She turned to go, and then looked back at Gwen.
“Goodbye, Gwendolyn. I wish you well.”
She turned and walked up the path to the castle.
Gwen stood still as the numb buzzing in her head drowned out the sound of her mother’s vanishing footsteps. There was no room in her body for breath, and she wondered distantly how long someone could last without breathing. Her entire body was tight, as if her insides were expanding taut against her skin. Her fingers clenched and unclenched arhythmically.
Ellie was lost to her, soon to be an empty shell or dead. Aidan was in the clutches of Isolde. Bran had his own troubles to attend to and would be no help. The rescue attempt had failed.
On top of that, her dreams of her mother were shattered. The picture in her mind of a smiling, loving mother torn away from her daughter by cruel external forces was extinguished. The cold, dispassionate reality choked her like a rapidly rising river. She was drowning in it.
She was a pent-up ball of tension. Every muscle in her body clenched. Her mind was a whirling maelstrom of emotion. An image of her father’s kind and loving face emerged from the chaos, and she suddenly wanted nothing more than to see him, to be wrapped up in a strong warm hug of comfort and love.
Something broke inside. The airtight box where she kept her emotions burst to reveal a gaping hole. All the hurt and betrayal and promise of love lost and hope dashed came pouring out.
She screamed.
Chapter 20
And screamed, and screamed. Eyes closed, she threw back her head as the screams ripped out of her throat. Waves of heat rippled off her, and pulses of what felt like static charge ran through her body. She screamed until the rage drained away and the heat and electricity subsided. She sank down on her knees, gulping in uncontrollable sobs.
She shook with tears, rocking until her breathing quieted. She felt empty but oddly relieved, as if she’d been carrying something and had only just now put it down for a rest.
A branch snapped and fell to the ground with a solid thud.
Gwen opened her eyes. Before her stood the burned-out shell of a forest. She had been standing in a lush grove of poplars with bluebells carpeting the forest floor. All that was left were the stumps of trees in a twenty foot radius and a delicate snow of ash drifting in the light breeze.
Gwen stared in open-mouthed shock. A round opening was in front of her. It looked like a window to another place. It was a similar sunny green on the other side, but Gwen could sense it was different, other. The edges of the circle of otherness fluttered a little, as if the Breenan world were woven fabric and a hole had been rent in the middle.
Gwen’s mind was blank and numb. Slowly the realization of what she saw became clear. This was a portal, a way into the human world. It was a way back home. Through the fog of the aftermath of her breakdown, she found herself contemplating how the portal had been made. She tentatively reached into herself, toward her magical core. Instead of the usual wall of resistance, her imaginary fingers slid straight to the heart of a warm glow in her chest. She gasped aloud at the strange sensation. It was almost viscous, and it swirled around inside, pulsing with energy.
“I did it,” she said aloud. The silent forest did not respond. “I found my core.” She gave a little laugh of disbelief, more of an exhalation than a show of humor. She reached out and touched the edges of the portal gingerly. The fabric of this world fluttered and swayed against her fingers. She stretched out a hand through the portal. Nothing happened. Taking a breath as if she were diving underwater, and feeling foolish for doing so, she poked her head through.
Before her spread a green field of swaying grass surrounded by hedge rows. Three cows munched quietly, chewing cud without concern for the gaping hole in their midst. To her left lay a quiet country lane bordered by a low stone wall. No cars drove by, but a road sign read:
London, 50 miles
Gwen’s bruised heart gave a flutter of hope.
“England,” she breathed. She had done it. She had made a portal back to the human world.
She reached down to touch the swaying blades of grass directly below her to make sure they were real. The blades felt coarse and stiff, supremely physical between her fingers. Her face cracked into an inadvertent smile. Just then a pulse emanated from the ragged edges of the portal. She drew her head back into the Otherworld nervously and watched in astonishment as the edges began to weave themselves together. Quicker and quicker they wove as the fissure leading to the human world shrank to a tiny porthole and vanished. The weaving complete, the fabric of air gave a final shiver, then there was nothing.
Gwen put her hand through the place where the portal had been. Empty air greeted her searching fingers, no different from any other spot.
“No,” she said with despair, the hope the portal had kindled fading fast. She frowned. “No,” she repeated, more defiantly. She had made the first one, why couldn’t she do it again? She felt around for her magical core. It was still there in her chest, pulsing with steady heat. A few edges of hardness had crept back as the box remade itself. She swept them away with her imaginary hand. She would no longer be contained by her fears. That was the old Gwen. Her emotions, extended beyond endurance, beyond her capabilities of quelling them, had broken open the barrier to her core. She reveled in its warmth, amazed that she had never let herself feel this before.
Gwen squared her shoulders and held her head up high. She let out a long, slow breath, and reached into her core. She wasn’t quite sure what to do next so she thought of her father again, her anchor to the human world, and held out her hand. As she imagined the empty strangeness and torn edges of a portal, she pushed a small piece of her core up through her chest, through the length of her arm, and out her hand.
Her whole arm pulsed and there was a soft ripping sound in the still of the blasted forest. A portal lay just beyond her outstretched fingertips. It was smaller than the last, perhaps the length of her arm in diameter. The same field of grass and cows swayed in the sunlight of the human world. Gwen stared incredulously, gave a delighted smile, and then laughed out loud.
A few seconds later, the portal mended itself and the rent sealed. Gwen tried again, making an even smaller portal by grabbing an even smaller piece of her core. This portal was only a hand span across and Gwen had to press her face to the tear to properly see the other side. It too sealed itself in a few seconds.
Gwen wandered over to a nearby log and let her legs collapse from under her. She stared into space, thinking hard.
“That’s it,” she said aloud. She bit her lip then laughed in disbelief at her own daring. She would sneak into Isolde’s castle and steal away Ellie and Aidan from under Isolde’s very nose using portals. No one would see her coming, if she walked to the castle on the human side.
Gwen got up and dusted off her dress, postponing her plan for a few moments while she gathered her courage. She had to make a portal and go through it, allowing the fabric to close behind her. She was fairly sure she could now open portals at will, but what if it worked differently on the other side? What if she got stuck in the human world with Ellie and Aidan stranded in the Otherworld?
To postpone the moment, Gwen took a few steps back along the path around a corner until the castle was in sight. She eyeballed the distance then took a few deep breaths, pushing them out through pursed lips to embolden herself. She had to trust herself, trust in the power she had from belonging to both worlds.
She reached out a hand toward the castle, straight-elbowed, and concentrated on her father. She envisioned him on his painting stool at home, an expression of happy concentration on his face as he dabbed paint on a canvas. She smiled, and pushed a substantial portion of her core out through her hand.
A portal tore open, tall enough for her to walk through. Gwen set her jaw, took one last look behind her at the decimated forest, and left the Otherworld.
The portal closed behind her with a whisper of cloth sliding over cloth. She stood in the b
right field of cows with the lane to her left. She closed her eyes, trying to imagine where the path wound in the Otherworld. When she was sure of her direction, she pointed and opened her eyes. Her finger led across the field toward a small stone cottage with a tiled roof and tidy garden.
Gwen picked up her skirts and waded through the grass. She had just reached the lane when a rumble warned her of an approaching car. It had been so many days since she had heard one that she confused it at first for thunder or faraway drums. She cottoned on quickly and stared down at her dress in dismay. She couldn’t be seen by anyone here. How would she explain her clothing and why she stood in the middle of a field by herself? She looked around wildly but there was no cover close by. The car’s gears ground with a mechanical scraping from behind a nearby hill. She dropped, lying down beside the low stone wall.
The car crested the hill and zoomed past Gwen’s hiding spot without slowing. The engine noise faded away and she sighed in relief. She poked her head up to assess. No one else was in sight.
Gwen crossed the road hurriedly, grazing her knee on the rough stone in her haste. She reached a small stand of trees close to the cottage and paused. She needed to check her bearings. What if she lost the path in the Otherworld?
She held out her hand again and hesitated. Now she needed to concentrate on her mother to get back into the Otherworld. Isolde was her anchor there. Anger and resentment started to build in Gwen. This time, instead of suppressing the emotions as she had always done, she let herself feel them. They coursed through her body like a physical thing. Then, to her surprise, the sensations abated. Her magical core burned hotter than ever, unfettered by containing walls. Gwen closed her eyes and remembered the sketch of Isolde that she had cherished for so long, laughing and confident in her youth and beauty. She focused on the version of her mother she had built in her head, but images of Isolde she had seen in the Otherworld crept in beside the static sketch. Isolde’s smile of satisfaction as she tightened Ellie’s shoes, her worried face as she searched the ballroom for Gwen, her dispassionate expression as she spoke to Gwen in the forest not a half-hour ago. The images melded together in her mind to create a confusing, complex person that was anything but two-dimensional. Gwen took a small handful of her core and brought it out through her arm.
A tiny portal ripped open at face level. Gwen closed her eyes briefly and gave a tremendous sigh of relief. She could get back through. Rescuing Ellie and Aidan was still possible, if she weren’t already too late.
She quickly peeked through the portal at the path only a few paces from her opening. The castle was in view through the trees, its dark grey stones contrasting with the warm brown bark of the surrounding forest. She guessed at the distance to the castle wall as the portal mended itself. She looked past the cottage and picked another group of human-world trees that stood in the place of the Otherworld castle. She checked the windows of the cottage, but could see no movement, nor was there a car parked at the gate. Deciding to risk the trespass, she climbed another low stone wall surrounding the cottage and picked her way carefully through the garden, holding her skirts up to avoid breaking flower heads off of plants.
She climbed over the far wall and entered the copse of trees without incident. Quickly she focused on Isolde, drew on her core, and ripped open another peephole portal. This time there were no green bushes or brown trees. The portal opened to nothing but a blank wall of stone.
“What the…” Gwen breathed, perplexed. She wondered suddenly if she were being thwarted by Isolde. Then she laughed at her paranoia.
She was looking at the interior of the stone wall of the castle. She touched the stone, marveling at the smooth slice of granite that had never been exposed since its creation deep in the earth’s mantle. She pulled her hand back as the portal wove itself closed, shaking her head with wonder. Then she walked forward one tiny step, just shy of a sturdy birch tree with papery bark peeling off in strips. She took the tiniest piece of her core, focused on Isolde, and made a pinhole portal no wider than her thumb. She pressed her eye to the gap.
The ballroom lay before her. Swirls of bright dresses took over her vision. She tried to look to the right where sunlight spread over parquet tiles of the gleaming floor, but the doorway was outside the scope of her sight. Isolde and Corann were nowhere to be seen. She looked quickly to her left and was astonished and delighted when she spotted Bran lurking in a corner, doing his best to avoid detection. She noted a large pedestal next to him, topped with a bust of a woman with flowing locks and a sleepy expression carved out of pale wood.
Gwen let the portal close and walked five paces to her left, trusting that she guessed the distance correctly. There was a tree in the exact position she had hoped to open a portal in, so she moved to stand immediately to the side. This time she grabbed a substantial chunk of her core in order to tear a portal large enough to climb through. It was a huge risk, but she felt confident that it would be unnoticed in the dim corner behind the statue.
The portal ripped open with its customary swishing noise of sliding fabrics. Gwen looked through to the wall with the pedestal on her right. She carefully stepped through and slid into the space behind the statue. She looked back at the portal as it closed, and cursed inwardly at the pool of light pouring out over the dim floor from the sunny field of the human world. The portal closed, the light growing less by degrees until the corner settled back into dusty dimness.
Gwen let out her breath when she waited a moment and heard no exclamations of confusion or wonder. She peeked her head out from behind the statue. Bran was directly in front of it, arms folded and head darting side to side as if on the lookout.
“Psst,” Gwen whispered. “Bran. Back here.”
Bran leapt in place and whirled around. His wide eyes quickly crinkled with delight when he saw Gwen. He looked around swiftly. When sure that no one was watching, he squeezed himself in with Gwen behind the pedestal.
“Gwen,” he said with equal parts delight and agitation. “What happened? How did you get here?”
“No time to explain fully. The main thing is that I can create portals to the human world whenever and wherever I want. The glories of being a half-blood, I guess.”
Bran’s face glowed with excitement.
“Truly? You were just now in the human world?”
“Don’t get too excited. It was just a field with some cows.” Gwen peeked out to look for Isolde. There was no sign of her, nor of Corann. She spotted Ellie’s blue dress as she danced in the arms of a man with a fantastical mask of green moss and mushrooms. The orchestra, however, was disturbingly Aidan-free. Gwen’s heart lodged itself in her throat. She bit her lip hard in agitation but decided to focus on one problem at a time.
Bran still looked at her with longing eyes and an open mouth.
“I’d love to see cows.”
Gwen started to smile with amusement, then her eyes opened wide with the force of her idea.
“Bran, do you think you could dance Ellie over here, and then we could all escape through a portal?”
Bran looked as if presents couldn’t come any better than this.
“Really? Really and truly?” He gulped. “If the queen sees me…”
“Well, you’re in luck,” Gwen said briskly. “Both she and Corann seem to be otherwise engaged.” She grabbed his shoulders and pushed him toward the dance floor. “Go on, your cows await.”
Bran gave her one last awestruck look, straightened his shirt, and strode confidently to the dance floor. Gwen watched as he deftly maneuvered himself to Ellie and the Breenan in the moss mask. Somehow he cut in, and the moss man left the dance looking disgruntled.
The dance was a more freeform version of a waltz, and Bran easily steered Ellie toward Gwen’s corner. They had a tense moment when it appeared that a young Breenan aimed to cut in to dance with Ellie, but Bran quickly twirled Ellie away and the man gave up and retreated. Bran waited until the man had left the area entirely before sweeping Ellie toward Gwen in f
luid, graceful movements. Gwen noticed with horror that Ellie’s feet were bleeding, leaving glistening marks on the gleaming floor. As the pair danced only paces away, Gwen focused on her father and opened a large portal behind the statue. She leapt through it and seconds later Bran and Ellie tumbled through, the portal whooshing shut behind them.
Ellie dropped to the ground like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Gwen swooped down and grabbed her shoulders.
“Ellie? Ellie!” she said, looking into Ellie’s blood-drained face and half-closed eyes. “Ellie! Are you okay? Can you speak to me?”
Ellie’s eyes fluttered open. Her eyes remained unfocused for a moment, then she looked at Gwen.
“Oh Gwennie, I’m so sorry.”
Gwen exhaled, tears springing to her eyes. Then she carefully enveloped Ellie in an embrace. Ellie’s face buried into Gwen’s shoulder as Gwen rocked her.
“Don’t be silly,” Gwen whispered fiercely in Ellie’s ear. “None of this is your fault. None of it.”
They rocked for a while longer. Gwen released her grip on Ellie and gently laid her down on the grass. Ellie closed her eyes.
“Just rest for a minute, okay?” Ellie nodded without opening her eyes. Gwen turned to Bran.
He stared around in open-mouthed wonderment at the fields and cottage surrounding them. He wore the expression of a child on his first visit to a candy shop.
“I can’t believe I’m actually here,” he said with awe. “This is incredible. This is like legend come to life.” He turned to Gwen, his eyes shining.
Bran’s mood was so infectious that Gwen smiled back. Then she frowned.
“I need to go back for Aidan. Can you take care of Ellie while I’m gone?” They both looked at Ellie’s immobile form on the ground beside them. “Please, Bran. I know it’s a lot to ask, but I’d be so grateful.”
Bran grinned at her.
“Are you kidding? You brought me to the human world! This is amazing. I can look after your human for a bit, of course.” Gwen gave an exasperated sigh. Bran said quickly, “Sorry, sorry—Ellie.”
Breenan Series Box Set Page 20