Elfland

by Freda Warrington

  Mouth open, Rosie felt Sam sliding into her, all the way in, gliding exquisitely over nerve endings, flesh enclosed in flesh; and yes, he was everything she’d secretly imagined, and it mattered, as sex with Alastair had never mattered; and it was sorcery, a living sorcerer’s wand enchanting her, seducing her with the dark excitement of the one thing in all the world that she should not be doing . . .

  She entered a sharp, wild plane of existence beyond the Dusklands. The sensations were so intense that she could no longer breathe. This deep, oiled and burning pressure was all she needed in the world. The faint thought came to her, I’ve never had an Aetherial man before, he’s the first . . . and she felt herself cresting a magical wave as he moved convulsively into her.

  The world swam and dissolved. Her awareness of his pleasure intensified her own beyond bearing. She saw colors. It seemed that Naamon, the realm of fire, was whirling around them, coalescing to a glittering diamond peak that left her straining and wordless with its intensity; then pulsing strongly outwards, ecstasy flowing like oil, curling and leaping as he gasped her name; then ebbing at last into delicious rainbow trails.

  Release. Thank the gods.

  Peace, just for a few seconds.

  They stood holding on to each other, shaken and trembling, caught in a golden moment before reality set in. Sam sighed, “God, Rosie,” against her neck. She only exhaled, openmouthed as the last trickles of pleasure faded. She clung for him for a moment; then remembered where she was.

  Oh fuck. Oh hell, what was I thinking?

  Within seconds, the chill stickiness of regret began. They were in a hideously undignified position, straddled against a tree trunk with her dress billowing around him like a meringue. Awkwardly they began the process of disentangling themselves and rearranging their clothing. Rosie tried to straighten the layers of her skirt with damp hands.

  There were rows of curved creases that wouldn’t shake out. Blood inflamed her face and she couldn’t look at Sam. In a flash of horror she imagined all the wedding guests encircling them, beginning a slow handclap—she glanced around, but the woodlands were deserted. Shuddering, she wondered how she could avoid speaking to him and escape—preferably into a chasm in the ground.

  “Are you all right?” he asked quietly.

  “The dress isn’t,” Rosie snapped, shaking the hem.

  “It’s fine. Just a few leaves—” He brushed her hip. “That’s it.”

  “Get off. I can manage.”

  She was aware of his silence as she went on fussing with the fabric. Then he said, “Run away with me, Rosie.”

  “What?” She straightened up. Sam was looking at her, his head tilted and the tip of his tongue touching his upper lip. His eyes glittered and his hair was in a spiky mess.

  “I mean it. Come on. I’ve got a motorbike . . .”

  “How unbelievably corny.”

  “Yeah, whatever.” He glanced over his shoulder to indicate escape. “Please, let’s just go.”

  He came close again but she put out her hands to ward him off. “Don’t be ridiculous. I have to go back.”

  “To the reception?”

  “Where else?” She began to walk but he came with her. “Don’t follow me.”

  “Don’t walk away!” Sam caught her shoulder. She knocked his hand aside but stopped, afraid he would follow her all the way back to the hall. Rosie was in shock; surely if anyone saw them together, they would know exactly what had happened and the world would end.

  “What, Sam? You thought one moment of complete madness would make me abandon my marriage? I have to make it work!”

  “Oh yeah, it’s already working so well that you jump me and practically eat me alive? Not that I’m complaining, but what was that about?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “Oh, I do,” he said grimly. “It wasn’t all one-sided, Rosie. You felt something.”

  “Disgust and revulsion.”

  “It’s a start,” he said. “So, does revulsion normally make you that hot?”

  She took several deep breaths. The only way she could think of to make him go was to be ice-cold and cruel. He’d never give up otherwise. “Look, Sam, I’ve had too much to drink and an overload of emotion. It was a fit of nerves, that’s all. Nothing happened, okay? Nothing happened.”

  He put his hands in his pockets. “Yeah, well, you can try and kid yourself—”

  “You could have been anyone,” she hissed. “Yes, all right, I panicked and did something unforgivably stupid. But you were just—a body.”

  At that, he recoiled. He looked at the ground and then at her again, eyes darkening. “You don’t mean that.”

  “Oh, I do. You had no right to come here and—What the hell can I say to make you leave me alone?”

  Sam’s expression grew remote, withdrawing from her. She wondered, with a wisp of anxiety, what he might do in revenge. He asked levelly, “Are you really going to go and play the good wife, after what we’ve done?”

  “I really am,” she replied.

  This time when she stepped away, he stood white-faced and let her go.

  Rosie spent her honeymoon night in a hotel bed, listening to Alastair snoring. He’d been in no fit state for sex and she was relieved. His safe, friendly flesh seemed as lifeless as lard and she couldn’t have responded if she’d wanted to. She hated herself for it. Would he have smelled Sam on her, realized that another man had spilled himself inside her, even after she’d half-drowned herself in the shower?

  Random images of the day clamored in her mind. Talking to Lucas as she painted her nails this morning, feeling calm and certain that she was taking the right path—it seemed centuries ago. Jessica and Auberon slow-dancing, blissfully content in each other’s embrace. Aunt Phyllida, merry and flirting with the Scottish party. Her uncle Comyn, watching everything and everyone, watching all the time like a raptor.

  And after she’d made her flustered return to the reception . . . The glowing faces of her family, especially Matthew with Faith on his arm like a kitten . . . Rosie frantically smiling back, feeling that she must be red-faced and wild-haired with guilt. When she caught a glimpse of her reflection in a huge gilt mirror, she couldn’t believe how composed she looked. Surely she was staring at someone else.

  Not at a bride who had just run out and shagged another man.

  It was one thing she could never confess to anyone, not even Mel. She couldn’t believe she’d done it, let alone understand what had possessed her.

  Sam was right. Her marriage was a hopeless act of desperation. She hated him for being right.

  No, Sam was wrong. She could create a life and be happy; not like Jon, obsessed with the unobtainable, not like Faith in her doormat devotion. Open-eyed, clearheaded, she’d made a sensible choice to live in harmony with the human world, and who the hell was Sam to come along and say she couldn’t?

  Alastair was solid, kind and faithful. He didn’t deserve this. Sam was—what? A force for chaos. He was untrustworthy, and to Rosie, there was nothing worse. There was something twisted in him, an abyss in his soul. The Wilders all had that black hole inside, Lawrence and Jon and Sam; and in each it was of an interestingly different kind, but in all of them it was there.

  Rosie lay seething. Sam couldn’t simply send a card with good wishes, oh no; he couldn’t concede graceful defeat and let her go. No, he had to lie in wait and sabotage her life in the worst possible way. That was not gracious. That was selfish and destructive. Sam existed only to disrupt her life and then stand gloating.

  Then she turned the beam of anger on herself. If Sam had behaved disgracefully, so had she. I started it, she thought, not him. Be honest. I knew exactly what I was doing. What’s the worst thing you can do on your wedding day, short of stabbing an in-law? And what made me rush out and do it?

  “You’re so good, Rosie,” she heard voices saying. Even Jon had said it. “You’re an angel.”

  No, I’m not.

  I’m wicked. I’m scum.


  She looked at the shape of her husband’s back in the darkness. He slept unknowing, oblivious of what he’d married. Shame consumed her. She wondered, was this how Mum felt, after she slept with Lawrence?

  No, this is nothing like that. It was a moment of insanity. A mistake, and it’s over.

  Yet when she closed her eyes, it was not Alastair’s kind, freckled face she saw as they made their vows. No, all she saw was Sam. All she felt was his hot mouth on her, the wonderful pressure of his hands and his narrow hips between hers. Remembering, she sighed and turned restlessly. Ah, the searing thrill of him inside her.

  “I’m so happy, Rosie,” Alastair had said as they danced, his guileless face shining. “Finally found the place I belong.”

  When she slept at last, she dreamed she was running across an open mountainside with a shadow figure beside her. She knew it was Sam, and they were racing together like wolves through a bright rainstorm. The dream was distorted, as if projected onto an oblique screen, and it glistened with shadow and light all night long.

  12

  Queen of Fire

  Lucas walked across High Warrens, where sedimentary rocks pushed out of the bracken and the lower slopes were thick with oak and sweet chestnut. He’d often come here with Jon. It was their place.

  He followed a path through the trees into a hidden glen, with a steep horseshoe-shaped slope on one side, a dry stone wall with birches and brambles on the other. It was late November, a soft misty day gilded by weak sunlight. Rags of leaves clung to the branches, making a web of yellow and russet lace.

  He saw a spectral figure halfway up the slope. It appeared to bend and flow over gnarled roots, around fallen logs encrusted with fungus. Lucas felt reality shift into the Dusklands. He never knew how he made the transition, since it was as natural as walking. A veil rippled away. The light turned royal blue, trees and shrubs shone ultraviolet. The specter solidified into Jon.

  Seeing him, Jon straightened up and waved. Over skinny jeans, he was wearing a brown velvet jacket that he’d owned for years, and there was an old-fashioned wicker shopping basket on his arm. “Finally,” said Jon. “Where the hell have you been?” He stood smiling, hair blowing around his shoulders, as Lucas climbed up towards him. He looked ethereal, like a beautiful consumptive. “I thought you weren’t speaking to me.”

  “I’m not,” Lucas retorted.

  “Why were you looking for me, then?”

  “I wasn’t.”

  Jon nodded. “So you’re not looking for me in a place we always used to hang out together?”

  Lucas sighed, looking at his trainers, trying not to smile because it felt like betraying Rosie. “Okay, I hoped I’d find you. Thought it was time we made peace.”

  “Fine by me. I never understood why we fell out in the first place.”

  “I think you do,” said Lucas. “Rosie found out about the dealing.”

  “It was only a few mushrooms!” Jon rolled his eyes. “I don’t know why everyone gets so agitated about it.” He began to climb slowly again, searching the wet grass.

  “And the rest,” said Lucas, following him. “It drew the very worst kind of people around us until Sam ended up in jail over it.”

  Jon glared sideways at him. “Whenever someone attacks us, Sam loses it. He always goes too far, but that’s not actually my fault. You know how bad I felt.”

  “Well, I had to get away from that scene. So should you.”

  “I have,” Jon said icily.

  “Look, she’s my sister. She didn’t forbid me to see you, but if I had, she’d have been really hurt. I stayed away because I love her, not because I don’t like you.”

  “So why are you here now?”

  Lucas kicked at a loose stone and a finger-sized elemental fled from underneath with a tiny shout of anger. “Oops. Must remember not to do that in the Dusklands.”

  “Don’t change the subject. Why?”

  “Furor’s died down. I missed you.” He tried a smile. Jon put down his basket and wrapped slim arms around him. Startled, Lucas hugged him back. Jon stroked his hair, slid his hands to hold Lucas’s face between his palms. They kissed each other lightly on cheeks and lips.

  “I missed you too,” said Jon. “Here, carry this while I harvest.” He pushed the basket at Luc. It was heavy, containing a stone pestle and mortar beneath a collection of blood red fungus and fat seedcases. An earthy scent rose from them. Jon resumed his search, squeezing berries between his fingers. “How is Rosie, by the way?”

  “She’s great,” said Lucas. “All happily married. Went on honeymoon in Italy for two weeks, came home and moved into her brand-new Fox Home in Ashvale. And she’s set up a whole new department for Dad, Fox Landscapes. She’s really happy.”

  “That’s good.” Jon smiled. Eerie light reflected off his face, smoothing shadows and making him look as spellbinding as the night he’d first offered Lucas the dream agaric. “So that’s why you’re here. Rosie’s not in your hair anymore, telling you what a bad person I am.”

  Lucas felt sudden anger. “I’m here because I want to be. I needed time to think. Your whole answer to Sam’s situation was to drag me off to get so stoned that I lost three years of my life. I just want to know why.”

  Jon gave him a pained look. “I went off the rails, okay? I didn’t expect the Spanish bloody Inquisition.”

  “It’s not. You don’t look like you’re back on the rails yet.”

  Jon dragged a hand through his hair. “Well, try having someone stabbed on your carpet and your brother taken away for it, and your stepmother—it was a bad time and I couldn’t deal with it. That’s all. It’s over.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. Sam’s back, life at Stonegate is no more crappy than usual. I’m fine.”

  “You don’t look it. You’re still using, aren’t you?”

  “For fuck’s sake don’t go moral on me, Luc. Nothing I harvest or sell is illegal. Botanists couldn’t even identify it.” His face came closer to Luc’s. “Their petty human standards don’t apply to us.”

  “It’s not about morals,” Lucas retorted. “When we were in Nottingham, we were so busy and creative, weren’t we, saving the world? Only we weren’t. All we actually did was get high.”

  “You didn’t have a problem with it at the time.”

  “Obviously I should have.”

  “That’s why you abandoned me?”

  “You were destroying yourself! I didn’t have the sense to see it. Now it looks like you’re doing a great job of messing up without any help from me. You look like hell.”

  Jon stared at him, eyes turning hard and glittery. Lucas expected to be told to fuck off. Instead, Jon seemed to collapse inside.

  “I thought you understood.” Turning, he sat on a mound of grass, facing down into the glade. He leaned his elbows on his knees, utterly dejected. “There’s been so much crap in my life. College was a farce; I’m no artist. You can bluff your way through, but my heart wasn’t in it.”

  “Why did you go, then?” Lucas sat down beside him.

  “I thought art might be another way into the Spiral, you know? But it didn’t happen.” Jon was so wretched, heartbroken almost, that Lucas softened. “You’ve got your music but I’ve got nothing; can’t paint, write, play an instrument, any of the things I dreamed of. Even my songs were shit.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Don’t you understand that the purpose of blackdrop is to make the pain go away? You don’t need it like I do, because you’re a sane and happy soul, and that’s why I love you. I know it’s wrong but I need it, just to feel I’m floating in Elysion—and to lose the fear that I’ll never, ever, go there in reality. I don’t blame you for walking away.”

  “It wasn’t just that,” Lucas said softly. He finally let the words out, low and hesitant, “Rosie and I saw you kissing Sapphire.”

  Jon’s head snapped up. He looked haggard. “Uh,” he breathed. Lucas had never before seen him so plainly, viscerally shocked.


  “It broke Rosie’s heart. That’s why I left with her.”

  “Oh my god.” Panic entered his voice. “You haven’t told anyone, have you?”

  “Of course not. Jon, er . . . Was it really what it looked like?”

  “Oh.” Jon leaned on one hand, rubbing distractedly at his forehead. After a few seconds he said, “Yes, I’ve been fucking my stepmother, what about it?”

  Lucas sat gaping at him.

  Eventually he managed to say, “That doesn’t sound like the best idea in the world.” After another minute, “I know she’s attractive, but she’s your stepmother.” And eventually, weakly, “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” Jon sighed, putting his head in both hands. “She was having trouble with Lawrence. Obviously didn’t realize what a cantankerous devil she was marrying. She wanted to get back at him with a nasty little secret and I was something she could control. I was too young to understand that at the time. I was sixteen when she started on me. I honestly didn’t want to, I was terrified of her. But she’s so persuasive, and . . . dominant. And she was always so kind and warm to me, you know? I didn’t want to lose that. I was confused. So I sort of let it happen and then I didn’t know how to make it stop.”

  “Did you try saying no?”

  “Yes, later, but somehow she’d always talk me round, find reasons to carry on. ‘I’ll tell Lawrence about this or that, we’re in too deep,’ and so on.”

  “Christ, Jon.” Lucas was almost gasping for breath. “Sixteen? But that’s . . . when you first came to our school . . . when Rosie got a crush on you . . .”

  “I know, it’s sick, isn’t it?” Jon gave a ghostly grin.

  “But that’s like nine years . . .”

  “Oh, it only happened occasionally, like if she was mad with my father and needed a whipping boy. Not that she literally whipped me . . .”

  “Stop!” Lucas exclaimed. “Too much information.”

  “Yeah, well, who the hell can I tell, if not you?”

  “As long as I can get my memory wiped afterwards.” Lucas pulled an expressive face. “But surely you could have stopped it by now? You’re an adult. You don’t have to keep going home. What, are you enjoying it too much?”