by Justin Rose
“Take care of our people, Rand,” Ariel said. “Be strong for them.”
Geuel and Hefthon began packing up what items they had not lost with the horses, Geuel handing back Hefthon’s unused bow, and Ariel landed once more on the stairs. Tressa approached her and whispered, “Don’t let him die for your troubles.”
Within twenty minutes, Reheuel’s family were all hiking away from the keep. Reheuel and Ariel approached the edge of the Faeja, stopping at a place just above the wreckage of the city. Ariel drew a silver flute-like instrument from her belt and began to play, the sounds carrying far over the water to the north. The music chortled slightly, like the sound of a brook or a stream; and the rhythms surged and receded like a surf, perfectly constant.
After a few minutes, the water stirred and faces appeared in the currents. They were like disturbances carved in the ripples, there one moment and gone the next, their hair flowing, long and wild in the eddies that surrounded their faces. Reheuel could hardly tell if they were solid or liquid. They seemed to flow and move with the water, to distort in the current. But, at the same time, they rested almost beneath the surface, like a swimmer staring from just beneath the water.
Ariel put away her flute and spoke to them in a language full of babble and the gush of water, rushing with a kind of raw beauty, wholly foreign to the tinkling silver of the fairy voice.
“What are we doing?” Reheuel asked, anxious to leave.
“Transportation,” Ariel replied. “The river sprites will help us reach the mountain.”
A few minutes later the river swelled slightly, waves sloshing over the bank. The eddies quickened around the boulders that broke the surface, and waves appeared where before the water had been smooth. The river rose continually, running faster and faster as it struggled through the wreckage that clotted it. After several minutes, a small rowboat came into sight upstream, borne rapidly in a solitary surge. It looked strangely out of place, the rough-hewn timber boat, caught in the supernatural rapids around it, pounding water filled with the laughing faces of the sprites.
The boat nosed gently into the bank beside Reheuel, and the water slowed to its normal calm. Ariel flew out over the river and thanked the sprites in their language, holding out her hand as if in blessing.
Reheuel stepped carefully into the boat. “No oars,” he said, glancing at the floor of the craft.
“We won’t need them,” Ariel replied as she landed on the boat’s prow. She pointed upstream and spoke a command to the sprites.
The boat turned in the water and swung out from the shore, lifting slightly in the prow as a new current took hold of it. It moved steadily upstream, faster even than Reheuel could have rowed it. On either side the water still ran past downstream, but where the boat moved, a single reverse current grew below. Glancing over the edge of the boat, Reheuel saw waves lift and slide forward against the boat’s bottom. Occasionally, fingers and hands of water formed in the waves, dragging and pushing at the boat and then dissipating back into the current.
Ariel lay down in the prow and wrapped her wings around her arms and chest, sheltering herself from the breeze of their movement. “What do you plan to do, once we reach the mountain?” she asked.
Reheuel shrugged. “I don’t really know. We’ll have to be quiet. There could be hundreds of them, perhaps more by now. It’s been so long.”
Ariel nodded. “I can lead you to the caves, but you will have to find our way in.”
“You know I’ve been to the caves before?”
Ariel nodded.
“So why did you come?”
“Because you have no duty toward my people . . . I do.”
The boat continued for hours, and after a while, Reheuel lay down to sleep. His side ached dully, and he could feel the scar on his back rubbing against the wood hull of the boat. The wound was healed, as was that on his leg, but even Ariel’s magic could not replace the blood he had lost. Exhaustion still plagued him. The little boat continued for hours as he slept, racing with unnatural speed.
* * *
“Seven days’ hike . . .” Geuel muttered as he crested a hill, shoving off of his ash walking stick. “What I wouldn’t give to have kept the horses.”
Hefthon nodded. “It’d be easy enough with just the two of us. But I don’t know if Veil can do it even in seven. I think she’ll take nine. Not to mention finding food.”
“I could do it in four alone,” Geuel said. “I feel so helpless.”
Hefthon glanced back at his mother and sister as they climbed the hill behind him. “Go,” he said. “You’re faster than I am anyway.”
Geuel shifted uncomfortably, anxious to leave but unsure of his duty. “I feel like I’m deserting you.”
Hefthon shook his head. “The goblins are long gone. There’s little danger left out here. How much food do you have?”
“About two days’ worth.”
Hefthon unslung his pack. “Take mine. We can stop and hunt along the way. You need to warn the others, to get everyone inside the walls.”
Geuel took the pack uncertainly. “You sure?”
“We both know you have to. Don’t force guilt.”
Geuel nodded and set off at a light lope down the far side of the hill. Hefthon turned and helped Veil over the hill’s crest. “Easy there,” he said.
Tressa reached the top of the hill a moment later. “Is Geuel gone?” she asked.
Hefthon nodded.
“Good,” she said.
* * *
Reheuel awoke to the dull shadows of a forest, heavy across the water in the dim light of early morning. High above and seemingly just miles distant, the first mountain of the Gath chain rose bright and welcoming, strangely beautiful given the darkness that dwelt just beyond. Off beyond its edges, Reheuel could see farther mountains of the range, Tubath and Henerrin just visible in the distance. He knew that somewhere between those two spires Gath Odrenoch lay nestled. “Did we travel all night?” he asked.
Ariel, still wrapped in her wings in the prow, nodded. “The Sprites never tire in the water. We should reach the mountain this afternoon.”
“We should have brought the others. Saved them time.”
“We are in the foothills now,” Ariel replied. “They would waste days finding usable routes.”
Reheuel opened his pack and drew out some dried meat. “Feels strange to be moving so fast without effort. Makes me restless.”
Ariel nodded. “I flew part of the night.”
“So, what happens if we don’t find the Tear? To the fairies I mean?” Reheuel asked as he ate.
“They will age,” Ariel replied, “shed their innocence and find adulthood. Most will die. Starvation, cold, violence. Without the Tear, they may even get sick. The fairies have been sheltered since childhood, living without struggle or pain, all linked by the Tear. Most were weak even before they became fairies.”
“And if we find the Tear? What then?”
“I would hope that things can be restored,” Ariel said. “But the trauma, the pain, the development—could all that really be forgotten? To stay young, the fairies require innocence, ignorance. For many it will be too late.”
“Like Randiriel, the one who fought?” Reheuel asked.
“Rand’s—different,” Ariel replied, struggling with the words. “Randiriel was—a mistake. I took her after her innocence had ended. Randiriel was lost as a fairy before she became one. There is no going back for her.”
“And what will happen to those like her, the ones who can’t go back?”
Ariel shrugged. “Some will join the council. Others . . . like Randiriel . . . will leave. Randiriel is strong. Far stronger than her brothers and sisters. She will survive.”
“So you’ll banish her?” Reheuel asked.
“Without innocence, no being could happily endure our ignorance,” Ariel replied. “She will need to explore, to see the world, to find the wonder and the ugliness of it. There will be no place for her in the City of Youth.”
“Why do you stay then? You’re no longer innocent,” Reheuel asked.
“I have purpose there. I protect my people, just as you protect yours. As long as my actions fall in suit with Innocence, my tie to her remains. Besides, I’ve seen enough of the world’s ugliness. The Fairy City offers no ignorance for me.”
Reheuel laughed. “I used to think that the Fairy City was so perfect, so eternal.”
“So did I,” Ariel replied sadly.
“It was pure, unblemished, a lingering taste of childhood,” Reheuel said. “But childhood never lasts alone, does it? It’s too frail. You’re the one who’s kept it alive, a bitter adult sheltering artificial youth.”
“Adults always shelter youth. Without you to provide, would your children ever have had a time of innocence? You took the pain that life threw at them—the struggles, the responsibilities. You bore the weight of their living. My protection does not falsify my city’s youth. It completes it.”
Reheuel grew silent and turned his eyes back to the river banks. The Faeja was smaller near the mountain, narrower and slightly faster than the tributary-swollen, lazy river that flowed beneath the Fairy City. The banks were in clear sight on either side, covered in thick sedge broken occasionally by little stands of purple loosestrife. Occasionally, he could see the blue and yellow of irises peeking out from behind the bulrushes. He fingered the iris stitched into his tunic and felt a rush of bile in his throat, burning and putrid. His city balanced on the edge of destruction, and the Iris wanted conscripts for her conquests.
The nation was rotting.
* * *
Geuel awoke with a start, scrabbling to his feet and struggling with the folds of his cloak. He slapped wildly at his face, at the soft, tingling pricks that stretched across it. A large wolf spider flew to the ground and scurried away into the loam. Geuel’s racing heart stilled. Just a spider, he told himself. Just a spider. He shook himself to clear his head and slapped at his breeches, shifting the dewy cotton where it clung to his legs. Dawn had passed, and the sun hung just above the eastern horizon, pink-hued behind a haze of thin cloud.
He lifted his packs from the ground and cinched them tightly to his back. Three more days, four at the most. He had traveled longer than usual, finally collapsing at the feet of a large diamond tree near midnight. He started walking and winced as his joints groaned beneath him. He was a strong hiker, well accustomed to long days and nights spent sprawled over the roots and pebbles of the forest. But he knew that even his body would struggle to maintain the twenty mile days ahead of him.
Hour after hour throughout that second day, he dragged himself onward, sometimes half-sprinting down inclines, other times stumbling breathlessly to crest a hill. Rarely pausing, knowing that to stop would invite the full force of his fatigue to catch up with him. Knowing that if he once laid down he would not rise for hours.
His throat was perpetually dry, and his body burned beneath a layer of sweat. But he dared not drink too often for fear of slowing his pace. He sucked on a flat pebble to moisten his mouth and sought the shadiest routes.
The day dragged by slowly, morning melting beneath noon’s oppressive heat, the heat seeming to linger eternally, reticent to surrender to evening’s chill. When evening finally came, the sweat that saturated Geuel’s clothing cooled miserably and clung, sticky but cold, to his skin. The breeze that hours earlier would have been a welcome relief merely served to chill him further. He yearned to stop and start a fire, to sleep with his back to the embers until the last ray of heat had leaked from the ashes and died in the next day’s morning. Instead, around ten thirty that night, he collapsed against the trunk of a great cedar tree, wrapped his cloak around his body, and struggled to forget the cold, to sleep through the misery of the night.
Despite his exhaustion, it took him over an hour to finally fall asleep. The cold seeped through the mesh of his cloak and infiltrated the lining of his jacket, caressing his skin with the freezing fingertips of night. No matter how he tucked the edges of his cloak behind him, sealing each gap, the cold still found a way in, still crept through some crevice between flesh and cloth. Occasionally he heard movements in the brush and trees, the pattering of little feet in the loam and the snuffling of moist snouts. Each time that he heard movement, he imagined goblins, spindled across the branches of nearby trees, waiting for him to sleep, waiting for him to become vulnerable. Eventually, he drew his sword and clutched it beside him, finding comfort in its solidity, in the visible gleam of its blade.
Smoke rose from the towers of Gath Odrenoch. Flaming meteors shaped like skulls exploded in the earth of the town square. The barracks was a smoking crater, surrounded by glowing splinters of beams and melted glass. Kezeik lay in the earth outside, his body charred and smoking, his hound nuzzling at his side.
Geuel watched in horror as the blacksmith’s twelve year old son, Akazi, stood alone in the gate of the city, his father’s sword drawn and a dozen goblins licking their blades in front of him. The blacksmith’s body lay slumped against the wheel of the portcullis where he had tried to close the gate. His wife screamed from the steps of their home. Above the gate the Golden Iris still waved proudly, her blue folds rippling in the smoky breeze, her threading torn by passing arrows.
Geuel tried to run forward, but a sharp pain in his arm stopped him. He slumped back and tried to rise again. Again the pain stopped him. Just then Master Deni ran to Akazi’s side and waved him backward, yelled for him to take his mother away. The goblins surged forward, and Deni waited, a light smile on his thin lips, his old eyes more full of life than Geuel had ever seen them.
A goblin fell. Geuel tried to run forward to help, and again his arm stung sharply. He felt blood running warmly down his forearm and glanced at it. He was trapped, pinned down by his own sword. It was caught in an overturned carriage beside where he lay. Another goblin fell. A third. Geuel tore his sword from the carriage and leapt to his feet, a scream of rage choking into horror as he watched Deni’s body strike the earth.
He hadn’t reached them. He was too late.
Geuel awoke with a start. Dawn was long past, and the sun hung high in the east. The light was the bright yellow of a clear mid-morning. Blood trickled down his right arm from a shallow gash. His sword lay in the grass beside where he had slept. His mouth was dry, and he drank from his canteen. The cold water chased away the images of the night, letting him forget all save one. He still remembered clearly the Golden Iris waving in the smoke of the city, the one glimpse of beauty left in a scene of horror.
After eating, he left his sword where it lay, glad to be rid of the weight, and took off at a light trot, his body energized with new-found purpose.
* * *
On top of a chandelier in the fairy keep, the council sat at a tiny round table, hands folded and faces grave. “How much food is there?” Celine, one of the fairies who had healed Reheuel, asked.
Randiriel shook her head. “Enough for lunch, maybe. We still have eighteen hundred mouths to feed. Some of them should be foraging.”
Several of the council members laughed.
“They can’t forage. They can barely speak,” said one.
“They haven’t needed to,” Randiriel replied. “We’ve coddled them, haven’t let them do anything. They need drive. They’re not linked anymore. They’re individuals.”
Another fairy shook his head. His body looked youthful, as all fairy bodies do. But his voice wavered with age. “Ariel would not wish it. The less they exert themselves, the easier it will be for them to forget.”
“Well, maybe they won’t forget. Maybe they can’t,” Randiriel replied. “Who are we to hold them back from growing stronger? Anyway, do we have another option? They have to eat, and we can’t all leave here. The keep would collapse behind us.”
The council member Brylle rose. “Very well, we shall gather them and give them their instructions. I only hope they can still function.”
It took a few hours of coaxing and explaini
ng, but gradually the council gathered the fairies into groups of a hundred or so each and instructed them on gathering food. The instructions were nothing new. The fairies had all spent countless hours scouring for strawberries beneath the meadow grass, milking the clover blossoms, and stealing honey from the beehives in the forest. But most of the fairies hardly seemed able to comprehend the instructions. They were fractured and confused, many still in shock after being separated from their fellows.
Randiriel stood in front of a hundred fairies. In her had she clutched her crystal rose, the sole remaining token of her creations. She looked into the eyes of several of the fairies, trying to gauge their emotions. “Brothers and sisters,” she said softly, “I know you’re frightened. I know you feel alone. But tonight you must forget your fear. You must rise above it.” She levitated the flower gently before them. Several gasped, and hands reached out to brush it, to assure themselves of its existence.
Randiriel smiled. “I am alone now, just like each of you. I and you—these words meant little to us before. But now you must own them. You must hold to them as you once held to us. Each of you is strong. Each of you is a being. You may not be linked by a Tear, but you are still fairy.” She pulled the rose back into her hands. “And if I can still do this, then I know that each of you can do it as well.”
She paused and waited for a response. Most of the fairies simply stared blankly. Some whispered and rustled with the first stirrings of thought. Thirteen stood and nodded in understanding. “What should we do?” one asked.
Randiriel beckoned them closer, separating them from the others. She pointed to the door. “I need you to go out there and gather in food for the others: raspberries, strawberries, honey if you can find it. There are probably still may berries on the Blue Hills. Gather what you can find.”
They nodded and turned to the door. Many seemed relieved, as if they had longed for some form of action, some objective to replace their former unity. The rest of the fairies still huddled where Randiriel had first addressed them, shifting and whispering uncomfortably. Randiriel smiled at them. “You may all return to your places,” she said.