CHAPTER FIVE [sativa]

From the top of the tallest tree in the forest, Myrddin cast Nell and Byron into the encroaching dusk. For a moment there was nothing but piercing blue skies through which they fell slowly, like feathers or lost shreds of cloud.

When Nell came to her senses she was standing on a wharf, the salt-stench of the ocean thrust up her nostrils.

Nearby she could see the ruins of a castle perched atop a forested knoll.

She’d been to this place before. Marauder’s Cove. 

Away over the ocean, the sun was still hovering above the horizon.

Myrddin’s voice echoed in the dusty air: “Crossing places. The crossroads, my dear.”

The scorching summer breeze carried a sound over to her. Suppressed, choking sobs. Nell scanned the wharf. It didn’t take long to spot the source of the crying: a girl sitting on the edge of the wharf, dangling her legs over the calm, unhurried waves.

She was sharpening a sickle on a whetstone, tears rolling down her cheeks.

“Hey,” said Nell softly as she approached the girl. “Where’d you get that?”

The girl’s back straightened. She dropped the whetstone onto the wharf next to her, and her grip on the sickle tightened.

“What do you want?” she scowled tearfully, turning to look at Nell.

She was skinny, her T-short and shorts hanging loose, awkward on her thin shoulders and skeletal frame. She had large dark circles under her bloodshot eyes, which widened as recognition flooded them.

“Nell Ferrin?”

“You’re not a murderer now, are you, Summer?” Nell said. She was only a couple of yards away from the girl now. “‘Cause you sure look like one right now.”

Summer’s lower lip trembled.

“I’m your friend, Summer.” Nell crouched next to the girl she’d once known. “Don’t you remember?”

Summer squeezed her eyes shut. “Nell… they won’t leave me alone,” she croaked.

She opened her eyes, but refused to look at Nell.

Nell lifted a hand to try to pat Summer on the shoulder, but the girl flinched away from her.

“What voices?” Nell asked, trying to keep her own voice level, trying to keep it gentle.

“I know you don’t hear them. Nobody else does. But I do. They tell me things I wish I didn’t know. Like that today is the last day of my life.” Summer leapt to her feet sudden, brandishing the newly-sharpened sickle as though she were surrounded by a hoard of invisible enemies. “I want them to stop!”

Nell gritted her teeth. Stay strong, she thought. She rose to her feet, her legs tensing — ready to spring into a run if need be.

She had an escape plan ready. Sprint to the edge of the wharf and dive off, and swim for it.

But not yet.

“Hey, Summer,” Nell said slowly. “I think you should put that down.”

Summer froze, and for a moment the sickle fell to her side, and she fixed Nell with an unblinking gaze.

“Don’t patronize me,” she snapped.

“I’m not patronizing you. Really.”

Summer wavered. Then she raised the sickle again — the curved blade caught the light of the sun and scorched a green-and-purple afterimage into Nell’s retina.

“It’s too late,” Summer said, her words hollow, emptied out. The words of someone who’s already given up, and given in. “I’ve already killed six people today. And you know what? It’s working. The voices are shutting up. One by one.”

Nell was blinking rapidly all of a sudden. “Is — is that so?” she managed.

“Six people,” Summer hissed. As Nell watched the girl’s eyes turned cold and grey. Her hair shrivelled and whitened, and wrinkles spider-webbed across her face. She smiled widely — too widely, revealing charred gums and a mouth full of blackened, rotten teeth. “And when summer turns to autumn,” he continued, in a voice like several different voices speaking in unison, “you will be the seventh.”

***

Myrddin had been watching Matt. He’d been watching for long enough that he’d figured out the man’s true name: Marduk. A sorcerer from Sumer. A practitioner of an exceptionally dark kind of witchcraft.

The two of them had met before, many centuries earlier, in vastly different circumstances.

Clever disguise, old man.

He’d watched from the shadows that afternoon as Marduk had brought three children to an isolated glade in the woods and put them under a spell — a grim incantation involving a blood rite, the skinning and burning of three rabbits, and the use of many dangerous plants.

Myrddin’s blood had curdled at the sight. He knew that spell. The Utuk Xul, it was called.

Poor kids. 

The children’s minds, bodies and souls now belonged to the man they called Matt, who they thought was their father, but who as really a monstrous demon that’d been wearing their father’s skin since before they were born. Under the Utuk Xul they were no longer real human children, but creatures bound to Marduk’s will.

It wouldn’t be noticeable to the unwary passerby. But if you were to look deep into those three kids’ eyes you would see it: a cruel, swirling abyss of cold fire.

Zombies.

And Marduk was clearly well-practised in this sort of spell. He executed it elegantly and efficiently — still, though, it was a reckless one, the Utuk Xul. It went astray easily.

Myrddin watched from his hiding spot in the branches of a gnarled oak, as Marduk looked each of his children in the eyes and told them their bidding.

To Jack he said: “You will harvest all the remaining Summer Haze. You will track down all who carry it and claim it as your own.”

To Meg he said: “You will all those attempting to profit from the sale of Summer Haze. You will tae it forcibly from them, and claim it as your own. By the end of the day, between your combined efforts, all the Summer Haze in the Great Deep will belong to me.”

To Summer he said: “And you, little one, will give in, finally, to the sacred truth of the universe: that everything is either fire, or tinder. Tonight, my sweet Summer, you will draw blood.”

And with that he set them loose upon the world.

***

By the time Myrddin returned to the barn it was dark and Marduk was fast asleep, sprawled on the couch, Ozzy’s remains digesting noisily inside him.

Myrddin sat on the windowsill for a time, hidden behind stripes of pale moonlight. For a moment he feared he’d forgotten the incantation. “Damn…” he whispered…

Marduk stirred, his eyelids fluttered. And suddenly another Sumerian chant came back to Myrddin. A speaker of that (almost) forgotten tongue would have understood his words as follows:

“I call on the spirits of the seven boundless seas,

And the seven suns guarding each of these,

The sea of sand, the sea of stone, 

The sea of ink, the sea of stars,

The sea of snow, the sea of spheres,

And the sea that falls and falls forever…”

Marduk pushed himself up on his elbows on the couch. “The hell’s goinon?” he demanded groggily.

“…to these powers, these seven suns

Over seven distant seas, I command:

Restore the natural order of things.”

“Who said that?”

Myrddin stepped down from the windowsill. “I did,” he whispered. “What are you up to, Marduk Marruka of the Seven Gates?”

Marduk bristled — it had been hundreds of years since he’d been addressed by that name. He squinted into the moon-graced darkness.

“It’s you,” he gasped, his voice curling snidely. “Myrddin the Madman. Myrddin the Maniac.”

Myrddin nodded sagely. Then he smiled, and told Marduk Marruka the truth. The incantation he’d just invoked, you see, was a primeval and formidable spell. (Without getting too deep into the complex laws of the unearthly arts, some clarification is needed here. Performing a spell essentially involves creating a temporary contract with one or more otherworldly spirits, trading their supernatural services for material benefits. Often a spirit will offer its services in exchange for having a cult created in its name.)

The spell Myrddin had just invoked was considered extremely dangerous because of its ambiguity. A spirit might interpret the command “restore the natural order of things” in any number of ways, and spirits are among the most mischievous and amoral entities to tread these cosmic planes.

But what most of them would agree upon is that the innocent boy named Ozzy should not have been murdered and eaten by the sorcerer known as Marduk Marruka.

“I asked you a question,” Myrddin said. as the walls of the room collapsed inward and the shadows and moonlight whirled into life, twining together, coalescing into leering faces and knotted hands groping for Marduk from all sides. “What is your design, Marduk Marruka of the Seven Gates? What do you want with my Summer Haze?”

Marduk pushed himself up on his elbows. “Summer Haze!” he gasped. “In this country, whoever controls the Summer Haze controls the people!” He threw himself from the bed — but the spirits were already pinning him to the floor, raking open his stomach — geysers of putrid black blood sprayed into the air as the spirits rummaged around in Marduk’s innards with wraithlike caws, pulling out the dissolving bits of Ozzy that were still salvageable.

It wasn’t enough, in the end.

Myrddin watched the grisly proceedings with a rancorous snarl on his face.

“Say my real name,” he commanded.

Between the bloodcurdling screams, Marduk’s mouth formed the words. “Myrddin the Wild!” he gasped. “Myrddin Maniac! Myrddin Wyllt, Keeper of the Crossroads!” With each word the sorcerer’s voice spiked higher and higher, until the words all blurred together into one guttural, vengeful wail:

“MYYYYYYYRRRRDDDDDDDIIIIIIIIINN!”

***

Ozzy woke slowly. He blinked the nightmare’s crusted remains out of his eyes, squinted in the gloom.

Where am I?

The last thing he remembered was pain. Searing, stabbing pain. Excruciating — he knew what that word meant now.

He’d been boiled in a cauldron. Chopped into little pieces. Eaten slowly and deliberately with a fork, a knife and a great deal of exotic seasoning, by the man who called himself Matt.

“Pay attention, child!”

Ozzy jumped. He squinted. The world shunted into focus.

He was standing in the middle of a courtyard of some sort. Dilapidated wooden buildings rose on all sides. It was twilight: the sun had set, the western sky was fired up with crimson and gold and pink and green, and the stars were just beginning to come out in the indigo sky above.

Before him was the creature called Myrddin, with his sinuous silvery beard and goat legs and goat hooves and elfin ears, and that purple-and-orange turban.

“You?” said Ozzy.

“You?” Myrddin echoed. “Yes, Oswald Odenkar. It is me.”

“How the hell do you know my –?”

But Myrddin placed a knotty yellow-nailed finger on Ozzy’s lips. “Save your questions. We have work to do.” From the folds of his robe he produced a burlap sack, which he proffered to Ozzy. “You’ll need this.”

Ozzy accepted the bag warily. “The hell?”

“Look around you,” said Myrddin. “Tell me what you see.”

Ozzy scanned the courtyard. He took in the barns that surrounded it, the fenced-off enclosures, the muddy lanes meandering between buildings.

He took in the sunset, the wispy clouds lingering in the sky, lit up incandescent like streaks of neon as they caught the last rays of daylight.

He took in the motes of dust hovering int he air, suspended motionless in the dying light.

“Wait a minute…” he murmured, cupping his hand around a feather suspended motionless in mid-air. “What is — what’s — what the — ?”

Myrddin grimaced. “It’s a glitch,” he explained. “One single quantifiable moment which, for some reason, is taking longer to decay than it’s supposed to.”

“I don’t understa –”

“Look.” Myrddin’s voice took on an edge of impatience. “I could spend hours explaining this to you. But we have work to do, so for now you’ll have to content yourself with a simplistic explanation. Sometimes, you see, an event occurs. An event so wonderful, or so terrible, that for a moment the universe has to pause to catch its breath. That is what’s happening now. So” — he gestured to the burlap sack in Ozzy’s hands — “I need you to go into each one of these buildings and gather all the Summer Haze you can find. You must search every floor, every nook and cranny, every shadow. You must leave no stone unturned. And you must hurry, Oswald Odenkar.”

Ozzy twisted the scratchy fabric in his hands. “And just how am I supposed to do that?” he muttered.

Myrddin shrugged, and rolled his eyes. “Follow your nose. Like the rest of us.”

“And why should I do anything you say?”

The satyr leaned in close to Ozzy. “Do you want to see your friends again?”

Ozzy wavered. “Well –” He broke off. “I — but — what are you gonna do while I’m gathering all the Summer Haze?”

Myrddin winked. “I’m going to make sure nobody gets in your way.”

It didn’t seem to Ozzy like he had much of a choice. “Fine,” he said.

So the two of them got to work, the boy and the satyr. And the boy had no idea that he’d been lied to, and that he was never going to see his friends again.

The story continues — but the path is now set:

INDICA | | | SATIVA