by Jane M. R.
Using the land relocating ports this time, he takes me to the town of colored glass buildings. Wordless the entire time, he leads me to a small red glass house and knocks on the door.
The woman I recognize from the oddity shop from my last visit pokes her head out, huddled in a shawl against the cool night. “Hello Brine.”
“Hello.”
“Brine desires to see Joseara.”
“Of course. Come in.”
Joseara is laying on a comfy pile of blankets and pillows in a night dress too big for her with the sleeves cut away. Her left arm pit is bandaged. She’s breathing so shallowly I think I imagine it. I’m forcing myself not to cry as I approach. Tears will only mount upon Zadicayn’s guilt.
I stand above her, fiddling with my fingers. “Has she…” I clear my throat. “Has she woken up yet?”
“Nay.”
“When did you bring her here?”
“Tuesday.”
Time is faster in the Fae Realm. Today is Thursday. That equals three months in the Fae Realm.
I fight the tears by shifting my lips around and swallowing too much. Her insipid skin where I see obvious dry cracks and flakes has tightened on her bare arms and scarred face, sinking her eyes and making her look horrifyingly like a skeleton with how knobby she has become. I could count every bone in her hand if I wanted.
She is dead. Just that nothing dies in the Fae Realm.
I can’t cry here. Zadicayn will consider that an admission that he is to blame and there is no telling what his conscience will do to him.
I steady myself with an emboldening breath. “Is being in the Fae Realm helping her recover?”
“If I must judge that question against what we both see… nay. Tis been three months.”
“But nothing dies here.”
“Ye can nary find harm here, either. She tis the first harmed person I hath brought to the Fae Realm. I dost nary wit what happens to them except nary a thing.”
Now the question I’ve been avoiding. “What happened?”
He folds his arms tightly in front of him. “I visited Corden and Joseara at Corden’s camp. We wert attacked by several men. I can nary say if they wert of the church or the three families. I ran but one of the men grabbed at my amulet and a Faewraith appeareth, eating three of them before coming after me. I killed it. I followed the others who taketh Joseara but they hid in an underground catacomb. It taketh me relocating the smoke from a pipe they had coming out of the ground back inside to flush one of them out to findeth the entrance. I got inside just as they wert dragging her to a fire kiln.”
I clench my fists to keep from trembling.
“They cuteth her arm with a dagger before that. I released a blast of fire inside the catacomb just before I relocated with Joseara into your closet before I couldst relocate to the Fae Gate. I got her inside the Fae Realm just before her last couple of heart beats.” His tone mellows, evened out and stretched. Numb.
“It’s not your fault.”
“A’right.”
“It’s not.”
“I hear ye.”
I don’t know what to do for either Zadicayn or Joseara except to keep staring at the thief, building up my grief for both of them so I’ll drown when I release it in the privacy of my room.
“My guess tis the three families. The church wouldst have nary a reason to kill her.”
“Did you get a look at anyone in the catacomb before you relocated with Joseara?”
“Just a quick glance of a tall man in a coat much like what I weareth to Bristol. Gray hair above both ears.”
Aklen. “Were there more people in there beside him?”
“Certain. Howevermore I moved too fast to look upon them further.”
I’m only able to stomach that my father-in-law has done this to Joseara and something similar to me – twice – when I reassure myself I will be working for Zadicayn from the inside after I am married. I can stop this. Expose Aklen to the church, who also supplies Valemorren’s constables for crimes against God.
“I promise to fight for you on the inside, Zadicayn. I’ll find a way to bring Aklen to justice so he is out of the way and you can continue in your search for your nineteen wizards.”
He doesn’t reply to this. His tight posture alerts me to something he appears he wants to say but he doesn’t.
“We must goeth now.”
I can’t see any more reason to stay and keep staring at the lifeless body of Joseara, but I can’t seem to move. Zadicayn touches me as if trying to do so without actually touching me. The gesture makes me feel like distance is opening up between us. I shake the feeling away.
He declares our departure to Lorcrante and then guides me out, as if afraid I’ll run away and hide in the Fae Realm forever if he doesn’t keep hold of me. Lord knows I want to.
The walk to the relocation ports is silent. I want to embrace him to make all his fears go away but his grip on my arm signals a hostility if I do much else but walk forward.
The travel back is as silent as our travel there. Back in the Human Realm, he continues with his grip on my arm up the stairs. It’s not until we hit the Grand Hall that I realize what he is doing.
I buck back and try to yank my arm out of his grip but he must have been expecting that because he clinches harder and yanks me forward. I stumble.
“I dost nary wit why ye nary believe me when I sayest I can nary see thee anymore.”
Balanced back on my feet, I plant them, turning into a hundred and thirty-pound weight he must drag.
“I don’t want right now to be the last time I see you. That’s unfair to me. I need… I need one more day to adjust. If you make me go right now with the promise I can’t come back, I will be in emotional agony the rest of my life.”
“But at least ye shall live.”
“I’m not going back unless you tell me I can come back tomorrow.”
He spins on me swiftly with a roar. “Every time ye come I become more unwilling to let ye go, Brine! Stop tempting me with all that I can nary have! Ye shall go now for the last time so I can move on. I thank thee for thy work from the inside of the Whaerin family so maybe someday I shall come into society again. I thank thee for freeing me from the vault and for being my friend.”
I don’t want to tempt him. But I can’t have this be my last time. It’s too sudden. Too soon. Losing something so engrained into my life this unexpectedly would be like a fist ripping a chunk of my hair out and forcing me to accept it like it never happened. If I must lose the hair, I need it cut. Not ripped. I’m still not going to like it, but having it cut hurts less and doesn’t last nearly as long. Hair grows back poorly after it’s been ripped out.
“One more day. Please!” I didn’t hear him speak the spell. My feet lift off the floor and, keeping hold on my arm so I’m floating like a festival ribbon behind him, he walks forward.
“Put me down!” I’m using my other hand to keep my legs modest beneath my white nightgown. “Put me down!”
He walks with me like that all the way to the Fae Gate where he finally puts me down. I lung to clasp onto him like I did last time this happened, but he catches both my arms and spins me away from him. I fight.
“STOP Brine.”
“I have to come back! One more time. Tomorrow! Please! I need this! I care so deeply about you –” I say too late because I know that’s not going to help him miss me less. “It’s because of you my life has changed so dramatically and I need a better send off than this. For me freeing you and helping you from inside the Whaerin family, you owe this to me.”
I’m forcing him into something he doesn’t want to do. Him grabbing his hair and facing away from me declares it. He was so certain he owed me for freeing him that I use that against him without shame. “Please.”
My heart stutters the whole time I see him fight with indecision. He faces me. He’s not looking at me. “Fine. Tomorrow night. Ye shalt stay for only an hour and then I shall escort ye out to whence I shall rel
ocate thee onto the back of a bird to get thee away if I must.”
“Okay.”
“But haunted with the thought of harm coming upon thee because of thy further association shall keep me awake tonight.”
My need to say goodbye to him in a more formal manner trumps his need for sleep tonight. Furthermore, my traveling from the Fae Gate back to my room via the bloodstone is not noticed by anyone. No one ever travels this road because they still think it is dammed in by the trees Zadicayn cleared away. It will be noticed eventually, but for now it’s safe, and it will be safe tomorrow night.
“Thank you.”
He indicates with his head that I should go. I knock on the Fae Gate ten times.
“If you change the pattern so I can’t come back, I will never forgive you.”
“I shan’t.”
It’s only because I have never seen him lie that I walk through the Fae Gate. At the end, before the gate closes, I turn around. But he is already gone.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
ZADICAYN
Black spots of fatigue spin pirouettes in my vision. Forgetting the last time I ate doesn’t help. I had tried to carry my anger with me to fuel the power I need to convince Life but it dropped off me a while ago. It finally needed sleep.
“Giveth me nineteen wizards,” I demand to the Essences. I’m done asking.
“If twenty men could not do it,” say the endless female voices in sync, “then twenty more will not.”
“Then giveth me nineteen females.”
“Females give life. Men protect it.”
“Why can females nary protect for once?”
“Because men cannot give life –”
“My people wilt die if there art nary more wizards!”
“Twenty men could not –”
I speak the spell for fire, to fling it at the Essences, to give them all the anguish they have left in me. But the spell won’t work. Life knows what I want to use it for.
“Males art the ones who killed the wizards, who stole me amulet and threw me in a vault. Men didst that. MEN! Finally, after three hundred and twenty-four years a female gathered the pieces needed for the release of meself and a second female set me free. Females didst that! Not men… females. Those females giveth me new life whence the men who art supposed to be protecting it wanted to harm me, and successfully killed nineteen wizards. One of those females almost died, and ye art saying that females canst only give life? Ye knoweth nothing about life. Ye art the essence of females and yet ye wish the humans to die so the dragons can liveth again in my realm. Ye dost nary give life. Ye dost nary even protect it. Ye art just as bad as those men who killed my family and friends and then shoved me in a vault.” It’s a terrible thing to say to those who employ me, but I have nothing left to lose and no pleading, begging, or asking is quieting the distress in my heart.
Life is silent. As if they hadn’t heard a word.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
BRINELLA
If it wasn’t my last time, I would have already pressed the bloodstones together. Would have already been in the castle.
But it is my last time. So I haven’t left my bed, have not dressed… a small show of refusal against my unwillingness to lock again the cage of my life.
But it is my last time. So I get out of bed, dress, and press the two bloodstones together.
The rock connects to the spot of blood beside the Fae Gate. I knock ten, slow times on the stone. Shuffle through when it opens.
Zadicayn is sitting on the bridge, hanging his legs over the wall, watching the moon shaped like the white tip of a fingernail rise on his face. He looks at me. It is the last time for him too, and it weighs heavy on his greeting.
“Evening, Brine.”
“Hi.” One more night after this, I want to beg.
He doesn’t have Joseara’s blood on his long blue coat with the tall collar anymore. Must have relocated it off. He swings his legs off the wall and proceeds into the castle. I have to gallop to keep up. Not knowing what is in store for my last night, I expect our usual dinner in the kitchen. But he doesn’t go that way. He doesn’t even hint to what kind of send-off he’s giving me. Really, he says nothing. Wordless, I follow him to the Dome Room.
He escorts me into the Fae Realm and we proceed back up through the castle. We walk through the Grand Hall. I’m expecting to see Joseara one last time but he stops on the bridge and bends to one knee, pressing the stone with his left palm.
He looks at me with gold irises. “Ye besought me once what it wast like for me pre-vault. I figured out a spell that wouldst let me show ye.” Those odd sounds I heard once before flood past his lips, any S sounds coming out as sharp hisses.
Voices flare behind me and I spin around to see images of people walking arm in arm along the bridge. Light floods the bridge from the Grand Hall through the door we left partially open.
“What did you do?” I step aside as two laughing people walk passed me. The girl is wearing a dress with a belt around the waist, bell sleeves, and a hat that looks like a cone with some gauzy material streaming from it. Her male companion wears black hosiery and pointed shoes.
Declining to answer, Zadicayn stands and walks toward the front doors. I follow. Lights, images, and sounds flare to life around me when we enter. Candles crown the walls and the tip of a hundred arms on each chandelier. And there are people. Talking and laughing and music too. An orchestra with lutes, hand drums, bagpipes, and flutes occupy the corner to my left where people are dancing.
The scene is going to disappear if I breath. Pressure on my arm prompts me to follow Zadicayn’s lead. Shock makes my legs stiff and I stumble after him whose choice of clothes fit nicely with the fashion of whatever time period this is now. All the women wear elaborate dresses – none of them tied – from a fashion I recognize as something Renaissance. And the men, too. For once, I feel out of place.
We pass a male and a female pressed close into each other. As I watch, they kiss. On the mouth.
I stop to stare, unable to break away from my shame which feels much like watching them undress. I’ve never seen kissing before. No one ever does it in public. My parents haven’t even done it in front of me. Did they even do it in private?
I blush, understandably knowing how Zadicayn must be viewing me right now, watching people kiss, but I’ve never seen it before. How will I know how to do it for Jaicom? The way their mouths lock together looks so odd… and yet it stirs some sort of want within me.
“I shalt guess ye hath never seen anyone kiss before.”
“It looks gross. What if they have bad breath?”
“Ye dost nary breathe when ye kiss.”
“How would you know?” His glance on me answers my question. “But what if neither of them clean their teeth?” I’m actually genuinely concerned. “What if they have food stuck in their teeth? What if… what if you get their slobber in your mouth!”
He sighs. “As long as Jaicom Whaerin thinks upon the same thing, maybe ye shall nary ever kiss him.”
Maybe. But at the same time, a deep well of sadness opens inside me as I watch the couple pull apart and smile at each other, holding hands as they walk away.
I return to the present. “These people aren’t real.”
Zadicayn walks across the glossy floor as if he had never left this opulence and gaiety so many years ago. “They wert once. What ye art seeing tis a re-creation of my memory, from how I saw it pre-vault. I chose this one because it tis the last good time I remembereth.”
The wizard approaches a man who has a striking similarity to Zadicayn himself. He is in conversation with two other men. Thick black hair is gathered in a ponytail, a good three inches longer than Zadicayn’s. The man has gold eyes and well-trimmed black facial hair that surrounds his mouth. As I watch, the man’s lips move but no sound comes out. Laughter and low tone conversation and music surround us but just like a memory of such a thing, each noise can not be placed to a specific speaker. What we are hearing
must be the noise Zadicayn remembers, not who is making them.
He moves on toward a tall woman with black hair in conversation with a small group surrounding her. A girl of about twelve years stands close to her, as if the woman would become her shield against unwanted company at any moment. She has similarities to Zadicayn as well.
“Is she your sister?”
“Yea,” he says, as if trying to find the appropriate emotion to go with the statement. “And my mother.”
I knew that already. Standing so close to his mother I pick up traces of rosemary, just like Zadicayn would have scented all those years ago.
Zadicayn moves on. He points out eighteen other men and boys, all with gold eyes, even remembering most of their names. “Every year, one of the twenty wizard families hosted a party. Those ye see art also local citizens. Lords, relatives of kings. We hath even the king to our castle on one occasion.” He points to the long banners hanging down from the mezzanine. There are twenty banners, ten on each side. Each a different color with a different dominating symbol in the center. “Each wizard house tis represented here.”
“Do the symbols mean anything specific?” I see the blue banner with the silver dragon which I know hangs in the Grand Hall on the human side for the Eldenshod house.
“The symbols of each of the ten families starteth early in humanity’s life, around the year three thousand nine hundred before the common era.”
“When was that?”
“A long bloody time ago. Now ye hath me saying the word.”
“Serves you right for the words from you I say.”
“Anyway, wizards started early enough that rocks and sticks wert our go-to daily essentials that helped us eat, fight, and harvest. So one family hast a rock as their house symbol, another a stick, another a piece of string, and so on. As the generations passed, the wizards started to thinketh more highly of themselves and so morphed the rock symbol into a compass, the stick became a sword, the string became a long bow.”