I grab Jamison by the front of the shirt and kiss him on the mouth.
He jerks in surprise and softens.
“There,” I say loudly. “Now everyone knows.”
Alick displays a wide grin. “It’s about time.”
I flush again, hotter.
“I think he already guessed,” Jamison whispers to me, then
announces to everyone, “We’re ready to go.”
Redmond gestures at the wagons. “You don’t really expect us to ride
in those like livestock. How demeaning.”
Neely climbs into the back of one and lies on his side, his knees
curled into his chest. “It’s not so bad, Captain. An old giant like me can do it.”
Redmond mutters as he crawls into the other wagon.
“He’s going to complain all the way there,” I say.
“Should we flip a coin to decide who drives him?” Jamison asks.
“It’s only fair.”
“No.” I sigh. “You take Neely, I’ll take Mundy.”
A musket has been stashed at the front of each wagon, and Jamison
carries a pistol. Quinn still sulks nearby. I take out the gem-studded shell brooch and give it to her. She’s unsure about wearing something so delicate, but when I tell her it belonged to the former marchioness, she accepts it like I’ve given her the greatest prize in the worlds.
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Jamison and I load up the supplies and start eastward. I hold the
reins steady, my days of driving my uncle’s wagon through the city for deliveries helping me settle in.
Winds push in from the sea, heaving at our backs. The gusts are
laced with a melody, the lullaby Jamison has become obsessed with. He swivels around to look back at the sea several times. I think he hears the music too.
We travel farther inland, away from the sea winds. The song quiets,
but my uneasiness stays. Can someone be haunted by a song? Because
I have a nagging feeling that the music isn’t after me.
It’s plaguing Jamison.
The roadways are deserted. Our wagons haven’t passed another traveler for nearly an hour, which is probably for the best. Redmond will not shut up.
He peers out through a small hole he punctured in the canvas.
“How much longer?”
“Less than an hour.”
“I’ve been trapped inside the back of the wagon for three.”
“You should use this time to rest. We have a climb ahead of us.” The skystalk towers directly beyond in the wheat field. My hands rattle on the reins, my nerves growing with every turn of the wagon wheels. Our journey up the skystalk will take us very high into the sky.
Redmond doesn’t reply. He must have taken my advice—
“Giants are outstanding climbers,” he says. I suppress a groan. “In
the olden days, giants climbed skystalks to the Plain of Delight and the Other Land.”
My ears perk up. “You’ve been to both of those Otherworlds?”
“I haven’t personally, but my people used to travel everywhere.
Skystalks once connected the Silver-Clouded Plain with the Other Land 97
Emily R. King
and the Plain of Delight. I doubt you’ve heard of their inhabitants, the trolls and spriggans, human.”
“Actually, I have.” I elaborate to prove I’m not the stupid human he thinks I am. “Spriggans are treelike creatures who live in burrows in the Plain of Delight and are often employed by the elves to serve as guards and animal caretakers. Trolls are industrious metalworkers and hard
laborers who hail from the Other Land. Our legends suggest they’re
half breeds of humans and giants.”
Redmond blows his lips. “Giants would not debase themselves by mating with mortals. Trolls are stupid, ugly little creatures only good for grunt work.” He shifts his position, rocking the wagon. “I cannot feel my foot. If my jacket is ruined by this filthy wagon, you’ll replace it.”
“There isn’t enough velvet in all the realms for a jacket your size.”
Over the next rise, the base of the skystalk appears in the wheat
field. The middle and top have widened to the same thickness as the
bottom, their thorns like enormous porcupine needles. Silver clouds
wreathe its top, obscuring the apex. I thought the skystalk was farther away, but we are only minutes from arriving.
Jamison stops his wagon and calls back to us. “Soldier checkpoint
ahead!”
A half dozen or so of Queen Aislinn’s soldiers block the road. I pull my hood down and slip my sword under my cloak. Redmond quiets,
the sudden silence nerve-racking.
We halt at the checkpoint. The bare landscape offers no cover or
escape routes. No trees or hedges or turns in the roadway. Just low-
hanging clouds and vast wheat fields. An offering to Mother Madrona
in thanks for the growing season has been set on the ground, twigs
and summer flowers weaved into a hand-size wreath. A farmer or field-worker must have left it, assuming no one would pass through this quiet area and see their token of faith before the wind blew it away. My uncle told me these tokens were once worn on heads and hung everywhere
when he was a boy, before the queen outlawed them.
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A soldier steps up to the first wagon. “Name, sir?”
“Marquess of Arundel,” Jamison replies. “What’s the meaning of
this stop? My father passed away, and I need to move the last of his belongings to my estate not far from here.”
“This area is closed, my lord. We’ve been ordered to turn travelers
around.”
Three more soldiers bearing muskets begin to case Jamison’s wagon,
walking around and looking underneath. I bow my head, my fingers
sliding to my sword, and sense Redmond holding his breath behind me.
“Surely you don’t mean to keep me from my home,” Jamison says.
“Those are our orders, my lord. Please pull ahead and turn around.
We’ll escort you away from the blockade. You can find another route
home.”
A soldier lifts the flap at the rear of Jamison’s wagon. Neely’s huge foot flies out, knocking the man back into our horse team. Our horses rear and reverse the wagon several paces. Neely rips off the canvas covering and roars.
The soldiers at the back of the wagon raise their muskets. Jamison
draws his pistol on the solider he was speaking with, and the two of them hold each other in a standoff.
I stand up and snap the reins. We plow past the armed soldiers, and
the last guard is momentarily distracted. Jamison whacks him over the head, knocking him to the ground.
We ride past as Neely gets back into their wagon. Jamison wrenches
on the reins, and they take off after us.
The soldiers we plowed past stand up and fire. Shots zip past us,
some ripping through the canvas. I urge the horse team faster. Jamison charges behind us, and we direct our wagons into the field, riding out of the soldiers’ firing range.
The skystalk is in the distance, a gnarled, massive shoot in a sea of golden wheat. No one else is around. We barrel onward, trampling the field.
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Emily R. King
Roots shoot up from the ground and startle my horses. I try direct-
ing the wagon away from my companions, and two of the back wheels
lift off the ground. Redmond falls out and rolls to a stop. I right the wagon before it tips over, the wheels landing with a bone-jarring slam.
More roots shoot up, grabbing the wheels of Jamison’s wagon, and
it comes to an abrupt stop. Neely hangs on and stays in, but Jamison goes flying forward over the horses and lands hard.
I slow my wagon and jump out. Something slithers among the
wheat stalks, shifting at my feet. Redmond rises, his jacket torn and dirty. We both go still, then his eyes bulge.
“Spriggans!” he shouts. “Run!”
Jamison gets up and sprints to his wagon for the supply pack. I run
with the giants, and a root trips me, making me fall to the ground. The dirt roils with spindly foliage, like tree roots bubbling from below. Little shoots dart out and snatch at me. I yank away and pick myself up.
Redmond’s foot is caught. He lifts his leg and pulls a creature out
of the dirt. The willowy thing has branch-like limbs covered with hard, wrinkled gray skin. A narrow, eerily young face looks up at the giant and hisses. Redmond pitches it across the field.
A vise wraps around my ankle and tightens. I tug against the sprig-
gan’s squeezing grip.
“Where did they come from?” I ask.
Neely’s wrist has been snagged by another. “The elven guard sta-
tioned them here to guard the skystalk.” He breaks the spriggan’s binding and rips my leg free.
We sprint for the skystalk, dodging grasping shoots. Jamison beats
us there with the supply pack. Redmond has fallen behind. He roars as he plucks more spriggans from the dirt, like carrots from a garden, and hurls them across the field.
Neely starts climbing for the clouds, and we follow. We’re not a
second off the ground when a root snatches at Jamison’s leg. I hack at the tendril with my sword, setting him loose. Several more spriggans 100
Everafter Song
snake their grasp around Jamison from calf to thigh. I slash at them, careful not to hit my love, but they wrap around him tighter.
“Go, Evie,” he pants. “Go and don’t stop.”
I chop at another strand. “Not. Without. You.”
He takes off the supply pack and swings it up at me. I pause mid-
hack to catch the bag. The spriggans give a collective tug and drag
Jamison to the ground. A tangle of gnarled roots arches over him in a dome, weaving itself together like a basket. They cover Redmond in the same hill of roots.
A shoot snatches at my leg. I kick it away and climb higher. Neely
waits for me a few stories above the ground, out of the spriggans’ range.
Jamison and Redmond have disappeared under a cage of roots. The
skystalk trembles. Spriggans have wrapped their reedy arms around the base and begun to pull. They’re trying to tip it over.
“Hurry, poppet!”
Neely and I set off faster, ascending into rampant winds. The shak-
ing peters away the higher we climb. Big clouds rush in around us, a surge of white muffling the winds to an unnerving quiet. I dare not
think how far from the ground we are. I focus on scaling the section right above me, hand over hand, little by little.
Neely hisses loudly.
“Are you all right?” I ask.
“I slipped. Keep going.”
We push onward into thinner air, and my heart begins to spin.
We’re leaving this world.
A flash of silver sends spots across my vision, then the sky around
us tilts. I hold on tighter as we’re turned upside down. Neely and I hang end over top, our hair and clothes dangling. Suspended there, my vision clears to see the world straighten out again.
We resume our climb, but we aren’t going up anymore. We’re
descending. I cannot comprehend how, but I keep moving, my muscles
achy and my lungs heaving.
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My feet strike white stone—cloud rock. Thick fog encircles us and
constricts our view. Neely’s big hand grips mine; he’s at my side, yet I can hardly see him. A trapdoor opens above our heads. An invisible
force pulls us in, and we fall up.
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Chapter Twelve
I land on a bed of grass, staring up at the night. My clock heart hitches, recalibrating, and then resumes a baseline rhythm.
Tick . . .
Tock.
I push to my feet with my sword. Neely lies on his back beside me,
winded. We landed beside a pond under leafy trees. Frogs ribbit near the water’s edge, and huge dragonflies soar over the still water, their wingspans the size of a sparrow’s. Though we left the Land of the Living in the daytime, time in this world is far into the evening. The stars and moon offer scant light, their radiance filtered by the tree branches overhead. Everything—the trees, rocks, insects, and flowers—is bigger than back home. The willows are taller than my head.
Neely rips a thorn out of his hand and another out of his heel,
injuries from the skystalk. I wrap his hand with cloth torn from the hem of my cloak. He sits on a log and tends to his foot.
“Where did the skystalk go?” I ask.
He hobbles to the grassy patch we landed on, kneels, and feels
around. His long arm slides down a hole up to his shoulder, and he pulls out a fistful of white stones. “The Silver-Clouded Plain exists inside a massive cloud bank. The Creator gathered two thick, fluffy clouds and molded them together. Then she blew a hole into the center of the
clouds and placed our world inside.”
Emily R. King
He drops the white rocks. They hit the ground, poof into bits of
cloud, and vanish. I cannot fathom how a world could be nestled in
a bed of clouds, or how I just saw rocks turn to air, but the skystalk bypassed the curse the Creator put on this world. At this point, anything seems possible.
I hug myself to fight off a shiver. “Will Jamison be all right?”
“The spriggans won’t hurt them, poppet. They were defending the
skystalk for the elves.”
I wish I had his confidence. “Do you know where we are?”
“Stonecross Hollow.” Neely indicates a stone pile in the shape of a
cross on a rise above the pond. “We’re in the prairie east of our strong-hold city, Rackfort.”
Loud cranking noises fill the night. We still and listen as the clatter rushes toward us in puffs and groans, clinks and clatters. I grip my sword as the noise approaches, passes us, and travels away.
“What was that?” I whisper.
“I’ve no idea. We’ll stay here until daylight and head west tomor-
row. My sisters and father live outside Rackfort, about a day’s walk from here.” Neely sits on the ground with his back against the log. “My sisters will be glad to see me.”
Neely’s father is the reason he was banished. He turned in his
son for stealing food to feed his sisters and himself. A family reunion between them will be interesting.
I step closer to the pond for a peek at the oversize frogs.
“I wouldn’t get that close,” Neely says. “Last I heard, a grindylow
lives in the pond of Stonecross Hollow. Grindylows can live for centuries. Better to be safe and keep back.”
Having been nearly drowned by one of the tentacled water crea-
tures, I edge away from the water and inventory our supplies. We
should have everything we need, but I double-check the pack. A folded piece of paper falls out of the front pocket. I open it and shift into the moonlight to read the short passage.
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Jamison Callahan from the Land of the Living requests
a divination of the future. Payment for service requires
one month’s time. This document and ensuing bargain
are binding, nonrefundable, and unexchangeable for any
other inquiries about the client’s past, present, or future.
The client accepts the terms regardless of the outcome of
the foretelling.
The bottom is signed by Jamison and marked with a
bloody
fingerprint—his fingerprint, I presume. Beside his name, scrawled
in elegant handwriting, is the sea hag’s signature.
“Do you know what this is?” I ask, showing Neely.
He pulls his monocle out of his pocket and squints to read the
passage in the dark. “Aye. It’s a contract of divination with the sea hag.
Every pirate in the Land Under the Wave visited Muriel at one time or another, may she rest in peace.”
“You mean Jamison asked the sea hag for a reading?”
“Right there it says, ‘divination of the future.’ She took one month off his life in exchange for telling him his fate.”
I’m speechless. I sensed that he was holding on to something pri-
vate, but this? Why didn’t he tell me? He would have revealed the divination if it were good news—the two of us getting rid of Markham,
being pardoned by the queen, and starting over. The possibilities of what the sea hag predicted pile up, stacking on top of each other, a crushing force.
“Poppet?” the giant whispers.
“Yes, Neely?”
“Do you think Rufus misses me?”
I need a moment to recall who Rufus is. Ah, the lamb. “I think so.
We often remember when someone is kind to us.”
Neely pats me on the head. “You have a good heart, Everley
Donovan.”
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Emily R. King
I tip my head against his shoulder and sigh.
Tucking Jamison’s contract in my pocket, I search inside myself
for a calmness I don’t possess. I will never be able to fall asleep. Spirit jumping from one world to the next is ambitious, but I have to know
Jamison is safe.
My ticking heart fills my thoughts. The relentless sound once pes-
tered me and plagued my every waking moment, a reminder of loss and
pain. Now the sound calls to mind my uncle. His life and luster, talents and accomplishments. His love for me.
My spirit lifts off my body. Hovering above myself, my sword in
hand, I address the immortal blade. Which way to Jamison?
The sword vibrates and warms, then drags me up into the night.
We rise through the clouds that ring the Silver-Clouded Plain and hover above the giants’ world. I’m uncertain about which direction to go.
Jamison could still be in the Land of the Living, or the spriggans could have taken him to the Land of Promise. My clock heart spins.
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