started, but paused to look at the ground when he realized the flames were already receding. Hungry had been glazed, blackred and shining, into the hardpack.
Nut-Meg moved to the edge of the crossroads, a little bit away from the path to the Bluff. Her scent and light flared. She began to walk the circle of the crossroads with small steps, her tail dragging a solid trail in the dirt. That acrid smell rose from the burning earth. Nut-Meg paced the crossroads, leaving a boiled, blackened line in her wake.
Joseph watched the firedog’s progress around the edge of the crossroads. Her light and the sharp smoke rising from the hardpack stung his eyes, but he didn’t look away.
“This is going to be a poor stop for you,” Joseph said. “You asked me what I’ve done. I brought my entire family – cousins, great-uncles, every able adult and their children – to Piquette when I raised the funds to open Sonore. News of the mine’s opening pulled fine folk from all over the South, until we had three hundred and eighty-nine good people living and working here.
“We lost ninety-two to the pox before Christmas last, twenty-six remain in the mines, sixteen died in the poorhouse fire over the winter, a hundred and forty-seven fell in this latest pestilence, four babes starved to death, thirty-four left in the night, two old men drank their brains away, and Pastor Weathers was eaten by a boar. Three hundred and six have fallen or run; a mere eighty-three remain.”
“Piquette will rebound.”
“I am not certain of that, sir,” Joseph replied, “not certain at all. Many nights I myself have contemplated slinking back to Atlanta.”
Nut-Meg had almost completed her circuit. Joseph noticed someone on the path alongside the Bluff. It took only a moment for him to recognize her; in the same instant, she shrieked and raced across the last open space in Nut-Meg’s circle, passing directly in front of the massive beast. Nut-Meg plodded on, unconcerned, closing the circle as Joseph’s mother ran to him – much faster than he’d thought she could move – and grasped him by the lapels of his suit coat.
“Deviiils!” she screamed. She shook him, hard enough to bring his teeth together on his tongue. Pain lanced through Joseph and the sharp tang of blood filled his mouth. His mother shook him again. Her hair, normally so carefully coiffed, floated around her head in a wispy gray nimbus.
“This hellbeast’s fire stinks all the way up to the Bluff,” she cried. “Emily’s frightened out of her wits.” She shook him again and Joseph was nearly yanked off his feet. He wondered where her sudden strength had come from. He caught her wrists.
“Mother,” he said, “You oughtn’t be here.”
“No, Joseph Emmanuel Albers, it is you who shouldn’t be here,” she hissed, “consorting with deviiils. Were you not content to drag us here, to die in our own filth like lepers? You’ve damned us all.”
Joseph pushed her away from him.
“Get back to your bed, Mother,” he said. She jumped forward and grabbed his suit coat, shook him once more. He shoved her away.
“I took to my bed when the first of my grandchildren fell to your pride, but I’ll not remain idle while you damn my last.” She pointed her gnarled index finger in his face.
“Keep that child innocent!” she screamed. “Save her and burn your contract with this deviiil-”
Joseph swung his cane into the side of her face. Her jaw snapped and she gave a huge wet, bubbling howl.
“Wrong religion!” Joseph shrieked. He whisked the cane at her again. Her skull parted like water. He raised the cane over his head, and an enormous, soft mass enveloped him from behind. Lorelei took hold of Joseph’s arms and pulled him away from his mother with such ease, he might have weighed no more than a moth. His cane slid from his grasp.
Joseph’s mother staggered, her arms spasming in wild jerks, and collapsed. Charley Cat caught her before she fell to the ground, and was instantly soaked in the blood fountaining from her battered skull. He began to drag her to the edge of the crossroads but after a final, drenching pulse, her blood slowed to a drip.
Charley Cat shifted her and tightened his grip. Joseph saw the way his mother’s body dragged and flopped, yielding as a scarecrow. Charley Cat lowered her to the ground and crouched over her. He raised his gore-streaked face to Joseph and roared. The forest surrounding them trembled. A low moan rose from the host on Firedown Road.
Tears were already pouring down Joseph’s face. “I didn’t mean to!” he cried. “I just—” His chest hitched and he was reduced to loud, gasping wails. If Lorelei hadn’t borne his weight he would surely have fallen in the dirt.
“You killed her within our circle. Just as we consecrated this ground.” Charley Cat spit on the ground at Joseph’s feet. The dirt blackened and bubbled and screamed. “Rock, flower, stick, hungry…and matricide.”
“I didn’t mean to.” Joseph couldn’t seem to stop saying it. Lorelei released him. He stumbled but managed to right himself before he fell into the muddy soup his mother’s blood had made of the hardpack. His gore-coated cane lay at his feet.
“Our pact is complete,” Charley Cat said, “and you and yours are strong.”
Her skull, easier to snap than peas. Joseph moaned.
“Best take care how y’move from now on.” Lorelei patted his arm.
Charley Cat squatted and laid Joseph’s mother on the ground. Joseph winced at the sight of the cat god’s nude body so near his mother’s clothed, dead one.
“Better for you if it had been your father,” Charley Cat said. “Though patricide can have terrible consequences, gods everywhere accept the laws of violent succession. But even this land’s mad gods will not abide what you have done here.”
Charley Cat raised the dead woman’s head and tipped it toward Lorelei. He worked the dented jaw and pushed the corners of her lips into a bloody smile. A spongy mass slipped from the gash in Helen’s head and sloughed down her face. Joseph’s insides kicked. He gagged on a rush of bile.
“Your people have as grand a storytelling tradition as mine,” Charley Cat said to Lorelei. He moved Helen’s jaw as he spoke. Bone glinted through her torn flesh; mercifully, the rest of her brains stayed within her skull. “How would this death alter things amongst your folk?”
“The poison will spread, whatever we do,” she replied, “and will afflict everyone who settles here.”
Charley Cat nodded. “So it is, then,” he said. He turned his flat ebony eyes to Joseph.
“Any murder within a sacred circle is a terrible thing,” Charley Cat declared. “This blood you’ve spilled will stain your folk forever.”
Joseph bristled. “You can’t—”
Charley Cat cut him off. “You did. This is down to you, Joseph Albers, and none other.”
Joseph recoiled. His eyes burned.
Nut-Meg stepped on the yarrow. It burnt to char at her touch. She walked to the coal and gobbled it down, then headed toward Joseph’s fallen, bloody cane. She cracked it in two and set it ablaze with one bite.
Charley Cat still held Joseph’s mother in his arms. “The flowers,” he said. He set her head down, stretched her body alongside hungry. “The rock. Your stick. Hungry. All in exchange for safe passage and hospitality. I have something of great value to offer in counter to your matricide; of course, if you accept it I will expect you and yours to be particularly welcoming – worshipping, even – when we stop in Piquette.”
Joseph couldn’t speak. He nodded instead. Charley Cat stretched one clawed hand to the west, to the silent host that waited for him far down Firedown Road.
A monstrous shadow separated itself from the mass. It stretched toward the little assembly at the crossroads. The tip came forward without its darkness breaking once, and Joseph’s skin began to crawl: it was a snake as big around as two men. Its body covered half the two hundred or so feet between the Carnival crowd and the crossroads, and still the thing continued to advance. Joseph turned away. Charley Cat placed his hands on Joseph’s shoulders and held him fast.
“I’ve said yes,
” Joseph croaked. “I don’t need to meet any more of your company tonight.”
“My sister and I travel with other gods than just our family,” Charley Cat replied.
“Please. Surely the deal is done.”
The head of the thing reached them. Joseph cringed at its approach, but Charley Cat’s claws were deep in his shoulders and he was unable to close his eyes or hide his face. The air around the creature thickened and thinned in irregular pulses. His mother’s body shuddered and tumbled on the ground like a leaf caught in a dust-devil. The monster seemed to move not under its own strength, but by pushing the very universe aside as it stretched.
Although its motion was nearly silent, Joseph felt the soft noise of its passing would deafen him. As it approached, Joseph could make out a sleek, narrow fin along its spine. He realized it was no snake, but some monstrous eel. When Charley Cat released him, Joseph fell to his knees. He clamped his hands over his ears, but still heard the very air shrieking with its every sinuous move.
Its flat, reflective eyes never seemed to focus on their little group, but as it passed them ridges of skin along its side rolled up to reveal eye after eye. Long gashes winked open within its hide. Joseph glanced into one and fell, writhing and screaming, into the dirt. The abomination continued to move, and the world groaned and hiccoughed as it came.
Its passage seemed to continue for hours. When it finally ended, Joseph