tableau seemed so bizarre that she suspected something more sinister was behind it all, so she approached the small group to find out what was going on.
Among those in attendance was an elderly man who stood off to one side. He too wept, and as he did so he fingered a metallic ornament suspended from a necklace of wooden beads. She thought it best to speak to him first, so as not to disturb the ceremony. As such, she walked up beside him and asked him courteously to explain the ceremony.
"It is a sacrifice, my child. Each generation our village is required to give a maiden as bride to the Black Ram With a Thousand Ewes."
She recognized the name; the Black Ram was the male counterpart of Shub-Niggurath. "Why would your people do such a thing?"
"If we do not grant its demand, it will destroy us all. Through her bravery and generosity, she protects us for an entire generation."
"I understand." And indeed she did. The people from her homeland of Erin had often made human sacrifices to appease their bloodthirsty gods, and with few exceptions they were like the girl: beautiful, unblemished, born and raised for that purpose alone, and, strangest of all, ready and willing to fulfill their appointed destiny.
Even so: "Why do you not fight it instead?"
The man hung his head in shame. "Because we are cowardly and weak. We have not had the strength to defend ourselves for as long as this curse has been upon us. When I was a boy, I remember that a hero came to us and offered to go and confront the Black Ram, but he failed, and it came and decimated our village, consuming many of our souls. If one whose strength and courage was far greater than ours could not prevail against this fiend, what hope have we?" And he buried his face in his hands, as if to hide from his shame.
She took pity on him, and placed a hand on his shoulder to comfort him. "How long has this gone on?" Her tone was gentle to soothe him.
The old man dropping his hands. "Longer than anyone can remember." He paused to wipe his eyes. "I remember tales of it told to me by my great-grandfather, who had heard them from his great-grandfather, who had heard them from his. We are an accursed people, and we have borne it for centuries, yet we still pray to our gods to rid us of this monster."
She felt amazed. "Why? It seems to me they have abandoned you."
For the first time the elder showed some defiance. "They have not abandon us!"
"How do you know this?"
"It may not be their will to remove this scourge from our lives, but they pity us and each generation send us one such as she--" He indicated the girl. "--that the rest of us may remain safe from the wicked grasp of this archfiend."
"And why would they do this if they refuse to deliver you?"
"Because we have remained faithful to them even in the face of this abomination."
"But what of her?"
"We...do not know, but all we can do is pray that our gods take her soul before the Black Ram can consume it." Distressed by that slim hope, the man once again buried his face in his hands.
She marveled at such a simple, stubborn faith; that it could survive, let alone flourish, under circumstances such as those; that it could still inspire hope for a miracle even after ten generations and longer. Among the people of Erin, the inability of any deity to save them from a fell supernatural force would be proof of that god's inferiority, and they would freely abandon it for another, hopefully stronger one. Though she knew the supernatural world was as real as the natural, she did not herself believe in gods, but the idea that any people would cling to them against all reason, especially ones so uncaring or ineffectual, defied all comprehension.
With her curiosity satisfied, she could have simply turned and walked away, leaving the people to their curse. Instead, she found herself saying something quite inexplicable:
"I will take her place."
The oldster lifted his head and gave her a stunned look. "Are you serious?" Disbelief stood naked on his face.
For a moment she wondered that herself, but she gave him a pointed stare with an enigmatic smile. "I would not have said it if I was not."
His face beamed as, for perhaps the first time in his life, hope filled his heart. "Are you a maiden?"
"I am," she lied.
Taking her by the arm, he pulled her towards the bride. "Then we must hurry, before she passes through the gate."
From "The Golden Mushroom"
By that time they had reached the spot indicated on the map. It was a boggy hollow, in area a little larger than a baseball field. Pools of debris and silt-filled water lay interspersed by mounds and ridges of soggy earth. The trees were small and thinner there, and more widely scattered, but the only other vegetation were thick mats of a ground-hugging herb.
Shadow sat on a rock waiting for them as she gazed into the hollow. The long, lean, smoky-gray cat looked up at them with her mint-green eyes as they came abreast of her. "This may be a little more difficult."
To Eile she sounded smugly satisfied. "What do you think?" she asked Sunny.
"It doesn't look too bad." But there was a hint of uncertainty in her tone. Eile couldn't blame her. While it wasn't going to be as easy as the other items, it looked simple enough: avoid the pools, stay on the land, and hope it was solid enough to support them. But it would make searching for the gilded toadstool all the more difficult.
"If only we knew where to look," Sunny added in frustration.
As if her words were a prayer, a shaft of sunlight dropped out of a break in the clouds and fell on the central mound. At its center an object winked and twinkled with a distinctive metallic sheen.
Though stunned, Eile felt suspicious too. "Alright, now that was just too convenient."
"Yeah, but what choice do we have?"
Sunny sounded nervous, but she was right. "None." She placed the pack on the ground. "You go first. Use yer bow ta test the ground ahead, make sure it's firm." She unsheathed her sword and held it at the ready. "I'll watch our backs. Okay?"
"Okay, partner!" She grinned, excitement shining in her eyes. "Team Girl laughs in the face of death as we brave the dangers of the bog of doom! Ha-ha-ha!"
Eile grimaced and pressed the fingers of her left hand into her forehead. "Just...be careful where you step, will ya? Shadow, you stay here."
"I'll be sure to tell Mayv where to scatter the flowers."
She gave the cat a dirty look. "Thanks a bunch."
"Don't mention it."
Sunny made her way to the closest ridge and started out over it, probing the earth with her bow before she took each step. Eile made sure she stepped into Sunny's footprints. At first the ground seemed quite firm, but after a couple of yards Sunny started to sink. For a moment her heart seized up as she expected Sunny to be sucked down out of sight, but she only sank to her ankles. The ground was getting softer, but the vegetation seemed able to hold it together.
"Ick!" Sunny squealed as she extracted her foot.
"Keep moving!" She sank as well, but fortunately no deeper despite her armor. Apparently the herb mat was strong enough to bear their weight without breaking.
Sunny took another step. "I hope I tied the laces tight enough. I don't want to be stuck out here without boots."
After nearly twelve Dream-months, Eile had gotten pretty good at estimating the passage of time without a watch. It was sort of like dead reckoning. By her calculation, it took them a total of forty-five minutes to reach the central mound. It was a nerve-wracking trip; with each step, she expected them to stumble into quicksand or fall through an unsuspected dirt bridge and sink into a deep bog hole. But they made it safely, and she figured the journey back would be faster.
Sunny lifted her skirt and examined her feet. They were covered in muck half-way up her shins. "Ugh. I'm gonna need to get new shoes after this." She then dropped the hem and looked around, while Eile looked with her.
The mound was no different from any of the others, except larger. It was covered by an herb mat, but in its center stood the Golden Mushroom. It resembled its name exactly: a standa
rd toadstool stalk and cap, but metallic gold in color. In fact, it looked like it was made of real gold.
"Here." Sunny held out her bow, and she took it.
"We'll take the same route back." She watched Sunny put on her gloves and go up to the fungus.
"Right." She spoke in an absentminded fashion as she knelt down.
In the same moment, Eile felt something strange in the woods around them. The hairs on the nape of neck stood up as her skin crawled and turned to goose flesh. Raising her sword, she turned around in all directions, trying to identify it, but she saw nothing. But she heard it: muffled thunderclaps like the stamping of huge feet. Then she felt the ground tremble with the concussion shock. Something was coming, something huge, but she couldn't pinpoint from where.
She looked back at Sunny. She had heard and felt it too, and she stood slowly as she looked around.
"Sunny!" She tossed her the bow. She caught it and nocked an arrow, ready for whatever came.
The sounds grew steadily louder as the tremors intensified. Then Eile saw them: gigantic anthropoid figures striding around the perimeter of the hollow, just beyond the tree line. She tried to count them, but lost track as they crossed and recrossed each other's paths. They moved faster than she expected from their size. She looked for Shadow, but the cat was gone.
Before she could try to find her, one of the figures emerged into the hollow. It came at her with startling speed as it covered great distances with each enormous stride.
"Sweet Jesus!" She saw it clearly for the first time: it looked like a tree!
Sunny screamed. Eile whipped around in time to see a second tree-creature stalking off with her in one hand. She struggled, kicked, and pounded on the fingers, but it had her in an iron grip.
"Eile!! Help me!!!" The monster merged with the woods and vanished from sight.
"Sunnyyy!!!" She started off after her. The creature coming up behind her passed her in two massive strides, then turned and swung an arm at her. It caught her before she could dodge, picked her up, and threw her backwards in a high, long arch. She landed in one of the pools with a shocking splash. Terrified, she flailed about for some moments, desperately trying to stay afloat, when she realized she was already resting on the bottom. She sat up and wiped detritus away from her face as she sputtered to expel the foul tasting water from her mouth.
She looked around and found that the tree-monsters were gone.
"Shit!" She groped for her sword, and when she found it she stood up and ran back to the central mound, heedless to any danger. She gained the top and glanced around, looking for the spot where the one creature had taken Sunny into the woods, but she saw nothing to indicate where they had gone.
"Arrrgh, dammit, dammit, dammit!" she raged, as much from misery as wrath.
"Eile!"
She turned and saw Shadow standing on a farther mound.
"I know where they took Sunny. Follow me!"
She didn't argue. She charged off the mound and across a ridge, and followed the cat as it crossed the rest of the hollow and dashed into the woods. Eile ran as fast as she could push herself, relying on instinct to avoid roots and branches, and luck to avoid what her instincts couldn't detect. The scenery around her passed in a blur as her sight focused into tunnel vision and she became oblivious to everything except the chase and her desperate desire to find Sunny.
God, whoever or whatever you are in this place, please let her be safe. I can't live without her; I can't stand to lose her. Please, I beg of you, let me find her alive.
From "A Deliberation of Morality"
A pop startled her, and when she opened her eyes and slipped her glasses back on she saw a small column of fire and smoke standing in the middle of the report she had been