by Nicola Shill
A highway followed the shoreline all the way from Melbourne to the tip of the Mornington Peninsula, one of the two arms of land encircling Port Phillip Bay. In some places, the margin of bush between the beach and the highway was wide, but in others the road came quite close to the beach. At Anthony’s Nose, there was room only for the road, and even that had been carved into the rock. As the bush ahead began to thin, Cassandra caught glimpses of Arthur’s Seat and heard the hum of traffic on the highway. She experienced a sharp pang of homesickness at the familiarity of it all. Her home was across the other side of that highway, on the gentle southern slope of Arthur’s Seat.
Lorcan pointed to just below the top of the mountain. ‘Zabeth lives up there.’
Cassandra considered the route they would need to take. ‘How are we going to get across the road?’
‘We go under it.’ He pointed. ‘Look.’ Ahead of them was the opening of a stormwater drain. ‘It goes under the road and will get us a good way up the mountain, too.’
In order for them to enter the mouth of the drain, it was necessary to leave the cover of the bush and travel a short distance over the exposed beach. The snake hesitated for a moment before whipping out on to the sand. Cassandra and Lorcan both scanned around for signs of danger. There were no humans in the immediate vicinity; most people preferred to enjoy the beach away from these outlets. Behind them, Cassandra saw the distinctive pattern left in the sand by the snake. That would be cause for alarm when a human encountered it.
When they reached the mouth of the drain, the snake turned sharply and they were plunged into the pitch darkness of the tunnel. Lorcan’s glittering aura provided very little in the way of illumination, and Cassandra discovered claustrophobia on top of her fear of the dark. She tried to comfort herself by remembering that it was summertime: no rain and, due to stringent water restrictions, not even a car being washed in the street or a garden being watered. The drain was bone dry. She didn’t have to worry about drowning as well. She closed her eyes and tried to forget that outside her eyelids was total, inky darkness. She imagined the bush still passing by. The swish-swish of the snake made a soothing, lulling rhythm.
She was very tired.
— CHAPTER 35 —
Zabeth’s House
A shaft of light illuminated Cassandra’s closed eyelids and jolted her into awareness.
She awoke to dazzling sunlight. They were out of the drain and climbing steeply upward through thick bushland. The foreshore ti-tree had given way to eucalyptus trees, although the banksia still remained. Zabeth had chosen a good location for her home. She was unlikely to be bothered by humans here. There were large areas on these slopes that were so rugged and densely vegetated that they were virtually inaccessible to anyone but the most obstinate and intrepid bushwalkers.
The snake began to slow down and then stopped. Lorcan stirred behind Cassandra, and she was suddenly mortified to realise that she was slumped against him and that he had his arms around her. She jolted up and away from him.
‘You fell asleep,’ he said. ‘It was inevitable after the adrenaline rush of this morning.’ He slid off the snake and reached up to help her down. His explanation had done nothing to ease her embarrassment. She felt the burn of her face blushing as he lifted her down.
Once she was standing on the ground, Lorcan pointed to a spot about halfway up a massive flowering eucalyptus tree. ‘That’s Zabeth’s house.’
Cassandra squinted but saw nothing unusual up there. Movement drew her gaze down to a house that was snuggled against the base of the tree. An old, yet surprisingly sprightly female fae was emerging from the front door. She strode towards them with a warm, friendly smile on her face. A metallic green Christmas beetle with a sparkly bronze head was trying to keep up beside her. When it waddled through a patch of sunlight, Cassandra had to blink against the brilliance of mirror smooth wings and a thorax that glittered as if it were encrusted with a million tiny emeralds. The beetle rushed up to Lorcan for a pat.
‘Hello Lorcan,’ said the old lady.
‘Hi Cal. This is Cassandra.’ Squatting down to pat the beetle, he added, ‘Cassandra, this little fellow is Kiro and this …,’ he stood up, gesturing to the lady, ‘is Cal.’
Cassandra smiled politely, said hello to Cal, and bent down to pat Kiro, who had started nudging her legs.
‘No self-respect,’ Lorcan muttered.
Cassandra laughed and squatted down to do a better job of it.
Meanwhile, Lorcan talked to Cal. ‘Cassandra’s here to see Zabeth. Is she in?’
‘Yes, she’s expecting you.’
Cassandra wondered how Zabeth had known to expect them and whether it was a good or a bad sign. She stood and peered up into the tree. ‘How am I going to get up there?’ she asked.
‘I’ll have to carry you,’ answered Lorcan and stepped towards her.
‘Oh … ahhh ….’ Cassandra took a step back, remembering being carried through the air first by Chayton after her pathetic escape attempt and later by Koy during the revelry from hell. Both had messy endings. She tried to think of an alternative, but before anything came to mind, Lorcan had closed the gap between them, slipped his arm around her waist and hauled her in tightly against his side. His broad hand was tucked just under her breast and splayed over her rib cage.
Cassandra stopped breathing.
A gusty swoop of Lorcan’s mighty wings catapulted them skyward. There was incredible strength in those wings. Each beat moved a large volume of air that whooshed past Cassandra and propelled them upward at dizzying speed. Even before she ran out of oxygen, they were landing gently on the rim of a hole in the tree trunk. Cassandra sucked in a deep breath and remembered her fear of heights. Embarrassment be damned, she clung tightly on to Lorcan’s arm.
She heard Zabeth’s voice before she could make out her form in the relative dimness of the hole.
‘Hello, Lorcan. And this must be Cassandra. Come in.’
‘Hello.’ Lorcan leaned into the hole to plant a kiss on the old lady’s cheek. ‘I’ll leave you two alone.’ He nudged Cassandra forward so that she stepped down into the hole, and then, with a beat of his wings, he was gone.
The interior of Zabeth’s house was cool and fragrant. A couple of windows allowed sunlight to filter through the branches and leaves of the tree outside and a gentle breeze to circulate. Cassandra almost believed that neither the sun nor the wind would have dared enter the house in anything other than a sedate and respectful manner.
The walls had the natural beauty and warm glow of fine timber. One wall had a bench and shelves carved into it. On the shelves sat woven baskets, earthenware pots and ornate glass bottles holding crystals, opals and other gemstones, dried herbs and a myriad of other unidentifiable but nevertheless interesting looking sundries.
Zabeth invited Cassandra to sit down and handed her a cup of tea. Cassandra doubted she would get away with only pretending to drink it here. Her eyes slid longingly to the containers of herbs and she wondered why fae didn’t drink herb tea. Not that she had ever liked it in the human world, but it couldn’t fail to be better than this brew. Cassandra had named it ‘fungitea’.
‘You should try it, Cassandra. It’s very nice. Soothing. And good for you. You can’t go on pretending to drink it forever.’ Laughter twinkled in Zabeth’s eyes as she spoke. There was an omniscience about her, as though she was the embodiment of total knowledge. Cassandra took a tentative sip. A hot, satiny liquid filled her mouth and left a warm trail down her throat as she swallowed it. The taste was delicate and nutty, not at all pungent as Cassandra had thought. She took another sip.
Zabeth smiled knowingly and settled back in her chair.
— CHAPTER 36 —
Anthropocentrism
‘You want to go home.’
Zabeth’s smile was gone. So too was the small talk and ice breaking.
Cassandra had been expecting a dominating matriarch. Something about this small, aged fae with softly greying hair
and intelligent, piercing eyes was more compelling. Cassandra felt an almost irresistible urge to please her.
‘When did you first realise you have fae sight?’
‘I didn’t! I never knew.’ Was that a lie? Cassandra now realised that her childhood fairy fantasies had almost certainly been real.
‘Yet you followed one of the children all the way into the agora.’
‘No! I didn’t mean to … I wasn’t trying to …’ What was she saying? She had followed the fae boy. Already it was sounding too much like her debate with Lorcan. ‘Please let me go home. I won’t see again …’
‘You can’t control that.’
‘I won’t look.’
Zabeth laughed sharply and then sighed. ‘Cassandra, I’m not going to send you home and I’ll tell you why.’
A dreadful chill moved down Cassandra’s body from her head to her toes as Zabeth spoke. ‘Gillwillan must not be discovered by humans …’
‘I won’t tell anyone. I promise.’
A frown creased Zabeth’s brow.
Normally, Cassandra would have been instantly contrite for interrupting, but she was so panicked she barely noticed. She had been cogitating on something ever since Brack had laid down the law the morning after her escape attempt. Maybe it was a solution.
‘Brack said it was possible for you to erase my memory.’
Zabeth nodded but continued to frown.
‘Well, why can’t you erase all of this – from the first day until now – and then send me back?’
‘We can’t selectively erase, Cassandra. It’s all or nothing. We avoid doing it because it’s traumatic for the victim. Also, you’d still have fae sight, so it’s not even a permanent remedy. It would most likely happen again. We can’t keep erasing your memory every time you see one of us. In any case, humans can undo it. It usually takes them a while and is often incomplete, but it can be done.’
‘How can I convince you that I’ll keep your secret?’
‘Cassandra, you simply can’t make that promise. At this moment, you genuinely mean it, and I want to believe you. But I understand humans well enough to know that they discard honesty to achieve other goals. As time goes on, your priorities will change and this promise will lose importance.’
Tears began to trickle down Cassandra’s cheeks.
Zabeth leaned forward in her chair to capture Cassandra’s eyes with her own. It embarrassed Cassandra to have Zabeth watching her cry. She wanted to look away, but Zabeth’s gaze was strongly magnetic.
‘Cassandra, don’t take this so personally. It’s not about your nature per se: it’s about human nature generally. You can’t help being a product of that.’
‘You really hate humans don’t you?’
‘That is simply not true.’ Zabeth sat back. ‘Fae and humans used to be good friends.’
‘But not anymore.’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘We … moved in different directions. There are fundamental differences between us, and eventually those differences made us choose different paths: paths that were incompatible.’
‘What differences?’
Zabeth studied Cassandra for a moment, sipping her tea, as if she was pondering how much to tell.
Decision apparently made, she began, ‘Both the differences and the similarities between humans and fae go back to the beginning of our existence.’
‘Similarities?’
‘We’re not so different: we’re the same flesh and blood, we have intelligence and emotions that separate us from other animals, but we arrived at this point in vastly different ways. Fae inherit great knowledge and abilities at birth. Sages, like me, spend their lifetime refining that knowledge. We live a virtually hermitic life, partly because of the need for solitude to study and reflect but also to protect the knowledge by keeping it separate.’
‘Why does it have to be kept separate? Why can’t everyone know it?’
‘It’s extremely powerful. It encompasses the laws of the universe. It brings together all of the secrets of creation and therefore also exposes the secrets of destruction. It has the potential to wipe out humans and fae and all other species on earth.’
‘How are humans different?’
‘Your process of creation has been tougher, slower and is still continuing, but as with the formation of a diamond, it is creating a beautiful, multi-faceted result. Humans adapt. Humans are resilient. You are curious: driven to explore and discover. You love a challenge. You would never be satisfied with inherited knowledge alone. That’s one of the reasons why you’re not trusted with it.’
‘One of? What other reasons are there?’
‘Humans would destroy themselves.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you’d be unable to resist using the knowledge, “taking it for a spin”, to use a human expression. You wouldn’t be satisfied merely to know. It’s not in your nature. That’s both a great strength and a dangerous flaw.’
‘What’s the point of knowledge you can’t use?’
‘The fact that I don’t have a use for it doesn’t mean it’s not useful. It’s just not useful yet. I don’t need to know why or when or even if it will be useful. My role is merely to refine it, guard it and pass it along to other sages.’
‘You make humans sound stupid.’
‘No, Cassandra, I don’t think humans are stupid, but they are anthropocentric.’
‘Anthro …’
‘Anthropo: human; centric: central. You see yourselves as the centre of the universe. It makes you self-indulgent and that creates problems: poverty, violence, and now it’s putting the whole planet in great danger. You over-consume because you believe that nothing is more important than yourselves.’
Cassandra thought that was excessively harsh. There were many examples of humans making sacrifices for the greater good … she just couldn’t think of any at the moment. In any case, she wasn’t confident enough to argue the point with Zabeth, so she remained mute.
‘Which brings us back to why I can’t believe you when you promise to keep our secret,’ Zabeth continued. ‘Human self-interest will inevitably defeat honesty.’
Cassandra knew that Zabeth was resolute, but how could she accept this decision? Her silent tears were amplifying into quiet sobbing.
Zabeth’s tone gentled. ‘I’m sorry to hurt your feelings, Cassandra. That wasn’t my intention. I only wanted you to understand why I can’t risk sending you home. Let me explain it better.’ She sipped her tea and looked thoughtful for a moment. ‘It’s unreasonable to expect you to keep our secret because you’re not loyal to us, not because you’re a bad person, but because you’re not one of us. To put it in human terms again: there’s nothing in it for you.’
Cassandra rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand and sniffled. ‘What if I prove my loyalty?’
Zabeth took another sip of her tea and looked at Cassandra over the rim of her cup with narrowed eyes. ‘How would you do that?’
‘I don’t know. But if I did, would you let me go?’
Zabeth looked sceptical, but to Cassandra’s surprise she answered, ‘I suppose I would.’
Cassandra opened her mouth to speak, but Zabeth held up a hand to cut her off. ‘Let’s leave it at that for now.’ She stood up, and Cassandra realised it was time to leave.
She rubbed her eyes dry and followed Zabeth to the door. She was pretty sure she didn’t have the courage to step up on to the opening of the hole, yet that was clearly what Zabeth was expecting. The idea of being anything less than perfectly obedient to Zabeth was more terrifying than any vision of plummeting to death could ever be. She gripped the edge of the hole beside her with both hands and stepped up.
A rustling from above caught her attention. Lorcan was floating down. With his huge wings spread and the sun behind him, he could have been an archangel: glowing in black and glittering silver, powerful and dangerous, with a beauty beyond the human domain.
A frisson of awe sh
ivered through Cassandra.
— CHAPTER 37 —
Denial
Lorcan curled his arm around Cassandra’s waist and felt her stiffen up.
He was torn between smug glee at her fear of him and a desire to win her trust. He was experiencing extremely unwelcome feelings of protectiveness towards this human. He admired her bravery and resilience. She was obviously terrified of snakes and yet had climbed aboard regardless. She seemed to hate the dark, but hadn’t complained. She was clinging tightly to the edge of Zabeth’s hole and earnestly not looking down; so, she was afraid of heights, too. He should at least try to alleviate her fear. He owed her that much after this morning.
He said goodbye to Zabeth and then, maintaining his hold on Cassandra’s waist, reached across to peel her fingers away from the edge of the hole. He drew her hand in against his chest and held it there tightly as he stepped them both off the branch together. He spread his wings so that the two of them floated gently to the ground.
The snake was basking in the sun. Lorcan lifted Cassandra on, leapt on behind her, and with a last wave to Zabeth, they were off.
The bush enveloped them within seconds. Lorcan knew that Cassandra would be mulling over her conversation with Zabeth and acknowledging to herself that she would never return to her human world. He knew the moment she began to cry. She tried valiantly to conceal it, but he could feel her pain and she couldn’t completely hide the little shudders and sniffles. He wished he hadn’t been such a know-it-all this morning. He couldn’t feign ignorance of the outcome. Even offering comfort was going to sound insincere after his diatribe. His usually effortless, suave manner seemed to desert him around Cassandra.
Ahead, Lorcan saw the shoulder of road that contained the opening to the drain: Cassandra’s world. He allowed himself a pang of sympathy for what she must be feeling: so close and yet so far. A car, followed by two motorcycles, roared around the bend, belching poison into the air as if it were a sewer. This road was a popular human tourist drive, winding steeply down the front of the mountain, affording breathtaking views of the bay and the ships using the channel as a sea highway. The ships were bigger now, since humans had dredged the bottom of the channel to deepen it. Entire ecosystems had been sucked up, lost forever. Humans called this progress. On a clear day, such as today, you could see the skyscrapers of Melbourne sitting in a smear of air pollution across the other side of the bay. Environmental vandals. Cassandra’s people. Not anymore. She was better off out of it. His sympathy evaporated.