Frank Tuttle - The Banshee's walk

“I don’t think you’re crazy.” Toadsticker gleamed in the shadows. “During the War, six of us were camped out on the bank of some lake. Never did find out if it had a name. But all six of us were awake and sober as stones, and we saw every damned fish in that lake just come jumping out of the water, right onto the bank. Flopping around by the thousands. Big and small and long and short. All flopping in the moonlight, all at once.”

Gertriss raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

“Really. We hauled ass out of there. Caught up with our company the next day. Nobody ever believed us. But I saw it.”

Marlo spat, and there may have been an earthy word mixed in with the expulsion. I grinned.

“So when I’m told there might be women in the trees, I say that’s a possibility. Especially since it doesn’t appear you’re the first to see this arboreal female-isn’t that right, Marlo?”

That shut Marlo up for the rest of the ride. I could tell, though, we were nearly to the House when the ponies picked up the pace and the old road showed signs of frequent use and the odor of wood smoke began to waft through the walls of forest. We rounded a wide bend, and dogs started barking. I heard a snatch of far-off laughter.

Marlo dropped his reins. The ponies didn’t need to be told or led or cajoled any longer, as they knew water, oats and rest were close.

Leaving the woods and entering the House grounds was such a subtle change I’d almost missed it. The shade was the same, cast by the same enormous old blood-oaks that ruled this patch of the forest. The road merely widened a bit, and there it was, the House Werewilk, shaded on all sides by trees that hung over it and kept its peaked roofs in dapples of shadow.

The House was old. Very old. You don’t see those roofs anymore, except in paintings. Slate tiles covered them, at angles so steep the moss could barely grow. The idea was to make it hard for Trolls or Elves or ambitious neighbors to climb around up there, and for flaming arrows or the like to slide quickly off.

The House was tall and square. It rose up five extra-tall pre-War stories, with a six-story turret at each corner. The tiny turret slot-windows provided for archers were all bricked up, but I could see plain where’d they’d been.

The whole place was brick and stone. Any wood that did show was ornamental. The old places had been built to resist burning, whether caused by careless cooks or oil-soaked missiles.

The tiny glass windows, set way back in their barred iron frames, were small and so thick they showed nothing but blurs behind them. I wondered if it was dark inside then decided it always looked like midnight, behind those doors.

The doors themselves were massive iron-banded garrison gates that someone had painted a merry and highly inappropriate bright red. The knocker in the middle had been given a garish coat of sunflower yellow. Such decor in Rannit proper would have brought out the Historic Preservation Society with battering rams and whole battalions of grim-faced lawyers.

Gertriss gawked and forgot herself and put a hand on my arm and then snatched it quickly away.

“That’s the biggest house I’ve ever seen, Mr. Markhat,” she said.

I chuckled. She’d seen places far bigger in Rannit, but I guess seeing Rannit’s houses crammed together made her think of them as less than this.

“It’s a nice place for a summer home,” I said. Marlo climbed down and started fussing with his ponies, Gefner followed him, yammering suddenly away and the kids Scatter and Lank vanished like yesterday’s dew.

I grabbed up my rucksack and offered to take Gertriss’s bag, but she leaped down with it in hand before I could say a word.

I laughed and nodded at the bright red doors.

“I guess we’ll just show ourselves in,” I said.

She nodded, listening to something.

I listened too.

There was music coming from inside the house. Music and clapping and probably two dozen people laughing behind those massive shut doors and those thick, bolt-proof glass windows.

Gertriss frowned.

“Does anyone work around here?” she asked.

“Just us tireless finders,” I said. We set out across the weedy lawn, past ward statues covered in vines and neglect, over stepping-stones that had sunk into the grass so deeply they were nearly covered over. I noticed that someone had painted smiles on the faces of the more somber yard wards, which is not only not seen in Rannit’s better neighborhoods but is actually illegal even in the shabby ones.

Bold red fox squirrels chattered and barked above us as we passed beneath them, and their shadows flew as they flanked us. The canopy was tall and thick, and the military part of me groaned at the thought of trying to ever defend this place now-the carefully planned fields of fire afforded by the corner towers were useless, cluttered up by limb and bough, leaving the house vulnerable to an easy assault on the doors.

Gertriss frowned. “You don’t much like this place, do you, Mr. Markhat?” she whispered.

I shrugged. Being in the woods was enough to spook a city boy, even one without crossbow bolts buried in his rucksack. And maybe there was something to Mama’s claims of Gertriss and the Sight.

“It could use some work,” I said. We were a stone’s throw from the red door now, and the laughter and music from inside was loud enough to make insulting our hosts aloud perfectly safe. It was obvious no one was watching out for visitors from town.

“Remember what I said. I’ll do most of the talking. You are my eyes and ears. I’d rather know what people do, who they look at, which ones say too much and which ones don’t talk at all. Got it?”

Gertriss nodded. We hiked up the big old granite steps, put our bags down in the weeds that sprang up through the cracks, and I gave the yellow doorknocker a good solid half-dozen blows.

I might as well have dropped a sack full of shadows. If anyone inside heard me, and over the din it seemed unlikely, no one bothered to come to the door.

I took up the knocker and gave the door another half-dozen whacks. “Hello,” I shouted. “City Watch. Your house is on fire. Trolls in the yard. Tax collectors.”

Nothing.

I put my shoulder to the door and shoved.

It wasn’t even latched. Sunlight spilled in, three dogs and a pair of cats spilled out, and the musicians didn’t miss so much as a single beat.

The doors opened into a standard three-walled alcove. The missing wall, to our right, opened into a Great Room, and it was there the party remained in full swing.

A band of sorts was parked up and down the grand, swooping stairs that led up into darkness. There was a pair of shaggy-haired skinny kids on long-necked Southern guitars, another pair whistling away on flutes, and another banging out a rhythm on a pair of old infantry drums. The drummer was so drunk he could barely stand, but his drumbeats were perfect.

At the foot of the stairs, there were more kids, two dozen at least, mostly paired off in the usual boy-girl fashion doing what were either dances or some sort of fever-induced fits. They weren’t all dancing. Naturally, there were a half-dozen partiers of either sex hovering in ragged circles around the dance floor, either staring into their cups to make it obvious they didn’t care much about this dancing foolishness anyway or giggling at each other and whispering behind raised hands.

I stepped inside. Gertriss followed. I let the door slam with a monstrous thud and it was only then that anyone noticed the House had been invaded.

The place was dark, and it took my eyes a moment to adjust. I saw mouths drop open and dancers turn and go still. By the time I was used to the lamplight and the candles, the last beats and bangs from the musicians died and the House was suddenly silent.