by Tim Lebbon
“Fuck you,” Vince said. “You’re full of shit.”
Mallian frowned.
Vince saw movement from the corner of his eye, maybe the distraction he needed. Mallian hadn’t walked properly for two years. He was twice the size of Vince, stronger, more vicious and brutal, but right then Vince thought that even with a fractured arm he was probably faster.
“I see everything, human,” Mallian said. “You think I’ve been lying there in the dirt doing nothing all this time? I’ve been planning and making friends. You might think you’re the hero of the hour, but you’re nothing more than an annoying hindrance.”
“You think I’ll help you when you make threats like that?”
“You’ll help because I make promises like that.”
More movement to his left, and Vince forced himself not to look.
“Sammi is innocent.”
“Innocent fairy flesh tastes the best.”
The shape came closer. It seemed to be circling, edging in behind Mallian, and perhaps that meant it was there to help. He’d tried to help injured Kin several times, tried to make contact with them, as much for himself as for them. Success had been limited, but perhaps whichever Kin this was, it would repay in kind.
All I need is a distraction.
“Maybe...” Vince said, and then the Kin came close, manifesting in strange sunlight and approaching from Mallian’s left.
“Ah, Bah’Lia,” Mallian said, and Vince felt hope shrivelling to nothing.
The short, slight Kin, humanoid and covered with a fine down, looked daunted and intimidated by Mallian’s size and appearance, but also awed.
“I know where they are,” Bah’Lia said.
“Where what are?” Mallian asked.
“The relics you want. I was following him when he discarded them.”
“You’re sure?”
Bah’Lia nodded, and Vince knew this was his only and final chance. If this Kin was telling the truth, Mallian had no more use for him, and with the portal still standing open, Vince did not want to die.
He wanted to live, and escape, and find his old life once again.
“Thanks, Bah’Lia,” Vince whispered, and when he saw Mallian’s confused frown—when the Nephilim looked at the Kin with growing suspicion in his eyes—Vince rolled onto his side, stood, and ran. As he accelerated he reached down and snatched up the sharp half of his snapped spear.
Every part of his concentration wanted to drag itself to the unbelievable agony of his broken left arm pressed across his stomach, but he pulled back, focusing on the ground before him, a dark land in the midst of night broken by the sun he sought.
He hoped that Bah’Lia had lied, and that it had not been following him as he’d cast those sad remnants aside, losing them so well in the long grasses and waters of the Fold that he would never remember where they were. If it had seen, then Mallian might still be able to achieve his aim of Ascent. But part of him also hoped that it wasn’t a lie, and that even now Mallian and the Kin were starting to follow the winding trail he had led and retrieving those sad, dangerous relics.
If that were the case, their distraction might enable him to make it out of the Fold alive.
18
She runs, she races, and towards the place where she formed the portal between her world and the other, she even flies. Perhaps it’s that brief moment of flight—her first for as long as she can recall—that does so much to drain her energy.
She lands within the portal, and as she takes a moment to gather herself, she assesses what she has done. The time delay between sensing the actions of the fairy girl and forging this new pathway between worlds is slight. The energy required is huge, and it all comes from within her. If she’d taken a few moments to consider her actions she might have prepared better, and might have constructed the portal in such a way that the power required was used and distributed more efficiently. As it was, her reaction was instinctive, and the doorway before which she stands quivers and shakes with seeping energies.
I’m wasting myself just by standing here, she thinks, and she walks through.
On the other side she is even weaker. This world has been bleeding her dry for as long as she can remember, and the terrible times at the mercy of that evil human woman are her own nightmares. She relives them again now as she re-enters that world—she can smell its rot and ruin, and taste sickness on the air like the breath of a dying animal. Coming back makes her realise why she has grown to hate this place.
Her legs quake and she staggers to one side. Falling to her knees, she is shocked by how colourless the real world is when set against her Fold. It is grey and bland, bereft of plants and grasses, the land seemingly seared clean by some cataclysm. She wonders whether a lot more time has passed over here than she anticipated. It could be that the humans have finally destroyed themselves and their world, and that the girl has become an old, old fairy, haunting the ghost of an uninhabited place.
If that is the case, she has come to rescue her.
She remains on her knees as the shakes and weakness begin to lessen. Her hand is splayed in the dry soil, and she squeezes her fingers and feels, rather than a dead nothingness, a rich and thriving fertility. That surprises her. She lifts the soil to her nose and breathes it in, and senses the true story of this place.
Peace and coexistence. Conflict and fear. Water and death.
She breathes in deeply a few times more, enjoying the feel of the afternoon sun on her skin, and tries her old wings again. They part from her body and slap at the air effectively enough, but she knows that to use them now would drain what little energy she has left.
She needs it for what is to come.
Standing slowly, she’s aware of movement behind her. Something else is coming through the portal. She tenses, ready to dash across this grey land to catch any Kin that might be attempting an escape. She’s disturbed by her lack of concentration, and the fact that she has not considered the full implications of her actions. Usually her plans are so considered that they have the clarity of recent memories, and they almost always play out the way she intended.
She saw and sensed signs of the girl and ran. She should have known that pushing a portal through from her Fold to the world might allow her Kin to escape. She should have taken measures.
But once I have her, it won’t matter if I have the Kin or not.
She smiles. It’s not an expression she uses lightly, or often. She has dreamed of sharing her time with another fairy for many centuries. They will nurture each other, make each other well. Given time, perhaps they will fly together. Her wings twitch at the thought.
She realises that it is only the human, skittering away from the portal like a startled deer. He sees her, pauses, then runs in the opposite direction.
She could chase him down and take out his throat in a heartbeat, but he no longer concerns her. She’s glad that he’s gone. He was a taint on her land, something she did not welcome, and now his blood will never again infect her soil.
As the human flees, the fairy stands and turns a slow circle. She sees the portal, like a hazy wound in the air. It is stable for now, but she will reassess its build and strength all the time. She sees a wide, shallow valley where a lake once stood, and senses the remains of a human settlement.
She feels madness on the air. It’s a strange sensation because it is a Kin madness, and it makes her feel uncertain and sick. Three of them, she thinks, driven to distraction by a human-inspired insanity. If she gets a chance, she will put them out of their misery.
And then she finds the girl. Not far away, across the valley floor close to the remains of a ruined building.
She breathes in, tastes the breath of a fairy, and sighs deeply.
Feeling strong once again she begins to move.
* * *
“That’s not her,” Lilou said.
The Kin had started banging inside the cooler room again, louder and more violently than before. Angela guessed it was the appearance of th
e portal that had them agitated. It had her agitated, too. Her heart beat twice as fast as normal, sweat beaded across her nose and the back of her neck, and she had to fight the urge to run towards the shimmering place out across the valley floor. It looked like heat haze, a dust devil, a place where reality doubted itself. She had seen its like before, and last time it had slammed shut before Vince could escape.
The last time she’d seen him he had been facing up to Mallian.
“What the hell is that?” Bone asked.
Angela laughed. It had an edge of madness. A gateway into another dimension created by a mad fairy, she thought. She could not bring herself to say it, though she had the feeling Bone would believe her.
“That’s not her, Sammi,” Lilou said again. The nymph was standing atop the half-buried cooler room.
“What?” Angela asked.
“Take a look.”
Angela scrambled up the fallen remains of the wall, hoping she would see him, hoping against all the hopelessness she had felt over the past two years. When Lilou reached out for her she took her hand and gripped, pulling herself up, and the two women—human and Kin—kept holding hands as they looked past the scattered ruins of Longford and towards the river.
And there he was, Vince, running awkwardly towards them, left arm held across his stomach, and glancing back every few steps. He was different—his hair was much longer and he wore a straggly beard—but she could never not know him.
She tried to speak but it came out as a deep, violent gasp. Lilou held her up.
“Something’s chasing him,” Lilou said. “We need to be ready.”
“Ready with what?” she asked.
“Maybe ready with Sammi.”
Angela looked down at the girl sitting in the mud, pale and wan and worn out.
“Sammi,” she said.
“I heard.”
More banging came from beneath them. Angela didn’t like to think how little there was between her and the mad, infected Kin. They still knew so little about them, but the fact that they were dangerous was a certainty.
There’s Vince, she thought, and it was a moment she had never truly believed would happen. She had seen him countless times over the past couple of years in daydreams—laughing at her, flicking food, scowling, the two of them drinking and walking by a river and making love—but however much she had hoped, the idea of ever seeing him again had been a remote, foolish dream. She might as well wish after someone who was dead.
Now here he was, and Angela lost herself. She jumped from the wall and landed on the bank of silt built up against the cooler room. Her feet sank in and she rolled, standing again, running, ignoring Lilou’s shouts and Sammi’s weaker cries, because this was Vince, the man she loved and the other half of her in this world, and she would not spend another second without him if she didn’t have to. She had been incomplete for the past two years, her soul broken, and though Sammi had given her purpose she could never, ever fix her. Vince’s loss had been so traumatic that sometimes it had given her physical pain, and she’d examined her body for signs. Some forms of grief were so deep and powerful that they could damage the flesh.
“Vince!” she called, but her voice was stolen by her panting, gasping breath. She ran harder and he saw her, and she saw him try to call her name as well. He was in pain, but she would wrap him in her arms and make him better. Whatever he had been through there in the Fold with Grace and Mallian, whatever he had done to survive, she would make him better.
As the distance between them grew less she began to fear it was all a hallucination. She was seeing things, her mind tweaked and stirred by this strange place and these weird events, she was imagining Vince coming towards her.
Would I really imagine the ways he’s changed? The long straggly hair, bushy beard, drawn, thinner face? Could I really dream that desperate hope in his eyes?
Then they were close and she smelled him before they impacted with each other, barely slowing down as if trying to combine themselves and their cells, make two into one as they had been before all this chaos and craziness began. He smelled old and dirty, but beneath it all was the familiar Vince-scent she would know even in a gloomy, crowded room.
“Vince!” she breathed into his neck, and when she inhaled she caught a dozen untold stories on his smell. She only hoped he would have time to tell them.
He squeezed her as hard as she squeezed him. It hurt, and he groaned in pain as well, but she loved it, because it was the love of her life holding her so tight that she thought he might never let go.
“I can’t believe it’s you,” he said. He moved back a little so he could look into her face. “You’ve changed so much!”
“I’ve changed so much?” she gasped. “Why did you think the beard was a good idea?”
“Camouflage. Against the dragons.”
“There are dragons in there?” She looked past him towards the portal, and although he grinned and shook his head, the idea was not ridiculous. Nothing was anymore.
“We have to move,” he said. He looked back, still holding onto her as if afraid she would vanish as soon as he looked away. “Grace. And Mallian.”
“Oh shit, are they there?”
“More than ever before,” Vince said. He grasped her hand and urged her to return the way she’d come.
“Your arm?”
“Mallian. What about Sammi?”
“Over there, with Lilou.” She pointed.
“Who’s the guy?”
“Bone.”
“Nice name.”
“Don’t trust him.”
“Even more comforting.” Vince looked around as they ran. “Did I miss a war, or something?”
“It used to be a flooded valley. Long story.”
“How long have I been gone?”
“Too long, Vince. You can’t leave me again, ever. Ever!”
“I don’t want to, ever. How long?”
“Two years,” she said, and she feared she should have broken it more gently. Maybe over there it had only been two months.
“Feels about right,” he said. “I must have missed some great TV.”
There was so much more for both of them to ask, so many questions that might have no easy answers, but he pulled her fast, and she was surprised by how much fitter and leaner he was. It only inspired a dozen more questions.
He continued looking around as they ran, and as they closed on Sammi, Lilou and Bone, she felt Vince’s hand close tighter around hers.
“There she is,” he said, and for a moment Angela thought he meant Sammi. She was standing with Lilou’s help, smiling at them both as they approached. But Vince was looking to their right, past the stumps of an old building protruding from the ground and towards the spiky remains of a clump of trees. She caught movement among their stripped grey trunks. She had seen that figure before.
“Grace,” she said. “She’s come for Sammi.”
“Huh?”
“Sammi. She can do things, Vince. She’s a fairy, or has fairy blood.”
Confusion shifted to understanding on his face. And then fear.
They reached the ruin where the others waited only seconds before Grace.
* * *
Still weak and queasy from the strange magic she had used, Sammi tried to stagger away from Lilou as she saw Angela and Vince rushing towards her. She felt like the centre of the world and had no wish to be there. She had asked for none of this, and though the strange power she’d felt growing inside for some time excited her, right now it only made her tired and depressed. All she wanted was to be together with Angela, and now Vince.
Lilou did not let her go. Instead she grabbed and held her tight, and Sammi began to panic and struggle.
“I’ve got you,” Lilou whispered in her ear, and Sammi realised that the nymph only ever meant her well. “I’ll look after you.”
Angela and Vince were almost with them. Vince looked different, like an older ghost of himself. Angela looked shocked and afraid. Further
away, Grace was also running towards them. She moved so quickly that she left a haze of dust in the air behind her.
Everyone is coming for me, Sammi thought, and she struggled again, wanting only to turn around and run.
“It’ll do no good,” Lilou said.
“What can I do?” she asked. When Lilou didn’t answer, she twisted a little so she could look into the nymph’s face. There was no hope in her eyes.
Bone had moved closer to the cooler door, crouching down as if to hide from the people running at them. None of them knew his real story, and she doubted him. How could someone called Bone be trusted? Even Sammi could see that he’d been military, or still was. Noticing small tells was something her dad had taught her when they used to sit at sidewalk cafés in Cape Cod and people watch together. Carrying a limp but trying to hide it. He walks really upright and stiff, proud. She still wears her hair short, and there’s a regimental tattoo showing beneath her sleeve. With Bone it was something more subtle and fundamental—the way he carried himself; the movement of his limbs; his voice and choice of vocabulary.
“What can I do?” she asked again. Angela and Vince reached them, breathing hard.
“Hey, Sammi,” Vince said through a mask of pain. She could see that his left arm was broken and held awkwardly against his chest. “So you’re a fairy now? I always thought you were more of an Orc.”
And then Grace was there while she was still smiling. It made no difference that Angela and Vince had reached her first. Angela stood close and put an arm around her shoulder, hugging her in, and Vince hugged them both with his good arm. Vince and Lilou swapped a glance, a smile, enough for Sammi to think, Secret histories between those two. She wished she didn’t think that. It would be easier if she couldn’t see so much, but her senses were sharper than they had ever been. Her hands tingled, fingers throbbing. The scars on her arm simmered as if they were rivers of fire coursing through her veins.
“You can’t have her,” Angela said.
Grace came to a gentle halt ten metres from them, taking them all in at a glance. Sammi had been close to her before, when the fairy had come through from the Fold and dragged her across the threshold from this world and into another. Back then, though, Sammi hadn’t known what she really was. She’d been a girl trapped in an adults’ world, brave and resourceful, yet still experiencing a child’s confusion and fear. Now she was older and wiser. Perhaps wiser than almost everyone here.