Disclaimer: Not mine, not making any money. I'm just playing.
I have fussed and fretted over this chapter, worried that it's too strong compared to the rest of the story. I've chopped it and changed it and I invariably come back to the fact that this is how it is in my head. So for better or for worse, that's what I'm posting and this chapter contains a warning for more sexual content than the rest of the story. At least now it's actually earned its M rating.
Shadow Puppets
Chapter 28
Edna found Stephanie sitting with Lula leaning against the wall of the cottage in the sun. "Where's Ranger?" she asked.
"Off somewhere debriefing Tank and Lester," Stephanie said. "Why?"
"Because I need to talk to the two of you about getting us home. You'll be involved."
"How?"
"I'm going to use you as a vessel for the power to break out through the barrier."
Stephanie looked confused. "What barrier?"
"We already tried to get home," Lula said. "We just got turned around every time. That's how Edna and me ended up along for the ride."
"You mean we're trapped here?" Stephanie's voice was sharp with alarm.
"Not if you help me," Edna said. "But you need to be willing."
"Of course I'm willing. Why would I not be willing?"
"Because I haven't said what you'd have to do yet."
"Then I think you'd better tell me."
Edna did.
Stephanie shook her head. "Oh no. No no no. I can't do that. I can't believe you're asking me. You're my grandma. You're supposed to be normal, and bake cookies and try to find a nice Catholic boy for me to marry."
"You found one, and do you want to go home or not?"
"I'll do it," Lula interrupted. "It'd be easier for me. I'm used to this kind of shit."
Edna shook her head. "I'm sorry. If I could use you I would, Lula. I know what I'm asking. But Stephanie's a relative. She shares my blood. It's my first time and she's my best chance of getting it right."
"This is wrong," Lula said.
"If we don't do it, we have to travel this place for as long as it takes trying to find another way. I swear, nobody will remember anything but me. It will be like it never happened."
"Are you absolutely sure of that?" Stephanie asked. "Nobody?"
"I promise."
"If you told Mom I'd never talk to you again."
"Do you think she'd be any happier with me? I'd be in a retirement home for the demented inside of a week, if your father didn't shoot me first."
"If I agree to do this," Stephanie said in a shaky voice, "there's no guarantee that Ranger will say yes too."
"Trust me, girl," Lula said, "he's a guy. That kind of shit don't bother guys at all. He ain't gonna mind."
Stephanie dropped her head down onto her knees and wrapped her arms around her head. "Oh God, what am I doing?" she said in a muffled voice. "Where shall we do it?"
"Out here in the forest where it's private," Edna said.
"Joe can't be there. I don't care if nobody remembers."
Lula got up. "No problem. I'll tell Joe to take the kids down to the village and stay there tonight. Is tonight too soon?"
"No, we can be ready," Edna answered. "Tell Garrick to go too. They have things to talk about. Stephanie, help me find Ranger and talk to him, then we have herbs we need to find."
* * *
The firelight flickered on the surface of the dark liquid in the bowl as Stephanie looked into it. "I'm still going to be able to go to church after this, right? I'm not damned, or cursed or anything?"
"No gods, no demons," Edna assured her, "just people. We're collecting the power of what you're feeling and passing it to me to borrow. I'm going to collect it all up and use it to take us home." And I don't know what God is going to think of me for doing it, but I'm going to do it anyway so that I can bring you all home safely.
Stephanie nodded and drained the bowl before shrugging off the blanket that covered her naked body and laying on her front on the ground. "I'm ready."
Edna picked up the bowl of softened chocolate that sat by the fire and dipped her finger in. She put it to Stephanie's newly washed skin and started painting on different, older designs.
By the time she had covered her back and started on the front, the herbs were working. Stephanie's eyes were glazed and she writhed and sighed at the touch of the air. The firelight turned her skin to pale gold and the symbols shifted and turned with her movements.
A croon reached Edna's ears and she looked up. The rest of the group were circled around them, lit by the fire. Lula was there, eyes glazed and hungry. Lester and Tank flanked her, leaning forward watching the painting, watching Stephanie's restless movements as she lay on the ground by the fire. The warband made up the rest of the circle, all similarly stripped to the waist to expose the symbols, livid against pale skin, that she had painted on them earlier as they drank from their bowls.
The croon grew into a chant, a deep voice growling and a providing a rhythm that the rest quickly followed. Lester started banging his hands against a hollow log in sharp counterpoint to the watchers' wordless chant as they watched Stephanie writhe in the middle of the circle and push her breasts towards the sky.
A long shadow fell across her as someone stepped between her and the fire, naked as she. She looked up into Ranger's face and undulated restlessly beneath his gaze, spreading her legs before him.
He caught Edna's eye and held it. She wasn't the only one aware then. He had drained the bowl as she had painted him, but he was fighting it every step of the way. His eyes promised a reckoning for this tomorrow.
His face softened again as he looked down at his lover and saw her pleading for his touch. He crouched down over her and trailed a finger softly down her cheek, combed back the hair that tangled across her face.
Edna felt suddenly ashamed that she'd brought this private affection out before a circle of eyes and stripped it bare for the world to see, to use as a source of power. They'd both agreed, but she wasn't sure she'd ever forgive herself for the way her granddaughter was writhing helplessly in the light of flames, driven by the potion she'd prepared for her so that she could ignore everything but the presence of the man crouched above her.
But it was too late now.
The chant grew in volume as Ranger laid himself down over Stephanie and found her lips, kissed her as though they were alone and not in the middle of the circle.
She sighed and arched beneath him and tried to pull him closer.
He gently loosened her grip on his shoulders and pushed her back down as he worked his mouth down her body to her center and stopped there, worshiping her until her cries rose above the chant and the drum.
The trickle of power that had been flowing into Edna became a flood that burned her body. She could discern the source of the flows in a way that wasn't quite any of her senses but borrowed from all of them. Stephanie's sweet and heady, the boys' thinner, drier, like young wine. Stephanie's flow grew until it roared in her ears and threatened to overwhelm her. Two more grew, dancing and twining together. Tank and Lula had broken away to conduct a rite of their own.
She felt it when Ranger entered Stephanie. His own flow of power grew to join the flood, musky and rich. She wound the two flows together and fed them back to the two lovers, felt it returned a hundredfold in an ocean wave of power that she had to fight to control, trying to float on top of it, weaving the colors together like white light into a coherent whole that would do her bidding.
She was so lost in the fight that she was only dimly aware of the flow of power peaking and tailing off. The lights in her mind's eye winked out one by one as the participants slept.
Her borrowed power settled around her like a cocoon of warm water. One with the potential to rise up over her face and drown her if she wasn't careful.
She opened her eyes and realized that she was flat on the floor too, like the rest of them. She'd fallen back and never even noticed. She stood up, wobbling slightly, and went looking for blankets to cover them.
Ranger was curled possessively around Stephanie, for all the world like a human blanket. She laid one over the two of them anyway.
Finally, when everyone was covered, she wrapped herself in a blanket of her own and sat down by the fire to try to stop the top of her head unscrewing and floating off into the night sky.
* * *
She woke to find Ranger squatting in front of her waiting for her to become aware of his presence. He was still naked and covered with the symbols that she had painted on his skin the night before. His presence was intimidating in a way that Tank's and Lester's never had been, even though they were the same size or bigger.
"Do you have enough power?" he asked in a low voice.
The borrowed power enveloped her like warm honey. She nodded.
"That never happens again," he said quietly. "Not to her. I don't ever want to see her like that again. Do you understand?"
She nodded again, trying to stop the power rising up and taking charge. He had no idea how much danger he was in.
"Good. Now do what you have to do and let's go home." He rose and walked over to where Stephanie slept by the ashes of the fire. He scooped her up in the blanket and carried her into the gingerbread house.
Edna breathed again. There was no chance that she was trying this again, with Stephanie or anyone else. She was poised on a rope over a chasm and she suddenly understood Ash a lot more than she really wanted to. The power sang in her blood and enticed her to use it. Better to go home and go back to being a crazy old lady with nothing to worry about but driving her family nuts than be like this forever. She hoped that the knowledge she had now wouldn't cross back with her. The temptation would be unbearable.
The rest of the sleepers were beginning to stir as Morelli and Garrick walked into the clearing. Garrick toed the warband up with the edge of his boot, one by one. "Up you get, ladies. We ride out in an hour. Look sharp or my new second will find some water to help you up."
Edna raised his eyebrows at Morelli and he smiled sadly. "I'm not coming back with you. Garrick's offered me a place in the warband. We ride out to find the girl in the tower today."
"Are you sure?"
He nodded and shifted a bundle in his hands. "I found some clothes in the village for Steph." He read the look on her face and grinned. "And yes, I even brought some for him too."
"You're a good boy, Joseph. I always did like you."
He winked. "Shh. Don't go ruining my reputation. Just do me a favor and pinch his ass or something at least once before you get home to Trenton. I don't want him having everything his own way."
"I will."
"And look suitably impressed when you see Greta's new pony. She's dying to show it off to you and Lula before you go. Hans looks like a sparrow on a mountain on his, but you can't laugh. Garrick swears he'll have grown into it in a year or two."
"Spoiling your new children already?"
"Are you kidding? It was the only way I was going to get to keep my own horse."
"Every Prince Charming should have his own horse. You know, you look happier already."
"It's going to be good. It feels right. And I'll find a way to see you all again."
"Good luck."
"I'd better go say the rest of my goodbyes. You take care of yourself Grandma." He picked her up in a bear hug and planted a kiss on her cheek before walking away.
A few minutes later Lula joined her, sitting on the ground beside her and watching the warband packing up and saddling horses. "Did it work?"
"It did. We're going home. Do you remember anything?"
"Not a damn thing from when I drank that stuff you gave me to when I woke up. Just tell me our girl's okay."
"She's fine. Everybody's fine. It's over."
"It better be. I know it had to happen, but it was one hell of a thing to have to do."
"I know. And now I've done it once, I don't plan on doing it ever again." She didn't tell her why. Fear in the others' eyes would do nothing to help her deal with the lure of power. She held out a wrinkled hand. "I feel like if I stand up on my own I might float away. Help me get up and get packed?"
* * *
Morelli leaned on his saddle with the rest of the warband and watched his friends clustered together behind Edna as she sat on the ground in the archway. The vines still showed evidence of the battle that had almost killed Tank. Tank was clearly leaving a safe distance between himself and them just in case.
"Last chance," Garrick said to him as the air in the archway shimmered and distorted like the heat haze above a fire.
Morelli shook his head. "No. We have a kid in a tower to rescue."
Edna stood and walked into the shimmer. Morelli thought he saw a different forest on the other side, the swamp that they had cut their way through what seemed like a lifetime ago. Tank followed her through holding Lula's hand. Lester hesitated, looked around as though he was searching for something before finally stepping through after them.
Finally, just Ranger and Stephanie were left, Stephanie holding up the hem of her overlong dress as she walked, Ranger with his arm around her, solicitous. Possessive. She stopped and looked back at Morelli before crossing through, caught sight of him and waved. He waved back and she stepped through and was gone.
"Good looking woman," Garrick observed.
"Yeah. She has something."
"And you did all this for her even though she's with another man?"
"Pretty much. She's worth it. And it's been the best time of my life."
"Is your world really that bad?"
"No. Some of it is wonderful. But not what I was going back to. A job trying to stop a bunch of vermin from doing the world a favor and killing each other. Watching him help my girlfriend find her inner savage. Listening to my grandmother go on about finding a nice Italian girl to continue the Morelli family name. No, I think I'm going to find my happy ever after here."
The shimmer gradually faded away until there was no evidence that it had ever been there.
"You know," Garrick said, "Belle was hoping you'd come back to the village and see her before you left. She likes you."
"And you're okay with that?"
"I think you should have run back to your world as fast as you could when you had the chance. Her father was past thirty when her mother took a liking to him and it made no difference. Poor bastard never stood a chance."
Morelli snorted. "And you just had to wait until the gate closed to tell me that, didn't you?"
Garrick roared with laughter. "Never mind. I'm sure you'll think of something." He raised his arm above his head and pointed towards the horizon. "Let's move out."