Relics--The Folded Land

by Tim Lebbon

  “I hate you,” Angela said as Mallian ran past them toward their Jeep. He glanced at her. He’d heard, and that was the only satisfaction she could take from this.

  Behind them, she heard the sound of the Jeep being beaten out of action by the Nephilim. Then a few pounding footsteps, a rustle of branches and undergrowth, and he was gone.

  “We’ve got to get the fuck away from here,” Meloy said. “Now.”

  “What’s four more dead bodies to my name?” Angela said. Then she spun on Lilou. “You’ve got some explaining to do.”

  “I will explain,” Lilou said, “but not here. Just know that I’m sorry.”

  Hearing “sorry” from the nymph made Angela angrier than if she’d fought back. She started to spit out a reply.

  “I can follow,” a voice said.

  Angela glanced around and Ahara was with them, standing behind Meloy at the edge of the road.

  “How?” Angela asked.

  “I have the Kin-killer’s scent now. I can follow, but we have to hurry, because the trail won’t last forever.”

  “We need a new car,” Meloy said, looking around at the three wrecked vehicles. Bodies lay bloodied and mutilated in the road.

  “Across the fields,” Ahara said. “This way. A farmstead.”

  As the wisp left the road, glowing into the rows of fruit trees, Angela tilted her head to the sound of distant engines. “Someone’s coming.”

  They jumped across the ditch and entered the trees. Hope was slipping away, but the recognition Angela had seen in Sammi’s eyes meant that she had to grasp onto it with both hands.

  24

  He is shut away from the eyes of the world.

  The brief exposure to American sun felt good, and even though only for a short time, it allowed him to sense the vastness of this land, the epic scale and scope of its landscape. The countless places there are to hide. He might never return to London—he has yet to decide—but if he does leave his longtime home behind forever, he knows that this new world will afford him a suitable place to continue his plans. Plans that are drawing toward an important juncture.

  Meanwhile, though she gave herself to the cause of Ascent, he cannot help but mourn Jilaria Bran.

  The van sways and rocks as it heads toward a safe place nearby, and in the darkness of its interior, he remembers some of their times together, both good and bad. They were not always friends. Once, he was more inclined to protect the humans than to harm them, and Jilaria Bran chided him for what she thought of as his weakness.

  In troubled times along the borderlands between England and Wales, with French nobles building castles and probing into the Welsh mountains, Jilaria Bran plied her trade. Luring unsuspecting travelers, peasants, and French soldiers into her clutches with promises of salvation or revenge, she built a grisly store of human body parts with which to experiment in the magical arts. She fed and entertained them first, and made love to some, never letting them spill their seed inside her but collecting it for use in strange potions. After a time—sometimes hours, other times days— she killed them and took them apart.

  Useful portions she treated and stored, pickling some in vinegar, curing others in a network of deep caverns that lay beneath her shack in the woods. Those remnants she could not use were fed to her pigs. She took pleasure in telling him how her bacon was renowned in the area for its richness.

  The witch was, perhaps, the first relics collector, although one who gathered human body parts rather than Kin.

  She was careful to hide her activities, and sometimes when the moon was but a sliver and the woods were darker and more dangerous than ever she would venture out, naked, and cast her spells. She never told him what those spells were.

  “We all have our secrets,” Jilaria Bran said. “My spells are mine.” Now they would remain secrets forever.

  He saw her sometimes, back then, when he allowed himself out of hiding to prowl the deep forests of those places. By that time he had been hidden away for millennia, too large ever to pass for a normal man. But he’d found remote places to stay—caverns, ruins, deep valleys where no humans dared explore. From there he still could interact with the world, from time to time.

  He and Jilaria Bran argued about her activities. He told her they were cruel, and would attract attention to her Kin ways.

  “We have to stay hidden,” he told her. “Our time has been and gone.”

  In return, she insisted that she wasn’t about to be driven down into holes and hovels. Besides, she said, those who had cause to suspect she wasn’t human tended to disappear. Their hides, heads, and hands hung in her caves.

  Finally he left that place and headed north. He didn’t see Jilaria Bran again for almost three hundred years. In that time she did not change, but he did. He sometimes thought it was she who planted the seed of his discontent, nurturing the ideas of rebellion that would eventually manifest as Ascent.

  Now she is gone. That amazing witch, that murderess, that propagator of ideas. He asked her to give herself to the cause, and she did so without question. Mallian hopes that in her final moments she thought back to those earlier times, and recognized that she was always right.

  The humans will never be superior to the Kin.

  It is the Kin who are superior.

  He closes his eyes and his head sways as the van rocks. He knows he will not sleep. They are too close to their goal, and he feels glad that Jilaria Bran will play a vital part in events.

  But Mallian is not conflicted. He has let Gregor go, and will capture him again when the time is right.

  Soon, he thinks. That will be soon. Then I’ll crush him like the stupid, gullible human maggot he is, and Jilaria Bran and all his Kin victims can sleep avenged.

  * * *

  She is shut away from the eyes of the world.

  This is what she has always wanted, and the final part of her dream is at last coming to pass. Yet a fairy is not a solitary creature, and with eternity to spend in this Fold she has created, she will no longer be alone.

  Four Kin have come to her so far, all of them brought by the wraiths she tasked. She has let the wraiths free, as she promised. She understands that dragging them back from the beyond has meant a form of torture for them, but their joy at being released is enough to balance against that.

  She is beyond guilt.

  Joy, she can feel. Already the Fold is changing, and although there is a small route still open into and out of the real world, in here the rules and laws are flexing and adapting to her will. Time stretches and twists, and she has already been here for a hundred days. Landscapes grow and morph to her desires, and at the northern end of the Fold the rocks have stretched up into delicate arches, glittering with quartz and other fine reflective crystals, embracing a series of pools and waterfalls where a mermaid now frolics.

  Her name is Shashahanna. Until recently she was Sasha, a young woman living and working in Boston who had been human for forty years. She had a boyfriend and many other human companions, and if her reality sometimes slipped, she pulled it back, denying her true nature. She has told the fairy about her human life as a denier. Although she began her time in the Fold missing the humans she professed to love, her reality has quickly changed.

  She visits Shashahanna on occasion, watching from the high hillsides as the mermaid dips into and out of the pools, leaping across the spits of land and swimming on her back, watching herself reflected in the stone bridges arcing across the water and reveling in her newfound truth. Sometimes Shashahanna laughs, sometimes she cries tears of joy, whooping and singing songs of water and air. She is happy, and the fairy feels the reflection of her happiness in her own ancient heart.

  Further along the valley and higher up its side, a small cave has been opened up. Spread around its mouth and down the hillside are slicks of rubble and shale. She walks past from time to time, but she is content to let the dwarf Dastion do his work. It’s been a long time since he has allowed himself to dig. She hears his singing echoing
from the depths, and probing with her fairy senses she can feel down into the ground. The Fold goes deep—even she is not certain how deep, because she has allowed it to sink down and embrace depths she will likely never see—and her senses float her through the mines and hollows he has already formed.

  An expert at excavation, Dastion has moved many tons of rock. Three tunnels twist and turn into the hillside, two sunken shafts are underway, and there are levels down there where he has discovered gold, diamonds, and at least four places where the teeth of dragons are still bitten into the ground. Their clasp is sure, even in death. Dastion has marked these areas as special, and the fairy understands that they will keep him occupied for a long time to come.

  Perhaps one day he might even bring a dragon’s tooth to the surface. That will be an interesting moment. No dragon’s tooth has seen daylight since deep in the Time, and she cannot tell how such an exposure might affect the Fold.

  Times have changed.

  Dastion was brought to the Fold by the wraith of a mothman, taken from his home in a Chicago suburb. Dastion admitted to her that he was a denier, and had been for ten decades. Yet he has always been a sad dwarf, had taken to drink and drugs, his body wracked with sickness. Unhappiness marked every year of his denial, and she could not imagine a place less dwarf-like than a city, where even subterranean places crawled with the blight of humanity.

  Dastion took to the Fold more naturally than any of the three Kin who arrived before him. He has been more grateful to her, and more ready to embrace the experiment she is overseeing. She and Dastion are already friends.

  Fer the shapeshifter has taken longer to adapt. She is a fighter, and she struggled all the way into the Fold. Even after arriving she continued her fight, grasping onto her denial even as she shifted from human to beast, beast to human. Each change caused her untold agonies, and her screams echoed across the valley, bringing Dastion to the surface to see what was happening, causing Shashahanna to dive into her deepest pool so that she could not hear the sounds of distress.

  The fairy took a whole day to calm Fer down. That night the shapeshifter cried, but the following morning she awoke to the most amazing sunrise, prepared by the fairy’s magic and setting the eastern half of the Fold aflame with all colors of the rainbow, and some colors never before seen by humans.

  This made Fer see the wonderful truth. For as long as she had been a denier, her perceptions had been closed to such wonders. Her body had been human. Her true nature—the freedom to change and dance through countless permutations—had been constrained by the life she chose. The fairy understands the deniers and what they craved. However, acceptance and freedom in a world of humans meant being a human, or at least feigning humanity. It was a false existence.

  Now Fer runs through the Fold, relishing her newfound freedom, her spirit given wing. From hilltop to valley, end to end, she sprints and calls out in whatever voice her current incarnation takes. The fairy has heard the howl of a dog, the screech of a bird, the cry of a deer, the bark of a fox. Sometimes Fer runs as a human, naked and free in a world she must have imagined only in her dreams, but which she never thought she would see again. Though not of the original Time, still Fer is embracing this new Time that the fairy has granted her.

  Hengle the werewolf, the man who was Jeff, has also made himself entirely at home. He lives in a small building on the western slopes, its walls and roof raised from the ground by fairy magic. He has experienced one change here, and in that time he hunted some of the few animals that remained from the real world, to persist within the Fold.

  He will need more food, however. The fairy will create it for him. She will look after all her new friends, because they are here to keep her company.

  And more. They are here for something more. But the Fold is still young, and there is no need for her to reveal that other purpose. Not yet.

  This Time is hers, and she can take her time.

  25

  The attack came from the place Lilou least expected it.

  Still in shock at seeing Mallian, she was even more shocked at witnessing Jilaria Bran’s sacrifice to his cause. She had known the witch for some time, and though they had never been close, like all Kin who lived in a loose group there was a bond between them. Born of survival and nurtured through danger, this bond was as instinctive as breathing. It wasn’t something that could be easily forgotten.

  She was dwelling on Jilaria Bran’s death when the hands grabbed her and flung her to the ground.

  “Answers,” he breathed into her face. Meloy loved her, but Lilou more than anyone knew that love could also inspire pain, anger, and hurt. “We need answers, and now!” His weight forced her down, crushing the air from her lungs. She knew that she owed them all answers, and perhaps revealing the bigger picture might enable her to solidify her place within it.

  “I can tell you everything,” she said. “I will. Please get off me, Frederick.”

  He blinked down at her, almost close enough to kiss. She felt his breath. His anger was palpable, and she could feel him shivering. Letting her go, he stood and stepped back. As Lilou too stood, and brushed herself off, she met Angela’s gaze. Then Vince’s.

  She felt a rush of shame for misleading them.

  Lilou had been lying to them from the start.

  “I’m going to steal a car,” Vince said. “Easier on my own. You stay here and find out…” He looked at Lilou. “Everything.” He kissed Angela and moved away, heading for a large farmstead they’d come across a couple of miles from the road. They had already heard sirens, screaming from town and halting at the scene of the slaughter. They had to move soon.

  Everything depended on following Gregor’s tail.

  For now, however, sweating and panting from their run through the fruit fields, they were ready for the truth.

  “I wasn’t expecting Mallian to be here,” she said. “He sent me with you, Meloy, to track Gregor, but only because he knew Gregor would lead us to the fairy.”

  “How the fuck did he know that?”

  “Gregor is a Kin-killer, and he knows how to hunt us. Lightning strikes are a method fairies have used before for killing enemies, but in this case Grace was using them for something else. Marking Kin who have denied their heritage, it seems, then drawing them to her.”

  “Sammi’s not Kin,” Angela said.

  Lilou shrugged. She didn’t know the truth of that.

  “But why is she drawing them to her?” Angela asked.

  “Mallian believes she’s trying to remove herself from our world,” Lilou said. “Leave it all behind.”

  “Kill herself?”

  “Fairies rarely die,” Lilou said. “Mary Rock discovered that. No, it’s more likely that she is making a Fold. An alternate pocket in reality, cut off from this world. There’s a precedent for it. The story is part of Kin mythology, although there are a few still alive who remember it.”

  “Like Mallian,” Angela said.

  “Like Mallian.”

  “But why did he send you to find the fairy?” Meloy asked. “What’s his interest in her? We rescued her, she fucked off. It seems pretty obvious she doesn’t want anything to do with him, or with us.”

  “It was a mistake on his part,” Lilou said. “A misunderstanding. Mallian hoped that rescuing Grace from Mary Rock would gain her trust and confidence. Instead, she fled and came here.”

  “But why does he want her?” Meloy asked again, more forcefully.

  “Ascent,” Angela said.

  “Yes,” Lilou said. “Grace might be the last of the fairies. The only one seen in many centuries. It was assumed that most had finally died, and those who did survive into the modern era have likely removed themselves, just as Grace intends to do.”

  “They’re powerful,” Angela said. “That’s why he wants her. That’s why he rescued her from Mary Rock.”

  “More powerful than you know,” Lilou said. “Back in the Time, many of the Kin possessed forms of magic, weak and strong, eleme
ntal and transmutational. Even nymphs like me could spin spells and cast wards, though only weak ones. As time went on most of us lost the ability, and as humanity grew and cast their own spells across the world, our magic leaked away. I’ve still got a touch of it, as most Kin have. In me it manifests as little more than an instinct, an attraction. I have some control over it, but I’m a passive carrier rather than a wielder. I have little choice over what I can do, or how powerful it is.” She looked at Meloy. “You’ve witnessed it, and felt it.”

  Meloy nodded. He looked grim-faced. “And Grace?”

  “Fairies are the Kin that kept the greatest distance from the world of humans. As humanity grew, spread, and cast its influence wider and more powerfully across the globe, the fairies retreated. They found their way into hidden valleys and wild woodlands. They removed themselves, and when people started to venture even into those remote places, the fairies took themselves further. But they always kept their magic, and that’s what Mallian wants.”

  “He can’t accomplish Ascent without the fairy’s magic?” Angela asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Lilou said. “He’s been talking for a long time about revealing ourselves to humanity, and taking a new place in the world. He’s never been clear about what that new place might be, and he’s always been one step away from moving forward with Ascent. As you know, he has his supporters. There are factions in Britain, and a few over here, just waiting for his word. At the first sign Ascent is beginning, these factions will reveal themselves.”

  “How?” Angela asked.

  “In public. In the media. Some through violence. All from a position of strength.”

  “And you?” Meloy asked.

  “I’ve spent a long time on the fence,” Lilou replied. “Part of me wants what he wants, a life where hiding isn’t our main concern. Another part of me understands that our time has been and gone, and seeks to accept it.”