by Molly Ringle
The whitefingers were reaching in two at a time again, presumably on Merrick’s side as well, for they both twisted at the same moment, in opposite directions, to swat at their attackers. Larkin’s pack pulled against Merrick’s, then released abruptly, sending Larkin stumbling a few steps. The knot had come undone.
He whirled to reconnect them, but at that moment the light from Merrick’s phone went out. All became darkness and howling wind and a hail of twigs.
“The light!” Larkin shouted.
“It hooked my phone—it smashed it! I can’t find it!” Merrick’s voice already sounded farther than it should, drowned under the wind.
Larkin reached for him, met a branch, and snatched his hand back in terror. It was not safe to grope about in this darkness, nor was it any safer to stand still. “Where are you? I can’t find you!”
“Larkin!” Merrick was definitely farther now. “I can’t—there are white-fingers—oh Lord oh Lord—”
“I’m here! This way!” Larkin slashed around with the sword, then froze, not wanting to harm Merrick.
The screaming sobs came closer, filling Larkin’s ears as if they came from tiny insects hovering about his head. He swatted his hand around, but the horrible sounds only grew louder. “Merrick! Merrick!”
Panic raked against the inside of his chest. He could not have been saved, over and over, only to die like this, in an evil forest, his soul ripped out of him by whitefingers.
The wind pushed him against a trunk and he huddled there, covering his head with both arms. His thoughts began shredding apart. He screamed out, trying to form a name, but could not remember whose name it was. He knew only that there was someone dear to him whom he had to find and could not reach, and the anguish of it was piercing his heart.
Everyone whom he cared about—he tried to grasp their identities and could not, but the feeling of despair at having lost them raged inside him, a hurricane sea. He was sobbing, curled tight against the trunk, shielding his head. This was all that was left: dying and becoming a lost soul, consumed forever by loss, wandering and searching in the dark.
Somewhere, amidst the gale and the ghostly cries, he thought he heard someone shouting in a ragged voice, “Sal! Woodstriders? Air fae of the wind! Haluli! Are you there? Mother!” The words touched a poignant chord within Larkin, though he could not recognize the names or the voice long enough to remember why.
Then the voice blew away, carried off like a kite breaking its string. Larkin was left alone among the dreadful spirits.
A pair of arms locked around him, slender and cool. Horror shot through him. He yelled and thrashed, but the thing held on. “Shhh,” it said in his ear, then magic flooded him and he could not fight anymore. His feet left the ground, and leaves brushed him all over as he rose, helpless in a blind embrace.
CHAPTER 40
HE COULDN’T REMEMBER WHERE HE WAS OR what he was looking for. He couldn’t even remember his name. All he knew was misery: he had failed and lost everyone, and he was doomed.
Then someone picked him up. Their touch numbed him, and they carried him through the air. The darkness lifted from the impenetrable black of the terrible screaming place to a murky gray where he could see around him a short distance. He drifted in and out of awareness, and when his mind cleared enough to remember that he was Merrick Highvalley and he was in the fae realm on an important mission, he found himself lying on a large nest of thorny sticks.
He sat up, and hissed and jerked his hands away as the thorns pricked his palms. The nest was floating in the air in a churning mass of dark clouds that smelled of volcanic smoke. Ash drifted from the sky; grit accumulated on his skin and clothes. It had turned the nest grayish-white, and his lungs stung to breathe it.
He turned to find a human-sized sylph sitting on the edge of his nest. She was the only thing visible other than nest and clouds, and the lustrous blue of her wings, long hair, and feathery garments made a startling contrast to the dead gray of everything else.
“I was allowed to free you from the whitefingers,” she said, “but I had to deposit you here. I’m a guest in this realm. I must do as Vowri wishes.”
Still lightheaded, he crawled forward, wincing again as thorns stabbed his knees through his trousers. “Thank you. Did you free Larkin too?”
“Yes. He’s here.” She gestured into the clouds beside her, though he saw nothing.
“Larkin?” Merrick shouted. “Hello?”
His voice was eaten up by the murk. No one answered.
“The prisoners cannot see or hear each other unless Vowri wishes it,” the sylph said. “But we see them. He’s calling for you too. He can’t see me unless I go to his cage. I know another, too, who will be very interested that you’re both here.”
The blue of her feathers. The line of her profile, which looked so much like Cassidy’s.
Merrick got slowly to his feet. “You’re … my mother, aren’t you.”
She nodded, eyes lowered, swinging a bare twilight-purple leg in the air. “I am Haluli.” Her leg fell still. “I feel a strange turmoil to speak to you at last. I don’t know how to name it.”
Guilt, maybe, he wanted to snap. But he had defended her himself, pointed out that the fae probably felt things differently. Not to mention she had saved their lives.
“Were … ” A lump blocked his throat. He swallowed to soften it. “Were you ever there, all those years? Did you come see us, without us knowing?”
She brightened—a literal star-like glow filling her whole body. “Yes. I liked to look in on you both. Your father too. And my little granddaughter, Elemi. But time moved so fast. I would glimpse you when you were small, then go away for a while, and return and find you grown and changed. I suppose I … ” The glow dimmed. “I thought you had little use for me, as you were doing so well. Humans and fae, we don’t always know what to make of each other.”
“We always wanted to meet you. And my dad—do you even realize what he’s suffering? He was cursed by one of your kind. He’s aging faster than he should. He’ll die soon, all because you took him into the fae realm and didn’t come back to heal him.”
She nodded, somber again. “I’ve seen. I know you wish me to heal it—I heard your summons a short time ago. But some of the ailments humans get in this realm, they’re difficult.”
“My ancestor Rosamund had a Lava Flow charm that supposedly cured fae spell damage. If there were something like that … ”
She shook her head. “I know of the charm. I think perhaps Rosamund could do it, but no one else. Even I wouldn’t be able to do anything for him unless I kept him in our haunt, giving him my magic every day. And I couldn’t do that, take him away from you and Cassidy and Elemi. You wouldn’t want me to.”
Merrick’s shoulders drooped. The one noble thing he had been trying to do, the motive that had birthed this entire mess, it had been hopeless from the start. He grasped at his chest for the lucidity potion—it might ease his pain in this realm where anguish was amplified—but it was gone. He now remembered, hazily, a whitefinger catching the chain and breaking it, the way they had done to Larkin’s. His phone was gone too, lost in the birch forest.
No lucidity. No communication with home. No hope for his father. Barely any chance at defeating Ula Kana either, the way things looked.
But that, at least, he could still try.
“Please help me out of here,” he said. “I’ll fly. Show me to Larkin. We’ll give Vowri our gifts, then go to the desert, and—”
“You can’t. You won’t be able to leave unless she allows it.”
Defiant, Merrick gathered up his powers, for he still felt them fluttering within himself. But as soon as he deployed them into flight, he thudded to a stop barely a foot above the sooty sticks, his head hitting something. He reached up, stunned. There was a barrier there, like a dome of invisible glass, the wind and ash passing through it even when his body could not.
He let his feet sink to the nest. “This is why no one comes back
from here.”
“Or Vowri sees to it that their minds are shattered if they do. None, not even we fae, can speak of these nests, or their prisoners, outside her realm. She keeps a spell upon the place to make it so.” Haluli rose to hover in the air and reached out to touch his cheek. Like the smoke, she seemed able to move through the invisible wall. Only the prisoners, evidently, were trapped within. “At least I’m finally speaking with you. I should have, long ago.”
Merrick felt grudgingly better for a moment at her touch, and met her eyes with a sudden hope. “Is everyone all right back in our realm? Cassidy, Elemi, Dad? What’s happening?”
She lifted a pearly-blue shoulder in a shrug. “I haven’t been to see them since I heard of Ula Kana’s awakening. There’ve been so many rumors, about you and Larkin as well as the destruction in the human realm, that I’ve been mainly flying from one territory to another for news. I didn’t wish to leave the fae realm when you were here. You were the one who might need me the most, it seemed.” She smiled wistfully.
Knowing she had been looking out for him after all was some comfort, but not much of one, considering he was trapped and helpless. He stomped through the sticks to the other side of the nest. “I have to talk to Vowri! We have to complete this quest, or at least try. And please let me see Larkin. He can’t be locked up like this. It would destroy him, after what Rosamund did to him.”
“I know. It’s up to Vowri, though. Not me.”
“Then make her come talk to me.”
“She will. She … ” The wind strengthened. The clouds thickened, bitter smoke furling overhead to darken the skies further.
Figures appeared everywhere, all around in the smoky sky—transparent forms drifting free, as well as humans trapped on nests, all of them slumped in defeat. Except Larkin, whose nest was suddenly near Merrick’s, and who prowled back and forth, his hair a long tangle and his shoulders tight with distress.
Merrick lunged toward him just as Larkin spotted him. They both slammed against their invisible walls. If they could have reached out, their hands would have touched.
Merrick managed to smile. “Hey. You’re alive.”
“You as well. Thank the gods.”
“Do you know who saved us from the whitefingers?” He gestured toward Haluli. “My mother, Haluli. She was there after all.”
Larkin gave her a gracious nod. “I was out of my wits and hadn’t any notion who carried me off. I thank you.”
“It was my pleasure,” she said. “I’ve heard a great deal about you and have wanted to meet you for some time.”
“Then where’s Vowri?” Merrick asked. “Aren’t these all prisoners? And … ” He gazed at one of the transparent figures who drifted between nests, a woman with an old-fashioned dress and sad eyes. “Ghosts,” he said. “Souls. Those aren’t fae.” Somehow he knew it; felt it.
“They are the lost,” Haluli said. “They’ve died, and linger here from sadness, to be near those they love.”
“Vowri never sets these folk free?” Larkin said.
“Only when she’s certain their suffering in being freed will be more interesting to watch than their suffering in captivity,” someone said. It was a deep, rough voice, a woman’s. It seemed oddly familiar.
Merrick turned toward it.
“It cannot be,” Larkin whispered.
“Greetings, Your Highness.” In a nest near theirs, the woman rose to her feet. She was old and emaciated, gray all over, wearing patched and thread-bare clothing. “I hope you received my letter. Whether you did or no, let me reiterate my deepest apologies and my gladness to see you awake, even under these unfortunate circumstances.”
Larkin only blinked in astonishment.
“Wait,” Merrick said. It wasn’t her voice that was familiar so much as her accent. It was like Larkin’s.
Just as he put it together, the woman turned and bowed to him. “Merrick, my kinsman and a most valiant witch, it’s an honor to meet you at last. Rosamund Highvalley at your service.”
CHAPTER 41
DESPITE THE SHOCK THAT STILL CRACKLED through him, Larkin returned Rosamund’s bow. “In some way, friend, I rather expected this meeting. Your powers were too great for you to have simply met your demise like a lowly human.” He slipped a sardonic tone into his polite words.
She laughed. “Your barbs are as sharp as ever, friend. Merrick, has he been dueling with you regularly upon the proper place of witches in Eidolonia?”
“Well,” Merrick said, “it only came down to knives once.”
“Yet he’s become your ally; indeed, your beloved. Oh, don’t blush, boys. It would be clear from your faces even if I’d not heard the gossip. It does the heart good, truly.”
Larkin refused to lower his gaze in anything that might resemble modesty. “How long have you been here? How is this possible?”
She lifted a hand and tugged down her ragged sleeve to show rows of blue dots running up her arm: simple tattoos, an easy matter for anyone with her powers. “I’ve tried to keep count, based on how many nights pass. In total, I estimate it’s been forty-three of my years.”
“To more than two hundred of ours?” Merrick said skeptically. Then he tilted his head. “It could be. Sometimes one night is a month, so … ”
“There’s no consistent mathematical formula to apply.” She let her sleeve cover her arm again. “Some years move slowly in comparison to the human world; some speed past. But possible it is, for here I am. Eighty-six years old and still alive.”
She had been a large woman in her late thirties when Larkin had last seen her, always striding about energetically, wearing flowing red trousers, a gold-threaded cape, and a dauntless smile. Now she must have weighed one-third what she used to, along with having aged, and he would not have recognized her by sight. But her voice and manner of speaking declared her identity beyond doubt.
Which, when he thought about it, made his spirits plummet.
“If you cannot escape from here,” Larkin said, “there’s little hope that we can.”
She sighed. “I entered from the north, aiming to speak with Vowri about my plan to trap Ula Kana in the desert. I thought to approach the most formidable of the three first, to assess my chances—which, evidently, were poor indeed. I failed, and here I have stayed.”
“Philomena didn’t know where you were going?” Merrick asked. “You were always just reported ‘lost’ in the historic record.”
“She knew where I meant to go, and tried to dissuade me. I had my box with me, the one you found, and I sent a visiting sylph to leave it at Highvalley House for Philo, along with a letter. But Vowri’s magic made the words disappear. No one can speak of this realm outside it, nor write of it, while she rules. Thus no one knew with certainty what became of me, other than a few of the fae. Not until Philo died herself, that is.” Rosamund turned a smile upon the ghost in the long gown who hovered near her nest. “Hello, dear. She hasn’t let us see one another for quite some time, has she?”
Larkin realized with a start that the ghost was indeed Philomena Quintal, aged somewhat and much sadder than he had ever seen her.
She drifted closer, reaching out toward Rosamund. Rosamund lifted her hand, but they did not make contact; their hands slipped through one another. Neither woman seemed dismayed. They were long since used to the physics of this place.
“Miss Quintal.” Larkin bowed. “My deepest regrets.”
“I am beset with regrets.” Philomena’s words wavered, bits of them disappearing, as if heard through water. “I hid the journal and the items that could have freed you, prolonging your sleep. I’m so sorry, Your Highness.”
“Your hesitation was well founded,” he said. “Ula Kana does fly free, and now we are imprisoned.”
Merrick groaned and turned away, and Larkin felt a flash of regret—he had not meant to stir up Merrick’s guilt.
“My great-great-etcetera nephew,” Rosamund said, “seems to have approached things in the wrong order. A Highvalley tr
ait, perhaps.”
“Then do explain what you intended,” Larkin retorted. “We’ve deciphered your instructions well enough to come this far, but I confess your motives and methods still often confound me.”
Rosamund heaved herself to her feet. Larkin saw she had spread assorted bits of rags all over her nest, as protection against the thorns; acquired from where, he could not imagine. “I’m uncertain how much of the truth has entered into the historic record. But it began with your parents. Surely you could guess, friend, that they would not be content to leave you in that sleep forever. They kept beseeching me to find a way to free you without freeing Ula Kana.”
Tears pricked at Larkin’s eyes. Their emotion when placing him in the bower. His dreams of losing them. The way he had remembered their disapproval and told himself they had not missed him.
“I assured them I had the same thought,” she continued, “as indeed I did, given I had forced you into the sleep. Which, by the by, they never knew. I hadn’t the courage to tell them.”
He swallowed. “Just as well.”
“I’d already begun devising my solution, which you read in my journal, though I did not discuss the details with them. I didn’t wish to give them false hopes till I was certain I could accomplish it, and in any case the plan was to be secret. Witches’ powers had become much restricted by law as part of the truce. What I was creating and attempting would have been largely frowned upon by the public.
“But the years passed and still I failed to achieve the alliances among the fae that I needed. I had, as you know, been much too cavalier in my dealings with them, and none would strike any palatable deal with me. Meanwhile you gathered dust in your bower. I never forgot it for a day; not one, friend. Vowri delights in gorging upon my guilt. Do you not, m’lady?” She called out the words to the sky.
Larkin glanced up and saw nothing—until, there—a strange crumpling of a smoke cloud moving from one place to another. For a moment it became a hooded figure floating in the air. Then it blended into the murk again.