“He's young, and he's scared because nothing is as he hoped it would be.” Rose took off her riding gloves and folded them into her pocket. She sighed and rubbed her temples. “Ragan acted out with the same anger and self-loathing when he was a teenager. He realized that the rest of the world didn't see him as his father and I did, and he was terrified of what that meant. I think he still is, and rightfully so, but he's better at hiding it.”
“Caught between two worlds and belonging to neither,” I murmured. The creek had wound back close to the road and its babble nearly drowned out my voice.
“He told me once that the most he could hope for was calm, but I've seen him happy before and maybe I will again someday.”
“Shan or Ragan?”
“I suppose that statement applies to both, but I was referring to Ragan. He was happy when he was with your mother, and even more so when she gave him Alon. She was the first person aside from Mordegan and me to see him as a person worthy of love instead of an anomaly to scorn or an oddity to stare at and whisper about. He never thought he'd have a family, not because he didn't want one but because the world wouldn't allow it, but then he found Rin Sylleth. Life became tragic, as it does too often for good people, but he is calmer now than he was before he met your mother, and I think it's because he now recognizes that he's worthy of being loved. I see echoes of adolescent Ragan in Shan, and I see moments of joy when Shan is with Marita. Gods-willing they will have many more years together than my son did with Rin, but even if they don't, the brief moments of happiness he's experiencing now are changing him for the better. I hope she'll help him accept that he's worthy of love, forgiveness, comfort, and everything else that will help him heal.”
Crows cawed in the trees. Serida twitched against my back, licked my fingertips, then fell still with her head on her hip. “So much of what he was is gone, all because his own grandmother wanted to tear him apart and rebuild him as a monster. Who does that? At least she failed her primary objective. He's not the monster she hoped for, not any sort of monster at all.” I paused to drink musty water from my canteen. The creek water wasn't as fresh and clean as it looked, and boiling it had only amplified the dirty flavor. The creek ran the same direction we rode and I wondered if it drained from the morass or if there was a bend before we first encountered it that had brought it down from the north. At least we hadn't needed to cross any bridges over it yet.
“No, he's not a monster. He's a wonderful young man who has lost his balance and isn't sure if he's going to teeter back upright or land on his face.” Rose dabbed a handkerchief under her nose before tucking it back into a jacket pocket. “We're here to catch him, so he'll be all right.”
I breathed in deeply and exhaled through my mouth. A new scent crept into my nose and prickled across my tongue. It wasn't pine or birch, musty water or mossy detritus. Something arboreal and new. Maybe we'd see a new variety of tree soon. “Rose, I wish you'd been able to reveal yourself as Ragan's mother back when he was with my mother. It would have been nice to know you as our acting grandmother in addition to the merc who taught Shan how not to blow himself up with a shadow bomb. It would have been nice if Alon had known you were his grandma.”
“It wasn't safe, no matter how much I wanted to hold that role in your lives.” Rose's voice was choked. Her plush black tail flicked her horse's thigh and her pointed ears drooped. “I'm here for you now, both of you. You may not be my blood, but you're my family. You should know that Ragan never stopped referring to you two as his sons when he asked me about you in the years you were apart. My son and I both choose to make you and Shan our family, and that choice binds us just as strongly as natural kinship.”
“Ragan is the closest thing to a father I've ever had. It was devastating when he left us, but now I'm older and I understand why. It hurts, but I understand. Their love was strong and genuine, but it it couldn't mend what was broken. It couldn't keep their secrets and memories from tearing their trust to pieces, and it couldn't promise any of their children would survive to adulthood.”
Rose twisted toward me and smiled. Her golden eyes were wide and glossy. “You've grown into an empathetic young man, Tessen. It's a wonderful thing.” She patted the sheathed dagger on her hip and turned her eyes back to the road. “I think you're ready to start training with Ragan again. I know it's been a couple years, but clearly you've kept up your training and I think I know with whom. I saw you do one little trick back on the plains that you could only have learned from Mordegan himself because I've never seen anyone else do it. Don't worry, I won't tell. Anyway, a little time each day will help you regain what strength you've lost. I'm going to keep working with Shan. I've got some ideas on new incantations I can teach him and that will help keep his mind occupied.”
“I'm ready to get back to form,” I said. I was tired of feeling weak and fatigued. I hoped I wouldn't have to fight again, but melee training was about more than battle. It helped me find balance and become comfortable in the awkwardness of my own body.
“I thought so.” Rose said, her voice back to its usual clarity. “Tonight we'll all get back to work.”
∆∆∆
By late afternoon, the snails were the size of whiskey barrels. They chomped on grasses and ferns as they continued to follow each other's slime trails, which oozed half the width of the road and were becoming difficult to avoid if we rode side-by-side.
“Hey, Nador, pretty soon they're gonna be big enough to strap a saddle on. Shall we pick you out a new mount?” Ragan asked. He was directly in front of me, sharing Sprite's back with the halfling.
“Piss off, raggedy cat,” Nador squeaked, giggling not with humor but instead with irritation. “How about you ride the snail and I keep Sprite?”
“You'd need to tow around a catapult to get on him. Catapult, not a ladder. He's spooked by ladders. Dunno why, the coward.” Ragan leaned to the left and spat toward a reed-munching snail. “I don't wanna ride a snail. That stench they give off is rank. Swamp and egg rot.”
I certainly smelled the sulfur he was describing, but even more pungent was the cedar and decay of the surrounding forest. Just within the past hour, the pines and birches had transitioned to cedars, junipers, and oaks. The ground was heavily ferned and thick with detritus. Small animals scurried over rotting logs and birds sang above our heads. This forest was brighter and more hospitable than the previous one, but that may only have been because the clouds had finally departed to leave behind a clear blue sky.
“Nobody's riding any gods-damned snails,” Shan said from behind me. He hadn't spoken since we returned to the road after our last break, and I hadn't realized just how close he was riding. He yawned loudly and smacked his lips together. He must have been dozing, which explained why he had positioned Evinlore close between Saragon and Marita's Hedimar. Shan popped his knuckles, then his neck, and asked, “Doesn't anyone hear that?”
“No gods-damned snails. I hear you just fine,” Ragan said.
“No, no, not that. It's a rhythmic thump in the distance. Drums, maybe.”
I closed my eyes and listened, but heard only the birds and the steady clomp of hooves. The creek had bent north from us some time back, so there was no watery murmur. “I don't hear anything.”
“Of course you don't,” Shan said. “Your round little human ears are almost as useless as your fuzzy vision. Marita, please tell me you hear drums and I haven't lost more of my mind.”
“I hear them,” Marita replied.
“So do I,” Iefyr added.
Shan clicked his tongue. “Good, I'm not hallucinating again. Elves hear drums that human and Faeline and halfling cannot. See, elves are occasionally good for something.”
“Never said they weren't,” I said.
“Not you, fool. Ragan. Good-for-nothing elves. Heard it more than once from him.”
“You're not an elf, Shannon,” Ragan said.
“Iefyr and I are as much elf as you are Fae, and we're just as ineffective at hiding it as
you are, but that doesn't matter, does it? You like to insult elves around me, and Marita is a full-blooded elf.”
“It's all right, Shan,” Marita said quietly, gently. “I acknowledge the brutality and tyranny of my own people. Ragan is one of the people who helped me recognize it. I know your father recognizes it, too, which gives me hope that Jade elves won't always be so blind to their own flaws and cruelty.”
Ragan turned to look back over his shoulder. “You and Daelis are anomalies. And half-bloods are half-bloods, not elves. Shannon, you'd be a damned fool to call yourself an elf when you're not one.”
“You're an asshole, Ragan.” Shan muttered.
“Aren't we all?” Ragan replied before returning his attention to the road ahead.
I heard it now, the steady rhythm of drums. We were riding closer to the source, and the beats were gradually becoming less muffled by the trees.
“Are we going to keep arguing and ride right up to the drummers?” I asked. Argue, argue, argue, all anyone did anymore was argue. No one bothered to fight with me except for Shan, but the others seemed to have taken up bickering as a form of entertainment. Nador and Iefyr, Marita and Rose, Rose and Ragan, Ragan and Shan, Nador and Ragan, Marita and Ragan . . . Ragan seemed to be the epicenter of most of the squabbling. I was certain it was because he was anxious. He was afraid of being seen by the Fae, afraid of being called abomination again. Or worse, afraid someone would become violent toward him. Ragan's height made him an imposing figure in the Jade Realm, but in the Faelands he was slight, weak, and grotesque.
“Enough of the childish pettifoggery,” Rose said with a sigh. “Not you, Tessen. You're the only one with any sense today.”
We fell silent as we passed a snail the size of a pony. The creature's eyestalks swiveled toward us as it slithered over the fallen leaves and weeds that blanketed the road. It opened and closed its toothless mouth several times, then returned to ignoring us.
“Nador, they've gotten big enough that if we find a shell without the snail still in it, you've got yourself a new house,” Ragan said.
“Shut up, you pointy-eared sardsack. Just shut your damned mouth,” Nador growled.
“Whoa!” Ragan yanked Sprite to a halt. He held up his left hand, then pointed downward. “Watch yourselves up here. Road snaps to the right and if you keep going straight, you're gonna go down. Way down. Down with the snails and whatever they're chasing.”
“Don't follow the snails,” Shan said.
“Yeah, don't follow the snails. Please. I reckon you'll never be seen again if you do.” Ragan carefully guided Sprite to the right. “I'm telling you, though, I've suddenly got an urge to follow them. Not too powerful, but curiosity's scratching at my mind.”
“I feel it too, but stay on the road, Ragan,” Nador said.
“Look, don't chase. Strange sight down there.” Ragan shook his head before continuing on the road.
I had to venture nearly to the bend to see what Ragan and Nador had been looking at. Straight ahead was a steep drop with a zig-zagging, spiraling path leading downward. Three forest creeks spewed green-tinted waterfalls into the unseen depths. Snails traveled the path behind the cascades, growing ever larger as they descended. Down, down, down, into the shadows of an endless pit. Star-like lights glittered in the misty abyss. The wind shifted and a stench like rotting flesh and eggs assaulted my nose.
Follow the snails. Follow the snails. Follow the snails. The whisper caught me in a creeping, tentacled embrace and tried to tug me forward. I resisted with a sharp inhale and a recoil of my hand. I tugged the reins. “Come on, Saragon, not that way. We don't ride into snail pits. Never, never go that way.”
Saragon nickered, her eyes wide. She hesitated momentarily before following Sprite away from the snail pit. I watched the road behind me to make sure everyone else resisted the urge to descend.
“I remember something about this,” Rose said once we all safely navigated the bend. “When I was a young child, my grandmother told me a story about the creation of the world. Before there was this world, there was a tiny world inhabited by snails, a world no bigger than a boulder. The snails were as small as a grain of sand, and they stayed in one clump of grass, until one day the snail king decided it was time to take the other snails on an adventure. They followed his trail as he went around and around the world. Any snail that attempted to travel faster than the king was eaten by him. As the eons passed, he grew bigger and slower, and more and more snails were eaten. The snail king became so large he could no longer move, but the scent of his trail lingered so the snails kept following it because they no longer remembered anything but the trail. The world formed around the giant snail and grew larger as he did. Grass grew, water flowed, the land became varied, and new animals began to appear. People came to be, and the world became our own. But, still at the center of the world is the snail king, and still the snails follow the trail. Down, down, down, to the center of the world, and they and anything else that heeds the snail king's call gets eaten and becomes a piece of the world.”
“So, everything we stand upon is snail shit?” Ragan asked with a snort.
Rose laughed. “Seems that way. I don't know where she heard the story, probably from one of the Molluskfae she drank and gambled with. They're not the most intelligent of Fae, so they probably saw this place and thought a cannibalistic snail at the center of the world was a reasonable explanation.”
“Everyone's a damned fool.”
The drumming grew louder as we rode away from the snail pit. Louder and louder, and the cadence became clear. An accented triplet pattern offset a lower pitched gallop. I was certain there were only two drums. Occasionally one pitch would cut out for several bars or the rhythm would shift to a duple pattern, but it always returned to the original triplet and gallop.
“Cover your face, Ragan. I think this road is taking us right to them,” Rose said.
Ragan mumbled to himself as he wrapped one of Shan's light scarves around the lower half of his face. He donned a pair of goggles with green-tinted lenses before covering his tawny hair with his hood.
“Tail, Ragan,” Shan said. His own face and eyes were already covered in the same manner as Ragan's.
“Damn it. You're trying to get me to pass as human, and I don't think I can. I'm too tall and my balance is all wrong,” Ragan grumbled as he rearranged his clothing to hide his tail.
“Most people in this realm have never seen a human in anything other than an illustration. Don't claim to be one, but I don't think they'll press you on the matter so long as you don't do anything to make them wonder,” Rose said.
“You kind of look like a desert orc right now, so you could go with that,” Iefyr suggested. “Covered like you are, your height suggests orc. You're a little too slender and your hands are definitely not orc hands, but I doubt they'll notice if you wear gloves and play the part. Shift your center down and walk like an orc, not a Faeline. Avoid questions and you'll be fine.”
I hoped that was true. Ragan needed to stay safe from prying Fae, but I had a feeling it was only a matter of time before keen eyes would reveal him for what he truly was. As long as we were still in the Faelands, he was in more danger than either Shan or me.
Chapter 30
The trees parted to reveal a verdant meadow. Butterflies fluttered between red brush-like blooms and ferns were replaced by brambleberries. Several brown objects sat at the center of the field near the source of the drumming, but my poor distance sight couldn't resolve what they were.
“Is that . . . is that a big wooden mouse?” Shan asked, indicating toward the largest brown object, which seemed to be positioned in the middle of the road directly ahead of us.
“A rat,” Rose replied. She smirked and rubbed the back of her neck. “It's a rat effigy. I think we'll be safe with the people we find here.”
“How could you possibly think that?” I asked. Nothing was safe in the Faelands, so how could she assume that drummers with a giant wooden rat wouldn'
t try to kill us?
Rose's smirk widened into a grin. “My dear, only Owlfae would erect a rat effigy. They are nomadic and invariably peaceful. Their senses are even more acute than those of elves, so I'm sure they already know we're here.”
Rose dismounted and led her horse toward the center of the meadow.
“Get back on Abracca, Mom,” Ragan protested. “If we have to run, you'll lose precious seconds getting your ass back on her.”
Rose kept her back to us and kept walking. “Trust me, Ragan. Please. Owlfae are helpful if we treat them like the amicable souls they are. It grieves them to be treated as potential enemies. You've met Owlfae before. They regularly wander through the Jade Realm and they always treat you kindly.”
“I've not met these specific Owlfae.” Ragan caught up with Rose, then dismounted to walk next to her. “I'm trying to trust you, but you haven't been here in decades.”
“Thirty-eight years.” Rose reached for Ragan's hand and squeezed it. “I left my homeland five years before you were born and I never intended to return to it. Now we're here and so are my memories. Trust me, my dear. I have no intention of placing you or anyone else in danger.”
The rest of us descended from our horses. The brown objects resolved into parked traveling wagons. Around the wagons, several brindle-coated Fae horses munched on grass and stomped at the clod.
The drumming stopped and so did we. Seconds later, we found ourselves being gazed upon by a family of Owlfae.
Sixteen round, yellow eyes stared at us. Heart-shaped faces and tufted ears were fringed with brown feathers, and hooked noses shaded small mouths. Wings draped like capes beneath sinewy arms and clawed hands. The Owlfae were otherwise humanoid in appearance, with friendly, curious faces and plump bodies. They were dressed in shimmering, autumn-hued clothing that was simple of cut but elaborately embroidered with images of leaves, mushrooms, and small forest animals.
The largest Owlfae stepped toward us. She tilted her head far to the side, held it there for a moment, and then jerked it upright. “Hello, travelers. Will you share our meal?”
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