Author: Wildbow

Left in the Dust – 16.10 | Pale

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The door slammed behind Charles, and the house shook.  Images on the walls broke away, standing an inch or two away from the wall itself.  Details slowly moved, like the needles and razors Mal had contributed, and the echoes.

She spoke, and her voice felt empty and hollow in the house.

“This is a ritual where I’m meant to show where my place is in the world.  The world is- it’s dark.  People struggle.  People like Lucy don’t get a fair shake-”

The front hall was empty.  Lucy hadn’t followed her here.

“-And people like Avery suffer loneliness.  Most adults seem to barely get by.  And that’s here, in a country that’s so beautiful, with so much good.  I know I’m not perfect, but I want to face the bad stuff.  Because by doing that, I can help Lucy some.  I can help Avery.  I can be friends with Tashlit, when others would have run away.  Or hurt her.”

The white light that came in through the window shifted, like a cloud had passed over the sun, but it was so white and so stark that a heatless, full-size white star could have been within walking distance of the front door.

“I get the feeling you’re going to come after the idea of what we’re trying to do, so I want to make it clear,” she told the empty room.  “When we talked to Ken we couldn’t create an offshoot of Ken that represents the Others.  That’s part of what inspired me to want to make a third Kennet.  So that one part, facing the bad stuff other people look away from?  Screw the thin veneer and disguises we throw over that stuff…”

The room shifted.  It looked like things did under her Sight, cocoon-wraps of plastic or sheer fabric.  There was nothing crimson or pale beneath it though.  The art stood out, still, just over the surfaces.  The light from the windows didn’t radiate either.  Verona was reminded of images from nuclear blasts, where the energy had come through and cast permanent shadows.  This was that kind of energy.  Brilliant, bleaching white and shadows left behind where the light didn’t touch.

“…But also, the world’s gotta have magic in it.  I’ve felt that ever since Miss approached us and gave us the loose rundown.  Even before it clicked and I was Aware.  So we gotta have a Kennet with magic in it.”

Another, heavier shadow passed over the glaring white light.

Her hand twinged.  She rubbed it.

“There are conditions,” the Sable Prince said, from behind her.

Verona turned, still rubbing in circular motions around her palm.  The Sable Prince stood where the Carmine furs had been, just out of the light.

“Conditions?”

“You made your demesnes claim a full declaration, nothing held back.  An oath.”

Verona nodded quickly.  “Yeah.”

“Normally, we can account for the unsaid portions of a statement.  The oath is old wording, and that old meaning holds.  It means you’ll take permanent ownership of your demesne.  That is what you swear when you say those words, or words like them.  If you fail you may try again, but your claim will be worse, sometimes to the point you can’t take that location.”

“Yes.  I know.”

He paused.  His skin was dark gray in the gloom, hair past waist length and tied into a ponytail, his beard at the edges of his already sharp jaw, accenting it.  His suit, shirt, tie, and shoes were all black.  His eyes reflected the white from the window.  He was a very dark presence, compared to the color from the mural and the light from the window.

“You’ll be forsworn, then,” he told her.

Her heart skipped a beat.  Had Charles meant-  “What bullshit is that!?”

“If you make the claim you want to make and if you fail to bring it full circle, you will be forsworn.  The Alabaster, Aurum and I discussed.  The Carmine Exile abstained.  We will allow you to claim a demesne in a Kennet that is yet to be, but if you or others cannot bring that Kennet to fruition, you’ll fail to fulfill your oath.”

“I’m guessing this is what Charles said I’d hate?”

“It’s only a small part of what the Carmine Exile said you’d hate.  I wanted to open by allowing you to abandon your claim now.  It will count against future claims, as any failed demesne ritual would.”

“And if I continue?”

“Then you commit yourself to bringing that Kennet to be, and are forsworn if you cannot.  You’ll answer the challenges we pose you here and now, to justify your initial claim for this ritual, but there will be another claim to be challenged later when you bring that Kennet into being.”

“Wait, what?  Another?”

“We’ll arrange it accordingly.”

“I need more explanation than that.”

“You’ll answer challenges here today.  You’ve answered the Kennet beneath, you’ll answer us for the Kennet to be, and you’ll answer Kennet above after.  But when your group turns the Kennet that does not yet exist into a realm, a claim will go out.  Anyone that wishes to answer it can, to refute your claim, and if they stop you they’ll stop the ritual.”

“That’s balls.”

“You may declare yourself divorced from the ritual to make a third Kennet if you wish to preserve the ritual, should someone disclaim you.”

“…At the cost of being forsworn?”

“Yes.”

“That’s balls.”

“Yes,” the Alabaster Doe replied.  Verona turned.  The Doe stood with her back to the window, hard to make out in the glare.  The antlers that were worked into her clothing made shadows on the wall as large as trees.  “It’s unfortunate, but this is the compromise and challenge we decided on.”

Verona clenched her fist.

“Can you bring Lucy?” Verona asked. “I’d like to discuss with her.”

“No,” the Alabaster’s voice was quiet.  “The challengers come.”

A dragging sound outside preceded the woman’s entry.

She was slender, hair long in a different way than Verona’s hair had used to be long, untrimmed and a bit greasy.  Her dress looked like it belonged to a woman taller and broader across the shoulders than she was, and slipped from one bare shoulder to show a pair of scars- one round, the other a slash.  Marks surrounding her neck looked like rope burns from a hanging- but there was a narrow line there too, cutting through the other scar.  A homemade leather apron had started out brown, but had been stained enough to go nearly black, and a hood of the same rough design looked like it had been a cow’s head, horns included.  It wasn’t attached to anything she wore, but had two draping parts that she’d criss-crossed and put around her neck and shoulders, the back portion draping back behind her.

The young woman didn’t blink as she took in the surroundings.

“Toadswallow’s friend?” Verona asked.  “She came into town last night, didn’t she?”

“If you’d waited one more day, Alpeana would have approached you to inform you,” the Alabaster told Verona.  “She is best known as the Milkmaid.”

The Milkmaid looked at the Alabaster, eyes wide, eyebrows drawing up and together in a very intense kind of look.

“Clara Tucker,” the Alabaster amended.

“Hi Clara.”

“Clara did not answer the call and has not resided here long enough to have a counterclaim.  I chose her because of what she illustrates,” the Alabaster told Verona.  “Here we have a recreation of Clara.  In the spirit of the rules, I wouldn’t bring her actual self here, out of concern that there could be bad blood and rippling effects.  I choose to trust you won’t carry the bad blood in the other direction.”

“She’s a bogeyman, right?”

The Alabaster was gone.

Clara took a step forward, still studying the surroundings.

“Okay,” Verona replied.  “Hi, Clara.  Do you talk?”

Clara looked down and to her right, bent down, and picked up a two-by four.  She turned that intense stare toward Verona.

She smashed it against the doorframe.  The wood broke at a diagonal, ending with a wedge-shaped point.

“She said you’re illustrating something.  Can you share?” Verona asked.  “‘Cause you know, I like art.  Generally.”

Clara dropped to a crouch and ran for Verona at the same time, bent over, low to the ground, weapon held out to the side.

“Shi-”

Verona threw a spell card.  Clara leaped up onto the couch, then jumped off one foot, for the mantlepiece over the crappy old fireplace.  Behind and to the right of Verona.

The spell card detonated in a flash of light, followed by a crackle.

Not, like, superhumanly fast, but-

Verona scrambled back and out of the way, kicking the chair at the Milkmaid as she jumped down from the top of the fireplace.  She collided with the chair on landing and fell hard as it toppled beneath her.

The Milkmaid went from lying on her belly to a lunge with no hesitation, stabbing out with the spike of wood.  Verona fended it off with one arm- her sweater caught the tip of the wood and helped it avoid finding purchase.  The Milkmaid grabbed the front of her sweater and jerked her closer, before shoving her back.

Verona tripped over the piece of wood that had broken away from the spike.  Floorboards shattered under her, and she plunged into the cellar of a house that didn’t have a basement.

She landed with her upper back hitting something cushioned over something hard.  Something scraped her leg and elbow, and her backpack was too full to be a good cushion at her lower back, making her feel painfully off balance.

The smell of decaying flesh exploded into her nostrils, down her throat, and produced an immediate rebellion there.

Her eyes adjusted to the gloom as she looked up at the hole in the floor- wider than any she’d made with her body.  The Milkmaid stood at the edge of the hole, holding the spike of wood.

Before darting off, feet pounding on the old floorboards above Verona.

And below-

She lay on a pile of dead bodies in varying states of decomposition, and one body that wasn’t decomposing at all, because it was fresh.

Farming tools had been dismantled and shoved into the floor.  Pitchforks, scythes, hoes, shovels.  Some had been sharpened and modified.  A rake used its tines to host a wreath of barbed wire.

She put a hand out, searching for purchase, and what wasn’t broken metal, broken off bits of rusty equipment, or splintering wood was bodies.  Even those weren’t safe, because some had metal working their way up through them, pointing up at the hole.

There was a rug.  One that had probably been put over the hole, so the unwary would step on it and fall through.  Onto this.  It wouldn’t perfectly protect her if there was a blade beneath and she put her weight on it, but it was better than nothing.

She found ‘ground’ to crawl onto, but the flesh was waxy and had extruded something gelatinous- Verona’s head dipped, her entire upper body locking up and cramping as she fought to avoid puking, and her hand rested on clothing and slid.  Decomposing flesh pulled away from bone.  She only barely managed to avoid face-planting into corpse.  Or belly flopping onto a pitchfork with only the rightmost spike sticking up toward her belly.

She moved carefully, leaning on the body with bent arms, forearms atop flesh, sticking leg and toe out while using the slickness of the body to make the rotation easier, turning herself around until she could set feet down on the rug.

The door opened.

“Please, please, no,” a girl whimpered.

Verona reached for spell cards-

She had nothing.

Verona looked around, and saw a spot where maybe she could hide.  A cabinet, with door ajar.  She hesitated, then decided to quickly pull off her sweater, throwing it up-

It caught on the broken edges of floorboards above.

Verona hurried to the hiding spot- and paused at the last second.

Steel glinted inside.  A triangular bit of steel.

She glanced quickly to the stairs, checking the coast was clear, then adjusted the angle she was peering through those doors-

A bear trap, just inside, with other machinery.

Was it crawling inside that was dangerous, or just opening the door?

She took a much worse hiding spot, deciding not to gamble.  Leaning against the edge of the cabinet, face turned to present a slimmer profile.  She’d worn a black tank beneath her sweater, and that at least gave her some camouflage in the gloom of the unlit basement, the light from upstairs shining down.  She had to turn her feet to an awkward angle so the brightly painted skateboarding shoes wouldn’t draw the eye.

The Milkmaid came down the stairs, dragging someone behind her by the hair.  A woman, twenty or so.  Every time it looked like the victim had gotten her balance or recovered, she was jerked this way or that.  The fact the air here was so pungent it was hard to breathe only served to stun her more.

“Oh my god, Sean!” the victim cried out, coughing through gags,  “Oh my god, oh no, no, honey, no, no!”

The words became inarticulate, the inarticulate cries became retching- but she fought and struggled without cease, and the Milkmaid hung onto her arm and hair, patiently wrenching her this way or that to keep her under control.

That was probably the only thing saving Verona from being seen, because her hiding spot was garbage.  The Milkmaid found a moment to look up at the sweater.

The victim, mid-struggle, saw Verona.  The fact she stopped for a moment drew the Milkmaid’s attention-

Verona pulled her head back into the corner between the side of the cabinet and the wall, drawing in her chest with shoulders bent forward at the same time.

“You killed Sean!  You killed Sean!” the woman she was dragging behind her cried out.  “Listen to me!  Look at me!”

She’s trying to buy me a chance.

“Look at me-” the girl shrieked, pulling on the Milkmaid’s hair.

The Milkmaid grabbed her wrist, adjusted her grip, then lifted-

Yeah, she wasn’t that much faster than a person.  She wasn’t that much stronger.  But it looked like she could pull off the kind of ‘I’m going to regret that tomorrow’ kind of bursts of speed and strength that most people held back from.  She lifted her victim, clearly intent on throwing her down on the spike bed of pitchforks and scythes.  Her target put one foot out, against the side of a shovel, pushing against it to try to steer herself.

Putting the Milkmaid’s back to Verona.

Verona stuck a foot out beneath one of the cabinet’s legs, toeing at the cabinet door from beneath the cabinet until it moved.  She did it again, fiercer this time, toe scraping the underside of the cabinet before pushing the door open and away.

Chain rattled against something rapid-fire, pulling tight, and the bear trap was hauled out on three chains- two running into the floor, more to guide and keep it facing outward than anything, and one that had run along the struts that held the floorboards above them in place.  That last one, up above, pulled it straight into the Milkmaid’s back and shoulder, where it bit in deep.

Verona lurched forward, ready to capitalize on the chance, but saw motion in the left corner of her eye and the whites of the victim’s eyes in the right corner of her eye.  With gaze unfocused, she stepped back and away-

Metal clacked against metal.  A harpoon was attached to one of the lower chains, bottom end fixed to the wall, upper end fixed to the chain, so whatever the chain pointed at, the harpoon pointed at.  And the chain was connected to the bear trap, which was connected to the Milkmaid.

It launched automatically, as a delayed part of the trap, with a gunshot sound.

Bent nails, glass, twisted bits of wire and cut up segments of barbed wire fired off with the harpoon.  Some pinged off the metal of the bear trap, but a lot of it sank into flesh, along with the three foot spear.  Some flecks caught the girl the Milkmaid had been dragging, knocking her off her feet.

Verona stepped on the chains for good measure as she passed the Milkmaid, jerking the woman backward and off her feet.  She helped the victim up, and the two of them raced up the stairs, while the Milkmaid reached behind herself to disengage from the trap.

Bogeyman rule number something or other.  Resist the urge to be clever and try to finish them off after you get in a good hit.  They’ll just turn the moment around on you.  They’re Abyssal, the slasher movie villains come to life.  You kill them, they come back with a scar and a vengeance later.

Gotta coup and claim that shit, except what you’re really tug-of-warring over is whether they get to stay here or if they go for a longer stay in the Abyss.

“Thank you.  Thank you,” the woman whispered.  “You’re so young.”

“I’m sorry about your Sean guy.”

“Fuck,” the woman gasped, the word becoming a moan halfway through.

Should I not have brought it up?

The upstairs wasn’t the house she was trying to lay claim to, which didn’t feel very fair.  They skirted around the hole in the floor and Verona declined to grab her sweater, which was slick with corpse grease.

The bear trap lay on the floor of the cellar, in a pool of blood.

No Milkmaid.  No harpoon.

Yep.  Yeah, no, that was bogeyman 101, apparently.

Gotta game this, Verona thought to herself.  A bit of a mental reorientation, to push the panic back and away.  It’s not real, it’s a test, I have to figure out the test.  Illustration.  What is she meant to illustrate?

Verona used her Sight to check the coast was clear, and saw it very much wasn’t.  Red wriggling things stood out bold, shivering and shuddering, stained black around the edges.

Floorboards, just inside the door, stained with the same sort of blackness that tainted the Milkmaid’s hood and apron.  Verona could visualize it, a bit, especially with the way the red wriggling spirit-life moved, ready to act, baring teeth.  Step on this spot, walking toward the door, trying to leave, and the floorboards could give.  Not falling or dropping someone through the floor, but levering down, like an uneven see-saw that wouldn’t go back up.  A twisted ankle, and a set of floorboards sticking up and not letting the door get pulled back.

There was probably a pin somewhere, or a rug that had been surreptitiously kicked aside, that made it possible to come and go.

Easier to just not step there, open the door, then go outside.  Into the evening.  Onto a plot of farm surrounded by heavy mist.

“I have friends.  They were outside,” the woman told Verona.

Verona looked in the direction of the stable.  “Okay.  Let’s look.”

She made sure to be careful as they crossed the open area between house and stable. It was early evening, and the sky was still touched with pink and red from the sunset.   A calf that was chained out front bleated, loud, and Verona knew it had just signaled the Milkmaid.

They entered the barn, and Verona could see the cows and bulls, each in a stall.  All disfigured, odd looking.  Flesh had been torn and then stapled together.  Tubes ran from a churning, smoking milking machine to one stall, and the fluids they brought were mostly blood, mixed with something black.  Maybe bile.

A hand reached past a cow head to grip the bars with broken fingers.  Verona took two rapid steps back, her expression stone still.

Okay.  Not actual cows.  People.  A dozen people.

They moaned and cried out but none were capable of forming words.

The woman went from cell to cell.  “Opal!  Opal, are you here!?”

It felt like someone should have called out, or made more noise, but at the sound of a friendly or non-hostile voice, the entire stable began to make noise.  Feet kicked at the walls of stalls, heads butted up against bars.

“Be careful, check with me before doing anything,” Verona told the woman, as she hurried past, checking each stall.  “She likes traps.”

The woman wasn’t listening.

Verona passed an arrangement of equipment that was possibly meant for handling milk.  Or handling this kind of milk.  Ways to pasteurize it, or adjust it, maybe?  But it was equipment she recognized.

Brass tubing, pipes, a glass phial.  There was a bulb-shaped flask with a burn mark licking up the side and a chip at the mouth and it was Verona’s.  The brass heart was there.

Once she knew it was hers, from the house she was claiming, she knew what was there, what the fluids were.  It was pretty easy to work out, with the trimmed down, partially disassembled setup.

“Opal.  It’s you, what did she do!?” the woman said.  She pulled on the handle to the stall door.  When it didn’t budge, she shook the door violently.

‘Opal’ slammed her head repeatedly into the door from the other side, with a force that had to hurt her neck.

“Careful!” Verona called out.  She checked the Milkmaid wasn’t coming.  Then when she looked back at the woman who’d escaped with her, she saw her running to what looked like a big circuit breaker with a lever.  An electronic control?

Verona didn’t have time to get another warning out before the woman grabbed it with both hands, hauling down-

And the lights flickered.  The woman dropped to the floor as if all her limbs had turned to limp noodles.  Body jerking, convulsing, she turned a head toward Verona, grimacing briefly with teeth bared, grating audibly against one another as another convulsion gripped her.

Not just a regular electric shock, but something with black taint running through it.

A shadow preceded the Milkmaid’s entrance to the Stable.  She walked, dragging something behind her.

Verona hid by the churning milking machine, pulling knees close.  The smoke poured from the machine, and Verona put a hand to her mask, which she’d inscribed a bubble of air onto.

It shouldn’t have worked, with the mask broken up like it was.  Verona was left to wonder if it worked because the mask was hers, she’d awoken with it, and it was part of her Self, or if the illustration the Alabaster Doe and other judges had wanted to provide didn’t need her to be coughing and giving her position away.

“I caught you in the middle of some messy shit.  You’ve got people scurrying about.  Innocents.”  The voice was grating, and male.  “They got you good.”

Verona could see through gaps in the machinery of the milking machine.  The Milkmaid entering.  She threw the harpoon down.

“Surprised to see that again.  I thought you took that to get me to shut up.”

The Milkmaid paused in the middle of surveying her stable of moaning, agitated cows to nod.

“Want to buy some more?” the voice asked.  “Shit worked, didn’t it?”

The Milkmaid snorted.

“I could get some workers over to fix up the wiring when they make the delivery.  Power for the house?  New modern conveniences?”

The mention of electricity made the Milkmaid turn her head.  Verona pulled back a bit, while the Milkmaid walked over to the far end of the stable, where the woman had collapsed after being electrocuted.

The woman, limbs not wholly functioning, spittle frothing at the lips, struggled to get to a standing position, and then settled for crawling with bent limbs.  “No.  No, please, no!”

Curled up in a hiding spot, Verona couldn’t really throw.  She contorted, twisting, to get one glass container behind her shoulder, without sticking her arm so far up it would get seen.

Her other hand twinged, cramping.  It was warm out and her sweat felt icy on skin, running down neck and back.

As the Milkmaid passed in front of her, Verona leaned forward, flick-throwing it, over her shoulder.

The glass broke, and the contents ignited as they touched skin and clothing.

Fire spread on straw and dust like it was oil.  Still actively on fire, the Milkmaid stood there, facing Verona now, visibly in pain and just… toughing it out.

She hit some hidden switch or catch, and chains rattled through tubes.  Verona’s Sight let her track it- seeing if it would travel back to her.  It didn’t.

She was letting the cows and bulls out.  A dozen mutilated people with mutilations and taxidermied cows blending in to make them monstrous.  Panicked, some of them ignited, they fled.

“Want help?” the grating voice asked.

Verona looked.

Toadswallow.  Younger, from a pre-monocle era.  He wore a white sleeveless tee and shorts that acted more like pants for him.

“It’ll cost,” he told the Milkmaid, while staring at Verona.  “But you’ll be able to round up your stock.”

“…if that one isn’t dealt with by the time I’m done, I’ll deal with you, or I’ll take out one-eyed goblins your size until I’m reasonably confident I’ve handled you.”

Verona’s head turned.  The stable shuddered, and the vertical struts of wood became trees.

She was in the forest, and it was full evening now.  Kennet in the distance.

“What’s the point, guys?” she asked, out loud.

Peckersnot fought a goblin three times his size.  Smearing glue-like snot on him.

Suffocating him.

She turned away.

Chloe lunged for Lucy.  Lucy fell backwards into a little forklift, kicking, fighting to get away as Chloe came down on top of her-

That had only been a short while ago, but it felt like so much longer.  Verona had been away.

A gunshot, loud, made her turn abruptly.

A young man pleaded in some Middle Eastern language.  John replied in the same language, and then shot him too.

Each scene came fast, abrupt enough that Verona was compelled to turn to face it, moving across landscapes and venues.  If she didn’t move, she was jostled, bumped.

“Matty,” a gruff voice called out, catching Verona off guard.  The man brushed past her as if he didn’t realize she was there.

“You do it this time,” the man said.

‘Matty’ was Verona’s age, a bit husky and sullen, looking weird without scruff on his chin.  He stepped into a room, and Verona could see people sleeping.  It was a hospital sort of nighttime, with light shining in from the hallway and small nightlight style lights by above every bed.

Matthew’s father was prematurely gray, ironically, considering his practice, with deep-set lines in his face.  He looked like Matthew if Matthew hadn’t slept in weeks.  His hair was just-got-out-of-bed messy, and his sweater rough-spun.

Matthew approached the bed and pulled a hand from his pocket.  It was covered in runework and diagrams, drawn on with pen or marker.  After a backwards glance toward the door, he took one of the patient’s hands.  A frail old man.

The moment he made contact, the numbers on the machine by the bed began to change.  66… 65… 64… 63… 62… 61… 60…

The number turned red.  The machine started to beep, and young Matthew looked at it with dark eyes.  There was a strangled, stuttering digital sound, and it was silenced, only a few seconds after going off.

Under the cold eyes of his father.

His nervousness and anxiety was infectious, and when there was a scream behind Verona, she jumped and looked away out of impulse.

“Monster!”

Snow and cold wind blew around Verona, and she wished she’d kept her sweater.  She hunched forward, arms wrapped around herself, and turned to squint into the blowing snow.

Rook, following after a group of twenty or so Others who varied from the giant to the winged.  Followed by a human girl who’d wrapped herself in blankets.

“Monster, please.  You’ve left us with nobody and no-one.”

Weapons were strapped to a rack on Rook’s back, and they were slick with blood.  She left a dappled trail of blood behind her as she waded through calf-deep snow.  Her hair was black with streaks of gray, tied back in a hasty ponytail that left locks and strands here and there to blow into the wind.  A mask was fixed to her lower face.

“Monster-”

“Don’t call me that, child.  I spared you.  Don’t make me reconsider.”

“It’s a long winter before us.  You and your band ruined our food.  You’ve slaughtered everyone who could hunt.  This isn’t sparing us.  You’ve doomed us to a cold, hungry death.”

“Learn to hunt.”

“I’m but fourteen, monst-… creature.”

“Hardly better to call me a creature.”

“I’m only fourteen, and I’m the oldest.  There are ten more children.  If I go to hunt, they’ll be left on their own.”

“Hunt efficiently, so you won’t leave them be for too long.”

“That won’t do.”

“Shall I change you?” Rook asked, turning on the woman.  “I could make you a monster or a creature, so your hunting would be faster.  I could even give you a choice of what to be.  Would you be a skin changer?  A stalker in night?  A vessel for spirit?”

The girl’s face twisted in fear.

“No?  You’d have the means of providing for them.  You’d sacrifice your humanity to save their lives.”

The twist of fear became disgust.

“No,” Rook said, voice nearly lost in the whistling wind.  “Then I suppose you wouldn’t want me to alter the children, either.”

“Leave us some animals.  Two goats.  They can provide milk for the littlest ones.”

“They can also provide milk for us.  If we gave you the goats, we’d be the ones facing starvation in this winter cold.  Endure, child.  This wind will blow for two weeks, after that there will be a chance.  Perhaps right away, perhaps two months after, your people will come to you.”

“We don’t have enough.  You doom us.  You’ve given us an even crueler death than you gave the adults.”

“If you should find that you become Other in your hunger and isolation, be prepared to face the rescuing party of soldiers as enemies, not saviors.  They will treat you as they’ve treated us.  Perhaps you’ll find you’re forced to treat them as we treated your parents, and you’ll know what this war is.  If so… find us.”

“You’ve doomed us!” the girl shrieked.  “You’ve killed us all, demon!”

Rook turned to walk away through the snow.

Cold wind blew hard enough to put Verona off balance.  She took a partial step back for balance and nearly fell down stairs.

Girls in black sweaters with badges on the breast and plaid skirts were gathered on the landing of the stairs.  There were twenty of them, of varying ages.

“I don’t know who told you that, but it didn’t happen like that,” a girl said.  “Be a bitch, fine, but don’t be a dumb bitch.”

“Oops,” a girl told her.  She put a hand out.  “Maybe I’m a clumsy bitch.”

Pushing the first girl down the stairs.  It was a long flight- the school was huge and elegant, and the ceilings high.  Thirty or more stairs.  She didn’t stop tumbling until she hit the bottom.

“Oh my god,” one of the girls whispered.

The pusher wheeled on her.  “Everyone agrees she deserved that.”

There were no protests.  Some nodded, others murmured agreement.

One girl in the group met Verona’s eyes.  Lis.  Or a replication of Lis.

“She’s not heading the ritual,” Verona murmured.  “You’re off base.”

“She’s Kennet.  She gave you the house,” the Alabaster Doe replied.  “She’s more a part of the ritual than most.”

They were back in the living room.  The big window that overlooked the stairwell was now the living room window.

Light shone through and made the room’s interior bright, but the scene outside the window was night.

Verona had seen this angle, that scene.  When they’d been making Lucy’s earring with Avery’s photograph from the awakening.  When they’d been doing the Alcazar and diving into the Carmine ritual.

Miss watching the Carmine die, getting the call for help, and doing nothing.

“So… okay,” Verona replied.  She met the Alabaster Doe’s eyes.  “Talking about the Kennet that is yet to be?  That we’d be forging?  What will this demesne be, in that?”

The Alabaster Doe didn’t reply.

So if we go by what the Sable Prince said, this happens in two parts.  I have to answer this… but it’s a bit of a softball.  Kind of.  And the actual challenge comes later.

But the answer she gave here could set her up to fail later.

“Has the Milkmaid hurt anyone in Kennet?”

“Then… that’s a step forward.”

“Not yet.”

“But it’s a step forward,” Verona pressed.  “If someone’s an alcoholic, a day without drinking is a good day, right?  Maybe Kennet could be a place for those good days.”

“With Toadswallow in charge?  Who arms evil and drives the weak to do harm?  With Miss, who allows wrongs to happen?”

“See, you threw a whole mess of stuff at me, a lot of it contradicts-”

“The thrust of the argument is delivered by the whole of what you saw.”

“Yeah, sure,” Verona replied.  “But that’s B.S. to argue against.”

“This is a challenge to your claim.  You would make this demesne locked to and important to a Kennet that is yet to take shape.  The hands that would mold that Kennet are bloody ones.  Can you truly say it wouldn’t be a darker and more violent place than Kennet below?”

“And if I say yes?”

“I’d ask you to prove it.”

“What if I say no?”

“I’d ask you to face it and show you can answer the challenges that darkness and violence poses.”

“And what-”

Verona paused.

She wasn’t sure how to answer.

“It’s complicated, isn’t it?” Verona asked.  “It’s not as simple as having to fight it or embrace it.”

“We, in part, will arbitrate the spirits and influence the outcome when you bring a third Kennet to pass.  In cases where we’re split on what to do, the choices you make here may tip the scales.  It was your idea, after all.”

“No pressure, huh?” Verona asked.  “I’m forsworn if it fails, but it’s also part of my challenge in getting this demesne, and I partially decide the shape it takes?”

“Yes.”

Verona looked around the gossamer covered living room, with the images standing out and away from the walls.

She hadn’t added anything to it since the Family Man.

The scene outside the window had returned to glaring white-sun brilliance that threatened to scour away details and erode everything it touched like the heaviest of rains.

“I don’t want to embrace the darkness.  That leads to- to the Family Man.  To Charles, even.  What he wanted to do with the living ritual, before it mutated and became the Choir.  I will embrace it, as a tool, just not as my first priority.”

The Alabaster Doe studied her, wordless.

“I don’t want to fight the darkness.  That leads to Witch Hunters.  Cleo.  That’s not to say I won’t fight the ugliness and evil out there.  I will.  But not as my first priority.”

It felt kind of weird.  These pronouncements worked a lot better when she wasn’t being stared down.  It made her feel like she was presenting in front of the class.

“I want to understand it, so I can unravel it, redirect it, fix it.”

“Do you understand the Milkmaid?”

“I think so.  I’ve read up on Bogeymen.  And if I understand her and Toadswallow understands her and if she’s good then I think we’re okay.”

“Do you understand Toadswallow?”

“Yeah.  He’s a guy that’s changed some.  He was raised in an environment that makes for a whole lot of mean and he’s getting away from that.  But not enough, yeah.  Not if he made Peckersnot kill.”

“And do you understand the Other you call Miss?”

“Oh yeah.  Not sure I agree with letting the Carmine die, but I have the benefit of looking back at the last few months.  I understand why she would’ve done it.”

“The challenge is before you, then.  It’s up to you to recognize and face it.  The remainder will come another day, when you help forge a third Kennet.”

Verona nodded, frowning.  Her hand twinged, and she rubbed at it.  It felt worse since earlier, when she’d been preparing to deal with the Milkmaid.

She still had the scattered vials from there, ends sticking out of the top of her left front pocket.  She had her spell cards back, too.  The mural spread above her, covering the ceiling.  Naked and half-naked people were either lying down or midway through cavorting.  They were predominantly male, in at least a three to one ratio, and wore or had the heads of animals.  But it wasn’t furry art like the stuff that clogged most art sites Verona went to.  It was a dark romantic style, emphasizing shadow, with the light used as a spotlight to highlight the figures.  Those figures were detailed, the heads realistic and detailed.  Snake, crane, goat, lion, wolf, maggot.  More scraps of cloth served to blindfold or tie muzzles shut than to cover any parts- the white ribbons from the Family Man.

They extended into the living room, the hallway- she walked forward.

Kitchen, she saw.  Up the stairwell.  Upstairs.  All the ceilings.

Her nose itched, and she scratched the nose of her mask, still diagonal across her face, to resolve it.  The mask moved slightly in response, and it rubbed in the right spot to make the itch go away.

She still had something to resolve to finish this part of the claim, though.  It wasn’t just that she had to make the third Kennet.  She had to make the third Kennet and resolve some challenge that involved what the Alabaster had showed her.

Who would have thought trying to lay a claim to a place that didn’t exist yet would take more time than the lower Kennet that did?

“We would ask you a question about the house itself,” the Aurum told her.

He hung back, surrounded by the images from before.  Where they were elaborate, a dark romantic style with heavy emphasis on lighting and deep shadow.

The house rattled.  With a loud tearing sound, the lighting changed.

Bringing her back full circle.  To the House on Half Street, upper Kennet.  The mask covered most of her right eye, part of the right side of her face, and half her mouth.  There were five ribbons extending back around the side of her head, pinning her hair back and away, so only half her hair hung down.

“What about the house?”

The Aurum smiled.  The centipede wove in and out of the wallpaper, slipping its head beneath the Aurum, before carrying him off.

Outside, a car was puling up.  She could hear the crunch of it, faint.  She heard the door slam.  There was a light honk as it was locked remotely.

That had always annoyed her.  The honk.  It felt intrusive.

The tempo of arrival, door slamming, horn honking, it was dead familiar to her.

Her dad entered, looking around.  He looked tired, hair a bit messy, and he wore a red polo shirt that was kind of shapeless on him.  It made him look younger than he was, which made him look way more tired than he was.  Like a dying thirty year old instead of a slightly tired and rumpled guy in his mid-forties.

“Yo,” she greeted him.  It wasn’t the real him.

“You’re not in school?”

“Nah,” she replied.  “You’re not at work?”

“I’m taking a vacation day.  Something I have because I work as hard as I do.  It’s about responsibility, Verona.”

“Uh huh,” she replied, frowning.

Gotta figure out the angle.  About the house, the Aurum said.  Stay focused on that.

“You didn’t rake the lawn like I asked.”

“Maybe later,” she answered him.

“I had to do the dishes and I had to do the laundry to make sure I had something to wear for work today.  What have you gotten done?”

“This?” she asked, indicating the house.

“What makes you think you can take care of this if you can’t even contribute at home?”

The house rattled slightly.  When it settled down, things felt slightly off.

Undercutting my claim?  A kind of counter to what I was doing with the blood, sweat, tears, and other stuff?

“I give time to what I care about.”

“You abandon what you care about.  Your art.  Even practices- you’re dabbling because you can’t commit.  So how would you ever commit to taking care of this place?” he asked her.  “Come on, Verona.”

“I’m a dabbler and nascent sorceress because of my focus.  I want to get good at a lot of the practice.  I’d rather do that by learning a little bit about a lot of things than going hard at any one thing.”

“You can’t even commit to me, Verona.  Your only actual present family.”

“Oh god,” she replied.  She amended, “Gods and spirits.”

“You’re bad at staying in touch with your mom.”

“We’re doing okay, ‘dad’.”

“You can’t commit to Lucy.  You’re letting that friendship slip away.  Do you think a tattoo artist will fill the gap?  That’s a once in a lifetime friendship.”

A little harder to quip a response to that.

“Twice in a lifetime, maybe.  Avery.”

“And are you putting the effort in for Avery?” he asked.  “What are you even going to do with this house, except hole away and detach from the rest of the world?”

“Get away from you.”

“And them.  And other responsibilities.  School.  You’ve been skipping class.  Your project is unfinished.”

“Unless time goes wonky I should be able to finish by the deadline.”

“Twice now, you’ve mentioned priorities,” he replied.  “Kennet Below first, Kennet to Come second, and the Kennet you were born to last?”

“Yes,” she said.  She had to fight her instincts to shrug and brush him off like she usually might, because sounding serious was more important.

“And you don’t want to fight evil.  You don’t want to embrace it.  Those are lower priority, you said.  You want to understand it.”

“And unravel it, decipher it, work it out.  Understand the systems around that.  Rework shit.”

He punched the wall.  She jumped a bit.

His voice started as a growl and gradually got louder as he went.  “You don’t have the commitment to do chores, go to school, dedicate yourself to a practice, to be the decent friend those other two deserve, or be my daughter!”

“Weak finish,” Verona replied.  “You’ve got to be a dad first.”

“You can’t commit yourself to a boy who loves you.  Who you know loves you.  Who misses you every time you’re in class even though he thinks he sees you around.  A boy you’re being unfair to.”

“It would be unfair to me to- that’s not me.  It’s so not me I think I was born that way.”

“He’s done nothing except care for you and be decent to you.  You’re so much like your mother in this.  She couldn’t commit to me.”

“Don’t talk about her.  You can’t compare us.”

“She can’t commit to work.  She gets excited about big, grand projects that she secretly suspects will fail.  Programs that will get canceled, tasks that will be cut off by the next federal government, absolving her of all blame for failure.  Sometimes she lucks out, but mostly she does work that doesn’t matter and she collects fat government pay with a big enough pension she can retire by fifty.”

“She’s not relevant to this.”

“Do you know what happens when she’s fifty?  She’ll travel.  And all the work you’ve done to rebuild a bond will fall apart.  You’ll be seventeen, finishing high school, starting out as an adult.  Do you really think she’ll be there for you then?  Or will she be in Paris, Spain, Amsterdam, sending the occasional message, giving you the occasional video call?  Who’s going to guide you at that critical time in your life?  Take you to Universities?”

“If you say you’ll– or my dad will step in and drive me around-”

“Nobody except you will look after you, Verona.  Not me.  Not Jasmine after you lose your friendship with Lucy.  Not your mom.  Not your teachers.  You alone.”

“Is there a point to this, Aurum?” Verona called out.  The Aurum was long gone.

“You can’t commit, you don’t deserve this space, you fail at the basic, fundamental tasks of taking care of yourself.  Refusing meds for the pain in your hand, getting that hand hurt in the first place, missing sleep, you’re wearing fraying clothes you strangle and bottle up your emotions until you get literally sick you’re a fucking mess, Verona!”

She hated that her dad’s shout got a reaction out of her.  That it resonated.  That yeah, the Aurum was using some conjuration of her dad to deliver this message, that it was freaking working, throwing her off, making her cringe.

The words hurt.

“I’m a kid.  Not being one hundred percent great at taking care of myself when my dad really dropped the ball is just- it’s reality.”

“You’re on your way to being an adult but you’re so scared of facing your approaching adulthood you’re retreating from life.”

“Who’s fault is it if I feel like adulthood is a raw deal?”

“Yours, Verona,” her ‘dad’ replied.  “Your feelings are your responsibility, as much as you don’t want them to be.”

“I’ve got it handled,” she replied.

“You’re a piteous, shabby, lazy mess and if your friends are pulling away it’s because you’re more of a fucking emotional burden than I am.”

Verona tried to inhale so she could reply but her throat was locked up around the lump in her throat and she couldn’t breathe past it.

“You leave, Verona, you pull back.  You left this summer and if you hadn’t?  If you’d committed to helping and figuring things out, then you all could’ve won against Charles.  Then your friends could have had their happily ever fucking after, right?”

She cleared her throat.

“And you want a house?” he asked.  “You don’t think it would land in their laps as another Verona-adjacent problem to handle?”

“I don’t know how piteous I am,” she replied.  “But I can work on that.”

“The issue at hand is that you’re failing to work at that.  You make me micromanage you, you make your best friend micromanage you, you don’t work at all!”

She covered her ears.  Just have to get the words out.  He’s a prop and a mouthpiece, “Jeremy likes me.  More importantly, I like me.  It’s this big freaking cliche-”

He reached for her and hauled her hand away from her ear.  “You’re distracting from the question!”

“I’m answering the fucking challenge!” she screeched the words, pulling her arm free.  She huffed out a breath.  More level, she added, “I’m answering.”

“Another maybe later, worded differently?  That’s not an answer.”

“No.  Right now, right here?  There’s a big cliche in most books and shows and stuff, where it feels like I’m supposed to hate myself, hate my body, feel fat, feel pressured, feel whatever.  I know I’m not the best looker.  But shabby?  No.  I do what I do with intention.  Scruffy hair and slightly frayed sweaters and jeans are a look.  One I know at least one other person is into.  But even if Jeremy wasn’t, I am, so that’s cool.  Piteous I can deal with, shabby is a hell nah, and lazy?  I’m trying to set up to build a town!”

“You don’t have the work ethic to take care of a house.  It’s a responsibility, and magic won’t sweep away the jobs that come with it.”

She looked up at the ceiling, at the figures there.

He went on, “You don’t follow through, Verona.”

Putting all tougher emotions aside…

The angle.

The Aurum had put a challenge before her.  What was the angle of this?  To get her to break down?  Admit she couldn’t commit?

What was the damn challenge?

She met his eyes.

She raised her hand, showing him the scar on her palm.  Two fingers trembled because she didn’t want her hand to collapse in on itself, pinky crossing index finger or thumb.  “I got injured.  Maybe permanent, but… that’s not the end of that story.  There’s a chance.  The story goes on.”

“What are you on about-”

“Stop.”

He stopped but he didn’t look happy about it.

“My art?” she asked.

“What about it.”

“Be quiet,” she told him.

She looked for, found, and grabbed her bag.  She pulled out the sketchbook.  “I stopped.  Because of my dad.  But I picked it back up again.  Clothes?  I replaced and updated them.  That’s just… that’s what you do with clothes.  Lucy?  I dropped away from that friendship.  We’re on our way back.”

She rubbed at her hand.  “Stop talking as if anything’s final.  Maybe I’ll pull away from this demesne project later… just a bit, but I won’t abandon it.  No more than I can totally abandon being an artist, or a friend.  No more than I can abandon loving cats or skinny boys or stripey sweaters, okay?”

Verona paused, meeting his eyes.

He didn’t reply, and wore an expression like he was concentrating.

“Can you stop wearing my dad’s face?” she asked.  “I don’t know why you did that in the first place.  Maybe the Aurum thought it gave the challenge a bit of an edge.  Which it did.  And if he was giving you all the details, probably pretty easy.  But…”

The shape of him began to dissolve.

“If I leave you, House, I’ll come back.  The me of now will change and grow up.  I want to grow up the rest of the way with you.  The way things are now aren’t the way they’ll be forever.  I’ll grow, you’ll grow, we’ll do some really cool shit.”

He dissolved, and as he did, echoes peeled away.

Of prior owners.  A sixty-something woman fighting with a daughter, who had a very young kid.  Then other scenes, that same woman with the kid, her daughter absent.  Living in this house.

Emotions.  Pain- sickness.  Worry about money.

I have to revise my earlier stance, Verona thought to herself, as the emotions washed over her, too real.  Replete with experiences.  I’m actually pretty terrible with echoes.

“No, the pain is over,” she told an echo of sickness.  She pushed through it with added will, and between statement, will, and the lack of focus or responsive will in the echo, she scattered it.

She repeated that process.  She had to vanquish the echoes yet again.  This time, dispelling the last remnants of the previous owner.  A grandmother trying to raise her addict daughter’s kid.

Some of the strongest echoes were the daughter coming home.  The relapses, the tirades, the acting out.  Destroying furniture.

Or coming home because she was hurt or had nowhere else to go, then going through withdrawals because she couldn’t move or she was afraid of people outside the house.

Verona endured it all, banished the echoes.  It got harder as she got more tired.  And the Hyde version of herself had destroyed the box of salt.  So she had to weather eight or nine years of especially intense bullshit in the span of twenty or thirty minutes.  One by one by freaking one.

When she was done, she fell into the chair.

The lights came on.  Lights she hadn’t known were there came on.

Illuminating shadow and casting new and interesting tones onto the paintings.  Decorative borders appeared on walls, freehand cursives in silver paint.

Lucy was sitting on the stairs, in view of Verona’s seat in the living room, near where the furs had been.

“There you are,” Lucy said.

“Did I go all fractal like you did?”

“No.  You disappeared.”

“Any word on Avery?”

“She’s managing.  It’s tough.”

“Yeah.”

“Incoming friend of yours,” Lucy announced, glancing off to the side.

Tashlit entered.

“Hey, buddy,” Verona replied.

Tashlit gestured, hands briefly covering the spot where her normal eyes would be.

“Tired, yeah.  Damn echoes.”

Tashlit gestured, bowing.

No contest.

Tashlit passed something to Verona.  Verona leaned forward to receive it.

A copper fishhook.

“Is that your-”

Tashlit brought thumb close to her other four flattened fingers and made a motion like she was stroking the brim of a baseball cap.

“Your dad’s.  Thank you.  That means a lot.”

Tashlit thumped her heart, then made a claw shape near the heart, pointing upward.

“Same.  You can consider my door always open to you.  This is a place you can stay.”

Tashlit looked around, her body still, her eyes roving.

She mimed, like she was making explosions happen with her fingers.

“Isn’t that the sign for noisy?  In terms of sounds?  God-begotten sense?”

Tashlit repeated the gesture in front of Verona’s face- her eyes.

“Visually noisy.  No.  it’s cool.  It’ll look better after I’ve tidied up.”

Tashlit turned as a mural finished.  A drawing of a woman from the waist up, blonde hair covering her eyes, her arm outstretched.  A snake had wound up her body and down her arm, the head near fingers that tickled the underside of the snake’s chin.  Its scales were black, its pattern like eyes, its head eyeless.

“I need more male acquaintances.  Or I’ll end up with walls of naked women.”

Tashlit mimed, tugging on her shirt partway through.

“Well that would just ruin the aesthetic, wouldn’t it?  What good is a mural like this if you’re not appreciating the physical form?”

“Coming in!” Nibble called out.

Tashlit gestured.  Verona nodded.

Tashlit left, and Nibble and Chloe entered.  Chloe had a hoodless coat draped over her head, Nibble’s arm around her shoulder, holding it in place.  They stopped short of entering the room where the light came in through the front window.

“How’d you guys even get here?” Verona asked.

“The storm out west is starting to creep closer.  Heavy cloud cover, bit of rain,” Nibble said.  “Good excuse to throw something over Chloe and duck into Matthew’s truck.”

Verona couldn’t see far beyond the front window.  But there was rain.

“No contest,” Chloe told Verona.  She looked around.  “I like this a lot.”

Verona could remember the moment in the sequence of images where Chloe had been attacking Lucy.

It hadn’t sounded that bad in Lucy’s recounting.  It had looked really bad to Verona.

“Very appreciated,” Verona replied.  “Consider yourself welcome here.”

Chloe glanced at Nibble, then hurried forward a few steps, pushing an envelope down onto Verona’s knee.  She hurried back, sticking claw-tips into her mouth.

“Thank you.  I could have come to you.”

“It’s okay.  Open it.”

Verona did.

It was a set of papers, with a familiar, smudge-y art style and some shaky writing.  Many had hand-drawn decorations in at least two corners.

“Taped a pen to a claw and wrote that,” Chloe said, waggling an index finger that ended in a claw that could have been used as a kitchen knife.  “I hired the artist.”

“The elusive P.S.?”

“I thought you’d like it,” Chloe said.

The papers were coupons.  Offers to clean, scrub, tidy, organize.

“You guys really don’t have to bring gifts,” Verona said.  “But this is great.”

“Consider it a-” Chloe lost the word she was looking for.  She looked at Nibble.

“I dunno,” he told her.

“It’s a- ploy.  But a friendly one,” Chloe said.  “I like cleaning.  It’s meditative and it keeps me indoors.  Putting the world in order.  Bangnut and Doglick found us a pressure washer!  I love it.  I’m getting into other stuff but I don’t think I’ll get tired of using that.  So I thought I’ll give you some and you can get some cleanings for free, and then later if you want more you can pay me.”

“This is great.  I could use it.  Except maybe the tidying.  I like my orderly chaos.”

“Noted.  I will leave piles and things be as best I can.”

“Thanks.”

Nibble held out a metal, extendable car antenna.  “No Contest, and a gift.”

“Thank you.  What’s this?”

“Lucy said it’s magical, which I figured it was, and it’s cursed, which I didn’t know.  But she said you’d like the opportunity to play chicken with another curse, so… here.”

“Thank you.  What does it do?”

“I kept it around for a while.  It’s better than using coat hangers for getting a reception, since it’s an actual antenna.  I’d use it to get a better signal if we were out in the middle of nowhere.  Get some radio, TV, phone.  Apparently it soaked up my ghoul energy for a while?”

“What’s the downside?”

“Seems like the longer you leave it on, the more it starts to narrow down what you can see.  Until you’re only seeing death scenes, murder, cannibalism, horror, darkness…”

Verona nodded.

“I used it for a bit, but I haven’t had a reason to use it since moving to Kennet.”

“Thank you.”

“I don’t know how useful that is to you, but I figured-”

“It’s great.  Every little thing is great to have.”

“There’s a big dark cloud passing over the sun,” Chloe murmured, leaning into Nibble.  “We’ll go before it brightens up, let you go on.  Be safe, have fun.”

“Bye.”

But it wasn’t quite as simple as that, because the mural appeared, and they wanted to wait, which meant they got in the way of the incoming person or people.

A dismembered arm with a fancy ribbon tied to it.  The ribbon made for a high-fashion tourniquet, tying off the raw end of a wound.  The hand was posed, nails painted.

A reclining man with the back of his head ‘resting’ against the window frame reached up, fingers grazing that of the dangling arm.  He had tattoos of bones on his flesh, blue for human bones and scratchy red to make angles pointed, like on teeth.

Reggie came next.

Reggie carried a radio and a cigarette.  He set both down, reached into a pocket, and placed paper by the cigarette.

“Krrrt- with the incoming storm, plans are canceled, there will be no match between the K.O. Peewees and the Tripoli Ticklebees.  No match to close out the season.”

“I’ll take that as a no contest?”

“-winner!” someone shouted over the radio, to raucous audience applause.  With the distortion, audience whistles sounded like bird cries and hoots sounded like something animal.

“I don’t know I am a winner yet, but thank you.”

Reggie held up the paper.

A hole burned through the ‘no contest’ portion.

“No contest from me either,” Reggie said.

“Training’s going okay?” Verona asked.

“Not really training.  Trials.  Lessons.”

“Good luck.”

Reggie nodded.  “You too.”

The mural extended.  Smoke curled around Matthew’s image of the eye.  Montague’s effect filled in empty space, connecting various images.  A naked man covered in blood was hugged by the spider legs that sprouted from his own back.  Reggie was represented by another figure, hidden behind the door that led to the dining room.  A man surrounded by mannequin parts.  The image was less filled in or detailed than others.

Miss was next.  Verona knew before Miss had even entered because light shone through the clouds and hit the winow at an angle that made for bad glare.

“No contest, of course,” she said.

“They challenged me about what Kennet could become.  If we ignore wrongdoing, let people suffer for our own ends.”

And the Alabaster gave me one last challenge before she left.  I think that challenge was that yeah, I have to recognize and understand, but I also have to do something about it.

“I think I’ve thoroughly learned my lesson,” Miss replied.  “The ramifications have been severe.”

“If we move forward, there’s a chance that, you know… roles could reverse.”

“And I’d be the one dying?”

“As a central figure?  Yeah.  We need to do better on that crap.  So we can set a precedent.”

“Let’s.”

The mural grew.  But it wasn’t just Miss’s image, a woman with back arched, hands on face, elbows pointing skyward, hair flying like she was mid-motion, the image positioned so the cabinet in the dining room hid the face and hands.  It extended up.

Elaborating on the animal-headed people on the ceiling.  Surrounding them with others.  Context for scenes.  More blindfolds, that turned a violent thrust of the arm into a stumble, a clutch at another person into a grasp for balance or support.

Guilherme followed after Miss left.  He had to duck to get through the doorways.

“No contest.  Be warned, the goblins are outside.  Farting.”  He articulated ‘farting’ in an odd way.  Like the word didn’t want to come out right.  Far-ting.  “They brought Jabber.”

Verona nodded.

The goblins came storming through.  All the Kennet goblins, plus another group that hung further back.  Ones without a claim.  They pushed Jabber, who flailed arms and head around with no rhythm or meaning.  Cherry tried to ride on his head and got poked in the rear end with a piercing that was embedded in Nat’s fingernail or clawtip.  It was hard to tell in the mess.

The Milkmaid hadn’t come after all, but Toadswallow’s acquaintances hung back near Lucy.

Verona greeted them, answered messages, and tried to keep track of who had no-contested.

“Guys, stay still.  It’s hard to count you.”

“Aleor sourmo!” Jabber screamed, flailing.

“Tatty,” Toadswallow called out, from the back.  “Help count.”

Verona gave him a long look, then looked at Lucy, who had risen to her feet behind Toadswallow.

“That one and that one and not that one, and that one,” Tatty Bo Jangles recited, pointing here and there with no apparent system.

“Jabba!”

“No contest!” Biscuit called up.  “Here, it’s tequila.  I like the ones with scorpions and things in them but we didn’t have any of those so I dropped some other bugs inside.”

“Thank you.  I’m sure I can find a use for that.”

Peckersnot held up a picture.

“Some art?  Can it wait?  Or is it a gift?”

“Thanks, Peck.  Good job on getting hired by Chloe for the coupon art.”

Verona picked up the tequila bottle that Biscuit had pushed across the floor.

“Do not drink the tequila, Ronnie!” Lucy called down from the front hall.

“Drink it,” Biscuit whispered.

“And that one said no contest and that one didn’t and so didn’t him…” Tatty recited.

“Point out the ones who haven’t said it yet,” Verona told the little goblin boss.

Tatty twisted up her arms to get her hands to the right angle and stuck four fingers of one hand in four different directions and did the same with two fingers on her left hand.

It made Verona’s hand cramp some in sympathy.  She rubbed at her palm.

“Ramjam!” Verona called out.  She put her arms out.  “Come on, dude!”

“How do I do a better no contest than Nat?” Ramjam asked, indicating Snatchragged.  “What if I headbutt her and then say it?  Knock her down a peg.”

“Try,” Nat replied.

“Just say it and move things along, Ram,” Verona told him.

“No contest.  Kick some legs and headbutt some ass!” Ramjam whooped.

The last few goblins said what needed to be said.  Kittycough was mostly mute, but pressed a claw to the bottom of the page, leaving a red mark framed by five longer ones.  Jabber slammed a hard clay hand with metal bracing wrapped around it down on the ink pad and then onto the paper.

Leaving Toadswallow as the only one who hadn’t responded.

“Can the rabble clear out?” Verona asked.  “Wanted to talk to Sir Toadswallow.”

Toadswallow nodded, then ventured into the room.  His group didn’t apparently consider themselves rabble, so the huge goblin with the chainsaw in his back, Toadswallow’s beau, and the skinny, human sized goblin were all there.

“Can I talk freely in front of them?”

“Sock,” Toadswallow called out.  “I don’t like or trust you that much.”

“Nobody likes or trusts Sock,” a goblin still in the front hall said.  Sock took the bait and left, when he could have stood his ground and made Verona and Toadswallow have to drag him off.

“Sounds serious,” Toadswallow said.

“You sure you want these guys listening in?”

“They know my dirty secrets.  They know the stories.  They know who I am,” Toadswallow croaked at her.

“Got a little flashback scene with you and the Milkmaid.  Asking what we’d want another Kennet to look like.”

“Ahhh.”

“It’s not good, Toad.  I don’t sweat this stuff as much as Lucy or Ave, but it’s not good.”

“The Milkmaid was out of the Abyss and hunting people before I was even born,” Toadswallow explained.  “Selling Abyss milk in different strengths, for different purposes.  I got to the game late, thought I’d ingratiate myself.”

“By selling her weapons?”

“Ah, one of those scenes?”

“Toad…” Verona said, shaking her head some.

“Yeh,” Toadswallow grunted.  “But what do I do?  Kill her?  She’s a bogeyman, they come back with a new scar, vendetta, and with you in their crosshairs.  I was new- just parted from Bubbleyum.”

“Love you, Toadsie!”

“Love you too, my dear bubble butt,” Toadswallow told her.  To Verona, he said, “I don’t like binding.  Imprisonment was unlikely to work when she can punch through a stone wall given enough time.  Others tried to corner her using police.  Arresting a bogeyman can work nicely, they blend in, become more like normal folk, surrounded by innocents where they can’t go all out.  But she killed a cop.  Then she left the city for the country.  I made friends with her, got her to slow down, got her to stop wasting energy.”

“But she kept going.”

“Yeh.”

The accent had disappeared.

“You did what you did to Peckersnot.”

“Yeh.”

Verona glanced past Toadswallow to Lucy, , who was frowning.  Kennet was flirting with the idea of getting caught in the storm, and that manifested as patches of light and moments of beauty that would later be lost in the shuffl

“Toad… just going to say, maybe it’s best if you step down.  Focus on the market.”

“As local council leader?”

“Yeah.  As local council leader.”

“I was going to offer you a discount as my gift.”

“Gifts aren’t obligatory, but… maybe let’s at least have a vote?  Things have changed.  And we need to be careful about who represents us.”

“Yeh,” Toadswallow said.  He shifted his footing.  “In front of this lot, really?”

“I asked.”

“I didn’t know you’d go that far.”

“Well… sorry.  You’re kicking ass with the market.  You’re a top goblin in my books.  But… that stuff hangs over it.”

Toadswallow huffed out a sigh.

“Sorry,” she told him.  “But that stuff’s ugly.  And the Peckersnot thing was recent.”

“Yeh.  I’m not blaming you, girl.  Just…”

He trailed off.

“We okay?” Verona asked, after a moment.

“Yeh.  Ten percent discount at the market.  I’ve made sure the vendors know.  I’m giving the same to the other two to be fair.  That’s Lucy, that’s Avery.”

Verona nodded.  “That’s great.”

“I’m glad.  I’ll put it to a vote.  We’ll be clear about where we’re at, what we need.”

Verona nodded.

“Any objection if I get elected again?”

“No.  But we can’t do that again, okay?  What you did to Peckersnot?”

“Yeh.”

“And the Milkmaid will be good?”

“Yeah.  Keeping an eye on her.  Killwagon too.”

“Sorry if I made you look bad in front of your favorite lady,” Verona murmured.

“It’ll just take some explaining.  She goes too easy on me anyway.”

Toadswallow left, pausing at the door.  “Rook is out of town.  Unavoidable, she said.  She’s aware it hurts her claim to things here.  I think we can accommodate.”

“Sure,” Verona said.

“Absolutely,” Lucy said, as Toadswallow passed her.

The walls scratched with the sound of the images taking shape.  Various animals, filling in empty spaces, watching, pointing, commenting, many wounded or missing body parts.  Small birds hung onto the arms of the girl who was standing one legged on the giant man’s upstretched hand, as if they could balance her or lift her aloft.

An image of a figure, heavyset, in the mouth of a frog, trying to hold it open, his pose very like Atlas, bearing the weight of the world on his shoulders.

“Close to done?” Lucy asked.

“There’s a complicating factor or two.  We’ll really, uh, really have to make this third Kennet happen now.”

“Okay?” Lucy asked.  “Why does that sound ominous?”

“Because I-”

Heavy footsteps.

Matthew again?

Lucy held out a rapier, facing the front door and the person on the other side who was out of sight.  Trees out front made the view from the middle of the living room a little tricky to manage.

Should have set up on the couch.

A man’s voice.  “I answer the challenge and contest the claim.”

“Yeah.  Ronnie?” Lucy called out.

“I’m here.”

He stepped into the doorway.

Anthem Tedd.  Verona only knew what he looked like because she’d seen a glimpse of him on day one at the summer school, and she’d seen his picture in a book.

He was basically in the book of ‘don’t fight these guys’.

Verona exhaled slowly.

“Avery Kelly isn’t here?”

“No,” Lucy replied, behind him.  “She went to Thunder Bay.  That’s where your daughter met her, remember?”

“I remember,” he said, sounding annoyed.  “I thought it might be temporary.  Or that she’d come.”

“You’re dealing with me.  Not her,” Verona told him.

“I’ll deal with her through you, if I have to,” he said.  “Shall I make my contest?  I typically insist on a fight.  I’m sure you understand.”

“Your daughter is friends with our friend,” Lucy said, behind him.

Verona scooped up her phone off the couch.

She dialed Avery.

“Hello?” Avery asked.  “Is everything okay?”

“You’re on speaker,” Verona told her.

“Why am I on speaker?  It’s worrying I’m on speaker.”

“Hm,” Anthem grunted.  “Avery Kelly?”

“Yeah,” Avery replied.  “Who…?”

“It’s Anthem Tedd.”

“My daughter went to you for a weekend.  The man who drove her home told me that when she left, she was in tears.  She would not elaborate.”

“I can’t elaborate either,” Avery said.  “But we’re still friends.”

“If you can’t tell me, then I’ll fight your friend.  You know what happens if I fight her?”

“Some idea,” Avery said.  “I was a nice host, I think.  I treated her pretty well.”

“She apparently didn’t think so.”

“If you call her-”

“She’s away.  In the warrens.”

Verona looked.  Toad and his crew were long gone.  She couldn’t send them out to the Warrens to fetch Liberty.

“I’m sure she’ll understand,” Anthem said.  “Trial by combat?  Weapons, no weapons?  I could tie a hand behind my back.”

“Would really rather not,” Verona said.

“If you don’t decide, I’ll insist.  You have a lot of claim, I’ve arrived late, but it should be fine.”

“Will she really understand?” Avery asked, clearly agitated now.

“It’s business.  We’re working on something big.  Your demesne here is a small stone on the road we’re building, as they might say, but it takes only a couple of minutes to clear off.”

“I don’t know what to say or do,” Avery said.  “I know I’m supposed to do my share for the ritual-”

“You apologize after your friend loses.  That’s all you need to do,” Anthem said.

“I- frig.”

Lucy held a rapier ready, but she couldn’t use it, really.  he was protected by certain rules.

“What about America?” Verona asked, not looking away from Lucy.

“Uh, Ronnie?” Avery asked.

“Is she with Liberty?”

“She isn’t.  She’s helping with a project.”

“Can we talk to her?  Run this by her?”

“Ronnie,” Avery said, voice quiet through the speaker.  “Last we heard of her, she attacked us.  We’re not on good terms.”

“Yeah, well… she can decide how much context to give, right?”

“I think you’re postponing the inevitable.  Shall we fight?” Anthem asked.  “Name your terms.”

His phone rang.

“Hello?” Anthem asked.  “You called me.”

He glanced at Verona, who looked at Lucy, who shrugged.

“Putting you on speaker.  While you’re on the phone, I should ask.  The Kennet practitioners are here, setting up a demesne.  Two here.  A third on the phone.  They’re being cagey about Liberty leaving Avery’s company in tears.”

“Yeah?” America asked.  “Why haven’t you torn them to shreds already?”

“Why haven’t I?” he asked.

“Because it would make Liberty even sadder than anything I might’ve done?” Avery asked, back.

“Are we really a threat to you?” Lucy asked.

“Removing bad influences and distractions will help Liberty find her way.  Three wild practitioners make especially bad influences, as far as I can see.  Threat?  No.  But you’re in the way.”

“Daddy,” America said, over speaker phone.

“Let it go.  For me, for Liberty.”

“They’ll only get crushed later.”

“Let them get crushed then.  But don’t do it yourself.  Liberty’s in a mood because she’s missing the kids she was teaching.  The Blue Heron’s gone, it’s not reopening any time soon.  She’s going to regular school, she hates it.”

“Is that why she was crying?”

“Some of it.”

A very small part of it?

“If you get on her bad side, you’ll be on the bad side of a goblin raider princess who is unloading a lot of pent up feelings and crap, kay?”

Anthem sighed.  He looked at Verona.  “Cancel this demesne claim.”

Verona shook her head.  Her hand twitched with pain, but she didn’t want to rub it in front of him.  She didn’t want to betray weakness.

“Came too far,” she told him.

“They’ll come for this territory soon.  I’ll take my daughter’s advice, but only because I’ve been telling her she needs to be more authoritative.  She’s lord of a small area.”

“I hope she enjoys it,” Avery said.

“Fuck yourself with the prickly end of a hairbrush, Kelly,” America called out.  “All of you.  Ruining something good.  Everything that happened with the Blue Heron closing is your fault.  It stemmed from you.”

“It would’ve happened anyway,” Verona said.

“Don’t try and gainsay me, whichever one you are.  Fuck yourselves.  Prickly hairbrush, something hot, something that won’t come out.  You decide who handles which but make sure you get the job done.”

America hung up.

“I don’t know where Liberty stands, but one of my daughters doesn’t like you.”

“Pretty sure Liberty and I are good,” Avery said, over the phone.

“I’ll trust you’re telling the truth on that.  If she returns and she says different, I’ll be back.”

“That’s fine,” Avery said.

“Hm,” Anthem grunted.  He ran a hand through blond hair, looking around the room.

Then he left.

“Sending a quick message to Zed,” Avery said.  “I got him to put America on the phone with her dad.  He had them each ring one another.”

“Good call.  Is that it, then?” Verona asked.

“Almost,” Lucy said.  She glanced in the direction Anthem had gone, then entered the living room.  “No contest.”

“Share in my demesne, as I hope I’ll be able to share in yours,” Verona told her.  “We did the awakening together, we can do the rest together.”

The images appeared on the floor.  Outlines of foxes, like they were burned into the wood and lacquered over.  They extended up the stairs.

“No contest,” Avery said.  “From me or Snowdrop.”

“Share in my demesne, you both.  There’ll be an opossum nook.  As we awoke together, let us dwell together.”

“Thank you.  I’ll share with you if we get that far.”

They exchanged some words, but they were only a short way into discussing Avery’s activities, which mostly covered the Storm in Thunder Bay, when the house creaked.

There was a ripping sound.

The feeling hit Verona.  Like being tapped on the shoulder, but whole-body.  Attention-grabbing.

The House on Half Street.

She could feel it stretching.  Nothing moved, but it still reached.

The process of developing a demesne was allegedly pretty slow.  But for right now, she’d be happy having an easier way of going between the different sides of Kennet.  Two for now.  A third to come.

The cat marks chased after the deer and occasional opossum, giving the floor a texture that wasn’t immediately apparent- but got more intense if looked on from the right angles.

“I’ll need a light switch that’s for the art, not the lights.  Turn that off so I can have someone like Jeremy over,” Verona murmured.  “I wonder how long that takes to set up.”

“It worked okay?” Avery asked over the phone.

“Yeah.”

“Okay, I should run.  Things aren’t actually at a great stopping point.  Wish me luck.”

“Luck,” Verona wished.

She touched the walls, moving here and there to check things.

Maybe there was ten percent of her that didn’t feel surprised by things they’d normally feel surprised by.

It was weird.

“The books say to take a break.  Step away after the ritual.  It’s not like the house can burn down anymore.”

“Well, not that easily.”

“No,” Lucy replied.  “But let’s walk.  Get away from the ritual and back to life in general.”

Verona nodded.

She gathered up her stuff, they left the house, and she laid a hand on the door, to feel that weird almost-familiarity.

She locked the front door, took a step away, and then realized she’d locked it without getting the key out of her pocket.  She smiled.

“What was that with America?” Lucy asked.

“Oh.  Well, I looked at you and I know we’ve had differences, but we love each other, right?”

“For sure,” Lucy replied.

“So I knew- yeah, America might be pissed and not our biggest fan, but she loves Liberty.  She’ll do right by-”

They were only a short distance past the house when they saw Anthem Tedd.  He sat on his car hood, smoking, looking up at the overcast sky.  He didn’t seem to mind getting drizzled on.

“You’re still here?” Lucy asked.

“Taking a moment.  There’s nowhere to be.  You don’t have a lordship, you can’t kick me out.”

“We could try but it would be a pretty dismal end result, right?” Verona asked.

Lucy elbowed her.

Anthem dropped the cigarette and then stepped on it.  “Congratulations on the demesne.”

“Thank you,” Verona said.  “Lots to figure out still.”

“That seems to be the consensus.  It’ll be the same on our end.”

“Your end?” Lucy asked.

“Yes.  Musser has taken Toronto and the surrounding regions.  Nearly half of the remaining territories capitulated immediately on hearing.  The writing on the wall is bold and legible.  So enjoy that demesne, for the short time you’re likely to have it.”

Next Chapter