Fates

10

Hands, rough like sandpaper, jerked Corinthe awake. A rush of pain made her gasp. Her stomach rolled, and for a second, she thought she was going to be sick.

She opened her eyes. She was lying on packed dirt on the ground. A stubby candle, enclosed by a smudgy glass-topped lantern, flickered next to her.

The smallest man Corinthe had ever seen—the size of a toddler, if that—knelt over her, holding what looked like a pair of large tweezers in his fingers, muttering to himself. He reached out with his tweezers; she felt a small tug on her arm and an icy-cold flash. She gasped and tried to sit up, but found she had no control over her limbs. Panic slid down her back.

Why couldn’t she move?

The man continued muttering to himself. He held up a dirty glass jar and dropped the stinger into it. Suddenly, he began to giggle. When he looked at her, his sunken eyes were lit up with excitement. “Hornet venom,” he cackled. “Small doses, they make strong. Make safe from more stings!”

He laughed until he wheezed—a raspy, wet sound that made Corinthe’s stomach turn over. When he opened his mouth, he exposed rows of blackened teeth. Each one came to a dull point, and she fought against the image of him taking a huge bite out of her.

A gnome. Had to be. Corinthe had seen their likenesses only a few times, in marbles that were not her charges. And gnomes lived in the Forest of Blood Nymphs, too—she had forgotten that. They were neither good nor bad, just very self-serving. They communicated in strange, circular ways that were hard to follow. Bargaining with a gnome took a lot of skill.

“Where am I?” she demanded. Her voice, at least, was still in her control—still steady. “Who are you?”

“This my home. I be Beatis, at your service.” He bowed, then stood and dragged the edge of a crusty sleeve over his dripping nose.

It was dark and smoky in the roughly circular room, which was only a few feet wider than the length of her body. Near her feet, crudely built shelves lined with dirty bottles teetered toward the ceiling. On her left was a pile of dried grass, sticks, and leaves—a makeshift bed, Corinthe imagined.

Above her, it looked like roots were entangled to form a ceiling. But was that … was that fur stuck between them?

She blinked, and her vision cleared slightly. More than a dozen animal carcasses in varying stages of decay were suspended above her, strung within the web of a tree. Bones, skin, eyeless sockets.

Corinthe quickly turned away, wincing. The gnome looked at her, then up.

“Pets. They be good tests. But not always success,” he said, frowning. Then he shrugged. “Feeds tree. Keeps her happy.” He reached up and patted a bit of the twisted wooden ceiling affectionately; Corinthe now recognized that they were in the hollowed-out ground directly beneath the tree’s vast canopy of roots. The creatures trapped in the roots were ones she didn’t quite recognize—they didn’t exist in Pyralis. Or Humana, for that matter. The gnome returned to his task, bending forward to continue removing the stingers from her body. There were dozens and dozens of them remaining in her legs; Corinthe couldn’t stand to look.

“I always listening for the hornets. They’s very hard to find. They’s very hard to trap.” He rubbed his hands together. “Then I hears them and—I finds an Executor! So many questions, which to ask first?”

Alarm shot up her spine. He knew she was an Executor. She tried to force her fingers to move, but the command got lost somewhere between her brain and her hand.

“You be lucky Beatis find you in time.”

Something pricked her arm again. Before she could protest, a small tube was guiding her blood into a clear glass vial, which the gnome quickly filled and corked. He tucked it into his pocket, rubbed a greenish liquid into the spot he had bled, and waddled to the other side of the room with his jar. Carefully, he placed it on a shelf lined with an eclectic mixture of bottles, cans, jars, and boxes, each with peeling labels made of leaves and paste.

He pulled the vial from his pocket and slipped it inside a wooden box, then pushed it back behind several large bottles. When he returned, he held out a clear jar full of moving black things. He reached into the jar and pulled out something that looked like a slug. He held it between his stubby fingers for a moment, grinning as the slimy creature twisted and turned.

“What is that?”

“Leeches. They be good at sucking out the poisons,” Beatis said. “Don’t worry, pretty thing. Beatis be taking care of you.”

“Please …” Now she couldn’t help it. Her voice quavered. Stars danced brightly behind her eyelids, and she felt herself sinking, falling back into unconsciousness. She fought to stay awake, to stay alert.

Beatis carefully placed the slimy creature over one of the welts left by a hornet’s stinger. A faint tugging sensation, not wholly unpleasant, came from where that thing had attached to her skin. Leeches, she knew, existed in Humana as well. Often, things were blown along the Crossroad and passed between worlds this way—like litter, like dust clinging to the shoes of those who traveled through the universe’s infinite realms.

He attached the creatures all over her bare arms, where ugly bruises and welts showed evidence of the hornets’ attack. Inside her chest, something began to burn. Fire trickled down her arms. Her legs. She wanted to scream but couldn’t drag in enough air to make more than a whimper. Was this how the earth felt when she stitched from it, sucked from it?

Corinthe’s stomach rolled. The room dipped and swayed.

“Please,” she moaned again, half delirious with pain.

The carcasses above her began to move, swinging, disjointed, from their heels. One grinned down at her, its face half gone with rot. She slammed her eyes closed, though the image remained burned behind her eyelids.

But then the fire inside her died down and the frantic pounding of her pulse slowed to a normal rhythm. The room stopped spinning, and the dead animals stopped dancing above her head. She tried to move again. This time, her hand twitched.

After a few minutes more, full feeling began to flood back to her hands and fingers, trickling down her legs to her toes. It was working. One by one, the leeches released and fell to the dirt floor, curled into tight black balls. Beatis carefully picked them up and returned them to the jar.

“Good test subjects, yes? Full of venom. Perhaps they die. Perhaps not.” He shuffled to the shelves again and replaced the jar on the shelf.

Corinthe slowly pushed to sitting, ducking her head to avoid bumping up against one of the half-rotted skeletons above her. Now that she was upright, she practically grazed the ceiling of roots with her head.

Gnome grottoes tended to be small and sparse: holes in the ground, literally. Now that Corinthe was thinking more clearly, she noticed a hole in one portion of the ceiling, a tunnel barely visible beyond the roots. That must be how the gnome came and went and how he pulled her into the grotto.

It occurred to her that she should be grateful.

“Thank you,” she said. The leeches had left faint bruises all over her skin, but as she flexed her fingers, she was amazed that most of the pain had abated. She could move again. “For saving my life.”

Beatis laughed until he wheezed. “Thank you, thank you!” he parroted gleefully. “I just buy you time. No cure for hornet’s sting. You still die, just not so fast. Two days, maybe …” He counted on his fat, stubby fingers. “Three, maybe, if you’re lucky.”

She felt a jolt of panic. No, she couldn’t die. Fates didn’t die.

But she wasn’t a Fate anymore.

She’d been cast out into Humana as an Executor. Had she lived there so long that she had become like them? Finite. Mortal. She had already bled like them, had been wounded and fatigued.

Had wanted to sleep.

The hornets’ venom had stunned her, rendered her unconscious. What if the gnome was right?

What would happen to her after death? Where would she go? She knew that other people, mortal people, believed in many different outcomes, but what did she believe?

She had never had to consider it before.

The patron saint of lost causes … She suddenly remembered the words of Sylvia, the principal.

But if she could make it back to Pyralis in time … if she was restored as a Fate before the venom took hold …

“Please,” Corinthe said carefully. “I’m looking for someone. Do you know where I can find a gateway?”

The gnome’s lips curled back into a smile, revealing those awful, jagged teeth. “Not time enough. Beatis take care until you die. Never had Executor before.”

She stared at him. “How did you—?”

“Aha! Hahaha! I be right, then.” He leaned forward and sniffed. “I smell human on you. But no human blood. No. Different blood.” His eyes seemed to swell even larger. He picked up a bottle of a greenish fluid. “Perhaps we test some potions. This made from nectar of green bell flower. Very rare. Might be fatal. Either way, you die.” He let out a raucous burst of laughter.

Corinthe pushed into a crouch. She felt stronger now. “You can’t keep me here,” she said. Her head bumped against the roots and a shower of dirt rained down on her.

“Oh yes. Yes, I can. I find you. You are mine now.” He pulled a dirty knife with a long, blood-spotted blade from behind his back and leveled it at her. “You stay.”

Corinthe tried to swallow and found she couldn’t. Blood pounded in her ears. Trying to fight unarmed in this tiny space, with venom thick in her veins, would be hopeless.

It would only mean a faster death.

She would have to find another way.

“I’ll pay you,” Corinthe blurted out.

He froze. She had said the magic words. Gnomes were infamous barterers.

The gnome frowned, wiped his nose on his sleeve again, and lowered the knife. “Pay?”

She held up both hands, to show him she didn’t intend to fight. “Yes. I’ll make you a deal.”

“What you have I want?” The gnome scowled.

The only thing truly valuable that she had was the locket, which she needed to find her way home. If she couldn’t get to the Crossroad, though, she would never execute Luc’s fate.

And she’d be trapped here until she died.

Something else. She had to have something else.

“My shoes!” It occurred to her as she watched the gnome prance back and forth on his bare feet. “Your feet must be all cut up. A nice pair of shoes would keep them safe.”

He seemed to consider it. He rocked up onto his toes. “And?”

Corinthe licked her lips. They were parched. “They come from Humana. But they’re not just ordinary boots. They are made of the thick skin of a magical earthly animal. They will make you run quicker than you can dream.”

The gnome’s eyes flashed hungrily. “And what? What else more?”

“I have nothing else,” she said. She was losing patience. How long would the venom take to work in her blood? One day? Two? Corinthe thought of dying here, trapped underground as the venom coursed through her veins. If she could perform her last task as an Executor, she could return home—and once she was restored as an immortal Fate, none of this would matter.

Except Luc would be dead.

Beatis grunted and shook his head. “More.”

She was glad that the locket was hanging safely around her neck, concealed beneath her jacket. “You took my blood. I’d say that’s a fair deal already. You take my shoes, and you get me to a gateway.”

“I can wait until you die. Then have shoes for me,” he said, grinning.

“You could. But you have to sleep sometime. And when you do, I’ll kill you.” She said the words neutrally, hoping the fact that she was an Executor would give weight to her threat; the gnome couldn’t know how weak she felt.

The gnome spat on the dirt floor. “Deal,” he finally said. “Magic shoes for the Crossroad. You promise now. Mine, mine, mine.”

Corinthe unlaced her leather boots quickly. The floor was damp, and cold seeped through her thin socks. The gnome grabbed the shoes and sat down heavily. After shoving his dirty feet into her boots, he tugged at the laces, growled again, then wiggled his long, gnarled toes inside the front of the boot.

When he stood, Corinthe almost laughed. The boots covered the entire length of his legs and gaped open, practically falling off every time he tried to take a step. She helped him work the laces, earning her a grunt of approval.

“So.” Corinthe stood again—as much as she could stand, without cracking her head. “Where is it?”

The gnome waddled clumsily to the corner, his steps thumping on the packed earth. Corinthe looked up at the opening in the ceiling and wondered how on earth he had managed to pull her through it. Before she could ask, he shoved aside one of the cabinets to reveal a much larger tunnel.

She peeked inside, but it was too dark to see more than a few feet of sloped earth. The tunnel smelled like musty, dank ground.

“I’ll follow you,” she said. Gnomes weren’t known for being entirely trustworthy, and for all she knew, the tunnel led to some kind of trap.

He pulled an oil lantern off the shelf and lit the wick; the smell of sulfur tickled her nose. He walked upright into the passageway, but Corinthe had to crawl on her hands and knees. Beatis turned around to glare at her periodically and urge her to go faster. After a few feet, the tunnel began to slope upward. The small lantern illuminated nothing more than his flickering outline and the tangle of roots above their heads. Corinthe could hear a soft gurgling sound, almost like a fountain.

Then she remembered where she was. Her stomach twisted. It was blood. She was listening to the trees feed. The air hung thicker here. Heavy. It was hard to breathe. The tunnel grew narrower, and roots raked fingers through her hair, dragged across her bare arms. She felt the shift, the flood of excitement that rippled through the ground. The walls of the passageway shuddered, and dirt showered down on her head.

“Hurry,” Beatis wheezed. “They find you. The trees be hungry.” Beatis scampered ahead and was soon lost in the darkness.

Terror shot through her. Dirt continued to rain down on her head. The roots continued to reach for her, pull at her, trying to consume and drain her. She tried to call out, but she could barely draw breath. The earth around her was closing in, burying her.

Stars exploded behind her eyes, and strangely, it made her think about the sky over the San Francisco Bay. About standing with Lucas. About the heat that raced through her blood when he had touched her.

Enough, she told herself. Wherever he was, she would find him and kill him. There was no choice, only destiny.

Her legs were completely encased in dirt. She couldn’t crawl any farther. Beatis’s light had disappeared. More dirt drove down on her shoulders, pushed her head down until she lay with one cheek against the ground.

The earth pulsed like a heartbeat. She reached out one hand, desperately clawing for help that wasn’t there.

And then, even as she cursed herself for trusting a gnome, she felt a rough hand close around hers. Beatis pulled her, loosening her from the earthen coffin with surprising strength.

Fresh air filled her lungs. Dirt fell away from her legs and she pushed to her knees, let go of Beatis, and threw herself at the light. She rolled a few feet down a small incline and landed on her back, gasping for breath.

The trees around them hissed softly, as though disappointed. She wondered how long it would be before they raised the alarm. Gave her away.

“Hurry, we must go fast,” the gnome said.

He didn’t wait to see if Corinthe followed; he just took off down a path that cut through the trees. She stumbled after him. Hard thorns bit into her feet. Finally, the trees thinned, and then in one step, she was clear of the forest.

Twenty feet in front of her, a thick wall of mist rose to the sky. It was as if the forest simply ceased to exist right at this spot. Cool tendrils of fog snaked across the ground.

“Where is it?” she asked. There were burrs stuck to the soft soles of her feet. No wonder the gnome had taken the shoes.

Beatis spun in a full circle. “Left or right, right or left … ,” he chanted.

Then she heard it: the high-pitched whine of the Blood Nymphs.

Not again.

Panic prickled at her skin like thousands of tiny needles. Branches clacked together behind her, gnashing like enormous teeth.

The gnome took a step back. “Deal be done.” He grinned. “Venom be poison in your blood. Feed on you till you die. I still win.”

“Where?” she repeated, lunging for him. He skidded to the left and Corinthe stumbled past him, already woozy from the venom. She spun around and tried lunging at him again, but she tripped over a tree root and landed hard on her hands and knees. The locket spilled out from under her shirt and the clasp came undone. The lid opened and the clearing filled with the tinny lullaby. The gnome froze on the edge of the clearing. The Nymphs quieted. Listened. Corinthe held her breath as the ballerina pirouetted slowly.

The gnome watched the ballerina with feverish excitement. Saliva ran down his chin and dripped onto the ground.

“You say you have nothing else!” he whined, taking a step closer.

A wave of dizziness forced her to take several deep breaths. It had to be the venom, working in her blood again. Could the gnome have been wrong? What if she didn’t have two or three days?

What if she only had hours?

“Show me the gateway,” she said. The gnome made a leap for her locket, but she scrambled backward and stood unsteadily. She pulled the chain off her neck and held it firmly, raising it high above his head. “Tell me and I’ll give you this.”

Beatis licked his lips nervously, his eyes darting back and forth between the locket in her hand and a low tree full of blue leaves to her right. Corinthe could tell at once this tree was not full of blood like the rest.

Her pulse sped up. The entrance to a gateway was there. Once she entered she’d have to navigate the Crossroad to Lucas.

Corinthe turned and ran.

“Mine!” Beatis shrieked. He produced the knife from a strap around his waist and made a leap for her. She felt a quick tug; a clump of hair came away in his hand.

The angry hum of the Nymphs swelled to a scream.

Corinthe snapped the locket closed as she hurtled toward the gateway, calling on every ounce of her strength as an Executor. She launched herself up into the tree. Waves of nausea rolled over her and she fought them back.

“Beatis will find you!” The gnome stabbed furiously at the tree as Corinthe climbed. “You be dead and I get the locket. Beatis take it from you when you be dead. Deal! It be a deal!”

She kept climbing, fighting through the fierce wind that had begun to blow. The swell of the Nymphs’ howling was drowned out. She could no longer hear Beatis’s threats. Her hair whipped around her head. Blue leaves swirled in and out of her vision. They looked like shattered pieces of the sky.

The wind grew stronger, like a hurricane rush. It was as if a tornado had descended on top of her, intent on ripping her apart one cell at a time. The gateway had opened, and the wind from the Crossroad rushed into the forest. The force yanked at her body, pulled her grip loose. For one second, she hung suspended in the gray nothingness.

Then she fell—up or down or sideways, she couldn’t tell.

She’d been told that like a river running through an endless prairie, the Crossroad forked through and across the whole universe, constantly changing direction. The motion created a furious wind, a current that blew its travelers between worlds.

Agony ripped through Corinthe’s chest, a hundred times worse than the hornet stings. She willed herself against the current, following Lucas’s trail, feeling his presence in the universe.

Focus.

She managed to open the locket, and the ballerina spun.

Think of finding the boy.

Think of killing him.

Then you can go home.