by K. C. Lannon
Iain ate the orange while he traveled. While the fruit was sweet and hydrating, he still did not feel satisfied. He couldn’t feel an ounce of satisfaction while he could still smell the faery’s fruit in his satchel. It pervaded his senses, nagging.
He hadn’t even noticed taking the fruit out of his bag. It was in his hand, and he’d stopped walking. He tried to convince himself he would just give in this once, that it wouldn’t turn into a problem like it had years ago.
Iain held it up to his mouth without realizing. His mouth watered. He could almost taste it, almost feel the relief it would bring. It would get him through the day, give him the strength he needed to keep going. It would help him reach James…
James. Remember James.
He thought of James for the first time since he’d taken the fruit, and disgust twisted in his gut. He couldn’t believe what he had almost done. He couldn’t believe how easily he had almost lost all his progress, how easily he could’ve fallen back into old habits—and while he still had a mission to complete, while he was still covered in Philip’s blood.
Iain scoffed at himself in disbelief, coming to his senses like stepping out of fog. “Yeah, that’s a brilliant move. That will get you credibility for sure.”
Without another moment of hesitation, Iain pulled back his arm and chucked the contaminated fruit into the field behind him with all the force he could muster. He was breathing hard, his heart pounding in his chest. He could still smell the fruit. The scent clung to his clothes.
It did not take him long to pick up on James and Deirdre’s trail. He found a campsite that was fresh enough to have been used last night, in a clearing with an old, abandoned vehicle.
The old London ruins are close to here. That’s where they’ve headed.
Iain saw a large mound of earth ahead of him. Peeking up from the other side were the dark silhouettes of old, decayed, and burned skeletal remains of old London. The bombing destroyed most of the buildings; those that remained had been claimed by nature, overgrown with plant life. He decided to go around the mound instead of over it, knowing it would take longer but not trusting that faeries had not inhabited the greener areas of the ruins. Iain set off toward old London.
Chapter Eighteen
It was a cloudless day, and though the cool breeze was persistent, the sunlight made up for it. Deirdre easily shrugged off any worries, her spirits boosted by the pleasant, crisp mood of the day. James asked her about everything she learned from Mother Superior about her family and the faeries. She answered honestly, save for when it came to Mother’s elf friend. She shared the story but told it like it was another person’s tale, like one of Mother’s neighbors.
Once James had stopped his discussion about faeries, she began to chat about the trees and plants they came across, comparing them to the ones she had gotten familiar with during her years of hiking and camping. She shared how she had gotten lost so many times that the Sisters had made her learn how to read the stars and maps to better find her way again and stay on course.
One Sister who was a known pessimist had taught her what she knew about foraging safely and had gotten a local man who sometimes did hard labor and odd jobs around the orphanage to teach her some basic hunting. The Sister reasoned that, even if Deirdre got lost for weeks or months, she’d still be able to survive that way. Mother Superior was less than thrilled but had relented when Deirdre proved an able and quick learner in these fields.
A few hours later as they continued their hike, the trees and vibrant fields fell away to almost entirely bare land, full of more weeds than any other plants, scattered with an increasing number of discarded vehicles, some of which seemed relatively new. Realizing they were close to the city, Deirdre kept her eyes dead ahead, curious to see what it looked like. She knew old London had been obliterated to a degree by the bomb, but apparently there were many ruins left behind, looking extremely old even though it had only been less than half a century.
Perhaps sensing her anticipation, James pointed to the rise before them. “We should be able to see it soon, over this hill.”
“Come on then!” Deirdre waved him forward excitedly, beginning to run straight up the small hill. He followed at an infuriatingly slow pace; she didn’t wait for him but charged right to the top.
The sparse trees that dotted the land behind them completely fell away. Before them lay the grey and black ruins of the city, stretched out farther than her eye could see. Some of the rubble was clearly old buildings, looking like they had been cut in half or had their top stories roughly torn away. But most of it blended together in a sea of jagged, giant ridges of stone and steel, casting shadows on the forsaken web of streets and alleyways.
Deirdre shook her head at the city. “What a sight. That’s hideous.”
James finally made it up the hill, and as he stepped beside her, the sound of crumbling dirt reached her ears. She looked around, confused; suddenly the ground beneath them shifted. She looked down just as the dirt between them split, the earth cracking wide open. There was barely any time to even yell in alarm before the ground completely caved, sucking them both down inside a dark hole.
Plummeting down, she screamed, wildly grabbing, hoping to somehow stop her fall, only to collide with the hard ground below. Her backpack broke her fall, and her curly hair cushioned her head just enough so it didn’t collide with the ground directly. But she was winded and lay there for several moments before slowly rolling onto her side, coughing.
Her gaze fell on James, who was already on his hands and knees, preparing to stand again—he had fallen on a pile of thick, discarded, filthy tarps and was white and shaking with shock, but uninjured.
After sitting up, she still asked, “You all right?”
“Y-yeah, the tarps…” He gestured to them. “I’m fine. Lucky they were there.”
Deirdre let out a short, delirious giggle. “Lucky for sure!” She looked around them at the darkness, illuminated only by the light far above them from where they fell. “What is this, some sort of cave?”
“No, look at those rails.” She followed James’s pointed finger slightly down the cave; they were partially broken and very rusty, but there were two thick rails spaced far apart, bolted down onto thick wooden planks.
“Railroad tracks?” she wondered aloud.
“The London Underground.” James gestured at the cave around them, a small grin appearing on his face. “We must have fallen into an outer tunnel of the old city!”
“Oh.” She scrunched up her nose at the darkness, then looked back up. “Well, let’s get out of here.”
He stared at her, looking up at the hole in the Underground ceiling, a good fifteen feet above them. “I-I can’t reach all the way up there.”
“Sure you can! We can pile up those tarps you fell on and get back up.”
He looked at the tarps and then at everything else in the area they had to use, slowly starting to shake his head. “I don’t know.”
“Oh, don’t be so pessimistic!” She pushed past him, grabbing the bottommost tarp, trying to drag them all in one go. They didn’t budge. Then she tried the top two, then was forced to pick up the topmost one. It was still immensely thick and heavy, and she grunted with the effort as she dragged it.
“Do you want me to help?” James asked when she was nearly finished.
“No!” She threw the tarp underneath the hole with a shout of exertion (and anger at the tarp for being so difficult). “See? We can do it!”
He didn’t reply, and after she dragged the second tarp and stacked it, her back was starting to hurt. Plus now that she looked at the two piled up, they really weren’t going to give them that much height. Standing back and judging, she realized that, even if she got James on top of all the tarps and gave him a boost, he still wouldn’t be able to reach the hole.
She slumped her shoulders in defeat. “I guess we’ll go through the cave.”
“Tunnel,” James immediately corrected.
“Yeah,
fine.”
After she pulled out her green torch, they began to head through the tunnels. Luckily, the path was mostly clear, and Deirdre first stuck to one wall, thinking that it’d eventually lead them to an exit. But as the minutes stretched on by and the tunnels led them through twists and turns, she began to wonder if they had already gotten lost somehow.
Of course, I have no idea where we’re going anyway, she thought with a sigh. She shone the light squarely in the center of the path, trying to forget the walls all around them.
The silence grew thick and deep, and desperate to break it, she asked, “So, James, you’re looking for your mum. What is your dad like again?” She remembered what he said yesterday about his father maybe tearing some pages out of a book and flinched; maybe asking about him wasn’t a good idea.
James leaped over a chunk of rubble haphazardly in the dark, straying ahead of her slightly. He kicked at a rock and sent it skittering across the ground. The sound echoed through the tunnel like a shout.
Deirdre was about to apologize for bringing it up when James suddenly said, “There isn’t much to know. He’s a general in the Iron Guard. That’s all I know about him anyway.”
“A general? Are there a lot of Iron Guard generals?”
“Just two, my father and General Windsor.”
She stopped in her tracks, sucking in her breath. “Is your last name Callaghan? Is your dad Alan Callaghan?”
James sighed. “So you’ve heard of him then? He’s a bit of a celebrity outside Neo-London, at least. He has been on the radio before.”
“I didn’t know that. He… he funds Trinity.”
James nodded like he already knew. “Yeah. I thought so.”
She bit down on her bottom lip. Her automatic impulse was to tell him everything. But they were related, and Deirdre felt she didn’t know how families worked, not really. What if James just came with her because his father told him to so he could find her and put her back in jail?
And James didn’t want to come onto the Trinity grounds, she remembered. What if it wasn’t because he was shy? What if he was scared that Mother might recognize him and that she’d know what he was up to? Ooooh, I don’t know! I believe his story about him going to find his mother… but still…
She let out a very loud sigh, which echoed back loudly all throughout the tunnels. It reminded her just how small the space was, and she shrunk down, holding the torch close, as if to make herself smaller.
“Did you meet him when you were at Trinity? He goes there sometimes to check up on everything.” James scoffed. “One time he did show us the boys’ orphanage. Iain tried to convince me Dad was going to leave me—” James inhaled sharply. “I’m… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to joke about…”
She didn’t even hear him; her mind was racing aimlessly, trying to decide what to do, and the walls around her just seemed to grow closer and closer in the darkness with each second.
Eventually James offered to hold the torch for a while. And he had no trouble shining the light all over the place; even though they had been here for a while, he still seemed quite interested by it all. Her skin crawled every time she glimpsed the ceiling or the walls, and the air began to get stuffier and stuffier. Soon she was fanning herself, even though James was still bundled up in his jacket.
“Why would they make this stupid tunnel so narrow here?” she whispered so it wouldn’t echo, glaring at the walls.
“It’s the same, it had to be, because of the cars that I was telling you about,” James said.
She looked back at him. “You were? Sorry… I didn’t hear you. I guess sound doesn’t travel well in a place like this. Or something.”
After a moment, James asked, “Deirdre, do you know anything about the London tube system?”
“Not a thing.”
“In that case, I… I studied the layout of old London, the blueprints and all. And these tunnels all had maps every so often inside them; we should be able to find one…” He trailed off, walking back the way they came in the dark, eventually shining the green light on a broad, old map in the wall. “Right here. I think we can use it to get out.” He looked at her, his eyes unsure, waiting for confirmation.
Her mouth fell open. “You knew these maps were here? Why didn’t you say anything ten minutes ago?”
“Well, I just figured… you seemed to know where you were headed—”
Deirdre rapped the top of his head smartly with her knuckles. “Even so! A map would have been useful! Next time just say something, all right?”
He immediately nodded, rubbing his head, muttering something about her being worse than his brother. Sincerely hoping he had learned his lesson, she helped him look for their location on the map, and they headed toward the nearest exit.
The first exit was caved in, so they went to the next, which was dark and dusty but wide open. Once they spotted the stairs leading up, Deirdre sprinted for them, wanting nothing more than to see the sky again. James kept on her heels at first, though she outpaced him up the three flights of twisting stairs. But at the top she screeched to a halt.
They were inside the old city. The ruined buildings surrounding them were but hollow skeletons of their former selves, either worn down or looming above like silent watchers. The streets were dusty, even though a light fog was rolling in, turning the sky white. The sun was still shining, but there was no way of telling where, exactly, its position was.
James caught up with her, taking a moment to recover before pointing at what used to be an elephant statue, saying, “We’re in south London. We’re… not too far off course.”
“Good.” She adjusted her grip on her backpack, looking at James. “Let’s get out of here as soon as we can. Are you ready to move?”
He raised a hand, saying, “Half a minute,” and then promptly sat down on a nearby, half-broken bench, still steadying his breath.
She was about to join him, but the distant sound of rocks shifting reached her ears. Looking all around, she saw nothing, save for the empty buildings and fog. It was completely quiet again, a big difference from the natural noise in the country and then her heart beating loudly in her ears underground.
“I don’t like this,” she whispered, slowly turning around in circles, looking for a sign of any movement.
James sat up straight, frowning both directions down the road. “Everything looks fine.”
“I heard something. I…” She bit her lip. The sound came again, rocks and pebbles moving. At first it was too quiet; it could have just been the wind. But then she recognized it: it was the same sound as someone walking down a gravel road. And it was getting louder.
Clearly hearing it too, James stood up, also searching, whispering, “Faeries don’t come out of the city center. And they don’t come inside the city. That’s what my father said…”
They kept looking, listening for what felt like nearly half an hour until Deirdre spotted a dark shape in the fog, headed toward them. She tugged on James’s sleeve to get his attention.
“What’s the best way to deal with evil faeries?” she whispered. “Do we run? Play dead? Or what? James?” She looked at him; he was staring, his face pale. But then he squinted, making out the figure.
“Oh, hell.”
Deirdre looked back, ready for anything—except to see Iain emerge from the fog.
She straightened, remembering her conversation with James in the tunnel. Iain Callaghan… how in the world did he find us? Even if James isn’t working for Alan, I bet Iain is… Or maybe James told Iain we’d be here? She glanced at James, suddenly feeling trapped.
Looking back at Iain, she caught her breath, noticing the blood splatters all over his jacket.
He didn’t seem to notice her; brushing past her, he ran up to James, practically slamming into him as he pulled him into an embrace. The younger brother, sputtering in alarm, shoved him away with as much force as he could muster. Iain stumbled back, seeming dazed, his eyes widening as he looked down and spotted the dark
bloodstains on his clothes as if for the first time.
James weakly lifted his hand as if to reach over and try to wipe the blood away. “Iain, you… you’re covered in blood!”
“It’s not mine,” Iain answered, his voice thick.
“Then, uh, whose is it? And why are you here, for that matter? How did you find us?”
Iain didn’t answer; his gaze fell on Deirdre, who stiffened, standing up straighter, squaring her shoulders.
He’s here because Alan sent him. He came after me… It’s just like Mother said.
He held out one hand to stop her, reaching down and pulling a pair of dark handcuffs off his belt with the other. “You step away from him, and you put these on. Got it?”
She stepped back. She was right.
With a bout of nervous laughter, James burst out, “What are you doing? Arresting her because I ran away?”
Iain’s face twitched, as if stung, but he still pressed. “So you’ve left of your own accord then? You’ve left Dad and me to worry about you for the rest of our lives?”
James folded his arms defiantly across his chest. “Like Dad would’ve worried.”
“When you vanish in the middle of an attack on the city, that’s the cause of some worry, yeah. Philip Prance was worried enough to go after you.”
Deirdre’s eyes widened and her hands flew to her mouth. An attack on the city? Everything was fine when we left! And I didn’t hear anything from the outside…
“The Fancy Prancer went looking for me?” James scoffed in disbelief, clearly finding the whole idea amusing. “Well, where is he then?”
“Philip is dead,” Iain said.
As if unable to stand, James sank gingerly onto the bench, shaking his head.
“The king is dead.” Iain thrust the cuffs toward Deirdre again, never taking his eyes off her. “You’ll find out all about it when we get back to the city. They think some faery was involved. She’s wanted as a suspect.”
