Sun Kissed Innsmouth
Part Seventy
Felecia followed silently and dutifully, stopping only long enough to swat at the insects that continued to land on her bare skin and drink their fill. The land only seemed to get wetter and more uneven as the old woman picked her way slowly through the swampy woods. The trees overhead blocked most of the light from the moon and only gave the occasion glimpse of a cloudy night sky. Felecia caught herself forming another question. Something along the lines of the uncertainty of navigating through such a dark and featureless place.
Why wag your tongue when just looking at me does the work for you?
The ocean waves. When Felecia stopped walking she could still hear them if just barely. Those waves told her where the stifling, wet woods ended to the north along the coast of the island. It took a few hours for Felecia to figure that much out and she hadn’t been walking these woods for years, much less decades. The old woman surely knew which direction she was going as long as she could hear the distant ocean waves.
Felecia was considering her epiphany and feeling confident in her ability to determine that they had been and were continuing west when they reached an ancient oak tree. The tree trunk was massive and its gnarled branches and half buried roots all seemed to twist and turn and drive up and down and up once more until trying to take in the whole thing became an impossibility. Felecia became so lost in staring at the tree and trying to puzzle it all out that she didn’t notice or hear the old woman turn and begin picking her way south.
Who would have gone to the trouble of walking out into the boggy woods to plant a lone oak tree among a forest of elm and poplar? The tree must have been ancient to achieve such size and have so many branches and roots. Surely the thing was well established even when the old woman first found herself out there?
A sudden sting sent Felecia absently slapping the back of her exposed neck. Her hand came away wet and the faintest of moon light that filtered through the canopy above showed her a tangle of wings, legs, and blood, her blood, a whole pool of the stuff.
The disgruntled groan and the shriek that followed got the old woman turned around. “You get two choices out here, pee in the mud and rub the paste all over, or cover yourself in cloth.”
Felecia dug in her pack and groaned some more as she pulled on unwanted layers of clothing in the stifling heat. The old woman waved at her, “You might be better off with the pee mud.”
As the old woman waved Felecia began to understood the nature of the crusty, caked poncho she wore and Felecia gagged and stifled a third disgusted groan.
Silence helped for the rest of the walk, it helped Felecia keep her senses tuned to the ocean waves until their presence to the north disappeared altogether. Silence helped Felecia to recognize and memorize the various sounds the deeper, wet woods, had to offer at night. Mostly though, Felecia was content not to ask the old woman any more questions, or talk much at all. The old woman hadn’t been pleasant, not once, and she reminded Felecia more and more of a filthy, angrier version of Nana.
Why am I even following this crazy old woman? Why I am in this swampy mess in the dead of night baking under layers of clothes and being eaten alive by insects?
As it turned out the only thing Felecia did want to do was ask herself questions, and she had no good answers. Was this all she could think to do? Her destiny finally fulfilled by vanishing into the swampy woods to stay with the sour doppelganger of the woman who had raised her with one hand and mistreated her at every turn with the other.