Veronica had been told she had potential power. She lied with her every breath. "You can both have me, but I want to see a striptease first," she said. "Like in a porno. I'll show you how good it can be. Then if you don't like it, you can always rip me apart later."
The hounds wagged their tails.
"Just get her now," Ram said.
"No. I want her," Kurt snapped. "I wanted her before. Heather wouldn't let me have her, but she's dead."
Not quite, Veronica thought. "Strip for me," she lied. "It'll be good. I'll make a bargain with you. For every skin you slough, I'll lose one thing."
"Kinky. I like it." Kurt's hot breath panted as if he couldn't quite control himself.
"Can we just - " Ram started, but Kurt nipped his ear. Kurt always was the stronger and slightly smarter of the two, and could force his will on Ram.
"Offer has an expiry date," Veronica taunted. She compelled as best she could, lying and forcing her version of the truth on them. "Strip off those hound skins or I'll do nothing for you."
They had to claw and bite at each other to do it. Then they stood before her, looking more human, in familiar letter jackets and jeans. Veronica the fox in turn took off her fox skin, laying it aside as easily as a glove, being human again for now.
"Clothes," she said.
Veronica put down one of her earrings. Cold chilly air blew around them, but it didn't seem to slow Kurt or Ram. She focused on their faces above a mess of pale skin and bristling hair on ugly arms and legs, spoke and lied so sweetly they couldn't help but believe her.
"You're not finished yet," she said. "Strip another layer down."
"What?" Kurt looked down at his goose pimples, at his bare hands. He got the idea and slapped Ram, gouging his skin with his fingernails. Ram helped Kurt do the same thing. In this world, far more layers could be shed, particularly if you were already dead. Veronica traded another earring.
"Go further," Veronica teased them. "You're strong, you should be able to take the pain. Go on."
She didn't much like seeing what a person looked like, trying to shed seven skins. Too much like biology class. Kurt and Ram used nails and teeth on each other, doing what they couldn't have done when alive. It started to hurt them just as Veronica lost her second shoelace.
"Strip," she repeated, and Kurt and Ram hurt so much by then they could only go on, the only way forward. Veronica simply plucked hairs out of her scalp to fulfil her half of the bargain. Seven times stripped, three long black hairs on the ground. Then there were two bleeding, wriggling lumps before Veronica, who could not have taken her even if they still wanted to.
"Riddle me this," Veronica said. She could afford to let her voice go cold, speak like herself rather than a bad Marlene-Dietrich-sex-kitten imitation. She'd told her own myth here, remade herself from prey to victor. "What does a shepherd girl do when she's alone with a despicable prince? She makes him bathe in lye first. You have chosen to do this to yourself, boys, and there's no saving you from the pain unless you choose to leave."
Veronica felt hairs on the back of her neck rise up, an eerily realistic sensation to feel in a dream world. She suspected that pain here would be borne in the waking world as well, that death here meant a true and proper death. And she felt herself standing on the gateway of that death.
She felt a void open by Kurt and Ram, like a rift in this world. A chill even colder than deep space emanated from it. The bourn of an undiscovered country, a place she couldn't look on directly or understand. A gate that would take Kurt and Ram from this waystation, to the true death that awaited them.
"Go," Veronica whispered. She wasn't sure if they could hear her or not. Whatever lay beyond that hungry void would end their pain and suffering, and they made a choice.
Veronica shivered in fear. She was alone and chilled in the woods, damp on her shoulders and wrists. She hadn't promised not to put back on what she'd lost, so she retrieved her shoelaces and found one of her earrings. She didn't bother about the strands of hair.
She left the forest behind, seeking Heather Duke as best she could, but some time after she had gone a black hand laid spindly fingers on a stray strand of hair in the woods. The creature hissed, smelling the scent that it would follow.
—
Heather swore she'd passed through the same thorn bush ten times. Twenty at least. "Fuck you, Thorn Lady," she said, though she had the sense to at least whisper it under her breath rather than blatantly yell it out. Then again, she had fire here in place of her normal powers; anyone called the Thorn Lady ought to be deathly afraid of what Heather Chandler could do.
The wind was rising. Then Heather got clocked on the head. She whipped around and glared at whoever had dared to do this, then she saw it was just an apple, blown by the wind.
It was a nice, crisp-looking apple. It was so bright yellow it was almost golden. It looked as succulent and shiny as the cover of a magazine, the sort of apple you saw once in a thousand times at school lunchtimes, and then you grabbed it before anyone else could or else just ordered the lucky person to hand it over. Then you bit, and if juice ran down your chin then for that one single fresh moment you didn't care at all about how sticky or messy you became.
Heather thought twice. It's a trap. She held the apple out, away from her body.
Three trees blocked her way. Myrtle to the left, pear to the right, olive in the middle. All three were in full bloom with no applicable consideration to botanical plausibility. An owl sitting on the olive branches hooted at her.
"Give me that apple," the myrtle said.
"No. It is mine," the pear argued.
"Hearken not to their squabble. I will make the best use of it," the olive tree begged. An owl hooted from it as if to punctuate. Heather stared from one talking tree to the other, her eyes narrowing. You're only like the third weirdest things I've ever seen here, she thought.
"Any chance any of you have a cheerleader hidden under your roots?" Heather asked. "Her name's Heather, I'm looking for her."
"Let the mortal judge who deserves the apple," said the pear tree. "Tell us! Will you judge beauty, wisdom, or riches most deserving? My myrtle colleague is for beauty; the olive wisdom; and I am prosperity and fulness, the rightful queen of them all."
"Give it to me and I'll give you a gift. Anyone you wish will desire you uncontrollably," the myrtle offered.
"We call that date rape where I come from," Heather said. "And my power already gives me that and other things." She wondered what the other trees would bribe, and if it would be any better.
"Knowledge of the stars in your world," said the olive tree. "Astronomy at your fingertips, the wisdom of the stars embedded in your mind. You will look up at the sky and know every constellation as an old friend."
"We use projectors and stuff for that," Heather said. Only an incredibly unpopular nerd would want something like that - even if it had sounded sort of cool, for about half a second. She waited impatiently for the pear to give her best shot.
"A purse of King John's jewels, lost in the Wash near eight hundred years ago," the pear tree said. Heather snickered inwardly; that sounded made up.
"Choose," the olive demanded.
Heather figured Mizz Pope and most teachers would've told her to pick the olive, wisdom. Grandma Chandler would probably opt for riches. The Heather Chandler she was at school would've chosen beauty in a heartbeat. Only shallow people didn't judge by appearance. What kind of sanctimonious, myopic, short-bus twits refused to judge someone based on how they chose to present themselves, and thought themselves better than other people for being freaking unobservant? Pissed Heather off to no end.
Should she just eat the apple herself? It was a memory of Disney Snow White that stopped Heather from that; she'd watched it with Heather McNamara as a kid and had to hold her hand in the scary bits. Maybe she should use eeny, meeny, miny, moe? Take the purse of jewels, since it was the least mind-altering of the three prizes?
But then Heather suddenly realized the great danger she was in. An icy chill pooled and ran down the back of her neck as she figured it out. These trees offered powerful bribes. Whichever one I choose, the other two become my enemies.
She could also choose to set the apple on fire, or the trees, but that would net her three new enemies.
"I must take the time to think. You're all beautiful." Heather idly tossed the apple in the air, catching it, up and down and up and down. When in doubt, play for time and find something to manipulate. She narrowed her eyes, spotting dots on the far horizon. The dots in the sky grew bigger, one in particular. Heather threw higher and higher, still managing to catch it. God, let me not drop it. Finally the large bird flying overhead was close. She threw the apple as high as she could. The bird successfully caught such a coveted object in his beak. Heather pretended to look surprised.
"You might have to let that eagle judge," Heather said, and ran away in the opposite direction as fast as she could. She faintly heard the trees' voices as she ran.
"I think she chose wisdom," the olive tree said.
"You have only to look at her to see she's exceptionally beautiful for a mortal. I say she was on my side," the myrtle argued.
"She's rich as well, at least for now," complained the pear, very faint as Heather finally got away from them. "But will she be in future?"
Heather slammed herself against a tree trunk that didn't move or talk at her. She was pouring with sweat. "HEATHER!" she screamed for her friend, willing McNamara to fucking get a clue already and let herself be rescued.
A voice answered her. "Please help me," a flapper girl said. She was transparent; probably a ghost. Heather backed cautiously away. The ghost wore a long dress, making a flat silhouette with a dropped waist, dripping with beading and a panelled skirt. Heather had seen a picture of Grandma Chandler in similar clothes; she'd worn them better. Since the dress was long, it looked early-twenties rather than a later arrival in the unfortunate trend of little-boy-flat-chests with no shape, but the girl seemed the kind to be out of date. She looked like the Betty Finn type, not necessarily ugly but always wittering and fretting and betraying herself into being pathetic and unattractive, the sort who'd always be a regular five years behind the fashion.
"What the fuck do you want?" Heather said, trying to combine red-hot anger and a cold deathly chill in her words at the same time. It seemed to work on the ghost, who looked like she was going to cry if only she had tear glands.
"Cruel!" The ghost sobbed like Betty Finn, too. "You're me. You're her. You could never be anything but cruel."
Oh, come on, I'm sick of people giving me crap, Heather thought. "I'm sorry," she said, rather insincerely, taking into consideration that the ghost hadn't moved to harm her as yet. The ghost continued to sob. "Come on, stop crying - "
"Trapped forever, trapped forever," the ghost wailed.
Do a favor, get a favor, Heather decided; she had the niggling feeling the Paladin would look at her funny if she walked past. She stepped back, testing the waters. "Come with me?" she asked, extending a hand to the ghost.
The ghost girl seemed to flutter towards her, but it looked like she was pulled back by the black hollow tree that framed her.
"Are you trapped in that thing?" Heather asked, and impatiently asked again several different ways before she got a halfway coherent answer. Yes.
So Heather summoned her fire, and flung it to burn down that tree. She felt a chilly, prickling sensation down the back of her neck, as if she were watched by someone or something malevolent. But she'd decided on her course of action, and did it.
The tree burnt to a crisp. The ghost flew from it, to where Heather didn't see. Then all the other trees around her changed in a moment. On each knotted trunk, the bark changed into the face of an ancient old woman, implacably angry and twisted. She knew it was the Thorn Lady without having to be told.
"You defiled my property," the old woman said. Her grimace turned into a terrifying, greedy smile. "You're mine."
In a moment, thick walls of black thorns grew up around Heather, trapping her in a tiny space barely more than a foot square. She was on the point of breaking out her fire again, burning it all down - when she heard another's voice.
"She's mine," Heather heard. "She murdered me. That claim supersedes, and you will give her to me."
Oh shit spite ghost, Heather thought.
"She's my friend," she heard another voice, wavering and timorous. This one she knew well. Heather McNamara - the one she'd come to save. With Martha? How could that be? Heather beat at the thorns with her fists, heedless of the pain.
"The Fire Woman's apprentice. How curious that she dares not show her face." The Thorn Lady chuckled, harsh like the clacking of empty seed-pods against each other. "Stake your claim, trespasser. Your way out will not be easy."
"Come on, Heather." Martha burst in through the walls of Heather's prison. She seized her by the hand. "You murdered me - but keep your mouth shut, don't set anything on fire, and try not to fuck anything else up."
Martha Dumptruck had learnt bad language in ghostly revenge purgatory. Interesting. Martha pulled both Heathers along with her. Thorns pressed on them and cut their bodies, but something Martha did healed the cuts as soon as they were made. There was only an endless pain. Heather tried to give Heather McNamara a nod, somehow non-verbally tell her I beat a giant toad in a game of insults and mastered fireballs and judged between three overly demanding trees and endured the Thorn Lady all to save you. I'm a freaking hero.
And you really are my friend.
But all that had to wait, until they'd endured miles and miles of impassable thorns, ever stretching higher and higher above and around them, blotting out the sky.
—
He was tired. A warm grey bed surrounded him.
"You feel things," said a small grey man, "and that's what I wanted and needed. A good bargain." He rubbed grey knotted hands together and grinned jovially. He would have been short even if he'd stood up, but he was still more diminutive as he hunched over himself, his back bent and curled like the ripples in convenience store beef jerky.
J.D. felt numb; it was a welcome change from his power. Chandler was right. It was always more of a vulnerability than a power. Sensing other people overwhelmed him, anger burned him, and he felt any pain going around that the world had to offer.
He dimly felt that this grey little man was playing with J.D.'s power like a child on the beach with a shiny piece of glass, turning it over at different angles to get a different color reflection. Red anger, yellow fear, green courage, cold blue and then hot sick pain, each looked at in turn for sheer curiosity and the pleasure of different sensations. J.D. was removed from all of that now.
The grey man offered him rest. He'd sleep here and let him take what he wanted. J.D. had thought of coming to this in-between place in case of meeting - he felt emotionally indifferent to that now, so he wouldn't bother to remember. He'd settle for the grey indifference seeping into him.
Nothing seemed to matter. The grey man departed after a while, still chuckling over his new-held powers. J.D. was covered in fine grey fuzz, falling from the trees around him like a blanket. He didn't mind. It was soft. He drowsed into a bleak oblivion.
"Get up." Cold sharp hands dug into his shoulder. He opened his eyes to see something strange; a knight in silver armour. Even her fingers were cased in mail. "You must never sleep too long in Grey Willows. I am the Paladin, and I was sent to mount your rescue."
With her touch, J.D. felt a sudden pain flood into him again. His powers had been with him all along. He looked at the knight, wondering, and passed a shuddering hand over his face. He didn't want to look at her or to think. She all but forced him on her yellow horse as if he were a sack of potatoes, and she rode like the hounds of hell were after her.
J.D. could see why. The skies around Grey Willows turned blue-black. The Paladin warded creatures of the storm off with a shining blade and shield, her emblem a rose and a six-pointed star. He could feel the knight - was she a ghost? She was like a golden rose and like the smell of fresh bread, a personality concentrated into one beacon of heroism rather than split into a hundred pathetic distractions like a normal person. It was almost painful to feel how pure she was. She felt like the sort of storybook hero that J.D. had long grown out of, would cynically sneer at as silly and impossible. No one was that kind of hero. Everyone was messed up and fucked up beyond any kind of help. Himself as much as anyone.
The Paladin led him to the edge of what looked like a town, cottages glowing and twinkling with lights in the twilight. Maybe it was the equivalent of a false plaster-wall set, like something you'd see in a film, for there were no people to be seen. Her yellow horse drank greedily from a trough, the color reminding J.D. of a book he'd once read. As if quixotic crusaders existed anywhere but in dreams; and this was a dream world.
He coughed. He dipped his hands into the dirty water and wiped them across his face. The Paladin sat beside him on a mossy stone, drawing idle sketches in the dirt with a long stick; he couldn't see what, if anything, she drew. The moonlight shone on her silver visor.
"Take off your helm," J.D. said at last. His voice shook despite his best efforts.
"You mortals are all the same," the Paladin said; she only sounded vaguely amused, as if she were trying hard to be a little more cheerful. She pried off her helm to show her face: an ordinary-looking woman, middle-aged, with light brown hair and kind eyes.
She looked exactly the same as she'd always done. He couldn't have made any mistake.
"Mom," J.D. said.
The Paladin tilted her head in confusion. J.D. saw no answering flicker in her eyes, felt no sign of recognition in her. She looked at him like she would look at a not-particularly-welcome stranger.
"Who are you?" she asked.
—
"She makes him bathe in lye first" - The Lindworm (folk tale)
"Only shallow people do not judge by appearance" - Wilde
King John of England did lose his crown jewels in the Wash, a swamp, in 1216.