Walking With Coyote

It started with the govi. Masha was sure of that. Somehow, it all came back to the govi breaking.

There was delay after the soul was released too soon, the rave, and the soldiers, and the pain of captivity and torture for information she did not have. Then the slow healing, and only when she felt better was Masha able to finally lay the soul to rest, to do the ritual necessary to send it safely below the waters. Even then, she had help from a willing passerby, the woman Jeze who now worked at the gym in the old Sarcina headquarters.

Once she was finally able to walk about, Masha went back to her customary rounds about the twin islands, making her honors to the lwa at the many veves she had been tending for nearly a year. The shock, the absolute shock of finding two of them willfully descecrated was beyond anything Masha had experienced, worse than the betrayal at the hands of friends, worse than the pain of uncomprehending torture.

She went to the church to speak with the priest there, Father Eamon. She'd met him a few times and liked him, his lyrical Irish accent, his boxer's frame. She told him about what she'd found and it was then that Masha first smelled it. Mildew. Swampy, musty, sour and dank, the odor of mildew seemed to rise from the church walls. She sneezed at the clogging scent, and left.

Days passed, and the sneezing grew worse. The rotting scent of vegetation seemed to rise and linger everywhere. She could taste it, and she was sure it was growing in every place she frequented. Masha was sneezing more and more violently and the first time her nose bled was in the park. She'd been working for hours, tending her garden there, raking, weeding, hoeing, trying to work her healing body and exhaust it as well.

Because the nightmares wouldn't let her sleep. Whenever Masha closed her eyes, she dreamt the same dream:

She is in a dark cavernous room of some sort, and the scent of rot and sewage and mildew is all about her. Phosphorescent growths are the only source of light and the drip of water off stalagtites the only sound save her labored breathing. A darker pore in the general dimness lies ahead and she creeps forward on hands and knees, afraid to walk upright lest she fall or plunge into some unseen chasm. Deeper and she thinks she spies a flicker of light, the orange red of flames, barely flickering. A thin hope flares in her chest and she crawls a little more briskly, eyes fixed on the pinpoint of light.

Hours seem to pass as is the way of dreams and she is exhausted, so tired, but unable, unwilling to stop. Finally the light seems to grow closer and then it splits into two small flames. Masha pauses and finds herself staring into eyes, ancient eyes, eyes that hold madness and death. The cloying mildew scent rises about her and she screams, the mindless screams of the trapped dreamer, and she finds herself surrounded by the buzz of countless biting flies. Their wings knick at her face and hands as she bats frantically at them, unable to move away as Masha suddenly finds herself trapped by solid walls of wet, weeping stone. The eyes grow closer as the buzzing roars through her pounding head, and she falls into them, burning, burning, before waking up in a panic, her head a solid flame of pain.

Every time she slept, the same dream.

There in the park, she worked, when the sneezes became so violent that blood poured from her nose. And over by Maman Brigitte's veve, the one she'd cleaned and recreated after being so fouled, a beehive, only the sounds were like the buzzing of the biting flies in the nightmare. It seemed to Masha that the buzzing was now brother to the mildew, the two cozy and living within her rather than without. It was after she found the bee hive and the sounds overwhelmed her that she discovered her arms were clawed and ripped, her own fingernails bloody and limned with skin.

She headed to the MCMC, wanting to treat her wounds before anyone saw, and found the Father there with the woman Guin. She'd been raped and Masha did her best to stay calm, remain herself, be the healer she has been studying for so long to be. Some fragmented moments, but she did well enough, and after went to the church where she found a note claiming that the Templar Matthew had been taken. She remembered speaking a neko and a now pale Tuqiri and they showed her the desecrated altar and that is the last Masha remembers from that night.

Another night, no sleep, no food or water because it won't stay down. She's in the park, it feels better here, in the grasses, and went to Maman Brigitte, begging her to help. She retched and then the roar of the buzzing wings filled her head. Fragments, then finding herself soiled with her pants around her ankles, with a crazed Marina and an oak tree. She ran, ran to the Center and plunged into the shower, weeping.

More wandering, and a surreal ballet of sword against sword, more fragments. Than some clarity when the neko, she knew this one, the purple and black neko gets wounded and left and Masha tried to be whole and help. Chi, nearby and the Hauler man, then Bekah with her kit and another medic came and Masha ran off, relieved and terrified that someone will see that she's in pieces.

A slice of memory, Bekah speaking then darkness. Light and more of the now horribly familiar sneezing and blood and a man's voice, surpised and confused. Masha drew herself together and said what she'd been saying, allergies, and a flash of Matthew naked and raw behind a curtain, then the damned buzzing and the cooling green of grasses.

A long blank time then Masha slowly realized she'd been wandering and headed into the nearest place, the Twilight Zone. Stranger behind the bar and he gave her a bottle of whiskey which she drank then he said something, something, but the stench rose, the cacaphony rang. She found herself on hands and knees and the taste of blood was in her mouth and she felt it like lead weight in her stomach, but not for long and Masha retched, retched then ran.

Masha wandered and keeps wandering, driven and growing gaunt, slowly consumed with the need to outpace the claustrophobic blanket of swamp and mildew and buzzing wings.