To Fight the Black Wind

Chapter 9

I remember the way Josephine said “doctor” to me at times in our journey. It was akin to the word “savior.” I could not be that for her—as much as I wanted to be. I needed to be Josephine’s guide, not her hero. This is always a dangerous time in the relationship between a patient and a doctor. The patient gives up all sense of responsibility and hands it, and their life, to the doctor. The power is as intoxicating as it is toxic. Nothing good can come of accepting such a responsibility. It was hard, though. I had grown fond of Josephine. Thus, I needed to coax her into confronting her great fear.

The cave was about the size of an amphitheatre with light emanating from an unknown source. Faint colors of blue, purple, and green swirled about us in slow eddies on the cavern walls and floor, making it hard for me to get my bearings. I refused to search out the source of the light and dismissed the impossible. The words “impossible” and “unlikely” no longer had meaning in this place. The rules were different. Logic wasn’t king. Physics were an illusion. Dream monsters could hurt, even kill. I needed to be on guard for all of it.

Josephine led the way, picking her path across the cave floor, weaving her way through stalagmites adorned with jewels and half-covered by creeping moss. As I watched one stalagmite in particular, yellow-green moss surged over a garnet. A heartbeat later, the moss turned the deep red of the gemstone. A touch to one foot alerted me to a spot of creeping moss that had found me interesting. I pulled my foot away and hurried across the cavern to watch Josephine. Behind us, the room filled with the sound of creeping moss covering and consuming whatever it could.

Josephine paced before half a dozen openings in the cave wall. She paused in front of one tunnel and considered a couple of the others. The one before us was rough-hewn with tool marks of having been carved from the mountain. One of the other tunnels had wooden supports. A third had bricked walls.

“Where do these go? To different places?”

Josephine nodded. “There are many places in the Dreamlands. We want to stay in the west.”

I refused to ask the question she wanted me to ask. I would not be distracted from our session. I needed to help her in the way I hadn’t been able to help Malachi. “Toward the Red House?”

“Yes.”

“Which one takes us there?”

Josephine looked between the three tunnels, her face a mask of confusion. “Things have changed.”

I stood close behind her. “You can do this. You know this place. Go with your instinct.”

“What if I get it wrong?” She leaned back to me.

I let her shoulder touch mine, taking comfort as much as giving it. “Then we will deal with it together. Choose. Time is of the essence.”

Josephine glanced at me out of the corner of her eye as I cast her words at her. She pointed to the rough-hewn tunnel. “That one.”

I stepped around her and into the tunnel. “Let’s go.” I gestured for her to walk alongside me.

Josephine hesitated then steeled herself. With a raised chin, she stepped to my side. We walked in. The tunnel, dim, was wide enough for three people to walk abreast. The light neither waxed nor waned. All around us, the rock of the mountain pressed in. I looked back. Darkness swallowed the entrance of the cavern. It was as if we traveled in a bubble of light. I counted fifty steps before casting my opening questions.

“Who is the Black Wind?”

Josephine took a breath. “One of the Outer Gods. He has another name. We do not speak it. If we do, he might hear. He is one of the gods who interacts with humans.” She spoke like a child reciting a lesson.

“And his minions? Are they demons?” I suppressed a shudder at the memory of those men with horns and hooves.

“I do not know. They work for him. They hunt for him. I believe that is their purpose.”

“They hunt you now?” Josephine nodded. Her hand sought mine and clasped it for comfort. I squeezed, encouraging her. “Why?”

“I…” Josephine shook her head. “I am special.”

I waited for her to continue. She didn’t.

We walked in silence, our steps eating ground. It felt as if we were walking a spiral even though the way was straight and narrow. I smelled the faintest breath of fresh air. The tunnel wasn’t going to be as long as I thought it would be. “They called you the Bride.” Josephine pulled away from me, walking faster. I let her go. I walked a couple steps behind, watching her stiff posture and fear. “Why?”

“I do not want to talk about that.” She continued to march ahead. “I cannot. I have another duty. I must focus on it.”

Her first duty, the protection of something within her that was killing her slowly. She was correct. We needed to focus on that for the moment. “Yes. You have a point. We can revisit the Black Wind another day. We will do so, soon,” I promised, wondering if her fear strengthened her will enough to influence my mind. I shook my head. I could not, would not, think like that.

I shifted back to our previous conversations and the point we broke through. “Do you remember what it was you weren’t supposed to know?”

“I read the book.” Josephine’s voice was a whisper almost lost to our fast steps.

The tunnel wound in a downward direction. “You were not supposed to read the book.”

“No.”

There were two ways I could approach this. Only one of them dug into Josephine’s motivations. “Why did you read it?” The light grew, tinted red. I could see the opening.

Shadows encroached around us, squeezing us until it was only possible to walk one behind the other. Even as the light brightened the end of the tunnel, promising a sweet relief, part of me would be forever left behind in the shadows that now clung to my arms, my hips, my legs. It was all I could do to keep myself from pushing Josephine forward, faster. But she had to emerge from the darkness on her own. Her confession would be both our salvations.

“I was afraid.” Again, Josephine’s voice was soft.

It was a weak admission. A red herring. “What were you afraid of? Why did you read the book?” Closer and closer the exit came. I didn’t know what was waiting out there for us. I needed to know what she’d intended when she did what she’d been forbidden to do.

“I thought it would protect me.” We crossed out of the tunnel and into the light. Josephine ahead with me at her heel. “I thought it would give me the spell to stop…” She hesitated, unwilling to go on in either word or step.

I stopped close behind, careful not to touch her. She had to take this final step on her own. Instead, I gazed at the beauty that lay before us.

It was a gorgeous valley with a forest at its center. Instead of verdant greens, the forest’s leaves were the fall colors of browns, yellows, oranges, and—in the center—red. The path led down the hill and passed a babbling stream, winding into that forest. The sun above us shone bright at high noon. Josephine turned her face upward, letting the sun warm her skin. She had her eyes closed.

I lowered my voice and prompted her with her own words. “The spell to stop…?”

“My death at the hands of the Black Wind.” Josephine whispered to the uncaring sky.

It seemed that the Black Wind needed to be spoken of sooner rather than later. How could this Black Wind kill her and why? What was within her that could stop something like an Outer God? “I don’t understand.”

The valley below us flickered. One moment it was lush mountainside, the next it was a roiling ocean with white capped waves. I blinked and shook my head. The gorgeous flora returned.

Josephine turned to me. “I fear I have hastened my end. I read the book, and its madness brings the Black Wind ever closer. I should never have been so foolish. I must rid myself of this burden.” She looked over her shoulder at the forest. “And I will. There, in the Red House.” She took a step backward.

As she did, the landscape changed again. The valley disappeared and the angry ocean with its violent waves reappeared. Instead of flat ground, we were on slick rock. The wind howled around us. Josephine gasped, slipping and falling. I reached for her. Our fingertips touched and then she was gone, tumbling to the rocks.

Josephine hit the ground of the valley hard. She’d landed on the path that led us into the heart of the forest below. I hunkered, waiting for the land to change again. It did not. I stood and focused on thinking we were in the valley of the Red House, hoping it would keep us stable.

“Josephine?”

For a moment, she did nothing except lie there on her back. She screwed up her face in a way that made me think she was going to laugh. It would’ve broken the sudden darkness of the situation and deflected her fear and the uncertainty of our surroundings.

She didn’t laugh.

Josephine arched with a shriek of pain and turned over. Her back bulged and moved under her shirt. She pulled her tucked blouse out of her pants and craned her neck. We both saw the book-shaped thing press against her skin, its corners cutting through, blood leaking through punctured flesh. Josephine gasped in pain. “Get it out. Help me, Doctor! Please!”

Falling to my knees, I pulled the ornate knife from the sheath at her belt, then pressed a hand to her shoulder. The book, a literal book, had to come out of her. “Still, Josephine. Lie still.”

“It hurts. Please.” Her words were a panic, but her writhing body stilled.

I pushed her blouse up, exposing her back. With a single slash, I cut her flesh from hip to hip. The book, impossibly large, poked out of that slit. I slid my hands under her skin and grasped the book by its sides. It was slick, like the scales of the shantak I’d fought. I refused to let go. Sliding one arm farther under Josephine’s skin almost up to my elbow, I caught the corner of the book. I eased it downward and out from under her skin.

The book resisted, catching on something within my patient’s body. She gasped in pain and clawed at the ground. “Please,” I whispered. I don’t know who or what I begged to help me, but providence heard and the book acquiesced. My hands found purchase and the book slid out of Josephine’s body. At the last moment, it stuck and I yanked as hard as I could. The book released Josephine with an audible pop that she echoed with a moan of relief.

I rocked backward and hit the ground with a hard thump. The book—that had seemed so big—pressed against my body, the size of a bible but only half as thick. I pulled it away from me, expecting to be covered in blood, but the book and my shirt were clean.

She still lay on the ground, panting, laughing, crying. Her back was unmarked and unmarred from what had just happened. Even though I’d cut her and the knife I’d used lay discarded at her side, her tawny-beige skin was smooth. I couldn’t believe it. “Are you well?”

Josephine pushed herself to her knees and brushed the dirt from her clothes in an absent gesture. She twisted around and looked at her back, touching the unblemished skin. Her smile was beatific as she gave another sigh. “I am free. You have freed me.”

I looked down at the book in my arms. Its blank cover now revealed a title in that script that was both so familiar and alien. I could almost understand it. Almost.

She touched my shoulder and offered me a hand up. “I knew I needed you on my journey. Thank you for having the strength I did not.”

I accepted the hand and the compliment as gracefully as I could. While Josephine seemed much more balanced, I felt off kilter. As if I stood on an unseen boat. “Now that I’ve done this, we need to get the book back to its rightful owner.” Josephine did not ask for the book—her duty, her responsibility, her burden—and I did not offer it.

Josephine pointed down the path toward the colorful woods. “Perhaps…perhaps this has pushed my doom farther away.”

I breathed slow breaths. “As soon as we give this back to its owner, we will speak, you and I, of the Black Wind and why you believe it means your death.”

I wanted to talk about the Black Wind, to continue our session, but I couldn’t. Not while I held the book. My mind was too full. I glanced at the book’s cover again. I could almost understand what it spelled out. In the back of my mind, the book whispered, tempting me to open and read it. To understand. To know. To become one with it. I now understood the real reason Josephine read the book.

I resisted its temptation with years of study instead of play, years of discipline instead of whim, years of refusing immediate gratification in order to gain my heart’s future desire. Still, the book called to me even though I knew that path was madness.

I didn’t know how long I could resist its whispered pleas. Here, in my hands, was true magic. I was curious. So very curious.