by Brindi Quinn
I didn’t have a voice, but I had a will, a strong one, and if that will could speak it would have said: “I think not!”
“MerRIN?”
“Merrin?”
“MERRIn?”
From here on out, I acted on instinct. Intrinsically, I knew that the voices were asking me a question, as if offering me an opening to inject my opinion into theirs.
My will responded: “People may do bad things, but at their core they’re mostly good. And they certainly don’t deserve to be slaughtered.”
“Prove it.”
Prove it? How? The darkness was spiteful, malicious, so I thought that maybe the key was to fight back with the opposite. I defended with a shield of my fondest memories—Albie in a nurse’s bonnet bandaging my wrist the time I burned it. Beau surprising me at the Crag on my birthday. Windley sneaking drinks to me out on the forest balcony when I was still underage.
As I wrestled my will against the will of the darkness, the darkness undertook a dramatic shift in attitude, weakening in its rebellion. “They aren’t so bad… but some of them are.”
Shoot, I had faltered, thinking of Sestilia and her beaming smile. “Even the bad ones have merit… probably. No, they definitely all have merit.”
“They have merit. All but the spider queen.”
I struggled to win over the darkness in Sestilia’s defense. “Ugh. She too has merit, okay? I’m sure in some small way.”
“Even the bad ones have merit. Let the earthly creatures live? For now.”
The cloud of anger subsided as the hands began to slink away from my floating outline, returning to the darkness from which they were born.
“mErrin.”
“MerRIn…”
“Merrin!”
That last voice was real, crisp and near.
With a gasp, I shot my eyes open. Windley was bent over me, cupping my face, brow dipped in worry. “Merrin! Thank goddess. I swear I don’t know what I did!” He released my cheeks and examined his shaking hands in horror. “Somehow I did it without even knowing.”
“No.” I shook my head, groggy. “That wasn’t…” But my throat was thick with the taste of darkness. I tried to cough it out.
Though I had been out for several minutes, it seemed no time had passed for the others, for Albie and Rafe were still mid-run over to us despite being only a short distance away before the episode.
Albie slid to the ground and pushed Windley out of the way, which was easy to do with the Spirite lamenting over the powers he thought he had unintentionally unleashed.
“My Queen!” He cradled me to his weathered chest. “Are you all right?”
I wasn’t sure.
The darkness was gone from me, and the forest was the same as before, but I was different. I knew it the moment I opened my eyes back into the real world. I could hear a faint ringing in my ears, easy to tune out but there, nonetheless. I knew what it was because Beau had tried so many times to describe it to me.
The echoes. I could hear them.
I probably should have confided it right there, but I worried that Albie would demand we turn back home when he found out. And I worried Rafe would fear the worst for Beau.
Those thoughts were certainly going through my head too. Communion with the forest was Beau’s task and Beau’s alone. It was a power handed down through her bloodline, as far back as recorded history. So why could I hear them? I wasn’t a royal of the Clearing. And what did it mean for Beau?
One sad image paraded through my head: Beau’s perfect body, limp and devoid of the echoes that had been ripped from her. No! She had lost her echoes before being taken. There was comfort in that, at least. My finding them should have no bearing on her.
I was speculating.
I hugged my arms around myself, tucked under my cloak. Had I really just convinced the forest not to kill everyone? And which forest? Beau exchanged echoes with the Scarlet Wood. Had I exchanged with the Emerald Wood? Or was that even a forest? It felt like something else. Something ill. As Beau had described it, nature had no fondness for humanity unless convinced otherwise.
Was that darkness nature itself? Did we really even know?
In the absence of understanding, people create stories. To cope with fear.
I had to do something about Windley. He was over yonder, freaking out because he thought he had done that to me. And I also had to do something about Albie because I had never seen his wrinkles so deep. Was this very moment branding him with a new one, I wondered.
“It seems I forgot to drink water,” I lied, yet clearing my throat of darkness.
Rafe hurried to fetch a canteen from his pack. “Please be more careful, Your Majesty,” he said as he handed it to me.
Albie, not satisfied with the excuse, fawned over me for the next several minutes in search of another ailment. “This is a longer journey than you’ve ever taken, My Queen. We should stop here for today.”
“I promise I’m fine, Albie. I’m not delicate. I have as much stamina as him, at least,” I kidded toward Windley. “And we really can’t waste time.” I put a hand to his chest. “This is my command, my knight.”
Albie sighed through his teeth before agreeing.
“See?” I hopped to my feet with extra pep. “I feel great.” Though those distant echoes in my ears were unnerving.
Albie stuck close to me after that, which wasn’t ideal because it meant I couldn’t tell Windley that he wasn’t the one responsible for my blackout.
He kept to the back of the group—a scorned hound.
I kept waiting for my chance to sneak away until, at long last, we ventured to a spring running between the trees, where we stopped to fill our canteens with clear trickling water. The bed of it was dotted in glowing pebbles. I picked one up. Removing the stone from the water dulled its glow, so I returned it to where it belonged, and the luminosity restored. I hopped over the slim trail of water and made my way to Windley who sat sulking next to a bout of ferns.
“You should stay away,” he said when he saw me approaching. “I clearly have no self-control when it comes to you.”
“Shh.” I grabbed his wrist and was received with alarm. “Over here.” While Rafe filled the canteens and Albie mulled over his map, I led Windley out of earshot and pretended I was showing him a turtle with a glowing shell.
He whipped his hand from mine. “Did you not hear me?”
I rolled my eyes. “Knock it off, dramatic.”
“How can you say that?” he said. “I told you I would never harm you and then within the minute, I did!”
It wasn’t like him to be spastic. And I was really surprised he wasn’t taking the ‘I made you swoon’ route. That proved just how distressed he was.
“Windley. Look into my eyes.” I redirected him. “That wasn’t you, okay? And I need to tell you something, but you have to promise me that you won’t freak out and that you won’t tell the others. I don’t trust their reaction.”
He folded his arms, foul-tempered. “If this is an attempt to make me feel better—”
“I can hear the echoes.”
Windley’s face fell. “Come again?”
“Beau’s echoes. I can hear them.”
Windley let out a laugh from the back of his throat. “That’s what you came up with?”
“Windley!” I scolded. “I’m not kidding. And I’m… anxious. So shut up and listen.”
His mouth softened. “You’re being serious, Queen Merrin?”
“Something happened to me back there, and now I can hear them.”
“What do they sound like?” he asked, lowering himself to meet my gaze.
“It’s too hard to describe. Try imagining a—”
“Color I’ve never seen before,” he cut me off, fanning: “Yada yada.”
“Then why did you ask?” I said through clenched teeth.
Windley’s face showed amusement before it contorted into confusion. “You’re sure?”
“As sure as I am of my own
name,” I said. “It’s bizarre, though. I had an episode when I passed out. It felt a lot longer to me than it actually was, and during that time I kind of convinced the forest not to slaughter everyone, though it was reeeally hard not to let it kill off Sestilia.”
Windley looked at me like I was daft. “This forest?” He tapped his boot against the bark of one of the mammoth trees.
“To be honest, I’m not sure if it even was a forest. It was darkness. It wanted to destroy everyone, and I had to talk it down.” I rubbed my face with both hands. “I know it sounds crazy, okay?”
Was I rambling? It felt like I was rambling. Windley searched my eyes until satisfied that I was telling the truth. His tone mellowed: “What does that mean for Queen Beau? Does that mean she’s…” He sought solace in the vibrant shelled turtle that was crawling ever slowly away from us.
I took a deep breath. I doubted there would be a more fitting time to tell him the truth.
“That’s the other thing,” I said. “A couple of weeks before Beau went missing, she… may have admitted to me that she could no longer hear them.”
Windley blinked at me thrice. “And you only thought to mention so now!?”
Yes, that part was hard to defend. “I didn’t want to betray her! It weighed heavily upon me. I think Rafe already knows. He means to tell me to tonight.”
“Good lord, lion queen.” Windley folded his arms with a heave of his chest. “What a mess. And here I thought I had simply made you swoon.”
There it was.
Chapter 14
Lustful
Windley’s eyes seared through the fire with intention. I had ordered him not to tell Albie about the echoes, for I knew Albie would make us abandon our quest the moment he found out. I was still on the fence about telling Rafe, though. First, I needed to find out what he knew, and in order to do that, I had to get him alone.
I bade my time, slowly grazing on the roast fish Rafe had prepared. The knave himself had finished his meal long ago and was arching his neck to inspect those bits of night sky persistent enough to show through the forest canopy.
“Something wrong, my boy?” Albie asked.
“Luna,” Rafe murmured. “She’s hard to see in here.”
“Aye, but Delagos said this wood is mostly peaceful,” Albie reassured. “You shouldn’t need another charge until we’re out in the open.”
“Only mostly peaceful?” I said, glancing over my shoulder to where the stags were resting.
“Are you afraid?” The fire’s light teased across Windley’s face. “It’s unlike you to be afraid, lion queen.”
Actually, I was afraid, but not of anything that could be fended off by Rafe’s enchanted steel or Windley’s spinning hatchets.
It was that mass of hands writhing from the darkness that had me on edge. How did Beau always act so calm and refined, knowing it was out there in the unseen world, lurking at the edges of perception?
I had never seen my sister queen succumb the way I had. She was deliberate in her meetings with the forest, often donning a dress of scarlet to match the wood. To my knowledge, nature had never forced itself upon her like it had me. Maybe because I was unpracticed? I wasn’t sure how to prepare for the next onslaught.
Meanwhile, Windley had been staring at me as though he meant to leap through the flames to catch me should I faint again.
“Speaking of the moon.” Albie searched the sky. “It’ll be at peak soon. We should turn in, My Queen. Easy to lose track of time out here.”
I bade the others a faux goodnight and followed Albie into the tent. The moment the first snore escaped him, though, I was darting out of bed, like so many times I had snuck out on him as a child to roam the castle. Castles were always more enchanting at night.
“Miss us already?” Windley purred. “I do understand why. Have you seen the pair of us?”
“Windley, stay here. Rafe, come with me.”
Windley appeared sour that I had denied his request to flirt, so I gave him a pandering wave over my shoulder as I toted Rafe away.
“Your Majesty?” Rafe’s discomfort was obvious.
“I need to know what Beau said to you before she disappeared. You indicated earlier that there was something—” But I couldn’t finish.
Apparently, castles weren’t the only thing more enchanting at night.
We hadn’t been able to see it under the influence of the fire’s light, but the wood was not as it once was; and the farther we roamed from camp, the further the forest revealed itself to us.
“Rafe, what is this?” I released his arm, struck with awe.
Being awestruck for real is a rare thing. It’s expecting nothing and receiving everything. Those moments stay with you.
“Old magic,” he said. “It’s in the soil.”
In the deep of night, the effulgence of the forest had heightened, giving way to another world; an alien world, one of vibrant colors and flares of distant light. The toadstools dotting the moss glowed iridescently. The spores of the ground ferns lit their leaves from below with stalks pulsing, dim and then bright. Throughout the trunks, small, willowy particles dotted the air as shimmers of light.
The allure of nocturnal magic encompassed us.
And there was something else.
With each step we took, the ground left a glowing trail of footprints after us. These imprinted in the moss only a few seconds before swallowing into the night.
“Rafe, our footprints are glowing!” I stopped to press my foot deeply into the lush ground. Retracting it created a brilliant stamp that stayed only a few seconds before disappearing.
“Only yours, Your Majesty.” Rafe took a step to demonstrate. He was right. Only my prints lingered. “It must be your royal blood.”
That or the fact that I could suddenly hear the forest’s vehement resonance. But I wasn’t ready to admit that to him yet.
And he was in no position to hear it.
With a loud grunt, like one who had just been belted, the magician suddenly grabbed his chest and winced.
“Rafe?” His face was contorted, but I didn’t grasp how severe it was until he doubled over. “Rafe! What is it?” Ready to defend, I searched the surrounding area for an enemy but saw only a many-legged insect scuttle over one of my disappearing footprints.
“Nothing,” he huffed, hand still to his heart.
It wasn’t nothing. I had seen him rubbing his chest earlier, too. “Tell me, Rafe. Is it heartache? Are you sick with worry over Beau?
He shook his head. “It’s not worthy of your concern.” But he could barely get the words out when he let out another grimace, this time dropping to his knee as he clutched the front of his shirt.
I put hands on him to steady him. “As your queen I command you to tell me what’s ailing you, Rafe!”
“My chest,” he said through wince. “It tightens from time to time. I don’t know the cause. It will subside soon.”
He didn’t realize it, but his fingers were drilling into my thigh. They were colder than the northern snow. Cold extremities and a tight chest? What might that be? There were several possibilities—heart fever, devil’s croup, winter sickness—but each was easily diagnosed and curable with medicines brewed right in our own queendom.
“In the last three years, I’ve never seen you endure anything like this.” I said. “Why now?”
It took him several more huffs through his teeth before he was able to manage a single word: “Beau.”
Beau brought it on?
He concentrated on taking short, even breaths until regaining control enough to continue: “She isn’t the cause; she’s the cure. I’ve had this condition for years. Until recently, Queen Beau kept it at away using the heat from her body.”
Her body’s heat? That was maybe the last thing I expected to hear. There were many parts of the body that emitted heat. This conversation could turn awkward depending on the delivery method.
I should have known. They were lovers, after all.
> With my imagination running rampant, I waited for Rafe to finish stabilizing, for his panting to slow, and for his grip on my leg to loosen. When it seemed that he could sit on his own without teetering, I asked him to elaborate.
He gave a sigh, eyes unenthused as they had ever been—because last night’s display of emotion was a one-time thing, apparently. “It’s not what you’re thinking,” he said. “It’s her hands. When she places her hand on my chest, it gives off heat that delays the episodes. That’s…” His amber gaze darted to a cluster of luminated mushrooms a short distance away. “How we first came together.”
So there was a spark of emotion left in him after all, albeit an embarrassed one.
I could picture it. Beau happening upon the handsome magician ailing, likely during one of our excursions to the forest fortress. Beau staring deeply into him, concern in her doe-ish eyes. Beau placing her dainty fingers against his toned chest, and the pair of them falling slowly into forbidden love as she healed him.
But with what power? That of the oracle? Her royal blood? True love?
“But something changed recently,” Rafe continued. “And she was no longer able to do it.”
“You mean that although she placed her hand to your chest, nothing happened? When did that start?”
“The last time we visited the treetop bastion,” he said. “After you and I spoke in the belvedere, I…” He forced himself to finish: “Went to her room.”
But I had been sleeping in bed with her that night!
His adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “I’m sorry, Your Majesty. This is difficult for me to admit. I know it’s dishonorable.”
“Proceed.”
“I felt an episode coming on, so I went to her. You were sleeping, and she was upset, though she wouldn’t tell me why.” He rubbed his chest. “When she tried to heal me, it didn’t work. That only made her more upset. The episodes have been getting worse ever since.”
Ever since Beau lost her echoes.
“Did Beau share any theories as to why she could no longer heal you?” I probed.
“No, but it caused her grief up until…”
She was taken. He couldn’t bring himself to finish.