by Molly Ringle
They rose again, shouldering their packs. As they approached the cliff, a fast-moving cloud of smoke darkened the sky from their right, lightning and flame flickering at its fringes. Fear shot cold down into Merrick’s feet.
“Back!” Larkin said.
They dove beneath the cover of a marshberry bush on the riverbank. Lying flat on their fronts in the mud, they peered up through the wine-colored leaves.
Ula Kana and her cluster of supporters burned forward, obscuring the sunset with acrid smoke. They moved slower this time, searching. Ula Kana flung forks of lightning, destroying trees to reveal what lay beneath. “Tell us where they hide, swamp fae,” she called. “Send them out and perhaps I will leave your soggy grounds alone.”
Merrick’s heartbeat throbbed against his throat. He glanced at Larkin, who held still, his lips pressed shut as he watched through the leaves.
A jinn, his skin like an elephant’s and his ponytail a stream of fire, flew low, darting below trees at the edges of the swamp to peek under them. Along the ground bounded a redcap, each step of his booted feet carrying him twenty feet or more, sailing over the rivers. He soon drew close. He was taller than most humans, carried a double-edged axe, and wore a long cap the color of dried blood. His fangs, upper and lower both, extended so far he could not close his mouth. He slowed as he reached the patch of rocks where Merrick and Larkin had just rested, and sniffed the air.
Oh, please no, Merrick prayed. He heard Larkin’s shallow breathing; felt his tensed arm against his side.
A flick of Ula Kana’s charcoal-black hand, and a tree to their left went up in a whoosh of flame. Branches crackled and fell. Screeching water fae burst out and speared upward to pester Ula Kana and her cronies. Some attacked the redcap, who began swatting them with his axe.
A wet snort caught Merrick’s attention. In the stream, within arm’s reach, a kelpie had drawn near. It rested like a crocodile, just the top of its head above water, algae-green eyes fixed on them.
“Please don’t give us away,” Merrick whispered to it, hoping his voice wouldn’t be heard under the squalling of the fae. “Safe passage. Please? The dragonflies?”
It snorted again, and its eyes flicked to Merrick’s hand.
Before Merrick could grasp the clue, Larkin seized the half-eaten apple Merrick still held and tossed it into the water in front of the kelpie’s nose.
The kelpie chomped it down in one gulp, then lingered against the bank, still staring at them.
“Please,” Larkin echoed in a whisper.
It lifted more of its body so its back was above the water, gleaming wet. The trailing marshberry branches touched its ears. It just sat there, staring. Merrick and Larkin shared a bewildered shrug.
Badgered by water fae, Ula Kana and her allies moved farther along, past their hiding place. In another few minutes Larkin and Merrick might still be able to run for it and fly to the top of the falls.
Then a monkey-faery went hurtling straight at their marshberry bush, flung by the redcap’s axe. Tumbling and shrieking, it crashed across their backs, breaking branches, exposing them.
They looked through the newly opened space in horror and met the direct stare of the redcap. “Ula Kana!” he shouted. He loped toward them, hampered by the attacks of the monkey clan. Ula Kana swung around and beamed her furnace-glow smile.
Merrick and Larkin scrambled backward—Merrick had some vague thought of retreating into the swamp, since it had worked before. Then a cluster of dragonflies buzzed in. Some knifed toward the redcap and Ula Kana. The large one in front hovered before Merrick and Larkin and dipped its wing toward the kelpie, who still lurked in the water.
“It will carry us?” Larkin asked. “To Sia Fia’s land?”
Another dip of its wing.
“But the waterfall—how—” Merrick said.
“Pity’s sake, don’t ask.” Larkin leaped onto the kelpie with the assured movement of someone who knew how to mount a horse—the type of person Merrick decidedly was not. His legs immersed in the stream, Larkin reached for Merrick. “Come!”
The defenses of the water fae were failing. Ula Kana, the redcap, the jinn, all of them were getting closer each second. Ula Kana lifted her hand, and an electric tingle gathered around Merrick’s feet.
He flung himself onto the kelpie behind Larkin and wrapped his arms around Larkin’s waist, squashed against his backpack. The kelpie shot forward like an unleashed arrow, and in that second a lightning bolt cracked the ground where Merrick had stood. When he looked back, he could barely see a thing; all had become whistling wind and frothing water.
Kelpies posed as horses and lured people onto their backs and rode with them into the water, where they drowned them and ate them. He and Larkin could not possibly have improved their situation any. How was it better to die this way than by one swift lightning bolt? Even so, he felt it in Larkin’s tension as Larkin gripped the kelpie’s soaked mane, and in his own determined heart too: Ula Kana would not have the satisfaction of killing them. Never.
Water poured over them, hitting like needles, streaming so thick and hard he could barely breathe. They were rising; the kelpie had gone vertical so that Larkin had to hold on hard with hands and thighs, and Merrick had to hold on to Larkin. Climbing the waterfall. The kelpie was galloping up the waterfall, inside it. Merrick pressed his forehead against Larkin’s pack, framing a tiny space of air beneath his mouth and nose, though water kept spraying relentlessly into it. He tried to stop choking and hold his breath instead, telling himself they would have to reach the top soon—unless the kelpie intended to carry them underwater in the stream on the upper end and kill them there.
Drowning while clinging to Larkin wouldn’t be the worst possible demise, he thought, fighting for air, water surging into his mouth and nose, his lungs burning.
The water warmed as they climbed, growing almost as hot as a spa. Then they burst into the air, tilting to horizontal again. He and Larkin sucked in breaths, choking and gasping. The kelpie reared and threw them off. Merrick held onto Larkin, aiming to save their lives by flying if they were being flung off the cliff. But they thudded against ground.
Fire fae surrounded them, a circle of heat. Dragon-like salamanders and drakes of every size from garden lizard to alligator stood on their hind feet to peer at them. Fadas and sprites hovered in the air, holding torches. Will-o’-the-wisps bobbed in the feathery turquoise leaves of the trees.
Merrick and Larkin lifted their hands in surrender, dripping wet and coughing. The kelpie snarled something in the fae language to a fada in a wispy red silk gown, then plunged back into the river and disappeared.
The fada in the red gown drifted closer to regard Merrick and Larkin.
No Ula Kana. No jinn, no redcap. These were Sia Fia’s fire fae, Merrick suddenly realized, and he wanted to laugh in relief. They had made it.
Where the trees opened out over the cliff, a tangle of lightning and smoke smudged the twilight sky: Ula Kana’s cohort being driven back. Possibly Sia Fia’s fae were taking them on, in tandem with the swamp fae. Howls and crackles echoed off the cliff faces. But the local fae were winning, and a second later Ula Kana shot away like a comet, vanishing around the side of the cliff, surely in search of a different way in.
The fada in the red gown was only the length of Merrick’s forearm, hovering a few feet off the ground. She was the colors of a gas flame, her legs blue, rising to white in her stocky middle, then to orange in her frizzy hair and the twisted horns on her head.
“The kelpie says, ‘Take them and be done, I gave the filth safe passage as was agreed,’” she told them, her voice resonant and lilting. “What does he mean?”
Larkin rose onto his knees. “Good evening. We would never have trespassed upon your noble lands, but circumstances are dire. You have seen the disturbance Ula Kana has caused here, and she has done even worse in our world. We bring you gifts. We ask nothing in return but a night of sanctuary in Sia Fia’s celebrated realm, and her cooperat
ion in containing Ula Kana, by means we will explain if she will be so generous as to receive us.”
“Do you know dances?” she asked.
Merrick sighed. Fadas. Of course.
“Yes,” Larkin said cautiously.
“You will dance with us and share your gifts?”
“Yes.”
She rose up higher, looking proud. “Then come in. I am Sia Fia. Welcome to my realm.”
CHAPTER 30
ENCIRCLED BY THE CROWD OF FAE, THEY walked through the forest. The terrain was quite unlike the swamp: the river ran between stone banks, dry leaves carpeted the ground, and torches kept the air warm. Some burned on stakes stuck in the earth, while others hovered overhead between trees, as bare flames with no visible wood or fuel. There were hot springs in clearings too, burbling sapphire pools edged with multicolored mud, giving off whiffs of rotten egg. If they liked those kinds of smells, Merrick thought, his perfume gift wasn’t going to go over so well. But the turquoise-leaved trees had fluffy magenta flowers that wafted a sweet scent—some type of mimosa, he guessed—so maybe the fae enjoyed pleasant fragrances too.
Another outcropping of rock loomed ahead. The fae led them around it, and on the other side Merrick and Larkin stopped in wonder.
When people romanticized faeryland, Merrick thought, they imagined some place like this.
They stood within a towering crescent of rock walls, the mimosas inside it forming natural Gothic arches, a lacy mask for the sky. Hundreds of flames and will-o’-the-wisps twinkled in mid-air, from ground level up to the highest limbs. In the central clearing stood a giant cone of white rock spraying steam and water into the air. Mineral deposits from the geyser glittered like diamonds all around its base.
In the rock walls were countless little caves holding glimmering lights: a thousand cozy rooms, each inviting a visit. Spots to recline were scattered all about under the trees: hammocks of silk rope, flower-strewn fur rugs, bench swings that hung by magic in the air. All had room for more than one occupant, and indeed many were already taken by pairs, threesomes, or larger clusters of fae. The warning Sal had given them about Sia Fia’s realm and its usual interests appeared to be true.
Sia Fia turned to them, her scrap of a gown fluttering. “You are weary and dirtied from your travels. Please allow us to show you to a cave to wash and change, then we will summon you for the midnight revels and feast, and you may speak of your errand and present your gifts.”
“You are most kind,” Larkin said, and Merrick echoed the words in a murmur.
It didn’t surprise him that the fae brought the two of them into a single cave room with one bed—or rather, one heap of rugs and silk, smoothed into bed shape—and didn’t ask if they might prefer separate quarters. Just as well. They could better keep an eye on each other’s safety this way.
Sia Fia flitted away with her entourage, leaving Merrick and Larkin alone. The cave’s mouth had no door; it was covered only by vines of morning glories in crimson, yellow, and orange. Outside, the fae’s chatter mingled with the songs of evening birds.
They set down their packs. Merrick walked to the back of their cave, where a little waterfall emerged from a hole and tumbled down into a stone ditch, which ran into a secondary torchlit chamber and then out through another hole below the floor. In that chamber a dung faery crouched by the ditch, giving a hint as to the function intended there. Dung fae looked like fist-sized lumps of deer droppings with housefly legs, and smelled bad if you got close to them, but at least they didn’t seem to do anything other than crawl around and nibble waste off the ground. The torches lighting the cave burned with a hint of incense, sweetening the air, mingling pleasantly with the wet-rock smell.
Merrick put his finger in the waterfall. “It’s warm. These must be the hot springs near Pitchstone Mountain.”
“Yet it’s the property of fire fae rather than water?” Larkin answered from the first chamber. “It surprises me somewhat.”
“The springs are driven by the volcano, so yeah, I guess that’s the territory of fire.” He flicked the water off his fingers, wandered back into the first chamber, and felt his eyes widen.
Larkin was naked except for his socks, which he was peeling off. He tossed them onto the heap of wet clothes on the ground and opened his pack. “I do hope some clothing in here stayed dry. Did we wrap all of it sufficiently?”
Pecs and knife-edge collarbone thrown into relief by torchlight. Strong legs with a natural fur of hairs. V-lined abs leading the eye to everything that hung loose.
“Yeah,” Merrick made himself say. “Put it all in plastic bags, I think. In case of … kelpies.”
“Ah.” Larkin opened a bag and retrieved a pair of underwear, which he stepped into. “I suppose we can rinse today’s clothes and they shall dry in this warmth.”
A pleasantly desirous sensation took over Merrick’s thoughts. He let it. It felt far lovelier than the fear and grief that had been devouring him all day. He stripped off his T-shirt and came forward to drop it on the heap. “Good idea. I’ll add mine.” He unzipped his jeans, then paused with them slipping down his hips, and playfully pushed Larkin’s bedraggled hair off his bare shoulder. “Suppose we got washed well enough on that ride. Might want to check our hair for water-weeds, though.”
Larkin looked up. His mouth curved into a curious smile. “Quite. And no leeches upon you, one hopes? Turn. Let me see.”
Merrick turned, his heart tapping hard, his lips flushing as hot as the air above the torches.
Larkin’s hand skimmed across his shoulder blades. “More feathers,” Larkin said. “The lightest dusting of blue. They’re soft.”
“On my chest too.” Merrick trailed his fingers across his chest, where the blue bits of down mingled with his black hairs.
“No leeches that I can see.” Larkin spoke the words closer, his lips brushing the side of Merrick’s neck. “Although I cannot see all.” Larkin’s fingers traveled down, slipped into the waistband of Merrick’s undershorts, and caressed his hipbones.
Tipping his head back, Merrick shut his eyes—then snapped them open. He grabbed the lucidity vial around his neck, sprayed his chest, and inhaled.
His head cleared. The wave of lust receded; not entirely, but enough to show a WHAT ARE YOU DOING?? message scrawled to himself.
He turned, took Larkin’s vial—the only thing other than underwear Larkin was wearing—and sprayed him on the chest too.
Larkin looked confused, then inhaled. Then he gave Merrick a startled glance and stepped backward.
“It … probably got washed off in the waterfall,” Merrick said.
“Aye.” Larkin grabbed a dry shirt. “The … enchantments in this realm are surely powerful, as Sal warned. Best to be cautious.”
They made no eye contact and didn’t speak further, busying themselves with changing into clean clothes, squeezing out the muddy ones under the waterfall, and spreading them on the rock floor to dry.
Still, the lucidity potion only gave Merrick the wherewithal to keep his hands and innuendoes to himself. It didn’t do a thing to make Larkin less alluring. Because that feeling didn’t come from any artificial enchantment at all.
CHAPTER 31
THEY WERE SUMMONED BY A FADA AFTER A short time and reentered the clearing. The number of flowers and twinkling lights seemed to have doubled, and now that night had fallen, Larkin found the effect of the countless spots of glowing color even more bewitching. Fae lounged on swings or played in the spray of the geyser, their lights changing the water’s color around them. Others sang from high in the rocks, a primordial, wild sound, like wolves or tree frogs or owls, but transformed into a hypnotic melody.
Sia Fia’s realm felt, in short, like a magical nighttime festival, which one shouldn’t attend wearing T-shirts, baggy trousers, and bare feet, the way Larkin and Merrick had.
“Might we be underdressed?” Larkin asked Merrick.
“Maybe, but we didn’t bring anything formal.”
I
nquiring as to dress and setting his mind to the task of winning over Sia Fia was far preferable to mulling over what he had almost done to Merrick in the cave. This territory’s enchantment was terrifyingly strong. Not since his teenage years had Larkin possessed so little self-control and let himself be so driven by ill-advised amorous intent. His only consolation in his shame was that Merrick had seemed to fall prey to the allure as well. That, indeed, was a flattering thought—all the more reason he must not dwell on it.
A red glow bloomed above them: Sia Fia descended, surrounded by will-o’-the-wisps in all the colors of fire.
“Young humans,” she greeted, coming to a floating halt at eye level. “What do you ask of us?”
“Powerful friend,” Larkin said, “your realm borders the Kumiahi desert, the volcanic lands favored only by a few creatures, including Ula Kana. When I was freed from my unwilling slumber a few days ago, so alas was she, and since then she has wrought nothing but harm to fae and humans alike. We come with the mission of containing her again for the good of all. Not asleep this time, but awake and free to roam, only within the Kumiahi and nowhere else. To secure its borders we would ask your magical assistance, along with that of Arlanuk and Vowri, the others whose territories border the desert.”
Sia Fia uttered a throaty laugh. “Their cooperation will be hard to obtain indeed. I wish you luck of that.”
“Our task is by no means an easy one. Nonetheless, we bring you gifts, and we hope that together we might accomplish this aim.”
“What gifts are these?”
It was Merrick’s turn. “We have three. First, this crystal, imbued with magic by Rosamund Highvalley, the most talented human witch in island history. When you awaken its magic, it will enhance your pleasure tenfold.” He presented the egg-shaped rose quartz.
Sia Fia took it, rubbed it against her cheek, and purred like a cat. “Oh, this will be fine. What else?”
Merrick opened a crimson velvet box, displaying a glass bottle with a silver cap and a label reading Silver and Lunacy in sepia handwriting. The fae pulled closer, interested. “I create perfumes with my sibling,” Merrick said. “I’ve selected one of our finest for you. We’ve chosen this art because we love the pleasure that scent can bring people.”
