The Unmaking: The Last Days of Tian Di, Book Two

by Egan, Catherine

  ~~~

  Nell woke to voices, her heart still aching with the music she had heard. She opened her eyes and blinked, confused. Trees heavy with emerald green moss surrounded her. The moss hung in elegant fringes from the branches and encased the trees entirely. Through the branches twined over her head, she saw a pale sky. She sat up and petals spilled off her. She had been lying in a bower of moss and flowers. She rose and followed the voices she had heard. She found her friends in a clearing among the trees. Ander and Charlie were sprawled on elegant divans arranged around a low table laden with bowls of fruit and cakes, eating with deep concentration. Swarn sat cross-legged on the ground, back straight, and did not touch the food. There was no sign of Jalo, but another Faery in a brightly feathered cloak was leaning against one of the trees and watching them with his arms folded, an amused expression on his face.

  “You’re the last to wake up,” said Charlie, pointing out the obvious. Charlie looked the way he always did, but in this lovely setting Nell noticed how bedraggled and unwashed Ander was, and she suspected she looked just as bad.

  She smiled brilliantly at the Faery, hoping she didn’t actually smell bad. “Hello. I’m Nell.”

  “Please eat,” said the Faery, not bothering to introduce himself in return. “Jalo is speaking with his mother. He will come for you when they are finished.”

  Needing no further prompting, Nell sat down on one of the divans and tucked into the fruit. There was a plate of what looked like dark bread but when she put it in her mouth it melted to a thick, sweet liquid almost like molasses.

  “Where are the dragons?” she asked Swarn.

  “They are stabled,” said Swarn. A reluctant smile tugged at the edges of her mouth. “The first dragons of the cliffs of Batt ever to enter the Realm of the Faeries, I’d wager. And I must thank you for saving the injured one. These two insist it was your doing.”

  “Oh!” Nell was a little surprised by that, but pleased. “Aye-anytime.”

  “There are only two left now,” said Swarn. “They will be the parents of the future generations.”

  “Lah, what happened in the marsh?” asked Nell.

  Swarn’s face closed. For a moment Nell thought she would not answer and was afraid it had been a terrible thing to ask. Then Swarn said, “Nia blindsided me. I was not ready. I knew I could not defeat her by myself and so I called the dragons to hold her off. They gave me time to escape and seek friends, though I found none. I did not think she had the power to destroy them all. I did not think she would do so. I should have stayed and died with them.”

  “You’ll be much more helpful alive,” Charlie pointed out, but Swarn looked away, scowling at their idyllic surroundings.

  Nell dropped the subject and looked up at the Faery.

  “Is there anywhere we could have a bath?” she asked.

  The Faery, who had been listening to their conversation with undisguised fascination, started at being spoken to directly.

  “Of course,” he replied. “Jalo instructed me to...yes, you must all bathe.”

  “Thank the Ancients!” said Nell. “I’ve been in these same clothes for far too many days in a row now.”

  Ander looked ruefully at the grimy pajamas he’d been wearing since Nell had come banging on his door in Holburg.

  “I think a bath would suit me, too,” he said. “Wonder if I could get a shave?”

  Nell grinned at him, for in a week he had very nearly grown a full beard. Unlike his hair, it was quite grey.

  “This way,” said the Faery to Nell and Swarn, pointing. A path of bright pebbles appeared, winding among the trees. The Faery directed Charlie and Ander along another path that appeared as soon as he pointed at the ground. Nell hurried along the path, Swarn following behind her. She could hear running water now. The path led directly to a shining pool hidden by trees that grew close together. At one end of it, a waterfall spilled over a tall, rocky cleft. Moss hung wet and gleaming over the rocks.

  “Oh!” cried Nell, enchanted. She stripped off her filthy clothes and leaped into the water. It was pleasantly cool and clear as glass. She stood beneath the waterfall and let the water rush over her, pounding in her ears. When she emerged, blinking the water out of her eyes and laughing, Swarn was sitting in the water, her clothes lying on the bank. Nell was startled to see that her strong brown body was a map of scars. She sat in the water with more dignity than Nell would have imagined a naked person could possess.

  “I hope we are right in turning to the Faeries for help,” said Swarn crisply. “Your friend seems sincere enough but I have never trusted Faeries and am loath to do so now. Malferio in particular is slippery, unpredictable.”

  “I dinnay see that we have a choice,” said Nell, to which Swarn nodded curt agreement. Nell sat on the bank letting herself dry off. Two silvery white dresses, impossibly soft to the touch, were laid on the ground for them, the sleeves and hems adorned with tiny, fragrant flowers. She stifled a laugh trying to imagine Swarn wearing such a thing. When she was more or less dry, she slipped into the smaller dress. It fit her perfectly.

  “Do you think it’s safe to explore a bit?” Nell asked.

  Swarn did not answer immediately and when she spoke, it was not to answer Nell’s question. “I am not afraid to die,” she said. “But I fear for Eliza. Even if the Faeries give her sanctuary, I wonder if it is enough. She is so young, her potential still untapped. It grieves me to think –”

  “Dinnay think it, then,” said Nell sharply. “Eliza’s going to be fine, aye. We have a plan!”

  “Do we?” Swarn asked dryly.

  “Yes! The Faeries help us get safely back to Di Shang, you break the Curse on the Mancers, we find Eliza, and then all together we crush Nia! Lah, praps not we. There’s not much I can do. But it’s a good plan, aye.”

  Swarn smiled at Nell for the first time with something nearly approaching warmth.

  “Eliza loves you dearly,” she said.

  “I know,” said Nell. “She’s my best friend.”

  The witch slipped under the water and began to swim slow circles around the pool. Nell could hear Charlie and Ander talking in the opposite direction from the clearing and so she ran through the trees to find them. There was a bright glimmer between the trees and then the woods were gone, as if they had never been there at all. Nell stumbled slightly, startled. She was on a bamboo walkway on a lake. The lake shone silver and dazzling butterflies swooped among the waterlilies. The walkway met with several others, criss-crossing the water. White flowers were twined around the bamboo railings. She looked behind her but there was no sign of the mossy wood. The lake was ringed by tall mountains and at the top of the nearest mountain perched a castle with long, delicate spires. Unearthly music echoed across the water.

  “Hello, Nell!” Ander and Charlie were walking towards her. Ander had shaved off his rough beard and looked quite transformed. They were both dressed in the brightly feathered vests and silk trousers the Faeries wore. The sight of Ander in particular dressed as a Faery made Nell laugh.

  “It doesnay quite suit you, Mister Brady,” she said.

  “But your dress suits you very well,” Ander said with a smile. He waved his hand at their surroundings and added, “Quite something, all this, lah! Nary thought I’d see the like.”

  “Listen, I know you must be upset with me,” said Nell in a rush. “But we couldnay ask Swarn or Jalo to take us home when time is so short. You understand, nay? We’ll go back to Di Shang when Swarn goes. And lah, a chance to see the Realm of the Faeries...”

  Ander shook his head. “I’ve given up trying to thwart you, Nell,” he said. “I’m beginning to see you are not like other children.”

  “I’m hardly a child; I’m nearly fifteen!” Nell protested. Charlie snickered a little at that.

  “Lah, sure, whatever you say. Fifteen to me sounds like a kid, aye. What I mean is that most of us lead pretty ordinary lives because, when you come down to it, we’re pretty ordinary people. The one
s who have grand adventures and are at the centre of things are mostly those who have some kind of special gift or talent, like your friend Eliza. Then there are people like you, who have something else...I dinnay know what to call it, exactly, but I’ll say this, you’ve got more energy than anyone I’ve ever met.” Ander looked at her rather fondly for a moment and then continued, “You remind me of your ma, except you’ve got this energy she never had. When she was a girl, oh, by the Ancients, she had the prettiest laugh you’ve ever heard. Dinnay hear it much these days. She wouldnay say it, wouldnay know how to, but life has been a disappointment to her. There she was, all those years, thinking it was going to be beautiful and that it would just happen. But it never happened. I dinnay think you can imagine what that’s like, or how many adults are not much more than the sum of their broken dreams, all the things they wished for then just buried inside themselves somewhere.” Ander laid his big, meaty hand on her shoulder, crushing the flowers on her dress. “You’re a rare one, all right, and everything your ma should’ve been.” At this, he got a bit teary, and turned and strode off abruptly.

  Nell and Charlie looked at each other.

  “That was strange,” said Charlie.

  “Should we follow him?” asked Nell, taken aback by his speech.

  Charlie shook his head. “Let him be a bit, aye.” He reached over to tear one of the flowers off the railing, then stopped himself. “Today’s the first day of Winter Festival, nay?”

  “So it is!” exclaimed Nell. “My parents are prolly out of their minds, aye. And we’re missing the Day of Regrets! Have you ever celebrated Winter Festival, Charlie?”

  “Sure. I used to pose as a traveller from someplace friendly so they’d include me. I never was one for the Day of Regrets, though. I’d usually show up on the third day for the feast, aye. That’s when it starts to get good.”

  “I like the idea behind the Day of Regrets, but in practice it always seems a bit false,” Nell agreed. “Nobody ever wants to talk about their real regrets, on Holburg anyway, so they make things up half the time.”

  “Lah, since it’s the Day of Regrets, let’s start with you. What do you regret?”

  Without agreeing to walk, they both began strolling in the opposite direction from where Ander had gone.

  Nell thought hard. “Sometimes I regret giving up my memories of the first time we came to Tian Xia, but I dinnay know how else we would have gotten away, and now that I’m here I feel it’s being made up for. Praps I regret not being more patient with my parents. But that’s a bit feeble, nay? What about you?”

  “I regret failing Eliza,” said Charlie solemnly. “I regret every time I’ve failed her. I regret...lah, there are a lot of things I regret.”

  “I spose I’d have more if I’d been alive as long as you,” said Nell, trying to be kind. “And I dinnay think it’s fair to say you’ve failed Eliza. She wouldnay think so.”

  Charlie shook his head and grinned at her. “If you lived a thousand years, I doubt you’d have a single real regret. It’s not your nature.”

  “What do you know about my nature?” Nell laughed.

  “I know you pretty well.”

  “I spec you do. But lah, unless you’re going to tell me all the stories of all your regrets from all your thousands of years, I spose that’s the end of our Day of Regret Ceremony. Without the procession and the ashes and the Shedding of Tears. And we’ve already broken the fasting rule by having breakfast, aye. I completely forgot about it.”

  “I’m sorry you’re missing it because of me,” said Charlie.

  “Oh, but I’d much rather be here!” exclaimed Nell. “The Realm of the Faeries! Everything seems so perfect, more beautiful than it should be, in a way. It’s wonderful but a little disturbing at the same time, dinnay you think so? Like it’s nay real or like there’s some dark side to it all we cannay see with the naked eye. Do you feel that, too?”

  Charlie nodded. “I dinnay feel exactly safe here. Praps it’s just knowing we’d never find our way out without one of them.”

  “Lah, but Jalo’s trustworthy.”

  Charlie shrugged non-committally.

  “Of course he is,” said Nell. “Think how much he’s helped us already! I just wish Eliza were here too. I’d imagined the three of us together over Winter Festival.”

  “What about Julian? Did he go somewhere else for Winter Festival?”

  Charlie asked this with studied casualness. Nell paused. Since getting on the train in Kalla she had not thought of Julian at all, except to babble embarrassing stories on the Crossing to keep Charlie awake.

  “No,” she said slowly. “I mean, yes. He went home, aye. He lives in Bled. It’s not far from Kalla.”

  Life at Ariston Hebe seemed impossibly remote, though she had left only a week ago. She had been so preoccupied with so many things, with sports and tests and hairstyles and Julian, but all of that had melted to insignificance the moment Charlie crashed into the backyard, half-dead.

  “It seems so trivial, aye,” she said, with a disconcerted half-laugh.

  “What?” asked Charlie. “Julian? I thought he seemed sort of...lah, trivial is a good word but praps it shouldnay be applied to a person.”

  “No, I dinnay mean him. I mean all of it. School, everything.”

  Nell watched the butterflies batting about in the sweet-smelling air and tried to imagine going back to school after Winter Festival, seeing her friends again, and Julian. But if Nia was not stopped the worlds would be changed. Without the Mancers, Tian Xia beings would keep on pouring into Di Shang. What would become of her safe and happy life at Ariston Hebe? Would the changes reach as far as Holburg?

  “Your problem is you’re hooked on adventure,” said Charlie. “You’re never happier than when the worlds are in peril, aye.”

  “That’s nay true,” said Nell, thinking how terrified she had been when it was just her and Ander in Tian Xia. She didn’t admit that to Charlie, though. “If any of us is really hooked on adventure, it’s you. Eliza says you cannay stay in one place for more than a day or so without getting restless.”

  “Then it’s my problem too,” agreed Charlie. “I think you’re worse than I am, though.”

  She punched him on the arm. He mimed pain, then said, “There’s no point picking a fight with me, lah. You know I could turn into a dragon and eat you.”

  Nell laughed, and they stopped walking at a curve in the bridge to watch several luminescent swans glide by. They stood in silence for a while, lost in their own thoughts. Nell was thinking about Ander’s surprising speech about her mother when Charlie said, half-reluctantly, “Did Eliza ever tell you that, when we were trapped in the Arctic, she saw my true form?”

  Nell looked at him, startled. “No! I didnay know you had a true form. I just thought that you...lah, I dinnay know what I thought. I spose I nary did think about it.”

  “I should’ve known she wouldnay tell even you,” said Charlie.

  “She can keep a person’s secrets, aye,” agreed Nell, not wanting to pry further, curious though she was.

  Then Charlie leaned a bit closer to her and said, “I want to show you. So I dinnay have anything else to say on the Day of Regrets.”

  Nell stared at him, unsure how to reply. One moment he was Charlie, so very familiar, the way he stood, the slant of his shoulders, the curve of his mouth and the way his eyebrows pointed up just slightly at the tips. And then he wasn’t Charlie anymore. He dissolved into a luminous wave entwined with its own shadow. It was light and darkness and everything in between, snaking towards her, and in it she could almost see something happening, but it was something beyond what she had words or thought for. It slipped around her neck and pressed itself to her cheek, and it was like touching something that cannot be touched – the way water would feel if it wasn’t wet, or fire if it wasn’t hot. It crossed her lips and she inhaled it. As it streamed into her lungs the world was briefly changed, everything was different, and she felt within herself infinite pos
sibilities of life and being. Then she exhaled, and the wavering billow took shape, became Charlie again.

  For a long moment he held her gaze and she found herself unable to look away or speak. Then they both became aware of footsteps approaching rapidly.

  “Enjoying the water promenade, I see!” said Jalo cheerfully.

  Nell forced herself to look away from Charlie to the Faery. He was dressed even more splendidly than before.

  “The King has decreed that an elite squadron of the Faery Guard will escort the witch and the rest of you to Di Shang and the Mancer Citadel, leaving at dawn tomorrow. A place has been selected for the witch to prepare her Magic and I’ve taken her there.”

  “Why tomorrow?” asked Nell. “We should go as soon as Swarn is ready!”

  “I’m afraid there’s no question of leaving tonight,” said Jalo solemnly. “It is the Festival of Light, when we swear allegiance to the King, and all Faeries must be present. It only happens twice a year. I’m sure it will be interesting for you.”

  Nell wanted to argue but sensed it would do no good. In any case, she was feeling disoriented. “Thank you,” was all she managed.

  “My mother Tariro owns a number of the Faery Mines, of which I’m sure you’ve heard,” Jalo continued. “Perhaps you would enjoy a tour? They are quite spectacular, really.”

  “We’d love to,” said Nell, looking at Charlie. He looked back at her a bit sadly.

  “Sure,” he assented.