Duran bit the gem. We didn’t learn anything about whether or not it was a diamond from the exercise. “I mean, it has to be,” he said, peering at me through it. His eye was magnified. “Otherwise, why would they leave it in a squid?”
“You can leave anything in that squid,” I said. Honestly, I was starting to believe it was a diamond too, but that didn’t mean I was going to agree with him verbally. He needed some challenges in his life. “That doesn’t mean it’s going to become a diamond.” I held out a hand. “I’ll keep hold of it, in case it’s important.”
He handed it over surprisingly quickly, then peered over at the garden beds. “Can we have some flowers with dinner?”
“Pick some narsturium,” I said. “But if I catch you with any nightshade, you’ll be the one forced to eat it. ”
Where we’d spent the night was relatively close. Apis and I headed over, poking at the remnants of our ashes. It was depressing. I tipped over a log, pressing a finger to the edge of it. It felt… a little drier.
“I suppose I’ll try again,” he offered.
“We’re all going to be more smoked than jerky by the end of this journey,” I muttered, but I waved him onwards and started digging through our supplies. If I’d gone through all of the effort of bringing jars of preserves, I was going to eat them.
It seemed that the day of drying made all the difference, because this time, when Apis sparked it up the fire caught easily. I caught his eyes, unbelieving, over the flame.
“Don’t say it,” he warned. “You’ll scare it off.”
“I’m just glad I’ll be able to dry something.”
I pulled my socks off as fast as I could manage. After a moment of thought, I propped my boots up near the fire as well. If we only got a few moments of a fire, I’d take dry boots before anything else. After a moment, I began digging through for our cooking tools.
“Good news,” I said, as I heard Duran’s footsteps crunch up. “Tonight, the turnips will be soft and the fish will be crunchy!”
He held up his haul. “Recipe twenty,” he said, hopeful. “Mushroom stuffing?”
It was very aspirational, but I didn’t see why not. “Go ahead. Although I don’t know where you’re getting the rest of the ingredients.”
“I’ll just substitute!”
Well, that made me a little more fearful. I just hoped he hadn’t found anything poisonous out there. My back was already aching as I leaned against a log, stretching out my leg. I held the diamond out in the flames, watching it sparkle. “It has to be important.”
Duran was working on cutting up a few more of the mushrooms I had gathered yesterday. He looked up at my comment, eyebrows drawing together. “It’s what the big woman wants,” he said.
“What?”
“Teuthida,” said Apis. He was pulling off his own boots. “That’s what he meant, I believe. She had outstretched hands.”
I tucked the teardrop into a pocket in my cloak. Now that he mentioned it… “We have to find three more of these?” Exactly like Teuthida. Like any goddess. Another pointless quest.
“We’ll figure it out tomorrow,” I said, my eyes already drooping low. How had I come into this temple to find Duran’s father and ended up participating in Teuthida’s quests? This was all wrong. “Duran, is that done yet?”
He’d created some… dough, if I wanted to call it that, and was pressing it into our one pan. It sizzled half-heartedly as it went over the fire.
“Is it supposed to look like that?”
I leaned over and sniffed it, then gave it a poke with the spoon. Maybe I should have been supervising his cooking instead of thinking about quests and diamonds.
Goddesses. Not even once.
“I’ll have a pickle tonight,” I said, scooting further away from Duran’s horror. “You can test it yourself. Ah, you don’t earn the recipe.”
His shoulders lowered a little. “I’ll try it,” offered Apis.
Duran held out a piece on the end of the spoon. Apis’s hand was steady as he took the offered spoon and tried a piece. As soon as Duran turned his back Apis spit the bite out into his handkerchief. He looked a little green.
“Try to dispose of that properly,” I said, lying back and reaching for our remaining preserves. “We don’t want to poison the fish.”
----------------------------------------
“Well,” I said. “Now what?”
The sun had risen, but much before that I’d been woken by an aching in my bones and the cold leeching into my skin. I was too old to go around sleeping in temples, especially at this time of year. I could see my breath and the dew on the walls.
We couldn’t be done with this soon enough. It hadn’t been hard to rouse Apis- he’d been awake already, resorting our supplies- and Duran had woken easily enough, eager to go try and find the remaining gems.
Now we were at another set of garden beds, underneath another squid carving. I was beginning to hate the creatures. The fried version was fine, but in stone form… they just had too many legs. You certainly couldn’t eat them.
Unlike the last set of garden beds, these were mostly empty. One set still had a few turnips left, but someone had clearly come through and picked it all out.
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I ran my hands through one of the empty dirt beds and squinted. Someone had clearly not understood that harvesting means you leave part of the plant behind. Either that, or a priestess had a black thumb.
“Maybe it’s the same test as last time, and we need to push in the one that’s got poison,” said Duran. He was barely tall enough to reach the garden bed, standing up on his tip-toes. Apis was well behind us, crouching in the dirt and looking at something. Probably a worm or something of the like.
“There isn’t any poison left.”
He shrugged. “Maybe they wanted the poison.”
I looked along the row of garden beds. They were staggered, some higher up, some lower. All about an arm’s length wide, and carved out of the same pale stone as the temple with decoration of waves.
All empty. “So you want us to press in all of the tentacles,” I said. Why was I taking advice from Duran?
“I guess?”
“They really harvested everything?”
We both turned. Apis had finally caught up with us. He shrugged, looking sheepish. “I thought there might be a code or something in the way the path was built, since some of the stones have the same pattern carved in them as the…” He coughed. “Ah, it turns out they’re all waves. Like the ocean.”
“Because she’s a squid?”
“Because she’s a squid.”
“Well, I’m glad you checked.” We both turned back to the garden beds. “Why can the puzzle never be straightforward? I’m not cut out for this sort of thing.”
Apis had stepped up to one of the garden beds and was digging through it thoughtfully. “Remember last month, when the new girl said we were getting her order wrong on purpose?”
I squinted at him accusingly, then turned to my own planter box, also empty. Was he looking for seeds? As I combed through the dirt, all I found were a few rotting leaves. I held them up to the light, trying to identify them. “Yes?”
“You interrogated everyone, but no one would be a reliable witness and say she was trying to frame you because she didn’t want to pay.”
“They were all cowards. Nothing new!”
“Yes, but not everyone would be able to prove she was lying. Especially with only a napkin as evidence.”
“She was insulting all of us! My path of vengeance was perfectly normal. Justified, even.”
“I liked your path of vengeance. I’m saying that if anyone could find traces of poison plants from dirt, it would be you,” said Apis. “Although I’m not sure you needed to send Duran to break into her room.”
Duran had finally dug to the bottom of the planter box. He pulled his hands out, dirt underneath his nails. “There’s nothing there, Madam Elysia. Just stone.”
Apis had retreived a single seed. I didn’t need to look at it long. “Turnips,” I said, and then looked away to hide my satisfaction. “Obviously! You don’t need me to identify that. Everyone knows what a turnip seed looks like.”
I pulled another decomposing leaf out of the empty planter box underneath my hands. It was recognizable now. Nightshade.
Did I want to hope that the puzzle was the same for each squid?
“We’re gambling on poison again?”
I turned to face my companions. Apis nodded. Duran shrugged. Once again, it was up to me. I sighed. “Everyone duck.”
I gave them a few seconds to brace themselves. A faint howling wind ran past my hair again, ruffling my cloak. There was something horribly empty about this place. For a second, I thought I saw another green shimmer behind a tree.
Was the vision in the bear armor back?
Then it was gone, and it was time. I had to make my decisions. I turned towards the squid carving.
Ten tentacles. Ten garden beds. Only one with any plant still growing in it. I reached up and pressed in the tentacle above the bed I had just been checking, the third one along; the one with nightshade leaves in it. Stupid, Elysia. Anyone could put leaves in a garden bed. It’s so easy to sabatoge.
The stone ground in. It stayed in.
Nothing happened.
I let out a minute breath. So. One challenge down. I moved to the right, glanced over the garden beds. Last time, the poison and the healthy flowers and food had mostly alternated. But there had been some tricks there. Did I want to bet on the garden beds alternating again?
I skipped one bed, then reached up and pushed another tentacle in. Another hesitant silence. No punishment.
Maybe I was worrying for nothing. Perhaps the temple had spent all of their money on diamonds and there was nothing left for punishing fools who didn’t figure out the tentacle puzzle right.
I stepped over again, alternating temple beds again.
On my back, I felt a strange heat. Not quite like fire. As I reached forward, over the garden bed, my fingers began to tingle. Like my hand had begun to fall asleep.
I blinked. For a moment, I thought I saw a bee perched on the back of my fingers.
Well, well, well.
Her voice echoed so loudly I glanced over my shoulder, looking for her. But there was no Andrena. Only Apis and Duran, hiding behind a column and a tree, respectively. A few plants. The rippling of the water.
“I thought you were busy,” I hissed.
You keep almost dying. I’ve diverted more attention to you.
The sword heated more. I reached for it, trying to pull it off my back, but my hands tingled more. I shuddered.
“Whatever you’re doing, stop!”
It’s hard for me to appear here uninvited. It’s like… if you attempted to break into someone else’s house. Forgive me, but I need to use the sword as a path. Unless you want to invite me into your mind?
My fingers tingled further.
“I’m not letting you in my head.”
Even if I could help?
For a moment, the sword was so hot I thought it might actually burn me. As I began to yelp, my fingers moved with a force not my own, snapping and pointing at the garden bed. There was a golden shimmer. A smell of the fresh green of spring, the faint haze after rain. Then, as I blinked, a tiny green sprout.
As it began to climb, leaves starting to unfurl, my hand went limp. Under my control again. The sword cooled just before it did any real damage.
You see? This is what I could do if you only let us work together.
Andrena sounded way too smug for someone who’d just stolen my body. “This wasn’t in the fine print,” I muttered. “I don’t want you in my body. Get out!”
Most people aren’t this stubborn. Don’t you want to acquire your…
The silence was a little too long.
There is a man you are seeking? Your… husband? Employer?
“Next time, find out what I want before you try to steal my body,” I said. “And get out.” For a moment, I thought it hadn’t worked. If walling my mind off depended on how determined I was…
For a moment, I had been tempted. What if working with Andrena could get me through quickly? I could work with her for just a few days, then kick her out and be through.
No. The gods don’t work that way. The instant I said yes, I’d be stuck under her heel forever- even through the afterlife.
I shuddered. I had to keep my mind walled off.I breathed in. I breathed out. My mind remained empty.
For a moment my hands twitched towards the sword. It would probably be safer to throw it away- deep into the canal, where she couldn’t use it to access me anymore. After a moment, I pulled it off and put it on the ground. Even if it was horrible and a little cursed, a big sword was a big sword.
“Is everything all right?” Apis called. “It’s been a while.”
“I’m thinking.” I stared at the sprout. I could see the small leaf starting to form. Rosemary- completely edible. If Andrena hadn’t possessed my body, I would have pressed in that tentacle and lost the gem.
I swallowed. Andrena, I still say no. I had never wanted to be a Paladin. I still didn’t want to be. I certainly didn’t want her in my head, in my body, or anything of the sort.
Even if it came with cool magical powers. I pressed the tentacle in above the garden bed to the right of it, then stepped over and pressed the final tentacle. Even if Andrena had helped, it was still a matter of luck. I ducked as soon as the tentacle pressed in.
With a grinding sound, the squid’s head began to rotate.