by Kate Sparkes
As I reached the last row of chairs, I began to read aloud. Quietly at first, then growing louder as my anger gave me confidence. A poem from the middle, in which the centaur was a metaphor for the unity of man and beast. I didn’t remember seeing that in the newer version at all.
Verelle stopped speaking and watched me, her mouth twisted into a tight smile.
At least I have her attention. I paged back.
“‘And in those days the monsters roamed the land,’” I read, voice only trembling slightly. Everyone turned to watch as I approached and stopped several paces from the bottom step. “‘Living as animals, without understanding. The humans came among them, living in peace, sharing the words of the Mother.’” I looked up at her and met her eyes. “What peace did you bring to the last world you nearly destroyed, Verelle?”
Even up close, it was hard to read her expression. She appeared interested, even somewhat amused, but irritated. Trying, I suspected, to decide whether to make an example of me right away or let me dig my own grave a little deeper.
“Where did you get that, child?”
I wanted to turn to address the people, but I needed her full attention. I refused to look into her eyes even as I felt her in my thoughts, observing them. I hoped my anger burned her.
“I visited Elurien,” I told her. “I arrived as you left.”
One finely shaped eyebrow arched. “Was that you? I owe you thanks for opening the door.” She raised her arms. “All of my people owe you thanks!”
A few applauded uncertainly behind me.
“This isn’t the message that the people were reading when I was there,” I said, and pointed the book at her. “How old are you, Verelle? How many generations did it take you to reshape these words and the beliefs that came from them?” I stepped closer. “Was it hard to convince the priests to omit the message of peace and include one of cruelty? Or did it only take a display of your so-called divine power?”
She shrugged. Apparently bad-guy blabbermouth wasn’t her thing. Too bad for me.
“The spark is bullshit,” I continued, “but you made them believe. It’s most impressive.”
Verelle chuckled. “We all carry the spark. Every human here before me. Even you.”
A dark shape flew up to the roof of the building behind her. I didn’t let myself consciously note it.
A thought struck me. “Do you ever laugh at the perfect absurdity of it all?”
She frowned.
“You’re so concerned with humans, with convincing them that they’re the rulers of your world… but look at you. What you call a divine spark is really an accident of birth, isn’t it? Your magic is impressive, no doubt. But no goddess who intended people to live by this—” I shook the book at her “—would ever purposely give such power to someone who would use it as you have. You’re an inhuman oddity just as much as the monsters you hate so much.”
Her eyes flashed, and she bared her teeth. “How dare you? I am the pinnacle of what is human. I am eternal, undying, blessed.”
“As no natural human is,” I concluded for her. “Yet you used your power for your own selfish purposes, to gain power and create slaves.” For the benefit of the audience sitting silent behind me, I added, “You tortured innocent creatures for the sake of your own sick pleasure. Is that why your dear Mother blessed you? To bring suffering to her world?”
“Liar,” Verelle spat.
Murmurs spread through the crowd behind me as I flipped to a passage I’d once misunderstood.
“‘Beware the liar,’” I read, louder now. “‘The disrupter, who seems to come in peace. Beware the true monster, fair of face and black of heart, with words of honey and claws of poison.’ That’s you, isn’t it? When the Mother of your world first whispered words into the ears of humans, she warned them about you. Was this the first passage you had removed?”
Verelle’s pale cheeks reddened. She raised a hand. A familiar feline form prowled onto the steps behind her, but again I ignored it. And so did the soldiers, who were as focused on me as Verelle was.
“Go ahead,” I yelled, and spread my arms wide. “Shut me up. Show them how afraid you are of the truth coming out. Did you think you could have a fresh start here?”
Verelle wasn’t so pretty when rage gripped her. She screamed and lowered her hand. At the same time, a massive shape flew at me from my right and hit me hard, sending me crashing to the ground several metres away. My head hit the concrete sidewalk, sending shooting stars across my vision, but I pushed myself to my feet and stumbled to the bottom of the steps, where Auphel was slumped in a motionless heap, struck by whatever the sorceress had intended for me. Her battle axe lay useless at Verelle’s feet.
I stumbled to Auphel and rolled her onto her back. She was breathing but unconscious, eyes staring up into the clouds.
I glared up at Verelle, who stood unharmed, shock painted plainly across her face.
The soldiers roused themselves then, as Verelle realized she was under attack. Jaid leapt at one and tore his throat out, leaving him bleeding as she met the other blade to blade.
Verelle looked to the sky as though to call for her other warriors, and found a very different winged shape descending, sword drawn.
She gasped, and the anger left her face as he landed. “My angel. You’ve returned to me.”
Something caught in her voice then. I hated to think it was sadness. She had no right to feel that. Or regret. She was only allowed to be the bad guy, and I was happier without any shades of grey there.
“It’s over, Verelle,” Zinian said. “You put up a worthy fight, but for far too long.”
“Zinian,” she said, with nauseating tenderness. “I tried to make you happy.”
He snarled. “You failed.”
“Yet I heard so few complaints, my darling.”
She reached out a hand and wiggled her fingers, and Auphel’s back arched in a spasm. She groaned. With a flick of Verelle’s wrist, I felt it too. I gasped as electric pain radiated from my heart to the tips of my limbs, and my jaw clenched tight. I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t breathe.
Zinian bared his teeth and drew his sword. Verelle laughed and turned the blade aside with her magic, as though pushing away a child’s toy.
“You were always so endearingly noble about monsters,” she said. Auphel groaned as another spasm gripped her. Verelle’s expression grew cold. “Toss your sword aside, or these friends of yours die.”
Zinian looked at us, hesitating, then growled in frustration. His sword clattered to the boards and slid off into the bushes.
No. I fought to stay conscious, to draw a breath and yell for him to attack.
Auphel lay still as Verelle’s attention turned completely on Zinian. My own pain disappeared, leaving me trembling, but intact. Verelle had found a more interesting playmate. I tried to get to my feet, but my legs collapsed under me.
“That’s better,” Verelle said to him, and smiled. “What a mess this has become. I trusted you, my angel. It broke my heart when you betrayed me, and an ancient heart is not an easy thing to harm. But now you’re here, which means you’ve found a way home. Come home with me. It will be different this time.” She tilted her head again, an innocent gesture I was already getting sick of.
Behind them, Jaid took a blade to the arm and screamed in rage. Zinian didn’t look, and I wondered whether Verelle might be soothing his emotions, making him forget us as she’d made the people of Fairbrook forget those who had been lost.
Auphel stirred, and I looked down at her. “Shhhh,” she whispered.
My throat tightened.
“Step aside now,” the ogress said softly.
I pushed away, heart in my throat. Auphel hauled herself up to a crouch and bellowed, then stumbled up the steps, wobbling drunkenly. Verelle turned and blasted her again, leaning forward with the force of her magic. Auphel fell, crashing head first to the ground with a sickening thud.
“Auphel!” I cried.
In that moment
when Verelle’s attention was diverted, Zinian lunged for Auphel’s axe. Though I would have guessed that no one short of an ogre could lift it, he grabbed the handle and swung it in a massive arc. Verelle saw it coming, but momentum brought it down hard and heavy in spite of her magic.
Time seemed to slow to near-freezing as the blade came down on the back of Verelle’s neck. I half expected it to bounce off, but it sliced clean through and slammed into the wooden boards below, shattering them.
Verelle’s golden hair flew as her head rolled and bounced down the steps, coming to a stop near my feet. She looked up at me, blinking, looking quite bewildered. Her lips twitched, trying to form words and not finding the breath to make herself heard.
Auphel took a sharp breath as her eyes snapped open. My heart leapt.
“Here,” Auphel croaked. I grabbed the head by its hair and tossed it to her. Golden hairs tangled in my fingers, and I fought back my gag reflex. Auphel twisted toward it and brought one fist down, crushing Verelle’s skull.
Everything Verelle had ever been—every hate, every lust, every bit of wasted potential—turned to pale, bloody mush.
I caught my breath as I crouched beside Auphel. She was having trouble breathing, and blood flowed like tears from her eyes. I touched her hand, and her fingers curled around mine, enveloping them in her grasp.
Jaid set her sword down and leaned against a wall to catch her breath. Her enemy had disappeared. I hoped all of the others had, as well.
Zinian stumbled down the steps and placed a hand on Auphel’s face. “You in there, soldier?”
“I’m here,” she croaked. “I’d like to sleep for a month, if that’s okay.”
Zinian let out a relieved breath. “Maybe after we get you home. Heroes deserve all the rest they want.” He patted her shoulder, then stretched his arms out and winced. “That’s going to hurt later. How do you manage to carry that axe everywhere with you?”
Auphel smiled and let out a barking cough that made me stumble away. “Guess I’m as useful as you always said I was.”
I looked around. Everyone had fled, likely when the monsters appeared. I hoped some had stayed long enough to see how they’d saved us.
Jaid’s fur bristled with excitement as she came toward us.
“It worked,” she said. “You okay, Zin?”
Zinian nodded. The dark circles under his eyes and the bend of his neck revealed his deep exhaustion, but he smiled, then laughed. “It’s over.”
Jaid stepped closer and waited, tail twitching, until I looked up at her. “You did well,” she said. “For a human and a civilian. Thank you for not giving us away.”
I smiled a little, though the shock of everything that had just happened made it feel false. “Not for all of Verelle’s power would I have given you up.”
She wrinkled her nose, lifting whiskers that were now bent and broken. “I hope you wouldn’t want that.”
I snorted. “Not even a little.”
Jaid smiled and paced away, alert for further danger. Verelle was gone, but the monsters probably felt no safer in Fairbrook than I had when I’d arrived in Elurien. They were surrounded by their own nightmare creatures here.
Zinian and I helped Auphel sit up. Her bleeding had slowed, but I wasn’t going to ask her to move until she felt ready. If the townsfolk were still disturbed by the monsters, that was their problem.
Zinian pulled me a few paces away.
“Do you feel free, now that it’s done?” I asked.
He drew in a deep breath of air that had grown thick with pre-rain mist. “I do, but not for that reason. I once thought I was chained to my past as long as Verelle lived. But after you left, I realized that her death wasn’t the key I needed.” His eyes crinkled in the corners. “It was you. The night we spent together, I lost my chains.”
Tears welled up, stinging my eyes, and I nodded. “I know what you mean,” I said, my voice hoarse. “Different chains, though.”
“I found your letter after you left.”
I winced. “You weren’t supposed to see that.”
“I’m glad I did, though it tore me apart when I realized that I felt the same way about you, and I’d let you go.” He grazed my cheek gently with the back side of a curved claw, then leaned in, stopping just before his lips touched mine. “I didn’t come here to finish Verelle. I came for you.”
I pressed my lips to his, not caring who might be staring.
Somewhere behind us, Auphel let out a weak cheer.
Chapter Eighteen
If there’s one thing to be said for Newfoundlanders (and there are so many things, really), it’s that they know how to pick up and carry on after disaster. Verelle had hit the town harder than any winter storm, but the cleanup wasn’t so different. The people banded together to rebuild.
Those who still lived, at least.
While the people of Fairbrook had been trapped on the island, a storm had blown in at the other end of the causeway, keeping Verelle’s secrets safe. There was much debate over whether to make the story public or cover it up. Would it be good for tourism, or would it frighten people away?
I didn’t participate in that discussion, but I did what I could to help while my friends recuperated in the bookstore, well away from the humans. My parents hadn’t come to visit us, and things between me and my mother remained uncomfortable at best when we met in town. I doubted I’d ever be forgiven for telling her off. Loretta Walsh knew far better than I how to hold a grudge.
My friends and I spent three more nights in the store, all of us too exhausted to do more than scarf down a meal and collapse into sleep—me from my current hard work, them from their sudden release after years of fighting.
Zinian shared the bed upstairs with me, and sleeping with his arm wrapped around my waist and his breath against my neck was heaven.
“Emergency crews inbound,” Gus Hodder commented to me on the third morning. We’d found him hiding under the grocery store’s loading dock with a broken leg the evening after Verelle’s fall.
“’Bout time,” muttered an older man who passed us. He gave me a nod. “Friends still resting?”
“They are.”
“Proper thing.” He scowled at a Coast Guard helicopter that passed overhead.
The town had kept things quiet until the most important parts of the cleanup were completed. They’d moved bodies to a refrigerated back room of the store. At least the soldiers had disappeared now that Verelle was dead, not leaving so much as a feather behind as proof they’d ever existed.
I kept my eye on a stranger in a black trenchcoat—a walking cliché of a mysterious government official if ever there was one. His dark skin appeared flat and somehow bloodless. He wore a wide-brimmed hat pulled low over his eyes, but winced and glared upward as the clouds parted and the sun broke through. He made me nervous.
I turned toward a rustling noise in the alley behind me. Zinian stood in the shadows, where they all preferred to remain, even though many of the townspeople had tried to offer our legendary hospitality to them once they’d got over their fears. Gus gave him a quick nod and hurried away.
“Outsiders are poking around,” I said to Zinian as I walked over. The man in the trenchcoat turned, squinted into the darkness behind me, and held up one finger in a clear command.
Stay.
I don’t think so. I threaded my fingers between Zinian’s, and we hurried through the alleys toward the bookstore.
Jaid was waiting on the back step with Tomie, who had become quite attached to this incredible cat-person who was able to work the can opener. As it turned out, his family had been in Florida for the winter, and the poor fellow had been forgotten in Verelle’s chaos. The spoiled creature would have all the treats he could handle soon enough.
Jaid stood as we approached.
“It’s time to go,” Zinian said.
“At last,” sighed Auphel from inside the store. She squeezed out the door and wobbled a few paces. The hits she’d taken from Ve
relle had hurt her more than I’d realized, but she would recover. She turned to Zinian with concern written in the creases of her heavy brow. “Did you ask?”
“Not yet.”
My heart skipped. I knew what the question was.
Zinian walked toward the park, and I followed. We looked out over the pond. Leaf buds had finally decided to show their faces on some of the trees, giving the park a hazy green cast. Spring was taking its time coming as it always did, with false starts and backward steps, but summer would be glorious when it finally arrived.
“I suppose everyone expects you to stay here,” Zinian said, without looking at me.
“They seem to. My uncle is already going on about plans for rebuilding the dairy bar, and I’m sure someone would put me up if things stayed too frosty at home. Things will get better for me here, I think.”
People were already treating me differently. Not like the defeated wanderer I’d expected to return as, but a hero.
Zinian nodded sadly. “Not for us, though. We need to leave before more humans come to the island.”
“I know.” Their work here was done. Asking him to stay for my sake, in a world that would see him as a monster in the most terrifying sense, would be cruel.
He pulled a key from his pocket, big and black and metallic. “If you wanted to come back to visit us, I would leave this with you. I—” He stopped himself, then turned to look at me. His brow furrowed. “The thought of never seeing you again is unbearable to me. I know these people need you, that you belong here, but I can’t leave without knowing we’ll meet again soon.”
“I know,” I said again, this time as a whisper that squeaked out around the lump in my throat.
I knew what it would cost him to leave the door open to this world of humans. He would trust me to use the new key well, but as I considered the townspeople, the stranger in the trenchcoat, and the unknown tourists who would soon flood our fair shores, I knew I couldn’t expose Elurien to the possibility of them finding it. As much as I wanted to keep the best of both worlds, I couldn’t be that selfish.