TWO

Puff of Red Smoke

When Leander got over the initial shock of the water, he realized three pleasant things. The first was that the water was not deep enough for him to drown in it. The second was that the pool was not caked with the same slime as was in every waterhole he’d seen in Spiknit Wood. The third was that the sun had been warming the water and it was really quite pleasant.

He waved to Blueleg to show that he hadn’t broken anything in the landing.

Blueleg yelled back, “If you don’t clean yourself properly, I’ll be down to wash you myself.”

That idea made Leander’s eyes chase around in all directions to find soap and a washcloth. He found both and got to work.

Then he realized sadly that the slug inside his helmet was cleaner than he was. He was making a mess of the crystal-clean water just by being in it.

He groaned and continued on. Surely they had this problem with all their guests. There wasn’t another way to the castle except through Spiknit Wood. There was a lake on the other side of the castle and mountains beyond that… What was on the other side of the mountains? Leander didn’t know. His travels had been in other directions.

Eager to have the ‘bath portion’ of his travels complete, he pulled weird things out of his ears, blew green things out of his nose, spat up a couple of oddities, scraped something that looked very much like roof tiles off the back of his calf, and pulled another boneless snotball from the middle of his back—the spot no one can reach no matter how hard they try.

After he was quite clean, he looked as dapper as a prince. The clothes they had given him were nicer than the clothing he wore to court. Blueleg had kept his promise and cleaned up Leander’s shaving and trimmed up his ragged impromptu haircut.

Since he had looked like a prince after he was merely cleaned, after he was styled he looked like what?

Blueleg gave him a disgusted grunt. “I didn’t even know they made people as pretty as you. Yuck. I suppose it’s all for the best. If you weren’t a pretty boy, this probably wouldn’t work.”

“What am I doing again?” Leander asked as he tied the laces on the boots they’d given him.

Blueleg tightened his mask strap. “Have you ever seen a ghost, son?”

“I’ve thought I saw ghosts lots of times, but whenever I went to investigate, I saw nothing.”

“Oh, then you’ve seen lots of ghosts.”

Leander laughed. “Is that so?”

“Yeah. Ghosts are like clouds,” Blueleg explained. “You can see them from afar, but once they’re in your face, they disappear like smoke. You can walk through them and if they don’t want to talk to you, you wouldn’t even know they were there. Were you scared when you saw those ghosts?”

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Leander looked around oddly. “I am a knight. I kill people. I’m a ghost-maker. Of course not.”

“Oh, good,” Blueleg said gleefully. “Then you’ll have no problem meeting the Mistress.”

Leander followed him as they left the garment room. “Please tell me she is not the woman I saw with the sheep on the hillside.”

“She is not. You saw the Maiden. I saw her too. It’s her habit to hide with the sheep when she’s avoiding her duties. But you’re right, they look a lot alike.”

Once his concerns were assuaged that the woman he wanted to meet was not dead, he asked Blueleg, “When will I be able to get my armor and sword? I want my sword back in particular. It’s very valuable.”

Blueleg stopped and slapped Leander on the chest with the back of his hand. They were in a hallway, a long passageway with high arches over their heads. On one side there were pillars that showed the dipping water and the mountains. On the other side were the castle walls. The balloonist was short, barely coming up to Leander’s bicep.

“She’s here,” he said. “Wait here until she speaks to you. See if you can see her. I’ll get your sword.”

The balloonist departed and Leander was left standing on the stones looking for a trace of smoke where one shouldn’t be. Finally, he saw one. It was a puff of red smoke like one that came about when a man softly blew into his pipe instead of pulling on it. The haze in the air hung in front of a staircase.

Tentatively, Leander approached it.

“Follow me.” The words were whispered across the breeze. The sound and shape of the words reminded him of the sound someone makes when they’ve already been impaled, but they want to say one last thing. The actual words ‘follow me’ were particularly poignant. He thought he’d heard them before as someone on the threshold of death invited them to come along after them.

Leander was not afraid of death or anything else. As a knight, he had been trained to fear nothing. And without fear, he took his first steps on the staircase leading around and around up the cylinder of a tower. At the top, he looked down from the north watchtower to the grass between the curtain walls.

He saw the maiden in the red dress again. She held a newborn lamb in her arms, and the way her light hair curled around her face and figure, he felt himself quite stolen.

However, he was a knight before he was anything else. “What did you bring me here to do?” he said with the low timber of a brass bell.

“Do you see that girl?” the red vapor was more visible now as it spilled over his ear and down his neck to disappear at his chest.

“Naturally,” he responded.

“She’s the source of all the trouble,” the disembodied voice continued.

“Is she?”

“I need you to get rid of her,” the voice said with an air of finality.

Leander almost laughed. Of course, the ghost was trying to sneak people into the afterworld. He had seen that coming yards off.

The scene on the lawn changed as various men approached the maiden. Up until then, Leander had seen the maiden, Blueleg, and the smudge of red smoke that was called the Mistress. He hadn’t even known there were other people in the castle. They had been so quiet. Now we saw at least two dozen men hurrying to the maiden on the grass.

“I’ll escort you to dinner!”

“No, I’ll bring her.”

“No. Me!”

Leander stroked his chin. Was he about to see a full-on brawl for one woman? He chuckled. “How am I supposed to get rid of her?”

“Tomorrow night, you’ll take her and go. Sleep well tonight for tomorrow night, you won’t sleep at all.” The words floated to him like a balloon being pulled away by the wind. The reddish smoke snuffed out.

Leander rolled his eyes. That must be the language of ghosts. He had never heard it before. They couldn’t talk unless they spoke in riddles, with nuance, and a slight foreboding. It sounded so much like ghost stories he’d heard around army campfires that the encounter was immediately mundane.

He yawned and went to find the supper that had been promised by the men yelling in the courtyard.