Heir of Earth (Forgotten Gods)

by Rosemary Clair

  “Great. So I’m a mutt?” I tossed my hands into the air and then crossed them at my chest.

  “No.” His answer was quick and he shook his head with eyes so wide they pulled back to his temples. “You’ve got more power in you than I have ever seen in my world.”

  “You’re wrong. You have to be,” I said grabbing my head in my hands, trying to keep the pieces of my world from falling around me. “I can’t be. I’m…I’m normal. There’s nothing special about me.”

  “Come on, Faye, you and I both know that’s a lie you try to make everyone else believe. This is me you’re talking to. I know your secrets. I know how hard it is for you to be normal.” He tucked his head down and looked at me.

  He was right. I wasn’t a normal teenager. I tried so desperately to be normal, but despite my best attempts I would never be like everyone else. All I could do was fake it. I could hide my secrets away from those around me and try to be something I wasn’t. Even if the world believed me, my life would never be anything more than a big fat lie.

  I shook my head at him and curled my knees into my chest. He shifted nervously beside me, moving to rest a hand on my shoulder, but stopping in mid air and pulling it back. Crossing his arms over his knees, he sighed loudly.

  “Okay, then, if it isn’t magic, you tell me how you managed to put your arm in the fire and not get burned?” Dayne’s words were soft, but firm, clearly not ready to give up the fight.

  “I was born without developed nerve ending in my hands. I’ve never been able to feel heat.” I babbled the same excuse I had always used, the reason why I couldn’t feel the heat. There was only one problem with that.

  “Okay, so science can explain why you don’t feel the heat. That doesn’t explain why it doesn’t char your flesh like a normal human, though. Does it?” He cocked his brow at me, knowing I didn’t have an answer for him. All I could do was shake my head and stare at the fire. No, I didn’t have an answer for that. Neither did modern medical science.

  I reached over and picked up one of the smoldering coals that had tumbled from the pile of debris burning in front of us. I didn’t even flinch, didn’t feel the tiniest pin prick of pain when the coal began to sizzle against my skin. I crumbled the charred wood in my hands and released a smoking pile of ash spilling to the ground. Again, I opened my hand to find nothing but the black stain of soot.

  Yep, I was a freak all right. A total freak.

  “Can you do that?” I asked, still staring at the pile of burned wood beside me.

  “Uh-uh,” he said shaking his head. “I don’t have that power. Few do.”

  “What power?” I asked and turned to face him. He drew his knees up in front of him and the amber glow cast shadows across his face.

  “Some people call it elemental, others would say you can talk to the earth.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Most believe that the world is controlled by four main elements—the earth that shelters us, the air that gives us life, the water that makes us grow, and the fire that destroys it all. If you can talk to the earth, you can control these. If you can control these, you can control the earth.”

  “Do many Sidhe talk to the earth?”

  “None. There hasn’t been a Sidhe to wield your power in ages. Fire walking is only found in our legends, from a time before LisTirna. And I’m guessing if you have fire and air, you probably have the other two as well,” he said as he poked his finger into the pile of ash I had just created. Chills raced over my body.

  “I don’t control the air and I’m not controlling fire. It just isn’t burning me for some odd reason,” I said, reaching out and holding the tip of a finger in the flames. After a few seconds I pulled my finger away and the tip of it continued to burn like a lighted match. I blew gently and the fire extinguished.

  “Um…yeah you can,” he said tightly as he looked away from me with a guilty expression on his face. He bit at his lip, waiting for my reaction. I said nothing and he continued. “So, I knew there was something different about you the night Ali was born, but you confirmed it the morning after I found you in the woods. The morning I told you there could never be anything between us?” Of course, I remembered that morning despite my best attempts to forget it. He didn’t have to ask. It was the worst morning of my life.

  “Yeah, I was really mad at you, but that doesn’t mean I controlled the earth.” I rolled my eyes sarcastically.

  “But you did. That breeze that kicked up out of nowhere?” He tucked his head and squinted his eyes, waiting for me to remember. “That was you. I heard your voice on the wind and that’s when I knew.” He sighed and his eyes fell away from mine, back down to the ground where they stayed.

  “You’ve known this all along?” I jumped to my feet, suddenly furious with him for lying to me. For keeping such a secret from me. How could he? I began flying around the fire, its flames seeming to stoke with my rage, unable to move fast enough to get away from the anger that was growing inside me.

  “I only wanted what was best for you.” His body went limp like a rag-doll when he saw how angry I was. “I thought your life would be better…easier…if you didn’t know these things.” Regret wrinkled his brow, but for once, I didn’t want to make it go away.

  “How could you do this to me?” My voice cracked and I knew the tears were coming. “You know how much I hate my life. That night I told you how awful my life was. You knew exactly why things were so horrible, but yet you sat there listening and said nothing?” Tears were filling my eyes, making it hard to see anything other than the bright orange flames against the black night sky.

  “No, Faye.” Dayne jumped to his feet and walked over to me. He tried to put his hands on me but I broke free of his embrace and stood rigidly straight, daring him to try it again. “I thought I was saving you.” His voice was pitiful, but I didn’t care. “If you never knew the truth you could live a normal life and never have to be like me. You don’t want this life. I know you don’t.” He moved to put his arms around me, but stopped, knowing by the hard look on my face that wasn’t what I wanted, or needed, right now.

  “I thought you couldn’t lie, fairy!” I yelled at him so loudly my throat burned.

  “I didn’t lie.” His voice was eerily calm and he stood straight to his full height looking over me into the black night. “I just didn’t tell the whole truth. I was protecting you.”

  “But you can’t keep something like that from me. If you knew something like that, you should have told me!” I stormed away from him and resumed my pacing, tossing my hands wildly into the air around me as I made my case. “Do you have any idea how hard it is for me? Living the life I do? Never fitting in anywhere? Always having to pretend to be something I’m not? How could you keep something like that from me?” I shook my head as I stared at the stone statue of a man before me. He heard the way my voice cracked around the tears that were choking high up in my throat and he looked over to me, his face softened by my pain.

  “Because, Faye, you have the life I have always dreamed of living.” The fire danced on the side of his face, casting the contours of his profile into sharp relief but he remained stock still like a bronzed work of art. “You have the freedom to live as a normal human. Don’t you see the gift you have? I was trying to save you. I was trying to keep you from becoming what I am.”

  “That wasn’t your decision to make!” I screamed at him, punching both fists behind me and leaning forward to him like a downhill skier. We both stood motionless, the dim amber flames flickering silently over our angry faces.

  “Ugh!” I finally screamed through clenched teeth when he offered nothing but a blank stare. My mind was racing and before I knew it my feet were following, running off into the dark night.

  “Faye, wait…” I heard him calling behind me, but I didn’t care. I didn’t stop. I kept on running and for once he didn’t follow me.

  I ran blindly through the field by memory, recalling how it had looked before the sun went
down. After a few moments, my eyes adjusted to the absence of light and the shape of a large oak tree appeared on the horizon. I ran to it, and when I finally reached the point I had been focusing on, I crashed at its roots and the waterfall of tears began to pour from my eyes. I couldn’t believe what my life was becoming—how wrong I had been about everything.

  No wonder I was so horrible at being normal. No wonder everything about me seemed to be some glaring neon “NO!” sign. I wasn’t supposed to be living this life. This wasn’t me. I was supposed to be in some world far away, some world where maybe my parents would love me, and I would have friends and everything just didn’t have to be so hard. A place where life could actually work for me. A place where I didn’t have to hide who I was.

  It was like everything I had known, or thought I knew, was gone. Whisked away in an instant by his words. Crushed by a secret he had been keeping from me. Everything about my life suddenly felt like a lie. A big fat lie that had taken away everything and left nothing but crumbled walls in its place. How was I supposed to find my way out of this? How was I supposed to live a life that wasn’t mine, trapped in a world where I didn’t belong?

  This just wasn’t where my life was supposed to be. Sure, I had wanted to start over. I had wanted Ireland to be the beginning of the rest of my life, but I had envisioned growing up, coming out of my shell, not finding out I was some otherworldly creature that would never belong. That wasn’t what I wanted to be.

  I wiped at the tears flowing down my face, using both sides of my hand and even the tattered scraps of my shirtsleeve. The charred remains fluttered in the breeze.

  I knew then it didn’t matter what I did or did not want to be. It had never mattered. All the desperate late night prayers to God, asking him to take away my affliction and just let me be normal, all the tears that had fallen from my eyes lamenting the ways I failed in life, all the desperate hopes and dreams that one day things would change and I would be okay. They didn’t matter. None of it mattered. I couldn’t change who I was. I could only accept it.

  I held my breath, not wanting to cry anymore. The bark at my back dug into my head as I rolled it back and forth, needing the pain to remind me I was still in the real world and this wasn’t a dream. The glow of the fire burned on the horizon, but as I looked up all I could see were the huge branches, bending over me, protecting me from the night. My whining sobs slowed to heavy, shallow pants, and I knew I had reached the bottom of my pathetic life. It couldn’t get any worse, and there certainly wasn’t anywhere else to fall.

  The chill of night wrapped around me, making the trail of tears feel like ice water on my cheeks. I brought my knees into my chest, needing their warmth and comfort. I tried to mourn all I was losing in my human life. But despite all the things that flashed through my mind, the tears stopped coming and I had to ask myself—was I really that sad to see it go? Aside from my family, the answer was a resounding ‘No’. I reached out for the cool grass under me while my mind quickly thought about what this new life could potentially bring.

  The images of the beautiful woman from Ennishlough’s walls flashed through my mind and I began to relax against the tree. An old picture I had once seen of Marilyn Monroe smiling while a breeze blew her white dress high into the air and everyone around hung adoringly on her every word made a surreal chuckle puff over my lips. I could be all that and more if I wanted. I could live the life most women only dreamed of.

  On top of that…I had Dayne, and even though I was still mad at him, he was really all that mattered. All I didn’t want to lose. He was the only one in my life who had ever known everything about me, had ever known my whole truth. Despite all my human shortcomings, he wanted me.

  I absently traced my lips with my fingers as I thought about what else this revelation had given me—like the answers I finally had to the questions that had always circled around my mind. I finally knew my life was so wrong because a human life wasn’t really my life at all. While part of me was utterly shattered to learn that the life I had always craved was never going to be a possibility, the larger part of me was relieved. Relieved that I no longer had to pretend at a life I would never be any good at. Relieved that the expectations of a normal human life were no longer the standard by which I would be judged.

  But the biggest relief? I wasn’t alone anymore.

  With Dayne beside me, I knew I could do anything, and a whole new world of possibilities began to open up before me. I had a brand new life waiting for me that humans would never be able to comprehend, let alone imagine. Who knows what I might be capable of with Dayne to show me how to escape the limitations of being merely human? My eyes went wide and the black cloth of night began to look like a blank canvas just waiting to be painted with the colors of my new life.

  I was no longer capable of failing at anything. I wasn’t capable of disappointing, or falling short or even sinking to the miserable dregs of social society. I would win at life from this day forward, no matter what crossed my path. This time, nothing could stop me, not even the world itself.

  I weighed my options and made up my mind. There was no turning back.

  “Dayne?” I whispered his name because I knew he wouldn’t be far.

  “Yes?” His voice answered from the shadows, just as I knew it would.

  “Show me,” I said as I let go of my old life. His body appeared before me in the darkness, his silhouette outlined against the fading amber glow of the fire in the distance. Through the blackness, my eyes found his. I crashed into his chest with a sudden blow as his arms swallowed me in a huge embrace. The beat of his heart thumped hard on my chest. With a heavy triple beat, my own heart raced to catch up with his, syncing itself with Dayne’s.

  Phin’s words from all those afternoons ago came back to me.

  That first life wasn’t meant to be mine.

  For the second time that summer, I let go of my past and clung a future I could’ve never imagined.

  Chapter 22

  Not Supposed To Break Down

  I had known the secrets of Dayne’s world for about two weeks. Which was long enough to convince myself that he was right—I didn’t belong in my world anymore than he did—but still not long enough for me to forget the realities of being human. A day didn’t pass where, at least once, I felt like my life had been tossed into a blender and set on liquefy. Still, if you took away all the weird stuff, like finding out I wasn’t human and that my perfect boyfriend was actually a fairy who was guarding the portal to an alternate realm where magic roamed free…life was pretty good, and I found myself constantly waiting for something bad to happen.

  Tiny bruises had appeared up and down my thigh from where I had to pinch myself on a daily basis. After revealing all his secrets that night by the fire, Dayne and I had found another level of our relationship, a deeper level that probably wasn’t possible for humans to comprehend. Whenever we saw each other after having been apart, it was like a dam was released in us, the agony of being apart flooding out and pushing us together so violently it probably embarrassed anyone who might be watching. I had a boyfriend. A really hot boyfriend. That wasn’t something I ever expected. Good things just didn’t happen to me. At least they never had happened to me in the past.

  The entire town seemed to be watching our every move, like we had just stepped into the limelight of paparazzi flash bulbs and check–out line gossip rags, but they weren’t cruel like I expected them to be. They were actually nice. Well, everyone except the handful of girls who wished it was them. Either way, it was a huge change from the usual stories that kept tongues wagging about Dayne. I guess dating me made him more normal in the eyes of Clonlea. I wondered what they would say if they knew the truth.

  My work life changed almost over night. I still left for the barn at am sharp every morning, just as before, but when the boss asked me to go for a ride with him, Phin couldn’t say no. I didn’t neglect my job. I just ended up staying at the barn long after Phin and Lucas went home, which didn’t bot
her me at all because it meant more time with Dayne. He kept me company while I finished my chores and drove me home when I was done.

  He was watching me finish up one day when the bad thing I had been waiting for finally happened and brought the dose of reality I had been expecting into our impossibly perfect fairytale.

  It was a hot day near the end of June, as ordinary as any of the other days that had passed since we shared each other’s secrets.

  He was sitting on a hay bale near the wash rack while I cleaned the tack I had ridden in that day. We had already taken LeSheen and Lisana for their morning ride and eaten a delicious lunch that Loren had prepared for us—a feast compared to the fare Phin usually offered at the barn. Of course, Dayne had already stolen every kiss he could when Phin and Lucas weren’t looking. By all accounts, it was just an ordinary day in my new world when everything came screeching to a halt.

  It was the simplest of gestures, but it changed our world completely.

  I was walking by him, a bridle slung over my shoulder and a heavy saddle draped over my arms. A breeze caught my hair and sent blonde curls spilling into my face, making it almost impossible to see where I was going. It was really impractical to wear my hair down while working at a barn, but Dayne insisted I always leave it loose and flowing.

  “Can you get this piece of hair?” I asked, blowing at a pesky curl that refused to find its way back where it belonged.

  “Gladly,” he said, smiling as he reached up to tuck the curl behind my ear.

  His fingertips brushed against my face, and it felt like he had sliced my cheek open with a knife.

  “Ouch!” I screamed and dropped the heavy saddle to the ground, clutching my face and running to the bathroom inside Phin’s office.

  Dayne was right behind me every step of the way.

  “What’s wrong, Faye? What happened?”

  I couldn’t answer his questions. The pain radiated across my face and burned like he had set fire to my skin. When I pulled my hand away to look at it in the tiny bathroom mirror, I expected to see blood dripping from a huge gash sliced across my cheek.