Freya Snow Pup Trilogy

by L. C. Mawson

“Alright. Well, I just wanted to return it.”

  “Do you need to be off so soon or do you want to stay for a cup of tea?”

  “I can stay, if it wouldn’t be imposing,” Freya said, eager to get closer to the Fae once more.

  “Not at all, dear,” the grandmother said, stepping back to let her in.

  Freya followed her through to the kitchen as she stretched her magic out, seeking the Fae. She could sense them in the back of the garden as before, flitting about. She kept her senses focused on them, hoping to glean some insight as the rest of her focused on not visibly zoning out.

  “I wanted to thank you,” the grandmother said as she put the kettle on. “Zoe doesn’t see much kindness these days.”

  “Why not?” Freya asked. “If you don’t mind my asking,” she hastily added.

  The grandmother shrugged. “Things at home haven’t been settled for a while now and she takes refuge in her fantasies. She then takes those fantasies to school and... the other children aren’t kind.”

  Freya nodded as the grandmother poured out cups of tea. It tied into what Peter had said about the girl wanting to go with them. She was bullied and isolated and she wanted a different life.

  A life where she could bend reality to her will. Where she would have a family and friends. Freya couldn’t help but sympathise.

  She tried to ignore the pang in her chest. The Fae couldn’t be trusted. She trusted Amber and she trusted her assessment on that. Not to mention that the Dwarves had backed her up. Plus, how would the grandmother feel if Zoe suddenly disappeared one day?

  But Freya couldn’t help but feel that, if she had been given the same deal at Zoe’s age, she would have taken it without question.

  What right did Freya have to interfere?

  “I just hope things get better for her,” the grandmother said as she placed a cup of tea in front of Freya. “I try to do my best, you know?”

  Freya nodded, her resolve to keep Zoe on Earth cementing. “I’m sure things will get better for her.”

  “Have you eaten anything today?” the grandmother asked. “I’ve got some new flapjack bars, if you’d like one.”

  Freya was about to say that she was fine, she’d had toast before leaving, but her stomach quickly argued with that. “That would be lovely, thank you.”

  The grandmother smiled, handing her a bar. “You’re welcome, dear.”

  Freya quickly ate the bar, her stomach growling. “What kind was that?” Freya asked, wondering if she could get Margaret to buy them.

  “There was a woman who was selling them door-to-door yesterday. Some kind of blueberry and apple, I think.”

  Freya predicted the word ‘apple’ before she said it, suddenly feeling very woozy. She made a show of checking her phone, hoping that she had more than a few moments.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry! I have to meet my friend. Thank you for the tea and food,” Freya quickly said before bolting from the room, shifting to the Dwarves as soon as she was out of the front door.

  She collapsed unconscious as soon as she landed on the cottage floor.

  Chapter Eleven

  Freya opened her eyes to see the sea above her. Below her? She scrambled to her feet in an attempt to battle the sudden sense of vertigo engulfing her.

  She stood to see that she was surrounded by tall, blood-red grass, waving in the salt breeze.

  Freya dared to look upwards once more, seeing that the sky had been replaced with a deep green sea. Her brain couldn’t really process that it was above her, trying to convince her that it was below, despite her feet remaining firmly planted among the blood-red grass.

  “What is this place?” Freya asked, her voice echoing, despite the open space.

  She held her arms to herself in an effort to ward off the chill of the sea breeze, realising that she was wearing a scrappy white dress and brown boots, her hair braided behind her.

  “What happened?” she asked, trying to ward off the creeping sense of loneliness as nothing but an endless expanse lay before her.

  After a few moments of desperate searching, she saw a faint structure in the distance.

  She steeled herself and started walking forward.

  SHE DIDN’T KNOW HOW long she walked for. Time stopped having meaning. Sometimes it dragged as if for millennia, and sometimes miles seemed to take mere seconds.

  Eventually the structure in the distance became more pronounced. After a while, she recognised it as a castle, and later she realised that it was in a state of disrepair. It was by no means a ruin, but it had clearly been neglected for the last decade or so.

  The doors and windows were covered with poorly placed planks of wood, with enough space left for Freya to duck beneath and make her way through one of the windows.

  “Is anyone there?” she called, the echo from outside now gone.

  There was no response, so Freya continued on. The place gave her goosebumps, though not in a bad way. Her feet seemed to know where they were going, leading her through the corridor and to a large set of doors. She felt as if they should be intimidating, though they seemed nothing but familiar to her.

  She opened them to find a ballroom, filled with pale blue ghosts. The ghosts were all dressed in extravagant ball gowns and the like, though they had no faces.

  As Freya entered the room, the same pale blue clouds which made up the others surrounded her, forming a dress just like the others, along with a small tiara atop her head.

  At the top of the room was a large throne, with two more at either side of it. The figure in the centre throne stood up, making his way down to Freya.

  He bowed as he reached her and she found herself curtsying in response.

  “I was worried you were going to run late,” a voice, which seemed to come from all around her, said.

  She smirked, her brain having little to do with how her body behaved. “And miss my own party? Hardly.”

  “I should not keep you from your birthday well-wishers, but don’t be too long. Your mother is looking forward to giving you your present.”

  “Of course not, Father.”

  He turned to leave and was replaced by a slightly shorter figure.

  “Care to share this dance?”

  She recognised this voice as Damon’s, taking his hand immediately. “It would be my pleasure.”

  He twirled her around the floor for a while before speaking again. “Your father is staring.”

  “Of course he is. He thinks your interest in me is all some well-engineered plot of your father’s.”

  “I would be lying if I said that he was not scheming.”

  “Your father is always scheming. I am not some pawn to be moved around his chessboard. If he thinks that I am, then he underestimates me. He gains nothing from our relationship and I aim to keep it that way.”

  “I would indeed say that he underestimates you but... I suppose I do not want you to underestimate him. There’s a reason he is as powerful as he is.”

  “I am simply looking forward to the storm we will have to weather after I announce my plan to marry you.”

  “I... You have not spoken of this plan.”

  She smirked once more. “Oh, have I not? It must have slipped my mind. I would very much like to hear your thoughts on the matter.”

  “I would, of course, never dream of defying yo-”

  The ghosts disappeared around her and Freya found the spell broken.

  “They were simply echoes,” a solid voice told her from across the room.

  Freya turned to see that the throne now had a corporeal woman sitting in it. Her skin was jet black, with no colour variation at all. As if someone had just taken the outline of a woman and used the fill tool. The only exceptions were the silver tears burned into her cheeks, the exact same colour as her knee-length dress.

  The woman regarded her with jet black eyes. “Do you know where you are?” she eventually asked.

  “No,” Freya replied. “What did you mean echoes? Who are you?”

&nbs
p; “My name is Ku, though mortals better know me as what remains of the last Ancient. This place,” she indicated around her, “is the Shadow Realm. A mirror of your own world where echoes of other worlds are more likely to bleed through.”

  “Wait, you’re... You’re the being Amber was bound to, right? That’s where she got her powers?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you mean other worlds? That... One of the ghosts sounded like Damon.”

  Ku nodded. “I am unsure how much mortals understand of the world now. Amber never paid much attention to such things, and my last host was too much like her in too many ways.”

  “You had a host after Amber?”

  “Your mother carried me for a time,” Ku told her, as if telling her the time of day. “She did not have much time to adjust to me before her death, however.”

  “So, what? You latched onto her after Amber died?”

  “Passing me on was the reason Amber died,” Ku corrected her. “After your mother died, I had no host, and decided I didn’t need one. I only took a host to prevent the Shadows from making it to Earth.”

  “But what if the seals between the worlds broke?”

  “I watched for many years and the seals were never threatened.”

  “Well, the Fae are threatening them now.”

  Ku waved her hand dismissively. “If the Earth was in any real danger, Fate would call me back. Though... I suppose sending you here might be her way of doing so.” She stood up. “Come. We shall see if the Earth is truly in the peril you claim.”

  Freya nodded, hurrying after her. “So, the sleeping curse sent me to the Shadow Realm?”

  “Yes. Though you come here often in your sleep anyway. I had wondered why this time you did not remember.”

  Freya frowned. “Wait, I come here in my sleep?”

  Ku nodded. “You do not remember when you wake up, but you are fully conscious here, unlike everyone else.”

  “Everyone else?”

  “All magical beings keep part of their soul here,” Ku told her. “But it is merely a reflection. Everything here is symbolic of everything happening in the other realms. They cannot make choices which do not reflect the choices made elsewhere. Not unless the rest of their soul is sent here.”

  “Then they become fully aware?”

  “They do not remember their lives elsewhere, if that is what you’re asking. You are unique in that regard. Possibly because you were conceived here.”

  “So... What were the echoes?”

  Ku huffed a little. “Every action you take is a divergent point. You know this, yes?”

  “Yeah, it’s like quantum mechanics, right? Every time you make a decision, the universe splits. Every possibility is played out somewhere. And, somewhere, Spock has a beard.”

  Ku frowned. “I think I understood that reference. Spock is the pointy eared one from the stories about space, yes?”

  “Yeah, that’s the one,” Freya confirmed with a smile. “So, are you saying that those ghosts were from an alternate reality? Like, a regency AU or something.”

  Ku’s frown deepened. “I dislike it when language evolves without me. Regardless, I think you are correct. The Shadow Realm is essentially a buffer between these realities and they can sometimes leak through, just as you saw in the ballroom.”

  As they lapsed into silence, Freya tried really hard not to think too much about the fact that she had apparently proposed to Damon in an alternate reality.

  Ku led her into a room where the walls were covered in mirrors. In the centre of the room stood another woman, though woman was perhaps a stretch. She was perhaps best described as a series of branches and vines which wrapped around each other to form the shape of a woman.

  “Freya!” the tree-woman cried happily. “I was wondering when you would be back.”

  “She does not remember,” Ku informed her. “She was sent here by a curse.”

  “A curse? How did that happen?”

  “Fae,” Freya told her. “They have me re-enacting Snow White.”

  The tree-woman sighed. “The Lost Children. Of course.”

  “I’m sorry, but... Who exactly are you?”

  “She has the memories of her conscious self,” Ku reminded the tree-woman.

  She nodded. “I do not have a name. We are both parts of you. Parts which you have not fully integrated into yourself, but parts nonetheless.”

  “You’re both part of me?” Freya asked before turning to Ku. “I thought you said you didn’t have a host.”

  “I don’t. Not really. You were the nearest compatible host when your mother died, and I have to reside somewhere. However, I sealed myself from you so that we wouldn’t bind. You don’t require my power, and I am content to remain dormant.”

  “You might be, but I’m not,” the tree-woman protested.

  “We usually refer to her as Juni,” Ku interjected, “after the ancestor you inherited her from.”

  “So, why aren’t you fully integrated?” Freya asked Juni.

  Juni shrugged. “There are rules regarding my power. I am a bridge between nature and the Human world. You cannot fully access my power until you have a sufficient tie to the Human realm.”

  “Which wouldn’t be a good idea anyway,” Ku said. “I don’t know what Fate thought she was doing when she brought you into the world, Freya, but you’re a volatile enough cocktail without adding more Ancient power into the mix.”

  “Um... Thanks, I think...”

  Juni laughed at that. “Ignore Ku. Ancients don’t really have need of social graces.”

  Freya turned as she caught sight of something in the corner of her eye. One of the mirrors was no longer reflecting her. Or rather, it was, but not the her it should be reflecting. Her reflection was dressed in black leather riding clothes, her hair up in a braid.

  “What’s up with this mirror?” Freya asked as the other her tugged at her clothes, straightening them out.

  “These mirrors show you the alternate worlds I told you about before,” Ku said. “She’s the you from the ballroom.”

  “The one engaged to Damon?”

  “Yes.”

  “And she can’t see us?”

  “No, the mirrors are just one way.”

  That was when Freya heard a voice that seemed to be coming from all around her. “Fussing with your clothes isn’t going to change anything.”

  The mirror Freya sighed as another woman came into frame. She was older, with blonde hair and olive skin, though she had Freya’s wild green eyes. She was wearing a long black and red dress with so much intricate lacing that it gave Freya a headache to look at.

  “It makes me feel better,” the mirror Freya replied. “Nothing I do will change anything anyway.”

  “Well, that’s not true,” the older woman said, putting her arm around the mirror Freya. “You just don’t want to do any of the things that will change anything.”

  “I’m not breaking things off with Damon because Father doesn’t like Uther. My life is not theirs to play with.”

  The other woman sighed. “I never wanted it to be. Part of me wonders if I shouldn’t have kept you on Earth, to live a normal Human life as I did.”

  “Earth is a smoking crater,” mirror Freya pointed out. “I’m not being some petty young girl who wishes for a different life. Father’s letting his paranoia get in the way of realising that I know what I’m doing. He’s messing up my plans.”

  “Your plans?”

  “Uther has been rallying support against me. As soon as I take Father’s place, it will be civil war. Damon and I aren’t going to let it come to that.”

  The older woman laughed, shaking her head. “You know, you could tell your Father about your plan.”

  “Ah yes, because he has never been reluctant when it comes to me putting myself in danger.”

  “Fair point.”

  They moved away from the mirror so that Freya could no longer see or hear them.

  “This place is really wei
rd,” she eventually said to Ku and Juni. “I have to figure out a way to get back...”

  “You were saying something about the seals between worlds weakening,” Ku reminded her.

  “Yeah. The Fae have brought Dwarves to Earth and, as long as they’re there, the seals will weaken.”

  Ku hummed, moving over to another mirror and waving her hand in front of it. It rippled to show a girl who was maybe fourteen, though she had the same butterfly wings as Peter.

  “Ku?” she asked. “What do you want?”

  “I’ve heard that Fae are interfering with my seals.”

  “How? Aren’t you in the Shadow Realm?”

  “Freya told me.”

  “Hi,” Freya said awkwardly.

  The girl in the mirror seemed surprised to see her. “You’re wrapped up in this?”

  “I got hit with a sleeping curse. It sent me here.”

  “Let me guess, Peter was the one who cursed you?”

  “Yes.”

  The girl sighed. “I never thought he would be this reckless.”

  “Did you know Peter would curse her?” Juni asked.

  The girl folded her arms. “No, but I did know that he planned to see Freya. I’m not sure what his goal was meant to be. To protect her, maybe. He doesn’t like how integral she is to Fate’s plan. That’s never boded well for any other member of our family.”

  Juni sighed at that. “Oh, my child. There is no changing the plan. Even if it means that Freya must bind with Ku to return.”

  “That may not be necessary,” the girl said. “I am confident that Peter would not have cursed her if he didn’t think there was some way for her to wake.”

  “Well, I mean, he cursed me to play out Snow White, so true love’s kiss would theoretically wake me. I just don’t have anyone.”

  “Peter wouldn’t have cursed you if that was the case. You’re in the Shadow Realm. It might be more obvious to you there than on Earth.”

  “Oh, I guarantee that it is,” Ku said. “Thank you, Tilly.”

  The mirror rippled once more and the Fae girl disappeared.

  Ku turned back to her. “Well, that’s easy enough to solve.”

  “Did you miss the bit about me not having a true love, or...?”