by Mel Sterling
Everything hurt, her heart most of all. While they ran, she wept. For Stephen, for Aaron, for Thomas, for herself. For all the souls whose possibility of restoration to life she had destroyed. Somewhere in Portland, the hearts in several people's bodies, soulless and empty, had probably ceased to beat at last. She had killed them as surely as the Queen would have done. But better to be fairy earth, she supposed, than to be imprisoned forever. In her own way, the Queen had the truth of it, even if it was not the truth Tess would have chosen.
After a time, it seemed that their path climbed steadily. A little after that, she thought the air might be more fresh, dew-damp, and chilly. Thomas burst out of the tunnel at last, racing past an ugly lump of something gray-green in the moonlight. The lump turned slowly to stare at them.
"That's a troll," Thomas panted. "You can see the difference for yourself." He put distance between them and the lumpen being, then slowed a fraction, his head turning from side to side as he ran. He mumbled to himself.
"Put me down," Tess said.
"It's here—right here somewhere—"
"What is? Put me down."
"The ley."
"The what? Thomas—"
"A fairy road. Like I said, we're leaving. There'd better not be anything coming this way on it, or by God I—there!" He turned sharply, headed once more uphill in the dark, moon-silvered forest. He halted in front of a monstrous Sitka spruce, one of the kind the Native Americans called council trees, using them as landmarks for meeting places or rituals. In its early youth, several of its branches had been trained outward and down before being permitted to grow upward. Others called them octopus trees, with their limbs reaching skyward like an enormous candelabra. Tess had never heard of one so close to Portland before, yet here it was. Thomas set her down, but didn't let go of her.
He pointed at the bowl-like base of the spruce. "The road starts here. This tree anchors this end. The ley will take us over the top of Forest Park and down the other side. We'll end up somewhere near the Columbia River."
Tess saw no road, just the black shape of the tree and the bone-white moon above. Around them amongst the dark trees were other birch girls, pale swaying forms who looked at her curiously, beckoning her to join them. The world was different, and it frightened her. Everything about this world frightened her—her new self most of all. She turned away from the birch girls to the only safety she knew: Thomas.
"No," she said to him, uncertain what she was objecting to, but feeling she must deny something this terrible night. Thomas merely took her in his arms, looking up into her branches for a long moment, and then he kissed her woody lips. She felt them soften beneath his, becoming tender, perhaps even human lips, and sobbed against his mouth.
He lifted his head and drew a finger down her cheek. "Trust me just a little longer. You saved my life from the Queen, now let me try and save yours." He took one step to the side, pulling her along.
An uncomfortable sensation, like a flood of ants crawling over her skin and biting, made all her hairs—leaves, twigs, she thought crazily—stand on end. Then they were whizzing through the black forest at a speed even greater than that of the Wild Hunt as it tore through Portland.
A massive fir tree came straight at them. Tess fainted.
When Tess opened her eyes, she lay across Thomas's lap, her head and branches cradled in the bend of his arm and shoulder. The moon still shone on them, though from much farther west and lower on the horizon. The air smelled of fresh water, river weed and wet sand, and, somehow, dawn. Something lumpy was between them, and as she stirred, she realized it was her purse.
"I still have it," she mumbled. "Cross-body bags are the best." She picked a drooping bluebell off its strap and flung it away with distaste.
Thomas opened his eyes and gazed down at her. His back was against a large boulder. He looked unutterably weary in the moonlight, his skin gray and rough. The night was quiet around them.
"Did I wake you? I'm sorry."
"Still have what?" he asked her.
"My purse." She tried to sit up, and he let her. "Where are we?"
"At the far end of the ley, somewhere near the town of Clatskanie, I think." He gestured with his chin, and she glanced where he was looking. Not far from them an expanse of dark water rippled slowly past from right to left—east to west, she thought. "That's the Columbia. The fairy road ends here. It can't cross that much running water."
"Clatskanie!" It was still Halloween night, yet somehow on foot they had traveled more than sixty miles. She got to her feet and stumble-walked to the edge of the river. Her boots fell off as she went, but after one glance, she left them behind. Roots weren't meant to fit inside boots. The soft sand was soothing to her scraped and bruised roots, and as she got to the wetter sand, she realized she could taste its moisture through them. The Columbia tasted of tannins, green riverweed, marsh grass and the basalt gorge through which the river flowed. There was also a chemical tang she didn't recognize. She backed up quickly, thinking of fertilizer run-off from farms, storm water from drains, and who knew what else.
Birch girl.
She turned to look at Thomas, who still leaned against the rock, watching her. As tears welled in her eyes, she reached to brush them away, and smelled root beer. Birch sap, she thought crazily. Birch beer. She cried root beer tears now.
"Will she come after us?" Tess asked Thomas. "Will she chase us?"
"I don't know. If we can get to dawn without being caught, a lot of things will be different. Hunter will have to give up, for example. But he owes you a life debt because you set him free. That's one thing in our favor."
"It's not long until dawn. I can smell it."
He smiled a tired smile. "Can you now?"
She stretched out her branches, all of them, to their very tips, where the old-gold leaves trembled, and two or three fluttered loose. The fabric of her shirt and jacket snagged on her rough bark skin, but though the stretching hurt, it also felt good, even where her bark had been scraped away from their flight through the tunnels.
"So beautiful," Thomas said.
She looked at him for a long time, thinking of nothing, but feeling everything.
"I love you, Tess."
She covered her eyes with her hands, and this time, when the tears fell, they tasted of salt and her hands were soft human hands. So she was like Thomas, half fae, half human, and her glamour came and went without her bidding. She wondered if she'd fall into the wintersleep Thomas had mentioned as the Wild Hunt carried them along the mound, or if her half-human state would somehow make her different.
"Why did you do it, Tess? You worked so hard to save those people. Why did you crush the Queen's trinkets?"
Tess felt a rash of rough bark flaring along her jaw line, with anger and a terrible, bitter regret. A tired autumn birch leaf crackled against the lapel of her jacket where her ponytail lay over her shoulder.
How to explain to Thomas what she'd seen through the hole in the stone as she looked at the smoky soul trapped inside the snail shell? The desperate need of the residue of the person to be freed; her certainty that the person's corporeal body was long gone, and for the soul remaining inside, to be slowly drained like a battery when the Queen began to make new homes for her fae creatures, was the purest torture imaginable. Better to destroy them all, hopefully freeing them, and run the risk of crushing a trinket that held something of Aaron or Thomas in it, than leave those trapped souls to wither as Stephen had done.
She shook her head, asking instead, "Why don't you hate me, Thomas?"
"What, because your heart was true? Because you were still yourself, even under all that birch bark? Still the woman I fell in love with?"
She looked at him, the ugly trow, strong and beautiful to her now, all because he was Thomas. "Because I would have let you die if part of your soul had been in one of those trinkets. I chose—" she choked a little. "I didn't choose you."
"You did choose me. You just didn't realize it." He touched hi
s arm, where only a few strands of the Queen's binding remained. "You freed me."
"Hunter's the one who's freed, not you."
Thomas shrugged. "It's nearly the same thing, I reckon. I've made my own choice. If she calls me again, I won't go. Freed."
Tess scrubbed at her face, where her tears smelled faintly of root beer again. She had to take a deep breath to call back her human self, and found it could be done. Not completely, but somewhat. She wasn't as sure as Thomas that he could ignore the call of his Queen, but she also wasn't sure the Queen still had her job, now that Hunter no longer did her bidding.
"It'll get easier, the glamour," Thomas said. He got to his feet and came to put his arms around her, careful not to step on her rooty bare toes.
"Promise?"
"Promise. I'll teach you."
She leaned against him. Her hair drifted upward, becoming twiggy, growing leaves. "I'm frightened. I don't want to be fae." Yet somewhere deep inside, she wondered if she wasn't fooling herself. Had the Queen seen through her to her deepest longings? Was this truly her heart's desire? She didn't want to be lonely any longer. Standing beside the strong-tasting Columbia with Thomas's arms around her, she felt a new sort of contentment like an undercurrent in her soul. Thomas was here with her. Loneliness seemed like a bad dream that was already fading.
"It's not so bad, being fae. Just different."
"Then why do you want to be human?"
He was silent for so long that she began to fear she was wrong—he didn't actually want to be human. When he spoke, his tone was thoughtful and quiet. "For a long time I only wanted to get back what she took from me. Beat her at her own game. Revenge." Thomas tipped her face up with a rough-skinned trow finger under her chin. "But lately, I wanted to be human for you."
"Oh," was all she could manage, but it made him smile, despite his exhaustion. He kissed her softly.
They stood twined together for a while. The smell of dawn grew stronger and the wind off the river slackened before it changed direction. "Are we safe?" she asked. "What are we going to do? Where will we go?"
"I might know a few places. Not the market, and not my trow-hold. Maybe not even Portland, not right away. We'll wait until we hear some news."
"What if the Queen—"
"We'll make plans. Over breakfast. How does that sound?"
"Let me guess. Milk and fresh bread?"
"Nothing better in the world." He grinned, all his big teeth showing. "Is there still a wallet in that famous cross-body bag of yours?"
Tess lifted the flap and reached inside with fingers that were rough with bark at the knuckles. Her wallet was still inside. "Yep."
"Then let's go see if Clatskanie has a grocery store open this early in the morning. I'm hungry."
"You'll have to do the buying. It might be awkward if a tree-girl walked into the store."
"It will be my pleasure."
Hand in hand, they put the Columbia at their backs and walked south through marsh grass and moss. From the east came the thin, faraway crow of a rooster.
Read on for an excerpt of Ironbound, the next installment in the Portland After Dark series! Coming in 2017. Copyright © 2015 Mel Sterling. All rights reserved.
Hunter chose not to be seated when his hounds—a motley mix of bogles, kelpies, redcaps and one ragged boggart—dragged Thomas Half-made and his fair lady, Tess, into Hunter's audience room. Hunter stood with his arms crossed. His wooden staff leaned against the arrangement of massive basalt hexagonal columns that served as his throne. He wore his crown of reeds, animal tails and dreadlocks, but his stag's head mask, with its broad rack of antlers, rested atop his throne like a crown itself.
King in the East, those who had followed him from Forest Park at Allantide had taken to calling him. His band of the solitary fae grew every day, as more and more slipped away from the Unseelie Queen's great mound west of the Willamette River. They came one at a time, or in pairs, arriving in the darkness, or just before dawn, when the humans of Portland slept. Hunter's halls lay beneath Mt. Tabor, an extinct cinder cone inside the city limits. From its top, he could see the long line of hills that bounded Portland to the northwest, and housed the Queen and her court.
At Hunter's left sat a squat basalt column. On its top was a brazier, and behind the brazier was the one fae Hunter knew would command Thomas Half-made's trust: Sharpwit the hob. She had once tended her grill in the goblin market beneath the Burnside Bridge, but at Allantide, the Queen's work was done and Underbridge became an outpost of the mound at Forest Park. Sharpwit, having heard of the war begun that night within the Queen's chambers, and the ill treatment of Thomas Half-made, had crept away from the market. Now she fed the fae in Hunter's halls, making do with raids into human kitchens and shops while she worked to establish her supplies of more traditional fare such as grubs and fungus.
The ragged boggart grinned wildly. Tess—for Hunter had learned her truename two weeks before on that fateful Allantide—marched in front of him, trussed in a coil of Hunter's own snare magic. The boggart's stone knife lurked at her ribs. Her torso and arms were wrapped like a spider's bundle.
Thomas Half-made, the Queen's former trow barrowguard and guardian of the goblin market, accompanied the boggart and the rest of Hunter's hounds. Thomas's fists opened and closed in pure impotent fury as the birch girl he loved struggled within the snare.
There had been no need to capture Thomas; only his beloved. It was as effective as capturing the half-human, half-trow brute, and far simpler.
Hunter smiled, and in that moment Thomas saw him.
In a flash Thomas was upon him, big hands at his throat. Hunter gave one stiff nod to the boggart, who prodded Tess's ribs with the handle of the knife.
Tess made a grunt of discomfort, then was silent. Her eyes blazed at Hunter. At the sound, Thomas froze and his grip loosened, though he did not release Hunter, and the pressure on Hunter's windpipe made him want to cough.
But Hunter knew his point had been made. By controlling Tess, Hunter controlled Thomas. It was Thomas he most wanted. Thomas whom he suspected had the skills he needed.
Still, he had to admire her. Of all of the humans the Queen had dragged through her chamber over the centuries, only this one had managed to best her. Hunter owed Tess his freedom, perhaps even a place in his Court, but unless she was clever enough to claim that debt, he would offer nothing. Humans often had no skill at bargaining with the fae, and Hunter saw no need to change that balance. Tess had been human when she first met the Queen, but the Queen had turned her into another of her half-mades, a birch girl part of the time, barely human the rest. The difference between Tess and Thomas was that Thomas still owed the Queen allegiance as long as her band of bone and gold was around his arm. Tess had no such allegiance, but her history with Hunter was dark and brief. She would not encourage Thomas to assist Hunter. Thomas had been the prey of the Wild Hunt that Allantide. At the time, he had been an obstacle in the path of Hunter's plans.
Yet now he sought Thomas's knowledge and skill. It galled him to need another to solve a problem he should have been able to address, but Hunter could not allow the Queen's depredations to continue. He had to find a way to stop her from picking off, one by one, the fae who had fled with him to the east side of the Willamette River.
Another glance from Hunter and the boggart prodded Tess again. This time she took a hard, stamping step backward onto the boggart's foot in reaction. But boggarts were not bogles or goblins, and their feet were hard as horn. Hunter gave her grudging approval for the attempt. Then he shifted his gaze to Thomas.
"Release me, or my hound will use the sharp edge of his knife."
Thomas Half-made glared back at him for several long moments, but Hunter did not blink or flinch. Then the trow took a step back, but only one. "I wondered which of you would try to finish me first," Thomas growled. "You or the Queen. I have my answer. Let her go." His head tipped back to indicate Tess.
Hunter eased one leg onto the arm of his
throne and shifted his weight. He opened his hands to show they were empty. "I would have requested your presence, but would you have come?"
"Of course not, you murderer!" Tess spat.
"She is fiercer than you," Hunter said idly to Thomas.
"Believe it," Tess replied.
Thomas's head turned to the right, where Sharpwit had a few autumn-curled slugs on skewers above the coals of her brazier. "Are you well, Sharpwit?"
"Aye," said the hob.
"Here of your own will?"
"Aye," she repeated.
"Not a prisoner?"
"Nay."
Thomas took another step back, wary confusion painted on his face. His heavy brows drew down. "Release the birch girl."
Hunter noted Thomas's care to avoid using Tess's truename. He resolved to do the same to demonstrate his willingness to negotiate. "Let us come to an agreement first, Half-made. Then I will release her."
"Agreement? I'll see you in hell first."
"That's as may be. But hear me. I require your skill with iron and ley lines."
"Another bargain?" Tess demanded. "I for one have had more than enough of fae bargains. The answer is no."
Thomas glanced over his shoulder at Tess, then back to Hunter. "I have the skill. But my price is high."
"Freedom from the Queen for you," Hunter said, nodding slowly. "And humanity for your birch girl."
Thomas's head tilted to one side, and Tess stilled behind him.
Good. Hunter had their attention now.
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