by E E Everly
How hard could it be to find?
I didn’t have anything of mine, except my bra, which I opted to leave behind. The clothes I’d arrived in had been discarded because they were a vile bloody mess. My hiking boots were left at the portal, unless they’d been picked up by authorities. I seriously hoped the meddlesome fae had at least protected my stuff. Whose side were they on anyway? Regardless, if my boots were there, I could put them on once I crossed to Earth. I couldn’t very well hike home in the dainty slip-ons that Bronwen had given me.
I was comfortably attired in slim pants and a form-fitting shirt that covered my bottom, what I would equate to a tunic and leggings on Earth. All the clothes on Emira were supremely comfortable. The fabrics were beyond anything that I’d seen, making the clothes one with my body.
I grimaced as I shifted Trysten and creaked open the door to my room. Even if the portal was open, I had a hike on the other side, through the woods and up the road to my house.
Never mind that. One thing at a time.
I followed the quickest exit to the gardens and wound through to the outside edge. Beyond the gardens were fields of grains nodding in the wind and grazing cattle of sorts. They could have been cows and sheep, but on every further inspection, the animals had something different about them, as if God had based this world on Earth but with a few tweaks. Or maybe it was the other way around.
The cows seemed taller, broader, hairier. A hairy rhinoceros came to mind. I steered clear of them, not knowing their speed should they give chase, and walked on a trail that conveniently led to the woods. My hike sloped downhill, which I was grateful for. I turned a few times and marveled at the estate behind me. Now that I was farther away, its size amazed me. The building had several wings—wings that I’d yet to explore—considering I’d spent most of my time so far in my room.
Beyond the estate, a mountain rose, sharp and peaked but not snow covered. The season was summer, and the hills had evergreens, but the deciduous trees below were full and green.
The world was lush. The sky a vibrant blue. The colors of plants bold and glorious, as if they thrived on this world better than plants on Earth did.
What a fantastic place. I wanted to see it all.
Someday.
I reached the trees after walking for twenty minutes and slipped underneath their cool canopy. I rubbed Trysten, assuring her that I knew what I was doing, even though I did not.
“I’m just on a walk, little bug. We shall see what we can find.”
The portal, I hoped.
I scanned the trees, begging for the light of a meadow or the gray of the boulder to shine through.
The trail I followed narrowed and wound through the trees.
“I bet when those fae brought your daddy here, he’d gone off the trail, just as I had back home.”
I glanced toward the estate. Most likely the fae had brought him the straightest route from his bedroom.
“That would only be any good if I knew where the boulder was.”
Undaunted, I left the trail and stepped over some underbrush and rocks. This was fun. I rubbed my hands over tree bark. I stopped to smell some spicy leaves of a scraggly bush. As long as I remembered my way back, I would be fine.
Little furry animals skittered across logs. Birds twitched up leaves, looking for bugs. The wildlife wasn’t afraid and didn’t scamper off as they did in my woods.
“Trysten, this will be a great place for you to grow up.” I could imagine her running through the forest and laughing, with insane red curls trailing behind her.
This ached my heart so much.
She would stay here. That much I knew. She was going to be an emrys and learn their ways, everything that I had been denied. Maybe a dragon would choose her as its guardian.
What about me? Obviously, I couldn’t tear myself away from her. I would have to stay too.
“Maybe Mom could come here. Wouldn’t that be nice, buga?”
The thundering steps of something crashed through the underbrush behind me. Oh heavens! I hadn’t considered creatures larger than squirrels. If the cattle were enormous, what could have been coming after me now?
I scrambled behind a tree and crouched. Trysten woke up and promptly stuck her hand into her mouth. She chewed on it with fury. I wondered if she could sense my alarm. Her cheek was touching my skin just below my clavicle, so I wouldn’t doubt it. I slowed my breath and thought about calm. Be calm, buga buga. We will be all right.
I hoped.
The crunch of leaves drew closer, slower. I curled toward the tree, using my body as a shield for Trysten. An animal was pawing around.
It sounded huge.
Why hadn’t they told me what sorts of creatures were in this world?
Because they didn’t expect you to go off in the woods by yourself, you dope.
The beast had stopped. All became still. I didn’t dare peek to see what kind of creature it was, but I could hear its breathing about ten paces away.
“Anerah!” someone called from the same place.
I froze, my breath caught. Cystenian. I exhaled and rose to my feet. I’d kill him for scaring me like that.
“I’m here.” I stepped around the tree and gasped.
I had been right. It was a great big beast. Like a saber-toothed tiger, only the most delicious chocolate brown color. Its fangs or tusks or whatever they were dripped with saliva. A massive pink tongue flicked out and licked its nose.
My heart pounded. I would have screamed, but Cystenian was sitting on its back, leaning over its shoulders, with his fingers curled into its fur.
I couldn’t shut my mouth.
Cystenian slid off the beast and landed gracefully on his feet. “What are you doing out here?”
“Me?” I bulged my eyes at him. Did he not know how bizarre this all was? “How did you find me?”
“Bronwen said you were missing.” Standing on the ground, Cystenian came up to the cat’s shoulder.
I rubbed Trysten while processing the enormity of the creature. “That doesn’t explain how you found me.”
“You’re right. I forgot that you don’t know how to do any of this.” Cystenian leaned forward. “Don’t panic, but I know your particular essence, and I followed it.”
“What does that even mean?” I wagged my head in annoyance.
“Every emrys has a distinct light signature. I just looked for yours.”
He had a way to stalk me. Wonderful. “There’s so much I have to learn about this world.”
“Don’t worry. You’ll understand it in time.”
“I feel like an idiot.”
“But you aren’t,” he said.
“Thanks.”
The giant cat must have been tired of our conversation because it blinked its round eyes at me one final time and wandered into the trees.
“Don’t go far, Iestyn,” Cystenian said.
“That’s Iestyn? That’s who you made the double jump with?” Oh my gosh. I’d assumed it was a horse.
Cystenian stepped closer and took my hand to help me around the tree.
“Do you know how terrifying that creature is?”
“Who? Iestyn? He’s a baby. Wouldn’t hurt a bee.” I eyed the cat’s progress through the trees. He paused at a patch of flowers buzzing with bees, and crouched. His hindquarters wriggled and then he leapt at a bee, no less, and captured it under his paws. When he peeked at his catch, the bee buzzed up and zapped him on the nose. Iestyn hissed and batted at his face.
The poor thing.
“Serves you right, Iestyn, for making me a liar.” Cystenian bounded over to the cat and put his palm on his nose. His hand glowed briefly and then returned to normal.
Iestyn licked Cystenian’s face.
“Ew.” Cystenian wiped the slobber away. “Thanks a lot.”
“What’d you do?” I asked.
“I took the sting away.”
“Right.” Emrys powers. Obviously. I crept closer. “Can I touch him?”
“Let me?”
“I’m kidding. Of course he will.” Cystenian rubbed Iestyn’s shoulder. “Sit down, won’t ya, boy, so you don’t scare her.”
Iestyn slumped onto the ground and tucked his head onto his paws as any old cat would. Cystenian folded over Iestyn’s upper body and hugged him. “Right here, at his shoulder. Give him a good rub. He likes it.”
Iestyn’s shoulders were massive. His upper body tapered down his torso to smaller hindquarters that looked just as powerful as the front legs. I sank my hands into the fur, which practically swallowed my hand it was so thick.
“He’s lovely.” I gave him a good scrub with my fingertips. A purr erupted from him.
“That means he doesn’t want to eat you.”
I laughed. That was a joke, I think.
Cystenian leaned closer, over the cat, and looked at Trysten. “How’s my baby today?”
“Good.”
“Want me to take her?”
“Nope. It took me forever to get her in here. I’m not taking her out yet.”
“She’s hungry.” Cystenian looked right into my eyes. His were so piercing. I tried not to sigh, but he was so handsome, so dreamy. I couldn’t believe we’d had a fling in the woods and he was the father of my child. I wanted to smooch his parted lips.
It was a good thing we had a giant cat between us.
“She’s always hungry. She can wait a bit,” I said.
“So, are you going to explain why you ventured into the woods by yourself?”
“Was that a bad thing?” I made myself look penitent, but then thought better of my foolishness. “Are there animals that I should know about? Poisonous things?”
“A few, but it’s not likely that you would stumble upon them.”
“Okay.” I nodded and pulled away from Cystenian’s intensity. “I was looking for the portal.” As I said it, I turned back to gauge his reaction.
His face registered something. Concern? Sadness? “Are you leaving, then?”
“I don’t want to. I need to see Mom. She’ll be in a panic, but I don’t know where the portal is.” When Cystenian opened his mouth to say something, I cut him off. “I was just going for a visit. I would have come back.”
“Chances are the portal isn’t even open.” Cystenian pushed off Iestyn and came around him. Iestyn immediately bounced off through the trees. “That cat. Can’t keep him still for more than a few minutes.”
I grinned. “Is he how you travel? Like a horse?” I’d hate to see the types of horses here.
“Most of the time. Unless I call for a dragon, but that’s only if I travel between vales. Iestyn is how I travel about in Brynmor.”
“Which is here.”
“Yes.” Cystenian nodded to his right. “This way. The portal is in this direction. You were getting close.”
Like a gentleman, he helped me through the trees and around the underbrush, always keeping his hand near my elbow or extending his arm for me to take. Too Austen-like. Too chivalrous.
“We had guards at the portal right after I brought you through,” he said. “Last word was that it was closed, so they were relieved of their duty.”
“Closed already?” I broke inside.
“I’m afraid so.”
“How will I get word to Mom?”
“I’m not sure.”
After ten minutes, we came to the meadow. It was close to what I remembered. Just as amazing. Just as magical but less hazy. Less clouded from the spell. I trudged forward to the boulder and wasn’t surprised to meet solid rock.
I sank to my knees and hugged Trysten. “This sucks!”
“Sucks? Is Trysten doing something?”
“Sucks means that the situation is crappy, stupid, upsetting. This really sucks.”
Cystenian knelt beside me. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for this to happen. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. I would open it if I could.”
I brushed my palms over my eyes. Frustrating tears were biting. “How is the portal here? What makes such things?”
“Well”—Cystenian pushed my hair back behind my ear and cupped my cheek. Why did he have to tempt me so?—“we have the tale from Catrin, about how she opened the rift into Gorlassar from Bryn.”
I held Cystenian’s gaze, afraid he would stop touching my face. “What’s a rift?”
His hand trailed away and smoothed over Trysten in her sling. He brushed my fingers cradling her and paused, leaving us touching.
My heart was in my throat.
“A tear in creation,” he said. “A fissure that can bridge space and sometimes time.”
“That is insane science-fiction stuff.”
“I don’t know that there’s any science to it.” Cystenian shrugged, and his fingers fell away as he sat back on his heels. “That’s just how things are. The Creator leaves tiny rifts between worlds, but many of them have to be discovered and opened.”
Questions pinched my brows together. “This Catrin opened one of them?”
“Yes. She reached right up into the rift and pulled it open with her light. The rift parted, and she was able to step through into Gorlassar.”
“So she was an emrys if she had light?”
“Yes,” Cystenian said.
“Then why can’t we open this portal in the same way?”
“Once a rift is opened, it’s called a portal. The one Catrin parted is always open. Some close on their own because the energy clamps down on itself. The entrance to the other world is still there, just unable to be accessed unless a source of energy can pry the portal open. Opening the portal takes a vast amount of concentrated light and darkness though.”
“Why can’t several emrys aim their light at the portal to open it?” I asked.
“Light and darkness, Anerah. It takes both.”
“Why can’t two emrys aim light and darkness at the portal?”
“Emrys can’t harness darkness,” Cystenian said. “We don’t even carry it.”
“Okay.” Hmm, I didn’t know a thing about darkness. “Where does someone get darkness from, then?”
“That’s the big problem.”
“How so?”
“Darkness can’t be harnessed on Emira,” he said.
“None at all?”
“None.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and screwed my face up. This couldn’t have been more frustrating. “How did my father pass through? The fae opened it. Can the fae use light and dark magic?”
“I have no idea how your father came through. And, yes, fae can use both light and dark powers. Also, it’s not really magic; it’s energy.”
“In my world, that’s magic. Being able to do anything like that with your mind and body is magic.”
Not having any answers about how to open the portal wouldn’t do. That left me with one option. Something I’d been wondering about since my delivery. “Cystenian, when I was in labor, my father talked to me, in my head. He wasn’t anywhere near, but I heard him, and he coached me through the delivery.”
Cystenian nodded. “Yes, emrys can forge a connection that allows them to communicate through each other’s mind.”
“You’re saying my father has a connection to me?”
“Most likely.”
Great. Not that I liked it, but that ability held promise. “Can emrys make this connection with anyone?”
“Any emrys, though a connection is not to be entered into lightly. It’s called a mental bond.”
“A mental bond?”
The eagerness in Cystenian’s eyes told me he was excited to be teaching me stuff. “Only done with close intimates because the bond is forged with our light, and though it can be broken, it’s not easily done.”
So it’s probably permanent. I wouldn’t dwell on that. “Can emrys have more than one mental bond?” If my father had bonded with me, I would hate to think that I couldn’t do that with anyone I truly cared about.
“Yes.
”
Relief. And sudden curiosity. “Do you have any?”
“Uh…” He swallowed, clearly unnerved, his confidence gone.
How had my question made him uneasy? Was a person’s private mental bond something I wasn’t supposed to know about or talk about? I ventured a guess anyway, especially since I remembered their unspoken conversation the other day. “It’s Bronwen, isn’t it?”
Cystenian exhaled. “Yes.”
He looked too relieved for having answered that question so simply. Perhaps he had other bonds too, but he clearly wasn’t going to elaborate.
“What made you want to bond with her?”
“She’s my only sibling. We’re especially close. For a while, she was on Bryn while I was here, and that’s how we kept in touch.”
While she was on Bryn, a separate world. Bingo. That was an answer to my next question. “You can hear each other through your mental bond across planets? Which would mean across galaxies and through portals?”
“Yes. Why? What are you thinking?”
“I should be able to talk to my father, then. He has a way through the portal, I hope, so if I reach out to him, heaven forbid, he might help me.”
Cystenian’s eyes brightened. “Let’s hope.”
“If he doesn’t have a way through, he could at least send a message to Mom that I’m okay!” My spirits lifted. That was hope indeed, that telepathic communication could be better than a phone in my situation.
Cystenian squeezed my hand. “I’m glad you thought of a way around this portal thing. I hope it works.”
“Me too. Even though I loathe asking my father for help, I’m going to have to suck it up and do it.”
Cystenian laughed. “I’m not even going to ask what that phrase means.”
NINETEEN
Cystenian escorted me to the estate after our trip to the boulder. I stopped by one of the many garden statues. The Willow Woman, as I dubbed her. She was a woman who drooped with sorrow. Her arms hung like the branches of a willow tree, and her back was curved as if she carried the weight of a thousand broken hearts. She stood alone, solemn, without so much as a flower around her bare feet, only the pea gravel of the path.
