Fade (Chaos)

by Claire Farrell

  “Wow,” I said. “I feel it, too.”

  “I have no idea what’s out this way,” Drake said. “Do you?”

  Brendan shook his head. “Maybe there’s a festival. A party or celebration of some kind.”

  “Should we?” Drake asked, looking mischievous.

  Brendan laughed. “We could take a look. Be ready to flee if we’ve stumbled upon a cannibalistic ceremony though.”

  I really hoped he was joking.

  We turned the horses in the direction of the drumbeat, stepping through a forest that grew impossibly thick. Then suddenly it changed, and the trees were lighter, willowier. The sun beamed down, and the journey became more pleasant. The Darkside couldn’t exactly be called “nice,” but some parts weren’t completely horrible.

  “I hear a fiddle,” Brendan said. “I hope there’ll be singing.”

  Drake looked at him. “What if it’s—”

  “We have a power they won’t expect,” Brendan said.

  “What if it’s who?” I whispered, hoping Brendan would answer.

  “You’ll see,” was all he said.

  I thumped his back. He groaned, and I tried to suppress my giggle.

  “No bodyguard to protect you now, King Brendan.”

  “None indeed,” he said. “I’d almost think you and Anya had contrived the whole thing.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Now don’t start pouting again. I hate when you look so sad. It’s almost enough to make even a king’s heart melt.”

  I tried to smile, but my chin wobbled. I had managed to push Anya and Líle out of my mind for a bit. It was almost as though the Darkside had plotted our separation. We would eventually return in four different groups, and that was if everything went well.

  I missed Grim’s observations and his advice. I even missed Realtín’s annoying habits of knotting my hair and throwing things at me. I liked Drake and Brendan, but it wasn’t the same.

  The music grew louder, and I thought I heard laughter. We came upon a village of half-naked people, the tallest of which barely reached my shoulders.

  Most of the buildings were perched on tree branches. Candles lit the windows of the small homes, and I realised with a start that it was night time. In a clearing, a number of people danced around a bonfire. Their faces were tattooed with markings, and their teeth looked far sharper than normal. One man sat cross-legged on a low branch, eating a hunk of raw meat. He bit through the bone with ease. I squeezed Brendan’s waist a little tighter.

  “Hallo!” a voice called out from above us. “Here to celebrate, are you?”

  I looked up to see a man with long silver hair staring down at us from one of the tree homes. He grinned, and his blood-stained teeth were the sharpest I had seen yet. I glanced at the dancers, but they didn’t seem to have noticed us. I prayed there would be no trouble.

  “Are we welcome then?” Brendan asked.

  “As long as you mean us no harm,” the old man said. “Come stay the night with us. The party will run until sunrise, don’t you worry. Are you in need of a meal?”

  “We have some food of our own,” Drake said. “We wouldn’t want to intrude except to ask what you all are celebrating.”

  “Haven’t you heard?” the old man asked. “Sadler’s gone and done it. King of the Darkside, he is now. King of the Court of Chaos, he says. Can you imagine? We’re celebrating the fact some control will come back to the Darkside. Perhaps some of the darkness from the Fade will disappear. Makes a place almost unliveable, it does, but a king could find a way to cure the taint.”

  “Oh. We hadn’t heard of his crowning,” Brendan said. “We’ve been travelling for a while, you see.”

  “Of course, of course,” the old man said. “It’s news to us all. Listen, rest yourselves wherever you like. You can join in the celebration. Nobody will mind. You might as well take advantage of the fire instead of making your own. Besides, you’ll want to be celebrating, too, I suppose. Things are going to change around here. Forgotten no longer!”

  After thanking him, we made our way to an empty patch of ground. Some of the people ran over and asked if they could help our horses. When we agreed, they rubbed the animals down with great care and fed them.

  “Well?” Brendan said, unpacking some foodstuffs. “What do we do about this?”

  “He created his own court,” Drake said. “And they’re happy about it.”

  “I saw the rift.” Brendan looked around with a thoughtful expression. “The Darkside separated from the rest of the realm a long time ago because of it. Nobody cared enough to treat the problem when it counted. A ruler here could restore order. My grandfather used to tell tales of rifts that could cut through realms. If you leave them unchecked, they can swallow up the land. It’s said a rift sent the daoine sídhe to us, that the giants came from a land eaten up by darkness.”

  “I wouldn’t mind if the Darkside was swallowed up,” Drake said. “It seems like a place for monsters and fools alike.”

  “That’s unfair,” I said. “You can’t help the place you were born. These people are nice. I doubt they voluntarily came out this way.” I sucked in a breath. “Although, I’m pretty sure some of Reynard’s men used to work for the old queens. What if a different kind of fae have been gathering over here, attracted by the darkness?”

  “And the chaos,” Drake said.

  “The chaos court,” Brendan said slowly. “He always had a tendency toward melodrama. This makes me believe he’s been branded already. Nobody wants to deal with the Darkside. Not even the old queens wanted the hassle.”

  “I thought we would deal with it,” Drake said.

  “And now we’ll have to,” Brendan said, his green eyes burning with anger. “We’ll have to deal with Sadler, one way or another.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Grim was calling my name.

  I sat up, my heart pounding. A dream. It was just a dream.

  Bleary-eyed, I looked around, wondering why nobody was keeping watch. We had camped next to the tree village. A couple of men lay asleep by the smouldering bonfire, but most had gone to bed in their treehouses after the celebrations. One of the horses was asleep, while the other grazed peacefully just outside our camp. They weren’t worried. Then again, they weren’t Dubh.

  I was about to lay down again when I heard: “Cara! This way! Hurry, there’s no time!”

  I stumbled to my feet and ran toward the trees in my eagerness to get to Grim. Something was wrong. Something had happened. I thought of Sorcha and Donella, of treachery and trickery.

  Then I stopped, remembering the siren and all the obstacles that had tripped me up before. A shining gold light shimmered between the trees. Realtín. I started running again, my heart filled to bursting at the thought of seeing my little friends.

  I came into a clearing and stopped short. At least an acre of withered and scorched grass lay before me. Thick brown thorns tangled around the surrounding trees as if preventing them from growing any farther in. In the centre of the clearing stood a large mirror, taller and wider than I was. The golden light was coming from the mirror. The gilded exterior glimmered under the rays emanating from the glass. And in the reflection, instead of trees or me or anything I expected, I saw Grim and Realtín, their small hands pounding against the glass from the inside.

  “No,” I whispered, my blood running cold. It couldn’t be real.

  “Help me,” Grim pleaded. “Pull me out, like you did for Brendan in the Fade.”

  How could a mirror know about that? How could a mirror know anything at all?

  I crept closer, painfully aware of the dead silence. It was as though the trees held their breath in anticipation of what I would do next. Goosebumps rose on my arms and legs. The trees didn’t move. Leaves didn’t rustle on the branches. I looked up, but I couldn’t see the moon.

  The gold light turned red. “Help me!” Realtín shrieked.

  I didn’t fully trust the mirror, but I kept moving. I studied Grim—the same bald head sl
iced with pink puckered scarring, the same solemn grey eyes. For a split second, I saw my brother’s face, instead. I blinked, and he was Grim again. I took a step back, shaking my head.

  Grim fell to his knees, pain and desolation in his eyes. Realtín threw herself at the glass again and again, until her body was mangled, her wings covered in blood.

  “Realtín!” I touched the glass with both hands.

  My fingers slid through as if nothing were there. I could see my hands in the reflection. Grim and Realtín clutched at my fingers and pulled. But I couldn’t feel their touch. I tried to pull back, but I was stuck fast. I felt my skin sliding across my muscles and sinews and into the mirror. I stared at my arms in horror, but there was nothing wrong with them. It wasn’t my skin I was losing. The mirror was taking something else.

  Something tugged at my insides, propelling me forward, closer to the mirror. The air grew colder. I choked out a sob. Could I be losing a part of myself? My mind, my heart, my soul? The sensation was just like the one I’d felt near the Wall of Souls.

  Frantic, I dug my heels into the ground and leaned backward, struggling to free my hands. Whatever was taking from me clamped down harder, but I was determined. And scared. My human emotions sometimes gave me an advantage in the realm of the fae, so I welcomed them.

  I thought about everything I had ever feared, and I willed it out of me. Darkness pulled away from my skin, the emotion so strong that it became tangible in the chaos of the Darkside. I thought I heard a shriek of pain. The grip on my arms loosened abruptly.

  I fell back onto my arse. Trembling, I sat there, unable to do much else. I felt incomplete and weak, like a shadow drifting on the surface of the earth. Like a shade’s memory. My reflection was transparent and shaky.

  The mirror whirled and screamed, playing scenes of horror—deaths and disaster and an army dressed in black. I wrapped my arms around my knees, and pulled them to my chest. The glass was pristine except for a missing shard in the top right-hand corner, and the images looked real enough to touch.

  Grim and Realtín’s broken bodies floated down a river red with blood. Líle was mad, beating her head against walls until her skull imploded. Anya was burned on a funeral pyre, only a single watcher there to see her remains turn to dust. Brendan and Drake faced each other with swords, armies behind their backs. Their deaths led to a never-ending battle. The cat was skinned alive and roasted on an open fire. Dubh was decapitated by someone who looked like Reynard.

  And finally, I saw myself. I stood in the mirror with blood on my hands. I was older and unharmed, so the blood wasn’t mine. A black wedding band surrounded my ring finger. A black stone decorated a finger on my other hand. A black crown of thorns clung to my head.

  My reflection-self aged before my eyes. Wrinkles deepened around the eyes and mouth. My forehead grew heavy with worry lines. My hair fell out even as it turned to a dark grey colour. The life left my eyes until they were cold and dark. Evil. I lay in a large bed, completely alone. Hooded figures surrounded the bed, but they turned away, all but one. The last stood there for the longest, staring at my aging body. I lifted my hand in a pleading way, either desperate for forgiveness or perhaps affection. But the figure walked away without looking back. Tears rolled down the cheeks of my reflection-self, then my chest rose and fell with one last shuddering breath.

  The sun rose in the clearing. Sounds filled the air again. The mirror was gone. I wasn’t sure if I had fallen asleep or snapped out of a bad vision. The memories of what I had seen engulfed me. Were they fate or possibilities? Blood on my hands. Was that a metaphor, or would my actions destroy my faery friends? Or was it intended to scare me into leaving? Worse… was it a sign I was truly losing my mind?

  “Cara, what’s wrong? Did something happen?” Drake knelt by me, his voice soft with concern.

  I stared at the spot where the mirror had stood. The grass was bloody, as if everything that had happened in the mirror had seeped into the earth—and nourished it, if the newly green grass there was any sign.

  “What’s going on?” Brendan asked.

  Drake responded, “She won’t speak. She won’t look at me. What happened to her?”

  Brendan put a hand on my chin and made me look at him. I saw through him and watched his death instead. I whimpered as maggots ate his eyes.

  His decaying mouth moved. “Make her sleep, Drake.”

  “How?”

  Brendan made a sound of exasperation. “You have the power, and you can’t use it. What tricks are those priestesses planning? Use your will. Concentrate on her, close her eyes, and tell her to sleep awhile. Pull everything that’s in you out and wrap it into the words. You’ll understand when you try.”

  Brendan lifted me into his arms. I stared at a bloody sky while they peered down at me.

  “You’re all going to die,” I whispered.

  They exchanged worried glances. Drake touched my eyelids, forcing my eyes shut. It didn’t matter. The images still played inside my eyelids.

  “Sleep, Cara,” Drake said. “Sleep and heal.”

  I heard the final word in a dark dream. I clung onto it, hoping it would free me from the nightmares.

  ***

  When I awoke, the sky was dark. I ached too much to move. Drake and Brendan sat across from each other by the fire, speaking quietly.

  “We have to leave soon,” Brendan said. “They could still track us from the trace you left back there.”

  “Maybe we should wait until she wakes up,” Drake said. “To question her.”

  “And if she doesn’t wake?”

  “Why wouldn’t she?”

  “You barely know what you’re doing. The fact that you let her come out here in the first place says it all.”

  “Oh, here we go,” Drake said. “Finally gotten over hinting at it? I didn’t let her do anything. She’s her own person. She does her own thing. I followed her and brought help. It was the best I could do in the circumstances.”

  “Oh, yes. I forgot,” Brendan said. “You were too busy taking the crown to watch over the one human in your care.”

  “She’s not a child,” Drake insisted. “She doesn’t need to be surrounded by watchers.”

  “In the human world, she’s not a child, and she’s more aware than most, but in this realm, she’s as innocent as a babe. What were you thinking?”

  “I was thinking about the realm. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t have done the same thing!”

  “I would never have left her alone long enough to give her a chance to come up with the idea.” Brendan hesitated. “And I would have sent others to the Fade for you.”

  “Just because you lived in my body for a while doesn’t give you the right to tell me what to do.”

  Brendan laughed. “Is that what I’m doing?”

  “Constantly.” But I heard the smile in Drake’s voice.

  I let out a sigh of relief.

  “Are you awake?” Brendan called out.

  “Kind of.” I sat up and stretched.

  Drake brought me a cup of water. I drank eagerly then excused myself so I could head into the woods to find a decent place to pee. I had lost a lot of my dignity lately, I realised.

  Even after my unwilling sleep, the visions and dreams were as clear as ever. I returned to the others and sat beside the fire. Brendan handed me some kind of murky-looking soup. It didn’t taste too bad, and at least it was warm.

  I looked around at the unfamiliar camp. “Where are the treehouses?”

  “We took you away in case they hurt you,” Brendan said. “And because we were forced to use magic. It hasn’t been a pleasant journey. I’m glad you’re awake.”

  “What happened?” Drake asked.

  I sighed and stirred my soup. “I don’t know.”

  “Cara—” Brendan began.

  I held up my spoon. “I don’t know if it was real or a trick or… if I was just losing my mind.”

  “What were you doing out there?” Brendan asked. “Away from
camp.”

  I stared at the fire. “I woke up because I thought I heard Grim calling me. I didn’t trust it, but then I saw gold light. Just like Realtín. I had to find out what was happening.”

  “And what did you find?” Drake asked.

  “A mirror.”

  They exchanged a glance.

  “I know.” I dropped my bowl and rested my head in my hands. Neither faery said a word. I peeked up at them. “I’m losing my freaking mind, aren’t I?”

  “Just…” Brendan looked at Drake.

  “What happened then?” Drake asked.

  “I saw Grim and Realtín trapped in the mirror. I mean, I knew it couldn’t be, but this is the fae realm. Pretty much anything is possible, right?” I squeezed my eyes shut, remembering. “Grim looked like my brother for a second, and I backed off, but then Realtín started throwing herself at the glass, and I couldn’t…” I opened my eyes and stared at them. “I couldn’t leave her. So I touched the glass. But my hands passed through it. I could literally see my hands in the mirror. I saw Grim and Realtín touch me, but I didn’t feel their hands. I felt… something else.”

  “What did you feel?” Brendan asked.

  “I felt like something was being stolen from me. I thought it was killing me, but nothing looked different. It was all on the inside. I felt like a piece of me was dying. Like… I don’t know. I panicked and got free, and then the mirror starting showing me these kinds of visions. Everyone was dying. All of you. And I had blood on my hands. It was like a warning or… I don’t know.”

  Drake looked at me, fear mingled with pity.

  I inhaled sharply. “It never happened, did it? I’m losing my mind.”

  Drake’s eyes grew wide as he looked at Brendan, but Brendan shook his head. “Not necessarily. You’re right. Anything can happen here.”

  “Brendan—” Drake began.

  Brendan talked over him. “There used to be a story about a mirror that could steal your soul if you stared too long into its reflection. I remember reading about it as a boy. It was a relic of the old days, and nobody knew if it still existed.” He held my gaze. “You are not losing your mind, Cara.”