by D D Croix
Despite its strangeness, I knew this place. I had been here before.
Yes, remember. His word trailed off like a whisper in the wind.
Before I could refuse, an image flashed in my mind. A memory. Moonlight pierced the canopy, painting the trees a sharp silver. And he was there, a silhouette beside me. “No!” I grabbed my head, willing the image away. “I’ve never been here.”
Your spirit has come. You remember. It has tried to come home.
Mrs. Crossey had told me he was a trickster, and that’s what he was doing now. “No! That’s a lie.”
They tell you lies. They tell you that you belong to them, but you are mine. You’ve always been mine.
Mine. The talons of that word dug deep, scratching into a past I had never seen.
The beast’s lips stretched into something unmistakably malevolent. You feel it. You know.
“I don’t.” Another flash of recognition hit me. Something vaguely familiar. Like a memory. I was a child.
Do you know me now?
It was coming back. In fragments. “Krol… Your name is Krol.”
His burning red eyes glimmered. You remember.
“How was I here? I don’t understand.” Fear swelled within me.
You already know.
“No!” But even as I said it, my panic mellowed into something new. Another kind of knowing. My arms tingled with strange new awareness. I knew him, but how?
You are mine.
His words burned through me again. Not as a threat but a truth. A revelation. I should have been angry or frightened, but I wasn’t. Only curious.
“How could I? I belong to no one. I never have.”
Laughter like the grinding of rock. You will remember.
“Tell me.”
He moved in the shadows. I could see more of his form. He wasn’t a beast. He was a man. A tall, sinewy man, as tense and watchful as a predator on the prowl. He was watching me as I was watching him.
So very like your mother.
I straightened, my fingers curling into fists. “I never knew my mother, and I don’t care to.” How many times had I said those words? Every time I wanted them to be true, but they rang false, now more than ever.
And your father?
He was goading me, the bastard.
A father and a daughter. What a wonderful pair, don’t you agree? Have you ever considered it?
Something buzzing behind me made me turn. My dragonfly. She flew frantically near my head, darting, circling. “I don’t understand.” Her message was too confused, too crazed.
I should have known. I could hear the sneer in his voice.
But he wasn’t speaking to me. He was looking at her.
Try if you must, but you can do nothing in that powerless form.
She flew to my shoulder and perched there.
The move vexed him.
Leave!
That was her message now to me. Leave while you can.
But I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to know what this man or this creature or whatever he was knew of my parents.
You don’t want to know.
I shook off her message, but I turned to her. “Why?”
She only stared at me.
“Tell me.”
My sister will never tell you the truth. But I will.
He was moving in the shadows again.
“Then tell me.”
Another rumbling laugh. You already know. You’ve always known.
“You’re lying.” My voice cracked. I did know something, or at least I thought I did.
You belong to me, he repeated, his voice growing more commanding, more vicious. We can rule together, you and I. You can let me in.
“I will never help you. I stopped you from taking the Queen.”
I meant no harm.
“That’s a lie!”
The thought was mine, but the muffled words were not. I turned to find Mrs. Crossey, standing with Marlie and Mr. Wyck at the edge of the grove, behind the liquid wall.
My heart leapt and I wanted to go to her, to embrace her. She was up! She was here!
Stay where you are.
I stared at my dragonfly, not understanding her hesitation. “But she can help.”
If you leave, he still has you.
What did she mean?
Sister, you may have mastered that tiny form, but you will not stop me. I may not be able to claim the Queen, but any host will do, as you well know. Even my daughter.
I spun back. “Your daughter?”
Those red, vengeful eyes held me.
My knees buckled beneath me. Perhaps he answered, I don’t know. It didn’t matter because I knew the answer. As he’d said before, perhaps I’d always known. The dark parts of my heart. The envy and despair. The detachment. Even the stealing, I was sure. That was him. I was always part of him.
Yes, you feel it now.
My dragonfly lifted from my shoulder and flew at him, her brother, if he was to be believed. She aimed herself like a spear at those hateful eyes, and I rooted for her.
He tried batting her away, but she fell back and attacked again and again.
I knew she couldn’t win, but she persisted.
Fight me, sister, but we both know you cannot prevail. Not like this. Remember, it didn’t have to be this way, Druansha. You could have given me what was rightfully mine. But you horded this world for yourself.
She circled and dove at him again.
He batted her away, slamming her hard against a tree. You let them call you Lady of the Fayte, but now you will be Lady of Nothing.
Had he called my dragonfly the Lady of the Fayte? I whipped around to Mrs. Crossey, the answer to my question plain on my face.
But she couldn’t move. None of them could. Their bodies were lost in a tangled wall of tree roots and vines, slithering and wrapping themselves ever more tightly around my friends.
But I didn’t need to hear from any of them to know the truth. My dragonfly was not my dragonfly after all. I was not a friend. I was simply a means to an end.
Had it all been a lie?
I closed my eyes and said the word. “Father.”
The sound of it filled me. He was my family, all that I had. I truly did belong to him.
When I opened my eyes again, he was in front of me. A towering figure dark as ash and hard as rock.
He extended his hand, his skin rough and dry with a simple metal ring encircling his thumb. A crimson jewel perched upon that ring, glowing with the same fire in his eyes. Together, no one can stop us.
I slipped off my glove and put my hand in his. His touch sent a lightning bolt through my fingers and my limbs. That invisible power held me captive. I was part of him, and he was part of me. This was not a lie. This was blood and bone.
In a riot of sensations, everything flowed into me through that touch: his past, his present, his pain, his heartache, and now this, his victory.
He was telling me the truth. He wanted me beside him. He needed me.
Somewhere in the distance I heard Marlie, Mr. Wyck, and Mrs. Crossey call out. Their voices a cacophony of shrieks and screams that hardly registered.
Krol heard them, too. He stretched his other arm in their direction, and the trees responded to his will like minions, tightening around my friends’ throats, making them gasp and choke. He was squeezing away their breath, and they would die if I did nothing. I knew from his touch that was his intent.
“Leave them,” I said. “I’ll go with you but leave them.”
He turned to me, his fiery eyes a question.
I nodded, giving him the assurance he sought.
His hand lowered, and the tree limbs slackened. The gasps subsided. My choice was made.
Then that haunting awareness was there again. His message to me: We will rule these worlds together.
“Yes.” The word skipped on my lips, so I repeated it with more force. “Yes, I will come with you.”
From Krol—from my father—I sense
d only… relief? Not joy, but conviction. The certainty that I would do his bidding, that there was no doubt.
I shuffled forward.
Yes, child. Come with me.
Wails again erupted behind me, but they didn’t matter. I knew what I had to do.
The Gray Wood is only the beginning of your new world. The world that was stolen from you, as you were stolen from me.
He led me onward, deeper into the forest. Along the shadowy path, past gray gnarled trees and withered bushes. Dead leaves and twigs scattered across the woodland floor. We walked so long, I was sure we should have emerged at the banks of the Thames. But the trees only grew denser, darker.
“That night on the Slopes,” I said when I could no longer hold back the question. “The girl who perished. Was that you?”
There was a long pause. I sensed his frustration. Or was it something else?
Your phantom wandered in the Gray Wood that night. I tried to reach you, but you were gone before I could.
My phantom? Had I traveled when I fainted? But what did that have to do with the village girl?
When she appeared, I believed it was you, returning to me. I approached too soon, and the stupid creature made such noise. Such awful cries. She would have ruined our plans. She would have ruined everything.
In his thoughts, I saw him trap her in the tall grasses and drain away her life. I could see her face locked in fear. He wasn’t sorry he’d done it, only annoyed that it had to be done.
If he sensed my horror, he didn’t show it. His thoughts seemed drawn elsewhere.
It’s your power.
Were his words a response to my silent question? I didn’t know, but I remained silent to urge him on.
You have remarkable strength, like your mother.
“What happened to her?” The question slipped out before I could stop it.
Choices had to be made. I paid the price, but you… you can change everything.
Perhaps I could. But I had to keep my mind blank. Keep his mind’s claws from my thoughts.
I focused on each step as we proceeded in silence until we came to a low hanging branch. He swept it aside, and I could see we’d reached the edge of a meadow. But a meadow unlike any I’d ever seen.
The sky was still wrapped in inky darkness, but each tree, every shrub and flower was imbued with its own glistening, shimmering light. Even the stones and the dirt beneath my feet twinkled with a preternatural glow. Orange, yellow, blue, violet. I saw every color of the rainbow as I gazed across the luminous landscape.
Even my hands and limbs emanated with color.
I have much to show you.
I wanted to see it all. Truly I did. Here, I felt light and limitless. I wanted to explore, but there was something else I wanted more.
“Can you take me to the tree?”
He cocked his head to the side.
Would he feign not to know which one I meant?
How do you know of this tree?
“I’ve seen it in my dreams.”
They were not dreams.
He probed my thoughts, seeking the truth.
I held the image I’d plucked from his own mind.
This stalemate lasted so long I nearly lost my nerve.
Then he nodded. Satisfied. It is close.
He led me back toward the woodland and we walked along the border of tall trees until we came to it. Straddling both the Gray Wood and the shimmering meadow, that ancient oak rose to an astonishing height, just as I’d seen it in my vision. When we reached it, I slumped against its trunk. “Allow me to rest a moment.”
He watched me, wary. Why?
“I’m so tired.” I made a show of heaving my breath.
Only for a moment.
I stared at the ground and nodded, as if it was too much to even hold my head upright. The truth was I was searching for something.
Krol circled me and the tree in a beastly manner that unnerved me. When he was far enough away that he couldn’t stop me, I dropped to a crevice in the bark and touched the thing I sought with my bare hand.
“Fosgail,” I said aloud, praying it was an adequate pronunciation of the command I had plucked from the vision.
It must have been because the bark beneath my fingers slithered apart and the slim crevice widened to a gaping hole. I saw the blur of him rush toward me, but it didn’t matter.
My fingers wrapped around the smooth cold stone before he could reach me. I grabbed it, and its violet light burst through the space between my fingers like rigid shards of glass. I opened my fingers and let it tumble from my grip.
In an instant, my dragonfly flew into its light and it pulsed with vibrant purple hues. Their lights merged and swirled together, and they wound themselves into a shining column that rose to the clouds above.
In a moment, when the light receded, a woman stood before me. She towered over me as she had towered over Queen Boudica, and her silver-white hair flowed behind her, cascading over a lavender gown girded by a silver cord. Pointed ears protruded from that wild mane, and at her neck sat the egg-sized gem, now wrapped in a golden lattice as delicate as a spider’ s web.
This was the Lady of the Fayte.
I dropped to one knee and bowed my head.
She approached and touched my hair.
Rise, Jane.
Like my father’s voice, hers came to me as a thought not a sound.
You have released me from my brother’s curse.
At the mention of him, I looked past her. There was nothing where he had been.
He is gone. For now.
A tug of sadness pulled at my chest.
He is too weak to face me now. But it doesn’t matter. I am free, and I can again pass freely between our worlds.
It took all of my courage to look up into her lavender eyes and ask: “You were my dragonfly?”
The sweetest, softest smile curled her flower petal lips. I was.
“But why?”
So many reasons.
I shook my head. I was trying to understand, but the world was closing in around me.
You are tired. It’s time for you to rest.
The words were soothing, and I was tired. So tired.
A darkness gathered at the periphery. I fought against it, until I no longer could.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Muffled sounds. Words? Whatever they were I wished them away. I only wanted to return to the comfort of oblivion.
“She’s twitching. I think she’s waking up.”
“Shhh!”
The voices were clearer now. Familiar.
“There! Did you see her eyelids? She’s definitely waking up.”
“Move away, Marlie. You’re crowding her.”
It was Mrs. Crossey, but the concern I heard in her voice jolted me further into awareness.
“I’m all right,” I said. Or at least I tried to. What tumbled over my lips sounded more like gurgles and grunts. Did they even hear me?
“Off with you now,” Mrs. Crossey said, I assumed to Marlie. “There’s work to be done in the kitchen. Go see to it.”
“But the white willow bark tea. It will ease the pain.”
“Give it here, then close the door behind you. That’s a good girl.”
I heard another balk from my roommate, but then a door closed.
Two hands enfolded themselves around one of mine, which lay, I now realized, at my side. I tensed, but the hands were muffled in mittens. Even now she was protecting me.
“It’s all right, dear,” she whispered. “You’re safe. The doctor says you’ll be just fine. Don’t strain yourself.”
Her words poured over me like sun-warmed honey, and I soaked them in. I was safe.
But from what? I tried to remember.
Flashes returned to me. The shimmering, otherworldly grove. Those beastly eyes.
My father.
An icy shiver raced up my spine.
“It’s all right, dear.” Her wool-covered hand patted mine. “Everything
will be fine.”
I yearned for it to be true. I wanted to forget about the Fayte and the Lady and Krol. I wanted to turn back the clock, before the summons to Mr. MacDougall’s office, before everything fell apart. When it was just me and my dragonfly.
I breathed the word aloud. “Dragonfly.”
Another pat from Mrs. Crossey’s bundled hand. “Oh, yes. That.” Her words floated on a wave of amused wonder. “How you kept that secret, I’ll never know. But my, what a secret.”
My secret friend.
Another flash from the Gray Wood. But my dragonfly was much more than that. The Lady of the Fayte. Krol was my family, but she was, too. My thoughts swirled with this unsettling new notion. “Where…?”
“Where is she?” Mrs. Crossey finished my thought. “I don’t know. Back to the Brightlands, I suspect.”
The Brightlands. So that place had a name. Of course she would return there. It was her home. Where the leaves had shimmered, and tree branches glowed. Where the air smelled of new blooms and crackled with life. Where she’d shed her insect form and become the Lady once more.
It was all coming back. I opened my eyes.
“She saved me.” My voice was stronger now. My memories were, too.
“Yes. She saved us all, but I think you saved her as well. Here, sip this.”
The edge of a teacup pressed against my lower lip followed by a steady drip of something warm and soothing. I breathed in the spicy fragrance of cinnamon and clove. When I’d taken enough, Mrs. Crossey pulled the cup away.
“Now, you need to sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.”
But I didn’t want to sleep. I had too many questions. How was I here? What had happened to the Queen? What had happened to Mr. Bailey and Mr. MacDougall?
And Mr. Wyck.
My chest tightened at the memory of him standing beyond the boundary with Mrs. Crossey and Marlie, and of him subduing Mr. Bailey. He had been on our side after all. I should have believed him. I should have known.
It was my last thought before slipping back into oblivion.
~ ~ ~
Another day, maybe two, passed in the hazy space between slumber and wakefulness. Meals were delivered on trays and left on the bedside table. Mrs. Crossey or Marlie sat at my bedside and talked as I sipped at broth and nibbled buttered biscuits, which was all I could manage because I had no appetite. Not even Dr. Holland, who stopped in several times a day, seemed to know why.
