Lightbringer

Cold chills danced down Wendy’s spine. “Do I know you?”

“No,” the woman replied. “But I most certainly know you. You are the scourge of the Never, the one who walks at night.” She sighed. “I hear quite a lot from where I sit. Quite a lot. And not all of it, I’m sad to say, is good news.”

The woman straightened and turned so that she faced Wendy head on. All Wendy could see of her face was the bottom of her chin and long, lean line of her neck. When the woman spoke, the cloak shifted aside for a brief moment, revealing a crosshatched scar lining the edge of her collarbone, the remains of the puckered flesh dipping under the neck of her shift.

“You’ve been meddling in my affairs. Poking your nose where it shouldn’t be.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Wendy protested. “I don’t even know who you are. I’m dreaming this. I’ve got school—”

“Time is short here,” the woman interrupted. “Though the hours seem long. A pair of very special Walkers went missing recently, a matched set, and I can’t say that I like that one bit. I’ve got eyes and ears everywhere— seems some folks would like to join in on my pretty party—and the whispers say that you’re the one to blame for my recent troubles. Riders I can handle, they’re just a gang of arrogant kiddies, but someone like you? You need to be dealt with.”

“Who the hell are you?”

The woman sighed. “They call me the White Lady.” Her fingers plucked the crosshatched scars like a harpist strumming strings and her voice dropped low, insinuating. “Heard of me?”

Cursing, Wendy shoved away from the woman and leapt to her feet. She tried to unravel the Light but the fire was dead inside, black coals and dust. She could not even find the smallest flame to fan into a blaze. Wendy pounded her fists on her thighs. “Why won’t it come?”

Amused at Wendy’s display, the White Lady shook her head, hood swaying from side to side, and tsked. “Dreams may be like death, my dear, but they are still ages apart. Do you really think I’m so stupid as to approach you in the Never?” She sighed again, as if disappointed. “You’ve just proven that you can’t be trusted; you’d reap me then and there, if I were to call for a palaver.”

“What do you want?” Wendy asked flatly, ashamed of her outburst. She crossed her arms over her chest, keeping well away from the woman.

“A truce.” The wind blew in a harder gust; Wendy was downwind of the White Lady and nearly gagged at the rich, thick scent of rot that filled her nose and watered her eyes, filling her mouth with the strong, sour taste of bile and coppery salt.

“You want a truce?” Wendy spat, trying to clean her mouth of the foul taste. She could hardly believe her ears. “What kind of truce?”

The White Lady threw up her arms in disgust. “The kind where you and I call a cease-fire. You don’t attack my Walkers and I don’t have them attack you and yours for interfering in my business. Truuuuuce. It’s a simple enough word, haven’t you ever heard it before?”

“I’m not stupid,” Wendy snapped.

“Hmm, I wasn’t so certain.” High above them seagulls cried, their noisome calls bouncing off the jetty and echoing around the cove. “Excuse me a moment,” the White Lady said, and stood, hem whipping about her feet. She gathered up a handful of sand and shells and rolled the damp mess in her hands until it was firmly compacted into a lopsided sandball roughly the size of her palm. “I do hate gulls.”

“They’re too far,” Wendy pointed out. “It’ll never make it.”

“That, my dear, is the beauty of dreams,” the White Lady said serenely and flung the ball hard in the direction of the seagulls’ calls. It soared up and out, traveling impossibly far, retaining its firm shape as far as Wendy could see. The call of the gull broke as if severed, ending in a strangled cry followed by a sickening wet thump far distant down the shore.

The White Lady wiped her hands free of the last clinging grains.

Wendy turned her face away, sickened. “You’re foul.”

“No, just practical. They do make such a noise. A lady can hardly dicker for peace with a ruckus like that going on in the background,” she said, rucking up the arms of her cloak to the elbows and holding out hands with palms turned up. “So how about it? Let’s make a deal.”

“I don’t deal with the likes of you.”

“The likes of me?” The White Lady pressed mottled and rotting fingers to her chest in a gesture of dismay. “And just what is that supposed to mean?” When she moved her hands the skin began flaking away from her bones in a shower. Wendy could spy yellowed sinew and slim cords of tendon holding her bones together.

“I don’t deal with ghosts,” Wendy said. “I don’t deal with cannibals like Walkers. And I definitely won’t deal with a ghost who’s got Walkers taking orders from her.”

“A little high and mighty, aren’t we?”

“They’re foul. They eat children. And I don’t know how you’re healing them, but if you were any kind of decent human being when you were alive, you’ll stop helping them out.”

“Ah, teenagers,” the White Lady sneered. “You all think you know everything. Look, dear, let me tell you a little something about the real, adult world. You work with whoever you have to, in order to get shit done. You get it? I worked with worse than Walkers when I was walking the living lands, that’s for sure. And, by the way, enough with the attitude. A simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ will suffice. I don’t need lectures from a kid barely out of diapers, thanks.”

“Fine. You want an answer? Here’s your answer: N-O. No. I’ve got my own business to attend to, lady, and if your Walkers happen to be in the area while I’m doing my thing, then that’s just too bad for you.”

“Oh, really?” The White Lady clasped her hands demurely together. “So that’s the way you want things to be, then?”

“Pretty much.”

“Fine. That’s the way it’s going to be. Oh-me-oh-my I do believe I’ve been TOLD, now haven’t I?” The White Lady laughed then, a burst of racketing hyena mirth that echoed loudly.

Whoever she was before, dying made her go crazy, Wendy realized. Deep cold overwhelmed her with the thought, as if she’d dipped her hands and feet in snow; licked at icicles until her lips and tongue were numb. Wendy shivered and turned her face away from the woman, digging her toes in the sand, seeking the comforting stability of the earth beneath her feet. She took one step back and then another, when her ankle slammed into something sharp and pointed that dug deep into her skin, pricking her. Startled by the unexpected pain, Wendy yelled and fell backwards on the sand, catching herself with her elbows. Sparks of fierce tingling heat flared up her arms, stealing her breath.

The terrible laughter cut off.

“Well then, I think I’ll just have to keep you, won’t I?” The White Lady hiked up the hem of her robe, lifting the cloth high over knees seeping clear, whitish fluid. “If you’re not going to talk business now, then we’ll just have to negotiate after you’ve been my…guest for a while.”

Sucking in a deep breath and holding one scraped and stinging elbow in the other hand, Wendy glanced around, confused and bordering on hysteria.

The open beach was gone as suddenly as it had appeared. Birds chirped in the trees and the mist vanished; the sky was a blue bowl dotted with shell-shaped clouds. The White Lady’s boat was still only a half dozen feet away, moored up against a large and drooping willow tree, but they were enclosed in a large copse of trees, their branches so tightly packed together that Wendy knew she’d never be able to wriggle through.

What remained of the shell doorway was gone, but in its place was a large concrete circle marked with a hopscotch grid. At the end of the grid was a box writ with the number 13 over and over again in a chalked rainbow of colors, some faded, some fresh. A lush carpet of green grass stretched out in all directions; nearby the wind tossed the tops of trees to and fro, setting the empty swing set into a jangling metallic cacophony.

There was no path, no opening, no easy way up or down. She was trapped.

A foot or so away, where Wendy had tripped, was a cheerful red picnic blanket laid out with square white plates and napkins shaped like swans, matching chopsticks stabbed artfully into each swan’s back. A bottle of soda chilled in a bucket of ice and beside it was an old-fashioned picnic basket, one corner spotted with blood. A large Chinese takeout container lay on its side beside the basket, huge clumps of white rice spilled across the corner of the blanket.