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Chapter 17
Josh was still able to turn his head, and in doing so saw that the black lady and the little person had their hands extended in his direction as well. For the moment, at least, the vines held him firmly enough to keep him in place, but gently enough not to bruise or break.
“I see”, said the black lady, her even voice edged with poison as she walked around the young man to face him, blocking the goat and Ingrid from his view. “So you’re the one that’s been causing our sister so much grief.”
Given his current situation, Josh surmised that mouthing off to this woman would end poorly for him, no matter how much he resented his work being called “grief”, so he simply nodded his head. With any luck, he’d have a chance to make his case.
“The most obvious solution would be to toss you out of here right now, but...” she turned to Josh’s friend. “Ingrid, what say you?”
This question surprised Ingrid. She knew the three of them were more than capable of keeping Josh under wraps, so to speak. The problem was the fact that she had led him to the bagworm, however unintentionally. Despite her care, despite her discretion, he’d been in the right place at the right time to follow her here.
Indeed, the obvious thing would be to do away with him, but...
“No.”
Clenching her fists, Ingrid broke cover and approached Josh until she was face-to-face with the young man, with the glare of years of resentment.
“I want to hear what he has to say.”
“You heard her,” Esmeralda sneered, twisting Josh so he was facing the main elevator and the rest of the gathered druids. “Make your case, lad, if ye have one.”
Almost simultaneously, the host of the coven had their eyes on the bound interloper. They weren’t entirely sure what they were waiting for him to say, but it was enough to know that he had trespassed against a sister, and one way or another would be justly recompensed.
Looking back, a lot of them were almost glad he took the route he did:
“Well...” he began, in a voice loud enough to hear—he'd clearly had practice, “I came all this way to get Ingrid back, but it seems I have more to do.
I don’t know exactly what you all do here, but I know enough to tell you that you’ve all been deceived! Nothing good can come out of twisting the earth the way you do! Only Jesus Christ has that right, because he created this world and everything in it! You can give up this life and yield your lives over to him!”
There was a great murmur among the druids before one of them, a tall, strapping green-skinned woman spoke up. “What’s this Jesus fella’s problem with sharin’? It sounds like ‘e’s got his ‘ead up his arse!”
Josh visibly bristled, but, over the resulting raucous laughter, answered the challenge. “I promise you, he only has your best interests at heart! That’s why he died, rose again, and went back to heaven to complete your salvation from your fallen nature-”
Any further explanation was drowned out by the angry protestations of the coven.
“You think that’s bad??” Ingrid interjected. “Try hearing garbage like this every week, once a week, at least, for almost 20 goddamn years!”
Josh stared at her in horror. “Ingrid! How can you take the Lord’s name in--?!”
“Oh, shut up!” Ingrid barked. “I am so fucking sick and tired of your preaching and your posturing and your constant bouncing off the walls. It’s so obvious you’re taking notes from Reverend Park and trying to impress me.
Well, it doesn’t, and it never will, because I’ve found something real, something that I can actually have for myself, and I’m not going to give that up just because Jesus wants all the power for himself.”
Josh looked at Ingrid with shock, and once he’d had time to process what he’d just heard, his expression hardened.
“Alright then. If that’s how you really feel...I didn’t wanna believe it, but I guess you really are lost. I shouldn’t be surprised, since you’re hanging around with a literal goat demon.”
“You...!!”
“Alright, that’s quite enough,” Camellia said nonchalantly, as she made a gathering motion in the air with her hands. Instantly Josh’s face, save for his nose, was wrapped in foliage. Ingrid, meanwhile, had just barely regained her composure and turned away from him, biting down on her fist to distract her brain from her burning rage.
“Sisters, if two of you could put him in one of the cells. Xenia, Esmeralda, please accompany me in taking Ingrid to her room.”
--
Esmeralda had put Ingrid up in a simple but spacious room on the third floor. It was much like the quiet room, except this one had a foyer leading into a living room with a chair and two couches, a kitchen nook and a bedroom, including a shelf where Ingrid could put her books and a walk-in closet for her clothes.
Of course, the human girl wasn’t terribly occupied with that now. She threw herself into the first couch she saw and groaned into her hands.
“You were phenomenal,” Xenia said, sitting next to Ingrid on the couch and lightly rubbing her back. “I half expected seedlings to come out of the ground; that’s how powerful you looked.”
“Yeah? Well, I felt like wringing his scrawny neck. And he would have deserved it...”
“But?” Camellia replied, parking herself in the couch with Esmeralda across from the Xenia and Ingrid.
“But I’m the one who led him here.” Ingrid pressed her hands together in a pleading gesture. “I promise, I tried to get out here without him seeing me, but...”
Esmeralda shook her head. “Ah, think nothing of it, lass. It was pure bad luck. Ye did what you could. We’ll make sure he keeps his mouth shut after we put him out.”
Ingrid looked at the door leading back out to the main hall, deep in thought.
“Something on your mind, love?”
“Actually, do you think we could keep him here for the night? There’s something I had in mind. We’d need to be up pretty early in the morning to do it though...”
“Ooh, early morning intrigue~!” Camellia chirped, clapping her hands in mischievous glee...
--
Josh lay flat on his back on the wooden cot, staring up at the cieling. As soon as the woman in the robe had blindfolded---blind-vined??--him, and given the order, his plant-bound form had been borne aloft by two sets of powerful hands like he was a sack of potatoes and rolled him into this cell with bars made of thin but sturdy trunks that seemed to be one with the rest of the room. Even if he could escape this cell, he had no way of getting out of the building itself; at a certain point, he felt himself floating through the air for a long time, so they must have put him somewhere high up. Only then had they released him from his prison of vines.
They’d let him keep his phone, precisely because they knew he couldn’t escape, and it told him it was now 7 in the morning. He’d slept fitfully through the night, dreaming briefly of endless jungles and hostile humanoid figures reaching for his through the branches.
He had to wonder if this was how the Apostle Paul felt when he was jailed for spreading the gospel.
He had no idea what these lost souls had in store for him. If they really did let him go, he would tell everyone what had just happened here, and he’d get a contingent together to march right back here and win Ingrid back.
If not, well...it was a life well lived.
Of course, Ingrid seemed pretty taken with the goat she’d apparently been hanging around with, so he didn’t know how that would shake out, but--
Just then, he heard a door open just out of his line of sight and was soon greeted by Ingrid and the woman who ordered his detainment. They both looked at him placidly for a moment. Ingrid held a brown envelope with a dark green wax seal.
Josh sat on the edge of the cot and stared back at them for a while. Finally he said, “What now?”
The older woman spoke up. “We’ve decided to let you leave here with your life.”
Josh smirked. “After all that?”
“Yes, ‘after all that’. Put any tortured fantasies of martyrdom out of your mind. It’s not our way and it serves nobody, least of all you.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” replied Josh, looking askance.
“I’m sure,” Ingrid muttered.
“But you’re not getting off so easy. Ingrid needs you to deliver this letter to her parents.” Ingrid tossed it across the floor, where it spun until it hit the toe of Josh’s shoe. “She told me you know their address intimately.”
Josh simply stared down at the letter for a moment, then looked up at the older woman and said, “And what, exactly, is keeping me from just ripping this up and telling everyone about this place?”
The woman smiled ever-so-sweetly...
“I’m so glad you asked.”
And thrust a hand in Josh’s direction, once again summoning vines to latch onto Josh’s right arm and pull him towards her until his arm was sticking through the bars.
“What are you--?!”
“Now hold still. This won’t hurt a bit.” The woman’s free hand glowed green with power, and she opened a hole in the tangling of veins to give her access to Josh’s wrist...
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