Mistfall

by Olivia Martinez

Abel, it seems, is one of the silent, angry types. Those kind of people tended to be the most volatile. That was good because it meant he could be distracted.

  “Just checking,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. I expected a backhand or something, but Abel stayed where he was, fisting and unfisting his hands in anger. He wanted to hit me; I could see it in his eyes. So what was stopping him?

  “I tire of your constant disrespect,” he said stiffly. “Would you really give up your freedom in order to spite me?”

  I winked at him. “Sure would. It’s been great seeing you, but I have plans. Toodles.” I dismissed him with a wave, sat down on a chair and turned my attention to the latest gossip magazine.

  Oh sweet Goddess, the look on his face was priceless. He looked as if he had been slapped, yet he did not make a move towards me and I knew why.

  Right before I had flippantly waved him off, I realized that the barrier that protected him worked both ways. He couldn’t hurt me without exposing himself. Was he afraid of little ol’ me?

  He quickly turned on his heel and left. I wasn’t too worried when I was once again sealed in this tomb. He had already tried to make me an offer twice without ordering my execution. He’d be back.

  10. BFF’s for Life

  I didn’t see Abel again for weeks. That didn’t mean it was a quiet couple of weeks. About an hour after Abel left, two of his Aelfadl soldiers came and paid me a visit. They must have been new recruits because they only lasted about ten minutes and I wasn’t even armed. I left them tied up together with a pretty red bow for their buddies.

  I’ve never viewed what I am as a curse. At times it may have tried my patience due to the difficulties it has presented. But, in situations like the one I was in, it was good to be me. My magic was one of the most powerful out there and hard to defeat.

  Hailz stopped by a few days later. Iblis’s feathers must have been ruffled by my incarceration because Hailz was rather civil and helpful helping me form an escape plan. Once we figured out how to get me out of the oubliette, Hailz informed me that I was currently being held in Abel’s castle, in Ireland.

  “I figured that out on my own,” I told her. “Abel would want to keep me close.”

  “That puts you at a disadvantage,” she pointed out. “The castle is heavily guarded. You’ll have one hell of a fight waiting for you once you get out of this room.”

  “Not to mention, I’ll still be stuck in Ireland.”

  “Do you know what makes Fae villages so awesome?” she asked, leaning back against the wall and folding her arms.

  “I’ve never been in one. I couldn’t even hazard a guess,” I admitted.

  “Portals. Fae villages have portals.”

  She went on. “In the ancient times, when the Fae still fought in wars, their villages were virtually undefeatable. When one village was infiltrated, thousands of Fae would pour into the portal from other villages to defend the one.”

  “That’s impressive,” I told her looking up from a map of the area surrounding the castle. “Let’s say I pull this off. How do I even gain entry into the village?

  “Not to worry, I’m friends with the village leader,” she mentioned, pleased with herself.

  “Sounds like a one-sided friendship to me,” I commented on her less than sociable demeanor. “What does this Fae get out of it?”

  She straightened up with a big grin on her face and winked at me. “Me,” she stated.

  “Ugh. Too much information,” I groaned, dropping my head into my hand.

  “You asked.”

  I raised my head. “Do me a favor Hailz. Once this is all over and you aren’t bound to me anymore, please, please go back to being the psychopathic killer I love and hate you for.”

  “What? Are you scared we’re going to become BFF’s for life?” she teased.

  I laughed as I imagined that friendship. The body count we’d leave in our wake would cause overcrowding at the local cemetery.

  I wasn’t afraid of becoming friends with her. The truth, well, was a bit darker.

  “No, you don’t have to worry about that,” I assured her. It’s just that eventually one of us is going to kill the other. If we keep at it the way we are…” I trailed off, not sure how to finish the sentence.

  “Ah, I see. You’re concerned one of us may make a mistake, pull a punch, or worse, feel guilty over the other’s demise.”

  “Pretty much,” I said.

  You could hear a pin drop as we stood there. Hailz’s lack of a snarky retort told me that she was a bit apprehensive of the direction our relationship was going. I kicked at the ground with my shoe while she stared at the cracks in the ceiling studiously.

  “What about the invisible barrier?” I asked, changing the subject. “Were you able to find anything out?

  She shook her head in disappointment. “Abel keeps an iron grip on his court and The Powers. Whatever magic he’s exploiting, even the Master doesn’t know of it.”

  “Damn, I was really hoping for some good news on that,” I mumbled.

  Hailz and I spent the next fifteen minutes discussing a few last minute points of my escape. Though there were no floor plans for the dungeons, I did have one for the rest of the castle. We decided that I would rendezvous with Hailz at a cave near the Fae village. Just in case Abel had other plans, she agreed to check on my every few days to make sure I was still breathing.

  That settled, she left and I was on my own again. Unfortunately, I had to wait to put my plan into action until Hailz contacted her Fae friend. That left me with some time on my hands.

  I stood in the middle of the oubliette, deciding how best to kill some time when everything went black. It wasn’t the lights, but my vision. I was a healthy young woman with no medical conditions that would cause this type of thing. It had me a little freaked out.

  I knew the couch was a short five steps to my left. I carefully made my way over to it in order to orient myself. When I reached for the couch, it wasn’t there. I felt around the area, reaching for the coffee table. There was literally nothing around me, not even the walls.

  I tried to create a ball of light to no avail.

  A disembodied voice broke through the black emptiness surrounding me. “You’re magic won’t work here. You’re in my realm now, my rules.

  “Hello? Who’s there?” I called out.

  The voice didn’t come from any one direction, but all around me when it spoke again. “The impossible child, you shouldn’t exist.”

  “Well here I am. Not quite so impossible.” I turned in circles, trying to find the source of the voice. “Before we discuss any more philosophical conundrums, would you mind turning on the lights?” I asked the mysterious interloper.

  “You’re trying to see with your eyes. Use your mind,” I was told.

  Sweet Goddess I had enough with Otherworld beings. There’s a reason the myths make us all out to be tricksters. I was going to take an extended vacation on the human side of the Mistfall when this was all over. Some magical sensory deprivation would be a welcomed respite.

  “How do you do that?” I asked.

  I was answered by silence. The only thing I could think of was to try the voice’s suggestion the same way I use my magic. Closing my eyes I pictured the dark void around me. Slowly, I imagined light penetrating its pitch-black depths.

  Little by little, objects soon came into focus, objects I didn’t recognize or create. This wasn’t my cozy oubliette I had imagined the light revealing. Oddest of all was the creature that appeared next to me.

  I was absolutely sure that I had used my mind to see correctly. Never in a thousand years would I have created the creature next to me. He towered over me and his face… Have you ever seen one of those bone white, hooked nosed Venetian masks? Picture that with empty eye sockets. Creepy.

  I had never come across his kind before. I knew every kind of Otherworlder there was, myth or real. This wasn’t on either of those lists.

  “Who are you?” I asked, wide
eyed.

  “We are the Dreamweavers. We require no other name,” it informed me.

  The scenery around us changed. The moonlight illuminated the ground beneath me, the stars shining bright in the clear night sky. The Dreamweaver and I stood in front of a reflecting pool. The writing on the stones that enclosed the pool was far more ancient than anything on Earth. Whatever the Dreamweaver might be, they were old, far older than the Fae themselves.

  He ran his bony hand over the surface of the water and told me to watch. I leaned over the stones and looked into the pool.

  As the surface stopped rippling, a picture formed on is glassy surface. It was our world and it was burning. Scene after scene, the story was the same. Fire raged, its deadly tendrils destroying everything in its path. There was devastation anywhere you looked. No survivors. There weren’t even bodies or remnants of buildings. Everything had turned to ash.

  I lifted my head to look at the Dreamweaver. “What is this and why are you showing it to me?” I asked.

  “This is what will happen to your world and it’s because of you.” He wasn’t alarmed or vicious in the way he said it. The Dreamweaver may as well have given me the weather report.

  I looked up from the pool and back to the creepy stuff of nightmares next to me. My jaw dropped. How on Earth could or would I cause such destruction?

  I pointed to the water. “How am I responsible for that?”

  “The path you are on will lead you to destroy the world,” he responded.

  “What?” I shrieked. “There’s no way I would ever do such a thing!”

  “The Waters of Time do not lie. This is what will be.”

  “How do I stop it? I’ll do anything,” I pleaded. “Just tell me what to do.”

  “You cannot do anything. No matter what choices you make, this will be the outcome,” the Dreamweaver told me.

  I could feel the salty wetness forming in the corners of my eyes. How? How could I do something so horrible?

  My throat constricted, making my voice raspy. “There has to be something.”

  “You could join us,” the Dreamweaver offered. “The world would survive, but not as you know it.”

  “Show me. Use the pool and show me what changes if I join you,” I pleaded.

  He ran his fingers over the dark pool of water again. What I saw made me prefer the total destruction of the world.

  Terror, pain, and sorrow were behind door number two. Otherworlders and humans were enslaved. The bodies of the dead, in various states of decay were chained to the living. One of the Aelfadl was slicing open a man’s neck, his blood spurting all over the dress of the man’s daughter.

  “Make it stop,” I whispered. Tears were now freely falling down my face and into the pool, causing the painful scene to deform in the ripples. The Dreamweaver once again ran his hand over the pool, dispersing the painful images.

  “So, no matter what I do, I will cause death and destruction?” I asked in between sniffles.

  “Yes.”

  I stared at the evil pool of the apocalypse and weighed my options. Neither option was acceptable. I wiped the tears away with my sleeve. No. I will not let a silly swimming pool dictate my future. I make my own destiny.

  The only fire that would burn was the one sparking to life in the pit of my stomach. “I choose neither,” I lashed out. “I will find a third option that doesn’t end up in the world’s destruction or its enslavement.”

  I was done. There was no way I was going to stay here with Mr. Doom & Gloom. The papery thin fingers of the Dreamweaver reached out to grab me, but I swatted his hand away. It was time to go. I pictured my prison in my mind until every detail, from the overstuffed sofa, to the linen and leather covers of my books were crystal clear. When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to the oubliette. There was no trace of the mental hijacker left, but a soul sucking chill had crept its way into my very bones.

  Sleep failed to find me that night as pictures of raging infernos and children being viciously murdered appeared every time I closed my eyes. There has to be another option.

  11. More Mental Hijacking

  I barely slept over the next few days. Every time I drifted off, horrifying images would jolt me awake screaming. I knew I would eventually have to succumb, but I intended to fight it as long as possible.

  Staving off sleep for the fear of my dreams wasn’t my most brilliant idea. A few more of Abel’s thugs had come to play Winner and Loser’s with me. Exhaustion had slowed my reaction time. I almost had my first and final loss when a troll had swung at my head with its club. The club came so close I could feel my hair move from the force of the swing. It was a sheer miracle that my brains weren’t splattered on the walls, in a gooey, bloody mess.

  Do you know what you get when you mix sleep deprivation with horrifying visions and the dreams I’ve been having of the guy I’ve probably been in love with for the past five years? One very po’d jinn.

  I had to blink a few times as everything came into focus. Looking around the room, I recognized the familiar table I was sitting at. I was in the middle of John’s kitchen. I stood up from my seat and took a look around.

  The Spartan feel of the place was gone. He had moved in ahead of schedule due to Willa’s death and didn’t have time to furnish the place when I was here. A mocha sofa set now lay in his living room. Potted plants of lavender, thyme, mugwort, etc., lined the window sills, each vying for the golden sunlight streaming through the crystal panes of glass.

  Picture frames graced the mantle of the fireplace. I looked at each photo. One was of his mother holding him as a baby. Another was of Jack and John, stacking red rust bricks on top of mortar, building the chimney to the fireplace I was standing in front of. The one that grabbed my attention was the one of me. Me? Why would he have a picture of me on his mantle after all these years?

  I remember the day he took the picture. We were having a rare day off from combative training. Per usual we remained in the forest.

  John owned quite a bit of land he had built his house on and we were walking through a part he hadn’t been through in some time. His lack of interest in cultivating his property allowed a pixie garden to flourish. Pixie gardens were rare to find and beautiful to walk through, if you were invited.

  The caretaker of the garden, a man named Parson Persimmon, welcomed us to his pride and joy. He invited the two of us to stay the day as well as the mid-summer feast that night.

  I know what you’re thinking. Parson Persimmon? It sounds ridiculous, I know, but pixies love alliteration. I have met: Rueful Rose, Cackling Carrot, Waning Wisteria, and Libertine Lilly, just to name a few.

  Parson Persimmon, or Perse as he liked to be called, showed us to the main garden. He left us on our own to explore for a short while to make sure there was no one underfoot, as they were all of four inches tall.

  I say garden because, for pixies, that’s what it is. In terms of relative size though, it was a large farm. The ornamental gardens, like the one John and I were in, were varied with a myriad of plants. Creeping ivy snaked its way towards the sky on any trellis or vertical support it could find. Creeping phlox in pink and white covered the ground on either side of the velvety moss covered path we were walking on. Flowers grew up from the ground and hung down from planters in every imaginable hue.

  Outside of the gardens laid fields of singular plants. An acre to the right of us was nothing but rosemary interspersed between trees and other naturally occurring flora. Its aroma perfumed the air upon the breezes that carried it with its evergreen spiciness. Above us, in the trees, grew canopies of orchids in virgin white, lavender, and cotton candy pink. It was a spectacular sight.

  Perse returned and showed us around the different display gardens. Pixies were unaccustomed to visitors so Perce was chuffed as chips and relishing in his role of tour guide.

  Did you ever wonder how the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were possible in a desert? It was because of these guys. Pixies created and maintained them for
just under a millennia. They would still be there today too if a king hadn’t insulted the garden’s pixie caretaker.

  The prankster in Perse came out when he sent us into a maze. Tall, green hedges formed the corridors. It was simple enough at first; just follow it to the center. Things became a bit more difficult when the hedges decided to walk off and rearrange themselves.

  John and I became separated when a new wall grew up in between us like a shot. I could hear the tinkling chime of pixie laughter when John swore and kicked at the hedges. Between John’s frustration and the hilarity of the situation, I couldn’t help but join in with the pixies.

  Knowing that the pixies could keep their sabotage going for days, I cheated. Only a little though. I magicked up a variety of shiny objects for them. Gold and silver for the boys and colorful sea glass for the girls. The pixies’ magic was relegated to the plant world, so any mineral based bauble was highly coveted among them.

  One of the pixies who went by the name of Joyous Jasmine, Jaz for short, appeared from the sanctuary of the hedge at my offering. Her hands were clasped over her mouth, mid-giggle. She wore a lovely purple velvet dress, which upon further inspection, was made out of flower petals. What I had mistaken for velvet were really the very fine hairs of violet petals.

  She perched atop my shoulder, pleased with the opaque aquamarine shard of sea glass, and showed me to the center of the maze. On my entrance to its center, a dozen pixies surrounded me, waiting to claim the prizes I had offered. I handed them out freely, both as a bribe and a token of my appreciation for being allowed to walk amongst their heavenly abode.

  John must’ve given some of the pixies trouble as Jaz and I waited on him for over twenty minutes. He finally joined us when he gave up on trying to figure out the maze and split the earth of the maze in half.

  After he repaired the fissure and subsequently calmed the pixies down, Perse brought us tea into the clearing. He didn’t stay, but Jaz and some of her friends did.