Chapter 8 #2
Mal trailed a hand over his sleeve that concealed most of the flaky, itchy image within, a gesture that was becoming habit.
He was silent for a long moment, resentful at having been asked something in return, and when he finally spoke, it was in a tone as unwelcoming of questions as Griff’s had been moments earlier. “My boss. It was just business.”
“I don’t know—a tattoo seems pretty personal to me. Seems like the kind of story you might want to tell when someone asks.”
Mal turned to study Griff’s face more closely, not sure what he was going to find there.
More judgment, probably, if history was any indication.
Or maybe … was Griff really curious about him?
About the stories he could tell? Not that he would be explaining the real reason for their treasure hunt when they had barely left Linden.
When their eyes met, Griff immediately glanced off in the direction Alys had disappeared as another rush of wind flattened the tops of the pink-red fireweed, and Mal dismissed the notion altogether. Of course Griff didn’t want to hear about his life. If he did, he would have asked a long time ago.
Mal was relieved to see Alys’s white-blond head bobbing back toward them at top speed a few moments later. As she got closer, he noted something clutched in her fists, the dark-purple flesh of berries peeking from between gaps in her fingers.
“Anyone else feeling peckish?” she asked with a gleam in her cornflower-blue eyes as she distributed handfuls of berries to Mal, then to Griff, saving plenty for herself as well. “Vic taught me some about foraging this year,” she added proudly. Mal suspected she was trying to impress Griff.
“Thanks, Alys,” he said with more enthusiasm than he felt, flashing her an indulgent smile to match. The berries were exceptionally bitter, which made not grimacing a challenge. “They’re really … fresh.”
“Vic taught me some about foraging too,” Griff told them as he tried a berry, not bothering to hide his wince as the taste hit. “Not sure I know about these, though.”
They pressed on into the mist, following the edge of the road for now, the day growing oddly bright though they were still heading toward that dark horizon.
Mal, who had initially set a grueling pace to try to impress his employers, began to lag slightly, and when Griff eventually caught up to him, Mal noticed a sheen of sweat slicking the other man’s face, more than just mist dripping from the curly ends of his raven hair.
He dropped his own hood as well, too warm to continue on otherwise.
“As your hired healer, I feel a certain obligation to tell you that you don’t look so good,” Griff confided lowly to him, just out of earshot of Alys, who was walking on the opposite side of the road and seemed to be whispering to the occasional nodding flowerhead.
That’s when Mal realized his heartbeat had picked up an unusual cadence.
A hand pressed to his forehead came away slick, too, though the mist had let up in the past hour or so.
He stopped in his tracks, blinking as if the world’s colors had just shifted from rose to gray, and let out a familiar grumble.
“Alys … what did you say those berries were again?”
She turned, her eyes suspiciously bright, and said, “I didn’t.
I don’t know the name. One of Vic’s favorites, though.
At least, I think. I was … sort of … already high when I picked them.
It’s possible I got the wrong ones.” A flush darkened her cheeks as she admitted, “I ate a couple of those dried mushrooms you brought me from work before we set out this morning.”
Now Mal knew why Alys had seemed so at ease with the three of them back together again when there was so much still unsaid. She’d been too out of it to think about all the bad times, the things Mal couldn’t even drink away.
Beside him, Griff had started frantically scratching at a spot just beneath his shirt collar as if it itched worse than Mal’s tattoo.
Quickly the foreman’s hands moved down over his torso, all the way down to his pant leg, which he pulled up as if expecting to see something there.
He swiped a hand across his back, into one of those hard-to-reach-places, his eyes growing wider and more panicked by the second.
Mal’s lips quirked, amused, as Griff started unbuttoning his dark linen shirt. “No one’s paying you to put on that kind of show,” he commented dryly, but he wasn’t sure Griff even heard him.
The other man was too busy muttering, “Get them off me. Just need to get them off.”
“Get what off?” Mal asked, a bite of impatience in the words. “I don’t see anything.” And he, of course, was used to seeing things others couldn’t.
“Firespiders,” Griff breathed, his voice hushed, as if he thought talking loudly might upset the dime-sized, bright-red creatures that, as far as Mal could tell, weren’t even there. Clawing at his shirt, he added, “I can’t remember how many bites before the venom paralyzes someone my size …”
Far be it from Mal to pretend he knew the first thing about healing. Still, he leaned a little closer to Griff to observe with some urgency in his tone, “You’re about the same color as the curdled milk I threw out last week. How many of those berries did you eat?”
Alys giggled as Griff tried and failed to wriggle out of his shirt with his pack still slung over his shoulders and his cloak still fastened.
But Mal wasn’t finding much humor in the situation himself, even if perhaps he ordinarily would have; narrowing his eyes against the sun’s glare, he realized there was a shadow behind Griff that wasn’t his own.
A taller, darker shade that was puppeting his every movement but not quite getting them right, copying the frantic itching and the way Griff was now running off the road and into the grassy field that flanked their left.
It looked a lot like the solid shadow he had seen behind Griff last night.
But why was the Shadow Queen already sending emissaries to spook him?
To hound him into picking up the pace? He was already going after the treasure as fast as his two legs could possibly carry him.
And why wouldn’t this thing just show its face like every other spirit he had encountered? Glare at him or something?
Of course, just then he couldn’t even be certain whether what he was seeing was real or a result of eating all those berries.
The way his tattoo was suddenly burning like the day he’d received it as he took a step toward Griff decided for him. Whatever it was, it was real enough. Dead enough, and dangerous enough.
And he was going to get it off of Griff, because the whole reason he had brought him out here was to keep him safe.
He had, after all, worked several stints in Protection when the coin was good.
With a growl, he raced after Griff—apparently still more possessed of his faculties than the other man, even if his breath was now coming in rapid gasps—catching up with him easily and colliding with him, knocking a gust of breath from Griff’s chest as he wrestled the slightly larger man to the ground in a tangle of packs and clothes and smashing foreheads.
“What the hell?” Griff spluttered as he shoved an elbow into Mal’s face. Another connected with his ribs. “Get. Off!”
No longer seeing the extra shadow, Mal growled back as he dodged a quick elbow, “Didn’t want to be here in the first place,” rolling off Griff with a few muttered curses.
Then he lay on his back in the tall grass, staring up at the strange-hued sky and wondering if the loud pattering he heard was each drop of his own sweat hitting the ground.
No, he decided a few moments later as Alys’s legs came into view. It must have just been her footsteps as she wandered over. She should really learn not to walk so loud when they were out where anyone might discover them.
Griff, just a few feet farther into the grass, also managed to roll onto his back, taking some gulping mouthfuls of fresh air that reassured Mal he was still very much alive.
There was a large, flattish rock nearby breaking up the field, and Mal watched as Alys climbed onto it, riffling through her pack until she came across one of her many sketchbooks and a pack of charcoals.
Settling herself cross-legged, the pad in her lap, she started to draw something—much the way she had done since they were little, to the delight and wonder of other children and adults alike.
“Did you get all the spiders off, at least, when you tackled me?” Griff asked hoarsely, drawing Mal’s attention back to him.
“There were never any spiders,” Mal said firmly, in a tone he hoped left no room to question the matter further.
He was much more concerned about the shadow without a face that had now appeared twice, both times behind Griff, though there was no sense in alarming anyone about it while they were in this state.
Griff sighed. “Is Alys going to be like this the whole time we’re out here?”
Mal shrugged. “I’m not her boss. It’s called business partners.
” He glanced back at Alys, who continued humming and drawing, her pupils blown wide, her smile relaxed.
She was often like this at the cottage, too, as if there were something about being “elsewhere” she found easier.
Floating just outside herself, as if she couldn’t bear to spend too long in her own skin.
This was the legacy their parents had fought so hard to protect: an artist who loved her drugs, an enterprising but often-maligned businessman, and a foreman with commitment issues.
The heroes who killed the Shadow Queen’s last living dragon at the steep cost of their own lives, the ones who ended the last great war with their sacrifice, who were lauded by all the bards from here to the far south where dwarven empires dominated and coffee plants grew, had surely had greater ambitions for their children than this.
Their legacy, wrestling each other to the ground, sweating hallucinogenic berries out of their pores, and unable to follow a simple map for a full day.
Fucking fantastic.
“Wonder what the kids are doing right now,” Alys said thoughtfully after a while—Mal couldn’t guess how long it had been since he and Griff had collapsed on their backs and agreed without speaking that they weren’t going to move until the worst of this had passed.
“Hope they’re staying out of the creek and minding Vic. ”
Beside him, Griff started shaking with quiet laughter.
“What’s so funny?” Mal grumbled, not sure he wanted to hear the answer. He rarely did with Griff.
“Just—it makes sense that Vic’s the one watching Alys’s kids,” the foreman explained between bouts of laughter that shook his shoulders.
“Wynnie thinks a dagger is a good birthday present for a six-year-old.” Scooting closer to Mal, he added with a glint in his eyes, as if they were sharing a delightful secret, “Bet Vic still does everyone’s laundry too. ”
Mal really wished the berries had made Griff quiet rather than chatty. He had already had his fill of hearing that low, musical voice for the day.
“What are you drawing, Alys?” he called over to the rock, determined to just ignore the man beside him until he sobered up.
“Little Mal, at the moment,” she answered sweetly, not taking her eyes from the paper.
At another giggle from beside him, Mal groaned and gathered some clumps of grass between his fingers so he wouldn’t be tempted to curl them into fists.
“Is that … is that what the ladies call your …?” Griff choked out, making a vague gesture between his own legs even as Mal narrowed his eyes at him in a clear indication that he should shut up before someone got seriously hurt.
Was he really that much of a joke to Griff? And why did he care anymore?
“It’s a cat. I hate that wretched thing,” Mal explained with an air of long-suffering. He had always harbored a dislike for cats in general, so much so that as children they often idly speculated that he must have orcish blood somewhere in his family line.
“No, really,” Mal insisted as Griff’s laughter died down.
“This one is worse than most. It only comes inside to eat the dog’s food or attack someone—with claws, teeth, you name it.
That beast has a taste for blood and a serious attitude problem.
I have no idea why Alys named it after me, of all people. ”
The clouds scudding past broke apart, reforming into a dozen mesmerizing shapes that soon drew Griff’s attention, much to Mal’s relief. He’d had enough of Griff picking at his personal life for one day.
“Look!” The foreman grinned, flinging his arm wide above Mal’s head.
Mal suspected he had meant to nudge him in the side and missed.
Griff pointed with his other hand this time, indicating two large scraps of fluffy cloud overhead that had collided to form the clumsy shape of a pouncing cat. “It’s Little Mal.”
“Shut up,” Mal ordered, though thanks to the berries, without his usual ire.
Griff pointed to a different one. “And there’s Whiskey, the dog.”
They used to play this game on golden afternoons after they’d had their fill of swimming or sheep tipping, a sacred outing on which Alys never joined them (on account of it being mean to the sheep, she said, though they had never actually invited her, either).
As far as they were concerned, the sheep needed a little excitement now and then and never came away sporting so much as a bruise.
They had even made a little game of trying to catch the sheep’s bell collar, which generally ended with bruises on their own knees and unchecked amounts of laughter, after which they would practice their cloud spotting while trying to catch a breath.
For a few glorious years, they were the menace of several local farmers.
“I think that one’s a turtle,” Mal offered groggily a few minutes later, trying to pretend this was normal, that they could still share anything without the fear of Griff ruining it.
“See?” He arced his body a little closer to Griff’s and pointed at a domed shape above them from which wisps of cloud protruded like a head and a tiny tail.
Griff smiled, if somewhat hesitantly.
At that, Alys finally looked up from her drawing to survey the pair of them fondly. “Isn’t this great?” she asked, her dilated eyes shimmering with sincerity. “The three of us, finally together again?”
Mal turned hastily away and retched in the grass.