by Tim Lebbon
Slumping to the ground between Vince and Lilou she leaned against the tree, closed her eyes until they were only open a slit. Thorn was still circling them, a small shadow darting through the trees. The inhuman woman remained where she’d been when Mallian left, perfectly still, watching, waiting.
Angela had seen how violent and brutal Thorn could be, but it was the woman who scared her most.
“What?” Vince whispered.
“Don’t know,” she said. “Baylor said wait.”
“I think I know,” Lilou said, and she sounded strange. Angry and sad at the same time.
Only the wisp can make her sound like that!
The darting, leaping shape of Thorn suddenly tripped and struck the ground with a heavy grunt. He shrieked a warning. Ahara manifested atop him, pummeling her arms down into the pixie’s face, and as Thorn cried out again, Angela saw movement deeper in the forest.
“She’s coming!” she said, and she, Lilou, and Vince stood. They had no weapons, and weren’t prepared to confront the kooshdakhaa. As she came for them she flickered between woman and beast, pale and dark, lithe and muscular, and Angela crouched to pick up a short, heavy stick.
With a single leap, Baylor launched himself into the woman’s path. He punched out with his front hooves but she was ready for him, dropping onto her back and sliding beneath him, slicing ragged nails across his chest and stomach as she went.
The centaur cried out in pain and shock.
The woman grinned as she stood. Not ten feet from the humans, she looked determined to kill.
Angela saw the movement, recognized what was about to happen, and she almost cried out. Lilou grabbed her arm and squeezed to keep her silent.
The kooshdakhaa glanced down at the movement. It grabbed her attention, and that gave Meloy another vital second.
The injured man leapt from the centaur’s back and landed on the Kin. If he’d been expecting her to crumple and fall beneath his weight he was disappointed, but he did not pause. As she stumbled two steps forward, he wrapped his muscled arms around her neck and face, his legs crossed around her thighs.
“Go!” Meloy shouted.
“Meloy,” Lilou said. He looked at her, and smiled. She took a step forward. This time it was Angela’s turn to hold her back.
“He’s giving us time!” she said.
The kooshdakhaa flitted between human and animal, struggling to loosen Meloy’s grip. His face was a grimace, eyes squeezed shut, and Angela couldn’t imagine the pain he was in. She was a naked woman, skin slick with sweat, his arms slipping and legs almost losing their grip. She was an otter-like creature, fur thick with dirt and dried blood. She screamed obscenities at the air, then gnashed at Meloy’s arms with sharp animal canines, piercing and slashing to the bone, ripping, crunching.
Meloy gritted his teeth but did not scream. He held on tight. He couldn’t fight this thing, but he could restrain it.
“Go!” Jay called. She was still seated and nursing her own pain, but she saw the chance they were being given.
Angela knew there wouldn’t be another one.
She glanced across at Thorn and Ahara, engaged as they were in their own fight. Then, without another word, she, Vince, and Lilou started uphill, following the route Mallian had so recently taken toward the entrance to the Fold. Angela still gripped the stick she’d picked up, and she slammed it against a couple of trees to test its strength. It was solid, but didn’t give her an ounce of comfort or hope.
However they faced Mallian, they would need something more than a broken tree to help them.
They climbed in silence, pushing themselves hard to take every second they could from Meloy’s selfless act. The silence was a heavy pressure that none of them wanted to break, a pressure that built as Angela awaited the sound she dreaded.
When the scream came, Angela felt it crawl inside and scrape claws across her soul. Lilou let out a sob.
They kept moving, faster if anything, all of them understanding that Meloy’s sacrifice gave them this one chance to achieve their aims. For Lilou, to stop Mallian. For Angela, to rescue Sammi.
“She’ll be coming,” Lilou said. Neither of them replied. There was no time, they had no breath. Every word spoken took strength, and they needed each gasp to reach the Fold before the changeling reached them.
When they broke out of the forest onto the escarpment it came as a surprise. Even while Angela rested on hands and knees, panting and sweating and trying to catch her breath, Lilou was up and urging them on.
“No time to stare,” the nymph said. “Follow me.” She started running toward the thing that should not be there.
Vince and Angela shared a glance and followed.
Everything is telling me to run the other way, Angela thought. Maybe that’s how the Kin have survived for so long. Everything about them makes us want to look and run the other way.
All but a few of us.
Part of the landscape was somewhere else. The rocky escarpment, home to some isolated trees, steep shale slopes, and spreads of moss-covered stone, was blurred and uncertain a hundred feet from where they had climbed from the steep forest. Still they ran, not hesitating, not risking a moment of their advantage.
At the last second, as Angela passed through the shimmering mass, she wondered whether only Kin could enter the Fold.
Maybe she and Vince would be turned inside out.
Eyes squeezed shut, she ran on.
38
She has not felt shock like this in such a long time.
The fairy shivers in the warm, comfortable atmosphere of the world she has created. The shivering is from surprise and a deep-rooted clenching of her soul, a feeling she has not believed possible for many centuries, perhaps more. Uncertainty stalks her like the ghost of the fairy she used to be.
This was all about being on my own, she thinks, and the figure before her mimics her quivering fear.
The girl stares at her, eyes wide, breathing fast and shallow. Behind the girl she sees the wide, beautiful landscape that she is so eager to close off from the rest of reality and call, finally, home. She has peopled it with her own kind, or at least fellow Kin, creatures who she will come to know better over time. This girl should have been the last of them.
I never knew. I never even suspected.
It’s that deficiency in her knowledge that shocks her as much as what she sees before her.
Somewhere in this girl is fairy.
“Who are you?” the fairy asks, and the girl frowns and takes a few steps back. It should be her asking me that question, she thinks. It should be me with the authority here. Without even speaking, the human-looking girl is taking charge.
She takes another step back.
The fairy whispers something in her own ancient language. It’s a sound she rarely makes anymore because only she is there to hear and understand, and she will not talk to herself. It’s barely a language at all, more a muttering of insinuations and an exhalation of hopes.
The girl’s eyes grow wide. Is that a flicker of understanding?
“No,” the girl breathes. And then she opens her mouth and says something else, something in the fairy language.
She drops to her knees.
The girl has fairy in her, and now she is talking to me in a language she cannot know. This is more than denial. This is ignorance. How the human-ish child could have existed for so long without knowing is beyond her grasp.
Five generations ago, eight, twelve… this child’s ancestor lay with a fairy.
“Travesty,” the fairy says. She is angry that such a word must taint the air of her Fold. “Corruption,” she whispers, the word heavy and dirty on her breath. She mutters an incantation in her fairy language. The ground shakes. Grasses wave back and forth in rippling patterns of fear.
The girl turns and runs.
But as the fairy stands to follow, to tear the girl down and rip out the part of her that should not be, a great invisible hand slams down onto her, driving her int
o the soil of her own Fold and knocking the breath from her lungs.
At first she thinks it is the girl, and she berates herself for not recognizing such power. But lying on her side she can still see the girl sprinting like a frightened child down into the valley in her flight of fear.
This is not the girl. This is something else.
* * *
He has not felt a thrill like this in such a long time.
Inside the Fold is like the Time, and for the first couple of minutes Mallian forgets everything he is here for. He walks and looks, breathes and remembers, and for the first time in a long, long while he sheds a tear for everything that has passed.
Then he grows more determined than ever before about everything that is to come.
He senses that he is being watched. He cannot see the watcher, but he can smell it, and he knows that it is Kin. He is happy to let it watch. Perhaps in times to come the watcher will tell stories about what he or she saw, and sing songs. Mallian rarely lets pride obstruct his actions, but he allows himself this.
Emptying the rucksack, he unwraps the items which Gregor spent his adult life collecting from across the world. Most of these relics are memories from the past, old, withered things from creatures that once thrived, or at least survived. Mallian feels sadness that they had to die for him, but bears no guilt. He cannot allow that. With all the things he has done, guilt will drive him mad.
The glamor is one he has harbored to himself for many decades. One of the few left to him—a shred of magic, a dreg of something once so much more powerful—he has nurtured and practiced its performance and charms every year for all that time. Always alone, always in private, never revealing the talent, he has constantly been preparing for this moment.
He looks around for the fairy. She will soon know that he’s here, and he has to ensure that he’s ready for her when that moment arrives.
The spell is in two parts—subdue and contain. When Grace is subdued he will be safe from her great power, for a time. And once she is contained, he will own her.
He spreads the relics on the ground before him. They will be used in two parts, to coincide with the two portions of the glamor. He concentrates on the first, arranging seven of them in a half-circle around him. Kneeling within the arc, he touches each relic and experiences a brief, powerful memory of its owner’s life. It’s a humbling experience. He accepts each memory with a mutter of thanks, and a promise that their lives will be remembered—even those whose lives ended in hiding, ashamed and terrified.
Even those, he honors. Every Kin, no matter how beaten down and petrified of what this world has become, is worth a hundred humans. A thousand. More.
Soon, such numbers will begin to pay their dues.
Mallian mutters the glamor. He has its Script once again, but he does not need to consult it, because he remembers every word, turn of phrase, and incantation perfectly. Concentrating all his focus on the seven relics, he remembers where this magic originated. His senses thrum with memories of the Time, and some memories are fed by this new place. It would be a good place to make a home, but he quickly shoves that idea aside.
The fairy has built this Fold as a retreat. Hiding is what Mallian has been doing for far too long, and the ethos of Ascent is the exact opposite.
He repeats the glamor again… again… and with each repetition he is closer to completing the first part of the spell.
He takes a deep breath and sees what is watching him. One of the Kin, a denier, given freedom by the fairy. But this valley is not real freedom.
Mallian shoves, and the spell is made. He feels it surging outward, and somewhere in the Fold the fairy falls to the ground, subdued. He grins.
I’m so close, he thinks, and the Kin has vanished. Perhaps his delight has scared her away.
He sweeps aside the seven relics. They have served their purpose, and already he can smell the scent of decay as time catches them and they begin to putrefy. He begins to spread the second seven items, ready for the spell that will contain the fairy and place her in his thrall.
Such power to command. Such potential—
There are only six.
He pauses, breath held, then looks again. Still six.
Mallian knows the Script word for word, letter for letter, and there are seven items required for each spell. Gregor gathered all of them. A witch’s third ear and eye was the last, and Jilaria Bran gave herself up for that great honor.
He counts the parts. Six.
He closes his eyes and thinks of Vince holding the rucksack up to him. That deceitful human.
Mallian roars.
* * *
She rises up. Shoved face-first into the dirt of her world, she knew exactly what was happening. It is an ancient glamor, one not used on a fairy for millennia. It might be the one thing she still fears, greater than an eternity alone, so she pushes back against it, struggling to regain herself before the second part of the glamor is cast and she is forever in thrall to whoever is doing the casting.
It’s him, she thinks as the Nephilim comes to mind. Of all the Kin she has encountered in recent memory, he may be the only one with access to the spells, and the wherewithal to gather the parts required. He rescued me only to contain me.
She grimaces as she stands, casting her own conflicting glamors to fight against the weight that is crushing her down. Pushing back, pushing hard, she realizes that the second glamor is not yet cast. If he knows what he is doing, he must know that his time is now short.
Something must have gone wrong.
Still moving against the stifling weight of subjugation, she starts down the hillside toward the entrance to the Fold, following the fleeing girl. She can see traces of her on the air like echoes of her passing. Signs of her trace of fairy blood hang everywhere—a shimmer to the air, a sheen against certain flowers. It is something incredible. Perhaps if she can recapture the girl, she will not have to rip out the fairy part of her, buried in human flesh, blood, and bone. Perhaps over time, the girl might become what she always craved for her eternity in the Fold.
True companionship.
Moving faster, shrugging off more and more of the glamor with her own powers, she eyes her future with the brightest eyes yet.
39
Sammi had never run this fast before. Leaping from rock to rock, pounding across grassy slopes, dodging holes in the ground, jumping over a ravine and just making the other side without slipping and falling, her focus was on the valley floor and its end, where she saw the shimmering opening that she’d first experienced from the other side.
The other side was home. She didn’t know what this side was, only that it was a long way from home. The Fold looked like a valley she might know, but although there were trees and grasses, a river and signs of geological time having formed this place, she knew it was somewhere else. The fairy had made this place.
The fairy had seen something in her.
Sammi wouldn’t allow herself to think about that, for now. Her only aim now was to escape, run back into her world where Angela and Vince were searching for her. Gregor might still be there, but at least he was a danger she could understand.
Something about this place felt so wrong. It was a feeling in her bones, a whisper coming from deep inside in a voice she didn’t quite know, but felt like she should.
Her mother wasn’t here. That had been a lie all along, and she guessed she’d known it for a while. She couldn’t beat on herself for hoping, though. She hated Gregor all the more.
Jumping over a stream she landed in marshy ground, falling forward and losing a sneaker in the muck. It didn’t matter. She crawled, then stood and started running again, despite the discomfort. She was on the valley floor now, and ahead of her she could see the air shimmering with the exit from the Fold. Perhaps this was her only way out. She hoped it was safe.
But it wasn’t, and Sammi knew that even before she heard the cries and saw the beast kneeling close to the Fold, raging about something that had been do
ne to him. It was Mallian, his fury unleashed, power unrestrained. There were small objects scattered around him, and close to his feet lay Gregor’s backpack.
Sammi skidded to a halt and hid behind a huge fallen tree. She looked around, through a gap where the tree lay against a tumble of rocks. Mallian stood between her and the way back home. Perhaps she could run past him and be through the portal before he caught her. Or perhaps in his rage he would snatch her up and tear her in half out of pure spite.
She had never been so far from home. The distance seemed to be a hollow within her, readying to explode, as if the infinity between here and there had its own terrible gravity. Then something inside calmed and soothed her, and told her that if she only kept her wits, then things might still end up all right. The Fold was a universe and just a step away from home. All she had to do was take that step.
Edging around the fallen tree, she eyed the best route past Mallian.
As she tensed and readied herself to run, heart hammering, sweat glimmering on her face, she saw movement in the blurred portal.
Three figures came through.
Angela, Vince, and the woman who had been with them.
Mallian stopped shouting and stood motionless as he watched them pass through.
“You!” he said, pointing at Vince. “You stole from me.”
Angela looked past the towering Nephilim and locked eyes with Sammi. Sammi smiled. Angela frowned.
And then Sammi sensed something approaching behind her.
Glancing back she saw Grace floating down the valley side and leaping across the stream, moving so quickly that her feet barely seemed to touch the ground.
Mallian turned, too, and saw the fairy at the same time. His face dropped. His shoulders slumped.
“Sammi!” Angela shouted.
Sammi broke cover and ran.
* * *
This is when everything changes, Angela thought, and she rushed ahead without giving herself time to pause. Instinct took over. She focused on Sammi, running to meet the girl who was sprinting toward her. Nothing else mattered.
