by Chloe Adler
“But he was king. What approval did he need?”
“A plan, at least.” The little fairy buzzes off my hand and onto my shoulder. “But once the fachan returned, Vasily was bound to the spell his father had fashioned.”
Oh right. “So Vasily was thrown out of Tara?”
“Exactly,” Paxil leaps up and down on my shoulder. “With their king gone and the wacky antics of the fachan, the royalists were pissed. They wanted the royals to get Azotar out of Tara or they wanted to leave themselves. They temporarily put Katrina in charge and asked her to find a solution.”
Bad choice. “What did she do?”
“She asked Azotar for its help.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
“What? But, but, but—why?” Katrina asked Azotar for help? But the whole reason she took the royalists and left Tara was to escape it.
“Well, she knew it had been honing its powers. There is no one else as powerful in Tara.” He flies off my shoulder and hovers in front of my face. “I think she had her own reasons too. I never trusted that one.”
Smart sprite. “So the fachan helped the royals and royalists get to Juna?”
Paxil shifts uncomfortably on my outstretched palm. “Not just the fachan.”
I blow out a long breath of air. “What besides the fachan then?”
“Me.” Paxil says. “I’m the other piece of the puzzle.”
“You?” Zuri screams from above. “You’re just making that up so you can go to Juna.”
“No,” he lifts off my hand, “it took the both of us.”
His mother flies down, buzzing like an angry hornet. “How did this happen without my knowledge or my consent?”
I drop the hand posing as Paxil’s floor, wiggling my fingers to restore circulation, and hold out my other one.
Paxil lands on it, twisting a piece of his shaggy hair between two fingers. “Well . . . no one actually knew. Not even the fachan itself.”
“What?” Zuri shrieks. “Spit it out boy, what are you saying?”
Paxil looks at me, not his mother. “It didn’t know I was there. When Azotar came here in the monolith, I snuck inside. Katrina was there, trying to use its magic to transport everyone, but it wasn’t working. I followed their voices down a flight of stairs and as soon as I entered a hidden room, a bright blue light exploded outward. It was so powerful it knocked me out completely. When I woke up, I was lying on a tree branch in the loke tree and the royals and royalists were all gone.”
“That doesn’t mean you had anything to do with it,” Zuri scoffs. “There’s no proof.”
“The proof is that it didn’t work without me and as soon as I flew into that room, it did work. What other explanation is there, Mom?”
“Any other explanation. Literally any other.” She lands on my hand next to her son.
“Either way,” I intercede before they can keep arguing, “I’ll have to go back and talk to the fachan again.” I look at Zuri. “May I take Paxil with me, just in case?”
“No.”
“Mo-o-om,” he whines. “I’m not a little kid.”
“You’re not an adult yet either.”
When Paxil and I first met, all those years ago, we were both five years old, but since one hour on Tara is equal to one day on Earth, he must be almost six now. Though he looks closer to ten. Hmm. Fleeting memories of Earth Science classes in high school remind me I have no idea how long a day actually is on Tara. Or a year. Dammit, it doesn’t matter how old he is exactly, he’s just a kid, but I need him. Even if it is a ridiculous theory.
I don’t have time to argue. Maybe there’s a compromise? “Look, Zuri, I’m not going to insist on bringing your son into danger. I can try without him, but maybe you’d consider coming with us? That way you can keep your eye on him.”
Paxil huffs. “I was already there by myself and nothing happened. Come on, Mom. I’ll be with Amaya. She’s a biggun, she can take care of me.”
“Hush, boy. What have I told you about using that derogatory word?” Zuri shakes her tiny head. I stifle a giggle. That won’t help right now, but she’s just so cute when she’s angry.
He looks down, scuffing one tiny shoe against the other. “Sorry, Mom.”
She ruffles his hair and looks up at me. “All we want is for the fachan to leave Tara, and if my son can help with that . . .”
“Really?” He bounces up and down.
“I won’t let anything happen to him,” I say. “I can keep him hidden so Azotar won’t even know he’s there.
“Let me help too.” She places a hand on her son’s shoulder.
“How?” But instead of answering her son, she takes off. As the monolith looms above, she heads toward it. It must be following us. I squint into the sunlight. Is she knocking on the side of it with her tiny little hand? A door materializes and she disappears inside. Shielding my eyes, I squint at the open maw, which reveals only darkness. Several beats later it lowers, landing just outside the forest with a loud thud. The door opens.
With Paxil perched atop my shoulder, hiding under my hair, we make our way to the structure.
Zuri flies out and hovers next to her son. “Be careful,” she whispers.
“We will be.”
The small fairy and I enter the darkened obelisk. As soon as we cross the threshold, the door slams shut and we rise.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Eerie lights flick on when we enter and Paxil flies off my shoulder.
“Wait!” I cry. So much for promising to keep him hidden.
“Amaya?” Betty’s soft voice calls out.
She’s leaning against the far wall, palming her eyes. Thank goodness she’s come to. “Did you see Azotar?”
She nods. “Yes, it woke me up. I don’t know how long I was out. What happened? How did we get here?”
I shake my head. “I’m not sure.”
She reaches for my hands and I let her take them. Pulling them up to her heart, she blinks at me. “Thank you. It’s even more magnificent than it was in dreamland. Amaya . . .”
“Yes?”
“Will you make it corporeal? Please?” She pulls her trembling lower lip into her mouth. “I know you can do it. You did it for Sabin.”
I did. “I will try.” It hits me hard that when I say this, I actually mean it. I’m not saying what I think she wants to hear. I’m not saying to get something from her. I’m saying it because I really, truly want to help them.
Paxil’s wings whirr by, and Betty turns her head like a scared animal. “What’s that?”
“Paxil, come here.” I hold out my hand and the boy lands on it, looking up at Betty.
“Hi, miss. My name is Paxil.”
“Paxil.” She smiles. “I’ve seen you before but we’ve never met. I’m Betty. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
His smile falters. “You’ve seen me but I’ve never seen you?”
“Betty’s a witch,” I explain. “She can view Tara through a crystal ball. Kinda like a one-way mirror.”
Paxil bobs his head and then turns to me. “I have no idea what you mean, but whatever.” He shrugs.
His word choice indicates some things must have bled in from Earth somehow, even if the concept of a one-way mirror didn’t. I suppose even freakishly cute fairy children can be insolent.
“When do we go downstairs to the hidden room?” Paxil asks.
Betty looks between us. “Hidden room?”
“I need to get to Juna,” I say. “It’s the only way I can free Azotar. And according to Paxil here, the only way to get there is through Azotar itself.”
As if on cue, black smoke seeps from the floor, more or less solidifying into the shape of the androgynous fachan. It moves next to Betty, an ethereal arm circling her shoulders. She smiles up at it and then turns back to me. “You were saying?”
After Paxil and I explain what we know, there’s a deafening silence.
Just as I’m about to throw up my hands and beg, Azotar’s smoke thickens to a d
ense, molten consistency and winds around Betty like a lover. She turns her head and speaks quietly to it. Too softly for me to hear. After a moment, she nods. “Let’s do this.”
A hatch in the floor slides open, the same one I descended into only a few weeks ago to save Sabin when he was shackled to a wall below. “It’s down there?”
Paxil flies to the edge and looks in. “Yuppers, this is it.” He disappears over the edge before I can stop him.
Chapter Twenty-Six
After several flights of stairs, Paxil pauses and hovers outside a part of the wall that has no distinguishable marks. A second later, it slides open. We enter a small room thrumming with power. If I had to guess, I’d call this the monolith’s generator room. Lines of blue energy crisscross the entire space, zapping and firing like static electricity.
Betty’s mouth drops open. “What is this?”
“This,” drawls Azotar’s disembodied voice, “is the source of my power here on Tara.”
“Yes, I remember this,” says Paxil. “There were beams of light shooting through space, shooting across time.”
“Is this the way to Juna?” I ask.
“You don’t need me or the fairy boy to get there, Amaya,” it responds.
I throw my arms up in frustration. “What do I need then?”
“Everything you need is within you,” says Azotar. “Eventually you won’t need an anchor here, which Paxil is providing for you now, a strong piece of pure Taran magic. Eventually you won’t need my magic, or that of any other, to boost you up and along the path, but right now we’re your power pack.”
Cryptic much? “Can you tell me what that means exactly?”
“At this time, you need a jet engine to take off, like the fuel in a rocket. You need a large power boost because the worlds you’re traveling between are so far apart. That’s what we are, your fuel. But you have the innate ability to stitch worlds together. The more you do, the tighter the fabric becomes, the closer the worlds become.”
“Yes,” Betty claps her hands, “that makes sense. Like a patchwork quilt, right, Az?”
“Exactly,” the disembodied voice says. “No piece is connected until Amaya connects them.”
“I’m stitching a quilt?”
“Between planes,” says Betty. “Each time you travel to one, you pull that piece of fabric closer to the next one.”
“So like when she started, Earth and Tara were really far away? Like the loke tree and the Lake of Tales?” says Paxil. “And the more she travels between the lands, the closer and closer they move so now they’re next to each other?”
“Something like that,” says Azotar.
“So I can just wish myself to Juna?” But it’s not like I have a pair of ruby slippers handy. There must be more to it.
“Your stitch to Juna is loose. You haven’t traveled there enough, but with another go, you’ll tighten it, pull it taut.” Azotar appears next to Betty, dense smoke circling her waist. “You still can’t go there on your own, but you can pull magic from my generator and use Paxil, the little fairy, to anchor the thread. The rest is up to you.”
“How?”
“What have you used in the past to focus your powers?” asks Betty.
Sex. So not happening. But then again, there’s something else, isn’t there?
My voice.
Facepalm, why didn’t I think of that sooner? Vasily and I could have arrived in Juna with all our clothes on, dammit. I clear my throat, open my mouth and belt out a few lines of Verdi’s Il Trovatore, Azucena’s lines dark and throaty.
Betty gasps. “Wow, you’re really good. Wait—take this. Just in case.”
She shoves the little Taran rock into my hand and I proffer a smile, as much as possible while belting out an aria. Warm bursts of energy alight on my skin, reminiscent of static electricity. Little zaps and cracks split the air. The room spins and we close our eyes. I draw in the fallen loke tree, the wide mountain where everyone lives, the cruel climate and the undying sun. The pitch builds, heightens, tumbles, turns and rights itself again. When I open my eyes, I’m in Juna. Unfortunately, I’m in the hot, barren desert, the royalists’ mountain nowhere in sight.
I grumble, lifting myself out of the red clay. The landscape is bleak. Red dirt as far as the eye can see. The sun blazes down, scorching and dismal. I turn slowly and let out a soft shriek when I spot the fallen loke tree. It was in my blind spot. Practically crawling over to it, I search the ground for Sanne. Locating her takes me far too long but when I feel the curve of her hilt under a splintered branch, I leap to my feet and pull her out. I spend another several minutes feeling for the sheath. Once she’s plastered against my hip, where she belongs, I face my next task.
I dig into the base of the truncated loke tree, just as Vasily did what seems like ages ago. It was right here, wasn’t it? Between this lump that looks like the Cheshire cat and a rock the exact color of Jules’s favorite lip gloss . . .
But after half an hour of looking, the last twenty minutes of which are spent alternately cursing and suppressing sobs, I have to admit defeat.
The portal is gone.
From the moment I saw the chopped-down loke tree in Betty’s crystal ball, I knew it had to be. Why else cut down the dead tree? But I’d still hoped . . .
Someone destroyed it. So, no direct flight back to Tara for me, for Vasily, or for his people. Why would anyone do this? And how on Earth—er, Tara—are we going to get his people back? I’m getting better, and Azotar swears the worlds are pulling taut, whatever that means, but I’m still hit or miss when it comes to escorting passengers. How long will it take to bring everyone back one by one? Or will I have to beg Azotar for some magical jet fuel after all?
I have no idea which direction to move in. When the loke tree was standing, one of its branches pointed in the right direction, but now there is no signpost.
Dejected and forlorn, I reach inside for the tools the warlocks gave me. Sitting down, I steady my breath, close my eyes, and tap into Bodhi and the meditation practices he taught me.
I let the tension leak from my body, following it instinctively as it takes on a new shape, that of a cord grounding me to the center of the planet. The cord spins around the planet’s center and shoots back up to the surface, like a compass pointing to the center of Juna, spinning my perspective to the left, then the right and then to the left again.
My powers blossom here and I lean into them, letting my mind go blank. It’s almost as though my physical hand reaches down along my mental cord, feeling the taut pull as it winds straight through the desert and tethers me to the planet, stitching me here. I follow it with my mind until it reaches a blackened center, the core. And then, as if the core is metal and my mind is a magnet, it pulls, hooking me like a spring.
My consciousness bounces back up to the surface and when I open my eyes, the landscape is covered in a grid.
Gasping, I leap to my feet. The vista is like something out of a video game, grid lines extending out and beyond the horizon in every direction. I spin in a slow circle until I feel the mountain in my mind, invisible to the naked eye and yet I know exactly where it is.
I start walking, my hand planted on the hilt of my trusty sword.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
By the time I arrive at the mountain, the sun is setting, lighting up an orange sky. I take a moment to worry about not asking Vasily about the time differences here. But when I returned to Earth from Juna before, it was the same as if I’d been to Tara. Maybe they chose Juna for it’s similar time passage. I can’t think of another reason; this place sucks balls.
I make my way around the large foreground until I spot the entrance to the great hall. Two female guards stand outside and I approach them cautiously. They aren’t pointing unsheathed weapons at me like they were when Katrina sat on the throne, so that’s an improvement.
“Ladies, I’m Vasily’s mate, Amaya. I’m here to see him.”
The mouth of one of the guards crooks up in
a condescending smile. “Go on in.”
“But . . .” the other guard says, but the first one holds up a hand to shush her.
As soon as I enter, I know why. The chamber is filled to capacity and I slide around the back, behind a wall of bodies, unseen. I can barely make out Vasily, seated on his throne looking more tired than I’ve ever seen him. My heart clenches and I want to run to him, but I hold back, reminding myself that he’s no longer mine to run to. But even if he were, this would not be the right time.
“Please, this is going nowhere.” He holds up a hand.
“Only because you refuse to listen!” shouts a woman.
“Oh he’s listening,” a man says, “but he’s not taking any action.”
“What would you have me do?” asks Vasily. “We’re all on the same side here. We all want the same thing, to return to Tara. Right?”
“You know it’s not that simple,” the man yells. “We’ve been debating this for hours. Get that monster out first and then we’ll go back.”
“Citizens,” Verity’s voice rings out crystal clear, “you have to trust us. This is a delicate moment. The Tarans need Vasily in order to remove Azotar and you need the fachan in order to return to Tara.”
At least that’s one less thing for me to try and explain to everyone. After I left, Vasily must have talked to his people about how they got to Juna in the first place and found out it was Azotar who gave Katrina the oomph she needed. Does that mean Vasily has figured out we’ll need Azotar again to return, now that the loke tree’s one-way portal is gone? The royalists hate the fachan. And unlike Oceane and the asrai, Vasily doesn’t have the trust of his people after being gone for so long. It’s a catch-22. How are they going to get their people to agree to this?
“I don’t know why we’re listening to Vasily anyway,” a second woman snorts. “His consort is a menial human.”
