by Rainy Kaye
When the trees fade to just wet open land, she nods farewell to each of us in turn, then whirls around with a whisk of her robe and disappears back into the swamp.
“Friendly,” I scoff, but I can't be too harsh. She did escort us through the most dangerous place I've personally had the displeasure of traipsing around. Not having to outsmart the snake earns her a few brownie points, at least.
“I guess we just make a—” Remy starts to say, but the jingling of a familiar bell interrupts.
We both turn to look as the green-and-yellow rickshaw comes into view, and then stops a few feet from us.
“It hasn't been a full day yet,” I say, relieved but equally suspicious why he's still hanging around the swamp.
“Not much other fare these days, lady,” he says, his words kind but his tone less so.
“Businesses aren't exactly booming, Ember,” Remy says, seemingly more at ease with the man's response than I am. “Long ride to come back and forth.”
He heads toward the rickshaw, and I follow after him as he climbs up on it. I settle in next to him, and the driver, singing another barely audible song, heads toward town. At least, I assume we're headed back toward town. It's away from the swamp, and that matters most to me at the moment.
“Now what?” I ask. “We can't get more elixir, so do we just go buy some sage oil and finish off the dark fae in the car at Pink Boutique?”
“She's the least of our problems,” Remy says. “I want answers—from Gwendolyn. She sent us to the bog beastie knowing we wouldn't be able to get what we needed from him.”
“Yeah, I'm pretty good at following along,” I say with a roll of my eyes.
I feel like I was a clump of dirt in the hand of a giant, though, the pressure slowly building until I'm ready to crumble. There is no way to resist any of this: I can't make the dark fae stop crossing into my world, into my city, and I can't make the bog witch give us the ingredient needed to make more elixir to save Remy. Strangers to each other or not, we are tied together now. My ability to fight this battle against the dark fae is woven into keeping him safe from the shadows.
And, judging by how the shadows now creep along the ground, they are closing in.
* * *
When we reach Gwendolyn's house, Remy busts through the front door without knocking. The fire is low, the dishes put away. He rushes through the house, yelling for her, as I stand by the wall, arms wrapped around my torso.
My gaze lands on the table where the tea canister had been. The tea canister is gone.
“She's not here,” I say quietly.
“I can see that,” he says as he charges behind me to check the other side of the house. “The filthy—“
“No, I mean, she's not coming back.” I point to the table.
He halts, hovering over my shoulder. I glance up at him, a scowl flickering over his face, then settling into a hard expression.
“Come on,” he says, then turns and stomps off, slamming the front door on his way out.
I take in the room once more, looking for any missed sign of where she went, or some indication that she had not betrayed us. I find nothing. With sudden urgency not to lose Remy, I hurry out of the house and back into the gray light, careful to avoid the fingers of the shadows that seem to be creeping toward me, like zombie hands pulling their corpse from their grave.
Step on a crack, fall and break your mother's back.
Step on the black and never get your sanity back.
Remy is far ahead but not yet out of sight, so I pick up my pace, nearly skipping over the shadows, to catch up with him. We power walk several blocks before I note the determination on his face and realize where we're headed: to the wall dividing the city.
* * *
I stare up at the wall for so long, my neck kinks, and I'm not sure I can lower my head without assistance. The wall is even more impressive up close: the ornate patterns up the side are embossed nearly a foot deep. I can't imagine who built it or why, but it rivals the grandeur of the bog bridge.
To my side, Remy starts rustling about, and I force myself to look at him instead of the far more impressive wall. He scrounges around on the ground, moving farther away from me, as he gathers ropes and rods from the piles of trash and debris. Then he starts fashioning together something that increasingly looks like he intends for us to climb over the dividing structure.
I saunter to where he's squatted, my arms wrapped around me. “So, no portal to the other side, I guess?”
He doesn't reply as he continues tying together the wall-climbing device. I shuffle my foot in the gravel and stare down at him, waiting.
At length, he says, “That would mean we were allowed to travel.”
“They don't like visitors?”
“They don't like us,” he mutters, eyes narrowing and he pulls a knot a little too roughly. “And we don't like them.”
I stop shuffling around the gravel. “Oh. That's why the tea is such a big deal.”
He nods. “Like I told you, only witches are allowed to cross it. I assume that's where the wench went.”
I quirk my lips. “Are they going to try to kill us?”
“Probably,” he says flatly. “Crossing. . .it. . .is punishable by death.”
“I'm going to stay here,” I say, trying to add a chuckle to minimize my potential freak out, but my tone is dead serious.
“Bad idea.”
“Yes, but sneaking into enemy territory is a worse idea.”
“They're not really our enemies,” he says. “It's just been a law for as long as anyone remembers. No one left to enforce it.”
“Nice backpedaling.” I can't keep the edge out of my voice no matter how hard I try. I really don't want to piss off Remy, especially while I'm in this weird little place, but nothing is getting me over that wall.
Nothing besides an enormous snake, or a bog creature, or. . .
I stare down at the shadows, and I swear they've wiggled closer to me. I can almost feel their anticipation, their excitement, at nearly claiming me. How do you fight back against a shadow?
I swallow hard and turn back to Remy. “Have the shadows taken over the other side, as well? Beasties on the loose there, too?”
He hesitates, not looking up at me, but not really looking at anything. After a long moment, he says, “I don't really know.”
I glance up at the wall. “That's enough to convince me to go.”
7
In time, Remy has constructed a kind of grappling system. He swings the sharp heavy ends into the embossed pattern and weaves the ropes up the wall as he goes. When he reaches a third of the way, I follow after. It's the world's most awkward spider web. The ropes dig into my fingers, and they feel like they're going to snap under my feet. Each step is a little farther from the ground I'm inevitably going to smash into, probably breaking several bones and puncturing a lung in the process.
But there might be help on the other side, and that keeps me climbing. Even as the ropes sag dangerously. Even as my hands begin to bleed. Even as my thighs cramp from trying to balance my weight. Inside my shoes, my toes are tightly curled and starting to ache.
I don't want to look down and see how far I've climbed, but I also don't want to look up and see how much closer I am to the gray sky. So I stare at the wall inches from my face, noting every groove, every crack. I concentrate on the rough texture as it scrapes against my knuckles. Little red splotches of blood mark my ascent.
Then Remy yells down at me. I finally dare to look up. He's standing on top of the wall, free of the ropes. I feel like I might fall without him on it with me, even though the fear makes no sense. He tosses some additional climbing gear to the side and puts his arms out, practically glowing with enthusiasm.
There must be rich greenery. Clear water. Blue skies. Hell, maybe even some glitter, because I am in the fairy world. I can't wait to see it. My hands and feet move faster, more coordinated, gliding up the wall like I'm a pro.
At the top, I hesita
te, my routine broken. I have to figure out how to get my feet up there; I don't have the upper body strength to push up onto it. Remy glances at me, then hunkers down and helps me up. I move stiffly, letting him guide me to safety.
The top of the wall is wider than I had anticipated—easily fifteen feet across—and there's plenty of room for both of us. I sit next to where he stands, my limbs weak and shaking. I pull my knees to my chest, wrap my arms around them, and stare out to the magical other side.
It's gray. Broken. Covered in shadows.
Air escapes me, and I can't seem to find any more.
Remy looks startled. “Ember? You okay?”
“No, I'm not!” I gesture at the bleakness in front of us. “It's more of this—this. . .awfulness. I want to go home.”
“Me, too,” he says quietly.
My rant dies in my throat. I don't know what the fae world was like before the shadows, but there's no point in hanging out here any longer.
“Just give up this stupid quest,” I say, squinting up at him.
“I have to find my brother,” he says evenly. “He's out here somewhere. I'm sure they took him. They've always hated us.”
“Well, what did you do?” The accusation in my voice is heavy, but I don't even know who I should be trusting. Maybe Remy is a holy terror to his world.
“It's just always been that way.” He either doesn't pick up the insinuation, or he chooses to ignore it.
“Well, there had to be a reason. . . isn't there?” I beseech him for answers, for logic and reason, but he doesn't give me any. With a defeated sigh, I turn back to the destroyed city, and it could be a copy of the one we just climbed away from.
Remy gathers the second part of our escape route and places it in front of him. With a few tweaks, he anchors it to the wall with heavy hooks, then shoves it down the side. Clattering and banging echoes around us as the long, makeshift ladder unfurls.
I hold my breath, afraid we've made our presence known—but that requires anyone to be around to care. The city looks even more empty than the one we left. Once we're on the ground, that might be different, though.
It's a toss up if I rather run into another behemoth beastie, the lurking dark fae, or whoever used to punish trespassers. All are equally nightmarish in different ways. Even sticking with Remy isn't much better. I'm here by circumstance, and my value is about the same as the ladder: when he's done using me to help save his brother, he will probably leave me hanging.
If the fae inhabitants don't get me, the shadows will. It's only a matter of time, and I need answers at least as badly as he does.In the end, every man for himself.
I push to my feet and stand next to him as the ladder finishes with a final clunk.
“Let's get going,” I grumble.
Without words, Remy descends the ladder. I sigh, my joints aching from the climb up, and start the stomach-twisting climb down. It's easier and more natural, but I don't like it any better. At the bottom, there's maybe twenty feet between the final rung and the ground. Remy has already dropped down and moved away. I hesitate, then let go, landing far less gracefully than I would have liked.
My glutes and ankles hurt, but I'm otherwise in like-new condition for whatever terrible thing is waiting for us on this side of the wall.
“Where do you expect to find the elixir?” I ask as we head away from the wall, into the dreary streets.
This city is about the same as the one we left, from the debris to the slinking shadows, but there's a distinct lack of fae darting in and out of sight. Perhaps there were no survivors in this neck of the proverbial woods. At least I have one less awful creature wanting to rip off my limbs.
“I don't really know,” Remy admits. “I guess we hope that it can be made from something besides the Penumbra beastie, or we find Gwendolyn.”
I look at him sideways, but don't reply. If I find Gwendolyn, I'm going to cram that tea canister down her throat.
But perhaps more unsettling is that Remy has no idea where we're going. I can't even argue because I have no better ideas. Hopefully, his tribal knowledge of his world has given him some intuition that this is the right path, and not just prolonging our inevitable death. That's kind of par for the course these days.
Remy halts, and I follow his gaze just beyond the nearby crumbling rooftops.
“What's that up there?” He squints.
I'm sure his question is rhetorical, but I answer, anyway: “Looks like a. . .stack of hay?”
At first, I would have mistaken it for debris—albeit a lot of it—piled on top of the building. Now that Remy has pointed it out, there's a definite structure to it that I can't make out from the ground.
Remy is already using a slat and impressive upper body strength to scale up to the roof. I sigh in resignation and stomp toward the building seconds before he turns around to gesture me up. He leans dangerously far over and grabs my arm and back of my jacket to half-hoist me up.
I lose my footing. My arm wraps around his waist as I heave forward. We crash backwards, landing in an awkward tangle on the shingles, butted up against the hay. My face is inches from his, my hair tickling against his neck. He brushes it off and slides his hand up to my cheek, pushing the strands behind my ear. . .and removes a clump of hay.
“In my world, girls use flowers,” he says.
I laugh, batting the hay out of his fingers, and then climb off of him as we turn our attention back to the structure in front of us. He rises to his feet, plunges his hands into the stack and, somehow, scampers up the wall of hay.
Fairies.
I follow with a halfhearted attempt, expecting the hay to come off by the fistful, but it's surprisingly firm. Like it is covering a solid framework. In some way I don't understand, it's nearly effortless to reach the top. I'm not even panting as I stand on a ridge, brushing straw off my clothes.
The ridge continues to either side, curving off from the roof and onto a low hill just behind the building. The floor is covered in straw, a solid layer that disguises where the roof ends and the hill begins.
I survey the structure, trying to decipher how it got there.
“It looks kind of like a nest. . .” As I say the words, my stomach sinks. I turn, tense and robot-like with fear, to look at Remy. “You mentioned wards. . .the beasties. . .”
“Yep. Um, we probably should get going.” His words belie the stark horror across his face.
The wards are unstable, letting beasties into the cities. The beasties, as I've discovered, are huge.
Apparently, some of them build nests, too.
I turn as gracefully as possible while standing on the rim of an apartment-sized nest, trembling with the realization I just violated a monster's home. With a deep breath, I jump down to the shingles. Remy's shout is drowned out by the crack of the roof collapsing under me. Dust swallows my vision. I land solidly on my back, forcing air out then right back in. Twisting to my side, I cough on the dust, then wave my vision clear.
Something in front of me snaps.
I push to a sit, arms braced behind me, and peer into the room lit only with dirty sunlight from the hole in the ceiling.
“Remy?”
Two shifted dark fae charge from the shadows. I scream as they hook me by the arms on either side and drag me toward the wall. We crash straight through it. My head lulls forward from the impact. They keep running, the back of my jeans tearing along the ground. My legs kick but I can't plant my feet onto anything.
Another intact building stands in front of us. They don't slow down, but meet the wall head on again. I'm jarred forward, but they don't loosen their hold. My shoulder joints burn as they drag me across the room and up a flight of stairs. I'm jostled and thudded, each wooden step meeting along my spine. I want to twist free, but I can only envision how the dark fae snapped limbs from their prey. It's all I can do to try to brace against it happening by accident.
At the top of the stairs, they pick me up and swing me into a room. My tailbone slams into
the floor, and I skid into a wall. Without the fae busting through it, the wall brings me a stop. Motion sickness gets the best of me, and I dry heave.
I rest my head back against the wall, and with effort wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. My body parts don't feel like they're mine anymore.
It's not until a silhouette blocks the dull light that I realize the door has been open the whole time. Not like they were going to let me escape, anyway.
A man clomps toward me, wisps of wings trailing over his shoulders. It's them, the mercenaries, again. They seem to have more control over their shape shifting than the others. Or maybe they all can pick and choose when, and I just never saw them without it enough to know it was intentional.
When the shadows get Remy, will he be able to choose to spare me? And will he?
The man crouches next to me, and I don't move, just stare absently over at him. Whatever he's going to do to me, I hope it's quick. Not even painless; that's a tall order. Just fast.
He pulls a small black zippered case from his jacket, opens it, and rests it on the floor. The top stands up just enough to reveal a row of blue-filled syringes.
I want to tell him, I don't need those. Remy does. Give them to him. Please.
But I can't speak, and this man is not going to listen to me, anyway. He lifts out one of the syringes with one hand, and reaches for me with his other. My arm shoots out, my fingers wrapping around his wrist. He jerks back. I shove him, then scoop up the black case. He scrambles toward me. I jump to my feet and dart for the door. He snags my ankle. My face meets the floor, my teeth chomping into my tongue.
