Relics--The Folded Land

by Tim Lebbon

  “One day I’ll come and see you in London!” Sammi had said the last time they’d seen each other, a few weeks before Angela left for the UK, and Angela had really believed she would. Theirs was a fresh relationship, unhindered by age-grown troubles, the sort when the time span between meetings or chats meant little. Sometimes the bond between family was genuine and strong, honest and innocent, not a forced friendship.

  She hated the idea that Sammi might think badly of her. How might that innocent young girl be suffering now? Her niece had been taken by the fairy, and her brother-in-law killed, and Angela couldn’t help thinking it was all her fault.

  “They’ll never leave us alone, will they?” she asked.

  “You know they can’t,” Vince said.

  “I don’t mean that. I don’t mean…” She waved a hand over her shoulder toward the back seat, where Ahara sat, or perhaps not. “I know they’ll always figure in our world, because they can’t risk letting us go. But they’ll always be ripping our lives apart.”

  Vince had no answer for that.

  “Why Sammi? We helped the fairy escape, so why come after me and my family?”

  “None of them knows,” he said. “They say Grace is unknowable, as if she’s some sort of godlike figure for them.”

  “Or if they do know, they’re not telling you,” she replied. He glanced sidelong at her and she saw the hurt there, at the idea that his precious Kin were keeping something from him. She felt a moment of pity for Vince. She recognized the wonder of the Kin, but Vince felt the need to bury himself within it, surround himself. Angela was perfectly content to admire from afar.

  “Oh, Vince,” she said. Despair bit in for her poor dead sister and brother-in-law, and for Sammi, a sweet innocent girl snatched away from normality and thrust into this mad new world. Where was she now? Who was she with?

  Was she terrified?

  Was she dead?

  “Help’s coming,” Vince said. Angela heard a strange tone in his voice.

  “Lilou.”

  “Yeah. She’s flying over. They don’t like travel that much, so it must be important. She said—”

  “Good,” Angela said. She meant it. Vince’s voice held a certain tone every time he mentioned the nymph’s name, and Angela would never be able to convince herself that there hadn’t been something between the two of them. Yet Lilou exuded goodness, and that had been a comfort. “I like her. She’s familiar. It’s good that she’s coming.”

  “You’re sure?” Vince asked.

  “Maybe she’ll be able to help us make sense of it.”

  “Lilou,” a voice said from the back seat. Angela glanced back at Ahara, shimmering like heat haze in flickering sunlight slanting through the windows.

  “Do you know Lilou?” Angela asked.

  Ahara said nothing. Her image shimmered, like a television with bad reception.

  “We have to find Sammi,” Angela said. The car pulled onto the interstate and was swallowed by traffic headed out of the city. So many hundreds of people who knew nothing about the real world. She experienced a familiar disconnect, but also shame at the self-pity she’d allowed herself to feel. None of this was about her, and it never had been. Everything now was about Sammi, and Angela felt a curious hardening of her own edges, a strengthening of her foundations at this simple, terrible truth. She had a purpose once more.

  Rescue Sammi, or die trying.

  “That’s why I came to find you,” Vince said. “Claudette and her goon just happened to cross our paths.”

  “So we start with Lilou,” Angela said. “She might know why the fairy—Grace—has taken Sammi.”

  “That’s my hope,” Vince said.

  It was a good feeling leaving the city behind.

  Sorry, Sally, Angela thought. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to say goodbye. But I’ll save Sammi. I’ll make sure she’s safe.

  At the same time, the idea that she could do anything to rescue Sammi from a fairy who could summon lightning felt like a lie, as did any concept of safety. Though filled with purpose, she felt hopeless. Useless. She hated the feeling, but it was familiar in the shadow of the Kin.

  “So is this our life now, Vince?”

  “Things need to calm down,” he said.

  “And when they’ve calmed down, if they ever do, what about us? What about our life, having children, being together?”

  Vince let out a low snort that might have been frustration.

  “Do you even think about that anymore?” she asked.

  “Of course I do.” It was sharper than he’d intended, she knew that. “It’s a different life for now, that’s true, but it’s life among the incredible, the remarkable. Most people have never known the Kin, and most never will. We’re blessed.”

  “Blessed?” Such a discussion was pointless right now. It would serve only to drive the wedge even deeper between them.

  “I love you,” Vince said.

  “I want to live our lives,” she said.

  They drove on in silence.

  8

  Over the years Gregor believed he had become attuned to the Kin. When they were close he could sense them in a strange, indefinable way. It was nothing physical, no goosebumps or shivers down the spine. Perhaps it was a sixth sense, or seventh, or eighth. It was a subtle vibration in his body, a nervousness that meant he could not sleep or settle. An excitement in his gut.

  The nearness of Kin often meant that he would have to kill again soon, and that took him one life closer to the fulfillment of his own existence.

  His body thrummed as if electricity was being passed through it. As if lightning hung in the air. He had never been so nervous or excited, and believed there was more than one Kin close by.

  Behind the half-built house he sat on a set of timber steps and shrugged off his backpack. Pulling out several wrapped objects, he chose the smallest one he possessed, unrolled it and placed it in the palm of his hand. The feather came from an angel’s wing, and it was the only such item he had acquired without first needing to kill. The relic collector in Mexico City had been old and forgetful, her dilapidated home protected by faux spells and charms that were powered by little more than local superstition. Gaining access had been easy, and stealing away the only relic worth owning had added a precious item to his growing collection.

  The many years of pursuing his aims had imbued him with knowledge that went wider and deeper than the Script.

  Placing the feather on its open cloth, folding one corner over so that a breeze would not blow it away, Gregor looked around for something to use. He found a plant pot with a wide, deep saucer resting underneath. The saucer was dark with mold, but it would serve his purpose.

  Pouring some water from his canteen, he laid it down on the sun-warmed steps, swirling it around the saucer. It was around an inch deep.

  Perfect.

  Gregor waited until the water had calmed before placing the angel feather on its surface.

  He had tried this several times before, and it had never worked. Always the feather had upended in the water, snapped quill pointing downward, feather aiming upward as if striving for Heaven.

  This time it was different. The feather spun on the water’s surface, left and then right and then left again, never falling still, as if strange currents turned it back and forth. Gregor held his breath as it continued spinning, reversing direction several times before becoming frozen in place. It happened so suddenly and certainly that the curved feather even seemed to straighten a little, its quill end lifting slightly from the water’s surface as if pulled by a strong, invisible thread.

  “It works,” Gregor breathed, and he wondered at the creature from which this feather had come. Even long dead, it still sensed the presence of its fellows.

  Noting the direction the feather indicated, he packed the relics away once more, hefted the backpack onto his shoulders, and started following the Kin’s trail.

  * * *

  He found the girl sitting out on her wide lawn, eas
ed back in a recliner while an old woman fussed back and forth between chair and house, bringing drinks and food. About twenty yards distant, the girl seemed to be enjoying the attention, but she was tired. She dropped off to sleep in the midday sun. Her right arm slipped from the chair, hand hanging down. The skin of her upper arm was dark, a swath of patterns just like the woman in the hospital.

  Something crouched beside her.

  Gregor frowned, shifting position in the trees so that he could see better. At first he thought it was a shadow thrown by the girl in the chair, a strange trick of the light. Then he moved an overhanging branch aside, just a little.

  The figure possessed the shape of a small child, crouched down with knees drawn up and arms hugging them tight. Its head was up, though, leaning over to the left. It appeared to be whispering to the girl. Motionless, she stared up at the deep blue sky, listening, frowning.

  Gregor recognized the wraith for what it was. He did not consult the Script that much these days. Partly because it was old and fragile, and he could not even consider the chance of it being damaged or lost. Not only was it his driving force, it was a connection to the hazy past he still hoped to rediscover. Following the Script was his way of seeking the truth.

  Another reason he rarely read it was that it had become so familiar, and he knew without looking which elements of the Script’s instructions he still lacked. The remaining objects he sought spoke to him during the day and whispered into his ear at night, and sometimes he dreamed of them.

  From this distance he couldn’t quite discern the girl’s true nature. What he was certain of was that she was Kin, otherwise she would have been running in terror from the wraith by her side.

  He waited for a while, observing and planning his route across the garden to the girl. He was always cautious when he moved in for the kill. He had been caught in the act three times during his long journey—twice by humans, once by a fellow Kin—and each time he had been lucky to escape. His knife had found extra blood on those days. Being disturbed in his activities was time-consuming and dangerous, and he always strove to make sure the kill was clean, his escape clear and rapid.

  * * *

  He waited for more than two hours. Through a downstairs window he saw the old woman relax onto a sofa and drift into a troubled sleep. A radio played softly from somewhere in the house.

  The girl barely moved, although the wraith that crouched beside her urged her to do so. That was strange. It was something he had never seen before, but the creature did not trouble him. He knew from experience that a wraith might touch him, might even be able to speak, but little more than that. They were old, forgotten, weak things, and whatever held this one tethered to the world was concentrated for some reason on the girl. During his long time hunting and killing Kin, he was used to encounters that inspired more mysteries.

  Gregor made sure his backpack was secured, the metal tube zipped into his inner jacket pocket, and the curved blade gripped tightly in his hand. Then he left the tree cover and started out across the lawn.

  The wraith sensed him first. Still crouching and hugging its knees, it turned to stare at him as he walked across the grass. He picked up speed, blade held down by his side.

  She might be a witch, he thought. She could just be. One of the missing requisites of the Script was a witch’s third ear and eye. He had seen a witch once in Guatemala two decades before, a starving, hunted thing that hid away in an old slaughterhouse on an abandoned farm, her skin darkened by old blood and horrible memories. She had forgotten herself, and her sloughed flesh had displayed no signs of the markings that might mark her as special. If she had once possessed a third ear and eye, it had long since withered and rotted away. She had been so pathetic that he hadn’t even put her out of her misery.

  This girl looked different, but as he closed on her and the wraith started to rise, Gregor felt a sinking disappointment as he realized his mistake.

  The girl was doubtless Kin, but she was no witch. A nixie, perhaps. Her fingers were too short, her body too thin, and as she turned to look at him he saw the piercing blue eyes of a water sprite.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “A friend,” he said. She smiled, but the wraith knew better. He recognized it now, or at least he knew its like. It was the remnant of an elf, member of one of the lesser elven clans from the forests of Europe. It posed no threat. It was faded and almost not there at all.

  “And what are you?” he asked the wraith.

  “Just a girl,” the girl said, thinking the question was aimed at her.

  “A disappointing girl,” Gregor said. “All these patterns I follow, all this effort I put in, and most of the time I’m presented only with disappointment.”

  “Something strange happened,” she said. “Are you from the news?”

  “No,” Gregor said. “I’m from somewhere else.”

  “Are you here about the lightning? It’s strange.” She glanced at the wraith. “She’s asking me to go somewhere, she says it’ll be better there, more peaceful than here, and…” The dead elf was backing away now, her face sad rather than scared, and Gregor thought she could see or sense his intention. She could no longer be harmed, but she must have wanted or needed something from this girl, and she realized her chances were dwindling. The wraith looked at the blade in his hand as if she recognized it.

  Perhaps amongst the dead his reputation preceded him.

  “Where is she asking you to go?” Gregor asked.

  “She won’t say.”

  Gregor knelt beside the girl and pressed the knife to her face. She drew in a sharp breath. He peered at the dead elf.

  “Say,” Gregor said. The wraith shook its head and backed away, fading into the sunlight and becoming opaque, heat haze across the sun-bleached lawn.

  “I’m a secret,” the girl whispered. “I’ve never revealed myself, I’m living with them now, aging with them and—”

  “You’re one of the deniers,” he said. “I’ve met your kind before. Amazing beasts who wish themselves mundane.”

  “There’s nothing mundane about humans.”

  “You’ll never be human,” he snapped. “Now say!”

  “I told you, I don’t know.”

  Gregor shifted the blade until it was pressed into her ear. A dribble of blood ran down the arc of curved metal. His heart barely increased its beat.

  “It’s a pity,” he said, and he leant all his weight on the handle.

  The girl, the denier, stiffened and thrashed a little before she died. As she faded away, so too did the wraith, shimmering into nothing as if it had never been there.

  Gregor glanced toward the house, but there was no sign of the old woman.

  The next time he tracked down one of these things that had been struck by lightning, a twice-struck, he’d try harder to find out where they were meant to go. He had a feeling that there, he might complete his collection at last.

  As he left the garden and pushed through bushes back into the street, the old woman began to scream.

  Soon he would rest and take out the angel’s feather. It would spin once more, and then point. At the thought of following its lead, his heart began to beat faster.

  9

  “Gloria Minogue?”

  “What of it?”

  “Couldn’t you have chosen a surname less likely to draw attention?”

  Lilou shrugged.

  “Jane Smith. Susan Jones.”

  “What’s wrong with Gloria Minogue?” Lilou didn’t like places like this. The airport was bustling with hundreds, perhaps thousands of people, snaking lines of them queuing in front of counters, many more drifting toward passport control and the departure lounge that lay beyond. The noise in the vast enclosed space was constant, with public address announcements adding to the cacophony. Children ran screaming and laughing, the hum-hum of wheeled suitcases vibrated through the floor, and wherever she looked she felt a hundred sets of eyes on her. She caught a man’s stare, a woman’s gaze, a
child’s frank glare.

  Lilou had reined herself in as much as possible, because she’d known what this place was going to be like, but she could do nothing about her natural beauty. Her unnatural charm and allure was something she could control, to an extent, but the weight of her years, the depth of experience in her eyes and face, were parts of her she could not change.

  “It’s not the most innocuous of names.”

  “Why? I should be so lucky?” Lilou smiled at Meloy’s quizzical glance. Just because she was Kin didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy human culture. Music was close to her heart, and always had been from her early days when she enjoyed the entertainment provided by traveling minstrels and wandering troubadours.

  “Oh, right,” Meloy said.

  “What if I told you she was a fairy?”

  “Huh?” His eyes went wide. Shock relaxed his features, stripping away a surface sheen that helped her see more of the real him. She couldn’t help but like what she saw. Meloy was full of bluff and bluster, a veneer that hid a deep air of menace, but at his heart he still possessed the wonder of an innocent.

  “Joke,” she said.

  Meloy chuckled. She liked that about him, too. After all he had seen and been through, he could still find lightness in life. He held his chest and groaned a little. Echoes of the knife wound would likely trouble him forever.

  “Still, you’re sure?” he asked, quieter now that they were about to be called to check-in.

  “Trust me,” Lilou said. She projected confidence, but inside she was nervous. She had not flown for almost thirty years, and many things had changed in that time. Security here was tight. She couldn’t allow any foolish mistakes to trip her up. “Anyway, what’s your name?”

  “You know my name,” Meloy said. “Best way of getting into trouble is making one up. Eh, Lilou?”

  “The name is Gloria,” she said. She looked down at her feet. Everything about this was strange, but she had brought it upon herself. Out of the small group allied around the fallen Nephilim Mallian, she was the one best suited to travel, and the Kin most comfortable in human company. She didn’t like to dwell too much on how tied in it was with her raison d’être as a sexual creature, a nymph whose basic instincts were to seduce.