Chapter 85: Helpless

The boat scraped against the shore with a low, grinding groan, and I was the first one out of it. Not out of bravery. Out of a very sincere desire to put as much distance as possible between myself and the four people who had spent the entire crossing humming a tune that I was fairly certain Theodore had made up on the spot, something about a dreamer and his mysterious lady.

I did not ask for the lyrics of course.

The ground here was stony and grey, the mountain rising above us in one huge, sullen slab that blotted out half the sky. The black water lapped behind us, quiet now, almost polite, like it had finally run out of things to try.

Then I noticed the bones.

They were scattered across the shore in long, uneven drifts, ribs as thick as my forearm, skulls with too many eye sockets, jaws that looked like they belonged to something that used to eat other things that used to eat people.

All different shapes, all different sizes. And every last one of them picked so clean that the surface shone pale even in this dim light. Somebody had eaten these creatures down to nothing, slowly and thoroughly, the way you eat a chicken leg when you know there won’t be another meal for a week.

Further along, blackened scraps of wood lay half buried in the gravel, charred at the edges. A campfire, or several. Somebody had been here for a while.

And at the far end of the shore, tucked in the shadow of a jutting rock, sat a small blue tent.

Nobody said anything.

The wind moved through the bones with a soft, hollow whistle, and I found that my hand had drifted to the hilt of the dagger without my permission.

"So," Arthur said at last, in the careful voice of a man trying not to wake something up. "Do we set up the Spirit Barrier first, or do we talk to whoever is in the tent?"

"I think talking to the person in the tent is more important," I said quickly, perhaps a little too quickly.

"Who cares what you think?" Theodore said, and laughed, loud and cheerful, entirely unbothered by the bones.

"We do need to meet them," Sera added, and I saw the smile tugging at the corner of her mouth before she had even finished the sentence. "Him. Or her. Who knows? Maybe she’s the star of the dream. Or maybe he is."

’Umm.’ I stared straight ahead. ’I’m not gay.’

I decided, very firmly, not to say that out loud, because saying it out loud would only feed the flames, and I had a strong feeling that this crowd was the type to add kindling to a bonfire just to see how tall it could get.

We walked toward the tent in a loose line, boots crunching over gravel and old bone. Every step made the silence thicker. My spiritual intuition, which had been so helpfully vocal earlier tonight, was suspiciously quiet now, which I chose to interpret as a good sign, and which I suspected was a bad one.

We were maybe ten paces from the tent when the flap moved.

It opened slowly. Very slowly. A hand appeared first, gripping the canvas, and then a head, and then a whole person, crawling out with the wary, hunched posture of someone who very much expected to see something with too many teeth.

He was young, maybe twenty, a little older than Sera. He had short black hair that were faded at the sides. Two small blue earrings caught the dim light. He had no facial hair at all, and he had a lean, wiry frame that looked like it had been running on nothing but rations and stubbornness for far too long.

His eyes landed on us. Widened.

"RAAAAAAAHHHH!!!"

He came out swinging, two swords in his hands, one of the blade was already arcing toward Theodore’s head.

"WHOAAAAHHHH!" Theodore yelped, throwing both hands up and stumbling backward in a way that would have been very funny if it hadn’t come with a sword. "CHILL! CHILL!!!"

The swordsman froze mid-swing. His chest heaved. His eyes darted from face to face, and for a long, ridiculous second, the two of them just stood there, staring at each other, both of them breathing hard.

"You could have told me you were human," the young man gasped, lowering one blade a fraction. Then he stiffened and raised both again. "Wait. Wait. You’re not Culex’s soldiers, are you?!"

I blinked. "Who?"

"Who the f*ck is Culex?" Theodore demanded, before I could get the word out, and honestly, it was a better question.

The young man hesitated. His eyes flicked from Theodore to Sera to Mary, then back to me, as if searching for the lie hiding behind our faces. Slowly, reluctantly, he let the swords stab in the ground.

"How do I know you people are telling the truth?" he asked, and his voice was rough, cracked from disuse.

I opened my mouth to say something reasonable. Something diplomatic. Something that would convince this suspicious, sleep-deprived stranger that we were exactly what we looked like: five exhausted teenagers with terrible survival skills.

Arthur got there first.

He looked at me. He was already laughing.

"Put this guy in a Spirit Barrier."

I turned to stare at him. "Arthur."

The stranger considered this. He glanced at me, then at the others, and gave a small, wary nod. "Alright."

"No," I said. "Wait. That’s not what he..."

Four hands closed around me at once.

Theodore had my left arm. Sera had my right. Mary had a fistful of my collar, and Arthur, that traitor, had already started dragging me toward a clear patch of ground with the cheerful efficiency of a man who had been looking forward to this since the boat.

"This is a misunderstanding!" I shouted. "He meant him! The stranger! We’re trying to verify HIS honesty!"

"He said your name," Mary said calmly. "I heard it."

"He did not say my name!"

"Close enough," said Theodore.

I felt the gravel scrape under my boots and felt the panic climb up my spine, and in a last, desperate act of survival, I did the only thing I could think of. I closed my eyes and prayed with all the sincerity that a dying man could muster.

’The Supreme Angel of Fate;

You are the Grace of Destiny;

The Spirit of Time;

I, Edmund Rhys, your servant, humbly request that you save me.’

For a moment there was only silence.

Then a voice answered, dry and amused and unmistakably male, it drifted up from somewhere deep inside my chest.

"I ain’t helping you this time, kid."