Death of the Body (Crossing Death) (5 page)

The dog stared at me.
I need to pee,
his expression said.

“Now you decide to talk,” I snorted, pushing him aside to regain my footing.

I’ve never known anyone to listen,
he said, trotting by my side with childlike excitement.

“Well don’t get used to it.” I opened the door so the dog could get outside. “Make it quick while I go find my friends, and wait for me at the door to let you back in.”

Once the dog was outside I returned to the cellar. I cried out for Ralph and Hailey before I was halfway down the stairs.

“Have they gone?” Ralph responded.

“I was terrified for you. Are you okay?” Hailey added.

I ignored their questions. “I think it is obvious Joshua isn’t coming for us. We need to get out of here before we’re discovered.”

“Where will we go?” Ralph asked, panic obvious in his tone.

“We’ll head for the ancestral ruins to the north. There are caves for shelter and plenty of rivers for water and plants for food. It is far from the kingdom of men; they probably don’t know it exists yet. If any of our people have survived, I’d imagine they would go there.”

“Survived?” Hailey repeated.

I turned back up the stairs before I let my expression reflect my feelings to Hailey’s question. I didn’t answer.

“Edmund,” Hailey stated in a thoughtful whisper, “it will take us weeks to get to the ruins by horse.”

“Longer by foot.”

“We’re
walking
?” Ralph shrieked.

“We don’t have a choice. I don’t know why those men thought I was one of their children, but I think three kids on horses riding
out
of the city instead of
into
it would be suspicious. We are going to have a hard enough time walking out of here.”

The gold flecks in Ralph’s eyes caught fire in the dim light, but his face was exasperated. “And what if no one is at the ancestral ruins?”

“Then we will summon someone to us,” I answered.

Hailey’s face turned from fear into sour disbelief. “We aren’t powerful enough to perform such a spell.”

“Then we will practice until we are!”

The comment came across a little harsher than I had anticipated. Hailey’s resulting grimace was enough for Ralph to take action, “It’s the best plan we’ve got. Unless you can think of something better. We’re all scared.”

“What if they’re
all
dead?” Hailey asked. Her question was innocent enough but it brought to the surface the fear that each of us had been trying not to think about.

“I refuse to believe that,” I answered, not to reassure Ralph or Hailey, but myself. “And we can stand here all night and bicker over it until those two men that have taken over my house return, or we can gather what we can now, and leave.”

It looked like it took all the resolve that he had, but Ralph started packing.

Hailey stood still for a moment, her eyes studying my own. Unexpectedly, she flung her arms around me and held me in a tight embrace.

“You don’t have any better ideas, do you?” I asked honestly.

She pulled back, her eyes worried. “I just pray you are right.”

Three

Max’s long black hair blended in with the town’s dark cobblestone streets. He didn’t appear to be much more than a shadow moving rhythmically next to me. The thick pads under his paws made his gait stealthy. His eyes, however, were bright and excited. They caught the light so intensely that the humans we encountered looked at him with fear. He was a bit too curious for my taste; he wouldn’t just walk next to me, but had to swerve back and forth down the street putting his nose down as often as possible. I had to call to him a few times to stop him from venturing too far away from us.

Ralph and Hailey were a few steps behind me. We had thrown enough food into some over-the-shoulder bags to last us for a few days’ travel which, as long as we weren’t followed, would be enough to get us to a spot of land where we could gather more. Luckily, our people were adept at living off the land. Carrying any more in our sacks might have looked suspicious.

The city gates grew closer. I could see the lock was not in place and the bars stood slightly ajar.

Hailey’s whisper from behind me was thick with concern. “They left the gates open?”

I could feel a tinge of fear center on my neck. It might seem strange for a civilization as interconnected to the environment as ours to live in a town surrounded by a large brick wall and iron barred gates. Our gates were never open at night, and with reason. I had no idea men were our enemies until tonight. They were just another species we shared our planet with, like any other animal—but we did have other enemies. Our greatest enemy was a dark species long ago subdued that would every now and again be successful in getting through the city walls to snatch one of our children. Because the kingdom of men had no magical connection to the planet, these energumen, as they were called, could prey on them without consequence.

“So what?” Ralph bantered. “We were going out there anyway.”

I turned around in time to see Hailey give Ralph one of her looks. “
We
have means of protecting ourselves. The humans don’t.”

“So?” I said, surprised at the venom in my voice. “Let the humans suffer. I hope the energumen take them all.”

Now Hailey was angry. “We don’t even know what happened here.”

“You’re
defending
them? You saw the same thing I did,” I scoffed. “I showed you the memory of Joshua. You know what he said. He never came to get us. What do you think happened to him?”

Now she was close to tears. “They can’t
all
be dead.”

If even one mage was dead, that was enough for me to punish all the humans—if it were my choice. So I chose to ignore Hailey. I didn’t want to respond and confirm my own fear. Instead I turned and walked toward the gate.

I hadn’t made it two steps before a large man emerged from between two buildings. Since I hadn’t been paying attention to where I was going, I ran into his hard body with enough force that it would have made a normal man stumble over me. This man, however, was so large that I stumbled over him and tumbled onto the street.

“What are you kids doing?” he asked accusingly.

I was surprised to hear Ralph answer before I could even get back on my feet. “We’re from the orphanage. We were told to take this dog for a walk.”

I looked up in time to see the man’s expression pucker. He pointed one long, thick finger toward the gate. “You see those carriages approaching? They hail from the orphanage. I don’t see them here just yet.”

Ralph appeared to physically shrink as the color drained from his face.

“To which family do you belong, boy? Your father will no doubt want to hear about the misdeeds of the liar he shelters as a son.”

“It’s my fault, sir.” I found myself talking before I had even thought the words. “The stories he tells get us in trouble with strangers often. Certainly you can’t blame him for being scared. You are a rather,” I gulped, “large man, sir.”

The looming figure softened his stance enough to put down his pointing finger, but his eyes were still wary of us. “Then this is your dog, boy?”

“Yes.”

“And I assume he is well trained?”

I hesitated, not sure of where this line of questioning was meant to lead me. “Yes.”

“Then if you tell the truth, if he is your animal, and if he is well trained as you claim, make him do something for me.”

So it was meant to be a test. “What would you like to see him do?” I asked.

The man pondered for a moment. When he asked his question, it had a carefully contained inflection, like he was trying to hide something. “Does he hunt?”

“Yes.”

The man took an ominous step forward and started pointing again, this time toward the dog. “That breed cannot hunt,” he said between clenched teeth.

I had to take a step back to avoid being squashed by this man’s sudden tirade. He took another violent step in my direction.

“I assure you he can!” I pleaded.

My feet were off the ground a moment later. The man grabbed me by my shirt and hoisted me up toward his face. When our noses were mere inches from each other he spoke, “Then have him hunt something for me.”

The look in his eye was total victory, but he set me back down and glanced toward Max.

I need you to find something alive for me, Max. Anything will do. Some animal. Bring it back to me.

Max’s expression was the dog equivalent of someone rolling their eyes.
How am I supposed to do that?

You’re the dog! Haven’t you ever, you know, chased anything around?

Besides my tail?
His expression was playful.

“Well?” The man grew impatient.

“Max, hunt!” I commanded in the most authoritative voice I could muster.

The dog looked at me, obviously disgusted, but bounded for the gate.

The first carriage had just arrived, but was too large to fit through the gate. Max ducked under the carriage door as it opened, and startled the person climbing out. She sputtered profanities as she missed the last step and hit the ground with much less grace than she was obviously accustomed to expecting. Her dress was flowing and fit her wide frame with tailored precision. At the sight of her, the man who had threatened us ran to throw open the gate and greet her.

“Madam Lucacious,” he said, taking her gloved hand and pressing it to his mouth.

“Hello, Frederick,” she responded, acting as if having to acknowledge his presence was difficult.

We used this chance to make our way toward the gate. As soon as we were at the bars, I could see three other carriages lined up behind the first. Each was as large as the one towering above me.

“How many children?” Frederick was asking.

“61.” The woman responded to Frederick’s inquiries with the shortest sentences possible. As she made her way into the town, she looked down at us, her face twisted in disgust. “Uhg,” she groaned. “It might be 64.”

Ralph, Hailey, and I looked around at each other, trying to understand her meaning. It wasn’t until the children started unloading from the carriages that we realized we looked as ragged as they did.

“This is perfect,” Hailey whispered. “We can use the kids as a distraction to weave through the carriages and around the wall.” She was already leading us out the gates and toward the same hill where we had met Joshua earlier that evening.

My eyes were on the children as we carefully made our way toward the open country. Each child carried a small lumpy pillowcase, no doubt filled with a few personal belongings. They huddled together, wearing weary looks on their faces as they surveyed their new surroundings.

I admit I wasn’t watching where I was going. I was too busy taking pleasure in the image of these human children all being terrified of the city walls that towered above them. When I ran straight into the back of Ralph, I muttered a quick apology. I took a step back, expecting him to turn around and yell at me for not paying attention, but he stood there with his back to me. That’s when I noticed his hands were balled into fists. He looked intently between the ground and Hailey, who was also frozen in place.

“Are you sure?” she asked in a quivering voice. I realized I had missed something.

Ralph didn’t answer immediately. I took a step to the side so I could see around him.

“Edmund?” Hailey’s voice was pleading with me.

When I could see between them, I followed Ralph’s eyes to a large snake coiled stealthily in the high grass.

“It’s just a snake,” I said, stating the obvious, almost questioning the reason for their rigidity.

Then Ralph muttered a word that all three of us had already thought once tonight. The word caused my stomach to ball like Ralph’s fists and a surge of adrenaline caused my body to tense as rigidly as my friends’: “Energumen.”

“Are you sure?” I repeated Hailey’s question.

This was Ralph’s gift. He had the ability to see things the rest of us couldn’t see; the possession of a creature, like this snake, for example. Ralph nodded his head, and we all took an instinctive step back.

Energumen weren’t particularly dangerous to children of our age. The first spell we learned as soon as we could speak was the one to remove an energumen from their physical host. Energumen were spiritual creatures that had powers of their own, but could only manifest those powers if they had possession of a living body. An energumen in a physical body was definitely something to fear, but the knots in my stomach weren’t because of that. The spell to exorcize the energumen was visual, and the men who made our entire magical race vanish were only a few yards away.

As if sensing our tension, the snake reared its head, its dark, hallow eyes centered on me.

How odd and how strange
, we could all hear it speak,
that I would find three little mages while seeking for men.
Its voice was strangely sweet and alluring, quiet, like a whisper that sounded like a song. The creature inched toward us. We took another step back.
Perhaps I will take you back to my realm, and leave the men be. A great reward for one mage; imagine the prize for three!