Chapter 45: We Had Brought the Wrong Kind of Spirit

Chapter 45: Chapter 45: We Had Brought the Wrong Kind of Spirit

Dante put himself between Anika and the stream before remembering that his best fighting performance had recently involved punching a shoulder. Rhea stayed beside them, turning her phone toward the trees as she tried to reconnect the call.

"You heard me say the name," he called toward the woman they could not see. "That doesn’t make us expected guests, and she isn’t going anywhere without us."

"I would prefer not to be discussed like luggage," Anika said. Her fingers rested near his elbow, and he could not tell whether she was warning him or making sure he stayed within reach.

A narrow face appeared inside a hollow tree across the stream. The woman’s features moved against the bark without a body beneath them, and a small brass speaker hung from the branch above her, humming after each word.

"Your arrival was reported at the turn," she replied. "Visitors with unfinished obligations wait at the court entrance."

Rhea photographed the brass speaker. Its hum stopped with the woman’s mouth, but the lips remained part of the bark when she went silent. Dante couldn’t tell where the spell ended and the listener began. He wanted an exit before finding out what else the trees could do.

He asked for the public exit instead of giving his name again. The face disappeared, and a root lifted from the water, sliding over the paving toward Anika’s ankle.

She stepped away, but a second root caught Dante’s shoe and pulled him toward the bank. He grabbed a branch with his less injured hand, sending pain through the bruised knuckles from the student-center fight. His foot slid another inch, and all his plans for a calm warning became a very ordinary shout.

Anika traced a tight spiral in the air above the root, leaving a bright line behind her finger, and spoke, "Barama, gamgin gajireul pureora." Wind burst beneath it as her final word ended, loosening its grip long enough for Rhea to pull Dante back.

The root slapped the empty paving, then withdrew into the stream. Anika finished the effect and held the nearest tree while she caught her breath, which frightened him more than the sudden attack had.

"That was an immediate threat," she said when she saw him looking at her hand. "You can put it in whatever report they make us fill out after this."

Rhea checked Anika with her packed monitoring charm and recorded the time, then told Dante to lower his phone light. Pale shapes followed its beam between the trees, one opening a mouth wider than its head.

Dante asked for the reading before he realized it was Anika’s choice to share it. He corrected himself, and she let Rhea show him the fall without offering an explanation. He wanted to call it the wind spell and be finished worrying, but she had held heavier weather steady before he arrived. That comparison stayed with him as he lowered the light.

"Court guests, with people expecting us home and terrible manners if we miss it," he announced, borrowing the tree woman’s words. She ordered the shapes back, giving him a stupid thrill at guessing a useful rule.

"Then take the lit route," she said. "Refusing the entrance means refusing guest protection."

The lamps bobbed above the bank without posts or wires, brightening as they approached. Dante followed beside the stream, with Rhea on Anika’s other side. He photographed each turn and slowed when Anika held his sleeve, refusing to let the moving lights hurry them apart.

"Tell me if I’m going too quickly," he said, watching the wet stones instead of performing confidence for the trees. Rhea checked the path behind them and gave him a small nod. He felt better knowing someone had heard the useful part of his voice, although he still wanted a future in which being useful required fewer things trying to eat him.

The lamps ended beside a mushroom wider than a dorm building. Its pale stem held windows, an elevator shaft and a glass entrance with a sign asking visitors to remove muddy shoes or accept cleaning charges.

"It has an elevator," Dante said, pointing before he could stop himself. "Of course it has an elevator, because stairs would make the giant mushroom ridiculous."

At the entrance, a woman lowered a route book beneath thin gold glasses. Fluffy antennae rose above honey-blonde hair with dark layers underneath, and golden wings folded behind a fitted yellow-and-cream outfit.

She caught Dante staring at her waist and lifted her chin, almost distracting him from her upside-down book. "I’m Honey, the city’s greatest scholar, whom you should have asked before taking the visitor turn backward."

Rhea asked if she’d been available at the turn. Honey denied any duty to stand beside every sign while pushing a door marked PULL, so Anika opened it before Dante disgraced himself laughing.

Inside, glass walkways curved around the hollow stem. Little dragons warmed a bakery oven, and shoppers waited beside a lift while parcels floated down from the floors above. Dante could smell bread through the damp mushroom air. People lived here, which somehow made being trapped feel stranger.

Honey led them toward a lift, checked her book and took the passage beside it instead. They reached a locked supply gate beneath a row of wilting flowers before she announced that their questions had made her miss the better route.

Dante started back, but Honey stopped him from touching the gate. She checked the dry flower cups, drew a small curling mark with her finger and spoke softly in Korean before a drop of glowing nectar settled into each one.

The flowers lifted, revealing a silver cleaning cable stretched across the floor. A brush the size of a dog raced along it and disappeared through the gate, leaving Dante grateful that he had not been introduced to the local floor treatment.

"The petals flash silver when that line is running," Honey explained, suddenly precise. "Someone forgot their water, so they couldn’t show you."

Rhea photographed the warning flowers before Honey brought them back to the lift. Dante kept clear of the cable this time.

He checked which silver petals faced the walkway. Honey showed him, suddenly more certain than she had been about the route. Dante thanked her without adding a joke. She had noticed something the rest of them missed, and he wanted her to keep talking.

Honey’s antennae lifted as though the compliment was overdue, and she asked him to remember that useful detail when describing their meeting.

At the court entrance, an attendant held up a tablet showing Blackwell’s public incident notice. Anika’s photograph sat beside the request for witnesses to Martin’s death, and the attendant matched it to her face before lowering the screen.

"The other two can request departure," he told her. "Your application needs a hearing, unless your companions are willing to leave you here."