Among the fallen, p.30
Among the Fallen, page 30
“What’s in the box?” Willie asked. He had been tempted, but had honored Ryder’s admonition never to open it.
“The key to the world,” Ryder said. “She will ask you that, and when she opens it, close your eyes.”
So when the burly Guardian got out of the vehicle and opened a door, Willie got in, as if it had all been arranged. He was surprised to see Commander Chuck Priestley waiting for him inside. “Mother Barbara wants to have a little chat,” Chuck said politely.
“I know,” Willie responded, trying to sound like the spy character he saw once on tv. “I have something that belongs to her.”
Chuck, sensing there was more to this business than he knew, directed a hostile stare at his passenger, seemed about to speak, then apparently deciding that in this case, ignorance was his best defense, tapped the shoulder of the uniformed driver, and the vehicle moved off through the waking town toward Ravensbeak Ridge.
When Betty arrived at the Mountain Realty office next morning, she was disappointed to find her employer not there before her. She wanted to apologize for having to leave in the middle of their supper to go tend her distraught sibling. She had hoped the evening might come to a more gratifying conclusion, and was fairly confident Willie had shared her expectation. She wished sometimes Willie Graham were not so shy toward her, that he would be more assertive about their perhaps relationship, but that was part of his charm. He never presumed. In any situation, he always left her room to declare her own way.
But after an hour, there was no sign of Willie. Two prospective clients called and she took messages. When she left the notes on Willie’s desk, she found a cryptic scrawl on his notepad, Badb Catha. Foreign, it looked like. Somebody’s name?
A couple of prospective buyers, recently retired, from down the mountain at Pearis Falls, came for their nine-thirty appointment. Willie wasn’t answering his phone so Betty closed the office and took them to view the property they had inquired about. At first they were somewhat put-off by Willie’s absence, but Betty invented and assigned to him a sudden illness, and exuded sufficient charm to return to the office an hour later to take their binder check and signature on a commitment to purchase. Willie would be proud of her, she was certain, as soon as she could find him.
More phone calls came in. Betty took messages, rescheduled appointments, placated and made excuses regarding matters she couldn’t resolve on her own. Noon arrived and she still had not been able to contact her absent boss. She phoned Feral Flour Bakeshop and ordered a pizza for her lunch, and while she waited for it to arrive, she googled Badb Catha. The world-wide web informed her that Badb Catha was a Celtic deity, a goddess, or maybe three of them, of war and destruction. The name translated into English as Battle Crow. Weird, but someway familiar. Battle, she thought. What about Battle? Of course, that was it. Willie had gone to see Barbara Battle, the old crow. But why hadn’t he called in? What could be taking him so long?
Willie watched the trees slip past as the road began winding up the east side of Ravensbeak Ridge. The bulky driver concentrated on his road. Chuck Priestly sat watching him as if studying some sort of exotic specimen in a zoo. Willie pretended not to notice, pretended to be calm and confident and self-contained. To his own surprise, he almost was.
Before he left Ryder at Mountain Realty the previous evening, the dragon had reached out suddenly and laid a palm against his chest. Willie recoiled from the jolt, like an electric shock, that the touch precipitated.
“Just a wee bit of dragonfire,” Ryder said, laughing softly. It will calm you tomorrow when they come for you. It will guide you if you call on it. Don’t resist. Just rest in that little fire. Trust where it leads you. It will fade when you don’t need it anymore.”
Willie could feel it now. A warmth beneath his ribs. A presence. Like a second heart. It was comforting. He felt enabled by it. He reckoned he was in no hurry to be rid of this dragonfire, as Ryder had called it. The van stopped at a gate. Priestly spoke to his phone and the gate opened. Willie saw the Cathedral up ahead brilliant under the morning sun as the gate closed behind. The gleaming façade towered into the air, reflecting the sunlight like a column of fire. Dragonfire, Willie thought.
Contrasting sharply with the burnt slopes below, the Restoration Crusade campus was greening into summer, like another world. The van stopped beside the rear entrance on the cathedral’s west side. In the building’s shadow, the air felt almost chill. The driver got out and opened the door as if Willie were an honored dignitary. Priestly got out and walked into the building beside him and the big driver followed behind. Willie wondered what would happen if he decided to leave just then, if the big man would beat him senseless, or if Priestly would just grab him and drag him wherever they wanted him to go.
Omar Longshadow was making his morning coffee when he saw the Restoration Crusade SUV pass the window at Town Hall. There goes trouble, he thought. He was still pondering his attempt to interview Barbara Battle at the Cathedral when Constable Bear came in. “You want to hold down the office while I go up the street and talk to Willie Graham?” he said. Omar habitually phrased his directives as questions. Mountain pride would always embrace a request more readily than an order.
“Sure, Chief,” Jolene answered, dropping a box from Feral Flour Bake Shop on the desk. “I brought donuts.”
Omar drove straight to Mountain Realty. The morning was bright and beautiful. Any other day he would have walked, but the sight of Battle’s wagon had instilled a vague nagging urgency. He wanted to enlighten himself regarding Ryder’s cryptic reference to the realtor. It was hard to imagine Willie Graham as being a force to be reckoned with in their conflict with the Crusade gang.
Betty was at her desk when Omar came through the door. Her worried face found a smile when she looked up from the paper in her hand.
“Morning, Chief,” she said. “Have you seen anything of my boss this morning?”
“I was hoping to find Willie here,” Omar said. “I need to talk to him about something.”
“He isn’t here, Chief.” Betty looked on the verge of tears. “I’ve tried calling him at home and on his mobile, but he doesn’t answer.” She waved her sheet of paper at him, “Oh, Chief,” her voice catching in her throat. “I’m afraid Willie’s gotten into some trouble.” She pushed the paper at him, “Do you know what this means?”
Omar took the sheet, read Badb Catha. He remembered the SUV with the intertwined RC on the side. “It’s Gaelic for Battle Crow, Betty, and I think you may be right about Willie.”
“Wait here,” Commander Priestly said, gesturing at a row of chairs opposite the reception desk. He murmured some words to the dark-haired young woman behind the desk, whose name tag declared her to be Helen, then disappeared behind a farther door. Willie sat, unsettled as he was, not entirely oblivious to Helen’s tastefully displayed charms, while the burly driver sat beside him exuding menace. Willie could feel a noticeable warmth emanating from Simon’s little box in his pocket. He took a curious comfort from the presence and felt a growing reluctance to be parted from it.
Helen’s intercom buzzed softly. She gave it her attention, then looked up at Willie, “Mister Graham?” in a soft and sultry voice that might sell blue pills in a TV commercial, “Mother Barbara will see you now.”
Helen stood and Willie followed her to the door, while Driver remained glaring and immobile in his chair. Helen opened the door and ushered him through, wafting a not quite natural sweetness that might have been perfume. In the dimly lit room beyond, Barbara Battle sat at a huge desk, raised above the floor where Chuck Priestley stood beside a single chair, like a soldier at attention.
Battle looked to Willie more regal than he remembered. Perhaps it was the surroundings, but she seemed to be smoldering with pent-up power, a tangible fierceness, almost beautiful, almost frightening.
“You may leave us, Commander,” she murmured, gazing at Chuck, then turned her attention to Willie, “Mister Graham and I wish to engage in private.”
“Are you sure, Mother Barbara? I . . .” Chuck began with evident unease.
“I will not repeat myself to you, Priestly,” Battle responded, so softly Willie could barely hear, though Chuck recoiled as if he’d been struck, turned and fled the room without a word.
“Sit down, sir, please” she said pleasantly to Willie when they were alone. Willie wilted under her thunderous smile and did as he was told.
Badb Catha gazed down at the puny human male seated before her. Pale and soft and weak. Tasteless, not even fit for a snack. Confused. He didn’t even have mind to be properly afraid of her. Yet, she sensed a danger in him. He carried power, though he did not seem to be aware of it. An aura not his own clung to his person. Something alien to this fallen world, yet familiar to her. Something from her deep past. She could almost name it . . . No, impossible. Or was it?
“You reek of Dragon, Willie Graham,” she said in her human voice, but not quite so friendly now. “Anyone I know?”
“Do you know Simon Ryder?” the human asked.
You’re either very brave, or just the fool you appear to be. Instead, she said, “I knew him on another world. He would have done well to stay there.”
“That is his intention,” the human said, as if reciting a message from memory, “He only came here to bring you what belongs to you alone.”
“So, Ryder has sent me a geek bearing gifts, then?” the Battle Crow said, wary now and intrigued. “It must be a small present indeed, if you can carry it, little man.” She cast her awareness, touched no scent of dragon within her circle. “Where’s Ryder?” she demanded.
“Gone,” the human said. She read the truth in him. No doubt Ryder had returned to Trier, where Wandalena could hide him.
“What do you carry that belongs to me alone, apart from your own life and limb?” She said.
“This,” said Willie Graham, and took a small wooden box from his pocket and held it out toward her.
“Wait.” Barbara commanded. “Open it.”
“I’m not allowed,” Willie said. “Ryder said it is for your eyes only. He said it is the key to your world.”
“Then close your eyes and open it,” Barbara growled, wearying of her constraining guise.
Willie Graham closed his eyes and lifted the lid from the box. It didn’t explode. Willie didn’t burst into flame or crumble into dust.
“Give it to me,” the Badb rumbled, her human aspect shredding away as she reached out a taloned hand. Willie replaced the lid, opened his eyes, gasped at the apparition before him and dropped the box into her outstretched claw before collapsing into his chair.
Barbara held the box. She could feel the crafter’s power in the wood. No ordinary box, this. Lugh, the first and mightiest among the old deities, had made it. Had he been here all along, maybe even before her, near and hidden, all this time?
How perverse are the gods. More inscrutable, even than dragons. “The key to my world, you say?” She rumbled at the little man, who was very much afraid at last. He nodded, unspeaking, his voice swallowed by his fright. She inhaled deeply. Human fear she found as tasty and nourishing as their flesh and blood. Babd Catha lifted the lid, light as a feather, to reveal nestled in a bed of green forest moss a tiny sphere. It might have been a bird’s egg, except it was clear and bright as water, and she could see her own reflection imaged perfectly within its depths. Nothing pleasured the Badb Catha more than her own likeness. Lost in her verisimilitude, it wasn’t until she felt her power diminishing, draining away, that she saw the stone wall behind her. She knew every stone. She had counted them and measured them and cursed them and beat at them for four hundred years in the dungeon beneath Trier Abbey.
“Close your eyes when she opens it,” Simon Ryder admonished when instructing Willie on delivering Lugh’s box. But Willie couldn’t look away when the dragon woman lifted the lid from the box and indescribable light flooded her scaled visage. He couldn’t close his eyes on the thousands of tiny lights that gathered and swirled about her as she gazed entranced at the thing she held.
By the time her expression changed to perplexity to alarm to rage, and she looked out at Willie, paralyzed in his chair, a sphere of swirling light spun around her, obscuring her like a luminous veil as her features seemed to drain away like wax, melting, dripping, flowing like water into the little wooden cube An instant before she disappeared completely, Barbara Battle shot an expression of mad loathing at Willie that struck him like a stone. “You!” she roared. “She can’t have it. Yours.”
A fire blossomed in Willie’s head, blinding him for an instant. When he could see again absolute silence ruled. Years went by. Then he heard the empty box clatter against the floor. His heart began to beat again. He could breathe. After what seemed a long time, Willie decided he was able to move. He stood and walked over by Barbara’s desk and picked up the wooden box. It was intact, but empty, the insides burnt black. He replaced the lid and dropped into his pocket. It would make a nice souvenir of his adventure.
Someone knocked on the door. “Come in,” Willie said calmly, as if he were in charge.
Helen looked into the room, “Where’s Mother Barbara?” she asked.
“She had to leave,” Willie Graham said. “Call your driver to take me home.” Helen did as she was told. Willie could tell she was afraid of him. He liked the taste. He wanted more.
Acknowledgments
Heartfelt thanks to Debbie Coulter, David Longley, Scott Derks and Sharon Claybough, who read it rough and set me straight, and especially to Jean Lowd, my publisher and editor at Creative James Media, who rescued Among the Fallen from the author whenever he jumped on his horse and rode off in all directions. Diana Toledo Calçado at Triumph Covers made the spectacular cover art that turns a browser into a reader. There would be no words here to read without the abiding and enabling nurture of Jane Ella Matthews, my Main Muse and co-conspirator in my life-long quest to thwart the Empire.
About the Author
Henry Mitchell reads and writes in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. He is the author of six novels and two collections of short stories:
The Summer Boy
Between Times
Laurel Falls
Slick Rock Creek
The Winged Child
Among the Fallen
Dark on the Mountain – stories
Early Dark – stories
Henry Mitchell, Among the Fallen
