Pale: 1.3 - Avery
Author: Wildbow

Avery

Avery and her friends sat in the back of a beat-up old pickup, Avery with one hand on her hat, her mask in her lap, and a blanket thrown over her and Lucy’s legs, weighed down at the ends by their bags.  The wind blew past them, not as cold as it should have been.

Avery could finally let herself believe that all of the scary moments had been worth it if things could be this good now.

Not that things were excellent.  Just good.  Excellent would require someone she could cuddle up against, and less of the mind-numbing, stomach-gnawing anxiety that came with being in the back of a relative stranger’s truck as they drove down little-known roads into the Canadian wilderness, the sky black and moonless and the streets unlit by anything but the truck’s headlights.

It being ‘good’ despite everything said a lot, as far as she was concerned.  The awakening was done and she had her friends with her.  There was anxiety, yes, but there was also relief and excitement.

“Verona,” Lucy said.  She’d had a flashlight about as long and thick as a finger in her lips, and she had to pull it out to speak.  She shone it on her notebook.  “Give me one observation about Miss.”

“You’ve been on this for hours, Luce.”

“I want to finish her section.  I’m almost done here.”

“Hours.  We’re going to go to sleep tonight and I-” Verona stopped.  In the dim light of Lucy’s flashlight and the light of the truck’s cabin interior, Avery could see Verona rolling her eyes, her lips moving for a second before she continued, “-can imagine myself hearing you in my dreams, tonight.”

“Almost screwed up, huh?” Lucy asked.

“I think I’m one hundred percent so far for truth-telling.”

“Then open your mouth one more time, continue that win streak, and tell me one observation about Miss.”

Verona groaned.  “Give me one observation about Matthew’s truck.  Give me one observation about that black bear out in the woods.  Give me one observation about that unicorn you dreamt of.”

“You do not seem like the type to dream about unicorns,” Avery said.

“Come on.  I don’t like leaving things unfinished,” Lucy said.

Verona reached for one of the chocolate bars they’d got from the last rest stop, and Lucy lunged for it, upsetting the blanket and letting cold air beneath, chilling Avery’s legs.  Lucy seemed to want to take it hostage, but when Verona got two fingertips on it, pinning it down, Lucy stuck her foot out, kicking it away.  The chocolate bar slid down the length of the pickup’s bed to the tailgate at the end, stopping there.

Avery watched Verona huff, clearly annoyed by the fact the chocolate bar was now a matter of feet away, out of easy reach.

“Tell me, and maybe I can reach it,” Lucy said.

“I’m not going to answer your question until I have a chocolate bar,” Verona said.  “Ideally that one.”

“That’s now fact,” Verona said.

“You shouldn’t use minor oaths for chocolate bars, Ronnie.”

“Already done.  Hey Avery, you realize you don’t need to hold onto your hat?”

“I don’t want it to blow away,” Avery said.  Her position, now that she was done fixing the blanket Lucy had disturbed, was skewed sideways, one leg extended to the bulge at one side of the truck bed where it accommodated the wheel beneath, her back was to the bag she’d placed between herself and the truck’s cab for cushioning, one hand on her hat, and one arm around the lip of the truck bed, holding the cool metal.  It didn’t leave her a lot of freedom of movement, but riding in the back of a pickup, exposed to the elements, on four sides, no seatbelt or anything, she liked claiming the security she could.

Verona rolled her eyes, picked up her own hat, and turned it over.  She had a bit of chalk, and began drawing.

“Ave, ignore her,” Lucy said.  “Give me one observation about Miss.”

“She keeps things hidden,” Avery said.

“Already had something like that down.”

“I mean, she told me during the ritual that she picked me first?”

“Can you expand on that?”

“It just feels like she can’t help but keep a lot of cards up her sleeve.”

“Good enough,” Lucy said.  She moved the narrow flashlight to her mouth, shining it on the book she was writing in, and began taking her painstaking notes.  Verona leaned in closer to try to borrow some of the light, and Lucy leaned away.

Verona used the light from the truck’s cab, instead.  She’d drawn a circle on the brim of her hat, and within that circle, she had drawn a triangle with a line through it and a line beneath it.  Now she drew branches off to the side, with curved arms.

Edith had given them the quickest of rundowns before they’d left.  Four symbols, all triangles, some with lines through them, each with ‘underlines’ to indicate orientation.  They’d been encouraged to stick to air for the time being.  They had organized themselves in the back of the truck, Lucy had started to write the symbols down before she could forget them, and she’d nearly lost her notebook to the fierce wind, before scribbling over the simple symbol and stopping the effect.

They’d sat there, cold and disappointed, debating about whether they should knock on the window and ask Matthew to stop.  They’d sat in dissatisfaction for about forty five minutes before he’d pulled the truck into a rest stop.  They’d peed, ordered hamburgers and pogos from a place with more bare wood than paint on the sign, had Edith explain runes and particulars again while waiting for their orders, and then hit the road again.

The second time around, they had tried out some of the basics.  How you could draw a circle with a rune within it and have lines radiating out, to emit that thing, or have a ‘bar’ perpendicular to the radiating lines to block that thing.  How a square or triangle could be used, but a circle was often best because it was equally strong around its perimeter.  Triangles could impart more force on the rest of the world because they pointed outward, but had points of weakness and points of strength, and could thus ‘collapse’, especially if the diagram was imbalanced.

There were air signs along the side of the truck now, drawn in chalk on the textured plastic.  Triangles pointing up with horizontal lines through them, enclosed in circles.  Each circle had a line extending up and away from it, with a ‘bar’ at the top.  Essentially a circle with a capital ‘T’ at the top.

Block the air.  After they’d drawn that, the chilly wind had stopped being a problem.

Verona seemed to be doing something more complicated.  Avery watched as Verona experimented, creating three radiating lines that bent at right angles, curved in quarter-circles.  There was already some chalk on the hat, like there was on the underside of Avery’s.  Edith’s work.

“What are you doing to your hat?”

“Experimenting,” Verona said.  “This should work.”

“Your hat is-” Lucy started, mumbling around the flashlight.

Verona’s hat flew out of her hands.  As the truck continued barreling down the road, the hat flew the opposite direction, and the dark material disappeared into the darkness in about one second.

Lucy reached up and pulled the flashlight out of her mouth.

Verona raised one hand, reaching up.  She raised her voice, “Come on!”

The hat, caught by strong wind, came from off to their left, blowing straight into Verona’s waiting hand.

“Yeah!  Whoo!  Thank you, spirits!” Verona called out.

Inside the cab, Avery saw, Charles was turning his head to peer through the back window at them.  Noticing the commotion.

Verona brought her hat down to her lap, spat on the part she had drawn on, and started to wipe the diagram away with her sleeve.

“That could have gone badly,” Lucy said.

Verona folded the hat so the circular brim was a half-circle, point caught within, and then stuck it into her bag.  “Maybe.  But Miss said earlier that this is about deals.  Words, actions, and routines.  They’re listening now.  Paying attention to our words, watching what we write down.  If you do something confidently, there’s a better chance it’ll work.”

“There’s also a chance you lose your hat and we spend three hours looking for it off the side of the road.”

Verona smiled.  “Maybe.  But it’s about routine, too, right?  According to Edith, these symbols for wind have been used by a variety of cultures for hundreds of years.  They were written about  by ancient people, they were passed on, taught.  So the spirits know how to recognize them.”

“And it’s the same with our words, the longer we go without telling any fibs, the better we get at making ourselves heard.  They said that it’s a regular thing with practices.  Habits become patterns become expectations, for us and for the world.  We can set our own small routines.  If we do stuff and it works, it makes it more likely it’ll be a real pattern in the future.”

“If we make a habit of doing a lot of practice and pulling off minor stunts and tricks, then that should become a pattern, and the pattern…” Verona let the words hang, a hand extended.

“Becomes expectation,” Avery finished.

“I think if I need to do something like toss my hat away and have it come back, or whatever, the spirits are more likely to give me a thumbs up and carry on doing what we did before, if I’ve done it a lot.”

Avery and Lucy exchanged a glance.

“Are you going to call me an idiot?” Verona asked.

“No,” Lucy said.  “I had a feeling you’d be annoyingly good at this.  But let’s talk to them before we make too many assumptions.”  She pointed the lightless end of the flashlight back toward the truck cabin as she said ‘them’.

“Sure,” Verona replied. She looked pleased with herself.

“I think it’s smart that you can do that… and it’s a dumb thing to do,” Lucy added.

Verona twisted around, then knocked on the narrow glass window at the back of the truck cab.

It was Charles who slid it open.  Avery could hear music playing from within.  Charles didn’t ask a question or speak.

“Can we ask questions?” Verona asked.

“We’re stopping soon,” Matthew said.  “You could ask then if it’s easier.”

“Quick question for now, then,” Verona said.  “I don’t want to jump to conclusions about stuff.  If I act a certain way with the spirits, practice a lot, it’ll become a… working relationship?”

“Yeah,” Charles said, his voice rough around the edges.

“Avery’s holding onto her hat, but if she has it protected from the wind, would it be good to trust the spirits?  Is that a good thing for practicing?”

“If you’re sure you drew it right,” Charles said.

“Thanks.  How long until we get there?”

“Getting where we’re going takes a day,” Matthew said.  “We left at six oh five, we should get there at seven oh five.”

“That’s very precise,” Lucy said.

“Didn’t hear that.”

“Very precise!” Lucy raised her voice.

“I’ll explain after.”

“How long until we stop?”

Charles motioned like he was going to shut the window, checked they didn’t want to say anything more, and then slid it closed.

The road was long, flat, and straight, with the trees set very close to the road’s edges, the vast majority of them evergreens.  Avery pulled off her hat, checked the rune, and then took her hand off of it.  It moved here and there with the wind, but it wasn’t pulled off her head and lost in the darkness.

Her hands freer, she opened a bag of ketchup chips.  Even though it was a small bag half-filled with air, she didn’t finish it before the truck slowed and they began to pull off to a side road.

The truck pulled into a parking space.  The place was desolate, probably because there were still a couple places here and there where the sun didn’t reach, where there was still snow on the ground.  There were two other cars in the parking lot.

Matthew got out of the car and headed straight for the office.  Avery and her friends took a second to disengage from their blankets and bags, standing and stretching.  Avery had put a folded blanket beneath her and a blanket on top, and arranged her bag so the padding and the clothes inside were behind her, and she was still stiff and sore.  She was faster to get to her feet and get moving than the other two, and surreptitiously made her way to the end of the truck, where the candy bar had come to rest against the tailgate.  She pocketed it.

“Share after?” Verona asked.

The truck had been awkward, and the riding in the back illegal, but Charles didn’t have a license, and Matthew and Edith didn’t have room for six people in the truck cab.

Their bags had been strapped down, and Avery undid the straps before handing the stuff down off the sides to the two adults.

“Campground?” Lucy asked.

“It’s private, the weather shouldn’t be an issue, and it keeps us on course,” Edith said.  “Watch your step.”

“I’m fine,” Verona said.  “I can kinda see in the dark if I use my Sight.”

“What?” Avery asked.  She did as Miss had instructed earlier in the evening, and opened her eyes to the Sight.  She could see the flare of Edith’s eyes, and the world partially dissolved.  On trees, on cars, there were a multitude of handprints and footprints.  Bands extended like clotheslines or spider’s webs across everything, including a band from the truck to the office, another band to the truck, and another band that extended down into the woods, wrapping around trees on the way there.

Where there weren’t handprints and footprints, things were damaged.  Bark was peeled and broken, grass black to the point it looked like there was nothing there, and sections of wall around the camp buildings were splintered and shedding paint.

The bands were the interesting thing.  They were almost like old film negatives, partially transparent, silhouettes standing up and looking around.  Almost like paper with sections cut out.  Almost like something quilted, layers stitched on.  A middle-ground between all three.  Where there was too much negative, too much cut-out, or too little material, the bands looked like they could snap.  She felt like she could look at those scenes that formed the band and analyze them, but she couldn’t get close enough.  When she moved, they moved.  If she walked towards one, it rose higher until it was well above her head.

She remembered why she’d used the sight, and tried to analyze the world around her.  Movement and motion provoked shedding of bits of grass, bark, or paint, to the point she could tell that there were things out there, but… she couldn’t see in the dark.

“I can’t,” she said.

“Me either,” Lucy said.

“You could train your eyes to See that way,” Edith said.  “For now, I would guess your Sight is exaggerating your natural abilities, preferences, and your way of looking at the world.”

“You’d guess?” Lucy asked.  “You don’t know?”

“You weren’t a practitioner, then?”

Edith picked up Lucy’s spare bag, bringing it to her shoulder.  Matthew was exiting the building, having paid.  “Let’s get settled first.”

“Were you tired?” Avery asked, hefting her bag.  Charles extended a hand, like he was going to carry one, and she shook her head.  The man’s expression was unreadable as he started walking.  “I know my mom gets bad road hypnosis, when the roads are straight and monotonous.”

“It doesn’t matter much how long we stop for,” Matthew said.  “So long as we’re sticking with the journey.  It takes a day of travel to get to the Carmine Beast’s… domain, I guess it would be, or have been.”

They’d agreed they needed to know about the victim before they could start assessing the people who might have done the victimizing.  This, apparently, had been part of the plan and the timing.  It was why they’d been told to free up their weekends.

“Just to be clear,” Lucy said.  “It takes a day.  No matter what?”

“If you take a detour or aren’t doing something that’s part of the singular journey, you may have to start over,” Matthew said.  “Stopping to rest is part of a long journey.”

“We could have walked?”

“Provided you were walking away from civilization, yes.  The destination is wherever you are when you’ve been traveling for the full day.  But your feet would be sore after a full day of walking, and the directions call for not just a day’s travel, but a day’s travel in directions that take us further from civilization.  Taking a car north makes it easier to go somewhere without traveling toward a hub of civilization.”

“Huh,” Avery said.  “Then what?”

“When we get there, there will be a cue.  One that only the lost and desperate are likely to follow.  From there, it is a short distance to her domain.”

Lucy was using her flashlight to shine the way.  Matt had another, bigger one from the truck.

Edith turned her head to look off into the trees.  Avery, her Sight still active, could see the band that wound through the trees and along a path, extending to the distant campsite that Edith was looking at.

Edith pulled hairs from her head, twisted them together, and snapped her fingers at the frayed end.  A flame appeared, brighter than either of the flashlights.

“Campsite nine,” Matthew said.  “Here.”

They walked down the short path to the site.  Matthew set down a large bag.  Avery dropped her own stuff near the bench.

“So.  Can we ask questions?” Lucy asked.  She had her notebook with her, but it was closed.

“Go ahead,” Matthew said.

“You and Edith.  This isn’t a formal interview, but…”

“It’d be nice to know who we’re traveling with,” Avery said.  They’d agreed to wait to interview the pair.  A casual conversation was better.

“My name is Matthew Moss.  My father taught me some of the practice when I was young.  I did a ritual that resembled what you did earlier today when I was ten.”

“When we asked your name and what type of Other you were, you said Host.”

“It’s most accurate, but I trained as a Heartless.  A practitioner who gives up select fragments of their mortality or takes from others in pursuit of life everlasting.  My father was caught and killed by witch hunters while trying to take the last years from people at a palliative care home.”

“Witch hunters are a thing?” Avery asked.  She pulled off her hat, placing it on the bench next to her, looking over one shoulder.

Edith, kneeling by the concrete-ringed campfire, ignited the wood that had been left there, cold and damp, by past campers.

“Witch hunters are a thing.  I wasn’t interested in obtaining more youth when I was already young, especially after losing my father.  I carried on, with basic practice under my belt.  Some shamanism, some of the heartless practices that made life easier without needing to prey on others.”

“I taught you the basic runes and ways of interacting with spirits using diagrams because they’re very good to know as fundamentals,” Edith said.  “You can tap into forces like wind, fire, earth, but spirits can represent anything and everything in this world.  A single twig has spirits of wood, of the color brown, of life, pine, and nature touching on it and affecting it.  A heartless practitioner can benefit from knowing how to interact with spirits of life or death, how to recognize them.  A binder might pay closer attention to spirits related to certain emotions.”

“Like knowing your math or spelling.  There are very few jobs where you won’t benefit from being able to write a coherent email or add up your paycheque,” Matthew spoke, staring into the fire with eyes that were cast in shadow the firelight didn’t touch.  “There are very few practices which can’t benefit from something like ‘I need a little bit more of this’ or ‘I need this out of the way while I work’, when ‘this’ could be anything from heat to hate to a bit more Self.”

Avery was glad for the fire.  She put her hands out.  The night was dark and the woods darker.

“I bring up the shamanism because I noticed a disturbance and I found the Girl by Candlelight.  A complex spirit.  Remember how Edith just said you can have all those individual things in a twig?  Those things can fall away or separate, and attach to something else.  An echo, or a ghost if you prefer to call it that, or whatever event shook them loose shook enough free that the stray spirits were able to clump together.  They form into something coherent, and the complex spirit that results can be a fleeting existence or a concrete one that gets its rougher edges sanded off by time.”

“Were you more concrete?” Verona asked.

“I was and am fleeting,” Edith said.  “Practitioners have a responsibility to tidy up messes and keep ordinary people from being inconvenienced.  Matthew followed a trail of small fires and sightings to me.  The ghost of a girl who suffocated on smoke in a house fire.  The emotions and spirits shed in a roadside, candlelit vigil for a teenage girl who died in a car accident.  A child’s pyromania, manifested in anxiety and confusion, cast away as the child grew up.  These things and other, smaller things found each other and were bound together.”

“She was the most interesting thing I’d run into with my practice in years.  I tried what I could to keep her fueled and together,” Matthew said.  “I talked to her for hours, sometimes, trying to bring out the responses that helped her take more human shape.”

“Seven years ago, a girl named Edith James tried and failed to end her life,” Edith said.  “She suffered severe brain damage and necrosis of the intestinal lining.  It wasn’t pretty, especially with the grief the family suffered in the wake of the attempt and the hospitalization.  There was next to nothing of her left, so… I moved in.  The two years I was learning to operate a brain and a body were excused as Edith James’ recovery.  Her family was overjoyed, and that fragment of her that remains inside this body is content that they aren’t grieving.”

“And you?” Lucy asked Matthew.

“We found each other again.  She needed help.  The darkness that haunted Edith, the doom, had become complex in its own way.  It wanted fruition, and was trying to attach itself to the Candlelight Girl within.  I made the transition to being a Host, a practitioner who takes spirits and other immaterial things like ghosts or elementals into their body.  Done well and carefully, hosting something lets you draw on its power and qualities.  I carved out a hole in myself to take it in using the practices I was taught as a youth, but Edith’s darkness is too large and unwieldy for me.  I have power if I need it, I can draw on its strength, but I have to be very careful.  I can’t really practice and haven’t practiced for seven years, and the practices I can do are all touched by the force I hold inside myself, or directly related to it.  Darkness, pain, doom.  At this point I would better be considered a human turned Other than a practitioner.”

Avery leaned forward.  “So you’re both kind of the same, but…”

“But different.  In the end, I, Matthew Moss, love the Girl by Candlelight.  She, I hope, loves me.”

“And the darkness I house wants to finish destroying her flesh and what remains of the original Edith James.”

Lucy’s finger tapped a pattern on the notebook’s hard cover.  She seemed to be considering.  Avery was about to ask something, when Lucy came out and said, “You kept your last name, Edith.”

“We got married in hopes it would make her stronger against the darkness,” Matthew said.  “And because we were and are in love.  We decided stability was more important than redefining who ‘Edith James’ was.”

They’re still kind of doing that thing where Matthew does the talking for Edith, who is quieter.  Like my second aunt, Avery observed.

“I guess this became more of an interview after all,” Verona said.  “This is interesting.”

“There’s a bunch more questions I want to ask, actually,” Lucy said.  “But I think they should wait until we know more about practice and the Carmine Beast.  Charles?  Can we ask you things?”

“It’s why I’m here,” Charles said.

“About your past, I mean.”

“Oh.” He heaved out a sigh.  “Go ahead.”

“How did you get forsworn?” Lucy asked him.

“I broke an oath,” he said.

Avery wasn’t exactly keen on having Charles with them.  When she imagined an axe murderer, she tended to imagine someone who looked kind of like Charles, but with more muscle.  Now, being here and watching him, it seemed to her that the kind of person who would be that unhinged wouldn’t be doing pushups or lifting weights.  It made sense they’d be as gaunt as this man was.

She wanted to feel sorry for him, but she would have much rather felt sorry for him from a distance, without him sitting across the campfire, his freaky face lit from below by the flames, shadows dancing across creases and old scars.

“What oath?” Lucy asked.

“I had a friend over.  A fellow practitioner.  He was… a tricky friend.  The kind you have to make excuses for, or warn friends about before you introduce them.”

“Hmmmm,” Verona made a sound, her chin on her hand.  She turned her head toward Lucy.  “Hmm.”

“And?” Lucy asked, putting a hand out in front of Verona’s face.

“He was opinionated, he didn’t like to let things go.  He came so we could talk about the process of creating an Other.  A kind of summoning.”

“Tell us more about that?” Verona asked.

“Maybe put a pin in it for later?” Lucy asked.  “Let’s continue with the basic story.”

“It’s not a long explanation.  I wanted an invisible presence that would look out for trouble.  Something like a roving eye, that could check that certain dangerous things hadn’t escaped, or notice if a bogeyman or vicious goblin were out there preying on people, so someone could be notified and the monster stopped.  My friend was an augur.  He would have handled the part that let it watch and observe.”

“Did it work?” Verona asked.

Lucy elbowed her friend.  “Are you going to get us sidetracked every single time someone talks about practice or Others?”

“It’s interesting and worth knowing,” Verona protested.  “It tells us about who Charles is as a person.”

“We never got that far,” Charles said.  “I made dinner.  We talked, we drank, and the conversation changed several times.  It got onto the subject of politics.”

“My grandfather is really political,” Avery said.  “It seems kind of miserable.”

Charles huffed out a small laugh, in what might have been the first glimmer of anything  like amusement or positivity from him since they’d met.  “Miserable, and it feels more miserable every year.  Our talk got heated.  He argued for the sake of arguing, I argued out of passion.  He needled me, using topics he knew I was sensitive about, and I’d been drinking.  He said something unconscionable, I picked up a glass to throw it, saw the look on his face, and he looked victorious.  I threw it against a wall instead.”

“How do you get forsworn from that?” Verona asked.

“I didn’t even remember back then, but the look on his face told me there was something.  Around the time we’d first met, he’d had me promise him he’d be safe from any harm at my hands or the hands of my guests.  I hadn’t thought we’d have a long-term friendship, then.  I’d needed him for one thing.  But it was enough, and it still counted, later.”

“Note to self,” Avery said, quiet.  “Remember my oaths and promises.”

“Be sensible about the ones you do make,” Charles said.  “That one wasn’t so bad, but it was too broad, too long-lasting.  If you think you might forget, put a time limit on it.”

“Miss chocolate bar,” Lucy said, looking over at Verona.  She turned her attention back to Charles.  “I thought you didn’t hurt him.”

“I realized he’d been trying to corner me or pull something.  I told him to leave.  Angrier than I had been.  He was, and I have to imagine he still is stubborn.  I pushed the table, enough to force him to take that one step toward the door.  He did, and he stepped on broken glass.”

“That was enough?” Avery asked.

“Yes.  Especially considering the ways of the spirits, Others, and old traditions.  For much of human history, hospitality and respecting one’s guests was one of the most important things.  Turning away a traveler in need could kill them.  Disrespecting a guest or host could be disastrous.”

“How does it work?” Verona asked.  “What does it look like when you’re Forsworn?”

“When someone calls you forsworn, as he did, there is a process.  He looked me in the eye, he named the oath, and he named the wrong.  If there’s no person to do that, then the world has a way of telling you.  A crack of thunder, a tremor in the earth, a vision.  It can depend.  Then the person forsworn gets an opportunity to answer it.  It’s a heavy thing to name someone forsworn.  If the person answers and they didn’t actually break the oath, the person trying to forswear them is forsworn instead.”

“He was playing with fire.”

“He knew what he was doing,” Charles said.  “I couldn’t answer it.  His blood was drawn by my violent actions.  I immediately took steps to mitigate the damage.  Protections and practices I’d set in place were coming undone.  My demesnes was collapsing in on itself and I had things within to rescue.  I would later find he’d taken some of my things while I was distracted, before he left.  He could get away with it too, because when you’re forsworn, you become a karmic sinkhole.  Open season for everyone, with no rights.”

“When did all of this happen?” Lucy asked.

“What was the political argument?” Lucy asked.

Charles raised bushy eyebrows above eyes with deep circles beneath them.  “Is it important?”

“It was about prisons.  The government then was making noise about privatizing Canadian prisons.  Following the god-damned American model, when we once had a prison system that was top three to top five in the civilized world.  It seemed so important then.  Now, if it weren’t tied to my being forsworn, I might have forgotten that argument entirely.  Stupid.”

“What was your relationship with the Carmine Beast?” Lucy asked.

“I see.  We’re going there?” Charles asked.  “I’m a suspect?”

“Everyone is, not just you,” Lucy said.

“There was none.  I only got a few glimpses of her.  I reached out once or twice, after being forsworn.  There was no answer.”

“Were you angry there was no answer?”

“I’m angry at a lot of things.  This world is happy to make you a part of it until you stop being useful, and then it discards you.  Remember that.  Keep it in mind always, and maybe you’ll avoid getting what I got.”

“Easy does it, Charles,” Matthew said.

“No,” Charles said.  “No, there’s nothing easy about this at all.”

“Were you angry at her?” Lucy pressed.

Charles, still looking at Matthew, still fresh off the retort, seemed to need a few seconds to gather himself.  He sounded tired as he muttered, “Not especially.”

“Why did you reach out to her?” Verona asked.

“Because, among the Others around here?  She’s close to the top.  If anything or anyone could change my situation, it’d be something like her.  When you’re facing a life sentence, Veronica, you appeal.  You write the governor.  You do whatever you can.”

“Verona, not Veronica.”

“It’s not short for-”

Verona was already shaking her head.

“Sorry.  And what I said stands.”

“Where were you that night?” Lucy asked.

“I was with Matthew.  He brought me things.”

“Magical things?” Verona asked.

“Some groceries.  Things for putting up a shelf.  He wanted access to the books I still keep around.”

“Can you verify, Matthew?” Lucy butted in.

“I went over that night.  Trading some basics for information.  I’m always engaged in some form of research, in hopes I don’t have to lug this ugly thing inside me around for the rest of my life.  One of the goblins came by to tell us the Carmine Beast was dying.  They’d followed it to the edge of the city, but couldn’t go further.”

Matthew cracked his knuckles.  Beside him, Edith laid a hand on his leg.  She looked more comfortable and not like the diminished, abused wife now that she was by the fire.  Matthew answered, “Because they’re goblins, and to put it in the simplest terms, the more civilized an area is, the harder it is for them to venture inside.  I left, I caught up with the others there.  I took note of the witness.  We figured out our next steps.”

“And you?” Lucy asked Charles.

“I stayed home, I put up my shelf.  I made a late dinner.  The goblin was there.  Bluntmunch.  I fed him some of my dinner, gave him some booze.”

“He can corroborate?”

“He’s not as dumb as he looks.  He should remember.”

So he has an alibi?  Or either Matthew or the goblin can lie?

“So you’re saying you didn’t, and others will back you up in that.  You say you didn’t want to,” Lucy said, speaking very carefully.

“If you did want to… how would you go about it?”

“If I did want to…?”

“Kill or vanish the Carmine Beast.”

“It’s at or near the top of the food chain, girl.  It’s-”

“Don’t call me girl.  Don’t do that,” Lucy said.  “Just like you wouldn’t call my brother ‘boy’.  Don’t be that guy.  Don’t diminish me.”

“Didn’t mean anything by it.  So soon after getting her name wrong…”

“Just don’t.  I’m Lucy.  Lucille if you want to be formal, but I hate that.”

“Lucy.  I can’t seem to win, ever.”

“I’m saying it’s at the top, I’m so far down that I need to rely on people like Matthew here to ensure I can stay fed.  The universe is against me, I can’t hold a job, I can’t keep a place of my own, and the karma hit that comes with being forsworn means I’m on everyone’s shitlist.  I have no earthly idea how I’d do the deed, even if I could still practice.  Like this?  Impossible.”

Lucy’s head turned slightly.  Matthew and Edith were nodding.

“What could?” Avery asked.

“I don’t even know,” Charles said.  “But I haven’t been paying a lot of attention.  Mostly I’ve been trying to survive.”

“Matthew?  Edith?” Lucy asked.  “Who or what could?”

“It’s a very short list,” Matthew said.  “We can talk more about the Carmine Beast tomorrow.  It’s the point of this trip, after all.”

“Should we turn in?” Edith asked.

“If there’s no objections,” Matthew said.

“A bit of a lesson, while Matthew sets up the tents,” Edith said.  “We’ve talked about some of the ways a simple circle can be elaborated on, when drawing diagrams.”

“You sense this stuff on a fundamental level?” Verona asked.

“I do,” Edith said.  She reached into the open fire, which hadn’t gotten any smaller or more diminished by the ongoing burn, and she pulled out a stick.  She began drawing in the dirt, walking the perimeter of the campsite to create a large circle.  “The ‘T’ shape forms a bar, if you remember.  What happens if we turn it upside-down?  The circle sitting on the ‘T’ shape instead of the other way around?”

“Holding something in?” Avery asked.

“Yes.  Insulating.  Triangles serve much the same function, but we’ve already talked about how triangles are shorthand for the various elements.  They point, and are more driven,” Edith explained.  “What do you think would happen, if we were to drive heat in?”

“We’d cook?”  Verona asked.

“Possibly.  We don’t have a defined power source yet, and no nearby source of heat, so it’s possible and likely the circle would break, instead.”

Verona began taking notes, while Edith continued working on the diagram.    Blocks for the wind at the north, east, south, and western points, while insulation for heat were set at the northwest, northeast, southwest, and southeast.

Charles lay down across a bench, and seemed to be getting himself settled to sleep there.  Matthew shook out the tents.

Lucy had pulled out a sleeping bag, and was watching all of them.

“Luce,” Avery said, quiet.

Avery’s eyes fell on Charles.  “Want to sleep in shifts?”

“They’re strangers.  This is all strange,” Avery said.

“What time are we getting up?” Lucy asked, her voice loud enough it startled Avery.

“The sunrise will probably wake us,” Matthew replied.  He seemed to know what he was doing with the tent, with one already almost put together.  “If we sleep in, the sleep stops being part of the travel, and we’re delaying or interrupting the journey.  So it’ll be sometime soon after we wake up and eat.”

“In eight hours?” Lucy asked.

“Something like that.”

“Two-and-a-half hour shifts?” Lucy asked, quieter.

“I can take any extra, if we gotta,” Avery said.

Avery got herself settled, her sleeping bag was thin enough it was probably for summertimes, not winters, but the diagram was finished, and she could already feel the area getting more cozy, the warmth from the fire gathering within.  She situated her bag to where she could sit up against it and watch everything.

Verona was sitting inside her sleeping bag, rummaging around.  Avery wasn’t sure what she was doing until Verona pulled out a sock.  She averted her eyes as Verona pulled out her pants, as well.

This would all be so cool if it weren’t for the gnawing fear that hung over everything.

It would be nice to get stronger, learn more, and be able to defend herself.

The tents were set up, and Edith and Matthew got inside theirs.  Charles slept outside, lying on the bench with his face skyward, the crook of his elbow at his nose.  Avery sat at the aperture to her tent, watching Matthew and Edith’s tent, and the sleeping ex-practitioner.  Behind her, Verona and Lucy got settled in to sleep.

Avery used her Sight.  It made it easier to see moving things, and to see the threads that tied one thing to another.

Two hours was a long time to kill, but she didn’t mind much, and while she was doing it, she imagined, it was good to get the practice in, and train this Sight of hers.

Verona was very good at the practice.  Lucy was on top of the investigation.  Avery knew she didn’t have a lot going for her.  So she’d do her best at this, at the very least.

Avery was woken by a shake.  Her first thought was alarm, that she’d fallen asleep while on watch.  But she was further inside the tent.  She’d swapped places with Verona, who now was beside her, already waking up and pulling on pants again.

Avery was in full zombie mode as she got up and got ready to leave the tent.  She made her way to the bench and accepted the offered food, giving it a long, hard look with her Sight before digging in.  She wasn’t even sure what she’d See if there was anything strange in there.

“Can I see your hat, before we get going?” Edith asked.

Avery had placed it with her main bag, and that was just through the tent flap.  Plate still in her lap, still chewing, she leaned back until she had to put a hand on the ground to keep from toppling back, reached through the flap with the fork, and managed to hook her hat.  She got it close enough to grab it, then sat up again.

She gave it a once-over, noting the diagram they’d put on it before leaving.  The wide brim was useful in a way, because it provided a lot of drawing area.

The idea of this particular bit of chalk-drawing, like the one on Lucy’s hat and Verona’s hat, was not to work on spirits, but to work on the bands she could see with the Sight.  Every relationship between a person and a person, place, or thing had a band or a ‘connection’.

The main drawing on the brim served to temporarily sever the connection between her and her home.

“It’s faded,” Edith observed.  “We should redraw it.”

“There may be a rebound, especially if they’re the type who would have called.  Expect to get an awkward phone call the moment I wipe this off to put something new down.  Try not to panic, don’t lie, just keep the conversation going until I finish redrawing it.  Once it’s done, try to end the conversation.”

“My parents wouldn’t call, I don’t think,” Avery said.

“I’m sorry,” Matthew said.

“It’s faded, meaning there’s been some resistance,” Edith said.

“I really don’t think they’d call,” Avery insisted.

Matthew gave Edith a look.  He was still cooking.  Pancakes and bacon in the same pan.  Avery’s dad was the type who really hated that, because he’d say the bacon would taste like pancakes and the pancakes like bacon.  As far as Avery was concerned, it was all the same in the end.

“Even if they don’t love you, they might feel like they should call.”

“Nah.  My parents love me.  They’re great.  They’re just busy and distracted.  My grandfather might ask about me, though.”

“That could be it.  If he’d ask, miss you, or wonder how you’re doing, and that’s being blocked.”

“Feels a bit lonely,” Avery said.

“My dad never calls when I’m at Luce’s,” Verona said.  “It’s early Saturday so… he’s probably working, and he might even be glad he doesn’t have to bother with me.”

“Ronnie comes over most weekends,” Lucy said. She was prodding at her hair, which had gotten squished in the night, “If you wanted to start coming over whenever, that’s cool too, Ave.”

“Thanks,” Avery said, smiling.

“Were you comfortable last night?”

“I wasn’t cold, if that’s what you mean,” Lucy said.  “Not sure about the others.”

“No issues,” Avery said.

“First time ever that I’ve been camping.  Was neat,” Verona said.

“Good,” Edith said.  She smiled, and there was a bit of warmth in her eyes that had nothing to do with the spirit of candles and fire inside her.

The smoke and the sleeping outdoors had made Avery bleary-eyed, and she was frankly happy to keep a blanket around her, fill her belly, and then do what was necessary to get packed up, conserving all energy and staying half asleep throughout.

The tents were dismantled, their stuff gathered.  They got into the open back of the pick-up truck again, secure from the attentions of any police by the same connection-blocking practice that kept their parents from calling to check in and finding that their daughters had skipped town.

At the last second, Lucy knocked, asking them to stop.  She hopped down from the back, ran over to the office where they’d gone to pay for the spot at the campsite, and went to the vending machine there.  She made her way back, climbed in, and handed Verona and Avery a chocolate bar each.

Verona laughed.  “Is this because of what I said yesterday?”

“I don’t want you to make stupid oaths like that again.  Promise.”

“I’ll be more careful,” Verona told Lucy.

“Why do I get one?” Avery asked.

“Because you’re not a pain in my ass.”

The truck rumbled back into motion.  They resumed their journey.

“Got some stuff for you, Lucy,” Avery said, doing what she could to get settled.

“Let me get my notebook.  What stuff?”

“The farther we get from Kennet, the happier Edith seems.  Not getting that vibe I was before.”

“That’s good,” Lucy said.  “Might have something to do with her being a spirit.”

“We should write down the stuff about her background.  And what Matthew said.”

“And Charles,” Verona offered.

“Help me remember,” Lucy said.  “Be really, really sure, speak up if you have any doubts about any piece of information…”

A knock at the window disturbed Avery’s read of the book she’d grabbed from the last rest stop.  She sat up, and she twisted around.  When she couldn’t see through the truck window and out the windshield, she stood, taking hold of the rack at the top of the pickup to stay balanced, in case the truck started moving all of a sudden.

The sun was setting, and the sky was red.  The trees were thick here, and the road was dirt.

At the top of the hill at the far end of the road, there was an animal that could have been a stray dog or coyote.  Too small and long-legged to be a wolf.  It looked like it had been hit by a car.  It was injured.

“Aw!” Avery exclaimed.  “Poor thing.”

“This is it,” Matthew spoke through the open window, as he turned off the engine.  “The cue we’re supposed to follow.”

He opened his door.  He, Edith, and Charles climbed out.

Avery and her friends climbed out.  Her hands were gross from not having showered and the dust that had gotten on them.  They’d put down more signs on the plastic lining at the rear of the truck, warding off the dust, but just the grit that had already gotten in there was bad enough, when she wasn’t in a position to wipe it off.

They ventured forward, and the bloodied animal slinked into the trees.

Matthew explained, “The only people liable to follow a random animal are those with nowhere to go, or people who know what the animal is about and want to find the Carmine Beast.  Essentially, the only people the Carmine beast wants at its doorstep in the first place.”

“What kind of people does it want?”

“Hunters and the hunted,” Charles said.

Following the animal wasn’t easy, but it was bleeding, and the blood trail helped.

There were more places here where blood had stained the ground or painted green leaves, grass, weeds, and moss with crimson.  Blood in the traces of snow that spring hadn’t yet erased.  Blood in soil, in sand, in what might have been peat.

Until there was more bloody ground than ground without blood.

“It says a lot that the animal we’re following is injured,” Matthew observed.  “Our witness described following a giant canine, it was howling in pain and mourning, and it was injured.”

Avery spoke up, “So the Carmine Beast was a beast?  I know that’s a dumb question, maybe, but-”

“Not a dumb question,” Edith said.  “Its shape is variable.  Many spirits are similar, though complex spirits like myself tend to be firmer, either because we’re too knit-together, or we can’t afford to change because we’re that weak.”

“It’s a spirit, then?”

“It’s more than a spirit.  By taking on this role, it is elevated.”

“A god?” Verona asked.  “Or a lesser god?”

“A role,” Matthew said.

He pushed past some foliage, and held branches out of the way for Edith and the girls.

Past those branches was a bit of a cliff, and then a clearing.

In that clearing, the ground was so blood-soaked, so much more red than anything Avery had seen, that the leaves couldn’t hold color, and were whiter than snow.  Trees were cast in blacks and greys, and moisture, where it appeared, beaded crimson and thick.

Bones had been dragged to a central location, and the bones had formed an arrangement, crushed or pushed into place by a weight and framing that Avery instinctively knew.

That something belonged here, in that nest of bones, and it was absent.  There were animals here, all carnivores, but they were listless, bowed.  Lacking.  Again, they were missing something.  She could feel the absence like a weight on her chest.

A throne without its Queen.  Servants without a master.

She understood now why they’d needed to come and see this.  To understand the magnitude of what they were trying to fix.

A sharp growling behind her made her jump and skip forward a solid three steps.

Other animals had crept in through the bone-white foliage.  They continued to growl, advancing.

“Charles Abrams,” a woman said.

“I know,” Charles said.

“There is no shelter for you here,” the woman said.  “No quest, no passage, no currency.”

“Charles is forsworn.  He gets no court or audience,” Edith murmured.

There were Others present.  Others who passed through the trees without needing to bend for branches or get out of the way.

“Court?  Do we bow?” Verona asked, quiet.

“No,” Matthew said.  “No need.  That’s a human custom.”

Avery pulled off her hat, and held it to her chest, all the same.

One woman, dressed in white furs.  A man in a black suit.  And off to the side, sitting atop the head of a centipede, an older teen or younger adult with long hair and flowing clothes in gold.

“In many places around the world,” Matthew explained, his voice low.  Their group parted as the three Others made their way past them and deeper into the clearing.  “There are totems, fixtures, or assumptive forces.  In one part of Asia, I’m not learned enough to place it exactly, you might have the Azure Dragon, the Vermilion Bird, the White Tiger and the Black Tortoise.  In some places, it’s only one.  Often, their role is similar.”

“We have four, here?” Lucy asked.

“You’re not the first to come here,” the woman in white said.

“I know,” Matthew said.  “We inducted some new practitioners.  There’s no Lord in our area, so we thought we’d make introductions.  Let them see the Carmine Beast’s domain, and get a sense of what they’re doing.”

“Who came before?” Lucy asked, twisting around.

“Other practitioners from near Kennet.  The ones who would be investigating if we didn’t bring someone in,” Matthew said.

“They know very little,” the man in the flowing gold robe said.  He still sat cross-legged on the centipede’s head.

“They’re fast learners.”

“Can they bring her back to us?  Or name the culprit?” the one in black asked.

“We’re going to try,” Lucy said.  “Can we ask questions?”

“Ask,” the woman in white said.

“What are you, what is this?”

“When the practitioners of an area organize to a sufficient degree, they tend to put Lords in place.  Others or Practitioners strong enough to oversee an area, mete out judgment, and deal with problems.  But not all areas have these things,” the man in the black suit explained.

“For other areas, there is a hierarchy.  The Others self-organize, they handle threats, they keep things in balance,” the man in gold told them.  “But sometimes, it’s not enough, or there’s nobody and nothing suitable to fill a role.  If something needs to be laid to rest and there is no Death nearby…”

He indicated the man in the black suit, who said, “I might step in to handle duties.”

“You’re a higher authority?” Lucy asked.

The man in the black suit answered, “A court of appeals, a final stop, or very rarely, a first stop, when a problem needs handling, a specific individual may find their way to us for a first meeting.  People on the most desperate of quests, those seeking answers, those seeking shelter, and people needing salvation… they often find their way to us when they’ve exhausted every last option.  Each of us take on a different role and share of the duties.”

“I suppose if we say no, they could pray to gods, for all the good that often does,” the man in gold said, smiling wide enough it looked like his face could crack in two.

“The Carmine Beast was one of you?” Verona asked.

“What was her role?” Lucy asked.

“She handled monsters and those who kill monsters,” the woman in white said.  “She handled matters of war and murder, carnage, blood, and execution.  Justice, in its bloodiest form.”

“Was…” Avery started.  She was suddenly very aware it could be a rude question, considering these things were like the Carmine Beast’s family.  She decided to ask anyway, because the question would bother her.  “…was she evil?”

“She was too fundamental a thing to call good or evil.  But she did not have many friends.”

This was a little too much.  This felt too big.

It was starting to dawn on Avery that the reason Matthew had said they didn’t have to solve this was because it was far more immense than the three of them could hope to wrap their heads around.

“I don’t mean to offend, but I’m going to be blunt,” Lucy said.  “Do you know anything relevant?”

The man in the black suit and dress shirt answered, “We know very little.  It only recently came to our attention.  I suspect we don’t know much more than you.”

“Do the others agree?”

“Agreed,” the woman in white furs said, at the same time the man in gold said, “Yes.”

“Did you have any part in this?”

“How strong would you have to be to kill her, or make her vanish like this?” Lucy asked.

“To give an idea of the scale and difficulty, could you end all violence in one area of one Canadian province?” the man in gold asked.  “Even for a short while?”

“It’s more about having the right information and leverage than having the strength… though strength certainly wouldn’t hurt,” the woman in white said.

“Why would someone hurt her?  Because she didn’t have many friends?” Lucy asked.

“She didn’t, but you could look at it as the vacating of a position.  There’s a power in taking someone from that seat, and there’s a power in the seat.  Right now, the seat is empty, and it must be filled.  By filling it, one Other or Practitioner will take on the responsibility and the power that comes with it.”

“It’s like the supreme court, then?” Avery asked.  “Once you’ve worked your way through all the lower courts, if the case is compelling, you end up here?”

“And by taking the role, they get that final say.  They get to make the laws, essentially?”

“More or less,” the woman in white furs said.

“Are there any limitations on the kind of person or Other?”

“They’d need to fit the role, to a certain degree.  The role would then mold itself to them and they’d be molded in turn.”

“Has anyone applied?”

“Nobody has stepped forward.  This isn’t surprising.  If one declared themselves for the seat and the role as the next Carmine Beast, there would be a brief period they could be cut down or supplanted.  It is easier, especially among the murderous and dangerous types that would take this role, to let someone else make the first move.  We may be forced to select someone, which would make them vulnerable, force them to prove themselves.”

“And who are the candidates?” Verona asked.

“You know them because they are in Kennet.  The first is John Stiles, who is not especially strong, but we think he would serve with a mind to balance, making him our preference.  The other is your Hungry Choir.”

“And how would they serve?” Avery asked.

“We have discussed it and concluded they’d serve in a disastrous fashion, with an uneven hand,” the man in the black suit said.  “Their reign is likely, because they are strong, and it’s likely to be short.  We’ll adapt, whatever happens.”

I guess we know who we’re talking to next.  Two suspects with something to gain.  Others who could be the next Carmine Beast.