With each change in the music, so too did their emotions change. With it the images flashed before their eyes, and before long they all felt the need to rest. Without argue they dismounted and made a hasty camp not realizing this was something not of the norm. All of them were being woven so deeply in wyrd they had never felt before that they didn’t realize the subterfuge until long after they woke to find how they had been slighted. But until that moment of realization, they would naively lower themselves to the ground without care or worry about where the singing was coming from or who was doing the singing.
In the deep of their sleep they dreamed dreams induced by the singing, and within them they were taken back to the places of their youth, places they had once known and longed for. The wyrd, had they known it as such, didn’t seem malignant, and neither would they have thought of it as such with the serenity it brought to them.
It was Maeven who woke first to an urging that was mirrored in the woman’s voice that sounded so close, yet which he knew to be miles and realms away.
“Maeven Beggets, you wake up this instant!” his Aunt Rosalee’s voice scolded. As he had just been dreaming of home, nothing seemed amiss with this, and instead he waved his hand in the direction the voice had come from in protest.
“NOW!” the voice of his less than sane aunt thundered through his head, and at once the music was broken and Maeven sat up with a start.
“WHAT?!?” he yelled perplexedly, his outburst breaking the music of Grace’s dream too. In actuality she had been struggling with breaking it herself, and found that she could not without help. Maeven’s bellow had provided the help she so desperately needed to cast aside the mantle of dreams.
“What is it, Maeven?” Grace asked, trying to rise in the fog-clogged air, but finding it hard with her protesting bones and joints.
“I think you know what it is, Grace,” Maeven said. “Wake the others.”
“Yes,” she said moving to Angelica, albeit sluggishly and slapping her sharply across the face.
Angelica was quickly jolted awake.
“A simple yell would have sufficed, Grace,” Maeven reminded her as he made his way to Jovian, bent low to him, and in a moment the other boy was stirring.
Grace fumbled her way back to Holly and retrieved from inside her saddle bag an old candle that she began carving with a knife. There was something amiss. Something she wasn’t seeing.
“Joya!” Grace said. “Where is she?”
“Look for her!” Angelica yelled, starting to scramble around the area looking for her sister.
“What could have done this?” Jovian asked, obeying his sister.
“It was sirens,” Grace said. She handed them all chunks of wax. “If they come back, put these in your ears, if you can’t hear the music, it won’t affect you.”
But they didn’t come back, and they didn’t find Joya.
Around them the fog positively glowed like moonlight.
As the sun rose, intruding on the time of dreams, the orbs that may have been their salvation or their demise seemed to sigh as one by one they shuddered and then winked out of existence until, finally, the only light around them was the dim golden glow of the sun.
“Was that them?” Angelica asked, scrambling out of her bedroll barely awake to search the surrounding fog for whatever had been lighting the area.
“Do you really think that is wise?” Grace asked as Angelica darted in and out of the fog like someone possessed with a need she could not explain.
“Where did they go?” she asked excitedly. She obviously had not hear a word Grace said.
“Angelica, come on and get some breakfast. We have to leave.” Grace prodded as she made her way to the fire and started preparing breakfast.
“We are not going anywhere,” Angelica told her resolutely. “We are not going anywhere until we find out what they are. We have been traveling for days searching for them. We can’t leave now that we have found them.” As long as they weren’t more Lantern’s.
As the sun set the orbs once more began to illuminate the woods around them, lighting in the way they had extinguished. They seemed to shiver, as if waking, and flickered a few times before they lit up the surrounding fog in what might be called a symphony of light.
The lights danced and pulsed around them, much livelier now than they had been earlier. The orbs seemed to play with one another, darting here and there, a few of them seemingly chasing one another.
Grace thought that she could possibly hear little laughter, like tiny silver bells tinkling in the wyrded wind.
Then, finally, one of the orbs darted into the path where they had set up camp and stopped dead in front of Angelica. It quivered there, looking up at her even as she stared down at the bewildered fey.
The orb hesitated for a moment and then darted away, back into the group. The playing suddenly ceased and all the orbs huddled together in a tighter circle around the humans, buzzing with light, murmuring as if they were conversing with one another, or better yet trying to figure out what the humans were and if they posed a threat.
Slowly, uncertainly, one orb at a time would emerge from the fog, buzz around the clearing in a maniacal, rapid movement, and then dart back out. The orbs would buzz again with what Grace assumed to be conversation.
“What are they?” Jovian asked as more and more of the orbs came toward them.
“They are fairies,” Angelica said breathlessly, feeling their presence at the edge of her mind like another consciousness pressing in on her, trying to be aware of what she was, how she thought, and most of all if she was sincere.
One of the fairies landed in Angelica’s upturned palm directly above the stigmata bathing her hand in opalescent moonlight. The cool weight of the fairy lounged in her hand as if it belonged there and her hand was made only for its sitting. Its presence felt like a cold pebble where its light radiated.
Then, as if by a collective mind, the fairies all about her suddenly stopped what they were doing, as if they were halting, listening to instructions that only the fey could hear. As one they hovered further into the air, while the one in her palm shifted slightly so that it could take flight. Together the bright orbs of light shot back into the fog where they had come from.
For a time it looked like the fairies might leave them.
“Wait!” she exclaimed. Her hand reached out then quickly retracted where it clutched one wrist held tightly to her chest. Her need was apparent not only in her face but her eyes as well. “We are lost and need to be led to the Mirror of the Moon,” she told them, her elven ring glimmering slightly in the faltering light of the fairies.
“What is that?” a tiny voice asked from behind Jovian.
“What is what, Taranis?” another voice answered.
“The glimmer on the Tall One’s finger!” the first voice said in exasperation.
“It is a ring gifted to my mother from the Elves of Nependier,” Angelica told them. “My mother was Sylvie LaFaye, and my aunt Pharoh LaFaye. I know that they did all kinds of good for the preservation of wyrd, but there is one … person that remains who would put asunder all they had worked for. We struggle in finding this person, the one who now occupies the Mirror of the Moon, to stop the tyranny that she seeks to unleash upon the Great Realms.”
“So it is that you seek the dark one that has caught hold of the Mirror of the Moon and the very fabric of our existence?” a female fairy asked, her light slightly brighter than all the others. The new fairy parted the fog and hovered forth, and the other fairies followed in her wake. “I am Telsara Lightdancer, Mugwump of the Light Dancer Mushroom Ring,” she informed Angelica.
“I am honored to meet you, Mugwump Lightdancer,” Angelica greeted, going to her knees before the hovering orb that was no bigger than her fist. “We beseech your guidance to the Mirror of the Moon to set this travesty right.”
“And our help you will have. Tegaris will lead you to where you need to go. You have gotten off the path some ways and need to b
e led back, but you should be aright in a week or so.”
They were all shocked that they had gained the help of the fairies so quickly, a feeling that Telsara noticed and commented on. “It is not because of your sterling words, but instead for the fact that you are the children of the Hairy Woman.”
“Now,” the Mugwump’s voice rang out clearly over the conversations that had arose from the meeting, “we have much space to travel and not much time to do it in if we wish to stop the negative affects on wyrd that the Well of Wyrding is causing. We also don’t have much time to save the other LaFaye daughters before they have succumbed too much insanity to come back from.”
The humans began packing up their belongings as she spoke realizing that this was heralding the beginning of their journey with the fairies.
“The Lightdancer Ring will accompany them back to the Lake Mirror where Tegaris will finish taking them the rest of the way.”
Though the light of the fairies aided them, it was still dark, the kind of dark that would drink in light, not allowing it to illuminate much more beyond the space the light occupied. Everything else lay in shadow, and Angelica soon began to feel claustrophobic.
The night seemed to drag on endlessly, but before she knew it grayness of day was lighting the darkness around her, and she could feel the weariness it brought in every fiber of her being.
The fairies led them to a large clearing that provided ample room for a fire that wouldn’t be needed and space for the horses without requiring the travelers to bed down on one another. Angelica was as happy as she could be in light of the situation.
But Angelica was worried beyond words. They were now so close to their goal that she could not help feeling a variety of emotions: happiness at seeing her sisters again, fear of facing the Mask, and for some reason mourning that the journey was near completion. The last emotion she tried to explore more as she laid herself to sleep, but she didn’t have time to comprehend the complexity of her feelings before sleep stole over her and she was drifting through a mantle of dreams.
When they finally reached Lake Mirror, so named for its perpetually calm, reflective surface and its proximity to the Mirror of the Moon, it wasn’t without trepidation. The emotions warring inside of them were insurmountable and threatened to spill over into their actions. At once Jovian felt like that cool, calm lake they stood before, the moon spilling down onto its surface, the lake reflecting back up at the night sky an image of itself with stars, fleeting clouds, and the celestial body of the Mother Goddess herself. He, too, was calm and collected on the outside, but as a mere pebble could change the entire surface of the lake so could one slip, one wrong word, disturb his demeanor.
At one moment Jovian was happy that their traveling through the endless night of the Sacred Forest was soon at a close, yet at the same time he understood that this was where they were to part ways with Grace and the other fairies. The fairies he was not so upset about leaving, but Grace….
Through their traveling she had become so much more than a teacher and much more like a grandmother. She would be making it on her own to the Well of Wyrding with no help, nor would she accept help. He watched her that night, helping with camp, making small talk with Maeven, and he couldn’t help but feel that she was at such a disadvantage. He wanted to go with her, to protect her against whatever she might come up against. He worried for her, for the forest was filled with all sorts of monsters and he had never once saw Grace raise a hand to defend herself.
How would she make it?
And then he couldn’t help but feel that he was losing yet one more family member. This anger he channeled toward Porillon. If it had not been for her this would never have happened. He would never be out here now trying to find two sisters that had been taken from him, losing the only grandmother figure he had, and he wouldn’t be leagues from his father and home.
And he wouldn’t have learned who he truly was and from what blood he descended.
Dinner was taken and cleared in deep thought, and it was with little surprise yet deep mourning that Grace informed them of the news:
“Tonight I leave you all and for how long I am not sure,” Grace said resolutely as she laid out her bedroll and hunkered down for the day.
None of them spoke. In light of the situation there was not much that could be said. They all knew this time was coming, the inevitable parting of their group. They had just hoped it would not happen so soon.
Though Grace gave the appearance of deep slumber, she didn’t sleep a wink that day, and instead was awake to watch the sun rise through the clear air over Lake Mirror. She watched the light dance and refract off the still surface and couldn’t help but wonder at the beauty of this land, of the Sacred Forest.
Lake Mirror, being the one place (oddly enough) where fog did not gather, allowed Grace to watch the warm golden dawn from its shores. The beautiful display was mirrored in the lake, and she smiled as she rubbed the chill from her arms. There was not a cloud in the sky, for they were all seemingly on the ground, and the light of the sun seemed ethereal to her eyes which had not seen it in weeks as it began glowing off the fog eddying around her ankles making its way slowly to the lake’s edge.
The sun crept higher and higher in the sky. The whole time Grace thought about where they were, and that not far from this beauty, maybe a day’s travel, was the woman that had engineered this whole event. Not only a day’s travel from here were the girls they sought, and the means to neutralize the errant Well of Wyrding.
Around evening Grace realized she was not going to sleep any longer, and so she gathered her things, loaded up Holly, and began rummaging through her packs. Deep inside she found what she was looking for, another Telfetch that she would leave with the three of them, which would transport messages immediately to the other one she held so they would always be in contact, except for those times when she was not within range of the silver embossed box.
When the sun set emotions stirred within her even as the fairies began coming to life. Ever the strong woman she was, Grace stuffed these emotions back where they belonged, and she woke the three children that she had come to think of as her own brood.
“Now,” she told them when they were all awake, “This Telfetch is linked to my own. All you need do is write a letter, put it in the box as you have seen me do, and seal it shut. The letter will be instantly transported to my Telfetch, and I will respond the moment I get a chance.”
They all nodded, not trusting themselves to speak.
She stood then, embraced them all, and mounted Holly.
“There will be no long good-byes, for we will see one another again soon. I will meet you back at the plantation in three months’ time. If anything happens between then … well, we have means of communicating with one another but if anything happens we will meet at the Guardian’s Keep in the Barrier Mountains of the Realm of Earth.” And with nothing more than that Grace followed Telsara and the fairies out of the clearing.
Jovian, Angelica, and Maeven watched the old lady ride off into the darkening fog and then turned in the opposite direction, staring off to a point they could not yet see but knew was there.
“The Mirror of the Moon,” Maeven breathed. “We are actually going to see it?”
“Yes,” Jovian said, his heart beating hard enough in his throat so that he could barely speak.
“What do you suspect we will find there?” Angelica asked. “Besides the obvious.”
“I think we will find exactly what Porillon wants us to find,” Jovian said.
“No, we won’t,” Angelica said forcefully drawing all eyes to them. “Don’t give her that power, Jovian LaFaye. We will find there the potential of what Porillon wants us to find, but we have the final decision over what comes of it. I have seen what she wants for us, and you were the proof of that. She will not kill us and you best remember that.”
“We have not much time,” Tegaris said.
With nods they took advantage of the lake and all bathed.<
br />
Resolutely they set their shoulders and headed away from the camp now cold and void of use, like the life they were leaving behind. Never before had they felt the severity of what they ventured to do as they now did.
Angelica was not sure if they would live against Porillon, but she was bound and determined to give all she had to make good on her promise in Whitewood Haven.
They thought also of Baba Yaga and their time with her in the Otherworld. She had given them what she called the will to do that which must be done, whatever that meant. For some reason she could not readily explain, Angelica didn’t think the gift from Baba Yaga was what they needed now.
No, what they needed now was divine intervention.
Or to find their sisters, even now, fleeing through the forest away from the danger with the medallion in tow.
The thought of the medallion turned Angelica’s contemplations to something else. This whole time Angelica had been trying to determine what she was and now what Jovian was. It had never occurred to her, for some odd reason, that the medallion would be able to tell them.
And thus their thoughts carried them through the night into the wee hours of the morning to the space of time just before dawn, and when Angelica saw the glow ahead she thought it was the rising of that sun, and that they would have to camp before actually reaching the Mirror of the Moon.
In all actuality camping was not at all what was about to happen, for even as she was preparing to stop and roll out her bedroll they came to the queerest clearing she could ever imagine.
The clearing that the Mirror of the Moon sat in was massive, much larger than the wheat fields at home on their plantation. The lawns, for that is the only word Angelica could think to call them, were as well kept as if someone came here every day to groom them. The gardens were weeded and properly taken care of as if the temple had not been abandoned since Arael’s power had ruled there.
The Mirror of the Moon (Revenant Wyrd Book 2) Page 24