Fey Hearted

by N. E. Conneely

  She’d been wrong. Dyna was coming.

  The sphinx shot through the air, heading straight for Rose. The perytons intercepted her, and Dyna dove steeply to avoid them. A few of them remained with her through the acrobatics and lined up for an attack. Dyna rolled out of the way, but two stayed on her tail. The sphinx started climbing, gaining altitude in preparation for another dive.

  The perytons fanned out below her as Dyna plummeted, leveling off as she got closer to them. She zipped past most of them, but others raced to meet her, rolling around her paws and using their antlers and hooves to open gashes on her sides.

  All around Rose more and more perytons were taking to the sky. The unicorns and deer were closing ranks, making sure there was nowhere for Dyna to land. A loud caw overhead made Rose return her attention to the sky. Firebirds were now streaking toward the action, too.

  Her eyes widened and her heart raced as the second wave of perytons spread out in a netlike formation. Dyna was forced to slow down and turn to avoid going straight into them. One of the perytons charged her. Dyna swatted him with a paw, and he careened through the air before crashing into the ground.

  Rose gasped, trying to absorb what had just happened. She didn’t have the best view, but the peryton had landed on a wing and one leg was at a funny angle. Dyna had gravely injured the peryton, maybe even killed it. Tears pooled in Rose’s eyes.

  At first it had been touching that the elementals were willing to protect her, but now it was shockingly real and heartbreaking. She looked up at the battle in the sky. The firebirds had reached Dyna and were diving in to drip fire on the sphinx’s back and wings. She roared and pawed at them, but they were small and nimble enough to dodge her attacks.

  The perytons were slowing Dyna down and continuing to open shallow wounds in her skin with their antlers, but they weren’t stopping her. Most of the perytons had avoided serious injury, but six of them were gliding away from the fight, favoring a particular leg or wing. Rose’s heart clenched.

  Dyna was hovering overhead, blood dripping down her sides from where she’d been gored. “Do you have an answer, fey hearted?”

  Rose didn’t answer, just glared defiantly.

  “Then you are mine. Your death will be a mercy. Had you lived, you would have been haunted by what you missed.”

  “Come and get me,” Rose yelled.

  Dyna gave a thrust with her wings and lunged toward Rose, but a great clap of thunder and a wall of air forced her back. Rose’s nose was flooded with the smells of soot and irises.

  Ember hung in the air above them, wings beating just enough to keep him aloft, but the force of air was more than enough to make Rose grateful to be wedged between the elementals and her friends. The unicorns weren’t all that happy, either. They flattened their ears, tucked their tails, and braced all four feet against the ground.

  “Return to yourrr home.”

  The sphinx hissed.

  “Ssso be it.” Ember drew in a great breath, and the perytons scattered. Dyna’s eyes widened with the realization of what Ember was about to do. She wheeled around and started flying away, but a ball of fire erupted from Ember’s mouth, burning her tail and rump. Dyna screamed.

  “Dyna the ssphinx, you are bound to yourr land for two hundrred yearsss and unable to punish a failed riddlerrr for twice that time. For violating my previous orderrr, any brreak of thesse commands will causse death.”

  The sphinx screamed again, and Rose smelled a mix of irises, lightning, and soot. An opening, much like the one that had sent Rebecca back to the human world, appeared under the sphinx. In the blink of an eye, Dyna was sucked into it. The opening closed, leaving the sky void of magic and the sphinx.

  Ember took in the scene. “Ssshe will not trrouble you again.” And then, with a distant boom and a spike in the scent of soot and irises, Ember was gone.

  Rose stood there for a moment, feeling numb. The elementals had been hurt. And while Dyna seemed to have been dealt with, something told Rose that she should avoid Dyna’s territory, nonetheless.

  “Somebody get a healer,” Alda snapped as she hurried over to an injured peryton. Another peryton took off over the trees, heading for the healing house, and the elementals around them started to disperse.

  At that, Rose shook off her shock. She scooted around a unicorn, ran inside, and pulled out a stack of flat white sheets. As she ran back outside, she nearly collided with Everblue, who was carrying as many bowls of water as he could.

  They set down their supplies outside, and Rose pulled a knife out of her boot and started cutting the sheets into strips. Silverlight and Everblue each grabbed a handful and started bandaging the perytons where they could.

  Rose did her best to keep the bowls of water clean and full. Her whole body relaxed when Moonbeam sprinted out of the forest, followed by several other fey. They spread out, quickly tending to the wounded. Moonbeam motioned for two other fey to join her, and they started on the peryton who’d been swatted out of the sky by Dyna.

  “Rose, help that unicorn,” Alda shouted to her, pointing.

  She nodded, took some of the fabric strips, and rushed over to bandage the sprained leg of a unicorn that had slipped when avoiding a falling peryton. Luckily, the unicorn was being very patient.

  “I’m sorry. I’ve practiced a lot, but this is the first time I’ve actually bandaged anyone. How does it feel?” She stood up, and the unicorn shifted its weight.

  “Too tight?” she asked.

  The unicorn didn’t do anything.

  “Too loose?”

  Still nothing.

  “Just right?”

  The unicorn nodded and rubbed his nose on her shoulder.

  “Good. When the actual healers aren’t so busy, have one of them take a look at it,” she said. “I failed my magical healing class.”

  Rose was sure he was laughing at her as he limped away.

  “We’re going to lose him!” a female voice shouted.

  “No, get away from him. They’re his only chance now,” Moonbeam screamed.

  Rose spun around. Moonbeam was pulling another woman away from a peryton. If anything, the bandages made his injuries look worse. They had straightened the leg, but it was now six times its original size. The wing was still bent, mostly because it seemed they’d been unable to get his other wing folded so they couldn’t roll him over far enough to work on it.

  “I’ve got to try,” the woman wailed.

  A man came up on her other side and helped Moonbeam pull the woman away from the peryton. Rose didn’t understand why they were clearing off and letting the other perytons form a circle around him. If it was a death ritual, shouldn’t they wait until the peryton was actually dead?

  As confused as she was, she knew better than to go against Moonbeam’s orders, and it was very clear that Moonbeam thought the elementals were better equipped to handle this than the fey.

  Four perytons stepped out of the circle. They spread out around the injured one—the males at his nose and rump, and the females on the sides. The four perytons spread their wings, casting deep shadows across the injured buck. They looked at one another and, as one, reached down and touched him with their noses.

  Rose was overwhelmed by a deep, earthy odor with hints of rose, iris, and fresh mountain air. The four perytons took a step back, but the magic only intensified. Finally, the smells started to abate.

  Rose still couldn’t tell what they’d done, only that the magic had been almost as strong as when Ember sent Rebecca back to the human world. Her eyes blurred and she blinked, refocusing on the fallen buck. His wing had straightened.

  In a flurry of movement, he surged to his feet and shook himself. He stretched his wings before tucking them against his body, the previously crumpled wing whole again. The bandage fell off his leg, and it was now straight and didn’t show any sign of the trauma that had been there moments ago. The four peryton touched noses with him again before moving back into the herd.

  Other peryton
broke away from the group to touch their nose to his, and the faint scent of lemongrass reached her. Rose guessed they were giving him energy. After all, being essentially resurrected couldn’t be easy.

  Rose looked at Moonbeam, who had a satisfied smile on her face, as did the man. The woman they’d torn away from the buck was stunned. Silverlight was nodding, as if he’d expected this, and Everblue smiled slightly.

  Questions spiraled through Rose’s mind, but one stood out from the rest: if the elemental fey could accomplish that, what else could they do?

  Chapter 25

  Silverlight sighed. His father was being mysterious again.

  “Did she solve the riddle?” Waterfall asked.

  “I told you before. If she worked on it, I wasn’t involved, and she didn’t give Dyna the answer, which I’m assuming she would’ve done if she’d known it,” Silverlight said, frustration tingeing his voice.

  “If you hear anything on the topic—”

  “I will tell you, like I said I would.” Silverlight rubbed the back of his neck. “Now if you don’t stop harping on this, I’m going to think you’re just using me as an informant rather than coming to see me because I’m your son.”

  Waterfall looked up, eyes wide. “What? No. There are reasons—”

  Silverlight help up a hand. “Stop. That’s all I needed. However, unless you want everyone else to be suspicious, I need you to get out of here.”

  “There is nothing unusual about a father checking on his son.”

  “No, but you’ve been less than subtle when you want to talk to me alone.” Silverlight paused. “Will you answer some questions for me?”

  “If I can.”

  “What did Dyna want?”

  “I wish I knew. I can only think of several reasons for her actions. Perhaps she shares the wilds’ desire to eliminate the fey hearted and Rose appeared to be an easy target. Or as the kin representative suggested, maybe she disliked the way the magic was attracted to Rose. Both could be to true to an extent.”

  “And the elementals? I have never heard of them acting like that.”

  “They seem attached to Rose.”

  Silverlight nodded. While he agreed with his father’s assessment, there had to be a lot more to it. Why would Dyna go after Rose? Was she really helping the wilds? Was it just about magic? And what did irises have to do with anything?

  Waterfall reread the page one more time. There were five questions he’d left out for Ember, but none of the answers made sense.

  Why did Dyna riddle Rose?

  Dyna wanted Rose to see the cost.

  What exactly can the magic do?

  Are other kin working with Dyna?

  Is Dyna working with the wilds?

  What does iris mean?

  Iris is everything.

  Waterfall scratched his head. The cost of what? What was iris and how was it everything? He didn’t bother trying to look for Ember to ask any of these follow-up questions. The dragon was never willing to give a reasonable answer to anything.

  Instead, he walked into the joint council-treis meeting, nodded at Moonbeam, and took his seat. Summersky, George, and Fireheart quickly greeted him.

  “Now that we are all here, I would like to discuss a few matters,” Waterfall said, opening the meeting. “First, Moonbeam, are you certain that Dyna activated a geas?”

  “From what the children told us of their first meeting, all the signs were there, and I can think of no other reason why she would have violated Ember’s order.” Moonbeam turned to Waterfall. “So has Rose been working on the riddle?”

  “Silverlight tells me that he has not seen her working on it,” Waterfall said.

  “That doesn’t mean she isn’t working on it. There are three options, as I see it,” George said. “She could have solved it already, be resisting the urge, or be hiding her work.” George sighed. “However, I don’t see that it matters now that Dyna is neutralized.”

  “Did you get any information from Ember?” Fireheart asked.

  “In fact I did.” Waterfall read the questions and answers. “Does that clear things up for anyone?”

  There were blank faces all around the room.

  “What does any of that mean?” Summersky asked.

  Fireheart rubbed his temple. “Why did both the kin and Dyna reference magic? And why didn’t Ember answer some of those questions?”

  Waterfall shrugged.

  Moonbeam sighed. “It means that Ember is willing to let this run its course, and so should we.”

  Rose had been in bed for hours, but she couldn’t sleep. At first she had been reading a book about the elementals, but she had given that up more than an hour ago. Dyna’s words kept running through her head, and she needed to understand them. She needed to solve the riddle. Rose was willing to admit that she should ask for help. This was turning into an obsession.

  She repeated the riddle to herself:

  I am found at the beginning but not the end,

  then contained in a turn but not in a tune.

  I am usually found with a space on each side,

  and I am always at the end of beginnings.

  You have not called me this, but what am I known as?

  Then it hit her. I was found at the beginning of the riddle but not the end. That only left the third clue. Rose thought about how the words looked when they were written down. The answer to the third line was also I. Also, I was usually found with a space on each side. That would mean, if she went with Everblue’s hunch for the other letters, that it spelled Iris… Grandmother’s name was Iris, not that Rose had ever called her that.

  Rose jolted up in bed. You would have been haunted. Those had been Dyna’s words on the most recent visit, and before that, she’d warned that Rose stood to lose something.

  Oh no.

  Suddenly glad that Pearl hadn’t come to bed with her, Rose quietly started getting dressed. It didn’t matter if she’d effectively lost her grandmother when she came to this world, she needed to know what Dyna was talking about now. If her grandmother was in danger somehow…

  She took a deep breath. There was only one way to find out if Grandmother was all right. Rose had to find the pool, had to see into her family’s lives again.

  Rose left the house through her bedroom window. Everblue was sleeping in the living room, and he would have noticed if she’d used the front door. It didn’t take much magic to remove and replace the window, though, and no one was close enough to sense what she was doing.

  Outside, she was relieved to see that the Field was empty. Rose wasn’t sure if the elementals had returned to their own field, but she couldn’t see any of them, and that was good enough for now. As she walked along the path, she tried to figure out the best route to the pond. She’d only been there the one time, and she wasn’t willing to go through the Elementals’ Field to get there this time. Trying to retrace the return trip she and Silverlight had taken seemed like the best bet, but it wasn’t going to be easy. They hadn’t followed a path, and without a path, any part of the woods looked much like the next. However, if she could find the stream, she could follow it until she came to the pond. That sounded like a nice, easy plan, but it was dark as pitch, and even familiar trails looked different at night.

  Rose turned onto the path to the Elementals’ Field for now. It was another mile or so before she would branch off into the woods. She pushed away the thoughts of what kind of trouble she could get in for doing this. Silverlight had said to keep quiet about the pond, but he’d never forbidden her from going there on her own. With a little luck, she’d be back in her bed before morning, and the night’s adventure would go unnoticed anyway.

  What really concerned Rose was her grandmother. What could be happening to her that would haunt Rose? Dozens of ideas, each more terrible than the last, flashed through her head, but she shook them off. This wasn’t the time to think about that. She had to find the pond. It would show her the truth.

  When Rose was close to the
Elementals’ Field, she stepped into the woods. She was only feet from the path when she knew this was going to be mostly guesswork. Anything that might have looked familiar in the daylight was obscured, and she was left with only a vague idea of what direction she had come from last time. Her progress was slow but, thanks to the moonlight, not impossible. After a while she was fairly sure she’d come far enough into the woods to find the stream, but it was nowhere to be seen.

  Standing in the dark, surrounded by mysterious shapes and shadows, she realized the desperation of her search. She had no way of knowing where the stream went on either side of the pool. Sure, it had looked like a straight line, but it could be as curved and twisted as a pretzel.

  Above her came a soft hoot. Esmeralda glided past her and landed on a branch, hooting again.

  “Please, be quiet,” Rose whispered. “I don’t want them to know I’m out here.”

  The fevian cocked her head to the side.

  Rose sighed. “Could you help me find the stream? The one with the pool?”

  Esmeralda took off, circled Rose once, and headed to the left. Rose wasn’t sure if she should trust the fevian, who could be leading her to Waterfall or Silverlight, but she didn’t really see a choice. She hadn’t found the pool on her own, and Silverlight was always saying how much Esmeralda liked Rose. Why would she lead Rose into trouble?

  Following Esmeralda was easy enough. The owl would fly ahead, land on a tree, and wait for Rose to catch up. On one occasion, she ended up going in the wrong direction, and Esmeralda found her, clacked her beak in frustration, and got Rose on the right track again.

  When Rose heard the trickling water, she smiled at Esmeralda. “Thank you.”

  Esmeralda hooted once and flew off.

  Rose reached the stream and silently thanked the fevian again. Esmeralda hadn’t just led her to the stream but straight to the pond.

  The trip had taken longer than Rose had expected, and the moon was low in the sky now. There were still hours before dawn but she would need to hurry to get back before she was missed.