by Molly Ringle
A lightning bolt stabbed down, its noise a physical blow through Larkin’s body. It cracked apart a water-oak barely fifty feet from them. The tree split into three pieces, which groaned as they crashed into the swamp. The smell of scorch stung Larkin’s nose.
A space opened in the canopy above, and in the sky hovered Ula Kana. Near her in the smoke bobbed her cronies, the flying fae who had chosen to side with her or had been swayed into it by her powers. Larkin took in little detail about them. He could not draw his gaze from her black eyes with their volcanic threads of glowing orange. Trembling, he drew his sword.
She paid no attention to him at first. Instead she smiled at Merrick. “Is it true? This is the witch who freed me? I would be grateful, if he were not speaking so vengefully.”
“Don’t answer her,” Larkin said.
“Sal,” Merrick said, not taking his eyes from Ula Kana. “Get away.”
Sal moved back toward the verge a few steps, then stopped, standing as tall as her frame allowed.
The swamp fae, meanwhile, arose in defense, outraged at the destruction of the tree. They screeched insults at Ula Kana in the fae language—Larkin knew only a little of it, but enough to grasp the message. Dragonflies hurtled upward, turning themselves into needles to stab the eyes of the enemy fae. Ula Kana’s forces scattered amid howls of pain. But she waved the dragonflies aside with hardly any effort.
She continued studying Merrick. “But he is half fae. Could I not influence him?” She reached out a sooty hand, flames glimmering at her fingertips. Larkin and Merrick jerked backward, but not fast enough. A thin rope of fire seared through the air and touched Merrick’s forehead, then vanished, leaving a glowing trail that seemed to thrum as if alive. Merrick went still.
Ula Kana beamed. Her teeth were the seething, glowing orange of a furnace. “Why, yes, I can a little. How interesting.”
Merrick stared at her, motionless, though his arms twitched and his jaw tensed.
Even the lucidity could not entirely guard against her, then. Larkin’s body went hollow with fear. He hauled Merrick in front of him, holding his sword across Merrick’s chest, and shot magic into Merrick to boost his strength. Merrick took a startled breath.
“You shall not have him,” Larkin said. “Go back to your fire realms, Ula Kana. The rest of us don’t want you.”
The water fae shrieked in agreement. A group of monkeys sprouted wings and flung themselves at Ula Kana’s companions. Locked pairs of fae tumbled out of the air, breaking branches and thrashing in the swamp as they fought.
Ula Kana, however, remained untouched, and even drew closer, immobilizing several of the nearest water fae through fire-lines that flicked out to ensnare each of them. “The prince as well! My partner in the tedious sleep. Do you remember when you last saw me, little Lava Flower? When you were too afraid to climb, to save your lover?”
Shaking, he clamped his arm tighter, holding Merrick to his chest, and pulled him backward. They splashed into the swamp, their shoes filling with water and mud.
“Leave,” Sal urged. “Run. The water fae will keep her off.”
Larkin dragged Merrick away. Merrick awakened more as their distance from Ula Kana increased. Together they struggled up onto a log.
“And who is this?” Ula Kana looked to Sal, sounding bored. “A traitor. Pity. She does have knowledge, however. That’s useful to me.” Her fingertips lit up again with flame.
“No!” shouted Merrick.
Larkin seized him again. They both nearly toppled into the water, reeling on the log.
Sal twitched one ear at them and gave a gentle nod.
A rope of fire streaked from Ula Kana’s fingers to Sal’s face.
Sal closed her eyes. A mist formed around her, then she simply … crumbled. She became a heap of earth, shaped like herself for a moment, which then fell to pieces onto the wet ground. The water soaked into the parts, absorbing them into the swamp.
Larkin and Merrick stared in horror. Had Ula Kana destroyed her?
But Ula Kana looked surprised as well, then laughed. “A faery who would rather return to the elements than join me? Pathetic.”
“Sal,” Merrick screamed, struggling in Larkin’s arms.
A roar rumbled up from the swamp, and the kelpie broke the surface and reared its giant, dripping hooves at Ula Kana. She pulled up, startled, then bared her teeth and reached out to subdue it with her power. But she was outnumbered: the rest of the water fae, in all their forms, surged forth against her. The kelpie reared up again, unbowed and rebellious. Steam hissed as fire clashed against water.
Larkin dragged Merrick away from the melee, and though Merrick kept looking back, his eyes wild, he came along.
Keeping to the cover beneath low branches and bushes, they pushed on until the sound of the fighting faded into the sloshes of the swamp.
Soaked to the thighs, muddy, insect-bitten, and shaken, they finally stopped to rest on a relatively dry patch of ground beneath a willow. They emptied the water out of their shoes and squeezed out their socks. The shoes were thin “trainers,” comfortable for the street but inadequate for a swamp. They’d been unable to provision anything better upon short notice. Larkin made sure the galangal root was in place in his water bottle, even though the water had come from the human realm, then took a drink and offered it to Merrick.
Merrick ignored the bottle. He stared ahead, eyebrows lowered, greenish mud smudging his face. “You’re an exo-witch.”
Larkin set the bottle on his knee. “Yes.”
“After all those anti-witch speeches you gave up and down the country.”
“One can’t help the powers one’s born with. I choose not to use mine, most of the time. But I can heal and protect you on this journey, if I’ve the strength, and I will.”
“Meanwhile I can’t do a thing to help you.”
“Of course you can. We shall look out for one another.”
Merrick wrung out his socks again.
A squirrel-like animal leaped from one branch to another. “When we addressed the swamp fae,” Larkin said, “and something flew away, I suspect that was a spy of Ula Kana’s, who alerted her and brought her upon us.”
“Sal thought the swamp fae would defend us. Some did. But even among them, there are spies. They could be anywhere. We’ll never be able to do this.”
“We can but try.” Larkin picked a scrap of water-weed off the side of the bottle.
“I almost got brainwashed already. Within the first five minutes. Even with lucidity.”
“But you didn’t. You fought it.”
“Because you protected me. And she was barely trying. I could feel her, in my head. Probing in my thoughts, my secrets. Seeing what she could use.”
Larkin shivered. “It’s what makes her a horrid enemy. But you did escape. As did Sal, in her way.”
Merrick’s eyes dimmed, and he looked down at the coffee-brown water near their feet.
“It’s far better that Sal chose what she did,” Larkin added gently, “than that she should fall under Ula Kana’s sway. And she’s not gone, not the way a human would be. She’ll be reborn.”
“But I won’t be able to find her. And she won’t know me.”
“She might, a little. They say their folk are sometimes drawn to the same souls after rebirth, that loyalty and fondness can linger, even if memories … do not entirely.”
It offered little in the way of consolation, and Merrick did not answer.
Larkin rolled up his trousers to ensure nothing had latched upon his legs in the water, then plucked at Merrick’s wet cuff. “Do be sure you haven’t acquired leeches.”
Merrick dragged his hems up to the knees and brushed his fingers across his skin. “She said you’ve seen her before. The attacks in Dasdemir, I assume.”
Clearly the she was now Ula Kana, not Sal. “Yes.”
Merrick absently stroked the black hairs on his leg, his chin on his knee. Larkin offered the water again, and this time Merrick accept
ed it and drank.
After taking the bottle back, Larkin clasped it between his hands. A bird with webbed feet sat before them, dunking its beak into the water. “She had captured Boris, the day they attacked the palace. When I jumped through the window and landed in the courtyard, she was there. High in the sky, with her … fire-tendrils wrapped round him. His clothes were afire and he was writhing in agony.”
Larkin did not turn, but in the edge of his vision he saw Merrick look at him.
Larkin stared at the bird. “She told me, ‘Come up and get him. Perhaps if you climb to me, I will release him.’ She was above the battlements, five stories high, and they had smashed part of the nearest tower. The staircase was still intact, somewhat, but the outer wall was gone. I dragged myself to it and began to climb. But I had broken my ankle in the jump from the window, and was bleeding all over from the glass. And the stairs … ” Larkin swallowed against his tightened throat. “It was a spiral stair, and many stairs were broken, especially higher up. With only the inner wall still intact, and the fall becoming more dangerous the higher I crawled … ” He paused to breathe.
“She wasn’t going to release him,” Merrick said in quiet anger. “She was just torturing you.”
“I shall never know. My legs refused to move any further after the second story. I clung there; I could do nothing, I … could only watch as she let go of him. Let him fall.” Larkin shut his eyes, then opened them again. The eerie swamp was a kinder view than his memories.
“If she already had him, you couldn’t have saved him.”
“I want to destroy her. For so many things she’s done. Yet we have been in the wrong too, have we not? Using their land in ways they don’t like, failing to honor deals. I had said so, publicly, many times, taking their side as it were, and still … still she did this to me. To so many.”
Merrick flung a stick into the water. The bird fluttered away. “Why is she like this? I know some fae don’t want humans on the island at all, but to wage war like this, so relentlessly, without even attempting a deal … ”
“What she claimed, when she arose from the elements, is that humans are invaders who shouldn’t be here, and she is the force who restores proper balance to nature. She was often compared to goddesses of destruction, those who start wildfires or volcanic eruptions, causing death but cleansing the earth and opening the way to the renewal of life.”
“But she hates us. She doesn’t want us renewed; she wants us gone.”
“Quite.” Larkin slid the bottle back into his pack. “She may spread her influence to others like a wildfire—which, thankfully, few can—but unlike a fire, she’s sentient, and turns her power squarely against us.”
“I’d say it makes no sense,” Merrick said after a few moments, “except human genocide and other crimes are just as mindless. She must think she’s the hero. Doing it for love of the island.”
“I cannot bring myself to call it love.”
“No. I can’t either.”
“Her mind cannot be changed; it’s how she’s made. But although it’s in a tiger’s nature to devour us, and perhaps we cannot blame the creature for it, we should nonetheless put up strong fences between us and it if we’re sensible.”
Merrick scraped mud off his trouser legs with a stick. “You don’t have to go through with this. You’ve faced her enough for one lifetime. You could get out now, leave the country. I would understand.”
“I will see this through. I must. I tell you what she did to me only so that you know why I do it. I can’t bear to think of her causing anyone to feel what I felt that day. We can have harmony between humans and fae—Rosamund was right upon that point, and proved it with the truce—but we cannot have it with Ula Kana flying free. Nor with leaders like Riquelme in charge.”
Merrick dragged his wet socks and shoes toward himself. “Then we keep going.”
CHAPTER 29
AS THEY SLOGGED THROUGH THE SWAMP, slapping at mosquitoes and warning each other of snakes, Merrick examined every fae creature who alighted on a branch or bobbed up from beneath the water. Could that be Sal? Or that? Or that? The desperate game kept him from giving up hope altogether.
No one seemed to agree on how long it took the fae to be reborn. Some said it was instantaneous. Some said they swam as invisible energy among the elements for days, months, years, before taking a new form. The form was their choice, he knew, but he had no idea if the amount of time it took was also up to them.
She wasn’t gone, as Larkin had said; yet to him she likely was, and that would have grieved him enough. But for her to be gone because of him, because he had played carelessly with magic and set loose all this misfortune …
Merrick swatted hanging lichen out of the way. He would probably die in here. He deserved to.
His foot slipped on a log, and he would have splashed into the muck again, but Larkin caught him by the backpack to stop his fall.
“Thanks,” Merrick muttered.
“My pleasure.” Larkin’s tone was gentle. He had been like that since they lost Sal. For of course he understood.
Imagine how Larkin felt, Merrick reminded himself. First to have to watch Ula Kana kill his beloved, all the while blaming himself for not being able to save him, then to have his anguish ignited again by witnessing her return and her latest string of murders.
Maybe Merrick and Larkin were the wrong choices entirely for this mission. They were too damaged.
He halted and scowled around at the curtains of lichen, twisted trees, and submerged logs, all extending as far as he could see. Which wasn’t far, in a landscape like this. “How do we even know we’re going the right way?”
“We’re going upstream. We’ve been consistent in that. It should lead us to the hills.”
“Are we even sure water flows downhill in here?”
“I … have never heard otherwise.”
A winged frog plopped out of the water, landed in front of Merrick’s soaked shoes, and glared at him.
“Um,” Merrick said. “Hello. Could you please tell us if Sia Fia’s realm is that way?” He pointed in what they had been taking for upstream. “The dragonflies let us in.”
He didn’t know if the frog would speak, though on their way through the swamp some fae had been talking to each other in their own language, of which he knew little. The tongue was difficult for humans to learn. Most fae weren’t willing to teach it, and those who were kept telling humans they weren’t using it right, and eventually gave up.
The frog shot out its tongue to catch and eat a mosquito. It swallowed, in a bubbly bulge of its whole body, then said in a croak, “The hills. Sia Fia lives in the hills.”
“And the hills are that way?”
“Upstream. Naturally.”
“Are the water fae still battling Ula Kana?” Larkin asked.
“Sent her away.” The frog snagged another mosquito. “She flies in a rage around the edges of the swamp. Means to kill you.”
Sickened though not surprised, Merrick nodded. “At least that’s keeping her out of the human realm.”
“Go then. Get your foul feet out of our home. Disturbing our peace. Feh.” The frog made a rude sound, then leaped off the log and disappeared underwater.
Merrick exchanged a glance with Larkin, and they trudged onward.
Because he couldn’t stand any longer to replay Sal’s death in his mind, Merrick asked Larkin about his youth—what it was like to grow up as a prince in the 1700s, what he liked to do back then, what the king and queen made him learn. Larkin dredged up answers, reluctant at first, but gaining in animation when Merrick’s modern-era confusion amused him: “What even is contra dancing?”
Larkin in turn asked after many of the puzzling things he had observed in the modern day, and Merrick did his best to explain: “Sexting? My dad told you about it?”
The sky above faded to a sunset gold. The water picked up speed, eventually forming a proper stream with banks they could follow. A low, constant roar grew as
they walked, the sound of rapids. A good sign: they must finally be approaching the hills. At last they broke free of the swampy forest.
Before them rose a waterfall, ten times higher than the tallest trees. It poured over a black cliff, an outcropping that stretched far to each side. Clouds of mist, farther along to left and right, signaled other waterfalls.
Their map had not included this obstacle, and all Merrick could do was stare in dismay.
“Well, we’ve reached the hills,” he said. “But I don’t see how we can climb them.”
“Perhaps we can go around these steeper faces and find a more gradual ascent.” Larkin glanced at the sky. “But it will be dark in another hour or two.”
“Yeah. We’d hoped to reach Sia Fia’s realm by night.”
They set down their packs in the mist-soaked jumble of rocks and ferns beside the waterfall’s pool, opting to eat before deciding how to proceed. To avoid being seen from overhead, they stayed under a tree. Grief pinched Merrick’s heart at the smell of Sal’s house, preserved within the pack and rising to his nose when he opened it: bread, rosemary, old books, earth. He owed her a memorial perfume after this, if he survived. Chewing an apple, he observed a troop of black-and-white monkeys lounging on the narrow ledges beside the falls, their long tails hanging in curlicues. They kept an avid watch on Merrick and Larkin, likely interested in their snacks.
“I suppose I could fly us up there,” Merrick said. “It would be heavy with our packs, but it wouldn’t take long. I could manage.”
“It may be the best option.” Larkin plucked a macadamia from a plastic bag and ate it, eyeing the cliffs along either side. “These rivers and fall-pools will be difficult to cross. It would be slow work to move either direction in search of a gentler path. And more difficult the darker it becomes.”
“We could camp here for the night and try in the morning, but … ”
“No. Too exposed. In addition, one night could turn out longer in the human world than we would like.”
“True. Ula—she could do a lot of damage in that time.” Saying her name, out here in the open, felt unwise.
