by Tom Mohan
“How many do you think went to the woods?” Marcas asked.
Nidawi shrugged. “A hundred, maybe more. Not all of them came through town.”
“This is impossible,” Marcas said, his voice low and tired. “Even with Conall, we wouldn’t be able to keep one-tenth of that many from taking the dark power.”
“Not to mention that Tír na nÓg itself is escaping the curse and returning.”
“You two sound like you’re giving up.” Nidawi’s voice was sharp and accusing. “You all have had it too good for too long.”
She pointed out the window to the sleeping town beyond. “This is what you were made for. This is your purpose. You think you’ve lived all those years to keep a few evil people from becoming more evil? Fallon, you think you have people falling all over themselves to please you for your own satisfaction?” She quieted. “This is exactly what you are here for. Not just you. Your parents are out there somewhere. So are Brianna and Liza. Yes, Liza is as much a part of this as you and I. More so, if I were to guess. Still a couple other Old Ones out there as well. Oh no, children, we have not lost this thing yet, not by a long shot.”
“Speaking of Brianna, we should get to her house,” Marcas said.
“No good. She’s not there,” Nidawi said.
“What?” Fallon’s head jerked up. “She has to be there. She can’t be anywhere else.”
“The house is empty. Trashed. Jacob Yoder and his bunch tore it up looking for her, but she wasn’t there.”
“Jacob? What’s he got to do with this?” Fallon’s mind was reeling at this new development.
“He’s been behind it all along. Jacob lured Conall into the woods, betrayed him to the fae. I don’t know the whole of his connection to them, but I get the feeling some of his grandfather’s abilities run in his blood.”
Fallon was still stuck on the idea that Brianna was not in her house. “If she isn’t in the house, she must be…”
“In the Mist.” Marcas completed her thought.
“Oh my god. We’ve got to get to her.” Fallon had no idea how that might happen, but she knew she couldn’t leave her sister all alone.
“And how do you intend to do that?” Nidawi asked.
“I…” Fallon looked at Marcas.
He shook his head. “I don’t know. Without Conall, I have no power in the woods, especially if a hundred or so people are wandering around in there.”
“I’m not so sure Brianna is in the Mist, anyway,” Nidawi said. “I think she went out the back. The door was open.”
It took a moment for the implications of that to settle in Fallon’s mind. “The back? There’s nothing out there. Literally. Nothing. She couldn’t have gone through there.” She turned to Marcas. “Could she?”
He shrugged. “Anything’s possible these days.”
“I feel like pieces of a puzzle are falling into place,” Nidawi said. “Pieces that have been waiting eons for this very time. Whatever our role, it is out here, in this realm. Those who have been drawn into other realms have their own parts to play. Ours is here.”
“So, what do we do?” Marcas asked.
Nidawi turned and looked out the window. “I don’t have the slightest idea.”
“I might,” Fallon said. She was staring at a mural on the wall behind the counter. Though it was too dark to see clearly, every citizen of Halden’s Mill knew it well. It depicted the original mill that the town was named for.
“Oh?” Nidawi saw where she was looking and joined her. “Of course. I should have thought of that myself.”
“What?” Marcas asked.
“Back when people first started settling the area, before we were born and the forest stretched for miles all around, the mill was here,” Fallon said. “Our grandparents needed a reason to be here, so Halden Finn started the mill. An Irish family living with the natives in the middle of nowhere was a bit too suspicious.”
Nidawi nodded. “My people still lived in peace, and the only white men were fur traders and Finns. Your family kind of stood out back then. That mill was the original Finn household, before they moved out to the farm.” She chewed her thumbnail as she thought. “I haven’t been there in years. Last I looked, the place was pretty much a ruin. The nearness of Tír na nÓg along with the efforts of my fellow Old Ones have kept pretty much all living things away. I can still feel the power radiating from there. Might be something we can use.”
“Can’t hurt to look,” Marcas said. “I don’t have any other ideas.” He looked at Fallon. “Do you feel up to it? You’ve been through hell the last couple days.”
“Not to mention what that asshole in back just put you through,” Nidawi added.
Fallon crossed her arms over her chest. She was still shaking from the assault. “To be honest, I feel like crap, but I can’t just sit around while the town tears itself apart. Besides, I’m older than petrified opossum crap. This isn’t the first time a guy’s come on strong. I’m all in until we succeed or I drop.”
“It’ll be like going home,” Nidawi said. “Let’s do it.”
Liza’s thoughts were sluggish as she followed the bobbing light deeper into the forest. She no longer felt fear, though curiosity and self-preservation weaved through her mind. She had a vague sense of familiarity and comfort but also of malevolence and injustice. As they moved deeper into the woods, she again became aware of the presence of others around them. She could feel their gazes on her, almost hearing their thoughts. Excitement simmered in the fae forest this night.
Overhead, lightning flashed. Sheets of it covered the sky, as if a great battle were being waged in the clouds. Perhaps there is, she thought. Something was happening up there, something beyond the natural. She waited for the thunder, but it never came. Between flashes, she noticed that the sky was beginning to brighten with a new day. Would the night really pass? Liza had begun to think that she was lost in perpetual night, a place so dark that the light of the sun could never reach it.
As the forest lightened from dark to dim, Liza saw motion in the trees around them as the curious fae drew nearer. She no longer felt malice from them, only a sense of long-awaited anticipation. The trees parted before them, and Liza followed Darius and the light bearer into a large clearing of trampled dirt. The brown area was like a bruise in the beauty of the woods.
A wave of nausea swept through her as she stepped into the clearing, as did a deep dread that would have sent her scampering back to the safety of the trees if only her body obeyed her mind. Instead, she continued her steady pace to the center of the open space.
Darius and the light bearer had remained in the trees, leaving her alone. The forest surrounding the clearing was alive with fae creatures. She could feel them staring at her. For a time, she stood there, nauseated and trembling as the gray sky grew brighter. Finally, two figures stepped from the trees across from her and approached. They were female, with pale, almost translucent skin and short, dark hair matted to their heads. They stood about a head shorter than Liza and had green eyes that were too big for their faces. Each wore a simple dress, one the color of the dirt upon which they tread and the other the green of the forest.
As the fae women neared Liza, they split up and circled her, one to her right and the other to her left. The one wearing green came back around to face her while the other remained behind, and they began to undress her. Their touch was gentle and methodical, in no rush. They continued until she stood completely naked and shivering for all to see. She knew she should feel embarrassed, exposed as she was, but for the most part she felt detached, a mere spectator of the night’s events.
The fae women circled her once more, their gazes sliding over every inch of her body, knowing smiles on their pale faces. When they met again in front of her, they walked back to the tree line and disappeared, leaving her again alone in the center of the clearing.
“You are the Princess.”
Liza flinched at the voice that spoke from directly behind her. The voice was male,
deep and strong. Her nausea intensified at the sound as the numb part of her mind gave way to the fear of her rational self.
“The Prince has waited long for this day, for the time that the curse would be lifted and he would take his rightful place in the world.”
Liza heard excited voices coming from the forest.
How many are out there? How many are watching me right now?
She flinched again at a touch from behind. Callused fingers ran down her back, along her spine. The touch was cold, causing goosebumps to rise on her flesh. The fingers moved away, and a robe was slipped up her arms and over her shoulders. Arms wrapped around her from behind, pulling the robe across her naked body and tying it in the back. The robe hung to her knees and was light in weight yet warm.
Again, she stood alone in the center of the clearing.
A hush settled over the forest. The gray light of early morning began to fade until the world around her was blanketed in complete blackness. Liza shuddered and realized that she had control of her body once more. She spun in a slow circle.
Nothing but darkness wherever she looked.
Light flashed, and she looked up to see a mass of clouds boiling overhead. Then the light was gone, and she was plunged into darkness once again. Something brushed against her leg, as though she had walked through a spiderweb. Then she felt it on her hand. She stepped back, but the darkness confused her senses and stole away any sense of direction.
More lightning cracked the sky, and Liza shrieked as a grotesque face materialized inches from her own. As quickly as it had come, the light vanished, but the image of the face floated before her, purple and covered in open sores that oozed pus. She stumbled back, hands waving out around her. She felt another touch, this time on her neck. She screamed and stumbled, almost falling. The light flashed again, and she was surrounded by pus-dripping faces. They leered at her, forked tongues lashing out, tasting her exposed flesh.
Liza’s mind gave in to the terror, and she broke into a stumbling run. She didn’t care that she was completely blind. Didn’t care that there was nowhere to run. Her primitive sense of self-preservation told her only that she had to flee, to hide, to escape.
Around her, she heard laughter at her futile thrashing. She put her hands over her ears and continued forward, all the while feeling the tongues on her skin, the cackling in her ears. Another flash of lightning.
They were everywhere now. There was nowhere she could turn, no space that was not filled with rotting faces. Their breath washed over her, rancid with decay. Her stomach could take no more, and she would have vomited had there been anything in her stomach. Instead, she heaved as acidic bile burned her throat. She stumbled and fell to her knees, covering her head with her hands.
Another flash of light.
A snake slithered from between her knees. She jerked back. It raised its head and hissed at her.
Darkness again.
Liza’s mind screamed for her to move, to run, but she could only kneel in the dirt. Hide her face from the ghouls that surrounded her. The leering faces. The stench. It was all too much. They were all over her now, touching every exposed part of her flesh. She cried out and felt something touch her lips. She closed her mouth tight and moaned. Her mind slipped toward insanity. She welcomed it.
Another touch, freezing cold on her chest beneath the robe. Liza’s fingers moved to the pendant that still hung from her neck. She grasped it in her trembling hand. As her fingers closed around the pendant, the laughter and hissing that surrounded her gave way to singing that filled her mind. Ancient and long-forgotten words of some familiar yet unknown language brought her back from the brink of the dark chasm into which her mind had been about to plummet.
She lifted her head and stared at the lightning-streaked sky. She kept her gaze on the clouds, refusing to acknowledge whatever might be beside her.
Liza stood, pendant still clutched in her hand. She was still afraid, but the terror had subsided to a more manageable feeling of helplessness against the unknown.
“Enough!” The command from her own mouth caught her by surprise. The forest fell silent. Something stirred within her, something that had remained dormant since eons past. For the first time in her life, Liza felt fully whole, fully alive. All fear was pushed aside by a confidence that birthed courage and strength. What she had touched when protecting Jacob at the bar now came to her in force.
She lowered her gaze from the flashing sky to the gray-shadowed forest around her. More than ever before, she could sense those within, thousands of them, wondering what would happen next.
She wondered as well.
A breeze stirred through the clearing, burgeoning into a wind. Her skin told her the wind was cold, but the cold did not bother her. She was warmed from within. She closed her eyes and tilted her face toward the sky before lifting her arms out to the side. The wind flowed around her, then beneath, lifting her by the arms.
She felt weightless, floating as the wind came at her from all directions. Her hair whipped around her face, and her robe flapped against her body. The wind carried with it scents that had been picked up along the way to this place—rich, healthy smells that spoke of life and abundance as well as dank, putrid smells of death and decay. In her mind, she could see the wind, see the scents it carried. She knew that these scents were not born of the lands the wind had seen but of the land’s inhabitants.
Liza opened her eyes. Thick fog hid the world from her. The fog swirled in the wind but remained around her like a cocoon. The lightning continued to flash, no longer above her but all around. Her skin prickled with its power.
She felt no sensation of movement but knew that she had been lifted into the swirling clouds. Here, the smells of life and death were more distinct. She realized that her earlier impression of a battle in the clouds had been accurate. This was where the two sides converged, slamming against one another with enough power to rend the fabric of reality. The power flowed around her but did not touch her. She was not a part of either of them—not life, not death. This knowledge stirred discomfort in her, but she knew there was nothing to be done about it.
The mist felt heavier, more ominous. The calm that Liza had felt since rising above the valley floor fell away. Fear surged in its place. She felt the cold now, the cold and wet of the air around her. The lightning had gone dark, yet power surged through the air. Something approached from the depths of the cloud, something terrifying beyond imagining. Its hate and scorn hit her like a physical attack, sending shudders through her body.
The thing’s hate intensified as another presence fell over her, even more terrifying than the first. This one hid its emotions better—or did not have them at all. She was aware of the vastness of it, of the incredible power that flowed from it, but little else. The attention of the two beings crushed her beneath their gaze.
“The time has come.” The voice boomed from the darkness of the mist. Or was it in her head? She was beyond knowing.
“The time has come,” the other voice agreed.
“The instrument has been chosen from ages past, of yesterday and today and times not yet seen.”
“The instrument has been chosen.”
The voices surrounded her, similar to one another yet different enough that she could tell them apart. That she was the instrument they spoke of was beyond dispute.
“The sacrifice is prepared. The stage is set.”
“Choose wisely. The fate of worlds rests on your puny shoulders.”
“Not hers alone.”
“The others are worthless, lost in their own miseries. These creatures are little more than weak animals.”
“And yet they have been chosen from beyond time.”
“So be it.”
“So be it.”
The god-like beings vanished, leaving Liza hovering like a boat battered by massive waves. Then she was falling through the gray mist of the clouds as lightning once again exploded around her. She screamed, her voice torn away by the raging w
ind that no longer supported her. She fell out of the cloud into vast darkness, knowing that at any second she would be broken by the ground that rose up to meet her. Faster and faster she fell, her body tense with anticipation.
As suddenly as it had begun, her fall stopped, her scream the only sound. She closed her lips to stifle the scream, her breath heaving. She felt solid ground beneath her back and grass beneath her twitching fingers. As her breathing settled, the scent of flowers filled her senses.
Finally, she opened her eyes to see twinkling stars in a clear sky. Some of the stars appeared closer than others, and one flew past her face like a flaming hummingbird. She sat up and found herself on top of a grass-covered mound that rose ten feet or so from the forest floor. The mound was in a clearing, smaller than the one she had been in before, and the ground around it was covered in a mist that gleamed a soft blue.
Again, the fiery glow buzzed by her face. She followed it as it swooped around the mound before darting toward the trees. Liza pulled herself to her knees and looked around. More of the blinking creatures hovered around the edges of the clearing. Again, she gazed up at the clear sky. It was empty, and yet the clearing was lit as though by a full moon. She returned her attention to the mist-covered ground. The light either came from the mist itself or something below it.
Liza stood. She considered waiting atop the mound for daylight, but who knew if daylight would ever come to this place. Had it not been daybreak when she’d been taken up to the clouds only to find darkness upon her return to the ground? She considered that these thoughts fit smoothly in her mind, though they should have been alien and frightening.
She only wished she could understand what it all meant.
The creature buzzed past her face again, twice circling her head before flying off in the same direction as before.
It wants me to follow it. But to where?