Sixty-One Nails

by Mike Shevdon

  "Do you trust me to show you something? Here and now."

  "Yes."

  Her hesitant smile acknowledged the gap between hope and expectation. Was my trust important to her? It shamed me, after all we had been through, that I was unable to offer my complete trust. Then again, she made it clear on a number of occasions that she had her own priorities and I had no idea how far they would press her. I wasn't ready to offer unqualified trust. She walked around behind me, holding my shoulder to gently prevent me from turning with her. "I'm going to ask you to follow my instructions. Where we're going I won't get chance to explain, so I want you to just do it and I'll explain afterwards, OK? "

  "Why can't you explain now?"

  "It'll make much more sense afterwards."

  "So I have to trust you."

  "Yes."

  "You could just tell me."

  "I could, but you've already found several disadvan

  tages to being Fey. This is one of the advantages."

  "Are you sure I'm going to like it?"

  "Trust me," she whispered.

  It was hard after the day I'd had. She hadn't led me wrong though. Perhaps I could trust her for this one thing.

  She stood behind me, placing her hands on my shoulders, orientating me gently until I was facing the side wall of the underground chapel.

  "After the first step, I want you to step aside and take a deep breath to steady yourself and then, when I step in after you, I want you to step back on the line of the Way and step again, straight away, understand. Don't say anything and try not to make a noise, OK? "

  "What do you mean, steady myself?"

  "You'll understand after the first step, I promise."

  "Off the line and on again, don't make a noise. Got it." It was simple enough, but she was making a big deal about it.

  "Remember what I said." She squeezed my shoulder and I nodded again. "Now, close your eyes." I did as she asked, conscious of the pressure of her fingers on my shoulder.

  "You remember how it was with the mirror in Claire's office, how you connected with it, called to it? "

  "Yes."

  "Feel below your feet. Feel the flow of energy there." I reached down to the low vibration under the floor and tentatively felt towards it. Whereas the mirror had been still, like a windless pool, this was a torrent. It raged and crashed beneath our feet, surging along. I swayed slightly, unbalanced by its momentum. "Steady. You're just trying to create a connection with it, not to hold it. Just recognise it. Say 'Hello' to it, acknowledge its power and accept it. "

  "It's very strong."

  "Don't try and fight it, you'll lose. Just connect with it and let yourself be known."

  I reached out into the torrent as you might dangle your hand into the water from a speedboat, feeling the buffeting from it and knowing its power.

  "Now make a connection with it and take a step forwards, I'm right behind you."

  "But–"

  "I'm right behind you. Remember what I said."

  Tentatively, I reached to the darkness inside. It was eager to connect with the torrent below. I showed it what I wanted and the darkness snaked down, faster than I had anticipated. I felt the torrent rise beneath me. I took a step forward and it crested up under me and surged, carrying me off with it while I screamed and yelled at the joy of it, forgetting everything she'd said about being quiet. It was like surfing and skydiving rolled into one.

  My foot hit the floor and I stopped, staggering forward slightly. The echoes of my yell died around me. I opened my eyes and it was dark. I could still feel the river of power beneath me. I remembered Blackbird's instructions and stepped off the line just in time. A breeze turned out of nowhere and she melted into existence beside me.

  "That was fantastic! Where are we?" I was excited and elated by it.

  "Shhh." She pressed her hand over my mouth. "Hush."

  Light spilled downwards, revealing a cellar space with a staircase leading upwards in front of us, the light spilling down the steps from a door opened above. "Is there someone there?"

  The voice had a querulous quality to it that led me to think it hoped that there wasn't. A light bulb clicked on to my right.

  She whispered almost soundlessly, "Quick, before they get down here."

  She pressed me to the line again and I stepped onto it, ready this time for the rush. The Way answered with enthusiasm and I was swept up on a tidal wave of power. I opened my eyes this time and I could see the sparkles and whirls of it, turning and running. I realised that unlike a river it didn't flow in one direction, but in all directions. My step landed and I was somewhere else. I stepped off the line, further into the dusty shadows lined by the streaks of light, and Blackbird emerged after me, stepping from the breeze that whirled the dust up to streak the darkness with lines from above. I grinned at her in the dark.

  "This time you follow me. There's more than one Way from here so I'll go first."

  "How do you know which is the right Way?"

  "I'm just choosing a direction, initially from the orientation of the church, and then after that it's all down to feel."

  I watched as she stepped onto the line. A breeze sprang into life, swirling the dust up into the slivers of light from above and she was swept away. I stepped onto the line after her. I could feel the path of her presence, like a bed still warm.

  I reached down into the stream of energy beneath me and welcomed it as it welled up underneath, carrying me into the depths across an emptiness filled with ribbons of light and dark, whorled and streaked, echoing with disembodied voices.

  Seventeen

  I had thought all the stops on the Way would be in the crypts or basements, but our next step surprised me by depositing us in a woodland clearing. Crows lifted from the treetops and circled around us, cawing their alarm as we slipped into their domain in a cloud of falling leaves. The trees were at the crown of a hill. Between the trunks you could see miles of open countryside laid out below us. "Where are we now?"

  "Near Hereford, I think. We need to head north from here."

  The subtle change in her voice should have alerted me that something had changed but I wasn't ready for the shift in Blackbird's appearance. She had switched to the girl in Claire's conference room. The dappled sunlight filtering through the rust-tinted canopy showed me a young woman rather than an old lady. "What's with the change?"

  Her hair still held the vivid corkscrew curls from the girl in Trafalgar Square, though the glamour and polish of that earlier persona had been replaced by a casual beauty. The short skirt from before was now a long flared cotton one in gypsy colours and her top was sleeveless, in bold blue. A pale blue woollen shawl wrapped around her shoulders and down around her arms. She twirled around amidst the drifting leaves. "What do you think?" She smiled as she completed her turn.

  "It's fine, Blackbird, but I think I prefer the older you."

  "Do you?" she challenged. "Or do you just feel safer? "

  "You haven't answered my question, why the change?"

  "I think a man your age travelling with a younger woman causes less comment, don't you? Anyway, I told you, I'm tired of hiding."

  There was something about that little addition that rang differently in her voice. Not a lie, but it made me look at her more closely. She had acquired a freshness, a sparkle that had nothing to do with the autumn sunshine filtering through the trees.

  "We'll rest here a moment," she turned away from my scrutiny to look around the clearing. "How are you holding up?"

  "I feel great. Travelling down the Way is fantastic. "

  "The Ways leave you elated and full of energy, but it will quickly wear off and leave you feeling tired and washed out. Too much of it and you can lose focus. "

  "What happens then? "

  "You don't want to get lost on the Way."

  I didn't feel tired or lost. I was buzzing. I had so many questions.

  "What are the sounds you can hear on the Way?"

  "The low r
ushing sound is the Way, itself."

  "No, I meant the other noises, the ones that sound like the echoes of voices."

  "I don't hear those."

  "You don't?"

  "No."

  "I'm sure I heard them."

  She hesitated.

  "Is something wrong?" I asked her.

  "No, nothing's wrong. At least I don't think so. It's just that there are gaps in my knowledge, Rabbit. I know it must seem like I know all about the Feyre, but the truth is that I only know the ones I've met, or seen, or heard about. You present me with things I've never come across before. Tell me, what do you see when you travel down the Way?"

  "There are flashes of things, flying past. Spirals, eddies that twist and turn, lights that streak past like shooting stars in a sea of blue so deep, it's just… It's hard to make sense of it."

  "When I travel, I see a river of fire streaked from blue through to yellow and orange. It's like riding on an explosion of flame."

  "Why is it different?"

  "I am Fey'ree, a creature of fire and air. When I call to the Way, it answers me in kind, bearing me on a river of fire and air. When you call to it, it answers according to your nature."

  "What is it then that I'm seeing and hearing?"

  "The Feyre believe in five elements. Each of the Feyre expresses those elements in their own way, which is what makes us different from each other. The greyne are of water and air, the trollen of earth and water, each an expression of its essence."

  "I thought there were supposed to be four elements. "

  "Earth, air, fire, water, and the void. "

  "What's the void?"

  "It is the space between things; the emptiness dividing one from another. It is everywhere, between everything. Without it there would be no you or me or anything else. It would all merge into a single mass. The void is the element for the wraithkin. "

  "Is that bad?"

  "There is no good or bad in it, it just is. As I told you, I am a creature of fire and air and, as such, I can't be harmed with it. I could put my hand in a flame and it would be hot and it might hurt, but it wouldn't burn me."

  "So what does it mean to be of the void?"

  "I've no idea, I've never been in a position to ask anyone before."

  I thought about that for a moment. How would she know? The wraithkin had taken themselves apart from the rest of the Feyre a long time ago and even in the best of times I got the impression that they were secretive. "It didn't look like nothingness. "

  "Pardon? "

  "The void. It didn't look like nothing."

  "I didn't say it was nothing, I said it was between things. When we were in the conference room, back at the Courts of Justice, what made you choose the mirror?"

  "Well, it was there on the wall, and you told me the wraithkin that came that night… you know?" A shadow crossed her eyes, but I pressed on. "Well, you said he spoke into the mirror, so I wondered if I could too. "

  "And you did. "

  "It worked quite well, didn't it?"

  "That's why I have to be careful what I say to you. Before you called to the mirror I had no idea you could do that without touching it. Remember, the wraithkin on that night put his hand on the mirror? "

  "Yes, but it felt like the same thing."

  "And it was, but would you have tried if I had told you that you couldn't do it that way? "

  "Probably not," I admitted.

  "So by letting you follow your instinct, rather than filling you full of my preconceptions, you discovered something for yourself. Honestly, Rabbit, at the moment I am your worst enemy. "

  "No, Blackbird. You're my best friend."

  I had expected a smile for that, but instead her expression changed to something more guarded and neutral.

  "You place too much trust in me. "

  "Do I?"

  "You know you do. You admitted as much when we were in the crypt." She avoided eye contact, wading slowly through the leaves around her ankles. "You've helped me enormously. You must know how grateful I am?"

  There was a long pause. She was focused on the distant farms visible through the trees.

  "I did not think you would survive last night."

  "I know. You explained that at the underground station."

  "It doesn't make a very good friend, though, does it?"

  It was my turn to pause.

  "You are meant to be here," I told her.

  "Pardon?"

  "I was tempted before to tell you before that you were in the vision, so you would come with me, but the truth is I didn't see you. "

  "You can't lie to me like that, Rabbit."

  "I know, and I didn't try, but I was tempted."

  "So what makes you say I am meant to be here?"

  "Because I knew the crypt from my vision as soon as I saw it, but if you hadn't been there I would never have known it existed. Why would I? I didn't know about the Way or where to find it, but you did. Therefore you had to be there with me." I gave her a hesitant smile. "Someone else could have told you."

  "Who? No one else will speak to me after what happened with Fenlock, you said that much yourself. No, you may not have appeared in the vision, but you're meant to be here, I'm certain of that."

  She turned away again, staring across the fields as the breeze rustled in the branches overhead.

  I changed the subject. "How come we're not in a crypt or something?"

  She paused, then waded back though the leaves towards me. "The Ways were here long before the churches were built. There used to be temples and shrines on some of the node points and when Christianity arrived, the sites became churches. What better way to ensure a set of followers than to incorporate the old religions into the new?"

  "So was there something here, on this hill?"

  "Who knows? Sometimes the nodes are just places, like any other. Sometimes they are the sites for grand structures. You never know."

  "What happens if you crash into someone's funeral in a church or something?"

  "I generally take the precaution of using glamour to divert attention away but you can't do that entirely. Sometimes you just have to keep going until you find somewhere empty. There a knack to it, like treading stepping stones, you just hop from one to another." She mimicked a hopping, jumping step across the clearing.

  "If you appear and disappear in a moment, people don't believe what they've seen. They rationalise it as a reflection or a trick of the light. At worst, a place gets the reputation for being haunted. Are you ready to go again?"

  I nodded my assent and she stepped over to where the line was. She glanced back at me and then the leaves whirled up around her and she was gone. One moment I was sure she was there, the next moment there were just a vortex of falling leaves in an echo of the vision I had received from Kareesh. Well, at least I knew I was still on the right path, even if it was a strange one. I stepped onto the line, feeling the echoes of her passage and felt the breeze spring up. There was a whirl of leaves and the glade was far away.

  I followed, emerging into another darkened cellar, filled with dusty woodwork. Blackbird had her torch out and was opening the map. She folded and unfolded it until she had the place she wanted. "Once more, I think," she whispered.

  She folded the map and tucked it into her bag and switched off the torch.

  "Are you OK?"

  "I'm fine."

  "You'll sleep well tonight, I think."

  "I was supposed to sleep well last night. Then look what happened."

  She caught my hand and squeezed it in the dark.

  "Ready?"

  "Yes, I'm ready."

  She was right about the ways. Once the adrenaline wore off you were left feeling slightly disconnected from the world and very, very weary. Or maybe that was being woken at four in the morning by somebody trying to eat you. Either way, I was reaching the end of my endurance.

  I felt the air twist around me as she left. I stepped onto the line, forcing myself to focus on the s
ense of her passing.

  The Way swept me up once more, the disembodied voices sounding strangely familiar. The words were just out of hearing, and I thought that if I listened more closely maybe I could make out what they were saying. I felt the void twist and bend around me and I realised with a sinking feeling that I had missed Blackbird's trail. I twisted around, causing the way to eddy and swirl around me. It condensed and cleared leaving me hanging suspended, with no frame of reference with which to orientate myself.

  I bathed in the lightless depths of it. Pale fire crept onto my fingertips and streamed into the empty dark. I tried to focus on Blackbird, to force the way to take me to her. I felt it veer and eddy as I curled and spun aimlessly. The voices wailed distantly, and I began to fear they were the voices of past travellers who had lost their way in the void. Fear sharpened my senses and I pulled at the fabric of the emptiness, bending it to my will, calling to it, forcing it to take me to her.