Relics and Runes Anthology

by Heather Marie Adkins

  He sat beside me, fingers loosely entwined with mine and somehow a part of that same missing section of my life the forest filled. He swept me back into connection with the tree. Its steady, deep strength gave me courage and I relaxed. Now Logan was part of the forest with me, even deepening my bond with it. Together we were entwined in the life and beauty of the natural world.

  With his firm guidance, I touched small lives all around me, lived the slow, deep pulse of the forest; the quick brush of birds flitting past; the warmth of sun on leaves and the taste of water and soil through roots. Through my bare feet and skin, I joined the world, blending with it; tasting its energy; in complete harmony with every living thing; contented; whole. Fear and darkness, blood and pain were distant, vague memories.

  This was the truth. I laughed at the green-lit leaves overhead. Every leaf, stem and insect shimmered with a silvery-green not-quite-light that mesmerised and entranced me.

  It’s beautiful.

  …you can see it?

  Oh, yes. Can’t you?

  No, only feel the pulse of the energy flow.

  It’s kind of silvery-green and feels like a thousand tiny pinpricks inside my skin; like if I tried too hard to grab it might hurt, but if I don’t it’s just…energising. And it tastes like ozone.

  It feels different for everyone. To me it’s cold water and the taste of snow.

  Logan’s presence withdrew and physical discomfort intruded as my body clamoured for attention. My backside hurt. I reluctantly disconnected myself from the lure of the forest. I said goodbye to the fig and opened my eyes. Logan looked back at me, his eyes almost dreamy. It was the most relaxed I’d seen him.

  Impulsively, I pulled his face closer, kissing him without reservation, with a joy and completion I’d never felt before with anyone. He kissed me back, his mouth warm and tender, his thoughts twined with mine, his arms around me gentle as he cradled me close. I deepened the kiss, hungry, wanting more, sliding my arms around his shoulders, revelling in the strength in him.

  He broke free and shoved me away, wiping his mouth.

  Don’t do that. His mental voice was hard, his eyes snapping. It’s not me you want. You’re just feeling the earth-connection for the first time. It’s all new. If we took this where you want it to go now, you’d hate yourself and me for it later. We both would.

  I looked at my hands. He’d held them. They’d cupped his face as we kissed.

  I’d touched him again, palm to skin.

  But this time nothing had happened. No visions, no draw of power. No fear. No darkness.

  What the hell?

  ‘We need to cool off. Let’s take a swim,’ Logan said aloud. Standing and brushing his pants off, he avoided my eye.

  Rejection stung. My cheeks flushed. I said nothing; still reeling from his mood-switch and my discovery. Paul Eisen must have felt like this last night.

  Logan’s face clouded to black irritation. ‘Paul? I thought you’d decided not to keep dating him.’

  I gave him a cold look. ‘Aren’t there some sort of ethics of telepathy that say you’re not supposed to intrude on private thoughts? Wow. That’s a sentence I never thought I’d say.’

  He pressed his lips together, eyes glittering with some emotion I couldn’t identify. ‘There are but it’s difficult when you’re broadcasting. The point is: how well are you planning to get to know Eisen?’

  ‘You’re not my keeper, Logan. He asked me out again, yes, but…my life’s complicated – even before all this.’ I indicated him and the surrounding forest. ‘And I have a feeling things are going to be even weirder. Am I right?’ I eyed him narrowly. He hid important things and I wasn’t going to let them go now.

  He stayed silent a moment, then turned away, his face once more expressionless. ‘You have good instincts. You’re safer away from someone as visible as Paul Eisen.’

  ‘Like I said,’ I said mildly, returning his cool with hauteur of my own, ‘you’re not my keeper and I barely know you. You have no say in who I see. I still don’t know what you want from me, either. Or why you’re helping.’ I cocked my head at him, knowing my next words were truth. ‘Especially since I get the impression you don’t even like me all that much.’

  Logan stilled and hardened. ‘I don’t want to be your keeper, but I can help you stay safe. If you’ll let me. Liking you or not has nothing to do with it.’

  He flung his t-shirt aside and dove smoothly into the deepest part of the pool. I stood. My backside was numb and my back ached. After a brief hesitation, I tugged off the shirt and shorts and dipped a toe in. Grateful for the freezing temperature, I slid into the pool, catching my breath as the icy water caressed the sun-warmed skin of my stomach. It brought me fully to my senses and the intimate connection with the forest receded further, dreamlike.

  A small part of me was still aware of Logan’s thoughts, though. In his mind was an image of me: sparkling water on my bare, olive skin. He dwelt on the curve of my waist, the swell of breast above my bra. I turned to see him rising from beneath the water. He was beautiful. Stripped to his shorts, his lean, muscular body caught in the dappled sunlight, he was meant to be here, meant to be part of this place; as I was.

  He saw me watching and grimaced. Diving into the clear depths, he swam across the pool and surfaced not far away. A shake of his dark head sent glittering drops of water flying through the sunbeams.

  I slipped beneath the surface, and the chill enveloped me entirely. I stayed under as long as I could, watching the sunlight flicker across the rocky bottom, trying to regain equilibrium. Eventually my scalp ached with the cold and I had to breathe. I broke the surface with a gasp, sweeping hair and water from my eyes.

  Logan stood over me, his eyes as cool as the water. The light-reflections slipping across his face disguised any emotion. His mind was blank, our connection severed.

  ‘We should go soon,’ he said.

  11

  Did you hear her? She saw the sianfath. I’ve never heard of anyone who could.>

  What does it mean?

 

  Maybe another precog. She’s repressing that knowledge thoroughly. She’s afraid.

 

  …Herself. Who she might be. What’s buried in her mind. Schizophrenia?

 

  ‘But we only just got here,’ I protested, unwilling to return to the wound-tight, frightening world I inhabited. It seemed unreal and distant right now and I wanted to keep it that way.

  Logan checked his watch. ‘We were in thrall with the forest for almost four hours. Time passes quickly in the sianfath.’

  ‘Four hours!’ I stood up in the shallow water, only now noticing the length of shadows and quality of light. ‘Is that what it’s called, that glow; that feeling of…connection: the sianfath?’

  He nodded shortly. ‘Yes, it means something like…one-and-all. Bit hard to translate.’

  Overhead, the sun edged out from behind the trees, pouring heat and light that sparkled and glittered as it caught the drops of water floating in the air. I trailed my fingers across the water’s surface, still feeling the tantalising dregs of the connection to the great fig tree, clinging to a tiny bit of peace. I swished the water, watching the purple-white, glittering ripples, thinking and struggling to put those thoughts into words.

  ‘So...who am I? Why can I feel the forest? Why can I hear your thoughts? Who put these blocks in my mind and why?’

  ‘All good questions but it’s a long story and you’re getting cold,’ Logan replied. ‘Let’s get out. We’ll get lunch, a hot drink and talk.’

  A shiver sleeted across my skin and I waded out of the pool. As I grabbed my clothes, Logan reached towards my face, then hesitated and dropped both hands away, merely staring deep into my eyes.

  You’ll never lose this ability to hear me now. Does th
at bother you?

  Yes. No. I’m…not sure. Somehow it seems normal.

  That’s because it is normal, to our people.

  Who are “our people”?

  He turned his back. ‘Get your clothes on and I’ll get food then tell you what I can.’

  ‘Wait.’ I folded my arms.

  He turned back, brows lifted.

  ‘I’d like answers more than food or hot drinks. Start talking, Logan.’

  His eyes turned past me for a moment and he compressed his lips. With abrupt movements, he spun back and sat on one of the many large, black rocks lining the watercourse.

  Taking that as assent, I dressed and made myself comfortable with my back against the sun-warmed basalt.

  ‘So tell me who you are; what’s going on. Who these people are chasing me and why are they?’

  He stared off into the distance for a long, silent moment, then nodded.

  He talked and I listened.

  After a minute or so, I held up a palm, not sure if I was halting him or the disbelief welling up inside me. This was just ridiculous. What he described couldn’t possibly be true.

  ‘Hang on, hang on. This is madness. Homo sapiens silvis? Silvis must be Latin for what, forests? Intelligent Man of the Forests? Are you saying I belong to an entirely different species of human? That’s... ridiculous!’

  ‘Yes, I know it sounds impossible,’ he said, ‘but it’s true. You’ve heard or read the stories of the Faery folk; the Beautiful ones; the Shining ones; the Forest Folk. That’s us. We are the aes sidhe; the Elvenkind; the sidhe – whatever you want to call us.’

  ‘Elves?’ I laughed. ‘That’s just plain stupid. There is no such thing.’

  He shrugged, his ice-grey gaze slightly scornful. ‘I don’t much care if you believe it. It’s the truth. You’re a half-caste, and I’m three-quarter. Your father was a full-blood, as was my father. My mother, my Aunt Maeve’s half-sister, was half-caste. So technically, I believe, we’re a sub-species, since we can interbreed. We call ourselves Daoine sidhe.’ He smiled wryly. ‘Which just means “people”, so it’s nothing mystic.’

  ‘You’re serious?’ I stared at him in disbelief. ‘Frigging Elves?’

  He nodded. ‘We typically mature mentally much faster than humans, but physically slower. You probably remember most of your childhood very clearly and you would have been small until you hit about sixteen.’

  I nodded, mouth agape.

  He continued. ‘We live a lot longer, but our reproduction rate is much slower, so we’re dying out as a race. We’re an endangered species.’ His smile was bleak. ‘Unflattering though it is, the mating instinct is why you’re attracted to me so strongly. Your body knows who I am.’

  I started, my cheeks flushing, shaken by his casual reference to my reaction. On a purely academic level, it made a lot of sense, if what he said was true. It was just so damned hard to believe.

  ‘Both sexes,’ he continued calmly, ‘are faster and stronger than humans, although males more so than females. Both are gifted in learning languages and information of any sort. Both have telepathic abilities, but women often also have other abilities: precognition, telekinesis, that sort of thing.’

  I said nothing, unable to believe it, but unable to disbelieve it either. There was too much that rang true in too many ways for me to dismiss it as pure bullshit.

  ‘What you felt today,’ he added, indicating the lush vegetation around the pool, ‘our connection with the forests of this world is ancient and integral to who we are. That’s the other reason we’re dying. The forests are part of us and we of them: the sianfath. You’ve lived in cities all your life, but you don’t belong there.’ He fell silent, watching me as I stared at the rippling water at my feet.

  ‘OK. Let’s just suspend disbelief,’ I said, ‘and assume for a moment it’s all true. Why?’ I swatted a mosquito on my arm and considered the broken little body. I had extinguished a life, small though it was.

  I shuddered. ‘Why are people chasing me?

  ‘That,’ Logan replied, ‘is a more complicated story.’ He checked his watch. ‘If I promise to tell it will you let me get lunch first? I’m starving.’

  ‘Fine!’ I glared at him. ‘But you’d bloody well better come back or I will hunt you down.’

  His reply was just an ironic half-smile.

  ‘Wait,’ I repeated.

  He paused.

  ‘Will you tell me what the ocair is as well?’

  He stilled and his eyes slid from mine as he looked back at the house. I couldn’t see his face as he replied,

  ‘Like I said. I don’t know what else it is, so I can’t tell you. Sorry.’ He stalked away.

  That was a lie. Something in me knew it. But even a lie was a good thing, because it meant I was on the right track. I’d found someone with the information I needed, even if he didn’t trust me enough yet to share it.

  My irritation with him slid away as he vanished up the path. I didn’t need him to like me, just to tell me what the hell was going on. As soon as I had the information he kept dangling, and whatever he hid, I would go.

  Elves? My thoughts kept returning to that idea. Could it really be possible? In the midst of the powerful swell of life and peace in this little valley, it was easy to believe. But was that because I wanted to believe? After all, everyone wanted to think they were special. I didn’t. My differences had always been something terrifying; to be hidden. But if I wasn’t some freakishly-weird human…if I was really meant to be different, and to live with others like me. That made the world a far more interesting place.

  And more complicated. Which I didn’t need, right now.

  Could I believe him? Could I trust him when I’d vowed never to trust anyone other than Anna? Logan already knew far more about me than was safe.

  The best I could achieve, at the moment, was to suspend disbelief.

  Wanting to regain peace, I leaned back against the rock and soaked up the feeling of being free and relaxed for what felt like the first time ever. I closed my eyes and raised my face to the brilliant warmth. Red and orange lights danced on the inside of my eyelids. My lips curled in a languid, satisfied smile.

  After a few minutes, a cloud seemed to pass before the sun, even though it still shone brightly. The back of my skull ached with tension. Something dimmed my sense of freedom and I opened my eyes, searching for the cause. The creek hadn’t changed. The water still glittered, the trees still sighed gently in a light breeze, birds still flitted in and out of the sunlight; living jewels.

  So, what was wrong?

  Uneasiness seeped in, pinpricks under my skin, displacing calm. I sat up, brushing my hands together and pulling my feet out of the cold water. Instinctively, I gazed north, towards the path and the house, towards the source of my unease. What was it?

  I waited, still tense and uncertain what to do. Logan appeared on the path, sans food and drinks. Instead he carried two laden backpacks, one large and one smaller. He’d changed into different clothing and wore his leather jacket. I squinted up at him, shading my eyes from the afternoon sun, trying to pretend everything was normal.

  ‘Pretty crap service. Where’s....’ I stopped, recognising my own tension in him. I wasn’t imagining it. ‘What’s wrong?’ I flicked grit off my feet and shoved my sandals on.

  Logan checked the path. ‘They’ve found you. They’re almost here.’ He passed me the smaller backpack. ‘Your handbag’s in there, and a couple of changes of clothes. Maeve has everything from your car with her.’

  ‘What?’ My heart stuttered. ‘Who’s here? The men from last night? They couldn’t. I broke two of them at least.’ Sliding the pack over my shoulders, I scrambled to my feet.

  ‘More of the same. Hired to find you.’ He grabbed my wrist, pulling me not to the path but into the shallow water. We crossed to the other side, splashing awkwardly over the uneven bottom. ‘I should have drowned your phone last night. They must have tracked it when we turned it on this morning.�
��

  ‘But it was a burn phone. I’ve only had it three days. Who the hell can do that? Who hired them? Why do they want me?’ I tugged free and stopped. ‘I can’t keep running, Logan. If you don’t know what the ocair is then I need to confront these men and find out from them. I want them out of my life. If it’s all they want, then I’ll just give it to them.’

  He made a noise of exasperation. ‘You can’t be so naïve. They don’t just want that, whatever it is. They also want you – alive. Look.’ He glanced back up the path. ‘I promise I’ll explain but there are at least fifteen of them this time. We have to run. Pick your battles. This isn’t one you can win. Not against that many with guns.’

  Without waiting for my agreement, he spun on his heel and sprinted away.

  I swore. A loud, metallic squeal said the intruders had found the garden gate and trail to the valley. I wavered then followed Logan, struggling to keep up with his long-legged stride as he ran down a barely-visible path.

  ‘What about your aunt and cousin?’

  Glancing back, he put a finger to his lips and tapped his temple. Voices and sounds echo down here. Tread carefully. Maeve and Jen are well away. We’ll meet up with them later. Right now we need to get to the shed at the bottom of this hill.

  I couldn’t easily reply. Telepathy took concentration and I had to watch where I put my feet. I refused to be some damned ankle-twisting heroine. Sweat trickled down my back. I wasn’t as fit as I thought, apparently.

  Logan picked up the pace. He barely breathed hard as he leapt from boulder to boulder and wound silently through the trees. He seemed at home, never snapping a twig, never stumbling. There were times he almost vanished in the dappled green gloom.

  I was an elephant: all big feet and flapping appendages as I tried to balance on the slippery rocks. A branch broke under my flailing hand. A shout sounded from above, somewhere on the hillside. A face appeared between trees, on the path from the house.

  Logan swore aloud. Angry at myself for betraying our location, I snatched up a fist-sized rock. I stopped behind a tree, steadying myself. I drew my arm back and stepped out. Something struck the trunk next to my head, spraying slivers of timber.