with that sword, I had no idea. Perhaps people who carry swords around suffer from the same affliction as those who own only hammers. I wouldn't know, because I've got two hands, and I only need one of those to carry a knife. Muadhnait's panic woke the others — Kimberly with a start, Tenny with a wonderfully soothing brrrt-brrt, Casma with a yawn and a stretch.

Kimberly started to panic too, which was so cute I could have bitten her cheeks, but neither of those things would help right then, so I went ahead and told everybody an abbreviated version of what had happened; that turned out to be a mistake, because Kimberly's panic didn't go away, it just changed tone. We were not under attack — hooray — but we might have been metaphysically interfered with — boo. Don't ask me, I wasn't the one going wide-eyed and starting to hyperventilate.

Casma got up and rubbed Kimberly's back. Which was the right thing to do, but I should have been the one to do it. Muadhnait clanked around by the plinth for a while until Kimberly waved her back over, so I could repeat myself to our local expert. Dawn was breaking over the ruined village, quite unlike dawn on Earth; the light was rich and syrupy, cast by a thing that was not a sun. Long streamers of bruised purple rippled behind the thick cloud cover.

Bleeding bites of pinkish froth churned and settled in the skies, like chunks gnawed from the skin of a mutant fruit. Low red light glinted off the plates and helm of Muadhnait's dull grey armour; her visor slit was a slice of night, preserved against the sunrise.

"And then I woke up," I finished.

"Morning was here. Morning is here. Very efficient. Five stars. Ten out of ten." Kimberly was pacing back and forth in a tight circle, struggling not to grit her teeth (not good for you, Kim, don't do that), and gripping at her own arms, (did you need something in them, Kim? I could see you shivering. The whole world could see you shivering.) Tenny kept flexing her wings and staring up at the sky with those big black eyes; Casma sat by her, on one of the big logs, holding her hand to keep her grounded.

"No no no no no no," Kimberly hissed; her eyes kept going left and right, left and right, left and right, like she was watching a miniature tennis match.

"No, this is— this is really, really, really bad. That— that statue, that was your, like, patron saint, or something? Muadhnait? Is that right? We've angered a saint, or … a … a …

""Deity?" Casma supplied, bright-eyed and full of smiles.

"'God' is a bit boring and implies objectively divine status, so perhaps we should stick with deity. Diet deity. Dusty deity. Was the statue very dusty? There's not a lot of wind around here. Oh! Maybe there was wind in the night and that's why she went over the cliff? Do deities go walkabout? Do dusty dames in darkness get disturbed by drafts?" Kimberly gave Casma what my sister would have described as a 'capital-L look', but either Kim wasn't very good at it, or Casma was too complicated to be told off.

She smiled and smiled and smiled. Muadhnait's armoured hands hesitated over half-formed signs: "She — you — lie — dream — certainty — madness/tainted," (which was the same word.) Then she gave up and spread her arms.

"It was only a dream," I said.

"Dreams are dreams. Why does it have to mean anything?" Kimberly made a sound in her throat that actually made me feel bad, because she wasn't the one I was being sarcastic at. She turned on me and actually stared, which was sort of impressive. (Seriously, well done, Kim. You can stare at me any time you need more practice. I won't tell.) "Maisie," she said, and I could hear her fraying inside.

"Maisie, the statue. It's gone! How can that just be a dream!? We turn up here and it just walks off? I would still be worried about this even if you hadn't had the dream at all!" I looked into Kimberly's eyes.

"It'll be okay, Kim. It was just a dream." Kim couldn't hold my gaze. Muadhnait finally located her words. Her fingers clicked through a rapid set of signs: "Our Lady of the Forded Briar spoke to you? You're certain she spoke to you?"

"It was only a dream." Muadhnait shook her head, dome-shaped helmet rotating back and forth.

"She spoke to you? You are certain?"

"There were words." … I hadn't told the whole truth; sometimes things that happen in the night stay in the night. I've told you the whole truth, of course, because you weren't there. Your opinion of the metaphysical specifics of whatever had transpired between me and the Briar-bitch is of absolutely no import to what happened next. You get the whole thing, gristle and guts and grunting and all.

You get the spear in my belly, and the way it felt to be opened and all pink and wet and meaty inside; you get the way she laughed at me when I cut off her tip, and the fact it was lodged deep in my imagined flesh when the dream crashed to a close. Muadhnait and Kimberly and Tenny got an edited version. I gave them the gist, because holding back important information gleaned in dreams is really more Heather's speed, and that habit never served her well.

Never say that I learned nothing from my beloved sister; I did, just not the things some prying eyes hoped I had. So, I told them about Our Supposed Lady and the things she'd said, but not about her (not-)spear, or the way she'd used it, or how I had answered with my knife. Girls shoving things inside each other is a private matter, after all. Casma knew. I avoided her eyes all morning, but I could see it in the way she crinkled at me.

She knew I had more than I'd said out loud, and she had a laugh in her look, as if she'd heard it on the gossip grapevine. I didn't mention the giggling darkness at all; what had passed between me and the night itself was still between me and the night. (You're welcome.) … Casma was saying, "What if it was Maisie's naughty Mimic? M-N-M. Can we call her that? What if it was something playing fancy dress, not the real deity at all? What if she did a sneaky in the night and blew dreams into Maisie's ear?

It might not have been a diet deity in the dark." Muadhnait shook her head. She signed, "The fairies would not dare impersonate her."

"Hmmmmmmm." Casma smiled a very complicated smile. Kimberly rallied suddenly, pointing at the absence on the little headland.

"Could the 'fairies' have broken the statue? Thrown it over the cliff in the night? They must have done! That's the only explanation, it's the only—" Muadhnait signed, "No fairy or freak or night-walker would dare offend Our Lady. None would touch her." Muadhnait paused.

"None but Outsiders." Kimberly turned a most gooey shade of grey.

"We— we— we didn't do this! We were all asleep, all night! How could any of us have moved a whole statue like that? Muadhnait, we did not do this. A-and we wouldn't disrespect your gods or saints or anything like that. Come on, Cas, Tenny, we wouldn't, would we? Maisie? Please back me up here." Muadhnait hesitated a moment (don't think I didn't see that sneaky little look toward Tenny, you paranoid nun), then signed: "I intended no accusation."

"Yes you did," I said. I stood up and unwrapped my kitchen knife; Kimberly had asked me for back up, but that was a problem, because the one thing I wasn't feeling any more was backed up. Muadhnait's hands hesitated aside, as if about to go for one of her swords. Her crossbow still lay in several pieces, on the other side of the ashes of the fire. Cerise sunrise glinted off the blade of my knife. I turned it one way, then the other, so Muadhnait could see.

"I'm the one who had the dream," I said.

"Dream me a chip in this blade and I'll dream you up a pair of severed stone ankles. This wouldn't cut through stone anyway. Unless you're a stone-cold moron. Are you?" Kimberly grimaced like she'd been punched in the gut, but she didn't hiss my name (a small disappointment). Casma went, "Ooooh!" Tenny giggled, which was a sound that could have soothed a gut wound. Muadhnait accepted that. She signed an apology and spread her hands. I put my knife away. Kimberly said, "But, wait, what does this mean?

Has Maisie been … warned off? Blessed? Cursed? What?" Muadhnait signed, "I do not know. Our Lady of the Forded Briar does not deign to address those who dream."

"I'm fine," I said. That was a lie, because I was so much more than fine. If it hadn't been for the others I would have stretched myself out like a cat and rubbed myself on the ground. … I'd gone to sleep that previous night feeling like shit — and not because I was sleeping out in the open, wrapped in a thin blanket, far away from home. I felt terrible because Casma had wormed her way into my head and forced me to play a role I didn't want.

Her little 'heart-to-heart' had peeled vile, wriggling things off the inside of my carbon fibre chassis, and then held them over the fire until they had squealed; she knew about my jealousy now (envy, yes, fine!), and that made every sidelong look from her mean more than I could bear. She had cracked me open and eaten bits of me in the only way my body could not endure. I had been shelled and violated and fallen asleep in a terrible mood. But when I'd woken, none of that had mattered.

The short and bloody exchange of fluids with Our Lady of the Forded Briar had filled me with deep and lasting satisfaction, just like her spear had filled my guts. It was a bit like waking up tangled in Heather, a bit like the feelings I got when I was forced into close proximity with Raine (though lacking the self-disgust), and a bit like the aftermath of staring at anime girls on the internet. So I didn't give a shit about Casma trying to work her fingers into my head. I wanted a rematch with the Briar-bitch.

And next time she better use more than just the tip, or I'd hilt my knife in that stone flesh. … We 'investigated' the missing statue some more, because of course we did. That's what sensible people do when something clearly supernatural has taken place — stick their noses into the aftermath to see if anything additional gets burned off. Kimberly and Tenny and Casma might have been on the periphery of my sister's antics, but they had picked up the same habits, and I was too blissed-out to put up a proper argument.

But there was nothing to investigate, no clues to uncover. There were no footprints burned into the grass where I had dreamed the Briar-bitch walking like a shard of broken star. There was no patch of bloodstains from the guts I didn't have. I sniffed the air, hoping for a hint of that burned-metal perfume, but there was only the scent of our fire and the dry grass.

Muadhnait started by doing a circuit of the village and checking the ruined cottages, poking her crossbow into the corners, in case the statue had crept indoors for the night. Then she and Kimberly puzzled over the plinth for a while — the feet of the statue had left behind no impression, no damage where they had detached from the stone.

Muadhnait eyed Tenny briefly, then signed a question about Tenny's capacity for flight; Kimberly said no, Tenny would not fly, not to check the edge of the cliff for any sign of the missing statue. Tenny was not given an opportunity to answer for herself. Casma held her hand. Her wings shivered with a need we all knew would be far too dangerous to slake. (I'm sorry, Tenns. You deserved better. We all should have known better.) In the end Muadhnait had to check over the precipice of the headland by herself.

She went down on her belly, crawling in her armour, to peer over the side of the cliff. A devoted believer, without an ounce of dignity to lose; but her goddess wasn't down there, smashed to bits or otherwise. While the others were occupied poking at stone and peering at the obsidian ocean, I checked myself for damage, when nobody was looking. My abdomen was untouched — both the fake flesh over the top and the hard layer of carbon fibre beneath. No spear-hole. Just a dream. I checked between my legs, too.

Are you surprised? No, not at that; you've been with me for long enough now that you can't possibly mistake me for an innocent. I may not have felt like an adult, but I felt plenty of adult between my legs; the Good Doctor Martense had made sure I had room for that equipment, if I wanted it. And I could think of one very obvious adult organ that a spear may have stood in for. But there was no damage down there, no matter how I groped my own cunt. I wasn't even a little sore.

"Maisie?"

"Mm?" I took my hand out of my skirt before I turned around and answered Kimberly.

"Yes?"

"You … you tutted? I thought you might have found something. No?"

"Nothing. Just frustrated." After about twenty minutes of buggering around looking for the missing statue, Muadhnait gave up. Everybody drifted back to the remains of the fire. Nobody had slept well, except me. Possibly Muadhnait had, but who could tell through all that armour? She sure wasn't showing us her eye bags. Muadhnait rekindled a corner of the fire and set about making some breakfast — more handfuls of dry grain from her pack, added to water and brought almost to a boil in her little collapsible pot.

Those who needed calories and hydration did the thing with calories and hydration. Casma and I refrained, though Casma accepted a long drink of water. Muadhnait stared at me for a while.

"Everyone's gonna be so worried by now," Kimberly said after she swallowed her last mouthful of food.

"We've been gone for … what, a whole day? Twelve hours? More?"

"More than twelve," said Casma.

"But less than twenty four. The sweet spot for spotting sweets." Tenny trilled, "Cass, what does that even mean?"

"I don't know!" Casma smirked. Tenny went brrrr-rrrr, which was sort of like a giggle. Casma was doing something right. I forgave her for the nonsense. Kimberly nodded along to something inside her own head.

"Twelve hours, more than twelve hours. I should … I should be at work. Oh goddess, I'm gonna lose my job over this. I'm gonna lose my job. And I like my job. I actually like it! It's the first thing I've ever done that isn't completely terrible, and now I'm gonna lose it. I'm … I'm gonna … I …" Tenny said, "Kimmy-Kims. Auntie Evee won't throw you out." Kimberly looked up at Tenny. They made eye contact in a way I never really could. Kimberly managed to smile.

"O-of course not. Of course, Tenny. I-I'm sorry. I'm just so …" Kimberly let out a huge sigh and raked her hands through her hair.

"I can't believe this is happening to us. I just can't. I need a smoke so bad right now." Tenny let out a soft brrrrt.

"Lozz-mums will be worried too. Mmmmm." Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there. Casma squeezed Tenny's hand.

"She knows I'm here with you, Tenns! Getting by with a little help from your friends," she sang.

"Right?"

"Rrrrrright," Tenny trilled.

"Rightyyyyyy."

"Heather will find us," I said.

"We just have to deal with the Mimic." And I didn't doubt that for a second. … A paradox, isn't it? I wasn't afraid, because I knew that Heather would come for me, even though I knew more than I was saying. Kimberly seemed to have forgotten it, while Casma had not mentioned it, and I assumed Tenny had been sworn to silence by Casma. The Mimic's words from the previous day were a glaring streak of shit in this fantasy soup; she had not intended to bring Kimberly here.

Something was not as simple about this situation as my faith in my sister suggested. But that didn't matter. My sister was (and is) a universal constant — the only universal constant on which I could truly rely. It did not matter what details I had missed. It did not matter that I was lying to myself by willpower and lying to the others by omission. Water is wet. The sky is up. Heather would come for us. Unless up was down and black was white. The human capacity for cognitive dissonance is remarkable, isn't it?

I had mastered it, even without a brain. … As the others ate and talked, I took my mobile phone out of my pocket, so I could spend a few minutes staring at pictures of anime girls. Then I realised I couldn't do that — I was restricted to whatever I had already saved. Yuno stared back from my phone's wallpaper; I thumbed through a few others in the gallery. Seventy four percent battery remained. My usual morning routine was impossible. No wifi Outside. No internet in the fairy realm.

A whole crop of new illustrations was waiting for me online — fanart for all my favourites, and the occasional sneaky original — but I couldn't access any of it. Browsing the new additions was one of the best highlights of each morning; some I would show to Heather, while some I would share with Evelyn (and she always saw them, because she's too stubborn to turn off pings. Ping-ping-ping, Evee. P-p-p-p-ping! Tell me off for spamming you, go on, you know you want to.) But some were just for me — the kind of illustrations that would make steam shoot from my sister's ears, or have her complaining about the limits of feasible anatomy. (I might be flat as a board, but I appreciate the opposite more than most.) Out here there was only sunlight and ruins and the ashes of the fire. No tea, no breakfast, no creaking of an old house beneath my feet. It didn't bother me that much. It didn't. Did not. Like a grain of sand stuck between the plates of my body. The others had it worse.

Kimberly probably wanted a shower, (though you didn't stink, Kim. Not in the slightest. Promise. Cross my heart and hope to die, you smelled divine.) Tenny seemed restless despite Casma's best efforts — tentacle-tips plucking at the air and twisting into each other, like a human picking at their cuticles. I had no idea how Casma spent her mornings; perhaps she was missing her mother. She didn't show it, smiling and wiggling her legs, fiddling with the hem of her skirt, eager to be off.

"Miss Muadhnait," Kimberly was saying.

"In light of, uh … t-this —" she gestured at the empty plinth over on the little headland "— do you need to adjust your plans?" Muadhnait shook her head, dome-shaped helmet sliding back and forth. She signed, "No. I must rescue my sister. Nothing can change that now." Kimberly shot me a glance full of doubt. I shrugged. What did she want me to do?

"T-then we'll … we'll keep on accompanying you," Kimberly said.

"Thank you for sharing your food and water. We … uh … we would be in trouble without that." Muadhnait signed something about charity. Kimberly said.

"Do you think it's much further to the castle?" Muadhnait hesitated, then signed, "With haste and caution we should reach the outer gate before the close of afternoon. I have maps and blueprints of the innards, but they are likely flawed and out of date. I plan to camp at the gate tonight. It will be a more exposed position. There will be more danger. But I cannot brave the stone itself by dark. If you wish to turn back now, you may still reach safety before nightfall." Kimberly tried not to sigh.

(She shouldn't have bothered.)"The Mimic is mine," I said.

"We're not turning back."

"Bravo," Casma murmured. We broke camp just before sunrise finished rising, when the brilliant colours started to fade away to the heavy grey of day. Muadhnait carried the leftover logs back to the large cottage built into the cliff side — "For the next who might need this refuge." Kimberly tried to bustle around, getting Tenny and Casma ready to go again, but there was nothing with which to bustle.

It wasn't as if we had luggage or packs or anything to carry, nothing except my knife; I watched Kimberly as she just stopped, hands empty, with nothing to do. Muadhnait returned and made sure the fire was out. Casma waited with her hands linked with Tenny, all smiley smiling smiles. Tenny looked oddly content. I unwrapped and re-wrapped my kitchen knife, and offered my shawl to Kimberly (and got rejected). Finally Muadhnait strapped her pack onto her back and her pouches to her belt.

She kicked apart the ring of salt — "So it does not go rotten inside." As we left the ruined village, I kept glancing back at the beautiful corpse — at that hidden cluster of cottages with their tumbledown stones tucked into a curl of cliff side. As the others entered the gulley which led toward the tunnel through the wall, I pulled out my phone and took several photographs. If you look hard enough, you might even find them. (Sorry, Evelyn. I know, I know, Outside is Outside and has to stay Outside, but I couldn't resist. You've seen it. You know. Do you want to punish me for being a bad girl?) We entered the gulley and reached the tunnel through the wall. Another long walk in the damp dark chill, and then we were out the other side.

The second leg of our quest for the Mimic's castle was a little easier on the legs than the first — the landscape still rose toward the great rocky crest which hung above the flat black plane of the obsidian sea, but it rose in gentler waves than yesterday's ascent, like we had entered the edge of a tilted tableland. Muadhnait led our little troop through undulating hillsides of clean grass, threading us past overgrown copses of shiny, thorned bush, and beneath the occasional stunted emissaries of the giant trees.

The landscape fell further away behind us and far to our left, eventually revealing that the giant's wood where we had started was a single exploratory finger of a vast forest that swallowed the horizon. We were too far away and too far up to make out real details, but it seemed like only the infinite coastal strip was clear of trees — and several distant bulges deep in the woods, so far off they were drowned in haze, perhaps other areas of soaring high ground. A fey forest, as far as the eye could see.

You could hear it creaking on the wind, like the lungs of a breathing planet. If you are lucky enough to have never been confined for an extended period, then I cannot make you understand with words what it feels like to stand on the roof of a world and see to the curve of the horizon. I had my sister's memories of freedom, but they were pale shadows compared to this. You don't get it. I don't expect you to. Or maybe you do. In which case, I'm sorry. Casma and Tenny chattered on. Kimberly and I brought up the rear.

We broke at mid-morning, then again for lunch, but not for long. Muadhnait was eager to reach the castle's feet before darkness. We saw plenty of other weird sights on that second day, none of which turned out to be important, but you're hungry for more, aren't you? This is what Heather would do — drown you in all the little things she'd seen, adding to half of them with speculation, to the other half with lack of precision. What did we spot?

A distant promontory of rock held a jutting building in whose windows glowed strange green lights casting the shadows of cavorting imps. Another giant centipede scuttled off between the hills as we approached a cleft in the ground, prompting Muadhnait to draw her crossbow and wait until she was certain it wouldn't return. Once we had to pause behind a curl of rock while something big and heavy stomped by us about fifty feet away, reeking of oil and grease like a lost machine.

We spotted a dead tree covered in carvings; Muadhnait told us not to look. We sighted a ring of stones ahead; Muadhnait led us on a wide detour, so we would not come too close. Casma thought she saw something following us — perhaps a dog, hiding amid the rocky outcrops. Muadhnait said that would be welcome; dogs should not be alone. Animals were rare this far out into a dangerous region. Ahead of us, the Mimic's castle grew in size as the day wore on, ruining the view and threatening to sour my mood.

Black slabs of stone dressed in a gown of white lace, shoulders and waist draped with streamers of thick mist, gormless face frozen in rock. It stood right on the edge of the upper rocky headland as if contemplating a picturesque suicide on the cliffs below; I amused myself for a while by imagining the shattered body of the thing scattered across the surface of the obsidian ocean. Would one of those stones shatter the glassy black, or bounce off like a rubber ball? My sister would have found it beautiful.

She would have waxed poetic and then waned purple, comparing the castle with a woman — a fairy princess awaiting us on a precipice, hiding her face behind a veil of mist. Perhaps you think it's beautiful, too. All right. Maybe it was. I don't care. I had a better woman on my mind. Our Lady of the Forded Briar was everywhere.

At first I caught glimpses peripheral — her stony face peering from around the trunk of a tree, the hem of her flowing dress fluttering off behind a tangle of thorns, a saucy hint of spear-shaft poking out from over the next rise, or maybe a phantom whiff of burning metal lingering in the air. None of the others noticed. Muadhnait didn't stop and draw her crossbow. Casma didn't make interested noises. I kept those sightings for myself, just as I had kept the details of the dream. My silence roused her ardour.

The glow of the sun behind the clouds became her burning nuclear gaze. The tickle of the grass on my bare feet was her fingertips climbing my calves to places they shouldn't. The wind was a whisper that I couldn't decode, brushing against my ears, daring me to murmur back. The hills we crested were the swell of her buttocks and breasts, solid enough to bite into.

The tongue of giant's forest on the distant valley floor was the thatch of her pubic hair between her legs — which raised the question, where was her cunt? Would I find it there beneath me, if I unwrapped my knife and stuck it into the dirt? When we took a break to eat lunch, I tried doing that. Nothing happened.

"Ummmm," Kimberly said. (Is that a sound one 'says'; whatever, she said it.) "Maisie? Are you trying to … to dig a hole?"

"Blunting your knife," Casma said.

"A blunted knife is a blunted life. Ohhh, I'll have to remember that one."

"Just testing something," I said. I pulled the knife out of the ground — just the tip — and wiped the dirt off before wrapping it back up again.

"Testing … w-what?" Kimberly pressed.

"Maisie, please, if there's something else, then we need to know. We really need to know. We've been here almost a whole day now, or … more than a whole day. If there's something weird going on …" She trailed off when I looked at her. I didn't feel like explaining that I was trying to follow up on a one-night stand. Should I have told Kimberly the whole truth? Would it have made any difference? How could I have explained it? Unlike my sister, I wasn't afraid of being seen as insane.

What I was seeing was no hallucination, even though the wisps of Our Lady were never there when we reached her, and the landscape had not responded to two inches of steel up inside it.

I was not seeing things, or going mad, or losing my mind; I was reading the truth which unfolded itself in the sum of all the parts of this world — and those parts added up to a bloody great spear-maiden with nuclear fire behind her eyes. Those who cannot recognise patterns cannot be taught to do so. If you want to get where I am standing, you have to make the journey yourself. Or maybe you think I'm insane. Tell yourself whatever you want. I don't care.

I didn't seek out Kimberly's hand on that second leg of the journey, though we did hold together for a while. She took the initiative, which wasn't particularly cute, because it told me she was only doing it because she thought I wanted that. I did want it, but that's not the point. … Do you think I'm a slut? No, really. You can answer. I won't be angry. Tell me the truth — do you think I'm a slut? If you don't, perhaps you should.

The previous day I wanted Kimberly more than anything; this day I was distracted by the aftermath of a dream sticking her rod all up in my guts, and Kimberly was just somebody near and cute and worth hanging onto. Yesterday morning I'd been all about the Mimic, and I was going to be all about her again later, whatever happened. She was cute in a different way. But Briar-Bitch was not cute — no, not at all, regardless of the stony skin and the height she had on me, she simply wasn't my type. She just wasn't cute.

But I wanted another round, regardless. … I'd love to tell you the rest of that journey was uneventful, but that would be two lies. I might be a slut, but I'm not much of a liar. Less than an hour after lunch, Muadhnait paused on the edge of a large flat plain — like a mountain meadow stretched out between the hillsides. Almost none of the tangled thorny bushes grew here, just patches of long grass in low waves.

A big rocky outcrop dominated the middle of the field like a little fortress, but the rest of the ground was level and soft and empty. On Earth somewhere like this should have been filled with sheep or goats. The Mimic's castle was close now — perhaps an hour or two away, the headland looming above us. Muadhnait stopped and looked back the way we'd just come — a tangle of deep ravines and rolling hills. She unhooked her crossbow, but she didn't signal for silence. Kimberly reacted like a spooked cat.

"What? What? Uh, Tenns, Cassy, come— come here, come here, now! By me, please. Now!"

"Brrrrrt, what's it? What's seen?" Tenny went up on tiptoes to look in the same direction as Muadhnait, but Casma pulled her by the hand, over to the dubious shelter of Kimberly's backside. I unwrapped my kitchen knife. Muadhnait stood like that for over a minute — I counted — then rested her crossbow on her waist and signed to us.

"We are being hunted." Kimberly's face did one of the most delicious things I'd ever seen, which made me regret I hadn't been holding her hand more often. Who needed some ephemeral tart made of hills and trees when you could have that face beneath you in bed? I felt like a fool.

"W-what?" Kimberly hissed. She groped for Tenny and Casma, trying to hold their hands.

"What— what— what do you mean, hunted?! By what? How do you know that?"

"Oh," said Casma.

"I thought so too. I wasn't imagining it, then. Yay." Poor Kim didn't know where to look.

"What!?" Casma's pleasure was not catching — Tenny looked worried too. Her tentacles were all out, waggling in the air. Her wings kept twitching. Muadhnait signed: "Something has been following us since just before lunch. I cannot tell what it is, but it is not a dog. It hangs back like an animal hunting for prey, but it has followed us through convolutions no predator would attempt, and it has declined every chance to approach that a poor hound would accept. I believe it is a minion, sent by the fairy."

Kimberly swallowed.

"O-okay. So … you've got a crossbow, and those swords. You can … you can stop it, right?" Muadhnait hesitated. That was the wrong answer for Kimberly; it made her face get worse. Muadhnait signed, "It has kept out of sight so far. But when we cross this open space it will be forced to reveal itself, lest it fall too far behind and lose our trail. We will see it soon. Please be ready."

"Ready for what?" Kimberly hissed.

"F-for what!?"

"Knifing," said Casma.

"Don't," I said. Casma pouted the most complex pout it was possible to pout. I resisted the urge to bite the inside of my mouth; blood wouldn't help. Only yesterday Casma would have looked at me with a hurt in her face which would require a team of critics to unravel, but apparently she considered us friends now. You probably consider us friends too, don't you? Casma and I. Not you and I. We're not friends. (Not unless you try again.)"If the foe is beyond me," Muadhnait signed, "you must run."

Kimberly went very pale. Tenny held her hand, two tentacles wrapped around Kim's wrist. Casma just smiled. Kimberly shot me a look which could have been read by an illiterate chimpanzee, but I looked elsewhere, because there were no circumstances under which I was going to run. Muadhnait switched her position in our formation — she took what was now the rear, walking backward with slow steps, armoured boots sinking into the soft grass, crossbow cradled in her arms.

Kimberly and Tenny and Casma scurried behind her, heading toward the big rock formation in the middle of the meadow. I kept my knife out. I kept me to one side. I kept my options open. I wondered if this was not an enemy at all, but the Briar-bitch back for a rematch. We all watched the part of the landscape from which we had emerged, waiting for something horrible to creep around the crest of the hills. We almost reached the big rock, but then, there it was.

When it came, it was almost too far away to make out the details — which was a good thing, because that meant it was relatively small, no larger than a human being. A smudge of ivory white nosed out around a ravine-mouth parallel to our path, scuttling on a bunch of legs, body low to the ground. I tutted. Not the Briar Lady, then. She was playing hard to get, just like I was.

"What is that?" Kimberly hissed.

"W-what is that— no, wait, don't— don't take your hands off the crossbow to answer." Muadhnait wasn't silly enough to do that in the first place. She shouldered her crossbow. She waited. Tenny was emitting a low humming trill — a noise I'd never heard her make before, like a dog's growl, slowly rising in pitch. The white thing looked up. Perhaps it saw us seeing it. Perhaps it made a decision.

"Oh!" Casma said.

"Strings!" Then it scuttled toward us. It moved like a spider, shooting over the grass faster. In two seconds it looked like a spider as well — a pale, naked, humanoid body standing lengthwise on six whirring limbs. A long neck extended from the front, topped by a blank white ovoid for a head. Kimberly screamed. Tenny made a sound that was maybe a scream. Casma said, "Oh dear." Muadhnait loosed a bolt with a great big THWANG. (Yes, I insist, because that's the sound, and it's very loud.) The first bolt went high, whizzing over the spider's body, swishing into the grass. Muadhnait yanked the lever on the crossbow; the mechanism spanned the bow and slid a second bolt into place. THWANG the second — and the spider jinked aside, faster than the bolt. Muadhnait jerked out another reload, gauntlets slipping on the levers. THWANG! The third bolt hit the spider-thing's body, right in the middle of the torso, at a low angle.

Muadhnait had pulled off a small miracle — and no, I don't hold enough resentment to pretend she wasn't an incredible shot with that bow. She was. Sticking the spider-thing in the neck or head would have been difficult, but a body shot at that angle and speed was almost impossible. Well done, nun. An arm-span worth of steel went straight through the torso, lodged deep in the thing's body. Nothing happened. It didn't even bleed. Muadhnait dropped the crossbow and drew one of her swords.

Kimberly was pulling Casma and Tenny by the hands, shouting something very noble and proper, taking the first steps in a doomed escape. (She had seen how fast that thing moved, hadn't she? What use was running?) Tenny was making a sound like a small engine, her wings flickering and twitching, trying to rise from her back. Why did I just stand there? Why wasn't I rushing to assist Muadhnait in the moments before the spider reached her?

Because I'd already seen what it really was, just like Casma had, and I didn't want to use my knife on it. Call me sentimental and I'll use it elsewhere, though. The pale spider reached Muadhnait and reared up on two legs, trying to crash down on her or grab her with the big wide hands it had instead of feet; perhaps it intended to shuck her, like a big grey shellfish. When the Mimic had tried to ambush us from the air yesterday, we'd all seen Muadhnait wave her sword around.

Nothing more than a little toothpick action. I don't know anything about sword fighting. You'd have to ask Raine about the mechanics, (and she would be wrong most of the time because Raine gets her education from Youtube videos, unless you ask her about knife fighting, and knives are not just little swords.) But I didn't need expert knowledge to be impressed. The pale spider was very fast, hands lashing out at Muadhnait in a barrage of fists and hooks and grasping fingers.

Muadhnait did things with her sword that I didn't quite understand — I could follow them, I could see the way the blade moved, and I could have comprehended it all if I'd been willing to spend more of the girl I had once been (because sword fighting is a pattern like any other.) But even if I had done that, I doubted I would have understood in the way she did, with muscle and tendon and instinct.

Her sword was always in the way, always ready to block another blow, sometimes turning at angles that seemed impossible, but were not, because she was just a nun, and not a mage. Her sword met each blow with a loud, heavy thock-thock-thock of metal against wood. A few seconds of fancy sword-work later, the spider gave up trying to peel Muadhnait out of her shell. Three fists swung out, then arced back in, a trio of hammers aimed at her side. She couldn't block that.

Muadhnait went flying, head over heels, crashing to the ground with a clatter of armour, real sack of potatoes style. She didn't lose her sword and she didn't stop to dramatically cough blood through her visor, which was impressive if you understand anything about this sort of thing. She lurched halfway back to her feet; she would have gotten the sword up in time too, to take the follow-up blow before the spider-thing could beat her to death. But the pale spider didn't stop to pounce.

(If it had, I would have leapt on its back; I didn't like Muadhnait, but I wasn't going to leave the woman to die.) (No. Really. I wasn't. Believe what you want, but I'm not that cold. I'm not cold at all.) Instead, the pale spider shot right past Muadhnait — and then right past me. It went straight for Kimberly. That was when I became certain. This thing had been sent by my favourite little slut. My mercy only went so far.