Invincible

by Dawn Metcalf

  Realization twisted inside her like a pin, the shock snapping her still. How? she thought. Is it because he’s a wizard? Because he has no signatura? Because he hasn’t been marked? Or are we different, somehow? The next thought swelled to the surface like a boil. Is it me? Is there something wrong with me?

  Behold the Destroyer of Worlds.

  Dmitri was still bounding and jumping ahead of him, zigging and zagging in rapturous glee. From their high vantage point, Joy and Ink could see Dmitri stop before the court and fall to his knees, sides heaving, head bowed. Stef called out his name, but the satyr didn’t respond.

  Dmitri prostrated himself before his Queen.

  “NO!”

  Stef crested the hill, rushing forward, eyes wild. The army broke ranks and rushed him. Joy’s insides braced as they charged, an inhuman wall against her brother, an army against one lone man. They met with a crash of bodies and limbs; hands clamped on his arms, claws pushing, paws grabbing, tails lashing, pinning him facedown, screaming.

  “No! Please no!” Joy jerked and strained, her face wet with furious tears. “Please stop!” The Queen gazed up at her, unsympathetic. Dmitri’s bare shoulders heaved as he lay calmly at her feet. Joy didn’t need to see his face to guess at the adoration that shone there. The Queen had cast her spell to make a point, mocking her brother’s love as well as Joy’s proof. The King turned away, his profile sharp as glass.

  “Your task is unfulfilled, your offer rejected,” he said. “Your offering, however, has been accepted.”

  “No...” Joy whimpered before Ink squeezed her, an unsaid warning to stay silent. She wilted, wondering if her mistake had condemned them all. Her throat cinched as the two young men were dragged before the royal court. The world bowed and wobbled as Ink held her back.

  The Queen smiled, triumphant.

  The King’s voice cut through the void, kind but stern. “Bring us proof that it is safe to Return ere you come again.” Lower in timbre but no less biting, he added, “Lead us home.”

  He made a dismissive gesture. The door swung shut.

  * * *

  Ink and Joy stood on the brink of nothing, deep in the belly of the Bailiwick.

  Stef and Dmitri were prisoners of the King and Queen, trapped in Faeland.

  There would be no Return.

  The world behind Joy’s eyes went white. Every hair on her body stood up on end. Her blood boiled, raising a simmer of goose bumps, her arms shook, her skin tightened, tugging her lips back over clenched teeth. She shuddered, burning with the need to reach out, find that place of heat and salt and old, old ice and bury herself inside—but she was far from her world and the soil here was make-believe, and so she trembled, unable to touch anything real.

  The last image seared on the back of her brain was the smug countenances of the King and Queen.

  Her mind exploded.

  THEY CANNOT DO THIS!

  Joy grabbed the scalpel and slashed at the door, the blade skipping over the gleaming edges, erasing a great gash of nothingness in its wake. She slashed again and again, ripping through grass and sky and sun and soil, tearing through distant trees and hacking at the horizon, stabbing white wounds through the forever-dawn. The blade cut like wet fingertips through chalk, slicing the grove to ribbons, like scissors through paper. The scalpel flashed, erasing perfect pictures of pebble and brook. She screamed. These were all lies—ALL LIES!—impermanent and untrue. Joy spun, arms flailing, blade slashing, still screaming; her fury echoed, hollow and cruel.

  Ink watched her reduce a thousand years of his mother’s imprisonment into shreds.

  Helpless, furious, Joy tore down the world.

  Finally, she stopped, panting, and glared over her shoulder. The door burned defiant against the remains of a piecemeal sky.

  Like Maia’s door and her mother’s abandonment, some things could not be undone.

  It crumpled whatever was left inside her. Whimpering, Joy collapsed, sagging against the ground, caught by an imaginary meadow and the grip of Ink’s hands. She rocked back and forth, heaving, gasping. There wasn’t enough air in the world. She had to make it stop, make it unhappen, make it untrue. She curled into a ball, her thoughts like dissipating smoke.

  Stef... Stef... Stef...

  It was every one of her nightmares come true.

  “Joy.” Ink’s voice was close, somewhere outside the pain, but she couldn’t bear to look. “Your brother is safe. They will not harm him in any way.” His words were urging her to look at him. “He is considered a bond, collateral—the best that we can offer—and they will treat him as such until we return. And we will return for him when we bring proof,” he said softly, touching her hair. “We will find the answer.”

  “Very impressive,” Inq said, strolling forward. Both Joy and Ink sat up in surprise. “I especially like what you’ve done with the place.” The Scribe nodded slowly, taking in the shredded landscape. “I always felt that it could do with a makeover.” She stopped in front of them and knelt down. “Ink is right, you know. Your brother will be fine and so will his boyfriend. It’s like how humans used to sacrifice their best, most beautiful warriors to the gods for their favor. They’re like treasure now.” She rubbed Joy’s shoulder. “I told you they liked pretty things. They’ll be kept safe.”

  “No,” Joy said, gulping on sobs. “Stef isn’t safe! He can’t be!” She shook her head trying to clear her way through her fog of despair. “Don’t you understand? Humans aren’t allowed in Faeland!”

  “Stef isn’t human,” Ink said.

  “Exactly!” Joy said. “He’s like me, part-Folk. Part-Elemental, maybe. But that’s the problem—he still has his True Name!” The Scribes exchanged glances. “Don’t you get it? He doesn’t have a signatura! He’s vulnerable to anyone—everyone—and he’s trapped in there, surrounded by Folk! It’s his worst nightmare!” She started shaking, wondering what she’d done and what sort of cruelty an army of battle-ready, xenophobic Folk would do with the Queen’s new pet.

  “He is not defenseless,” Ink said, trying to soothe her. “He is a wizard.”

  Joy shook her head. He didn’t understand the delicate balance between Folk and humans who could do magic, but Inq did. The wily Scribe’s voice lost some of its edge as she placed a hand on Ink’s shoulder. “His being a wizard may make things worse.”

  “Joy...” Ink said, but his words died off. He couldn’t refute it. The confirmation of her worst fears and failures broke something inside her. She collapsed on the meadow and cried.

  Ink folded himself around her, embracing her like a set of wings. She sobbed until the tears subsided, anger and guilt giving way to quiet. The wave of emotions crested and crashed. Joy clung to his arms, trembling softly, wrung-out, hollow and spent.

  “Come,” Inq said tenderly. “We must go tell the Bailiwick.” She smoothed back Joy’s hair, wiping smears of hot moisture from her cheeks and smiled. “Trust me, Joy—I know this feeling, but we haven’t lost your brother yet.”

  Joy sat up, squeezing her eyes with the pads of her fingers, taking a deep breath and pushing herself to her feet. Ink stood alongside her. Inq stood beside him. Joy picked up the scalpel from the make-believe grass, the glint of silver flashing in the leftover sun. Her breath shuddered as she exhaled. Her lips tasted like salt.

  “I’m not going to lose him,” she said. “I’m going to bring him back.” Joy glared back at the door between worlds and squeezed the scalpel. “I’m going to bring everyone back.”

  NINETEEN

  GRAUS CLAUDE SQUATTED before one of the low inlaid tables, eating a mountain of rice balls with porcelain chopsticks. Joy waited for him to stop chewing after she’d relayed what had happened to Stef and Dmitri and the danger that her brother was in the longer he stayed in Faeland. She paced by the lounge chairs, burning with resolve.

/>   The Bailiwick raised one set of chopsticks and clicked them together. “What do you plan to do now?”

  You. My fault. She was full of guilt and anger and in that moment, she hated him.

  “I’m going to go after him,” she snapped.

  “Aha,” he said. “And why is that of the utmost importance?”

  “Well, besides being my brother, he’s sitting unprotected in Faeland surrounded by thousands of Folk who hate humans and he’s not fully human, he’s part-Folk, but he doesn’t have a signatura.”

  “Exactly!” Graus Claude beamed, picking up more rice balls with his other hands. “Your brother is one of the few living changelings who do not yet have a signatura. Our proposed method of safeguarding the Folk from humanity postdated the King and Queen’s leaving, and they are unfamiliar with it. One of the reasons your acceptance of a signatura caused such a stir, Miss Malone, was that the ceremony hadn’t happened for hundreds of years.” He raised a second set of chopsticks like a conductor’s baton. “If your brother could accept a signatura of his own, it would protect him from manipulation by his True Name, thus proving to the King and Queen that the system works.” He gave a self-satisfied grin. “If the Folk are safe from entrapment, then it proves that it is safe to Return.” He popped four rice balls into his mouth and started chewing again.

  Joy glanced back at Ink and Filly, who stood silent. Only the lapping of the water and the echo of Graus Claude’s words hung in the air. The headstrong Valkyrie smiled at Joy with a knowing grin.

  “Oh my God,” Joy said. “Oh my God! That would work!” She grabbed the Bailiwick’s sleeve, tugging him away from his lunch. “I have to go back! I have to go now!”

  “Unhand me,” Graus Claude rumbled. She let go instantly. He smoothed the wrinkles from the abused silk. “You have an assignment that befits the courier—find the proof that the King and Queen require and all things shall be returned to that which they once were.” The Bailiwick glanced at her meaningfully. “And all that should not be will be excised and put right.” She dropped her gaze. Graus Claude was genteel enough to let it pass without comment. “Besides,” he said. “You would be wasting your time. By now the Court will have hidden both your brother and themselves.”

  Joy stammered. “Wh-what? Why?”

  “It is protocol,” he said with a sniff. “Tradition, if you will. The terrain is self-correcting. The labyrinth moves. All the tales speak of it—it is tactically sound.”

  “So now I have to find him in there?” Joy said. “How am I supposed to do that?”

  “You aren’t,” Inq said reasonably. “That’s the point.”

  Ink hesitated by the pillars. “And you cannot step foot beyond the doorway.” He meant it literally. Faeland had rejected her. But not Stef.

  “You’re right,” Joy said. “But Stef did it. He even used magic.” Wizard magic. Human magic. She felt the truth of it as the idea slipped into place, like a missing piece. Born with the Sight, they were still human enough—and something else—to slip through the rules. It was who they were. It was the edge she needed. “So, theoretically, I can do it, too.” Her fingers grazed the shapes of the dowsing rod in her purse. “If I use human magic, I can find him.”

  The Bailiwick grumbled. “You will need more magic than you possess to cross Faeland unimpeded.”

  “I know,” Joy said, thinking of Monica and the Wizard Vinh. “But I have some ideas.”

  The Bailiwick snorted. “Such arrogance,” he said in Water Tongue so only the eelet could hear it. Joy bit the inside of her cheek to keep from being cheeky.

  “You will need a guide,” Ink said.

  Filly spoke up, “Kestrel?” The inhuman tracker was unparalleled, but Joy shook her head, remembering how the tracker had been used to track her down in the Hall. She didn’t need to be questioning loyalties out there. “I don’t think any of the Folk can help me,” she turned to Ink. “You saw what happened to Dmitri.”

  Ink glanced at his employer. “The Folk’s adoration for our monarchs is without question—they would likely prove to be unreliable allies. Anyone could be turned with a word and no human can cross the threshold.”

  “I think I can get by without a guide,” Joy said, wondering if the dowsing rod would work for tracking down siblings. Vinh had told her to track Stef’s mana, but she didn’t know how. “I just need to sneak in, find him, get him to accept a True Name in front of the King and Queen, and bring them all out.” Joy shrugged with a little, humorless laugh. “Easy-peasy.”

  “So you do not need a guide,” Filly said, stepping forward. “You need a distraction.” She nodded once, decisively. “I volunteer.”

  “What?” Graus Claude bellowed. “I forbid it!”

  “I dare you to try, old squatter,” Filly said with a toss of her head. “Ink can swear there’s no one better at baiting a trap, and none know it better than he!”

  “You know nothing of the pieces at play here,” Graus Claude growled through shark’s teeth, pointing at both Joy and Ink. “And they shall not tell you.” His words served as a double warning.

  “Even better,” Filly said, hands on her hips. “If captured, I cannot possibly reveal plans that I know nothing about.”

  Ink considered his brash friend, hands on his hips, fingers just touching the wallet chain as it swayed and caught the light. “Ignorance may be a fine shield, but it won’t protect you from what lies beyond the Bailiwick.”

  “He’s right,” Joy said. Although strangely touched by the offer and disappointed not to have the warrior woman by her side, she didn’t want to put any more of her friends at risk. “It’s...another world,” she said lamely. “And the King and Queen have every advantage—they know the land, they have all the resources and everyone there is absolutely loyal to their commands.”

  Filly’s eyes sparkled as she grinned. “A challenge!”

  “No! An army,” Joy said, trying to stress her point. “There’s a massive army full of war machines and monsters and hundreds of soldiers standing around ready to charge. They’re more than ready for anything that comes through that door.” She started counting the important points on her fingers. “We’ll be outmanned, outmaneuvered and thoroughly outgunned. These Folk have been ready to wage war against the humans for, like, a thousand years!”

  Filly’s face lost its cocky grin, her eyes gone dreamy, stretching the long blue tattoos under her eyebrows, a quiet awe painting her lips in a silent O. Her voice whispered with wonder:

  “Valhalla,” she breathed.

  Inq glanced sideways at Joy. “Congratulations. There’ll be no stopping her now.”

  * * *

  Joy leaped out of the breach, running through the condo, looking for something that they might use to help locate Stef. She wrenched open the door to his room, remembering that the place was a wreck and her brother had packed all of his things in his car, which was back at Dmitri’s apartment. She tried picking through the mess for something—anything—of Stef’s.

  “What sort of thing do we need?” Joy gasped as she frantically searched through the rubble. Ink came up behind her and scanned the room with a critical eye.

  “It is usually something personal.”

  “What? Like his watch? Baby blanket?”

  Ink picked up the waste bin and looked inside. “Usually hair or tears or blood,” he said. “That is what grounds Folk magic, but it will not work in Faeland. You need human magic, wizard’s magic, so his master, the Wizard Vinh, will know best. However, there are other preparations that must be made before we go. How will you cross into Faeland, for example?”

  Joy ran across the hall to the bathroom, barely listening. “Not even a toothbrush,” she said, exasperated. “It’s in his car with everything else.” She grabbed Ink’s hand. “Take me there. We have to—”

  The door opened. The
alarm beeped off. Dad walked in.

  Too late.

  “Hi, honey.” Her father waved from the kitchen as he dropped his briefcase on the counter and his keys in the candy dish by the door. “How was work today?”

  “Hi... Dad.” Joy fumbled. She’d totally forgotten she’d been scheduled for work today. Ink wasn’t using his glamour, so he was still invisible. Joy envied him. “I was just heading out.”

  He popped the cap off a beer. “Isn’t it late?” he asked. “What time is it?”

  “Eight?” she guessed. She lost track of time when she wasn’t near clocks. Time had become almost meaningless; clocks held almost still in one world versus the next. Enrique had warned her that her body would still know time passing, that was why mortals who slipstreamed would prematurely age—human lehman’s lives burned twice as bright if they followed the whims of their immortal lovers, but while Joy was mortal, she wasn’t entirely human. What is time to an Elemental? Do I age like mortals or like one of the Folk?

  She fussed with her purse, tucking the scalpel quickly into her back pocket and trying not to look at Ink. It wasn’t easy having her dad and her boyfriend in the same room with only one of them knowing it. This double life was giving her a headache.

  “Eight o’clock,” her father repeated. He nodded as if that meant something. “Right. So how was your day?”

  “Meh.” She said the most noncommittal thing she could as she inched closer to Stef’s open doorway, blocking it from view. She could feel her father’s gaze following her. Ink took the hint and shut the door quietly as Joy said, “How about you? How was your day? Anything interesting?”

  He seemed to consider the question as he sat down at the kitchen table. “Interesting,” he said. “Yes. That’s one word for it.”

  Joy hesitated. “Interesting?”