Wildwood

14. The Witch and the Devil-2

“So, where are we exactly?” I ask.

“It’s an unincorporated bank-owned piece of property and has been pretty much since the Declaration of Independence,” she says with a snort. “Maris comes to this place when she wants to be alone.”

“How do you know about it?” I ask, searching for Unseen shadows. There’s no point. The forest is uniformly black. How does Vanessa see out here?

“Once I decided I wanted her help. I followed her everywhere. I learned about all of her hiding places. It might seem rude in our world, but I’ve learned it’s the way Unseens operate,” she explains. “The last time I saw her, she told me she’d be here the next time I needed her. Like I said, she knows we’re coming.”

I follow her in, and even though I can barely see my hand in front of my face without my flashlight, I somehow feel entirely exposed. The trees thin, and the ground turns soft under my feet. We step through a tangle of shrubbery, and then onto a sandy bank. Ahead of us runs a wide slow river, turned dark silver by reflecting the light from the moon. The opposite bank is nearly vertical.

“There’s a river on my property that eventually connects with this one,” Vanessa says, nodding at the water. “I’ve actually seen Maris in my yard before.”

“Does she kayak or something?” I ask.

“No.” Vanessa laughs. “I forget how much you still have to learn. Maris is an elemental Unseen, which means her elemental makeup is almost pure water. She can take a human form to speak to people, but she spends most of her time on this side of the veil as water. If she goes too long on this side of the veil without contacting water, she could die.”

“Who do we have here?” A woman’s voice rasps from close by. I spin around. A short woman stands ankle deep in the river, a silver hooded cape draped over her shoulders and trailing in the water. Her pale blue eyes glow in the dark, narrowing to slits as she stares at me. I startle at how similar her eyes look to my mothers. Their similarities begin and end there. Her skin is coal black and deeply wrinkled, reminding me of hardened lava, and flecked with tiny white dots like freckles. Her hair, by contrast, is white as snow. It hangs to her waist in waterfall curls, and is streaked with shades of silver and blue. A thin silver strip of metal coils around her throat. She brings her finger within a hair’s width of my coat, then snatches her hand away.

“You are something special, aren’t you?” she says. I hold my breath. I want to step back and bolt, but my feet remain frozen.

“That’s why we came,” Vanessa says, breaking the intense spell that had settled in the sliver of air between us. “But then you know that already, don’t you, Maris?”

“Let me take a look inside.” Maris stares straight through my eyes. Her pupils dilate so far that they blot out her pale irises. I can see myself on their surfaces. I look openly at myself for the first time in years: the sadness, the exhaustion, how young I appear… how old.

In her eyes, my reflection sharpens; my cheek bones become severe, my eyes shift into a wider set and double the size, my hair thick and black. It dances around my face, then swirls away as if driven by wind and the rest of me turns black. My face stretches long and morphs into a horse’s head. The horse throws it’s nose in the air and screams. I smother a gasp and shut my eyes, shaking and overwhelmed. Where have I seen that horse before? Why am I seeing it now?

“It’s you…” Maris murmurs, and her pupils recede.

“Me?” I ask, shrinking back.

“The girl chosen by the black horse, the soul Asher can’t break. The heart he can’t fool. It’s you.” A brisk wind kicks off the river face, sending my hair flying and a chill through my body. “Come, now. Let’s get you inside and I’ll tell you all that you need to know.” She leads me toward a little tent tucked between the limbs of a fallen tree at the water’s edge. Vanessa follows close behind us.

“Ah-ah, Bella. This one is not for you,” Maris scolds Vanessa. I expect Vanessa to argue. Instead, she steps back. I’ve never seen her concede to anyone. I cast her one last glance over my shoulder as Maris takes my hand and pulls me forward.

We step inside the little tent. Half of the floor is submerged in shallow water, and the other half is dry sand. There’s a thick blue blanket folded into a rectangle at the water’s edge. A weathered wooden chest is nestled in the corner. Crystal prisms dangle from the low ceiling. They catch light from somewhere, and paint dark rainbows all over the canvas walls. Maris strikes a match and brings it to the wick of an antique lantern. The rainbows fade a bit in the new light. With a start I realize that the prisms had been reflecting Maris. She takes a seat in the water. She motions for me to take a seat in front of her on the blanket.

What are you, exactly? I wonder as I lower myself to the ground.

“I am the hand in the undertow. I am the rainbow in the mist,” she responds.

“You can read my mind?” I ask, leaning away.

“I can read a lot of things,” she says. “You, though, reading what is right in front of you isn’t your gift.” She tilts her face, studying me. “You are standing on a chess board, dear girl, and the game is happening all around you.”

“What piece am I?” I ask, remembering what Vanessa said about Maris and preferring to speak in riddles.

“A pawn doesn’t worry about being a pawn, it worries about the pieces within striking distance. Any piece can be taken off the board by any other piece. There’s beauty in it, don’t you think?”

“I guess so,” I offer.

“There’s a reason the king can only move one space at a time, but it is important to remember he can move in any direction. He’s perhaps most deadly when he’s ahead of you. The queen however, the queen is the piece that is used best when she’s quiet and hides behind others; her reach so great, she can cross the board in a single turn if the way is clear.”

“Am I a queen or a pawn?’ I press, doing my best to keep up with her.

“Which piece you are isn’t nearly as important as making sure you’re choosing allies whose colors match yours.”

“I don’t know who to trust,” I admit aloud, grateful Vanessa isn’t in the tent to hear me say that. I didn’t even realize it was true until right now.

“Trust no one,” she says, leaning forward. “Only yourself and perhaps your mother,” she responds, sincerity touching her voice for the first time.

I tense. “My mother?”

“Yes, your mother,” she says with a knowing smile.

“Do you know my mother?” I ask sarcastically.

“We go way back,” she replies, a wistful smile drawing up her cheeks. I’m startled by her answer. She brings her thumb to her lips. When she drops her hand, she’s left a silver streak on her mouth. Immediately, I see the glass on the kitchen table, the streak of silver that I thought was lipstick.

“You were at my house. She called you a psychic.”

“She knows better than that,” she answers.

“How could she know what you are? She doesn’t believe in a world in the clear.”

“She didn’t come to me about a world in the clear. She came to me about you. I haven’t seen her in years, until very recently,”

“You saw her? Is she okay? Where did she go? Why did she leave?” I end in a whisper, seeing her letter in my mind.

“When Asher closes in, the fewer things you stand to lose, the safer you are. Your mother was a piece of wind and sky, and to the sky she returned in order to help you.”

“Are you… are you trying to tell me that my mom died?” I stammer, my throat squeezing with the threat of grief. Maris shakes her head.

“She is more alive now than she has been in years. I could not help her the way she needed, but she found someone who can. I do know she is safe. But this is not about your mother. This is about you and Spera.”

“Asher thinks I’m Spera,” I say quietly, relieved to hear news of my mother, and equally relieved to move away from the subject of her. I’m not sure how longer I can hold myself together when she’s in my mind’s spotlight.

“I thought he might,” Maris says, raising an eyebrow. “What do you know of Spera?”

“Vanessa told me she was royalty in the Unseen world, and a legend ever since. That’s all I know,” I say.

“Spera was a girl, just like you, a thousand years ago. Through Asher’s influence, she became royalty, but she never became Unseen or crossed to the Unseen world in her lifetime,” Maris says. “Asher must believe Spera has been reborn in you. He will come for you over and over, because there’s something on this side of the veil he wants. Something he can only have if the veil dissolves, and he believes Spera is the only one who can open the veil for him.”

“Why does he need the veil to dissolve? He can come through it just fine now,” I say.

“The veil keeps Unseen creatures from destroying your world. In order to pass through the veil separating the Unseen side from your side, all Unseen creatures must take a form humans will recognize, and with it, that form’s weaknesses and mortality.”

“Vanessa told me about that.”

“If an Unseen can cross in its true form into your world, its immortality will follow, as will its strength and size. The beasts you conjure in your worst nightmares are no comparison to what will appear in your world should the veil collapse. Your world would never survive.”

“Why?” I ask, trepidation climbing my spine like a ladder.

“Tenix.” Maris reaches behind her and searches her box with her fingers. She picks up a silver tube. “Do you know what Tenix is?”

“Sort of. Vanessa used it to heal my leg,” I say, eyeing the bottle. “She said it’s like the glue that bonds elements together, but I don’t really understand how it works.”

“She is right. All mortal life is comprised of percentages of the four major elements: earth, air, water, and fire. When a person dies, what does its body become?”

“Earth?” I guess, shifting where I sit.

“Yes. When a person dies, the elements that make your body break down. It’s mostly earth and water, and a fraction of air and fire, depending on the personality,” she says, winking. “Tenix is left behind in its raw form, visible only to Unseen eyes. But finding it is the easy part. Asher and his guards are the only creatures with the correct elemental breakdown to be able to absorb Tenix in its raw form, and carry it through the veil into the Unseen world for purification and processing. The mortal forms they must take when on your side limits how much Tenix they can absorb and transport. It also slows down how fast they can kill things. If they are allowed to cross into your world in their true forms, they would dismantle all mortal life in your world within a matter of days.”

“So Tenix is… Tenix is life itself?”

“In a way, yes. It’s what makes life possible.”

“Does Vanessa know that?” I ask, stricken. I wonder what had died to give me the ability to walk again.

“Of course she does,” Maris says, shrugging.

“And you sell it. So do you… do you harvest it?” I ask, guarding my front with my arms. “Do you kill things?”

“I’m more of an opportunist,” she answers. “Remember, only Asher and his guards can harvest Tenix from a living creature here. But every Unseen creature values Tenix, and will do whatever they can to possess it.”

“So how do you get it?” I ask, staring at her box.

“I am a trader. Tenix is a popular currency, but it is not the only one. Although it’s certainly Asher’s favorite.”

“What does Spera have to do with this?” I narrow my eyes, inwardly searching for a link, but these puzzle pieces of information could fit a thousand different ways, or not at all.

“Words carved into diamond,” she says. She splashes handfuls of water on her thighs, and then trails her fingers along the surface of the puddle. The water glows in response to her touch, and she paints a wavy line.

“What words?” I ask, mesmerized.

“A prophecy of a mortal who can open the veil. In my world, they call this mortal the Vessel.” She draws a spiral in the water. It begins to throb the second she lifts her hand.