by Ron C. Nieto
“Do not stop!” Troy’s voice jerked her out of contemplating the destruction and she rushed after him.
“Where are we going?” The spasms from the main room grew and hit the corridor like a whiplash, lifting Lily from the ground. She rolled with the fall as best she could, feeling the jagged edges of crumbled walls and cracked floor piercing her skin and bruising her bones.
Troy didn’t reply. He stood beyond the dais where the stone she had been supposed to fetch had lain, studying the wall. His long fingers danced over the trembling stone, touching here and there, dragging almost gentle caresses over the surface even as it broke.
“Troy? What are you doing?” He ignored her and droplets of water glistened over the wall under his fingertips.
The corridor behind them collapsed. Lily threw herself up the dais, but the ripples caught her and she fell, the stone stairs biting her ribs and her cheek. She tasted blood.
She knew she had to keep running, but for a moment, she couldn’t remember why. She couldn’t tell which was up or down as the remains of the cuelebre’s cave twisted and shattered around her. She couldn’t hear the deafening noise of the earth burying them.
She tried to crawl forward, backward, somewhere, but strong arms held her and lifted her. Without thinking, she wrapped her own arms around Troy’s neck and clung to him for consciousness as he threw them both through the opening of a new path.
Before darkness claimed her, she thought she saw a woman over Troy’s shoulder. She was a beautiful creature of black hair and pale, glowing skin, and she stood under the falling stones. Laughing.
C H A P T E R XIX
Lily came around to a strange mixture of dull pain and safe comfort. She didn’t want to open her eyes and tear her mind from the calming emptiness where it had floated for who knew how long, but there was a vague sense of urgency that told her she should.
I’m running out of time.
And she knew it to be true, even if she couldn’t tell what the deadline was for.
She stirred, tried to force movement into her limbs, and a cool weight fell on her shoulder.
“Careful, Lily,” said a voice over her, very close. Troy. “Your body requires more rest.”
“I can’t afford it,” she croaked, struggling to open her eyes and sit up.
“Because time is running out?” Troy sighed. He sounded tired. “I believe I have already told you that time is meaningless here, have I not?”
“Where are we?”
“Safe.” A smirk, tangible in his tone.
“We’ve had this conversation before,” she mumbled.
“If the familiarity helps you feel better, we may rehearse it as many times as you wish.”
“Oh, ha ha. Funny.” She tried to twist around to see him and found she was curled on her side, her back pressed against his thigh as he sat sentinel over her. His hand still rested on her shoulder and she welcomed his touch. It worked like an anchor. “Seriously now. Can you tell me what happened?”
“You succeeded in slipping cold iron past the guardian,” he said. “It appears to have killed him, but unfortunately the cave was tied to his existence. He had created his own haven, much like this is mine, and it crumbled to pieces without the will of its maker to hold all the threads together. We were forced to flee.”
“So that place doesn’t exist anymore?”
“Not as you saw it, no.”
“That’s… sort of sad. It was beautiful. In its own way.” Lily felt a shift travel through her back and shoulder. A shrug from Troy.
“It is as it is,” he said.
“Does that mean it was all for nothing? If we can’t go back, we can’t collect the stone. After everything, I botched the bargain.”
Troy’s hand moved from her shoulder, traveled down her arm, and captured her own, pulling it toward him. She rolled with the movement, lying on her back and staring up at him quizzically.
His green eyes bore into hers and his other hand pressed a smooth, slippery black stone into hers.
“You got it.” Her fingers trembled.
“I stole it while you distracted Cuelebre with the bargain. You did a fair effort this time, but might I recommend against striking deals with every fay you encounter?”
“Wait.” She struggled to sit up but his grip left her hand and returned to her shoulder, holding her down. He gave her a warning glance not to move and she ceased her attempts, but didn’t let go of her questions. She had too many of them. “But why were you there? I thought you wanted no part in the confrontation.”
“I assure you I did not.”
“Was it because of the necklace then?”
His fingers slid to her neck and picked up the silver chain. He held all three charms and studied them, the back of his knuckles brushing the soft skin over the hollow of her throat. She felt her breath catch and he smirked when he noticed, a flash of white peeking between his lips.
He let the pendant fall back into place. “It would appear that is not the reason.”
Lily squinted at it. “When Grandma gave it to me,” she began, “I could have sworn that there was one wilted rose and two in full bloom. But the other day, when we met your friend, the especially weird one? There were two wilted roses. There are two wilted roses now. Does that make sense?”
“Yes.”
There was a moment of silence and Lily stared up with all the stubbornness of a mule until Troy’s lips cracked a thin smile.
“To answer your unasked question, the charms represent the number of times a life will be saved,” he relented. “Blooms for promise and wilted carcasses for what has already come to pass.”
“So you’ve saved Grandma’s life once, and then mine another time.” She let her fingers play with the cool metal, thinking. She wouldn’t bother asking about her grandmother because getting that information could be too tricky, but then… “That doesn’t add up.”
“Does it not?”
“No. You’ve saved me three times already. Once from the bogeys, once from the redcaps, now one from the cuelebre.” She counted each occasion out, tapping her fingers. “But I’ve only spent a bloom. How does that work?”
“In a most complex manner.”
With a huff, she ignored his restraining hand and sat up. Dizziness caught up to her for a moment, but she managed to cover up her swaying under a shift to look away from him.
“You could just say ‘I don’t want to tell you,’ you know,” she said.
“And you might learn to phrase your questions properly, Lily. Each answer obtained is a debt incurred and I cannot understand why you would beg for favors when you already know the truth.”
“Because that’s what people do!” She whirled on him. “We talk about what we know and reassure each other and say important things without the other person having to wrestle each word out of our mouths!”
“That is what humans do,” he said, his cool not breaking in front of her sudden passion. “You would do well to learn to think like us if you want to prosper while straddling both your mortal world and our own.”
Her fire banked, leaving behind the embers of embarrassment. Hugging her knees to her chest, she took deep and even breaths until she regained enough control of her voice that she could sound as calm as he did.
“Okay,” she admitted. “You’re right. I’m not thinking in faerie terms and it’s rushing me from bad situations into dire ones. I’ll try to be smarter from now on.” She dared to smile a little at him. “I guess that just giving me that piece of advice put me in your debt, right?”
Troy laughed and the sound washed over her like a river’s current over pebbles on the shore. “Indeed it did,” he said. “But worry not. I gave up on tallying after our first conversation.”
“Sorry.” Troy arched an eyebrow, still smiling, and Lily sighed. “Another notch?”
“If I were keeping count.”
“Why is saying ‘sorry’ so bad?” Troy went to reply but she held up a hand. “Wait, wait. T
his is another of those things I already know the answer for, isn’t it? Let me try.” She began to tap her fingers against her lips. “It’s because it means you’ve done something wrong… Because if you apologize to someone, then that means you’ve wronged that person,” she said after a moment.
“And this entitles them to demand compensation for each time you have apologized to them,” said Troy. “Would you care to keep guessing?”
“About the necklace?”
He nodded.
“Sure. Let me think.” She gave him a small, nervous grin. “I’m not sure I remember the wording you used that first time you told me about it,” she confessed. “But you did say before facing the cuelebre that it had to be within your possibilities. Still, that can’t be it because you did manage to save me so, technically speaking, you could. Am I right?”
“You are correct. In fact, even if you do not recall my exact words, you have inadvertently stumbled upon the answer already.”
“Have I? What did I—? Not possibilities, so then saving me. That’s all I said, and that’s not an answer. That’s talking circles.”
“A clue?”
“Yes, please.”
“You should know that ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ are nearly as terrible a misstep as ‘sorry.’”
Lily laughed at his smug smile. “Okay, you! Out with the clue then!”
He regarded her for a moment longer, shaking his head with an amused light in his eyes. When her chuckles subsided, his eyes fell to her necklace, resting in the hollow of her throat.
“Saving you, Lily, must not be mistaken with saving us.”
“That’s not fair,” she said, suddenly subdued. “It doesn’t count because you were there with me? You still saved me and it doesn’t matter that you were in danger too.”
“That was my mistake when crafting the necklace, Lily,” he said with a shrug. “I hope you understand now the importance of detail?”
“Yeah, I think I do.” She bit her lip and plunged on. “There’s a detail I can’t figure out yet.”
“And that is?”
“Why were you there, Troy?” She caught his eye and he let her hold onto it. “You said you didn’t want to. You told me to find another way, but still you came. Why?”
He was silent for so long that Lily had to avert her gaze. He was silent long enough that she was sure he wouldn’t reply. He held his silence, and she felt his attention on her, studying her while their bantering mood dissolved in tension. She bit her lip to keep from fidgeting, and just when she thought she would explode and apologize to him in spite of what she now knew, she felt the back of his fingers against her cheekbone.
She startled and held her breath.
“You are a most peculiar creature, Lily,” he said, his touch sliding down the side of her face and under her chin, tilting her head so she had to look at him. “In my experience, humans will blunder happily to their deaths because they refuse to acknowledge the world as it is, because they do not allow themselves to remember that they are neither alone nor quite as powerful as they believe in the true scope of things. You blunder forward with equal determination and enthusiasm. You court disaster with every step you take toward your goal, but you are conscious of it. And yet your awareness of danger, of how heavily outmatched and how badly outclassed you are, does not seem to arrest you, does it? That is peculiar and interesting indeed, Lily Boyd. Even though I know that only a fool would find foolishness worthy of respect.” He stood up then, a languid unfolding movement that broke contact between them and freed her from the spell of his gaze. “If your curiosity is sated now,” he continued, staring at the tree-line beyond their little clearing, “I would advise you to rest before we return to Glaistig. You shall need your wits and your energy for that encounter and we do not know when another opportunity for sleep and healing will present itself next.”
She wasn’t tired. Her body might have been, but thoughts whirred in her mind and she felt as powerless to stop them as she was to stop her heart from beating. Her curiosity was far from sated and she longed to continue their conversation even as he turned his back on her and walked to the edge of his riverside haven. Still, there was truth to his words, of course, and the least she could do after he had answered all her questions was respecting the need for distance he was expressing now.
She curled up on the ground and faced him, contemplating the lines of his shoulders and the way stray droplets of water would sometimes drip from his hair down his back, and let the vision of him lull her to sleep.
C H A P T E R XX
Lily wouldn’t have thought it possible, but she did manage to sleep long and sound. When she awakened next, the weariness and disorientation she had felt before were gone.
“Are you ready?” Troy said as soon as she blinked her eyes open. He stood a few feet away from her with a restless tension about him that immediately hit her as odd.
“Yeah.” She sat up and stretched her back with as much discretion as she could muster. “In a hurry, are we?”
“I did get the impression that time was of the essence, yes. It runs in a different manner while we are here, but it does run nonetheless.”
Lily looked over at him and couldn’t tell if he was puzzled at her sudden laziness or if he was mocking her usual comments of “when” and “where.”
“You’re right, I guess,” she said. “I’m just not used to moving right after cracking one eye open.”
“If you wish to linger, that would not be a great issue.”
“No, no.” She stood, yawning, and patted her pocket to ensure the stone that would fulfill her part of the bargain was still there. “Lead the way. Is it far?”
“Quite close, in fact.”
He picked up her knapsack on his way and handed it to her. She slung it over her shoulders and fell into step behind him. Instead of heading for the river, as he had the last time, he took a different, winding path that soon had them climbing out of the humid forest.
“How did we get here yesterday? Or whenever it was. I forgot to ask.”
“And we could never leave you without your answers,” he muttered ahead before throwing a backward glance over his shoulder. “Through the deeper parts of our world. I daresay that is the reason you were so fatigued when you awoke last. Other than the blow to the head, of course.”
“What, traveling to the deeper parts of faerie lands makes humans want to sleep?”
“No. Being yanked through different currents of time and across the empty spaces between without due control does.”
“That sounds dangerous.”
“And reckless. It was. It was also the only resource I had available.”
Lily hurried up and captured his fingers. His skin was even colder than usual and, when he stopped abruptly to stare at her with a question in his eyes, his lashes were wet.
“I wanted to thank you,” she said. “I wanted to say that even if it didn’t count according to the necklace, what you did counted to me. So, there. Thank you. And you can keep track of it.” She smiled.
After a moment of apparent surprise, he returned the gesture. It was a simple smile without mischief or malice in it, and Lily found it warmed her a little in spite of the cold seeping into her fingers. Then, he tightened his own fingers around hers and the world around them changed while remaining still. They had crossed the opening, and once more, she hadn’t even seen it coming.
They stood now on the outskirts of the forest beyond where it became only a sparse population of lonely trunks and close enough to the river that the smell of fresh water and moss and mud overpowered everything else. Troy stepped back from her as if they hadn’t just shared… something.
“Do attempt to think before speaking this time,” he said, gesturing for her to walk with him.
“I’ll do my best.”
Side by side, not ten paces later, they crossed another opening that showed them a starker version of the same abandoned landscape. The only hint of movement was Glaistig
herself, rising from her throne-like rock to greet them with a wide grin that showed sharp, pointy teeth.
“Well, well,” she said. “It would seem I was right after all and the little girl survived her trial. Come and sit. Let us celebrate.”
Glaistig didn’t offer them food or drink. She barely gestured to offer them a seat on the ground at her feet. Her idea of celebrating, Lily thought, was very similar to other’s people idea of a cat eying the canary.
“Tell me, then. How did you come to succeed?” she asked after a moment.
“That’s not important,” Lily said, very careful not to look at Troy for support even if that was what she wanted to do. “I have the stone you needed and my end of the bargain is fulfilled. That’s what we should focus on.”
Glaistig’s eyes did cut over to Troy then, her lips twisting in a smirk that he answered with one of his own.
“I see you have become more cautious of your words, little girl,” she said. “That is no fun, but no matter. I was to tell you of the good doctor now, was I not?”
“Yes. You agreed to tell me all you know about her disappearance.”
Glaistig leaned back on her rock as if she were lounging in the most comfortable chaise and tapped her lips.
“So I did. Where do I begin? Should I remark upon the weather?”
“The weather? What has that to do with anything?” Lily said, puzzled, but Troy spoke over her words.
“The cold of winter lingers for far too long over our lands. That is an easy enough observation to make and hardly pertinent to the bargain.”
“Hardly pertinent? Come now, Kelpie. I know you have noticed it in the water of your streams. I know you must have wondered about it when you realized there was a bogey pack where before only brownies stood in the house of the doctor. Surely you understand the implications.”
“But would the weather be at fault for the change or would the change precipitate the weather?”
“That is the question, is it not? The answer I can give to the best of my abilities is that the weather prevailed.”
