“I did, too. I’m so glad you and I have gotten to be friends.”
Holly set down her brush and swiveled to face Tabby. “So am I. I mean that. I used to think you were—no offense, but I used to think you were a little arrogant. You always seemed like you were above everyone else and certainly too good to be bothered with the likes of me.”
“Oh, no, never, Holly!” Tabby shuffled nearer to the small girl, set her crutch aside, and took hold of Holly’s hands. “It was never like that. I just didn’t understand you. You and your mother both. You had these powers, and it intimidated me. You were always this exotic bird, and I was only a common crow. I didn’t want to know you better. I shunned your company, but it was never your fault, even though I'd convinced myself you were to blame. You, who were always calm, like your mother, so confident. It took me a long time to realize it was jealousy and my own insecurity. I struggle with the same feelings when it comes to Brint. I think you saw that today. With Brint, it’s a little easier—he’s my twin, so we've always been close—but if he'd have been a twin sister instead of a brother…I don’t think our relationship would be the same.”
Holly scooted over to make room on the bench for Tabitha to sit beside her. “I wish we'd have talked like this a long time ago.”
“I wouldn’t have been ready,” Tabitha said softly. “It took coming here to make me see.”
“You're probably right. You still don’t see yourself the way we do, though, and I hope that changes. You're not a crow, Tabby. I could only dream of being as pretty as you are.”
“My brother seems to think you pretty enough,” Tabby said.
Holly blushed and looked down at her feet. “Your brother is…very special. I wish…”
“What do you wish, Holly? If it's within my power to help you, I will.”
“Nothing. I'm being silly.”
Tabitha decided not to press. She didn’t want to ruin the moment by pushing too hard, not when she and Holly were getting along so well. Instead, she changed the subject. “Did you have time to study the prophecy today? I know you said you were planning to when you took it with you this morning.”
“No, not yet. I still have it in my cloak. I can put it back on the table, if you want to have a try.” Holly reached into her cloak and had the scroll half out of the inner pocket when Tabby put a hand on her arm to stop her.
“Keep it. I’ve looked at it until my eyes have crossed, and I’m right where I was when I started. It seems like it should make sense, but it …doesn’t. Go ahead and hold onto it for a while.”
Holly returned the scroll to the depths of the hidden pocket. Tabby saw a fleeting look darken her face and assumed Holly was no more eager than she to wrestle with the strange document which seemed to block their attempts to unlock its secrets at every turn.
The sound of raised voices came through the windows, immediately drawing their attention. This place was typically one of quiet and contemplation. The nosiest thing they'd heard since their arrival was the clang of swords when Brint and Logan practiced. There was a frantic pounding on the front door. Holly rose to open the bedroom door so they'd be able to hear better. Tabitha took hold of her crutch, rose unsteadily to her feet, and joined Holly.
It was Liam. His face was soot-streaked, and his cloak was singed at the bottom. He didn’t even wait to be greeted before he spoke. When he did, Tabby noticed his voice sounded rough, having taken on a coarse, croaking quality. “There is fire in the forest.”
Logan had been the one to admit him, and he was the one who spoke now: “Have the women gone to put it out? Is there anything we can do?”
“You do not understand!” He coughed harshly and grabbed the doorframe for support. “It is not natural. More fires are springing up faster than we can put them out, and there is a fell wind pushing them this way. Also, there are strange beasts in the wood, like wolves, but not. They are black, but nearly hairless, except upon their faces. The Etrafarian wolves flee before them without offering resistance.”
He paused to cough once more. Brint tried to bring a chair for him, but he waved it away.
“Tell us what to do,” Brint said as he scooped up his sword and tossed Logan’s to him.
“I do not know. We must get the fires under control or we will find ourselves burned out. Those Etrafarians with control over water are fighting the flames, even now, and the air Etrafarians do what they can to push the fire in the opposite direction. We could use your help trying to find the cause.”
The men nodded to one another and were already moving.
“Logan!” Tabitha called out.
“Tabby, stay here as long as you can. If the fire starts getting too close, I want you to make your way down the main path to the ocean. Only use the main path—I don’t want to have to come looking for you. Take your sword, and for Rah’s sake, be careful.”
“You, too.” She hobbled forward and kissed him quickly before releasing him to his task.
“Holly,” Brint said, “stay close by, and if things get out of hand, go with Tabby. She may need your help.” Brint was turning to go, but Holly surprised everyone, flying at him, throwing her arms about his neck, and kissing him with a fierce intensity. When she released him, he stood rooted to the spot with a bemused look on his face, and Logan had to physically take hold of his arm to get him moving.
Tabitha hobbled to the door, and she and Holly could only stare. Thick smoke was beginning to wend its way through the village, and the heavy smell of burning trees was already starting to sting their eyes.
“I’m going out there,” Holly said.
“I don’t know; do you really think you should? They did tell us to stay put.”
“Brint said to stay close by, and I will. I only want to see if there’s anything I can do to help. I can at least stop any stray embers that might spring into something larger. I will not go far, I promise.”
Tabby worried, but Holly was making sense, and as long as she didn’t leave the immediate area, she could, indeed, do some good. It was then Tabitha realized Holly was staring at her, and the same expression she had worn in the bedroom had returned.
“What are you thinking, Holly?”
“I just remembered something. Be right back.”
Tabby watched Holly slip back into their bedroom. She closed the door, and Tabby wondered what she could be up to, but after only a few moments, the door opened again. Holly came out bearing pieces of cloth. She handed Tabby a length of the material that she recognized as the same deep blue Holly had used to make her a skirt. She wasn’t sure what Holly meant for her to do with it until she saw her take her own piece of cloth and wrap it around her face like a sort of scarf.
“It isn’t much,” Holly said, “but it might help with the smoke. If it gets too thick, soak the fabric in some water. If it's more than smoke, and you find yourself surrounded by fire, you would do better to put the wet cloth over your head and not your mouth. Breathing through a wet cloth when there is serious heat would likely do you more harm than good.”
“How do you know all this?” Tabby asked, a little surprised by Holly’s impressive display.
“Are you kidding? Did I or did I not grow up in the household of Daniel, Weapons Master of Maj? I was bound to pick up something, even if it was never meant to be a weapon.”
“Don’t be too sure about that—knowledge is its own weapon,” Tabby said, praising her friend.
Holly pulled Tabby into a tight hug. “I will always be your friend, Tabby. Do you hear me? Always.”
“I know, Holly, and I yours.”
Holly looked as though she was going to say something else, but she must have changed her mind, for in the next instant, she dashed from the building. Tabby tried to watch her progress, but the smoke made it nearly impossible. As a matter of fact, the smoke was growing dramatically thicker. She saw no flames, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there, lurking just out of view behind a curtain of white and brown haze.
Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad i
dea to head toward the ocean now. Why hadn’t she thought to have Liam bring the horses? She wasn’t exactly light on her feet, and though the ocean was relatively nearby, it would take a lot of limping and stumbling to get there. Oh, well, Liam was gone. In the time it would take her to find the horses, she could be halfway there. For all she knew, they'd been set loose to protect them from the spreading fire.
Tabitha scribbled a hasty note that read simply, “ocean” signed with a capital T, adjusted her crutch, tightened the scarf around her face, and closed the door behind her. She could see only her immediate surroundings, no more than ten feet in any direction, except when there was a sudden wind shift when things would clear for a moment. The wind would change again, and all was lost once more. It was as if the north wind and the south wind were locked in some sort of violent wrestling match.
The main path to the ocean came into view. At least, she thought it was the main path. There were several paths, and she had only been down it twice before. Once when she first came, and the second time only this morning, when they'd all gone done for a swim. All the trails would take her to the ocean, but the main path was wider and smoother and came out near a sheltered cove. The other paths led to the cliffs that, she was told, gave a beautiful view of the open ocean. She missed the ocean, and while the little cove was pretty, the larger view of the sea was hidden from sight by the natural formation of the island which wrapped around the spot like two hands held in prayer.
She started down the path. Yes, this was it, wide, smooth, and firm under foot. A streak of gray in front of her caused her to cry out. When she did, the animal froze. It was one of the Etrafarian wolves. Its ear was torn and bloody, and there was a deep gash on its hindquarters.
Tabitha held perfectly still. These wolves were not pets, not even a little bit. They were wild animals that helped the handful of Etrafarians with whom they could communicate. Tabby held no illusions they would see her as anything other than a nuisance at best and a snack at worst. This wolf seemed to decide on the former, and it continued on with little more than a sniff in her general direction. Its back leg dragged behind it when it went, and she had a moment where she considered following to see what she could do for the poor creature. “Tabitha, you idiot,” she said aloud. “You would probably only get a nasty bite for your efforts.” She laughed nervously at her own foolishness and concentrated on keeping to the path.
After ten minutes, her throat was raw and her eyes were burning. She wished she had taken Holly’s advice and wetted the fabric before she started out. She continued to plod her way along, but the path seemed to be growing narrower, and did there seem to be a lot more rocks than there had been this morning? Another few minutes passed, and she admitted to herself that this was definitely not the main path. She considered turning around, but she could see the smoke thinning up ahead. “Come on, don’t give up now,” she said to herself. “Mother hates a coward.” She adjusted her crutch and kept going.
She was vaguely aware of the sound of yelling up ahead, but it was hard to know how far away it was. Suddenly, three more Etrafarian wolves broke from the brush. She screamed again, but this time they didn’t even glance her way, and they never broke stride. She was starting to get a horrible feeling in the pit of her stomach. She was all alone there, on the wrong path, where no one knew to look for her, and wolves were fleeing from something. Was it the fire, or something else? Liam had mentioned black wolves. She shuddered at the thought. “Stop it!” she yelled at herself, but the silence that followed her shout was so oppressive, she dared not speak out loud again. Instead, she kept going.
Finally, she saw the end of the trail, but it was not at all that she had been hoping for. The Etrafarians had not lied—the view was beautiful, and to a people with the ability to float, a sixty foot drop down the side of a cliff probably didn’t seem like something worth mentioning—for Tabitha however, it was the end of the road. She first looked left and then right. She could try walking in one of those directions to see if there were a way down, but when she looked over the edge, she could not see anything in either direction that appeared promising. “Great, just great.”
There was a splashing noise, and she looked down the beach toward the sound. It was a boat! Where had that come from? She scanned further out and sure enough, there were two large, black ships, anchored behind a towering rock formation that stuck up from the ocean floor like a giant, reddish hand. Had she not been looking, she probably would have thought those ships no more than part of the rock’s shadow. The small boat was drawing nearer to the shore. Tabitha wasn’t sure why, but she was afraid. She held perfectly still. They were close enough to see her, but if she didn’t move, maybe she wouldn’t draw their notice.
The boat scraped bottom and four figures emerged. Two were obviously Etrafarian, for they floated to shore, not even getting their toes wet as they went. The two others were much larger and were dragging the craft onto the sand. They were huge! Oh, dear Rah! They were Breken!
“Hurry! Hurry!” she heard one of the Etrafarians call out. She thought he must have been talking to one of his companions, but then she saw her. Holly was running in the direction of the boat. She had her skirts hiked up around her knees as she ran. As soon as she jumped into the boat, the fairies were beside her, and the two Breken shoved the craft back into the surf.
Tabby was almost too shocked to breathe. Then, as the boat was being rowed rapidly away, she saw two things almost at once. From one direction came five or six of the black wolves, but there was no way these were any kind of natural wolf. Calling them wolves would be like calling mermaids fish. They had leathery, cracked-looking skin, and their eyes were milky white, as if they were blind. Their lips pulled back from long, dagger-like teeth, and they issued throaty growls that gave her goosebumps, even from this distance. The second thing she saw was Brint. He came bolting onto the sandy beach, sword in hand, with hardly more than a cursory glance at the approaching wolves before running to the water’s edge.
“Brint!” she screamed at him.
He paused and looked up at her on her rocky perch. She saw his look of indecision as he locked eyes with her and turned back to face Holly.
The line of wolves on the beach was spreading out, putting themselves between Brint and any means of escape, and that growling—that hideous growling! It was almost as though they were right next to her.
“Tabitha!” Brint shouted back in her direction.
She felt the blood drain from her face. She reached slowly to her waist for her sword and realized she had left it behind. From her left and her right, she heard them coming. Saliva dripped from their mouths in stringy ropes, and they crouched low as they drew nearer.
“Tabitha!” Brint yelled to her. “Use your crutch!”
She steadied herself on one foot and held the crutch out before her, pivoting as best she could and swinging wildly as the animals drew steadily nearer. Out of the corner of her eye she could see that she now had the attention of the wolves on the beach below. If she fell or was foolish enough to risk a jump, they'd be waiting for her. One of the wolves leapt, and she swung the crutch with all her strength, connecting solidly. It hit the ground with a satisfying thump, but just as quickly, sprang back to its feet, shook its head, and began to growl once more.
“Tabby!” Brint screamed, and this time she heard the fear in his voice.
She had initially lost sight of the tiny boat in the chaos, but now she could see Holly standing up, watching her with a look of utter horror on her face. The wolves were gathering for a combined leap, and she knew there was no way she would be able to stop them this time. She closed her eyes, not wanting to see it when it came. Maybe it would be over quickly. Rah, she thought, if you are there, I want you to know that I hoped to meet you one day, I was just hoping it wouldn’t be so soon.
She felt the weight as it slammed into her full force, but there was no searing pain of teeth ripping into flesh—instead, she was flying. She opened her eyes to fi
nd herself wrapped in Logan’s arms. He had been the one to slam into her, carrying the two of them over the side of the cliff to safety.
Down below, the wolves jumped and snarled, trying to reach the prize that had been snatched from them.
“Brint!” Tabitha called down to her brother. He looked at her, smiled, and dove headlong into the water. With long, fluid strokes, he swam in the direction of the boat.
Over and over she screamed his name, but he did not slow. The rowers, however, had stopped, and when he reached them, they pulled him aboard and set out once more.
Logan was floating her up and away from the beach and the snarling wolves. She was so distraught, she actually fought him as she screamed Brint’s name. It wouldn’t occur to her until much later that Logan had done the only thing he could. They couldn’t go down to the beach, for the wolves were waiting, and even if Logan had the strength to float them all the way to the retreating boat, what then? But reason would not come until later, right now, all she could do was scream.
Chapter 34
She remembered hearing that terrible, shrieking scream and wishing it would stop, but it kept going until she thought she would go mad from it. She had lost sight of the sea. Logan was carrying her through the woods, and still, the screaming followed them like a vengeful spirit. Smoke hung in the air all around them, but it was no more than the leftover echo of the fires which had been quenched. The fairies had done their work well. Tabby thought she would have been able to hear the squelching, sucking sound of the mud as it pulled at Logan’s boots, but that cursed screaming prevented her from doing so.
When they got back to the village, she saw that the wooden structure, where the four of them had lived, was still standing. Embers had burned a few black spots into the beautiful wood, but it remained mostly untouched.
Logan elbowed the door open and set Tabitha in one of the chairs before hurrying out the door again. Where was he going? Didn’t he hear that incessant cry? Maybe that was it—maybe he had gone to put an end to it for her. That would be nice. She would like to rest, but how could she with that screaming?
Prophecy (The Destiny Series Book 4) Page 29
