And Todd started to change.
It was slow at first, but definite, as if fighting the hag-spirits was draining away some magical energy that allowed him to hold his shape.
Jazz grabbed my hand. Her fingers dug into my palm as Todd gradually morphed into what looked like a snarling child covered with long, tangled hair.
Red hair.
The image thrashed, turned its mean little eyes in my direction, and let out a maniac laugh I knew all too well. Then it roared, flashed reddish black light, and vanished, knocking down hags and leaving the hag-spirits limp on the ground.
“Unbelievable.” I stood, pulling Jazz to her feet with me. “That was the Erlking.”
The freak had come to L.O.S.T. and shapeshifted into my brother. But when? And what had happened to the real Todd?
The image flickered and went off like an old-time film breaking right in half Helden and Sherise released the image, then drooped like flowers who hadn’t had enough water. Hags knelt and gave them vials of blue and green liquid I wouldn’t have touched for all the money in all the banks in the world, but Dame Corey helped them both drink the stuff.
As they recovered, the lead hag turned her wrinkled, pinched-up face in our direction. “Someone set that heinous monster free from the Sacred Lands.”
It sounded more like an accusation than a statement.
Jazz reacted with a flare of golden light across her shoulders. “Listen,” she snapped. “If you’re trying to say that Bren or I would do something like that—”
I took her elbow, very glad that neither of us had worn our swords. I had taken mine back, and she had kept the one she won from Alderon, but on my dad’s advice, we had given them over to the healers for safekeeping. “Stop,” I said, loud enough and firm enough to get her attention.
She shook loose from me and turned, eyes blazing. “I won’t have them accusing us.”
“But it might be the truth.” I grabbed her by the shoulders before she could start yelling and blasting things. “Remember what I asked, about whether my half-and-half blood might be a problem? Well, obviously it was. I was really afraid of that.”
She gaped at me. So did the hag.
“I don’t know how he used me, but—oh, wait. Yes I do, maybe.” I glanced at the hag, and at Dame Corey. “Jazz said the Erlking could shapeshift into something as small as a cockroach if he wanted to.”
They nodded. So did Jazz.
I let her go and reflexively reached up to rub behind my ear. The spot which had itched so badly the first time I left the Sacred Lands. “What about a flea?”
At this, Jazz sat back down on the bench, clearly horrified.
Dame Corey went pale, and the hag’s ugly mouth twisted into an even uglier frown.
That was all the answer I needed.
The Erlking had used the weakness of my half-and-half magical blood and ridden me out of his prison like a common mule. Then he turned himself into my brother until Sherise and Helden caught him and forced him to change back to his normal shape. Which brought me back to the original questions I had.
“When? And what happened to the real Todd?” Silence wrapped around the clearing, except for the trees, who were still muttering to each other. I wanted to yell at the lumber to shut up, but Helden turned her head sideways, like she might be listening.
After a few seconds, she said, “The pines tell me the Erlking came during the attack of the harpies. And they say you should be more careful about snapping off their branches. You are clumsy.”
Jazz nudged me in the butt before I could make any cracks. “Can you get them to tell us more about what happened to Todd and the Erlking?” she asked. “The trees—any of the plants? The animals?”
Sherise looked thunderstruck and frustrated, like they should have thought about that before, but Helden just nodded. I didn’t doubt her. If the chick could get the hags to love her like they did, in my book, she could do just about anything.
“It may take some time,” Helden said as she stood up. “If Sherise will help me, and my clan sisters?” Sherise stood up immediately. To my great surprise, the hags assented quickly and gathered their spirits close.
“I know you might wish to hunt for your brother and interrogate the flora and fauna,” Helden said to me as she lifted her black cowl. “But please, refrain. You have an amazing ability to anger the plants.”
“Um, okay. If you say so.” I jammed my hands into my breeches pockets. Jeez, but it was hard to have to wait. No matter what, that was my little brother out there, somewhere, and he needed my help.
“We’ll meet you at sunset,” Helden called as she and her non-plant-pissing-off crew fanned out and departed. “Sherise and I will come to Dame Corey’s house.”
I gritted my teeth. Okay, so I’d learned to respond, not react. I’d learned to plan and not charge straight into whatever mess might be going on. I’d learned to listen and compromise.
But this. This was tough. This was my little brother we were talking about.
Jazz turned to her mother. “We still have a house?”
Dame Corey nodded as we all started back for the main town. “Is it still, uh, yellow?” Jazz asked in a tone of voice that said she hoped it wasn’t.
Despite my heavy heart, I had to bite my lip to keep from snorting out a laugh and getting turned into something unpleasant.
We spent the day helping clean up and repair, build, rebuild, and catch a few of Todd’s carnivorous escapees. The harpies were still there lending a big, smelly hand, and by late afternoon, Rol and Acaw had returned from their trips.
As sunset approached, Jazz and I sat with Dad, her mom, Rol, and Acaw, drinking tea and lemonade on Dame Corey’s porch, which was yellow now, too, after the repairs. Wall, roof, shutters—the whole thing—yellow. Jazz muttered something about sunglasses, but I reminded her that she was lucky. After all, it could have been purple. That shut her up.
A cat went by, gave us a stuck-up look, and meowed instead of saying something rude in British slang.
Dad, still experimenting, pointed his finger at the lemonade pitcher. It lifted up a few inches before he smiled and set it back down. “We’ve outlasted the animals.”
“I think the changes to human and oldeFolke are permanent,” Dame Corey said for the fifth time in the last hour. She didn’t shoot Dad an annoyed look, but I could tell she wanted to. She probably wanted to straighten his goofball hair, too.
Rol cleared his throat. “Let us hope that’s a good thing.” Acaw and his crow-brother, wise as always, said nothing at all.
A flicker of movement down the road caught my attention. I got to my feet. Dad stood up too, and Jazz, as a cluster of hags approached with Sherise, Helden, and another girl, much younger, wearing a hag robe that had been spelled down to her size. The little girl, who seemed to be around eight, was holding Sherise’s hand. She had the wide-eyed look of one of the newly recovered Shadow-people.
“This is Kella,” Helden said by way of introduction. “The Grainne of Grainne, keeper of the sunstone.”
As if in proof, the little kid pulled out a silver chain to show us a smooth, bright yellow rock. When I narrowed my eyes to see it better, I could have sworn I saw flames dancing around inside.
“Three of the old charmed families,” Dame Corey mused aloud. To the hags, she said, “Do you think the legacy bearers of the other nine will turn up?”
“I have no doubt,” one of the hags answered in a low, gravelly voice. The hag-spirit curled around her arm hissed its assent.
“Will you be keeping Kella under your care?” Jazz asked.
“Yes,” another hag replied. “Sherise has a home with us as well.”
Surprised, I looked at the girl who had gotten my little brother’s attention. “Is this what you want?”
“For now,” she said softly. “There are things I need to learn—and fast.”
“The news is not good,” Helden offered by way of explanation, “but neither is it terrible. We believe To
dd is alive, Bren. Before they lost speech, the trees told us the Erlking took him hostage almost the very moment you returned from Talamadden with Jasmina.”
“The first time you came back,” Sherise clarified. “The Erlking intended to lay in wait for you here and murder you, but the harpy attack caused him trouble. He kept the form you trusted, waiting for his chance, but you and Jazz were almost always together or with lots of other witches or oldeFolke. After you left the second time, we caught him, so he never got his chance.”
“Todd was kept bound and gagged in a vacant slither day-lair.” Helden’s eyes shone with new tears as she addressed Bren. “Your brother struggled so hard to free himself, using magic and cunning over and over, he forced the Erlking to spend his energies attending to his captive. The foul creature had little time to make mischief in L.O.S.T. The oaks said Todd was the bravest human they have ever seen.” She hesitated, wiping a tear. “The maples also noted that unlike you, Todd is not clumsy with trees, and they wished very much they could have helped him escape.”
“The dogwoods told us Todd knew what he was doing, that he fought like that on purpose,” Sherise whispered. “Todd was trying to keep us safe by nearly killing himself to get loose, taking up all the Erlking’s time.”
“And now?” Dad sounded tense, unhappy. I totally understood. I would have asked myself, but I couldn’t get the words out.
“When the Erlking escaped us that night, he left L.O.S.T. and took Todd with him on a quest.” Helden sighed. “The hawthorns say that with Todd’s powerful magic, the endeavor can hardly fail.”
“Todd would never help that monster.” Those words came out well enough, in a major hot rush. I folded my arms even as Jazz stood up and rubbed my shoulder. “That part the trees got wrong.”
She rise stared down at her feet. “He doesn’t have to do it willingly. The Erlking has ways of persuading him.”
Even Jazz’s powerful calming energy couldn’t untie the knot from my guts then. “I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know, but what are they after? What is the Erlking trying to find?”
All three girls looked away from us, even the little one. It was the hags who lifted their heads to answer.
One word.
One tiny little word, hissed by a chorus of ancient voices.
It wound through my mind, rubbing harsh against my ears, filling my heart with a heaviness I didn’t think I’d ever be able to escape.
Nire.
***
Epilogue
The weeks after the Battle of L.O.S.T. were amongst the bleakest I had known beyond my death and imprisonment in Talamadden. Bren was absolutely lost to me as he worried over his brother and railed against the reality.
We had no way of tracking the Erlking, no way of figuring how the wicked dwarf planned to go about traveling to a Sanctuary no longer connected to the Path. The ancient scrolls offered no clues, the oldeFolke had no inkling, and the girls the hags were training could not see possibilities, even with their powerful legacy stones. Acaw was beside himself. I had never seen the elfling at a loss for answers, but he had no more ideas than we did.
Thus, the painful truth: Bren and I could not mount a rescue to save Todd from his fate, or stop the Erlking in his mission to release Nire. We had no choice but to wait for them to come to us.
That was the consensus amongst all who had experience with the Erlking, hags included. He wouldn’t be able to resist gloating if he succeeded. He would have to taunt Bren with his brother, since Bren had bested him once before. It was the only way he could feel superior again. It was the only way he could win. As for Nire, the Shadowmaster was his ticket to vengeance against the rest of us, all of the witches, whatever race or strength, who had kept him contained in the Sacred Lands.
Waiting for the bad guys to come to him—well, obviously, that didn’t suit Bren’s style at all. He spent his days alone, pacing, thinking, reading scrolls, quizzing oldeFolke, and traversing the Path and the Sanctuaries. He wanted to find a clue so badly, needed to find a clue so much, that he lost sight of most everything else in life.
Me included.
I understood. I really did, and I wasn’t angry. Just lonely. And perpetually out of sorts, as Rol often remarked during our endless hours of sword training. I had mastered the blade that once had been Alderon’s, and Nire’s before that. It obeyed my physical and magical commands without question, and I felt confident I could wield it if had to, without risking any loss of control.
As late fall plodded toward winter, there came a time when I began to wonder if Bren still felt anything at all for me—for anyone. But much as I couldn’t find Todd when I didn’t know where to look, I also couldn’t find Bren. He would have to come to me when he was ready.
On the positive side, with the combined and enhanced magic of the L.O.S.T.’s many inhabitants, old and new, rebuilding went faster than I would have believed possible. A few families of harpies decided to make their home with us, and Garth and his three offspring took charge of Todd’s zoo. Even better, I did not have to encourage the recovered Shadow-people to get along, even with races that would have normally declared war upon seeing longtime enemies. After living through Nire’s attacks, spending years as tortured half-alive creatures, they were all too aware of the price of hatred.
They were also all too aware of what we would face if…when…the Erlking and Todd succeeded in freeing the Shadowmaster.
At the Yule feast toward the end of that year, I stood in the great hall of L.O.S.T., an addition made to the general store during the time of repairs. It was a huge banquet hall, with many fireplaces and even more tables and seats for hundreds upon hundreds. It even had an open-air section to permit the ongoing growth of a huge and ancient cedar. Helden had chosen the direction and the tree, and we had followed her instructions in building so that we honored the tree to her satisfaction.
This night, the tree had been decorated in splendid fashion, with candles of many colors glowing warmly along every branch. Bren’s father and dozens of children were busy covering its finery with endless ropes and chains, which Helden, Sherise, and Kella spelled to change color and shape across the night. Garth and his little harpies were flapping up and down the length of the cedar, stretching chains and hanging candles wherever the children pointed. My mother was making ready for the lighting of the candles, and bells had been positioned at every possible location for a strong and powerful ringing.
As I stood toward the back of the hall helping to tidy after the feast, an endeavor well suited to calming my mood and nerves, I sensed rather than saw Bren’s approach.
I turned to find him standing against the edge of one of the massive hearths where Yule logs crackled and flamed. By the bulge of the muscles beneath his black tunic, he had not neglected his training. His right arm now looked of equal size and strength to his left, and I knew he had likely regained most of his skill with the blade. The stubble I had grown so accustomed to made his face more handsome.
He looked older.
As for wiser, that remained to be seen.
He held up his hands by way of greeting, and I saw that he had sprigs of holly fisted in his left, while a small box rested on his right palm. The box had been wrapped in bright reds and greens.
Rol, who had been making sure I didn’t zap away anything of consequence, managed to make himself scarce faster than a witch of his size had any right to do. Acaw, who had been setting his crow-brother on scraps and sweets, took himself away in equally rapid fashion.
Despite the enormity of the crowd, we were suddenly very much alone.
Bren still said nothing. He came to me slowly, stopping only a few inches away. Then he turned to the fire and threw his dried holly into the flames.
“The year’s almost gone, and I’m saying goodbye to sad things I can’t control.” His voice was so rich and deep, so very quiet. His brown eyes, captured in the flame, seemed equally rich and deep. “Are you almost gone, too? Because I don’t want to say goodbye t
o you.”
I just stood there like an absolute dolt, feeling too off-balance to speak.
“Well.” He sighed. “At least you didn’t tell me to drop dead. That’s something.”
Before I could find my voice, he knelt before me and offered me the box. “This is so you know how much I love you, and how much I meant what I said in the Sacred Lands.”
My hands started to shake, which made me infinitely angry. Bren must have seen the rage flash in my eyes, because he gently covered my hands with his before I could tear into the paper. “Later,” he murmured. “When you’re ready. I want you to have all the time you need to think. Goddess knows I’ve taken my time lately.”
He stood. Humoring him but planning to rip into the box the minute he took his attention elsewhere, I tucked the small package into the pocket of my green Yule gown.
“Do you know how beautiful you are?” He smiled at me, his face warm and open in the fire’s ever-dancing light.
“I like your tunic,” I finally managed. Okay, so it was pathetic, but it was all I could muster at the moment. He grinned, then leaned down and kissed me.
The feel of his lips pushed away the pain of his long emotional absence, at least for that one special moment. I was vaguely aware of the giant circle of candle-holders forming around the hall, capturing us inside. Even less aware of the blessings, the lighting of the red candles, and the singing. Bren held me so close, and he kissed me again and again. He kissed me until the Yule bells started pealing, until they stopped ringing, until the shouts of “Happy Solstice!” and “Good Yule!” rose around us like an endless cheer.
When he finally let me catch my breath, I stroked the rough stubble covering his chin and said, “If this portents our next year, I’m very happy.”
His look went from soft to amused, finally settling on serious. “Consider it a portent. And I’m glad you didn’t turn me into an ass, even though I deserved it.”
In the early hours of the morning, I sat in the living room of my mother’s house with only a Yule candle for light. Reminding myself to breathe, I ran my fingers over the paper of the still unopened Yule gift from Bren.
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