I went downstairs and clattered around the small kitchen on the first floor in search of a bottle of anything. I found one old bottle of wine. It would have to do. As I rambled back up the stairs to the tree loft, I paused as I passed the door to the cave. Cool air wafted in from all around the hinges. On the other side, I swore I heard whispering, hissing voices. I pressed my ear against the wooden door. To my shock, the door handle rattled.
Gasping, I moved backward up the steps. When I moved away, the voices receded, and the handle grew still. It was the opium. Surely, it was the opium.
Wine in hand, I went back to the third floor and sat down. I drank from the bottle. It was a beautiful red wine, no doubt some special, sacred, ancient vintage. Mixing the wine with the opium, I was finally starting to feel . . . nothing, which meant I was feeling entirely better. I sat in the window listening to the owls call until I fell into a dizzy oblivion.
The moon was high when I woke again. The room was dark. I was lying on the cold stone floor. The moonlight cast long shadows across the room. To my surprise, the sword at the center of the table still glimmered with green light. It had not been the leaves after all. It was cold. I rose, gently putting Byron’s cologne back in the bag, secured my satchel over my shoulder, then staggered to the bedroom on the second floor. The embers had burned low. I grabbed logs beside the fireplace and banked up the fire. I then headed back down the stairs to retrieve more wood. When I reached the bottom of the stairs, I stopped dead in my tracks. The door to the cave was ajar.
“Fuck,” I whispered under my breath and as quietly as I could, I started taking steps back up the stairs.
The door began to open very slowly. I backed away in horror. There was no way I could make it to the front door. I was going to have to jump out an upstairs window. A small hand with long black fingernails reached around the edge of the door. From the open cave, I heard hissing whispers. I shuddered then stood frozen.
“Lily?” I heard a voice call. I could have sworn it was Byron.
I didn’t dare speak. The hand on the cave door retreated.
“Lily?” the voice called again, and a moment later, Robin rounded the corner, his lamp blazing before him. He took in the scene. With haste, he crossed the room and slammed the door shut, sliding the bolt securely across the lock. He looked at me with an expression of shock and terror on his face.
Trembling, I reached out for him.
He reached out and picked me up, cradling me against his chest. Wordlessly, he carried me outside. Terrified and completely out of my mind, I rested my head against his chest. In the darkness, I saw the dark shapes of the trees overhead. I heard the soft sound of rushing water. A few minutes later, Robin lowered me onto the ground beside a pool. A spring flowed over rocks and tumbled into the small pond. The water reflected the moon overhead turning the pool silver.
“Are you all right? Did they harm you?” Robin asked, peering deeply into my face. He looked frightened. Frantically, he grabbed my arms and looked them over.
“What was that?” I replied aghast, yanking my arms back before he saw the injection marks thereon.
“The little people of the hollow hills.”
What the hell? “That was . . . real?”
“They don’t usually intrude unless . . . you don’t have to go back there,” he said then frowned. Robin rose and grabbed some sticks heaped nearby. He started a fire. The air was cold. I shivered in my thin Moroccan garb. After he got the fire going, Robin sat beside me once again.
“You must be cold,” he said, urging me to warm my hands by the flames.
I didn’t reply but gazed at him. His face was illuminated by the firelight. My boozy head made me feel dizzy. He looked so much like George.
“Lily, I’d come to apologize,” he said, and pulling my hat out of his vest, he pushed it toward me. “The pin got damaged. I’m sorry. But I did fix it. After all, I’m the one who made it.”
I stared at my hat. The metal pin glimmered in the moonlight. “You?”
“I’m sorry I was so rude. You must understand . . . the former Warden . . . Lord Byron . . . Ianthe thinks me quite naïve, but I know he was my father. When you arrived, it was the first I heard of his death. Then to find you had the pin and the box . . . I didn’t know what to think.”
“The clockwork fairy? Did you make that as well?”
He nodded. “I only met Byron twice my entire life. When I was a young boy, he’d come to see Ianthe. I don’t know if he knew I was his son or not, but I only had to look at him to know he was my father. I wanted to impress him. He stayed a week. I’d been studying Boatswain’s designs. I tinkered the fairy and displayed the skeleton as a gift to him . . . a gift for my father. He’d been so pleased. He’d smiled at me . . . it was like standing in the sun. I didn’t see him again after that for a very long time. He came once more last summer. I’m twenty years old, but the minute he walked onto this estate, I felt like a child desperate for his attention. He complimented me, actually complimented me, on my tinkered designs. I was honored when he asked me to make something for him: a pin in the shape of a lily. The pin on your hat. My father . . . gave all my gifts to you.”
The opium had my head spinning. I felt very angry at Byron. What had he done? Had he known about Robin? Had he bargained him away? But then I considered everything I knew about the man I loved. Mad Jack’s lame son . . . what would sixteen year old Byron have given, bargained away to escape his fate? What would that damaged child have traded to change his destiny? I closed my eyes. I felt a tear slide down my cheek. How sad. How terribly sad. I knew then why I was there. I knew then why Byron had left me the box. In my opium haze, I had seen Byron’s spirit. He told me I would mend his regrets, the first of which sat beside me. Robin Byron. How much he looked like his father.
I took Robin’s hand. “I knew your father. I loved him. I love him still. He sent me here, with that box, your gift, as a message to you,” I said, realizing the truth as I spoke. “He knew you were his son. He made me Warden here because he trusted me.”
Robin looked surprised but thought on my words. Taking a deep breath, he began to weep softly, his hands covering his face. It moved me deeply.
I put my arm around him and pulled him against me, resting my cheek on his head. I held him tight, comforting him, knowing that I might be the only person in the world who would ever console him over the loss of his father. As I pressed my face against him, I caught his deep, earthy scent. He smelled sweet, like the woods: pine and cherry, fallen leaves, loamy earth, spring flowers, and campfire smoke. I pulled back.
“Thank you,” he whispered, inhaling with a shuddering breath. He sighed heavily.
I smiled then stuck my hand in my bag. I pulled out my tobacco pipe. I pressed some tobacco within and lit the pipe. I inhaled, my mouth filling with the sweet taste, then pressed the pipe toward Robin.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a woman smoke tobacco before,” he said then took the pipe from me. He smoked deeply. “Isn’t it expensive?”
I shrugged. “When you want something, you’ll sacrifice for it.”
Robin smoked again then passed the pipe back to me. “Are you sacrificing on your wardrobe these days?” he teased.
I chuckled in spite of myself. “What? This garb is very fashionable . . . in Morocco.”
“You were in Morocco?”
“Yes.”
“Is that where he . . . died?”
I shook my head then took a drop of laudanum. I offered it to Robin who waved it away. “He died in Greece. He was trying to liberate the Greek people from oppression,” I said. I tried to shake the terrible image of Byron convulsing on the bed from my mind. “It was not a good death, but the Greek people count him a hero.”
“You were with him?”
“When he passed? Yes.”
“Then he must have loved you. I mean, I’ve heard he had many women.”
I smoked again then handed Robin the tobacco. “He did. Things were . . .
different . . . between us.”
Robin looked curiously at me then nodded. “I’m sorry I got so angry. I didn’t understand.”
“It’s all right. We’re even. After all, I think you saved me from being dragged off to the realm of the faerie,” I said with a yawn.
Robin turned serious. “You don’t know how close to the truth you are.”
“Tell me about it in the morning. Right now, the opium has me. And I want to know where you got that skeleton.”
“Truly?”
I nodded then lay down on the earth, resting my head on Robin’s outstretched knee. “You aren’t going to tell me fairies are real, are you?” I asked, looking up at him.
Robin wiped a stray stand of hair from my forehead. “Are you always so . . .” he said, then shook his head at a loss for words.
“So . . . what?” I asked, my eyes drifting shut. Beside me, the fire snapped. The soft sound of the spring lulled me to sleep. My head on his leg, again I caught his woodsy scent. This time I let it in to fill my senses.
“So . . . well . . . at least now I understand what all the fuss was about,” I heard him whisper as I drifted off to sleep.
“LILY, WAKE UP,” I HEARD Robin whisper as he gently shook my shoulder.
A sharp pain flashed through my skull making me cringe. Dammit. I needed to stop. I needed to stop this. I opened my eyes a crack to see the sun wasn’t yet above the horizon. I was still lying on the ground beside the fire. My stomach ached horribly. I hadn’t eaten since I was on the Orpheus. “The sun isn’t even up yet,” I told Robin.
“I know. That’s why it has to be now. Sit up and drink some tea quickly. We need to go soon if you want to see.”
“See what?”
Robin pressed a steaming cup toward me. “Just drink this,” he said.
I sat up groggily. I groaned then sipped the tea. The taste was bitter but it washed the even nastier taste out of my mouth. I grimaced.
“Sorry. It’s an acquired taste. Take another drink then we can go.”
I slugged back the tea, taking deep swallows. The leaves at the bottom had again fallen into the shape of a triskelion. I stood with Robin’s help.
“You drank it all?” he asked, taking the cup from me.
“Yeah, why not . . . wait, what was in-”
“You’ll be all right. Anyone who can smoke and drink like you do . . . but, anyway, I dried out your slippers,” he said, handing them to me. I held Robin’s arm to steady myself as I pulled the slippers back on. “Come on,” he said then took my hand and led me into the forest. It was still mostly dark, but Robin knew exactly where he was going. He led us deep into the forest. Climbing over thick logs and through beds of ferns, we walked under the limbs of the old oak trees. In the shadowy pre-dawn light, the knotty trunks looked like old, grandfatherly faces.
My head started to feel strange. I had grown used to the sensation of opium. Absinthe was its own monster. But as I walked, I began to feel a strange sensation like my spirit was floating adrift, winging in then out of my body.
“Robin?” I said as I began to feel myself swoon.
“Sorry, Lily. I didn’t think you’d drink it all. Just a little sip aids things along. You probably didn’t even need it, let alone all of it. We’re almost there. Just stay quiet,” he whispered.
He led us to a small knoll. Before we reached its top, he whispered: “Crouch down. Stay low.” He dropped to the forest floor. I joined him. “Now, put these on,” he told me, handing me a pair of goggles.
I was baffled. “Whatever for?”
“You’ll need them to help you see. Paired with the potion, they work well. I crafted them using prismatic theory to see the magnetic field created by the realm’s energy, but in particular, to hone in on . . . well, just put them on. You’ll see.”
“Did you say potion?”
He smirked. Again, his cheeks dimpled.
I did as he told me. Once I pulled the goggles on, the forest around me took on a strange incandescent glow. Everything seemed luminescent, glimmering with hues of green and gold. I looked at Robin who was also wearing a pair of the tinkered goggles. All around him was a pulsating glow of vibrant green.
Robin was looking at me. “Orange,” he whispered and lifted my hand in front of me. “It suits you.”
I looked at my hands. Like Robin, I too glowed, but the color that surrounded me was orange save my chest. When I looked at the area around my heart, it was a swirling mix of dark gray, black, and purple.
Robin reached out and laid his palm on my chest. The green of his aura dispersed the sadness that had settled there. He smiled gently at me, touching my chin. “Now, let’s watch,” he whispered.
Pushing aside some ferns, we looked at the hilltop. Capping the hill were standing stones. The stones, like so many others dotting our realm, were shaped like an arched doorway: two standing stones crowned by a horizontal stone.
“Watch,” Robin whispered. “Watch as the sun rises.”
Everything was so blurry. I had a hard time focusing, but I tried to do as he instructed. Sunlight began to shimmer in the distance. The aura around the stones glowed with glimmering gold. When the sun broke over the horizon, its slanting rays shone directly through the stone archway. The sunlight shimmered in a way I had never seen it scatter before. The beams sparkled like they were blown with crystal dust. Then, I saw them. At first, I thought they were butterflies. A dozen or more small, incandescent creatures passed through the light into the archway. They moved so fast, their small wings carrying their tiny bodies. But it was their shape that gave them away. They were tiny and humanoid. They wore colorful gowns; the reds, blues, greens, oranges, and yellows shone with intense richness. They flew around one another playfully. Robin was showing me fairies. They fluttered about in the glowing light then disappeared through the arch into the unknown.
I looked at Robin. His body was aglow with brilliant green light. He smiled from ear to ear. Looking back, I watched the fairies. The sun traveled higher into the sky. The hilltop flooded with light. The shimmering glow coming from the stone arch faded. The fairies disappeared.
Robin pulled off his goggles and stood. He reached out, helping me up. I stood then took off the goggles. We went to the top of the hill. The place buzzed with energy. The hairs on the back of my neck were standing up straight. Even with the naked eye, I could make out a strange white light glimmering off the stones.
“They are still around us. We just can’t see them now. Can you sense them?” he asked me. He was staring into the arched gateway.
I closed my eyes. Around me, I felt . . . something. It felt like someone or something was standing close to me. “I think so.” I opened my eyes. There was nothing there. “What happens if you pass through?” I asked, motioning to the stones.
He grinned. “We’ll leave that for another day.”
“One thing though . . . how did you get the skeleton? I mean, you don’t strike me as the kind to cage up something so . . . special.”
Robin shrugged. “She came to me. All enchanted things want to be truly loved at least once before they die.”
My hands involuntarily leapt toward my mouth. I suppressed a gasp. I gazed at Robin who was staring at the standing stones.
“I guess Ianthe will be looking for you,” he said with a sigh then turned to go.
I joined him, walking at his side under the canopy of green, my mother’s—now Robin’s—words echoing through my mind.
WHEN WE NEARED IANTHE’S COTTAGE, Robin fell silent. His smile faded, his eyes cast toward the ground.
“Robin,” I said, taking him gently by the arm. “Thank you for showing me. It was amazing.”
He smiled at me, his green eyes searching my face. “No, thank you. Your words, they’ve brought me so much comfort.” He sighed heavily. “Lily, Ianthe will try to . . .” he said then frowned. He shook his head. “Just be true to yourself,” he added then went to the cabin door. “Ianthe?” he called with a knock as he p
ushed the door open.
“Robin! Where is Lily?” she scolded, her voice full of fury.
“I’m here,” I said flatly. Robin and I went inside.
“Oh. Very good. I was quite worried. Thank you, Robin. I need to meet Lily alone,” she said dismissively, escorting him back outside. The gesture made me angry.
“Ianthe,” Robin said, his voice was low, but I could hear that he was annoyed, “it might be wise to go cautiously.” He gazed back at me. “The little people of the hollow hills were out last night,” he added in a low undertone. He thought I would not hear. Realizing I’d picked up on his words, he stepped outside. Ianthe followed him. I could no longer make out their words, but Robin’s tone was firm. Ianthe sounded frustrated.
I plopped down in a chair beside the fire and closed my eyes. My head felt so strange. It was like waves were crashing through my mind. When I opened my eyes, I looked at the chair across from me and saw Byron sitting there. I saw him and saw through him all at once. He smiled at me, lifted one finger to his lips, then arched his eyebrow playfully at me.
“Lily . . . can I get you something? Food? Drink?” Ianthe asked when she rejoined me. I looked up at her, shook my head, then looked back at the chair.
Ianthe sat across from me, displacing Byron’s spirit. “When we last spoke, I mentioned that I can be of great personal help to you: your racing career, your personal life, any struggles you are facing. I can help you, in spite of whatever fantasies my son is coming up with,” she said with a shake of the head. “My role here is to assist the Warden,” Ianthe said nicely. “How can I assist you?”
Chasing the Green Fairy: The Airship Racing Chronicles Page 12
