"Veronica!" Heather Duke called. Her friend didn't turn back. Left behind again, something in the corn sheaves whispered to her. She blinked. Veronica's shadow hung behind her, splitting into three. She couldn't tell which one to follow. She hurried forward. Other shadows crept up beside her, layered over the tall grasses. At first they moved with her and then moved of their own will.
You're powerless, they hissed at her.
A shadow play. Duke's eye was caught by a shade of Veronica, proud and clever and scornful and glamorous.
You want what you can never have, Veronica's shade said, dangerous lips blood red and hair waving like a siren underwater, flawless and even more beautiful than she'd been in life.
Duke was drawn into memory.
At camp. She'd followed Martha there, a Catholic girl at a Jewish camp - she'd been weak even then, the older Heather Duke thought. At the party night, a celebration just before going home, it felt as if everyone was talking about that girl - an older girl, tall and powerful and from the perspective of eleven on the cusp of being a grown-up - the beautiful girl, with smooth dark hair and a sun-brown tan, who wore a small tight white peasant blouse to the party.
You can see everything when she bends down. Is she even wearing a bra? someone whisper-talked, loud enough for Duke and everyone around to hear. She watched the girl, covertly, along with the others. Would she bend down? She talked to her friends and moved between the tables. Then it happened. She dropped a napkin and stooped for it. Her rounded breasts moved and you could see almost all of them, bobbing and almost falling out -
"You shouldn't stare." Martha was frowning at her. "That's rude."
Duke angrily denied it; she and Martha moved on.
Freshman year came. Duke had a lot of headaches then. It felt like Heather Chandler wouldn't leave the inside of her head alone, just as she wouldn't leave the outside of her head alone. Taunting, focused on her, like a bird of prey going in on a helpless mouse for the kill. It didn't help that Heather Chandler was beautiful. Golden and dazzling, curls floating around her head like the viperous coils of a medusa. Slender and taunting Duke, You'll end up as fat as Martha Dumptruck, I could reach out and pinch the rolls on your waist, we'll give you a makeover if you're good. What Duke never told was the grasping, reaching, secret hot wetness she felt, everything wrong, everything no one was supposed to feel about another girl. It was against Jesus. She turned on Martha on Heather Chandler's say-so - God, it made her sick to think about it now - orchestrated a prank where she dumped melted ice cream on Martha's head, fed Martha's papier-mache project to the toilet, told Martha point blank that she hated her and she was a fat loser -
It was you all along, Duke's shadow whispered to her. You're the powerless one. Heather and Martha and Veronica are all better than you. You're the toy they all whim between them in their games.
There is a boy and there will always be a boy; Veronica will never think of you. She knows you want her - how could someone so brilliant and clever not know that - and she will take your store of affection only to spend it on the next boy.
Something stabbed Duke in the leg. She looked down, her head whirling. Her hand fixed around a thorny plant. It hurt, but at least the pain gave her clarity. The illusions around her cleared away. At least she could take a deep breath.
"Take it, gratis," said an unfamiliar woman's voice. Duke jumped and leapt back, still clutching the cluster of thorns. It looked almost like a bracelet, a twisted circle.
"I deliver my exposition: I am the Thorn Lady, a being of this land," the woman's voice said. She spoke from nowhere, as if she at least admitted she was a delusion. "You have met some lost souls on their way to death here, but I am not one of them. I was never mortal. I am the sum of men's fears, an archetype from misogynistic nightmares. I grew my thorns because of hatred, and protect myself through my power. A world without men would be not so terrible - would it, child?" she asked, almost mockingly, as if she knew Duke's secret and cared to exploit it.
"What do you want? Everyone wants something," Duke spat out. "You just want to use me too."
"I offer you reality," said the Thorn Lady. "Pain is truth. What hurts is real. You learnt this lesson long ago."
Duke drew herself up. This voice spoke her language. "Don't believe pretty lies," she said. "People hurt you and will always hurt you. Your only choice is to take power when you can."
"Well reasoned. You think yourself powerless, but I tell you that power is in your mind," the Thorn Lady said. "I will not lie to you. My thorns are a gift and no obligation, because you are as clever and sharp as me. I offer boons. When the time comes for you to bargain, consider me. Farewell."
The sheaves and shadows around Duke flickered again, as if the maze tried to drive her back into vulnerability. She touched one of the thorns until her finger started to bleed. The illusions and images vanished at the touch of pain, and she could see Veronica walking ahead of her.
Veronica turned back. "Heather?"
Before Veronica would see any of it, Duke slipped the thorn bracelet on her hand, below her long sleeve. Veronica already had power; she didn't need to know about someone else's offer of even more power. Duke hurried to catch up to her.
"One hell of a corn maze," Veronica said.
"It's not so bad once you're used to it," Duke said.
—
Heather struggled through the black-biting thorns. Martha Dunnstock pulled her wrist painfully, forcing her along. Easy for a spiteful ghost to ignore pain, especially other people's. They had to dash at the least give of weakness in the black branches, most of them utterly unyielding. Heather heard Heather McNamara's soft moans from the other side and resolved to keep her own mouth shut even if she had to bite through her lip to do it. She wasn't a coward. "Come on, let me set things on fire already," she muttered, not that she could be heard through the thorns, and cursed herself for phrasing it as let me.
Heather would decide for herself when setting things on fire was necessary; she was only listening to the spite ghost because she'd clearly survived some years here. Heather Chandler listened to people when she was sure they actually knew more than her and weren't just blowing smoke out of their asses - even if she'd never admit to it.
It might've been my fault, but I didn't intend it to end in death, Heather thought. Sorry, Martha. Thanks for trying whatever it is you're doing.
They had to run downhill, the path of least resistance. The thorns grew so dark they were like small black jewels - like black diamonds, hard enough to tear through flesh and a thousand more things besides, and still glint as dark and beautiful as before, wet blood staining them as an additional ornament. Their feet sped along a downward slope. Easy is the descent to ... ran an old proverb Heather didn't remember.
And finally they had reached the bottom of the slope. It didn't go down any more. There was only the harsh upward path they had run from, thorns tightening back into place already, and a steep impassable hill before them.
They'd been led into a trap. Herded, like cattle. The Thorn Lady's prisoners and prizes. Nowhere to escape now. Heather felt, rather than heard, Martha's nod, and let the Thorn Lady's forest burn. They couldn't be in any worse trouble anyway.
Heather made an inferno, towering fires that turned thorns into ashes, and yet the endless forest grew back. Burn in one part, grow all over again. No matter what she burned, the encroaching thorns pressed in on them once more. Wherever the Thorn Lady was, she was fucking laughing.
Then Heather saw another light, beyond where her fire burned. A distant flare of silver, pure as the stars. It bobbed and weaved amongst the thorns, marking its way through despite all the odds. Heather lowered her flames. She thought she knew what this was. Bit awkward playing damsel in distress again, but hell, I'll take what help I can get.
"I didn't know you were a pyromaniac, Heather," Heather McNamara stuttered.
"I'm not normally." Sparkling dialogue, Heather thought grumpily; the only redeeming factor was that surely they would leave this place soon.
The Paladin rode heavily and rode hard. Her silver shield glowed with its own light, fending off the black thorns that sought to tangle and wound her. She ruthlessly cut through branches and creepers with her shining sword. Her yellow horse neighed a loud battle-cry. A dark figure rode behind her in the unenviable, uncomfortable place over Primrose's buttocks - for which Heather Chandler had just enough human pity to sympathise after her own experience.
Heather sent an illuminating jet of fire into the air, signalling their rescuer, setting weird lights along Heather's and Martha's blackened cheeks. She supposed she must look as awful as they did, filthy and grimy with briars knotted in her hair, her skin covered with thorn-tracks.
Not one of the thorns could pierce the Paladin's armor, and slowly but surely she rode down the valley. She dismounted in the small clearing. The black figure behind her also slid off the horse's back, not without a pained groan that Heather understood.
"Let the children go," the Paladin said, voice bright and carrying like a silver bell from her metal visor.
That provoked the Thorn Lady's appearance. She came in a storm of rising black hedges, walls so high they blotted out all light. They rose on all sides of the valley, imprisoning them in the pincer of steep hills on both sides.
"How many times is it now, little knight?" The cracked old woman's voice swept around them like pelting hail in a thunderstorm.
"This makes thrice I have ridden to your domain to rescue captives," the Paladin answered. "I intend it to be thrice successful."
A dry chuckling sound came from the brambles, as if of old thorns rustling against each other. "But tell me, did or did not your master the Star caution you against stealing what is mine by right?"
"The Star is a colleague, not my master," the Paladin said. "We work toward the same end with different ambits. As the less powerful, mine is the wider. And so I say to release these children. They have suffered many dangers for the sake of their friends, and have earned their way to their own world."
"I say I do not quarrel with you yet," the Thorn Lady said, and then came another dry chuckle. "I offer easy terms. You say that the children are brave heroes, heroes who would sacrifice anything for the sake of a friend?"
Not what I'd say about myself, but it's nice to have someone else say it for you, Heather thought, and inwardly smirked. She'd done practically everything herself; fought and faced a giant toad, sent the Paladin to rescue the others, solved a problem for three talking trees, freed a ghostly flapper, and sent up fires to light their escape path. Just have to find Veronica and Heather Duke, and we're out of here.
"Of course I say it," the Paladin said.
"Then I set all free and clear to leave my realm - even including you, dead knight," the Thorn Lady said. "Provided Heather Chandler agrees to remain."
They all looked to Heather, then, even the horse Primrose, frightened eyes in the dim silvered light of the Paladin's shield, all eight of them circling inexorably to meet her. Only J.D. didn't bother to look up, staring at the ground with an arm on the flank of the horse.
"Let the murderer show what she is," the Thorn Lady said. "She released my ghost and I demand a fair exchange. You have a simple choice, a path to end your friends' suffering or a path to hurt them all. Will you swear yourself to me?"
"If you want to keep me, I'll burn your thorns down," Heather promised.
"They grow back," the Thorn Lady said. "If you truly came here to help your friend, you know what to do. Swear, or watch them all suffer."
Heather was silent. Just for a moment; she was thinking. Then the Thorn Lady's laughter crackled around her like dry twigs set aflame. She looked into Heather McNamara's desperate, pained eyes. She saw the sense of betrayal there, a chance of hope so near and yet denied by Heather's silence. Heather thought: The Thorn Lady took from me. She has won.
"Thank me. I have revealed her selfishness," the Thorn Lady commanded. "She has loved no one but herself all along. Enjoy your afterlife here and forever."
The thorns crackled gleefully. Heather McNamara laid a shaking hand on Martha's shoulder, instinctively rather than deliberately reaching out to the nearest person for support, but she couldn't have struck harder at Heather if she'd tried. Heather wanted to defend herself, but the words stuck in her throat, caught by the black dust of thorns and ash.
"It is best you know what she is," the Thorn Lady said. "She would not make the choice to save you."
"She should not have to," said the Paladin. She unbuckled a dull leather pouch around her waist. Immediately, a silver light glowed from within. She took out a small glowing ball, so bright you could not look at it directly, like a tiny pure star. Heather felt an indrawn breath even from the Thorn Lady, as if this magic was far more powerful than she'd expected. Powerful and precious and valuable beyond words - and something the Paladin sacrificed.
"I call a Convocation of Cardinals!"
She flung the globe to the ground. Its white light split apart, flying and spreading in a thousand different directions. It bore light all across the Thorn Lady's globe.
Paths of shining light unfurled before them, between them, small passages weaving across and around each other in waves while four wide ribbons of white light shone in four broad unrolling paths. The cardinal points of the compass-rose: a world of north and south and east and west, the powers of the realm approaching them.
A throne of thorns was the first to appear upon the path, drawn in the west. A gnarled old woman sat there, her brown fingernails curled over themselves in tight concentric rings that might be six feet long if they were somehow unrolled. The Thorn Lady. To the east formed a pole made from a grey plant, draped by a wizened figure in grey rags with a hunchback. Grey Willows, Heather thought, the name whispered to her once. To the south, last to appear, was an old person with white robes and white hair, their skin textured like the pages of an old book and their eyes glowing silver. One moment Heather was sure it was a man, the next certain she saw a woman. The Star, no doubt.
So there was another choice, Heather thought. Not agreeing to the first deal was smart, not selfish. Would I damn another person to save my own skin?
... Depends on the person, she thought.
Veronica and Heather Duke walked together from the path in the north, looking as surprised as Dorothy on the yellow brick road. Behind them sat only an empty chair to hold the north's place. It had been seared black and cracked open with some long-ago fire.
"The four cardinal points of this realm," the Paladin said. She approached the Star, the tilt of her head reverent for all she'd said the Star wasn't her boss. "The Thorn Lady, empress of the West. Grey Willows, lord of the East. The Star, caretaker of the South. And I see there is yet no chieftain of the north. Not since the fire ... But that is another story."
"We made the north fight over a hank of straw and sticks in their stupid tournament," Heather Duke boasted. No one seemed to pay her much attention.
"The mortals have endured travail and proved themselves," the Paladin said. "They live and are far from their allotted span. The laws of this land say we must send them back." Her visor, then, turned to Martha. "You have a claim of revenge. Are you willing to lay it aside?"
If someone murdered me I'd probably fling them to the Thorn Lady and laugh, Heather thought, even if it was a real accident ... not the sort of accident where I told her to kill herself because I wanted to hurt her.
"Heather killed me," Martha said. "But I've learnt that I don't - Revenge is not the most important thing." Her voice rang out clear as a bell across the gathering. She was dignified and powerful in spite of the dirt and grime on her, in spite of how she looked. "It was the Fire Woman who taught me, who offered me revenge. I've served her purposes all along and did not realize it."
"Chandler's grandmother is the Fire Woman," J.D. said.
Heather looked down at her hands. Made sense; if her powers were fire in this world, so should her grandmother's be. She supposed there must be a reason why Grandma hadn't shown her face: too scared of being yelled at or worse. Wouldn't she just hear about it when they returned.
"Send them back," said the Star. The voice was low and smooth, rippling out in a smooth-peanut-butter-sound somewhere between alto and tenor pitch.
"I concur," the Thorn Lady said. She clicked her tongue against brown thorny teeth. "Give the Fire Woman some trouble instead of me."
The third grey figure shrugged wrinkled shoulders. "I'll not play two against one," said Grey Willows. Heather caught a swift narrowed glance from J.D. to him, a grim thinning of lips. Ominous; the Paladin must have rescued him from that same cardinal point.
No time to think about it. Heather Duke thrust herself forward. "I'm not going back until I can protect myself. From her." She stared at Heather, and her face was set into almost the same startling, murderous bitterness Heather had seen on McNamara's face in the graveyard. "If you let her return, we'll all be her slaves. Again."
"You think I don't even deserve to live, Heather?" Heather said. Old habits of venting, letting the most pathetic member of her group feel it when she was angry, found their way through without thought. "You little fucking ingrate. I took you into the most powerful clique in school. I fought through this netherworld to save Heather's ass."
Heather Duke's grimace turned into a bitter grin. "Case in point."
Heather backtracked, just a little. Second time I got played today. Don't let it happen again. "I didn't ask for any of this, Heather," she said. She raised her palms, looking conciliatory and more gentle. "I didn't know I had power. I'll be nice and quit making you do things. All of you."
"You'll break that promise the instant you feel mildly inconvenienced," Duke said.
Heather had to admit she wasn't wrong. Any person used whatever power they had when it suited their interests; anyone who tried to convince themselves otherwise was lying. "Maybe. What are you going to do about it, Heather? Anyone else want to play burn the witch?" She cast a defiant look around her somewhat-friends. She knew that challenges to Heather Chandler would be as futile as they'd ever been. "Thought not. Open that door, Star."
The beginnings of a silver door in the air formed. The Star's idea of a door was delicate work, chased silver scrolls like leaves that surrounded a blurred picture that came into gradual focus. Heather saw glimpses of a real-world-mundane-room, dining table and scattered porcelain teacups, wet pools in the wood around them. It was perfect.
"This girl longs for power," said the Thorn Lady's creaking voice. "Understandable. Sensible. I offer a boon. Power for her, in return for her longing."
The words "I accept" came out of Duke's mouth before anyone could even try to stop her.
It was a harsh power, adamant-hard and sharp as steel. It rose from the thorns under Duke's feet, filling her like red-hot metal poured into a mold, covering her like impassable walls. As it grew, so too did she. Heather glimpsed a flash of a new bracelet below Duke's sleeve, stretched on an ever-growing wrist. The unfashionable thing split apart to fall on the rest of the thorns below her. Veronica had to jump back from her friend grown into a giantess, grown into a titan now. It was above twenty feet tall and sheathed in smoke-colored metal. It barely had any human features left at all, a colossus that left heavy footprints in the earth below its feet. It bore a sword the width of a bus. And, as it swung recklessly in Heather's direction, it seemed it didn't have any concern left in it for the lives of its former friends.
"I give you the Iron Duchess," the Thorn Lady pronounced.
They scattered as she attacked.