by Brindi Quinn
“Enchants?” The man’s tongue clicks. “Silly, faerie. Your aura is more woman than it ought to be. Is your wisdom being clouded? I’m not casting enchants here. My power is another power completely. One you will also know, in time.”
All of this he says whilst keeping his back to us, and continuing the task of draining the scarabs one by one.
“What are you called?” I ask.
Awyer is now pulling on my arm, yet I do not respond. I have failed to follow my own advice. I am allowing the gray man’s words to flow freely through me. It reminisces of liquid sugar.
“I would listen to your pactor, faerie. They’re coming, and you don’t want to be floating around when they get here. I was to take care of this before you arrived; then, thanks to that one, I was late. So sorry. It would seem you managed just fine, though.”
Who is coming? He was to take care of what, exactly? And for what purpose? There are a great many things to ask.
But my ward, he is shaking me now. He is tearing at me. His voice is distant, much more so than the gray man’s.
“Since you’re so willing, faerie, I would take you as one of my own. It’s tempting, particularly with your . . . unique condition. But sigh. Your pactor needs you. The boy is hopeless by himself. Why don’t you join me when you find yourself in need of pactor again? It shouldn’t be too much longer, now, should–”
“My mistress.”
Into my ear speaks a voice sweeter tasting than the intoxicating words of the gray man.
“Come away with me.” Awyer’s words are hushed, his lips against my ear, his hands upon my waist.
I lean into him. “My ward, I . . . I fear I may have become inebriated.”
Techton’s call comes from someplace behind us, “Did you get her, Awyer?”
“Yes,” says my ward, mouth yet to my ear. “I have gotten her. Come, Grim.”
I am intoxicated, enticed by the gray man, who has still to turn from the fence. Taking my hand, Awyer draws me to the forest. Never once does he unlock his animalistic eyes from mine. Never once does he release me from his golden stare.
I focus on him as he leads me. I will fight to block out anything more that the mysterious man at the gate may wish to say.
Even so, I hear it when we reach the wood:
The gray man has started to whistle.
Chapter XII: Déjà Vu
I am held by arms that writhe and flush with color stolen. I have not been carried like a damsel in this lifetime nor in any other . . .
Not until today.
I cannot say that the experience is lackluster; rather, it is livening. My skin sings as Awyer holds my drunken, feather-light form close to his chest and rips through the forest alongside two breathless Bloődites and one curious Azurian.
“He spoke into your mind, huh?” Techton questions Awyer’s story. “Without using his voice?”
Awyer nods. “And into Grim’s mind.”
“Funny, I didn’t hear a thing,” says Techton – and he is not necessarily disappointed by the confession. “What sorts of things did he say to you?”
“He told me he was destroying the Gated Rise,” says Awyer.
Destroying it? The possibility of such a thing eludes me.
But while I am eluded, there are others in our company who are upset by the news. The one least enjoying of the climb is set off most by the thought of its destruction. “You joshin’ me!?” spouts Pedj, swerving across Mael’s path to scrutinize Awyer. “What the?! After we just got on crossin’ the crankin’ thing?!” Mael gives him a delayed glare for his action.
“He claimed he was to get there before we arrived,” I say. “He was stalled because of a person he did not name.” Awyer repeats my mumbled statement and adds,
“He was destroying it to make way for an army.”
I cannot be certain, but I believe I hear a mumble from Techton. Something too low to discern. Something not meant to be discerned.
Pedj’s response is much more distinct. “You mean that Azurian Army?” he says. “What was bein’ led by your man Bexwin and his good buddy Feligo? Ha! Pretty wimpy army, you ask me.”
“Tell the zombie that he is daft to assume that was the full army.”
Awyer relays my message.
“Daft, is I? You’re the one what’s daft! What’s wrong with you, agent, anyhoop?”
“Mistress is poisoned,” says Mael, huffing. “Ark’s poison.”
“Poison!?” says Awyer, alarmed. In the middle of the widening wood, my ward halts to a stop, and the others follow by slowing from run to trot. “Is there an antidote?”
“I would not call it poison,” I say to him. “More it is like . . . seduction. It will wear away, as it has already begun to do.” Awyer’s concern glimmers from behind his straight-faced façade. Ancient gold cannot hide everything. Only after inspecting my face to see that I speak the truth, does he begin again to sprint.
Meanwhile, Pedj sets his disdain upon Techton. “What I’d like to know is why your people’d even want to get on marchin’ the Reck,” the zombie says, accusation full on his tongue.
“I get the feeling you expect me to know?” Techton’s forehead rises to allow his eyebrows to lift. “I told you, didn’t I? I gave up their politics. I haven’t been to the capital in over three years.”
“Yeah, but I’m sure you’ve HEARD things, eh?”
To that, Techton says nothing.
It is suspicious. Were I not already inclined to trust him over what I saw in my forememory, I would have Awyer belabor the issue.
Not so inclined to trust the tightlipped Azurian is Pedj. “Hmph,” he says. “Guess now we know for sure: Azurians is EVIL as evil can be.”
“Shup, Pedjram. Tech isn’t evil. Just look at his eyes. Evil people don’t got eyes like those.”
Mael’s skirt jiggles on her hips as she runs. Techton jogs behind her so as to attain a decent view. “Well thanks, Lady,” says so-called ‘Tech’, leering.
Evil or not, he is still man.
Under his breath, Pedj goes on, “Don’t know about you, but workin’ with Ark’s enough to be called evil in my book. Bet them blue smokers was in cahoots with him durin’ the first Kerr Attack, too.” He grows in volume. “What do you know about that, eh, Techie? Your former king never did admit what he was doin’ by stampedin’ through our territory! And now your croops gone and started a SECOND crusade? What GIVES?! Answer me, you blue mongrel!” In a lightning move, Pedj has become heated.
“Don’t listen to him, Tech. Pedj is racist.”
The three continue to squabble and speculate and flirt far into the wilds of the Reck. Onward they run, beneath bushy tree canopy and over weedy ground cover, until healthy magicks return to their veins, signaling that the rivers Brother and Sister have sufficiently separated from one another.
When the writhing things below his skin are turned hot once more, Awyer’s teeth begin to clench. “It would be safe to stop,” I tell the pained sorcerer, who has since grown used to coolness. “We are able to defend ourselves now.”
Techton, who has proven himself expert at building camp over the past few nights, begins, at Awyer’s suggestion, to gather up wood and draw his tent, which is large enough to provide shelter for all in our party.
In the interim, my ward and I find a hill to seclude ourselves upon. He and I have traded places: I am at full strength again, while he is the one in need of respite.
“We may use the air to tell our position.” I give him useful advice. “If our power begins to stifle, we will know we have treaded too far north or south, though it will become less of an issue the wider the rivers spread and the wider the Reck becomes. The Reck continually grows as Sister shifts south and Brother veers north.”
“Are the Golden Lands within the Reck?” he asks.
“I do not know. The easiest would be to assume that they are, but it would be foolish not to be prepared for other possibilities. I have not entered the Reck before. However, I will share
with you what I know of it.”
Nodding, Awyer leans back against the hill with one hand behind his head, the other rubbing his temple, and stares upward through a break in the canopy that allows for a view of the orange-painted sky. Unfiltered rays spread across his cheeks and chin.
And also his mouth, the corners of which are downturned in relaxation.
“There was once a time when the rivers, though still very hard to cross, were not voided,” I begin. “A time before the region was known as Reck. Thousands of years ago, it was a place called Western Cross. And it was guarded by the very chain wall that still exists today. I was long ago told the story of a traveler who rode an enchanted air raft over Brother River into Western Cross.”
“By whom?” inquires Awyer.
“By the very first Amethyst sphinx I ever made pact with, your ancestor.”
Awyer says nothing, so I continue,
“In the traveler’s day, there were rumors about the strange things that lay within Western Cross, and many other men were not so brave as to willingly enter a land said to be ruled by beasts.”
“What manner of beasts?”
“Men with horns. Girls with tails. And people who were part human, part lion – a people marked by the color gold.”
Awyer’s eyes narrow. “Sphinx.”
“Aye. Western Cross was said to be inhabited by men with horns, girls with tails, and sphinxes.”
For Awyer, it does not add up. “This story was told to you by my ancestor, a FULL sphinx?” he says. “When you said before that he did not tell you the location of the Golden Lands?”
“Let me finish, my ward.”
“Grim.”
“When the man landed upon the soil of Western Cross, he first encountered a man with horns. The horned man spoke a language unfamiliar to the traveler; his was the language of the rivers and trees, and the traveler could do nothing but throw the words of man upon deaf ears. Are there any here who speak as I speak? Are there any who will understand me? the traveler asked of the heavens. He asked it day after day, and on the fifth day, he was answered by a young girl. The girl had a tail of braided silk and eyes like the moon, and when she looked upon the traveler, there was not need for words at all.”
“A love story,” says Awyer in monotone.
“No.” I shake my head. “A horror story. The girl conceived a child, a child birthed of beast and man, and then she retreated away into the folds of the wood, never to be heard from again. The traveler cried in agony for his loss. He cried month after month, and on the fifth month, he was answered by a ball of gold. The golden ball offered the traveler a choice. He may forget his love and his child once and for all, or he may live with the anguish befallen him. Which, my fief, do you think he chose?”
“The man chose to forget.”
“Yes. He chose to forget, and the golden ball carried through on the promise. It took the traveler’s life then and there, and along with it, his memory of the tailed girl.”
Awyer sits up on his elbows. “The traveler was tricked by a sphinx.”
“No, the traveler was tricked by a ball of gold.”
He blinks at me. “Were there sphinxes living in Western Cross?”
“When I asked the same of your ancestor, he answered me this: We would never hide our homeland where it could so easily be found.”
Awyer hits his head against the hill and sighs. “Then why are we here?”
“Because, my ward, it is possible that your homeland resides through the Reck. There are only legends, myths, storytales about what lies within the Reck and how its rivers came to be polluted; nothing about what lies beyond. Did you know that only a mile east of the Gated Rise the sibling rivers are no longer voided? So, too, do they become bottomed. People yet refrain from drinking of their water, for it is taboo to do so, but enchants can be freely used among them, and crossing them is possible even in the absence of land bridge. It would be insightful to suspect that the waters are only cursed to repel intrusion, rather than being corrupted because they flow out of the Eternity Vessel, as the necromancers believe. It is my thought that the Reck ends, and that beyond lies the path to the Golden Lands.”
Awyer chews on what I have told him.
“Was that man at the gate Ark?” he says.
“I believe that if there is a being known as ‘Ark’, he is it. The zombie spoke that Ark has managed to pact multiple naefaeries and turn them against their pactors. I am ashamed to say that the gray man’s words were intoxicating for my ears. I . . .” I cannot look at my ward’s eyes. “For a small moment, I wished to join him. I-it would seem to match Pedj’s description, would it not?”
I am embarrassed. In the presence of my ward, I am embarrassed. Looking at my toes, I distract,
“If it IS Ark, and if he does indeed wish to carry out the ludicrous notion of shattering the Eternity Vessel, then he may be removing the Gated Rise in order to lead his army of naefaeries and their deceived pactors to the Golden Lands. We do not know if the army he spoke of was indeed the Azurian–”
My words come no more.
While I have been watching my toes, the ward on the hill has been watching me. Without warning, he places a hand atop my head. “Grim.” He commands my gaze be drawn to his. “Do not leave me.”
“N-no, my ward, I did not mean that I wish to leave you, only that, in that moment–”
Illuminated in twilit air, Awyer brings close his face to mine. His eyes, dark-lined and cat-like, pin mine in place. His mouth, full and relaxed, toys with the idea of meeting mine. “I will give you more reasons to stay by my side,” he says. And my pulse, meant to be even, speeds. I am a cornered bunnaly, on the verge of capture. If my blood is to pump quicker, I will end in heart failure.
But pump quicker it does, as Awyer, without so much as an ounce of hesitation, slips his hand to the back of my head and pulls my face against his chest. “Do not leave me, my mistress,” he says, with dominance, with possession, with coveting.
My ward has changed greatly in the days since Eldrade.
“My ward, I–”
“Do not call me that.”
“My fief–”
“That either.”
“A-Awyer,” I whisper the name of my sphinx into his chest. It is my will that he should live. It is my will that I should not be reborn. It is my wish that we should remain together.
They are secrets too selfish to utter aloud, secrets that the witches would surely salivate over, and so I remain silent, gripping the shirt upon the powerful sphinx’s chest.
“We should return,” I say into him. “It is not polite that we do not aid the others.”
“Techton refuses anytime I have asked. He likes to do it alone,” says Awyer, as softly he fondles the crown of my hair.
True, but I fear that if we remain this way, we will break more than we already have.
He is a young man and I am a young woman with a young soul. He is a boy and I am a girl. His girl. This is the fantasy I allow into my mind. This is my first life. We are not bound by contract. We are not on a life-ending task. We may remain on this down for as long as we like, sweetly soaking up the last rays of dying light.
The fantasy ends with abruption. Awyer releases me and pulls away. “Grim,” he says, and his tone is much less certain than it was just a moment ago.
“My wa–” Because he does not wish to be called by title, I correct to: “Awyer?”
The shadows of sunset play with his face. “Were you . . . close with all of your pactors?” he asks, not as casually as he pretends. His eyes search mine. Is there jealousy? Some. Earnestness? Yes. Concern? Certainly.
Close. By close he means the forbidden, compromising things I have long felt for him.
Though it is no small feat for a weak creature like me, I attempt to maintain contact with his piercing stare while giving him answer. I shake my head. “It is unheard of.”
A breath of relief comes from the sphinx of few words.
A moment o
f silent, sunset tension passes before he speaks again.
“You remember them all?” he says.
“My wards?”
“Your lives.”
Ah. “It depends,” I tell him. “I may choose to connect to them, or I may choose to experience the present alone. It is difficult for me to explain.”
Awyer’s mouth, which is still no great distance from mine, twitches. “Stern Grim versus giddy Grim,” he ascertains.
I release one subdued, invisible giggle. “I suppose, if that is how you see it. It used to be that I was nearly always with them – with my past selves. Lately, however, more and more . . .” I distract myself with the wind that tousles through Awyer’s hair. “I allow myself to leave them where they lie. And I feel young. Unwise. Foolish. Uncertain. A number of horrid things.”
Awyer’s mouth is turned smugly pleased. “Present Grim is the best Grim,” he says indulgently.
“You only say so because I am less strict on you!”
Guilty of grinning, Awyer shrugs in faux blasé. But he and I both know that is not the true reason for his preference.
Given an inch, my imagination runs with the breeze. If this fantasy were real, if he and I could be as I wish for us to be . . . I would release my duty as warden. I would shrug away all guardian tendencies. I would disconnect from my immortality and simply become Grim, the girl of seventeen.
Alas, I have become ensnared in delusions. Sadness settles upon me just as surely as the night quashes the sun.
“My soul is old, Awyer,” I say sadly while my eyes find a new place to hide – namely the tops of my own knees. “I am not suited for a mortal like . . .” I cannot finish.
Lo, I do not need to.
Relaxing his stance, Awyer leans again into the hill. “Mine is too,” he says in confession. “My soul is old.”
I am hit with surprise. Never before has he made such a claim. “What do you mean?” I say. I am more than curious; I am eager.
Head upon the hill, Awyer yawns. “Sometimes, Grim, only elusively, I see you and remember that I have seen you before.”
