by Leigh Evans
And I could see the cloud. A traveling smear of dark purple glitter and glints, tracking something that was already moving quickly toward the craggy cliffs.
Maybe that’s when the animal within me started to take over, though I didn’t realize it then. I shuddered at the cloud and the dark, and then I turned to do what he’d told me to do—because every other action made a mockery of my choice and his—and I made tracks.
I ran, trying not to make a noise, trying not to cry. Trying not to stumble.
I ran in the opposite direction from the cloud.
I ran, thinking that’s what I needed to do.
Fool.
You can’t outrun your destiny.
Chapter Five
So, I ran, blind, my emotional pain blurring everything into a collage of thick tree trunks, undefined knee-high vegetation, and low-hanging branches.
I didn’t the feel the heavy weight of Merry and Ralph bouncing on my chest, nor was I conscious of the nicks and bruises I was accumulating to the bottoms of my feet. I just kept going, crashing through the old forest, destination momentarily forgotten.
Grief mixed with burgeoning fear is a powerful jet fuel, but as propellants go it burns fast. Within ten minutes of plunging into the dark forest I hit empty, and shortly after that my lungs and leg muscles advised me they’d gone as far as they meant to.
I staggered to a stop, bracing my hands on my knees for a dry-heave session. My head spun sickly. The edges of my vision darkened, then drew inward, gathering up all the light to turn the world around me dark.
No, no, no.
Must keep going.
I sank to my knees, still thinking, No. And then I was sliding to one hip, and falling in slow motion to the ground. I moaned when my head met earth. The back of my skull was acutely tender.
I shouldn’t lie here, I thought. I need to keep moving …
* * *
“Wake. Up.”
The words were said in two distinct sound bites. The voice was feminine, the vowels elongated. The sound of it didn’t stir any glad feelings. I started to drift away from the irritation.
“Wake up, Hedi of Creemore,” she said again, her tone harsh enough to strip paint.
My eyes shot open.
I saw fog, wet and thick as the proverbial pea soup. Though, as opposed to a bowl of the green stuff, this substance was bluish-gray in hue and sweetly fragrant. Also unlike the soup, this myst was chilled. Its dampness sliced right through me.
I inhaled again. It smelled like Threall.
But …
As a rule, when I soul-traveled to the realm of the sleeping Fae I woke up facedown in a small stump-rutted field, my head turned toward a long row of hawthorns. That didn’t mean I couldn’t wake up as I was—lying at the base of a fir tree, curled on my side, one arm around my aching head—but still, if this was Threall something had definitely changed. I’d never seen the myst this thick, nor had I come to consciousness resting on a bed of dried pine needles.
I frowned. “Mad-one?”
“You must refrain from sleeping. Or you will fail in that which you promised, and all will be for naught.”
I bolted up into a sitting position, and a stab of pain lanced through the back of my head. The urge to faint was there again. I fought against it, but for two ticks the only thing keeping me semi-upright was the ballast of my ass.
“Do not go to sleep again!”
“I’m not going to!” However, performing a less than graceful swoon was entirely possible. Geez, what had I done to my head? My fingers probed the curve of my skull. There was a lump back behind my ear the size of an ostrich egg.
I remembered the washing machine and a sudden bloom of pain during the spin cycle.
Her voice came from my right. “What is an ostrich?”
“A bird with very long legs, and enormous eyes.” Goddess, how long had I been out? Five minutes? Five hours? I couldn’t tell with all this blue fog surrounding me. Time is important. Trowbridge was on the run. I needed to find a place where I could search the sky for the cloud. I put a leg under my butt and braced a hand to push myself to my feet.
“Trowbridge is being hunted,” I muttered, managing to get to one knee. “And I have to meet him at Daniel’s Rock. I need to…” get up, I finished silently.
“Yes. You must gather your resources and move again.”
“Mmmm,” I said, blinking hard.
“I am curious of this ostrich.”
I felt a familiar push inside my brain. Fae can speak through thought-pictures—simple images without any meme dialogue to punch up the irony. A mental nudge, such as the one she’d just aimed at me, signaled either an incoming image or a request for a visual.
But it was a case of too late, too little. Trading thought-pictures was for family and dear friends, and her mental push was the equivalent of a stranger opening our door, then saying, “Knock, knock,” as they wandered down the front hall, heading toward our kitchen.
Huh.
I looked at her through slit eyes. “I didn’t say that bit about the ostrich egg out loud.”
“No, you thought it.”
Oh crap. I could feel her in my head. Sitting there, all comfortable, taking a look around. “What are you doing?” I gave her a violent mental shove out of my private thoughts. “Are you touching me?” I whipped around to look behind and groaned at the resulting stabbing skull pain. When the pulse of ouch subsided, I spoke through gritted teeth. “Aren’t there rules about mystwalkers messing with other mystwalkers?”
“There are no rules,” she said dryly. “Naught but the ones made by mages.”
The sensation of sharing my brain subsided but didn’t necessarily go away. Kind of like when a wave hits the shore, pulls back, and leaves a film of wet bubbling on the sand.
She was still there.
One hand clamped over my ostrich egg, I turned on my knee, peering this way and that, trying to locate her in all that blue myst. “Where are you hiding?” I shouted.
“I am here.” The hem of her blue gown materialized to my right.
I tipped my head to look up at her and found that hurt too much, so I grabbed a handful of velvet and jerked her down to my level. “Oof,” she yelped. The fog swirled as she stumbled into an ungainly ass-plant. Then, the myst settled, enveloping her once again, except for her bent knee and her silk slipper.
Toes really can be stiff with outrage.
I heard her draw in a shaky breath, which she expelled in a long whistle of incredulity. “You touched me.”
“Said the pot to the kettle. And technically, I touched your skirt, not you.”
“You are endlessly provoking.”
Yes. I was. I leaned forward and blew. The fog parted, revealing her heart-shaped face. Heavy-lidded eyes, a long nose, country club written all over her. Expression set in her usual disdainful scowl. If she ever smiled, the Mystwalker of Threall would be a knockout.
“You want to tell me what’s with all the myst?” I drew a lazy circle in the air to illustrate my question, and ghostly tendrils of smoke eddied around my fingers. “And why did you call me to Threall? Because I don’t have time to—”
“I did not call you and you are not in Threall.”
“Well, let’s do a checklist: there’s blue myst, and—oh yes—you. You’re sitting so close, I could touch you again”—I faked her out with a taunting finger—“and you never leave Threall.” She couldn’t. Like me, Mad-one had been born with the rare ability to mystwalk, which meant she could separate her soul from her body and travel to the secret realm.
At night the tops of Threall’s trees glowed with the golden light of thousands of soul-balls, which hung like ripe fruit from their boughs. Mad-one referred to the trees as citadels and the single soul that hung from each citadel as a cyreath. I just called them fucking beautiful. The sight of all those lights stirred my twin mystwalker inclinations: the instincts to protect and to own. It’s the last attribute that gave us dream-walkers probl
ems: we become possessive of that we protect.
Think dog with a really good bone.
And that’s how you end up more than a trifle mad, marooned in a shadow realm that you no longer wanted to be in. You’re pulled by instincts to stay, and you forget how to go home.
“Stop thinking of me,” she chided. “And embrace the truth. You are not in Threall.”
Beneath my fingers, I could feel the pulpy swelling of the enormous bruise. She might have a point—I always wake up in Threall without a scratch, no matter what indignities my body suffered before I traveled to the realm. My hand slid down the back of my neck, moving to the front of me. My shirt was muddy. I peeled it up to inspect my ribs. There was a graze down the left side that continued right under my wet waistband.
Huh.
I looked upward, searching for a soul-light in the boughs above, but I couldn’t find one. Not a single glowing golden glow.
“Okay. I’m not in Threall,” I said slowly. I thought about that for a moment. Then, with a swallow, I asked, “Am I dead?”
“No.”
I drooped with relief. “But you’re here. With me.”
“It is but an illusion. Like the myst.” She moved her hand from left to right as if she were wiping a window clear of dew. The smoke curled away, vanishing into the undergrowth. I saw the forest around us; I saw her weariness; I saw the ferns I’d crushed before I’d fallen.
“How?”
“In Threall, my palm rests upon the spine of your tree. I tried to speak to you through thought alone, but of course you were resistant to my attempts. You need to see. To touch. To examine. Thus, my illusion.”
“So, you’re touching my citadel, right now? Up in Threall?” Oh, ew. She was sucking up my experiences like a kid with a straw and a soda. “Well, thanks for stopping by, but it’s time for you to go.”
Mad-one’s gaze roamed. “It has been a league and more since I’ve seen this forest.”
“Yup. Time to go.”
She made no move. Her eyes were uncharacteristically wide. If I wanted to I could count the tiny flecks of brown in her blue eyes.
She wasn’t going anywhere.
“So you’re not really here?” At her absent nod, I reached over to touch her skirt. The velvet nap rolled under my fingers. “That’s a really good illusion. You want to fill me in as to why you stopped by for a visit?”
She picked up a handful of pine needles. “When the light of your cryeath dimmed, I knew you were hurt, perhaps badly. I checked on you.”
She’d been watching over me in Threall, I thought, eyeing her as she lifted the handful of fragrant pine to her nose. She sniffed it delicately, and an expression of fleeting bliss softened the set line of her jaw. Damn, damn, damn.
“Thank you,” I said awkwardly.
“Once I did, I discovered that you were unharmed.”
“I’ve got an ostrich egg growing on the back of my head.”
“And that you were sleeping.”
“Ever heard of the word ‘concussion’?”
She lifted her shoulders. “Does it matter if you were asleep or rendered unable to stay awake? More alarming is the fact that your soul was traveling to my realm.” She bent her neck to study the dried needles in her palm. Her expression hardened back into her usual setting. With a head toss, she flung them into the ferns. “You must not return to my realm until such time as you are ready to complete your promise to me.”
“I wasn’t planning on penciling in a jaunt to—”
“You must not falter. You must not fail. I cannot help you—do you not understand? I can only watch the light change inside your cyreath; I can only touch the bark of your citadel and sip from your experiences.” Frustration sharpened her tone. “Why do you let your attention falter? Why can your focus not stay fixed to the problem? You move from distraction to distraction, threat to threat! Do you not comprehend what rests on your shoulders? It is not just your fate or mine! It is the future of all those we choose to protect. And it is lives of those we love.” She thumped her chest with her clenched fist. “I love, Hedi of Creemore, and your dallying is threatening the man I love.”
“Dallying? How dare you! Do you know how many miles Trowbridge and I have covered? How long it’s been since I slept?”
She shook her head. “I don’t care. Simeon has protected my body in Merenwyn this age and longer, and I will protect him to my last breath. You must stay firm to your course! Fail and I will destroy you! I will tear the skin of your cyreath with my teeth and laugh as the wind carries your soul to oblivion.”
I cocked my head to study her. Her eyes snapping, her face alive. Animation had set fire to her cold beauty, making her almost appear mortal. “You can’t,” I said quietly. “My life is connected to Lexi’s and his to the Old Mage. He won’t let you.”
I shared my citadel with my twin. Two trunks, one long taproot. Our futures were tied together. If I died, he died. And if that happened, the Old Mage was shit out of luck, for his soul had no place to call home. Thus, the old geezer would allow no bodily harm to me or my cyreath. It was that simple.
She knew it was an empty threat, but I guess that’s all she had to use. Now she folded her arms over her chest hard enough to plump her breasts and took in a shuddering breath.
I watched a tide of red crawl across her cheeks.
Embarrassed for her, I scraped some of the sludge off the front of my tee with my nails. The scent of the drying paste oddly comforted me. Was I concussed or what? Grimly, I wiped the pads of my fingers clean.
“I love too, Mad-one, and my mate is missing. A hunter is following him, and I don’t know where he is. I can only follow his progress by a cloud, and now I can’t even do that. I can’t see the sky. I’m deep in a forest, and I think I’m lost.”
“You are not lost.”
“Feels like it.”
Without turning, she pointed behind her. “Head in that direction. The forest will thin and soon you should be able search the sky for the sun.” She let out a bleak sigh. “Night is drawing nigh in Merenwyn. You will need to find a safe place to spend it. One with walls if possible. And you must not sleep, nor leave your place of sanctuary.”
“I’ve got a concussion. Don’t suppose you have any wake-up juice to lend me?”
She leaned over to gently touch the swollen lump behind my ear. I felt a burst of heat, a flush of happiness, and then my head cleared.
She sat back.
Cautiously, I checked my skull. No egg. No pain. I was healed. “I didn’t know you could heal me.” I tucked that information away, thinking it would be handy to have a medic on call.
“I cannot heal you again, Hedi of Creemore. I have used what I keep for myself, and now I am vulnerable.” I watched her gaze grow unfocused. “But your cyreath is shining again.”
“Can you see Lexi’s light? Is it brighter than before?” He should be almost through his healing. If good health shone, then …
And with that thought, she shut down.
Fear coursed through me. “Mad-one? What’s happening with Lexi?” At her small negative headshake, I reached for her arm. It tensed under my grip. “Let me in, Mad-one. Let me see what you’re seeing.”
“You do not wish to see this.”
“What’s wrong with Lexi? Didn’t the healing take? Is he still addicted? Is he fighting the mage?” She didn’t answer. I pushed harder. “Tell me! Is he okay?”
“You must hasten. Time is but one of your enemies.”
“Not till you tell me what’s wrong with Lexi.”
“He is not unwell,” she said. “But you must not dally. You must reach Daniel’s Rock as quickly as you can.”
“I’m supposed to have plenty of time,” I said, totally confused. “I’m way ahead of schedule. Trowbridge and I weren’t supposed to cross the portal for another day. I know that time is all screwed up between the two realms, but by the Old Mage’s reckoning I am early. How is getting to Daniel’s Rock a day before I need to goi
ng to help Lexi?”
“Time is melting, Hedi of Creemore. You must hurry.”
“No, no, no. That’s not good enough. You’ve got to tell me why I have to hurry. You have to tell me exactly what’s happening up there, or I swear to God, I’ll come up there to see for myself.”
“No!” She shook off my arm. “Do not come to my realm when you are weak and unprepared. For he is here, and he is there. He is everywhere.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“There are worse things than death, Hedi of Creemore. Do not squander our one last chance! Come only when you are ready to battle.” Her head turned sharply as if she heard something that I could not. “I must leave,” she whispered.
Myst started swirling around her.
“You’re not leaving me with these questions.” I lunged, searching for her in the fog.
Her voice was a thread of caution. “Your clothing is wet, and there is no sun in this part of the forest. You must quit this portion of the woods. You must find the sun again, then shelter for the night. Daniel’s Rock is to the east. Do not sleep. At first light head for the rock.”
“Who’s everywhere?” I shouted. “Are you talking about the Old Mage?”
I again lunged through the fog, searching for her. I felt velvet and clung to it. “At least tell me that Trowbridge is okay,” I pleaded as the fabric thinned under my touch. I tried to hold on to her. I really did. But between one breath and another, I lost her. “Goddess curse you, Mad-one.” Heart pounding, I sat back on my heels.
“That has already been done,” came her faint reply.
The fog thinned to vapor, then melted into the forest.
Chapter Six
ONE WRETCHED HOUR LATER
“Seriously?” I whispered to my amulet-friends. “Seriously?”
Ralph didn’t comment, having turned moody once Merry disengaged herself from his embrace to move higher on my neck. As for my dearest buddy, if she could swallow I think I would have heard a big gulp. But she couldn’t, so all Merry did was pull another vine out of her nest of gold and touch my sunburned cheek.