Coming Through It – Chapter 20

*Scene 01* 2:35 (Breakthrough)

Like a worm boring through the meat of an apple, the beast surged forward, breaking away the dirt and rock ahead of it, consuming the flesh of the under sediments of the escarpment, expelling the scree and pulverized powder through its pulsing gills.  It rapidly approached what it perceived to be hollow, which was suddenly filled with a churning motion.  As the beast squirmed forward, fissuring through the rock, a massive force slammed it back through the breech, trapping it in its own cut tunnel.

Water.  The force of an unground river, flooded the pocket shaft, forcing the beast’s body into a curling plug. Its spine plates raked the jagged rock, collapsing the tunnel upon the monster as it thrashed against the surging water.  Its throaty protestations gurgled in the surfeiting churn, popping and bubbling, unable to gain its equilibrium in the press.

Above the surface, the land fissured, and water bled and burst out of the ground flow in widening deltas down the escarpment, creating a diagonal furrow across the road on the upslope.  The fissure widened, causing the ground to shift like two tectonic plates driven against each other, breaking the edge crust as they ground and sloughed and then pushing it up into an artificial ridge.

Just beyond the cliff edge of the escarpment, a mere twenty feet down, water exploded out of the rock, falling precipitously down into a copse line of trees and a dried stream bed below.  The water roared down the rock line, crashing into a catcher pool, surging under a bridge, starling a team of horses tied to the bridge railing, washing over the canvas of a wagon canopy, and racing down the stony trench.

Suddenly, the ground burst open and a roar pierced the darkening sky, swirling with twisting clouds, and wraith-like shadows.  The beast was a confusion of splattering luminescence, rainfall created a curtain over its form, which was translucent, but shimmered with scintillating shadows, and bright bursts that bristled under the silvery etchings of lightning and rumbling cannonades of thunder.

Its roar seemed to shake the heavens and reverberate down the escarpment, as, far below, a small party of harried travelers fled to the solitary wagon hitched to a team of anxious and soddened horses.

*Scene 02* 4:35 (Cover of Rain)

Christie rode steadily down the dirt and stony road, trying to follow the intermittent signs of the wagon tracks and team.  The downpour of the rain had washed away many of the traces of the shallower ruts that had passed over flat rock, but pools of water still filled the channels where the wheels ran off of the stone into the softer soils.  Christie had been riding in this fashion for some time, casting her eyes along the rough makeshift road to ensure she did not miss where the team may have turned off.  Her neck ached from looking down so much that she finally leaned back in the saddle, and cast her gaze into the skies ahead of her.  The clouds were dark and grey, and blowing skeins of rain fell about a half-mile ahead of her, almost obscuring another rise in elevation.  The dark grey curtains obscured the edge of the northwest, but she could still see the evidence of the wagon’s progression.  She looked towards the west, but from where she was, she could no longer see the mysterious blue signal light that branched across the darkening sky.

How long will it be before the Xarmnians came after us? she wondered.  If she could still read the signs of the wagon’s passage after the storm wash, surely those trained hunters would be able to as well, with much less difficulty.  They might be on her track as well soon, and she knew she had to warn the others before that happened.  Thinking all of the thousands of ways this foolish pursuit of the company could go fatally wrong for her, threatened to cloud her mind with blind panic.  She wondered again if she should have just given up and waited on the coastline until the sea storm abated to see if another portal might return for her, as it had for Laura.

Laura.  What had become of the girl?  What did she go back to?  Christie’s eyes teared up just thinking about it.  So much pain.  So much cruelty both there in the Surface World and here in the Mid-World as well.  No place was safe from it.  It was an integral part of the human condition.  It was the double-bladed edge of free will.  Freedom to choose the good or the bad.  To make the charitable, selfless choice, or the cruel, selfish pursuit of gaining power over one’s fellow man.  To choose to love or to choose to terrify.

She glanced wistfully over her shoulder, back towards the farther hills and the inn beyond them.  It was then she noticed the towering black, billowing column of smoke, extending like an ominous curling finger over the eastern horizon, beckoning her to come back and meet the death that stalked her even now.

The inn.  Those monstrous men had set Begglar’s inn on fire.  It could only be that.  The pit of her stomach turned and twisted as if she had been punched.

She squinted and blinked, hoping the tower of smoke was just an illusion.  A trick of her own worrisome thoughts.

It wasn’t.

She squinted and blinked again, and her eyes widened.  Under the pillar of smoke and fire, she spotted what she had assumed to be falling ash, moving out of the shadow of the distant hillside–A line of moving dark specks, and some darker specks below them, steadily growing larger as they came into contrast with the dried yellow scrub grasses.

Men on horses.  The Xarmnians were coming.

But what was the lower line fronting them?

Her heart stilled for just a moment, as she realized she could just make out the finest edges of the sounds.

It sounded somehow familiar.  But different as well.  Deeper tones, more throaty and sharp.

Her eyes widened, as she turned and kicked the flanks of her mount, causing her horse to rear slightly and then build up towards a gallop and then a run.  She knew if she could only make the edge of the rainfall ahead, she might have a prayer.

The Xarmnians were coming after her.

They were coming with creatures that sounded like a ravenous pack of hunting dogs.  As cold and tired and damp as she had been, her only chance now was to ride as hard and fast as she could back into the rainfall.

*Scene 03* 18:23 (The Hidden Cache)

“What just happened to that girl?! I don’t understand all this?!” one of the young women cried.  Nell grabbed the girl’s hand, shifting young Miray onto her hip as she ushered those she could onward towards the restless team and covered wagon.

Lightning flashed and split the pseudo-night sky with a loud crack and a protracted flash of brilliant light.  Mixed in with the rain and thunder, the additional sound of the bestial roar from the top of the escarpment had drawn the attention of some of the men.  Something huge flailed in shadowy silhouette above and along the high edge of the escarpment cliff, made visible against the veins of light flashing across the silvered sky.

“Something is up there!” one of the young men pointed to the cliff top, but Begglar and Dominic pressed the crew to climb quickly into the wagon.

“Go!  GO!  Don’t waste time gawking!  We have to get to cover,” Begglar urged.

The falling water, now streaming out of the upper cliffside, had initially burst forth out of the hill like an uncorked spout jetting out into the lower treeline overshooting the collection basin below. Now it fell in a regular cascade down the rock face.  Its falling force had almost washed the wagon and the horses into the creekbed, and now the animals were antsy and restless, straining at their harnesses and had almost pulled free of their tethering.  Begglar grappled with the wet leather tracers, freeing them from the bridge’s baluster.  The struggling team had almost pulled the post loose of the bridge, and the leather had been strained and stretched.

Dominic and I tried calming the team, but they rolled their eyes and snorted, their hooves pawing and splashing the mud and puddles, clearly spooked by first the downpour and then by the cacophonous wailing of the angry banshee.  The wheels and tongue of the wagon twisted and its tracer rings jangled following the unnerved fidgeting of the agitated team.

A howling still permeated through the crackling fusillade and shifting clouds above us.  Black, gossamer twists of what looked like frayed material swirled in and among the gusts of wind that now pommeled us with stinging wet and cold.

The rest of the group crawled in under the canopy, hectored and cajoled by both Begglar and Dominic.  Whatever was above us would have to take its turn to torment us further, as the rain poured down with greater frigid fury.

Miray was dripping wet and shivering, as were most of our crew.  Cheryl nursed her injuries but tried to comfort two of the youths that were frightened and miserable.

“What just happened to Becca?  What did she turn into?  What did you do to her to make her suddenly…?”

I avoided the question, helping Dominic close the tailgate and pin it with the metal staves.  “You ride with them, I’ll ride up front with your dad this time,” I admonished heading around to the front box seat.

Begglar had fished the reins out of the tangle of tracers but still struggled to hold the team steady.  “Get on up there!” I shouted to him, “I’ll hold ’em, while you get on the seat.”

Begglar could barely hear me above the wind but surmised what I had intended, as I grabbed the bridle of one of the lead horses, holding him down against the bit.  I put my hand on the horse’s muzzle, again attempting to calm the animal without getting stomped on.  Begglar swung into the seat and gripped the reins, evening them out, as I released the bridle.  The team pushed forward and I almost got trapped between the lead animals as they stamped and snorted, anxious to get moving.  I pivoted out of their way and allowed the box to come towards me, thrusting a tow into the wooden spokes of the front wheel pitching me up into the seat beside Begglar as the wheel turned.

“That’s a bad way to break an ankle,” Begglar grumbled as he fed out the reins allowing the horses to splash onto the road, towards the under stables and grain bin doors ahead at the farther end of the skirt of the escarpment.

“Your horses didn’t give me much choice,” I countered.

“You know as well as I do that, they’ll be coming for us soon.  The scout Trolls are never too far out from the company troop.  It’s been two days now, and that Troll will be missed for not reporting in.  The Protectorate will be at our heels if they are not already awaiting us in an ambush ahead.  When do you think it will be safe to rendezvous with the others?”

Begglar nodded ahead.

“We’ve worked out a series of distance signals.  My company is waiting for us in the hills.  They have been gathering some of the horses so we will be able to move faster through the low country and then around the lakes and forests to the mountains ahead.  It would be best if we could make Azragoth by nightfall.”

“Azragoth?!  That place is haunted.  It’s a ghost town.”

Begglar put his finger to the side of his nose and winked, “Aye.  And we’d like to keep it that way, wouldn’t we?”

“What do you plan in Azragoth?”

“Later,” Begglar snorted, “Right now we’ve got to get to the weapons cache and give this team a chance to get out of this downpour.  That banshee has them spooked in a bad way.  It will linger until this storm blows over. They’ll be no good on the outer road this night.”

“I know just how they feel,” I commiserated.  The sudden fury of what had happened with whatever had masqueraded as young Becca had shaken me to the core.  I had not expected the encounter to end as it did, and I wondered what other things might be in store for us on the road ahead, but it was best not to dwell on that and risk fear impeding us further.

We rode down the wet road in relative silence, under the front splatter and drizzle of the overhanging canopy until we had drawn alongside the large doors.  Begglar and I both jumped out of our seats, as we guided the horses out of the pelting rain, under the more sheltered leeward side of the escarpment.  Begglar came around and thrust the wet reins into my hands, and shouted, “Hold the horses here while I get the doors opened.  Then lead them into the gate, following the fallen straw.  There is a stable in there and it’ll keep the beasties dry for now.  We will unhitch them inside where they can’t easily break and run.”

I nodded my understanding and Begglar hurried to a smaller door, fetching a key out of one of his breast coat pockets.  He fumble with it for a moment, but soon got the door opened and disappeared into the dark inside.

As I waited, I thought about the strange roaring from above.  I wondered at what animal or beast could have made such a noise above all of the storm, that it would draw our attention up to the top of the escarpment that we had just quitted only an hour before.  Could the Xarmnians be on us already?  What manner of beast would they have with them that could make such a sound?  It was no secret that the Xarmnians had regular outer patrols in the area.  Begglar had told me so.  Protectorate guards, they were called, though what they did and represented was the antithesis of protection.  They could already be in the vicinity.  They could have seen us progressing up the escarpment to the granary.

I had hoped, with the distance and the darkening sky and wind and the roar of the rain, the Protectorate guards would not immediately see us.  The land between Begglar’s hill and the granary escarpment was uneven, so we had urged everyone to hunker down and stay low when moving to the wagon.  Depending on how far they were, we might still be unseen.  The wagon road was close to the skirt of the escarpment.  The pale hill might blend with the cover sheets of the wagon, and we were still in the cast shadow of the upper hill.  All these things considered, there still was a chance we remained undetected.

The loading doors faced away from the road descending into the valley.  I kept a wary, watchful eye, but the rain-screened most of my view of what was transpiring on the lower roadway beyond.

Thunder growled from one side of the hill to the mountains beyond and echoed back.  Lightning splintered the sky with strobing flashes.

We had to act.

The raging storm would provide us with cover, but it would only delay their pursuit.

I realized Begglar and his family may have to lose their wagon and perhaps we could load supplies in the packs, but we would not get far or very fast with those draft horses.  We would need mountain stock eventually, but now we needed animals bred for sustainable speed overland to put as much distance between us and the Protectorate.  Whatever weaponry and armor we gathered from the cache could not be too heavy for us to carry or fight with.  Swiftness trumps armor plating in hand-to-hand combat.  Thankfully, there were no incendiary weapons here in the Sub-World.  Or at least never in my experience had I run across one.  But what did I know?  I knew many things but not everything, nor could I plan for all eventualities that might befall us.  There is danger enough in what is known.  But the far greater danger is in the unknowns.

Begglar unlocked the doors of the catcher bins, and we climbed over a slight berm and entered the dark bin with slanted floors that descend downward to catcher wells filled with large mounds of dry grain.  A torch was carefully lit, once we were further inside, so as not to draw attention from the outside toward any escaping glow.

Begglar and I unhitched the team, after Dominic drove the horse and wagon into a narrow tunnel, near the inner stables.  The floor, like Begglar had said, was lined with dry straw that crunched softly underfoot.  As we stabled the horses, the crew piled out of the darkened wagon, once the gate was lowered and entered the side corridor down the dimly lit passage towards the torch we had lit and placed in a wall sconce.  The grain door we had opened beyond the inner berm still was under the lip and shadow of the upper rock ledges.

“It’ll take some work, but I need about five or more of the boys and men to help us get down to the cache trap.  It is hidden under the grain.  Once we get down to it, I’ll light one of the inner furnaces.  We use it to keep the grains dry when the air gets damp under here.  Keeps the grains from sweating and moldering.”

“Fine,” I assented, “We can get some of the women to keep watch while we are occupied.”

I stationed Cheryl and Miray outside to watch and alert us if any of the Protectorate guards started moving our way.  Lindsey, who had given me her name in the dry creek while awaiting our Shibboleth tests from Begglar, offered to join them and I welcomed her help.  The others, not assisting in the digging were to be relay sentries, just inside the doors to immediately convey any alarm that was given by those stationed to keep watch to us working below.  With the rain and storm still raging outside, we could not risk having an alert go unheard.

Dominic and Begglar grabbed grain shovels and began to clear the grain from the lower edge of the mound and shovel it to the side.  Grain slid, frustratingly,  down into the cleared area so that the work was repetitive and far from easy.  Our entire company was sodden and dripping with rain and sweat as all of the men pitched in together until a second mound held enough grain to allow us to slide shovelfuls to the back wall of the bin.

At last, an area was cleared large enough for Begglar to get down on his hands and knees and feel along the slatted underboards for the particular place he was looking for.  He drew a cooking spoon out from his garment and dug at a circular inset in the floorboard until he uncovered a T-bolt the size of his fist.  With a grunt and a twist, he pulled the T-bolt upward and gave it a turn, freeing what was a grooved panel of the flooring, with cleverly concealed hinges on one end.

He raised the panel and we all craned in to see the weapons cache.  It appeared flat with a layer of grain that had likely sifted down into the concavity through the grooved slats.  There were some groans and murmurs as Begglar carefully reached in and began to scoop out handfuls of grain.  His hand dug deeper until he stopped and looked up into the firelight with a grin.  Carefully, he pulled out the first of many short swords, scabbards, and fine-linked shirts of chainmail, which were as light and pliable as any I had ever seen or felt.  A battle mace was produced from the grain-filled cache, and a hammered and dried leather tunic was pulled forth, with several following it.  Along the side, under the grain were halberds and throwing spears, and four quivers of bristling arrows in a sling, with bows made from ash and yew wood to match each set.  When quite a few weapons lay aside, Begglar lowered the door and guided the T-bolt back into its slot until the panel set even with the floor.  He climbed back to his feet and grabbed the grain shovel again and we pitched in, once more moving the second pile back over the uncovered area and blending it with the first.

Together we selected the weapons we would carry or learn to carry on us as we were trained to use them.  The chainmail shirts were given to the women, as they were lighter garments and pliable and could reliably turn the point of a dagger thrust or possibly the fatal piercing point of a spear.

The hard leather tunics were thick and layered leather that had been affixed to a linen cloth backing, yet molded to fit a man’s torso.  The hardened skin would require considerable force from a blade strike to pierce it directly, but it allowed for a full range of movement without the weight or restrictions associated with a metal breastplate.  These were the combat wear of overland raiders, rather than the armored wear of a city or kingdom guard.  Arguably they were better for use in a battle where there were fewer, smaller bands of fighters, rather than rank upon rank of soldiers who overwhelmed and fought with the advantage of numbers.  When armored soldiers became fatigued they would fall in battle, and the next row would hastily take their place in the fighting.  But lightly armored soldiers, trained with weapons would outlast those individuals in a fight because they did not tire as fast.  They might take out three or four soldiers in an extended skirmish before they succumbed to the fatigue of fighting.

Each of us rotated into the granary to arm and change out of wet clothes into battle attire.  We were ill-suited to combat at the moment, but that would change in the days and weeks ahead.  For privacy’s sake and decorum, the women took turns undressing in the grain bins with the loading doors shut to cover and shield the interior torchlight from the risk of being seen from the hills.  The rain continued to pour down and the lightning flashed from time to time, but the counts between flashes and thunderclaps and rumbling lengthened.

Begglar came up to me wet with sweat and flushed from the exercise of having done the lion’s share of uncovering the grain from the secret cache.

“I’ve just lit the drying furnaces.  There’s not much fuel left in the tinderboxes, but it should burn for a few hours anyway.  Possibly enough to keep us warm.  Nell and Dominic and some of the women will see to the horses.  There are feed sacks aplenty.  They should be rested a while.”

“What about Azragoth?  Wasn’t the plan to push forward?”

“There’ll be no making Azragoth tonight,” Begglar observed as the wind and rain fought furiously with the trees in the distant grove, and the rain gathered in puddles and poured into streams and rivulets down the granary grounds and into the wheat fields.

I stared out into the night, still suspicious of any movement along the distant roadway, “Do you think they’ll be watching us?”

“Highly doubt it.  Soldiers or no, those Protectorate Guards are a lazy sort.  Brutal bullies, deadly killers, but lazy just the same.”

“Still we must try to use the storm cover if we can.  I am betting they will come here, after dawn breaks.”

“That they will,…but we’ve got a few hours to get some rest, before pressing on.  Give it to them.  They’ve witnessed terrible things, and fatigue won’t make it any easier.  Some are rightly scared, others bewildered.  But they are beginning to have some faith in you, laddie.  Give them time.”

The tunnels were beginning to warm from the inner furnaces.  Closing the doors helped stave off the outside damp.

When the women were attired, the men filed in armed and dressed, lacing their tunics tightly across their chests, assisting each other to strap scabbards to their waists and keep the hilt tilted forward to come to hand at a moment’s notice, while keeping the scabbard’s metal locket and end ringed chape clear of the movement of their legs.  The dry grain had preserved the forged and polished steel of the weapons nicely so that it stayed dry and free of moisture that could so easily rust the blades or dull their cutting edges.  Once dressed, the women were invited back in to help adjust our garb, so that we at least looked like proper fighting men.

Nell and Dominic checked on the horses and wagon in the covered overhang of the threshing floor where the bags of grain were typically loaded.  They fed the horses oats and grains in feedbags hung from their bridles. They anticipated we would be leaving soon.  They joined us within, and dressed in their own dry clothes, having had their battle gear fitted underneath their garments all along.

Since children have better visual acuity and night vision, we left young Miray and another young one outside to watch the road for any chance sign of the Protectorate Guards’ movements until we could relieve her for a night watch.

When she suddenly appeared, white-faced at the narrow opening of the loading gate, we all turned as she scrambled over the berm, past the shadow of the doorway into the torchlight.  She was panting and frightened, barely able to speak, and seeing her once again ignited our own fear.

“Someone’s coming this way!”

“How many?!” we all seemed to ask at once.

Begglar pulled the loading door all the way shut and braced it with a thick timber while the girl caught her breath and continued.

“Only one…riding a horse…coming fast.”

*Scene 04* 16:30 (Resurfacing)

She woke up sweating profusely. Her heart was pounding and her fists were full of a bedsheet.  She raised her head and felt the underside of a coat around her face.  The smell of mothballs.  The bitter, irritating smell she remembered from her childhood.  She was in her closet again.  The place she always ran to when she was afraid.  The place she hid when her father and mother were fighting.  Where she could not hear the yelling and screaming. The sounds of things being broken and shattered.  She was sopping wet and exhausted.  Her arms felt gritty with sand.  She smelled the salt of seawater mixed in with the nauseous smell of naphthalene.

How did she end up in her closet?  How was it possible that she had been in one place…and now she was in another?  She gathered her feet under her and thrust upward.  Some clothes fell down upon her, pushed up from the hanging bar.  Her feet were cold.  Her sneakers squeaked on the wooden slat floor.

She fumbled blindly, for the hinged portion, blinking through the slanted slats of the closet door, and pushed it open.  The interior was dim, almost fully dark, but this was not the bedroom she had rented for the last four months.  This was her bedroom.  She had returned from wherever she had gone, but not to her apartment in the city.  However, this place was all too familiar.  She had not been back here in this place for many years, (seven to be precise) but it was seared into her memory and nightmares.  She had come back alright.  But to what?  Or, more importantly, to when?

The room was exactly as she remembered it.  Her small single bed by the wall, and the window.  Her card table desk, with the wobbly leg that never seemed to keep the table from moving.  The box where she kept her toys.  The tattered doll that she got for Christmas.  The crate where she kept her few story books, and her school books.  The faded poster of the Partridge Family.  Her heart-throb David Cassidy smiling as if only for her.

“C’mon get happy…,” she muttered in a breathless whisper, “C’mon get happy.”  Not feeling the groove or the vibe at all.

Whatever had happened to bring her here?

This was not a happy place.  Even though it should have been.

And these were not happy times.

She glanced out of the blurred pane of glass, catching a glimpse of an old blue four-door sedan parked near the front curb.

Rain beat down on its roof and trunk, in glistening splatters.

There was shouting and two figures out on the spartan grass lawn.

Figures she recognized, caught in a struggle.

“John! Don’t leave us please!” the smaller figure begged, clutching the larger figure’s arm.

And suddenly she gasped, knowing what was about to transpire and exactly where and when she was.

Laura was home.  And this was the night, her father would leave them.

Why had she come back?  And why here and why to this point in time?

The last thing she remembered, she had ridden a horse through a rain storm.  She had come to a hill and looked out onto a stormy sea.  And then the edge of the hill gave way, sliding in a muddied tide all the way down to the beach and the edge of a sandbar, still not covered by the foamy waves.  And then out of the sea came a shimmering blue light, and a large twisting circle of light, with a strange swirling glow inside it.  She had walked towards the light, out onto the sandbar, just before the light swallowed her whole.

Had she dreamed it all?  She shivered, gathering herself against the chill in her bones and her spirit.  The face of a clock glowed back at her mockingly in the wet miasma of water-washed moonlight coming through the window, and the painful family drama played itself out shamefully on the open street, for the disturbing amusement of the whole neighborhood.  Lights were on in the houses beyond.  Some houses remained dark at this hour.  The mocking clock digits glowed green along with the ticking hands, moving inexorably across its moon face to arrive at indications of four past ten.  It was almost as if the hands were raised in a shrugged V, giving her the “Whatever” dismissive reply.  Even her clock seemed to hold her in nihilistic disdain.  She wanted to smash it.  To break its glass face, and twist its ceaselessly spinning arms.  To claw and peel off the numbers surrounding its peering face.  She wanted to be anywhere but here. She wanted to be in any other time but now.

But if she wanted anything in her miserable life to change from being brought back here into this present, she was running out of time.  Her window of opportunity would be brief.  She had her pink suitcase already packed.  Tucked away in the back of the closet to remind her that one day she would leave this place.  That she would no longer watch her mom drink herself to death, while her dad failed to come home at night.  She would go with him this time.

The bourbon her mom had surreptitiously poured into her juice cup made her groggy, but it did not make her fall fully asleep as it had so many times before.

Laura whirled and turned back to her bi-folded closet door and the fabric-lined darkness from which she had emerged.  The suitcase was just inside, under the shoe shelf where she kept her few prized cassettes, and a few 8-tracks she had borrowed from what few friends she had at school.  Here players were old, and she had constantly worried that they would eat up her friends’ tapes.  Her mom would only let her listen to them if she kept the volume low so as not to disturb her father.  He always hated her “dopey hippie” music, as he called it.

“IRMA, LET GO A’ME!!” Laura’s father stormed from the entryway, as he entered the small house again, dragging her back from the stoop.

“I TOLD YOU WHAT I’D DO IF I EVER CAUGHT YOU DRUNK AGAIN!  THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT.  I’M GOING TO FLORIDA TO BE WITH DEBBIE! I SHOULD NEVER HAVE MARRIED A LUSH LIKE YOU! NEVER!!!  NOW, LET ME GO!”

“WHAT ABOUT LAURA?!” her mother wailed. “YOU CAN”T JUST WALK OUT ON HER.  Please, take her with you!  I’ll…I’ll check myself into rehab. Only please don’t go tonite.  It’s pouring outside.  PLEASE JOHN!  PLEASE DON’T GO!! I’m begging you.  I will get help.  I will this time.”

“There is no more ‘this time,’ Irma!” he growled.  “I can’t even stand to look at you anymore.  You used to be… Ah!  The heck with it!  I’m outta here!  I’m gonna miss my flight!”

Laura could hear her mother weeping as she followed him further into the house, into their shared bedroom towards the back, beyond the small kitchen.

Now was the time.  She snatched up the little pink suitcase with the reflective stickers she has put on it.  She left her closet door open as she snagged her coat.  It had been a little small back then, but somehow it still fit her the same way as it did before.  It would probably be cold in the trunk for a while, and the rain would make it miserable, but she knew just the way to pop it open to climb inside.  It had been one of her favorite hiding places when she was allowed to play hide-and-go-seek with the neighborhood kids.  Back before they started being mean to her.  Whispering about her to others at school.

It also signified better times, not good times, for there were hardly any of those, but ‘better times’.  Back when her parents were both trying to ‘make it work.’ For when the blue car was there, it also meant her daddy was home, for he always took their only car.  When ‘the car’ was home, she found her secret refuge in it, for what it represented was togetherness.

It represented that hope for her now, for ‘the car’ was more frequently gone than parked at home.  She had to get in it.  To somehow stop what was happening in her own small way.  At least, if she could be with him now, or for however long she still had left before she was able to support herself and move out on her own altogether.

If she could get far enough down the road, her Daddy would just have to take her with him to Florida.  Debbie had always been nice to her when she visited her dad’s office.  She did not know exactly what a “floozy” was, as her mom had so often called her, but whatever it was, it couldn’t be too bad.  Debbie had always given her candy from the office candy jar.  She wished Debbie had been her mom.  She doubted Debbie would steal from her–robbing her piggy bank just to buy liquor when her father cut off her mom’s weekly allowance.

She slipped quietly out of her bedroom door, carefully closing it behind her, wincing as the hinges faintly squeaked.

Her parents were loudly arguing in the back room.  So far they hadn’t noticed anything.

“I’m making a new start, Irma!  And you’re no longer part of it!  Enjoy your booze!  That seems to be your partner nowadays!”

“John, please! For Laura’s sake, if not for mine. Please don’t leave us like this!  I don’t care if you see Debbie if that makes you happy.  I know you don’t want me anymore like you used to.  I’ll get clean, I promise!”

Laura knew she could not linger any longer.  She crouched and slinked through the living room towards the open screen door.  Rain was still falling steadily outside.  She noticed that she was tracking water on the carpet.  Her jeans were wet and her sneakers squished.  A trail of water streaks came from the front door foyer from where her parents had entered the house from the outside.  Yellow sand came off of her shoes, leaving dun-colored tracks that bled into the water streaks.

Laura glanced at her reflection in the cracked living room mirror.  The image caught her off guard.  She was much younger than she should’ve been.  And something was wrong with her eyes.  The lamp in the front room must have something to do with it.  She leaned in closer, almost forgetting that she was pressed for time.  One of her eyes was strange, but the other eye seemed normal.  Yet she had no trouble seeing.  She pulled her hair back from her face.  It was sopping wet and also felt gritty with beach sand.

She released the screen door catch and slipped out pushing the air piston in hoping the restraint chain would not jangle and alert her parents in the back room.

She splashed down the canted sidewalk, stepping in spatter mud and almost falling.  She clutched her suitcase, which was now feeling slippery in the rain pelting her in the torrential downfall.  She waded across the lawn, trying not to fall.  She rounded the back of the baby blue sedan and set her suitcase down by the back bumper.  She tried to climb up, but her wet shoes slipped and she smacked down hitting her chin on the trunk hood, involuntarily crying out, but catching herself before she slipped back onto the wet pavement, slick with oil and gutter debris.

She jumped up again and pressed the trunk lid on the corner she knew would allow the inner lock to slip out of its clutch and spring up.  As she slid back down again, she felt her effort rewarded.  Her parents would be outside again in a few seconds, and she did not want to see again what she had seen so many years again through her bedroom window–her mom getting punched by her father and doubling over on the wet muddy lawn for all of the neighbors to see.

The shadowy cavity of her father’s car gaped before her like a monster’s open mouth.  Rain played its ratta-tat-ta rumble on the metal, and water sheered off of its curved lip pouring down upon Laura as she struggled to get her pink suitcase up and into the trunk space, just beyond the spare tire.  Something else was in the trunk, but she could not see it clearly.  She imagined it was her father’s toolbox that he had pretended to play mechanic with.

She had to hurry.  If her dad caught her doing this, he would be far angrier than he was now, and he might not let her come with him.  There was still a chance that he wouldn’t, but it was a risk she was going to take.  This would change the trajectory of her life.  She truly believed she would be the much stronger person she wished she was, that her father always wanted her to be.  His “tough girl”.  He had for years told her to be tough, growing up, but she didn’t know how.  Growing up with him might be different.  Had to be different.  Her mom was the weak one.  Could never leave the bottle and she loathed the thought of becoming like her.  Her dad could teach her if she could only be allowed to be with him too.  Debbie wouldn’t mind.  Debbie the floozy.  Debbie, who gave her candy and called her “kiddo”.

Laura climbed up on the bumper, holding fast to the under-struts of the trunk lid, almost slipping again on the wet white rubber of her sneaker soles.  She pulled the lid down after her, just as she heard the front screen door slam open, almost tearing the pump rod out of its upper piston.

Had they seen her?  She heard them continuing to argue and shout.  She tugged down hard on the inner trunk strut, waiting to hear the click of the trunk catch, not sure if she would be able to above the constant rataplan of the falling rain.

The interior was pitch dark but relatively dry.  The black carpet lining smelled of spilled oil and tire rubber, but there was something else there too.  A rotten smell.  A pungently sweet and sickening odor.  Something like the smell of the dead cat she had found behind the dumpster in the alleyway.  The one she had cried about until her father had had enough of it and gave her one of his “tough girl” speeches to cheer her up.  The smell was rancid.  She felt herself gagging.  She had to get out of the trunk.  She would soon throw up.  Daddy would never let her stay with him if he found her with puke all over herself.  She pressed upward, but the lid resisted her.  She turned on her side, to put her feet up and press the trunk lid open, but it was no use.  The trunk lock had engaged again.  If only she could press the lid up in the right place she might be able to disengage it once more.  The weak place was to her left.  She heard a noise outside of the vehicle.  A loud smack and something that sounded like grinding metal.  Her dad had opened the car door and was throwing things into the backseat.

She heard her mom again, “John, please!”

She heard a hard slap and her mother’s responsive cry and gasp.

“I told you what would happen if you grabbed me again!” she heard her father’s voice come coldly through the pouring rain with such a frosty chill, Laura shivered in terror.  This was not the man she had imagined him to be, through all of those intervening years that she had lived in the prison of her mom’s addiction and household.  There was a cold selfishness in him that did not allow for much room to fit her into his other life.

She tried to scrunch forward moving around the spare to find some leverage on the soft part of the trunk to free herself. The dark was disorienting, but the stench was much stronger in that direction, and before she could catch herself, she touched something lumpy and sticky.  And then, without warning, her stomach turned and she coughed and vomited sour bile into the stygian darkness.

*Scene 05* 13:26 (The Rider)

The rain and wind beat and scraped against the thick granary doors and moaned in a plaintive sadness as it wound its way through the breaks and ledges, hillocks, and mounds.  The branches of the trees in the distance popped and clacked together, and the wheat field sighed and whispered dangerous words that we feared but could not translate.  We remained quiet save for our controlled breathing, which sounded way too loud to my ears to ensure the secrecy of our presence.

I held Miray on my hip and she hugged my shoulder, but I could hear her heart rapidly beating and her short panicked breaths coming in rapid succession.  We had called all of our watchers to come inside the catcher rooms, for we could not risk being seen dashing in from the outside.

We had no idea how many Xarmnians were approaching, for Miray had only seen the one. Still, Begglar assured us that these hunters, butchers, and pillagers of villages, rarely were seen to travel in bands of less than six mounted riders.  Sometimes they came in companies as large as twenty or thirty.  A Xarmnian scout might ride solitary, but they would keep to the shadows and would never risk riding against a band of endemic travelers comprised of more than three individuals.  If there was one riding brazenly in the open, there were certainly others that were off to the flanks of that rider who were unseen.

If we remained garrisoned in the granary, we were relatively safe.  If we rode out into the open country we could be split up and run down.  Our company had only recently been handed their weapons, but they were still a far cry from knowing how to make effective use of them.  The doors were thick and fortified.  Made of hard sturdy timber planks and fortified with iron brace bands in the interior.  The Xarmnians had cruelly demonstrated what they would do to anyone who dared to steal even a meager portion of the grain, but they were spread thin and recognized that they could not afford to post Xarmnian guards at every one of their storehouses in the remote lands.  They had to work through local agents and delegates, and up to the present time, Begglar had been their agent appointed to this post along with his hirelings.  They had no idea that they had in fact entrusted their local grain stores into the hands of a former Surface Worlder, must less to one of the at-large fugitives on their wanted dead or alive lists.

The granary escarpment was honeycombed with passages and tunnels, as well as stairways that allowed in-season workers to monitor the grain chutes and threshing floors from the top floors to the blow-through shaft and all the way to the bottom sifting floor, just above the pits and bins.  Sound traveled through the interior caverns with a mysterious resonance, that echoed and reverberated down through the lower levels.  Whatever creature had topped the escarpment rise might make its way down through to the lower levels, but it might take it a while to do so, and it would not be able to descend without making considerable noise.  The nagging threat of that weighed on the back of my mind, but the more immediate threat was the approaching rider and whoever might be with him.

Directly, we heard the approach of hoofbeats and the snort and sputter of a hard-ridden horse.  Each heavy footfall seemed to strike the earth with the blows of a forge hammer beating fire-reddened steel, pounding the imagined metal into the searing blade that would bring death to us all.  The storm outside still blew with a low threatening force, but the fact that we heard the sound of the horseman, indicated that both man and animal were already close-by.

The hoof beats slowed as the mount and rider, audibly pulled reigns and danced heavily into a slowing turning balance.  Holding our breath as much as we could, we strained to gather direction and approach from the sounds alone, barely audible above the wind and the rain.

I motioned to Begglar and he drew near. “Is there another way to view the outside, where we won’t be seen?”

“They will be looking for us up and ahead, but there is one place most searchers fail to look,” Begglar answered in a low voice.

“Where is that?”

“Down,” Begglar answered, motioning me to follow him into what looked like a small closet space, where one might keep gardening tools locked away.

Nell followed us and said, “Give me the child, you two will need your hands free if they storm the entry and manage to bust down the door.”  She took a reluctant Miray from me and swung her onto her own hip. “Keep that blade handy,” she nodded towards the honor sword I held affixed to my hip, “You’re going to need it.”

Begglar produced another key from a ring out of his pocket and unlocked the narrow closet door.  Inside was a narrow, tight-turning, spiral staircase that extended up and down into the darkness below.

“What is this?”

“There is a small narrow hallway under the edge of the sliding doors above.  It has a metal grate set in against the edge of the stone floor, with a sliding plate.  It serves as both a water drain and a firewell.  Occasionally, rats will try to enter the granary for obvious reasons, and this drain can help us burn them out.” Begglar and I climbed slowly down into the darkness until we reached a wet stone floor that felt slick and had a peculiar pungent smell.  “We can set oil down it and flush the well.  It also helps us defrost the rollers and grooves during the snowy seasons.  Ice tends to fill the grooves and prevent us from sliding the granary doors open during the winter months.  This firewell-underhall allows us to burn away the accumulated ice and thaw the runners.”

“How will this help us see above?”

There is a small slide grate up ahead near the door I let you all in through.  The plate is kept well-oiled and moves aside allowing someone below to see anyone above attempting to open the inset door to the catcher bins.  The door is reinforced, but it is the weakest access point to gaining entrance to the granary.  A few men with a battering ram could defeat the door, but I doubt these Xarmnians will try that tonite unless they were sure this was where we had taken refuge.  The outer road’s too wet to reveal the recent passage of our wagon.  And the Xarmnians would be loathed to break into this place and destroy the entrance without the assurance of a good cause.”

“And what cause would that be?” I quipped.

“That they were certain that we are inside, and we are worth destroying the door to the king’s granary to capture,” finished Begglar as he felt along the upper ledge in the dark, and pushed aside a slanted plate cover, revealing the grill work, and outside silvered splashes of the rain.  “Whoever may be coming along the road beside the outer grain bin doors, is sure to stop here at the smaller entry door, where the escarpment overhangs us above. if for no other reason, but to get a moment to collect themselves out of the rain.”

Presently we heard the sound of iron-shod hooves clack as the horse climb up upon the paved floor overhead, echoing down the hollow shaft.  We moved forward, underneath the area where the sifting vents were, hoping to catch a glimpse of the horse and rider now directly above us.

Suddenly the rider spoke…and somehow I thought I recognized the voice.

“Is anyone in there?”

The voice was female, I was sure of it.   I released the breath–I was unaware I had been holding–and exhaled.  Begglar grabbed my arm in the darkness reflexively, but I reassured him.  “Did you hear her?  The voice is female.”

Begglar assented, “Then this stranger is not of the Xarmnian Protectorate.  Not out here.”

We quickly moved back along the tunnel towards the bottom rung of the circular stair, the outside rain providing cover for the splashes our feet made within the tunnel.  I had not been able to see the rider, but from the narrow slats, I could see the chest, fetlock, and pastern of the horse and its under girth-barrel, the saddle cinch straps, the bottom of the tread covers of each stirrup, and the wet and dripping saddle cloth.  What we were missing were the feet and legs of the rider.  Where was she?  She had to have dismounted.

Xarmnians did not typically trust their women to be part of the Protectorate Guards.  The men were too bawdy, raucous, and perverse to ever cause a woman to wish to be part of their company.  Or for even a moment ever believe that she would be “protected” by them.  The thought of traveling overland with them in remote lonely places was too horrible to even imagine.  In their minds, women served only for a few important purposes: to cook, to beat, satiate a man’s carnal hunger, and to make babies.  Beyond that, they weren’t worth the energy it took to kill them and toss their carcasses to the dogs.

I concurred with Begglar, this was no Xarmnian guard, I was sure of that.

We ascended the stair to the ground level, and Begglar closed and locked the small casement door to the passage.  We moved along the edge of the large rollings doors towards the smaller door at the end.

“Mr. O’Brian?” the voice called.  All too close now, and both Begglar and I jumped, startled by its proximity.  She was just outside of the granary bin doors and was probably walking down the line looking for another access point she might have missed while angling along the road at the bottom of the escarpment skirt.  How did she know my name? I wondered.  How did she even know someone was inside?  And then it hit me.  The rain.  Wet footprints, where the ground might have remained dry.  The smaller door stoop was raised to prevent pooling around the entry point, but it was also under the overhang of the escarpment’s upper cliff.  Suddenly, I knew exactly who this was.

I move to the door and Begglar helped me remove the bracing timber.  He had recognized her as well.

Others of our company had followed us, alarmed that we were now opening a door to the outside, but were too late to stop us.

I stepped through the portal, under a curtain of rainwater, draining down from the top of the escarpment, and called out, “Christie?  Is that you?”

Upon hearing the name ‘Christie’, the others and Begglar emerged from the under grain crypts like zombies from a grave, blinking in the now silvering night sky with a misty moon overhead cutting through the scudding rain clouds.

The moonlight pierced the fleeing cloud cover and cast a fortune of silver along the fields.  I almost expected to see a few werewolves loping wet-backed through the wheat fields beyond, seeking a night kill.

Christie came out of the shadows from along the loading dock area by the large roller doors where Begglar’s wagon and the team of horses had been temporarily stabled.  She was drenched and her long golden hair was plastered to her head, her bangs hung in wet ropes from her crown.  I rushed towards her as she shambled out of the pavement, catching her as she fell into my arms.  She was exhausted and shivering, and I could tell she had been through quite an ordeal.  She wept holding onto me weakly as I bore her up to keep her from crumpling to the ground.  “I found you,” she said, sighing with both exhaustion and shuddering relief.  “I almost lost hope of ever catching up to you.”

“Hold on, She-bear,” I said as I guided her under the overhang into the dry inset where the smaller entry door was.

“Get her horse,” Begglar directed, as one of the young men moved in to help me support Christie as we guided her through the doorway.

“I’ve got Christie,” I assured him, “Get her horse.  Bring it inside if it will come.  We’ll stable him with the others.  Get the mare a feedbag, dry her and rub her down.  Pull that wet saddle off her, and get her stabled with dry straw.”

Two of the women and Lindsey helped me get Christie further inside, and the tunnels were already feeling much warmer, due to the furnaces Begglar had lit prior.

“We’ve got her,” Lindsey move in, taking one of Christie’s arms over her shoulder.  “We’ve got a change of clothes for her and some of the gear from the cache.  She’ll be outfitted like the rest of us and warmed up in no time at all.”

“Wait,” Christie said, weakly, but in an urgent whisper, trying to stand on wobbly legs, but unable to muster her remaining strength by anything other than sheer determination.  “Wait,” she said again, this time a bit louder.

Begglar rebraced the door, the young man had maneuvered Christie’s horse inside and led it by the bridle.

“Xarmnians,” she gasped, trying to catch her breath, “Back there.  Burned it down.  Coming behind me.  Coming on the road with dogs.”

*Scene 06* 8:00 (Anchored Spare)

Laura awakened, cramped and crowded into a closed dark space.  Her breathing was labored.  She felt wet and cold.  Her muscles and bones ached.  A misasma of noisesome smells pervaded the darkness.  She tasted bitter bile.  Tears wet her face as she shivered in the stuffed confinement.  She realized that, for better or for worse, she was still in locked the trunk of her father’s car…and the car was now moving.  She heard the muffled, but steady staccatto of the windshield wipers sloshing across the glass.  The tires below hissing over the wet pavement.  The moistened clacking of rain drops and overwash, pouring over the lopsided trunk hood above her.  Her father still had no idea that she had stowed away in his jaunty “Mr. Blue Bird.”  Their family car, as it was.  Though his mother was never allowed to drive it.  He was the breadwinner of the family.  The breadwinner had all the priviledges.

Now she was flying away with him, unbeknownst, trapped in the thumping, bouncing tail of “Mr. Blue Bird”.  The noises of the road changed as she realized the car was moving faster.  Her daddy must have driven on to the Interstate.  She could hear the growl of the grooves in the pavement, now made louder along with the hiss of the water.  She took in a hard shuddering breath and instantly regretted it.  That smell.  That horrible dead smell assaulted her nostrils, but with less of a pungent punch than she had expected.  What was it?  Had a rat somehow crawled into the trunk?  Was there a hole in the floorboard, under the black carpet, that had somehow let whatever creature this was into the confines of this space?  Her stomach lurched and swam within her.  The oily carpet had a sickly nut-flavored smell.  The tire rubber added a bitter burnt odor to its unsavory brew.  The air was stale, musky, and fecund.  The interior had road dirt that had dislodged from the tread of the spare.  For all practical purposes, this trunk had every attribute of what she imagined a grave might smell like.  Of being buried alive.  The thought terrified her and she began to sob.  She could not see anything.  She could not help but smell the sinister vapors that wafted over her like a burial shroud.  Her heartbeat throbbed in her ears.  She had gone back only to find that this false hope of being able to change her past was a just quicker route to an early grave.

She tried to curl up tighter, to somehow make herself smaller, so that the depairing darkness might not enter her all at once.  She felt pressed in on all sides.  Like she was drowning.  Like she had felt that night when she and the others watched the dripping man through that dusty window, in that other place.

That other place…  Oh, if she could only go back to wherever that…Other Place…was.  Trolls, aside, nothing could be as bad as this, she thought. No one cared about her here.  No one.  Her mother would sober up and then wonder where she had gone, but that was probably the extent of it.  If she had cared about her at all, she would have gotten dry longer before it came to this.  “What about, Laura?!” her mother had wailed.  “Yeah,” Laura thought to herself, “What about me?”

If she had really cared, she would have realized that I was only valuable as a bargaining chip.  She thought she could keep Daddy home, because of a sense of obligation to me.  It never occurred to her that I needed someone to love me without the obligation to do so.  That I needed someone to choose me.  To mom, I was only an ‘anchor baby’.  A way to hold daddy in the port, rather than shipping out.  Well, she sure found out differently tonite didn’t she? Laura thought bitterly, tears falling into the dark wet carpet, as the vehicle bumped along and roared over the side grooves of the highway shoulder.

She heard her father’s muffled curse as a wet spray of water hit the side of the car, shearing off of what she perceived to be another vehicle passing him at a higher rate of speed.

“Slow down, you damned idiot!” he growled, “Can’t you see it’s pouring, out?!”

Thunder rumbled overhead, and Laura could hear the answering grumble of a semi-truck’s airbrakes popping and thrumming outside, as well as the hissing of other cars splashing through the wet falling curtains.

“Ah Crap!” a thump hammered what Laura imagined to be the steering wheel, and she felt the vehicle shudder a bit, and seem to push her body into the spare.  Another thwump sound indicated that whatever suitcase, her father had pitched into the backseat, had now slid off into the floorboard.  His zippered hanging bag with it.

Laura braced herself against the push and tug of the vehicle’s motion, stretching out her arm but finding that strange hairless lump move slightly under her splayed fingers.  The dead thing.  It…it moved.

Whether sheerly by the motion of the car, or under its own power, it seemed to twitch under her hand, and before she could stop herself, she screamed.

A primal, urgent, wailing scream poured out of her.  One she could not have surpressed if she tried.

Suddenly, she felt pitched forward, and her body smacked the anchored spare.

Sobbing, with no restraint, she screamed and cried out, “Daddy!  Daddy!!! Please!”

The car fishtailed, and was thrown into a nauseating spin, its tires hydroplaning and studdering across the roadway.  She heard a loud crash and the high-pitched sound of crunching and buckling metal, the wet shatter of safety glass.  Tires screeched, and dribbled over loose wet gravel, as horns wailed, and cars swerved around the otuside of the vehicle.

Laura felt a hard piece of metal crash into her ribs and lower back, causing her to gasp in pain, as she was thrown and pitched about in the narrow space.

The world heaved and turned upside down.  She felt her small suitcase lunge out of the dark and strike her leg with a thunk.  She felt the car go into a spin, rock up and onto its side, turning her dark interior space into a confused tumble, as if she had climbed into the well of a sidemount dryer, like the ones her mom used at the coin-operated laundry mat downtown.

She heard a car door grind open, the same time the trunk space thrust upward, as if the car itself had suddenly crested a steep hill.  The car leaned towards the right, and she heard the engine racing, the car wheels spinning and throwing pea-sized gravel up against the car’s undercarriage.

She clung to the hard rubber of the anchored spare, as the backend of the vehicle felt suspended, as if a crane had grabbed the back bumper and were raising it upward.  Her pink suitcase had tumbled back into the interior cavity along the seatback end of the trunk–threatening to assault her again as gravity schemed to reload the pink projectile back into the shadowed inner chamber.

She heard a wet sloughing sound as long grass began to move along the undercarriage, picking up speed.  The strange, and quickening sensation of falling was the last perception she registered as she descended into the darkness, clutching frantically to the treads of anchored spare bolted down under the wide metal wingnut to the bottom of the trunk’s wheel well.

Anchored spare, she thought.  How ironic was it that the very term for what she now held onto for dear life, should be exactly what she viewed herself as, even as her very world was turning upside down and descending into a freefall?

*Scene 07* 22:03 (Campfire Stories)

We gathered Christie in to our tenous communal fold, such as it was, as the doors were secured and braced against any further riders daring the storm.

“We’d best get you further inside and out of those wet clothes.  You’re going to catch your death of cold,” I said.  “He’s right, dear,” Nell chimed in, “We’d best get you warmed up and quickly before the cold goes to the bone.  The girls’ll get you dry and I’ll prepare something hot to drink to get you warmed on the inside.  A nice herbal tea, I should think.”

She half-smiled and nodded, as Lindsey and Cheryl quickly produced a cloak from their pack and wrapped her shoulders, and the women led her away down a dimly lit passage to the privacy of the grain bins, where we all had changed into travel and provisional battle gear.  When Christie was dried and outfitted, the women brought her back into the common area, near the furnaces.

The air in the storage bins and stables smelled of straw and dry husks, but was dry and earthy, slightly sweetened by hints of the malt in the grain scattered along the larger loading doors on the other side of the low berm.  The caverns flickered under the torchlight, and we moved further into the commons area, a broader low-ceiling cavern bolstered with stone pillars and equipped with rows of benches and stools near the iron furnaces that Begglar had previously lit.  A warm orange glow came through the grates also casting winsome shadows on the stone pavements from the benches and chair legs arranged in that open space.  It felt like gathering around a large campfire as we settled in to wait out the storm.

Begglar and Dominick unlockedan adjoining galley and pantry that serviced the commons area and procured some of the foodstores.  They tapped some of the ale barrels stored in the large racks, and filled cups and tankards for those of us who could take it.  We snacked on dried fruits, and jerked meats that were also stored in the pantries.  We warmed ourselves by the furnaces, pitching in together to share and pass around what served as a meal while in hiding.

Begglar told me the smoke stacks from the furnaces were piped up natural volcanic chimneys that vented on the upper surface of the escarpment, but also, since the smoke was from natural wood fires, part of it vented into a smoke room on one of the mid-levels where slabs of various meats were cured and hung.  In the off season, hunters and areas herdsmen, brought haunches of meat and sides free range cattle to be butchered, stripped and dried in the high smokehouse room. As part of payment for these services, choice cuts and portions were kept for the soldiers and workers who serviced the operation.  Portions were also given to help service the inn.  The escarpment granary was a veritable cornucopedia of foods and drink for many years.  But when the freshwater spring failed, the brewery operation dwindled down to only three to four keepers, and then down to only himself and Dominick.  Without the source of freshwater, it became difficult to rinse the meats intended for curing.

Christie was brought back into the commons area and was looking much more like herself again.  She seemed refreshed and glad to be back among the group.  Naturally, we gathered around her.  We were so relieved to see her yet amazed at the same time.  Hugs were given and we shared both in the delight and relief of welcoming her back into our traveling fellowship.

“Did you ride all the way through this terrible storm?” someone asked.

“Terrible?” Christie gathered her strength in a deep breath, “Honey, after Laura and I left the inn, we rode down the sea road right smack into a rough headwind. It worsened from there on in.”

“Where did you go?” Miray asked, settling herself on the floor near Christie’s feet.

“We took shelter in an old stable near that shack where we stopped before.  It was old but the wind almost blew it apart.  When I saw the trolls, Laura freaked and rode out into the storm.”

“Trolls?!” I exclaimed, casting a meaningful glance at Begglar.

“Yeah,” Christie exhaled, catching her breath again.  “Two of them, and I think they had the body of the other one we captured and burned.  Had it stretched out on the table in the cabin.  I saw them through the window, where we watched the man by the fire.  Only got a quick peek inside really.  I thought the man would be there, but he was no where in sight.  I don’t know if the trolls did something to him or what, but it was just the two I saw, hovering around the burned one.”

Begglar harumphed, “Now we know what happened to the others.  I told you trolls almost never travel alone.”

“That must’ve been terrifying. Especially for Laura.  It was part of why she left us to go back.  Did she see them too?”  Others were gathering closer now, eager to hear more of Christie and Laura’s experiences.

“No,” Christie responded, taking a sip of a cup of tea Nell brought to her.  “Mmm this is good, thank you, Nell.”

Nell seated herself nearby, next to Cheryl, Lindsey and another of the young women.  “My pleasure, dear.  Go on with yer tale.”

“So, I went out in the storm to check for a way into the cabin.  When we first came in, the doorway had an overgrowth of twisted vines blocking it.  We took temporary shelter in the stable, but it was getting so windy that we had no way to keep warm and dry in there.  I had wanted to see if the man was there and could give us a better place to take shelter until the storm passed over.  We had no way to make a fire, and the structure shook and the roof leaked.

“I left Laura to keep the horses calm while I hurried out in the rain to the cabin.  Someone had cut down the vines that had grown over the door, and it did not feel right just barging in, so I check the window and saw the trolls in there.  No sign of the man, but I figured if he was in league with the trolls, we wanted nothing to do with him either.”

“I assure you, he wasn’t,” I muttered.

“What?” Christie asked.

“Nothing,” I said, dismissing my interjection and urging her to continue.  “So how did Laura find out?”

Christie looked downcast and regretful. “I told her,” she sighed.  “I-I came back and was frightened myself.  She pressed me, and I just blurted it out.  Not thinking.  I just knew we couldn’t expect help from the cabin and she would want to know why.  I never imagined she would react like she did.  Never thought she might go out in the storm.  She panicked.  She just jumped on her horse and took off.  I tried stopping her.  Caught the stirrup, but was dragged across the mud and grass.  Laura seemed to forget everything but her terror.  I lost my grip and she and her mare galloped off into the dark wind and rain, coming down from the sea side.

“It was nearly all I could do to turn back to my own horse and go after her, but I could barely see.  The stable collapsed behind me.  Rats were running out from under the feeder troughs and through the backwall.  There was no where else to go. Someone was coming up on me out of the dark along the banks of the stream, as I charged after her.  I assumed the man had returned from wherever he had gone to, but with the trolls there, I had no time to think.  Both of our horses charged through the storm, running overland towards the sea cliffs, but it was all I could do to hang on and stay in the saddle.  I would see her far ahead through the flashes of lightning, and she made it back to the slopes and dismount, but I arrived too late to stop her.

“When I got there, she had somehow made her way down to the beach.  The storm surged and the sea pressed inward, but she made it out onto a sandbar and the blue oculus arose out of the sea and took her.

“I witnessed it all from the cliffs above.  Her horse was running loose, but I lost track of it in the storm.  I thought about going after it, but I remembered what you told us, Mister Begglar.  That the horses knew the way home.  If my horse hadn’t known the way, I would have been completely lost out there.”

“You did fine, lass!” Begglar interjected.  “Those sea storms are powerful and dangerous.  Many’s the man who would’ve avoided going out into such a blowing, fearsome.  These overland storms lose power coming inland.  Water fuels it, but the land will take out its steam.  By all counts, you gals ran into the worst of it.  The other horse will indeed come back.  Have no doubts.  Bessie’s a good mare.  Quite reliable.  How did you come back?  How was Evangeline?  She is the younger of the two horses.  Your horse.  Has a bit more spirit in her, but you seemed to be the more mature rider to be able to handle her.”

“Evangeline was a godsend, Mister Begglar.  She did just as you said she would.  I loosened the reins and let the mare find her own way back.  I held on to her mane and ducked my head.  The rain and the cold stung and froze, but I just let the horse lead not knowing where else to turn or what else to do.  Eventually, we came down the backroad and the riding was a little easier.

“When the horse returned to the barn near the inn, I was so relieved at first, but there were strange horses there that I had not seen before.  Tall, black and powerful animals, with thick, bulky saddles mounted on cowhide blankets with carry hooks on either side.  I smelled blood spilled somewhere in the barn.  Despite the rain, the air was thick with it mixed with another foul odor.  Right away, I could sense these horses belonged to terrible, and violent men.  Xarmnians, I believe you called them.  They ride with the smell of death on them.”

“How exciting!” a teenaged boy gushed. “What did you do then?”

“Exciting is not the word,” Christie winced, but continued with the account of her journey.  “When you see them coming after you, I doubt that will be the word you will choose to describe it.”

The boy shrugged and grinned, “Sorry.  I just got caught up in your story.  Please tell us more.”

“You may not be so enthusiastic when you hear the rest of it,” she gave him a measured look, and then resumed.  “Anyway, as I was saying, the rain was still coming down pretty strong, but not as blindingly hard as the deluge I had just rode through.  Everywhere I seemed to go, I ran into danger, and I just knew I needed to get out of there before I was seen, but I couldn’t be sure where to go next or where you all had gone.  I could barely see across the yard to the inn.  I knew the plan was to go to that Marker place you referred to,” Christie said, turning to me, “but I didn’t know where that was.  Only that you guys would probably need to take the road if you were taking the wagon you were loading when we left.  There was no one I could see from the barn, so I mounted again and rode up the curved road to the top of the ridge.  I had hoped the rain would provide enough cover, but once I reached the top, I turned my horse and saw some of the men coming out of the inn below.  I reined in and ducked behind the summit, and rode down into an offshoot cut, where the rain runs down beside the road into a ditch.  I found it curved around a small blind behind a boulder and took shelter, giving me a passable view of the descending road above and below.

“Those riders soon crested the summit on their horses shortly after, and I was so terrified that they would discover me in the narrow blind.  But instead of coming towards my hiding place, they turned and rode along the ridge headed away towards the west.  They were armed with spears, and brandished swords, but it looked like they were intent on riding after someone else.  I figured they would follow the road down the other side, but they charged across the slope diagonally after three others I had not noticed before.  I could not see who clearly, but they looked like some of our party and were on foot.  The horsemen, they just cruelly ran them down.  I saw one of them throw his spear, but I had to turn away.  I could not watch anymore.  I was so scared, but the men, the soldiers, for they looked like some sort of militia, never found me or rode my way.”

There was a collective gasp as we all realized what had happened to our three deserters.  “Oh no!” cried one.  “Have mercy!” cried another.

Christie continued, “The horsemen that I could still see through the rain, gathered the bodies of those they had slain onto their horses and took them back over the hill.  Back down to the inn.  I waited and waited, but no other riders came back down my side of the hill.  There was nothing I could do.  The men were cold and efficient.  Merciless.

“It took me a while, but I left my hiding place when the rain lightened up a bit and charged down the road that wound down the hillside.  I had no idea how far ahead you all were.  The road was muddy, but I thought I’d found the wheel tracks of your wagon so I followed those.  I eventually came to a strange hill, surrounded by thornbushes.  If I had to guess, I think it was some sort of a tell.  I remembered reading about them, and only saw a few pictures, but it seemed to fit what I remembered about them.

“The wagon ruts, as much as I could make out after the rain had passed, still led up there, so I stopped to investigate and see what direction you might’ve taken and to get a good view of the lower valley.  Y’know, to see if I could spot you all ahead in the distance.  The storm was still moving, and the worst of it had passed over me, but had slowed and it stretched out over to the northwestern horizon where the road down led.

“Watching from up there on the rise, something strange happened on the side of that hill.  Something that I am still processing, but not quite ready to talk about.”  Christie paused seeming to lose herself in the recent memory, her eyes briefly unfocused and then refocused, and then she added, almost as an afterthought, “There was this strange ray of blue light, too.  It looked like the beam of some kind of search light.  It illumined the upper portion of that tell, and stretched across the sky towards the west.  Somewhere towards a distant ridgeline of far grey mountains.  A light I had not noticed until I moved around towards the western face of the tell.”

There was a growing murmur from among the group, and Miray, who had been sitting cross-legged on the grain floor, chin in hands, wrapped in Christie’s recounting of her experiences, suddenly perked up and scrambled to her feet, beaming.

“See! See!” she grinned, wagging her finger at the group. “I told you all but you dinnent believe me!  She saw it too.  So, there!”

Impishly, she stuck out her small pink tongue, whirled and turned to me.

“We tried to tell them, dinnent we, Mister O’Brian!” she came over and squeezed my hand triumphantly.

“We did,” I answered quietly, “but they were not ready yet to see it.”

The others look from one to another, puzzled by this new revelation, and the sobering account of the demise of three former members of our group.  Threads of low, apprehensive muttering wove its way crossways and through the gathering.

Lindsey piped in, eager to catch Christie up on our latest experience, and distract from the course of the discussion.

“You just missed something terrible here too, Christie.  Be glad you were not here to see it.  The other little girl that was traveling with us was not what she appeared to be.”

“Other little girl?”  Christie turned to me with inquisitive eyes, “What is she talking about?”

I sighed.  There was no easy way to say it.  After all that Christie had been through, I felt it was too early to put this additional revelation on her.

From the corner of my eye, I noticed Cheryl squirm a bit, feeling perhaps some guilt on having been such an ardent defender of the deceiver.  She rubbed her leg gingerly, still suffering physically from her personal encounters of learning, as we had, that Becca was not Becca.

Lindsey saw my alarm and seemed to shrink back, regretting that she had broached the subject.  Another of the young men took up the account, handling the topic with a little less finesse.

“We had a traitor in our midst.  A monster, masquerading as a little girl.  But Mister O’Brian here fixed her with that sword of his.  Yes, he did.  She screeched like an angry owl.  Hurt our ears like the dickens, but he whacked her and she just dissolved away into dust.”

Christie turned on me, “Tell me you did not harm a little girl,” her She-Bear nature rising in alarm.

“No, we did not!” I said emphatically, turning a scowl on the young man who was making me sound like something between a hero and a villain.  “Don’t be alarmed.  We tested her to be certain.  She was not a creature of our world or this one. We have a way to expose the deception.   I assure you, this creature appeared in the form of a little girl, but was not one.”

Christie began to unconsciously move back from us, perhaps wondering herself if it had been wise to come back at all.  Wondering if we had been caught up in some mass hysteria and done something terrible to a child.  None of the faces around her bathed in the glow of the firelight seemed to reflect the sheen of madness or twinkle of duplicity.

Puzzled, she turned back to me.  “Then what was she?” she asked, arching an eyebrow, wariness peeking in, still stirring an uneasiness within her.

“She was a Banshee,” Begglar answered.

Christie looked from me…to Begglar…to others…and back to me again.  Miray looked at her directly and solemnly, nodding her head.  Christie sighed, knowing that if this was an adult deception the children wouldn’t be included in it.

“You know…,” she paused, gathering her thoughts and cautiously measuring her reply, “I’ve just been through some terrible experiences recently and before that a fight with a…a Troll.  I can’t believe I’m saying this.” She gathered her reserve and shivered a bit, hugging her arms to herself.  She then turned to Begglar, and said, “What is a Banshee?  At least, what is it here? What does the term mean in this place?”