Page 22 of South of Nowhere (Colter Shaw #5)
22.
Prologue
Arana Braveblade thought of herself as a “Somewhat Person.”
This was a phrase she had learned from one of the Elders of the Near Realm to describe certain people, and it was this rare quality that was, she prayed to Marthan, going to save her.
A Somewhat Person. What this meant was that she was partly who she seemed to be. And yet, decidedly, partly not. An outer her and an inner her.
It was the latter of these that she kept to herself, hidden deep. And it would be the key to her survival.
So now, when she strode to the gate to the Everscent Garden, on the mountain ledge two thousand feet above the village, one version of her nodded pleasantly to the guards, while the other her prepared in secret for what was coming next.
“Siress Braveblade,” said Ebertton Garr, the head jailor of this wing. “This is not a garden day.”
Braveblade hated that she was referred to as “siress,” the feminine version of “sire.” Certainly it might seem neutral on the surface, but in fact it nonetheless carried the whiff of inferior station. At least the Court recognized her surname, which she had chosen on her Womaning Day. “Braveblade” was her mother’s maiden name, and the preference was for those of her sex to adopt their father’s (to promote the appearance of which of the genders was to be in charge), but so far the naming convention had not yet made its way into the Scroll of Rules.
Tugging tighter about her the gray cape that matched the required floor-length skirt, Braveblade summoned a horrified expression upon her heart-shaped face. “My, you are right! Fuddled me! I’ve done it again. And now I am in dires. What shall I do?”
She looked from Garr to the other guard, Plank the Younger, a silly name for a silly man, too small for the sword that hung from his hip.
Garr asked, “What is the difficulty?” He had a drift for the ladies and the words were offered in a way that seemed sympathetic but was truly a clumsy flirt.
“I told Siress Stodge that I would prepare a Spell-Bind for her, and I must deliver it to her no later than Segment Fourteen today.” Her voice cracked as she added, “Two segments hence. Oh, she will not be pleased.”
Now both men stirred.
No one wished to have Siress Stodge—whose backname was Siress Strident, though she was occasionally called far worse!—angry with you. It could mean you would spend the rest of your days carting refuse to the Noffin Pit.
She bowed her head and wondered if her outer Somewhat Person could conjure tears. Braveblade was a fine spell-caster but damp eyes eluded her. So she touched the tip of her fingers, dipped in Farood powder, to the corners of her eyes.
The resulting waterworks—and genuine gasp of pain—were impressive.
Garr said, “Siress, is there…perhaps something I can do?” His backname was LeerMaster.
“Oh, Sire. You would be my savior! I would be forever grateful! If you could go into the garden and collect me drandons of bandiweb, cholaefa and stillgale. Of the first, I need only the yellow leaves. As you know, the green are useless. And they must be a certain shade, the shade of bee pollen. As for the stillgale, be wary of the black seeds. They can—”
“Perhaps, Siress, I think it would be better if you gathered what you need yourself. If you’re quick about it.”
“Could I? Oh, you are beyond kind!” The outer her beamed toward the man, who smelled of boreroot. Disgusting.
She endured what she knew would be his firm embrace and hand straying down her back—missing, thank Marthan—the contour of what she wore beneath the cape. The Scrolls required women to wear only cambric shirts above the waist. Any other garments were forbidden—especially what she had donned this morning: a warrior’s thick leather vest.
She found the embrace against his body repulsive—as was Plank’s perverted smile—but that feeling was counterweighed by the thought that they would soon be assigned to Noffin as punishment for this dereliction.
Then, she strode into the garden, the door closing behind her.
And so began the first stage of her escape from the castle of Thamann Hotaks, the reviled dictator controlling the Central Realm.
—
Yep, thought Fiona Lavelle. I’d keep reading.
Sitting in the driver’s seat of her Blue Strayer—well, her Chevy Camaro—she continued editing. She had eleven notebooks filled with the novel, which now totaled about a hundred thousand words, roughly half finished.
But she had decided to revise the story somewhat to incorporate current events, one might say—the levee collapsing behind her as she drove along Route 13.
She had just managed to escape and a moment later had found herself plummeting down an old trail at the base of this mountain, where the car ended up stuck in the mud beside the raging torrent of runoff water spilling over the top of the levee.
The storyline might go like this: Her hero—not “heroine” of course—was escaping in the magical Blue Strayer sled from her nemesis Thamann Hotaks. But the man had shot a Melting Spell toward her and it had dissolved the dam, endangering an entire village and knocking the Strayer to the ground in a forest, where it ended up stuck in the mud. And complaining mightily about it. Arana Braveblade’s Strayer was more than a means of transport. It had become her ornery yet lovable sidekick.
Amusingly, just at that moment, the car shook briefly in a fierce gust of wind, and rain machine-gunned the roof.
Lavelle yawned and stretched. She was still somewhat groggy. After Big Blue had streaked to a stop where she now sat, Fiona surveyed that scene and decided she was indeed seriously stuck in the mud and thought: Screw it.
And had done what someone else might not, under the circumstances. She took a nap. A glorious three-hour bout of oblivion. Not undeserved, considering she had wakened at three-thirty for the drive from Reno.
Then, waiting for the storm to pass, she’d noodled with the book.
Now, though, it was time to free herself, as Arana Braveblade was doing in her story.
Though Lavelle’s magic would come from a different source of spells: YouTube.
On her phone she viewed dozens of clips of men and women getting out of mud. Eventually all the escape efforts seemed to come down to roughly the same technique.
1. Find rough-surfaced material (dry, if possible—not likely here, so she would use the carpet from the trunk and floor mats) and force it under the front of the drive tires—rear, in the case of the Camaro. Not as helpful as the front. It was better to pull rather than push in such a situation. But there you had it.
2. Gently rock back and forth. Drive, reverse. Drive, reverse.
3. Keep doing it until you were free.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Got it.
One thing remained.
Lavelle checked herself out in the mirror. Her pink-framed glasses, the backward baseball cap, with no makeup, of course. She appeared more pale than she usually did, though her Roman nose provided some Technicolor; the cold had turned it significantly red.
A natural look. Fine.
All right, now, it’s lights, camera, action time…
She switched to the front camera—selfie mode—and hit Record .
“Hello, all. It’s stuck-in-the-mud Fiona. I’ve been following all you dears who’ve posted advice about getting unstuck. Here I am with Big Blue—my two-year-old, kick-ass Camaro—who is a bit…under the weather. Ha.”
Switching the camera off, she tucked it away, then pulled on her parka and stepped out into the rain, walking around to the trunk of the car.
Ten minutes later, she was ready and started to record again.
“About to get started!”
She walked to the passenger side and shot the view from there. The car was about four feet from the edge of a low cliff that dropped straight into the raging torrent of water—a flooded gulley that was an extension of a spillway under the levee.
“Reminder to self—avoid that. Don’t want to flood the engine! LOL!”
Lavelle set the phone on a low cliff, under an overhang, to keep it out of the rain. The lens was pointed at the rear wheels of the car, where she’d tucked the trunk carpets and floor mats.
“?‘Gently,’?” she called to her audience. “That’s the key word.”
She walked out of frame toward the driver’s door.
The phone recorded the action perfectly in 60 fps high-def video.
It caught the rear left wheel rocking back and forth ever so slightly.
It caught a little more of the car’s progress forward—until the wheel got stuck on a branch under one of the carpets.
It caught Fiona’s voice as she called, “Just a little more gas. And over the final hurdle!”
It caught the engine revving harder.
And it caught the rear wheels leaping over the branch and spinning madly in the mud as the Camaro slid sideways and tumbled over the edge into the water, accompanied by Fiona’s panicked scream, which lasted only seconds before becoming a horrible choking, one final cry, and then silence broken only by the slap and splash of the frantic water.