Mildred gently scratched at Wynn’s skirt with her feet, then settled down in Wynn’s lap with a contented flip of one wing. Wynn stroked her as she thought about the question. “The queen said we all have magic.”
“Elves don’t.” The girl sounded very sad. “We have nothing. We hide, we hunt, we die.”
“What is that?” Wynn pointed to the thing in her hands.
The elf looked surprised. “This?” She held it up. “It’s just a book. Haven’t you ever seen one? I know men in the Otherworld have them. Elves shared the idea for books with men long ago. I have seen pictures.”
Wynn shook her head. She had lived her whole life in the Otherworld with her mother. Her mother didn’t have a thing like that in her hut. The elf opened it up, and delicate squares of leaf-like material arched in a beautiful fan. On the leaves were pretty drawings and lots of squiggled patterns that made Wynn dizzy to look at them.
“You read it. These are pictures of words. When you write words down or draw pictures, you can keep them forever and you don’t have to remember them. Then when you die, those thoughts stay in the book, and you can give them to someone else. That way nothing is lost, even if you are gone.” The elf girl scooted beside her and brought the book in front of Wynn. Wynn turned the pages, looking at the beautiful pictures painted with such vibrant colors. They were of fairies.
“You like fairies?” Wynn asked. She didn’t think the elves liked fairies at all. The elf leader didn’t like her. He was very mean.
The girl got a dreamy look in her golden eyes. “Oh yes. They are very beautiful, and magical.”
“But you are very beautiful,” Wynn said.
The girl raised one eyebrow. “I have green skin and no hair.”
“And that is very beautiful,” Wynn insisted. “Your skin looks like my garden. And it has flowers on it. That is good for hiding. What is your name?”
“In your language, my name is Lexicon,” she smiled at Wynn. She had a very nice smile. “You can call me Lexi.”
“I am Wynn.” Wynn said each word as clearly as she could. She reached out a hand, and Lexi took it.
The pretty light flickered in the room. Mildred felt warm in her lap. Wynn was happy again. Lexi was wrong. She was magic. Wynn smiled at her.
“I need your help,” her new friend said. Her eyes were very shiny, and she blinked them, then looked away.
“I can help,” Wynn said. She was happy to help.
Lexi gave her a strange look. Her nose scrunched up. “You don’t even know what I was going to ask.”
“I don’t understand,” Wynn said. She hated those words. But none of this made sense to her. If Lexi needed help, she would help. Lexi was very nice.
Lexi sighed and closed her book. “How do you know if you can help me, when I haven’t even told you what the problem is?”
Wynn blinked at her. “You need help.”
Lexi nodded. “That’s right.”
“I will help.” This didn’t seem very difficult to Wynn.
“And you ask for nothing in return?” Lexi’s forehead wrinkled.
“I will help,” Wynn insisted.
It took a long time for Lexi to answer. Wynn knew how it felt to search for words, so she waited.
“My brother is dying,” she said. “And it’s all my fault.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Elric
ELRIC THREW A STICK DOWN in frustration as he watched what little light they had slowly die. They had been searching for a new trail all day, but it was no use. Night was upon them, and he was exhausted. He could barely stand without swaying. They would have to find shelter, and quickly.
No matter how hard he had searched, he couldn’t find any sign of Wynn, only the tracks of a band of wild pigs. They were strange, though. The space between the tracks seemed very regular, and the beasts had lined up in perfect rows.
Elric rubbed his neck as Osmund came closer with the stone in his branch glowing brightly. One reaper was dead, and he was glad for that. But, there was another reaper somewhere in the woods. And the fact that Wynn had met with a monster even more powerful and deadly than the reaper filled him with fear.
“Elric,” Osmund called. Elric found his way back to him with his heart in his throat. He still feared the worst at every moment. Osmund looked up at the canopy, secured his ax in a strap across his back, and then tucked his glowstone torch beside it. “We have to climb up a tree and wait out the night. Otherwise anything could sneak up on us in the dark, including whatever killed that reaper.”
Elric sheathed his sword and laced his fingers together to give Osmund a hand up. He boosted Osmund to the first branch and watched as the woodcutter expertly climbed to the topmost branches of the tree.
Reaching over his head to pull himself up on the first branch, Elric climbed more cautiously. He was never comfortable with being off the ground. He struggled higher and higher into the upper branches of the tree, to a place where he could peek through the highest layer of the leaves. Osmund reclined in a crook of a branch, as if he were in a hammock. “Not a bad view,” he said.
Elric found a sturdy branch to lean against and glanced up at the sky. He lost his breath and nearly fell out of the tree. He had seen the night sky many times, but he had never seen anything as magical as this.
The stars opened up in a great blanket above his head. They formed thick bands of light mixed with distant stardust that looked like clouds. They painted the sky with deep blues, pinks, and purples exploding in great billowing storms of color in the deepest depths of the sky. He could see distant bodies of light, swirling like spirals or great twisting pools of light in the distance. All the while, stars streaked through the endless sky—falling notes from silent music that was no longer allowed to be heard. They reminded him of Wynn, and another magical night they had spent under a broken oak tree that looked like great hands holding the moon aloft.
He hadn’t seen the stars since he had come to the Between. The shield prevented it. The light from the shield never faded, and it remained bright under the dome, even in the night. Elric had forgotten what the stars looked like, how they made him feel. As he stared out at the infinite sky, he wondered what else the fairies had sacrificed for their safety when they had closed the shield around their kingdom.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it,” Osmund said.
“Yes,” Elric said. “It really is.” He wondered if these woods were once beautiful in the time before the Grendel. As he stared up at the depths of the sky, large orbs of swirling colors rose on the horizon like great and beautiful moons. One had vast striped rings as it sailed through the endless sea of stars.
“On the night when I slipped through the shield, I did it to see the stars,” Osmund said, his voice soft, and less gruff than Elric had ever heard it. “The queen named her lost daughter after the stars, and I wanted to know what was so special about them. I didn’t get a chance to see them here, but when I got to the Otherworld, I finally understood. I’ve never seen the stars like this.”
Elric nodded. It was like they were both adrift in the heavens on a dark boat of leaves. “How did the queen’s daughter die?” he asked. “I thought fairies were immortal.”
“In a sense, they are. Experience ages them, not time. And they never die from growing old, but they aren’t born that way,” Osmund said, crossing his arms and resting his head in the crook of the branches. “When fairies are born, they are very much like us. They bleed, they scar, they can be killed if their magic has not come in yet. Sadly they are very fragile. Not many survive.”
Osmund gripped the branch over his shoulder and leaned back, peering up at the wonders above them. “The fairies’ magic wasn’t always as strong as it is now. The elves discovered a way to refine certain crystals to hone and amplify magic. They gifted a staff to the royal court. The Grendel took it for his own, and became obsessed with its power.”
Osmund looked out over the woods. “He wanted to rid the woods of the monsters from t
he Shadowfields, but the staff made him believe that power and strength gave him the right to rule. The fairy court didn’t agree, and they gave the crown to the queen.”
“And he didn’t take that well, did he?” Elric said. He had heard parts of this story.
“The queen wed a bold knight. He went to battle the Grendel to protect what was left of the fairy kingdom. He managed to steal the staff and give it to the queen, reducing the Grendel’s terrible power. The battle raged into the Shadowfields. He drove the Grendel off, but the Summer King, the queen’s one love, never returned.”
“That’s awful,” Elric said. The queen must have been heartbroken.
“She was, but then the queen realized she was going to have a baby. All the love she felt for the Summer King, she poured into the new child. The princess was born, and fairies and elves rejoiced. They vowed to fight the Grendel together, but the elves betrayed us.”
“What happened?” Elric asked.
“The Headmind of the elves, a woman named Reason, came to the queen to give the fairies a new crystal, infinitely more powerful than the one in the staff. It had the power to unite the magic of all good fairies and channel it as one force through the heart of the queen. It seemed like the perfect weapon to use against the Grendel to defeat him once and for all. But it was all a ruse. The elves were still loyal to the fairy who had once protected them from the monsters of the Shadowfields. In the night, Lord Raven saw Headmind Reason with the baby. She carried it into the Nightfell Wood.”
“Why would she do such a thing? It doesn’t make any sense.” Elric felt his stomach twisting.
“I don’t know.” Osmund shook his head. “Lord Raven believes that the elves knew the crystal had a weakness, that it was only as powerful as the strength of the queen’s heart. If the queen’s heart broke, so did the crystal. I don’t know why the elves wanted to destroy the fairies, but by linking all of the kingdom’s magic, the fairies became powerful, but fragile. For the first time, the magic of all the fairies could be used as one single force.”
“But that force is dependent on the strength of the queen,” Elric said.
“Exactly. The next day, the Grendel appeared in the Nightfell Wood carrying the baby’s blood-soaked blanket. He thanked the elves for their loyalty and said they would be rewarded. You know the rest. The queen used the crystal to create the shield, locking the Grendel out of the kingdom and the elves with him. The queen nearly diminished as the crystal bled for decades, but then she found me and some of the crystal’s power was restored, and now she has you.”
Elric tried to comprehend the tragedy of the entire situation. He didn’t blame the fairies for their hatred of the elves. The queen was right to shut them out from the shield. Why should she protect someone who hurt her? But one thing still confused him. “You mentioned that she had nearly diminished. What does that mean?” Elric shifted to sit more securely in the braches.
“Once a fairy has magic, they cannot die the way a mortal does. Instead of blood, they bleed light,” Osmund said.
Elric remembered the silvery light spilling from Fox and Elk during the battle with the reaper.
Osmund continued. “If they lose enough of that light, their life as we know it is gone.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” Elric said, plucking off a leaf of the tree that was tickling his neck.
Osmund thought about the question for a moment. “Take Zephyr, for example. The first form of his magic that he was able to control is the air around him. In the future, he will master other forms of magic and add to his name. That twilight trick shows promise.”
“I’m with you,” Elric said, slowly peeling the fleshy parts of the leaf away from the center vein.
“If fairies lose enough of their magical light, they are reduced to becoming the form of their simplest magic,” Osmund explained.
Elric thought about what he just said. Then the true horror of it finally struck him. “So if Zephyr were badly wounded, he would turn into air?”
Osmund nodded grimly. “Others become a rock, or a shadow, or mist, or a flower somewhere. They retain a consciousness, but lose control over their simplified form. There’s no way for them to come back again and become what they were. Not without powerful magic, and they would be beholden to the one who brought them back.”
Elric looked up at the stars, trying to imagine living for an eternity stuck in a form of a rock or a twig. It was worse than death. “The crystal is linked to the queen, so the cracks—that’s her blood spilling from it, isn’t it?”
Osmund closed his eyes. “Yes. If she diminishes completely, the Grendel will come to claim his staff and whatever power he can steal from the lives around him. Make no mistake. If the Grendel takes over the fairy kingdom, he will drain each and every living thing of their power and reduce them all to nothing. Only then will he have collected enough of the light magic to be able to use the portals again. He will fully come to the Otherworld, not just as a storm or a shadow. He will feed his dark magic with misery and pain. He will cause death and destruction, the likes of which I cannot imagine, to increase his power. Not a living soul will survive.”
Elric looked beyond the masses of stars to the storm clouds building over the Shadowfields. They seemed so far away. The woods stretched on forever, and Wynn was lost somewhere within it. The reaper howled, a long, deep sound that seemed to carry the promise of the pain and destruction of the Grendel on the wind. “Then we must defeat him,” Elric said.
They had to find Wynn before that reaper did, or it would be too late.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Wynn
WYNN WATCHED THE ELF GIRL wipe her eyes with the hem of her robe. She hadn’t talked for a while, but Wynn waited for her to speak. She was very upset. Finally she sighed and looked back up at Wynn.
“What happened?” Wynn asked. Now it felt even more important to help her friend. She knew what it was like to have a brother in trouble. It was terrible.
Lexi dried her nose with her sleeve. “The Grendel put him under a spell. Now he is very sick. Come with me. I’ll show you.”
Lexi picked up the lantern, but left the sack. Wynn gently lifted her sleeping hen and placed her on the bed. “Stay here, Mildred,” she whispered.
The elf girl pushed aside the loose floorboards and swung her feet down into the hole in the floor. She stood up, and the floor only came to her waist, but didn’t fall quickly. Instead she slowly drifted down through the floor like a feather. It was very strange.
Wynn peered through the floor. “Drop your feet down. I’ll help you,” Lexi said as she stood next to a strange contraption made of long boards and gears looped with ropes.
Wynn did as she was told and slid her legs down. She felt Lexi’s palms on the bottoms of her bare feet and slid down farther. Lexi steadied her, and placed her feet on a narrow board. Wynn tried to balance, but she wasn’t very good at balancing. The gears whirred, and the board under her feet slowly lowered, but Wynn couldn’t keep her balance. She tipped backward, and landed with a soft thump on the lumpy sacks. A puff of dust came up out of them.
“I’m so sorry,” Lexi whispered. “Are you hurt?”
Wynn shook her head and stood, slapping the dust off her tattered skirt.
“My invention isn’t the best, but I had to put it together with whatever I could find,” Lexi said as she lifted her lantern. “It’s all storage down here. I had to break open the lock. Don’t worry, I can fix it.”
They wandered through a maze of old stone walls, tall woven baskets filled with ropes and wheels, old crates, and several more sacks. It smelled dank and musty. In the shadows, Wynn could see larger wheels and billows. Moss grew in the spaces between the stones. Lexi’s lantern flickered, making the shadows dance around them.
“I’m not good at following rules,” Lexi said. “I don’t know why. I just get an idea in my head and I do it without thinking.”
Something creaked above them, and they stopped. Lexi shielded her light
with the edge of her robe. They heard a soft snore, and Lexi motioned them forward again.
“I like books. I was named for words.” Lexi peered around, then carefully stepped over a fallen broomstick. “Before the Grendel destroyed the old city, we had a great library. The books are still there, all the thoughts of everyone who is gone now. I’m obsessed with those lost books.
“When there was peace with the fairies, they gave us a great gift, a portal near that library. On the full moon, they used to come and use their magic to light the portal. We would go to the Otherworld and listen to the people there—hear their stories and write them in the books. In return we developed the stones that help amplify the fairies’ magic.” Lexi let out a sigh. “That didn’t turn out so well. The fairies used our gift against us. Dark times came, and then the shield. The Grendel realized there was still a portal in our city. He wanted to use it to go to the Otherworld, but he can’t make it work now. His magic is too dark and unfocused. He destroyed the city in his rage. Now it is all gone; we live in this patched-together town while the fairies use the crystal we gave them to protect themselves and not us.”
“That is sad,” Wynn said. She didn’t like it when things got broken. She thought about what Lexi said, and brightened. “Mother told elf stories,” Wynn said. “She said elves borrow people things. They get lost. I lost my shoes in the garden once. I didn’t see elves take them.” Wynn looked down at her bare feet. She had lost her shoes again. She knew the elves hadn’t taken them this time, either.
“We haven’t been to the Otherworld in a long time. When we do go, you can’t see us. We turn invisible.” Lexi giggled. “And we do like to investigate interesting things, sometimes borrowing them for a while.” She held the light higher and it shone on the shimmering strands of a spiderweb. “We always give everything back, though, when we can. Not always in the same place. If we accidentally misplace something, we speak to people like you and tell you where you can find it. We also share our ideas, especially if you are dreaming. Then the people can invent things, and pass that knowledge on. That way elves create things in your world too, and our ideas grow like flowers. We don’t have magic, but we had ideas once. All of that is lost now,” Lexi said sadly.
Into the Nightfell Wood Page 13