by Vanessa Skye
“I cannot hold it! Open the veil or die, Alys!”
The lightning strikes a solid target, and sparks erupt from the top of the old tree like fiery rain. There is a loud crack as half the trunk splits away, its huge bulk falling slowly toward me.
Death is seconds away.
There! I feel something brush against my fingertips, something…strange. Closing my eyes, I reach out with all my senses, not just my fingers, and concentrate.
The veil becomes a solid thing, and I grab on, ripping it open.
Baird disappears into his void.
I glance up just in time to see the falling tree so close that I can feel the rough edges of bark scrape my palm as I instinctively throw one hand out before falling into oblivion.
***
Wow. What a crazy dream! I am warm and comfortable in my bed—except for an insistent, annoying voice that keeps tugging me out of my happy place. Don’t they know I’m tired?
I grumble and swat away the hands shaking me. “Go ’way,” I mumble. “Sleeping.”
The voice becomes louder, more adamant, and a pair of hands grab my foot and jerk.
“Go away!” I yell, louder. Just let me sleep. Surely it’s not morning yet.
A blast of air hits my face, as do a few cold drops of rain.
That’s it! I blink, and Baird’s face, two inches from mine with mouth wide open mid-scream, comes into focus.
“…’lys! Wake up!”
I sit up. As it turns out, I’m not warm and comfortable at all. I’m lying on the grass, wet, freezing, and being pelted by rain.
He pulls me to my feet, and I stumble.
“Whoa, super dizzy.”
“It happens the first few times. You’ll get used to it. Can you run?”
“Run? Aren’t we safe now?”
“Only if whoever wants you dead does not follow us here.” He points toward a tree line in the darkening distance. “We just need to make it to cover. Now, can you run?”
“Okay,” I say, shaking my head to clear it.
He sets a steady pace over the soggy marshland underfoot, and I follow.
As we run, the rain smashes down, wetting us so thoroughly that I am soaked to the skin in minutes. But the wind, while strong, is nowhere near as bad as the storm we escaped. There is no snow in the air, no lightning, hail, or thunder.
I try to comfort myself with this knowledge, but the idea of warrior-like fairies following us here for the express purpose of killing me puts extra speed in my feet.
We quickly cover a mile of grassland before my pace starts to drop off.
“I…need…to…rest,” I say between gasping gulps of air.
He jogs back to me.
He’s not even puffing!
“Only a few miles to go then you can rest.”
A few miles? The forest doesn’t look that far away.
I drag onward, praying we reach the safety of the trees before I pass out.
As we draw nearer, it becomes clear, even through the wet haze, this is no ordinary forest. The trees get bigger by the minute, but not any closer.
I don’t understand.
It takes another exhausting half a mile at a dead run before I realize what’s going on. The trees are massive—nine or ten times taller and wider than any tree I have ever seen in Chicago, or anywhere else for that matter—and the forest is full of them, giving the illusion they’re closer than they actually are.
Eventually, I stumble into the misty woods behind Baird, fall on my hands and knees, and crawl toward a thicket to vomit.
“You are going to have to get a lot fitter very quickly if we are to travel as fast as we need to,” Baird says as he ties his hair back with a band and brushes the dripping water from his face. He throws off his tweed jacket and reveals a brown woolen sweater underneath.
He helps me to my feet, and I look around in awe as I catch my breath.
The trees—elms and oaks, I think, but I’m not sure—are enormous. The base of each tree is so large a family of four could comfortably live in the trunk and have room to spare. Even if the tops weren’t so far out of sight, I still couldn’t make out where they end because their branches are so thick.
Judging by the vivid reds, oranges, and yellows of the leaves around me, it’s mid-fall, at least, but not a single part of the evening sky is visible above us. However, the heavy canopy is providing relief from the rain. Now, if we just had some way to dry out.
“Um…so, uh, are we going to walk all night?” It startles me how loud my voice sounds in the quiet of the forest. Apart from the odd pitter-patter of the few lucky raindrops making it through all the leaves overhead and our own steps as we move through, nothing else stirs the silence.
“No, I am looking for a suitable place to rest until morning,” Baird replies without looking back.
I follow him for a good half an hour longer before he somehow finds what he’s looking for in the dark. An ancient tree—dead by the looks of it—has rotted away inside, leaving a huge, hollow cavern surrounded by a shell of sturdy bark. I can’t see how far up the trunk goes, but it’s quite dry inside and littered with old leaves.
“Sit,” he orders, pointing toward the hard ground. “Wait here. Scream if you get into trouble.”
I roll my eyes. You mean scream if someone tries to kill me for the fifth time in two days?
With chattering teeth and shaking limbs, I collapse on the leaf-covered dirt gratefully. I hug my legs to my chest and wrap my arms around them as Baird disappears into a darkness so thick I can barely see my hand in front of my face. My entire body is shaking—from the cold and wet now as the exhaustion eases away—and the reality of my situation hits me like a baseball bat to the gut.
I am alone. I’ve left everything I knew behind to enter an unfamiliar—and from the sound of it, unfriendly—world I had no clue existed until a few hours ago. I’ve put all my trust in a man I barely know, and I have some strange power inside me that can kill people.
The longer Baird is gone, the more pronounced the silence gets until every little noise sounds like certain doom. Every snapping twig, rustling leaf, and drop of rain forecast my imminent end.
The sobs start deep in my belly and pour out of me, so powerful I can’t stop them if I tried. Part of me wants to curl up in the base of this cozy tree and never get up. Maybe if I hide under the dry, decaying leaves, I can slowly sink into the earth, never to be seen again.
A twig cracks nearby, and a hysterical scream bubbles up in my throat.
“It is me,” Baird says. “But if I were the enemy, your sobs would have been more efficient than a glow-in-the-dark target on your back. Try to keep it down.” He sets about clearing away leaves and stacking a pile of wood on the bare dirt underneath.
Anger instantly dries my tears. “Pardon me for being a little upset that my entire life has been a lie!”
“Your life has been what it is out of necessity. Crying about it will not change anything.” He makes a small log teepee and steps back.
“I left the only person who-who ever loved me be-behind…” The sobs start again. “If-if she ever r-really did l-love me…”
“Enough feeling sorry for yourself, Alys! Of course, your mother loves you. She has been your caretaker since you were only a few weeks old. She may be a Gallagher, but she is also a human being and loves you like she would a child of her own.” He takes a deep breath. “And she is not the only person who loves you. You forget, I have been watching over you just as long.”
I sniffle and look up, not that I can see anything more than a dark form with hands on hips telling me where he is. “You have?”
“I have. I gave you to your mother. I have been in the background your entire life, following you wherever you went. You may have just met me as your teacher, but I have known you since you were a squalling babe.”
“Oh.” I hiccup and shift to a seated position. “She said she found me in a church.” I wipe my face and squint into the darkness, barely mak
ing out Baird’s face in the gloom as my eyes adjust. “Was I born here, or on…Earth? Who am I?”
“I will be happy to answer your questions. But first, light the fire,” he says, waving toward the pile of wood.
I frown. Why can’t he just do it? Can’t he see I’m throwing myself a pity party over here? “Um, okay. Do you have some matches or something?”
He snorts. “We are fae. We do not need matches.”
“But—”
“Your instruction in the art of magic starts now. You need to be well in control of your magic before we present you to the king.” He points at the wood again. “Fire. Now.”
I stare at the wet logs, and my teeth start chattering again. Even with matches and some dry twigs, a fire would be impossible. “I-I don’t know h-how. And I’m freezing! Can’t instruction start when I’m warm and dry?”
“If you want to get dry, light a fire. Otherwise,” he folds his arms and sits a few feet away, “enjoy the night as you are.”
I huff and stop just short of stomping my foot. “Can’t you tell me how to do it, at least?”
“You know how to do it, or have you already forgotten about barbecuing a man from the inside out just last night? A feat which takes a thousand times more power than the simple lighting of a campfire that any three-year-old faeling can manage, by the way.”
I blink, looking at my palms in the darkness. Last night? Jeez, it already seems like a year ago.
I raise my right palm and aim it at the woodpile. “Um…light?”
He snorts again. “Very convincing.”
This time, there’s no stopping my foot from landing firmly on the ground. “Well, I don’t know what I did last night. I just did it!”
“Exactly. So far, your magic use has been out of necessity, to protect yourself or your mother. Now, you must learn to use it when the stakes are not life and death. Light the fire or freeze. It is your call, Alys.” He curls up on the ground and turns away from me.
“Some teacher you are. And this is life or death. I’m going to freeze!”
He ignores me.
I’m shaking so hard I can barely hold my hand up, and my fingers and toes are going numb. I badly want to light the fire, but I lower my arm and think back to last night.
Closing my eyes, I try to feel for the magic inside me like I did with the veil.
After a few minutes, there is a flicker of…something…and then it’s gone.
I concentrate harder, trying to catch the flicker. It’s there…but it’s not, like attempting to grab air or lightning.
I grit my teeth and try harder.
Suddenly, the magic bubbles up so fast inside, I’m shocked it ever stayed in—it’s much bigger than me, and so much more powerful than the weak cage of my flesh and bone attempting to contain it.
Remembering Mom’s words from last night, I raise my palm and repeat, “Cas ar lasair!”
The magic pours out of me and slams into the woodpile.
A shower of splintered sparks scatters over the hollow, and each wet log comes alive with flickering hot flame.
Baird collects them all carefully and once more places them in an ordered pile in the area he’d cleared before they set the entire tree on fire. “Overkill, but generally acceptable,” he says as he sits back down. “You do not need to say any words to direct the power.”
“I don’t?”
“Did you say anything when you protected your mother with the shield or the flame?”
“No.”
He nods, reaching for his pack. He hands me a samosa as well as a few large, juicy figs he must have picked. “Your mother is an excellent cook.” He sighs and rubs his hand across his stomach. “I will miss human junk food. In-N-Out burgers are almost worth getting old for.”
“What do you mean getting old for?” I ask, frowning, as I nibble at my small meal.
“Here, on Tír na nÓg, we do not age.”
I panic as I imagine being stuck in this awkward, skinny, gangly stage forever.
“It stops once we reach our majority at age twenty-one. But on Earth, we age as any human would, no matter how much fae blood we posses. It is why it is considered a punishment to be banished there. It is essentially a very slow death sentence.”
I fervently hope my body does some serious filling out over the next three plus years. “So fairies are immortal?”
“Fae…”
He lets the word hang there until I nod in understanding.
“…are immortal, to a certain point. We can die if grievously wounded. Any critical injury that might kill a human can kill us, except for old age, starvation, and disease.”
“Oh. So…if your head got chopped off, you’d die?”
“Of course.”
“So you’re like a vampire then?”
Baird snorts. “There’s no such thing as vampires.”
“Says the freaking fairy,” I mutter.
“Fae!”
Processing all the new details of this strange place, I stare into the flames as the fire warms me and my clothes start to dry out. I take off my sweater and spread it on the leaves. “So where exactly are we?”
“Tír na nÓg.”
I roll my eyes. “Yes, but where is that? Are we in a different world, or in a different galaxy? Are the fae…aliens?”
He shakes his head. “Nothing like that. This is the earth of the fae. It is the same Earth you know, with the same continents, the same seas, and the same weather systems. It is merely an alternate earth, a parallel world if you want to put it another way.”
I try to wrap my brain around it. “How is that possible?”
He shrugs. “It simply is. Even your gifted human astronomers and physicists agree, parallel worlds are a likely phenomenon.”
“So, the fact that it is raining here, and on Earth, is because it’s the same world?”
“Exactly. Although the storm on Earth was manipulated to make it far worse than the natural storm here. Probably the work of a team of gaoithe and uisce—wind and water fae. It seems someone, or a group of someones, is quite intent on your death.”
I groan. “Well, that’s just freaking great. Are they going to follow us here?”
“They have not yet, although I admit, I am not sure why. They are fae and, therefore, come here as easily as you or I, but you will not be as undefended here as you were on Earth. My magic, as well as yours, is at full power now. Although your magic seemed unaffected by the same weaknesses most of us suffer in the human realm. Which is strange.”
“It is?”
“As I said before, fae magic is limited to minor tricks on Earth—some mind and weather manipulations, silly tricks your human magicians often use to great effect. You should not have been able to use your fire on Earth at all, let alone at the level you did.”
“Is that why the-the…fae who tried to kill me last night had to use a gun and not magic? Wait…are human magicians actually fairies?”
He nods. “Precisely. And I am sure he would not have come after you at all had he known what you could do. As for the magicians…it is likely they do not even know the truth behind their talents.”
Warmth leeches into my fingers and toes while I get lost in thought and the hypnotizing dance of the flames.
Fighting yawns brought on by the warm air and the day of nonstop fear and exertion, I return to the hollow log campsite of my here and now. “You said you’d tell me where I was born, and how I came to Earth.”
Baird takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes. “Lie down and close your eyes. You are exhausted, and we have a long day of travel ahead. We can talk more in the morning.”
“No.” I shake my head stubbornly. “I want to know now.”
“Fine, but you can still lay down and rest while you listen.”
I get as comfortable as I can in the soft bed of dry, crunchy leaves.
“You were born here on Tír na nÓg, as far as I am aware.”
“Who were my parents?”
; “You appear to be half-fae, your ears are not quite as pointed as a full fae, but I was never told who your parents might be.”
“Oh.” I’m disappointed. As great a job as Mom did, wanting to know where I came from is a deep, personal thing. Blood is blood. Some family after all this upheaval would have been nice. “How did you find me?”
“I was entrusted with your safety. A wise woman gave you to me when you were but a few hours old. She told me you were in danger here and needed to be raised with the humans to keep you safe. She said you were important to the fae—”
“Important how?”
“She did not tell me that,” he snaps.
I can hear his frustration, but I want to know everything.
He sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose, then shares more details in a much calmer voice. “She assured me it was possible for me to take a small baby through the veil with me. So, even though it was dangerous, I took you through and gave you to the Gallagher who later became your mother. I have watched you grow ever since.”
“Why was I in danger?”
“I do not know.”
“So you just believed her and brought me here anyway? What if the danger is worse here? What if the tear failed and we’d ended up in between? What if I can’t ever be in either place?”
“We will deal with trouble, should it arise, Alys. Given the circumstances, I had no other choice but to bring you back to Tír na…”
My eyes close and his voice fades. A part of me is fully aware he isn’t telling me everything, but I can’t bring myself to care. I’m just too tired.
With a full belly, aching limbs, and the soothing cracks and pops of the fire, I drift off to sleep.
Chapter Seven
“Alys,” Baird whispers. “It is time to wake.”
I peel my eyes slowly open to see a soft light penetrating our comfortable tree cave. The fire has long since gone out, but I’m dry, and the air is warmer than it was last night.
I stand and stretch, before brushing the leaves off my clothes and cracking the crick out of my neck caused by a night without a pillow, then I look at Baird and frown. “You look…different.”
“How so?” he asks as he gathers our belongings.