8 Gone is the Witch (45 page)

“Sure.” Carlos pointed at the two on the end
, their silhouettes’ rolling softly on the surface waves like drifting seaweed. “That’s Lilith and Ursula. You can tell by the hair. And look, that’s definitely Jerome’s over there.”

Ursula giggled.
“Methinks they await us.”

“But why?”

“I think they want us to join them,” I said.

“I’m not joining anyone
,” said Carlos, backing up.

Jerome was less apprehensive. He jumped into the water and climbed up on
his shadow as if mounting a surfboard. By straddling it, he found he could manage his balance and easily float.

The moment he lay flat, however,
all bets were off. He and his shadow took off like a rocket, screaming around the lagoon in a wave-thumping ride that appeared both dangerous and exhilarating.

I didn’t know what we could do to help him, save for knocking him off the damn thing with a
zip ball, but that was likely to kill him. I didn’t expect he’d like that much.

Then something amazing happened. He sat up
, and the shadow stopped. He lay forward again and the two blasted off on the ride of a lifetime. He continued doing that, displaying his mastery over a phenomenon he likely never encountered before. We could hear his laughter echoing throughout the lagoon, as it bounced off the rock cliffs enclosing the falls.

“Look at that!”
Carlos exclaimed, apparently changing his opinion about the mysterious shadows. “It looks like fun.”

Tony
said, “Yes, but don’t you dare think of––”

Before the
warning left his lips, Carlos jumped into the water, mounted his shadow and began racing Jerome around the lake.

Naturally, I couldn’t let them show me up. I jumped in and hopped on
to my shadow as easily as if putting on my shoes.

Ursula, who before th
e expedition wouldn’t climb on a bicycle without assessing every nuance of potential disaster, took to her shadow like a second skin.

Of the two remaining on the platform, I would have thought Leona too scared to try
such a stunt. I was wrong. She beat Tony into the water and proved herself a little hell raiser on a jet shadow.

After buzzing around the lagoon for a while, it became obvious that we had
acquired a method of transportation second only to portal jumping, which now seemed as far and few between as a Starbucks in the Antarctic. Ironic. I know.

We headed downstream in a wolf pack formation, only this time we let Ursula lead. She seemed like a natural at it, so we figured why not.

Before long, we had navigated into a shallow area of the river where the water got treacherously skinny. Worse, a dense fog had rolled in, swallowing the landscape and muting our shadows until they had completely disappeared.

Stranded and washed out, w
e waded onto the riverbank. Visibility was nearly nil, but with no other options, we joined hands and started back into the forest.

After bumping into
so many trees, Tony decided to retake the lead. He found a stick and fashioned it into a sightseeing cane, which he used to feel his way along the ground as we walked.

He instructed
us all to fall in line single file and take hold of the shirttail of the person in front of us. In my case, being behind Tony, I held onto his rawhide belt.

It worked
fine as far as keeping us from running into trees, but it proved painfully slow in the ground-covering department. It didn’t help matters either when Carlos questioned Tony’s sense of direction.

“What do you mean by that, Rodriquez?”

You can always tell when Tony’s angry with Carlos. He calls him Rodriquez. Better that, I suppose, than calling him Andrea, though there’s no guarantee I won’t call him that in the future.

“I mean how do you know we’re not traveling in circles?”

“We’re not traveling in circles.”

“
But how do you know?”

“Because I’m following the chirps.”

“What chirps?”

“
From the crickets. They’re chirping in front of us. They hear us coming and they scoot up a little further to stay ahead of us.”

“How do you know they aren’t
going in circles?”

“
Carlos, why would the crickets go in circles?”

“I don’t know, maybe they don’t want to wander
off too far from home. Crickets are territorial, you know. I heard––”

“
Whoo!” Leona shrieked. “What was that?”

“What
was what?” Tony stopped us abruptly. “You okay, Leona?”

“Sí, Detective.
Something cold touched on my leg and brushed me.”

“Blessed be!” cried
Ursula. “What hath brush thee, hath slithered past me as well!”

Tony
turned to grab my shoulder, but then let out a yelp. “Whoa! I felt that one.”

“You felt it, too?”
I asked.

“Abso-fuckin-lutely! There’s something out here.”

“`Tis a Wyvern, methinks,” said Ursula, “for such be the way of the serpent.”

“Snake
pass! Snake pass!” Jerome warned.

“All right,
everybody, chill,” I said. “Let’s keep our heads. How bad could it be if it hasn’t bitten anyone yet?”

“Yet?”
Carlos laughed nervously. “Couldn’t you have phrased that better?”

“O
oh! Methinks it did bite!”

“Ouch-ouch-ouch!”
Carlos cried as he hop scotched across the forest floor. “We have nibble! We have nibble! Damn! Got me on the shoulder, too!”

“
The shoulder?” I said. “What’s it doing up on your shoulder?”

Tony
felt his way to the nearest tree and pulled on a lower branch. “One of us should climb up.”

“Why?”

“I’m thinking this might only be ground fog. Maybe we can find a way out by looking above it.”

“I’ll do it,” said Carlos. “Anything to get off the ground.”

“What if the snakes are coming from the trees?”

“Lilith!”

“Sorry. The thought came to me.”

“O
w-wow-wow!” Tony yelled. “It got me. Something got me. Something definitely took a nip out of me. Carlos. Get up the damn tree!”

“Which one?”

“Any of `em! Just pick one.”

Carlos put his hand out
through the fog and started climbing the first tree he touched. He called to us. “Hey I can see! It’s clear for miles.”

“Seriously?”
I asked.

“Yes. It’s the strangest thing. The fog is like a
puffy quilt. Above it is crisp clear skies.”

“That’s great. Do you see a way out?”

“Yeah, I see... Uh-oh.”

“What do you mean, uh-oh? Carlos, talk to me.”

“Looks like Jerome was right. These things are unbelievable.”

“What things?”

“Snakes! Only they’re more like serpents. You should see this. They’re trolling in schools, porpoising above the fog line like dolphins. They’re huge with spiny fins running down their backs. Oh gawd! The teeth on that sucker!”

“
That’s it,” I said. “Come down. I think I have an idea.”

Tony
nudged me. “What are you thinking, Lilith?”

I pulled the witch’s ladder
from my pocket and began untying knots. “I’m going to make one hell of a vortex and, hopefully, suck all this fog out of the area.”

“
You think it’ll work?”

“Only one way to find out.”

I heard Carlos fall from the tree. “Son-of-a––”

“Hold that thought, Carlos, and grab onto th
e tree. Everyone, find something and hang on tight.”

“
Sure this is such a good––”

H
e never got the chance to finish. I released the third knot on the ladder, unleashing a massive whirlwind worthy of anything the ES could throw at us.

It roared like a freight train and ripped at our clothes
with the force of a Boeing jet engine. At one point, I heard Leona cry she couldn’t hang on. Tony offered to help her. I hollered for him to stay put, and for her to rotate around the trunk if she could and put the wind at her back.

The mayhem grew louder.
The sound of snapping branches raked in waves along the forest floor. The howl of wind grew deep, and soon the fog began to lift.

I
buffered my eyes with my shoulder, as white swirls of convection whipped by us in a maelstrom of blistering air. I saw hundreds of serpent-like beasts, their bellies fat with prey, fighting against the pull of the wind and losing.

Others, th
ose that Carlos saw swimming in the fog, defying gravity and trolling in schools, had either been sucked up by the vortex, or wrapped around trees in flattened ribbons of snake skin.

When it was o
ver, all but the smallest in a nest of thousands were gone. Only those closest to the ground had escaped the fury of the vortex. They quickly slithered away in desperate retreat for the river, perhaps expecting refuge in the shallow waters there.

Jerome, excited beyond words to see
so many snack-sized treats, gave chase to the lot of them. I hoped they were his favorite food. The thought of any of them getting away pissed me off.

“
You did it!” said Tony. He pulled me into a bear hug. “I don’t believe it.”

“Yeah, nice work,
” said Carlos, slowly picking himself up off the ground. “But you could have waited for me to get up first.”

“
Boo-hoo. Get over it. Ursula, Leona. You girls all right.”

“I am fine,” Leona reported. “Much thank
s to you for asking.”

“Aye,” said Ursula. “Thou art blessed with
presence of mind and skills to match. What hath we but thanks for you, for `tis surely not enough.”

“Aw,
shucks, don’t mention it,” I said, dismissing her in my naturally humble way. “All in a day’s work for an awesome witch like me.”

“No.
she’s right,” said Tony. “Some of those snakes were as big as crocodiles. It wouldn’t have taken much for them to swallow any one of us whole.”

“I hate snakes
,” Carlos grumbled.

“Hey, look!” I pointed to an unusual break in the tree
s not a dozen yards away. “What’s that?”

Tony
squinted through the lazy swirl of dust still settling on the ground. “I don’t know.”

I narrowed my focus and took a step toward the break. “Something’s happening over there.
Isn’t it?”

Carlos unsheathed his bolo. “Are the snakes coming back?”

“No.” I shook my head doubtfully, still not sure if what I thought I saw was the real thing or not.

Tony said, “Lilith?”

I pointed at the area in question and rolled my finger in small circular motions. “Tony, do you see to the left of that big tree there? Does that look like a wave or disturbance of some sort?”

“Yes, it does.”

“Tell me. Am I seeing things, or is all that dust stirred up by the vortex funneling into an invisible hole there?”

“Yes,
I... I think I see what you mean.”

“Aye!” said Ursula. “`Tis a hole for certain and a portal
, mayhaps.”

“A portal?” said Carlos. “Well
, what the hell are we waiting for? Come on. Let’s check it out!”

We ran, giddy with excitement and confident that our luck had changed for the better.
To be certain we weren’t observing a more common phenomenon, such as a dust devil or an atmospheric anomaly, Tony picked up a handful of dirt and pitched it into the hole.

“It doth fall in, but not fall out,” Ursula
noted.

Tony
’s smile stretched ear-to-ear. “You did it, Lilith. You found our portal. We can go home now.”

“Whoa, there cowboy
.” I splayed my hands to play down his excitement. “We’re not home yet. We don’t know where the closest portal to town is, but that’s about as far as this one will get us.”

“Doesn’t matter. That’s far enough.
We can figure it out from there.”

Carlos said, “What about Jerome?”

Tony avoided the question by looking at me. “Yeah listen, Carlos.” I softened my tone some. “About that. Jerome can’t come with us this time.”

I watched
his face age with pain. “What do you mean? We can’t just leave him here. How will he get by?”

Tony said,
“He’ll get by.” He tried to set his hand on Carlos’ shoulder, but Carlos wouldn’t have it. He backed away from us and turned his gaze towards the river.