I took off after her, acting on autopilot as my chest nearly burned through my skin with the heat it gave off.
Then I was falling into a hole and then sliding farther down along some sort of slippery moss. I landed with a thud that was so hard it forced the air from my lungs and rocked my vision. I lay gasping for a minute. When I opened my eyes and saw flickering lights, I thought it was from rattling my brain with the fall.
Where was I?
“Tiffy?” The sound didn’t echo like it should’ve in the cave, but seemed to be sucked into a vacuum. And what were those lights? They didn’t look like the Wood Mist, all golden, but every color I’d ever seen, and some I hadn’t known existed.
I got to my feet, reached out, and grabbed a jutting rock on the cave wall to steady myself. I looked around, but all I saw were the lights, and as I stood beneath them, my chest started to burn even hotter.
“Tiffy?” I called out again.
“Dal.” I jerked my head toward the sound of her voice and saw her walking toward me. “You need to leave here.”
“Give me your hand. We need to go.” I didn’t know what this place was, but if I didn’t get out of here soon it felt like I’d start spewing lava.
She stopped walking toward me, and the lights around us started glowing brighter. “I can’t. I need to stay here. This was the place you found for me.”
The lights glowed brighter and started to drop lower. I didn’t know what they were, but I knew it wasn’t good.
“No, Tiffy, we have to go. I didn’t find this place.” I reached for her, but she took a step farther away.
“Yes, you did—that night you walked and we stopped at the fence, it led me here. I’m supposed to be here.”
I let go of the rock I’d been holding on to and took a step toward her. That was when I noticed the ground wasn’t steady, and swayed under my feet as if alive. “Tiffy, please, I won’t leave…”
She stepped back from me.
“Dal, you must leave here now. It’s not safe for you. Listen to me: you must go back, and when you get to the farm, tell Bitters to drop the spell on the farm. It’s the only way I can help you. It’s very important, Dal.”
“Tiffy, I’m not leaving here without you.”
“Dal, don’t forget, tell Bitters…”
* * *
I woke lying on my back in the middle of the forest, not five minutes from the gate to the farm. I got to my feet and realized I had no idea where I’d just been. I remembered going but not how I got there or how I ended up here.
Dax was kneeling beside me. “What happened?”
“Tiffy’s out there.” I sat up still dazed. “I lost her.”
“With the Wood Mist?” he asked.
“Something like that…I think.” I knew it wasn’t normal, whatever it was.
He looked out at the forest, and I could see his torn expression before he let out a long breath. “We leave her. She’s safer with the Wood Mist right now. The group already left for the Rock a couple hours ago.”
I hated thinking of her out here with the army on its way, but I knew he was right. I started to the gate as I asked, “Where’s Fudge?”
“She wouldn’t leave,” he said as we both walked back to the farm, which looked more like a fortress now.
I had to go find Bitters.
Chapter 36
We could hear the engines way before they got to the gates, and it sounded like hell was about to descend upon us. They came en masse and in larger numbers than I’d thought they could muster. There were armored trucks and rows of horses. They had machine guns and other metal things I couldn’t even put a name to. But if they wanted to get rid of us, they would have to come in and get us.
I looked behind me, where Bitters was standing closer to the house, and he gave me a nod. He’d done as I asked. It was a risk, but my gut was telling me to trust Tiffy.
The bullets started raining down on us before I turned around, and the sound of a truck ramming the gate followed.
With a signal from Dax, our side opened fire. Through a gap in the barricade, I tried to pick off any soldiers spilling out of the trucks, and then the ones behind them that were flooding through the gates. I knew they didn’t have an unlimited supply of bullets, and neither did we.
Roars filled the air as the beasts shifted. I watched as Dax took beast form, his battle roar nearly deafening as he leapt over the barricade.
The strangest part of the attack was that not even a single bullet hit the barricade I was behind as I continued to try and pick off targets, now focusing on anyone near Dax.
My gun empty of bullets, I grabbed my knives and stepped into the battle. I swung out, killing and stabbing as I went, but unless I engaged someone, no one would touch me. They were going to kill everyone around me until I relented.
I took another soldier down, trying to not kill him, and then spun around looking for Dax. I’d lost sight of him.
And then I saw Tiffy.
I dashed toward her, screaming, “Get back!”
She shook her head, and I saw her say, “I can’t.”
A sword nearly took her head off as she kept walking toward me, and I sprang forward, grabbing her. I’d started to drag her across the lawn when I spotted Fudge running toward us through the field, dodging in between the beasts as they fought the Newco army, in her effort to save Tiffy.
They were all going to die. I’d never be able to get them out of here alive.
“Stop!” I yelled to Fudge, motioning I’d bring Tiffy there. Fudge froze, and then Tiffy wasn’t in my grip anymore.
I turned frantically to find the little girl. In the split second she’d parted from me, she’d managed to get almost thirty feet away, and in the midst of the worst fighting. I ran toward her, my heart in my throat as I saw beasts swinging their claws and coming within a hair of her.
She collapsed to the ground, even though I hadn’t seen a blow connect. I must have missed it, because she wasn’t getting up. I fell to my knees beside her and watched as her eyes rolled back in her head and her body began to convulse.
I couldn’t find an injury as I checked her body, but she was growing warm, so warm it soon became impossible to touch her.
“Tiffy?”
Her body started to crumple beneath my hands as it fractured into tinier and tinier pieces, until it was like staring at a pile of sand, except this sand was beginning to glow. It grew brighter and brighter and was drawing the attention from those fighting nearby. The noise of war that had surrounded me was dimming as beasts and humans alike were stopping their fights to watch the possible new threat that was brewing.
Slowly, the sand was a golden mist growing taller until it took on the vague form of a woman.
I stood and then stumbled backward. “Tiffy?” I asked. It was the most ridiculous thing to call the hovering form in front of me. The creature took a step toward me as I felt a pair of clawed hands grip my shoulders and Dax pulled me near him.
Tiffy was one of the Wood Mist. Had she always been or had they taken her from us once and for all?
“Dal,” it answered in a voice that wasn’t Tiffy, but was. “I know what I am now. What I’ve always been. I’m going to help you. Don’t be scared.”
The mist started swirling, and Dax tugged me back with him. The shape of the woman dissipated until the form of a woman was gone and a funnel of gold remained. It grew wider and wider, spreading outward. This thing was Tiffy?
I wouldn’t run, even as the mist grew. Chimes filled the air, and for the first time, I could see that everyone heard them as they looked around the air. Fighting had come to a complete halt.
I hadn’t looked back when I felt a cool mist of water flowing over my skin, soothing and beautiful, as images of waterfalls and gardens of flowers sprang to mind. The essence of life and renewal felt like it was surging through my veins.
My head had dropped back and my eyes closed as I relished in the blissful feeling. “What is this?” I asked
Dax, who was now fully human beside me.
“I don’t know, but you might not want to open your eyes,” Dax said.
I groaned. Nothing he could’ve said would have made me open my eyes faster.
When I first got out of the Cement Giant, I thought I’d been pretty hardened. I had been, but doling out death for the last couple of months helped with the sight in front of me.
The mist, the one that had felt like the touch of Fudge’s God on my skin, must have felt more like razors on the men of Newco. It was moving across the field like a tidal wave of death. One moment, a man would be standing there, and then the wave would pass over him and he’d be a shredded, bloody mess, writhing on the ground. The beasts were untouched, the people of the farm uninjured. It—Tiffy—targeted only the Newco force.
It didn’t take long for them to start running, the screams filling the air until you couldn’t hear anything but the sheer terror. Tiffy was slowly corralling them toward the wall of the cliff at the far west end of the farm. Massive in size, it seemed she had spread out almost the entire width of the property.
“Not all of these people are bad, Dax. They’re just on the wrong side of this war.”
“You can’t stop it,” he said, gripping my hand in his as we watched the rest of the Newco army get pulverized.
And then it was over. The mist disappeared and silence fell, except for the quiet groaning of our own injured. The Newco soldiers weren’t alive to groan.
“I’ll be back,” Dax said, and I knew he was going to see if there were any Newco people left alive.
I watched as he walked off, some of the beasts falling into step with him. I had no desire to follow.
There were broken bodies and blood everywhere, and the healthy were trying to help the injured, man and beast alike.
I stepped over a shredded body that was unrecognizable when she popped up in front of me. Tiffy, back in her four-year-old body, stood in front of me.
“I thought this form might be easier for you to handle. You seemed a bit freaked out by my other form.” She smiled. “Don’t be scared, Dal. It’s still me.”
This was Tiffy. I didn’t want to be afraid of her, but it was hard knowing she wasn’t a small child anymore, but part of some type of creature that just ripped through hundreds of mortals.
“What happened?”
She stepped closer and held out her hand to me. “Come and I’ll explain.”
I took it.
We walked past the unmanned gate and deeper into the forest. We stopped in a small clearing, and I took a few steps farther away from her, still not feeling as safe as I’d like. “Tiffy, what are you?”
She opened her mouth and a lyrical chime sound came out. “That’s what I am. That’s the true name for the Wood Mist. Unless you are one of us, it sounds like chimes on the air.”
“So, you are one of them?” I asked, knowing it to be true but having a hard time believing the little girl I’d worried over was the thing that had just wiped out an army.
“I’ve always been one of them, even when I wasn’t.” She smiled at me, but with her own wariness before she continued. “We have a long history in this world, beginning long before humans walked it. I’m not proud of all of it.”
I sat on a nearby log as I waited for her to continue.
She moved about the clearing, her hand grazing over a tree trunk here and a leaf there. “Before humans, there were all sorts of creatures. Us, the Wood Mist, have always thrived in the forests. The Dark Walkers liked stone and rocks, the minerals, and they lived in the sand and worshiped the sun. That’s why they can tolerate the cities so well. After all, cement is simply reconfigured rock.
“As the humans came, they encouraged your population to grow. They used them to build pyramids for them, and great temples and then cities.
“They kept wanting more and more cities, and more and more humans to build them.”
She stopped moving about, and I could hear the anger building until she seemed to calm herself down and looked at me calmly. “So we cursed them. If they loved the world without trees and grass, and the scorching sun without a maple’s dappled shade, then let them feel its burn. And they did.”
It was all falling into place now. I’d gotten dragged into their war. I didn’t know who to be angrier at anymore.
She let out a soft sigh that spoke of deep disappointment. “But they didn’t die. They began to use their magic to don human skin. It only lasted so long before it would rot and give off that sickly smoke you see. That’s why the few healthy ones that managed to evade the curse don’t have the smoke.
“They lingered on, using skin after skin. When some of them did finally die, they still ruined our forest. The curse kept them from rejoining the earth again, and they made foul areas of nothing but toxic mud.” She shook her head as she reached a palm out and laid it flat on a tree.
“Then they discovered that some humans had a magic of their own, but you already know about that,” she said, looking at me.
I nodded. “What happened to you?”
“I’m the strongest of my kind, but I gave up most of my magic in order to curse the Dark Walkers.”
“You didn’t remember this?” I asked as she made her way over and then sat beside me on the log.
“No. When the decision was made, it was thought to be best if I continued whatever existence I had thinking I was mortal. It would be too hard otherwise, like a bird that could roam the skies but then lost its feathers forever. I’d made the decision that it would be easier to never have known. I would live a human life, one after another, never really knowing what I was. But I didn’t know I’d have this feeling of a gaping wound inside of me.”
“And that’s why you thought something was wrong?”
“Yes. And then you came. What neither of us, Dark Walkers or Wood Mist, could find were the pockets of magic that form on the Earth. But you could. You led me to the place that would finally replenish me.”
As she sat there and looked at me now, I understood why she’d destroyed the Newco army for me.
“The Dark Walkers will come now. They have too much to lose. They know what’s at stake and are readying now,” Tiffy said. “I will fight with you again, but I can’t cut through Dark Walkers the way I did with the human army, or this never would’ve happened in the first place.”
I thought of all the injuries already. If they came at us now…
“I can broker peace for you. I will try and give you this,” she said, as she patted my hand like she’d done so many times before.
“How?”
“By using the place you gave me to help them heal. It’s the only way they’ll ever leave you be.”
I stood and walked the length of the clearing, wondering if I was crazy to even think of agreeing to this. There was only one way I could live with it. “I have a condition.”
“If it’s what I think, you’ll never be able to do it.”
“We’ll see about that.”
* * *
It was early morning as Dax stood beside me near assassin tree, with ten beasts behind us as we waited. Maybe picking the place should’ve made me feel better, but it didn’t. Tiffy being there wasn’t as reassuring as it might’ve been either, considering how Tiffy wasn’t Tiffy but sometimes a glowing sand monster.
Dax’s hand squeezing mine was the only thing that did feel right.
“You sure?” he asked.
“It’s the only way,” I said, then fell silent as Zarrod and several other Dark Walkers stepped into the clearing. The faceless Wood Mist appeared on the other side, our three groups forming the points of a triangle.
Tiffy stepped forward into the center. “It seems we have a problem, my old friend. We cursed you, and now you want to use her to find places to heal you. But I can’t allow that.”
“You can’t stop us. Look what happened last time. You disappeared for over a century.” Zarrod laughed.
“And what will happen if I do it again wh
ile most of your people are already sick?”
“You wouldn’t.”
“I would and you know it.”
“We won’t leave her be. You don’t get to use what she finds all for yourself.”
“The place she found has enough magic in it to heal all your people. I’ll share it and you will walk away.”
The Dark Walkers all started talking to each other. If I were them, I’d take that deal, because it was more than they had now.
But then the collective voice of the Wood Mist started talking. “And what happens when the human race rebuilds and they use them? It will happen. It’s happened over and over again throughout time.”
“We’ll mark out boundaries. It’s the only way to have peace. If we don’t heal them, they’ll only ruin our lands with their corpses.”
Both sides quieted down as they heard something they could agree to.
“What if this place isn’t enough and we need her again?” a tall female Dark Walker asked.
All eyes were on me. Our group was the only one that had remained quiet.
Peace. This was what I wanted. Freedom to live my life and peace in which to live it. Even with so much damage having been done, I wanted it. I had so much to live for that I realized I could finally let the past go.
But as I stood across from Zarrod, I knew it was a false promise. He’d haunt me for the rest of my life.
I lifted my hand and pointed at him. “But not with him. I don’t trust him, and there has to be a price paid for the lives lost.”
I could hear the hum of the Wood Mist and the disgruntled faces of the Dark Walkers as I stood there, firmly outnumbered but unwilling to back down. There was compromise and then there was foolishness. I knew that if I let him walk away from here for a moment of peace, I’d pay for it a thousand times over.
The Magic Page 23
