Cate Tiernan - A Chalice of Wind

Then I saw the ghosts. Translucent, gray, Disney World ghosts, floating from one tree to the next, as if playing ghost hide-and-seek. I saw a woman in old-fashioned clothes, a gray-haired man in his Sunday best. There was a hollow-eyed child, wearing rags, eating rice from a bowl with her fingers. And a slave, wrists wrapped in chains, the skin scraped raw and bleeding, I began to feel cold, and all the tiny little hairs all over my body stood on end. There was no sound-no splash of water, no call of bird, no rustle of leaves. Dead silence.

"Okay, I've seen enough," I told myself firmly. "Time to wake up "

The mists around me got thicker, more opaque, swirling in a smoky paisley pattern around the trees, the cypress knees, the Spanish moss. Maybe ten yards away, a log rolled-no, it was an alligator, covered with thick, dark green skin. I saw its small yellow eyes for a moment, right before it silently slid into the water, headed my way.

Crap.

Something touched my bare ankle, and I yelped, jumping a foot in the air. Heart pounding, I looked down. An enormous snake was twining around my bare leg. It was huge, as thick around as my waist, impossibly strong, dark, and wet. Its triangular head framed two cold, reptilian eyes. The constant flick of its tongue across my skin made me feel like I was covered with crawling insects. Adrenaline raced coldly through my veins, tightening my throat, speeding up my heart. I tried to run, but it held me fast. Uselessly I pushed at it with all my strength, trying to uncoil it from around me. I punched its head and barely made it bob. It coiled around me till I was weighted down by snake, surrounded by snake, my breath being squeezed from my lungs. I gasped for breath, trying to scream, digging my fingernails into the heavy, coiled muscles around my neck, and suddenly I knew that I was going to die, here in this swamp, without understanding why.

"Daddy!"

With my very last shred of strength, a scream burst from my throat. Then it was choked off- the snake was around my neck. I couldn't feel my arms anymore. I was light-headed and couldn't see…

Then all around me the world grew bright, like a floodlight had been turned on. I gasped and blinked wildly, unable to see, the snake still around my neck-

"Hold still, damn it," said a voice, and strong hands worked at my neck. I sucked in a deep breath as the snakes grip loosened and I could breathe again, I gulped in cool, air-conditioned air, feeling the cold sweat run down my temple, down my back.

" Wha, wha-"

"I heard you yell," Axelle said, and with difficulty I brought her into focus.

Slowly I struggled upright, my hand to my throat. I was still gasping, still choked by panic. I looked around, I was in my little room at Axelle's in New Orleans, She looked uncharacteristically disheveled-hair rumpled from sleep, grumpy, her body barely contained inside a red lace slip.

"What happened?" I croaked, my voice as hoarse as if Td been coughing all night. Looking down, I saw that my top sheet had gotten twisted into a thick rope, and this had been wound around my neck,

"I was having a nightmare," I said, still trying to orient myself. "A snake…" I pushed the sheet away, kicking it away from me, wiping my hand across my damp forehead, "God."

"I heard you yell," Axelle said again,

"How did you get in? My door was locked."

She shrugged. "It's my apartment. Nothing is locked to me."

Great. "Well, thank you" I said awkwardly, "I thought I was dying-it was… really realistic," I swallowed again, my hand brushing my throat, which ached,

Axelle frowned and nudged my fingers away, tilting my chin. She looked at my neck, at the sheet, and back at my neck. At the expression on her face, I got up and shakily made my way to the little mirror over the white bamboo dresser. My neck was bruised, scraped, as if I truly had been strangled.

My eyes widened, Axelle went to my window and ran her hands around the edge of it. The shutters were pulled and bolted from inside, and the window had been locked.

"It was just a dream," I said faintly. Unless of course Axelle had been trying to kill me. But I didn't sense danger from her-she'd just woken me up. It sounded stupid-it was hard to explain. But sometimes I had a sense about people-like in seventh grade, when I had instantly hated Coach Deakin, even though everyone else had loved him and thought he was so great. I'd hated him immediately, for no reason. And then six months later he had been arrested for sexually harassing four students.

I went to the bathroom and splashed water on my face, then drank some, feeling the ache in my throat as it went down.

"I don’t see how you could do that to yourself? " Axelle murmured as I shook out the covers, untwisting the sheet and spreading everything flat, "You dreamed it was a snake?"

I nodded, folding my covers way down out of the way at the bottom of the bed. I didn't want them anywhere near my head, "In a swamp."

Axelle looked at me thoughtfully, and, for the first time since I'd known her, I saw shrewd intelligence in her black eyes, "Well, leave your door open tonight," she said, pushing it wide. "In case you… need anything." Okay.

Murmuring to herself, Axelle traced her fingers lightly around my door frame, almost like she was writing a secret message with her fingers.

"What are you doing?"

She shrugged, "Just making sure the door is all right."

O-kaaay.

"Call me if you… get scared or anything," Axelle said before she turned to go.

I nodded. And the weird part was: I actually found that comforting.

Then she was gone, her red slip swishing lightly through the kitchen.

I sat up in bed, propped against the headboard, and didn't go back to sleep until the sun came through my shutters.

Jules spread his latest acquisition over the worktable in Axelles attic room.

"What year is that?" Daedalus asked.

Jules checked. "Nineteen-ten."

This was painstaking, often frustrating work, Jules thought. But perhaps they were making slow progress.

"Look" Jules said, tracing a ringer down the Atchafalaya River. "It’s different here, and here."

Daedalus nodded. "It must have jumped its banks between the time this map was drawn and the one from… 1903…

"Lets get a computer up here so we can double-check hurricane dates, floods, things like that" Jules said.

Daedalus gave him that patient-father look he hated. 'We can't have a computer up here," he said, just as Jules remembered that electrical appliances wreaked havoc with magickal fields.

"Oh yeah" he said, irritated that he hadn't thought of that. "Its just a pain to run up and down those stairs every time we need to check something. And that girl is on it a lot."

Daedalus glanced at him, keeping his finger on a map. "Is Axelle monitoring her?"

Jules shrugged. 'I don't know."

He heard Daedalus sigh as though once again, he himself had to do everything, had to make sure everything was being done right, done his way. Jules clenched his jaw. He was getting fed up with Daedaluss attitude Daedalus wasn't the mayor, after all. They were all equal in the Treize, right? Wasn't that what they had agreed? So why was Daedalus issuing orders-find this, get that go look up such-and-such? And Jules knew he wasn't the only one whose nerves Daedalus was stepping on.

Richard came in, holding a bottle of beer. Jules tried not to glance at his watch but couldn't help it. And of course Richard saw him.

"Hey, its five o'clock somewhere" he said, popping the top. He took a deep drink, then breathed a contented sigh, "Now that's a beer," he said, shaking his hair back. "Thank God for microbreweries. Have you tried this Turbodog?"