Chapter 10
Gen was mostly silent for the rest of the trip through Pillar Lagoon. She kept her distance from Slynn, preferring to fly close to Hope and Shae, instead. They passed through the border to the next province and entered the Shadow Fields.
To the fairies, there was little difference between anywhere else they’d been in The Void and the Shadow Fields, but Slynn said the Shadow Fields were eternally dark. He couldn’t see much because the sun never shone here. The fairies could see just fine. The sky was the same uniform gray all the way across the horizon.
They used their lightstones so Slynn could see and they flew for the entire day. Herron and Slynn talked as they flew. Shae drifted between the two of them and Hope and Gen. Gen didn’t feel like talking, so Shae tried talking to Hope. Hope quickly got annoyed with Shae when she started asking questions and responding to answers that Hope hadn’t given yet, so before long, Hope told Shae she needed some quiet time. Shae pouted and hung around Herron and Slynn for the rest of the day, but neither of them felt much like talking to her, either.
When they set up their camp for the night, Slynn was still unnerved. “Neither of the moons is visible here. No stars. It’s really disturbing here.”
“That’s how we see it all the time,” Herron said. “Except the sky isn’t black. It’s gray like fog.”
“Yeah,” Shae agreed. Then she added, “What’s going to try to murder us here, then?”
Slynn looked at her. A questioning expression was on his face.
Shae paced back and forth. “Everything in this place tries to kill us! I’ve said it before! I’ll say it again! The Void is terrible! Everything is slimy and disgusting and there are monsters everywhere and everything is trying to kill us! Even the cute stuff! I’ve had enough of this place. I can’t wait to go home.” She spun on her heel and stomped away. She sat down and rested against a gnarled tree stump, folded her across her chest, and hung her head.
Gen sat perched on another stump on the other side of camp, staring quietly off into the distance.
Hope didn’t know what to do, so she set up the tent that she and Gen shared, then Shae’s tent. Herron had started cooking dinner while she worked and it was ready by the time she finished. She took two bowls of it and brought one to Shae and the other to Gen. Neither of them made a move to take it. Hope sighed in frustration, then took a bowl for herself and ate.
About an hour later, Shae shrieked in terror. Slynn, Herron, Hope, and Gen all rushed toward her, ready for action, weapons drawn. Shae’s eyes were wide with fear. She was trying to scramble farther backward but she was already backed up against the tree stump as far as she could get. In front of her was a small golden dragon about the size of Shae’s leg. The dragon tilted its head to the side and gazed up at her. It took a step toward her and she shrieked again. The dragon narrowed its eyes and snorted a puff of smoke out from its nostrils.
“What in the world?” Slynn asked. “This is just a little guy. He shouldn’t be here.” He kneeled down and put his hand out toward the creature. “How did you get through the border? Hmm?”
The dragon sniffed Slynn’s hand, then cautiously approached and pressed its face into Slynn’s palm.
“You can pet it,” Slynn said. “It’s just a baby.”
“Pet it? What do you mean pet it?” Shae asked.
“I mean you can rub its body in an affectionate manner with your hand.”
“You mean pet it?” Shae cried. “That’s ridiculous! I don’t want my hand bitten off!”
Slynn rolled his eyes, then looked at Gen. “Okay, you pet it.”
Gen slowly kneeled down next to the dragon and reached out her hand. She touched its back. The dragon turned its head to look at her. Gen started to pull her hand back but the dragon tipped its head to the side again while it looked at her and Gen placed her hand on its back again. Its body was warm and its scales were smooth and soft, more like a boa constrictor’s scales than the hard, sharp, plate-like scales of the bigger ones they encountered earlier. As Gen put the dragon, it closed its eyes and made a kind of raspy purring sound.
“Well, no shit,” Gen whispered. “Look at you! Hi!”
The dragon slid forward against her hand and butted its head into Gen’s thigh, then slid its body over her leg like a cat.
“It’s not going to eat us?” Shae asked.
“Nah,” Slynn said. “It’s just a baby. I wonder how it got here. Dragons are not known for crossing borders.”
Shae walked cautiously up to the dragon, then sat on the ground next to it, next to Gen, and ran her fingers over its back. Instantly, it whirled away from Gen and rubbed itself against Shae.
“I think it likes me!” Shae laughed.
The dragon crawled up the front of Shae’s shirt and Shae rolled on her side, laughing. The dragon brought its face up to Shae’s and started licking her with tiny, almost poky little licks with the tip of its blue forked tongue. Shae giggled. It puffed another wisp of smoke from its nose, then it curled around and slid inside of Shae’s shirt.
“Aw!” Shae cooed. “He’s so warm!” She held one arm at the base of her stomach to hold the dragon and she got to her feet. At the change in orientation, the dragon scrambled to right itself and its small but sharp claws scraped at Shae’s skin. “Ow! It’s okay. It’s just scrapy.”
The dragon coiled itself around Shae’s chest and stuck its head up through her collar. Shae moved her hand away slowly and the dragon stayed put. She twisted her torso left, then right, then leaned slightly forward and then slightly backward. She nodded. “Yep, he’s not going anywhere. Isn’t he so cute? What should I name him?”
“What should you name him?” Herron echoed.
“Yeah! He needs a name!”
Hope raised an eyebrow at Shae, then turned away, grinning, and busied herself by sorting through her pack.
Gen said, “Name it something clever like Goldie Hawn.”
“What’s a Goldie Hawn? Why is that clever?” Shae asked.
“Never mind.”
“Ok, Hawn,” Shae bent her head forward and rubbed her chin against the top of the dragon’s head. “You like that name, Hawn? Yeah, you do!”
“You’re making the puppy voice to a baby dragon, you know,” Gen said.
“What’s the puppy voice? And don’t say never mind!”
“It’s just the cutesy, talking down to it, widdle sweetie guy voice.”
“Oh, shut up! He’s cute! I’m going to keep him.”
“You know,” Slynn said, “Eventually, he’ll grow up as big as those others?”
“How long does that take? How old were those dragons that tried to eat us?”
“A few hundred years, probably.”
“Well, that’s ridiculous,” Shae said. “I’m not going to be alive for a couple hundred years! So he’ll be cute and cuddly the whole time we’re together. Aren’t you, Hawnie?”
Gen muttered, “Yeah, I’ll be around in a couple hundred years.”
Shae looked very excited. “That’s right! You will! So when I’m gone, you can take Hawn and make him your, like, your war dragon or something! This is so exciting! Look! We made a new friend! The Void is such an amazing place.” Shae half-skipped, half-flittered away back to the stump and sat down, petting and talking to Hawn.
“Oh, dearie me,” Gen said to Hope. “I guess we’re six now, then. We have a pet dragon. Of course we do. For the love of god.”
Hope smiled up at Gen and shrugged. She patted the ground next to her and Gen sat down. Hope rested her head on Gen’s shoulder. “You need to eat something. But not right now. Don’t get up yet. Give me a few minutes, okay?”
“Sure,” Gen said, and put her arms around Hope. They sat together for a while and watched Shae play with the dragon.
-
The next morning, they ate breakfast and took the camp down. Shae had to make adjustments until she and Hawn figured out the best place for him to curl around Shae’s chest without interferin
g with the motion of her wings.
Once that was taken care of, they flew off across the Shadow Fields until they reached the border.
“What’s the next province?” Herron asked Slynn.
“We call it the Geome.”
“The Geome?” Hope asked. “What’s that like?”
“It’s rocky and crystalline. No dragons here, but there are giants made of rock. Kind of like the turtles you saw outside The Caverns.”
“Are they mean?” Shae asked.
Slynn nodded. “They do rather prefer to be left alone.”
“All right,” Herron said. “Let’s go, but let’s stay high and stay alert.”
As they passed through the border, the grayness surrounded them and then faded into a slightly darker gray.
“Wow, this is the first time the sky has ever looked different,” Shae said.
The ground was made of purple crystal, pointy and jagged. Every so often, a large column of crystal would tower above the ground, but otherwise, the surface was a fairly uniform height. The pixie and the fairies flew high over the ground. On the ground below, tremendous bipedal rock men lumbered about from one tall shaft of crystal to another. The rock men would put their hands on the crystal until it began to glow, then the purple glow crawled up the arms of the rock men. Then the rock men would let go, find another crystal, and put their hands on it until the purple glow traveled back up their arms and down the shaft of that crystal, then they’d find another crystal and repeat the process again.
“What are they doing?” Gen asked. “It looks like they’re pollinating the rocks.”
Slynn nodded. “That’s exactly what they’re doing.”
“Huh.”
“This is the last province we have to cross,” Slynn said. “We’ll be at The Meadows in a few hours. Are we all ready to go in?”
They each checked their gear and were mostly satisfied.
“I need a new bow,” Hope said. “I don’t feel like I’m at my best without one.”
“There’s a pixie settlement a couple hours away, but it’ll take us out of the way. And I’m not sure what we’ll find there. It could be empty. It could be filled with pixies who aren’t happy to see us.”
Hope sighed. “All right, it’s fine. I’m fine. I have my sword.”
“Are you sure?” Gen asked. “It’s only a few hours out of the way.”
“Yeah, unless they’re all hostile and angry and they arrest us. Then we miss the new moon and we’re stuck here for however long they hold us plus a month. I’m fine with a sword.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
“Okay,” Gen said. “Let’s go.”
They flew the rest of the way through the Geome until they reached the next border.
“This is it,” Slynn said. “Let’s get your Realm back, shall we?”
Gen nodded.
They passed through the border. It took much longer for the grayness to give way but eventually, The Meadows appeared around them.
“Wow,” Gen breathed as she looked around.
The Meadows was a broken land. Instead of the lush, vibrant, emerald green and thick, rolling grasslands, the land was covered with thin, patchy, wiry grass. The colors were washed-out and muted. There were huge cracks where the ground had been torn apart.
They all looked down at the shattered ground below them.
Herron looked at Gen. “I’m sorry.”
Gen nodded. “Let’s go.” She looked around. “I think I know where we are. The Chamber’s this way.”
They slowly flew over The Meadows. They passed several farm plots, diseased and wasted. The soil was a hard, dusty beige instead of rich, deep brown. Whatever crops that were left were wilted, blighted, and dead. They saw the village in the distance. It sat between them and the Chamber.
“We could go around,” Hope suggested.
“No. I want to see it,” Gen said.
They approached the village. Most of the buildings had collapsed. Shiny white fairy skeletons littered the ground, long since picked clean by the Void roaches. Gen paused over the town square and settled to the ground in front of one particular skeleton.
“This is where she fell,” Gen said. “Nai.”
She knelt in front of the skeleton and lightly placed her fingers on the skull. A tear ran down her cheek. She stood and looked around the plaza.
“This is going to take forever to rebuild.”
“It didn’t take that long for The Marsh fairies,” Herron said.
“It wasn’t as bad as all of this in The Marsh, was it?” Gen snapped.
Herron narrowed his eyes at her. “Don’t do that. Don’t let this place get to you. We knew it would be bad. We saw it! We watched The Meadows get completely torn apart!”
Gen nodded slowly. “Yeah. We sure did.”
“There’s a big pod of praps coming,” Shae said. “They’re pretty big. We should get going before they arrive.”
“Okay,” Gen said. “The circle is right near my house. Let’s go.”
They flew to Ivy’s farmhouse. A sinkhole had opened up underneath one of her farm plots and her house was torn in two. The back of the house had tipped into the sinkhole and titled at a steep angle. Ivy’s big, horseshoe crab shell bathtub lay smashed, in pieces, below the house.
“I searched for years to find that shell,” Gen said. She sniffled. “I mean, Ivy did.”
Hope took her hand. “Same thing, my love.”
Gen looked at Hope. “Yeah?”
Hope nodded. “Yeah.”
“The circle’s right over there,” Herron pointed past Ivy’s house.
“We have two entire days to go,” Slynn said. “We may as well make ourselves comfortable.”
“I think we could probably stay at my house for the next two days,” Gen said. She looked at Shae. “Any praps or anything destined to head our way?”
Shae concentrated for a moment. “No, I don’t think so. I’m not sure they’ll notice us out here.”
They flew down to the farmhouse and went inside. Gen looked around. Every detail of this house was etched in her mind and its current condition pained her deeply. She stood on the edge of the floor next to the hole and looked down the slope of the sinkhole at the other half of her house.
Chapter 11
March 15, 1781
Guilford County, North Carolina
Colonel Egan aimed and fired at one of the rebels. It was a solid hit and the American crumpled to the ground. Egan knelt and reloaded his rifle. He bit the top off the paper cartridge and poured the powder into the pan.
Wasson zipped through the air and landed in the grass next to Egan.
“I just went to listen to Cornwallis,” Wasson said. “They’re saying that we’re going down in friendly fire. Can you believe that?”
“What are they supposed to think?” Egan asked through the paper still clenched in his teeth. He spit the paper out and poured the rest of the powder down the barrel. “They don’t rightly know what’s really going on, do they?”
“James!” Wasson cried.
Egan looked to the left, let the musket fall to the ground, snatched a pistol from his belt, and shot the rebel who rushed at him. The rebel fell and rolled back down the hill. Egan finished reloading the musket and replaced the ramrod, then reloaded the pistol.
“What’s the situation?”
“We’ve lost a lot of men. They were saying almost a quarter of ours are down,” Wasson said.
“And what’s going on, on the other side? Can we drive them back?”
Wasson shook his head. “No, they had the fairies corralled and they just cut them down. It was terrible. But they’re about out of fairies to chase now.”
Egan crouched and advanced slowly through the trees. He spotted another American and took aim. He fired and missed. The rebel spun to face Egan, then three more rushed out of the trees, all charging at Egan with their bayonets. Egan dropped the musket and pulled out his other pis
tol. He fired and one of the charging rebels spun from the impact and fell.
The other three rushed through the trees at Egan. He backed away and turned to run, but his boot caught on a root sticking up from the ground. He toppled over and, in an instant, all three Americans were on top of him. All three stabbed him with the long points of their bayonets. Egan screamed as they yanked the pikes free and stabbed him again and again. He managed to roll onto his back and get his pistol up. He fired blindly but he couldn’t tell whether he hit his attacker or not. Another set of jabs into his abdomen sent waves of nauseating agony shuddering up Egan’s spine. He screamed again and coughed a mouthful of blood, then they stabbed him again. He twitched.
His entire world had narrowed to the sound of the blades piercing his body. Even the pain was no longer as noticeable as the sound. Then several shots rang out from somewhere nearby and the stabbing stopped. There was screaming and there were footsteps stomping through the grass and leaves on the ground.
Egan forced his eyes open and the world spun. He looked down at his body. He was covered with blood. He couldn’t focus enough to count the gashes in his chest and stomach. More blood gushed from the largest of them.
Wasson tried to land next to Egan but he fell the last foot or so and crashed to the ground.
“We… did our… best,” Wasson gasped. He lay back on the leafy ground and closed his eyes. His breath was coming in painful wheezes.
The sounds of memories echoed through Egan’s mind.
“Patricia! Go upstairs! Take Davina and lock yourself in the baby’s room. Go! Now!”
“The redcoat’s wife’s awake!”
“Good shot, sir!”
“I love you.”
“Look, James. She’s perfect. Just look at her. Little Davina. Her eyes look just like yours.”
“He killed his human a couple hundred years ago. That fairy who’s killing your men: He’s immortal.”
“If a human should die at the hands of his fairy, or the other way around, then he shall gain life unending.”
Sovereign (Realmwalker Book 3) Page 9