Dizzy yet? Or maybe you’re used to less-than-fastidious narrators like me. Let’s hope I don’t totally lose you in this next part because who doesn’t love to learn about mycelium and neutrinos?
I know it may feel like I’m doing a bit of bait and switch about us meeting this Chanctonbury Witch character, but if you don’t get a feel for how the underverse works, then all that’s coming will seem completely implausible. Remember, I’m an NPR fangirl and that makes PBS a nerd-kissing cousin: NOVA, Nature, Frontline, The American Experience.
Our world is a scientifically rational place. We just haven’t fully understood how the otherworldly fits into it yet. Think yin/yang, day/night, matter/anti-matter, life/death, dead/undead, chocolate/peanut butter.
Believe me, it’s all easier when you know your shrooms which is how Syl, TimTim and I stumbled across Qpid and Hell in the forest playing chicken with butter knives they’d taken and sharpened into fairly lethal playthings. And, yes, Hell almost completely cut my throat with a butter knife. But that’s later when she thought I’d sold Qpid to Julius Caesar’s quartermaster for some horse jerky. I was starving at the time, but, come on, I’m better than that. At least my mom reminds me to tell myself that three times a day.
I’m better than that. Exhale.
I’m better than that. Exhale.
I’m better than that. Gag me.
Two days after Syl enticed us with her Chanctonbury Witch boast, she sat down with us at breakfast. TimTim and I had taken to eating together and trying to figure out if we could manipulate the ectoplasmic environment that Syl teased was at our ghostly fingertips. This often involved a lot of pensive concentration during meals which I don’t blame anyone around us for confusing with extreme constipation. I can duly report that eating more fiber will not help you manipulate ghost arms or toot like the 4th of July.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
“Today will work. I found a place in the forest that is promising.” Syl announced when she sat down with us.
“Promising for what?” TimTim asked. “A ritual sacrifice? Carving Char and me up to summon your demon spawn?”
She leisurely spread four butter patties on her toast, which I inwardly saluted, and answered matter-of-factly, “I really wish it were that easy. No. I actually need you guys. We’ll need to be on our toes. Opening portals, tapping into the underverse, takes an open mind, a keen eye, and even then it’s a lot of trial and error.”
“I thought you said you had a certain set of skills,” I reminded her.
She cut her toast into wedges and nibbled each point before answering. “Everyone says things, Char.”
Not exactly encouraging, but she wasn’t wrong about needing a keen eye. During our free time after lunch she led TimTim and me up one of the main camp trails before she veered off towards a denser stretch of forest. She picked her way in and around thickets of huckleberry and holly bushes before stopping in a grove of towering cedars with Jurassic-sized ferns.
The grove was criss-crossed with long-fallen cedars, bearded with moss and spilling chunks of reddish wood onto the forest floor like a sequoia-sized pinata.
“I feel like I’m in the world’s biggest-assed bouncy house!” TimTim whooped, bounding around the springy woodland understory.
“Yeah, well just wait until you fall into Syl’s Ball Pit of the Dead,” I warned him.
“You’re not wrong,” Syl said. “That’s kinda what we’re here to do.”
TimTim quit bounding. “Say what?”
“It’s more a portal than a pit, but it is like falling…and you do have to watch out for the dead.”
I probably would’ve said something snarky to Syl at this point, but a razor honed butter knife zipped in front of my face and sunk deep into a rotting stump. And then my ample rump buried itself deep in the spongy earth as I fell backward in shock.
