Poison Read online

  He didn’t answer.

  “I mean, you said it yourself, nothing ever changes.”

  “Why do you think I haven’t left Whitfield since I got there?” he mumbled.

  “I thought you were just— I thought . . . You wanted to leave Avalon?”

  “Of course. Who wouldn’t? Do you think it’s fun living in a cave and cooking over a fire?”

  “Sometimes it is.”

  “Try impressing a date over a dinner of turnips and deer meat.”

  I laughed. “I thought you were their darling. That’s why they sent you, isn’t it?”

  He shrugged. “I guess. I’ve worked as a servant to . . . the Seer my whole life, almost since I was born.”

  He looked dejected. “I didn’t know there was anything else until I came to Whitfield.”

  “I’m with you there,” I said. “I come from a long line of cowen. I grew up thinking I was some kind of freak.”

  “At least cowen can be forgiven for being ignorant. They don’t deliberately choose to live like Neanderthals.” He shook his head. “What started out as protection against attack has turned into a prison for everyone here. But nobody can say anything, because there’s nowhere else to go.”

  “I just can’t imagine Morgan le Fay accepting this life.”

  Bryce laughed. “I’m pretty sure she didn’t do anything she didn’t want to do,” he said. “From the stories I’ve heard, she was pure evil.”

  I had to think about that. Morgan had disappointed me, yes, but I wouldn’t have called her evil.

  “She did kill her father, after all,” he added.

  I tried to remember the details of the King Arthur legend, and if it was common knowledge that the Merlin was Morgan’s—if not Arthur’s—father. “Wasn’t he walled up in a cave or something?”

  Bryce shrugged. “Maybe. All I know is, Morgan brought his body back here.”

  “She brought back his body? Why? I mean, it doesn’t exactly sound like something a cold-blooded killer would do.”

  “Hey, don’t ask me. That was way before my time.”

  “Then how do you know?”

  “We all know the stories. This is the place where nothing ever changes, remember? All we have are stories.”

  I was still thinking about something he’d said earlier. “Did Morgan have a trial?” I asked.

  “A trial? Here?” Bryce laughed.

  I stopped in my tracks. “Are you saying that Morgan was turned into a bug in amber as punishment for something she might never have done?”

  He ruffled my hair. “Peter told me you were dramatic,” he said. “It happened a millennium and a half ago. Let it be, Katy.”

  “Listen to yourself! Your Seer wants to lock Morgan up again. And that’s right now, not a millennium ago. If she was never guilty, that changes everything!”

  “Okay, okay!” He held his hands up in front of him. “So what do you want to do, arrest the Seer?”

  “I don’t know, but it makes a difference. Because Morgan’s still alive.”

  “So is the Seer,” he said.

  I blinked at him stupidly. “What do you mean?”

  He shrugged. “I told you. Nothing ever changes.”

  “Are you saying that no one here ever dies?”

  He chuckled. “Oh, we do. But the Seer doesn’t. She’s immortal.”

  I reeled backward. “You mean you’ve had the same leader since the beginning of time?”

  “I told you, we all have different gifts,” he said with a sigh. “I guess immortality is hers.”

  “Man,” I said, running my fingers through my hair. “Talk about absolute rulers. She can do anything she wants.”

  “Yep.”

  “And she’s got that army of vultures to carry out her commands.”

  “They’re not always vultures,” he said. “Shape-shifters, remember? Sometimes they’re worse than vultures.”

  I was feeling nauseated. “I’m starting to think maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.”

  “I agree. Let’s go back.” He tugged at my arm.

  “No,” I said, pulling away from him. “This is the only hope I have, now that the Whitfield witches are stumped. If I don’t find a way to lose this ring, I’ll probably cause the destruction of everything I know. Not to mention my own life.”

  “And mine,” Bryce said expressionlessly. “Incidentally, it’ll take us hours to get to get where we’re going.”

  I moaned, dismayed.

  “Unless you’re willing to try something new.”

  “New? Here?”

  “It’s not new to us,” he said. “Just you. Don’t freak.”

  And then it happened, the slight shift from Avalon into crazyland. It started with Bryce’s hands, which changed into hooves—yes, that’s right, hooves—before my eyes. His body became covered with coarse brown hair, and his head elongated as a rack of antlers sprouted from his skull. “Are you cool with this?” he asked casually. “It’s pretty far. This’ll be faster.”

  “You’re a deer,” I observed.

  “Yes,” he said pleasantly. “Now you, if you would.”

  “If I would what?”

  “Shape-shift,” he said. “Go ahead.”

  “That’s not something I can do,” I said.

  “Of course you can. You’re in Avalon.”

  “If I went to Southern California, would it mean I could surf?” I shouted.

  “Shape-shifting is a skill that you can master, Katy. Even if you’ve never done it before. At least try.”

  It was very strange, to say the least, seeing Bryce’s expressions on the face of this woodland creature. And stranger still to watch him talk. It was as if I’d walked right into the middle of a cartoon. I expected dancing bunnies and birds carrying garlands of flowers to come out and start singing to us.

  “Are you feeling well?” he asked.

  I shook my head to get my bearings. “What should I do?” I asked.

  “Just think like a deer.”

  Oh, was that all? “Er . . . ”

  He touched my forehead with his cold wet nose. “Does that help?”

  I looked down. With a gasp I noticed that my hands and feet had morphed. And my mouth felt odd. I chomped experimentally. Big teeth. Really big. The grass around me looked suddenly delicious. I craned my long neck and snipped off a few buttercups. Ambrosia.

  I was headed for some clover when Bryce called me back. “You’re liking this too much,” he said, laughing.

  Well, not said, exactly. There were no words. These Avalon witches, trapped for so long in their protected, unchanging home, had developed all sorts of magic as a way of life. Telepathy, shape-shifting . . . What else were they capable of?

  I started to run. That was it, running from a dead stop, and running like the wind. “Look at me!” I shouted, twitching my ears.

  Bryce was right beside me, his long body sleek with sweat. The breeze brought my own scent to me, rank and female, and my knees nearly buckled. I stank. “Not much farther,” he said.

  Good, I thought. Because I’m in desperate need of deodorant. “You can change me back, can’t you?” I asked nervously, my mind now completely separate from my running, powerful legs.

  “I didn’t change you in the first place,” he said.

  “You did so! When you—”

  “I made a glamour. An illusion that caused you to think you looked like a deer. Then your own magic took over, and you became what you believed yourself to be.”

  That made sense. I’d known anorexic girls who’d thought they were fat, and smart ones who’d thought they were stupid. And they hadn’t even been witches.

  “It all comes down to belief,” he said with a wink of his big, long-lashed Bambi eye.

  Then he was off, pounding across the field toward an outcropping of rock and a copse of trees in the distance. I followed him, moving faster, feeling myself almost leaving the earth, my hooves touching down only for the briefest instant before propelling
me into the air again.

  I never want to forget this feeling, I thought.

  CHAPTER

  •

  THIRTY-NINE

  My deer companion stopped in front of the rocks, rearing on his heels like a stallion. And then, in a shimmering instant, he turned into Bryce again.

  “Oh,” I said, feeling my deer-ness drop off me like a suit of armor in reverse. That is, as my deer shape fell away, I felt heavier and thicker. I saw color, but my vision was not as clear as it had been. My hearing dropped so low that for a moment I thought I was deaf. And I could smell virtually nothing. I clasped my hands together. They were trembling, remembering the joy of being hooves springing off the ground.

  “It’s hard to come back,” he said, touching my arm.

  “Have you always been able to do this?”

  He made a vague gesture. “Anyone can do anything, given enough time,” he said. “The witches here have been . . . ” I sensed that he was trying not to use the word “trapped.” “. . . encased in the magic of Avalon for so long that we’ve all developed certain skills.” He grinned. “On the other hand we’ve lost some abilities too.”

  “Like what?”

  “Astral projection, for one. Since we’re not permitted to travel beyond Avalon, we don’t need that particular talent.” He shrugged. “And of course we can’t do anything destructive, like fire-starting.”

  “But the Seer—”

  “Shh!” He looked around in panic. I guessed she was nearby. “Be careful what you say,” he whispered, taking me by the hand.

  He led me through the small grove of trees to an area that was covered by huge, flat rocks. The biggest of them, at least ten feet higher than the rest, was the size of the gym floor at school. Once we climbed it, I could see that it was cleaved in the center by a long fissure spewing out a constant jet of hissing steam. “This is where she speaks,” he whispered.

  “From inside the rock?”

  “Be as quiet as you can.” He gestured for me to stay where I was, on the far side of the big rock, as he ventured forward toward the fissure. Bryce looked back at me once, then spoke.

  “Great Seer who knows all things,” he began, “I bring to you—”

  “Poison!” a voice rasped from the depths. The sound was so loud and strange, I nearly swallowed my tongue. It seemed to come from the rocks themselves, a deep, breathy groan like a cry of pain from inside the earth as the steam from the crevasse gusted upward in a geyser. “You have brought poison to Avalon.”

  Bryce licked his lips nervously. “It is the ring she wears,” he said. “She was tricked into putting it on, and now she cannot take it off.”

  Steam covered him like a curtain. “Send her elsewhere!” A witch sitting on the limb of a tree chattered her teeth at me like a monkey. Beyond her were figures that I now noticed for the first time, kneeling or crouching among the rocks. I guessed I hadn’t seen them before because they were all dressed in hooded gray robes that blended in with the surrounding stone. The first thing that came to mind was that they looked like “real” witches—that is, the kind of witches you read about in fairy tales or saw in amusement park fun houses. Hags in rags, living in the valley of the shadow of death. Very creepy.

  They didn’t look up, although I’m sure they saw me. I raised my index finger as a way of asking permission to speak. “Actually—”

  Bryce shot me a warning glance. “The witches of Whitfield ask for your advice and help in this matter,” he went on. “They are prepared to compensate you handsomely for your assistance.”

  I glared at him. The witches of Whitfield had said no such thing! Bryce gave me a little shrug, a What else could I do? gesture.

  Steam rose again from the bank of rocks. “The poison serves the evil one,” the Seer said.

  “She is an agent of the Darkness,” monkey-woman said. Others joined her. “Darkness,” they muttered. “Darkness . . . ”

  “I am not!” I interrupted, suddenly too angry to feel afraid. “Hey, what kind of Seer are you, anyway, if you can’t even see—”

  “Kill her.”

  I gasped. It hadn’t taken her long to bring out the big guns, that was for sure.

  The steam rose up again, whiting out everything in sight.

  “Bryce!” I called, aware of the shrill sound of my voice.

  “Run!” he called back. “They have me.”

  “What?” My mouth went dry.

  As the air cleared, I could see Bryce surrounded by the hags. They were turning into vultures that raised him into the air as he flailed and struggled against them. “It’s too late!” he shouted. “Just run! Go!”

  Then with a scream he disappeared among them and they flew away, birds of prey after the hunt had ended.

  CHAPTER

  •

  FORTY

  The gray women who remained rose up like wraiths around me, their tattered garments billowing in the breeze like the clothes on scarecrows. One picked up a rock at her feet and curled her bony fingers around it.

  There were more of them than I’d thought, and they were all getting to their feet now. A wild murmur spread among them like electricity. More and more of them armed themselves with rocks and sticks. Some filled the skirts of their robes.

  Then one of them let out a wild shriek and threw the rock in her hand. It hit me square on my arm and knocked me down.

  I sucked in my breath with the pain and shock of it, then scrambled to my feet. Some of the women were crawling up onto the big rock where I stood. “Stop!” I yelled, skittering backward. “Let me talk!” I shouted. “If you understood—”

  I got a face full of dirt. As I sputtered and tried to wipe the debris out of my eyes, another rock hit me, this time on the side of my head. And another. And another.

  Reeling, not sure if I could even stay upright, I turned and ran, sliding off the rock on my back and landing in a heap. A shower of stones pelted me from above, where the witch women stood, grinning like ghouls, throwing at me whatever they could grab. I skittered to my feet and ran blindly away as stones smacked against my legs.

  Halfway across the meadow, staggering and panting, I ventured a glance back toward the Seer’s rock. To my relief I could still see the silhouettes of the women. I’d been afraid that they might turn into some kind of predators and finish me off, but it seemed they’d only wanted me to go away. They reminded me of ghosts. That’s what they were, really, wraiths, the useless remnants of what used to be human beings.

  I felt like I wanted to vomit, but my panic was too strong to allow me to stop for even a moment. The problem was, I didn’t know where I was or how to get back to Whitfield. For a moment a lightning bolt of panic swept through my veins. If I didn’t find my way back to the scene in the painting, I’d never get back to Whitfield. The prospect of spending the rest of my life in this horrible place was too gruesome to think about for long. A one-dress wardrobe in classic gray, perfect for lounging on rocks, hanging from trees, or strutting in my choice of caves.

  While I was trying to figure out where I was, something like a fly started buzzing around me. I say “something like” because even when the thing was flying around really fast, I knew it wasn’t a fly, since it was the size of a softball. Within seconds, other softball-size insects joined it.

  So the witches had come after me after all, I thought. They were shape-shifters. The last time I’d been here, they’d morphed themselves into biting flies. This time they’d become giant mosquitoes.

  That gave me an idea. In the near distance was a cave, where I could see a couple of bats just inside the entrance. I remembered reading in science class that mosquitoes were the favorite food of bats, so I hoped that loping toward the two sleepy-looking creatures hanging upside down in the mouth of the cave would be enough to scare off the mega-bugs that were following me.

  Wrong. Well, not about the bats, only the number of them. Within seconds there were hundreds of thousands of them, screeching and dive-bombing me. I tried
to bolt, but my feet got tangled up in the roots and undergrowth, and I went down with a crash while the bats flowed around me like black water.

  Through it all the mosquitoes never budged. While I lay crouching on the ground with my arms over my head, I heard them beneath the swooshing movement of the bats, beating their wings near me as if they wanted to get my attention. I peeked underneath my elbow to see . . .

  Omigod. It was a human face. These creatures weren’t insects at all, and they weren’t the hag women, either. They were girls around my age, who could have been in high school if they hadn’t been four inches tall.

  “Help us,” one of them squeaked, holding out her hands in supplication.

  I raised my head. “What?”

  “Take us out of this place,” she begged.

  “But I—”

  “You have come here, though you are not one of us,” she said, peering anxiously over her shoulder. “There are many of us. We will serve you all our days if only you will take us with you when you go.” She reached out to touch my face.

  “Stop!” I rolled away from her. These little beings didn’t stand a chance against me, I knew. “Don’t come any closer.”

  “Please, we beseech you.”

  “You don’t understand—”

  “Please . . . ”

  “Go away!” I shouted. Then I picked up a handful of dirt and threw it at her. “I’ll kill you if you touch me, don’t you understand? I’m poison!”

  She backed away, frowning. Then she staggered backward a few steps, her wings beating more and more slowly, making marks in the dry earth.

  “Oh, God,” I said, looking at my hands. I’d killed her! But how? With the dirt I’d thrown at her? I hadn’t even been angry. I’d just been frightened. And I hadn’t touched her.

  But then, she’d been so small. . . .

  A sound filled the air. I couldn’t recognize it until the moment when I realized it was me, screaming. The sound seemed to go on and on while everything around me blurred into a visual soup that I was drowning in.

  Then the fairy—the girl, I realized, a girl just like me who had shape-shifted into something small with wings—lay still as a swarm of other creatures like her carried her away from me. Some distance away they shifted back into normal girls, carrying their lifeless friend in their arms. A couple of them looked back at me, their eyes filled with bitterness.