Dreamt I was passing through some Back Mountains territory as part of my traveling from Here to There. The local folk greeted me with pleasant neutrality but gave me wary stinkeye behind my back. “Just passing through. Don’t even have time to be a dumbass tourist.” We all knew what I was really saying though. As long as I kept moving, there was no hostility.
Just before I left the town limits, two teenage boys came around the bend. “Hey Lady! Here’s your keepsake! Catch!” They lopped a sealed mason jar at me. It was a slow, high arching throw. Easy to catch.
I should have let it hit the ground.
I started chattering the moment my hand gripped it. Something in the jar was pulling me in, grabbing at me. I heard the boys laughing and guffawing as I fell to my knees trying to resist the trap. My chattering turned into mumbling as what was in the jar continued slowing taking over.
“Ge….ge…gen…..gi…..gin….genne…..gengan…. genneagan”
I don’t know what “Genneagan” meant or if it was a name or a command. But the more I mumbled it, the louder the boys hollered. The jar’s intent was to hold me. Fine.
I split my awareness in two, and with it, my form. I let the seized part of my self be sucked into the jar. The free portion transformed into ravenkin and lept on the closest of the two boys. He never had a chance to scream before I had ripped out his heart.
“If I have to free the rest of me from this jar, it will be paid for by his life. If you want him to continue, I suggest you find me someone to open this damn thing before sunset.” The boy’s heart continued beating bloodlessly in my hand. His body was ashen on the ground under my feet. If I replaced his heart before sunset, he would completely recover. If not, I have dinner.
The second youth ran shrieking into the town. As expected, everyone came out with intent of killing me. Until they saw the jar clenched in the hand I could not control.
“You gave her the Genneagan! Boy, did you trick her into picking up the Genneagan! Answer me!”
“It was just a prank! We meant no harm! It’s not supposed to work on people!”
“What the hell made you think she’s just people?”
“Then it’s doing what it’s supposed to, right?”
“The Genneagan doesn’t care if you’re good or bad. She did no wrong passing through and now you’ve done wrong to her. Maybe Annie can get her free before your brother dies.”
The assembled folk shouted for Annie to hurry to the scene. The ravenkin part of me kneeled comfortably on the stricken boy’s body. The captured part of me was conversing with the bound spirit in the jar.
“You’re Genneagan, eh?”
“Genne-genne.” It “spoke” no other syllables, but I could understand it just fine. I could feel that Genneagan wanted out of the jar, but the jar’s construction meant that anyone and anything Genneagan grabbed would be pulled into the jar with it. I felt the debris of many others that were not able to escape the jar. Genneagan had fed on them.
Genneagan was not feeding on me, though. Either it thought I was too much a predator to risk or… “When they open the jar to release me, you’re going to make a run for it.”
“Genne-genne!” It agreed.
“My other half is holding the soul of a boy in stasis. You can’t have him, his heart, or the rest of his flesh because that’s my bargaining chip to get this damn jar opened. I can’t help you escape. I can only make a big ass mess and let you decide what to do from there. Okay?
“Genne. Genne. Genneagen.” Genneagan accepted my words and withdrew from me.
Annie shoved her way through the crowd. The woman hit every stereotype of the backwoods spinster aunt, including carrying a loaded shotgun. She aimed it at my head in reflex. I held up the dry beating heart as a shield.
“There is no guarantee you can kill me, Annie. But if you fire, this boy is a goner and the Genneagan will likely eat his spirit. Now, I’d like the rest of me out of this damn jar, if you please. I’m told you’re the one that can do this neatly. If I have to make a mess, I will, but I don’t think your town will like what will come of it.”
“You’re the woman that came through today!”
“Nearly. I’m the woman that almost passed through clean until this boy and his brother decided to violate the rules of hospitality by throwing the Genneagan jar at me. Because those rules are broken, I’m full in my rights to eat what I’m holding. But I’m going to give more rational heads one last chance to make things right before I make them permanently wrong. Let me out of this jar, Annie.”
Annie lowered the shotgun and looked me over from talon to feathered head. “[Skin-stealer.] That’s why the jar took you.”
“I’ll be glad to discuss the possible roots of my abilities, once I’m back in one mind. As it is, the more rational and calm portions of myself are in the jar. This raven that I am becoming is irrational, chaotic, and prone to set shit on fire just to watch it burn. Should I start with the body or the heart?”
“Neither! Oh shit. Okay.” Annie dug out a bag of salt and chalk and started laying a circle around me. When she ended, she was on the inside of the circle with me. “If the Genneagan has eaten any part of you, I can’t get it back.”
“I will tell you a secret, Annie. The Genneagan is afraid of me. I am losing my patience and want to do something fun now. Maybe I should show you why nothing has nibbled on me?”
Annie stopped and looked full into my eyes. I’m not sure what she saw, but she blanched and nodded. “Give me the jar.”
“I can’t let go of it. I have control over all else of my body but my hand.”
“Then the Genneagan is holding on to you. I have to be quick. I can’t let it escape.” She tried in vain to pry my fingers off the jar. The white knuckles and flesh confirmed what I told her.
“Why not? Will it not survive outside the jar?”
Annie answered while laying down more symbols and layers. “The Genneagan is older than the town. The first settlers here were eaten by it. It took an Indian half-blood witch to trap it. The Indians said the Genneagan is a [skin-stealer] that forgot how to be human again. They tolerated it because there was a lot of game and the Genneagan only hunted exiles and outcasts. But when the settlers came…”
“The Indians were displaced, and there was no standing agreement with the Genneagan that stayed behind.” Inside the jar, I felt waves of resentment and hate from the Genneagan. “The boys said normal people aren’t affected by the jar.”
“No, only [skin-stealers] and [no-flesh]. But you’re a living, breathing person.” Annie looked again at the feathers attached to my skin. “With some added skills.”
“Does the Genneagan also affect [dead-walkers]?”
Annie stopped and looked up at me. “No one comes back from the dead. What comes back isn’t what died.”
“Like all myths, there is a portion that is true, a portion that is not, and a portion which is a lie meant to comfort the listener. Open the jar, Annie. I am losing patience.”
“I can’t.”
I looked up at her and held out the boy’s heart in my right hand and the jar clenched in my left. “Open the god damn jar, Annie.”
I watched her wrestle with the consequences of her decision. It was clear there was something she wasn’t telling me. I took a wild guess. “You can’t… or you won’t. Because you can’t hold the Genneagan down once the jar is opened. You’re trying to decide if the rest of your town is worth sacrificing this dipshit’s life, and so far, it is.”
Annie tightened her lips to keep them from trembling. I heard a woman’s voice implore Annie to open the jar to spare her son. I heard other voices telling that mother to be silent, or the Genneagan will eat them all.
Inside the jar, I asked the Genneagan if it was going to take revenge on the town for its imprisonment.
It answered that it would not. But it answered far too slowly for my tastes.
I pointed out that several generations of townsfolk had been born, lived, and died before I grabbed the jar. There is no one here responsible for its imprisonment. Only folks that blindly benefited from its fate. It acknowledged this, also too slowly for my tastes.
“I will be fucking blunt. I’m going to break the jar and you’re going to run like hell. If you touch a single person from this town, I will hunt you down, capture you, tear you into thin slivers of flesh, and take a full year to eat you. Bite by bite. Crush by crush. I will make genne jerky from your spiritual ass and I will feed you to [the things that eat all]. Do you fucking understand me?”
When the Genneagan finally answered, it was with a timbre of awe. Not fear. Respect. It answered with affirmation.
“Annie. About the circles. I know you laid them to not only attempt to keep the Ginneagan bound, but to also trap me. But the rules of hospitality has been broken. There is nothing you can do to harm me. Out of respect of the decision you have had to make, I am giving you a chance to leave safely. And out of respect of your decision, I am going to let you leave with the boy.”
I shoved the dry beating heart back into the boys chest. The wound closed as soon as I removed my hand. I not-at-all-softly kicked the body in the side of the chest, and the boy took in a sharp inhalation of breath. Before he could start to recover, Annie picked him up off the ground and threw him over her shoulder like one would grab a goat and fled.
I expected the townsfolk to attempt some type of bodily harm once my hostage was free. I was hoping it would involve fire. I was not disappointed.
Something reeking of alcohol splashed over me. Annie shouted for them to stop, but a mob requires blood to survive. A lit lighter arched over her head. “Haven’t you done enough?!”, Annie cried.
I laughed and laughed as the flames raced over me. I laughed harder at the look of the townsfolk’s faces when they realized the heat was doing no damage to me. I heard Annie shrieking at those close to me to run away because all of her carefully laid binding circles had been damaged in the attack and rendered useless.
Inside the jar, I reminded the Genneagan of its promise to me.
Weaver Ravenkin raised the captive jar above her head, and brought it down hard on the iron axe she carried in her satchel. The old glass broke surprisingly easy, throwing a thick, foul smelling, black tarry substance onto the ground and splashing everyone nearby.
My split self reunified at once. I remembered clearly what happened in the jar and outside of it. The black substance quivered against my skin, tickling it. If I didn’t know better, it hugged me briefly.
The townsfolk that were fouled by the substance were shrieking in horror.
“Genne…”, I muttered. I didn’t want to remind it of its promise to me.
I didn’t have to. The black tar pulled itself off of everyone, including me, and the ground and coalesced into a quivering puddle. The puddle extended up, becoming a pillar of tar that thickened into a humanoid form.
The Genneagan stood before me, two feet taller than a man should be, with limbs far too long and far too thin, and a torso just the same. All black, all shiny and all dull all at once, it reminded me of a substance I had encountered in a science class so many years ago.
I then remembered the makeup of this land, and what lies under the mountains.
“Coal tar.”
The features of a face indented themselves into the elongated head of the Genneagan. A mouth, far too wide than appropriate, slit itself and opened wide in what some would take as a malicious grin. The teeth were the few remaining bone shards of its victims.
“Nice touch.”
The Genneagan dipped briefly in a mockery of a bow. Before I could bow in return, it grabbed my face and kissed me. The acrid salty protrusion it used for a tongue slithered over mine in a motion I recognized as writing. It was writing a symbol in my mouth.
It withdrew, smirked in a gesture that was obviously copying mine, then turned and half flowed, half ran out of the town.
After it left, I was reminded that I was on fire. I looked down at the flames, and slurped them up like pudding. Annie had just returned with a bucket of water to throw on me. She stood there with her heavy weight, dumbfounded at what happened.
“I have the Genneagan’s word that it will not attack anyone from this town. It will not hold you responsible for its imprisonment because so much time has passed. I dare to assume it is going to resume hunting down exile and outcasts for its supper, though I think it may find itself prey before too long. The worlds are not what they used to be. If it returns to predate on the townsfolk, call me. I will come take care of it personally.”
“And how will I contact you?”
“Go to any corvid. Crow or raven preferably, but the jays and the jackdaws love to gossip, so they’ll also carry it. Tell them… tell them to tell Weaver that the Genneagan broke its promise. They’ll let me know. … How’s the boy?”
“Terrified. He said he was in a place where the bones burn. You sent him to Hell?!”
“Ha! No. I sent him to a safe place. And now I should go to a safe place myself. Good day to you, Annie.”
“The same traveler. Don’t take offense when I say don’t come back.”
“Don’t give me a reason to, and I’ll stay clear.”
I left the town limits and exited the dream. But not before recognizing what symbol the Genneagan painted on my tongue.