A fresh wave of agony crashed into me, and I dropped to my knees. Cathal barked at me, telling me to pick up the seed, to put it back. I swiveled my gaze, overwhelmed, and saw that Eve had caught fire; her bark burned where it touched the Hangman’s Tree. Without my help, it was clear she’d go up in flames, taking Neverland with her. I fumbled in the dirt, feeling for the kernel. I had to do this. I wasn’t sure what Eve’s plan was, but I had to trust her—even if she hadn’t trusted me enough to share it. At last, I managed to wrap my hand around the pebble-sized pip; it was surprisingly cool to the touch. I gritted my teeth, slapped the seed against the trunk, and pressed my head against the back of my hand to keep it in place.
And then I screamed.
I screamed until my throat hurt as bad as my hand, screamed until my gut ached. More than once, I felt my consciousness fade to black, the edges of my vision tunneling. I had no idea how long it went on, only that Cathal was close by; he yipped at me whenever I began to waver, whenever it seemed I might blackout. Then, at last, nothing. No pain, no sensation at all, really, beyond the sting in my throat. My hand no longer burned.
Suddenly, Cathal was at my back. The faerie hound took me by the scruff of my top and dragged me away from the tree, pulling my hair in the process. It hurt, though the pain was a distant thing. I thought to reach up to swat at him but barely managed to raise my arm; when he finally released me, it was all I could do to lift my chin and survey my surroundings.
What I saw left me speechless.
The Hangman’s Tree was on fire. Lit from within, green flames flickered out from beneath cracks in the massive trunk, coiling upwards, licking their way towards the uppermost limbs. I tried to sit up, to yell Eve’s name, but my throat was ruined, and my body battered. Perhaps sensing my desire, Cathal used his head to prop me up, though if he were concerned about Eve, he didn’t show it.
“Have to...save her…” I whispered.
“Too late for that now.”
I wanted to look back at the faerie hound, to see the expression that went with that gruff tone, but a low, keening sound stole my attention. I focused on the noise. It was coming from the Hangman’s Tree, and it was growing louder. No longer a mere hum, it raised to an uncomfortable decibel. Soon, it was all I could do not to cover my ears. And then—with a crescendo I could only describe as ear-shattering—it got louder.
Provoked by the obscenely high pitch, I finally managed to clamp my hands over my ears, blinking through another bout of tears to find Cathal howling over my shoulder, joining his voice to the din. The combined result was deafening—a piteous harmony that seemed to have no end.
And yet, there seemed to be some purpose behind it.
The air changed; a gust of wind pressed at my back, the atmosphere no longer listless as clouds began flying by at an alarming rate. I felt the ground beneath my feet tremble, then shift—its impossibly dry, hard surface offering the slightest give where before there had been none. The wail ceased, abruptly. I cautiously removed my hands only to catch the sound of running water. No, not running, I realized. Rushing. I glanced back over my shoulder, forced to crane my neck past Cathal, just in time to see a wall of seething water speeding towards us from the bay; the massive wave broke through the shelf of rocks in a torrent, spewing along the path Eve had carved in the soil. It surged past Cathal and me and crashed into the Hangman’s Tree with enough force to make me wince. The bark was stripped away in an instant, blasted to bits by the deluge.
The Hangman’s Tree was destroyed.
In its place, however, stood something else—something new and yet familiar.
I found myself gaping at this new apparition even as the water pooled, forming a pond at first, only to continue onwards towards a distant mountain line, snaking inexplicably upwards in utter defiance of physics. Finally, silence descended in earnest, interrupted only by the gurgle of running water and a distant crack of thunder. I rose slowly, conscious of the river running not twenty feet to my right, not to mention the moat of water surrounding Eve.
If it was Eve.
The Tree of Knowledge, only a few feet taller than me when we’d arrived in Fae, stood perhaps three times that height, her sides so swollen I’d have to walk a wide circle to see her from every angle. Freshly cleansed, her bark—once a ruddy shade of brown—gleamed copper even in the gloomy afternoon light. Her leaves, meanwhile, remained gold, though they were no longer the slender, dainty things they’d once been. Instead, they hung, frond-like, their tips sickeningly sharp. And yet, it had to be her; cast smooth and superimposed, it was obviously Eve’s visage splashed across the trunk.
“Eve?” I asked, tentatively, reaching out as though I might touch her. “Is that ye?”
A flash of annoyance rode the air.
“Not Eve,” the tree replied in Eve’s voice, though it boomed in comparison to what I was used to, almost as if it were coming from above rather than from the tree itself.
“Neverland?” Struck by the possibility that Eve had lost, that we’d suffered for nothing, it was all I could do to keep my voice steady. I took an involuntary step backwards as a fresh emotion surged—elation this time. Cathal padded up beside me, and I noticed the ground was greener than it had been a moment before. Tiny sprouts had begun poking up between the cracks in the dirt.
“Neverland...no. Neverland is gone. Only we remain.”
“And who are ye?”
Confusion. Wonder. Comprehension. The sensations passed over me one after the other, and I realized I could perceive the changing moods the way you might feel a rise or dip in temperature. The thought alone made the hair on my arms stand on edge. I glanced at Cathal, but he didn’t seem to be picking up any of what I was sensing; he’d sat back on his haunches, staring at the tree with his head cocked, one ear pointed skyward.
“Name us,” the tree said, at last. “Eve was a name chosen by a child. A joke in poor taste. Name us, Quinn MacKenna, and see our covenant made.”
I opened my mouth, determined to ask more questions, but found Cathal shaking his head at me in an oddly human way. I scowled, struggling to think past my exhaustion. Not Eve. Not Neverland. A bit of both, maybe? And she didn’t want to be called Eve, anymore. In hindsight, I could admit the appellation had been a mistake—a cruel reminder of what her predecessor had gone through in the Garden of Eden. Eden, the false paradise. Neverland, the island of horrors. My head pounded, making it hard to think clearly. I touched my ear, gingerly, with my right hand and came away with blood.
“Name us, Quinn MacKenna,” the tree reiterated.
“NeverEden,” I replied, weakly. “Your name is NeverEden.”
Relief. Determination. Pride.
“So it is,” NeverEden replied.
14
Cathal and I lingered on the bank of the pond, unable to ignore the sudden greenery spreading beneath us, the vegetation blossoming with every passing moment—like watching a video of grass growing on fast forward. I’d had to sit down, wrapping my arms around my knees, head burrowed. Every inch of me hurt. The gash above my eye had closed, and I bore no mark from the seed which had seared my flesh, but my whole body ached, sending pain signals every time I so much as twitched. What I needed—aside from a week-long soak in a hot bath and a full body massage—was sleep. Instead, I found myself arguing with the faerie hound, too exhausted to muster more than a mildly annoyed tone of voice.
“I can’t just leave ye here,” I insisted, for the third time.
“You’re being stubborn,” Cathal replied.
I raised my head and glanced sidelong at NeverEden, as I’d dubbed her. Since our initial interaction, she’d refused to speak, to answer any of my many questions. What had Eve done? And why? How was I able to sense her emotions? What was this covenant business? Of course, there were other, less tactful questions I’d left unspoken—like what the hell was she? Or, to put it even more bluntly, what sort of threat did she represent? Cathal, it seemed, shared my concerns; he’d volunteered to stay
behind and keep an eye on her.
“What if somethin’ happens?”
“You can take care of yourself.”
“Not to me, ye idgit. What if the tree…” I drifted off, unsure how much NeverEden could hear. Best to assume everything, I decided; her roots might already have spread everywhere. I made a motion with my hand as if to imply the worst.
Cathal huffed, clearly amused. “I’m sure I can take care of myself.”
“Like the time ye got caught by slavers and had to be rescued by yours truly?”
“Says the girl I saved from being poisoned.”
I glowered at the hound but couldn’t argue his point. We’d both screwed up. Both risked our necks to protect the other. Maybe that’s why I was so reticent to let him stay; having him at my back was something I’d come to rely on. “Fine,” I said, at last. “Stay here if ye must. But don’t expect me to be happy about it.”
“Quinn,” Cathal replied, suddenly quite serious, “where you are going...it’s not meant for me, for my kind. The Otherworld is my home. This realm shares similar air, a similar feel, but the odor that sometimes follows you, the stench on your clothes and those things you call guns and the place you call home...I don’t believe I could survive there. One day, the same may be true for you.”
“Ye mean the mortal realm?” I asked, frowning.
“Yes.”
“What’s wrong with the mortal realm?”
“It stinks.”
“Constructive criticism,” I replied, smirking.
“You aren’t listening. It smells sour. Rotten. Not as bad as the Blighted Lands, but there are hints of that. Traces.” Cathal shook his shaggy head from side to side. “There’s something wrong with your world. Something sick.”
I grunted, unsure what to say to that.
“There are other worlds like yours, other realms in decay. New worlds, too. This place,” Cathal sniffed at the air, his nostrils flaring, “will become one. It smells different than before. Reminds me of home.” He sneezed, muzzle wrinkling.
“How so?”
“Can’t you sense it?”
“Sense what?”
“Life.” Cathal pawed at the ground, nails digging furrows in the soil until I could see what lay beneath; thin, pale roots swarmed below like worms. The gouges disappeared in a matter of seconds, swallowed by eager dirt. I sighed and rose, wincing, wondering all the while what Eve—or NeverEden, rather—would do with this island. Would she return it to the way it was, or reshape it? I’d based the name on Eve’s antipathy, while simultaneously honoring not what this place had actually been, but what it had meant to all those who’d been inspired by tales of Peter Pan and Captain James Hook. To be honest, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
“I wish ye were comin’ with me. Ye and her.” I gestured vaguely at the copper tree, though in my heart I meant Eve. Now that she was gone, or at the very least so changed I didn’t recognize her, I realized I would miss her. Not only for her wealth of knowledge, but for her opinions, for listening when I had no one else to talk to.
“Sometimes the only way to fill your own shoes is to walk the world alone.”
I cocked an eyebrow at the faerie hound. “The hell d’ye get that from?”
“My Master. He said a lot of crap like that. Seemed appropriate.”
I waggled my hand and shrugged.
“Quinn MacKenna.”
Cathal and I flinched and turned as one to look at the gleaming copper tree. NeverEden swept her branches from side to side as though imitating a breeze that wasn’t there—displaying the locomotion of a living, conscious being. A leaf fell from one limb, crashing into the water below before floating back to the surface. NeverEden bent, dipping one branch into the water, and nudged the leaf toward the bank where I stood.
“Take this,” she said.
I swallowed nervously but did as she asked. The leaf was surprisingly heavy and as thick as a dinner plate; I had to resist the urge to bite it to see if it were made out of real gold. Be worth a small fortune if it were, I figured. “What am I supposed to do with it?”
“When the time comes, use it to find me. The piece always longs to become whole again. Remember that, Anu. Do not fight your nature.”
I opened my mouth to say something else but was interrupted by a sudden shifting beneath my feet. I wobbled, unsteady, my muscles screaming with the effort to stay upright. But the quake—and that’s what it was—only seemed to be getting worse. I fell to all fours, still clutching the leaf. “What’s goin’ on?” I yelled.
“I don’t know,” Cathal whined, sounding piteous as he fought to stay upright. Had I not been freaking out myself, I’d probably have enjoyed the sight; he reminded me of a dog trapped in a moving car.
“Quinn MacKenna, Eve releases you from your vow.”
The voice descended as if from the heavens, louder now than it had been before. I felt NeverEden’s emotions on the wind, each flavor unique. Nervousness. Resolve. Joy. She’d made a decision, something to do with the earthquake, no doubt. I leapt to my feet, prepared to confront her, to demand she tell me what was happening. I no longer felt sluggish. Indeed, it was as if the quivering ground held no sway over my equilibrium at all. I took an eager, impossibly quick step forward, determined to get my answers...and that’s when I finally processed what she’d said.
Released from my vow.
I reached for the skin above my eye and found it whole—nothing but smooth skin, no sign of the gash that had been there only a moment ago. My body no longer rebelled, no longer ached. If anything, I felt energized. Pent up. I raised one hand, marveling at the sensation, and saw that the leaf I’d been given had folded in on itself. The result: a dense triangle of pure gold, heavy as a paperweight.
“You must return to your ship now, Quinn MacKenna,” the copper tree said, bringing me immediately back to the moment at hand. “Without you, they cannot hope to survive. Your guardian will remain and await your return. So, do not dally.”
“But—”
The ground heaved, shuddering so violently even my well-honed, Fae-like reflexes couldn’t keep me entirely balanced. Damn it all. I had more questions! And yet, something told me I wouldn’t get the chance to ask them even if I outlasted these ridiculous tremors. Cathal, looking miserable, bumped into me with his shoulder.
“Quinn, go! She’s taking to the sky!”
“She what?” I gaped at the hound, but a quick survey of our surroundings proved he was correct; the horizon line was changing, the mountains in the distance brushing the tops of the clouds, much closer than they’d been only a few minutes before. NeverEden was making the island float. But why? And how high would she go? I gasped and spun, remembering the crew aboard the Jolly Roger; they’d probably have fled to the sea by now. If I waited any longer, it was possible I’d never make it aboard; I wasn’t certain how much juice Tinkerbell had in her, but I doubted it would be enough to chase us into the heavens.
“I’ll come back,” I insisted, grabbing the faerie hound’s face, fingers wound into the fur coating his cheeks. He jerked a nod, amber eyes flashing, the druidic marks on his body flaring to life. Only the flames were green this time—like those that had licked along the Hangman’s Tree not so long ago. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to question the change; the clouds were closing in from above. I needed to run.
Now.
15
Cursing my choice of footwear, I charged towards the distant shoreline. Or, at least, where the shore should have been; the rocky shelf we’d climbed over earlier sported a gaping hole where the wave had struck, so I aimed for that, praying the Neverlanders remained on the other side. The landscape passed by in a blur, my quick, certain strides so powerful I covered in seconds what before had taken me minutes. Despite the circumstances, I had to admit it was exhilarating—there was nothing quite like running for your life to get your blood moving.
And yet, even as I indulged in my renewed strength and stamina, I couldn’t help but
wonder whether or not I’d regained access to all of my abilities. Eve may have released me from my vow, but that wasn’t the same as saying I’d fulfilled it. Would my mother’s powers return, as well? Would I know what to do with them, if they did? I’d been so sure of myself when I’d stepped into the shadows in that cosmic hallway, when I’d molded darkness to my will. It had felt like driving a car after a long hiatus—unfamiliar at first, but easy once I recalled where to put my hands and feet. Now, however, I suspected it would be more like flying an airplane; I knew I was supposed to fly the damn thing but had no clue which buttons to push or which levers to pull.
I burst through the gap at a full sprint, not even sweating, though I had to dodge more than a few dislodged boulders as I passed. The quakes had stopped, replaced by a steady quiver. Once I caught sight of the edge, I realized why; the island had cleared the sea altogether. Hundreds of feet below, perhaps thousands, waves frothed, surging from all sides into the cavernous pit the island had left behind. In a way, it was breathtaking—the sort of thing you never expected to see with your own eyes. But I couldn’t stop to marvel. I scoured the sea, searching in vain for any sign of the Jolly Roger and its crew. This high up, however, it felt like searching for a speck of dirt in a haystack.
“Shit,” I muttered as I gauged the distance I’d have to cover. If I were human, the fall alone would kill me. I’d hit the water as though it were a slab of cement, my bones turned to jelly. Even as I was now, I wasn’t certain I’d survive; I’d tested my durability before, but never thought to try something as improbable as leaping off the edge of a flying island. Still, the longer I dallied, the further I’d have to fall.
Screw it.
“Cannonball!” I screamed as I launched myself into the open air, limbs splayed. My heart leapt into my throat as I fell, faster and faster, the wind whipping against me with enough force to take my breath away. The white caps grew more distinct with every passing second, the shape of the waves more discernible. Any moment now.
Sea Breeze: Phantom Queen Book 8 - A Temple Verse Series (The Phantom Queen Diaries) Page 9