by Gwen Rivers
“Well, I know I’m worth it. It’s the rest of the world with the problem with what I do, not me.” I snap. Then the rest of his words register. “Why? I haven’t been very nice to you in this life or from the sounds of things, in the past. I don’t understand.”
He rises and holds out a hand. “You never have. But that’s all right because I understand you. All you need to do is trust me.”
“You’d be better off asking for the moon on a silver platter,” I grumble. “I don’t trust anyone. I know better.”
“Dare airson aisling,” Aiden says softly.
Dare for a dream.
I let him take the backpack and scan the waste for a decent hiding spot. There’s a cracked pewter mug on the opposite side of the can, turned on its side. It’s large enough to hold both of us and offers some protection from any further layers of garbage.
Aiden spots it at the same time I do. Swinging my pack over one shoulder, he holds out a hand. “Do you want to fly us over there, or should I?”
I glance at him. “We’re not going to walk?”
“Through the garbage for what looks like half a mile?” He quirks a brow at me as if asking if I’m serious.
“I’m not that good with the flying,” I admit. Plus, more feathers have fallen out just in the short while we’ve been talking. He might be right about the molting.
“With your permission then?”
I nod in agreement. Then my body…comes apart. There’s no other way to describe it. All the pieces that makeup me, Nic Rutherford, separate. It starts at the extremities and works its way inwards, my feet within my boots, my fingers just disperse into embers. It’s not an unpleasant feeling so much as an unnerving one. My body dissolves like salt in water. My gaze flicks to Aiden before my eyes are caught up in the magic. He too is coming apart, the bits and pieces of him also undone and sparking to life.
The transformation is painless and freeing in a way. Gravity no longer holds me down, all the fragments of me are free to go where they will. And yet there is something that keeps all the free-floating parts on track. Whether it’s coming from Aiden or myself, I have no idea.
Then my senses abandon me. They’re not muted like when I joined with the oak, just no longer there. I don’t smell the garbage and that might be a relief if not for the fact that I can’t see or hear or touch anything either. I am, I exist, but all the tethers to my mortal flesh are gone.
Is this what death feels like? Awareness still intact but no more input from the world around you? No more danger or pain… just being. People who’ve claimed near-death experience talk about floating above their bodies. Did Sarah feel this weightless freedom, too?
Then we are solidifying inside the cup. The same process is done in reverse. My center mass, head chest stomach. Then my legs and moving steadily down to my feet. A few stray bits swirl around my face as I am put back together. Lastly my hands, first the left and then the right, still connected to his.
“You okay?” Aiden squeezes my newly reformed hand.
“That was…” I shake my head, having no words for such an ineffable experience.
“You get used to it. At least I did.” Aiden pulls me deeper into the cup and sits. “Come on, nothing to do now but wait for them to take out the trash.”
I sit beside him, my back hitting directly against the bottom of the cup. “My wings are gone.”
Aiden looks down at me, the feather is still tucked behind his ear. He plucks it free and gives it to me. “Magic is always temporary. By the way, your other imbalance corrected itself.”
“Huh?” I glance down and notice that my chest is back to normal. “Oh, thank god.”
“Which one?” Aiden murmurs and closes his eyes before I can ask him to explain.
Chapter 12
Out with the Trash
Though fatigued enough to sleep, between the unsettling dreams and unpleasant changes I found upon waking, I don’t want to chance a nap. With nothing to do but wait, I study the feather Aiden had rescued and imagine what will happen next. We need to find Laufey and figure out how to resurrect Sarah. Somehow, I doubt either task will be as simple as it sounds.
After an interminable amount of time, there is a shift in the bin. I put a hand out, but the next jolt sends me sprawling. I tumble into Aiden, pinning him to the bottom of the cup. Reflexively, his arms go around me, though his eyes remain closed.
“You can let me go,” I whisper even though it’s doubtful the giant carrying the bin can hear me.
“Never,” he breathes, a small smile on his lips and then his mouth is on mine.
No no no no no!
Every cell in my body freezes, my brain screams out a denial. I expect him to go limp at any moment. And in that instant, assured of his demise, I kiss him back, fully, as the only means I have to say goodbye.
The kiss is sweet and gentle, so different than any of the rugged attacks I’ve experienced before. Aiden’s heat radiates into me, warming places I had no idea had been frozen solid until they begin thawing. His hands move along my now wingless back in a tender caress. My fingers curl against his bare chest, memorizing the feel, the closeness of him for the first, and what I am sure will be the last time.
But his body doesn’t twitch in death throes, his arms don’t sag to the side, his eyes don’t glaze over. Instead he moves into me, pressing himself intimately against me as his hands grow bolder, tangling in my hair, cupping the nape of my neck, caressing my face. His scent overpowers my senses, cedar and sage shoving the pervasive garbage odor away. I revel in his wildness, his heat and crave more. I am losing myself in him, in this, and panic begins to well within me.
Then the world spins upside down, the sensation of free falling. Aiden and I are violently separated as the trash is upended. I see him for a moment, tumbling out of our temporary sanctuary before I lose track of him in the chaos. My head cracks against the opposite side of the cup with a dizzying thump before my body slides down at an angle to the rim. I manage to grab hold of the edge and stop my free fall, but it doesn’t matter as the cup is also falling. Either my body will be crushed on impact or the cup and the ton of garbage above it will flatten me.
“Nic, hang on!”
Out of the corner of my eye I see Aiden making his way toward me, seeming to climb up an ever-shifting staircase, leaping from one piece of debris to the next, flashing between his fire form and his human one. He lands in a crouch from a spinning half rotten potato and pushes off instantly before my nerveless fingers lose their grip….
And then we are both floating upwards in a shower of sparks.
Up and up and up we drift on a breeze I neither feel nor scent but know is there all the same. Aiden guides us out past the giant’s rubbish heap, over a body of water to the far edge of the shore beyond before finally bringing us back to earth.
I hit the ground on my left side, hard enough to knock all the air from my lungs.
“You okay?” Aiden crouches down beside me.
“Give me a minute,” I wheeze, taking stock of my recently disassembled, then reconnected form.
“Take all the time you need.” Aiden stands and moves away, for which I am grateful. Too much is happening too fast and I can barely keep up.
There is a moment during a hunt where time slows, where every breath takes millennia, every heartbeat an eon. I’ve grown used to the odd sensation, even learned to use it to my advantage.
But this is different.
“What just happened?” I ask Aiden.
“You mean, other than us getting chucked out with yesterday’s garbage?”
I nod.
He sighs.
“And don’t tell me it’s complicated,” I snap.
Both his eyebrows ascend. “Well, it is.”
When I glare at him he adds, “To put it simply, I sped us up, so we could beat time before we were flattened.”
I stare at him. “How is that even possible?”
“Nic, I don’t know.” He plunks
down beside me and scrubs a hand over his face. “What is it with you and understanding everything? You never used to care how something worked, only if it did.”
I sit up and scowl at him. “I’m not the same person you knew, Aiden. I don’t know who she was and have no idea how to be her. All I know how to be is me. Don’t ask me to apologize for that.”
He stares at me for a long moment, as though trying to puzzle me out. “Time can only move in one direction, forward. But in Underhill that forward momentum isn’t assigned to every creature in the same way and it’s possible to…detach from it. It’s like a trick of the light. If time doesn’t have a firm grasp on you, you can slip its hold. Temporarily. Eventually, the demands of the physical body will want to sync back up with standard time. Does that make sense?”
In a weird sort of way, it does. “And how are you still alive. Is that a trick, too?”
He blinks. “What are you talking about?”
“I know you said kissing me couldn’t kill you, but I felled a giant earlier by just brushing my lips against his skin. It doesn’t make sense that you’re still alive.” I stand up and stalk toward my pack which had fallen some distance away. I don’t want anything out of it, but it’s something to focus on other than the tempest of feelings roiling inside me.
Aiden grabs my arm and spins me to face him, brows furrowed in confusion. “I thought that was a dream. I didn’t mean to actually…” He stops and tilts his head in that wolf like way and says with wonder in his voice, “I’m still alive.”
I expel an exasperated breath. “That’s what I just said!”
“That means you wanted the kiss.”
“What?” I yank my arm free and he lets me go, though he’s obviously reluctant to do so. “I thought you said I couldn’t kill you?”
He shifts his weight, looking almost as uneasy as I feel. “When did I say that?”
“In my room, yesterday.” Or had it been the day before? “You said I couldn’t kill you by accident.”
He shakes his head. “No, I said you couldn’t kill me with a misspoken order. Your kiss is different, it could kill any creature if you meant for it to happen. Even a giant, though it would drain you.”
I stare at him. “So why aren’t you dead right now?”
“I told you, you must have wanted me to kiss you. There’s no other explanation.”
When I start to shake my head, he holds my face in his hands. “Nic, it’s all right. You can control it when you want to. Didn’t anyone ever tell you that?”
I think back to my panic, my longing for him not to die. Had that affected my deadly kiss? “No.”
“It’s a weapon in your arsenal, but much like a sword, you can keep it sheathed so it can’t hurt anyone.”
I can control it? My head keeps shaking back and forth until I’m sure it’ll fall off.
Aiden appears to sense my panic because he releases me and takes a step back hands held up in front of him. “It was an accident. I’ll sleep in wolf form to make sure it doesn’t happen again, all right?”
I can’t look at him anymore. I grab my backpack and head to the water. “I’m sick of smelling like garbage. I need to get cleaned up.”
He’s not saying anything, just watching me closely.
I hesitate at the water’s edge, still unwilling to strip in front of him. “There’s not anything lurking in here that will eat me, right?”
Aiden shakes his head. “No, just a few bioluminescent creatures. I wouldn’t drink it though, unless you want your insides to glow.”
“Okay.” Still I wait for him to turn his back.
He stares at me, clears his throat. “We’ll camp here tonight. I’ll get some wood for a fire.” He dusts off the battered sweats which I get the distinct impression he’s holding onto for my comfort more than his, and heads into the dark trees.
I don’t wait to see if he’s spying on me, just retrieve the bar of soap from my pack, shuck my clothes and head into the lake. The water is cool, but since I’ve lived most of my life in a mountain town, frigid water is something I’ve developed a tolerance against. Little blue green lights flick up as my feet disturb the sandy bottom. The largest would fit on the head of a pin. I watch their zigzag movement, fascinated as they flit about in the water, before resettling.
That minor distraction over, I focus on soaping myself up. The bar I packed is plant based and though I’m relatively confident it won’t harm the little critters in the lake, I use only enough to get the stink of garbage off my body and out of my hair.
Everything I thought I knew about myself, about my world, is changing. Aiden had been right, I did want to kiss him. Not because I desire him, I still don’t feel any sort of sexual attraction for him, but more from curiosity. And I hadn’t wanted him to die. Were those needs enough to stay my toxic kiss?
They must be otherwise Aiden never would have made it out of the cup. And neither would I. The rules of Underhill are so different than what I am used to. I am no longer the hunter, the biggest baddest killer around. Yet somehow, I was a queen of this realm, of the Unseelie Court. I commanded the Wild Hunt. That must have meant I’d mastered the secrets of Underhill.
And if I did it once, I can do it again.
A close splash breaks me from my reverie. Water ripples out and Aiden’s wolf head pops above the surface, surrounded by the glow of even more bioluminescent creatures. He dog paddles in a circle, looking more like a goofy Labrador than a big bad wolf.
A smirk pulls at my lips. “You look ridiculous.”
I could swear he grins at me before paddling deeper into the water, a bioluminescent trail in his wake.
I turn back to the shore, not at all surprised to see a roaring fire. What I am surprised to see is the blanket that is spread out beside it, a towel folded neatly on top. Where had all that come from?
I dry myself with the towel and sit wrapped in the folds of fabric, glad for the fire’s warmth and light to examine the blanket. It’s a patchwork quilt, hand crafted with skill. Neither Chloe nor Addy were seamstresses but there were a few women in town that made such things. One had given Addy such a gift when the Fate had saved her Great Dane after the creature had been mauled by a bear.
I study the blanket closer, swearing the white and blue pattern with the little pink flowers was the same pattern. Could it actually be the same quilt?
Turning back to the discarded towel, I eyeball that as well. It looks like the rose-colored ones that hang in our bathroom. I didn’t pack either item. Were they some sort of creation Aiden had summoned to comfort me? Or had he somehow brought these specific things across the Veil?
At that moment, Aiden charges up out of the water, dripping bioluminescent droplets from his shaggy black coat. Then he does exactly what I expect, and shakes. I get the blanket up as a shield just in time. It’s a long, thorough motion which starts at his snout and carries all the way down his spine to his tail.
Again, I find myself chuckling at his antics. The ferocious man eater that plays like a puppy.
“You smell like wet dog.” I get to my feet, blanket still swathed around me, and carry the towel to him. Even post-shake he’s soggy and saturated. “I bet you air dry as well as a pair of jeans.”
He lifts his head and closes his eyes as I rub the damp towel over his saturated fur.
“I don’t know how you got these things,” I mutter to him. “But I’m glad you did. Thanks.”
Green eyes open. Aiden doesn’t say anything, he can’t in this form but in my head I hear, your wish is my command.
“How come you couldn’t hear me earlier? When the giant grabbed me. Was there too much distance between us?”
No. Distance isn’t a factor with telepathy. I didn’t realize you were gone at first, my attention was on stocking up our supplies.
“Supplies?” I frown, glancing from the towel to the blanket. “You mean things like these?”
No, these came from your farmhouse.
“You transported
them here?” He can do that? “Why didn’t you just take us out that way?”
It doesn’t work that way, not on living beings. Aiden shook again, though this time it mostly fluffed out his coat. It’ll be about a three-day trek to find Laufey.
“Your grandmother.” I add.
Yes.
The towel is completely saturated, unable to hold another drop. I spread it out on a nearby branch to dry. The branch is already coated with a glowing pink mossy like substance. The leaves are pinkish purple, and rustle in the light breeze coming off the lake. Reaching out, I touch the moss, find it soft and springy beneath my fingers. Is it bioluminescent, too? From what I recall about creatures that put off that sort of light, they usually dwell in darkness, like at the bottom of the sea. Odd, to find them here, at the edge of a moonlit forest.
Aiden continues to stare into the fire. After a moment of studying the trees growing at the water’s edge, I resettle on the ground, still wearing only the blanket. “Were the two of you close growing up?”
Aiden lies down, paws stretched toward the blaze. No. She and my father didn’t get along. I didn’t meet her until I…left home.
I don’t miss his careful word choice or the sadness in those green eyes. He looks lost, or as lost as a wolf can look and once again I mentally flash back to the dream where I found him chained and begging for death. Had that happened? I want to ask, but he already looks off. He’s my only guide in this strange place and it’s not worth the risk to upset him. He’d mentioned his punishment happened before he left home as well. I wonder if one has to do with the other, but Aiden is thinking at me again.
She took me in. Taught me how to change my form, to control the wolf within and without. She is very wise and gentle, especially for a giant.
I study him in the firelight, ears forward, body tense. “You don’t like talking about your past, do you?”
His head turns in my direction. No.
It’s my turn to stare into the flames. “I get that. I was…found in a ramshackle cottage in the woods. Abandoned and living alone.”
