Green Jack (16 page)

“But numen
comes from the earth,” Jane said. “The first Green Jack awakened it
when he stepped out of the forest. We’ve channeled it and studied
it ever since.”

“Is that what
City folk believe?” Shanti raised her eyebrows. “Odd.”

“Don’t you pray
to the Green Gods?” The entire village felt as ritual-soaked as the
Collegium temple.

“Sometimes.
Sometimes to the earth, to the ancestors. Sometimes we dance the
rain. People have been doing it for centuries, long before the
Jacks even.”

Jane had never
heard any of her professors talk about numen that way. Like it was
in everything, not just the Green Jack masks. “Don’t you have
ceremonies to control numen?”

“Numen can’t be
organized or measured,” she scoffed. “It needs to stay wild. No
wonder you’re all the way you are. And no wonder your friend is
sick.”

As Jane tried
to integrate Feral beliefs with Directorate decrees inside her
head, the sun sank into the hills as though it was being swallowed.
The sky was streaked with purple, lavender and oranges. Jane had
never seen anything more beautiful in her life, not even on feast
days when paper lanterns were strung between the houses in her
neighbourhood. The green of the sunken gardens seemed to glow as
the light faded. Water barrels stood on platforms and a well of
some kind had been dug into the ground until groundwater bubbled
up. It was surrounded with decorated bones, chimes made of salvaged
metal, stubs of burning candles in clay dishes and faded prayer
flags.

When the drums
started, it was a low thrumming that vibrated under her feet. Her
numina mark thrummed at the top of her spine.

“It’s time.”
Anya replied, pushing out of the tent. The last of the light
flashed off her spear head.

Jane scrambled
to her feet. “Time for what?”

Two villagers
carried Saffron to a raised platform over the gardens, depositing
her into a hammock knotted with feathers. Sage and sweetgrass smoke
blew around her. Small fires were lit all around the village and
more herbs scented the smoke, making Jane dizzy enough that she had
to sit down again. Shanti had a cloth mask decorated with bells
over her mouth and nose.

When Elisande
collapsed, the rest of the villagers sank into unconsciousness.
Only Shanti and a few other warriors remained upright and alert.
Jane was awake but she was made of water and stone, impossible to
move. She could only watch as Saffron began to twitch and tremble,
the firelight making her eyes appear red when they rolled back in
her head.

Chapter
25

Saffron

The ground was
far below, impossibly far, and Saffron knew that touching it would
be like landing on rusty nails. Time pulsed, dilating, retracting,
moving backwards. The in-between was soft, cooling, full of
lavender shadows and torchlight. She was neither fish nor fowl, as
her Oona used to say. Even now, hallucinating with pain, it didn’t
make any sense.

She couldn’t
see the villagers who carried her, only the whirling spill of stars
overhead. They winked like the eyes of old and patient gods. She
smelled sage, pine. The drums were in perfect tune with her heart.
It was steadying, reminding it of its proper natural rhythm.

Elisande was
suddenly there, leaning over so that her pale face obliterated the
stars. When she moved, they streaked, like a crown. She wore an
antlered beaded headdress.

Saffron
wondered where Jane was, what they had done to her. She found it
mattered, and it was curious enough to distract her for a moment—no
one mattered except for Oona and Killian for so long now. Trust her
to care for a girl made of glass. She’d shatter before long.
Alliance, or not.

Saffron’s
tattoo sent unexpected electrical shocks through her veins,
stealing breath, thought, everything. Time lapsed again. The sky
was impossible: like layers of melted rock candy. Saffron was a
dandelion gone to seed, floating on the breath of a child’s wish.
She tasted bitter herbs: milk thistle, wormwood.

Elisande was
the first to rise and her skin glowed faintly. She scowled at
Saffron. “Get up.”

Though she felt
insubstantial and odd, Saffron found she could stand for the first
time in days. Her tattoo bled darkness, the skin around it bright
as sunsticks in a dark stairwell. She was still in the Badlands but
the colours were wrong: amplified and alien. She couldn’t tell if
it was day or night, the light seemed to be coming from all over
and the shadows were long. She couldn’t help but choose paints for
an imaginary canvas: cerulean, ochre, violet.

Anya snapped
her fingers in Saffron’s face. “Don’t get distracted here,” she
ordered sharply. “It’ll kill you.”

She blinked
slowly. “Where exactly is here?”

“The
Underworld.”

Her eyebrows
lifted. “That doesn’t sound promising. If you wanted to kill me, a
dagger’s easier.”

Elisande
shrugged. “A place is a place. You just need a map.”

“And a big
stick,” Anya added with a flash of an incendiary smile. The light
caught on the copper wire wrapped around her staff.

Elisande nodded
once. “Follow me.”

Saffron looked
dubious. “Kid, what are you? Like eleven?”

“Thirteen.”

“Thirteen?
Shouldn’t you be doing whatever passes for homework out here?”

“If I was doing
that, who would save you? Who would fetch your soul back?”

“It’s not my
soul. It’s this bloody tattoo that jacking hurts.”

Elisande rolled
her eyes. “And that’s why you need me to save you.”

Elisande took
them down into a crevice with steep narrow steps carved into the
stratified clay until it opened onto that grass stretched out into
a green and gold sea all around. Saffron followed seeing as she had
no other choice. Her arm hurt too much and she was too painfully
alert to be drugged. Nothing was hazy or nebulous, it was all sharp
light and shadows. And while it felt strange to trust her safety to
a little girl, there was no denying Elisande knew what she was
doing. And Anya treated the younger Feral with marked respect.
Saffron couldn’t drudge up that kind of reverence but she might be
able to keep her mouth shut. Maybe.

The leaf mask
was still limp but it was also superimposed with a lime-and-mint
glowing version, as if remembering what it ought to be. It pulsed
with promise, vines curling like a lover’s fingers through her
braids, berries red as lips after kissing, thorns hiding in wait
because what was a kiss without a hint of teeth?

Anya held up a
hand. Saffron didn’t see anything dangerous, just that green grass
and the purple mountain. The clouds made shapes over their heads:
griffin, fox, sunflower. Jane would know what they signified, but
Anya wasn’t looking at them either, she was studying the ground.
Saffron tensed, expecting snakes, scorpions, fire ants. We’re there
even insects in the Underworld?

“Don’t let the
shadows touch you,” Anya snapped.

Saffron stepped
back, feeling ridiculous. “Shadows? Really? I was expecting
monsters.”

Elisande slid
her an exasperated glance, the kind only a thirteen-year-old could
manage, shaman powers or not. “What else is a shadow that isn’t
attached to anything? Use your eyes, Elysian.”

The shadows
were dark as oil slicks, slithering and slippery as they closed the
distance between them. “What do they do?” she asked, hopping onto a
boulder. Darkness pooled at the rounded edges.

“Drain you,”
Elisande replied, pulling a painted flute from where it was tucked
into her wide embroidered belt. “Turn you into food.”

“And you’re
going to play it a lullaby?” Saffron snapped.

“Not
exactly.”

Elisande fit a
porcupine quill from one of her pouches into one end of the flute
and then blew hard in the other. The quill pierced the shadow
oozing over the rocks towards Saffron. There was a small
sound—squeaky and scratchy and awful, and then the shadow lay
limp.

“Give me a
knife, anything!” Saffron shouted as more shadows converged, moving
over the plains like a dark and dreadful wind. “I have good
aim.”

“Only a weapon
made from this place will work,” Anya replied. She somersaulted
into a patch of red poppies, the end of her staff slamming into a
long thin shadow sliding into the spot where she’d been
standing.

Saffron
suddenly missed the city with its curfews, taggers, rats, and water
police. At least she had daggers there and Killian at her back.
Here there were only Feral girls and hungry shadows—and a strange
pale tree down behind apile of boulders. It was mooth as glass,
without leaves or buds.

Saffron leapt
to the nearest rock. The boulders didn’t stop the shadows, of
course, but it gave her a few extra seconds, a bit more ground for
them to cover. They bubbled around her, forming spikes and teeth
and claws.

“Stay there!”
Anya shouted, her staff moving so fast it looked like it was
shooting off copper sparks.

“Like hell,”
Saffron muttered. She already owed them too much.

Something
touched her ankle.

It wasn’t a
bite or a rake of claws as expected, but soft and strange as a
cat’s tongue. Still, she stumbled, falling to one knee where her
foot went numb. Fatigue leeched up her leg, soft and sinister as a
drowning death. She crawled towards the tree, dragging her useless
leg. It may as well have belonged to someone else entirely for all
it responded.

Porcupine
quills fell in a sharp rain as Elisande made her way towards
Saffron. She didn’t see the bull-shaped shadow behind her, licking
at her heels. She’d feel it soon enough; it was big enough to drop
her unconscious. “Behind you!” Saffron shouted, even as Anya
skewered it. The air smelled like fire and pennies. The shadows
reared up like wild, stampeding horses.

Saffron reached
up for the closest branch, hoping it was strong enough to use as
weapon.

“Ask its
permission!” Elisande warned her, between breaths on her porcupine
flute.

“Can I have a
damn branch to kill these damn shadows,” Saffron muttered even
though it was clear there was no Dryad hiding in the tree, or
Protectorate soldiers to haul her away. Still, years of Oona’s
schooling had her adding a begrudging “Please.” If she’d had the
tobacco Oona had given her for an offering to the Spirit Forest,
she’d have left a pinch of it too. But her pockets were empty, here
on the other side.

She didn’t wait
for a reply because she didn’t speak tree. The branch cracked
loudly, startling yellow and purple birds from a bush of papery
leaves. The tree pulsed, uncomfortably like a heart. Something red
flared within it, but the liquid that oozed from the cut was thick
and silvery.

A shadow
touched the knee of her good leg. She pulled hard on the branch,
and the end was splintery; ragged more than pointed but it would
have to do. She drove it into a shadow, and though the tiny inhuman
screech made her smile grimly, the shadows kept coming, pouring
like ink spilled on drawing paper. Saffron stabbed at them until
her fingers were covered in what looked like soot and silver paint.
She was out of breath and her festering arm burned with pain. The
shadows faded, going grey.

Finally,
finally, Elisande snapped her fingers. “This way, Elysian.”

It was now
possible to clamber from stone to stone, or would have been, if
Saffron could feel her legs. They prickled painfully but only her
left leg would hold any weight, even leaning on the silvery thorn
branch. Anya slipped an arm under her shoulder. “You’re a lot of
work.”

“Then why are
you helping me?” Saffron asked. Her neck was damp with sweat under
her heavy braids, briars, and burrs.

“Rules of
hospitality. And kindness.”

Saffron
snorted. “I’m not Jane. I don’t believe in that type of kindness.”
They finally came up against the mountain. Its heavier shadow
swallowed the others. “How exactly is this going to heal an
infected tattoo?”

Elisande and
Anya exchanged an infuriatingly superior glance but Elisande only
said: “You are in one of these caves.”

“I’m right
here,” she muttered even though something close to recognition
tingle along her spine. She wanted to believe it was only the
feeling coming back into her legs. “I hate riddles.”

The mountain
was a honeycomb of sand-coloured caves; some lit with candles, some
dark and strange. Inside, Saffron saw a white horse, a black bear,
a blue heron.

“Go on,”
Elisande said. “Save yourself.”

Saffron stared
at the mountain, for longer than she’d care to admit. Long enough
that her legs started to work again, even if they did feel a little
soft. She could pretend that’s what had made her pause instead of
the fear batting its wings against her ribs. Anya started to look
bored.

“Sorry my
impending doom is taking so long,” Saffron snapped. It made her
feel a little better. She thought about Oona and how thrilled she’d
be with this adventure. About Killian and how he’d be scowling at
her even now. It helped even more than venting her bad temper. Some
kind of actual weapon would have been even better.

She started to
climb, sand and pebbles scattering under her boots. The bear
snapped its jaws at her and she carefully skirted that cave. Every
so often, people stared out at her. She wasn’t sure if she was
supposed to help them. Since she wasn’t even sure how to help
herself at this point, she kept climbing. The wind was warm and
smelled of cinnamon and pepper and distant smoke. The sky was
turning red and orange.

Blood ran from
her tattoo, dripping from her fingertips. She stopped to rest,
cradling her sore arm. There was more blood on the ground in front
of her, scattered like seeds. It led into a crooked cave. Something
moved inside. Saffron approached, fists raised. The person inside
glanced up, eyes narrowed.