Illusion

by Martina Boone

  The Deed is done. I have accepted my dear Robert’s proposal of Marriage, for James received the letter this afternoon confirming his release from his Regiment. Having tried three times to board a boat to go back to the West Indias, and having been forced each time by the Headaches to disembark, he had no choice but to resign his Commission. The welfare of our small fey spirits, Inola assures me, depends upon keeping my great-uncle’s bargain. This applies equally to the Beauforts, so my own Robert’s blood shall bind their half of the Serpent Stone, and my sons, should God be generous to give them to me, and their children, and their children’s children, will reside at Beaufort Hall and carry forward the trust that the Fire Carrier has placed in us. I hope, for his sake, and for that of my beloved fey, that the wait shall not be too long before conditions are favorable for their return. Inola’s belief in God, whom she calls the Apportioner, assures her that such a time is coming. She emerges from her silent meditations with the yunwi with renewed strength and faith each time.

  “So it was Eliza who added the binding to the bargains. Against her brother’s will,” Barrie said, not really surprised at all.

  “And possibly against Robert’s, if you read between the lines. I like her. A lot,” Kate said.

  “You would. You’re just like her,” said Seven unhappily.

  Barrie rubbed her temple, trying to think. “It sounds like it was the yunwi who told Inola—and maybe even the Fire Carrier—what to do about the binding, but the stone was split before Inola did that. Does Eliza write any more about how or why that happened?”

  “I doubt Eliza would explain that in later pages, since the stone was already split before she wrote this memo,” Kate said. “But I’ll keep looking.”

  Berg had been busy directing Cassie to type something on the computer, but he’d clearly been listening with at least half an ear. Leaning forward, he rested his elbows on the table. “That part about the silent meditations is interesting. Some of the Cherokee legends mention fasting before speaking to the yunwi or going into their caverns. That could be a form of meditation. But that part about the open country inside the mountains, and layers of cities above them inside the mountain . . . I can’t help wondering if that doesn’t sound more like an otherworld or alternate universes than the traditional concept of the underworld. I was never much good at physics, but it sounds consistent with superstring theory, the idea of multiple universes stacked or floating above one another.”

  “Aren’t we getting too literal with other people’s stories?” Pru asked, tapping her pencil. “We don’t know what they mean.”

  “Medicine people aren’t only doctors among the Cherokee. They’re priests and a lot more rolled up together. Maybe the stories are written on many different levels all at once,” Eight said.

  “Most stories are, if you take the time to consider them,” Obadiah said. “We’d all be better off if we did more of that.” He took the computer from Daphne, then stared at the keyboard as if it were a more dangerous kind of magic than the one he practiced. In the end he slid it back to her. “Myths and folktales especially aren’t always meant to be taken literally. Fasting can be a means of spiritual cleansing. It’s possible that what the stories mean is that only those with a clean spirit can speak to the yunwi, and only those chosen will travel with them. That could be either a suggestion—or a warning.”

  “What kind of warning?” Seven asked.

  “You keep asking questions as if there are easily digestible answers, something as simplistic as the sound bites you’re used to on television. True answers are never simple. I’ve spent a hundred years gathering knowledge, and I’ve barely begun to scratch the surface.”

  Pushing back her chair, Pru stood up and swept a stray curl behind her ear. Her fingers left a smudge of pencil lead across her temple. “Maybe we could all use a little break right about now. And a snack. Does anyone want some sandwiches?”

  “I’ll help,” Cassie said, jumping up.

  Pru gave a nod of thanks. “I just wish I knew if we’re getting any closer. We find trickles of information, and hints of stories—and they all lead to more questions. We don’t even know for certain if the Beaufort half of the binding stone is in the fountain, much less whether it’s safe to touch it. Or what to do with the stone even if we manage to get it put back together.”

  “It has to be possible, or the Fire Carrier wouldn’t have asked me to do it,” Barrie said.

  “You’re placing a lot of trust in a spirit. One who, by your own admission, is most likely desperate. You’re not always the best judge of character, remember?” Seven cast a meaningful glance at Cassie’s retreating back.

  “People keep saying that.” Barrie’s chin came up. “But in the end, I’ve been right most of the time. I know you all think I’m naïve for believing in the wrong people, but even if that comes back to haunt me now and then, I’d still rather believe the best of human nature. I don’t know if that’s the gift talking, or—” She had been rubbing her temples, and now her fingers stilled. “Of course. God, I’m an idiot.”

  Eight stopped scowling at the letterbook and raised his head. “Of course what?”

  “We keep talking about focus and trances and concentration, and I keep admitting that there are too many questions, but I never put that all together with why my gift sometimes tells me what I need to find. When I came in here looking for Eliza’s books, I was still just searching for anything lost, because I didn’t know what I was looking for. The more I thought about Eliza, the more things got easier to find—and then I reached straight for her letterbooks, because that was where the pull was strongest. It’s like when we needed the candles at the hardware store. Or even knowing how to get to the hardware store. Or asking the yunwi one question at a time—I can’t find an answer until I know the right question to ask.”

  She snatched up the other two letterbooks, stacked them with her own, and concentrated on a single query: Why are the yunwi here?

  The pull was instant, a hint of pressure so faint that it would have been easy to overlook. Tracing it back to the letterbook Pru had been reading, Barrie opened the cover, held the pages upright, and ran her thumb across the top. She let the pages fall away to the left until a tug of protest made her open the book at that point and pulled her attention to a letter. Then she read aloud:

  February 10, 1742

  To My Father,

  I received the congratulations of all our Acquaintance on the happy news of your being promoted yet again. If indeed it is happy news, for it must mean that you shall come home even less frequently.

  We have less news from England these past three months and more. With no shipping, we suppose there must be a new Embargo. We expect the Spaniards to come North from Saint Augustine in a matter of months. Mr. Oglethorpe harries their forts and lately killed two prisoners.

  I have continued to search for confirmation of Inola’s story about the settlement on Parris Island. Robert and I have traveled to the site of the failed French settlement of Charlesfort and the nearby Spanish capital of Saint Elena. Mr. Oglethorpe writes to assure me that the Spanish did abandon it sometime between 1585 and 1590, retreating back to lower Florida after repeated attacks by Indian tribes that had joined together. The island lies a matter of miles from our own, so as in other things, Inola’s story is proven correct.

  Knowing that the yunwi came here to help the Indians protect themselves, I cannot help but hope more fervently that the Beaufort and Watson stones together will continue to aid the Fire Carrier’s ceremony. May it keep our fey friends strong until the source of their power returns. I cannot bear the thought of being the one to lose them, or that our family should fail them in any way.

  The others sat in silence when Barrie had finished reading, and she took a moment to process. Almost three hundred years ago, Eliza had written Barrie’s own feelings into words.

  “I knew it.” Eight swung to his feet. “I knew it had to have something to do with the energy shifting—that’
s the exact timeline. The yunwi came here and got stuck when the line between here and Blood Mountain shifted away from the island, and for whatever reason, they couldn’t simply walk and look for the energy themselves. They must have hunkered down to wait for the energy to come back again, but now that it has, the stone is split between Watson’s Landing and Beaufort Hall, and no one remembers or understands what needs to be done.”

  “But why split the stone in the first place? Couldn’t the Fire Carrier have used just any rock to bind the two families?” Daphne asked.

  Obadiah rolled a pencil between his fingers. “Maybe he split it to make sure that the ulunsuti—and all that power—didn’t fall into the wrong hands. Things that important rarely vanish without leaving rumors that someone will eventually want to chase. Look at Cassie’s Civil War treasure. How could the Fire Carrier be certain who had heard of the stone from Ayita or Elijah, or Inola for that matter? Splitting it and using it to bind the gifts was brilliant—the rumors passed down in my family and any energy anyone felt in the area would have been associated with lodestones, not the ulunsuti.”

  “Are we still talking about electromagnetic energy? Or is it magnetic energy?” Kate asked.

  “They’re closely related,” Berg told her.

  “Then maybe,” Daphne said, “what we need is a compass.”

  Everyone turned to gape at her. Kate pushed back her chair and ran across the room to the butler’s pantry. A moment later, there was a sound of drawers opening and slamming shut. Seven rose and walked toward the door, but Kate’s head popped back out again. “Dad, where’s that old Boy Scout compass you used to have in here?” she asked.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Kate insisted on holding the compass, and they all followed her to the fountain while she watched the needle adjust itself. She stopped when the needle pointed at a spot on the fountain wall.

  “It’s either right here or on the other side of the fountain,” she said. “I can’t tell which.”

  Seven put his hand out and crooked his fingers imperiously. “Let me see.”

  Kate rolled her eyes but handed the compass over. Seven turned to Obadiah. “Even if she’s right,” he said, “how do we know the stone is safe to touch? Maybe you ought to be the one who—”

  “Even standing here is draining my energy worse than being near Barrie yesterday,” Obadiah said.

  “I can do it,” Daphne and Barrie both said at once.

  Barrie jumped in front of Daphne. “We know what happened to Seven’s father, but I’ve proven I can touch the Watson half. Logically, it has to be me. Also, the Fire Carrier asked me to do it.”

  “I could ask you a question about jumping off of bridges,” Eight said with his jaw set, “but you’d only ignore me, wouldn’t you? You don’t know what the Fire Carrier asked you to do. And maybe our half of the ulunsuti needs a Beaufort the same way your half needed a Watson.”

  “Then why would your great-grandfather have died?” Jerking free of Eight’s hold, Barrie dropped to her knees and groped the side of the fountain’s belowground basin beneath the froth of water. As before, the swell of energy in the area made it impossible to feel much else. Or maybe that was the chill in the water numbing her hands. Her fingers tingled, and her head was pounding, and she was nearly ready to get up and try the other side of the fountain when she leaned a little bit farther down and felt a bulge. Probing it with her fingertips, she identified the triangular shape, like the base of a pyramid, and she cupped it with her hand as she had when she’d grasped the Watson half.

  The warmth she had felt before wasn’t there this time; there was no pulse of life or hint of moment. What was different?

  Blood. Blood magic. With the Watson stone, she’d had Ernesto’s blood on her fingers. Pulling her hand out of the water, Barrie reached for a piece of gravel on the ground.

  Eight grasped her shoulder. “What are you doing?”

  “I think the stone needs blood to be activated.”

  “Not your blood,” he said. “The priests used animal blood.”

  “Maybe any kind will do, but I don’t have a dead deer handy. Mine will work.” Barrie had only her gut to go by. How did she separate what was instinct, versus good intentions, versus her gift pointing her in the right direction? All she knew was that she couldn’t risk losing Daphne or any of the Beauforts, Eight least of all. She forced herself to fully look at him. “You have to trust me. You do, don’t you?”

  “Depends on what you’re plotting.”

  “Oh, for the love of Jesus.” Daphne stepped over to a rosebush and broke off a stem, then scratched the thin skin on the back of her wrist repeatedly and deeply against the thorns. Blood welled to the surface slowly and glistened like gems against her skin.

  There hadn’t been more than a few drops of Ernesto’s blood on Barrie’s hands, but any blood she took from Daphne was going to wash off the second she dipped her hand into the water. On the pretext of rubbing her own left hand back and forth across Daphne’s bloody wrist, she reached down, grabbed the stem of the rose, and let the thorns bite deep into her skin. Then she plunged her hand back into the fountain and felt for the ulunsuti once again. It pulsed, but instead of growing warmer, it grew colder the longer that she held it. A painful, throbbing, and ugly cold.

  She couldn’t replicate whatever the Fire Carrier had done when he’d laid his hand over hers, but she tried to remember the pull of energy she’d felt, the feeling of connection. In the end, she focused on her finding gift, pushing at the question the way that she had when she’d searched the letterbook.

  The stone began to move, pressing lightly against her hand, then gaining strength until it was free and firmly in Barrie’s grasp. She pulled it out of the fountain and held it up triumphantly.

  Obadiah backed away.

  “Now what?” Daphne asked.

  “Now we take it to Watson’s Landing and see what happens,” Barrie said.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Energy swelled with every footstep Barrie took. At first, it was nothing more than a pull similar to what she had felt moving the stone through the Watson woods, but as she walked down the sloping lawn toward the river, it grew strong enough to stretch and squeeze the air around her, raising a wind that shifted like a corkscrew as she walked, first in one direction and then another. She felt alternately heavy and weightless, as if gravity came and went, and the ulunsuti pulled her feet faster than she wanted to go, until she was almost running toward the water.

  The stone also began to warm and vibrate, digging the sharp edges of itself into her palm and sending pulses like electrical charges up her arm. She was afraid to look down at it, afraid to look back at Pru and Kate and the others, for fear of what she would find written on their faces.

  She walked and Eight kept pace beside her. A hundred feet from the river, as she leaned against a sudden, chaotic gust of wind, he slipped his arm around her shoulders. “Stop, Bear! Whatever’s happening, it isn’t right. You need to go back.”

  He tried to pull her to a stop, but the draw of the stone toward the river was too much—she couldn’t ignore it. Wind whipped in front of her, bending the bushes and flattening the grass, and glancing back at Obadiah and Pru, she expected the same turbulence. But behind the stone, the only disturbance came from Pru and the others as they rushed after her, shouting for her to stop.

  Obadiah was the closest. He nodded as their eyes met. “Hold on to it tightly,” he shouted, his voice raised to be heard above the wind. “It’s the energy trying to balance itself. Negative reaching for positive.”

  “Is that dangerous?” Eight yelled back.

  “Might be even worse if you try to stop it now,” Obadiah called.

  Barrie concentrated on keeping up with her feet as the stone kept pulling. “Then promise me,” she shouted back at him, “whatever happens, don’t let anyone stop me. Back when I first agreed to help you, you swore you would break the Beaufort binding. You gave your word!”

  �
��This wasn’t what I meant!” he shouted, and behind him, Pru was screaming, too, but she was farther away, and the wind around Barrie whipped her words away so that Barrie couldn’t hear them.

  The river was approaching too quickly. Barrie threw her whole weight back against the slope of the hill, trying to slow her feet. “Get the boat for me,” she yelled to Eight. “Untie it, start the motor, and then get off. Hurry, or I’ll end up in the river!”

  “Just let go of the stone. Release it.” Eight grasped Barrie’s shoulders and yanked her back, but they had reached the bottom of the hill, and the stone drew her harder, faster. She struggled against the pull. It hurt to fight.

  Light and energy and something curved and reflective, as iridescent as a soap bubble, formed in front of the stone, crackling into existence and gleaming beyond the edge of her vision before winking out again, something she felt she would see if she only concentrated a little bit harder. Something that flattened the grass on the ground and sank the earth beneath an enormous, invisible weight, and then vanished as if it had never been. The thought sparked a memory, as if there were a connection Barrie should have been making, some clue that she was missing.

  Across the river, the yunwi had gathered on the dock, and they all stood oddly still. Their shapes were gathering substance, as if they were becoming not just more visible but solid. And down by the Watson woods, the Fire Carrier had come out in broad daylight and stood at the edge of the marsh grass on the bank. But they weren’t telling her to stop.

  The stone burrowed into Barrie’s hand, sending scalding vibrations of pain up her arm. She didn’t want to argue. “Eight, please get the boat. I don’t think I can hold on much longer. You have to trust me. The yunwi and the Fire Carrier wouldn’t let me do this if it weren’t necessary. You need to believe in me.”

  “I do. Of course I do.” He studied the water where the displacement effect was more pronounced than on the grass. A trough was forming between the stone in Barrie’s hand and the spot on the other bank near where she had hidden the other stone. The depression deepened as Barrie drew closer. The shimmer in the air had became more pronounced.