I narrowed my eyes as something occurred to me. Something incredibly obvious.
“Are you listening? I can practically hear your brain cells clicking along as they travel around, working much too hard to make sense of what is quite clear.”
Oh, no. Absolutely not. I fought against the pieces of information that had been given to me much earlier, and yet, I hadn’t made the connection.
Prince Declan. Prince Lantis.
How many royal families were here in Faerie? Sure, Declan had said there was more than one, hadn’t he, but did they all live here in this same area?
“If my little brother had trusted you, he would have told you he was a prince. A younger one, but no less . . . actually, less, of course, by virtue of his birth placement, but that’s no fault of his own.”
I scrunched up my face. Was this guy really Declan’s brother? And if they were princes, why were they bothering with me?
Why had Declan spent the last eighteen years bothering with me?
“Now that you've done some pondering, let’s keep moving. We don’t want to make her wait any longer than we have to.”
Ignoring his words, I kept still, wishing I had a pen and paper to write down everything I knew, and all the questions I had based on each revelation.
The more I found out, the more I realized I didn’t know, and needed to know to make sense of this whole trip.
If I used the key to find a door back home, what would happen to Declan? I knew that I would die soon, in my sleep it seemed, but would Declan be punished for not keeping me here in Faerie?
From what Lantis had just said, this she was expecting me, and she knew that Declan had brought me back here. If he showed up alone, what would she do?
Nothing I had heard about her made her seem like an understanding or even likable person, or fairy, or whatever she was, so I didn’t want to take any chances.
Besides, how could I go back to school, sickness, and bullying when I felt invincible here?
“Don’t get any strange ideas. Our goal is simple: get you to the center bower. From there, it is out of my hands, but I can assure you, I have requests that I will make known.”
Lantis’s claim interrupted my thoughts, and I forgot for a moment that I was trying to make myself seem more knowledgeable than I was.
“If you’re brothers, and princes, why would you waste your time on me? I know I’m important, but . . .”
His smile was more patronizing than predatory, and I realized that I had let him see too much. Primarily, that I knew absolutely nothing that I needed to know to get any sort of traction when it came to manipulating him.
But I sensed that he already knew that, and all my efforts to convince him otherwise had been in vain.
“Why don’t we let him explain that, since I’m sure he intended to anyway.”
He reached out and patted me on the head, but I backed away and his hand slid along and away from my shining hair. His eyes narrowed.
“It might be good for you to start playing nice with me now, so you don’t have to make an abrupt shift in behavior later.”
Standing up straight with his eyes on the horizon, he inhaled deeply and closed his eyes.
“Such a beautiful day. Every day is beautiful here in Faerie, as long as you know who and what to avoid.”
I frowned, glancing around on the off chance anyone else was present. Maybe a fairy, or, if I was lucky, Declan.
What would I say to him when we were together again? Would I be so relieved to see him that I would forget my worries about his memories, or of his failure to tell me what I really needed to know about my role here in Faerie?
“Now, enough stalling. It’s best to get on with it, and we’ll see you settled before nightfall.”
Settled. I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of that, or of the smug way he said it.
“No one wants to be out here after nightfall, royalty or no.”
Hopefully Declan wouldn’t be stranded somewhere, looking for me, when the sun went down. Had the fairies or the lux found him and told him I was with Lantis?
All of my speculation only made me more tense, but I didn’t know how to relieve my concerns.
“So, what happens at night?”
After it slipped out, I sighed, realizing that it wasn’t the best way to dispel my fear. Lantis might lie just to scare me, to keep me moving along with him instead of sightseeing or daydreaming.
We had started to walk again, briskly and in Lantis’s case, with a definite purpose. I had no trouble keeping up, a fact that still pleased me.
I wished my parents back home could see how healthy I was here. Did they know I was missing? Were they worried? Had my dad found my school bag and searched for me?
In spite of Declan’s reassurance that time would slow and no one would know we were gone from detention or my house, his inability to explain the difference in the speed of time had me wondering.
“I’m sure you’ve read plenty of those terrible children’s stories in the human world. The sickly sweet ones with happy endings . . . absolute fiction. The others, with a variety of creatures and deadly situations, that’s more like it.”
My seventh grade teacher had explained to us that the real endings to some of our favorite stories, like Cinderella and The Little Mermaid, were violent and devastating. After several of us had gone home shaking over the idea of chopping off toes to fit into glass slippers or turning into froth after giving up one’s voice, all for the love of a man, we found out that the teacher was going through a painful divorce.
Not the best reason to traumatize a bunch of twelve year old girls, but certainly understandable. Maybe it was her way of warning us against giving up parts of ourselves to please others.
“What about those fairies? Will they be safe overnight?”
My worries shifted back to the small group of sweet-faced admirers, and I wished I could have spent more time with them.
Lantis laughed, and kept laughing. He laughed so hard that he bent over, slapping his slim thigh as I stared. What was so hilarious about my concern for the fairies, who had wanted to help me as much as I wanted to find a way to stop the poisoning they told me about?
“Those creatures are the worst. They smile during the day, and bare their fangs at night. If you think the screaming we’ve heard during the day was disturbing, you have no idea what you would hear if you were out here at night.”
I started walking now, quicker as he spoke, and he took only a moment to catch up.
“The only thing worse than the screams during the day, would be your own screams, if those darling beasts got their hands on you at night.”
Chapter Eight
Darling beasts?
I know that looks can be deceiving, and so can behaviors. How often had some kid in school acted like she or he wanted to be my friend, only to play some nasty trick on me just to get the attention of everyone else? After my rather dramatic middle school prophecies, I was the easiest target anyone could possibly wish for.
Apparently, nothing was different in that department here in Faerie.
Following Lantis was the best, if not only, option now, and it wasn’t really worth the effort to try to maintain the false impression that I had any clue what or who I was. He was probably wise to that small detail anyway, and I was getting tired.
Not physically. I felt like I could walk for days with this new strength and stamina, my muscles nearly aching to keep moving. Years of rest and care were transformed into longed-for use, and the more I walked, the more I wanted to go on.
“Ah, do I sense excitement? Perhaps impatience, even?”
I looked around me as carefully as I could, wary that something else would creep up on us. Caught unawares too many times, I wanted no more surprises, good or bad.
Although whatever awaited me in this bower, and whoever this annoyingly mysterious and supposedly fearsome she was, was not going to be on the positive side of that coin.
“You keep saying
things, but you don’t explain them.”
My impatience, as he called it, was obvious, and I didn’t really care. He just laughed again, which didn’t rub me the right way. So much about him didn’t.
“And you were just thinking that my little brother and I weren’t alike at all, weren’t you?”
I stomped a few steps away from him, then continued forward. It was a very immature response, but I wasn’t worried about the impression I was making.
“I’m sure he had very good reasons for keeping certain details from me,” I insisted, glancing at Lantis. Seriously, if there had been a casting call for a new Lord of the Rings film, maybe The Silmarillion, he would have been a sure thing.
“Can you answer just one simple question, unrelated to everything we’ve talked about so far?”
We were side by side now, walking at a faster clip than a friendly stroll. With the sky a slyly comforting robin’s egg blue just beyond his dark curls, he turned his head slightly towards me, those freaky eyes of his capturing my gaze.
“What have you got for me?”
It was practically a dare, and his tone was decidedly less formal than it had been. If he wouldn’t tell me about me or my future, I considered that with that ego, he might be willing to talk about himself.
Any information was better than none.
“Declan has blue eyes. They’re very pale, like colored ice, but they’re definitely blue.”
I hadn’t exactly asked a question, and Lantis was quiet. Maybe he wasn’t going to respond, I considered, since there was nothing to answer, but before I could be more specific, he nodded.
“Ah, yes. And mine? Is that your question?”
Of course he couldn’t just tell me why his eyes were weird. I couldn’t even see the pupils at all anymore. There’s a saying about eyes being the window to the soul, and if that was true, Lantis was empty, a proud, cold shell.
Did fairies even have souls?
I shook my head, determined to keep my thoughts on track. The last thing I needed was to get waylaid by some existential crisis in my head just wondering about it, when I had so many answers to practical questions, like who I was and where we were going, that were of immediate importance.
But if I was a fairy, and if fairies didn’t have souls . . .
“And you aren’t even listening now, are you? So easily distracted.”
His sigh was an insult, false and dramatic. I turned away, looking behind me in case something small with sharp teeth was creeping up on me. At least there was no lake, no bridge . . .
Or there hadn’t been until now.
As if in response to my thoughts, a huge, brilliantly shimmering lake opened up before us, and I couldn’t suppress a groan.
This was getting repetitive, and not in a good way.
“Come now, it’s beautiful, isn’t it? I promise nothing will jump out and snatch you into its beautiful dark depths.”
Lantis laughed, but it lacked its earlier edge. He seemed genuinely amused by his statement, which I didn’t believe for a minute.
How had he known what happened before, when I was crossing the bridge with Declan? Had the lux told him, probably with glee over my brush with, if not death, at least a really painful bite?
That would mean that the lux with us here had been the same one, and not one of many. It didn’t mean that she was the only one in Faerie, though, so I wasn’t sure what good that information was to me.
“You look so serious. So much to worry about. Come along, then.”
He extended a hand to me, his smile back to its prevailing smirk. I had determined to go with him to this bower to meet whoever was waiting for me, as it seemed to be the place both he and Declan said was the place I belonged, and I figured that Lantis wasn’t about to feed me to some sea monster along the way.
Whatever his purpose was, he had to get me to her before he could accomplish it.
Not just get me there, but I suspected he needed me to help him. He mentioned overpowering her, as if he expected me to do just that.
That would be some trick, since I didn’t know who she was or why I would want to fight her. Everyone seemed to think that she wouldn’t be happy to see me, so maybe Lantis thought I would have to fight her.
As in, fight for my life.
“Uh, hey, wait a minute, Lantis.”
I was mid-reach, my hand lifted in the air but not quite close to his yet. He tilted his head in that way that mirrored Declan’s stance, although his was more of a mocking question rather than a polite bow.
Would Declan really have been taking me somewhere only to die? All I had to go on was my instincts, which weren’t all that great based on personal experience. Lantis could have been lying about those adorable fairies, but I couldn’t get the horrific images out of my head of tiny, blood-drenched teeth, like those of the lux. Drenched, specifically, with my blood, in the dark of night while I was out here in the middle of Wherever, Faerie all alone.
His fingers wiggled a little, as if to encourage me to take his hand and go with him, even as he could clearly see that I had doubts.
“It’s only natural, you know, to have doubts. I would wonder about your intellect if you didn’t, and then we would all be in trouble.”
That wasn’t the first time he had practically read my mind, which was disconcerting. It wasn’t a big leap to gather that I wasn’t incredibly eager to just skip along by his side without a more definite, more secure, more safe outcome guaranteed at our destination.
And why did he say we would all be in trouble if my intellectual capacity came into question?
An incredibly high-pitched wail began to rise from the far side of the lake, a little to the right of us and not on the other side of a bridge.
A bridge that had appeared while I was mulling over the possible vampiric tendencies of darling, child-like fairies.
I grabbed Lantis’s hand and forced myself to stare into his eyes, his pupils now present like tiny pinpricks in a milky sea.
“That’s a girl. Now, I promise you won’t be sorry.”
Knowing better than to think Lantis’s promises held any weight, I held tightly to his hand, hoping that our physical connection, at least, would keep me safe as long as possible.
At least as long as it took to find Declan.
The bridge was narrow, much like the one Declan and I had walked over before, but the wood seemed newer, unmarred by weather or age.
Like it had literally just appeared seconds ago.
The wailing grew into a scream, which was quickly becoming just another part of the landscape. I wondered if anyone else was concerned about the fate of whoever or whatever was making those tortured sounds, and if they were, did they keep it to themselves to avoid the same end?
As the bridge grew narrower and I could no longer walk side by side with Lantis, I let him take the lead and handle whatever might appear next. My last glance behind us had only been a few moments earlier, and I wasn’t too concerned that I would be surprised from that direction.
That was a mistake.
Chapter Nine
A gentle touch at my back made me wonder when the wind had picked up. The weather had been generally mild since Declan and I had flashed, for lack of a better word, into Faerie, with a breeze now and again that must have been normal, since he hadn’t commented on it.
But his memories . . . did he even remember that detail? How much did he remember, and why had he forgotten at all?
My eyes began to stray from Lantis’s back, to the flowers and tall grass surrounding the lake. None of the greenery was moving; it was all still, as if we were trapped in a painting.
If there was no breeze, what was moving at the back of my shirt?
Before I could turn to see, it touched me again, and this time I could tell that there was no wind involved.
I swallowed the scream that had begun to rise in the back of my throat and inhaled deeply instead. Whatever it was had lost its surprise factor, and if it had wanted to hur
t me . . .
Lantis turned in one smooth move and grabbed one of my arms, pulling me close to him. Had he noticed something following us, and acted as if he hadn’t been aware of it?
Stumbling a little as Lantis tried to hold me against him, I looked behind me, standing sideways while Lantis made a strange sort of chattering noise around the back of my head.
As soon as I realized what had actually touched my back, I shoved away from Lantis and took a single step towards the boy who had led me here in the first place.
“Declan!”
He was as breathlessly gorgeous as he had been that morning, walking into my classroom as if it was any other day, his dark hair tousled casually like a member of one of the boy bands the other girls at school were always cooing over.
But his eyes were no longer ice blue.
“Hope. Here you are, safe and sound. Let’s get back on track - we don’t want to be out here when the sun goes down.”
I stared at him as he spoke, his words clear and practical, but his voice was flat, expressionless.
And his eyes were milky white with no pupils in sight.
“No!”
Lantis cried out as he snatched my arm and jerked me back just as Declan reached out for me. Was it really him?
My feet slipped as Lantis held my arm tight, and I found myself looking down into the water, which was rippling, vibrating like something was coming to the surface.
“Oh, no you don’t. You won’t do me much good as something’s dinner, either right here on the bridge or in this charming lake.”
A single bubble rose to the surface of said charming lake, bursting delicately only a few feet away from my face.
Lantis pulled me up, and this time I didn’t resist.
“Hope. Come with me now, before something bad happens to you.”
Declan took a step towards us, and while I kept close to Lantis, my body leaned forward of its own accord, acting on the very basic physical attraction we shared.
With those eyes and that voice, though, it couldn’t be Declan, unless something horrible had happened to him while we were apart.
The Weight of Dreams Page 4