The cafeteria was almost as busy as the rest of the hospital, but we managed to get two bowls of hot soup and some bread rolls, and then we squeezed into a little table in the corner. I drained a cup of juice—the hospital refused to serve soda—to ease my throat before I launched into an abbreviated explanation of what had happened.
“I’m sorry,” I said for the tenth time. “I went with Mom because I was mad at you and Rosa for leaving her, and I thought I should be on her side to balance things out. I didn’t realize at first just how much trouble she was getting into and that we’d have to hide so much. Then she wouldn’t let me come see you guys or go to school or anything, while she and her creepy friends just broke more laws.”
He patted my hand reassuringly. “I know, honey, it was a shock for you when we left in such a hurry, and we didn’t get to explain things to you very well. I hated putting you in the middle of things, but I had to do what I thought was right for you girls. But I never guessed just how far your mother would take it all.” He looked out the window. “Do you know what’s happening in town? I just know it’s some kind of magic and they’re closing the roads, so I can’t get home, and I can’t get Rosa on the phone. I’m really worried about her.”
I rolled my eyes. “I saw Rosa yesterday. She’s fine, she’s running around with her faerie friends and probably decided that she has to be the one to fix everything.” I looked down at the soup. “And, um, the crisis is kind of Mom’s fault. She opened a gate to Faerie, but it went wrong. The magic is still spreading, so everything will probably start going weird here soon, too.”
I wondered if I could still control the gate, like Morrigan said. Maybe I could keep it from spreading into San Andreas and keep these people safe for now. Magikin would still be able to come here—although I didn’t believe that they were really attacking anyone, at least outside of the castle—but the hospital would have power to keep helping people, and the roads would stay open.
Samuel let out a sigh of relief. “I’m just glad to hear that your sister’s okay. It sounds like none of the phones in Madrone work right now. Is the magic field affecting them?”
I nodded. “Yeah, phones are down, and the electricity. All of the cars stopped working, too, so I guess some people might be stranded up in the mountains.” I picked apart my bread roll into little pieces and dropped them into the soup. “Um, there’s something else we have to talk about, too.”
He frowned. “Is your mother going to try to come after you for running away?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen her since she opened the gate, so I don’t know what she’s doing. No, this is more important.” I looked up at him sidelong. “She told me that she’s been lying to you. Us, I mean. I—I’m not really your daughter.”
He grabbed my hand across the table. “Of course you’re my daughter.”
I shook my head again, but I didn’t pull my hand away. It felt good. “No, Mom said that you don’t remember because she used a spell to change your memories, but a long time ago, she had an affair with another man.” I bit my lip. “I—I met him today. My biological father. He’s a faeriekin, and so am I.”
He smiled. “I remember now,” he said sadly. “Since your sister broke the spell. But that doesn’t matter. I held you when you were born, and I taught you how to ride a bike, and I’ve helped you with your math homework every night. As far as I’m concerned, you are my daughter.”
I jumped up from my seat and threw my arms around him, burying my face in his shoulder. He put his arms around my waist. “Thank you,” I mumbled into his green scrubs. “I really need you to keep being my father.”
When I calmed down and sat again, Dad said gently, “So, you met this other guy. Do you want to have a relationship with him, too?”
I shook my head. “No, I don’t think he’s a very good guy. He’s working with Mom on her stuff.”
He nodded. “Okay then. Whatever you want.” He squeezed my hand again. “I’m just happy to get my baby back home.”
27
Face the Guardian
Rosamunde
When Dandelion and I stepped through the Veil, I immediately sensed that something was different. I no longer felt that I could travel anywhere in the Otherworld easily, because many of the paths felt blocked. We could only push forward into the area directly connected to the tear, and there things were wrong: the trees were dying, the sky was covered in streaks of red like fire.
But the enormous golden coils of Kaorinix stopped us short. She was blocking the tear with her dragon body, and at first I stepped back in fear, but then I saw that she wasn’t even looking our way. She was gazing out into the forest, alert for anyone approaching the tear from the Otherworld.
Dandelion walked straight up to her head and waved.
The guardian looked around the area one more time, then shifted down into her human-like form and faced both of us. “It took you long enough to get here,” she said with a shake of her head. “This is a disaster. I have to physically stand here just to keep all of the magikin from rushing through to the other side.”
I realized then that I hadn’t seen any magikin anywhere near the tear since the day before. I’d thought to ask the faeriekin guards to keep intruders out of the mortal world, but the guardian clearly already had things in hand. But I’d expected more from her.
“Excuse me,” I said politely, stepping forward. “But why don’t you just close it?”
Kaorinix reached out and put her hand on the edge of the tear, but it reacted with sparks. She turned and held up her hand to show me the tips of her fingers glowing faintly before flickering out.
“I can’t.” Her voice seemed to rumble more deeply for a moment, with the power of a dragon’s lungs behind it. Her eyebrows came together in an angry scowl. “My own scale was used against me. The spell was miscast, a tangled mess, and I think only the ones who can cast it are able to unravel it now.”
I wrapped my arms around myself with a shiver. “You mean my mom? Are you sure? I mean, I can do the same kind of magic as her. Why can’t I just do it myself?”
She stepped back with a smile and gestured to the tear. “Feel free to try if you’d like.”
I looked to Dandelion for help, but he just shrugged and smiled. Well, I couldn’t make it any worse than it already was, right? I might as well try something.
I reached out and touched the edge, just like I’d seen the guardian do. It felt warm and tingly to the touch. I ran through what I knew about spells from Mom and other witchcraft sources, but nothing matched what I was used to seeing in her magic work. Usually she used herbs and other plants as a focus for the spell. Her biggest work had been the elaborate garden growing around our house, with plants forming a pattern that wove an enchantment over the entire family. But I didn’t see anything like that here.
Of course, Mom had opened the tear from the other side. I was looking at the wrong end of the thing.
“I’m just going to check something,” I said over my shoulder, and then stepped back through.
I turned around and looked at the ground around the opening. There was no sign of any herbs, dried, fresh, or burnt, where she’d performed the spell. Nothing grew around the area except grass, which had died under the winter snow, and now the ground was muddy from the melt.
I tilted my head back and looked up at the enormous madrone tree, the namesake and center point of the town. The gate was inside its thick trunk. Was this somehow her focal point for the spell?
Madrone trees didn’t have a lot of symbolism or mythology behind them. Most people just used the wood for fires, because it didn’t grow straight enough to build anything. I wracked my brain to think if Mom had said anything about them specifically. Sometimes she put the leaves into a tea for treating colds. There was one Native American tribe that had a taboo against burning madrone wood. Otherwise, I could think of nothing.
Clearly, though, it wasn’t an ordinary tree. Some objects gained power just fr
om the meaning that they held for people. Madrone was a small town, but a fair number of people had lived in it over the past hundred and fifty years. Did the tree have power just because it was a recognizable landmark?
I stepped around the tree, away from the gate, and touched the tree itself. Unlike most smaller trees and shrubs, the ancient tree’s bark didn’t crack and peel away from the wood. It just felt very smooth under my fingertips. I closed my eyes and concentrated on the tree. I could feel power humming through it, but I had no way to connect with it or alter what it was doing. I’d never worked directly with a living thing before and I had no idea how to start.
Once again, I felt how completely out of my league I was. I knew nothing about magic except how to make a few simple charms and fly around on my broom. This went right over my head into areas of magic that I’d only recently learned existed. I felt helpless before it.
I opened my eyes again and sighed. I would have to track down my mother and get her to tell me what she’d done. I had no idea how I would get her to cooperate. For that matter, I didn’t know where my mother had gone after she’d opened the gate. For all I knew, she was running around with a different Unseelie queen, plotting to murder more faeriekin nobility and bring anarchy down on the whole county.
I stepped back into the Otherworld and again felt that lurch of wrongness, like the rug was pulled out from under my feet. Whatever was going badly in my world seemed to be affecting the other realm as well. I didn’t have to ask the guardian how bad it was: I saw from the look of strain on her face and the gray tinge to her skin that conditions were worsening rapidly.
“You’re right, I don’t know how to close it,” I said with a shrug. “But if we can’t close it, can we at least contain it? Stop the influence from spreading?”
Again, Kaorinix just shook her head. “There are powers actively making it grow. I’ve slowed it as best I can on both sides, and I’m standing here to make sure that no one gets through into the wrong world. But if this continues, the permanent damage will grow worse.”
I was afraid to ask what would be permanent. I suppressed a shudder and turned to Dandelion. “Will you help me find my mother?”
He gave me a shadow of his usual smile and nodded. “Yes, we’ll do what we can.”
He turned to the guardian and clasped both of her hands in his. “Stay strong. One way or another, we will find a way to stop this.”
Kaorinix smiled back. “I know you will.”
As we turned to leave, I saw her move back into the center of the clearing, and shift back into her true form. The enormous golden dragon once again filled the space, leaving just enough room for us to squeeze back through the tear.
When we were back in the human world, I whirled on Dandelion and grabbed his arm. “You could have saved me a lot of time if you just told me that I needed Mom,” I said angrily. “I saw her yesterday just before I saw you, and instead of looking for Akasha, I could easily have just found her again then. Now it’s been a day and I don’t know where to even start searching.”
Dandelion held up his hands. “Whoa there, witchling! I’m sorry, I didn’t know that she had to be the one to close it. I only just now found out when you did. The guardian only shares things when she’s ready.”
It made me feel a little better to know that I wasn’t the only one getting bits and pieces of information doled out slowly, but it still didn’t solve our current problem. I let go of Dandelion and turned around in a circle, looking out over the transformed town. “She was looking for Akasha, too, although she didn’t find her when I did. Which way do you think that she went?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know your mother very well.” He looked at me sidelong. “But how did you track down your sister, anyway? Somehow you managed to find her when she was in the middle of the forest with a whole group of Unseelie.”
I flung up my hands in the air. “After months of looking for her! Kai wasn’t any help, either, so you gave me bad advice. I don’t know, I guess I just got lucky.”
Dandelion arched one eyebrow at me. “Oh? What happened when you got lucky?”
I shrugged and fingered the dragon scale necklace. “I was just thinking about how much I needed to find her, and then this path opened up in the forest. When I followed it, there she was.”
“What exactly were you thinking? Concentrate on that feeling,” he said quietly.
Now I was trying to remember the day before. Something unusual had happened, not just luck. I’d been tired and frustrated already with how everything was going crazy and Kai wasn’t helping. “I was yelling at Kai,” I remembered now. “I said that I was definitely going to find her this time. And his hand was on me, so I swatted him away—”
I gestured with my hand again, throwing it out to my right, and when my arm moved, the cloak on my back whipped out of my way.
Crack!
We both turned to stare as trees curved back out of the way to the right, revealing another tunnel-like path. Just like yesterday, the very forest was moving to show me the way to go.
Dandelion put his hand lightly on my shoulder, touching the cloak. “It focuses your powers,” he explained. “It contains all of the magical expertise that you’ve learned, because you put all of your materials into it.” He lifted a corner and pointed to a stem woven into the nettle fabric. “You’ve done finding spells before.”
I stared down at the cloak. “Wow, that’s really cool. So I’m prepared for anything now, right? It won’t take me all of that time and effort to cast spells?”
He shook his head and pointed to another part of the cloak. Some of the plants were breaking and falling out, shriveled to almost nothing, and they left behind ragged holes in the weave. “You’ve got a limited number of uses,” he said gently. “This won’t last long, and you’ve got to be careful not to lose it again. Right now it’s giving you certain protections against the chaos caused by the tear in the Veil. Without it, you’re just as vulnerable as the rest of us.”
I remembered the way that I’d been disoriented, stumbling down hallways and unable to keep track of where things were, and Kai pouring coffee onto the floor when he missed the mug. Things weren’t following the regular rules of physics—or was that just a trick that my mind played on me when I wasn’t wearing the cloak? Either way, it felt like I was going crazy.
“The rules of my world aren’t working right now,” I said slowly. “Is the same thing happening to your world? And does that have the same effect on your sanity that staying too long in the wrong world would?”
Dandelion nodded slowly. “The dragon scales give us a little extra protection in the wrong world under normal circumstances,” he said, nodding to the necklace at my throat. “But they don’t help as much now that the Veil no longer separates the two worlds, and even under normal circumstances, they won’t keep off the madness forever. And no one else is safe from this influence.”
I gasped as I thought of my family, my friends—but wait. Would everyone be affected the same way? “What about magikin? Can’t they live in either world normally?”
“Yes, but not in this blended nightmare,” he said with a shake of his head. “Magic and logic don’t mix well together. They’re actively fighting against each other, and those of us caught between are warped by it.”
Kai had been looking pretty bad before, even though he was a kitsune. What Dandelion said made sense.
I grabbed him by the arm and tugged him toward the path in the forest. “Then we’d better hurry up and find Mom. Maybe on the way, I’ll come up with a brilliant idea for convincing her to close the tear after she went to all the trouble of opening it. And then,” I went on, feeling a little loopy with power, “we’ll get Akasha away from the Unseelie, and we’ll all go home to be a family together and live happily ever after. You know, while I’m making wishes, or whatever this magic cloak does for me.”
Dandelion walked with me, shaking his head slightly. “Be careful what you try to do. Magic, especially t
he wish-fulfilling kind, has a habit of working in unexpected ways.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” I grumbled back at him. “Maybe one of these days you’ll teach me how to use my powers the right way so I stop screwing up and needing help to fix it.”
“Maybe,” he said with a playful wink.
28
Meet Morrigan
Rosmerta
I found the stream in the forest again and drank deeply, then settled down on the bank. I only meant to sit and rest for a few minutes, but I must have dozed off a second time, because I opened my eyes again with a start.
The light was unchanged, so there was no way of telling how much time had passed, but I felt stiff and sore from sitting so long on the ground. I slowly pulled myself to my feet, using a tree for support. The bark felt strange to the touch, fuzzy under my hands, and when I turned to look, I saw that it was covered in pale pink fur. I pulled my hand away with a shudder and bent for one last drink from the stream.
At last I stood up, feeling a little refreshed, and looked around. Which way had I come from? I couldn’t recall crossing over the stream, so I turned my back on the water and peered into the forest. I’d left my broom leaning against a twisted pine tree, that much I could remember. But the trees didn’t look much like pine or sequoia any longer. The ones closest to me all seemed to have sprouted some kind of fur or hairy covering varying from pale peach to dark magenta. Farther into the woods I could see other colors, as if a whole rainbow had stained the forest with its hues.
I took a guess at a direction and decided to head into the cooler range of blues and greens, because the bright colors were giving me a headache. As I walked through the trees, I saw little lights winking on and off between them like floating fireflies. That wasn’t reassuring, though, because I’d never seen fireflies in the woods before. I decided not to follow any floating lights just in case it was some kind of trap.
Fae of Calaveras Trilogy Box Set Page 68
