All of a sudden, I was extraordinarily anxious to get the heck out of there. It wasn’t even an intuition thing as much as a survival thing, but I had a feeling that the longer we stayed, the more danger we were in. And the last thing I wanted was to die on this side of the veil, where Mom and Grams wouldn’t even get to say goodbye to my body.
On second thought, a death like that might be in my best interest. It would be quick in comparison to the torturous one I was sure Mom would initiate the moment she found out I’d jumped into a portal that took me to another world without even telling her first.
Mom was ruthless when she got angry.
“I will lead the way in the morning,” Amelie announced.
It was only then that I realized the bright yellow sunshine that had plagued me since we’d landed in this world, sort of like an old, comforting blanket with one too many holes to really do its job, had started to disappear, replaced by the cover of thick darkness.
There were two moons up above, I noticed curiously. One of them hung high in the center of the sky while the second was low as if it was rising the way a sun would.
“Fascinating,” I muttered, at the exact same time that Hunter let out a strangled noise that I couldn’t even place.
“Uh, the morning?” He demanded. “Why not now?”
“Night is falling,” Amelie replied with a shrug, pointing up at the night sky. “We do not travel at night.”
“It really would be better to wait until morning,” Magda replied diplomatically. “There are all sorts of monstrous beasts in these woods nowadays. They feel as if they have the freedom to roam now that Inueya is king. Which, in a way, they do. He refuses to dissuade them from eating and destroying innocent fae.”
“Lovely,” I grimaced.
Magda showed Hunter and me to the little cave behind the waterfall that she had been staying in, and retrieved blankets and some sort of hard, unappetizing bread from the rest of the nymphs to serve as our dinner.
Honestly, sitting on a blanket in a cold, dank cave, noshing on hardened bread while my stomach screamed out for a hamburger or a steak, I cursed the little girl inside of me who used to yearn for adventures. Maybe it was her fault I was sitting there right then. If nothing else, I had managed to teach her that those grand old adventures her heart ached to go on were actually pretty sucky.
“It’s not the most comfortable, but it is safe,” Magda said apologetically, curling up in her own blanket and working to keep her sleepy eyes open for a few more minutes.
“It’s only one night,” I replied to assuage her guilt. “What could it hurt?”
It turned out, one night spent on a hard rock floor when you’re a forty-year-old woman can hurt. A lot.
If I had thought my body was sore when I’d woken up on Hunter’s soft, pillowy mattress, that paled in comparison to the immense pain I felt waking up on the rocky surface. It was so bad I opened my mouth in a silent scream, working to gain the energy to stand up.
I glanced over at where Hunter was sleeping just a few feet away- a polite, comfortable distance when with the company- and saw that he was silently laughing at me.
Actually laughing. With tears streaming down his cheeks and everything.
Rolling my eyes, I decided that I needed to be the bigger person here, so I refrained from making a rather rude gesture toward him and instead turned my attention back to my aching, screaming body.
After what felt like an eternity, I managed to push myself up onto my hands and knees. At the exact same moment, Amelie came sweeping in, already awake and ready for the day.
“Hello, it is time to get up,” she called out as if she couldn’t see that Hunter and I were already up.
“Working on it,” I told her through a grunt of pain.
Truly, my back felt like it was on fire. I didn’t even like hard mattresses, much less rock ones. And there was a little crick down in the base of my spine that I was fairly sure was from a loose rock that had been caught under me all night.
“Did you sleep well?” Magda asked as she rose from her bed, instantly peppy and ready for the day.
“Not as well as I would have liked,” I chucked. “Surprisingly, I don’t think my body is really made for cave sleeping.”
“Neither is mine,” she sighed. “Thank you two for doing this, by the way.”
“It’s our only way home,” Hunter shrugged.
“Yes, but you wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for me in the first place,” she replied. “So I feel it’s only proper that I thank you.”
“I’m only here because I wasn’t about to let Shannon jump through an inter-world portal all by herself.” The response was to Magda’s question, but I could tell that the words were aimed at me. Hunter wanted me to know just how much I meant to him.
And while the words and thoughts behind them were absolutely endearing, the sudden, intense anxiety pain I got in my chest was not. Instead of saying something equally mushy back to Hunter, I just nodded at him and turned around to fold up the nymph blanket I had slept on.
What is wrong with you, Shannon? I screamed angrily at myself, shocked and upset that I’d even done that. There Hunter was, basically proclaiming his love for me, and I’d done nothing but turn around to fold up a blanket. Why couldn’t I have responded with something just as nice?
I did feel that way about Hunter, right?
Honestly, I stood there and dug into my very own feeling, both aware and not caring that this was not the time nor the place to do it, and I couldn’t figure out the answer for the life of me. It wasn’t that I couldn’t see myself falling for Hunter- in the future, of course- or that I didn’t have strong feelings for him yet.
No, this was solely a Shannon problem. If I had to take a guess, it was likely something that had to do with the divorce.
But I really wasn’t a guessing woman. I also wasn’t a woman who liked to rehash the past. So instead I decided to turn and follow Amelie out the door, and then begin my trek through the forest with a mind that was completely clear of all of those distractions.
“What was that?” Magda asked when we’d been walking for about half of an hour. Hunter was behind me, trudging along, and keeping his eyes and ear peeled for the first sign of danger.
“What was what?” I asked innocently, feigning ignorance.
“You know,” she rolled her eyes. “When Hunter said all that gushy stuff that guys normally never say. I mean, telling us that he jumped through an entire portal just for you?”
“He just doesn’t want me to die,” I shrugged. “That’s not romantic as much as just being a decent human. Right?”
I couldn’t tell if I was actually asking Magda or attempting to reassure myself. It turned out, though, that it really didn’t matter because less than a second later Amelie froze in the middle of the forest, as still as a tree, with her hand up.
“What are you—” I started to ask before Hunter waved a hand at me to indicate I needed to be quiet. Normally I would have taken a pretty huge amount of offense to that, but considering the forest gave me the heebie-jeebies and I kept wondering when some sort of flesh-eating monstrosity was going to jump out and attack, I decided that arguing was not my best course of action right then.
So I did what any rational person would do and froze along with them, listening as hard as I possibly could.
And that was when I heard it. The sound was so faint it would have been easily missed, and for a moment, I thought it was just some mischievous creature in a nearby bush.
But after a split second longer, I realized that the sound I was hearing wasn’t some creature in a bush or even a horse somewhere else in the forest. It wasn’t the rustle of the leaves or the wind against the branches. It wasn’t anything natural.
It was an army. A massive one, with thousands of hooves and heavy booted soldiers, marching all in time to the beat of a silent drum, keeping perfect rhythm.
The cavalry.
I’d spent less than a day in this w
orld, and I already knew that the cavalry was a great evil. Every time someone said those two words, they looked as if they were about to vomit.
Even Amelie.
Her tanned face turned a ghostly white, and she spun around to look at us with wide, terrified green eyes.
“They are coming,” she said ominously.
“They’re searching for me,” Magda gasped, shoving a fist to her mouth and trying to hold back a sob. The cavalry was still fairly far off, but there was no telling how quickly one of them could travel if they heard us, especially considering they rode on the backs of winged horses.
“Stay calm,” I told Magda, though the order was more for myself than it was for her. Unconsciously, I stepped toward Hunter, pressing myself into his side as our minds raced, trying to figure out what to do.
If I can call up these portals, now would be a fantastic time to learn that, I urged myself, hoping that maybe the shadow world would appear, and I could take us all far, far away from the dreaded cavalry. I knew that if they found us, we were all dead.
Well, except for me. I’d probably just wish I was dead.
“Amelie, what do we do?” Magda breathed.
But Amelie looked just as frozen as she was. So Hunter sprang into action.
“How far is the portal?” He demanded, bending down so he could look Amelie right in her light green eyes.
“Not far,” she said, slightly dazed. “Maybe a ten-minute walk. But they will be able to catch us before we get there.”
Hunter grimaced, thinking for a second. He turned to me, asking a silent question with wide gray eyes.
“Then we hide,” I nodded, answering his question out loud.
And hide we did. Hunter found a cave not too far from the path we'd been traveling along, and the three of us ducked inside, pressing up against the walls and waited with bated breath as the cavalry came traipsing down the road, huge and powerful and so, so deadly.
18
The cave we’d hidden in was almost underground. There was a little sliver of light at the mouth of it, and I quickly discovered that, when I laid at the right angle, I could see out into the forest and watch the little path for the cavalry and their tortured beasts.
It didn’t take long for them to come down upon us. But the mass wasn’t so tight-knit anymore, and I could see that the soldiers seemed to have broken ranks.
The naive, hopeful part of me wondered if they’d thrown a coup, while the rational part of me knew that they had only gained a moment’s reprieve.
“You will search this entire forest until the traitor is found!” An annoying, trembling voice hollered out over the heads of his soldiers. He had that strange, almost yodel-like quality to his voice, and it made me want to crawl out of the cave just so I could punch him and get him to shut the heck up.
Regardless of his blatantly annoying voice, though, the soldiers listened to him. I watched as the army dispersed, moving out to cover the land like ants cover a counter on a hot summer’s day in search of a treat.
“Hey, Magda,” I murmured, making sure to keep my voice so quiet it was barely audible, just in case the cavalry had some sort of supersonic hearing I didn’t know about. Magda turned her head to glance at me. “What’s going to happen to you if they find you?”
“I’m afraid that if I told you, it might be too much,” she replied. Sincerity and sadness both tinged her voice, so I decided not to press the issue any further. I certainly didn’t want to make her uncomfortable in any way, and I also wasn’t sure I’d be able to handle whatever she was about to throw at me. Something told me that even in my previous life, I’d never seen anything quite as gruesome as what the elf king did to those that defied him.
As the stomping of the cavalry continued, I forced myself to close my eyes and take in even breaths. The last thing I wanted to do right then was panic, and I knew I was getting close to my breaking point. I was regretting everything I’d done from the moment I’d seen the first veil on my date with Hunter. I wished I could go back to the moment I’d decided to launch myself through this one, grab that Shannon by the arms, and insist that she keep her feet firmly planted on planter earth.
With no warning and no prodding whatsoever, I suddenly felt my magic pop up, tingling below the surface of my skin with welcome familiarity. Something inside of me whispered that I should leave it alone, and just let it do whatever it wanted to do. I wasn’t completely on board with that at first, being the control freak that I am, but a pair of dark leather cavalry boots appeared at the entrance to the cave at that moment, and all thoughts of control fled my mind.
“Sir, I believe I had found something,” the smooth voice that belonged to the owner of those boots was saying. Fear laced around my heart at that moment, since his boots didn’t seem to want to move and he was motioning to our cave with one hand.
I glanced over to Hunter and Amelie, who wore what I was sure were similar expressions to my own. They were both attempting to bite back fear, wanting to remain resolute for as long as possible. Hunter glanced toward the back of the cave, probably trying to plan some sort of escape route, but there was none. The cave was small and shallow, just enough to hide the four of us from the prying eyes of the cavalry. But it didn’t lead anywhere.
That moment of despair was the exact moment my magic clicked into place. The bubbling beneath my skin ceased, and I felt it reach out around me with invisible tendrils, wrapping the four of us in what felt like a blanket of warmth.
“What—” Amelie started to demand, but I put a finger to my lips in a silent order. She nodded when she saw me, but the look on her face was still highly suspicious. That would be okay for now, I assured myself. I just needed to trust my magic.
And so I did. I fell back into the warm fingers, trying not to think too hard as two cavalry members knelt down to peer inside the cave. All of us, even Hunter, stiffened when we were faced with two sets of icy blue eyes. They were clearly elves, made obvious not only by the long, thick hair or the smooth, pale skin but also the pointed ears on the sides of their heads.
I swear, I was absolutely convinced that the elves looked right at us. No, not at us- through us. Their eyes seemed to roam the cave, taking in every single centimeter of the smooth gray walls, searching for us.
Somehow, my magic was shielding us. I wasn’t sure what it was doing or how it was even working, but I was suddenly so grateful for the strangeness that was my half-fae half-witch powers. I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that without them, all four of us would have been dead or imprisoned.
Or worse.
But because it’s magic tendrils had reached out and circled us with some sort of subatomic invisibility cloak, we didn’t have to worry about any of that.
The two elves stayed for a rather harrowing amount of time, just staring at the blank rock walls. I had to wonder if they knew we were there, somehow, despite the fact that they couldn’t see us.
After a period of time that was far too long for my comfort, the elves finally decided that there was nothing in the cave worth shooting, and went back to join the rest of the cavalry.
“Alright troops, nothing here. March out!” That same annoying voice bellowed. It was quickly followed by the sounds of hundreds, if not thousands, of booted feet, either climbing up on their steed’s back or stomping off toward whatever their next destination was.
The moment they were gone, I let out a breath I didn’t even realize I had been holding. My magic retreated back inside of me, realizing that its job was finished for the moment.
“What the heck just happened?” Magda demanded. “How did you do that?”
“Beats me,” I shrugged with a heavy sigh. “It has a mind of its own sometimes, I swear. All I know is that I was hoping the elves wouldn’t catch us, and my magic made sure they didn’t.”
“That is all wonderful, but we should keep moving before they return and see right through your magic next time,” Amelie said, with a tone that told me she definitely did not think t
hat this was all wonderful.
“Good plan,” Hunter nodded. He helped me up out of the cave, and then we continued to follow Amelie for another mile and a half or so, before she finally came to a stop just on the edge of a clearing, swinging her arm out to indicate that we should all stop.
“There it is,” she murmured, in awe of what stood before us.
Admittedly, I was in awe of it, too. I’d thought that the little lagoon with the small waterfall cascading down into it was beautiful, but that was nothing compared to this one.
A rushing river stood before us, flowing from a lagoon that was about double the size of the first one that I’d seen. A waterfall fell down into it, beautiful and flowing and surrounded by all sorts of rocks that seemed like they would be absolutely perfect to go climbing on.
But all of that wasn’t the reason Amelie had sent her hand out to stop us so abruptly.
On the rocks stood a single, long figure. He was tall, with long, flowing blonde hair that had a few thin braids running through it, and pale skin that was nearly translucent. It reminded me of moonlight on the night of the full moon- full and rich and perfectly pure.
His frame was large, though it seemed too skinny. It was as if the man standing there was meant to be much bulkier, with more muscles on him. But instead, he was scarily thin, as if he had spent years wasting away.
I couldn’t see his face, but I had a sudden, distinct feeling that I knew him, somehow.
I wasn’t sure from where, though.
Just as that thought crossed my mind and I found myself trying to play back the faces I’d seen in that cafe Hunter and I had stopped at, the figure started to turn. Slowly, like he was surveying his surroundings. The man was examining the waterfall, trying to figure something out.
“He knows it is the veil,” Amelie murmured.
That took me by surprise. I hadn’t even realized this lagoon was where the veil was. I had assumed Amelie had merely stopped us so we didn’t alert the man to our presence.
But now that I knew we had company in attempting to make it to the other world, I grew a little wary. This man no longer seemed harmless as he examined every divet and crevice of the rocks, and every single molecule of the every flowing waterfall.
Paranoia, Pixies and Prophecies Page 13