The Schattenreich Mythology: Five Things You Always Wanted to Know About the Schattenreich

Some things that some of you have asked. I would like to answer them so as to not give too much away.

1. Why the Schattenreich?

The German word Schattenreich can be interpreted as the realm of shadows, the kingdom of shades or even a plenitude of shadows. My interpretation of this realm, where many shadows do exist, is that through their special relationship with the Otherworld (Ande-dubnos or Anderwelt), the von der Lahn family (and their ancestors) have carved out their own special portion, directly connected to the waking world and which has borders, where they can practice their craft in a relatively protected state.

2. Who can enter the Schattenreich?

Those of the blood, which mainly consists of the generations affected by Cathubodua's original curse - nine times nines generations - where the women are destined to die soon after childbirth. The ability to cross the veil to the Schattenreich is not without its obligations, however. These duties can and do vary according to a person's ability and affinities.

3. Is there a connection between Burg Lahn and the Schattenreich?

Yes! Burg Lahn, ancestral home to the von der Lahns and before them the Du Bois family and a few other branches of the family tree, is - through repeated usage - the well-worn path, easy access to the Schattenreich and through that domain to Ande-dubnos proper. Some would say that it constitutes a special sort of nemeton - a connection through the veil between the waking world and the Otherworld. A Schattenreich construct, Lahn-dunum, the Otherworld equivalent to Burg Lahn, exists in the Schattenreich and is also a place where crossing is facilitated.

4. Who built Lahn-dunum and where is it?

 No one knows who crafted the original construct. Access to Lahn-dunum is mostly restricted to the heir - the current Baron of Burg Lahn (formerly a count, but the family was demoted due to their stubborn adherence to their pagan heritage) - and his direct descendants (see, for example, Shadow Zone and Triple Junction). The construct is located within the Schattenreich - or at least it was until relatively recently, when Caitie accidentally translocated it (book 3, Double Couple) to Ande-dubnos.

5. Who lives in the Schattenreich?

The only (known and accounted for) permanent residents of the Schattenreich include:

Korri. An ancient being, most probably a Korrigan who rather than remain in the waking world , chose to dwell there with some of her brethren, who may or may not still exist outside of dreamtime. (see Double Couple)

Five-fingered Yan. a being out of legend whose fingers are lit. He can manifest on the borders between the Schattenreich and Ande-dubnos and can sometimes act as a (not necessarily reliable) guide, especially in dark places. His presence does not bode well (see Primary Fault).

The Lost Children.  Legend has it that during a later Crusades campaign, children were recruited to fight for the so-called holy lands. What is more likely is that the children were conscripted, possibly sold as slaves. The lucky ones who were rescued and taken to the Schattenreich, constitute a band of helpful but sometimes mischievous children who dwell permanently near the borders to Ande-dubnos. It is rumored that they can cross to the waking world, where they pilfer foodstuffs and other useful items to stock the ancestral von der Lahn cottage, Ker Gisell (see Double Couple).

Nymphs or mermaids (Breton Morverch) and probably many other names, live underneath the swift flowing waters of the so-called River of Life that forms the westernmost border to the Schattenreich. They guard access to a place of mystery and beauty, an eternally blooming wildflower meadow. Why this particular patch of land should remain inaccessible to humans and inhabitants alike, is not clear. This is likely due to the meadow being a transformative place and so not without special reason, off limit (see Shaky Ground) The nymphs can wear beautiful faces.

And one more as a bonus:

6. Is the Schattenreich black and white?

One reader always had the picture of the Schattenreich in shades of gray (shadows=gray, black, and white). The answer is No. The Schattenreich has very vivid colors (the trees, the sky, the grassy clearing), sometimes even more vivid than counterparts in the real world. The Schattenreich (and Ande-dubnos) do not seem to have strong scents or smells.

Additional questions or comments more than welcome!


photo credit:

Underweald, Sussex via photopin (license)

1095 via photopin (license)

 Dawn Mist via photopin (license)

Triple Junction, Book 5 of the Schattenreich: excerpt and cover reveal

Finally! Triple Junction, the last book in the Schattenreich series (but not the last of the Schattenreich!), soon to be released in ebook and trade paperback. 

Sorry for the delay, but we are accompanying our terminally ill cat, the handsome and intrepid Ramses (also known as Miezie and the model for Cicero in the Schattenreich books) on his last days with us. I hope there are still many days still remaining for our dear friend of 17 years (see picture at bottom), but it is hard to be sure.

Consequently, I am also behind on getting the Terrae Motus Books website ready for launch (it will eventually replace sharonreamer.com). To keep abreast of new releases and giveaways/promotions exclusive to subscribers, please sign up to receive my quarterly newsletter. I had planned on a 3rd quarter release of both the newsletter and the ebook (uh, that was last week, right?), but am now looking ahead to a fourth quarter, post-holiday, gentle launch of both paperback and ebook. It will be available before that time, wide, in a variety of outlets. Naturally, I will post updates on the blog.

So, on to the excerpt. I have picked this passage, not at the beginning but only a little ways into the book, as it's a nice standalone scene and provides a good framework for the novel and its themes. And of course, I didn't want to reveal spoil the wedding, which occurs near the beginning of the book. 
  

Book 5 of the Schattenreich

Chapter 6

We started from Lahn-dunum, the Schattenreich counterpart to Burg Lahn that now existed firmly within the borders of Ande-dubnos. I hadn’t been here since Heinrich, Hagen and I drank the funky-tasting water infused with the essence of the Dreams that allowed us to see into each other’s souls. I jumped at the eerie wailing emanating from the depths of Lahn-dunum’s crypts. I had last been down there when my uncle Niehls stabbed me in the neck.

Heinrich looked as puzzled as I felt.

Hagen didn’t. “Lahn-dunum has a new guardian. But he is still experiencing some, ah, adjustments to his new home.”

Sebastian crossed his arms. “Is he secure?”

“Quite,” Hagen said. “But I haven’t had a chance to check in on him recently. That will have to wait until a later time. Brides first?”

Hagen pushed open a set of double-doors leading out of Lahn-dunum. I’d never entered or exited through the front doors before. Or even remembered seeing them. Another first. Maybe they only existed on this night, Kala Goañv, Samhain, the festival associated with the end of the harvest and the coming of winter.

And now it would be celebrated as the eve of our wedding night. My second wedding night.

We reached the wooden bridge that separated Ande-dubnos from the Schattenreich. Its carved railings resembled my bedposts. In the dark, I could only hear the water rushing underneath. Because of more than one fateful encounter here, I looked both ways before hurrying to follow the others across. I supposed we were making a shortcut through the Schattenreich, but wasn’t sure. Hagen led us to the right, down a darkening path, lined on either side with brambles and sickly looking trees.

“Haven’t been this way before,” I mumbled.

“It’s not usually open to travel,” Hagen said.

The two full moons in the sky shone with a pale, pearly light. Heinrich reached upward and twisted his hand as if turning a faucet. We were blanketed in moonlight that cast an envelope around us, holding the darkness at bay. My moon shone through the trees, not quite full. It no longer had a dark growth blotting out its brilliance. I breathed out in relief, my legs feeling more solid.

We reached an archway of thick, tangled branches.

“Watch out for the thorns,” Hagen said. “They induce a stupor, followed by pain.”

We moved through the arch singly. I went last, holding my traveler’s cloak tight around me. Heinrich pulled out a binioú kozh, his Breton bagpipe; it looked ancient and more like a water bladder made from goatskin than a bagpipe. He played a few notes.

I shifted on my feet. “Are we waiting for someone?”

A series of plaintive cries reached us. Not wails; they sounded more like pleas, pleas to the living. Even though I didn’t understand the words, I understood their meaning: Give us life. Give us your life.

And there they waited, far from us, across a wide open plain bordered on the far end by forest. Even at a distance, they were easy to see; four of them, sunken-in men, their clothes in disarray and their hair plastered to their heads.

“Who are you?” I felt myself calling to them.

Hagen grimaced and grasped my shoulder, his arm around me. With his other hand, he covered my mouth. “Don’t—”

The sky lightened as if from a sudden brightening of the moons. The ground shook. I took a breath to shout a warning, but Hagen kept his hand firmly over my mouth. My eyes closed for a moment. When I opened them, the four men had closed at least half the distance between us. I hadn’t even seen them move. They cried again, the mournful sounds penetrating my skull, making me shiver.

I wanted to mimic their cries. My throat tightened.

Hagen nodded to Heinrich, who started a slow dirge on his bagpipe. The men turned and marched away in time to his music. We followed the dead men in one long procession. I fought the fright gripping my groin by putting one foot in front of the other.

The well-trodden path, its dark gravel ground into the equally dark and foul-smelling earth was bordered on either side by withered plants and bare-limbed trees that seemed hunched over with their own weight. We followed it into the woods. We were in Ankou’s domain. The sudden knowledge didn’t cripple me with fear – I was with Hagen and this was where he came to do his Ande-dubnos duty by guiding the dead to their final resting place – but it didn’t encourage relaxation on my part.

We made the trek in grim silence, relieved only by snuffling sounds from either side of the path. I looked once. Orange-red eyes glared back at me. Whatever creature belonged to those eyes had bulk, a darker shadow hulking against the darkness.

But although the creature jerked upwards when our eyes met, it didn’t move to intercept us. After that, I kept my eyes fixed on Hagen, striding confidently in front of me. Heinrich flanked me from behind, followed by Sebastian. He hummed quietly.

The path ended at a steep bluff. The dead men had deserted us, vanishing into a mist that rose behind us. Hagen turned and moved backwards along a faint trail that wound down, his hands braced on stones and protruding, famished-looking tree roots that lined the way. Once he reached the bottom, he motioned for us to follow him.

In the twilit evening we scrambled down. A patch of moonlight just behind a range of hills in the near distance called us on.

“Are we there yet?” I asked.

He smiled. “Just over the hills.”

The meandering trail through gentle hills led us into a bowl-shaped dale. A single-file procession marched downwards from the hills opposite us. Hagen called a halt when we reached a jumble of moss-covered boulders to the right of the path.

“Just find a place to sit comfortably. We won’t have long to wait,” Hagen said.

Heinrich slung his binioú kozh in preparation for playing, and Sebastian sat next to me, taking my hand in his.

“Who are they, Tadig?”

“Departed souls.”

“What are they doing here?”

“Celebrating. And remembering. Like us. Look. A few of the Tud join us.” My father pointed behind us, to the path we had just taken.

A line of about a dozen Tud, one of several races of beings who inhabited Ande-dubnos, came our way. These were the tall ones with fair skin and long silvery hair. They stood near a group of boulders to the left of the path. A couple of them nodded to us, and they watched Heinrich expectantly.

Then I saw Ankou. He stood where the path opened out to the grassy dale, where the dead had just passed. He wore his black cloak and wielded his iron-tipped staff, his legs spread. His hair blew behind him, his skin an unearthly white. He waited until the last of the dead passed by. When they were all gathered in the middle of the downs, Ankou rapped his staff on the ground three times.

The dead began to sing. Ankou rapped his staff three more times. Some danced, but mostly they moved amongst each other in a grim Irish wheel, touching one other as they passed, many of them turning, gazing as if searching for someone or something, the short cropped grasses not even marked by their passing. Hagen gazed in the same way. He tapped Heinrich on the shoulder.

Out in the middle of the dale, Hagen and Heinrich’s mother Isabel glided past the other souls. Her face had none of the life and hope so visible in the pictures Heinrich had shown me in Dinard, but she was beautiful, with a kissed-by-moonlight paleness contrasting her long dark hair and slender form.

Beautiful and dead. So near but so far away.

Heinrich played a few notes on his bagpipe, then stopped to sing to her in Brezhoneg, not a funeral dirge, but a song that sounded both happy and sad. Heinrich’s clear voice conveyed respect and longing.

Isabel glanced once our way and then continued her search. Was she looking for Hagen’s father Theodor? One of the dead men took her hand and led her in a slow dance. She didn’t resist. The others joined them, swaying and turning to Heinrich’s song.

Ankou kept a close watch on his flock. When one of them strayed too far towards us, he would call them back with a commanding voice that touched me in the deep place where my fear of him still lived. But what could he possibly threaten the dead with?

I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer to that question, but as I turned to ask Hagen, Ankou stood before us. He had moved across the dale in less time than it took me to open my mouth to speak, as quick as the dead men who had led us here. I turned my face away, unwilling to meet Ankou’s eyes.

His claim on me had not yet come to pass; he would have to wait. I married the man of my heart’s desire tonight and was still very much alive and a part of his life. Ankou bowed and reached out a hand to me. Was he asking me to dance?

I shrank back. Hagen reached me and took my hand in a tight grip. He held out a hand to ward off Ankou’s advance. “Your claim on Katarin is not yet due. What do you seek from the living?” A ring of light glowed a ghostly white on Hagen’s little finger.

Ankou bowed. “A dance to celebrate Kala Goañv and the day of your promising.”

Was our wedding night to be the cause of hostility? Hagen couldn’t tell me about the unfinished business between them because of a geis. But if all Ankou wanted was a dance, then I could do that. I took my hand from Hagen’s and extended it to Ankou.

A light touch on my shoulder made me turn my head.

“May I have the pleasure of a dance with you, milady?” Brionne, the Tud I once met at the Sea of Dreams, the night Heinrich and I made love for the first time, stood next to me. For the evening’s festivities, he wore a burgundy red suit featuring a double-breasted long-tail coat that went well with his platinum hair. Hagen smiled and nodded his head in approval.

Brionne bowed to Ankou and turned back to me. Ankou’s face betrayed no emotion, but a brief smile of acknowledgement appeared.

I gave Brionne my hand. “I’d be honored.”

The other Tud danced with us, their long arms and legs swirling, rising and falling. Ankou swiveled his head to watch us. Their enthusiasm pushed me into a frenzy, just like on Kala Hañv, the Maifest, when I ran with the Tud to honor Eduard’s passing. Here it had none of the urgency of the Wild Hunt I had fled.

I didn’t need to escape Death. Not tonight. Not yet.

Hagen joined Heinrich in his song, his voice higher but in harmony. I’d never heard him sing before. The words poured out evening a rich timbre; although I didn’t understand their meaning, the carefully contained emotion behind them seemed clear. Sebastian added his voice to the chorus, and put his arms across their shoulders. Heinrich ended the song with a few plaintive notes from his Breton bagpipe.

I curtsied low to Brionne and thanked him for the dance before turning again to the dead. The souls in the middle of the downs continued their own songs, voices strengthening and then fading away. Sobs and cries issued forth. They intensified their movements as if working up to a grand finale. At a signal from Ankou, they abruptly turned and began the climb back to where they had come from.

Hagen took a few steps closer to Ankou. They faced off, their words swallowed in a wind that swirled around them, a wind Ankou caused with a flourish of his iron rod, so that none of us were privy to their conversation. Heinrich held me around the waist.

Finished with what they had to say to each other, Druid and Death regarded each other across the short distance between them before Ankou turned and followed his flock, his long hair flowing around him. He turned once more and bowed to me before continuing on his way. My husband started after him, a momentary sadness lingering in his expression, until Sebastian clasped him by the shoulder.

We began the trek back home.

our beloved Miezie

Shadow Zone Excerpt and Cover

Here's the cover and an excerpt from Book 4, the penultimate novel in the Schattenreich series, and the sequel to Primary Fault, Shaky Ground and Double Couple. Release date for the trade paperback is planned for October 31. The ebook will follow shortly.

Chapter 3

He found me as I stumbled out, bereft of emotion, alone. I repeated the mantra of my journey through the forest once more. Where am I. Who am I. It had lasted a lifetime or no time at all. No sound, no smell. Souls don’t smell. Souls yearn.

Ankou saluted me, two fingers to his forehead, and then gestured in front of him. He wore no hat and didn’t have his curved iron. “Let us walk a-ways together. Katarin.”

“Is that my name?”

“It is the one I have given you.”

Ankou, the being who embodied Death, had his own, private name for me. I wasn’t thrilled about that. His appearance matched the one I had last seen as I lay bleeding out – a devastatingly attractive man but still cadaver-thin and tall – the ears ended in subtle points. His demeanor suggested antiquity, but his movements and face belied any suggestion of age. His hair blew back in a gentle breeze that swirled around his body, which was clad in black and gray, of course. His clothes bore decorations of silver and gold to match the highlights in his ankle-length hair and those dark eyes rimmed in silver.

“You control the wind like you control people’s deaths?” I asked him, fascinated, despite a lingering dread in the presence of the being I had feared since childhood.

A sad smile crossed his face. Was it just for my benefit? He had helped me find my way through his forest, but I was unconvinced it was a good idea to place trust in Death.

“A minor skill.”

“You look different. Why?”

“You have hated me your whole life. Your death allowed me to redeem myself, and…” He paused as we stopped at a crossroads.

I looked back the way we had come. No landscape or path. No forest, nothing but horizon, bleak against a gray sky. The way straight ahead and the way that crossed it were also bare of landmarks.

“And?” I prompted.

“And find a form that pleases you, my lady.” Ankou took a shallow bow.

“This one is a remarkable improvement on how you showed yourself to me the first two and a half decades I’ve known you,” I said.

He acknowledged my comment with a crooked smile.

“This is it, then. It is time for you to take me with you. Where do we go?”

“This is where we part,” he said. “I must attend. And you must return to—”

“Life. I wish I could.” I tried once again to remember names, but found I couldn’t. Not yet. At least he had given me a name.

“It is your decision.”

“My decision…where I will spend my death?”

“Your decision about how you will live,” he said. “What your choice will be.”

“I don’t understand. Didn’t you help me die?” I died in the arms of…one I loved. But Death had eased my pain, had made it easy, had banished my fear.

“Not a true death.”

“I died, but I’m not truly dead. Yep. That makes sense,” I said.

“You’ll have to make your way through the Between Lands alone, I’m afraid.”

“I walked through your forest. Are we all planted there? Good guys in front, bad guys in back? Tall trees are souls who count, aren’t they?”

His smile radiated true warmth. “You understand.” He twirled his arm in the direction of where we had come from. The forest emerged, as if from behind a mirage. “The Lands Beyond begin there.”
“Lands Beyond?”

“My domain.” He waved his arm. “I also have some control over the Between Lands, but it is a more variable landscape.”

I shrugged.

“At first, I hoped there would be some who I could keep with me. But over the years, the centuries…there was but one and then…” He shook his head. “You and your family and your ancestors, all the ones back to those first priests, the ones who bargained for power – none of them had your power to see through to the heart of things.”

“I’m good at figuring things out. You know, analyzing data; it’s a natural talent.”

Death laughed, both a rich and hollow sound. “No, that’s not it. You’re the one.”

“One what?”

“The apex.”

“Oh, that. That Anam thing. If you say so.”

“I do.”

I squinted at him, wondering if I could see beneath his facade. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why do you want to keep me with you?”

“Blood is powerful. Your blood, especially.”

Anam. Anamorphosis Was that it? “I don’t know what Anam means.”

“Soul. Eneff. Anima. Many languages, same meaning. Anam crosses all veils. You embody it.”

Figure it out. My ancestors bargained for power. One of them broke their bargain and so we were all cursed. My father’s brother wanted what I have. Anam. The apex of the life-soul-tree was where power concentrated. Power over the veil.

If I died giving birth, like my mother and the women in my family before her, then my girls would inherit it. But if I were the apex, the last one, then they would be free. Wouldn’t they? Would they have power without the curse? That was something any number of entities, human or otherwise, would like to control. Could everything really be that simple?

“I get to go back? To live again?”

He nodded. “Have you chosen an Aspect?”

“You know about all that?” I felt empty and weary and would have liked to just sink into a small insignificant heap on the ground for a few seconds or even an eternity.

“It’s what the lot of you seem to enjoy doing. If one of you has a particular affinity for the Aspect you’ve chosen, it becomes a significant part of your…self.”

“Oh. Cool. I picked that guy who turns himself into a swan to be with his lover.”

Ankou’s smile graced his face with an unearthly beauty. “Oenghus mac Oc. Nice.”

I sighed. “Glad you approve. So which way should I go from here?”

He turned sideways, held out his arms as if he were about to perform that Greek dance the men
do and then lowered them. “Walk that way,” he crossed one arm over his chest and pointed straight ahead. “Just follow it until the end. You will pass the Lecksteine along the way. Before the end they will become irresistible.”

“Salt licks? Like for deer in winter? And what happens if I taste them?”

“They represent the guilt of your past. You will live a portion of it again, once for each time you partake.”

I shivered.

“That way,” he crossed his other arm over and pointed down the intersecting road, “leads to a less untimely trek, The Paths of the Dead, but I fear your control of your craft is not yet sufficient to overcome its…hurdles. And there,” he twisted his head in the opposite direction, “may take you where you most want to go.”

“How do you know where I want to go?”

Ankou unfolded himself. “It’s what we live on.”

“You live on snatches of memories?”

“What you retain from the Dreams. We feed on them.”

“You feed on the Dreams? I thought it was blood and lust that satiated you.”

“What do humans most dream about based on your recent journey?”

Ankou retained his appearance, but I imagined I saw the immaterialness lurking beneath it. Always changing. Always hungry. Everything was hungry here.

“You’ve given me important information. I assume you want something in return?”

He laughed. It now had the sound of a symphony orchestra – but slightly out of tune. “That was for free. There will be ample opportunity for me to collect from you, Katarin.”

“While I have you in a talkative mood, tell me: where does that name come from?”

“Some special ones I collect receive a name from me. It marks you.” He bowed again. “The name Death calls you with is your true name.” His eyes sparkled with silver.

Katarin – Kati – that private name from a man I loved like the smell of an early summer morning sitting on the porch, the smell of simple pleasure and the yearning for it to continue. “He knows my true name. The man I love is Death’s right-hand man.”

Ankou didn’t say anything.

“What’s his true name?”

“It is a name of power. What do you offer in return?”

“You gave him my name.”

“He paid for it, pays for it still.”

“You partook of my life’s blood.”

He bent his head in acknowledgement. “Exquisite, it was.” He leaned down and whispered, his silvery hair caressing my face. The name fled from my consciousness as soon as he spoke it, but it lingered there, deep. I knew somehow it would return at my bidding.

“Use it wisely. The name compels.”

My true name had not been used to compel, but it did all the same. “This druid crap is hard on a body. I think I’ll head that way.” I crossed my arm towards the path he had indicated would be the one where I most wanted to go. I took a few steps away from him.

“Until we meet again, Katarin. Fare thee well.”

I ran fast down the path, stopped and turned. Ankou held up two fingers spread in a vee, an easily understood symbol both in his world and mine.

“You, too, Ankou. Don’t let the job get you down.”

He saluted me in that flippant way, two fingers to his forehead with a slight bow of his head. And then he vanished.

“I hate it when they do that.”

The path, dusty and long, stretched out in front of me.

***

The Between Lands

Dusty and long, one foot after another. I saw movement. Compared to the nothing I’d been staring at for the past…hours, days, centuries, it was a veritable hive of activity, caused by something; or things. As I got closer I wasn’t so sure I wanted to. They were alive – at least as far as anything was alive in this place. The Between Lands, Ankou had called them. Maybe these things were a form of Between Life.

They came up to my knee on average. One was taller. He – or it – might have been the one in
charge. He acted like it. But none of the others paid him any heed as he ordered them around with loud grunts and slaps to the portion of their anatomy that normally would qualify as a head. They had a mossy look about them – old, dried-up moss, brown with patches of gray and green. A memory…he had mentioned them once and said they were called moss men and they controlled the borders. But the borders to what?

They were furiously throwing up a wall of sorts – a mass of mud or clay mixed with tree branches and stones. I could still clamber over if I hurried – and if I could find a way through them. They looked harmless, but had an air of malevolence about them. Did they have teeth? I edged closer, but they continued to pretend I wasn’t there. Maybe I wasn’t. I held up my hand. It looked real enough. I could see the veins, dirty fingernails – was that Hohes Venn muck? – and fingerprints.

I held both hands palm out and shouted, “Stop!” They ignored me. Maybe they didn’t have ears or they didn’t understand English. What was the word in Brezhoneg? “Paouez!” I screamed. One of them looked at me for a second and then looked away. It was a response. I didn’t know whether it was the language or the scream.

I’d had a lot of practice screaming recently and was getting good at it. It tore out of me, a cumulative primal scream that had gathered strength through my being drugged, dragged into a swampy fen, stabbed, and accompanied by a rude relative on a ram-headed dragon into the depths of the Dreams where I was chased by a nasty dude with a double penis. The peak was being greeted by my lifelong fear transformed into a Celtic deity oozing sexy with his every gesture who pointed me across a desolate landscape that was supposed to lead me back to life. A life I desperately wanted. But I had to get past these goons first.

As the scream tapered off, the moss men were all staring at me with beady little eyes the color of pond slime. The head honcho guy put his sticklike arms on his torso, about hip-height, right below his…head. Neckless head honcho guy reached into a satchel – I hadn’t noticed it before because it was the same color as his skin – that looked even more fungus-like. He fumbled around for a few seconds. The others looked from him, to me, to him, to me.

I wondered if I should scream again. I drew in a lungful of air, opened my mouth, and Neckless consulted with his neighbors. A huddle formed with a lot of activity that included grunts and squeaks and other sublingual mutterings. Then the whole troop disappeared in a blink. Maybe two. What was left was the six-foot high wall.

Well, I’ll be damned. Screw that.

I was halfway up the wall. Stick arms scratched and moss-covered stumpy legs kicked. I fell. Landed on my butt. Grunty chuckles came from inside the wall. For my second try, I made a running start. Fingertips reached the top of the wall, and I hauled myself up, shimmying the rest of the way while securing a firm grip on the ledge at the top – not wide but enough to grasp. I was about to swing a leg over when a dozen of the little jerks appeared at the top, slimy eyes blazing. They pushed me off. I landed in a crouch.

Frustrated and sore, I walked left. The wall went on for longer than it first appeared. I began to think it was one of those nifty illusions when one of the creatures poked his head around the corner. Not far at all.

Unless they’re building another fucking wall.

I ran. Just as I rounded the wall, it curved in front of me on both sides – and ended behind me – a solid barrier. I had no choice but to go ahead. The wall tapered to nothing as suddenly as it had formed. Looking back, nothing remained of either wall or landscape. There were just trees in back of me, in front of me, and on either side. I caught a glimpse in the darkening sky of the moss men running away.

I looked down. I was as dirty as they were and covered in mud. A few nicks and scratches showed through the grime where they had attacked me, the dried blood making a darker contrast. But blood meant life. I walked deeper into the trees.