by Zoe Chant
...and all the portals crackled into nothing.
The darkness when the doorways closed was so sudden and complete that they were all blind for a moment.
“What did Robin say to you?” Tadra asked, after a moment of silence where they all adjusted to the unbroken night.
Ansel chuckled. “They said they’d probably redecorate, that I used entirely too much avocado green and was heavy-handed with the sparkle, and that the whole place smelled like my warehouse. I called them Tinker Bell for old times, and they called me Meatbag. It’s kind of our thing.”
Tadra had to giggle, and then shiver, because she didn’t have magic to keep her warm anymore. “Did you bring an extra coat?” she asked, and he insisted on taking her leather jacket off and wrapping it around her.
“I’m used to Michigan winters,” he assured her, buckling it at her neck. “And since Henrik can’t do portals anymore, we’ll all stay warm walking briskly home.”
He staggered as they set off and Tadra wormed her way up under his arm to help him walk.
“It was a worthy battle,” Trey said with satisfaction as they navigated the new forest back to the road.
“We made a great sacrifice,” Henrik agreed proudly.
Gwen punched him in the arm. “You wouldn’t have been happy in a world without pizza. Don’t make yourself sound like a martyr.”
Henrik bent to kiss her. “You are correct, my key. But do not believe that I will not miss my gryphon half. It is...unnerving.”
“Very peculiar,” Rez agreed.
“I will miss flying,” Trey said mournfully. “But I do not regret the choice in the slightest.”
“Sure,” Rez said. “Bring up the flying.” But he rubbed at the center of his forehead rather self-consciously. They had arrived at the edge of the woods.
Tadra closed her eyes and folded into herself curiously. She didn’t feel as empty as she’d expected and she remembered Robin’s warning that her firebird had bled into the rest of her, that they were entangled too completely for her ever to be completely free.
There was still a flicker far inside of her, and when she reached for it...
She was suddenly spreading wings.
If her firebird had been diminished before, it was even moreso now, stripped of the deep magic that had fueled it. It merely had traces of magic and was the size of a hummingbird, but it was a firebird, shedding sparks that didn’t burn.
She made cartwheels through the air, reveling in the flight and freedom, then circled Ansel and landed on his shoulder. She shook herself, scattering her sparks all around, and gave a bird smirk to her shieldmates, who were staring in astonishment.
“Does this mean…?” Trey started.
Henrik was already shrinking into a gryphon form the size of a mouse, his feathered wings keeping him aloft until he landed in Gwen’s open hands.
“Oh my God, you are the cutest thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” Gwen said adoringly. “Socks is either going to think you’re a kitten or a snack.”
A split-second later, Trey was a glimmering dragon landing on the top of Daniella’s head and preening, his green tail snaking down around her neck.
Rez gave a long-suffering sigh and turned into a unicorn, small enough to get momentarily lost in Heather’s long skirt before he trotted out and stabbed Ansel in the ankle.
“Hey!” Ansel protested. “What did I do?”
Tadra turned back into a woman simply so that she could laugh out loud. “You stole all the glory!” she said, slipping an arm around Ansel. “Here we were, chosen knights and trained warriors, and you were the one with the strength and sight to save faery single-handedly. It will be a wonder if we ever forgive you this slight to our pride.”
Henrik seemed to flow from Gwen’s hands into his human form. “Do not tease our shieldmate,” he scolded Tadra. Then he bowed to Ansel, to Tadra’s delight. “Do not take her seriously now that she has her tongue, landowner Ansel, keeper of hounds and fixer of technology. We are honored by your service and awed by your actions. Your courage and strength give us much to aspire to.”
“Did you just call me your shieldmate?” Ansel asked. Tadra could feel the surprise in his body.
Trey dropped from Daniella’s head as Rez swelled upward and both of them knelt before Ansel in their human shapes. “You are a true knight,” Rez agreed.
“A credit to our kingdom, our savior,” Trey added.
Ansel looked at them in confusion and Tadra stepped back to sign to him. You are our shieldmate. You are my heart. Then she knelt with her shieldmates and when she looked up at Ansel, she was delighted by the expression on his face: confusion, surprise, and joy. He understood the gift they’d just given him, and she knew how much it meant to him.
“I didn’t do it to be a knight,” Ansel said quietly.
“Of course not,” Trey said, standing again. “A true knight doesn’t do things for titles or glory. Your heart is pure.” He took Ansel’s face in his hands and touched their foreheads together.
“Your courage is unselfish,” Rez said, taking a turn to press his forehead to Ansel’s.
“Your strength of spirit is impressive,” Henrik added, and at the end of his forehead touch, he flung his arms around Ansel.
“We don’t have to hug all the time,” Ansel reminded him, but he embraced Henrik back.
Tadra took Ansel’s face between her palms when Henrik released him. She didn’t say a word, only rested her forehead against his and let herself love him completely.
Overhead, there were noisy bursts of fire in the sky.
Chapter 35
There were sirens through Wimberlette and the long walk back to Ansel’s house was surreal. The damage from their battle and the reconstruction of faery had not been constrained to the warehouse, and it hadn’t all been fixed when Ansel rebuilt faery. He had a moment of guilt for the collateral damage, then reminded himself that he’d just saved two worlds and maybe he didn’t need to worry about being able to fix absolutely everything. He was so tired that Tadra had to support him, and the destruction seemed minimal, in the scope of things.
Roads and sidewalks were broken and tilted plates in places, and there were a few trees down. It didn’t look like any structures had fallen, but there were a few people wandering around picking up fallen trash cans and shaking their heads at their neighbors.
“Did you guys feel that earthquake?” Jenny asked as they passed her house. There were fireworks going off in earnest overhead now and she had her son and daughter by the hands.
“I assure you we did,” Henrik said.
“Any damage?” Ansel asked. He probably looked drunk, barely able to stand on his own two feet. It wasn’t out of place, for the occasion.
“All our windows rattled! One of the plates broke!” one of her children cried.
“We got to stay up late!” the other one chortled.
“Happy New Year!” everyone said to each other.
Then they were finally home again, and the dogs were ecstatic to greet them and bark and whine and demand scratches and comfort. Even Socks made a brief appearance to let them all know about her various displeasures with the world. Nothing seemed to be damaged, though a few pictures on the wall were hanging askew, and a bowl had been knocked off the counter.
That was as likely to be from Socks as it was from their final battle.
Ansel fell onto the couch and Tadra wrapped him in an afghan, a comforting mirror of the way he’d taken care of her when she had been drained of her power.
“I feel weird,” he confessed to her, while the others fed the pets and rustled up snacks in the kitchen.
“You had all the power of faery in your head for a time,” Tadra reminded him, kissing his forehead. “I do not expect it was a comfortable burden.”
It was amazing, hearing her voice. It was both unfamiliar and so perfectly right for her, rich and velvety. “Your firebird…”
“Will always be a small part of me,” she said ser
enely. “If somewhat tinier than before.”
“You were ready to sacrifice her to save a world you’d only known a few weeks,” Ansel said, freeing a hand from the afghan to stroke her cheek. “And you must have known that you might have destroyed yourself to make it happen.”
“You were ready to sacrifice yourself to save a broken world you’d never even seen.”
“I could imagine it,” Ansel said thoughtfully. “And I know how much you loved it.”
“I love you,” she said, simply. She kissed his cheek, and he turned his mouth to meet hers.
They startled apart when Trey came in with hot drinks, then sagged close back together. They didn’t have to pretend any more, and that was almost as much of a relief as saving the world.
Trey winked at them as he set steaming mugs of cocoa on the coffee table and said drolly, “In case you needed any heating up.”
They all stayed up for another hour or so, warming over drinks and talking quietly over all that had happened.
Kevin’s—Cerad’s—influence over them did not go completely unremembered, but they agreed that the memories of that time were fuzzy.
“I know what happened,” Gwen explained thoughtfully. “I just don’t remember why I thought that everything was okay.”
“It was like being swaddled in cotton,” Henrik agreed. “But very pleasant cotton.”
The conversation moved to their plans for the fresh new year.
“I would like to secure a job,” Trey said. “It feels unseemly to continue to depend on the charity of our host.”
“I’d like to open a costume shop,” Heather said wistfully.
“I’m thinking about starting a Tang Soo Do studio,” Gwen confessed. “I’d have to get some certification, but there’s no martial arts available locally that’s not just for grown-ups, and I miss training kids.”
“I like children,” Henrik said thoughtfully, and the moment turned into something with unintended depth as they looked at each other in surprise and Gwen’s cheeks went pink.
Rez nodded. “I should like to travel and see some of the places that Heather has mentioned, such as DizzyKingdom and FishWorld.”
“I’d like to see more of this world, too,” Tadra said. “Perhaps a year of travel would be stimulating?”
“I might sleep for a year,” Ansel confessed, yawning.
That was their cue to disperse to their individual beds, leaving their tea and cocoa mugs where they were. The last of the fireworks had died away to nothing, and the sirens had long since gone silent.
Ansel felt like he’d found a second wind, but he didn’t protest when Tadra helped him up the stairs. He turned in her embrace to kiss her as soon as they were inside his room, and she eagerly kissed him back.
“I have been dying for one thing,” he confessed, kissing her neck and holding her close.
“What is it?” she whispered, her breath ragged and dear.
“I want to hear you,” Ansel said, letting his tongue lap her ear briefly before he put his lips against hers. “I want to make you cry out my name.”
He felt her smile against his mouth. “I might be very noisy,” she warned him. “You have very clever…hands.”
Ansel kicked the door shut behind them and wrestled her to the bed as they tore off their clothing and fell onto the rumpled comforter.
Her noises were everything that he thought they might be, and they had no fear of being caught, or any care for Socks, who shortly found the closed door and voiced her ire at it.
It was dark in the room and when Ansel went rummaging for a condom, he turned on the light with a quick flick of his wrist, not realizing what he’d done until Tadra gasped.
A handful of floating globes illuminated the room, soft silvery light making every curve of her naked body look like art.
Ansel looked at Tadra, then at the faery lights. “I didn’t even think about it,” he said in wonder. “I just…”
“The deep magic will always be a part of you,” Tadra said, reaching one hand to touch the cool light closest to her. “Like my firebird will be a part of me. It won’t be much, compared to faery itself.”
Ansel looked at his hand, then, as a test, waved it at the lights. They obediently bobbed and swirled, then distributed about the room again, floating serenely into the places he willed them and changing colors.
“What else can I do?” he wondered out loud.
“You can come and make love to me,” Tadra said impatiently. She seemed unimpressed, but then, she’d grown up in faery, with a firebird of deep magic sharing her soul.
Ansel found the condom and went to join her on the bed again. “Say my name,” he begged, taking her into his arms.
“Ansel,” Tadra breathed near his ear as she wound her arms around his neck. “Ansel! Ansel, my heart, my key, my love...”
Ansel was divided between wanting to smother her words with kisses and dying a little in joy at the sound of her voice as he made love to her beautiful body and brought her to high planes of pleasure. “Tadra,” he begged. They didn’t have to be quiet, but in the end, out of habit or need, they were making silent signs against each other: I love you, my heart, good, better, best, I love you…
Epilogue
At the end of that year, none of them were anywhere near where they’d imagined they would be, Tadra least of all.
Gwen was hugely pregnant, and she waded through the snow up the little slope from the road where they had parked to the site where the warehouse had been destroyed, huffing and protesting. Henrik hovered over her with a mix of pride and anxiousness. Daniella was laughing with Trey over the gift they’d brought, a CD of her first album as a professional singer.
“We don’t even know if they have CD players in faery,” she pointed out, not for the first time.
“I’m sure Robin will contrive a way to play it,” Trey said proudly.
Heather, wearing one of the dresses from her new line, was carrying a squirming Vesta, and Fabio was dancing around their feet, spraying snow everywhere and playing with Trucker, Ansel and Tadra’s big-pawed husky puppy.
The conversion of the warehouse from a commercial lot to a full-grown forest overnight had gotten a lot of brief attention, but since no one could explain it in a satisfactory way, it was generally just ignored and swept under the rug. Tadra suspected that some lingering faery magic diminished the memory of the event. The site sometimes got supernatural investigators, but there was no real evidence that it had ever been anything but a simple empty lot with some trees. The rubble from the structure itself was mostly overgrown with moss now, and covered in deep December snow.
Tadra’s heart was in her throat.
Ansel’s faery lights lit their way through the densely-growing trees, but none of them had the kind of power necessary to open a portal. She couldn’t know what had happened in faery, or how long it had been for them. Cerad might have betrayed Robin again, or stolen the deep magic, or perhaps Ansel had not fully purged out a pocket of the darkness and it had grown again and swallowed the world. The portal would have to be opened from the other side, and if something had happened to Robin...
Ansel’s hand in hers tightened as he sensed her nervousness. Okay? he signed, his face making it a question.
Okay, she agreed firmly.
There was no reason to borrow trouble before it found her.
She was wearing jeans and a quilted jacket, a knitted hat that she’d made herself (with Heather’s patient tutelage) over her ears. This world didn't need firebird knights, but she had found a place she belonged running Ansel’s re-opened secondhand store (in a new building downtown) and she was taking business classes at the local college.
She loved the work, and her job made a lot more sense when she realized that Ansel often bought some things at a higher price than he could charge in order to help people in a bind while saving them the dignity of asking for help. She was getting skilled at computers and was working on a webpage for the store. Being a merchant
unexpectedly suited her skills, and she never had to worry about hiring security.
Faery seemed far away and long ago, and when they reached the grove in the center of the lot, Tadra looked up at the clear, star-dotted sky through the trees. Ansel put his arms around her and she realized she was shivering.
“Everything will be fine,” he promised. “They’ll come.”
Tadra leaned into his embrace. She didn’t have enough faery magic to keep her warm, but she had love, and that was even better.
There was a rip of sound, just before a flash of light announced the portal, and Tadra caught her breath and squinted into the brilliance. Bells of celebration rang and she could hear golden voices on the other side, long before she could see over.
“Robin!” She left her shieldmates scrambling through the snow behind her as she sprinted to meet the fable, throwing her arms around them before she could remind herself that they were the crown and it was perhaps not exactly appropriate behavior of a protector of the kingdom.
But she was not a knight any longer, and Robin was her mentor and her friend before he was her crown. They met her, forehead to forehead, smiling and laughing as the summer spilled out of the portal and melted away all of the cold and dark in a rush of flowers and fragrant air. Robin wore gold and white, folds of shimmering feathers and silk, and the crown on their head glimmered like ice.
Then her shieldmates were there, and there were more dizzying embraces as everyone tried to cram an entire year of information into a few moments of greeting.
Tadra wasn’t the only one who was attending a school; Rez was studying to be a psychiatrist, glad to have some way of pursuing his healing with human skills. Heather was selling her fashions online. Henrik and Gwen had postponed their plans to open a studio for a few years to have children. Daniella and Trey were touring for her album which, while self-produced, was performing well.
Robin absorbed it all with enthusiasm, though it could not have been a full year for them; everything looked just as it had when they said farewell to it, an endless, beginningless season of beauty.
