Faire Eve

by Catherine Stovall

  Abnoba, like most wood sprites, could be vengeful if crossed. Unfortunately, she was also the most powerful wood sprite in Evalon. As the leaders and protectors of Evalon, the Sidhe and the Daoine Warriors had free passage through her forest and the gate hidden deep within. Out of respect, Eldon always asked for Abnoba’s blessing anyway. The wood sprites made powerful allies and Eldon knew he did not want to rustle their leaves.

  Eldon kept the lead, walking silently, lost in his own thoughts. For the moment, his mind wasn’t on Eve or the trouble in Evalon. He merely let his memories of his father flood back. He thought of being very small and walking beside the mammoth of a man on the very same path. His father’s hand had hung at his side the whole way, a silent offer for Eldon to take it if he became afraid. Eldon had tried to be brave and he had made it almost through the woods before an ugly sprite had swung upside down from a low branch, screaming like a banshee.

  Eldon had yelped like a hurt puppy. While one hand gripped his father’s in fear, the other had drawn his short sword. The sprite had taken one look at the gleaming blade in the hands of a five year old and decided he had better run. Eldon’s father had laughed heartily, patted him on the head, and had walked the rest of the way with his large fingers holding Eldon’s small ones. His father had been a great man. Eldon still missed him often. He hoped he had made him proud so far.

  Brought out of his reverie by an unusual feeling, Eldon began focusing on his surroundings. Living in a world of twilight, the shadows were familiar but the darkness hanging on the edges of the path seemed different. The dim shaded areas looked like thick blankets of black wool. The woods seemed too quiet. No birds sang, no squirrels chattered. Usually, travelers could hear sprites rustling in the trees and bush. They spied, teased, and performed their mischievous tricks mercilessly. Instead, an eerie hush settled around them.

  Holding up one arm, Eldon silently signaled to his men that there might be trouble. Caleb appeared at his side, “Wondered when you’d catch on boss. The rest of us have been feeling it for a while.”

  His voice low and his eyes looking everywhere at once, Eldon asked, “Where is everyone and everything? It’s too damn quiet. Quiet and dark.”

  Caleb nodded and began to answer, but before he could, Eldon darted to the side like a rattlesnake after prey. His hand burst into a nearby Blackthorn bush. A muffled cry escaped the shrubbery and Eldon pulled his hand free of the spikes. Rivulets of blood traced down his skin from the resulting cuts. He held up a squirming and frightened wood sprite who tried valiantly to fight its way out of the warrior’s grasp.

  The thing’s Ash wood colored skin covered its body in a rough and bark-like texture. Its arms flailed out as it tried to scratch Eldon’s face with twig like fingers. The leafy mass of hair rattled and rustled with its panicked throes. A small chipmunk skittered out, leapt to the ground, and scurried away. The imp’s face looked exactly like an old man’s, possibly more so because of the strain and stress it felt. It fought hard against the creature holding it at arm’s length.

  The thorny bush had cut Eldon in several places and it looked as if the little sprite had managed to bite him as well. He thrust the miniature tree looking creature towards Caleb. “Take it for a minute while I clean my arm.”

  The thing jabbered so fast in its native language, Eldon couldn’t understand most of what it said. It repeatedly screamed at him, “Sidhe arghun vantor corag bae sol faq Nádcha Večný.”

  Caleb held the creature out from him with a bemused look on his face. “You don’t think this thing will give me warts, do you?”

  Eldon couldn’t help but crack a smile, “Only if it pees on you, man.”

  Eldon made quick work of cleaning and covering his wounds. By the time he finished, the wood sprite seemed to have blown off most of its steam. It hung from Caleb’s hand with its arms crossed over its chest while muttering incoherently in its strange tongue. It still looked angry, but something else seemed to brew inside its head.

  Eldon locked gazes with the sprite. His vision swam and in his mind, he saw the image of something dark and shapeless moving through the woods. He heard the screams of the sprites as they died painfully in a death as cold as the River Shannon in February. He saw the black mass lumbering swiftly like an Upper World locomotive, its eyes blazing like blue fire in the obscure bleakness of the forest.

  Abnoba appeared, the vision of a living willow tree, she raised her long arms to the sky and called the forest against the beast as it tore her people into pieces. They bled a dark blood that poured thick like sap from broken limbs and shattered skulls. The monster laughed as the forest whipped itself against the bulk of the dark body. Voices sounded but Eldon could not translate the words. Abnoba wept with anger and fear but she did not run, standing as if she were a mighty Oak, she faced down her death.

  The forest shook with the demon’s roar, a bluish white light shattered the darkness, and Abnoba’s screams ripped at Eldon’s heart even as they pierced his eardrums. He felt what Abnoba had felt in her last moments. The blast smashed against him like a glacier and a volcano all at once. Held prisoner by the cold, despite the fire eating his body, Eldon watched through Abnoba’s eyes. The monster moved towards her out of the darkness. Eldon could almost see it.

  “What the hell are you doing to him, you little bugger?” Caleb’s shouts, the wood sprite’s screams, and angry cursing broke the spell holding Eldon.

  The little sprite twisted and stretched, determined to get at the soldier’s eyes. Caleb shook it brutally to prevent the attack. Eldon found himself on his knees in the dirt. Sweat beaded on his brow. He shivered and goose bumps covered his skin. Rubbing at his eyes, he tried to assure himself that the world he saw was real and solid. As his mind settled, his rage burned away the chill and cooled the fire.

  Caleb continued to shake the little beast, causing the sprite to attempt escape more ferociously. Its mad jabbering echoed off the trees. Eldon felt tempted to grab the thing from his second in command. He wanted to smash it under his foot, but after seeing such a brutal scene, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Instead, Eldon sprinkled the devilish sprite with some štipka. The magical dust made the sprite sneeze several times before his eyes glazed over.

  When it opened its mouth again, to squelch obscenities, the men and the sprite were severely surprised. They could understand the scraggly twig as well as they could each other. He still possessed a heavy accent but spoke in a universal language. “What is it you want from Gribbog? Gribbog is the only one left. Gribbog hid from the monster and lived, only to wish he could die.”

  “Did the vision you show me really happen here or was it a trick? Where is your mistress Abnoba?” Eldon sounded fierce. He kept his gaze away from the beastly sprite’s eyes, despite his natural instinct to stare the thing down until it shivered in fear of him.

  “Real. Real! Gribbog never lies! Gribbog doesn’t play tricks!” The creature began to weep thick tears of clear sappy fluid. Sniffling noisily, he continued, “Abnoba. Abnooooba! She burned in the ice. The monster, he ate the others like Gribbog, squashed still more. Gribbog is the smallest, and Gribbog hid very well. Gribbog watched as the monster burned his mistress with the light and the frozen fire.”

  Caleb gave the sprite another shake. “This is bullshit, Eldon. This thing is screwing with your head. It’s dragging us along on some warped game. We were given blessing to enter this place and I say this one’s broken the deal. We should break him.”

  Eldon wished he could destroy the monster, but he held out from his violent intentions. “Gribbog, if that’s your real name, if Abnoba is dead then how did she bless my entrance into the forest not an hour ago?”

  “Gribbog didn’t say the mistress was dead. Her spirit is strong. She cannot come back to her form. Her soul is trapped in the forest. The monster! The monster trapped her with fire and ice as blue as your eyes Eldon of the Daoine. Come, put Gribbog down and he will show you the way. I will show you Abnoba and you will be sorry
you were mean to Gribbog of the Wood.” The little sprite squiggled and squirmed as much as he could, his little legs running a marathon in the air as he tried to get down.

  Eldon dug in his pack for a moment and found a solution. The garrote from the fight with the Astaroth demons lay at the bottom of the bag. He had meant to return it to Aibell but forgot. Taking out the long golden wire, he made a noose. The wire was strong enough the sprite wouldn’t be able to bite through it and magical enough to give Gribbog quite a shock if he tried. Slipping the loop over the sprite’s leafy head, Eldon gave it a tug in warning.

  “If you try anything sneaky, you damnable sprite, I will choke the life out of you and leave you here for the termites to eat.” Eldon wasn’t in the mood to fool with Gribbog any longer and Eve was waiting. The soldier in him made him follow the sprite but the man in him longed to follow his heart.

  Through the bush, off the path, the men trudge behind the strange creature. Being large and heavy, they had some trouble moving through the landscape. Gribbog kept forgetting himself. He would jump up and down excitedly as he yelled, “Hurry, hurry you stupid fairy beasts. She is waiting and Gribbog can run much faster than you.”

  Caleb grumbled something behind Eldon that sounded a little like a recipe for boiled woodland sprites. Eldon moved on, stealthily and determined. The group wound themselves into the heart of the forest. Hardly any sunlight seeped through the high foliage. The air smelled of musk, rotted leaves, and honeysuckle. Despite the low light, Eldon and his men could see the damage around them.

  Large trees, the size of wagon wheels, laid snapped in half as if they were twigs. The underbrush looked flattened as if by a rolling boulder. Sticky, thick blood splattered and pooled in places. Picking their way carefully through the battle zone, they saw the ice. It clung to the trees and plants, adding a chill to the air. The forest around them shimmered with the fear and anguish of the recent bloodshed. The ice steamed and fizzled but didn’t seem to melt, despite the warmth of the day.

  The sight of the large Wych Elm disturbed Eldon the most. The tree had once stood, magnificent in both size and age. An obvious favorite of the sprites, the monster found most of its prey among the branches. A thick coating of ice covered from the roots to most of the upper limbs. Everywhere the ice touched remained frozen. The limbs that had escaped the blast, turned black and the leaves shriveled and fell to the forest floor. They piled in frozen clumps, covering the broken bodies of its once happy inhabitants. The vision still burning in his mind, Eldon’s body trembled with cold and hate at what he saw.

  Gribbog pulled at Eldon’s hand, prying the soldier’s attention away from the Elm. “Look, look with your own eyes and see Eldon of the Daoine. There stands our great Abnoba. She is there, in the ice. Gribbog brought you. You must free me. Free Gribbog before it comes back for me. Gribbog must hide. Let me go, let me go now. Eldon of the Daoine, Warriors of Daoine, you will be eaten or frozen by the fire but Gribbog will go.”

  The little sprite became agitated again and the garrote cut into his rough, treelike skin. The sappy blood welled up on Gribbog’s neck. Eldon felt sorry for the orphaned creature. After all, it had witnessed its whole colony destroyed and he and his men were torturing it.

  Vandel crept up beside Eldon, one of the younger men in the troop, he was never very outspoken unless in a ruckus with one of the others. Vandel stayed quiet, stayed low, and watched everyone’s backs as well as his own. Eldon liked that about the boy. “Cap't if you would like me to take the little feller so you can take a look around, I will.”

  Eldon clapped the youthful soldier on the shoulder and handed over the end of the garrote. “Play nice with him Gribbog and you can be out of here as soon as I’m done looking.” Eldon warned the sprite and hoped it heeded his words.

  Gribbog mumbled something broken and barely audible but he didn’t put up a fight. With his unlikely prisoner secured, Eldon began to pick his way through the wreckage. He headed toward a portion of the forest set back away from the great Wych Elm. The ice in front of him became thicker. It swept up from the forest floor in thick sheets to swallow everything it touched.

  In the distance, he could see her. Abnoba stood at the edge of the icy aftermath. Her hands held above her head and her face tilted to the sky. He could tell she had been calling the forest to her aid when the monster had attacked, just as in the vision Gribbog had shown him. Her position away from the nest told him that she had tried to lure the creature away from the other sprites.

  Abnoba looked as if the hands of a masterful sculpture had carved her instead of a once living being. Her long tendrils of vine-like hair streamed behind her, encased in curling icicles. Beautiful tragedy stared Eldon in the face. She was not gone but she was not whole. He could feel her presence still in the woods, unable to communicate and unable to return to her frozen shell.

  She was a brave and formidable ruler to the sprites. The oldest and most powerful among them, Abnoba had ruled the woods for as long as anyone in Evalon could remember. She would not let the monster turn her away from her home and children. Her spirit was too strong.

  The soles of his boots slid on the surface and sent him careening forward. Falling on to the ice with a painful jarring, Eldon slid several feet on all fours. When he finally stopped, he was face to face with the decapitated head of an old and withered sprite. In the final death throes, its eyes had rolled upward. leaving only the whites to show in a face frozen into a scream of anger and pain. The sprite’s rough brown skin had already begun to harden and dry like aged firewood.

  Eldon jerked away from the lifeless face and tried to regain his feet. Sliding across the ice again, he backed a few feet away. He managed to keep his feet under him and lean against a frozen tree stump for balance while he caught his breath. As a warrior, he had witnessed cruelty and death much greater than the scene before him. Yet, something about the innocence of the sprites and the cold evil of whatever had attacked them, made the brutal murders more powerful than any other he had seen.

  After disposing of the remains and casting a protective circle around Abnoba so she would remain undisturbed, the crew bade farewell and sincere condolences to Gribbog before moving on. Because of their discovery in Abnoba’s woods, they were late to meet with Eve and none dared to use the gate within the trees. The current situation forced them to use the gate in the heart of Spearwort. They must bring Eve back, at any cost.

  Evalon would face whatever new threat that had unleashed its unholy power on the wood sprites and they would need the power of the Sidhe to defeat the darkness. Eve was their answer to the cure. Once the Sidhe were returned, the new threat of an ice-breathing monster could be dealt with.

  An hour march on the other side of the bloody forest, Eldon spoke quietly with Arathus, the leader of the O’daine. Eldon warned Arathus about what had occurred in Abnoba’s Woods and was surprised to learn the O’daine had heard rumors of a massive beast lurking only in the shadows.

  “The beast is frightening people and some of the Brownie children are missing. Their parents fear the worse.” Arathus’ eyes gleamed with the chance to spill blood. “Perhaps, it is the same one who destroyed the sprites.”

  “Perhaps it is. Be wary old friend. You may be the leader of the O’daine but even the elfin spear may not be able to annihilate such a monster. I tell you, Abnoba is still there, just unable to return to her body. After seeing what it did to her and her people, I fear the creature contains dark power beyond anything I have ever seen.”

  Time ran short; he no longer had time to wait. Eldon gave the best warning he could. Arathus stood guard by the gate as Eldon and his men made the crossing. Eldon hated his mind when it reminded him, that in another moment, he would lay eyes on Eve again. He hated his heart even more when it leapt against his ribs in anticipation.

  10

  Eve walked across the green grass, feeling the chill of the wind. The sun sat at its highest point in the sky but the day felt cold. As they wound their way de
eper through Central Park, the beauty of the grounds did not fade. It only gained a more sinister element. The shadows moving beyond the places where light touched seemed to be waiting for her. She could feel the energy of the city and its inhabitants ebbing against nature. She could sense it like a buzz of electricity too close to her skin. Occasionally, she would walk through a place where the energy blanked out. Nothingness hung in the air as if life ceased to exist inside the spaces.

  She wanted to linger, to explore the bareness that sometimes only covered one footstep and other times covered several feet of space. Her mother, ever vigilant, and her father, with a wary look in his eyes, pushed her on. She must make it to the gate. A tangible fear clung to her mother, it haggard her inside but not out. The physical body looked as lovely as ever, but Eve could feel the age flowing through her mother’s strong limbs. It caused her to turn inward like a beautiful flower beginning to wilt.

  The people who strolled past them with pets and friends looked cheery and oblivious. Eve wished for that innocence for a moment. Her nerves strained under the pressure. She worried about her mom and dad. She worried about Eldon and Aibell. She also felt great concern for the unfamiliar family who had perished in the cold sleep. Most of all, she feared what lay ahead for herself.

  She was barely old enough to drive. She was barely tall enough to reach the second shelf in the kitchen cabinets. She was a girl, a sixteen-year-old girl. She should have been turning away from believing in fairies and science experiments and into boys and makeup. Instead, she had grown up fearing anything resembling magic. Eve suddenly found herself plunged into another world as if dumped into a tub full of ice water. Except, she wasn’t shivering from the cold, she shivered in fear.