The Illusions In Between

by J M Robison

  Using hands to conduct spells is not necessary. Sometimes it helps with guidance if you don’t quite know how to word direction in a spell. Black Magicians need their hands to command their demons, so it’s a show of superiority if I keep mine behind my back. I’m not a Black Magician. I’m a Fae Wizard.

  I transform a portion of the rain-dome into the shape of a shark. It breaks free and swims across the air at Carlo. Still, upside-down, he swings his arms at it, shouting. The water shark opens its jaws and consumes Carlo, breaking water all around him before diving to the earth in a massive splash.

  I copy the spell, and water shark after water shark swims out of the water dome, jaws open, and mash into Carlo who sputters, fighting to breathe, arms flailing, screaming every other breath. I extract heat out of my body and multiply the intensity, letting the fire pour out of the bottom of both boots in a hot stream, where it puddles on the wet cobblestone, hissing, coursing, about to consume the entire floor of the water dome, hot enough to feel the heat even at this height.

  I illusion rainbows to arc inside the dome so from this day forward, when he sees a rainbow, he’ll remember where he saw ten more at one time. God gave us rainbows to remind the world he would never flood it again. I give Carlo rainbows now to remind him I have the power to drown him.

  I cease the water-shark deluge on Carlo–I don’t want to suffocate him–and illusion a herd of Morrias–a nightmarish horse with fangs, scales, and a snake for a tail.

  They burst to life out of the water, and rush in a graceful, downward arc to the cobbles, and back up again through the water wall.

  I’ve stopped hearing Carlo scream. Could be the roaring fire below us, the crack of thunder ever-present, or that he’s screamed his voice out.

  With the aid of thunder, I illusion lightning to arc inside the dome timed close enough that the way Carlo bucks and flails helplessly, he thinks they are real.

  I illusion many other things, too, shooting the spells off my lips, careful not to let any of them touch Carlo or he will realize they have no substance. I illusion those horseless, metal carriages I saw in Pocatello, and elephants as I saw in Noah’s ark.

  Finally, amid the thunder above and snapping flames below, I hear earnest Italian. Hanging upside down in the air, Carlo’s hands are steepled together in front of him.

  Praying.

  I contain my triumphant laughter. I’ve got one more thing for him to add to his prayers.

  I lower myself to the cobble–the fire surrounding me but not burning me–where Carlo will see me if he ever opens his eyes again. I obscure the air between us with thick mist to hide me for just a moment.

  And say one word.

  “Dragon.”

  The dragon in naked-human form appears in front of me. He’s startled and looks furiously around.

  “Varlith, it’s me.”

  His eyes focus and flick toward me. He nods once and looks all around him at the water above and around us, and the mish-mash of illusions diving in and out of it. “I was starting to think you were dead since you didn’t call for me and didn’t show up where I last saw you.”

  “I shall relay the details at another time. I need you to do something for me.”

  * * *

  I part the water wall and walk through to the other side into continued rain. A massive, chest-filling roar swells within the entire width and breadth of Rome from inside the water-dome, despite the muffling wall of rain. Joined with it comes a human scream from Carlo, and then the top of the water-dome shatters, Varlith’s heavy green body shooting straight up. Carlo’s screams go with him, clutched in Varlith’s claws.

  Or, rather, Carlo will believe they are my claws since I designed Varlith’s transition to make Carlo believe I had turned into a dragon.

  I’ve already illusioned a thousand other dragons in the sky, wings beating, fangs flashing, so Carlo will believe where there is one carrying him away, there are countless more. Varlith’s body disappears behind the blur of rain and dark. Carlo’s shout testifies his rapid descent.

  I part the water in the dome so I can see where Carlo will land, and as he nearly does so, I relocate his body safely to the cobble. I watch for him to lift his head, and after a few anxious minutes, he rises to his hands and knees.

  I release the spell of the water-dome, and the entire structure collapses on top of him. All my illusions wash away until Carlo is the only thing left in the square, curled in a ball, holding his head, and rocking incessantly.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Brynnella

  Eudora’s spell keeps off most of the rain, but soon enough we are all drenched and shivering, though forgetting the cold as we stand on the rooftop, looking across to where a massive bubble of water grows between the buildings. Clearly the work of Zadicayn. Shapes and light move around inside it, but it’s hard to see what else.

  For the next several moments, my fears mount. To be devastated with terror that my husband might have died–Jaicom won’t tell me the details of what happened–to be lifted with elation to know he’s alive, only to crash harder while I wait in limbo to know if Zadicayn will win the duel. I may not sleep for three years with how my blood rushes anxiety under my skin, which may not stop even if Zadicayn lives because I’ll always fear the Illuminati coming for him again.

  A dragon bursts through the top of the water bubble, and it takes me longer than it should through my panic to recognize Varlith. A small body falls out of the sky from where Varlith flew. The water bubble collapses. Then nothing.

  My heartbeats count the minutes, looking onward to where Zadicayn met with the Black Magician, looking at the sky, but Varlith hasn’t re-appeared. My vision rearranges in a flash, and the accompanied pop from the relocation spell has me looking, instead, over Zadicayn’s shoulder. He has me in an embrace that isn’t close enough, tight enough, and I’m sobbing into his neck. He hooks a boot around the back of my ankle to suck me in tighter.

  His ponytail has fought out of its bindings. Long black hair brushes my face, where it sticks wet and sweaty to his neck. Our bodies turn into a throb. Words tumble into my mouth so fast I can’t say any of them. I want to cry, and laugh, and run around, and stand still, at the same time.

  He’s panting and smells of sweat and rain. I crumple his tunic in both hands; my anchors. I melt into him, full absorption stopped only by clothes. I’m forever imprinted with a fear that if I lose sight of him, someone’s going to take him. I don’t know how many more near-misses my heart can take before I just die.

  Our immediate situation catches up to us. I don’t feel the cold until his body separates from mine. His hand slides along my arm and joins with my fingers, squeezing them with the intent to not let go of me until we’re back in his castle. I feel the force it takes him to let go of all of me except my hand.

  His eyes shine gold, shot through with red from tears, stress, sleeplessness, or all of the above. His gaze drops downward to the dress another man made me wear. If I had a knife, I would cut it off.

  He leads me to where I left Jaicom, Joseara, and Eudora on the edge of the roof, their backs resolutely turned to us. They must have seen my reunion with Zadicayn and cared enough to let us do it in private.

  Except for Eudora. She looks over Joseara’s shoulder, kicking and fighting to run to her father.

  “Ye can let her go, Joseara.”

  Hearing my husband talk further anchors my belief that this moment…is real.

  Joseara does so, turning around with everyone else as Eudora runs at her father with a shriek. Zadicayn sweeps her into an embrace with his free hand. She cries into his neck.

  “Ciao!” hollers a shout below us on the street. I look over the edge. Darik stands shielding the rain out of his face with one hand, a bundle of cloth pressed into his chest with the other arm. “Can I get some help up there?”

  Zadicayn takes a breath as if to speak the spell himself, but Eudora beats him to it, and Darik appears before us, looking unsettled for being reloc
ated with magic.

  He hands the cloth bundle to me. “Your son.”

  I take my son in both arms. In my embrace, Levi cries. Having endured the cold and the rain so far, the aching sadness and misery in him finally shake loose against me as if having waited on me to do just that, clutching my dress with tiny hands. Zadicayn scoops us both with one arm, kissing his son’s head. Zadicayn’s breathing becomes heavy in a massive effort not to cry.

  “Follow me,” he says, pulling gently at my hand. “Let us get out of the rain and recover for our travels home.”

  Home now feels like a magical place, as unique and far away as the Fae Realm had once been for me. I don’t know where Zadicayn is leading us, but I follow without protest. I’ll follow him anywhere.

  He relocates us off the roof and takes the lead. I’m shivering violently, rain water dragging heavy on my dress, so it sags into the puddles I step through. I try covering Levi’s little head with the sodden blanket around him, but he cries anyway. We walk toward the area where I watched Zadicayn’s massive water bubble appear and disappear. He walks me through a narrow alley which opens into a massive square. He turns left and goes through a door. We drag water inside, puddles growing beneath us on the marble. The room is of a typical Roman architecture with columns and marble, though dusty with a musty air of disuse. We skirt around old furniture laced with cobwebs.

  Zadicayn steers us into a back room and another door opened above a wood stair. He leads me down, not letting go of my hand. He keeps Eudora in his other arm, and he must be fatigued with her weight but holds resolutely onto her, too. Eudora produces a fire ball, shedding enough light to walk by.

  Several turns and earthen hallways later, we come upon an underground room, and I’m not the only one who stops short with a startled gasp.

  Things stand on either side of what looks like a tear in the world, where two white pillars graced with black lacey lines appear to be under construction. I don’t know what the creatures are. They stand on two legs, have four arms, and a head too small for their white-furred bodies also swirled with black lines.

  Some other creature I can’t identify stands in the tear, fingers caressing the white pillars. It appears, tracing the black lines. In response, the pillars grow upward, curving as if to connect and form an arch. If it does, it will look exactly like the Fae Arches we use to enter and exit out of the Fae Realm.

  “What a relief,” Jaicom says. “We can travel back on the Fae side, right?”

  Zadicayn nods.

  “What happened?” I ask, watching the Fae Arch grow.

  “We art below the Pantheon. ‘Tis where I fell after I saw ye. Eudora relocated to me through the Fae Realm–don’t ask me how. The result was a tear, creating this window between the Human and Fae Realm. The Fae art creating an Arch to fix it. Apparently, it can’t be repaired any other way.”

  I’ve more questions to ask him, though am afraid of the answers. What happened after I watched him fall through the floor? When Jaicom rejoined me on the roof top, he said some glib thing about Zadicayn being alive and, “He will tell you what happened.” Maybe I don’t want to know. My imagination does well filling in all the gaps for me without proof to back them up.

  Zadicayn sets Eudora down where she’d fallen asleep on his shoulder during the walk. She wakes up with a grumble.

  “We shall have to wait until the Arch finishes growing,” Zadicayn says. “For now, let’s dry, warm, and sleep a bit.” His shivering agrees with him and all of us.

  Without any kindling, he grows a fire from the dirt like a blossom, relocating the smoke up and across the ceiling and down the passageway we entered by. We all gather around the fire, peeling off outer layers of clothes. There’s no hope for me. As much as I want to undress and dry, there’s more than just my husband with us.

  Zadicayn looks at me and sees my predicament. Levi’s crying has turned to a whimper. I need to get him dry, and he’s likely very hungry. Another thing I can’t do in present company. Zadicayn touches my elbow and points into the darkness, guiding me forward. We go deeper down the passage, around a corner, and out of sight of the others.

  He kneels, growing another fire just for us, next moving behind me where he tugs and pulls to unlace the back of my corset. It comes free in a single movement, and I know he opted to cut the laces off instead. It reminds me of six years ago when Joseara knifed the dress off me because I thought to walk across Valemorren in heavy wool and heeled shoes while on my way to discover Zadicayn and this new life of mine.

  The massive gold tent sinks to my feet. I hand Levi over so I can peel every layer off until all that remains is my long white shift.

  Minus a hundred layers, the warmth from the fire reaches me. I take Levi from Zadicayn and sit down to feed him. He removes his shirt and spells it to hang in the air near the fire to dry, his red amulet swaying across his neck when he moves. He turns his back to me, and I look away. Even after six years, I can’t stand seeing the three scars forming a triangle on his back, where the three blood diamonds punched through flesh to suck his blood and seal him beneath the undercroft of our castle.

  He picks up my heavy dress and turns it around, talking to it. Water seeps out of the dress like rain. It’s dry within a few moments. He spreads it on the ground and lays a sleepy Eudora on it, covering her with a corner.

  Warm, dry, fed, and rejoined with his family, Levi falls asleep mid-suckle. I lay him on the dress and cover him as well. I turn back to Zadicayn, who’s lying on his side and propped up with one elbow, watching me with unblinking, gold eyes magnified in the firelight. Without looking behind him, he illusions a solid wall of blue to reach both sides and top to bottom of the passage. Someone could be standing on the other side and not see us. He winks.

  My heart has been hammering non-stop with anxiety and terror since I was first brought to Rome, but this moment summons a different heartbeat–one of frothy heat and energy, despite my weary and a tight grip of my jaw. “We’ll wake the children.”

  He tilts his head. He’s keeping his eyes gold on purpose because he knows how strongly that allures me. “Best whisper my name, then.”

  Many more excuses rise to the surface: can’t it wait? Jaicom, Joseara, and Darik are not thirty steps that direction; I haven’t had a proper bath since…

  But he doesn’t care about any of those. And in the end, neither do I.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Darik

  Joseara, shameless before her company, removes everything except her bare underthings, stretching her other garments out to dry by the fire, propping them on chunks of brick and stone where available. Jaicom turns his back on her and the fire, using his wet coat as a pillow. He’s remained fully dressed otherwise, something he’s sure to regret in a few hours.

  I hesitate a moment before removing my clothing as well because I don’t want to nurse chaffed thighs in a few hours. I laugh quietly to myself. Suppose me and Joseara have been doing it backwards: we slept together fully clothed mere hours after we met, only to now get near naked yet not touch each other, and all that without any mention of a relationship.

  I remain in a sorry piece of underwear which does a better job at ventilation than a harness. Joseara watches the fire, seemingly uncaring of her own undress and not bothered by my own. The truth is, we’re all wet and need to dry, and there is no other way of doing it.

  Except I’m certain her heart is not kicking like a restless foal as mine is.

  I’d eluded the idea of family because I’d given up hope of ever having one; content to live and die at the hands of the Camorra. That is until I saw the man who trekked across Europe, who fell into the hands of the Illuminati to be exsanguinated, only to rise and conquer his enemies.

  All to get his wife back.

  Oh! If I had a woman who could hold me under such raw power as to tell me to block out the sun because she had a headache, I’d flail the skin off a thousand men and sew them into a canvass to stretch across the sky!


  Or just bring her indoors out of the sunlight.

  Would be much quicker.

  I cast an uneasy glance behind me, to those creatures constructing what Zadicayn called a Fae Arch, and the tear in the air as if through a blanket; actual sunlight spills from it, and birds flit by on the other side. Apparently, they are going to use it to get back to England. Joseara will be leaving with them. I’ve no way to ask her to stay with me a little longer.

  “Excited to get home?” I ask her, though I know the obvious answer.

  She shrugs.

  “Rome romanced you away that quick, eh?” I wink at her, though her eyes are down and she doesn’t see.

  She shakes her head and shifts around unnecessarily. I sense an English girl’s secret to soon be recorded on these ancient Roman walls. “I don’t really have a home.”

  I recall back to our night-long conversation on the roof overlooking the Pantheon. I chew on my tongue to mash the nerves out of my voice. “What are you going back to, then?”

  Her eyes flick up at me and then back down. “The Fae Realm, I suppose.”

  Her brief glance sparks an unspoken question. Does she want me to ask her to stay with me? My fingers flex in and out of fists. No. That’s not what her glance asked. I don’t have a job that pays enough to care for her. I don’t have but a broom closet to sleep.

  My heart thrums in my throat, but I can’t force the words to my mouth. Would she stay with me anyway, despite my lack of money and a decent place to sleep? Would I want to do that to her? Would she soon tire of my insignificants and leave after all? Should I ask to go with her to the Fae Realm? But if she wanted me to go with her, she would ask, right? Should I dare and ask her anyway?

  “Darik, you look like you want to say something.”