“I think you belong to…” She went into a high crouch, waved the head over its presumed lower half, and was rewarded with movement through the cadaver’s chest and fingers. “Right.” She put the head in place, left the face covered, and turned her torso to reach for the other head. “Rose?”
When both heads were in place, Maritza again made herself comfortable on the pounded dirt and raised her hands, palms down, above the covered faces. Her threaded needle floated to her hand for the briefest touch then dove downward, into the throat area of the head and the stub of a neck on the torsos. Following the movements of Maritza’s hand, the needle rose and fell in a steady rhythm until the head was reattached. The necromancer performed the same series of movements over the second head.
She unstopped the vial she showed me earlier, opened her mouth, and sprinkled the contents over her tongue. She pressed her lips together, dropped her chin toward her chest, and spit the dirt over the corpses.
“I have sacrificed a piece of my birth so that the two of you may once again wake.” Cleaning off her tongue with another napkin, she glanced over her shoulder in River’s direction. “Did we ever get their names?”
“Sweetbough. And Bellflower.”
As she repeated the two names, the bodies under Maritza’s hand-stitched shroud stirred. She lifted the closest edge of one shroud then the other, every movement studied, measured, and slow.
“Welcome,” she said. “Our time here is short and begging your indulgence, there are people here would ask about the manner of your deaths.”
Lips came unstuck. Whispers tumbled upwards and dissipated.
Maritza bent over, turned her ear toward their mouths, and listened. “Peasgood. Hyslop. Your brethren would speak with you.”
She came to her knees as the men re-entered the circle. They helped her to stand and took her place, one at the head of each hidden folk.
I walked to the opening at the East, my cell phone in my hand, thinking I would record whatever was said, if allowed. Cliff had warned me that taking photographs of the mounds would result in blank images. I hoped the same wasn’t true for the words of the dead, until the foursome’s indecipherable whispers had me abandon my idea.
When I checked my phone, close to fifteen minutes had gone by from the time the heads asked to speak to the living. I darted a glance at Maritza then at Tanner and the other druids and witches ringing the outer circle. Their attention was completely absorbed by the tableaux in front of us.
Maritza’s low whisper reached my ear. “There are things that must be spoken, knowledge that may only be passed from one hidden folk to another. The dead will speak for as long as they have things to say. That is the price we pay for their cooperation.”
I was beginning to feel antsy for something tangible to happen. I was also feeling the strain of the past twenty-four hours. It had to be at least dinner time, and when I peeked at my phone again, thinking I could text Rowan for a check-in, I had no reception. And the time read another twenty minutes had passed, and still Hyslop and Peasgood were hunched over the corpses and still we stood.
A wave of exhaustion swirled through my muscles, destabilizing my joints. From my ankles up, hazy, moss-colored winged insects invited me to collapse on the grass carpeting the rows between the earthen coffins and curl up for a nap. Inside the mound, the air verged on steamy, and the temperature was rising. I closed my eyes. Tried pinching the skin on the inside of my wrist. I shuffled three steps back, urged on by the little wings, then took three or four steps more, until I was on the grass and could lie down without getting dirty.
I was tired of being dirty.
I was tired of wearing stiff pants, sports bras, and clunky work boots.
From my horizontal position, all I could see was a forest of feet and shoes, legs and pants, skirts and ankles ringing the two living hidden folks and their two dead brethren. I tucked my knees toward my belly and my hands under the side of my face, and closed my eyes. With but a minute or five to rest, I would be good.
Kelp, salty, slippery, and cool, slid across my cheek. The feathery end trailed over my jaw and tickled my neck. I batted it away and dove deeper into the salty depths in an effort to elude whatever was trying to get my attention. Or I tried to swim away until I realized I was lying on a smooth, wide rock left damp by a retreating tide. My eyelids refused to open, but scents and sounds told me the ocean was near. The whoosh of gull wings, coupled with their cries, mingled with water gurgling, swirling, ebbing and flowing between the rocks around me.
Calliope, sweetheart.
I batted away another strip of seaweed.
Something wet unstuck my eyes. The tableaux in front of me had not changed. Living bodies ringed dead bodies. The trail of drool out the corner of my mouth let me know I’d napped. A quick look at my phone and verified almost thirty minutes had passed since I’d first closed my eyes. I stayed curled into myself, listened to my breath, and made another attempt to reach into the ground directly below my body.
My inquiry was met with the same silence I found at the demarcation line between the Pearmains’ orchards and this sacred site. The druids would know why this was. I hoped they could explain it, that it wasn’t some secret they had to keep on pain of—
“Calliope?” Rose’s pointed whisper brought me to sitting.
Those who were standing twisted and
