by H. L. Burke
“We have to get out of here.” Jericho stumbled towards the barrier. “We can’t just stop. The Fey is going to possess those two kids.”
“Take a minute to breathe!” Auric stood and grabbed Jericho’s arm. “Jericho, you just lost … Look at me!”
Jericho squeezed his eyes shut. He couldn’t. It was swirling again. He couldn’t breathe.
“Jericho, are you trying not to cry?” Auric’s voice softened. “You just lost your wife. I’m not going to think any less of you if you cry.”
Auric’s kindness smashed through the last wall of defense, and Jericho crumpled to the floor, weeping.
Once the dam broke, all control escaped him. He vaguely felt Auric’s arm around his shoulders, barely realized his head was resting on his friend’s chest like a heartbroken child hiding in his father’s arms. All that was real was the pain, the loneliness, the feeling of utter desolation. He’d been robbed, not only of Rill but of the last days with her, of the memories of those final moments. The Fey had tainted everything. He had nothing left.
“Why?” he choked out, even knowing what a pointless question it was to ask.
“My sister loved you so much.” Auric’s fingers tightened in Jericho’s hair as if he were attempting to hold him together. “More than anything. You’re her Jerry and nothing will change that, not even … not even this somehow.”
Jericho drew several deep breaths. He sat up and pulled away from the embrace. “She was your sister as well as my wife.”
“Don’t start. Take a moment. I can cry late—” Auric paused, staring past Jericho. “Jericho, can Jaspyr write?”
“Write? No.” Jericho turned.
The bronze fox had found Jericho’s stylus. With the metal rod clasped between his teeth he was tracing lines into the stone floor. Jericho stumbled to his feet and stared down at the markings. Clearly letters. “Apparently he can.”
I A M R—
Hope grew in Jericho like dawn breaking over the horizon.
I L L
“Rill?” Auric stammered.
The fox dropped the stylus and gave an exuberant nod.
Chapter Eighteen
Auric blinked several times. Jaspyr—Rill?—bounced up and down, continuing to nod and point to the “I A M R I L L” scratched into the floor with his—her?—snout.
“How?” Jericho whispered.
Closing his eyes, Auric sorted through his memories about the magic of familiars. “Well, Jaspyr is essentially a metal framework specifically enchanted to contain conscious Fey energy. I guess that means he can also hold a soul.” He opened his eyes and found Jericho on his knees, eye to eye with the metal fox. “I wonder if Jaspyr is still in there or if it’s just Rill now?”
“My guess, Jaspyr made room for both of them somehow.”
Rill-Fox nodded.
“Well, however, it works, we need to get out of here before the Soulsnatcher changes her mind and comes back here to finish us off.” Auric frowned. His emotions swung wildly between relief at his sister being alive and confusion over her current state. He forced them to subside. “Do you think she can get your stylus through the barrier?”
“Might be easier for her to just use it.” Jericho concentrated on the fox. “Rill, do you know how to do a barrier dispersal spell?”
Rill-Fox shook her head.
“It’s simple, only four symbols.”
Rill picked up the stylus with her teeth and held it at ready.
“Commencement symbol, diffusion symbol, disruption symbol—that one looks like two intersecting x’s—yes, that’s right.”
Rill worked through the symbols. They came out lopsided, but legible.
“Activation symbol,” Jericho named the last one. Rill finished the final stroke, and sparks shot across the lines carved in the stone floor. The barrier burst in a spray of golden dust.
Rill sprang into Jericho’s arms, nosing at his face and purring.
He clutched her to his chest. “This is not what I imagined holding you again would be like.”
The fox hung her head.
“No, sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.” Jericho fondled her ears. “I’m so glad you’re alive, Rill. We’re going to get you back in your body again somehow, though. I swear.” Rill nestled against him, her tail swishing.
Auric stared at the wagging tail, wondering if that was instinctive or if she knew she was doing it.
Jericho stood. “Well, how do we get out of here?”
Auric glanced at the hole in the ceiling. “I might be able to construct some sort of magic ladder.”
“Do you think there’s enough ambient energy left to do that after what Rill used to dismantle the barrier and everything the Fey was doing?”
Auric shrugged. Fey energy was finite but also hard to measure without proper equipment. “Can give it a go. Worst-case scenario: it doesn’t work but we’ve only lost time.”
“Yeah, or maybe … here, hold your sister.” Jericho passed him Rill.
Auric shifted uncomfortably as Rill’s glowing eyes met his. “You all right?” he asked.
She nodded.
Jericho strode to the pallet bed where the children had been sleeping and picked up one of the blankets. He tore it in two with a loud rip. “Enough here to make a rope.” He divided the blanket into several long strips then knotted them together. Craning his neck, he examined the edge of the hole. “I’ll need some sort of anchor to toss over the edge and hold it. A rock?”
Rill yipped and wriggled out of Auric’s arms. Taking one end of the rope between her teeth, she leaped onto a ledge on the rocks, then to another, narrower ledge, then another, until she scrambled over the edge and disappeared. A minute later she poked her head over the hole and barked.
Jericho put his weight against the end of the blanket rope. It held. He whistled. “Rill, you really are a brilliant little vixen.”
Auric groaned.
A few minutes later, he pulled himself out of the hole and lay on the grass.
Jericho, who had ascended before him, sat nearby, Rill in his lap. “It’s getting dark. We better hurry back to town and catch your mom up on things. Maybe she’ll have an idea how to get Rill out of Jaspyr and back into … well, Rill.”
Auric’s stomach clenched as he remembered his mother saying she didn’t know how to get the Soulsnatcher out of Rill’s body.
“Yeah, let’s get going.”
It was an easy enough task to follow the golden tracks still remaining from the earlier tracking spell. As the shadows overtook the forest, they concentrated on the path before them and kept a quick pace.
“What do you think the Soulsnatcher will do next?” Auric asked.
“Your mom said they could fit through small rifts. Assuming this one can’t open her own rifts, she’s got to wait for a natural one to form.”
“Those are hard to predict, though.” Auric scratched at his beard.
“Not really.” Jericho shrugged. “Your dad spent years tracking their location, strength, and frequency, after all. I bet I could estimate when and where one will open next within a few hours margin of error.”
“Yeah, well, so could I, but that’s because I’ve studied my father’s notes and the notes of magicians like him for years.” Auric scowled. “Do you think the Fey has access to any of that knowledge? It’s not like—oh!” He stopped mid-stride. “Remember what the Fey said? About how we’d make convenient vessels because we could get her into the Manor?”
Jericho’s frown deepened. “She’s going to use Hedward’s notes to find out when and where the next rift will open.”
“How does she know about that, though?”
Rill yipped.
“Rill’s memories.” Jericho shook his head. “Of course. She knows everything Rill knows which means she knows all about the day-to-day function of the shop and your father’s records.”
“And your love life, apparently.” Auric grimaced.
“Don’t remind me.” Jericho groaned.
Rill gave a low growl. “We better hurry. Chances are a rift will open sooner rather than later. We need to figure out when and where before she does and then we need to figure out how to stop her before she brings another of herself into this world.”
Even at their fastest pace, it was well after nightfall when they spied the lights of the village in the distance. The door to the Carver’s carpentry shop was unlocked. Inside, Lotta and Iris sat, heads together, over a pile of papers, bunches of herbs, and bits of machinery. When Auric entered, Lotta looked up, exchanged a glance with Iris, and giggled.
Auric’s face warmed. “What?”
“I was just telling her stories about when you were young.” Iris smiled. She cast her eyes over them. “Did you find anything?”
“Yes.” Auric swallowed. How was he going to explain this?
Somewhere in the distance, a baby’s faint cry echoed.
“Oh, they’re up again.” Iris stood. “Poor things miss their mother.”
Rill squirmed out of Jericho’s arms and bounded in the direction of the sound.
“Excuse me!” Jericho hurried after his wife.
Iris’s brow furrowed. “What was that about? Jaspyr’s acting off.”
“Yes, well … that’s not exactly Jaspyr.” With a deep breath, Auric launched into the tale. By the time he finished, both Iris and Lotta were staring at him, wide-eyed and open-mouthed.
Iris glanced in the direction of the hallway. “You … you mean … that was Rill?”
“I’m afraid so.” Auric sat at the edge of the workbench.
Iris twisted her braid in her hands. “Oh, the poor girl.”
“Do you think this is better or worse?” Lotta whispered.
“Better because we know where she is and can keep her close. Worse because I’m not certain how long a soul can live inside a familiar like Jaspyr, especially assuming Jaspyr is still in there somewhere with her.” Iris closed her eyes. “I don’t think there’s any precedence for something like this.”
“Yeah, even for us this is odd.” Auric’s shoulders slumped. He felt tired all over. Almost losing Rill, only to find her again, but not as herself—and he still had no idea how to fix this. “Did you come up with any ideas for getting the Soulsnatcher out of Rill?”
“Not a good way.” Lotta hung her head.
“I’m assuming that means you found a bad way.” Auric swallowed. “What is it?”
Lotta presented him with a labeled sketch.
Auric’s heart thumped. His mouth suddenly dry, he managed to croak out, “This looks like a revolver.”
“It is.” She reached under the table and pulled out an ivory-handled firearm. “It’s my uncle’s. He likes me to carry it when I travel alone, for self-defense. We can use it with a modified Fey-killing bullet, one laced with rosemary oil.”
“Which is deadly to this Fey, but only if it comes in contact with the actual essence of the Soulsnatcher, its own soul, if you will.” Iris put her hand on Auric’s shoulder. “It’s the worst-case scenario. We stop the Fey for good, but at a cost.”
“The cost being Rill?” Auric pushed away the paper. “There has to be another way.”
“We’re trying. We’ve gone over everything I know about Fey, but this one is particularly powerful. If not for the children and her plan to bring another Fey through the rifts to possess them, I’d say we could wait, but if we do it could cost those little ones their lives.”
“No, Rill wouldn’t want that. I mean, we can ask her, but I’m fairly certain she wouldn’t let two children die to save herself. That’s not who she is.” Auric rubbed his forehead to soothe a swiftly forming headache. “What are we going to tell Jericho?”
“I can speak to him,” Iris said. “There’s no easy way to break this.”
“It should be me. I know him better than you do. I’ll do it now. Putting it off won’t make it any easier.” He took a step towards the hall, but Lotta scrambled over the workbench and grabbed him about the waist. She pressed her cheek to his. He leaned against her, desperate for the comfort of her body against his. Setting his lips to hers, he kissed her for a long moment. “Don’t go anywhere,” he whispered. “I might need a hug when I get through with this.”
“You can have all my hugs.” Her breath tickled his ear, sending a pleasant shiver through him.
He released her and glanced at his mother.
“Up the stairs, first bedroom on the left,” she said without him having to ask.
“Thanks.”
The stairs creaked under foot as he went over what exactly he was going to say to Jericho in his head. Perhaps it was best to burst out with it. Get it over quickly. Jericho wasn’t likely to give up … and Auric wasn’t giving up either. He just needed Jericho to know what they were facing.
Pale candle light pooled through the doorway. Auric entered and found his friend standing over a large cradle. Jericho looked up and pressed his finger to his lips. Auric crept forward and stared into the cradle. The twins slept side by side with Rill curled up at their feet. She stared at her babies.
“Is she all right?” Auric whispered.
“I think so.” Jericho chuckled. “When we got up here, my mom was with them and tried to pull Rill out of the cradle. Rill bit her.”
Auric raised her eyebrows. “How’d she take that?”
“My mom? Oh, not well, but I told her I had it under control and sent her to back to bed. I didn’t feel like explaining … well, this.” He waved at Rill.
“She actually looks kind of happy.” Auric swallowed. His sister nestled closer to the babies, her tail twitching gently, and her eyes glued to them.
“Yeah, well, they’re her everything, you know.” Jericho gently stroked the cheeks of each twin in turn before petting Rill’s ears. “I almost lost all of them. I didn’t realize at the time Rill was in the same position. I’m not sure how conscious she was in that bottle, but I have to think if any part of her was awake, she was frantic to get back to us.”
Auric shifted from foot to foot. Maybe his mother was wrong and Rill’s soul could survive inside of Jaspyr. It wasn’t ideal, but she’d be alive. She’d be able to watch her children grow up, at least be near Jericho even if … well, that had to be awkward. Still, even if it wasn’t perfect, it was something.
“We need to talk.”
“I’m not sure I want to.” Jericho’s mouth pinched.
Auric let out a long breath. Of course. Jericho was smart. He had to be putting the pieces together. “You’ll be better off if this doesn’t blindside you, Jericho. Trust me.”
They stepped away from the cradle. The only other pieces of furniture in the little room were a rocking chair and an old bed with a sagging mattress. Jericho sat on the edge of the bed. Auric considered the rocker, but chose to remain standing.
Jericho rested his forehead in his hands. “Your mom doesn’t know how to get the Soulsnatcher out of Rill’s body, does she?”
“No.” Auric’s chest tightened. “How’d you—”
“Iris is proactive. If she knew a way, she’d have told it to us by now so we could get on with it.” Jericho shook his head. “I hoped that she’d have something figured out by the time we got back, but you standing here looking like an apprentice undertaker suggests otherwise.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Help me find a way to get my wife back in her body!” Jericho snapped.
One of the twins hiccuped, and Jericho’s mouth clamped shut.
“The Fey is planning to abandon Rill’s body soon in favor of Olive Cobb’s,” Auric whispered. “When she does, I’m not sure what happens to Rill.”
“And Olive Cobb will be in the exact same plight Rill is in now.” Jericho walked over to the crib and scooped Rill out. “You’ve been listening?”
She nodded. He placed her on the bed and sat beside her. “This is your life, Rill. I’m not going to make decisions for you.”
Rill climbed into his lap. She gazed up at him, e
ars flat against her head.
“We might have a moment when the Soulsnatcher transfers herself to Olive when you can …”
Rill yipped and shook her head.
“Yeah, not really fair to Olive.” Jericho pushed his hair back from his forehead. She stood on her hind legs with her front paws on his chest and nuzzled his face. “What are our options? Can we stop the Fey at all?”
“Lotta and Mom have devised a way to kill it.” Auric stared at his feet.
“But Rill?”
“It’ll most likely kill her, too … or her body, anyway. I don’t know what happens to Rill as she currently is.”
Jericho drew a deep breath. “Rill, I know this is your life, but there’s something I need to talk to Auric about alone. Will you trust me with that?”
She nodded.
He kissed the top of her head. “Stay with the twins. They need their mother.”
Rill slipped from his arms and across the room. In a single leap, she made the rail of the crib, then disappeared within it.
“Come on.” Jericho motioned towards the door.
Auric followed him down the stairs, through the workshop past the inquiring eyes of Mother and Lotta, and out into the dark yard.
The cool night air wafted around them. Jericho paced for a moment then let out a sigh.
“I can’t do it, Auric.”
“Can’t do what?” Auric cautiously stepped closer.
“Whatever your mother has planned, whatever the method to kill this Fey—I can’t. I know what Rill would want. She’s Rill. Self-sacrifice is in her blood. She lives to put others before herself: myself, you, the twins. That she’d die to save Olive Cobb is a given, but I can’t.”
“You don’t have to pull the trigger.”
“I don’t trust myself to let you do it either.” Jericho covered his face with his hands. “I know that creature isn’t truly Rill, but it looks like Rill, like the woman I said vows to, who I’ve made love to, the woman who gave birth to my children, who is everything to me. If I saw anyone, even you, about to harm her, I don’t trust that I wouldn’t just … kill them.”
Auric managed an anxious laugh. “Well, if you do kill me, I’ll try not to take it personally.”
