Relics--The Folded Land

by Tim Lebbon

  He never reached her.

  A shape struck Jeremiah square in the torso. Much smaller than he was, still it moved faster, and the impact sent him back into the stream, slipping on wet rocks and losing his footing. As he fell onto his back he roared and brought both hands around to pummel his attacker. Water closed around him as his fists struck only his chest.

  Tah stood breathing hard on the stream’s opposite bank. She crouched down, ready to pounce again.

  “Jay!” Angela shouted, and the woman took a step forward and fired down at the prone form.

  The bullet struck home.

  It only pissed him off more.

  Jeremiah sprang to his feet and landed running. He went directly for Jay, and this time when Tah barreled into him he was ready, flinging his fist out and connecting squarely with her face. She slumped into a deeper reach of the stream and started floating, limp and loose.

  “Vince!” Angela said, but he was already moving into deeper water. For a second she thought the cyclops was going to drift past, but he snagged her clothing and pulled. They both were dragged further into the stream before he used her momentum to swing her in toward the bank. Lilou helped drag her from the water, and then Angela joined in. Together they hauled the cyclops away from the water, turning her on her side so that she could breathe. Being so close to her, touching her, was strange, and seeing her one large eyelid continually flicker brought the strangeness of the moment crashing home.

  Another roar came from behind them, and when she turned Angela saw a shape being borne aloft. At first she thought it was Jeremiah being lifted by the mothman, but he was too large, too violent. This was Jay being hauled up out of harm’s way.

  The mothman was struggling. His wings flapped hard. Jeremiah plucked a rock the size of Angela’s head from the stream and hurled it high. It was a strangely beautiful sight, trailing droplets of water that caught the starlight. It nicked one of the creature’s wings and he dropped to the left, swooping down in a tight curve toward the tree line close to the rocky streambed.

  As the mothman struck the ground and Jay tumbled from his grasp, Baylor burst from the trees close by and reared up, kicking out with his front hooves. Angela could swear she heard them swishing at the air.

  Jeremiah charged.

  A shape rose up from where it had been hiding, swinging the heavy branch. It connected with Jeremiah’s face. Only then, seeing Jeremiah alongside the big man Meloy, did she realize just how strong and apelike the Kin was.

  “Meloy!” she shouted.

  Too late. He was a man who would never back down. He’d proven that at Mary Rock’s house. He hefted the branch and swung it again, this time striking the Kin across the chest. The branch snapped.

  Jeremiah did not waste time. He swung a heavy fist down onto Meloy’s head and crushed him into the ground, then rushed on toward Baylor, Jay, and the mothman.

  “Boss!” Vince shouted.

  Angela’s heart sank. “You go,” she said. “But careful. I’ll stay with Tah.”

  Vince crouched, hesitating.

  “Go!” she said. It was pointless staying together. If Jeremiah came for them, being together or alone would mean nothing.

  Vince dashed along the stream’s bank and crawled over rocks toward where they had seen Meloy fall.

  Beneath her hand, Tah groaned.

  “Easy,” Angela said.

  “Run,” Tah said.

  “No.”

  “We have to… run. He won’t be… alone.”

  Angela had already thought of that. She scanned the dark forest, the jingling stream, the flood plain, looking for shadows that should not move. Running would do no good. They had to make their stand.

  * * *

  When Vince reached his former boss he was already expecting the worst. What he saw only confirmed it. Blood gleamed in the starlight. Meloy was huddled down between several large rocks, as if rolled up and jammed there by something trying to hide a prize. He thought of animals concealing food for later consumption, remembered Jeremiah chewing on the dead woman’s arm, Ballus and his unnatural appetites.

  He wondered if humans had caught their insanity and evil from the Kin, or the other way around.

  From his right came a roar, a hiss, and the sound of something hard hitting something harder. Jeremiah and Baylor struggled together, the hairy man battering with his meaty fists, the centaur rearing and kicking, hooves striking up sparks each time he struck rock. Jeremiah was circling, and Baylor kept between the enemy and his fallen friends. Jay was already on her feet, and Vince saw the mothman stagger upright and fade back amongst the trees. If his wing was damaged he was done for, and no more use in this fight.

  “Fuck,” Meloy said, and Vince had never been so pleased to hear the gruff man’s voice.

  “Boss.” He crouched beside him, but any relief was short-lived. There was lots of blood. It glimmered in the poor light, and Vince could smell its rich warm tang on the air. “Where’d he get you?”

  “Everywhere.” Meloy’s voice was harsher than before, as if coming from somewhere broken.

  “Can’t believe you stood up to that thing.”

  “Like hitting a tree with a twig.”

  “Just keep still,” Vince said, and he leaned in closer, trying to make out Meloy’s injuries. It was too dark. He pulled out his phone, but Meloy’s hand clasped around his wrist. Even his fingers were bleeding.

  “Not yet!” he rasped. “Might not just be him.”

  “Right,” Vince said. If he used his phone’s torchlight, any other creatures closing in on them would have a bright target to home in on.

  “Not good,” Meloy said. His voice, still harsh, sounded weaker. “Feel like shit.”

  “Keep still, boss,” Vince said.

  From the tree line came more roars and the sounds of combat, fists and hooves clashing, meaty thuds… breaking bones. Baylor and Jeremiah were locked together, rolling and writhing in the midst of a fight to the death. Vince could smell them, a rich, cloying stench like the rankest body odor, piss, decay.

  Meloy said something, and Vince had to lean in close to hear him.

  “They’re amazing,” Meloy said. “All of them. To know them…” He drifted off.

  “Yeah, boss. All amazing.”

  “I’m still collecting. Now it’s memories.”

  “Hang in there,” Vince said. “Look at me! Keep talking!” He squatted down and reached for the man’s hand. He held and squeezed, and Meloy squeezed back.

  “A most amazing honor,” Meloy said, and then he fell silent. Vince felt his body tense, and then go limp. He shook Meloy’s hand, squeezed again, but this time there was no response.

  From behind him a gunshot rang out.

  * * *

  With Jeremiah and Baylor engaged in their bloody, brutal fight, it was easy enough to edge across the stream and circle around toward the first of the trees. Angela had to feel the way with her feet, keeping her full attention on the conflict. She glanced around, expecting more shadows to rise up and attack at any moment.

  The mothman seemed to have disappeared back into the forest, perhaps nursing his wounds. Jay had gone with him. When Angela reached the spot where they had landed, she peered into the trees but could see nothing. Perhaps they gazed back out at her, but if so they did nothing to signal her.

  Jeremiah and the centaur fought less than thirty feet away, and she felt the impact of each assault through the ground and transmitted on the air. Grunts and roars, thuds and snaps, she didn’t think either of them could sustain such violence for much longer.

  Scrambling around, she searched for an unnatural straight line in the darkness. She found it faster than she could have hoped, leaning against a rock close to where she’d seen the mothman and Jay fall. She grabbed the rifle. It was heavier than she’d expected. Her heart hammered, a thumping echoed in her ears, and time seemed to slow as the weight of events pressed down upon her. Sammi’s danger, the violence, Vince close by with an injured o
r dead Meloy, the slaughter of people on the road. Mallian.

  Ascent.

  She wished for a life free of the Kin, and every moment that passed, every event, made that seem less and less likely.

  Angela had fired guns before, when she was a kid and her cousin had taken her shooting. It had been a long time ago, and never a rifle. She hefted the weapon, hoping the safety was off, and braced it against her shoulder.

  Sighting on the struggling shadows, she wondered whether she should just fire into their mass until the weapon was empty.

  She breathed deep and slow, finger teasing the trigger and concentrating only on what was in front of her. The shapes roiling in the darkness. The pale flashes of bare skin, the twists of fur and hair. Starlight glimmering from sweat and blood.

  Baylor reared up and away, and Jeremiah pulled his fist back for a strike.

  Angela squeezed the trigger. The shot was so loud, the kick into her shoulder so hard that she stumbled back a couple of steps, ears ringing and all sound lowered into the distance. She gathered herself and brought the rifle up again.

  Just as a screaming, raving Jeremiah filled her vision and leapt at her with hands raised.

  She shot him in the face.

  The beast’s scream rose into a sharp, high whine and he tripped, sprawling so close that she felt one of his hands brush against her jeans. She stepped back and aimed the rifle down at him, pulling the trigger one more time.

  Click.

  Empty.

  Stay down, she thought, stay down, be dead.

  He wasn’t dead. He raised himself on all fours, his face a mask of wet, dark hate in the starlight. His tongue slipped out and slurped at his own blood.

  Then Baylor was there, stomping down with his two front hooves again and again, rising and falling. Tah was there, too, lifting a massive rock above her head and bringing it down on the fallen Kin. The sounds were horrible. Angela turned away, not wishing to see Jeremiah’s beaten, broken fate. Whoever and whatever he had been, it was a terrible way to die.

  She dropped the rifle and circled around toward Vince and Meloy. As she reached them she saw the look of hopelessness on her lover’s face.

  “I think he’s dead,” Vince said.

  31

  “Mallian left him behind to stop us,” Lilou said. “He’ll have left the others, too.”

  “I notice the hairy fucker didn’t go for you,” Jay said.

  “Mallian and I go back a long way,” Lilou said.

  “So you’re for him or against him?” Jay asked. She’d reloaded her rifle and held it in one hand, not yet slung on her shoulder. Ready to be used again.

  “In this, against him,” Lilou said. “That should be obvious.”

  “Fuck knows,” Jay said. “I’ve never pretended to understand any of you.”

  They were gathered around Meloy. In the east, the forested horizon was growing brighter. Vince was using his phone torch now, and the damage the big man had sustained was apparent.

  “Finish him off and move on,” Tah said.

  Angela stood between the injured man and the cyclops, as if ready to fight.

  “We don’t finish anyone,” Lilou said.

  “I’m not heartless,” Tah said, blinking her one large eye. It was wet, wide, expressive. “It’s just for the best, that’s all. Look at him. He’s broken. We leave him behind alive, he’ll die a slow death.”

  Meloy appeared to be unconscious, but Lilou wondered whether he was listening.

  “We’re not killing him,” Lilou said. Yet at the same time she understood what Tah was saying. “How is he?” she asked Vince.

  “I’m no doctor, but it’s not good. Compound fractures in his legs, slashed scalp, maybe cracked skull. And inside, who knows? That thing hit him pretty hard.”

  “I hit back,” Baylor said.

  Lilou looked around at them, taking stock. Jay and Tah stood close together, the cyclops nursing a bruised face and shoulder. Baylor was a little way off, washing his hooves and blood-spattered legs in the stream. Of the mothman there was no sign.

  Her human friends were together, Angela and Vince close to the battered, broken Frederick Meloy.

  “Where’s the wisp?” Lilou asked.

  “Always here,” a voice said from behind her.

  “Thanks for your help.”

  Ahara shrugged. “Not my fight.”

  “It’s everyone’s fight!” Lilou spat. “Mallian fears us, otherwise he wouldn’t have left Jeremiah to slow us down.”

  “We carry him,” Baylor said. The centaur’s voice was a surprise—soft, high, almost delicate. It belied his appearance. “He can go on my back. We need to move, and if we’re not putting him out of his misery, he has to come with us.”

  “So let’s move out,” Jay said. “Dawn’s here. We can move faster.”

  “So can Gregor,” Angela said.

  “What about the mothman?” Lilou asked. “He could scout ahead for us, search for Gregor and the girl. They’ll be on foot, too.”

  “Where is he?” Angela asked.

  “In the trees,” Jay said. “I’m afraid that rock might have damaged his wing. What’s a mothman who can’t fly?”

  “So will he do it?” Angela asked.

  “Why ask me?” Jay said. “I’m not his master.”

  “Then I’ll ask him myself,” Angela said. “Lilou?” She nodded, and together they went after the mothman.

  He was huddled close to the base of a tree, just inside the forest. He looked somehow reduced, and Lilou feared she had seen the expression he wore, many times before. Lost, subdued, resigned. He held one pair of wings wrapped around his torso like the flaps of a dark, iridescent robe. The other pair drooped away from his body, and the damage to them both was obvious. The rock had done more than nick a wing, it had passed through both of them, shattering fine bones and ripping the thin leathery skin that stretched between limbs. It was a miracle that he had glided in to land safely, with Jay in his grasp.

  He watched them approach, big eyes dimming as a filmy lid blinked.

  “I’m so sorry,” Lilou said.

  “Sorry doesn’t help me.”

  “We’ll help you,” Angela said. “What do you need? What can we do? We need your help, too. Do you think you’ll be able to fly and—”

  “Angela,” Lilou said, touching the woman’s arm.

  Angela looked at her, blinked, and seemed to understand the gravity of the situation.

  “It doesn’t matter,” the mothman said. His voice was gruff, old, weak. Lilou wondered how old he was, and what he had seen and done. More than any of them would ever know, probably. Such was the story with most Kin.

  “Of course it matters,” Lilou said. “We all matter, more so now than ever before.”

  The mothman held up one of his damaged wings, wincing as some of the fine broken bones grated together. His face was pale, and his big eyes were wet with tears.

  “You’ll be going to the Quiet Place.” Lilou jumped as Jay spoke from behind.

  “It’s long past my time,” the mothman replied.

  “What’s the Quiet Place?” Angela asked.

  “Somewhere secret,” Jay said.

  “Where they go to…?” Lilou could not use the word in front of the wounded Kin. It didn’t seem fair.

  “Where they go when they can’t live in the world anymore. You don’t have Quiet Places back in your country?”

  “I don’t think our country is big enough,” Angela said.

  “Safe places, yes,” Lilou said. “But they’re hiding places in the midst of the human world. Hiding in plain sight.”

  Jay only nodded, then stepped between the human and the nymph to approach the mothman. She glanced back over her shoulder. The situation had stolen her gruffness, and Lilou saw that something private was about to take place.

  “Come on,” Lilou said softly, and Angela seemed to understand, too. They walked away together. Lilou glanced back only once, to see Jay and the mothman s
tanding close, whispering into each other’s ears.

  It was a feeling she should have become used to, but was pleased that she never had. The mothman might or might not have been dying, but his removal from the world seemed certain. With the injuries he had sustained, his time here was at an end. A flying creature with no wings could not survive in the wild. Whatever their Quiet Place was, wherever it hid itself away, it was about to receive another poor soul.

  She guessed it was somewhere high in the mountains, perhaps in a hidden valley or ravine, or deep within a cave network whose entrance was protected by weak glamors. It was the sort of place a collector like Meloy would give a limb to find. It was somewhere the likes of him must never see.

  Yet Jay seemed to know where it was.

  Perhaps they do go there to die, Lilou thought, and she imagined taking her own walk into the wild mountains, following a trail only Kin could find, to a Quiet Place where all the noise faded away, all the troubles of surviving in a world that no longer acknowledged their existence drifted into memory and myth. She had often considered her own passing, and knew of a Kin back in Britain who was cursed with knowing the time and place of his own death. He never told anyone, and no one ever asked.

  Lilou was old in human years, but as Kin she was still young. Mallian sometimes made her feel like a child with his reminiscences of the Time. The fairy Grace was older still, old as the mountains, old as the cracks in the land, the rivers, and the seas. Yet more and more of late, the possibility of Lilou’s own demise presented itself to her, because the age of the Kin was long gone, and their Time was dead.

  Mallian’s desire to create a new Time for the Kin was misplaced and ill-informed. They were creatures of myth and legend now, known to humans almost entirely in books and stories, their exploits only guessed at, and rarely with any truth. Regaining the Time was like trying to restart a heart that had stopped beating, and bringing life back to a dead, corrupted corpse. Only tragedy could result.

  Even though her own time might be coming close, she was becoming more and more certain that her direction was the only one for the Kin. She knew where they should be. They had to know their place.