Chapter 22 - Tod’s Table
The drive from treatment to Tod's table normally took ten minutes, but Dex did it in four, leaving Sage holding onto the ‘oh-shit’ handle above her head and too scared to ask questions. Dex offered no explanation and kept his eyes on the road.
The road curved around ‘the hole,’ which was a deep, two-mile long cave with a mostly-collapsed ceiling.
It was also Nana White’s own personal pet habitat.
Dex drove straight to the check-in cabin at the Morning Wood Inn, then past it, through guest cabins to a back road, to the section where the family lived, straight to Tod's Table, a family restaurant that catered to foxen.
The parking lot was packed with cars. Dex slowed, driving down the side of the long building and past car after car, then stopped abruptly at the front door.
Sage opened the door and jumped down, purse forgotten.
She ran up the wheelchair ramp at a full sprint, grabbed the door handle and ripped open the door.
The ever-present scent of rabbit stew and dandelion wine leaked out at her, as did the sounds of many people talking.
Mina was right there in the foyer, waiting for Sage, her expression full of pain.
She had Paisley limp in her arms—sleeping?
Paisley was wearing Scooby-doo pajamas, and her head was on Mina’s shoulder, her long brown hair glowing and flowing neatly down her back like it had just been brushed.
Panic gripped Sage, making her throat tight. She rushed forward, touching her daughter, who was warm and pliant and seemed healthy. Paisley’s eyes were closed, and her cheeks were red. Sage peeled Paisley off Mina and hugged her tight. Paisley was alive. Alive and unhurt.
Paisley perked up and opened her eyes. “Mama,” she said, hugging her, her voice sleepy.
Sage hugged back and let the tears flow. “What happened, baby?”
“The vodvod Crew Arcoal woke me up mama. He's really nice,” Paisley said. She put her head on Sage’s shoulder.
Sage hugged her daughter tight, whispering, “Vodvod? Woke you up?”
She buried her face in Paisley’s hair and scented deeply, sorting through scents, cursing her weak half-human nose, until she thought she scented something awful. The Pravus?
Sage lifted her head and searched Mina’s eyes. Mina inclined her head, her eyes worried, and mouthed one word. “Khain.”
Sage had never wished to be able to speak ruhi more in her life than she did at that moment. Khain what? She wanted to scream. Khain what? But she didn’t want to scare Paisley. She covered Paisley’s ears and leaned close to Mina, noticing that everyone had stopped talking and was looking at them.
“What happened?” Sage whispered.
“Khain... took her,” Mina whispered back.
Sage’s head rocked back like she’d been physically punched in the face. “Took her where?”
Frannie came from a booth and grabbed Sage’s free hand. “I called the vod,” she said. “Nana didn’t want me to; she’s mad at me.”
Sage’s brain overheated, weakening her. Frannie and Mina helped her to the closest booth and family surrounded them.
Sage sat sideways at the end of the booth seat, holding Paisley, thinking, Dear deae, was this really happening?
Did the demon really have his filthy monster hands on Paisley?
Please. It’s a lie. Tell me it’s not true. Please.
She held Paisley to arm’s length. “Let me look at you”, she whispered fiercely. “Did he touch you? What did he do?”
Paisley shook her head. Sage yanked Paisley’s pajamas open at the neck, terrified she would see the mark of the demon on her chest, but no, it was unmarked. Sage sagged with relief and pulled her daughter close again.
“I sleepy, Mama,” Paisley said. Her eyes closed and her head drooped.
“She's been up all night,” Mina said.
Everyone crowded around them, murmuring. Sage’s Uncle Ellis squeezed her shoulder.
“Took her where?” Sage hissed at Mina. “Where did Khain take her?”
Mina didn’t answer.
Ellis answered. “To the Pravus. He took her to the Pravus.”
Sage couldn’t feel her face. Her heart threatened to burst from her chest. “For how long?” she whispered weakly.
Mina knelt in front of her, tears leaking. “All day yesterday. We got her back last night.”
Last night?! Sage was frantic to know exactly what had happened. She tried to look Paisley in the face. “What did he do to you?”
“Nothing mama.” Her head drooped. “I went to the Meadow. My daddy took me to the Meadow in the middle of the day…”
Sage was confused. Paisley didn't know her father—that asshole had abandoned them both before Paisley was even born.
“Her daddy,” Sage whispered, then she looked around the circle at family staring back. “She doesn’t mean Khain!”
“No,” Mina assured her. “She doesn’t. She had a dream, that’s all.” She looked around at everyone, as if looking for support. “It seems like she slept through the entire thing.”
“Slept through it… how could she sleep through it?”
“Magic,” Ellis said, and they all knew what that meant: Nana was involved.
“And then Crew Arcoal went into the Pravus and got her,” Ellis said, his voice soft and full of awe.
Sage looked straight ahead and saw nothing. Her thoughts protested with a wild, ongoing desperate scream. “No,” she said, feeling broken. “No…” More tears burst forth, and Paisley squirmed in her arms as Sage hugged her too damn tight. Why? Why? Why? Why was this their life?
Mina cried at Sage’s tears, and Frannie cried at Mina’s and then they were all crying, holding Sage who held Paisley—
Abigail White, Sage’s complex, powerful, and sometimes infuriating Nana, appeared in the middle of the room, her freaky stole around her shoulders. A few people gasped. Several backed away from her. Frannie ducked under the table.
“Touching,” Nana said. “But now—”
Sage didn’t let her finish the sentence. She broke free from all the family around her and stalked toward Nana, holding Paisley’s head on her shoulder, covering Paisley’s ear with her hand.
“I thought she was protected while I was in treatment,” she hissed.
“She is protected. The demon didn’t know what he had or she’d be dead.”
Sage looked around wildly. “You call that protected? He just took her!”
“Mina’s moving up to the Inn. It won’t happen up here.”
“I want her to come with me to treatment.”
“How does that make it safer, Little Miss? You’re unconscious.”
Sage knew she was right, and even if she wasn’t, she couldn’t save Paisley if Khain showed up. She wasn’t strong, she couldn’t shift or go dim. All she could do was run or be captured or die.
“What if she goes out of Serenity? She could go to my mom’s.”
Nana smirked. “Who’s going to take her? Not you, because of your Tether.”
Sage didn’t back down. Paisley was Nana’s favorite, and Nana had to be freaking out, too, even if she didn’t show it.
“You could do it, I’ve seen you leave Serenity. There’s some who don’t have a Tether who could escort her.”
Abigail paced around her. “And guard her too? The demon is not tethered to Serenity, only us. Your mother, an untethered foxen living alone among humans certainly can’t protect her, and the demon can find Paisley anywhere, if he really wants to.”
Sage’s mind grasped wildly. “The Vvyndicate would send a team to protect her. That’s what they do. That’s what they’re for.”
Abigail didn’t speak. She only paced, one hand behind her back, the other holding the tail of the fox pelt around her shoulders, making Sage shudder at the weirdness of it.
“Are you saying you want to activate the Vvyndicate?”
That stopped Sage short. The Vvyndicate was a council of foxen Citlali with the sole purpose of protecting and rescuing foxen from Khain.
A full council of seven members could open a portal to the Pravus, but they’d only had five members for decades now.
Still, they worked constantly, tracking Khain sightings, uniting foxen clans, and executing protection details.
They’d been especially busy lately because foxen abductions had been high for weeks.
Activating the Vvyndicate was always serious business, and worse, the last time the Vvyndicate had asked Sage to do something, she’d refused.
Nana didn’t say anything, she only continued to pace around Sage, as Paisley slept on her shoulder, and their family stood gathered around them, hanging on every word.
Sage stood tall and nodded. “Yes.”
Nana stopped pacing and faced Sage. “As you wish. You’ve been ordered to appear tonight at midnight; there’ll be an impromptu vyanya.”
Mina gasped and several family members murmured.
“A vyanya,” Sage repeated dully.
If only the occasion were not so horrible, it would be wonderful.
***
An hour later, Sage was bathing Paisley in the bathtub at Sage’s cabin and Paisley was trying to sleep through it. Mina had already bathed her earlier in the day, but Paisley still smelled like the Pravus, and so Sage was bathing her again.
Mina, Frannie, and Rissa talked softly in the living room, and most of the rest of the family was still at Tod’s Table, which was only a short walk away. The vans would arrive soon to shuttle them all out to the land where the Vyanya would be held.
“Hold your head back, vi, so I can rinse your hair.” Sage said, calling Paisley by the foxen term of endearment for female children. Vix was the term for adolescent females, and vixie for teens and adults. The males were called vo, vox, and voxen.
Sage grabbed a towel. “Stand up, you’re all done.”
Eyes closed, head drooping, Paisley stood. Sage wrapped her in a towel and took her out into the dark bedroom and laid her on another towel on the bed. She combed Paisley’s hair and dressed her in pajamas, her mind spinning.
Why? Why? Why?
Why? … Why Rhen, why?
Why did this happen?
WHY RHEN! TELL ME WHY?!
Sage shook her head and looked all around in the dark, desperately seeking an answer that would make her feel okay again.
No answer came, and she whipped up more questions inside herself.
WHY? Why was this their life? Why did she have White-Whittinger disease? Why were they born foxen, always hunted by the demon and shunned by the vod? Why had Paisley been stolen by the demon and what in the hell had he done to her?
Sage’s heartrate sped up, and she squirmed in her seat, feeling angry and alone, trying not to imagine what had happened to Paisley during her day in the Pravus.
Had Paisley really slept through it? And did that matter? And how was it even possible? What did Nana White have to do with it?
??? !!
Sage felt like punching something, like screaming, like cursing and raging. She yanked the bedspread and twisted it in her hands, growling quietly. Paisley squirmed and murmured in her sleep.
My baby, my beautiful innocent baby, Sage thought. She wanted to scream, she wanted to cry, but most of all she wanted to kill Khain. She wanted to stab his own disgusting claws through his dirty murdering heart.
How dare he take what wasn’t his?! How dare he take children?! How dare he?!
Sage dropped her face into the pillow and raged silently until someone came to get her.