CHAPTER THREE
A handsome man about my age filled the doorway. He did not seem to be surprised to see either the stag or me but simply smiled a welcome, then looked over his shoulder and said, “Mother, we have a visitor.”
Handsome? He was a total smokeshow and I found myself blushing as I slipped from the back of the deer, bracing myself against his bulk for balance.
The man looked concerned and took a step towards me.
“Are you hurt?” he said.
“I was in a car accident,” I said. “I really need to call Triple A.”
Why that was my first concern, I don’t know, but it seemed easier to focus on the aftermath of my accident than to try to make sense of how I’d ended up in the middle of a summer night when it was freaking December 21st in the Pacific Northwest.
The man looked past me to the stag and said, “Thank you, Geweih, she’s safe here.”
The deer made that strange snort/bleat sound and then trotted away.
The man turned his attention to me and gazed deeply into my eyes. It was an intense and intimate gaze and it unsettled me, though there was nothing but kindness in his amber eyes.
“Come in,” he said at last and stood aside to let me pass.
I stumbled a little crossing the threshold and he reached out to steady me, grabbing my elbow and holding onto it as we came into the small, well-kept house.
A very old woman turned from the stove when she heard our steps and she turned smiling to greet us.
But when she saw me, she dropped the plate she was holding and it shattered on the polished pine of the floor.
Do I look that bad? I wondered, much too aware of how bloody and bizarre I must look with my fancy dress now in tatters and mud and snow spattering my legs.
“Please don’t be afraid,” I said. “I know I look a fright.”
She snorted a laugh as if what I’d said amused her and replied, “No harm done, dear. I was merely startled.”
She looked at the man and added, “You look very like someone I used to know.”
“I am Marus,” the man said to me, “and this is my mother, Syla.”
His mother? The math didn’t add up. Marus looked like he was in his early twenties and Syla was ancient, with gray hair so thin her scalp showed through in patches and a face so wrinkled her eyes were almost lost in them. Maybe he was adopted, like I was.
“I’m Hildegard Thomas,” I said. “Hilde.”
“Hilde,” Syla replied, as if tasting the name on her tongue.
“I’m terribly sorry to bother you,” I said, feeling totally ridiculous, “but I had an accident and then I ran into your deer and he brought me here.”
“Yes,” she said. “He is trained to greet travelers.”
“Like a St. Bernard,” I said inanely and she and Marus both looked at me.
“Yes, just so,” she said. “Why don’t you clean yourself up and we’ll see what we can do about your situation.”
“Thank you,” I said. “If you’ll just point me to your bathroom.”
“Bathroom?” she asked, as if she’d never heard the word before, and then she started laughing hysterically. “Marus, show Hilde the…bathroom.” She nearly choked on the word.
WTF? I thought.
Marus smiled at me reassuringly. “It’s not as bad as all that,” he said and led me out the front door and around the back to where a natural hot spring bubbled up in a muddy clearing. There was a path of stones that led to the water’s edge. Grimy towels hung on a little hedge that partially screened the spring and there was a lump of something viscous balanced on the ground within easy reach of anyone who might be in the water.
And where’s the toilet? I wondered.
As if he’d heard the question, Marus said, “If you need to move your bowels, the privy is over there.” He pointed to a small shack almost hidden beneath a large tree.
I shuddered, imagining how many spiders might be inside it.
“Do you need anything else?” Marus asked politely, making no move to leave.
“No,” I said. “I’m good.” Which was not exactly true. I was very far from good. I was actually not good at all, but I was afraid if I said anything else, I might start screaming.
“Excellent, well,” he said. He gave me a little bow and then turned back toward the cottage.
I waited until he disappeared around the corner before I let out a deep breath. There wasn’t a window in the back of the cottage and as far as I could tell, we were out in the middle of nowhere, so I slowly began to unpeel my filthy, bloody clothes. I ached all over and the idea of getting into a hot spring was overpoweringly tempting.
Just taking off those torture devices strapped to my feet was bliss.
I lowered myself into the spring and nearly gasped at the heat of the water, but it was no hotter than the whirlpool at my gym.
The pool beneath the spring was about five feet deep, so I knotted my hair into a bun to keep it from getting wet as I allowed the water to engulf me.
The spring carried the dirt away from me and sucked it out of sight.
I touched the goo on the stone and brought it to my nose. It smelled pleasantly herbal, so I rubbed some of it on my skin to see what would happen.
It fizzed and lifted all the blood and grime away from my skin like the best K-Beauty mask ever.
When I finally felt clean, I heaved myself out of the spring using the paving stones for leverage. I was wrapping one of the towels around me when I saw movement out of the corner of my eye.
I whipped around, holding the towel up, and saw a…
Monster!
I screamed. That preternatural calm I’d been experiencing shredded and in that movement I felt a horrible fear bubbling up in me like the water from the spring. I screamed and retreated back into the spring as the creature stood there, looking bewildered and oddly…apologetic. He backed away, making noises that had the cadence of speech but not the meaning.
Marus came running to see what was happening and when he saw the creature, his expression darkened.
“Allard, no,” he yelled, aiming a kick at the beast.
Allard cowered back, his paws (hands?) raised in a defensive gesture.
He was still making those strange gabbling noises and whatever he was trying to say just made Marus angrier. He rained blows down on him, driving him back and away from the spring.
I was horrified. It was like watching someone beat a clumsy puppy. “Stop,” I said finally. “You’re hurting him.”
Marus turned to me and his amber eyes were mean. “You were screaming,” he said. “I thought you were in distress.”
“I didn’t mean to scream,” I said. “I was just taken by surprise.”
I looked straight at the thing he called Allard. “I’m sorry,” I said to him. “You scared me.”
Allard looked at me with his sad eyes and made another one of those apologetic-sounding noises.
“What did he say?” I asked Marus.
“Who knows?” he said. “He is like a parrot. He can mimic speech but make no sense of it.”
I decided right then that host or not, I didn’t like Marus very much.
He looked at me, taking in my towel-clad form and I didn’t much like the way he was looking at me. And I again got the feeling that he knew what I was thinking, but all he said was, “Just leave your things. They’re ruined and mother will have something for you to change into.”
Without waiting to see if I was following, he turned and headed for the cottage again. I looked at Allard who gave me a helpless shrug.
You’re a lot of help, I thought. Clutching the towel more closely around me, I stepped barefoot onto one of the paving stones. But when I got to the edge of the paving stones there was still a good five or six feet of mud I’d have to cross. I looked down at my bare, freshly washed feet and sighed.
Suddenly Allard was there, scooping me up in his hands (paws?) and carrying me like a baby.
Or like King Kong carrying Fay Wray, I thought, although he smelled like a clean, wet dog. When he reached the door of the cottage, he set me down gently before backing away.
“Thank you,” I said to his retreating form, although I wasn’t sure if he heard me.
Syla was alone in the cottage, which was odd, but I was more than happy not to be around Marus. His ferocious treatment of Allard had unnerved me.
She was reading a leather-bound book that looked as ancient as she was. She looked up when she heard me and smiled.
She was missing a tooth.
“You look much better,” she said. “Are you hungry?”
“A little,” I said, which was true. I hadn’t eaten before the party and I’d left without eating so much as a pita chip. “But I’d really like to change—”
She interrupted, “Is the hunger a cramp in your gut that makes you want to hunch over?”
“I’m sorry—” I began, but she cut me off again.
“Or is it the pinching kind of hunger that makes you weak?”
“I’m fine,” I said, a little weirded out by the cheerful intensity of her odd questions.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “The hunger eventually goes away.”
She looked at me as if she expected a response.
“That’s good to know,” I said slowly, thinking, I’ve got to get out of here.
“You can’t,” the old woman said, as if I’d spoken aloud.
I looked at her in surprise. “Why not?” I asked.
“You died when you crashed your car.”
No, that’s not possible, I thought.
“She’s going through the stages,” the old woman said to Marus, who had come back into the cottage through a door I hadn’t seen before. He was carrying a bundle of clothes, which he tossed to me.
I couldn’t catch them without letting go of the towel, so they dropped at my feet. Some sort of tunic thing and what looked like hospital scrub pants.
I bent carefully and picked them up.
I can’t be dead, I thought.
“She’s in denial right now,” Syla added.
“I always forget what comes next,” he said. “Anger or bargaining?”
“Anger,” she said and stared at me expectantly.
And then she started laughing maniacally and her son joined in. “We’re just fooling with you, Hilde,” he said. “You’re not dead, you’re in the Verge.”
“It never gets old,” Syla chortled. “You’re dead,” she said, which sent her off into a fresh round of merriment.
You are insane, I thought, and I didn’t much care if she heard that thought or not.
I looked around for some place I could change in privacy. There didn’t seem to be any rooms in the cottage, just a big open space with two beds and a table with two chairs and a kitchen area.
Marus didn’t seem inclined to look away so I finally just pulled the tunic on over my head then pulled the towel off as I tugged the pants on.
I really wished I’d gone back into the car for the keys to the trunk. The idea of walking back to the crash scene in my bare feet was not appealing.
I wondered if I could summon the stag like an Uber.
I wondered when I was going to wake up from this nightmare.
“You’re not dreaming, Hildegard,” Syla said.
“So you can read my mind,” I said.
“Yes,” she said. “It’s one of my many talents.”
I stared at her.
“Who are you?” I asked, but that wasn’t the question I wanted to ask her.
“Do you mean what am I?”
I nodded. She smiled that hag smile of hers and this time there was absolutely nothing kindly in it.
“I’m a witch, Hildegard. And I’m your aunt.”