Everafter Song

by Emily R. King

  “You heard her wrong. I didn’t sign a contract with the sea hag.”

  “And now she’s dead. She must have left it up to me to show you.”

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  Emily R. King

  Markham slides out of his cloak, drapes it over the back of a chair, and removes the infinity sandglass from his bag. Time moves untouched within the vessel, the iridescent sand filtering from top to bottom in a steady, silent stream. I restrain myself from snatching away the most powerful timepiece in the worlds from him. My uncle Holden devoted

  his life to serving as Father Time’s helmsman. Before Markham stole it, my uncle’s task was to turn the sandglass twice daily for decades to keep time flowing throughout Avelyn.

  “Evie,” says Markham, “kindly set down your sword and come with

  me. I have a story to share with you.”

  “Why would I go anywhere with you?”

  “Because you wish to see what awaits humankind.”

  I wish for him to go and leave me alone, and if going with him will

  accomplish that . . . “You have twelve minutes left. My sword comes

  with me.”

  “As you wish.”

  Markham offers me his arm, and I grasp his elbow. He turns a small

  dial on the top of the infinity sandglass. This small movement releases a brilliant rainbow that intensifies into a blinding light.

  Our spirits lift from our bodies, slipping out like snakes shedding

  their skins. We jump up, straight through the roof and into the sky, ghosts of ourselves. The whole process takes seconds, an abrupt but

  exhilarating separation of body and soul. The radiance whisks us away from our bodies and shoots us far away.

  We land a moment later in a forest. My sword, the immortal blade

  of Avelyn, still hangs at my side. As the relic of a broken star repurposed by the Creator, it exists both in the heavens and the material worlds. I’m grateful it’s with me. Spirit jumping is an ability I have been practicing in secret, moving from place to place while my body stays behind. It’s difficult to master, a rare skill.

  “How did you . . . ?”

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  Everafter Song

  “I’ve been exploring the limits of the infinity sandglass,” Markham

  says. “This extraordinary tool marks time across Avelyn, but that’s only the beginning. I’m learning that time itself bridges the worlds and can be crossed almost anywhere.”

  “Have we left our world?”

  “There’s no need. What we seek is in the Realm of Wyeth.”

  He lifts his attention to the canopies. Trees encircle us, their thick trunks and tangled boughs black and their needles green gray. I imagine the scents of moss and pine weight the morning air, but I smell nothing.

  My senses are unable to reach our surroundings. While in spirit form, I can act upon the world around me if I concentrate hard enough, but the world cannot act upon me.

  My clock heart spins and spins, unloosed from the strictness of

  time. We’re visitors, silent and unseen, leaving no trace.

  “This is the Black Forest,” he says. “Your human legends tell of a

  cursed woodland. Do you know of the warnings?”

  “Of course. Some say the Black Forest is the color of death because

  the trees took root over a scourged army. Is this what you brought me here to tell me?”

  “I brought you here to tell you about the triad war.”

  “You shouldn’t have wasted our time. I know of the war. The giants

  attacked humankind to obliterate us and take our world. The Creator

  intervened and put them to sleep.” I give Markham an impatient stare.

  “You brought me all the way out here for no reason.”

  He appraises me, his expression droll. “You’re not very teachable,

  are you?”

  “Only when my teacher is someone I respect.”

  Markham clucks his tongue, scolding me, and ambles off, setting

  our trail through the underbrush. Normal y, we would trample through the ferns and scare off the nesting groundbirds, but our spirits whisper past them.

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  Emily R. King

  “Long ago,” he says, “before the Black Forest grew up to become

  this great woodland, this was a field. Man, giant, and elf gathered here to fight for dominion over the Land of the Living, the Creator’s first and most cherished world. The giants believed this world was their

  rightful inheritance as the firstborns.” Markham kneels and places his palm to the ground. He must be concentrating, because his hand makes an imprint in the fallen pine needles. “Below us slumbers the army of giants, enchanted into an abiding sleep by the goddess of all creation through a song played on her violin. Here they lie to this day, yet over time, the shortsighted humans have forgotten their foes—and their

  redemption—and how close they came to annihilation.”

  “Your kind fought with us against the giants. You took our side,

  yet you speak of us so?”

  The prince drops his chin to his chest. “That is another story.”

  “Tell it to me. You brought me here, and you don’t seem to be in

  a hurry to go!”

  He rises quickly and shoves his face toward mine. “Lower your

  voice. Show respect for the elven soldiers who died here so that your kind might live.”

  I hold firm against his glare. “Tell me your story.”

  “It is the story of the creation.” He steps away and his voice gentles.

  “Long ago, at the dawn of time, when all creation came to be, my elven ancestors dwelled in the Everwoods with Mother Madrona. It was there, in that sacred grove of elderwood trees, that each group of the triad was born for a task. Giants—Eiocha’s firstborns—were given the role of

  crafting and beautifying the Creator’s lands. Elves—born second—were tasked with tending to and leading creaturekind.”

  “What were humans tasked to do?”

  Markham rises and glides out of the forest into a field. He pauses,

  expecting me to follow along. I move over to him. “In the elven version of the Creation Story, humans were created centuries after the rest of the triad. The elves and giants were struggling to fulfill their tasks, so 22

  Everafter Song

  Eiocha plucked an acorn from Madrona’s bough and cleaved it in two.

  From the split acorn grew a woman and a man. Eiocha tasked them to

  serve as helpmates to their elder brothers and sisters. We elves obey our purpose to watch over all creaturekind. Thus, when the giants attacked the humans, our servants, my father intervened.”

  “Your father was in the war? But the triad war must have been—”

  “Nine hundred years ago, during the beginning of his reign over

  the Land of Promise. My sister and I were not yet born. Our father led his troops into battle.”

  Speaking to someone who knew a soldier who’d fought in the triad

  war sobers me. The legendary event feels truer, more tangible.

  A bed of daisies sprouts around me. I scan the tree line for Father

  Time, and the field and woodland transform into a ravaged battlefield.

  The Black Forest has been felled, as if the goddess pulled every tree from the ground and tossed them aside like weeds. In the wreckage,

  giants laden with armor swing mighty weapons at an army of elves and humans.

  Father Time must be showing me the triad war. But then why are

  the trees felled? Markham said they grew after the giants were put to sleep.

  I spot a woman on the battlefield, and my stomach plunges to my

  ankles. She’s me—another Everley—riding astride an ivory mare with a gray diamond on its face, leading the charge against the giants. Jamison and our friends are fighting alongside her.

  This isn’t a scene of the past.
This is like the nightmares I’ve had, though those never felt this real, and never were the trees felled.

  Markham goes on, seemingly oblivious to the ghostly war paralyz-

  ing me. “For centuries, elves brought humans to the Land of Promise

  to tend to our orchards and vineyards. After Eiocha enchanted the army of giants to fall sleep, so few humans had survived their slaughter she forbade us from taking in more.”

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  Emily R. King

  A giant leaps on a soldier beside us. I flinch as he tears the human to pieces with his hands. Across the way, a gunshot strikes down Laverick.

  Claret bends over her, and a giant impales her in the back with a spear.

  As Jamison runs to the aid of the Fox and the Cat, he’s struck down by a giant’s mace. He falls on his side, staining the meadow with blood.

  The Everley on the white mare still fights across the field, far removed from her fallen comrades.

  Go after him. Help him.

  The Everley in battle turns away from Jamison and runs farther

  away, deeper into the fray. Jamison does not get up.

  I shut my eyes, nauseated. This isn’t real. This isn’t happening.

  The battle cries die off, and I reopen my eyes. The ghostly battlefield has vanished; the trees are righted again, the field no longer bathed in blood. Markham doesn’t seem to have noticed my stillness. His attention turns inward to his own thoughts.

  “Humans were created to serve their elder brothers and sisters,” he

  says, conviction in every word. “Eiocha’s command to leave your kind alone is no longer relevant. Your people have recovered and repopulated. There’s no need to leave humans in ignorance of their purpose.”

  Markham comes forward and taps a single finger against my spinning

  clock heart. “But you aren’t like other humans. You, like me, make your own purpose.”

  I step back and glare. “You and I are nothing alike. You destroyed

  a world. The Land of Youth is gone because of you.”

  “You still don’t understand,” he says tiredly.

  He clutches my arm and turns the small dial on the sandglass. A

  rainbow avalanche sends us into the morning sky. We shoot across an

  immeasurable expanse and land on an overhang by the sea.

  I stumble sideways, catching my bearings. Waves crash against the

  sandy base of the drop-off, huge breakers slamming against the beach and spraying into the air. A bank of gray clouds churns off the coast, 24

  Everafter Song

  building into a stormy coil. Briny winds sweep in gusts across the pitch of wilting wildflowers.

  Higher up the hillside, the charred remains of a manor overlook the

  sea. Grass and weeds strangle the crumbled foundation. My childhood

  home. This is all that’s left after the prince burned it to the ground.

  “Why are we here?” I demand. My spinning heart has begun to

  slow from spending this amount of time outside my body. “Did you

  bring me here to apologize?”

  He makes no remark, not a change of expression or a dry chuckle

  or a wry smirk. He gives me nothing, not an inkling of remorse.

  I raise my sword to his throat. “Have you nothing to say?”

  Markham grabs the hilt and slowly pushes, lowering it. “You think

  too finitely, Evie. The Evermore timeline isn’t fixed. We change the future every day through our choices. Father Time insists he decides when we are born and when we die, but, in fact, we do. We decide our paths.” He lifts the infinity sandglass. “This timepiece can navigate the stars and take me anywhere in Avelyn, except where I need.”

  “You said you want to go home.”

  “Time has changed my home,” he says, both sullen and belligerent.

  “Look at your own home. It’s proof that nothing stays the same forever.”

  So, if not home to the Land of Promise, where does he wish to go?

  He said the infinity sandglass can take him anywhere, except . . .

  The Silver-Clouded Plain—the giants’ world.

  He must want to go there. Their portals are closed to those seeking

  to enter. The giants are locked in their world, and for those who leave, there is no return. Expulsion from Avelyn was their punishment for trying to wipe out humankind. Markham stole magical seeds—“skyseeds,”

  Osric called them. Supposedly they can bypass the curse on the Silver-Clouded Plain. But if the seeds can get him there, why is he here with me? What is he waiting for?

  Markham’s attention drifts to the charred foundation of my family’s

  home. “What would you do if you could change the past?”

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  Emily R. King

  At one time, I longed to bring back my family. Then I hoped to

  have a real heart instead of my ticker. Now I wish Markham had never been born.

  His stricken gaze falls to mine. “I’ve tried to let go of the past,” he says, “but no amount of time will change my heart. Therefore, I must change time.”

  Nothing exists that has the power to undo the past, not even the

  infinity sandglass. Whatever he’s searching for must be more power-

  ful than anything humans have heard of. Osric once proposed that

  Markham was after an artifact, an object like my sword and the sand-

  glass, that has been hidden away, perhaps in the Silver-Clouded Plain.

  “You cannot change what’s been done,” I say, “no matter how hard

  you try. This is your life, Killian. You are a monster.”

  “Perhaps I am,” he muses. “But you needn’t worry, Evie. I won’t kill you or destroy the sandglass. Not yet.”

  He turns the knob on the sandglass and leaps into the air. I jump at him, but my hand misses the rainbow light shooting him away.

  “Markham! You cannot leave me here!” I spin in a circle, searching

  the sky. Off to the east, the sun blazes a piercing trail into the blue.

  “Damn blaggard prince!”

  I stab my sword into the field and slump against the hilt, turning

  my back to the ruins of my childhood home. My uncle often offered

  to bring me here to say goodbye to my family. I never came. My fam-

  ily wasn’t—isn’t—here. Their souls have returned to the Mother of All and found rest in her embrace. At least that’s what my parents believed would happen after we died.

  A sea wind flings itself at me, swishing the grass around my floating feet. My clothes and hair are untouched by the gusts. My clock heart spins even slower.

  “I have to return to my body. Which is the quickest way?” I ponder

  aloud.

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  Everafter Song

  My sword vibrates and warms in my hand. Not since I searched

  for the gate to the Everwoods has it responded to me. I yank the blade from the ground and hold it out.

  “Can you help me return to the manor?” I feel foolish waiting for a

  response, especially when nothing happens. Just as I begin to lower my sword, the blade warms and vibrates. I aim it inland. “Will you show me the way?”

  My sword quivers, then yanks me forward, dragging my spirit into

  the distance. I soar across Wyeth, a land of saturated greens and gray skies, and slow over a massive manor. I shoot down through the roof

  and into my body.

  I gasp awake in the study. Staggering up onto my wobbly legs,

  I drag my sword up with me, my ticker beating steadily, once again

  compelled by time.

  Markham pours himself the last of the whisky. “Well done, Evie.

  You were only a minute or two behind me.” He toasts me with his glass.

  “Do you see now? You needn’t depend on Father Time. The Evermore

  timeline is yours to explore.”
<
br />   “My sword showed me the way back; otherwise, I would still be

  stuck out there.”

  “The sword of Avelyn is mighty, but time is the real power.”

  Markham peers inside the sandglass. “We are slaves to time. To break free, we must bend time to our will.”

  I raise my sword, my arm quaking from exhaustion. “Give me the

  sandglass, Markham. No more games.”

  “You think I’m playing games?” His expression darkens and cools,

  his mask ripping away to reveal the monster who stood over me as a

  child and plunged his sword through my chest. “Do not confuse my

  mercy with complacency. I’ve only so much tolerance for your small

  mortal mind.”

  “Then leave me be. Go away and never come back.”

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  Emily R. King

  A tremor shakes the ground, a roar from the land that can be felt

  in my joints.

  “What did you do now?” I ask.

  “My childhood home is surrounded by acres of orchards. Did you

  know an apple tree produces fruit six to ten years after the seedling grows into a tree?” Markham’s eyes shine; he’s fascinated by this random fact. “The number-one ingredient a planted seed needs isn’t sunshine or water—it’s time.”

  The grandfather clock chimes the hour. Seven o’clock. Osric swings

  the door open, and he and Jamison hurry in.

  “Your fifteen minutes are over,” Jamison says, his musket at the

  ready.

  Markham swallows the last of his whisky and sets down his glass.

  “Thank you for the drink, Lord Callahan. I’ll take my leave now.”

  “You aren’t going anywhere,” I say.

  The prince grasps the timepiece with both hands. “You know how

  much I enjoy these spats of ours, Evie, but I don’t have time for your empty threats at the moment.”

  Another tremor rattles the manor, swinging the chandelier and

  knocking a vase off a table. Jamison, Osric, and I brace ourselves against the heavy pieces of furniture. Markham calmly puts on his cloak, twists the top of the infinity sandglass, and vanishes.

  28

  Chapter Four

  I run to the place where Markham stood seconds ago and turn in a

  circle. Where did he go? He cannot have spirit jumped or his body

  would still be here.

  “How did he leave?” I ask.