23. Chapter 23 #2
I hear them before I see them. Four black horses galloping around the riverbend like there’s a fire nipping at their hooves, being ridden by four soldiers of the Divine Army.
Their dark energies suffocate the forest like a thick pall, wicking all the oxygen from my lungs and forcing me to burrow into myself, deep down to the depths of my soul, to a place where despair blooms alive and well.
Shuddering, I imagine the guards’ gnarled fingers being devoid entirely of skin, or how their faces might look if they were to remove their helmets.
“The Undead Army,” I gasp. “They’ve sent a guard for each of us.”
“What are you talking about?” Maxine asks, withdrawing her dagger and spinning in a circle.
“I don’t see—” She abruptly stops. The four horsemen appear through the trees like wraiths bursting out of Hell, their screeches drowning out the starry skies and casting the forest into an inky black inferno of forever darkness, until that feeling of despair threatens to swallow me whole.
“Well fuck!” Lily yelps, whisking her holey dress off Bella’s shoulders and tucking it against her chest. “They won’t escort us safely to the market, but they certainly have no reservations about coming here to collect us after a dragon swoops through town!”
“We have to split up,” Bella cries out. “If they capture us, they’ll drag us straight back to the castle, and then we’ll be right back where we started...”
Trapped.
Lily takes a sharp left. Bella goes straight.
Maxine rushes right. I turn to run as well, but something forces me to stop.
It’s a hand on the back of my neck, ripe with plump veins and transparent skin.
It’s a brood’s eyeballs bulging beneath a dark cloak that smells like it was soaked in undiluted incense.
An old hag materializes out of seemingly nowhere and forces me forward with a whack of her cane, sending me sailing straight into a bramble of bushes where I’m pierced by more thorns and hidden by a swath of leaves.
What… the… ever-loving… fuck.
“Stay down,” she commands in a rasp. I do as she asks, mostly because I’m much more afraid of her than I am of those undead soldiers out there in the darkness.
The horses fly past, and I hear a scream somewhere off in the distance.
It sounds like Maxine, but it’s hard to be certain. It could be any of my friends.
“I have to help…” I pull myself to a stand, only for a hooked cane to snake around my wrist and tug me back down into the underbrush again.
I glare up at the elderly woman, who has far too much strength for someone of her size and stature.
She should be home knitting a quilt, not hovering over me, her eyes bulging out of her skull.
Where did she come from, anyway? And why is she being so bossy?
“What?” I chew at my fingernail. “I can’t just leave them behind. They’re my friends.”
“And how do you intend to help your friends, exactly?” the old crone croaks.
“By skewering those guards with your chewed-up fingernails?” She grabs hold of my elbow and yanks me forward.
“Your friends will be fine. The gods have ordered their return to the castle, not their deaths. You, on the other hand...” She eyes me up and down, her gaze falling on my fingers, her mouth making a tutting noise as she shakes her head. “You must come with me, now."
I nod, even though my mind is brimming on the brink of insanity, and my shred-up heart is gnawing at my waning common sense.
My brain turns into scraps of fringe that somehow convince me that following her is an acceptable plan.
I force myself to breathe in and out, slowly, as she weaves me through the forest like she was born in the trees, her agile footsteps leading me directly to a crooked little hut on the outskirts of the river-bend, where I’m immediately inundated by a cloud of cerise perfume that throws me into a violent coughing fit.
So much for trying not to hyperventilate.
A horde of dreamcatchers flutter along the low beams of the ceiling, their snares all decorated in spinning yarn, sandalwood beads, and dried-up lavender sprigs.
Oddly shaped teapots sit on an ancient stove, belting out ear-piercing, steam-filled harmonies like nobody’s listening.
At the center of all the chaos sits a rickety dining table harboring an array of strange-looking cards decorated in even stranger-looking faces.
“Breathe, girl.” The decrepit old woman whisks a teapot off the stove and collects two ceramic mugs from a nearby creaking cupboard, which she fills to the brim with scalding liquid as she motions for me to sit.
Exhaling deeply, and loudly, I inspect her closer under the dim lighting.
Her quicksilver eyes are bloodshot, and her body is as ancient as the oldest of tombs.
Her fingernails and teeth are both limp shades of white, like her keratin and enamel got together long ago and unanimously decided to die.
“My name is Trisda.” She gives me a wry smile, displaying her fleshy gums and tilted teeth, like her mouth is a monolithic site of intrigue. “Please, have a seat.”
I remain standing. Mostly because I’m far too busy analyzing the chairs and the table, which are made of bones, along with everything else in this little macabre hut.
The scene jerks my common sense back to life, which rattles the very foundation of my mind, screaming for me to go back outside and face that dragon head-on instead of partaking in tea and crumpets with this faded relic of a woman.
Trisda seems to read my expression as she takes a sip of her scalding tea, her silver hair tumbling down her shoulders in beads. “I might look it, but I don’t bite,” she croaks.
Yes, because that would require you to have realistic teeth.
“I’ve been here before,” I recall, spotting a bone-shaped spoon sitting in a bowl of slop on the stove.
“In my dreams.” I inspect her archaic face closer.
She doesn’t have mismatching eyes like Solara had claimed the Mother of Chaos would, but perhaps the tale of her mismatching eyes is a metaphorical one—like one eye seeing into the past, and the other into the future.
“You’re the Mother of Chaos, aren’t you? ” I ask.
Please be her, my mind screams into whatever void gave life to this chaotic universe. Please be the woman who will bring me to my sister.
The dragon rips a primordial roar across the sky as if echoing in agreement, causing the walls to shake with such intensity that the finger-boned curtains clatter like wind chimes.
“I am not the person of whom you seek, although I do know her quite personally.” Trisda folds her hands together on the table, her mysterious eyes glinting as she flips her deck of cards face up. “What do you think of my cards of fate, child?” she asks me plainly.
“Oh, uh… I think they’re lovely.” My posture deflates. It seems that my hopes and dreams are spinning into nothing but wisps of fragile glass and castaway dreams. If this is not the Mother of Chaos, then where is she?
“This card is my favorite,” Trisda coos, pointing toward one card in particular.
The illustration features a striking woman wearing a gown of gossamer silk, whose hair is a tapestry of scarlet.
“This is the Goddess of Whispers,” she adds as she leans over the table and smiles.
“She was a formidable goddess as much as she was water, always carrying a ripple of truth to her words and a cascade of insinuations in her back pocket. She’d till up gossip like she was sowing a fire, until eventually, the whole town was swept up in her secrets and lies. ”
I roll my eyes. “Whatever that means.”
“It means, child…” Trisda taps her fingers on the table. “The Goddess of Whispers would drag the townsfolk down to her lair beneath the depths of the ocean, where she’d feast on their corpses.”
“So she's a siren?” I swallow.
“She was a siren. Until she died… that is,” Trisda responds.
“Why are you telling me this?” I ask, studying the card closer. The goddess’s gown looks like a piece of the ocean, and there’s jangly bracelets running all up and down her arms.
“Because she's back.” Trisda smiles.
I toy with the frayed string of the table runner as my fingers buzz. “What the hell do you mean she’s back?"
Trisda leans back in her chair, but not before plucking a piece of frozen marmalade from the dish at the table’s center and popping it into her mouth. “She was spotted in Grenora just this morning."
“How is that possible? The gods can’t return from the dead,” I say, scooting to the edge of my seat.
Can they?
Trisda sucks harder on her frozen concoction of fruit and sugar water. “Have you heard of the prophecy, child?”
“What prophecy?” I ask. Trisda continues to stare at me in silence as I work to recall the prophecy from the bridge. “Fine,” I relent, already disliking the direction this conversation is heading. “I’ve heard about it in passing.”
Trisda pushes away the cards and reaches for my hands.
Hers are dry, cracking, and feel rough against my skin.
When she speaks, it’s with an uncharacteristic voice that feels airy and light, almost like she’s redrawing an old fairytale in her mind.
“A raven shall arrive on the backs of wolves, bearing the silver blood of the wraiths. In dreams, the Mother of Chaos she will unveil, commencing a war between gods, demons, and dragons…”
I yank my hands from her grasp as another roar cracks across the skies. “What does this prophecy have to do with a goddess returning from the dead?”