by Lan Chan
It was the end of January. The middle of summer in Australia. And yet for some reason, cool air wrapped around me when I stuck my head out to survey the drop. It raised goose bumps on my arm. The ground was a long way down. It was obscured by a strange cloud of mist at the base. I counted the windows below my floor. Three that I could see before the mist confused visibility. A death drop if I ever saw one. But when I glanced to my right, I smiled.
Along the guttering, someone had put up a sturdy-looking lattice and trained a wisteria plant over it. The gnarled branches were old and established. The main branch was thicker than my arm.
It took some manoeuvring to get myself perched right on the window ledge so that I could make the jump to the wisteria without slipping and breaking my neck. But I was a master at climbing trees. I’d spent most of my early childhood swinging on a branch in Nanna’s garden. I put half my weight on the wisteria to gauge whether it would hold. It didn’t move an inch. Reining in my grin, I shimmied down the vine.
When I hit the mist, I felt the sudden urge to stop. Uncertainty fluttered through me. Why was it this easy to escape if they were trying to keep me here? Unless this was part of the test? Grinding my teeth against all of the possibilities, I forced my legs to keep moving.
I touched damp grass much faster than I had anticipated. Relief shot through my body. My shaking limbs were a testament to the fear that I hadn’t allowed myself to give in to.
“Okay, Lex. Now what?”
This wasn’t the time to go exploring. I needed to find a familiar monument. Something that would lead me back onto a path that would take me to Nanna’s cell. As I glanced around, it hit me that I couldn’t hear a single car. The Institute was situated within a vast area of grassland, but it wasn’t so far from the road that the sound of engines wasn’t ever present. Here, night was a smothering cloak that seemed to blanket out any noise besides the chirping of crickets and the occasional flap of wings.
When I heard it the first time, I cringed thinking it could be that Nephilim coming to get me for trying to escape. But it was just a bird. Albeit a strange-looking one with tailfeathers that were much longer than normal.
On the ground it wasn’t hard to see beyond the mist as it had been from above. At intervals, little glowing lights bobbed in the air. As I got closer to one, I realised it wasn’t a fairy light hanging from the branches of a tree but a cluster of fireflies dancing in a circle. They didn’t scatter as I approached, nor did they break from their formation.
What the hell was this place?
Without knowing where I was going, I gravitated naturally towards the trees in the distance. I always seemed to be pulled towards nature. If Nanna wasn’t a factor, I’d skip out on the city altogether and go bush. My path came to an abrupt halt in front of a picket fence guarded on either side by two enormous oak trees. The same twinkling lights laced through the branches of the oak, throwing off a magical glow. I must still be high because it was so beautiful I wanted to reach out and touch it.
A signboard to the left held a message in stick letters that I couldn’t read. That was just great. I should head back and find another path. But something beyond the dimly lit path was calling to me. I could feel the tug inside my belly. There was no latch or lock on the gate. I looked everywhere but it was useless. Finally, I gave up and grabbed the top of the palings. They came up to my shoulders. I found that I could boost myself up easily enough and over the top. When I touched the wood, a tingle of static electricity raced up my arms. It was gone a second later. Must be the drugs wearing off.
I continued to walk, called by whatever it was that I couldn’t quite see. The cobbled path from the fence was brushed on either side by scented plants and herbs. Lavender, hyssop, mint and rosemary. I brushed my palm over the tips of their oily leaves and inhaled. It only cemented my conviction to get Nanna and get the hell out of here.
I was still grinding my teeth when my feet came to a stop. Every logical thought in my body fled. At the centre of a small lawn was a tree with rounded fruit that was glowing. The scent wafting off the fruit was phenomenal. A mix of both apple and quince. My rumbling stomach did a flip. A drop of saliva slid down the side of my mouth.
Suddenly, I was starving. The tree was out in the open. I wasn’t even sure why I was hesitating given that I was here against my free will. What was taking some fruit in the face of illegal imprisonment?
I didn’t even need to climb the branches. The structure of the tree was delicately arching. The canes that held the fruit bent gracefully. It was like the tree itself was offering up its bounty. And I wasn’t going to decline. The fruit wasn’t large but it had a pleasant yellow colour. When I sank my teeth into it and the first drops of nectar hit my tongue, my knees gave way.
“Oh my God,” I said. Forget heroin and meth. This fruit was the real drug. It was sugary but not too sweet with a hint of crispness. I was plucking another before I’d even finished my first. The crap thing about not knowing where my next meal would come from was that I had a tiny appetite. I was only halfway through the third fruit before I felt like I’d had way too much. I also felt like my limbs were suddenly too heavy. Contentment filled every pore in my body. I forgot why I’d even come here in the first place. What was it that I was meant to be doing? I shrugged and snuggled into the soft grass at the base of the tree.
Sleep. That’s what I needed right now. I closed my eyes and drifted off.
What felt like a second later, a chorus of ear-piercing screams had me jolting awake. Sunlight assaulted my eyes. Something whizzed past my head and slammed into the ground. Another round of screams. They were so high-pitched it felt as though I was only hearing part of them. A bird flew so low I felt the displaced air fluttering off its wings. And then something small but hard hit me in the head. It was followed by a rain of hard objects.
“Ow!” I jumped to my feet. “What the hell?”
“It speaks!” a tiny, shrill voice said. The pelting continued. It came from all sides. I tried to turn and use my back as a shield, but it was no use. Throwing up my arms to protect my head, I glanced down at the ground to find that it was littered with acorns. Somebody was pelting me with nuts.
The fluttering swiped at the left side of my torso. I turned in that direction to catch a purple ball of light whizz away. A volley of acorns shot at me from the same side.
“Stop!” I screamed.
“How dare you!” another small voice answered. “Trespasser!” At least that’s what I thought they were saying. The decibel of the voices made me shiver the way nails on a chalk board would.
Footsteps pounded against gravel. Crap on a cracker. I needed to get out of here. Except now the acorns had become a bit of a nut whirlwind. They battered at every inch of my skin.
“I didn’t mean to!” I said pathetically.
“Thief!” another female shot back.
I made a pathetic sound in my throat as a heavy hand clamped down on my shoulder. The acorn assault ceased.
“All you had to do was stay put,” Kai’s voice snapped in my ear. I lowered my arms and blinked away the bright light.
“Wahh?”
Struggling to get his arm off, I stared dumbfounded as a dozen or so small, glowing creatures hovered in the air. Every single one of them was about the size of a sugar glider possum. They wore sheafs made of bits of discarded nature. Petals, leaves, and yet more acorns. They were so perfectly proportioned that you couldn’t really even call them cute. Stunning was more like it. They threw off every colour of the spectrum imaginable. It was so pretty that I forgot how viscous they’d been just seconds ago. At least, I would have if they weren’t all scowling at me.
Boy, were they pissed.
“Wood nymphs,” I muttered. And then I stopped short. I wasn’t sure how I knew what they were, but there was a certainty in my knowing. In response, Kai’s irritated expression clouded over. The nymphs were all aflutter.
He grabbed at the arm that I’d snatched away. “You ate th
e fruit.”
A chorus of distressed wailing came from the nymphs. I looked around. In the daylight, the fruit continued to glow. They were still so lovely I almost reached out for one. If it weren’t for Kai scowling me, I might have.
“What’s the problem?”
The purple glowing nymph flew right up to Kai and landed on his shoulder. She proceeded to give him what I could only describe as an earful. But it was in a pitch so high I could barely make out anything aside from the obvious agitation. He sighed. To my utter astonishment, he ran a finger down the stiff bend of her spine in a caress that had her shuddering.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “She’s new. She doesn’t know what damage she’s doing.” The other nymphs cried out.
“Yes, I’ll deal with it.”
This time he didn’t allow me to squirm away when he yanked me forward by the scruff of my shirt. My feet barely touched the ground as he strode with me back out of the enclosed space. Mortification crept up my neck in a hot wave when I saw there were other people gathered around the entrance of the little woods. Most of them were humanoid, but I could swear there were some who had ears with sharp points at their tips.
“Move,” Kai snarled. The crowd jumped and then dispersed, not daring to even glance back.
“Lovely,” I muttered.
He jerked my collar so that I faced him. Trying to remove his grip on me was like an ant kicking at a rhino. A really pissed off but somehow still incredibly hot, rhino.
“You think this is a joke, Blue?” he snapped at me.
“Do you see me laughing?”
I never knew eyes could be so vividly green. If only he didn’t possess the asshole gene.
“Have you any idea what you’ve done? How did you even get in there?”
Smashing at his arm didn’t seem to do anything but irritate him further. His fist squeezed tighter, darkness seeming to saturate his pupils.
“It’s not like there’s a lock or anything,” I stammered. “I just jumped the fence. And if you don’t want me trespassing, maybe you shouldn’t be keeping me here against my will.”
His hand uncurled. I almost tripped with sudden freedom. I only managed to find my footing by bracing a hand against the nearest tree.
“Believe me, it wasn’t my idea to keep you around.”
I rubbed at the base of my neck. “I don’t care whose idea it is. And judging by your track record so far, I wouldn’t really put much stock in your judgement.”
Even I was surprised when his shoulders went rigid. I had this terrible habit of running my mouth off when I was flustered. This time, it seemed like it was really going to get me in trouble.
Leaning back against the fence, Kai crossed his arms. I might have been fooled into thinking it was a relaxed stance if not for the vein twitching above his left eye. He had a scar running vertically through his brow. It certainly wasn’t sexy.
“If you want to leave so badly, be my guest. Just don’t come back crying when the next demon shows up.”
“News flash, I didn’t ask for your help the first time. What did you do exactly? Except wave a sword in front of my face? You really are no use at all!”
As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I wanted to take them back. Clearly, I was a worse asshole than he was. Kai took a step towards me, his posture ramrod straight. Before I could come up with an apology, he reached out and grabbed my shoulder.
There was a second of sharp pain interspersed with budding pleasure as starlight burst around us. The lawn melted away. When next I blinked, we were inside a building. We stood in a hallway in front of a pair of mahogany doors. Across the top of the door was a gold plaque with the word: Headmistress.
I didn’t even have time to process the fact that we had just teleported because Kai banged hard on the door and then turned around and stalked away.
5
I had a second to watch Kai’s retreating back before the doors in front of me were pulled open. In the doorway stood a statuesque woman in a stylish red pant suit and black stiletto heels. I would break my neck in those. Her collar-length platinum blonde hair was styled into soft waves. The suit she wore was cropped to just below her calf. The part of her calf that was visible was toned as all hell.
She reached out a hand to me. “Alessia,” she said with a smile. “It’s good to meet you. I’m Headmistress Pendragon.” She popped her head out the door. “Was that my grandson?”
The look I gave her must have said it all.
“You have a grandson?” She didn’t even have a single line around her lips or eyes. I’d peg her for late forties maximum.
“Broody, green eyes, could give a Hemsworth brother a run for their money. Ring any bells?”
My patented brand of dumbstruck stupidity was being well utilised today. “How is that possible?”
She waved me into her office. “It’s the immortality,” she said casually as she strolled over and sat down at the chair behind a huge wooden desk. “It makes for a great conversation starter. Take a seat.”
I plopped down on one of the armchairs set up in front of her desk. “Does that mean he’s immortal too?”
Her smile turned soft. “Unfortunately, he has too much humanity in him.”
“Not that I’ve seen.” I’d meant to mutter it under my breath, but she beamed like she heard it loud and clear.
“Don’t take it personally. He’s just not used to…never mind.”
She shuffled some papers on her desk. “Now, I understand you trespassed into the Grove and ate some of the Arcana fruit.”
“I didn’t mean to! I was hungry and it was just…there.”
The side of her lips twitched. She was so far removed from the image of a headmistress in my mind. Who even called them headmistresses? In Australia we had principals.
“The thing is,” she said, “it wasn’t just there. The Arcana fruit is the most prized possession of the nymphs in the Grove. There are some powerful spells erected around it to keep people out. Yet somehow you just waltzed right in without raising a single alarm.”
When she said it like that, it sounded pretty bad. But she didn’t seem too upset by it so I took my emotional cue from her reaction.
“And then we have the matter of the protection spell.” She picked up a piece of paper and glanced down at it. I squinted, trying to make out some of the words through the thin paper. It all seemed like strange squiggles to me.
“Evan is a third-year high mage, and he couldn’t break through. But there isn’t a single thing we could find in your background or your grandmother’s –”
“Nanna?” I sat forward in my chair. “You’ve seen her? How is she? Can I see her?”
I wasn’t sure why but when she reached out to take my hand, a cold stone settled in my stomach. “We can certainly take you to see her, Alessia. It’s just that it might make you more distressed than you already are. Your grandmother never regained consciousness after the demon vacated her body. She’s being watched over by Raphael.”
I tried to pull my hand away, but her grip was like a vise. Just like her youth, her strength seemed to be something she was hiding in plain sight.
“What are you? What is this place? And what do you want from me?”
She patted my hand with her other palm but wouldn’t let me go. “Do you know what one of the side effects of Arcana fruit is?” she asked. I shook my head numbly. “It takes away delusions. It makes the truth easier to see. You ate a larger than usual portion last night.” A pause. “Humans have a very good coping strategy. Their mind plays tricks on them, offering up credible explanations for things they don’t understand and dismissing things they can’t explain. Arcana fruit strips them of that boundary. What does your gut tell you I am?”
This wasn’t happening. But I could no more stop my mouth from opening than I could stop breathing. “Amazon.”
The word hung in the air between us. I didn’t even know where the knowledge had come from. Only that I was now certain of it. In
the back of my throat, I tasted that same luscious sweetness from the night before.
This time, she was the one who leaned forward. “This isn’t a mental institution, Alessia. We’re not doctors trying to treat your condition.”
“Then what is this?”
She scratched the tip of her nose and let go of me. “We are that which is hinted at but not brought out into the light. Just your friendly neighbourhood beings from another dimension.”
The laugh that escaped me was involuntary but also mirthless. This wasn’t funny. It was incredulous.
“That can’t be right.” But in my gut, I knew it to be true. I’d seen too many things to dispute it. And the Arcana fruit forced my mind to focus on the problem instead of explaining it away. “What about Michael and Raphael?”
“Archangels. Or Seraphim as we call them.”
If I’d had a drink in my mouth, I’d have spat it all over the table. “Come off it!”
“Even without the fruit you must have felt their ethereal nature.”
I had felt it. Now I was replaying every stupid thing I’d said to them and cringing. “I don’t understand any of this. How is it at all possible?”
“All in good time, my dear. What we need to establish right now, for your safety and ours, is what you are.”
“What I am?”
She pierced me then with a hooded gaze. Her fingers intertwined in front of her. “Raphael has established that your soul is not of demon origin. But that’s as far as he could delve. I don’t wish to lie to you, Alessia –”
“Lex.”
She nodded. “It rings alarm bells when the archangel of healing cannot diagnose what type of being you are.”
My hands were shaking now. It started off as a slight tremor in my fingers and seemed to radiate all the way up my spine. “What does this mean?”