Elfland

by Freda Warrington

  Faith said, “I’m sorry, I never meant to be a nuisance, but I didn’t plan this, either. I don’t even know where you’re going, or why. Matthew’s never going to forgive me.”

  “For being Aetherial?” Sam said in disgust.

  “For deceiving him.”

  “He needs to get over himself. Pompous jerk.”

  “Sam!” said Rosie. “Shush. We’re trying to find Lucas, Fai. Somehow he accidentally unlocked the Lychgate. We think his Aetherial essence fled through when he was injured, and he won’t recover unless we find it. It’s desperate, I know. I hadn’t realized how mad it sounded until I said it.”

  “Needle, haystack,” said Sam.

  “I can’t face my parents unless I at least try to find him,” said Rosie. “You understand that, don’t you?” Faith nodded. She looked pallid with exhaustion. Her heart, too, must be broken.

  The twilight deepened. The darker it grew, the more solid the stalking figures became, keeping pace with them in the edge of the trees. The disembodied voice spoke again, “Vaethyr. Virgin.”

  Rosie caught a sharp breath. She was trying to convince herself she wasn’t afraid but her hands were clammy, her heart tripping. The shadow shapes flowed into their path, charcoal on slate grey. A low, menacing voice came from all around them. “You cannot come here unbranded.”

  Encircled by dark, wavering specters, they halted. “This is not looking good,” said Sam, clasping Heather firmly as he turned to Rosie and Faith. “We’re going to run like hell, back the way we came. Ready?”

  Then he gave a sharp cry. It was over before Rosie could react. He jerked as if shot and tumbled backwards, an arrow shaft sticking from his collarbone, the child shrieking on top of him.

  She saw a pair of golden eyes staring at her, a transparent winged form sketched on the darkness, a glowing arrow poised in some kind of crossbow. A split second later she felt the elf-shot; a stabbing fiery pain in her ribs. Her sight and hearing vanished in a rush of stars. Through the fog, she was aware of Faith trying to wrestle Heather from Sam until she, too, convulsed and fell. There was a moment of incomprehension, What the hell? No—this can’t be happening—not now . . . but pain dragged her down, across Sam’s fallen body, into an ocean of shadows.

  Rosie was drowning in another dimension; a blurred dim landscape that was Earth and Dusklands and Elysion and somewhere else entirely. She was running on all fours—knowing she was dreaming, which made running pointless, and had no time to waste on visions, but still desperately running as if her efforts could somehow influence the real world.

  Sam ran beside her stride for stride, and Sam was a wolf. More than wolf—a dread, magnificent beast with bright cobalt eyes, blond-tipped dark fur. She was the same, and she could also see her wolfish fylgia from the outside—shadowy, silvery, an elemental or a small deity, an entity she didn’t comprehend.

  For a few intoxicating minutes in her dual being, Rosie understood. The Otherworld hunters fired divine arrows of a kind, delivering splinters of complex knowledge. She and wolf Sam looked at each other; no need for words. They had always been here, side by side, wild, instinctive, answering to no one. They ran for days; hunting, feeding, play-fighting, mating, racing onwards again.

  Their human selves vanished.

  She had left a dim awareness: that you could not come back from this and stay sane. It was a whirlwind. It must leave you demented. She rose on her hind legs and became a statue in a temple, and wolf-headed Sam was her priest. Rosie began to laugh manically. She heard her mother singing,

  Let the Spiral take us down

  Tread the Spiral, round and round

  Dancing down the river’s course

  Spinning back towards the Source

  Find the mirror at its heart

  Merry meet, and merry part

  We kiss the water and fly,

  Kiss the water and fly . . .

  Jessica’s voice was a silver thread drawing her along the loop of time as it curved back towards its starting point. Suddenly, violently she was pitched into consciousness. A circle of pain burned under her left breast. The world was dark.

  She felt Sam moving and groaning beneath her. He clutched her shoulders, trying to push her off him. Her mouth was rust-dry. She felt dizzy, as if she’d been drugged. Hauling herself into a kneeling position, she felt raw pain on her rib cage beneath her left breast. Her fingers found a hole in her sweater, and a two-inch circle of blistered flesh, weeping blood.

  “Sam, are you all right?” Her voice came out as a sob. She clawed her hair back.

  He stared at her, eyes unfocused. “What the hell happened?”

  “Did you—were you with me? Wolf, but not?”

  “Uh . . .” The glazed eyes widened. He drew a few shallow breaths. “Yes. We were there for like . . . months. But dream time, not real time.”

  She touched a frayed hole in his T-shirt below the collarbone, and her fingertip went through and found the flesh wound. Sam winced. “Ouch.”

  “Whatever shot us was real,” she said, “but it’s only skin-deep. More a stamp than a penetrating wound. Oh my god, I thought they’d killed you.”

  “They didn’t, love. Feels like they stuck a hot coal on me. Jeez.”

  “Faith?” Rosie called out. “Are you there?”

  Looking up, she was suddenly blinded by the flare of a swinging lamp. On the forest path ahead of them was a woman, cloaked and hooded in black, bending over something on the ground. She straightened, raising the lamp so its light washed over them. In the glow, Rosie saw Faith rising to her knees and beside her, thank heaven, stood Heather, sobbing but apparently unhurt.

  “Where did you come from?” the woman called. Her voice was low, muffled within the deep hood. “I heard the little one crying. Come, you must go with me. It’s not safe at night.”

  “Now they tell us,” Sam said through his teeth. Rosie tried to stand up but the wound in her ribs burned so fiercely that she doubled over. Sam was no better. With an undignified struggle they made it to their feet, but it wasn’t clear who was helping whom.

  “I know it hurts, but it’s not fatal,” the woman said, rather impatiently. She helped Faith, giving her the lantern as she swung Heather up in a fireman’s lift. “I’m surprised they didn’t take the child. You are asking for trouble, bringing a youngster in here.”

  “They tried,” Faith said shakily. “Unless I dreamed it. I hung on to her for dear life until they gave up.” As she spoke, Rosie put her arms around her. Her friend was unyielding, distant, not the Faith she knew. She let her be, and fell back to Sam’s side.

  “You can rest with me tonight.” The woman led them along the path, her cloak a black flare against the dancing sphere of lamplight. “I can’t let you stay out here. You’ve come through the Lychgate, haven’t you? How long has it been open? I didn’t know. What on earth were you thinking, entering the Spiral without preparation?”

  “That’s a lot of questions,” said Sam. “And I’ve got one: What business is it of yours?”

  “Sam!” Rosie poked him in the ribs. “He doesn’t mean to be rude, he was born that way. It’s a long story. I have to find my brother.”

  “Well, you’re going nowhere until morning.” On every side, the forest flowed away into wilderness. Farther on, Rosie glimpsed a glade with a circle of standing stones, and wondered if Vaethyr used to dance there. She could almost taste echoes of it; animal masks, flower wreaths, wild music.

  Exertion and pain made it hard to speak. Eventually she asked, “Who were they—the ones who attacked us?”

  The woman answered without turning round. “I thought you knew. What have they taught you in Vaeth? They were Initiators. They recognized you as new to the Spiral and so they put the brand upon you. A toxic preparation of corrosive and hallucinogen—you will have had visions, I expect? And now be feeling a little rough.”

  “Yes.” She and Sam glanced at each other. “It’s true, we were never initiated because the Gates were lock
ed . . . but I thought it would be more civilized than that. They hunted us down!”

  Sam added, “And if I ever see them again, I’ll stick their red-hot arrows so far up their. . . .”

  “You won’t see them,” the woman laughed. “You wouldn’t recognize them. They are Aelyr who change shape and hunt down uninitiated Vaethyr. It’s a trance state in which, it’s said, the unbranded Vaethyr glow and so make themselves visible targets. Yes, the usual practice is for initiates to be brought through by their elders, so there’s some element of guidance and ceremony. But, ultimately, you are left on your own to be hunted and branded. You were lucky. Traditionally you would have been stripped naked and turned loose in the forest first.”

  “Oh,” said Sam. “I’m guessing that’s not as much fun as it sounds.”

  “For some, initiation is ecstatic. For others, hideous. There have been deaths. It is really a stupid practice born of the Aelyr desire to put their stamp on those Vaethyr who have the effrontery to live on Earth. On the surface it says, You’re one of us, but the subtext is, We own you. You came in uninvited, so they branded you anyway. It’s the way they do things, unfortunately. Never mind. You survived.”

  She took a side path that brought them uphill, leaving Rosie too weary to ask any more questions. There was dense grass under their feet, trees to their left, a folded wall of rock on their right. The path began a steep descent. Over the shoulder, the trees opened out and below lay a small, hidden valley. To the right, a waterfall poured down the rock face into a stream. Along the stream bank to their left stood a cottage; an archetypal stone cottage with thatch roof and vines around the door. The scene was all in dark shades of sapphire and emerald. Firefly lights glanced on the water.

  “Perfect,” Sam said with a laugh. “There had to be a witch’s cottage in the woods.”

  “Come in, walking wounded,” said the woman, opening the door to a simple interior bathed in firelight. “I’ll find something to salve those burns.” She set Heather down, took the lantern from Faith and placed it on a hook. Unself-consciously she threw off her cloak. Beneath it, she looked every inch the part of forest witch in a long figure-hugging dress of dark plum, with long tangles of black hair, a spare, bony face and penetrating eyes.

  Rosie heard Sam make a noise in his throat, a sort of gasp. There was a thud as the backpack hit the ground. He said, “Mum?”

  ______

  Lawrence stood looking down at the face of Lucas, his son. Still no improvement, the specialist had said. He couldn’t identify what he felt. Clearly he felt something, if only a void, a sucking white emptiness too big to grasp. It was not a place from which tears came. Auberon could weep enough for them both.

  “You’re so gracious, Auberon,” he said when the doctors had gone. “Gracious beyond words. You always have been.”

  The two men sat on either side of Lucas. There was no color in the room but black and white. Auberon had cleared up the doctor’s confusion by quietly explaining that while Lucas was his son, Lawrence was actually his biological father. “I suppose a lad is lucky to have two fathers,” Auberon said gravely. “Too many children have none at all.”

  “You’re not jealous?”

  “No, I’m not. It’s me who’s had the pleasure of his company all these years.” Auberon paled as he spoke, as if aware of the obvious conclusion, and these could be the last few days.

  “Well, I envy you that,” said Lawrence. “But if a decision has to be made . . . about turning off life support . . . then I envy you not at all. Whatever you decide, I won’t fight it.”

  “If they begin to pressure us, I don’t know where we’ll turn. What will it do to Jess? If his Aetherial essence can’t die, where has it gone? Through the Gates, even closed? Or somewhere in the Dusklands, like a ghost . . . perhaps he’ll attach himself to a tree or stone until he’s ready for rebirth of some kind . . . but we’ll never see him in this form again.”

  “So much of our existence is about saying farewell,” said Lawrence. His voice was dry with strain. “Our losses are not as concrete as they are for humans, but that makes it the more painful. Not knowing. Our children shouldn’t be able to fly through locked Gates—in physical or essential form—to vanish in the vastness of the inner realms . . . yet still they leave us.”

  Auberon met his eyes. “And there is the possibility,” he said carefully, “that without access to the Spiral, our Aetheric essence will die. We’ll become mortal. The Dusklands will fade from lack of sustenance, and we’ll forget our true selves. Is that what you wanted all along, my friend?”

  Lawrence gazed at Lucas’s sleeping face. “No,” he said hoarsely. “Never. The danger is real and terrible. What, you think I lied to you? I love the Otherworld.”

  Memories played across the back of Lawrence’s mind. Masked Aelyr bowing to him as they presented the ceremonial staff of applewood. Albin, waiting for him by the stream that flowed from Sibeyla into Melusiel; Lawrence proudly presenting a casket of sparkling albinite that he’d harvested on Earth, saying, “All these, Father, in exchange for the one stone you took from me.” Albin’s fist flying upwards, sending the priceless cut gems cascading into the stream, lost. His contemptuous response. “This is a sacred stone. To mine it and sell it on Vaeth is sacrilege!”

  Lawrence had realized, in that moment of despair, that nothing he did would ever incur Albin’s favor. He was an impossible-to-please father who had marked his son as weak and flawed from birth. And in the end, I fulfilled his prophecies, Lawrence thought. He was correct to despise me. He had all my faults pinned in a display case from the start.

  Not for a second had he blamed Albin for the existence of his nemesis, Brawth. Albin had not woken it or sent it. No, it was a horror entirely of Lawrence’s own making and Albin would say, he knew, “I told you that no good would come of defying me and following Liliana into the greedy corruption of Earth.”

  Here with Auberon, Lawrence found the confession spilling out. “It’s strange. When they give you the power of the Gatekeeper, it’s done with full ceremony. When they take it away, there is nothing. You are not even asked to clear your desk, as it were. Realization dawns and there is only a cold, dry emptiness.”

  Auberon leaned towards him, grasping Lucas’s hand as he did so. “Are you saying you’ve lost the power?”

  Lawrence nodded, eyes closed. “The Great Gates are blind rock to me now.”

  It took Auberon a few minutes to recover his composure. At last he said, “For how long? Have you told anyone?”

  “Only you. I have not even been able to face going up there since . . . Tell no one, I beg you. The whole world has turned to bleak grey rock because of my failings and I am stranded in a granite tower looking out at my work and there is nothing to be done. I am being punished.”

  “For what?”

  “For waking Brawth, the ice giant of the Abyss, and failing to destroy it.”

  Auberon paused, looking gravely at him like a concerned doctor. “How did you wake it?”

  “I don’t know. It defies reason. Simply by existing, I brought an enemy to life that grew greater as I diminished.”

  “Are you sure . . . that it is not all in your mind?”

  Lawrence laughed. “When Aetherials dream, what do we create? I have asked myself that many times, of course, but in the Spiral, dreams become real. You have sensed it, haven’t you? And Lucas has seen it. I have struggled all these years to protect my sons, to protect everyone from it . . . but now, if the lych-light’s gone, it’s out of my hands. My time is almost over, my friend.”

  “What are you saying?” Auberon had gone grey. “Don’t talk like this. Promise me you won’t think of harming yourself!”

  Lawrence’s bone-white finger traced Lucas’s cheek. He murmured, “Bron, if the time should come to turn off the machine and you truly can’t face it . . . I will.”

  Tears fell from Auberon’s tired eyes. “Don’t let’s speak of that yet.”

  Lawrence hardly knew h
e was expressing his thoughts aloud until it was too late. “Will that be considered sufficient punishment? To be forced to destroy this beloved life? A sacrifice. Will anything pacify Brawth and make it sink back into the darkness, other than to consume my son? Not any son, but the most precious one. What could be more bitter?” He exhaled a long ragged breath and whispered, “Lucas, come back to us.”

  The woman was unquestionably Virginia Wilder. Once seen, thought Rosie, never forgotten. When Sam said “Mum?” she gave a puzzled frown, drew her head back and continued as if she hadn’t heard. “Let me see to your wounds; they won’t have branded the child, don’t worry.” She smiled at Heather. “What a pretty little girl. Come in, rest; you’re safe here.”

  Sam and Rosie exchanged a look of astonished confusion. Virginia hurried through a dark archway at the back of the room, leaving them speechless.

  Firelight washed rough cream walls. The floor covering was some kind of dry moss, springy underfoot, strewn with dried flowers and fragrant herbs. There was little furniture, only a basic kitchen—a water pump, a trestle of thick dark wood along the right-hand wall, cupboards. The large fireplace had a second archway beside it. In the center stood a low round table, like a big disk of lapis lazuli, with cushions scattered around for seats. Everything looked softly yellow and blue-green.

  Faith collapsed onto a cushion with Heather in her lap. “Are you all right?” asked Rosie, kneeling beside her. “Where did they get you?”

  Faith pulled down the neck of her dress and showed a weeping red blister just below her throat. Although swollen, the shape was a clear spiral. Rosie gasped. “Ohh. I’ve seen this before. Lucas had one, after he . . .”

  Virginia came back with a brown glass bottle on a wad of gauze. “This lotion will ease the pain, although it will scar, of course; that’s the idea.” Sam only stared at her as she tended first Faith, then Rosie. It stung fiercely, making her eyes stream until it faded to a dull throb. Sam stood unflinching while Virginia dabbed his wound. When she’d finished, he touched one hand to her shoulder and snared her gaze so she couldn’t evade him. Rosie sat back on her heels, watching. She saw them side-on, their profiles painted by firelight.