CHAPTER SIX [sativa]
Nell yelled in horror, and leapt back from Summer, away from the edge of the wharf.
The sun, which was sinking steadily like a stone through water toward the horizon, passed behind a cloud — Nell glanced up as shade engulfed them, and when she looked back at Summer the wrinkles on the girl’s face had already vanished. Her eyes had regained their colour.
She burst into tears.
Nell exhaled loudly, and approached the too-skinny girl again. She remembered what Myrddin had said: “Because you are the most well-acquainted with Summer, my friend.”
“Tell me,” Nell murmured quietly.
“Tell you what?”
Nell stared deep into Summer’s eyes. She cleared her throat. “Where’d you get your name?”
Summer was silent for a moment. She kicked at the ground dejectedly with one battered sneaker.
Then:
“My mother died the day I was born. And Dad… Dad didn’t care about me, or about my brother, or my sister. His precious sorcery was more important to him than anything else.” She glared at Nell. “So Jack and Meg raised me. They named me — after their favourite drug. They smoked that shit every day — stole it from Dad’s supply. Summer Haze. He knew they were taking it, and he didn’t care. They were addicted. But they always kept it away from me. They said it wasn’t good, and they couldn’t stop, they were in too deep — but I still had a chance.”
A chill whispered down Nell’s spine.
“Then I met you,” Summer continued. “And you showed me how to smoke Mary Jane properly. Remember? How much fun we had, back at Saint-Cormora’s? Getting high behind the bike shed, going to class and seeing through all the bullshit? Or trekking through the woods to those abandoned houses, and hotboxing the empty rooms?” She paused. “And then–” She broke off, and her gaze became a glare which she fixed upon Nell, like a dart spearing a butterfly.
“Say it,” she spat.
Nell glanced around furtively, suddenly worried that Summer’s older siblings were going to appear out of thin air. They were the last people she wanted to see — now or ever again. “I–”
“Say it,” Summer repeated.
“I got busted,” Nell murmured. “They found an eighth in my backpack. And you took the hit for me. So — so they expelled you from Saint-Cormora’s.”
Summer shifted from one foot to the other. Nell noticed that the girl’s slender fingers were tightening and loosening rapidly on the sickle’s handle. “Say it, Nell.”
“And I never said a word to you.” Nell’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I never said thanks, or–”
“Or that I was your best friend,” Summer cut her off. “Your best friend, until I wasn’t.”
Nell nodded. She was blinking too fast, and there was a lump in her throat — she couldn’t trust herself to speak.
Summer pressed on: “You left me all alone, with no-one else. Jack and Meg were always like parents to me — and my Dad didn’t care about me one way or another. Sometimes I wasn’t even sure he knew I existed.” She swallowed loudly, and tears began to pour down her cheeks. “You were my only real friend, Nell Ferrin. Except for Mary Jane. And when you left, Mary Jane was there for me, in a way you never were.”
You left me all alone. Nell glanced around furtively, suddenly worried that Nell’s older siblings were going to appear out of thin air.
Summer was still speaking; and as she spun her story deeper and deeper her gaze focused on something faraway that Nell couldn’t see. “Soon I realized that the thing I looked forward to most in the day was smoking weed. I decided I had to quit, then and there. So I quit. Cold turkey. Threw out my bong, my grinder, my whole stash. Threw it in the fucking river. I made it a couple weeks…” She lowered her voice, and for a moment Nell could’ve sworn Summer’s face llooked old again. “A couple weeks without smoking, Nell. And then the voices started.”
Nell swallowed loudly. Summer —
“I woke up one morning and they were there, talking to me, just normal talking, like all they wanted to do was have a normal conversation. But there was nobody there. I was alone in my bedroom with a bunch of voices that didn’t have bodies attached to them. That day… fucking sucked.”
Summer’s voice was rising. “So I smoked and smoked, joint after joint after joint until the voices shut up. It worked. Like I smoked ’em out or something.” She chuckled humourlessly. “After that it was just… it… look, I kept trying to quit. Again and again. But the voices would always start up, sooner or later. Wasn’t long before it was always sooner, never later. And at some point along the way, I got to the point where I couldn’t go twenty-four hours without smoking or they would start screaming at me, screaming so loud I couldn’t hear anything else.”
She wiped her eyes on her bloodstained sleeve. “And now they’re saying I have to send souls back to the place we all come from. As many as I can, before the day is through.”
Nell wavered on her feet. “They’re — they’re lying to you, Summer,” she said, and she sounded far less certain than she would have liked.
“It’s all your fault,” Summer hissed. “All of it.”
Something hardened inside Nell. “No.” She shook her head. “Your addiction isn’t my fault. It’s yours.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Summer scowled. But then her eyes widened, and her voice softened. “He did us something, Nell. Something wicked. He called it the Utuk Xul. From the Sumerian Book of Dark Blessings.”
Silence fell, and the two girls who had once been friends stared at each other in stony silence.
The sun vanished behind the charcoal silhouette of Marauder’s Rock, pulling the sky into a swirl of dusking colours. Waves crashed against the sandy shore.
“I’m sorry,” Nell murmured. Too little too late, she thought bitterly. “For everything.”
“That’s all we’ve ever been to him,” Summer said, as though she hadn’t heard Nell. “To Dad, I mean: tools. How many children has he had over the centuries? Thousands? He’ll just go charm some other poor girl into fucking him and make some more. But fuck him. I’m not gonna do what he wants.”
She walked to the edge of the wharf, and sat down with her legs dangling over the water. She gripped the sickle in one hand, raised it in the air — the gleam of sunlight glancing off the curved metal blinded Nell, once again, as Summer brought the sickle down onto the wrist, slowly and deliberately, and sliced through her wrist.
“Will you help me?” she rasped.
The scream left Nell’s lips, but she didn’t hear it — didn’t hear anything except a steady whining in her ears. She stumbled forward, and part of her was aware that she was screaming again and again, against what she was seeing —
Blood spraying into the air, falling like rubies toward the waves.
The sickle, gleaming like a blood-stained crescent moon as it slipped from Summer’s grasp and fell toward the waves.
Summer shoving herself, with the very last of her strength, off the edge of the wharf, into the water. Vanishing. Over the edge.
Gone forever.
All gone.
Nell crumpled to her knees, her kneecaps rattling as they struck the hard wood of the wharf. Her stomach churning.
She stared at the place where Summer had just been, moments ago — but there was nothing left of her, just the gleaming ocean and the blazing sunset, and a few scattered streaks of blood on the edge of the wharf.
***
Ozzy kept to the shadows, bent double, and stayed close to the walls. He’d lost track of time — in fact he suspected that he’d never had a sense of time to begin with.
It would go like this: he’d steal into a building, bundle himself into the shadows and wait. Sniff the air. And without fail the smell would come to him, worming up into his nostrils.
This way, Oz, old buddy…
He’d follow the scent like a trail of breadcrumbs until he found it. Sometimes it was a little dime bag tucked away in a drawer. Sometimes it was a pile of tightly-packed bricks wrapped in black plastic, hidden in a pigeonhole behind a painting.
Sometimes it was a stray joint left on a table.
Where is everyone?
He didn’t run into anybody. Not a soul. Whatever was doing to distract the farm’s residents, it was working.
***
They met back at the established meeting spot. “I got it,” Ozzy declared, handing the bulging burlap sack to Myrddin. “All of it.”
Myrddin nodded and smiled. “Good work,” he said. And Ozzy smiled too, because Myrddin sounded almost proud. “Very good.”
“Can you bring me back to my friends now?”
But Myrddin was pursing his lips. He took a bag of Summer Haze from Ozzy. “I’m afraid that,” he said, forming the words carefully and deliberately, “is quite impossible.”
“But–”
“You were murdered, Oswald. And eaten. I could bring you back to your friends — but you would have a difficult time making your presence known to them. I’ve seen it happen before. Let me tell you, it always ends in tears.”
Ozzy’s throat tightened. “But I — but you said –”
“I’m sorry. I truly am But there are no two ways about it. Look.” Myrddin turned and pointed to the sunset — the distant horizon lit up by crimson and gold and pink and green.
It hadn’t changed at all, hadn’t grown fainter or brighter since Ozzy had last looked.
“You will never see the sun set again,” Myrddin continued. “Nor will you see it rise. When you look at the sky, you will only ever see this sky.” He pointed straight up at the heavens. “When you look at the horizon, you will only ever see that horizon.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Do you understand?”
Ozzy swayed on his feet. No. But he knew Myrddin wasn’t lying. And the horrible truth is that he did understand. He understood quite clearly.
Myrddin was moving toward him, opening his arms as though to embrace him. “You have served me well, Oswald Odenkar. So I will make you this offer, and I will make it once and only once. Stay with me. I will give you another body — something fetching — and I will teach you my ways. I have seen your potential. You will make a great and fearsome practitioner of the unnatural arts.
“Or,” he added, after a short pause, “we can part ways here, and you can let the winds of time carry you to the Seven Gates in the Sky, and be forever lost to these strange, strange corridors of existence.”
Ozzy was silent for a moment.
Then: “You’ll teach me?”
Myrddin nodded.
Once again, it didn’t sound like there was much of a choice.
“Then teach me.”
So Myrddin took Ozzy’s hand. The muddy ground was pulled away from under them, the barns vanished and they were soaring through the air — then dropping down onto a wooden patio overlooking an immeasurable forest.
Ozzy came to his senses just in time to see Myrddin rise to his feet, spread his arms and declare:
“Welcome, my friend, to the Hanging Gardens of the Golden Coast.”
But Ozzy’s jaw dropped. A posse of vaporous figures had gathered right behind Myrddin. They towered over him, faces frozen in silent screams, clawed talons reaching out and grabbing hold of him. They spoke in unison, wailing and whispering all at once, all together:
“THE NATURAL ORDER OF THINGS WILL BE RESTORED
AND YOU HAVE OVERSTAYED YOUR WELCOME,
MYRDDIN WYLLT, KEEPER OF THE CROSSROADS.”
Myrddin shouted in horror, he writhed and wriggled against their clutches. He grasped for Ozzy but it was too late.
“Find me!” he shrieked as they tore him to pieces and carried him up into the stopped sky. “Find me, Oswald Odenkar!”
***
Ozzy lingered for a time in the Hanging Gardens of the Golden Coast. He wandered along its walkways, explored the rooms that’d been hollowed out inside the trunks of the vast sequoias. He clambered along the stairwells winding around the thick tree trunks, and the whole while he felt himself loosening, coming quietly apart. A ball of yarn being slowly unraveled.
The horizon kept drawing his gaze, that vibrant frozen sunset beneath an indigo-ish sky that would never change colour again, at least not to his eyes…
He flitted from room to room inside the sequoias, and stumbled upon labyrinthine hallways, chambers lined with shelves stocked with grotesque artifacts, vast libraries filled with ancient tomes.
He spent some time reading, but soon found that he couldn’t focus on the fading letters, and that no matter how tightly he held them, the books kept slipping through his fingers and landing on the wooden floor.
He couldn’t pick them up again once they’d fallen.
He ventured out onto one of the curving patios, hoping against hope that these would’ve finished setting, that it would be night and he’d be able to forget about everything Myrddin had said.
But nothing had changed. The sky was the same as ever.
He leaned against the trunk and began to cry. Sobs wracked his body and his breath came in rattling gasps, and he tried to climb to his feet but found that he didn’t have feet anymore.
The wind was rising, but the branches of the sequoia weren’t moving. The sound of it grew louder and louder, loud enough to match Ozzy’s sob — and then it was a shrieking gale, and Ozzy realized that at some point his sobbing must’ve turned to laughter, because he was cackling to himself, howling with something akin to joy as he fled the Hanging Gardens and let the breeze finish unravelling him.
And as it unravelled him he grew.
Expanded.
Larger, larger, larger, until he could see the entire land spread out before him, all of the Great Deep with its never-ending forests and rivers and arid prairies, and its long unbending highway, its sleepy towns clinging to their precious riverbanks and its knobbly crooked cast.
There was Monolith Creek, coiling silver and serpentine and winding down to the ocean, the vast ocean stretching into the curving horizon.
For a moment the whole scene looked like a painting, frozen perfectly still, but every single tree branch and breaking wave and blade of grass was filled to bursting with infinite potential — the unseen echoes of every moment they had existed for, and every possible moment they could exist for.
He saw Byron scrambling clumsily through the woods.
He saw Nell making her way along the side of the highway, hugging herself and shivering as she walked slowly. Was that blood all over her?
Goodbye, Ozzy whispered, but he was already gone.
***
Byron wandered through the trees until it was too dark to distinguish tree-silhouettes from the backdrop of deeper darkness.
I’ll never find her at this rate.
Eventually he came to a gladed clearing. The moon was bright and silver overhead.
He spotted her — spotted the moonlight glinting off her wispy, silvery hair on the other side of the field.
He rushed across the clearing toward her, but she as gone, nothing left of her but a rustling of leaves and a whispering breeze threading through the tall grass. And an echoing voice clinging to the air:
“West.”
“Which way is west?” said Byron.
The summer breeze became a ferocious gust of wind, it slammed up Byron’s nostrils, swarmed into his ears, span him around and sent him into the trees, his feet borne by a crackling, tingling energy.
In time he arrived at the place where the narrow gravel lane forked off from the highway.
He slowed.
Someone was lying there, right where the two roads met. A crumpled body. Byron rushed over to it, knelt beside it.
“Caledonensa?”
The body let out a choking, laboured breath. She had milky eyes. Her head was covered in wispy snowy hair. She was wearing bloody burlap rags. “Who?” she croaked. A trickle of blood leaked out of the corner of her mouth. Byron felt one of her papery hands lace its fingers through his.
“What — what happened to you?”
“A truck,” Caledonensa managed. “A… bloody… truck.”
A lump formed in Byron’s throat. Then the old woman’s grip on his hand tightened, and Byron saw the truck before him, a pickup truck barrelling along the gravel lane. Behind the wheel: Piratehead.
“Oh my god,” Byron whispered.
The old woman’s parched, ancient lips were inches from his ears, but Byron realized she wasn’t moving, wasn’t even breathing. “No, no, no!” The stink of shit and stale urine and rotting meat spooled into his nostrils. “Caledonensa” — he was speaking louder now, more frantically — “you wrote the Creed of the Crossroads. Remember? Myrddin says you did.” He cleared his throat. “I will never resist the call to adventure.”
Go home, Byron.
“I will never resist the call to adventure,” Byron repeated. “I will never –”
Something brushed his arm. He yelped and leapt to his feet. A vulture. It was already pecking at what was left of the old crone.
Go.
So Byron clambered to his feet and set off along the side of he highway. He wasn’t sure where he was going, but there was a weight on his shoulders, and the pit of his stomach had been hollowed out — making the weight on his shoulders all the more unbearable.
Weariness dragged at him.
A bed… a soft feather pillow…
Eventually he spotted Nell on the other side of the road, walking in the opposite direction.
“Nell!”
It was definitely her. He crossed the road toward her. Her jacket was covered in blood. She had dark circles under her eyes.
“Jesus,” Byron murmured. “Are you okay? Did you…?” He trailed off.
“Autumn’s on its way,” Nell whispered, refusing to meet Byron’s gaze. “Can you feel it?”
“Nothing. Nothing.” She still wouldn’t look Byron in the eyes. “Did you find her? Caledonensa, I mean?”
Byron nodded. “Yeah, but she’s… she’s dead.”
“Oh.”
“Do you know what happened to Ozzy?”
Nell shook her head. “Let’s stick together, all right?”
Byron nodded. Without another word they started walking again.
J. Herrera Kamin 