Mrs. Twiggs reached in her cloak and pulled out an apophyllite pendant like the one she had given Detective Willows. She put it around Abigail’s neck and whispered an incantation in a language I didn’t recognize. “Take care,” she then said.
We turned back for one last glance at Pixel. Tracker sat, staring at Pixel and let out a mournful howl. Then he turned and followed us out. He would not leave Abigail’s side.
We left without looking back. After several hours of walking from downtown Asheville to the outskirts of Hendersonville, Abigail sat on a park bench. “Terra, I can summon a car or motorcycle or plane. Why do we have to walk? There’s no time.”
“This is the way Agatha Hollows found the portal.” I gazed at the stars. “Each step we take down her path unlocks her magic.” I questioned myself the whole time we walked. Could we do this? I was a cat, Abigail a mere girl. I had made it to the river with the lieutenant and had just enough magic to turn him to flesh. I thought of what waited in the water for those on this journey without the magic to cross. We continued our trek keeping to the woods. By the end of the first day, we camped on the bank of the Green River. Abigail gathered firewood. She took a can of beans and heated it over the flame. I walked along the bank, staring at the water rushing by and thought about the lieutenant. I could feel his new skin under my claws. Agatha Hollows had cast a spell that lowered the river and raised stepping-stones so we could walk across. I didn’t remember that spell. I tried for years to remember the exact words she spoke, but they were jumbled in my head. The stones retracted when I crossed with the lieutenant. Flutter landed on my back. She tried to speak to me. I knew she was talking, but I couldn’t understand her. I had never tried speaking to creatures of her kind. I spoke with cats and dogs, squirrels but never insects. I thought them beneath me. How proud was I? Me, a cat—no a witch cat. Whatever Flutter was now, she still had traces of her ancient magic running through her blood. She had drained all her powers on Pixel. She was the reason that Pixel had premonitions, that Pixel united the coven circle. Now the color had gone from her wings, faded. She looked pale and sickly. Like my dear friend Pixel, she was dying.
Abigail handed me a plate. I ate around the beans, chewing on the pork. She took out her phone, examining the picture of the painting. “Terra, what are the chances that these flowers painted over a hundred years ago are still growing wild?”
I said, “They’re enchanted, Abigail. They will be there.” I said half believing myself. Mankind had stomped all over this earth, bringing their devastation, their machines, their pollution. I closed my eyes and nestled up to Abigail. She pulled the blanket up tight, a cool spring night. The fire felt comforting; the owls sang us to sleep. The owls that Mrs. Birchbark sent to watch over us. I had seen Mrs. Lund following far behind us, watching over her shoulder. She had kept the form of the bloodhound so she could follow our scent without giving us away to whichever of the lieutenant’s minions followed us.
“Terra, wake up,” Abigail whispered. I opened my eyes. It was still dark. I focused into the woods. I saw dozens of red eyes staring out at us. Tracker stood at attention, emitting a low growl. The first creature stepped slowly into the clearing. It was the size and shape of a coyote, but it was without fur. Its skin was the color of mud, and it smelled rancid. It let out a low, deep growl. Tracker answered back, lunging toward it, baring his teeth. The others crawled out of the woods and surrounded us. Abigail grabbed the stone from her backpack. It glowed red hot. She held it high, and fireballs shot out engulfing the hounds. The leader backed up. She raised her hand and spoke “Back into the dark I send you.” The creatures yelped in pain and stepped slowly back into the woods except for one. It wriggled in pain as its body jerked. Its bones cracked as it grew twice its size. Abigail repeated, “Back into the dark, I send you.” The creature inched its way forward toward Abigail until it was just a few feet in front of us. Abigail grabbed the silver blade from her boot and stabbed at its face. The creature grabbed the blade and threw it to the side. “Terra, I can’t stop this creature. What is it?”
“The humans call it a hellhound.” I thought about how Agatha Hollows had killed a similar beast, but before I could tell Abigail, it lunged at her. She waved her hand, sending it tumbling into the water. It jumped out and headed back toward her. From out of the woods, the bloodhound ran out. Tracker and Mrs. Lund bit and tore at its rancid flesh. Agatha Hollows’s dogs had killed a beast like this. They were bred to be immune to the poison of its bite. Descendant of the dogs that walked beside the earth walkers, millions of years before the humans, Tracker chased the hound into the woods. Abigail watched through Tracker’s eyes as he killed each beast one by one. Mrs. Lund lay with her side wide open in the form of the bloodhound, then she shifted into her real self. The black veins of poison twisted around her body from the wounds. Abigail ran to her, pressing her hands against her wounds, trying to stop the bleeding.
Mrs. Lund smiled. “This is me, Abigail.” She was a beautiful elflike creature, slender with white-blond hair the color of Abigail’s, her eyes, the color of milky-blue opals. “The lieutenant is waiting at the bridge. I kept him off your trail. He can’t enter the portal, but he wants to stop you from entering.” Her light extinguished, her body turned to dust, then blew into the wind.
Tracker ran up to Abigail, his white fur turned red. Abigail frantically checked him for wounds, relieved to find the blood wasn’t his. She hugged him and rocked him in her arms. He wigged his tailless butt and lifted his lip with a smile. He kissed her on the face. I couldn’t hold back. I jumped on him and hugged him, rubbing my scent against his neck. The sun was rising. “Time to go.”
Chapter 36
The Road to Dark Corner
Abigail finished cleaning the blood off Tracker. She picked up Flutter, who was laying on a rock by the water. I paced back and forth along the shore, remembering how Agatha put one foot in front of the other, causing the stepping-stones to rise out of the water. With the morning sun I could see what was swimming under the surface. Like the hellhounds that roamed the woods on the trail to Poinsett Bridge, the water held other demons. Razor-sharp teeth and black soulless-eyed eels unseen to humans, harmless to all but those who walked the trail to the portal. I hadn’t told Abigail that for every piece of white magic we picked up along the way a piece of black magic followed us. Newton was right when he said for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Time and space are a rubber band, as you stretch it into the future from the present it snaps back into the past the same as magic. The guardians of the trail were waiting to devour not just our flesh but our true light. Tracker growled at them.
“Settle,” Abigail said. “You don’t want to fight them.”
“Step onto the water, Abigail,” I told her.
She looked down as one of the creatures raised its head above the water, snapping at us. She glanced at me.
“Believe, Abigail, you have to believe.”
She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and before she could stop herself she stepped out into the water. As she did the first stone rose up to greet her foot. She opened her eyes, balancing herself on the rock as the creatures swam around her, snapping and hissing. She took another step; the next stone rose. I leaped into her arms. Each step she took another stone rose out of the water. Tracker hopped from rock to rock behind us until we reached the far shore. Then the rocks and the creatures disappeared into the deep, cold water.
Abigail took Flutter out of her pocket and raised her hand to the sky. She floated to a bright red hibiscus. And then crisscrossed to an orange one. It was the path from the painting. We followed behind her, marking her way exactly. I could feel the gathering magic around us. We wound our way through the narrow trail, avoiding rocks, holes. We walked this way for miles, following Flutter, swatting at the bees that buzzed around our heads, passing by the North Saluda reservoir until we reached Callahan Mountain Road. The last time I had walked this road it was part of the dirt path of the Asheville Highway. Now it was paved with the occasional car speeding past us. We reached Poinsett Bridge at twilight; all the visitors had left. Or at least the human visitors. I could feel the presence of the others, the ghosts who lingered at the bridge attracted by the energy of the portal, moths to the light.