by Apollo Surge
"I know." Sawyer said, and forced himself to smile. "But I want to. I want to save our family."
Chapter Twenty-Four
They packed up, only what they could carry in either shape, and left the same day. The called Dr. Ferrox from the bus station and told her that, if the world was still around next week, she should visit them in Connecticut.
They had to travel more slowly because of Sawyer's condition, and every day Sawyer was more worried that they wouldn't make it in time. Twice they had to stop for hours while Sawyer was wracked with false labor contractions brought on by the stress.
At midnight, as the twentieth became the twenty-first, Sawyer was dozing against Elliot's shoulder on a bus to Hartford. His dreams were incoherent, flashes of fire and fear and pools of restfulness, tangled and confusing.
And then, all at once, they were replaced by a familiar meadow.
Sawyer had been waiting for this, and he was only confused for a moment before he realized what was happening. He wasn't surprised at all when he turned and saw Goldenrod standing among the flowers.
"I was wondering where you ran off to," the Seelie man said, tilting his head curiously.
"Just needed a quick vacation before the end of the world," Sawyer said with a shrug. "You know how it is."
"I'm sure I don't," Goldenrod replied. "But I would have found you regardless. You asked me to come to you, you may recall, if it looked certain that the Unseelie would succeed in destroying the mountain. If it seemed all was lost, I should come to you the night before and make my offer again."
"I'm surprised it took you this long." Sawyer ran his fingers over the wildflowers, taking a moment to appreciate them. He might never see something like that again.
"Yes, well, the difficulty with being 'certain' is that the Courts are evenly matched," Goldenrod replied, crossing his arms. "It's sort of our whole thing. Even now I have to admit calling it certain is a bit of a stretch. It's more like a fifty-fifty chance. I had to wait very precisely for things to tip just a degree in the Winter Court's favor in order to do this."
"How long do we have?" Sawyer asked. Goldenrod shrugged.
"Difficult to say. The Unseelie are gathering power for an earthquake of truly impressive magnitude. They've triggered several smaller ones already. But the Seelie army masses over the mountain, poised to break through the Unseelie line and take the mountain before they can destroy it. In the end, it will be a question of numbers, as it always is."
Sawyer frowned down at the flowers. Would they get there in time? And the babies...
"All that is but frosting on the cake," Goldenrod said, waving a hand dismissively. "What matters, what I'm here for, is to again make you the terribly generous offer I made you before."
He extended a hand to Sawyer, smiling as though he'd already won.
"Give yourself and your child to me and I will call off the Seelie forces and save the world."
"No," Sawyer said, still looking at the flowers.
"Pardon?" Goldenrod dropped his hand, looking puzzled.
"Not yet," Sawyer explained, looking up. "I need a little more time. One more option I want to explore first."
Goldenrod squinted, and thunder rolled in the distance.
"What have the Unseelie offered you?" he demanded. "I can assure you, you won't find their company more pleasant than mine."
"It's not the Unseelie," Sawyer said. "You'll probably get what you want in the end. I've just got one more Hail Mary to try first."
Goldenrod still looked suspicious, but the storm clouds on the horizon slowly dissipated.
"Fine," he said, shrugging. "It's traditional to make the offer three times anyway. I suppose I can wait just a little longer. Although, if you cut it too close I may have difficulty convincing the Queen to retreat you know."
"I'm prepared for that," Sawyer said. He was prepared for the whole world to end. "That reminds me. I finally figured it out."
"What's that?" Goldenrod asked, curious.
"How you all got through the barriers. You pretty much told me that first time I dreamed about you, but I forgot most of that dream until recently, and you were trying to trick me into thinking it was you."
"And what a shame you didn't fall for it," Goldenrod sighed. "It would have been so much easier."
Sawyer touched his chest, where the white antler scar still burned like ice.
"It was the Erlking," Sawyer said. "When I was with him during the ritual, it was also the height of my heat. I bonded to him. And since the protections of the boundaries extend to family, including family by marriage..."
"Bingo," Goldenrod confirmed. "We're in-laws! Or close enough, anyway. One Fae being allowed through weakened the entire contract. On top of which he was a royal, meaning his entire court was defacto included. And the ambiguous nature of the Wild Court was such that it was easy to find a loophole. All it took was one wild fae bound to the court, effectively both wild and Seelie, to open the door. And where the Seelie go, so to do the Unseelie. I'm surprised it took you so long to work it out. You had the scar and everything."
"What can I say?" Sawyer shrugged. "I'm kind of an idiot."
"No, you're worse," Goldenrod said, shaking his head. "You're a fool. In the classical sense. Reeking of destiny and all."
"Thanks, I think," Sawyer said, shrugging. Goldenrod shook his head.
"The point of the fool is the journey he takes," Goldenrod said cryptically. "And it remains to be seen how that journey will end."
"Is it too late to hope for happily ever after?" Sawyer asked, with a bitter smile.
"I rather think that's up to you," Goldenrod replied, and with a gesture a strong wind blew through the meadow, sweeping the flowers into the air. "I'll come to you again when you call for me, or when the end is at hand."
Sawyer covered his face as the wind grew, flowers obscuring his sight, crowding out the sun.
All at once, he opened his eyes. The sterile fluorescent light of the bus stung his vision. Elliot was asleep against the window, his arm around Sawyer's shoulders. Other passengers on the bus dozed, or read, or listened to music, muffled to static through their headphones. Sawyer looked at them, feeling a strange sense of disorientation, which continued even hours later as they left the bus and continued their journey, passing schools and homes and shopping malls where everyday people were living their everyday lives, with no idea what was coming. The farm had felt like a refugee camp, everyone bracing for disaster. Even the cabin, wonderful as it had been, had carried with it the inescapable sensation of a last holiday. But these people were feeling none of that. This was just another day for them. If the world ended, it would come as a complete surprise. Sawyer wondered if that was for the best.
The closer they came to Waterloo, the stranger the weather became. Sawyer had seen mention of the "anomalous weather patterns" over the area on the bus station's TV, but the small report really hadn't done it justice.
Winter and Summer were at war.
Summer rainstorms appeared, broke, and vanished in moments. Sudden sleet blew in from nowhere and was gone before you could do more than shiver. Waves of intense heat rolled in and then out in the space of a minute. Fog crept in and turned spontaneously to rain, thunder cracked once and never again, snow fell gentle from a blue and cloudless sky and melted before it hit the ground.
"We should hurry," Elliot said, watching frost cover the trees, only to stripped away by a hot July wind. Sawyer nodded.
They took a cab for the last leg of the journey and gave the driver the last of their cash not to ask questions when they scribbled fae wards on the passenger windows with a tube of chap stick. It dropped them off in front of the long driveway and they hurried up, ducking their heads against a wild icy gale which was swept away by a cloud of pollen and fallen flowers, until they reached the wards. They found the red string broken, the charms trampled into the mud.
"We're too late," Sawyer said, his heart squeezing painfully in his chest. Elliot said nothi
ng, just squeezed Sawyer closer to his side and hurried on toward the house.
"Alicia?" he shouted as he opened the front door. "Jacob, Mateo?"
There was no answer. It looked like the house had been empty for days.
Sawyer checked out the back door and saw no one. Even the chickens and goats were gone.
"They couldn't have all been taken," Elliot said, his voice wavering. Sawyer wasn't so sure, leaning against the dining room door as another wave of muscle spasms ran through him, gritting his teeth against the intense pressure and discomfort.
Something tapped on the wooden doorframe.
Sawyer straightened up abruptly, skin prickling with sudden fear as he searched for the source of the sound.
It came again, three light, rapid taps on the wood. Sawyer turned in a quick circle, looking for the source, his heart hammering at the thought that the Fae might still be here, waiting for them.
The tap came again, this time from the kitchen table.
Sawyer's brow furrowed. Cautiously, he stepped toward the sound. There was something small in the shadow of the table, only about the size of a squirrel. It tapped the leg of the table again as Sawyer approached, and for a moment Sawyer glimpsed large brown eyes and fine, dust colored fur.
Then it was gone, and the next tap came from near the back door. Sawyer looked toward it, and a second later heard the quiet clatter of ceramic on tile. He looked down at the dish sitting at his feet, the same blue and white bowl in which he'd left cream out for the domovoi.
Sawyer didn't say anything, but went to the fridge. The food hadn't gone bad yet, so the house hadn't been abandoned too long. There was fresh goat's milk in the door. He poured a little into the dish and turned away long enough to put the bottle back. By the time he looked back the dish was empty again. The back door opened with a creak.
"Elliot," Sawyer said loudly.
"What?" Elliot asked, jogging half way down the stairs from where he'd been checking the upper floor.
"This way," Sawyer said, unable to explain any further. Elliot didn't ask, just hurried after Sawyer as they headed out into the back yard, following the quiet tapping, which led them past the chicken coop to the garden fence. A chime sounded from the barn, calling them onwards. It sounded like one of the bells they put on the goats.
"Is it just me or does this feel like a trap?" Elliot said, giving Sawyer a worried look.
"I don't think it is," Sawyer replied. "I think it's the house spirits. If you take care of them, they're supposed to help you and protect the house. If they're still here, then I don't think everyone was taken. I think they're showing us where the others went."
He opened the garden gate and followed the ghostly chiming of the goat's bell past the barn and the workshop, to the old well at the back of the property, where they saw the bell shining on the gray stone rim. As Sawyer approached, he heard an echo of voices, coming up from the darkness of the well.
"...up the mountain," Sawyer heard, in what sounded like a distant echo of Alicia's voice. "To the cave!"
Sawyer nodded in understanding. He patted himself down suddenly, checking his pockets.
"Do you have any spare change?" he asked Elliot.
"Um, about a dollar fifty I think," Elliot said, pulling a handful of nickels and dimes out of his pocket. "Why?"
"Chuck it in," Sawyer told him, fishing a granola bar out of the front pocket of his hoodie.
"Should I make a wish?" Elliot asked, half joking.
"No," Sawyer said. "They already did you a favor. You're paying them back, not asking for more."
Elliot looked perplexed, but dropped the handful of change into the well, while Sawyer unwrapped the granola bar and jogged back to leave it near the barn.
"You heard the well," Sawyer said as he came back, already shrugging out of his clothes. "Up the mountain. They're hiding in the sacred cave."
Chapter Twenty-Five
The sun finished setting as they raced up the mountain, wary and alert for an attack from the fae. The signs of their presence were constant. The constantly shifting weather only grew more intense the higher they climbed.
Once, they glimpsed the ruins of a golden banquet through the trees, the guests all dead, slumped over their plates. The centerpiece of the feast was an elk, its antlers rimed with frost, a silver spear through its heart. Once they heard screams on the wind, inhuman and musical, and a furious buzzing as of a swarm of insects. Then a howling wind sprang up and they had to focus on not being carried off by a tornado before it melted into a shower of flower petals.
"What in tarnation are you doing back here?"
Sawyer's ears pricked at the familiar, angry voice.
"Jagger!" he said as the mountain spirit appeared among the stones ahead of them. "You're still alive!"
"For the moment," Jagger confirmed.
"Is this the guy you mentioned?" Elliot asked, staring at Jagger warily. "The guardian?"
"So I am," Jagger answered before Sawyer, standing up straighter to emphasize all three feet of his height. "And you seem to be doing your damndest to die out here."
"Can you lead us to the sacred cave?" Sawyer asked. "We keep getting turned around in all this weather bullshit."
"What'll you give me for it?" Jagger asked. "I'm still in the market for a baby, you know."
Sawyer thought for a moment, then pawed at his neck.
"I'll not have your fleas, thank you all the same," Jagger laughed.
"Here," Sawyer said, pushing the necklace he'd been wearing off over his neck. A clay pendant of a wolf hung on a leather cord. "Take this. Elliot gave it to me the first time we met. He made it himself."
"I was half joking about you owing me anything," Jagger said, eyes wide. "It's my job to protect the people of this mountain. You've no business giving me such a precious thing."
"I want you to have it," Sawyer said. "I don't know what's going to happen up there, and I owe you a lot. So, just in case I never get the chance to repay you properly, I hope this makes us square."
"It does," Jagger said, accepting the necklace with a surprising solemnity. "It more than does. This way now, and quickly."
He put the pendant on, and led them up the mountainside, steering them through the sudden snow storms and bitter heat and blistering winds. It was well and truly night by the time Sawyer saw the cave ahead of them, light spilling golden from the entrance. Jagger vanished without a word as they approached. Someone was standing in the opening of the cave with a lantern, and they shouted as they saw the wolves, their voice lost in a flurry of snow.
By the time Sawyer and Elliot stepped foot into the cave, there were four wolves blocking it, snarling in ferocious warning.
"Jacob!" Sawyer said, recognizing the huge black wolf in the center. "It's me!"
Jacob's ears perked up in surprise.
"Sawyer?" he said, darting closer to sniff at Sawyer's fur. "It is you! Where have you been?"
The other three wolves, Mateo and Alicia and Paul, crowded around him and Elliot, tails wagging in excitement.
"We thought you'd both been taken! We were scared out of our minds!"
"It's complicated," Sawyer said, reluctant to explain just yet. "I'm just glad you're all safe."
"You look ready to pop," Alicia commented. "How long do you have?"
"Feels like any minute now," Sawyer admitted with a canine grimace.
"Oh, are we not pretending not to notice Sawyer being obviously pregnant anymore?" Mateo asked. "That's a relief."
"Did everybody know?" Sawyer asked, shrill with embarrassment.
"I didn't think it was polite to bring it up," Jacob said self-consciously.
"The Moon told me at the same time it told you," Paul said, shrugging.
"I told you it was obvious as hell," Elliot chimed in.
Alicia led them back through the narrow passage into the cave proper, which was crowded almost to capacity. In addition to the gator shifters and Russell's group, there were several new faces Sa
wyer didn't recognize, as well as Serena and her coven, currently sitting in a circle and chanting something, directing a flow of electric purple energy toward the open roof of the cavern, where an iridescent shimmering force field was keeping the chaotic weather out.
"We all retreated up here a few days ago," Alicia explained. "The wards were already weakening and we figured we'd stand a better chance where the mountain's power is strongest. Serena and the other magic users have been working nonstop to reinforce the magic here and protect us."
"Any word from the Council?" Sawyer asked.
"Nothing," Alicia said grimly. "We've had other shifters and near fae straggling in one or two at a time every couple of days. Some of them have seen the Council trying to take on the Fae in a few other places. Nothing successful from what I've heard. The impression I've got is that they're gone."
"So much for hoping for a last minute save from them," Sawyer said with a sigh.
"Excuse me!"
Sawyer looked up, recognizing Casey hurrying toward them.
"Did you happen to see two kids out there?" she asked, her eyes wide and frantic. "I haven't seen Mike and Rita since the last headcount."
Sawyer felt a flash of cold fear. Their silence was all the answer Casey needed. She groaned, pressing her face into her hands.
"Their parents are gone," she sobbed. "I promised I'd look out for them!"
Sawyer looked up at the roof of the cavern, where the moon was slowly rising. Another contraction passed through him, twisting his insides into knots, a deep muscle ache and an intense pressure. He took a deep breath and held it until the feeling passed. He didn't have long now, but neither did he have time to wait.
"We'll find them," Sawyer said immediately.
"You can't go back out there," Alicia said at once. "It's a miracle you made it up here safe!"
"Even if Mike and Rita weren't out there, I'd be going back out anyway," Sawyer said frankly. "I think I might know how to stop all this. If not, well, it'll all be over in about an hour anyway. I just wanted to make sure you guys were all right first."