Weald Fae 03 - The Aetherfae

by Christopher Shields

  She pointed to a flat screen over the bar. Images flashed across it, but the sound was down. All three of us moved closer for a better view. It was a report of Miami being inundated by a wall of water three hundred feet tall. They replayed the scenes over and over. My hands flew to my mouth, muffling the scream that tore out of my chest. I recognized nearly every place they showed disappearing below the gray monster.

  Candace choked on a sob. “Maggie, I’m so sorry.”

  Ronnie grabbed me around the waist just as my legs gave up. Everything I’d known was being destroyed and played around the world for the morbid curiosity of others. I tore my eyes away from the screen only to see everyone in the bar staring at me as I sobbed and tried to wipe the tears and snot off my face. A small, elderly man with thin white hair stared at me. Tears rolled out of his big brown eyes and down the crags of his weathered face. I reached out for him and begged for help. A sob rumbled through his chest and he diverted his eyes.

  “Shhhhh, shhhh,” Ronnie said with his chin on top of my head.

  I managed to spit out, “What happened?”

  Ronnie whispered in my ear, “A volcano called Cumbre Viejo in the Canary Islands erupted eleven hours ago—half the mountain slipped into the sea. They said Miami had nine hours to evacuate. Maybe your friends and family got out.”

  It was a nice thought, but I knew better.

  TWENTY-SIX

  RAGE

  The wave swept inland for miles up and down the eastern seaboard of America, inundating islands in the Caribbean, smashing the ports of southern England, and wreaking havoc along the west coast of Europe. My mind focused on one thing: revenge. Images of Ozara’s face, surrounded by a halo of fiery red hair, taunted me. She laughed at my agony. I tried to concentrate on Gavin, but all I could think about was what Ozara had done to all those people—my friends, my family. Her leering face, wretched smile, and a look of satisfaction all popped back into my mind’s eye.

  After a few minutes, customers in the restaurant ran for cover, frantically yelling a message I didn’t understand. I vaguely remember smoke and heat, and Ronnie dragging me across the restaurant. To my left, a plastic tablecloth darkened, curled, and began to smoke. To my right, napkins burst into flames. It was hot outside, too.

  “Maggie calm down, you’re hurting people,” Candace warned me.

  She was right. Like the night Gavin disappeared and I set fire to the rain, I was out of control and tapped into my connection with the elements. A strong gust stood me up straight and pressed us all backwards. Light bulbs brightened and exploded. Amid the sounds of metal crashing to pavement, paper and leaves blew along the street in flurries. Stop it, idiot, you’re going to hurt someone. I fought to control my emotions, focusing on nothing but the frightened looks on their faces. Calm returned to the little street and we bolted to the car.

  Maintaining control was a struggle, and I fought to keep it for an hour but I was beginning to lose the battle. The German countryside rushing past the windows made my stomach knot, so I closed my eyes and curled up in the backseat. The musty, sour smell of the old carpet and leather made matters worse. To eliminate the smell, I lowered the windows. The warm August air rushed in, whipping my hair and pressing annoyingly on my skin. Everything grated on my nerves. Pulling a jacket over my face stopped the rush of color and light, and blocked the buffeting air. In the darkness, Ozara’s smile taunted me again. Find her, I said to myself. But it was no use. I was too angry to project.

  “Ronnie, pull over. Please.”

  He slowed the car and pulled down a narrow lane. We were surrounded by flat farmland. I threw the door open and bolted down the road. It felt good to walk, better to run, but I couldn’t get Ozara’s face out of my mind. I saw a small grove of old trees a quarter mile ahead, standing like a beacon in the expansive golden fields. I ran to it as fast as I could.

  The clattering sound of the diesel engine gradually disappeared behind me, until I could only hear the rhythmic pad of each shoe making contact with pavement, my heart pushing blood through in my ears, and each breath I fought for. The air was hot, making it difficult to breathe, but I felt better with each chest full. Sweating and huffing, I reached the edge of woods where I slowed and stared back down the road. Candace and Ronnie stood watching beside the gray car. To the west, the sun hung low over the horizon. Casting everything in an orange glow, it pushed shadows from the trees across the road. I jumped the ditch and scrambled into the cool shade of the grove. Two stone plinths of an old gate stood in the underbrush. They waited in the shadows like long forgotten sentinels guarding a sacred place.

  Their rough stone surfaces sent a chill down my spine as cool energy tingled against my palms. I tapped into it, letting it calm my body. At that moment, the irritating images of Ozara melted away until there was nothing in the world except the trees, the gate, and me. A tantalizing thought occurred to me: if I walked through the gate, maybe I would be transported to a safe place where nothing could get to me. It was pure fantasy, but I decided to make believe.

  Pulling energy from the air, the soil beneath my feet, and the trees, I stepped into my sanctuary. A few hundred feet inside, about the middle of the grove, I found a place where I couldn’t see past the oaks, maples and birches. An overgrown stone chimney occupied a small opening. Surrounded by small saplings vying for a ray of sunlight, the structure was the lone remnant of the home that had long ago rotted into the black soil. I sat with my back against it and tried to sort my thoughts.

  The light of the day slowly passed, and the tiny wooded haven gradually darkened. For a long time, I thought about Dad, Aunt May, and Rachel. I imagined them sitting with me, and I pretended we were in the Weald. No Fae, just the four of us. I saw them when I closed my eyes—Aunt May’s crooked smile, Rachel twirling her hair and trying not to grin, and Dad’s green eyes and dimples. I was home for a moment. We all were. I promised them I’d do my best for those still living and I asked them to forgive me if I failed. In the oddest sensation, like my subconscious was determined to give me what I needed, each said one-by-one that my best was all they could ask for.

  In the waning moments of dusk, I focused on Ozara. I imagined her standing in front of me, and I let my mind focus on all the people who’d died at her hands. Feelings of homicidal anger returned. With shaking hands, I wiped the tears from my face and tried to connect with the pure essence of each element. I knew I had to learn to control my anger, or I’d get myself killed. Ozara’s face became my kryptonite—I couldn’t maintain control. Her face forced me to imagine what the people in Memphis went through the moment the ground started shaking, and the people in Miami when the mountain of water ripped homes and families apart. Without even knowing it, Ozara had gotten in my head and rendered me useless. As mad as that made me, I grew even angrier with myself.

  “Concentrate, you dolt. You need to learn Aether.” It was the most important thing in the world at that moment—Aether.

  It didn’t matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t maintain the essence of Air, let alone manage the other three. My heart beat hard against my lungs and tears welled in my eyes. Then my subconscious gave me what I needed. In my mind’s eye, Ozara leered at me. You will fail, she said.

  “Shut up!” I screamed at the imaginary voice. That’s not Ozara, idiot, it’s you.

  When the night grew quiet again, I realized I was simply putting Ozara’s face on my own doubts. Get control, or everyone dies.

  I was used to stifling doubts. When I swam I always relied on my warm-up ritual. Before each race, when my nerves were at full tilt, I did exactly the same thing—each time, the same movements in the same order. It didn’t matter who I raced, or where I raced, I could always find the zone. With nothing to lose, I stood and went through the process, imagining the sound of the pool and the reflection of the water. Ozara’s face was still there, taunting me, but I was in control as I sat back down.

  The silvery green essence of Air formed three feet in front of me. To the
left of it, the blue essence of Water. I created the golden energy of Earth to the right, and finally just at the toes of my Nikes, the glowing red energy of Fire. There were a few things I already knew: combining them at one time created white light, and it did nothing. I also knew that mixing Air and Water created Clóca, which reflected Quint, the combination of Earth and Fire, so I tried something different.

  Mixing the energies of Water and Fire did nothing but discharge static. You’ve tried that before, stupid. Mixing Water and Earth created a pale amber-yellow energy. I’d seen it before, back in the hotel before I rescued Mitch a year ago, but at the time I couldn’t get it to do anything except glow. Experimenting again, it didn’t appear to cut or burn when I directed it toward a random branch. No matter how hard I concentrated, the limb didn’t change color or even move. Surely this has a purpose? Maybe it reacts with another substance.

  On a whim, I created Clóca and hid the limb. To my amazement, the amber-yellow energy cut right through it. Mere contact dissipated Clóca like flames on a sheet of plastic film. It was exhilarating and terrifying at the same time—I could expose Ozara, or anyone else using Clóca, but just as easily be exposed. How can the Fae not know about this…stuff?

  There were a few possibilities. They might have assumed, like I had until a few seconds earlier, that it was useless. Of course, a few might have known what it did and I just hadn’t encountered them yet. One thing seemed almost certain: neither Ozara nor Dersha knew about the substance, otherwise they would have found me in Veluwezoom. It was useless against Quint. I decided to call it Amber—a simplistic but descriptive name.

  Combining Fire and Air, I realized Gavin was more powerful than I’d given him credit for. The substances mixed to produce the molten material I’d seen him generate at the Seoladán when he attacked Chalen. It felt hot on my face, and lit up the trees and canopy above me. It incinerated the branch to ash on contact, and I found myself wishing Gavin had bathed Chalen in it. Other than Ozara, there were few Fae I wanted to remove from existence more than Chalen. Focus. This is useless against Aether.

  “That’s true, Ozara rendered Gavin powerless. Okay, think…the journal page. Where is the clue.” I went back over everything I could remember, like patterns from the garden. “Wait. Could the planting patterns be a clue?”

  I knew every plant in the garden, and there was nothing about it that resembled a pattern. There was order to it, of course, but there had been hundreds of different species of flowers and plants. I thought maybe four of them were the secret, one representing each element, but nothing stood out.

  What about the tea set?

  “Oh, my gosh…” The words escaped from my lips when I recalled the floral pattern around the edge of the cups and saucers.

  “Of course. Lola got the set as a gift from Willard, and he was the Steward before Lola. Could he have hidden the secret right there in plain sight?”

  I laughed when I thought about the simplicity of it. If the tea set was the key, then it means Pete passed the secret to Catherine, the second Steward, and she passed it on to Willard. Was it possible that all of my ancestors were in the business of keeping the secret to Aether alive? I felt a sense of connection with each of the Stewards, and a bit of pride. If I was right, generations of my family had outsmarted the Fae. Concentrate.

  While I drank from the set a hundred times, the most powerful memory of the pattern was of the saucer in Chalen’s hand at the Water trial. Five vines wove around each other, coming together at each tiny flower. It repeated around the rim in a ring—no beginning, no end. I ran the image through my head again. “No, four vines wrapped around a fifth—that’s the pattern. Five vines and four elements…crap. What is the fifth? Aether? Does it form when I make the pattern?

  My heart raced, and for the first time I felt like I was on the verge of success. I pulled the four elements into thin strands and tried to replicate the pattern. The energy cast tendrils from strand to strand, connecting to each other, but as when they made contact before, the result was white energy. I tried to pull the energy back into the separate elements, but it didn’t work. Once they combined, they stayed that way.

  “Okay, what am I missing?”

  From behind me, I heard Candace’s voice. “Mags, you all right?”

  She and Ronnie had stopped about twenty feet away, barely visible in the darkness.

  “Yeah, I’m a lot better now.”

  “It got dark, so we thought we’d come check on you,” he said.

  I stood and dusted my butt off. “I’m sorry. I just needed some air…some alone time.”

  “We’re sorry about Miami.“

  “Really sorry,” Ronnie added.

  Change the subject. “I’m okay now…and starving.”

  The last thing I wanted to do was think about what had happened to all of those people—what I was unable to prevent.

  Ronnie caught the hint. “Yeah, we are too—we were actually going to suggest making food a top priority.”

  “That sounds great to me. Lead the way.” I said.

  Candace cleared her throat. Even though the veil of night had obscured her expression, I knew she was giving me the look—lips pursed and pulled to the right side of her face, eyebrows arched.

  “What?”

  “I can’t see my hand in front of my face—a little light maybe?”

  “And how did you find me?”

  “The glowing lights from the middle of the trees…and a lot of falling down. Well, Candace fell…”

  “Because you were too afraid to lead the way, Ronald.”

  “When you’re as pretty as I am, you let others risk running face-first into trees.”

  The sound of a hand meeting flesh echoed in the darkness, followed quickly by a loud “Ow” from Ronnie, and his accompanying laughter. It made me feel a little better.

  “Light, you say? I have just the thing.” Combing the raw elements lit the trees and the ground around us.

  “Better, but eerie,” Candace said as we began walking out. “I feel like I’m wondering through the woods with a Tolkien elf.”

  In a seductive, metered voice, Ronnie quipped, “I give you the light of Earendil, our most beloved star.”

  All three of us laughed and wound our way back to the stone plinths near the road. Candace and Ronnie passed through them, but I lingered inside the threshold for just a moment. Covered in lichen and uneven, they really had served as a gateway of sorts. Inside them I’d discovered at least part of the secret I needed to create Aether, and I figured out that my ancestors had probably hidden the rest of it. It would be only a matter of time before I figured it all out. I was still furious and dead set on revenge, but I’d shed the feeling of despair and buried it in that little grove of trees.

  “You ready, Mags?”

  “Yes, Ronnie, I’m ready.”

  * * *

  After gorging on packaged donuts and soda, Ronnie snored in the backseat. We had all been awake for nearly two days, but he’d been driving so I volunteered to take over for a few hours. Staying awake wasn’t easy. With another hour until we would reach Berlin, I fought to keep my eyes open.

  “You were trying to create Aether, weren’t you?” Candace asked.

  “Still awake?”

  “Yes. Answer the question.”

  I chuckled. “Yes. I think I know part of the secret, anyway.”

  I explained what I thought the pattern meant.

  She sat up straight and turned the AC on full blast. “There, that should help. I remember the tea set, but I don’t remember the pattern…are you sure there were five vines?”

  The cold air was already having the desired effect. “Yes, I’m positive.”

  “I don’t get five elements.”

  “I don’t either, not yet. I thought maybe if I combined the cardinal elements correctly, they would create Aether—like it was the vine that ran straight through the middle of the rest.”

  “What do you think the flowers meant?”


  I wrung the steering wheel in my hands. “Honestly, I have no idea. I kinda hoped they were just decoration, you know—hiding the real clue.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her nodding. “Do you remember them—enough to describe them to me?”

  “They were just small, generic flowers…one at each place the vines intersected.”

  She paused for a few seconds. “They might be symbolic of Aether, or life in general, but you’re right, they might just be decoration. Gosh, I wish we had just one cup.”

  “I’ll draw the design when we stop, if you think that will help.”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “It might.”

  I ran the pattern through my head again, visualizing each little part. I’d never studied it very hard. I knew there were four vines that wrapped around a fifth, but Candace was right. The flowers could have represented something that I was overlooking.

  “You may not want to talk about it, but have you thought about how the Rogues found us?” she asked.

  “I have,” I said.

  She was right. I didn’t want to talk about it. It had bothered me a lot—that the Rogues seemed to know where we were as soon as we got to France. I chalked it up to a Sidhe spotting us as we fled Ireland and telling Dersha. My heart sank when I realized they were expecting us to seek out the Kabouter. Only five beings in the world knew our plan, and two of them were with me in the car. Gavin was the fourth, and there was no way he would have told the Rogues. That left Sara, who had suggested seeking out the Kabouter in the first place.

  Candace wasn’t satisfied leaving anything unspoken. “You don’t really think it was Sara, do you?”

  I didn’t answer. One way or another, Sara had told someone—either another Sidhe or one of the Rogues. And either way, she’d betrayed me. My gut said differently, but the facts seemed incontrovertible.

  “Maggie?”

  I snapped my head back up and pulled the car back onto the pavement. “Yes?”

  “Why don’t you let me drive…you need sleep.”

  “I think that’s a great idea.”