by Brey Willows
She looked confused, but Brenda softly cleared her throat. “It’s true, Kody. Maybe there are things we don’t know.”
Maggie watched the interchange, knowing full well she was out of the loop. And this was supposed to be the loop she was in charge of, in a way. “Wait. Are you saying someone makes the rules?” Pieces began to fall into place. “Who writes the book? And how?”
Di closed the notebook with a snap, making them all look at her. “That’s my cue to leave, my friends. I have no desire to meet my maker or to know who they might be in any capacity. Ignorance is often my bliss. I’m going to find a few people to suck the sexual life out of tonight. If I don’t see you in the morning before you go, remember to come back and tell me all about your adventure when you get back.”
She grabbed Kody by her shirt and pulled her in for a long, hard kiss. She let her go, and Kody fell back against the table looking a little bewildered.
“That’s in case I don’t see you again.” She put her hand on Maggie’s shoulder as she went to leave. She leaned close and fake-whispered, “And she makes a very attractive face when she orgasms, I assure you.”
She left the room, her laugh echoing down the hall.
Maggie met Kody’s eyes, and they both looked away.
Kody cleared her throat. “Okay. Well, we’d better get some sleep. We’ll take the cart all the way back to the cottage tomorrow, and we’ll be sleeping there by tomorrow night.”
Brenda jumped down and headed for the door. “I’ve got a couple things I want to buy, so I’ll be back soon.”
Shamus walked beside Maggie and Kody as they went back to their rooms. Before Maggie could turn into her room, Shamus stopped her with his paw on her leg.
“I wanted you to know, Maggie. I’m incredibly proud of you. When attacked, you kept your head, thought fast, and did what had to be done. Just as I’ve seen you do before when we were living in that grotesque little flat.” He nuzzled her hand and then went into his room and closed the door behind him.
Bemused, Maggie looked at Kody. “I think that’s the nicest he’s ever been to me.”
Kody shrugged. “I think it’s probably the nicest he’s ever been to anybody, ever. I wouldn’t expect it a second time.”
Maggie thought of Blech farting and snoring and startling himself off his perch back in that apartment. “No, probably not.”
They went in and got ready for bed. Maggie looked at the wound in her side, which was now just an angry salmon-pink slash rather than a red, open wound. She rolled her shoulder, and the pain was gone. Traveling by cart tomorrow wouldn’t be a problem. “Too bad they don’t have cars here.”
Kody yawned. “It’s weirdly something that has never been a thing in fairy tales. The first time I saw one in the other world I nearly wet myself. I had no idea what they were.”
Maggie smiled at the image of Kody jumping out of the way of a New York taxi. “So, can you tell me about the writer of the book at the cottage?”
Kody lay with her arms crossed behind her head. Her tank top was stretched across her flat stomach, and the markings of her tattoos beneath made a pattern on the white fabric. It was strangely sensual, and Maggie turned away and took up a similar position in her own bed so she’d be looking at the ceiling instead of lusting over Kody.
“No one knows who the writer is. I’ll start with that. But there’s a sense here, in every sector, that the writer knows all of us. He knows all the stories, all the characters, all the journeys. It could be that there’s more than one writer, but it’s never felt that way. And when you need to know something as the spinner, or if one of the story keepers needs some information on a new development in the story, they have a few options. They can go to their sector book, which is always kept at the story keeper’s cottage and is pretty much always up to date. Or they can go to the cottage and ask the cottage keeper to look up whatever special element it is they might need to know.” She yawned again, this time with her eyes closed. “But no one has ever met the writer.”
Maggie pondered that. “What’s a story keeper?”
“Every sector has one. They’re kind of like managers who keep everyone working and oversee the day-to-day stuff…” Kody’s words were quiet, and she was clearly very nearly asleep.
She drifted off, and Maggie knew she’d fallen asleep. She lay awake for a while, thinking about this newest piece of information. Someone who was in charge of people’s stories, of the way their lives went, sounded an awful lot like a deity. Was there a godhead creating all this? Was Maggie just a character in a story? The thought made her queasy. She hadn’t considered the nature of free will in this world, where characters, people, were relegated to certain sectors because their stories had been laid out for them for centuries, and were still being laid out for them today. The villains had forced their way out of the story, had taken charge and demanded autonomy. Could she blame them?
That line of thinking would take her in circles, and she had to stop. Questioning destiny and divinity weren’t going to make for an easy night’s sleep. One villain at a time.
Chapter Twenty-three
Birds of some sort circled lazily overhead, dark curves against a clear, summer blue sky. Maggie watched them until her neck started to hurt from looking up. “Do you know what they are?”
“Vultures, I think. They’re often used as spies. Probably keeping an eye on us.” Kody shaded her eyes and looked up, and then sent them a very real world hand gesture that made Maggie laugh.
“I’m not sure they’ll know how to translate that.”
“Well, it made me feel better, anyway.” Kody gave her a quick smile before looking back at the road.
They’d been traveling for a few hours now, and though they’d had some conversation, everything this morning had felt slightly strained. They were heading back to New York, and while Maggie was looking forward to coffee and a slice of pizza, she wondered if it was hard for them to leave now that they’d been back. Were they worried they wouldn’t see their homeland again? It was a possibility, of course. They were going to take on some nasty villains, and the bad guys were already after Maggie. They’d left the cottage because they didn’t know what they were dealing with or who the bad guys in New York were. Now they did, and it didn’t make any difference to Maggie’s safety. She’d already been stabbed, and it wasn’t a habit she wanted to get into. Maybe, though—
“Whatcha thinking about?” Kody asked.
Maggie sighed. “I’m wondering if Brenda and Shamus need to come with us. Maybe they’d be better off here, at home. What if I can’t protect them there?”
Kody laughed and glanced over her shoulder at the two in question. Brenda was curled in a ball, her head pillowed on Maggie’s duffle bag. Shamus lay on his back, splayed so the sun warmed his fluffy gray belly. “Try to leave them behind. I dare you.”
At Maggie’s serious look, she relented.
“I understand what you’re saying, Mags. But they were sent to protect you, and the fact that you’re actually being hunted now doesn’t mean they give up watching over you. Powers or not, you need your friends around you when your enemies are playing with your shadow.”
It made sense, though Maggie wasn’t entirely happy about it. The obligation she felt to them for staying with her, for giving her years of their lives even if she hadn’t known it, was frightening and heavy. She focused on their surroundings when the cart turned left at a small dirt path. “I thought that road went straight to the cottage.”
Kody’s frown line was back, and the lines around her eyes were deep. “It does. I want to show you something before we go. It’s important.”
Sensing Kody’s discomfort, Maggie wanted to comfort her, but since she didn’t know what was going on there was nothing she could say, so she just nodded. Within a few miles, a grove of trees stood tall and proud against the hillside. The undersides of the leaves looked like floating silver in the sunlight and their branches were bone white. It was only when they were
nearly next to them that Maggie saw the house sitting in their long shade.
“Wow. That’s stunning. Is it an inn?” Maggie asked.
Kody stopped the horses. She stared at the building, her face pale and her hands white around the reins.
“Kody?” Maggie put her hand over one of Kody’s. “What’s going on?”
There was stirring from the back, and Brenda and Shamus rose and looked between Maggie and Kody.
“Ah.” Shamus yawned and then climbed over the side of the cart. “I’ll be in the woods. Call when you’re done.” He jumped down and looked pointedly at Brenda.
“Oh, right. Sure.” She climbed down too, a little less gracefully. “I don’t see why I couldn’t stay,” she grumbled before they were far enough away not to be heard.
Maggie waited, and Kody flicked the reins. She stopped the horses again when they were in front of an overgrown path leading to the front door. That’s when Maggie realized the three-story stone house was abandoned. The windows were blind eyes, boarded and rotting. Some roof tiles were missing like someone had flicked them off, negligently exposing the soul of the house to the elements. What was once probably a beautiful wraparound porch was missing boards, like a mouth with missing teeth. Shutters that had once probably been a lovely shade of purple now looked sickly and lost. “What is this place, Kody?” Maggie whispered.
“My house.” Kody slowly got down from the cart and came around to Maggie’s side. She stood next to her. “It’s the shepherd’s hut, technically. Passed down from shepherd to shepherd in this sector, though there have been a few from other sectors that have used it too.”
“That’s a hut?” It was bigger than some millionaires’ houses Maggie had seen in pictures.
“The name was meant to keep the curious away, so people didn’t go searching for it. And it was meant to be a sanctuary, a place to go to forget about all the things you’d done.” Kody’s voice was hoarse, haunted.
Maggie took her hand. “Show me?”
Kody looked down at their entwined hands and then at the house. Swallowing hard, she nodded sharply and led the way. She took an old black skeleton key from her pocket and the front door opened noiselessly into a foyer, with what looked like a big living room off to the left, and a kitchen to the right. An elegant white staircase was between them, covered in years of dirt and lost time.
Maggie tugged on Kody’s hand, and when she didn’t move, Maggie gently pulled her toward the living room, where she let go of Kody’s hand to look around the room. That’s when she saw the dust covered photo on the fireplace mantle. Kody, young and vibrant, had her arms around a smaller woman in front of her. The woman looked like she might be laughing and had her head tilted back to look at Kody. The adoration was clear.
Maggie swallowed against the lump of sadness the picture sent through her. She turned, and Kody was watching her. She held up the photo she was looking at, and Kody slumped against the doorframe, her face as white as the walls.
“Isabella of the Glens. From one of the Gaelic noble families.” Kody slid down the wall and sat with her knees to her chest, looking lost in the halls of her memories. “I was working with Jessia, and we were gone a lot. When I came home, it was always like the first time we met. We were married two years after our first date, and she was never upset that I had to be away so often. She had her duties to her family and the village she’d come from, and she stayed busy. We had a good life.”
The house seemed to shudder around them. The only light came from the open front door, and Maggie wanted to rip the boards from the windows and let the light chase away the permeating despair. Instead, she sat beside Kody and cradled the old photo in her hands. “What happened?”
“We’d just come back from one of our tours. I decided to run to the store to get something special for dinner, so I could surprise Issy when she got back from whatever she was doing. I was cooking when someone came banging on the door. To this day, I don’t remember who it was. But they said there had been an accident, and I needed to go…”
Maggie waited, knowing the memory was playing out in Kody’s mind like a terrible movie. “And?” She prompted her, not wanting Kody to get so lost she didn’t come back.
Kody took a deep breath and looked at the photo in Maggie’s hands. “She’d been to see Snow White, over in the Western sector that’s not far from here, and then she went to check on the dwarves. Snow could be a real slave driver, and Issy had set up a miners’ protection system to make sure they weren’t being mistreated. But the dwarves were working farther up the mountain that day, and she didn’t know the terrain.”
Maggie could feel the horror of what was coming and put her hand over Kody’s. She wondered if Kody even knew she was crying. She didn’t want to wipe the tears away and startle her, so she just watched the way they darkened the layers of dust on the floor as they dropped one by one.
“She didn’t see the boards, that they weren’t secure. She fell into the mine below and was killed instantly.” Kody’s sob finally came out, and Maggie set the photo aside and pulled her close. Her heart wrenching sobs echoed off the walls and through the empty house, the only sound that had filled it in decades. Maggie held her until she’d cried herself out and only the occasional sniffle and tremor remained.
Eventually, Kody pulled away and ran her hands through her hair. “I was in the mine helping get Issy’s body out when Jess got called to the confrontation between the dragon and the soldier. That’s why I didn’t feel her fear or hear her call for me. I was mired in my own pain, and so I lost them both on the same night. By the time I left the mine, Jess was gone, and there was nothing I could do.”
“Jesus Christ, Kody.” Maggie couldn’t fathom the hell that Kody must have been through, that night and most of the rest since. How did someone live through that kind of loss and tragedy? That kind of guilt? “How on earth did you keep going?”
Kody sniffed and shook her head. “That first year after their deaths is pretty much just fog. I drank a lot, I know that. I hid, and fought. I get glimpses of memories that I don’t want, when I went after people without mercy.” She wiped at her face with her hands, smudging them with dirt. “Sometime in that second year your parents came to me and asked me to watch out for you in New York. I was aware of the hunting and decimation of spinners, but I wasn’t in a place to care. So I boarded up the house and left for your world. This is the first time I’ve been back.”
They sat there for a long time, until Maggie finally had to break the silence because her legs had gone numb and her back was aching, as was the wound in her side. “Thank you for trusting me enough to share this with me. I can’t imagine how heavy those memories are.”
Kody nodded slowly and looked at Maggie. “It’s weird. Being here reminds me that it was a very long time ago. It feels a little like a life someone else lived.” She grinned wryly. “Except for the pain, obviously.”
Maggie stood carefully, shaking out the numbness in her legs while holding on to the doorframe so she didn’t fall. “Obviously.” She looked around what had once been a place filled with love and laughter, and she understood that deep sadness in their connection. “You know it wasn’t your fault, right? That the circumstances were impossible, and there was no way you could have done anything differently?”
Kody stood with her, also stretching. “I’ve beat myself up for decades, thinking I should have done this or that differently, that if I hadn’t gone to the store, if I had just gone and found Issy right away, she wouldn’t have gone to the mines. And then I would have felt Jess…” She shook her head, and her eyes seemed clear of memory when she looked around this time. “But I think I’m ready to stop playing the what-if game, Mags. It’s time to let go. Issy would hate that I became a floor rug instead of a horse.”
It wasn’t the time to question idioms, so Maggie accepted it in context. Kody had lay down, stopped moving. “Then perhaps it’s time for us to go.”
Kody had a faint smile as she looke
d around. She turned to Maggie and pulled her into a strong, solid hug. “Thanks for not giving up on me when you found me in New York, Mags. It’s good to be back in the land of the living. I feel like I can move on, like I can really feel the world.”
Maggie hugged her back and decidedly ignored how good it felt to be in her arms and how wonderfully muscled her body felt. The last thing she needed was Kody feeling her attraction when she’d just unloaded so much emotional stuff.
“The harder you concentrate on pushing your desire away, the more it tries to come through,” Kody murmured against her hair and flexed her biceps against Maggie’s sides. “I need to teach you how to control it before you jump me.”
Maggie huffed and shoved her way, but she liked the open laugh Kody gave as they stepped out into the sunshine. A wall had crumbled between them, and Maggie wondered just what they’d find now that it was gone.
* * *
Shamus and Brenda rejoined them, and the rest of the ride back to the cottage was uneventful. Maggie occasionally caught a creature peeking out of the trees or darting back behind a hill mound, but nothing unusual came their way, and she was grateful for the reprieve before they jumped back into the magical fray.
The cottage soon appeared at the end of the path in front of them, and it made Maggie smile. She’d now seen enough houses in this land to know hers was most definitely part of the landscape, and definitely more so than it was in New York.
They unloaded the bags, and Kody rubbed the horses’ muzzles and said, “Right, you two. Head home. No messing about on the way.”
Their heads bobbed as though in answer, and they set off down the road. Kody picked up her bag and handed Maggie hers.
“Ready?”
Maggie turned to the cottage door and repeated the spell to open it, something she’d been doing in her head some nights just to make sure she remembered it. The door swung open, and she stepped into the cool interior of what felt like home. They all dropped their bags, and Brenda went to the phone.
