Thea Harrison: Serpent's Kiss

“How much land do you have?” Rune asked.

“About five acres,” Grace said as she slapped at a mosquito. “The Ohio River runs along the western border of the property. It’s been in the family ever since we came over from Europe in 1856. We couldn’t afford to buy anything like this now. I’m not even sure I’ll be able to pay property taxes when they come due.”

“There is a very old Power here,” Carling said. “Did it come with you to the States?”

Grace sent her a shadowed glance. “Yes,” said the human. She didn’t elaborate further.

She led them across a meadow to an old doorway that had been built into the side of a rocky incline. The sense of an ancient Power grew stronger as she took a small rusted coffee can from the top of the wooden lintel and withdrew a key that she fitted into the weathered wooden door to open it. Rune studied the structure. It looked like the opening to a mine shaft. It must have been constructed when the Andreas family originally settled on the property over a hundred and fifty years ago.

Grace said over her shoulder, “Your weapons are not welcome. You need to leave them here at the doorway.”

“Okay,” Rune said slowly.

Carling had been content to remain silent and study the land during the walk. She could tell by the aggressive spike in Rune’s emotions that he didn’t like the idea of disarming, but he set their two bags by the door then he stripped off his short sword and shoulder holsters with the guns and set them with care on the bags.

“Are we going into a cave?” Carling asked curiously.

“Yes,” Grace said. “There are cave systems all over the area, from Bluespring Caverns, Marengo Cave, and Squire Boone Caverns in southern Indiana to the Mammoth Cave system in central Kentucky. This is a very small system by comparison.”

The human stepped inside the doorway and felt along the inside wall. She flipped a switch and a naked light bulb went on over her head. It revealed an area large enough for them all to step into comfortably with two sturdy Rubbermaid storage cabinets, and a roughly hewn tunnel that sloped downward.

Grace opened up one of the cabinets. She drew out two flashlights. She handed one to Carling and kept the other one. “I don’t know if you’ll need this or not,” she said. “Your eyesight is a lot more photosensitive than a human’s. It gets pretty black down there though.”

“We had better take it, just in case,” said Carling.

Grace reached into the cabinet for something else that was wrapped in a protective cloth. “Pull the door shut behind you,” she said to Rune. Then she turned on her flashlight and led the way down the tunnel.

“So much for talking over a cup of coffee,” Rune muttered. He pulled the door shut, and they turned to follow the Oracle.

“Talking over a cup of coffee is not what you asked for,” Grace said over her shoulder. The light from her flashlight bounced off the roughly hewn rock walls and the packed earth floor of the tunnel. The temperature dropped sharply as they went, and the cold air felt faintly damp and smelled of the river. “You wanted to consult with the Oracle. Well, this is how you do it. The Oracle has always spoken from the deep places of the earth. What we channel demands it.”

Carling got the sense of space opening in front of Grace before she saw the tunnel walls widen. She and Rune followed Grace to step into a large cavern. Rune turned in a circle with the flashlight and then he flashed the light upward. The light did not touch the cavern walls, and it only glanced off the nearest part of the ceiling.

“It’s remarkably dry for being so close to the river,” he said. His voice echoed strangely.

“It has the same basic structure as the Mammoth Cave system. There’s a strong solid sandstone caprock layer over limestone. On the far end of the cavern there’s a natural tunnel that leads a bit farther down. The sandstone layer is damaged down there, so there’s some stalactite and stalagmite formation and the river leaks in before the cave system ends. There’s been some falling rock too, so that area’s not safe. That’s why we lock the door, to keep out exploring kids.”

Grace set her flashlight down and unfolded the cloth from the item she had brought with her. She let the cloth drop to the ground and as she turned to them, she held the item up for them to see.

It was a Greek mask. Ancient gold gleamed in the beam of the flashlight. The face was androgynous, beautiful and blank, with holes for the eyes and the mouth.

Carling murmured, “Oh my. That’s stunning.”

“The Oracle has worn this mask for thousands of years,” Grace said. “As you can imagine, there have been many reasons for that and they have fluctuated over time. Sometimes it has been worn with a great deal of ceremony. My grandmother taught my sister and I that we now wear it for two reasons. The first is tradition and honoring our past. The second reason is to remind the petitioner, when you consult with the Oracle you will no longer be talking to me, Grace Andreas.”

“Do you remember what is said?” Carling asked.

“I’ve heard that sometimes we can, but sometimes we just go blank.” Grace’s head was bent. She said quietly, “But I’m no expert. I’ve only been called to do this once since Petra died.” She lifted her head. “Are you ready?”

“Yes,” Rune said.

Grace raised the mask to place it over her face. Something vast stirred the cavern air. The ancient Power that haunted this land began to coalesce. A dry sound scraped at the edge of their hearing, like the sound of scales sliding along the cavern walls. The sound surrounded them as the Power coiled around.

Already unsettled, Rune’s hackles raised. He found himself growling low in his chest. Carling moved near until her shoulder brushed his arm. In the slanted beam of the flashlight, her face was composed but her eyes were wide and wary. Rune turned so that he stood back-to-back with Carling, facing outward.

A voice spoke from behind the golden mask, but it was not Grace’s voice. It was something else, something older and much wilder than a human’s voice.

“There you are, gryphon,” said the old wild Power. “I have looked forward to this conversation we have had.”

Looked forward, to a conversation in the past. Rune shook his head sharply. Yeah, there was that bad dose of LSD again, tripping on his ass like a flashback.

“How you doing?” he said to Python. “You old crazy, dead whack-job, you. Long time no see.”

The Power chuckled, a sound that brushed against their skin. “Have you seen Schrödinger’s Cat yet, gryphon?”

Rune knew of Schrödinger’s Cat. It was a famous physics hypothesis that described the paradox of quantum mechanics. Place a cat in a box with some poison along with some twisty scientific mumbo jumbo. Rune had lost patience with the mental exercise long before he bothered to learn all the physics involved. What he remembered was, the cat was supposed to be both alive and dead in the box, until it was observed to be either alive or dead.

Part of what the hypothesis was supposed to illustrate was, in quantum physics, the observer shapes the reality of what he observes. What did she mean by asking him that question?

Behind him, Carling hissed and bumped into his back. She said in his head, How could she possibly know to refer to Schrödinger’s Cat? That hypothesis wasn’t invented until the 1930s, and she died—if she really did die—thousands of years ago.

He said, I’ve lived a whole long life filled with weirdness . But this is weird even for me. He said aloud, “I’m not nearly drunk enough for this kind of conversation, Python.”

Something rushed up to his face. He jerked back, staring at the pale indistinct lines of a face. The transparent face bore a resemblance to a human female, but only in the same kind of way a chimpanzee or ape might. Its features were too sharp and elongated, with more of a snout than a nose, and it flowed back to a hooded cobra-like flare of a neck before falling into the body of a serpent as thick as a man’s waist.