Anais Eternal

by Paige Graffunder

  ◆◆◆

  I held open the rip in reality while Tatiana and Etachs gawked at me.

  "Come on!" I said impatiently, I didn't know if they were chasing us, but I would rather not find out. We had already lingered in the open too long. Etachs and Tatiana exchanged a look.

  "How are you doing that, Ana?" Tatiana said with slow suspicion.

  "I have no idea, but I know better than to rub a diamond left by pixies. Come on!" I snapped back and grabbed the strap of her bag, pulling her through the rip. She stumbled into the quiet meadow and fell into the tall grass. She looked up, the wisps of her hair that had escaped from her braid floating around her face in a pleasant summer evening breeze. I shot Etachs a look, and they held up their hands in surrender and stepped through. I followed, making sure the rip fully closed behind me.

  "What the fuck, Ana?" Tati said from where she sat in the grass. She hadn't gotten up from her fall.

  "Like I said, I have no idea," I said as I looked around. Ayesha wheeled in the clear and seemingly endless sky above us. "But I think that this place is older than anything we have ever seen before. If this is the place that I think it is..." I trailed off.

  "And what place is that?" Tatiana snapped, taking Etachs' offered hand and getting to her feet, brushing off the clinging grass seed from her trousers. I turned to look at her, a silly grin slapped upon my face. Tatiana just looked at me in bemused annoyance.

  "If I'm right, I think this is where our grandmother is from," I said and delighted in the shocked expression on Tati's face.

  "What? Grandmother Elena is from Cordivan, like us," Tatiana said.

  "No, she isn't," I said. "We only saw her there because that's where she lived when we were around. But in here..." I dropped my pack from my shoulders and rummaged around until I found one of the books. I opened it and tapped at the inscription on the inside cover. "Here!" I held it out to Tati and Etachs to inspect.

  They both bent their heads over the book, Etachs drawing back after a moment, "I don't know this word." They tapped a claw on the page.

  "I-it says..." Tati trailed off, then looked up at me, her face pale and confused. "It says, Elena of the Glade." Tatiana pulled the book from my hands, inspecting it closely. “This is in her handwriting.” She turned and looked at Etachs, then snapped the book shut and handed it back to me. "But where the hell are we? How did you know it was here?"

  I shrugged replacing the book in my bag and turned in a circle where I stood, looking at the green grass, and the tall healthy trees whispering in the breeze. Ayesha called out to me from the sky, delighted the air here was fresh and not tainted with Himlani presence. "I don't know, but I think we should stay here for a while, so I can read these books more thoroughly. I have a feeling that the one that was locked before may not be locked now..." As I spun in a slow circle, I spotted a tiny cabin tucked into a clutch of trees and headed in that direction.

  "Is it safe?" Tatiana called after me. She took Etachs' hand dragging them behind her as she followed me through the tall grass.

  "I have no idea," I called back laughing. "But it's as safe as anywhere else."

  "Ana!" Tatiana said exasperatedly. "Nowhere is safe!"

  I stopped and looked at her, grinning. "Exactly, so it might as well be here." I winked and continued toward the house. Tati grumbled something and continued after me. I reached the cabin first and began to walk around its exterior. It had a porch that wrapped all the way around the structure. It didn't look run down or overgrown, but it had clearly been a long time since anyone had been here. It had an air of emptiness. I couldn’t help but feel eerie how still and silent it was here. Once I had completely circled the house, I rejoined Tatiana and Etachs at the door.

  "So, what now?" Tatiana demanded.

  "We go in," I said. Tatiana rolled her eyes and stepped forward. Etachs and I exchanged a look and a smile. Tatiana grasped the handle on the door and pulled. The door didn't budge. She let out an exasperated sigh and pulled again. Nothing. She kicked the door and when she did, something caught my eye. I tuned into the murmur of my magic and a wide grin split my face.

  "We just need to find a key..." said Tatiana as she began to look around the porch. Etachs cast their eyes to the ground as well, looking for any sign of a hiding place. I watched them, leaning my shoulder against the door jamb, smiling. After a minute, Tatiana wheeled around to face me, her cheeks splashed with angry color. "Aren't you going to help, Anais? Or are you too powerful for us lowly peons now?" She bowed sarcastically at the end of the question and I fought to hide my smirk.

  "Help you look for what, Tati?" I asked, raising my eyebrows.

  "The Gods pounding key!" Tati growled at me.

  "Key for what?" I asked, my look of innocent ignorance still painted on my face, my stomach muscles straining inside my shirt against the giddy laughter fighting to pour out of me.

  "Key for what?!" yelled Tatiana. "A key for the Gift-forsaken door, Ana! Were you just off in your own little world for the last several minutes?"

  I frowned and then grasped the handle. "You don't need a key, Tati, the door isn't locked." I pulled open the door and stepped inside. I heard Etachs bark out a laugh that was quickly cut off, probably by one of Tatiana's cutting looks.

  The inside of the house was cozy without being overcrowded or too sparse. I got the sense that no one had been here in longer than any of the three of us had been alive, but the house didn't seem deserted. There was no dust, no cobwebs. The nature surrounding the house had not tried to reclaim the structure. It was just... empty, not abandoned. I heard the clomp of Tatiana's boots on the wooden floors. To the right, there was a nice hearth, surrounded by comfortable looking couches and chairs, with a low table. The walls were lined with shelves of books and small baubles— the kind of thing a person collects during a lifetime. Well, a person would collect, if a home was still something this world knew.

  I shook myself and continued my visual sweep of the house as Etachs' claws clicked on the floor behind me. They had entered and pulled the door shut behind them. Beyond the sitting area was a long, well-loved table with several chairs. Behind it, against the back wall of the cozy house was a sideboard, the marble top smooth and clean. Separating this side of the house from the other was a staircase. It disappeared past the ceiling into the dimness above. To the left of the staircase was a closed door, then an open space with a small desk tucked against the wall, a delicate-looking chair tucked up close beneath it. A set of double doors opening to the side of the house. Directly to my left was the kitchen, an L-shaped mix of classic, ancient, and modern. A wood-fired stove, a toaster oven, a dishwasher, and a hand pump for the sink, next to the shiny chrome modern one. The sink itself was a deep and long porcelain basin that looked like a small bathtub.

  I felt something inside of me relax. I exhaled as the stress I had been clenching in fists inside myself let go, the fingers of worry unwinding. I had been white knuckling my life for so long, I had forgotten these hands were capable of opening. I turned and looked at Tatiana and Etachs, and grinned. "I think we're as safe as we are going to be." Tatiana rolled her eyes, but Etachs smiled back at me.

  We walked through the house together. The door to the left of the stairs turned out to be a bathroom, which Etachs marveled at and peppered us with questions about the functions of each item inside the little room. Tatiana and I did our best to answer them but were holding back bemused chuckles the whole time. The three of us went upstairs together, single file up the narrow stairs, Tatiana, then me, then Etachs. Upstairs we found three small bedrooms, sparse, but comfortable, and another bathroom. The windows looked out into the glade and everything in the house was just how I would have set such a home up. Every so often, I would catch a familiar smell I couldn't place.

  After we had finished our first cursory walkthrough of the house, we set our packs down and stepped out onto the porch. "I guess we should find out how far this goes," Tatiana said, her hands on her hips as she looked out s
hrewdly over the Glade. I smiled and shook my head.

  "What?" she asked, her head cocked to the side as she looked at me. I just smiled and held my arm out. She looked at my extended arm then back at my face just as Ayesha's talons gripped the sleeve of my jacket and she fluttered to a halt. Tatiana rolled her eyes.

  "It looks like it has no borders, but it does. There are some animals here, deer, birds, bugs, and fish, but they are...." I frowned as I tried to convey what Ayesha had seen.

  "They are what?” Etachs asked. “They are still? Frozen? Trapped?"

  I shook my head. "She doesn't know, but apparently there is something interesting about them, they are not quite right... But there are no people, Human or Fae, and there is no... seam in this place... I guess she means that she can't tell where the rip into the real world is, the place where we came in.”

  "Hmm," Tatiana mulled this information over. Ayesha inched further up my arm until she was perched on my shoulder, her head buried into my hair, her face pressed into the space behind my ear. "Well, I guess that will do for now. We should see what there is for food here, and then we should have a conversation about what to do." Etachs and I nodded, and we all walked back into the house.

  Several hours later, after finding the kitchen cupboards empty of all but dishes and utensils but finding the surrounding glade full and lush with perfectly ripe fruit and greens and herbs, we had all eaten our fill. We now sat on the plush furniture in the living room, Etachs sprawled across the sofa, with Ayesha curled on their stomach while they stroked her feathers tenderly with their claws. Tatiana was sitting with her legs crossed on the loveseat across from me, and I was tucked into the armchair. I had done a more thorough search of the little cabin and had discovered that almost all of the books on the shelves were handwritten journals. I had selected four at random and they were resting on the arm of the chair. I glanced up to find Tatiana looking at me, her brows furrowed, her mouth drawn into a thin line of thought. I raised my own eyebrows at her.

  "Are we going to talk about it?" she said, leaning forward, bracing her elbows on her knees, her hands clasped before her.

  "Talk about what?" I said.

  "All of this, Ana!" she said opening her hands and vaguely gesturing.

  "I don't know what to tell you, Tati," I said, shrugging my shoulders.

  "Well, let's start with how you knew it was here," Tatiana said, her fingers lacing back together.

  "I don't know. It was like it was whispering to me. When I had the dream, my magic whispered its name to me, and then it was like there was a compass in my chest. I just followed it."

  "And the storm? How did you do that?"

  "I don't know. My magic told me how to do it, like the thing with Etachs."

  "That's not how magic is supposed to work, Ana, you don't do what it tells you, it does what you tell it to do."

  "Maybe for you, but this is how it works with some of my magic, Tati. Not all of it, but some."

  "That is what scares me, Ana." Tatiana leaned back in her chair; her shoulders slumped. She looked down at her clasped hands and I realized her knuckles were white.

  Stasis

  Serrif didn't know how long he had been in this hell, but he knew he would not be here much longer. He was in a dark metal box, so small he could not sit or stand comfortably. He was in constant pain from being cramped, from the endless needles they jabbed him with. There was no bed, no light, no access to water, and a meager amount of inedible paste on no identifiable schedule. There was no toilet, they merely let him sit in his own filth, and when they pulled him from the cell, they hosed him down before he was led into the room where they plugged into his veins.

  He was weak and wasted, his face a gaunt shadow of the man he had been when he was taken. His shriveled frame, barely more than a skeleton, wedged into a tiny box. His gorgeous golden skin was now a loose sack of lackluster paleness and his eyes, once green and brilliant, were a faded grey, so empty of their former glory they almost appeared completely white. Not that Serrif knew that. He had not seen himself since he had been captured by these monsters. He also did not know that he had begun to speak to himself aloud. He spoke in a language he had been afraid to use since these beasts had revealed themselves for what they were. A language forbidden for it would get you caught. But he was already caught, so he spoke to himself, but not truly to himself. He spoke to the tiny spark of his magic they had not yet stolen from him. When they had taken him, he had locked away a small kernel of his power and they had not yet gotten it from him. He spoke to it, and he waited.

  When the hatch of his cell slid open, for what was to be the last time, and the clawed hands reached inside grasping him by the throat, he did not fight them. There were always two when they came to collect him. They dragged him bodily into the harsh light of the hallway. He remained limp, eyes slitted open. The one that did not have its claws wrapped around his neck clicked something in their strange language to the other, who replied and began to drag his broken body down the hall. Serrif knew that they spoke, but all his senses were dulled, his hearing muffled as if from a great distance, or underwater. He murmured under his breath as the cold metal floor bit into his skin.

  They dragged him into the familiar room and hoisted him onto the metal frame suspended by thick cables to the ceiling on a pulley system. They pulled over the high-pressure hose and, as the blast of icy water crashed into him, the wind was driven out of his lungs and he writhed on the frame, gasping, the cruel wires digging into his skin as he twisted, sputtering in the freezing jet of water. After a moment, the punishing deluge lessened, then ceased. He was left panting and weeping, shivering on the mesh of metal wire. They grabbed his limbs one by one, cuffing him to the frame in a spread eagle. The first time this happened, he had been ashamed and mortified of his nakedness. But now he was dead to all emotion except for rage and resignation.

  The cold metal closed around his wrists and ankles, and he remained limp and compliant. He didn't scream as the first blow landed on his unprotected stomach. Any air left in his body whooshed out of him, his limbs straining at the cuffs as he tried to curl in on himself reflexively. They always started slow, keeping to blunt force, and electric shocks, nothing that would break the skin. Nothing that would waste their meal. By the tenth blow his voice was nothing more than a rasp, his throat raw from his anguished screaming. Serrif did not react as the first of their needles pierced his skin roughly, first his upper arms, then the crook of his elbows, his wrists, his hands, then in the space where his thighs met his groin, behind his knees, and the worst of all, at his ankles. He let his eyes slide shut, still whispering aloud in his own language, but not reacting to the sharp stabs. The Himlani in the room with him continued their clicking conversation, but he tuned them out. Diving deep within himself, he found the kernel of his magic he had secreted away, and he hid within it.

  After they had punctured his veins and confirmed the flood of blood into the capped tubes, the Himlani that had pulled him from his cell turned and danced their claws over a console protruding from the wall. The floor below the frame the Fae was strapped to, began to slide open, exposing a long table below. The frame began to descend into the room. Thirteen Himlani commanders sat around the table, their eyes turned up to the Fae, naked and prone on the wire mesh, the capped tubes dangling down. Once he had been lowered to the correct position, as one they all lifted their clawed hands to grasp the tubes and pulled them to their mouths, uncapping them with their teeth.

  Serrif groaned as they sucked the blood from him, his head going fuzzy and his vision blurry when he opened his eyes. Deep inside himself he held onto his kernel of magic and spoke to it through blood-stained teeth, a wide grin spreading over his chapped lips. A burst of light spread out from his chest, and the Himlani drinking from him began to scream as their scales were rent asunder, their own blood pouring from their eyes and ears. The dying breath of Serrif Mat'habanina, last of his line, father of four younglings all killed before his eyes, hus
band of Karrina who died in his arms, was a snarling, vengeful, laugh.

  ◆◆◆

  "We need to talk about that creepy thing the animals are doing," Tatiana said, swinging herself down the stairs and into the kitchen where I was boiling water for tea.

  "They aren't doing anything, Tati," I said, not looking up from my task.

  "That's what I mean, Ana, they aren't doing anything, and it's weird and I don't like it." Tatiana hoisted herself onto the counter and looked at me, her legs swinging, the heels of her bare feet rattling the doors of the cabinets.

  "Where is Etachs?" I asked, pulling the whistling kettle from the stove and filling the teapot I had found and cleaned very early this morning. I had never been a morning person but somehow in this place I had woken before the sun and felt better rested than I had since The Devastation.

  "Outside with Ayesha. That feather-brained beast likes the monster more than she ever liked me," Tatiana grumbled.

  "Not funny, Tatiana," I said sternly, turning to face her, two mugs of steaming tea in my hands.

  "Is one of those for me?" she asked, sniffing at the fragrant steam.

  "Not anymore, maybe I'll just give it to the monster," I snapped.

  "What are you going to give to me?" asked Etachs, entering through the double doors next to the kitchen. I grinned and handed the steaming mug to Etachs.

  "Tea," I said brightly and then laughed at the absolutely crushed look on Tatiana's face. "Oh, for the love of the Gift..." I said and pressed the second mug into my sister's hands, grinning at her squeal of delight before turning to fish out another mug and pour the last of the tea into it.