Page 16 of Brought to Light
Linden had told me we were going to a hunting lodge, which didn’t mean a lot to me. I wasn’t the sort of guy who had friends with vacation houses. Safe houses, yeah, but you went there when someone hunted you, not the other way around. The reality came closer to a deer blind with a door than to a holiday cabin. Two small rooms, one with a fireplace and a wooden table and a single rough chair, and the other with an even rougher low wooden frame holding a lumpy mattress and a couple of wool blankets.
I laid Linden down on the pathetic excuse for a bed reluctantly, unwilling to let him out of my grasp. For all I knew he’d vanish in a puff of vaporized tree, or get eaten, the second I let go.
He didn’t. He smiled, his face relaxing into the sleepy sweetness of someone who didn’t have a care in the world, and passed the fuck out almost instantly.
Well, nice for him. Not that he was wrong. I wasn’t going to let anything happen to him.
I turned and met two identical disapproving glares. Tweedledee and Tweedledum clearly weren’t too happy with me.
Kaspar gestured with his glowing staff and said a few words, and Oskar waved his hands at me, clearly trying to herd me back into the other room. Fine. We could all leave Linden to sleep, but I wasn’t leaving either of them alone with him.
I made a gesture of my own, though not the one I really wanted to.You first. Frowning, they edged out of the room backward, watching me to make sure I followed them. They obviously felt the same way.
Even with my stamina, the day had started to take its inevitable toll. I crouched down by the doorway into Linden’s bedroom, taking a load off by letting my back rest against the wall. I couldn’t risk sitting down, let alone lying down, with these two wide awake and looking at me like they were sizing me up for Oskar’s sword.
They turned away and spoke amongst themselves for a couple of minutes, arguing in low voices. Finally Kaspar set the leather bag he’d had slung on his back onto the table and pulled out a small cloth bag, waving his hand over it and muttering a few words. The bag glowed pinkish-white, vibrated, and—started to grow. My hand tightened on the gun in my front pocket. I’d had enough of magical bags for one fucking day, thank you.
But it didn’t do anything threatening, just got bigger until it was the size of the original leather bag it’d come out of.
Kaspar reached in and pulled out more bread and cheese, some apples, a small cloth-wrapped package, and a bottle that gleamed an odd greenish-yellow. Wine, maybe? Either way, and even though I didn’t trust these two not to poison, drug, or magic-whammy me, my stomach growled. The snack they’d handed out when we got out of the labyrinth had helped, but I felt like I could eat a horse, let alone another round of bread.
Oskar laughed, shaking his head, and spoke to me directly for the first time. I couldn’t understand him, but it almost sounded friendly.
Almost.
But instead of handing more food around, Kaspar unfolded the cloth package to reveal what looked like little cakes or cookies.
And then the argument started up again. From their tones, Kaspar was trying to talk Oskar into something he thought was a bad idea. At last Kaspar threw his hands up and said something that sounded, in any language, likeI’m doing it anyway, and pointed one finger at one of the cakes. It too glowed faintly pink.
Kaspar picked up the cake and brought it over to me, waving it at me as if to say,Here, take this fucked-up glowing fairy food and eat it, no worries, what could possibly go wrong?I stared at him in disbelief. Did I have a sign taped to my forehead saying I was a fucking moron or something?
He held it out again, sounding frustrated. With the other hand, he pointed at his own mouth and then at his ear. Then pointed at me, and then at his ear again, raising his eyebrows.
Okay. I’d landed somewhere magic was the norm. Linden somehow knew how to speak English despite coming from this place, and he hadn’t been in California long enough to be as fluent as he was, especially without even a trace of an accent.
How had that happened? Magic, almost certainly. If I was reading Kaspar right, he was trying to indicate speaking and hearing. He wanted me to eat the cake. With a little luck, it’d make me able to understand their language, and maybe speak it too. Without it, I’d spend the rest of my bitter, self-hating life as a frog in that river down the hill. I seemed to remember someone in a fairy tale being turned into a frog, and it seemed as likely as anything else.
Kaspar sighed, shook his head, and turned to Oskar. They argued some more. Finally, grousing all the while, Oskar started to unbuckle his belt.
Okay, and that was taking an unexpected fucking turn. I tensed and made sure my thumb rested on the safety of the Beretta.
Oskar took off his belt, carefully held his sword across his two outstretched hands, and nodded to me before setting the sword on the table. He backed away and spread his hands. He looked fucking miserable about it, too, and kept shooting death-glares at Kaspar.
Kaspar nodded, said something in an exasperated tone, and then tried to hand the cake to me again.
This time I took it. They were trying. They clearly did care about Linden, and he trusted them. And if this—oatmeal cookie?—would somehow let me communicate with them, that was all to the good. I was stuck with them.
It might still be poisoned. I wouldn’t be shocked. But I didn’t have a lot of options.
Fuck it.
I stuck the damn thing in my mouth and chewed. It had the texture and almost exactly the same flavor as every other MRE bar I’d ever choked down. If my mouth hadn’t been stuffed with chewy sawdust, I might’ve laughed, because apparently no matter what realm you were in, soldiers always had shitty rations. It was oddly reassuring.
Nothing happened after I forced the thing down. No stomach cramps, my throat didn’t close up, and I didn’t keel over.
But it also didn’t feel like magic.
And then Kaspar said, “You ought to be able to understand me now. Can you?”
