Baker and Jones Pt. 02 Ch. 06

Chapter Six - Annette

If the forest beyond the glas still holds onto its fetid, muggish dampness like a stubborn houseguest, the forest underneath the glas possesses it as a hound refusing to give up a bone - fangs and fight and all. The air fills the lungs with musk and the aching weight of the underground. The murky light may as well have been filtered through coffee grounds, sporadic and bitter. The untrodden surface underfoot sponges back underfoot with each timid step, giving the impression that a thick blanket of podzol holds back the ocean underfoot.

Annette's chest and arms are wet with sodden bark, painting her front end with rusted pine. Her cheek stings with debris from shoving her face into a trunk as she nearly slipped on the climb down, and her hair plasters against her face with dripping water and sweat. She doubles over when her boots finally make landfall on the rank earth, heaving out a breath and thinking to herself that it had been far easier to scale such giants when she was a little girl. How invincible childhood had been.

Underneath the rolling green, the glas presents to her a truly ghastly scene. The lumbering Kerish pines which usually fluff out into a spiraling star of bristles and pines instead seem sun-starved, withering - collapsing under the deprivation. Here, only the highest branches retain any foliage at all, fighting one another for the tiny glow of sunlight flittering through the soil covering. The lower rungs bear a starvation like winter, as though autumn had come and stolen all of its green and deposited it onto the ground without ceremony.

Pines are evergreen - to see them wounded like this feels, to Annette, alien and unsettling. The sky may as well shine green, or the rivers turn orange, and they would instill within her the same strangeness of feeling.

And where she might expect to see the soaked, discarded remains of needles covering the detritus, they've all since been claimed by the worms and fungi and decomposers of the soil. There had been time enough under the glas for the pines to shed their lowest blades, for the critters of the ground to consume that material, and to leave behind no trace of such a battle.

What could have possibly caused this?

Cordelia seems to share her confusion though not her dread, leaping down the final few feet to the ground and spinning in a large, bewildered circle. With much the same grandeur as a child on Christmas, she gleefully marvels, "This shouldn't be here."

Annette kicks her boot against a trunk, hoping to shake away an itch at the bottom of her foot that'd be impossible to indulge without worrying off her shoes. Tired from the climb down, she simply says, "I'm not sure the forest agrees."

"This shouldn't be here," confirms the Detective, just as enthused.

Beyond the bright rays of the sinkhole above, the light exists only in dim patches. She feels her eyes strain from the effort of adaptation, resenting the conditions. The forest continues on past where her eyes will allow her to see, trickling off into the unknowing, impossible darkness.

Cordelia's delight is interrupted as she makes a low, groaning noise, barely audible. Annette turns to see her hand quickly retreating from massaging her temples, as though embarrassed by the action. She looks up and down Annette, stoically neutral, and flicks her neck away as though dismissing her worry.

Annette suffers through her concern for the Detective, who once again seems content to let Annette be the only one of the pair who cares for Cordelia's wellbeing. Stomaching her nerves, she steps away, gazing out beyond the haphazard and tiltering pines to try and discern a proper way forward.

A hand grips her bicep, fingers twisting trepidatiously around the muscle and halting her in place. Annette's boots squelch to a stop. She closes her eyes and forces patience to win the day. "Frightened of the dark, dear?"

"Just..." A burdened breath. Hesitant. Cool. "Just stay close to me."

"And here I was, intending to scurry off into the haunted forest on my lonesome," she masks her fretting by habit. She swallows and tries to bring her focus to bear on the mystery at hand. "What is this place? This cannot be natural."

"No. I think..." Cordelia's voice is interrupted by another grimacing noise, and her hand releases from Annette to fly up to her forehead. A grim feeling corrupts Annette's sternum, bristling against the Detective's request not to disclose her clear-and-present issues. Cordelia paces away a few steps, and without further context, simply utters, "We ought to consider the possibility."

Keeping herself on task, she replies, "The scale of this place is massive. It would've required dozens of people, and I can't even imagine how one would go about-,"

The Detective stumbles, catching herself against a trunk to keep standing. Her palm grips into the coppery bark, fingernails digging into the canyons between chips. Her breath is forced and heavy, her forehead contorting with stress and beads of sweat.

Annette steps close. "I recognize you asked me to be patient with your disclosure, but you're not well." She places the back of her hand on Cordelia's forehead, then removes it quickly. "You're burning up. Do you feel a fever?"

"No," Cordelia dismisses, in a tone that clearly means yes. She purses her lips, and even quieter admits, "Perhaps."

She guides the Detective to sit, placing her back up against the bark. "A fever and a headache, are you feeling any other-,"

"I've not said anything about a headac-,"

Annette silences her with a look. "What else are you experiencing?"

She holds her face steady and gazes off into the distance behind Annette, thinking to herself. She watches as those emerald eyes dart back-and-forth, never settling for more than a heartbeat - a clear sign some debate is working underneath the surface. Cordelia was never famous for her interoception, and Annette suspects it may take some effort for her to take stock of her feelings and come to a full awareness of how she's-

Quite suddenly, Cordelia twists to the side and jams a finger down her throat. Her whole torso heaves with her as she retches all over the horrid ground, calling forth a smell of acid and sap. Annette has hardly any time to give her space, falling back onto her ass and catching her palms on the twigs and mud.

"Jesus, Cordelia, why would you-,"

With just as little warning, the Detective repeats the disgusting act, coughing out the contents of her stomach onto the earth without reverence. She remains bent over herself, panting out her urgent breath over the grisly scene, eyes shut tightly. She swallows, then makes a repulsed face as the palette makes a new trip down.

"Christ, that's a horrid taste," is all she says.

Annette shoves away the need to mirror the retching, slowly pulling herself up to bundle Cordelia's soft, raven hair between her palms and hold it back out of her face. From the corner of her eyes, the Detective flashes a non-understanding glow.

With an air of resignation, Annette mumbles, "How am I to know you won't try for a third?"

Cordelia shrugs and sits up, running her hand through her hair to shove off Annette's hold and to tuck the strands back behind her. She shivers and suffers through the discomfort for a moment, and without ceremony surmises, "Annette, I suspect I've been poisoned."

And, as though it is comforting, adds, "With luck, not fatally so."

Annette feels her nerves burst as she wonders, "When could you have been poiso-," and then her nerves are quickly replaced by a frustrated heat in her cheeks. She closes her eyes and whispers, "Please don't tell me there was more than salt in that soil you ate."

"I didn't taste anything other tha-,"

"Many poisons are famously tasteless," she hisses back. Annette stands quickly and surveys the area. "We need to get you to a doctor."

Cordelia is unhurried in her effort to stand, brushing off the dirt from herself without any sense of priority to her being. "I feel worlds better."

"I am not taking that risk. We're climbing back up now."

"With how unstable the surface is, we better not." Cordelia drops her palms into the pockets of her soggy trench coat. "We're lucky to have fallen as safely as we did."

Annette makes a displeased noise in her throat. She forces a clearing breath through her chest. "Another way out then," she concedes. A quick glance up at the sinkhole above, then her eyes trail back down to the opposite direction. "That way is east, we can dig our way out through the surface."

"West."

"I am quite confident that it is east."

Cordelia points her hand behind them. It remains tucked in her pocket so that the whole of her coat trails into the air with it like a ridiculous sleeve. "We ought to go west. Come along." She clicks her heels and marches off without another word.

Annette leaps bodily in front of the Detective, arresting her path and throwing her arms out wide to block her progress. "You. Need. A. Doctor."

"I'm fine," Cordelia ducks under one of Annette's outstretched arms and marches on, forcing Annette to do a little skipping hop to catch up. "My headache is gone, the fever has improved, and she's gone."

"She?"

Cordelia turns and points again, once more lifting her whole coat, and once more ignoring Annette's protestations. "The smoke and ruined village was this way."

This time Annette grabs Cordelia's arm and yanks it to halt her. "We need to find a way out. One which will get you to safety." She turns to face Annette, an expression of confusion on her face like all Annette had said was something silly and frivolous.

"Come now, Miss Baker. A ruined town beside an artificially buried forest? Can't be a coincidence. There will be an exit."

The incorrigible, incomprehensible, uncompromising Detective, Annette grumbles sourly as Cordelia marches off. This woman will be the death of my nerves.

It's difficult to keep her frustrations at bay as they saunter along underground, following a trail which Cordelia blazes with hardly any concern for Annette's pace. So complete was her faithfulness that Annette would remain lock-step with her.

No underbrush remains, and the only traces of it are the heavier branches which have not fully been subsumed into the ecosystem - if it could properly be called even that. Beyond the squirming masses of bugs that surely haunt underfoot and the sickly trees at hand, it's difficult to state that the forest is living at all.

It's impossible to get through to her. She's stubborn, and brilliant, which go hand-and-hand like dynamite and a match.

Cordelia moves silently through the woods, shoulders remaining level despite any movement she might make between branches. She seems almost a specter, always slightly unnatural in the way she moves as though she simply floats over the ground.

'Annette, don't you dare step more than a few feet away from me, lest you accidentally be killed in the few seconds I do not supervise you. Ahem, I realize I declared I'd been poisoned, but I'm fine now. Christ, Miss Baker, you worry too much."

Her fists agitate closed, tightening and releasing to punctuate her protesting ruminations. She's sure that her face is fixed into a firm scowl, but she's not at all sure that she could release it into a more pleasant expression if required.

'Not to worry, Annette, my odd behavior - odd even by my standards - is surely only the result of being poisoned, and I likely was only poisoned because I ate soil out of field I had been told in advance was POISONED!!"

'It's so strange that you're worried about this, Annette.'

She huffs out a frustrated breath, not caring to mask her displeasure any further. A sore part of her hopes Cordelia will whip around to ask whatever the matter may be, thus giving permission for Annette to inform her of how patently ridiculous Cordelia was-

Annette halts in place. A new, more concerning thought emerges.

It takes a few more steps for Cordelia to notice she's stopped, and to Annette's relief, she does in fact turn to query the pause, eyebrow ticked up into an affixed arch.

Annette swallows dryly. "What if the poison wasn't in the soil? What if..."

Cordelia's hands twist in her pockets. She kicks one boot against another to shake off the mud from its sole. When she speaks, her head inclines softly to the right, as though conceding something inevitable. "Then I would suspect that the Coven is quite aware of the presence of a Detective."

And she turns on her heel to continue the steady romp, without another moment of concern lended to the matter. Annette stares incredulously, wondering, if only for a singular, intrusive moment, whether or not both of them would make their return to Bellchester at the end of this all.

- - -

The west does not immediately produce an exit, but after following the sloped, root-filled ceiling to its conclusive grounding, then tacking northward along it, it does produce something far more interesting.

Voices.

Cordelia and Annette bunker in the shadows, trusting the umbral shroud of the cavern (hill?) to obscure their eavesdropping. They inch as close as confidence bolsters and their sense of hearing will allow, crouching behind adjacent trees and throwing their backs to the bark. Annette swears she hears the soft click of Cordelia's revolver, and receives an answer to a question she'd not brought herself to ask.

"-not going to respect her, I don't know what to say," the first voice puffs out domestically, disdainfully. It's light and comely, edging with a quiet fearsomeness and a soft accent. She almost sounds familiar, but Annette can't place it.

"It's not about respect," a second voice responds, low and harsh, spitting out defiantly. "It's about priority."

"Spare me."

"You feel it, too, I know it." A pause. "See?"

The first voice mutters something cranky under her breath. "Can we focus on the matter at han-,"

"I want you to consider it," the second voice insists, proud as a woman holding a winning hand at the table - and who wants the table to know it. It carries with it a sharp pride, a dense, harrowing gravity.

The first woman groans. "He bought the land ages ago. What else can we do?" Another tense pause passes. Annette and Cordelia share a look, trying to parse out what they are referring to. "You're ridiculous," she accuses the second. "A notorious fool you are if you think she'd let you hurt him."

"You've got the money, have you? No? What other option is there."

"Her promise," says the first dutifully.

"Ever faithful, ever holy," says the second scornfully. Her voice lowers coolly. "You know she's losing it."

"Don't you dare-,"

"You aren't with her like I am," the harsh voice utters, voice lower as though she'd be in trouble if caught. "I've seen apples sharper than her." Silence holds both tensely. "Oh, what? You'll hit me?"

Annette can imagine the first voice's hand tightly clenched and threatening assault.

"You do want them gone, don't you?" The second challenges.

"I'm not some corkie," the first spits. She sighs, then tacks into a new direction. "What about the Abbot?"

The other snorts.

"Now you're playing stupid," says the first. "Maud."

"Is the town loonie."

"But if he's-,"

"The fuck-brain's here now, that's the priority," the second dismisses, with a sense of priority and urgency under her breath. "The Abbot can perform exorcisms on Maud all day for all I care." She drops a weighted breath, edging with something wicked and needful. "We should just kill her."

Now the first laughs. "It's a wonder Mother tolerates you at all." There's a sound of brush underfoot, and her voice slowly trails off as the two walk away. "If she's gone mad, surely it's from having to suffer your..."

Annette shuts her eyes tightly, trying to commit as much of the conversation to memory as her jittering mind will allow. She'll consider later the questions of what their statements might mean, what insights they might provide - for now, simple memorization.

Why was that voice familiar?

She hesitantly brushes the thought aside. If the witches are truly hidden amongst the city, it's not impossible she's brushed paths with one already - but where?

Later.

Cordelia disturbs her debate, shuffling over to her without jostling the ground, and gently nudges Annette back to the world around them. With a voice that makes an earnest-yet-failed attempt to hold back pride in itself, she whispers, "They've gone west."

So Annette follows the Detective on a slow, squelching walk west, accepting there must be an exit to the glas that direction, just as her smug partner predicted. A small part of her is relieved. With how unusual Cordelia has been today, it's comforting to know her eccentrism still yields some benefit.

A small clearing carves its way through the sun-starved pines, no larger than a common living room. It's haphazardly circular, with one end trailing off towards the west as though giving way to a trodden path. The dim light almost seems to leech itself, craving the dissipation of night.

At the clearing's center lay a fire pit. At the fire pit's helm lay an altar.

A grim hollow of trunk lay upright, standing as though a person petrified by fear. Small branches and twigs hanging from its sides wear necklaces of bone and brittle, softly falling into long strands like beads. Where it carves into the ground it appears brown and ashen, as though the flames lick its feet clean. At its head, a face has been carved.

Annette requires no guide to hazard a guess: Hanelleian.

The face holds a majesty and simplicity that screams divine. Its shut eyes lock away the secrets of her world, held fast by a stiff, plain set of lips and a hooked chin. It appears alien, ancient, carved here as though it's stood for a thousand years.

Cordelia says nothing when confronted with it. She stands opposite it from the fire pit, as though sizing up her sparring partner. Her emerald eyes flick over it, hunting it for anything it might reveal - but, saying nothing, Cordeia turns on her heels and makes her way west.

The Detective walks with a newfound stillness to her, not borne out by any sort of fear of discovery. Her shoulders sit square and unaltered. Her head is held high and undeterred. If she bears any hesitation about the subjects of their eavesdropping finding them, her face and figure reveal no clues.

Save that her hand has not left the pocket Annette sorely suspects holsters a revolver.

West gives way to a vine-infested, root-ridden circular escape - a door of sorts. It rests round and arch-like, sloped into the ground where the glas gives way to the real earth below. Cordelia stops and considers it for a breath as Annette watches silently, still feeling given over to a sense of quietness and caution within herself.

Cordelia's gloved hand pushes the green exit open, splitting it down the middle as a curtain being drawn open, and she steps out into the fresh, blinding light of day. Even with the muggy gray clouds above, the brightness stings Annette's adjusted eyes, forcing her to throw up a hand to bring reprieve.

Beyond the glas lay the forgotten village, overrun by the wilderness around. A handful of hutches and homes made of stone and wood, homely, if in disrepair. Not a single chimney, nor patch of sky, betrays the smoke column which drew Cordelia here. No sign of either of the two voices. They've disappeared without even a footprint left behind. The village sits quiet and abandoned as ever.