by James Fahy
“Secondly, I have spoken at length with this boy.” She looked to Jackalope. “He has told me everything. Where you went. Why he left you.”
Robin's eyes flicked to Jackalope, whose silvery eyes shone in the firelight. Irene seemed to read the question on Robin’s face. “Yes, he has been perfectly candid with me about his past deeds.” She glanced down at the mask in her hand. “I could not truly believe it. And so he consented for me to view him with this curious device you have unearthed. This relic of the elementals.”
She looked back up to Robin, beckoning him away from the door and into the room. “I have seen his past with my own eyes. He believes himself a murderer,” she said. Her face was unreadable. “He is wrong,” she concluded simply after a second.
Robin was confused. Jackalope wasn’t looking at either of them.
“He believes he killed his brother,” Irene said. “With all of his heart. But he did not.”
Robin stared at Jackalope. “I knew you couldn’t have killed your own brother,” he said, almost accusingly.
The hornless Fae glared at Robin. “This old woman is wrong,” he said. “Whatever you saw through your magical mask. I know what I did. He is dead, and it is because of me.”
“Be quiet please,” Irene commanded. “Erlking does not accept cold-hearted killers to its bosom. This matter must be settled here and now.”
She took off her glasses, letting them rest on their long chain around her neck. “You left my nephew, and the others, on Briar Hill, consumed by shame. They had seen what the banshee revealed. The dark secrets you hold in your heart. You left not because you wanted to, but because you felt you did not deserve to stay. You blame yourself that much. To live a life of isolation and penance? That much is perfectly clear. You left to protect them from yourself.” She sighed, as though the boy were exasperating. “You are not the monster you fear you are, Jackalope. Hardly any people truly are. In many ways, you are … broken. But things can mend, eventually. Few things in this world or the next are ever truly beyond repair.”
“Why did you come back?” Robin asked. “You’re no coward, Jack. That much is obvious. You saved my life from that centaur. I would have been ground to a pulp.”
“I told you already, and I have told your guardian the same,” Jackalope said defensively. “Your knife! Your stupid dagger. It is haunted. Always it was dragging me in circles, straining to get back to you. It was like a dowsing rod. I tired of it. I thought if I followed where it led … well …” He shrugged. “It would lead me to you eventually, and I could return it. Be done with it, and the rest of you. How was I to know you'd be in the middle of a battle with nearly every centaur in the Netherworlde?” he scowled. “I should have learned my lesson back when I followed you into the Undine's hidden valley. Wherever you step, trouble follows, Robin Fellows.”
Robin eyed the seated Fae carefully.
“You could have just thrown it away,” he said.
Jackalope glared at him.
“It would seem,” Irene said quietly, “that your old tutor, Mr Phorbas, does not like to lose a student. He is still, in many ways, very much still with us.”
She looked at the grey headed Fae, her face softening somewhat …not with pity, Irene was not the kind of person to whom pity was a useful emotion. With kindness perhaps, Robin thought.
“Shall you tell Robin how your brother died?” she asked him. “Or would you prefer me to say what I saw in your memories? Which is easiest for you?” She placed the mask gently on the table by the knife.
Jackalope said nothing. He stared away from them, into the fire. Rain thrummed on the windows behind the thick curtains.
“Very well,” Irene said softly, clasping her hands before her. “The camps of Dis are a place of misery beyond understanding, Robin. Jackalope here knows that all too well. He grew up in their desolation and hopelessness.” She looked over to Robin. “Many lived and died in those camps. Fae and rebellious Panthea alike. Robbed of their dignity, of their humanity.” She glanced at the tattoo on Jackalope’s forearm, the branded numerals. “Robbed of their names even. Reduced to numbers, reduced to … things. This is how Eris and her kind win a war. They take away everything worth fighting for. Freedom, love, even, eventually, hope itself. It is how they break you.”
She sat slowly, opposite Jackalope, in her own chair, still looking at Robin. “It is not enough for the overseers of the camps that Fae are simply captured and held. They must be broken, body and mind, and most importantly…will. So that this race can never again rise up in rebellion against Eris.
This is the purpose of the camps of Dis, the hills of blood and bone, as they are known. They are factories for destroying hope. For taking apart your soul piece by piece. The jailers are cruel, and they are most … inventive … are they not, Jackalope?”
The boy did not reply. He stared still into the flames, his jaw working.
“Any camaraderie amongst the prisoners is stamped out, Robin,” she explained. “Familial bonds, love? It is worked on and worn down, destroyed, bit by bit. The jailers hate it. You see, love makes people strong. People, when they care about each other, are a dangerous force, and Eris knows this all too well.” She sighed.
“You and your brother, you kept each other sane, in that place, didn’t you?” she said to Jackalope. “All the years you were there. All the inhumanities thrown at you, you could always bear them … just. Because you had one another. Strength they could not break, no matter how hard they tried.”
“He was strong,” Jackalope whispered hoarsely, still looking at the fire. “I was not. He protected me. I needed him. I was nothing but a burden around his neck, a snot nosed kid to worry about, as though he didn’t have problems of his own. He never showed that though, not once.”
“No doubt because he needed you too,” Irene said. “Keeping you safe, having someone to worry about. I do not doubt that it gave him strength, and the determination not to be broken like so many of the other prisoners.”
“But he died,” Robin said, his own voice barely a whisper. “What happened in there, that makes you think you are a murderer?”
Jackalope still said nothing. His hands were on his knees, bunched and his pale knuckles were tight as cords. He still did not look at either of them.
“As I have said,” Irene told Robin. “The jailers of the camp were … are … inventive in their cruelty. There was one tradition, Robin, a vile sport for their own entertainment, known as the wild hunt.”
Jackalope stiffened a little.
“What’s that?” Robin asked.
“A simple enough concept,” Irene explained “Designed with the sole aim to pit prisoner against prisoner, to break down any friendships suspected of forming, any bonds in the camps which needed pinching in the bud.” Irene sighed. “Two prisoners would be loosed into the wild. Like animals. Given a shot at freedom, or at least the illusion of one. The jailers would then give chase, hunting them down for fun, and the cruellest part was this … whichever of the two prisoners was captured first would be killed on the spot as punishment. The other, the one who evaded capture longer, would merely be cast back into the camps. They would even receive preferential treatment as a kind of reward for winning the game. Extra food rations.” Her eyes were narrowed and thoughtful. “Though even this was designed to cause resentment amongst their peers of course.”
She looked at Robin. “Do you see the wickedness in it?” she asked. “However fake the chance of freedom may have been, no one ever actually escaped during these hunts. One was always killed, the other always recaptured. But still … there remained the slimmest possibility, the smallest sliver of faint hope. May this time they would be the one who got away.”
Robin imagined two prisoners who had become friends in that dark and fearful place, drawing comfort from one another, strength, their companionship making the hell of the camps bearable. Suddenly pitted against one another. Competing for the impossible.
“Fear and desperation mak
e people do such questionable things, Robin. People who, in other circumstances, might be good,” Irene said. “It was not uncommon, during these hunts, for the friends to turn on one another, to hobble or incapacitate the other, so desperate were they to escape. Even knowing their ally would be killed when caught first.”
Her mouth was a hard line. “This is the world Eris creates for her enemies. She casts down her apple between friends and sets them at one another’s throats like mad dogs. There was never any winner in these games. The loser dies, brought down like a wild animal in the dark wilderness. The winner is dragged back to hell, and now, instead of having a companion to make it bearable, they must live with the guilt of what they did to their only friend. Only the jailers win. It is almost certain that prisoner will never form a bond with another again. They would not dare or want it.”
Robin stared at Jackalope, beginning at last to realise what must had happened. “You were chosen for the hunt, weren’t you?” he said. “You … and your brother.”
Jackalope looked at him. “Yes,” he said thickly.
“When you were loosed,” Irene said, glancing at the Mask of Gaia, its smooth wooden surface flickering in the firelight, memories fresh in her mind. “Your brother told you that you were both going to escape, that you could both make it. He’d been planning it all for weeks, since he’d found out you were the next offerings. And you believed him. He was trying to make you feel less afraid. To give you the hope you needed to run so fast and so far."
“They caught him instead of you, didn’t they?” Robin asked, his voice cold with the horror of it.
“No,” Jackalope said flatly. “Not right away. He caught them.”
“His brother was a strong and determined Fae,” Irene said to Robin. “The mask showed me the events of that night. How far they both ran, deep into the woods beyond the camp, how desperately. And how their pursuers followed, faster, on horseback.” She leaned forward to Jackalope. "It showed me where you stopped running, where an ambush was laid. Your brother took out two of them before you both ran again. And in the confusion and the darkness, from one he felled, he tore away the creature's mana stone.”
Robin knew it was a terrible thing in the Netherworlde for anyone, friend or foe to touch another mana stone. They were the most personal objects one could imagine. Almost a part of yourself. To steal one from a corpse and run with it was clearly an act of the boldest desperation.
“Your brother was an Earth Panthea,” Irene said to Jackalope. “He hadn’t used mana in years, not since you were first taken to the camps, stripped of your own stones, when your horns and your names were taken from you. But he remembered one trick. He hid you. He hid you in the trees, wrapped in leaves, masked in a disguise so perfect none would see you, no matter how hard they searched. You were part of the forest. He told you he would lead them off. That he was going to draw them away. A wild goose chase. Isn’t that right?” she nodded. “You were to stay put, a whole day and night, before daring to move. To wait for him to return. He told you that he would circle back eventually for you.” She sighed deeply down her nose. “He also told you that if anything happened, if he didn’t return by that time, you were to leave. Continue north, keep off roads and in the trees wherever you could. That he would find you. You were to put as much distance as you could between yourself and Dis.”
“He didn’t get far,” Jackalope said bitterly. “He’d hidden me, like you say. He’d thrown the mana stone deep into the forest. They would only track its trail of power. But they were closer on our trail than we knew. They passed through the clearing only minutes after he had left … minutes.” The boy’s silver eyes were distant. “They headed straight after my big brother. They could follow his tracks, anyone could have.” He looked down at his own knees. At his clenched fists. “There were so many of them, on their horses, whooping and cheering like this was the best game in the world. Like … we didn’t matter. I knew they would catch him. I … I heard them catch him.” His mouth was taut in the dark room. “He was still so close, he never stood a chance, not really. I could have jumped down from the tree, I could have run and helped him. I know … I was just a child, but he had done everything for me, to get me safe and free, and … I didn’t.”
He shook his head, as though to dislodge the thoughts. “I didn’t move a muscle. I froze. I was so afraid. I sat in the tree, wrapped in his illusion, and listened to them kill him. I listened to my brother die, and I did nothing to stop it.” His voice had grown very quiet. “Nothing.”
The fire popped and hissed in the shadows of the study.
“I think he might have called my name, at the end,” Jackalope said. “I couldn’t bear it. Couldn’t bear to hear it. I don’t remember it now, that’s funny, right? That’s why I took his. I left that child in the tree when I finally came down, and that wasn’t until a full day later. The hunters had long gone, searching for me elsewhere in the woods. I didn’t dare move until I knew they were far away.”
He looked directly at Robin and, for the first time, Robin noticed that the boy looked extremely tired. “They hadn’t taken him away, you know. I found him just where they had left him, cast aside on the floor of the woods beyond the camps of Dis, like garbage. They hadn’t even closed his eyes.” He looked up, at Irene. “You saw the rest,” he said bitterly. “Did I avenge him? Nothing so noble. I ran. Ran north, just as he said I should. I hid in shadows and every night I was sure they would find me, convinced they were still hunting me, that I was still part of their game.” He gave a bitter half-laugh. “I’d covered half of the Netherworlde, a skulking, cowardly shadow, a traitor to my own brother, before I let myself believe the truth, that they had given up on me. That I really was the one who got away.”
“And that’s where I was when you found me, Scion,” he said to Robin. "'Go north', my brother had said. ‘Put as much distance as you can between yourself and Dis, and stay out of sight'. That’s exactly what I did, hiding in the snow, in the wilderness of the Gravis Glaciem. Alone, for years, with what I had done.”
Robin stared at Jackalope. “You didn’t do anything,” he said.
“That’s the point,” Jackalope smiled coldly. “I didn’t do anything. I let them kill him. To save my own skin.”
Robin shook his head, as though irritated. “No. You were a frightened kid. And you were doing exactly what he had told you to.”
“His death was my fault,” Jackalope insisted. “I could have intervened. I could have stopped it. He was dead because of me.”
“His death was the fault only of the creatures who killed him,” Irene told the boy. “Not yours. And yes, you are quite right, you could have intervened, but you could not have stopped it. He would still have died, and you would have been dragged, captured again, back to the camps, their pitiful ‘victor’.” She was peering at the Fae very closely. “Then, and only then, would his death have meant nothing.”
“He knew he didn’t stand a chance,” Robin said. “That’s obvious, even without looking into your memories with the mask. He knew, even when he was hiding you that he wasn’t coming back for you at all. That’s why he gave you instructions. He knew how long to tell you to wait, how long it would take for them to tire of looking for you. That’s why he told you where to go, and how to get there on your own.”
Jackalope stared at Robin, his eyes liquid mercury. His expression was unfathomable.
“Jack, you didn’t kill your brother,” Robin told him. “Any more that I killed my Gran or Phorbas. He died for you. He sacrificed himself to give you a chance. You didn’t fail him. He wanted you to live.”
Jackalope stood up slowly. His face was whiter than ever, even in the flickering light.
Robin noticed he still had centaur blood flickering his cheek and neck.
“I’m a bad person,” he said. “I should have saved him. I should have tried.”
Robin was aware that Irene was watching him closely, as though waiting on his judgement, offering none of her own.
He nodded to the other Fae.
“You were a kid. And he would never have forgiven you if you’d come after him,” he said. “No, you didn’t save his life, but he saved yours. You’re not a bad person, Jack. You saved my life … twice. You’re just …” He searched for the right words, casting about with his hands.
“…You’re just an idiot,” he finished with feeling, giving a weak smile.
“Running and hiding does not solve problems, my boy,” Irene said softly, a tiny smile touching the corners of her mouth at Robin’s exasperated words. “Believe me, it never has, not for anyone. They always find you. You can’t run away forever, certainly not from yourself. You may as well try to outrun your own shadow.” She folded her arms thoughtfully. “You wish for my advice? Make a stand. Here at Erlking.”
Jackalope looked to her. Robin knew what the boy was thinking. He had been invisible to the world for so long, hiding in shadows, alone with his terrible burden of guilt and loathing. The world didn’t see him. But here this old lady was looking right at him, and there was no judgement in her eyes, even after he had laid his soul bare. There was nothing in her eyes except firelight.
“You think I want forgiveness?” he asked quietly. “Is that it?”
“I think that’s all you want,” Robin said. “I just wish it was mine to give you. That’s something you’ll have to work on yourself, I suppose. But it doesn’t mean you have to do it on your own.”
“Erlking welcomes the lost, Jackalope,” Irene said. “I trust Robin’s judgement. You don’t have to run anymore.”
Jackalope ran his fingers through his pale hair. His permanent scowl was still in place, but he seemed to Robin more than ever not a wild and feral thing, not a seasoned survivor, fiercely independent and proud. He seemed just a boy. He appeared to be struggling.
