The last was said with such animalistic ferocity that everyone but Tiger Lily and I took a step back, caught off balance by the sudden burst of power and subsequent vow. Indeed, the only reason I stayed put was because I knew—deep down—that Oberon was no threat to me. Not as things stood now, at any rate. The Goblin King simply had too much to lose.
While the others recovered, Tiger Lily took a step forward, touching the back of her clawed hand to her forehead and bowing slightly at the waist. “Lord of the Wild Host,” she said, “forgive me for not honoring you sooner.”
Oberon quickly returned the gesture and waved her off, almost as if he were embarrassed to have been discovered. “Nevermind all that, Tiger Lily,” he replied. After a moment’s scrutiny, I realized it wasn’t embarrassment affecting the Goblin King, but nervousness. Why?
“Quinn!” Eve called again, sounding impatient.
“Comin’!” I replied, pausing at the top of the ladder to look back at Oberon, who studied me with an inscrutable expression. I found myself sympathizing with the Faeling and his role in what was to come; something about his agonized expression earlier had triggered memories of my own identity crisis, my own suffering. “Don’t let Temple’s war become your war,” I warned, though I wasn’t sure where the sudden concern stemmed from. “Keep your subjects safe.”
Oberon scoffed. “Wars aren’t kind to cowards, Quinn MacKenna. But don’t worry, we’ll all have our parts to play in this. Even you.” His eyes narrowed. “Perhaps especially you.”
“All the world’s a stage, eh?” I teased, gaze shifting inexorably to James—the earnest Captain Shakespeare, or so the time traveler would have it—as I bastardized one of the Bard’s most famous lines in an attempt to leave things between Oberon and me on a lighter, perhaps even friendlier, note.
“Let us hope not,” Helen interjected, speaking for the first time since we’d stepped onto the ship, her voice a dramatic contralto. “Stages can burn.”
Well, so much for improving the mood.
5
Cathal padded alongside me, his almost impossibly large, lanky frame making it easy for him to clamber up and over the array of jagged boulders that lined the shore. Up ahead, Eve seemed to be having even less trouble; she moved between the rocks like a spider, her roots diving between the crevices, keeping her level. In fact, she churned forward with such ease that I could barely keep up. I called after her to slow down, but she either didn’t hear or chose to ignore me. Despite her recent chattiness, I had a gut feeling that it was the latter; few wounds close with the passing of time alone, and emotional scars bleed more than most.
Unable to keep pace and unwilling to die trying, I stopped to catch my breath, hazarding a look over one shoulder. The Jolly Roger continued to hover in the sky, though the pink blush had faded considerably. The Neverlanders stood apart from the Greeks and the Goblin King, though all were watching our progress from the railing. I couldn’t quite make out their faces but suspected they were filled with hope, perhaps even expectation. Rage surged through me for a brief instant—how dare my father, if it really had been him, promise those poor people such a thing? What if I failed? The cruelty of losing your home twice—once to circumstance, and again to a broken vow—was staggering. Cathal nudged me with his muzzle, nearly sending me flying off my temporary perch in the process.
“Easy,” I cautioned as I reset my feet. “Not all of us have four legs.”
“Yes, well, we can’t all be perfect.”
I rolled my eyes but resumed the march, working my way between the stones, using my hands as often as my feet, beads of sweat pricking my brow. Cathal fell in behind me, loping from stone to stone the way a child might play hopscotch.
“Your tree,” he said, a moment later, “what is she?”
“What?”
Cathal quickly overtook me and set atop a particularly tall stone, eyes locked on Eve as she glided among the rocks, ears cocked. He didn’t speak until I joined him, my breath coming in short bursts, sweat now running down into my eyes; after spending months training to master the spear in the Otherworld, I’d developed impressive reserves of stamina, but seemingly had very little tolerance for the heat.
“She is learning,” Cathal replied as I sidled between two stones, mindful of the deeper crevices lest I slip and break something. His tone suggested he wasn’t entirely sure that was a good thing.
“Aye, she does that,” I replied, patting his flank. “Ye might even say it’s her sole occupation.”
“No, not like that. Humans learn by seeing, by doing. The Coin Sithe learn the way of the world by drinking the milk of our mothers. What she is doing is more like that.” Cathal raised his haunting, amber-colored eyes to the sky, muzzle twitching as he scented the air. “Something strange is happening here. I can smell it.”
Caught off guard by Cathal’s sudden loquaciousness, it was all I could do to process what he’d told me. The faerie hound rarely spoke of his kin or his upbringing, and I knew it pained him to do so. Which meant he’d thought it important I comprehend the distinction. But, before I could respond, the hound took off after Eve, leaving me to fumble onward, cursing my body’s current limitations; having endurance was all well and good, but without the mind-numbing speed and prodigious strength I’d been granted my first time here, I was irrevocably, irritatingly human.
Surprisingly, I didn’t consider this a humbling experience; I’d been a relatively frail creature for most of my life and had made the most of it, routinely surviving experiences which might have broken stronger, more capable people. In fact, until recently, I’d prided myself on that achievement. Looking back, it was clear I’d built a life around it—that so much of my self-worth had hinged upon surviving the worst of the worst, my psyche caught somewhere between an adrenaline rush and a death wish. Honestly, that’s all my chosen profession had boiled down to: as an arms dealer, I had an excuse to play in the monster’s sandbox, to steal their toys and kick down their castles.
It was only now, upon reflection, that I realized how delusional I’d been. That it hadn’t been my gift for navigating the precarious black market or my talent for tough negotiation which had driven me to pit myself against the worst possible odds. No, it was the chase, the thrill, which had appealed to me. Still appealed to me, if I was being honest. And yet, something had changed along the way.
I’d grown up.
Perhaps it was the obscene advantage I’d been given when I’d first arrived in Fae—a competitive edge so vast it mocked all my years of training, all my hard work. Of course, it wasn’t like I’d suddenly begun playing with a stacked deck; back then just about everyone I associated with had a trump card to play—be it the ability to shift into a ravenous animal, to weave illusions, to wield magic, or what have you, it had felt for a while there like truly gimmickless, powerless individuals had ceased to exist. And yet, with every new power I discovered, the stakes had seemed to diminish. I was no longer the little girl playing in the monster’s sandbox. I’d become the schoolyard bully.
Except that wasn’t entirely true. Deep down, I continued to thrive on chaos, eager to test my mettle. So what if I was no longer the underdog? A fight was a fight. That aspect of my personality hadn’t changed at all. The only difference now was that I no longer held any illusions about my chances. This tumultuous, often bloody life I led—little more than setting myself against one impossible task after another—was not going to end quietly in the wee hours of the night years and years from now. In fact, if Oberon was right and there was some cosmic hand of destiny guiding this mess, then I had a sneaking suspicion I was being prepared for a tragedy—a final act forged in fire and bathed in blood. And yet, I realized that didn’t really bother me; I had and always would live in the moment, partially convinced my next breath could be my last. To do anything else would be to invite the sort of self-doubt that so often plagued those listless, ambitionless people I could never entirely relate to. In this, all three of my selves had agreed.
“Quinn,” Eve said, her voice surprisingly close.
I halted and found myself standing on the final outcropping of rocks, overlooking a vast valley utterly devoid of life—a flat, nearly empty surface of solid dirt, cracked and broken. The remains of a small lake, perhaps, judging by the shape. As I watched, Eve plunged her roots into that lifeless soil and began to march further out, ploughing as she went, trailed by a furrow at least as wide and deep as a man. Together, Cathal and I followed on either side, covering ground much quicker now that I wasn’t forced to labor after them. Still, we had to hang back a bit; dirt clods soared high into the air, threatening to crash down on our heads if we weren’t careful.
“What’s she doin’?” I called to my canine companion.
“What’s it look like?”
I frowned. “Ye don’t know either, do ye?”
“Nope.”
I fetched a loose mound of dirt and tried to chuck it at the faerie hound, but Cathal dodged it with alarming ease, not so much as sparing me a glance. I sighed but resolved to keep walking and let the mystery unfold on Eve’s terms; I owed her that much, at least.
While I walked, I began to poke at the other mystery I’d uncovered—Merlin’s alleged involvement. Putting my emotions aside for the moment, I had to admit the circumstances surrounding his fortuitous arrival were suspicious, at best. Assuming he was alive, why urge James to help me? Was it because we sought Lugh’s Spear? According to my mother, it had been his responsibility to keep it safe. Or was it something else, something to do with the destiny my parents had bestowed upon me?
I wasn’t sure, and not knowing irritated me. When I’d first agreed to sail to Atlantis, I’d considered it a sort of favor, a way to repay the debt I owed to my mother’s spirit for looking after me in the only way she’d been able. Coupled with the fact that Ryan planned to use what he’d stolen from me to power an incredibly dangerous artifact—presumably so he could wage war on potentially innocent Faelings—and the whole affair felt more and more like fate, as opposed to mere providence.
But now...now it seemed like the possibility of meeting my father—once perhaps my most ardent wish in the whole world, in all the worlds—was no longer a fantasy. What if he was waiting for me at the end of this insane voyage? What would I have to say to him, and him to me? Would he apologize for abandoning me, or claim it was all part of the “divine” plan? Could I forgive him, either way? Such questions provoked a roil of emotions: anger, frustration, hope, longing.
Would it be a ceasefire, or a siege?
“We’re here,” Eve said, drawing me back to the present so quickly I nearly tumbled into the massive ditch she’d created. I halted and squinted skyward, surprised by what she’d found, by where she’d led us. The Hangman’s Tree, its branches skeletal, its trunk sunken and grey, loomed over us all. I did a slow turn, realizing we stood not far from the settlement I’d once visited; I could see remnants of the wall in the distance, the logs toppled to form misshapen lumps against the horizon. I stared for a moment, surprised by the lump in my throat. There had been people living there. Most of them had looked my age, maybe a bit older. The sheer waste sickened me so much I had to look away.
Peter Pan was dead. Hook was dead. Neverland was no more.
Somehow, I’d let those truths sink in, but not the others. Not the fact that the Lost People, that Hook’s crew, had also perished. How easy it is to forget the nameless, faceless folk who sit in the backgrounds of our bedtime stories—to weigh the passing of a legend against the deaths of hundreds. “Why here?” I asked, throat tight.
Cathal leapt to my side of the ditch and sat back on his hind legs, his tongue pulsing, teeth bared as he drew great, laboring breaths. I frowned and glanced back the way we’d come, surprised to find the distant rocks little more than a smudge. It seemed we’d walked a couple miles while I’d been lost in thought.
“I’ll get to that,” Eve replied. “But first, I want to talk to you about Eden.”
6
“And then there was light.”
“Shut up, it’s my story to tell,” Eve replied peevishly, obviously displeased with my offhand comment. “Besides, it should have gone: and then there was consciousness. Light and darkness are merely realities imposed by the natural world. It was you humans who decided to use them to represent wisdom and ignorance, and only then because you idiots can’t see in the dark.”
“Heh, good one,” Cathal chimed in.
I held both hands up in mock surrender, though admittedly I was glad to see Eve back in her natural state; giving me shit was how Eve showed affection—or at least I hoped that was the case. “I wasn’t tryin’ to be flippant,” I said. “Just sayin’ the first t’ing that came to mind, is all.”
“Another regrettable human trait,” she replied.
“Hah hah. I won’t interrupt again, I swear. Go on.”
Eve seemed to gather herself for a moment. “If I’m being honest, I have a very muddled understanding of what you might call Creation. What was passed on to me from that time is fragmented, mainly sensations, not actual memories.” Eve pressed one limb to her trunk in a remarkably human gesture, as if struggling to think. “I’ve made sense of some of it by analyzing the allegories, by testing the myths against my own feelings in order to determine what really happened.”
Cathal, whose heavy breathing had finally subsided, dropped to the ground and laid his shaggy head on his paws, staring up at the tree like a child waiting for a delightful bedtime story full of romance and adventure. But it wasn’t that sort of story.
“The Garden of Eden,” Eve began, “once defied everything mankind has come to despise or fear. Disease, rot, sorrow, death. These realities did not yet exist, not even as abstract concepts. Back then, the known world was touched by divine light. Unchanging, unyielding. But then something changed.” Eve’s limbs twitched. “There was a war. A battle for the fate of Heaven, unlike anything your kind would ever know because it was unlike any war you’ve ever seen. It was waged in different dimensions, scaled from the atomic level all the way to the cosmic, occurring outside time and space as you understand it.”
I cocked my head as Eve fell silent, trying to reconcile her story with the Biblical events I’d learned about during my Catholic school years. She was talking, presumably, about the angelic rebellion. Lucifer’s rebellion. For some reason, Eve’s story conjured up an image: a stained-glass window depicting Michael the Archangel with his spear pressed against the throat of a conquered dragon, his foot pinning the wing of his fallen foe. “And Eden?” I asked. “What about Adam and Eve and the apple? Isn’t that what ye wanted to tell us about?”
“I was getting to that,” Eve replied, waving one limb dismissively. “First of all, you mustn’t think of the Garden as a fixed place. It can be, but like so many of the realms that brush against your own, it’s only partially touching the mortal world. As the other realms exist, stretching out like peninsulas, so, too, does Eden. Even when it was first fashioned, it was as much a concept as a location—as much a dream as a reality. Indeed, it can grow anywhere and thrive under any name. Places like Avalon, like Nysa, Annwn, Lintukoto, and so many others long forgotten.”
I shook my head not in disbelief, exactly, but in confusion. I grasped the underlying principle well enough; if Heaven and Hell could exist across multiple pantheons, why not the Garden of Eden? A mythical paradise non-angelic beings could inhabit, so long as their deeds were worthy, their hearts pure. Having seen so many fictions come to life before my very eyes, I certainly wasn’t going to discount the possibility. But what did all this—Eve’s perspective on the angelic war, the long-winded explanation—have to do with Neverland?
“Why are ye tellin’ us this?” I asked, perhaps a tad impatiently.
Shockingly, Eve laughed; it was the first time I’d ever heard the sound—a rustling outburst that made me think of an animal surging through forest brush. “Here I am, trying to fill you in
on a period of history that some theologians might actually kill for, and you want me to get to the ‘good’ part,” she said, branches curling to form air quotes. “Sometimes I find it inexplicable that fate brought us together, Quinn. I’ve not met many of your kind, admittedly, but I doubt there are many who care so little for knowledge.”
I cocked an eyebrow at that. It wasn’t that she was entirely wrong, of course; most people were innately curious, unable to help themselves. Had Eve been given to an academic of any sort, they’d likely still be pumping her for information. “It isn’t that I don’t care,” I said, in my defense. “It’s that me priorities are different. Some people aren’t happy unless they know everythin’ there is to know. I’m not happy unless I know everythin’ I need to know. There’s a big gap between the two, that’s all.”
“Yes, I’m aware,” Eve countered, lightly. “I can’t say it’s an admirable trait, but I am glad it was you who found me. You have used me for your own gain, but far less often than you might have if you were someone else.” She sounded sad, then. “Very well, we’ll leave this story for the appropriate time. Ask the question you so clearly wish to ask.”
Struck by the notion that Eve’s tale had merit, I almost asked her to go on. But with the others waiting on the Jolly Roger, I simply couldn’t wait; there was no guarantee that Oberon would hang around if we dallied. Which meant, if we failed to save the island, we’d be more or less stranded here. I coughed into one fist, clearing my throat. “D’ye know how to revive Neverland?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“I’m listenin’.”
“That’s a first,” Eve quipped, caressing the trunk of the Hangman’s Tree with one limb. “Alright. Well, first of all, you should know that the island is not dead.”
“Come again?” That was news to me. The island sure looked dead; I had no idea what the standard of living was for a landmass, but I knew from personal experience what a wasteland looked like.
Sea Breeze: Phantom Queen Book 8 - A Temple Verse Series (The Phantom Queen Diaries) Page 4