by Tara Maya, Elle Casey, J L Bryan, Anthea Sharp, Jenna Elizabeth Johnson, Alexia Purdy (epub)
“Do you remember the three questions I asked you, that afternoon in the swamp?”
Cade’s words were calm, soothing, as if the simple cadence of his voice could win my trust. It was working.
I nodded, swallowing before speaking, “If I had heard voices or seen strange things, if I had ever had premonition dreams, and,” I paused and looked up at him, his now gray eyes calculating, “and if my eyes had a habit of changing color.”
He nodded and looked away. “All traits of someone with Faelorehn blood.”
I let that digest for a moment, and then asked, “What exactly does it mean to be Faelorehn? And what do you mean, I’m immortal?”
Was it like being faelah? I hoped not. He had called those creepy little creatures that had attacked me and the corpse hounds faelah; surely to be Faelorehn meant something else entirely.
“The Faelorehn are the people of the Otherworld, the books and fairytales would call them fae, or faeries. We look very much like human beings, but as you know our eyes never settle on one color, we have heightened senses of the supernatural, and when we have visited the Otherworld for a length of time, our gifts become stronger in this world. It’s almost like a battery Meghan. When we spend too much time here on earth, our powers are drained and we must return to the Otherworld to recharge.”
“We?”
Cade picked up a stone and threw it into the ocean. It went far further than it should have been able to go with the force he had put behind it.
“Yes, we. You and I. We are both of the Otherworld; both Faelorehn, both destined to live forever if disease or violence doesn’t claim our lives.”
I had kind of already surmised that, so it wasn’t a surprise to me. I moved on to other questions. “If I’m from the Otherworld, then why am I here? Why did someone abandon me in the middle of Southern California when I was so young?”
Cade cringed next to me. “I have a theory,” he said. “I believe you are either the daughter of someone very important and they felt the only way to keep you safe was to send you far away. Or,” he paused, casting me a softer look. “Or, you were unwanted, and there was no place for you in Eile.”
Something in that second option must have had some significance to Cade, because he sounded almost pained by it; more pained than he should have sounded as someone simply delivering bad news. I wondered if he had ever been unwanted himself and my heart opened to him.
He sighed. “The only way to tell for sure would be to bring you to the Otherworld and try to discover your origins. But that is not an option right now. It could be dangerous, especially since you have no knowledge of the Otherworld.”
“Can you teach me?” I asked, terrified and curious at the same time.
He turned and grinned. “Yes, to a point, but not today. So, tell me what you discovered from your research.”
I started out by mentioning Fergus, since his current absence made me think of him.
“I read that Otherworldly animals are white with red ears. But,” I thought about the other supernatural creatures; the gnomes, the Cumorrig, the raven . . . “not all the creatures I saw were white.”
Cade nodded. “Fergus is a spirit guide. He is connected to me. Spirit guides are hard to find, but they remain attached to their Faelorehn companion for life. When the ancients saw an animal that was white with red ears, they knew it was Otherworldly because spirit guides are able to do things normal animals can’t.”
I tucked that information away: white animals with red ears were Otherworldly spirit guides.
I continued to tell Cade what I had learned about the Celts and their deities. He nodded, waiting for me to finish before he spoke again.
“Unfortunately, with our kind not everything is as it seems. The Otherworld is very similar to this one, parallel you could say, but on a different dimension; linked together but not dependent upon one another. We have plants and animals and everything you might find here, but our people are capable of shifting between the worlds. The Faelorehn and the faelah can come and go between this earth and the Otherworld, but human beings and the other denizens of this planet cannot enter our world.”
I nodded, letting him know I still followed.
“Long ago, our people first discovered a way to enter into this place, through the dolmarehn. Many were built, both here and in our world. We discovered the relative weakness of humans and unfortunately, the most powerful of our kind exploited that weakness. They are the ones who cannot be killed, and they became gods and goddesses to the ancient people of northern Europe.”
This made sense, if any of it could make sense. I had seen science specials on T.V. that tried to claim aliens were responsible for building the pyramids, so why couldn’t the Faelorehn have slipped into our dimension and impressed early humankind with their supernatural strength?
“Someday I’ll show you the dolmarehn that I most often use, but not today. The Otherworld is a dangerous place Meghan, even to one who belongs there, and if you don’t know what to expect, it can kill you.”
That sounded daunting. The small bits and pieces of the Otherworld I had seen in this world were terrifying enough. I nodded severely, letting Cade know I concurred. The last thing I wanted to do was go wandering around in a strange place full of various faelah.
Cade was silent for a few seconds, then he turned and looked at me. His skin took on the golden hue of the sun as it fell further towards the horizon. Some well buried instinct tried to coax me into reaching out and touching him, but fortunately my better sense squashed it before I made a fool of myself. Honestly, what had gotten into me?
“Are you well?” he asked.
I screwed my face up into an expression of confusion. Had he known what I had just been tempted to do?
“With all of this, I mean. I have just told you that you are a being from the Otherworld, that you do not truly belong here.”
I simply nodded, unable to come up with a good response.
He shrugged. “Some people would not take it as well as you seem to be taking it.”
“No,” I finally managed, “it’s a shock. To be honest, I don’t think it’s quite settled in yet. I still expect to wake up from some strange dream.” I grinned and cast him a sideways glance. “I have lots of those, you know. Strange dreams.”
He smiled and seemed to relax a little.
We watched the sun set before we got up to leave. The young couple was still there, but everyone else had left. As we headed back up the Mesa, I thought long and hard about what Cade had said. It made sense, in a perverse, twisted universe sort of way. If anything, it explained all the visions I’d had and all the voices I’d heard my whole life. The upside: it meant that I wasn’t crazy. The downside: it meant I wasn’t human. The mere thought made me light-headed. I wondered if I could come to accept that.
Cade’s Trans Am rumbled up to the front of my driveway just as twilight was settling in. He put the car in neutral and got out to open the trunk. He handed me my backpack.
“I’ll be in touch,” he said. “There are a few errands I have to do; a few things I need to take care of in the Otherworld.” He ran his hand through his thick hair again. A habit, I was beginning to realize, when he was worried about something. I found it endearing.
“We’ll talk more about this when I return. Don’t be afraid to use the oak tree again, and I’ll ask Fergus to keep an eye on you.”
I smiled, a warm glow spreading through my stomach.
Cade climbed back into his car and closed the door. “Oh, and Meghan,” he said, calling out to me through the passenger side window, “one other thing you should know,”
“What’s that? I’m a long lost princess?” I joked as I hiked my backpack up onto my shoulder.
Cade grinned and shook his head, “No.”
I waited. Finally he took a deep breath and spoke, his voice hardly audible over the rumble of his idling car, “Stay away from the swamp as much as possible, and don’t trust anyone who claims to be Faelorehn.
”
He gripped the steering wheel and gazed straight ahead, past the broken barbed wire fence and the sign that read Dead End where our street met the horse path several yards away. “They know about you now, and I don’t yet know what they might want with you.”
I blinked, wanting very badly to ask him a dozen more questions, but he’d been sitting there for a while and his car was loud enough to draw attention from inside the house. The last thing I needed was a barrage of questions from curious family members.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out something attached to a thin leather string. He threw it through the window and somehow I managed to catch it.
“Keep that on your person at all times,” he said.
I examined it. It looked like a wooden bead with some sort of ancient rune burned into it. “What is it?”
He smiled again, “Mistletoe.”
I arched my eyebrow at him. Was he flirting with me? I felt my face flush.
“We Faelorehn use it to ward off evil spirits. The same way some people might wear garlic to frighten off vampires.”
Nodding, I slipped it around my neck and tucked it under my shirt.
“Goodbye for now Meghan. When I get back, I’ll tell you more of what I know and perhaps even teach you how to defend yourself against the faelah.”
I took a step back and he shifted into gear. I watched for a while as his dark car disappeared around the first bend of our road, and listened until I could no longer hear its soothing rumble. Sighing, I walked up our short, sloping driveway and tested the front door. It was unlocked. The house was noisy as usual, with Mom making dinner and the boys attempting to do their homework, but failing miserably.
“There you are!” Mom proclaimed after testing the marinara sauce she had on the stove.
“Yeah, sorry. We had more research to do than I thought,” I lied.
“Uh huh,” she said, giving me a rather knowing look.
Confused, I said, “Bradley gave you my message, right?”
“Oh, yes, he gave me the message, but,” she cast my father a glance. He was engrossed in the local news station, so she looked back at me, smiling. “I’m not surprised your research took longer than expected. From what I saw, I can’t say I blame you.”
For about ten seconds I was completely flabbergasted. What on earth was she talking about? Then I glanced through the window over the sink and realized that she had had a clear and unobstructed view of our driveway. I turned beet red.
“No, but, we really . . .” I stammered.
My mom laughed, then grabbed my elbow and pulled me deeper into the kitchen. “Oh come on! He was cute. What’s his name?”
“Mom,” I grumbled, completely mortified and eternally grateful my brothers couldn’t hear us, “we were studying for an English assignment, really. It’s not what you think.”
Oh, if only she knew how far off the mark she was. But I couldn’t tell her any of what Cade and I had discussed. She wouldn’t believe me and it would only lead to more treatments for my insanity.
“Okay honey, if you insist.” She winked and I grumbled something about more homework on my way downstairs.
I tried to get my homework done, I really did, but I couldn’t stop thinking about everything Cade had told me. How did one come to terms with the fact that they weren’t human? And what if I had been abandoned, unwanted by my real parents? Although my family loved me dearly, and I loved them, there was something painful about the knowledge of being cast aside by those who had created you to begin with.
I shivered. Maybe I had been wanted and had been sent to this world for my own protection. But if so, why had there not been a note of explanation and why hadn’t anyone come to find me and tell me? No, I was sure I had been unwanted, for my birth family would have sought me out by now and I wouldn’t have been discovered by some random Faelorehn guy tripping over me while trying to do his job.
Mom called down to tell me dinner was ready, and doing my best to compose myself, I went up and joined my family, feigning normal once again. I was good at it, after all.
That night as I lay in bed, contemplating the shambles that was currently my life, I wondered when I’d see Cade again. He had dropped a bombshell on me; there was no doubt about it. Immortal? Otherworldly? It was too mind-boggling to consider. I couldn’t even imagine living for all eternity. The very though scared the crud out of me.
As the sounds of the day wound down and the silence of night fell over me, my mind continued to whir in thought. I needed to know more, so much more. I felt like a beginning swimmer, thrown into a stormy sea infested with sharks, barely able to keep my head above water. I pulled the mistletoe bead from beneath the old t-shirt I had put on before bed. The rune that was burned into the surface of the smooth wood was black and harsh, but it felt warm in my hand. Sighing, I tucked it back away, wondering if I would see more faelah the next day.
After hours of tossing and turning, I finally fell into a troubled sleep, terrified of what the future might hold. High school was hard enough, but I couldn’t imagine what it was going to be like now that I knew I was definitely not like everybody else.
-Thirteen-
Attacked
A week passed before anything bizarre happened, and even then it wasn’t much. Cade had stayed away like he said he would. I hadn’t even seen him posing as Hobo Bob in the mornings or afternoons. Even when I happened to glance up from my homework in the dark of night, hoping to spot an enormous, ghost-like dog just outside my door, I was left seething in my own disappointment.
That was when I would remind myself that my only interest in Cade was purely an educational one: he knew the answers to my lifelong questions, and I simply wanted to know what those answers were. Doesn’t help that he’s built like a pro athlete, a voice in my head whispered. And he seemed pretty interested in you, if you ask me.
Don’t listen Meghan, another voice said, you can’t trust him. How do you know he isn’t making up all this Otherworld nonsense in order to pull the wool over your eyes?
Then the voices started to argue and I threw my math book across the room in frustration. It was a pretty bad sign when the voices inside your head started fighting with one another. I’m not sure what degree of crazy that made me. Regardless of what tricks my conscience was playing on me and whether I believed Cade had an ulterior motive or not, I needed to leave all options open until I had definite proof of what was true and what wasn’t.
School that week was the same as it always was: the slow, grueling gauntlet all teenagers are forced to crawl through in order to pass on to adulthood. I was really quite surprised to learn that Adam and his friends seemed to be taking Cade’s words to heart. I half expected to open my locker Tuesday morning and find some ominous threat, but as the week progressed, the worst I got from him and his cronies was a rude hand gesture or a nasty scowl. Sometimes I imagined they were planning revenge; quietly waiting until all signs proved that the guy with the black sports car was gone for good. Now I had another reason to wish for Cade to come back.
It was on my ride home the following Monday, exactly one week after my talk with Cade, that I noticed the raven again. Robyn was dropping me off at my house and my mind was still too caught up in thoughts of my unusual identity and the young man who had revealed it to me to notice anything out of place.
“Hey Meg, what’re you doing Saturday?” Robyn asked through the passenger side window.
I shrugged. “Sleeping in hopefully.”
“Want to go to the old post office in Halcyon with us? We were thinking about getting some Christmas shopping done.”
I thought about it for a moment. The Halcyon post office was one of our local hidden gems, an old mail building turned gift shop from when the town was first established about a hundred years ago. Although it still functioned as a post office for the small community of Halcyon, it also offered an eclectic collection of incense, chimes, home-crafted jewelry and apparel, independent books and, to Robyn’
s delight, plenty of artifacts that appealed to her more unique tastes. And, I thought as Robyn awaited my answer, it will give me a chance to do something other than wonder when Cade is coming back . . .
I shrugged my backpack further up onto my shoulder. “Sure. What time were you thinking about going?”
“We’ll pick you up at ten.”
I grinned and waved Robyn on, watching as her car puttered around the corner. It was then that I spotted the raven out of the corner of my eye, sitting on a high eucalyptus branch. If I hadn’t known any better I would’ve sworn it was whispering to something clinging to the side of the tree. Wait, I did know better. The raven was from the Otherworld, I knew that for certain. That meant it was at least as intelligent as Cade’s dog. A memory surfaced then, something I had read during my research. Something about the Morrigan and ravens . . . Ah, that was it. One of the Morrigan’s symbols was a raven. Could this bird belong to a Celtic goddess? I snorted. Now that was a stupid thought. That would mean that a goddess was interested in me. No, it just had to be another Otherworldly creature, drawn to my Faelorehn presence.
Doing my best to drive away my sudden nervousness, I narrowed my eyes and watched the large bird. The creature it ‘spoke’ to looked somewhat like a squirrel, but its tail was more like a rat’s and its face was, in a word, grotesque. Strange, I didn’t even notice that it was bright red until after I observed those other details.
I blinked and suddenly found two sets of eyes upon me; the raven’s dark red ones and the demented squirrel’s yellow ones. Shivering, I clutched my binder and spun on my heel, walking up my driveway as swiftly as possible.
* * *
I didn’t see any other strange Otherworldly things for the rest of the week and on Saturday morning Robyn pulled up in her small car with Tully.
