CHAPTER SIX: THE HOLLOW
There are oases and mirages in the desert - so, too, for the soul. Toward which do you tread, friend?
-Aliah el Lassa, 'A Season of Fire'
Thea wasn't sure how much later Larian and Heath showed up, but it couldn't have been too long. Heath had tracked them down because, of course he had; he could track a locust through a wheat field in a thunderstorm at night. On the subject of which, it had started to rain. Thea was glad for that - it masked his tears.
Larian leapt off her horse and crouched next to Matthias, still cradled in Thea's arms.
"For the love of Avalon, him, too?" she said and, for some reason, started listing off plants, mushrooms, and insects. Bilberry, anise, jester's wort, and crake-beetle, to name a few. She repeated the list, after which Heath darted into the dark of the woods.
Thea realized with a start that Larian was shaking him. He looked up, forcing the expression of despair from his face, and looking into eyes far darker than the night around them.
"Pressure, Thea! Apply pressure!"
Pressure. Right. He ripped Matthias's shirt at the seam, the fine silk shirt he'd worn for the masquerade, balled it up, and jammed it against his side, his small knuckles white from gripping it, the tendons in his slim arms taut with anxiety and pressure. Could he even apply enough pressure to do any good? Matthias didn't indicate any pain in response to the pressure, but he was still breathing - and his face had gone ashen and those breaths were getting shallow.
The rain made Thea's hair into a black mess that trickled rivulets down his face, cool little droplets going drip-drip-drip off his nose and patting upon the leather of Matthias's jerkin. All he could hear was the sound of his own breathing, the hush of rain, and the horse nearby shifting its bridle. Then he heard the beat of hooves and his heart started pounding - somehow, they'd found them! He unsheathed Matthias's buck knife and flailed it to the empty darkness.
Only, it wasn't them, whoever them was. It was Heath. He'd tracked down Cano's horse and ridden it back, a sack of herbs and other assorted wild ingredients on his back.
"I killed the beetles - I hope that's all right... they kept crawling out," he said.
"I only need one beetle," Larian stated.
For the first time, Thea noted that Larian been tending to somebody else while Thea compressed Matthias's wound, a muscular man with a gold-gleaming cuirass pried open like a clamshell - Cano!
"Cano!" Thea gasped.
"It doesn't look good," Larian agreed.
She took the sack of ingredients, unrolled it in a smooth motion, and started grinding and mixing the components with a smooth river rock, using the round indentation in a nearby stone as a makeshift mortar. She squatted by the stream, washing some of the ingredients, and discarding others into the flow - too low in quality or lacking the right bits. With a sigh, Larian eased to her feet and plodded over to Thea, handing him two small pouches, pungent, heavy with ingredients, and oozing out liquid.
"This one goes on the wound. The other..." she pointed to her cheek. "Right between the teeth and the cheek. Make sure he doesn't swallow it. Once the bleeding stops, I'd like to get him moved somewhere more... well, less in the middle of the forest, in the night, in the rain, in a flood zone."
"Is he going to die?"
Larian shrugged and prodded at Matthias's abdomen with her fingers. "Probably not - he's passed out from shock, but if the internal bleeding isn't worse than it feels, the blood loss itself won't kill him. But Cano? Quite likely," she said. "Eight arrows, some of them quite deep, and a crushed forearm. That he's alive at all is pretty remarkable, but he's still losing blood - so I've got more work to do."
"Poor Cano," Thea said.
"Poor Cano," Larian agreed.
+++++
At some point Thea, dead tired, drifted into an uneasy sleep, one hand upon Matthias's chest, as if he was forbidden from succumbing to his wounds until Thea said otherwise. That uneasy sleep transitioned to uneasy dream, and in it he saw the raven-haired woman with her crown of stars - a woman, he realized, whom he was increasingly coming to resemble. He followed after her, through the sun-dappled forest, morning dew brushing at his bare legs, brushing at his shoulders and face, as he ambled naked through the forest. The forest floor beneath his feet was a bed of moss softer than any down, and his lithe feet left no prints in their wake.
Thea found himself in a hollow, a secluded enclave within the forest with a stream running down a mossy rock face and into a deep, clear pool. The raven-haired woman dipped down - a motion so elegant you couldn't possibly call it a crouch or a squat, and peered into the pool, seeming to look far down into the water. Then she turned to Thea and said something in a language he couldn't understand.
"What?" Thea said.
She offered a wan smile and said,
"My power's weak, and ready ye are not,
yet I may tease this nettle that you've sought -
upon my bed, make tribute in my name,
and I shall bring your number to this spot."
She gestured to a little alcove near the rock face, and there Thea could see some ancient altar carved into the rock. Now covered with moss like a dripping of verdant wax grown over the centuries, the goddess's face at its front was barely recognizable through the fuzz of green. Having nothing else to offer, Thea offered himself, laying down upon the cool, damp moss. It was so soft and Thea felt very tired, his limbs leaden. He closed his eyes for a moment, and when they opened the woman stood above him, smiling beatifically. She reached down with a slender hand and gently, so gently, she pressed against his abdomen, pressed inside him, and then pulled back out, pulling something out of Thea, little tendrils stretching and recoiling as they dislodged from deep within his body. The woman's hand was still perfectly, impeccably clean, but between her slim fingers was a bloody, blackened thing, hissing and writhing against her grip. Then she held it to her lips and devoured it, the red of blood and black of bile tarnishing her pearl-white teeth.
+++++
Thea awoke with the dawn, the feeling gradually returning to her limbs, cold and clammy in the morning's cool. She sat up and found herself in the little alcove in the woods, supine upon the mossy stone. She slid off of it and examined the thing - it was just a moss-tinged outcropping, vaguely blocky, and not an altar. She must have dreamt it... just as she must have dreamt of that impossibly deep, clear pool, for the pool in the hollow beyond wasn't more than waist deep, continuing on to become a babbling brook. They must have followed the stream last night, tracked it to this spot, and decided to stop there to recover.
She checked on Matthias - still alive and breathing the slow, even breaths of deep sleep. She laid a hand upon his chest, feeling the steady thud of his heartbeat. Cano was alive, too, ashen and cool to the touch but breathing, a dozen little poultices secured around his body. And Larian and Heath? They were curled up with one another in the deepest part of the cove, so peaceful in their slumber that Thea didn't dare wake them. Instead, she padded out to the pool, drank of the cool, clean water, and realized that she really, really had to pee.
She walked downstream a little ways, hiked up her dress, and squatted at the water's edge. Thea glanced down, realizing for the first time that something fundamental had shifted within her - she, her, Thea thought. When had that happened?
Last night, she realized. Whether it had been just-a-dream or some sort of supernatural portent, Thea had offered up some portion of herself to the goddess - to Astrilla, some part of her said. And the goddess had taken whatever portion of Thea she didn't care for and replaced it with... well, something else. Femininity? Thea shrugged - if so, not much, for her groin was still smooth and sexless, possessing only a little divot for urine to escape.
Once finished, she returned to the pool by the alcove, taking another drink and examining herself in the shimmering surface. Nobody would ever mistake that face for a 'very smooth boy', as Matthias had said the other day. Not too much in the overall features had changed, but the effect was spectacular - smoother, rounder, and more expressive, an earnest and feminine face so heart-achingly beautiful that Thea couldn't help but smile at it... and the very notion that she could make such a face smile made her feel warm... and that powerful reaction to her own face made her frown... which made her gasp, all in the span of three seconds. It was not the face of a person you wanted to be cross with you - brooding and intense, it was like all of that beauty had been summoned into a storm front and sent to earth as a purifying tempest.
"How in the thirteen hells did we get here?" she heard Heath mutter back in the alcove.
"I was about to thank you for bringing us here," Larian said.
"Wish I could take credit... fuck, I'm sore and need a piss," he said.
Larian checked on her patients and then plodded out to the pool, crouching next to Thea at the water's edge. "Do you know anything about this, Thea?"
Thea pursed her lips. "Maybe," she said, stopping at the sound of her voice. It was a silvery voice, a bit higher than the day before, but still a shade lower than Larian's. "I had a dream about the goddess... Astrilla," she said, feeling out the sound of the name. It felt powerful. "She said she'd take us to safety for a sacrifice... and I think I sacrificed part of myself. Does that make sense?"
Larian nodded. "The road to perdition is taken one step at a time. Don't tell Cano, assuming he ever wakes up, but I'm pretty much convinced that there are yes gods-but-God. As the good book says: There is more in Heaven and Earth than is dreamt in Man's philosophy."
"Hoist by its own petard," Thea chuckled.
+++++
Against all expectations, Cano did wake up, but Matthias awoke first. He started stirring as they returned to the hollow after an outing for more ingredients. Thea had followed after Larian, holding the pouch of ingredients and squishing the beetles and bugs that were too dexterous to stay in the satchel. As they waded through the undergrowth, Thea pointed to every plant, fungus, and insect she couldn't identify and asked its name.
"Gingerberry, weatherwort, poison oak - don't touch that one, and yellow hopper," Larian said. "We already saw that one."
"This one looks different," Thea said. "It isn't ripe?"
"Overripe."
Thea soaked it all in, asking the purpose of the different ingredients when Larian found one good enough to use in her preparations. Larian, it seemed, knew every single thing in the forest, from the towering larch down to the tiny green hoppers ('arbor aphids') that would occasionally flit upon Thea's skirt before springing away.
"How do you know all this?" Thea asked.
Larian just shrugged, her coppery hair shimmering in the dappled light. Thea's hair didn't shimmer in anything - every bit of light was absorbed in its darkness... a very neat effect, though it made her hair appear unnatural. Instead, it seemed to have its own internal glimmer, sparkling and shimmering irrespective of the light.
"Some of this stuff I already knew," Larian said, handing Thea a wispy white flower. "Deacon's lace, improves the circulation, decreases inflammation - crushed to a paste, it's good for healing, but never put it over a wound that's still bleeding."
"Some of it you already knew," Thea clarified. Had language always been so subtle?
Larian nodded. "The rest, I haven't a clue. It's like some great font of information is bubbling up beneath my brain. I need only dip into it and the information comes flooding out. Is it like that with you? Heath says you played the lute even better than the girl at the masquerade."
"I hope she's all right," Thea said.
"The actress? Me, too. But... what about the lute?"
Thea shrugged. "I just copied what she did. I didn't do anything special."
Larian pursed her lips and turned to Thea, night-dark eyes taking her in. "And could you do it again?"
"Of course."
"And what's that?" She pointed to a little fruiting vine winding half-way up an elm.
That one was easy - Larian had already told her about it. "Weir vine. The vine itself has a bitter extract that can be used to induce vomiting - harmless but effective in small amounts. The berries, when ripe, produce an intoxicating and deeply analgesic effect - that means pain-relieving. Too much can cause respiratory arrest."
"Word for word," Larian said, chuckling. "You even got my inflections down. There's a lot you don't know, but not for long - your memory is a sponge. Now... let's get these back to our patients."
They'd taken a broad circuit through the nearby forest, so it only took them a minute or two to return to the hollow. Heath had gone out, as well, but had already returned and started a fire. He sat in front of it, skinning one of the several woodland creatures he'd caught, making quick, expert motions with Matthias's buck knife. He waved as they passed, lofting the half-skinned body of a ground squirrel the size of Thea's thigh.
"Be ready in a bit!" he said.
Back in the alcove, Larian showed Thea how to prepare a poultice and, as she tended to Cano, directed Thea to prepare a poultice and an oral infusion to place in Matthias's mouth. Thea copied her, motion-for-motion at first and then adjusted for differences in pack size and content. She removed Matthias's poultice from the night before, carefully peeling it from the wound, and dabbed at the dirt and clotted blood beneath with a clean cloth. With that, Matthias started to moan and rouse, and Thea forced herself to secure the new poultice before trying to wake him.
"Matthias?" she said, running a hand along his sweat-beaded forehead. "Matthias, are you awake?"
"Mmm..." he said. "Mouth..."
"Something's wrong with your mouth?"
He coughed, turned his head, and spat out a slimy brown blob. Thea looked on, horrified for a moment, thinking he'd coughed up some vital organ, before realizing it was his oral infusion from the night before. She laughed and turned his head to face her.
"Something tastes horrible," Matthias said, smacking dry lips. "I..." His eyes opened, squinting in the noonday light beyond the alcove, and his eyebrows slowly rose. "Th... Thea?" he said. "You're... that's really you?"
"I think you might have hurt your head," she said, glancing back toward Larian. "Maybe I should get..."
"No... it's just... you've changed more. It's just a bit much to..." He tried to sit up, but Thea kept him down with a gentle hand. His breathing sped and his eyes started to go wild - a symptom of the medication? "Madeline. My Maddie... I need to go," he said. "I need to go to Rouentz."
A dream, it turned out. Once Thea got him calm, once he promised he wouldn't try to sit up quite yet, and once he agreed to down three whole cups of water - it was a small cup, the antique silver communion cup purloined from his bag of valuables - Matthias recounted his dream:
"I was at the homestead," he said. "My old homestead, outside of Attist, before Nero and I joined our father in Nortsair. It was after the raid, after I returned home and found everything burned to ash, my Hannah lying dead and defiled by the ruins of our own home. I saw her, and it was like a fresh wound..." He winced at the pain in his side. "Appropriate, I suppose... and I collapsed by her side, weeping. Then a man was behind me - tall, with dark skin. Oil-dark skin, darker than mine, even darker than Cano's, and his hair was a mass of woolly locks, their tips glowing like coal.
"He gestured for me to stand, and I did. And he walked to the still-smoldering wreck of the house, and he lifted it, lifted the glowing-hot char of the house's mainbeam like it was nothing, lifted the collapsed and steaming stones of the hearth like baubles, and gathered me there. And... and I could feel the heat, it wiggled the air, and it should have seared and cooked my flesh, but it was nothing. And there, beneath the ruin of the house, beneath the collapsed hearth, was the body of my Sygmund. He died, frightened out of his mind, cooked to death..." Matthias said. Thea blotted at the tears streaming down his face.
"I'm so sorry, Matthias. It… it was just a dream," Thea said - though both of them knew the dream had the ring of clarity to it, a dream sent from those realms beyond mortal comprehension.
"It was more than a dream," Matthias stated. "I have to believe that it was... because that dark man showed me my Sygmund, and he showed me my Madeline... and she wasn't dead. Not dead and not broken, not yet. The strange man took me away from the homestead... I didn't want to go, because I couldn't bear to leave my Hannah again, even if she was dead. And the man said to me: 'leave the dead to their own counsel,' and his voice was hollow like ringing bells. He led me from the homestead, and suddenly we were far away... maybe not so far away. A day's ride perhaps. We were in Rouentz, and men with weapons were roving the streets, and they were forcing the townspeople to rebuild the palisades under threat of torture..."
"The raiders collapsed the southern palisade..." Thea said. "Did you know that?"
Matthias shook his head. "I didn't. But they were rebuilding it in my dream, maybe half-way done, and the great hall was burnt and they were hauling in stones to build a tower in its place. We walked through the street, and nobody saw us... but I saw her. I saw my Maddie - three years older, but definitely her, I saw her in rags, in chains, following with three other girls in chains behind a big, tattooed man with a big red beard braided down to his navel. 'The living you may counsel yet,' the dark man said. 'This is your daughter, Matthias, son of Edric, and the last of your line. Save her now, or your blood will be as sand for all of time.' Then... then I saw a man beside him, and it was my father, clad as he was at the masquerade, but with his peacock feathers all gone to gray. All of him had gone to gray. He opened his mouth to speak, and sand poured out... and then my own mouth tasted like death and my pain awoke me. What... Thea, what do you think it means?"
Thea took a deep breath and looked Matthias in the eye. "It means it's time for a new oral infusion," she said, wiggling the packet in her hand. "And we have to go to Rouentz to rescue your daughter, and we haven't got much time."
i like the (probably) divinely induced trip dreams
Thanks! In a story like this, if something is probably divinely-induced, then it's *definitely* divinely-induced.