By the flavor of the air and the presence of the sun, I knew we had crossed back into the mortal world.
19
“Which way did we come from?” I whispered, trying to get my bearings.
He indicated a trail of scattered salt receding into the darkness of one of the horizontal shafts, then opened a hand to reveal the last bits of the dust he had gathered. “I left a trail to follow. This seems too easy.”
“Except for being stuck at the bottom of a mine shaft with no rope or ladder.”
He looked up. “I may be able to cut hand- and footholds up the shaft. It’s cursed hot. I wonder if this is old Mali. Imagine if we have come to the birthplace of my ancestors…”
“To the very place where the salt plague began,” I whispered, shuddering.
A shuffling slip-slop echoed out of the darkness.
Slow as molasses, a creature emerged from the gloom of one of the other tunnels. Its steps had the creak of an elder’s, but its body was not frail, only stiff. It had the form of a perfectly proportioned person, not ugly or beautiful, neither male nor female, but all white. Not pale-haired and pale-skinned as northern Celts are, but the stark white of a being whose flesh has solidified into salt, like a salter in the final, morbid phase of the disease. Its eyes were salt-white and blind.
I knew what it was although I had never read a description of such a thing in the tales penned by travelers. Who could see such a sight and live to speak of it? No one could.
It was a ghoul.
A tongue licked the air as it tasted the scent of mortal blood.
The lick of its tongue scraped me despite the gap between us. The blood congealing on the cut on my arm began to flow as if it were being suckled out of my body. A drop of my blood struck the ground, its impact shivering a vibration through the soles of my feet. A bell-like clangor echoed through the tunnels, followed by a dead silence as the ghoul halted.
Chiming cries echoed from the tunnels. Unseen tongues licked the air, tasting for blood. Pebbles and dirt spat down on our heads. Far above us ghouls clustered at the mine’s mouth, eager to taste blood. One walked right off the cliff. It plunged through the spinning dust motes. Vai yanked me back as it hit with a sickening crunch. The ghoul heaved itself up, unbroken, unmarred.
“We have to go back,” said Vai.
I hadn’t known they could move so fast. They were on us, me beating at clawing hands and biting mouths. Cold steel stopped them in their tracks but it did not turn them to salt, not as the cut of my blade had dissolved the salters who had blundered into the sea on the beach at Salt Island.
“Vai! Move!”
Bell voices rang down the mines. Too late I heard a scrape behind us.
A ghoul staggered out of the darkness and lunged at Vai. Just as its mouth was about to close on his arm, he thrust his blade between its jaws. The blade caught its teeth a finger’s breadth from his sleeve.
I rammed into the ghoul with a shoulder. Fiery Shemesh! It was like shifting rock. It moved just enough for him to jerk back out of reach. It did not claw at me because now the advancing ghouls were all fixed on him, not on me.
“Catherine! I can’t see the gate.”
More thumped down from above. The breath of the ghouls was like the burrowing tongue of a craving that can never be eased. They would never stop coming. They swarmed toward him, but I had the scent of the spirit world in my lungs, all the gate I needed.
“Vai! Take my hand!” I thrust wildly to give them pause, then dragged Vai backward.
The memory of sun vanished as we crossed the gate. We staggered to a halt, panting, on the balcony where he had taken refuge. The city spread around us in its false beauty. Winds rippled color through ribbons. Bridges vaulted in graceful, intertwined arches, slender spans spun out of gold and silver. I swayed, a hand pressed to my sweaty forehead. A scraping shuffle sounded from the broken staircase as an unseen creature clawed uselessly at the rock.
“No! No! No!” I cried, ready to burst with sheer raging fury. “I’ll kill them! I’ll kill them!”
“Love, love. It’s all right.” He embraced me. I wasn’t sure if he was comforting me, or comforting himself by comforting me. “They can’t climb without stairs or ramps. They lack both the agility and the strength. We’re safe on this ledge.”
“We’re not safe! We have enough water for a day, at most. And no food! No way out—”
“Catherine! Enough!”
I broke off, my breath ragged.
His dark gaze met mine. “I saw a salter one time in Expedition, when I went out to the country with Kofi. It was before you came to Aunty’s boardinghouse. I saw her beg her brother to kill her. Then I saw her no longer able to speak, dead of mind but still alive in her body, a ravening beast. Worse, for beasts have purpose and their own sort of intelligence. Her family used spears to push her mindless flesh into a pit, but spears did not kill her. They poured salt water over her, and that did kill her, only she shrieked in such agony I have never forgotten the sound.”