"This rescue-mission will continue until she's home and her kidnapper is brought to justice."
Orin scoffed with disgust. "He thinks I kidnapped you? I'm not a darkling!"
"He doesn't know I'm a changeling, remember?"
"Oh." Orin smiled, his cheeks reddening. "Right."
A reporter chirped off camera: "Do you think this was done deliberately because of your candidacy for Sheriff?"
A shadow passed over Sam's face; the corner of his lip twitched. He stood before an orange brick wall, but he belonged in a dusty drinking town, boot spurs jingling as he clomped through batwing doors. "That is one theory, yes," Sam said. "And God help any abductor once I am elected."
So that was Sam's purpose—using his revenge on me to strengthen his political campaign. I scowled and briefly forgot about Delano. A new darkness had entered the motel room. Sam lacked magic, yet the power he wielded made me grow cold. Running away had humiliated him and endangered his campaign, and for retribution he would trap me, skin me alive, gut me of everything I loved and wanted and seize what he thought I owed. He believed I belonged under his thumb, serving him. I remembered what he had told me in his mother's guest room, the meaning of his words now clear: No one takes my girl. The tears in my eyes felt as if they'd steam from the anger burning inside me. Confessing why I had fled was pointless; Sam would twist the story and convince his law-enforcement brethren I was brainwashed. He would lie unscrupulously to maintain his new use for me, his publicity stunt. An invisible noose squeezed my throat, for in the darkest most hidden chambers of my heart, I realized my husband preferred I suffer, scared and alone and without any answers, than leave without his permission.
Cheater, cheater, freedom eater. Had a wife and swore to beat her.
Sam's face scrunched up as if he would cry, but no tears were in his eyes, only tumbleweeds and six-shooters and aces under the table. His grimace was pure barbed-wire. I wiped my brow on my sleeve. My husband doesn't want to rescue me, I realized. He wants a lynching.
My mother clucked her tongue inside my head. You should have listened to me. I told you to be a good wife, but what do I know? Now your new friend will suffer for your misbehavior. And it's all. Your. Fault.
The curtains were open an inch, casting a beam of early light onto the table. I jumped up like a fugitive to close them. The waves I had caused in my marriage had formed a riptide; the thick curtains bunched in my fists as if capable of saving me from being dragged out to sea.
"That was Deputy Samuel Thatcher yesterday afternoon, regarding the abduction of his wife, Miriam," a newscaster said, off-camera. A photo of my face from his birthday party last year flashed on screen. "The man who gave Miriam and her alleged kidnapper a ride to the Stop-and-Travel on the morning of December twenty-ninth reports that the alleged kidnapper is male, in his mid to late twenties—" Orin snorted at this "—light complexion, about five-ten, blond, blue-eyed, wearing tattered blue jeans, a fedora, and a brown jacket. They are believed to be heading west across the United States to California. If you have any information, please call—" Orin clicked off the television as a black widow scurried across the screen.
I flopped down onto the bed and pressed my forehead against my knees. "I hate him," I said, my thighs muffling my voice. "I don't want to go back."
"You won't."
I peered up at Orin. "But the media is sensationalizing this—this—lie! Soon everyone will know my face."
"We are hundreds of miles away from where they traced the phone call," Orin said. "That gives us time."
"But how much time? They know we're heading to California. It's a simple jump to pinpoint our destination."
Orin pinched his underlip in thought. After a moment his eyes brightened and he beamed with a toothy grin. "We'll head north!"
"Isn't everything we need west?"
"Yes!" Orin said. "So north is perfect. No one will suspect it."
"And then what? Hide out in an igloo until this blows over?"
"No, silly. We will still reach California. We'll just detour onto the ley line."
"What's the ley line?"
"It is an energy system network that crisscrosses the Earth. If we hop on at an entrance node, it will transport us along the stream. There is an exit near the Realm passage in the Sierra Nevada, but the nearest entrance for that stream is in North Dakota. Sam will never suspect it. And since the ley line is guarded and sustained with light, it will be nearly impossible for Delano to follow." Orin gnawed his underlip. "If we can't hitch to the entrance, however—or if the sentries won't let us in—it'll add several days to our journey." Orin glanced at the black widow on top of the television, as slick as a drop of oil. I thought I saw fear flash across his face. "The gamble is worth it." Orin fidgeted nervously with his sleeve's cuff, and I worried about what the black widow said.
"Is everything okay?" I asked.
Orin lifted his chin. "Of course." The cloud passed and his face gleamed with sunshine and nectar and warm golden shores. He fetched the take-out bag from the floor and set the contents on the table. "Eat," he said. "We will need our strength."
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The low hills on the horizon resembled two sleeping swans with their heads tucked behind their wings. Rounded. White. Seemingly impossible to reach. A gray, hazy sky squatted on their backs as if the sun had woken to this frozen landscape and decided: Ugh. Sooo not dealing with this crap today. Then pulled a blanket of clouds over its head and called in sick.
I stuck close to Orin's side to draw warmth off his faerie-fever. Our elbows were hooked, my raw nose tucked behind my coat's collar, my olive hat pulled down low. We slogged along a slushy tire-trail on a backcountry highway. Black cows gawked at us from snow filled pastures. The bare trees in the distance stood like busted capillaries against the leaden sky.
"Have you ever been on the ley line?" I asked.
"I have, but not on Earth's," Orin said. "All ley lines in the Realm are free and open for travel. Our leaders feel it encourages unity and reminds us we are all a part of something bigger than ourselves." A penny glinted in the melting slush. Orin picked it up, wiped it on his jeans, and placed it in his jacket pocket. "I pity humans and their costly inconvenient means of travel," Orin continued. "It's no wonder segregation is rampant here. I mean, how can humans connect when they are kept apart? They are left to gossip about customs they have never participated in, and despise races with whom they have never broke bread."
"Why don't faeries stop guarding Earth's entrances, then?" I asked. "If we—er, humans—had access, wouldn't it create a better understanding of humankind?"
"Years ago we opened Earth's lines to humans. Unfortunately, governments hid them from the common man. Militaries abused the systems, spying on governments unaware of the streams. Whispers of psychics and remote-viewers murmured within the ranks. Paranoia led to silent wars. Given the opportunity for unity, humans chose domination and control, so the Realm locked down Earth's systems again." Orin shook his head. "Pathetic, really."
Orin squeezed my elbow with his, his eyes sparkling like two pools of topaz water. "You are so fortunate, Miriam. Soon you will have access to a whole world. My favorite place is Griel. Whenever I have time off I always—"
Orin spent the next thirty minutes telling me personal stories about life in the Realm. A life I had been forced to trade for a father who had deserted his bastard daughter in a trailer park with a mother who refused to hug. I should have been greedy for any scrap of information about this new life I headed toward. I should have asked a thousand questions which glittered and shined like the man at my side. But my mind kept drifting back to Delano, his remarks about questions, and his tortured smile when I had asked if he would burst into flames.
"—absolutely perfect! Like gigantic, sparkling diamonds with—," Orin was saying, his free hand gesturing to emphasize the greatness of his descriptions about the valley of Sulare. His eyes were wide and distant, glimmering with memories.
I glowered. Delano had acted as if he wasn't the bad guy. But that was stupid. Orin was pure honey and sunshine and warm summer shores. He had shared his jacket, washed my clothes, hugged away my sorrow. Delano was cold and hollow and as dark as murder. I kicked a clump of slush. Delano had obviously been manipulating me. Trying to make me doubt—
"Are you okay?"
"Sorry?"
"You seem upset." Orin frowned. A flock of Canada geese honked in a V overhead. "Was it something I said?"
"No. I was, um, thinking about your tattoo. I thought faeries had real wings and could fly. Guess that is a lie from the taletellers. I'm a little bummed, is all."
"Oh, but we can fly," Orin said. "Er, well, sort of. Our tattoos symbolize that." He unhooked his elbow around mine, scanning the empty roadway. Nothing surrounded us but the cows and the frozen horizon. "Follow me."
We slipped through the barbed wire fence and into the pasture. The cows lifted their heads from the dead weeds poking out of the snow, gaping as if a traveling circus had rolled into their sleepy town. One gave a low, drawn-out meeeeeew.
Orin pressed his fedora down on his head, then dashed off. The cows jumped and trotted back as he sped through the field. I had just enough time to wonder if I should follow him when his feet left the snow. I gasped, delighted. He didn't fly, exactly. More like bounced across the air, as if leaping across an invisible trampoline ten feet off the ground.
I bobbed on my toes, watching, beaming, feeling seven years old again with my fingers curled around the schoolyard's chain-link fence. Back then I had watched, mesmerized, as the high schoolers across the street swarmed off grounds for lunch. Teachers had never stopped them; punishment had never loomed. They were free and they knew it. Every day I had daydreamed about joining them, knowing it would never happen. I was just a little kid, after all. But I also knew little kids eventually became big kids, and one day I too would know freedom.
Orin flew until he was a speck in the distance, then bounded back to me. He bounced off the air twenty feet above me, lightly whacked his head against his backpack when he summersaulted, and glided to the ground before me, as smooth as a drifting feather.
I clapped my hands, laughing. "That is amazing!"
He tugged my sleeve. "Fly with me."
"No way can I do that."
"Don't be silly. You're a faerie, and it's just nature communication. Run until you feel the air and light, then ask them to lift you."
I bit my lip, tingling with excitement. The thought of me flying. Me! "What does air and light feel like?"
"Hm." Orin twisted his mouth, thinking. "It kind of feels like a song. Now come on. We'll cover a lot more ground if I teach you to fly."
Hand in hand, we sprinted through the field. Orin lightened; the air tugged him on my arm like a kite in a windstorm. "You feel it first here," Orin said, patting his chest.
I was panting too hard to tell him I only felt the ground pounding my soles and a stitch in my side. Snow crunched beneath our feet. My breasts felt bruised from bouncing without a bra, making me grateful that all my adolescent wishes for a larger cup size had never been granted. With my thoughts I asked the air and light to lift me. I begged for the freedom to escape my husband, and pleaded to prove I was worth Orin's time.
"Stop!" I wheezed after a minute of nothing. Orin released my hand and flew up twenty feet; I buckled over at the waist, gasping for air. Maybe I was incapable of magic. After all, the sole evidence I had that I was a faerie was the conflicting statements of two strange men.
Orin glided back to me; his boot buckles jingled when they struck the ground. "Did you feel anything?" he asked. Was that disappointment in his voice or my insecure imagination?
"No. Nothing," I said, between puffs of breath. "I am. The worst. Faerie. Ever."
"Nonsense," he said, straightening his fedora. "You've just hit puberty. These things take time."
I snorted, rubbing beneath my ribs. "I hit puberty fifteen years ago, Orin."
"Sexually, not magically. Faeries stop aging physically in their mid to late twenties, then they develop magically."
"Whoa, wait," I said. "How long do faeries live then?"
"Typically 350 to 450 years. Some faeries have reached 600, though."
And here I've been fretting about hitting my thirties.
"How old are you?" I asked.
"Sixty-three."
I shook my head, chuckling softly to myself. "Unbelievable. I thought I would get Tinkerbell, and instead I got Peter Pan."
"Huh?"
"Never mind."
We slipped through the barbed wire fence and continued down the slush. "Hitting puberty let the Realm find you, actually," Orin said. He picked a Miller Lite bottle cap off the roadway and placed it in his jacket pocket. "New magics release an energy pulse. The Realm didn't have any unattended pre-pubescents in Ohio, so it had to be a changeling. Unfortunately, darklings also feel the pulse and until your energies stabilize it's like a tracking beacon."
"Which is how Delano is following us I take it."
"Probably," Orin said. "He could be tailing us in the darkshine, but he needs to sleep sometime."
Is Delano asleep now? I wondered. Or is he strolling beside me in the darkshine, laughing his ass off while I make a fool of myself? I grimaced. More likely he was clucking his tongue, wondering why I refused to ask Orin a simple question.
I cleared my throat and pushed my hair behind my flattened ears. I didn't have to ask Orin anything, of course, but it would stop the annoying thoughts about Delano. And it wasn't as if I was asking Orin about his sex life or anything. It was a question regarding me, for God's sake. Totally innocent.
So why did I feel like I was about to show him a photo-text from his secret lover?
I took a deep breath, catching a whiff of rotting roadkill. "Um, Orin? May I ask you something?"
Orin smiled, his teeth a tad too big for his mouth. "Of course," he said. "You may ask me anything."
"Um, how do darklings choose which infants to steal?"
"The darkshine prevents darklings from entering the Realm, thus they steal only faeries born on Earth. That is why you being a changeling is so rare; most are born in the Realm."
Oh. That makes sense. I sighed with relief.
But a few seconds later Delano's voice barreled into my head: Ask Orin questions. Ask until you are satisfied, then doubt his word and ask him more.
"So you were born in the Realm?" I asked.
"Nope. I'm Earth-born." Orin picked up a pink rock and twisted it in the gray light, as if examining the quality of a diamond.
"Then why are your ears pointed?"
Orin lowered the rock. "Huh?"
"Well, if your ears are pointed and you are Earth-born, then not every infant is a target of the darklings, right? So how do faeries know which infants the darklings will steal?"
Orin nodded. "It's true. Darklings seek only some newborns." He clenched the rock in his fist and plodded onwards.
I waited for Orin to elaborate. He didn't. "So how do faeries know which ones?"
"Darklings select certain families."
I waited nearly thirty-seconds for an explanation, but Orin walked in silence, chin up, face forward. His expression was as blank as the endless horizon. His lips, which I had started to believe were frozen in a half-smile, were pulled down in a grimace.
I quickened my pace to keep at his side. "Well, why?" I asked.
"Because darklings are evil."
I snorted. "Surely they must have a reason."
Orin wheeled on me. "Because they're darklings! That's what darklings do!" His outburst made me jump back. Orin pinched his sinuses with a sigh. "Look. Earth is the child of the Realm. When Earth was born, faeries became responsible for her care, but some families were lazy and selfish and refused to help. As punishment, the Realm stripped their day magic and imprisoned them in Earth's darkness. The darklings resent our warmth and our light and have sought revenge ever since. Since they're in
capable of physically attacking the Realm, they kidnap our children—namely from the bloodlines responsible for their imprisonment, like yours—and brainwash them against us."
"So darklings are faeries," I said.
Orin's nostrils flared. "Darklings are not faeries!"
"But you just said—"
"Darklings are evil! Worse than demons! The only good darkling is a dead darkling and the sooner they're gone the better for everyone!"
"But if they tend to Earth's nocturnal life, how—?"
"The Realm does a better job."
"But if they're stuck here, then why—?"
Orin whirled on me. "Why are you being difficult? We were having such a nice time and now you're ruining it with stupid questions!"
I gaped at him. A summer storm had passed over Orin's face, blocking his inner sunshine. What secrets are hidden behind those storm clouds? I wondered. What does his thunder mute? Delano had been correct and in that moment I hated him more than ever before. He was the face of every schoolmate who had laughed at my belief in magic, and every adult who had scolded my imagination. I had finally found my place in the world and in the span of a question he had ripped it away.
"I-I'm sorry," I said. "Please don't be upset. I was just curious."
Orin chucked the rock into the field and stormed down the road. A cow meeeewed. A few seconds later Orin stopped, his shoulders drooping. Timidly, I joined his side.
"I'm sorry, Miriam. Really. The darklings have caused our people so much torture and misery that the subject is difficult to speak about," Orin said, and handed me a candy cane from his jacket's inside pocket. "I know everything is new to you and difficult to understand. But trust me. The Realm can act only from a position of light and purity. The goodness the darklings want to destroy." He hooked my elbow with his and started down the road again. "The only way faeries can survive is if the darklings are eliminated."
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