Longfellow, Upside-Down #3
Mud studied the people in the helicopter.
Besides being the pilot, Eli was a master at killing.
Alex, in the seat beside Eli, could do amazing things with electronics and she had heard he practically made money grow on trees when it came to investing.
He was also a great shot with a handgun.
They were the queen’s brothers, adopted, more or less.
The third man she recognized as the Queen’s Consort and husband.
Everyone in the helicopter was royalty except Sarah and her.
Sarah was human, but covered in weapons, now that Mud looked her over. She was muscly. Athletic. They had weapons, and Mud had her gift. Adults always discounted her gift. But they needed it. They needed her.
They were talking, but her headphones were not letting her hear anything. They were arguing and intense, and they weren’t going to let her help, she just knew it. Adults were silly sometimes.
She reached around the dragon and poked Sarah. “How many can you take on and win? If the rest were tied up and couldn’t fight?”
Sarah checked the headphones, probably to make sure Mud wasn’t able to hear the big bad adults talk about important stuff.
Lip reading wasn’t a skill Mud had perfected, but growing up in the church had taught her how to read body language and some words. Sarah repeated the question to the others. She and the others were worried.
Mud poked Sarah again. “I can tie them up.”
Well, her acre of Soulwood, the dirt in her pocket, the Green Knight, and she, all together, could, if her gift could reach the farm and the knight from here. Or there, wherever this rift pool of water was.
Sarah’s already steely eyes went harder, narrowed with concentration so sharp it wanted to cut Mud’s bones. “How?”
“My gift is growing plants. Fast. If there’s an inch of root of a vine in the ground, I can make it grow and wrap them up.”
“How many? How fast?”
“I can handle three easy. Three in three minutes. Then once I get them tied down and have a brain free, at least two more, but that’ll take longer.” After that Mud would be tapped out, her middle would have turned to wood, and she’d have to sleep for a week. She didn’t offer that information.
Sarah turned away, as if she knew Mud was trying to read lips, and talked to the others.
The noise in her headphones changed and Eli said, “You can do this? With no damage to yourself?”
“I’m already a plant woman,” Mud said with asperity, to keep from answering his question. “What are they gonna do? Trim my leaves? Three minutes. I just need three minutes to get to work before you attack.”
“We’ll have to hike in to keep them from hearing the helo. I’ll carry you,” Eli said. “You’ll be above them on a rock ledge.”
That sounded kinda weird. Like, a man touching her, weird. But no one else seemed to find it strange. “Sure,” Mud said, not being sure at all.
◆◆◆
The helo landed at what Eli called the LZ—which meant the landing zone—and they all got out. The red dragon took off flying and disappeared so fast Mud couldn’t tell where it went.
“We’re a good half mile from the rift,” Eli said, as he gathered weapons and amulets and a strange pile of straps.
The rift was where the queen was, in desperate danger. Where the witches were. Fighting. Where Mud was going to try to trap the witches. Worry wiggled in her belly like worms. The thought of worms in her stomach made her a little nauseous.
Mud wasn’t excited at a half mile run hanging on Eli’s back. It sounded bouncy.
He slipped on a headset. So did the others. No one bothered to give Mud one, and they took back the ear protectors with built in communications. So not fair.
Eli said to the queen’s consort, “I can feel Jane now. It’s bad. We need to hurry.”
Mud didn’t understand why her brother could “feel” the queen and the consort couldn’t, but no one informed her. No one ever informed kids.
Eli hooked weapons into pouches and loops and straps on and in his clothes, then stepped into thicker, wider straps that formed a sort of harness, before he buckled the harness around his body.
Mud recognized it as climbing gear. Even a church-girl couldn’t live in the Appalachian Mountains without knowing what rock-climbing gear looked like.
The others each had straps, ropes, climbing harnesses, and weapons too.
Lots of weapons. The consort was wearing armor, though Mud didn’t remember seeing armor when she got into the helicopter.
Eli held out a hand to Mud.
She scowled like her sister did, with her whole face and body. Eli’s hard, dark-skinned face softened, his greenish eyes twinkling just the littlest bit. “If I do anything that bothers you, I am well aware that you can, and happily will, strangle me with your vines.”
Mud nodded once, firmly, the way her sister always did.
She took his hand. It was heated and steady.
Eli’s magic flowed into her like a gift.
It was human-man magic combined with the queen’s magic, and Mud’s own power reached out to him through the palms of their hands.
“Okay,” she said, feeling steadier. “Okay.”
He swung her onto his back and looped his elbows through her knees, piggyback.
Her belly and boobies were pressed against a slender backpack and the climbing gear instead of his back, which relieved Mud for reasons she didn’t fully understand, except they might have something to do with the way she had grown up, in God’s Cloud of Glory Church.
Polygamy in the church made women different from modern women.
Eli stepped forward. One step, two. He adjusted Mud’s weight with a light upward shift of his knees, tossing her body upward. Then he ran.
He was fast, faster-than-human, maybe as fast as a vampire.
He ran the way the bloodsuckers ran, except Mud knew Eli didn’t have to suck blood or hunt humans and he was out in the daylight, and wasn’t on fire.
Her hair streamed out behind her like a horse’s mane.
The wind tore at her face, almost burning.
The air roared. She had to close her eyes and duck her head into the space between Eli’s neck and shoulder, which smelled nice but felt weird.
Her leaves grew larger, more lush. Mud pushed against her gift and stopped growing the leaves.
It took concentration, especially with all the running, but it was important.
Her sister, Nell, had once turned into a tree and nearly didn’t turn back to human.
Mud knew that could happen to her too, if she wasn’t careful.
The worms in her belly started crawling again, so she concentrated on her gift, reshaping it, drawing on it, shifting it around inside her.
She reached for her tree on Soulwood, the first tree she had marked with her own power, with her handprint.
Dozens of her trees grew now, all subtly different from her sister’s trees, yet linked together.
There was power in the trees and in the land where a forest grew.
Humans had forgotten that. Instead of communing with them, humans used the trees, cutting them down too soon, before the wood and roots reached age and wisdom and their own power. Humans were, in general, stupid.
Power flowed into Mud, coiling through her, banishing the worms, whispering in her leaves. Her tree reached for her across the miles. The land filled her.
The Green Knight of Soulwood appeared in front of her, the sentient life of the tree her sister had created with her blood.
He was wearing armor, sitting astride his pale green horse.
No saddle. No banner. Just a long pole in one hand, pointed on one end, like one of those jousting spears she had seen in old movies.
The horse shifted on his feet and blew through his nose as if excited at the thought of battle.
“We’re nearly at a crack in the earth,” Eli said, barely heard over the pounding of his feet and the sound of the wind. He slowed. “There should be tackle in place to descend a rock wall. I’ll strap you to me and we’ll rappel down. You okay with that?”
I’ll strap you to me. Mud was already strapped to him, so she figured he meant something worse, something more physically close.
She wondered if she should be upset about it, but she had her tree at the ready, soil in her pocket.
She could defend herself if a man wanted to hurt her; If she so much as scratched him, she could kill him from anywhere.
“I’m ready,” Mud said. And she was, her power green and bright within her.
Longfellow swooped past, and she heard a, “Meeeep,” as it flapped by.
Eli’s pace slackened to a creep, silent, his feet not cracking sticks or crunching leaves.
Greenbrier vines hooked thorns into his heavy canvass pants.
He pulled steadily against the thorns and if they hooked through the pants to his flesh, he didn’t react.
No birds called, no squirrels barked or chittered.
Everything around her was green, green, green.
Rock walls began to rise at their sides as they descended a few feet to a level place, and then fell away, a narrow, V-shaped chasm opening at their feet.
There was climbing gear permanently installed at both sides of the central V’s rock walls, steel hooks and circles and bolts.
Eli dropped his arms and let her down to stand. He ignored her as he loosened the straps and the biners and knelt in front of her. Holding the straps out, he said, “Step in and I’ll cinch you up.” The words were professional and calm, almost detached, which helped.