Wayfarer

by R. J. Anderson

  Paul spun his chair to face Linden and Timothy. “Right, this is what we’re going to do. Knife will keep the Blackwings distracted at the back of the house while we sneak out the front. Then I’ll drive you to the train station.”

  He didn’t even notice that he’d called her Knife, Timothy thought, and a shiver went through him at the strangeness of it. But Paul was still talking: “Linden, do you think you can cast some kind of glamour to hide us?”

  “I can try,” said Linden in a small voice. The excitement that had lit her eyes earlier had vanished; she looked tense now, and very pale.

  “The glamour you need is simple,” Rob assured her. “If you hold a picture in your mind of the front of this house as you wish it to seem, it will appear so to the Blackwings until you are safely away. The only thing that might enable them to see through your illusion is if they hear you leaving-but I can cast a spell of silence to prevent that.”

  “But what will you do when we’ve gone?” Linden asked anxiously. “How will you get away?”

  Rob’s mouth quirked, as though her concern amused him. “I will be safe enough here in this house until the Blackwings have gone. They will not sense my presence-never fear; I have my own tricks and am a match for either of them.”

  “Assuming that fat head of yours will still fit out the door when they’re gone,” said Thorn sardonically from her perch above the fireplace; but Timothy could see that she was shaken. She rose and dusted off her breeches, adding, “I’d best get back to the Oak before that blighted pair of carrion-eaters arrives. Linden, you watch yourself-and the boy, too.” And with that she heaved open the window and disappeared.

  “Timothy!” shouted Peri’s voice from the floor above, and Timothy raced down the corridor to answer. He reached the bottom of the stairs just in time to catch the glimmering object she tossed down to him-an old-fashioned iron key.

  “Thanks,” he said as he slid it into his pocket, only realizing his mistake when he saw her flinch. “Sorry.”

  “No matter,” she replied. “Old habits, that’s all.” She galloped down the rest of the stairs and pulled Timothy into a rough embrace before reaching out to do the same with Linden, who had just hurried up with the others. She stooped to kiss Paul, gave Rob a curt nod, and strode toward the back door with rifle in hand.

  “Will she be all right?” Linden asked Rob. “Will they hurt her?”

  “They have no knowledge of your history, or hers,” said Rob. “To them she will appear no more than another ignorant human shooting at them for sport: As long as they do not suspect that she is knowingly defending you, she should be safe. But enough talk. The way is clear. Go.”

  Rob’s spell of silence seemed to be working, because as Linden crept out the front door and onto the gravel drive with Timothy and Paul behind her, none of them made a sound. The car doors opened without creaking, and shut just as noiselessly; and when Paul transferred from his wheelchair into the driver’s seat and turned the key, only a slight vibration assured Linden that the engine had started at all.

  She closed her eyes and pictured the front of the House just as Rob had told her, with an empty car sitting in the drive and no humans or faeries in sight, even as in reality Paul was already easing the car out onto the road. The effort made her temples pound, though not as badly as she’d feared; after a moment she even dared to look back to see what the Blackwings were doing.

  If she craned her neck she could just make out Knife standing tensed by the side of the House, watching the ravens as they circled high above. The air between their wings shimmered, and ripples of power expanded across the Oakenwyld, breaking against the House and the great Tree.

  “They’re searching for us,” she whispered.

  Suddenly the two birds wheeled in midair and veered toward them. “They’ve spotted us!” gasped Linden, and Paul’s hand moved sharply on the controls, urging the car to greater speed. But the road was winding, and it would be all too easy for their faery pursuers to cut them off-

  Then Knife burst through the gate into the front garden, swung up her rifle, and fired.

  It was a spectacular shot. Black feathers exploded into the sky, and the lead raven shrieked and straggled downward. Immediately his brother dove after him, and the two birds plunged into the shadows of the woods.

  “Yes!” exulted Timothy from the front seat, but Linden slumped down beside Paul’s folded wheelchair and closed her eyes, shuddering. Knife had indeed saved them-but at what cost? She had only winged the raven, not killed him. And if his brother could heal his wound as Rob had healed hers last night, it might not be long before the two of them rose up to take their revenge….

  Timothy must have been thinking the same thing, because when he spoke again he sounded less confident, as though he were trying to reassure himself. “She’ll be all right. Even if they do suspect she was helping us, they won’t do anything to her. They can’t afford to waste the time.”

  Paul did not answer. His expression was grim, his eyes fixed on the road. In silence they sped away, leaving the Oakenwyld and its lone defender behind them.

  Timothy had assumed Paul would take them to the station at Aynsbridge, but his cousin had a different plan. “You’ll get away faster from Oxted,” he said, “and it’ll make it harder for the Blackwings to catch up with you. When I drop you off, just go to the information desk and tell them you want to get to Cardigan as fast as possible; they’ll tell you where to go from there.”

  “Cardigan?” asked Linden from the backseat. “Is that where we’re going?”

  “Somewhere around there.” Timothy pulled the pages out of his jacket pocket, unfolded them, and handed them back to her. “There’s a map of Wales there. See where I’ve circled Cardigan, on the coast? And the next couple of pages are the information I found about the Children of Rhys.”

  “The Plant Rhys Ddwfn, or Children of Rhys the Deep,” read Linden aloud. “A small fair folk dwelling upon the Green Isles of the Sea…came often to market at Cardigan, and paid the farmers generously in silver…” Her lips formed a soft O of comprehension.

  “Right, so that’s why I thought Cardigan would be the place to start looking,” said Timothy. “But the last page is the best of all-it’s a story about this farmer named Gruffydd who actually met the Children of Rhys.”

  He waited as Linden read over the legend, which told how the farmer had been walking through St. David’s churchyard when he noticed some beautiful green islands out at sea. He decided to sail out to the islands in his boat, but as soon as he left the church, they disappeared. Gruffydd had gone back and forth in confusion a few times before realizing that he needed to pull up some of the strange plants that grew in the churchyard and take them with him in his boat. He did so, and when he reached the islands, the Children of Rhys greeted him warmly and gave him rich gifts.

  “So if we’re going to find the Children,” said Linden slowly as she finished reading, “we have to find this churchyard and these magical plants first?”

  “I know it sounds far-fetched,” said Timothy. Then his mouth twisted wryly and he added, “Or considering that I’m talking to a faery, maybe not. But it sounds to me like the church isn’t far from Cardigan, so it can’t hurt to look, right?”

  Linden nodded, though she still looked uncertain, and Timothy couldn’t blame her. How much confidence could they have in a story that was now hundreds of years old?

  “There’s something else about the Children you should know,” she said, and went on to tell him about the conversation she and Valerian had with Rob in the Oak-including what the Empress had done to gain power over all the faeries, and how the Stone of Naming was the only way to free them. “But these legends don’t say anything about the Stone,” she finished, looking down at the pages again. “I hope Rob wasn’t mistaken….”

  “So do I,” Timothy said grimly.

  A few minutes later Paul dropped them off at the station, pressed a wad of notes into Timothy’s hand, and roared off ba
ck down the road to Oakhaven. And now Timothy stood on the platform with Linden in his backpack and Paul’s money in his wallet, watching the sign that read

  LONDON BRIDGE: 5 min.

  He hadn’t wanted to go back to London at all, especially not to the same station they’d arrived at before, but the woman at the desk said there was no help for it. “Only way to get where you’re going at this hour, love,” she’d explained as she was printing off his tickets. “And you’ve got a long enough journey ahead of you as it is.”

  It was early afternoon now, the commuter rush long past, and when Timothy boarded the train he found it more than half empty. Still, he had difficulty finding a seat where he could talk to Linden without being overheard.

  “It’s going to take us until nightfall to get to Wales,” he told her when she emerged, disheveled and blinking, from the depths of the pack. “And the train only goes as far as Aberystwyth, so we’ll have to stop there overnight and take a coach to Cardigan in the morning. But before that we’re going to have to spend something like an hour in London, getting to the station where we’ll catch our next train. And that’s what I’m worried about.”

  “Do you think the Blackwings will catch up with us?” Linden asked.

  “I doubt they can fly that fast. But they’re not our only problem, remember? All the Empress’s faeries will be looking for us. Especially if the Blackwings tell them we’re coming.”

  Linden sucked in her breath. “Can they really do that?”

  “I don’t know. But just after I met Veronica the first time, I saw her talk into her hand as she was walking away. Back then I thought that she must be using a cell phone, and I’d just missed seeing her take it out of her purse…but now I think she was using magic. That must be how she arranged for that other faery to meet me at the Trans-National and give me that card for Sanctuary-”

  He broke off to see the woman passenger on the other side of the aisle frowning at him: She obviously thought Timothy was talking to himself. Embarrassed, he bent over and pretended to be searching for something in his pack, lowering his voice to a whisper as he went on. “The point is, if they do have some way to talk to one another over a distance, then there’s a good chance the faeries in London know we’re coming, so we’ll have to be on our guard. Can you tell when another faery is around?”

  Linden shook her small head. “Valerian has that power, I think, and obviously Rob does, too, but not me. I can smell them, though, if they’re close by. Will that be good enough?”

  “It’ll have to be,” said Timothy.

  “May I come out now?” said Linden as loudly as she dared, wondering if Timothy could even hear her amid all the noise of the station. “It’s hot in here.”

  “Just wait until I’m through the turnstiles,” Timothy muttered over his shoulder. “Then I’ll find somewhere to let you out.”

  Reminding herself to be patient, Linden drew a deep breath through her nose, concentrating on all the smells filtering in to her: sweat and skin, metal and rubber, coffee and spices, all heavily overlaid with the dusty canvas of the pack and the faint soap-and-musk that was Timothy. But in all of that, not a trace of the wild, tingling scent of her fellow faeries.

  “All right, you can come out now,” said Timothy at last, and Linden wriggled out of the pack and dropped to the floor beside him, making herself human size again. By now she hardly had to concentrate at all to make herself grow, and being big felt almost as natural as being small. The spell didn’t even give her a headache anymore.

  “I think Rob was right,” she confided to Timothy as she stepped out from the shadows. “The Empress’s people don’t like these places. Maybe they don’t even know we-”

  Timothy caught her by the arm and jerked her back as a huge man in baggy clothes strode past. “Watch where you’re going,” he said. “In a crowd like this, you can’t count on other people to watch out for you.”

  Linden blinked and looked around, noticing her surroundings for the first time. Behind her, a set of moving staircases rose and fell with mesmerizing smoothness. Beside her was the darkened alcove where Timothy had let her out of his pack. And stretching before her-a wide, windowless tunnel, swarming with more people than Linden had seen or even imagined in her life.

  They came in every skin color, every possible size and shape. Their clothes and hair were such a riot of styles, textures, and hues that she felt hopelessly drab, like a wren among goldfinches. But strongest of all was the wave of sheer humanness that washed toward her, that thick, meaty smell pungent with chemicals and salt.

  “Come on,” said Timothy, tugging at her, and Linden obeyed, gulping shallow breaths to calm her nausea. She clung tight to Timothy’s hand, and together they plunged through the crowd to the end of the tunnel.

  They had just emerged onto a platform whose sign read NORTHERN LINE when the ground rumbled beneath her feet. Linden clapped her hands to her ears, her hair whipping in all directions, as a giant metal snake came crashing out of the darkness and hissed to a stop in front of them, disgorging more humans onto the platform. Linden’s knees wobbled, and she couldn’t move until Timothy took hold of her and practically dragged her inside.

  “Sit down before you faint, will you?” he whispered as he led her to the back of the carriage. Linden sank into an empty seat and put her head in her hands. The human smell wasn’t quite as strong here, she realized with dim relief…but then a thread of winter-pine scent wafted toward her, and she sat up abruptly, dread prickling the back of her neck.

  There was a faery on the train with them.

  “We have to get off,” she started to tell Timothy. “It isn’t-”

  But then time stopped, and she couldn’t say anything at all.

  There was no sound, no movement, not even a breath of air. The passengers around Timothy were as still as photographs; outside, even the platform had ceased to bustle. Feeling as though he were swimming in wet cement, Timothy forced his head around to look at Linden and saw her frozen like all the others, one hand uplifted and her mouth open in a cry of warning that had come half a second too late.

  And yet he could still move, however sluggishly. Why? He crept his hand into his front pocket, and as his fingers brushed past his train tickets and touched the iron key the heaviness in his muscles fell away. His first impulse was to jump up, leap out the door, and dash for the station exit-but Linden was still trapped, and how could he use the key to free her without robbing her of all her magic as well?

  The faery rose from his seat at the far end of the carriage and walked toward them, teeth gleaming in a feral smile. A male, slight and wiry, with blond hair worn poet-length but no softness in his face at all. He stopped in front of Timothy, then raised his fingers as though touching a hidden earpiece and spoke into his palm:

  “It’s Martin. I’ve found them-”

  There was only one thing Timothy could think to do. He leaped out of his seat and tackled the faery, slamming him back against the carriage wall.

  Martin went limp, slithering out of Timothy’s grasp. He dropped to the aisle, rolled away, and bounded to his feet again; then he snatched a pen from the pocket of a nearby passenger and, with a flash, it became a silver knife in his hand.

  “Catch this, human boy,” he said silkily, and lunged forward. Timothy dodged, but not quite fast enough. The knife drew fire across his ribs, and he gasped-but at the same moment he flung out the hand that held the iron key, and the faery ran straight into it.

  The iron jerked in his palm, flaring with sudden heat. Martin gave a harsh cry and dropped to the floor. At the same instant the carriage woke up, doors hissing shut and passengers settling into their seats as though nothing had happened. Quickly Timothy kicked the knife away from Martin’s limp hand-but it was a pen again now, harmless.

  “Cleverly done,” panted the faery, getting up slowly and shaking the hair out of his eyes. “But what good will your secret weapon do you, now that it is no longer a secret?”

  He had ba
rely finished the sentence when the train jolted forward, throwing them both off balance. Martin lifted a hand as though to grasp the rail, then suddenly feinted and jabbed his fingers into Timothy’s wounded side. Timothy staggered, choking off a cry, and with a mocking slap on the back and a tug at his pocket the faery shoved him away and ran.

  Timothy rebounded against the wall and crumpled into a seat, his ribs flaming with agony. He was scarcely aware of Linden’s hands fluttering over him, her panicked whisper as she begged him to forgive her, that it had all happened so fast and she hadn’t known what to do and she was so, so sorry….

  “Here, you can’t do that!” bellowed a man farther up the carriage, and Timothy looked up dazedly to see Martin grab the doors and pry them apart with impossible strength. He braced them open with his feet as the train slowed, then sprang forward and landed on the very corner of the platform, surefooted as an antelope. Within seconds he had vanished into the crowd.

  The train ground to a stop halfway out of the station. Grumbles and clucks of protest rose from the other passengers as a terse voice over the loudspeaker announced that there would be a delay. But no one appeared to have noticed that Timothy was injured, and through his haze of pain he wondered why-until he saw the look of concentration on Linden’s face.

  “I’m trying to put a glamour around us,” she said between her teeth, “so I can look at your wound without anyone seeing. But it’s hard.”

  Slowly Timothy opened his hand. He’d been gripping the key so tightly that it had left a red imprint on his palm; now he let it drop onto the seat beside them, and Linden relaxed.

  “That’s better,” she said. She crouched in front of Timothy and pulled up his shirt. Her touch was feather light, but when her fingers probed the wound, he flinched.

  “It’s messy,” she said after a moment, “but not too deep. Do you have anything we could use for a bandage?”

  Several minutes passed while the underground train remained motionless, and Linden was beginning to despair when it finally shuddered to life again. She leaned into the circle of Timothy’s arm, pressing a crumpled rag against his side as the lights of the platform slid away and they plunged into the blackness ahead.