He didn’t seem like the enemy, though. Despite my wariness, I couldn’t bring myself to be completely distrusting of this elf and his intentions.
It was right as I had that thought that the elf in question turned, revealing the rest of his face to me.
I recognized those features. Each and every one of them. I’d gone over them in my head every single night before bed for the last six months, comparing and contrasting, trying to find some part of them in me, praying that the magic wasn’t the only thing I had been given. It seemed a terrible trade-off for never getting to meet my grandfather.
Until now.
“Laslow,” I breathed.
“Shannon,” Hunter started to mutter something in my ear, but I didn’t even give him the chance to finish what he wanted to say.
As soon as my brain registered the fact that this elf was Laslow, my grandfather, the man who might be able to answer the plethora of questions that plagued me at all hours of the day, every day, my body leaped into action, completely of its own accord.
I didn’t think about the fact that I could have been wrong or the fact that we were still in a forest that I knew nothing about, with an army of hundreds roaming around in search of my companion.
I didn’t think at all. Which was so unusual for me that I would look back at that moment one day, years down the road, and wonder how I had lost so much of my brain capacity.
It seemed to be happening more and more these days.
I sprang out from behind our cover, dashing over broken branches and dead leaves, with only one goal in mind.
“Laslow!” I yelled as I ran.
The elf didn’t hear me, though, because he was standing too close to the roar of the waterfall, searching for the hidden door to my world.
And what I couldn’t quite hear yet, over the roar of the waterfall, was the sound of a thousand footsteps tramping through the forest, pausing as they heard my twisted, primal scream.
“Laslow!” I shrieked a second time as I landed at the edge of the lagoon, scrambling up onto the closest rock I could find.
The elf finally turned toward me then, but he wasn’t looking directly at me, at least at first.
He was gazing beyond, into the forest, with his head tilted and his brow slightly furrowed in a move I recognized because I’d seen the expression on Mom’s face so many times before.
Finally, slow as a sloth, his gaze dropped to me.
“Shannon?” He breathed out.
But I couldn’t even hear him over the sound of my own thoughts. I’d picked up on the eery quiet of the forest over the rush of the waterfall, but there was more than that.
Somewhere in the distance, but not too far away, I heard a shout.
“This way, cavalry!”
“Shannon,” Hunter gasped, breathless as he ran up to me. “They’re coming for us.”
19
Within a second’s worth of time, a million things happened at once. Amelie dashed out from her hiding place, looked over to Hunter and me, and gave a small wave. Then, she waved her hand over her head, swirling it in the air like she was mixing something, and turned herself into one of those tiny, squirrel-like creatures that I had seen when we’d first arrived. Safe in her new form, the nymph scampered up the closest tree and disappeared between the golden leaves, leaving us to fend for ourselves.
I couldn’t blame her in the slightest. She’d already done so much to help us, after all. There was no sense in her staying around to possibly get herself killed.
At nearly the same time, Magda sprinted over to us, slipping slightly on the dead leaves that covered the forest floor, frantically yanking her hair out of her face.
“We need to get that portal open,” she cried out.
And right as she did, the very first cavalry member appeared. He was wearing that same red uniform, only his was not adorned with metals at all. It was completely clean, devoid of any sort of decoration, giving me the sense that he wasn’t exactly an accomplished soldier.
He was young, too, I could tell. I wasn’t sure exactly what he age would have been in elf years, but the baby fat in his cheeks and the hopeful glimmer in his eyes would have put him at about nineteen in the human world.
Until that is, he raised the flaming purple arrow he held in his grasp and aimed it straight for my head. The look of malice that entered his eyes as he did so was downright bone-chilling.
“I have found them!” The elf called out across the forest, just as he let loose the flaming arrow.
I didn’t even have time to duck. In fact, I was absolutely sure that this was it- these were my last moments of life. Even my magic wasn’t fast enough to save me right then.
But someone else’s was.
“Prohibe!” A smooth, yet slightly husky, male voice hollered out above my head.
Instantly, the arrow faltered in the air, immediately turning downward and crashing to the ground, where the purple flame ignited the detritus on the forest floor, creating a circle of protection around us.
“Come, Shannon, we do not have time for standing around,” the voice said in my ear. Laslow wrapped his arm around my own and tugged me up, leading me toward the waterfall. Magda and Hunter scrambled to follow just as three more soldiers entered the little clearing, jumping around to steer clear of the growing flames.
“How did you get out of prison?” I asked, slightly numb from shock.
Even though I was most definitely in the middle of a war zone, I couldn’t help but turn toward my grandfather and just take it all in.
He looked younger than me, strangely enough, with smooth ivory skin and skin so blonde it was nearly white. His eyes were a light, sky blue- almost a gray, but not quite. I’d never even seen that color on a human before.
But his eyes were also where he carried his age. I could see in them that he had lived a thousand lifetimes, and done a million different things, only to end up fighting for his life at the edge of a lagoon, praying a portal would open up and take him to a different world.
“I will answer all of the questions you have some time when we are not running for our lives, hmm?” He said, distracted, as he yanked me toward the waterfall.
“Stop, in the name of the King!” One of the soldiers yelled out below us. “If you come calmly, we will not be forced to harm you in any way.”
“Yeah, for now,” Magda snorted.
Another arrow sizzled and whistled through the air, but luckily for us, the assailant’s aim was terrible, and the arrow landed in the waterfall with a massive hiss. The flame went out instantly, and the weapon fell down to the lagoon, utterly harmless.
But that wasn’t the last of them.
In fact, a platoon of soldiers arrived just then, and it seemed that their strategy consisted of nothing more than shooting off arrows as fast as they could. We were ducking and weaving the sizzling sounds as we scrambled further and further up the rocks, headed toward the little alcove behind the waterfall.
“How do we get it open?” I asked Laslow nervously, daring to turn my head toward the soldiers.
That was a very bad idea, it turned out. Over the top of Hunter’s head, I could see bright red uniforms scrambling up the bottom rocks, coming closer and closer to us.
If the army managed to get up behind the waterfall and outnumber us, we were totally screwed, even if we managed to get the portal open.
“I am not sure,” Laslow grimaced. “Am I correct to assume that you are able to see the veil? I do not see how else you would have ended up in this world.”
“Yeah, that’s right,” I replied with a nod.
“Hit the deck!” Hunter hollered behind me.
Instantly, I flattened myself down against the rock, just in time for an arrow to sizzle right over my head. In fact, I felt it catch my hair, something I was only more sure of when my scalp lit up like it was on fire.
Which it actually was.
“Oh, God!” Magda screeched, grabbing a handful of water from the fall next to us an
d tossing it on my hair.
I did not want to see what that looked like in the mirror.
We were in the alcove now, though I wouldn’t say we were secure in the slightest. It was nothing more than a tiny indent behind the waterfall, and it led nowhere. There was a strange script that looked as if it had been burned into the back wall, though I wasn’t sure how that was even possible with the rock.
It was a foreign language, but one I recognized from seeing it in a few of the books down at the library.
Elvish.
“When the blood of two who know the veil as if it is their own touches this wall, the curtain will open and… I understand,” Laslow was muttering to himself.
I could hardly pay attention to him, though. My heart was pounding too hard, beating against my ribs like a drum, as I watched Hunter slip toward the edge of the alcove and peer down below.
Half a second later, he leaped back, shaking his head, and dashed over to me.
“We need to get out of here now,” he said in my ear. I could tell he was trying to keep his voice as calm and level as possible, but I knew him too well.
Underneath it all, he was terrified. This was the second time in less than a month that we’d been faced with an army in a foreign place, only this time, we had no way to get home it seemed.
“I can’t call up the veil,” I murmured to him. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying with all my might to call upon that feeling I had whenever I saw the shadow world and the curtain that separated the fae world from my own.
Now would be a really good time to have some sort of miraculous handle on this power of mine, I thought, squeezing my eyes shut and trying as hard as I possibly could.
“Ah!” Magda’s shriek took me right out of my concentration flow, and my eyes snapped open to see that one of the soldiers had made it over the edge of the alcove and grabbed ahold of her ankle, trying to yank her down and out of our little safety net.
“Oh, no you don’t,” Hunter growled. “Her husband paid me to find her, and I’m not letting the like of you take her.”
Hunter leaped forward and slammed his heel down on the elf’s ankle, breaking it easily. The soldier fell back with a cry, and Hunter turned around proudly.
Just at that moment, a second soldier appeared, grinning maliciously as he reached for Hunter’s thigh, a knife glinting in his hand.
“Hunter!” I cried out in terror. My hand flew out of its own accord, and a bright flash of magic leaped from my palm and right to the elf soldier’s forehead, smacking him right between the eyebrows. His brown eyes went wide, and then he slowly tipped back, like a cow in a field getting pushed by rambunctious troublemakers in the middle of the night. Moments later, we heard a loud splash, signaling he was in the water.
“I need your hand,” Laslow suddenly announced, stomping forward and yanking my hand up toward his face.
“What?” I demanded, spinning around.
“We need to offer our blood to the wall,” he explained. “Our ancestors built it. The only way to open it is to give them our blood unless it’s a full moon.”
I could see in his eyes that he was absolutely serious, and something in my gut told me to trust him. He’d come this far- he wouldn’t kill me now. If he wanted to hurt me, he would have done it already.
But he didn’t. I knew that Laslow would never hurt me. He was my grandfather, and all he wanted was to get home to me.
To Grams.
“Okay,” I nodded. “Whatever you need.”
A split second later, Laslow had grabbed a small rock from the cave floor, smacking it against the wall to break it into two sharp pieces.
“Guys, we should hurry up,” Magda said, backing up nervously from the entrance.
With no warning whatsoever, Laslow dug the rock into my palm and sliced it open, calling forth a bright red river of blood.
Hunter came up behind me, laying a comforting hand on the small of my back as I winced, watching Laslow do the same to his own palm.
“Lawbreakers!” That annoying, tinny voice that I’d been hearing all day sounded out down below us. There was a hint of pride in his tone, and I was fairly sure he thought that we’d been cornered.
They probably assumed we would never be able to get the veil open since it wasn’t a full moon. I doubt they counted on Laslow and I sharing blood with the elves who had first seen the veil.
For once, I really didn’t hate my elven side. In fact, I kind of loved it.
“Lawbreakers!” The elf repeated when we didn’t answer. As he launched into his idiotic speech, Laslow led me to the wall and the two of us pressed our palms against the rock face, right over the burned Elven lettering. “I will only give you one chance, in the name of our most beloved king. Come down now, hand over the traitor, and no harm will come to you. The nymph will be disposed of as traitors must be, but the three of you will be free to return to your normal lives.”
“How much do you want to bet that’s a lie?” Hunter chuckled darkly in my ear.
But it was all I could do to nod my agreement because, as he spoke, the wall began to glow. The light was a strange, purplish color, not like the cliched white light I would have expected from a portal that led to another world.
It started out as rays along the outer circle of the rock, reaching out like long, thin fingers, spreading slowly across the rock and cracking it as it went, forcing it to crumble and move, busting apart to reveal even more of the purple light.
“Lawbreakers.”
The voice was so close.
I whipped around to see the elf who had been speaking standing there on the edge of the alcove, staring at us with his hands on his hips as if he thought that might do him any good.
He was vile looking. He had pale skin, just as Laslow did, but it was a sickly, ghostly color. One long scar ran from his cheekbone to his chin, giving his face a rugged appearance that seemed strange when paired with his lanky form, long blonde hair, and light blue eyes.
“Do not go through that portal,” he warned.
“Mittente!” Laslow yelled at the precise same moment that the purple light finished cracking the wall, and the portal fully opened.
The elven military leader flew back from the edge of the alcove as if he had been yanked by some invisible, giant hand. A split second later, we heard him crash into the waters below.
But that was followed by a loud, angry cry from a hundred soldiers, and then the stomping of so many angry boots it sounded like a herd of elephants was coming straight for us.
“Go!” Laslow ordered, shoving me toward the portal.
“But what—”
I didn’t even get to finish my sentence, because Hunter came barreling toward me, grabbed me around the waist, and launched the both of us into the portal.
The journey was fast. A millisecond after Hunter grabbed me, I slammed against hard earth and soft grass. The two of us scrambled up and backed away from the portal, which looked awfully strange from this side.
It was just a glowing purple orb suspended about eight feet off the ground, bobbing up and down slightly.
The next moment, Magda came crashing through, followed closely by Laslow, and also by a flaming arrow. It just barely missed the two of them, burying itself in the ground just beyond their heads and lighting the grass on fire.
Hunter sprang into action, ripping off his coat to stamp out the flames. At the same time, Laslow whirled around, put his hands up to the portal, and started to mutter something that I couldn’t quite make out. He had his eyes closed and his head bowed like he was praying.
The portal started to shrink, growing smaller and smaller with each word that Laslow uttered. A single hand reached through, grasping around, desperately trying to get ahold of one of us and pull us back to the world of the fae.
But it never succeeded, thank God. The portal shrunk all the way down to nothingness, disappearing into thin air, and taking the hand along with it.
And then that was it.
The wo
rld was silent compared to the commotion we had just retreated from. The air was chilly, stinging my reddened, anxious cheeks. Not even the sound of wind rustling leaves could be heard.
Now that the adrenaline had stopped, I realized what was happening.
I was standing in the middle of a field in my world with my elven grandfather.
My elven grandfather.
Who, truthfully, didn’t look a day over thirty.
Laslow turned to me, a strange, indistinguishable expression on his face.
“Are you alright?” He asked nervously, looking me up and down. The white pants and shirt he wore billowed around him in the breeze, giving him the appearance of some sort of ancient shamanic healer.
All I could do was no in answer to his question.
Magda was brushing herself off, trying not to look as if she was casting surreptitious glances toward Laslow and me every few seconds, while Hunter was just a few feet away from me, there if I needed him, while still giving me the space that I needed.
Or thought I needed. My brain seemed to have ceased functioning now that I was faced head-on with Laslow.
Slowly, the elf walked over to me. I could see the hesitation in his eyes- a feeling I was sure was reflected in my own.
“I have heard much about you, Shannon,” he said softly, smiling tenderly as he looked at me.
That act alone was enough to make me want to sob. How many times had I imagined this as a child? My father was never coming back, Mom had made that more than clear, so I’d latched on to the only male figure I could think of- my grandfather. I’d imagined him popping up one day after school in a cool old truck, taking me for ice cream down at the shop, and then off to the arcade downtown.
Of course, in my daydreams, my grandfather was an awful lot older than me. And he looked it. I’d imagine him with soft hazel eyes and leathery, tanned skin, complete with white hair and a little bit of a Santa gut.
That daydream was nothing like the man that stood before me right then. This man looked like he should have been my younger brother, no my grandfather.
Paranoia, Pixies and Prophecies Page 14