by Elle Casey
“Huh.”
“Huh…huh…huh…huh…”
I frowned. “Okay, I change my mind. This could get annoying really quick.”
“Okay, I change my mind. This could get annoying really quick.”
“Okay, I change my mind. This could get annoying really quick.”
“Okay, I change my mind. This could get annoying really quick.”
“Okay, I change my mind. This could get annoying really quick…Okay, I change my mind. This could get annoying really quick…Okay, I change my mind. This could get annoying really quick….Okay, I change my mind. This could get annoying really quick.”
I zipped my lips and sat down in the air again. No frigging way was I going to play that game anymore.
I didn’t know how long I sat there. It could have been two minutes or it could have been a thousand years. But I heard a noise at some point and it jerked me out of the meditative state I’d fallen into.
Footsteps? I opened my mouth to ask who it was, but stopped myself. I’d heard enough of my own voice for a while.
“Jayne?” someone called out. There were no echoes following it.
I rolled my eyes. I knew for sure what was up then; I was definitely dead, and I hadn’t made it to the Overworld either. I seriously considered remaining silent and curling up into the smallest version of myself so I’d be harder to find, but then I gave up on the charade and waited. Destiny was calling, apparently, and I’d never been able to hide from that bitch.
“There you are,” he said, sounding monumentally tired. Ben sat down next to me and bent his legs up, resting his elbows on top of them. “What’re you doing in here?”
I looked at him sideways. “Is that supposed to be a joke?”
He frowned. “No. It’s a legitimate question.”
I spun to face him, sitting cross-legged and resting my hands on my knees. I imagined myself looking like a super mature meditation guru. “In order to tell you why I’m here, I guess I’d first have to know where here is.” I looked around. “Where am I? Hell? Heaven? Midlands?”
“What’s Midlands?” he asked.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. A place between the two? An empty white void?” I gestured to my right and left. “There’s not much going on in here, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
He looked sad. “You don’t know what happened to you, do you?”
I shook my head, no smartass comments coming to mind. I was tired—supremely tired of everything...of fighting, of negotiating, of trying to figure out who and what I was capable of. The only thing I felt truly good at was screwing up, and look where that had gotten me: exactly nowhere.
Ben sighed. “Sorry to break it to you, but you’re lost in your elements. Maybe one, maybe both. Not sure.”
I had to think about that for a bit. All I came up with was confusion. It wasn’t the answer I’d been expecting him to give. “Say what, now?” I was pretty sure he was wrong. My elements were usually green and blue, and this place was devoid of color.
“Yeah. That’s the theory anyway.”
“Whose theory?”
“Gray elves.” He started picking at his fingers, and I didn’t know what to make of this reaction other than the fact that it made him seem almost human…which he wasn’t. Weird.
“So how did you get in here?” I asked.
“Followed your trail. Talked to Biad. Worked a little magic.” He shrugged like it was no big deal, but I knew better.
“Sam help you?”
“She and some others.”
“What others?” I narrowed my eyes at him. He was definitely holding back.
He sighed like he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. “All of them.”
My heart felt like it dropped down into my stomach, creating instant nausea. “What do you mean, all of them?”
He looked up and was instantly staring at me super intently. “I mean every single witch on the entire planet that we could identify and communicate with. All of them.”
I swallowed with difficulty, my voice trembling a little. “And…how many of them were there…exactly?”
“Too many to count.”
I nodded silently. I had no words. This kind of group magic had to be a first, which meant I was going to go down in fae history as the biggest dumbass ever to walk the earth.
His tone lightened a little. “So, yeah, I’m here now, and my job is to get you back.”
“How did you get stuck with that shit job?” My voice had gone hoarse. I was close to crying, but I wasn’t sure exactly why. Maybe because I’d finally realized how hopeless my situation was or maybe because I was embarrassed that every single witch on the planet knew what a dipshit I was. It was hard to say which was worse.
“I volunteered.”
I dropped my face into my hands. I just could not deal with what he was saying. Ben was going to look like this awesomely good guy, which he apparently was, and I was going to look like the biggest loser who made everyone on the planet do epic magic just to get her to stop dicking around in her elements.
He pushed on my shoulder. “Hey.”
“I can’t,” I said, my voice muffled.
“I need you to look at me.”
I finally lifted my head, not because I wanted to hear what he was going to say but to solve the mystery of why his voice sounded so weird.
What I found shocked me to the core; Ben had tears in his eyes. Real ones.
“Why are you…?” I couldn’t even say the word—crying. Ben never did that. He was the toughest, most hardcore dude I’d ever met. He’d lived for hundreds of years and had been working on a mad plan to rule the world practically since birth. I hadn’t even thought he was capable of creating tears before this moment.
“Jayne, you have to understand what happened before and after you came into the Overworld.”
“Okay. I’m listening.” I turned to face him, gripping my knees up at my chest. I was breaking out in cold sweats, my heart beating triple time. I knew this was not going to be a happy bedtime type story.
“I was there, as you know, as the portal guardian’s companion,” he said, his tears temporarily drying up.
“Yeah, I remember that part. I heard you were doing well.”
“I was. I was enjoying my time and learning about our purpose in the world, and what it meant to be given access to the Overworld and to be sent back for another lifetime.” He stopped there and seemed to get lost in thought.
I said nothing, waiting for him to come back to me. His sadness was palpable, floating in the air all around us.
“She…taught me a lot,” he said wistfully.
I assumed he meant his dragon partner Heryon. “Is she…okay?” I asked, afraid what the answer was going to be.
“More or less,” he said, shrugging.
I didn’t press for details because I was quite sure I wouldn’t be able to handle them well, and Ben was genuinely distraught.
“And then things started to change,” he said, frowning. “Things started to feel…off. And Heryon got very agitated.”
“A cranky dragon. Sounds bad.”
He didn’t even crack a smile. “It is. It was. But she had reason to be upset. The forsaken…” He stopped his explanation to swallow a few times. He looked fearful, which was another first for Ben. It made my blood run cold.
That word he’d said niggled at the back of my mind. “The forsaken…what’s that?” I asked. “I heard someone mention that before. Maggie, I think?” I searched my memories and came up with a vague recollection of her muttering something about keeping them away when she was brewing up some demon bait. At the time I’d brushed it off, but now I was thinking it had been a mistake to do that. From the way Ben was acting, they were seriously bad news.
Ben finally looked up at me, stark fear shining out from his eyes. “The forsaken are creatures with dark souls that have no light inside them and never will. They lost their light so completely, it can never come back.
Their souls act like black holes, sucking light into them and extinguishing it.”
A shiver ran through me. “Sooo…they’re…like…ax murderers or something?”
He shook his head. “Worse.”
“Child molesters? Puppy killers? Vice principals?” I was trying so hard to break through his bleak demeanor, but it proved impossible.
“Worse. I cannot even describe to you the level of depravity they are capable of stooping to. Just…imagine them as creatures who are incapable of feeling or generating love and who personify darkness. They are the very essence of evil.”
“Like demons.”
“No, worse than demons, in that demons can still choose goodness and earn their way back to the Here and Now. The forsaken cannot.”
“Why are they called the forsaken?” I asked in a whisper as a dreadful chill settled over me. The cold felt like it went all the way into the marrow of my bones.
“Because they have forsaken all others and all others have forsaken them. And for a millennia they were kept away from the creatures of light—humans and fae—but they have been awakened from their sleep and they are coming.”
I tried hard to swallow, but my throat proved too restricted by the fear welling up from inside me somewhere. “Coming where? For what?” I finally scratched out.
“Coming to our world. For you.”
I took a few seconds to let those words sink in. They’re coming for me. The most awful, dark, evil, monsters in the entire universe are coming…FOR ME. Then I looked around, relief flowing through me. “Well…I guess I’m doing a great job of playing hide and seek, then, aren’t I? Heh, heh.” I tried to smile, but failed. “I’ll just chill here for a few millennia. That’ll solve the problem, right?”
“You can’t stay here,” Ben said, shaking his head no at me.
His answer pissed me off. It seemed like a totally awesome plan to me, to hide here in the nowhere place where they’d never find me. “Why not? If those bad guys are after me, this seems like the perfect place to hang out.” I laid on my back, stretching my arms and legs out to the sides. “I could relax here in this nothingness for the next couple decades. Shout out some echoes for entertainment.” I rubbed my stomach. “I don’t think I’m even going to get hungry in here.”
“If you stay, it will mean the end of everything.”
I really wanted to ignore that last comment. I tried very hard to, in fact. “I could learn to stand on my head. I’ve always wanted to do that. Maybe I’ll do some yoga!” I lifted up a leg and tried to grab it, but I am about as flexible as a steel rod, so I gave up. “Or not.”
“Jayne, I need you to get serious and pay attention. We don’t have a lot of time.” His voice cracked at the end.
That had me sitting up in a hurry. My fear was back and it tasted nasty…like rusted metal in the back of my mouth. “Why are you telling me all this?” Tears were close for me too.
“Because. You are literally our only hope.”
I jabbed my finger at him. “What about you, Big Head Ben? I thought you were the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-everything elemental…fire and wind and all that. Why don’t you go out there and save them? Why does it have to be me?” I was all fired up, ready to blast him for being a lazy, good for nothing Father of the fae, too busy tooling around on his dragon to do any of the hard work of world-saving.
“I tried. But it didn’t work. I’ve made too many bad decisions, and it finally caught up with me.”
I stared at him, my chin pulled in nearly to my chest. “Say what?” There was no way this was Ben Hawthorn sitting next to me. It had to be an imposter. The real Big Head Ben would have never admitted what this guy just did.
He waited for me to catch up, saying nothing. It was also very unlike Ben to let me come to my own conclusions. But I sensed no lies coming from him, and he sure was a dead ringer for the guy. He had his looks, mannerisms, and almost everything else too. The only thing he was missing was the huge ego. Theresa mentioning that he’d changed and had been working on himself with his dragon echoed in my head.
“You said all your bad decisions finally caught up with you. And you’ve been in the Overworld with Heryon, right? Are you saying that you’ve been punished or something?” I asked.
“I’m saying that every day we make choices. Those choices are always in service of our motivations. For centuries, my motivations have been selfish, and so I am not capable of giving the world what it needs right now. But you are.”
I snorted. “Ha. What a joke! I make bad choices all the time! I make bad choices daily.” I held up my hands and gestured around us. “Look at this! Look where I am! Tell me this is the result of good choices.” I laughed at the very idea that I could be the right person for this very ridiculous job of fixing the entire world and scaring off monsters like he’d described. The proof of my complete inability to save anything—even myself—was practically swallowing both of us in its vast, white emptiness. Somebody had fed this guy a pile of bullshit and he’d eaten it right up, apparently. Yum! Bullshit pie! Bullshit cookies! Bullshit pot roast! Give it all to Ben! He loves it! He’ll eat anything!
His voice was patient…kind, even. “You got caught up in your elements when you used them to heal the Overworld. Your motivations were pure and came from love. Your motivations have always been good, Jayne. Always.”
I shook my head. “Sorry. Not buying it. I blasted people on purpose sometimes.”
“To right a wrong. To save friends. To fight for your people. Never to wield power over others for your own ends. And you never participated in dark magic either. Never willingly with knowledge of the consequences.”
I had to think about that for a bit. A movie reel played back in my head, showing me all the times I’d called to my elements. It took a while before I could speak again. I felt monumentally sad that he was so wrong about me, that I could definitely pinpoint some moments when my motivations weren’t pure, when I was angry and lashed out. “Sometimes I wanted revenge.”
“Justice.”
That was all he said. Justice.
“But who am I to judge?” I asked meekly, not really feeling it. One of the commandments I’d heard in church once was floating around in my head. I knew it was the right thing to say—thou shalt not judge and all that—but a part of me still felt like I could tell the difference between right and wrong and that I did have the power to judge that kind of simple stuff.
“You are their Mother, and right now, their only hope.”
I closed my eyes for a few seconds and then held out my hands. “How about this…how about we both go back and save the world together?” The thing was, I wanted another chance to prove them right about me. I wanted to show my people that I could be this amazing fae who would always do the right thing by everyone else and not be a selfish brat who acted first and thought things through after.
He stood and reached down, taking my hands in his and giving me the leverage to stand. We were facing one another, reminding me very much of the day we had been bound by a certain angel who shall remain nameless. Chase…where in the hell are you, anyway? I got no answer to my call. Guardian angel, my butt. More like angel always on break.
“We’re out of time,” Ben said. “Close your eyes.”
I did as he asked, but not because I was ready to end the conversation and just let him take over. “I don’t understand what the hell is going on, Ben, but I’m not going anywhere until you explain what you’re planning on doing.”
“Breathe in and out. Deeply. Feel your breath deliver oxygen into every cell of your body.”
“What is this, yoga class?” I snorted. I could totally see Ben in hammer pants and a man bun.
“Jayne, I need you to focus.”
I opened one eye to peek at him. Tears were streaming down his face which made me slam my eyes shut hard. I did not want to see that. My hands started to tremble. I’d seen Ben get serious a bunch of times, but never like this. Words from that effing prophecy wer
e sliding through my head…the cries of many will weigh you down…the tears of the Father will seal their fate…
My hands were growing warmer from his touch, but my body felt like it was frozen. “Ben, wh…what’s going on? For real now, no messing around.” I kept my eyes closed, worried that looking at him would ruin whatever he was trying to do.
“In order for you to be able to accomplish all that must be done, and to repel the attack that comes for you in the form of the forsaken, you must have all of the elements at your disposal.”
I gripped his hands really hard. “Awesome. So we’re a team again. I can do it, I promise. I won’t call you an assbag. Not every day, anyway, just sometimes when it’s impossible to resist. I’ll try really hard to be patient with you, too.” I opened my eyes to make sure he could tell I was serious, but he was hardly there. It was like he was fading out, somehow disappearing right before my eyes. “Ben? What…what’s going on?”
“Goodbye, Mother. Good luck.”
And then he was gone. And I was standing in the middle of the Green Forest in front of Maggie’s door.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
THE DOOR TO Maggie’s place flew open and banged against the inside of her front room. “Well, well, well. . .look who’s here! Took you long enough!” She glared at me with her one good eye and waved me toward her. “Come in. And hurry up. I don’t have all day.” She turned and left me standing there alone on her front stoop.
I looked up at The Ancient, appreciating its beauty for a few seconds. Its glorious branches reached out in all directions, gnarled and thick. Everything in my world had changed, but it looked exactly the same as it had the last time I was here. I used my best Jersey accent in my greeting. “How you doin’, old man?”
A loud groaning came from some of its branches as it moved around in response.
I held up my hand. “High five.”
A nearby smaller branch swung over and slapped at me, giving me a sharp crack in the cheek with a bunch of its leaves. It went back into position just as quickly.
