Ch: 118 In Silent Dread
The otter Shaman took Axio’s appearance in stride, relatively well anyway. Becky was able to talk him out of the bath after a few minutes. “See, he’s just a spirit in a construct body…” She soothed.
“That fails to ease my discomfort. Spirits walking in mushroom flesh? I had heard rumors of dryads awakened and walking the land, but this is silly…”
“Pish tush… Axio is a lively fellow, it’s only your mortal body that fears his touch.” Plumeria whispered, in her stick insect/mantis form, clinging to a rafter above the beleaguered otter. “He is certainly less alien to mortals than I.”
“Oh! Plumeria! I had no idea you were here as well…” Axio shivered with happiness, as she spread her purple wings and flew to him, landing on his shoulder and clinging there. The shaman was forgotten entirely as the two beings got cozy.
“I only just arrived, sweet Ivy has a cutting of me planted in her chambers. Something about her connection to this house lets me slip through the etheric veil and manifest here.” She preened happily and settled in for a nice visit.
“Will we be ‘investigating’ again? I quite fancy the sleuthing lifestyle. At least, I will, once that lazy cadaver builds me a puppet body to inhabit.”
“I’ll put one together… spoiled brat. I never should have let you read those Hardy Boys books.” Gary grumbled. “I’m cutting you off.”
“Oh, I finished all of those on our last journey, sweet Maple has been keeping me supplied lately. I’ve finished Nancy Drew, Sherlock Holmes and the works of Dashiell Hammett.” The dryad chittered at him in glee.
“Maple has rooted in Becky’s soul somehow, now she sends us books from your memories!”
“Us?” He demanded softly. “Just how many of you are getting a visit from Becky’s Bookmobile?”
“Some two dozen or so have dipped their roots into our little group.” She muttered in reply, looking as shifty as green and purple mantis can look.
Gary took some time to digest that, while eying Becky in mild annoyance.
“Uhh, huh… Becks, are you playing book club with a forest of nerdy dryads without me?”
He noticed Shai was looking guilty too, out of the corner of his eye.
“Tis only works of fiction and the like. Just a few stories an songs, wi nae that can be harmful.” She muttered, while avoiding his eyes.
Several of the crew were making shushing and hushing motions when they thought he wasn’t looking, trying to silence this train of thought.
Reegil took the opportunity to make his escape, slipping back into the bath, while the humans and others carried on.
He reclined in the bubbling water and steam, letting the stress of being in this madhouse float away.
Shining white and pearlescent shimmering pink, Solange the ancient magnolia drifted by in her mantis form.
“Soothing, is it not? I come here sometimes, in the deep hours of the night, while the world around me sleeps… The dead one is kind enough to allow me to come and go as I will.”
Unfortunate Reegil sank, sputtering, to the very bottom, where he thrashed and flailed in a panic. He tried his best to drown for an extended period, until a giant red haired human dragged him to the surface roughly.
“You can’t drown here, it’s against the rules in Gary’s house.” Tallum’s voice rumbled through the waterlogged creature, who was still lying on the pavers, gasping.
“We’ll take your job, but if we decide to pull out, that’s final.” The big man rolled him up in a fluffy green robe and tucked him into a lounge. “We head out tomorrow. Travel with us if you wish, you may find it enlightening, or at least entertaining.”
“Where is that wretched Garree? I should nip him someplace tender for this.” He wriggled free of the enfolding robe and shook himself. “I shall not accompany you, I make my own way. Why hire experts for a job, just to supervise them stupidly?” He chittered in irritation and slipped out the overflow, without saying goodbye. The slippery otter shaman vanished into the estuary silently.
#
Seahorse vanished in the night, disappearing into wherever Gary’s brand of crazy sent it. They set out overland on horses, ponies, a dog cart and… whatever Gary was riding.
“I think you ride that thing, cause on a horse, you would have hands free to play an instrument…” Becky was playing a lovely melody on her harp, keeping his ‘travelin music’ gift afloat.
“Well, if it’s too much trouble for you…” He began to whistle a sprightly, warbling tune, simply flinging it into the sky. He chirped and tweeted along, adding bird calls with the rhythm of the hooves keeping time.
“Hey, that’s your weird fiddler song, ‘If I Were A Rich Man’, how're you doing that?” She squawked when he stopped whistling, but the music kept on.
“Disney princess powers, Amy can explain.” He sang softly, as a hummingbird whistled the complex melody from his perch on Gary’s shoulder. The wetlands and paddies were alive with singing, chirping and warbling creatures, all joined in a single song.
Gary sat up straight on his bike, opened his throat and lungs wide to sing a wordless do wop improv in his bass register as they rode along.
“Good boy, cultivation is an endless battle against stagnation. Qui moves in all things and places, even in your silly songs and chirping birds.” Luna lectured from Winslow’s back. “I feel you stretching, extending your limits… Keep working, reaching farther.”
All down the inland waterways and marshes, a bubble of strange magic engulfed the wildlife as it passed, turning them into a chorus of musical wonder. The effect lingered for the entire day. The wildlife carried on with the entire setlist, singing songs from another world, to confused locals on the road.
#
They summoned home just as evening began and the fog started rising. In the bath that evening, he cornered Becky, Shai and the two dryads. “So you guys have been digging around and sharing… my contents?” He paused for a few long moments to mull things over.
“That’s complicated, since the books and songs stored in me are ours, all of ours. Ok, new rule. I get editorial control over my personal memories... Everything else, I trust you, you’re both smarter than me anyway.” He breathed out slow and deep, letting all his worries float off for a while.
“Fantasy Fae Realm Book Club is officially sanctioned by the cult of secrets. I bet you wish you’d thought up a name before I found out.”
His smug and happy grin was almost too much to bear.
#
Gary, Liam, Axio and the two dryads were in the common room, looking over Liam’s little jar of seeds. The ones collected from the grenadier pear that Xyll and her kin had infected with undeath on the journey.
Shade Tree, seed, Undead, undifferentiated, unknown, detritivore, saprotroph.
“Since we have you here… I’ve been puzzling over these for a while. Liam won’t let me plant them, cause he’s a scared little baby…” Gary complained.
“Fascinating…” Axio muttered in wonder. “I haven't seen this before. Your bat friend is a living entity, after a fashion. She seems to be a natural expression of… whatever she is, rather than a corpse or spirit infected by undeath. Nor is she an outsider or monster, Xyll is a beast, possessing a normal animus and soul, save that she lacks living biology to contain them.” He smiled his awful, charming skull grimace and nodded happily. “So many new things!”
“You say there was a colony of them in the desert?” Plumeria muttered. “Odd for a fruit eating creature to dwell there in the first place. Odder still to have ‘natural’ and ‘living’ non corporeal entities flying about.”
Solange hummed a vaguely familiar snatch of music for a moment. “You should draw your wards and markings on a clay pot and plant one. Nothing will be learned from staring at a bottle of seeds and wondering.”
Gary smiled happily and spun in a circle for a quick costume change. “Why Solange… what a compelling and entirely novel idea… how clever of you to think of it.”
With a dramatic flourish, he drew a stack of simple terracotta pots out of his magic buns and held one up. With one hand he held it out for the group to see, gracefully indicating with his free hand, certain features.
“Note the sleek lines and unglazed finish, allowing chalk, paint or other pigments to fully integrate for better occult adherence.” His subtle hand gestures and the bold, stentorian voice he was projecting were strangely odd together,
“Runes and symbolic enchantments bind and contain the influence of whatever is planted, without preventing its growth and development.” With dancelike movements he enumerated and pointed out each detail, speaking in wide, open tones.
“Scriptural magic and sutras cleanse and neutralize any emanations of undeath it might produce. Finally, a braided cable of iron and silver wire around the rim, to ground out anything else I might have missed.” He smoothed his long, sequined gown of ivory silk and smiled so radiantly it caused a few of his friends to flinch back in alarm.
Across the room, Becky, Amy, Wilford and Rio were all giggling hysterically. Poor Shai was just confused and it showed. “It’s a game show thing… Becky and the kids will show you tonight, I’m sure. I’m doing a Vanna White, Don Pardo mashup.”
Liam just sighed and took the pots out into his garden shed, attached to Annie’s quarters. “Sheer lunacy, but I’m curious too… and this is in line with my own research.” He remarked over his shoulder.
#
They had taken over a small hummock of low, squishy silt and weeds for the night, erecting the house and garden while spreading Gary’s influence as far as he could manage, then a bit farther.
“Ye look a might done in boy of mine… would ye tae bed?” Shai nudged him with her shoulder gently, making him sway a little.
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“Cultivation. Luna says I gotta stay up til eighth.” He mumbled, red eyed and rheumy with exhaustion.
Luna leaned over the back of the sofa, intruding cheerfully. “You should make him dance… and summon some of those specters too. I like the shiny man with the baton!” She chattered, loudly, in his ear.
“Once we have you firmly settled into Iron rank you can slack off. Until then you are still a duckling, paddling in my pool.” She chirped, with a smile that wouldn’t melt butter.
Shai and Luna teamed with Becky to drag the boy through hell before bedtime. They used him like a cheap party hat, trading him from hand to hand.
Becky’s harp dragged his shadow friends out of him like a clown car disgorging… Garys… Garies?
These were less distinct, murky forms; wearing shadow cloaks and masks of pale ivory with his face in different expressions.
Each one swiped an instrument from his display and joined a jam session that got Shai’s booty in motion. The terrible woman spun his own gifts around his band of shadow selves, firming them up into a cohesive band.
They were pretty good, though none was any better a player than Gary himself. These shadows were unoccupied, limited to his own innate skill with the instruments in play.
“I’m spread too thin for any of the guys to come out, you gotta suffer.” He murmured in Shai’s arms, dancing along to ‘Sentimental Journey’. It was kinda weak with his feeble brass section.
“...Needs a trombone and sax.” He said softly, more than half asleep in her embrace.
Shai dusted him off to dreamland with a stiff dose of narcotic pollen and set him afloat in the grotto with a kiss. “I hae need of thee, dinnae get too worn through on the morrow.” Her lascivious wink left little doubt as to his fate.
“I was a good boy once… until a wicked dame led me astray…” He mumbled in the brief moments before he was gone.
#
Khan and Luna honored Shai’s request and held back, only inflicting misery on their victim. Rather than grinding him into flour and reconstituting him into a doughy blob with his own sweat and tears...
Gary was drenched in sweat, pale, shaky and weakened when he staggered off his silly wheeled construct, for an early night.
Shai and Becky had to help him through the house conjuration anyway. He played from a camp chair since standing would require steady legs.“Ohhh gods… nobody get between me and that bath.”
He shambled through the garden gate and flopped over the side, splashing down like a soiled mattress. He floated limply for a while, just breathing was enough effort.
“No more throat-singing…” He droned, in a strange, polyphonic mode. “Now I can’t stop!”
#
The land was just beginning to rise, but still very wet. Rivers, ponds, creeks… the whole lot, they were everywhere. As were mundane otters, beavers and muskrats.
They had passed the occasional house or hut along the road, most seen only as a single thread of smoke, down a narrow trail. Signs of woodcutting and other forestry activities were scarce but present; these were still civilized lands.
The little family had taken over a dry meadow and a good slice of the adjacent beaver pond. A small family of young beavers found the tree and herb nibbling along the pond to be much improved that season. Their otter neighbors downstream, had a good spring of fishing as well.
Just a few yards above sea level, moss and verdant wetland growth exploded in abundance and variety.
Liam, Gary and the kids had a fun late afternoon wandering his peripheries, touching, identifying and collecting herbs.
“Foulrot fungus smells like its name, but it can be used in medicines and healing philtres. I don’t have to tell you not to eat them, they taste like their name too.”
Liam was a fine teacher, imparting his knowledge with gentle and tender care. The young warrior smiled when Tawny and Bannock joined the foraging lessons.
“Why are the dryads not teaching this? One would think they have much wisdom on herbs.” Bannock asked, while digging a hen of the woods mushroom from beneath a fern.
“Dryads neither eat, nor require medicines… I suspect few outside our friends have even scant awareness that humans use herbs this way. We are simply too different.” He climbed under the damp, dripping fern to help extract the large fruiting body.
“Cut here, just above the soil, Gary likes us to use bronze knives, he says Iron is toxic to fae spirits and disrupts his strange magics.” Liam’s bronze hand scythe snipped the mushroom off neatly.
“He makes very fine garden tools in any case, so I just go with it.” Liam slipped the gleaming sickle blade into its scabbard with a satisfying click.
“Next season it will flourish again, if we leave the soil undisturbed… Oh! Morels!” He fairly danced off to join Amy in a mushroom ring beneath a chestnut tree.
The kids strutted back into the garden, each holding a big basket of gathered forest goodies. Berries, roots, mushrooms of course and whole plants too, dug up and their roots bundled in sack cloth pouches.
Khan had a long string of trout to add to dinner, along with a few nasty looking characters. Three long worm-like shapes were slowly swimming in a small section of the beaver pond, screened off with sharpened willow branches wound with berry vines.
“Giant marsh leeches, blood suckers. Ugly, but delicious.” He muttered while Gary helped him scale and gut the fish. When the fish were filetted and ready, Khan grabbed one of the squirming, four foot abominations and brusquely nailed its head to a fallen log with a deadly looking ice pick.
In a few deft moves, he peeled the slimy skin from the creature revealing a pink mass of boneless flesh. His knife flicked in a circle, just below the ‘head’ and the meaty body slipped away, leaving its disturbing entrails behind, with the awful ring toothed lamprey mouth.
You have gained skill in harvesting wild food, congratulations!
You have gained skill in butchery, congratulations!
You have gained skill in fishing, congratulations!
“Sweet! More skill ups!” He muttered for some reason, while Khan instructed him on the next wriggling monster.
“Your weird abilities will be more productive while cultivating, the process influences all parts of you, when applied correctly.” The veteran bumped his shoulder happily.
“We are pleased with your growth boy.” He whispered as they worked. “Don’t tell Luna I said that. You can have revenge on your friends when their turns come.”
Dinner was a mellow affair, Ivy made a mushroom soup of Bannock’s enormous chicken mushroom. It had looked like a pile of dirty feathers under the fern, now it was rich and meaty tasting soup, dished up with crusty toast and grilled trout with morels.
He had a nice dance with Shai, read the kids a few chapters of the ‘Jungle Book’ by the fire and tucked them in bed, the tranquility was intoxicating.
“I don’t wanna be so tired that I miss out on the important things…” He yawned mightily as he got ready for bed. “This afternoon was great, it seems like somebody has been riding me constantly for weeks now.”
“Aye, an now, tis my turn tae ride thee… everything be cultivation boy of mine… Everything.” She growled soft and low.
#
“...according to Reegil’s directions we should reach a settlement soon, perhaps tomorrow evening. It’s described as a fringe village of otters, beavers and even a few men, Mudwallow Bridge is the name.”
Liam answered Axio’s question with an uncomfortable smile. The little fellow still gave him the ookies. While he was shaking off the creepy feeling, all the instruments in the shop thrummed a single sustained note for a quiet moment, then fell silent.
Herlick and Ivy joined his naughty giggle when the strings and skins settled down. “Why are you laughing? Am I missing something?” Khan asked, in some confusion.
“They have no idea, but when he’s tired and they…” Ivy bobbed her eyebrows suggestively. “...the instruments sing out. It can get a little distracting, especially if…”
A sudden, shimmering chord rang out softly, followed by an ecstatic guitar solo, the music slowly ebbed away, leaving the entire house feeling lazy and just a little smug.
“You gotta learn how to do whatever that is, lover.” Ivy whispered to her giant.
#
Veteran Adventure guild specialists have a terrifying reputation, among their prey. Many criminals, after fleeing through the wilds for weeks, have thought themselves safely out of reach; only to find their pursuers dogging their heels.
Diane consoled herself with memories of those slavers and thieves, staring wide eyed up at her from their bedrolls in some camp miles from anywhere. Good times…
Running for two full days and nights, stopping only to eat and sleep, she was finally catching up to the slippery greenies. Arriving in their yard and finding an empty meadow had been annoying, chasing them was starting to get her furious.
The entire journey had been accompanied by the strangest chorus of musical frogs, lizards and birds. They sang and chirped along as though performing a woodland symphony in animal sounds.
Unnerving, that was the only way to describe it. In all her career, wandering the roads and wilds, this was a standout for just plain weird. Deep in the night she lingered in the trees two hundred yards away, watching.
The house was dark, only a paper lantern by the door and one on each side of the garden gate lit the surrounding area. A dim glow illuminated the towering column of steam that thickened the local fog into a morass only her potent vision gift could cut through.
Streams and tendrils of the thick steam slipped through the fog as though seeking something in the night. Reaching out in long, ropey tentacles, swirling vapor shapes carried the light from inside the compound differently than mundane fog.
Half seen forms seemed to slip from bush to bush in the surrounding forest and meadows. Focusing her gift from the spirit of light, the shadows disappeared under her gaze, revealing… nothing, just empty fog.
Soundlessly she crept forward, senses alert for any anomaly in the strange, singing marshland.
As she approached, faint strains of actual music caught her ear. Upbeat and jolly, it felt slightly martial. Like a marching song, vaguely remembered from her time in War’s legion. Unconsciously, she began to step in time, creeping forward in measured steps.
The happy and slightly percussive music grew ever so gradually louder, as she approached. Faint voices could just barely be heard muttering something, just beyond the garden wall.
Tarantara, tarantara!
Tarantara, tarantara!
Taking the moment in hand, she slipped closer, into the shadows of the wall itself. Sounds of drums and softly clashing cymbals lent an even more martial air to the music slipping through the foggy night.
Any fool could creep up on the house under these conditions. Diane smiled inside her hood and veil, anticipating what was to come. The sense of resistance and unwelcomeness caught her at the edge of the wall, unsettling, but she recognized it for a simple ward, this time. It was a kind of magical illusion, meant to deter minor nuisances. She bypassed it with a subtle flex of her well trained aura, forcing the magical threads to accept her presence without alarm or notice.
“They’ll never even hear me coming, ‘With Catlike Tread’...” She whispered to herself. She nearly jumped at the sound and inflection of her own voice, surprisingly loud in the quiet music.
With Cat-Like Tread…
Upon our prey we steal…
She smiled inside her concealing garments, at the hilariously appropriate lyrics, coming from over the wall.
In utter silence, she slipped through the thorns and toxic berries unharmed. Poor greenies no doubt thought themselves inviolate, behind their living barrier, wall and wards. For a bronze rank Adventurer, they posed no challenge at all. Not a leaf rustled, nor did a single thorn or berry find her clothing or flesh.
In silence dread,
Our cautious way we feel…
The music swelled louder, becoming more of a marching song, with hard hitting bass and cymbals on the first beat. She let it ease her sly and sneaky passage through the fruit trees and shrubbery.
No sound at all
We never speak a word!
A fly's foot-fall
Would be distinctly heard!
Even with the strange music seeming to come from all over the house, she saw little activity from her hiding spot among the pear trees. Emboldened, she relaxed and began listening to what the fools were singing.
So stealthily the pirate creeps…
While all the household soundly sleeps…
Those were a little jarring, considering her current actions. Khan and Luna had refused to answer any of her questions, but had sworn to not interfere…
That left a small swarm of ducklings and unranked children, besides the one just fledging into iron rank. Conveniently, the music picked up and became a raucous dance tune. This was going to be child’s play.
Come friends, who plough the sea
True to navigation!
Take another station!
Let's vary piracy,
With a little burglary!
When Diane realized she was linked arms with a smiling, brown haired man and the red haired hillwoman from her last visit, it was even more startling.
Looking down in either direction past her surprise dance partners, men in striped pants, blousy shirts and high boots were high-kicking and stomping on the beat, while singing the loud, crashing, full throated song about sneaking.
Discovering that she was engaged in a stomping, shouting kickline dance with a whole troupe, made her heart fall into her boots. Or it would have, were the damnable music not so catchy.
With cat like tread!
Upon our prey we steal!
In silence dread!
Our cautious way we feel!
The veteran Adventurer surrendered to the nonsense and allowed herself to just ride the foolish music and dance. They pranced to and fro in the garden, shouting the triumphantly sneaky song to the heavens; with the dark clad form, stepping lively in time and stomping on the one right along with them.
“That was fun, let’s go again!” She cheered, giving the hillwoman a twirl as the music shifted.
Three sleepy looking but very excited children clapped and yelled over their simple instruments, when the dance finished. Luna, Khan and a number of strange characters were lounging on the patio among the kids, enjoying the super early, predawn show.
“Bravo! Nicely done!” Khan shouted and clapped, while Luna gave a piercing whistle that cut the night. Lights came up, revealing the little troupe, most dressed in fluffy bathrobes and slippers. They were scattered over the stone paved open space, seated at instruments or lounging on chairs.
Only the tall brown man and the hillwoman on either side of her were humans, the rest of her dancing kickline of fanciful pirates were shadowy ghosts.
Indistinct variations on the man’s face and form, dressed in silly costumes were still dancing, enacting staged duels with imaginary swords or frisking about in nautical poses. Others were hauling unseen ropes or climbing nonexistent rigging in pantomime.
“All right, she’s cool.” The brown man addressed the gathered crowd of people and spirits, seeming even more delighted by her reaction. He turned back to her, coming into sharp focus for the first time.
“Hi, I’m Gary, this is Shai… Go on and introduce yourself, you gotta drop that hood though, house rules.” He clapped his hands loudly together with a wide, manic, hungry smile.
“It’s Dannyl’s turn to make breakfast... What are we having?” He asked the small ginger boy holding a guitar.
#