The Glass Mountain (Faerie Book 2)

by Jenna Grey

  And finally they came: the Djinn. No longer hiding in the shadows, but able to move freely in a darkened world, stronger now, although where their strength came from Lily had no idea. People hid in fear, living like rats in any hole they could find, starving and without hope.

  “Brittany and Brook, where are they?” Lily asked. Bryony just stared at her blankly for a moment as if Lily had just asked her the most difficult question in the world. For as far back as Lily could remember the three Bs had been inseparable.

  “Brittany’s dead,” Bryony said. The words came out riding on the back of tears. “A long time now. I was going to Brooks ‒ she’ll take me in.”

  Lily put her arm around Bryony and gave her a hug, her hands sinking into the fabric of the coat and finding little more than skin and bone under it.

  “We’ll get you there,” Lily said, her voice gentle. “You’ll be safe with us.” She suddenly thought back to what Bryony had just said. A long time now... “Bryony, what’s the date?”

  “Date?” Bryony gave a bitter laugh. “Do you think anyone bothers about dates any more?”

  “Well, how many months has it been since you saw me last?”

  Bryony looked at Lily as if she were quite demented.

  “Months? It’s been over a year. What planet are you living on?”

  Lily’s heart cramped into a tight knot.

  “No, that’s not possible ‒ we were only here a few hours ago, a day at the most,” she said, more to herself than to Bryony. The look on Connor’s face spoke more than a thousand words. He was as afraid as she was.

  And of course she understood, they both did. It wasn’t so much a case of what planet they’d been living on, rather more a case of which world. Time in the world of men ran differently to Otherworld. No time at all could have passed in Elphame, whereas here, in Midgard, it could have easily been years. Wherever they had been for the last few hours, it certainly hadn’t been here.

  So many thoughts crowded in on Lily, all vying for attention, the first and foremost being that she had to see Kieran to make sure that he and Claire were all right. In this nightmare world, anything could have happened to them, they might even be dead.

  Connor’s thoughts suddenly burst into her head.

  I know, you must be very afraid for your brother. Let’s get this woman where she has to go and we’ll go and see him. Are you sure you can trust her, though, after everything she’s done to you. She could be working for the Black King and this could be a trap.

  Lily thought about it for a few minutes and thought back:

  He could have killed us easily while we were in his hands, and he didn’t. Why would Bryony be able to kill us now?

  Connor nodded and slipped his hands under Bryony’s arms to help her up.

  “We’ll get you to your friend,” Connor said, “Can you stand up?”

  Bryony tried, and managed, with difficulty, but then collapsed again. Connor scooped Bryony up in his arms as if she weighed nothing, and in fact she did weigh little more than nothing, practically skin and bone.

  “I know where Brook lives,” Lily said.

  They moved off, along the High Street and passed the war memorial, a solitary stone pillar; scrawled across it were the words, “We’re all dead.” in blood red. It was strangled with dead weeds. Connor erected a glamour around them, not to keep them safe from Djinn but to keep them hidden from human eyes.

  Bryony lay limp in Connor’s arms, and Lily stroked her hair and whispered reassurances at her ‒ whatever this girl had done in the past, she didn’t deserve this.

  “We are going to put all of this right,” Lily said, “I promise, we are going to put all of this right.”

  There was a faint stirring from Bryony, and she made a strange noise, it was almost the same malicious arrogance Lily was used to from her arch enemy.

  “Oh, yeah, course you are...fucking super hero...”

  “No,” Lily said calmly, “something much, much better.”

  Chapter Five.

  Connor gently lowered Bryony onto the doorstep, and Lily could see no sign of life inside.

  “Are you sure she’s there? There’s no sign of life.”

  Bryony, now managing to stand on her own too feet, gave Lily a disparaging look.

  “Yeah, because she’s really going to advertise that she’s here so that the shadows can come and fillet her.”

  Lily almost smiled, when all was said and done, Bryony was still acerbic, self centred Bryony and Lily doubted she would ever change.

  “Are you sure she’ll take you in?” Lily asked, remembering how fickle every one of the three Bs could be.

  “Course she will,” Bryony said, without hesitation. She suddenly stared hard at Connor and said, “How did you kill that thing. Nobody can kill those things.”

  Connor gave a gentle smile.

  “Lily and I can,” he said, “And we are going to put everything right. All of it.”

  Bryony gave Connor a look that would have melted steel.

  “Gonna turn back time, are you?” she sneered. “The world’s dead, we’re all dead, we’re just too stupid to lie down in our graves.”

  “And yet we beat that monster when nobody else could,” Connor said. “We know what’s going on here and how to stop it. And believe it or not, we can put it right.”

  Bryony’s expression softened and she looked at him with curious eyes. Whether or not she heard something in Connor’s voice, saw something in Connor’s face, or was just so desperate to grasp at any hope, no matter how faint, Lily wasn’t sure, but Bryony’s face suddenly brightened.

  “Can this really be put right?”

  “I promise it can,” Lily said. She reached across and picked the remains of what might once have been a dandelion, and held it up for Bryony to see. She breathed on it gently, and looked up to see Bryony’s eyes grow wide as the dead plant began to plump out, filling with life, until it was a perfectly whole, perfectly beautiful dandelion.

  Bryony opened her mouth to say something, but nothing came out. Lily handed her the weed and Bryony just stared down at it, numbed into silence. She finally found her voice and said:

  “I always knew there was something weird about you.”

  Lily laughed, and then, quite unexpectedly, so did Bryony.

  “Bryony, how have you been getting food? How have you survived all this time?” Lily asked.

  Bryony gave a cold laugh.

  “How do you think? Men still want what men always want. I just give it to them.” Lily couldn’t imagine anyone wanting anything Bryony had to offer, covered in sores, little more than a scarecrow. Lily could only feel terrible pity for her. “Jack at the Fat Cow works for them, does their dirty work for them runs the whole area. They’ve got big plastic tunnels where they grow food, and the shadows don’t touch them, the food inside just keeps growing like nothing’s happened. They sell it to those that can afford it, to those that work for them. The rest of us just starve. They round people up to slaughter, burn people out of their houses, put down anyone who tries to put up any resistance. Him and his friends can do whatever they like. The shadows leave him alone as long as he does as he’s told.”

  That explained the chickens at the back of the pub. Lily wished they had taken more of the eggs now.

  “I hope you get on all right,” Lily said, and it sounded so pathetic. She laid a blessing on her, but doubted it would do much good. “Good luck Bryony. I promise this is going to end. Just hang on in there.”

  Bryony gave them one last disparaging look and gently knocked on the door, a secret signal. What else in times like these? There was the sound of something heavy being moved inside, a barricade being moved away from the door and a skirmish inside.

  Lily and Connor moved back to the gate and waited as the door was cautiously opened, and Bryony was safely inside, then turned and walked away. Lily grabbed a hold of Connor’s arm to pull him back because he could step outside the gate.

  “Connor, I
have to go and see Kieran and Claire, I have to know if they’re all right.”

  Connor kissed the top of her head and gave her a wan smile.

  “Of course you do, but I think we should get out of the village, first. There’s nothing for us here, we might be putting people’s lives at risk. We’re making them a bigger target than they already are. I don’t even know if the Black King can sense that we’re here.”

  “The further away, the better,” Lily said. “This place is one big mausoleum.”

  Connor gave a nod, and putting up a cloaking shield so that no human could see them, they

  made their way back out into open country again. The woodland around was still covered with that dreadful mist that seemed to go forever.

  “I’m so dizzy and confused I can’t make any sense of any of this,” Lily said.

  “I know, too much has happened too quickly.”

  “What Bryony was saying about some people working for the Djinn… surely they realise that they’re only working towards their own deaths? The crops, all of the vegetation is dying, and when it’s all dead, what do they think they’re going to eat when everything is dead? Any stocks they have aren’t going to last forever. Do they really think that betraying their own people will save them?”

  “I don’t think they’re thinking that far ahead,” Connor said. “They’re just trying to survive one day at a time. Desperate people will do desperate things to stay alive. If they can cling onto life for just one second longer, they’ll do it.”

  “Well then they had better be prepared to accept the consequences, because when the time comes, I’m going to make sure that they pay,” Lily said.

  Then the world went dark.

  When she woke up, she was lying cradled in Connor’s arms, pressed against his damp chest, with him stroking her hair and whispering gentle words to her.

  “What happened?” she asked, trying to sit up. The world was spinning, and she had to rest back for a moment.

  “You passed out, probably just hunger, but we both need to rest for a bit. I feel terrible as well.”

  He looked around for somewhere they could shelter, a clump of bushes perhaps or a hollow tree trunk. He stood, walking towards a large holly bush, half cloaked in mist, and gently eased aside some of the prickled branches to reveal a hollow, large enough to take the two of them with room to spare.

  “We can shelter here for a bit, see it’s like a little bushy cabin,” Connor said. “We can go and see how Kieran is then.”

  Lily peered inside and it did look quite inviting, a largish hollow protected all around by thick holly leaves. It would certainly be better than spending the night out in the open. Connor carefully pushed his way past the hostile prickles and Lily followed him in. Once inside he had pulled across the branches to cover the opening, Lily had to admit that they were fairly well concealed. The rich smell of loamy earth and old wood was comforting, and just to be able to shut out that disturbing mist for a little while made her feel better. She curled up next to Connor and let him fold her in his arms.

  “Not exactly the Ritz,” Lily said.

  “We can build a fire,” Connor said, “collect up some of the twigs.”

  Lily picked up some of the broken pieces of branch and twigs that littered the floor but realised at once that they were too damp to use as kindling. They both pulled a face and sighed. Connor let a fire ball drift into the air, and it hovered there, looking rather feeble in comparison to the one he had conjured earlier. It only lasted a few minutes, then flickered and died.

  “Can we go and see Kieran now? I’ll feel better if I can see that he’s okay. I’m so afraid that something terrible has happened to him.”

  “Sure. It should be safe enough to leave our bodies here while we travel. I’ll put a concealment charm around us.”

  Lily sat bolt upright and gave him a ‘You are bloody well joking, aren’t you?’ look. She hadn’t even thought about what would happen to their bodies if they dream walked to see Kieran.

  Before, when she had watched the children playing in the realm of the Black King, she had still been quite conscious of where she was, and only saw them through a sort of window in reality, but now they were actually going to go and see Kieran, if not in the flesh, at least in the spirit. Of course they would have to leave their bodies behind.

  “I really don’t like the idea of my body lying around for anybody to stumble across,” she said.

  Connor just raised one dark eyebrow.

  “It will be quite safe,” he said, as if she were making a fuss about nothing.

  Lily wished she could feel as confident about the whole thing as he did. He seemed to take everything in his stride, never letting anything phase now. She suddenly found herself looking at a stranger.

  “I believe you,” she said, and gave a pathetic smile. “What do we have to do?” she asked.

  “Just put everything else from your mind and think of Kieran.”

  Lily snuggled in under his arm, and decided that as much as she rebelled at the idea of body dumping for even a few minutes, she had to see Kieran, whatever the risk.

  She closed her hand around the snow globe and concentrated on the face of her younger foster brother. She could picture him easily in her mind’s eye. She suddenly realised just how much she missed him.

  “Open your eyes,” Connor said, after a few seconds. Lily snapped her eyes open, thinking that something had gone wrong, or there was danger.

  Instead she found that she and Connor were sitting in the entrance of her old home, Hale Hall, still wrapped in one another’s arms. She panicked momentarily, and leapt to her feet, afraid that someone would see them; for all she knew her foster mother Claire could be in the living room and step out any moment to catch them.

  “It’s okay, I’ve shielded us, no-one can see us,” Connor said, getting to his feet.

  “This is really weird,” she said, looking down at her arm and examining it. It seemed solid enough. She gave it a little pinch and felt it ‒ everything still seemed to be in working order, but she felt very odd, not quite right somehow.

  Lily looked around and felt a cold shiver of fear run through her. The hall, which was usually bright with light pouring through the stained glass window of the front door and the large picture window beside it was dark, and there was a dreadful smell of neglect about the place. The air was filled with the stench of damp and decaying food, a layer of dust covering everything.

  “Oh dear God, he’s dead, I know he’s dead,” she said, breaking down. “This place hasn’t been lived in for months, maybe not since we left.”

  “You don’t know that. Kieran could have just left, or he could still be here, just letting the place look like this to fool them into thinking it was deserted. He’s a smart boy.”

  Lily tried to force a smile through the tears.

  “You’re right. He never was one for housework.”

  Connor gave a dishwater weak smile back, which did nothing to reassure her.

  Lily looked down at her hands again.

  “Are you sure we’re not really here? I feel as if I’m here,” she said.

  “You are here, but you’re not. Don’t worry about it. Kieran will be able to see us and talk to us, that’s all that matters.”

  Lily, unconvinced, squeezed Connor’s arm, and it felt solid enough to her; he seemed just as real as he ever had.

  “How is it that I can feel you if we’re not really here?” she asked.

  Connor gave her a ‘don’t you know anything?’ kind of look, which she didn’t appreciate very much.

  “We’ve just slipped into another dimension of reality, that’s all. Everything and anything on this plane will feel solid to us. It’s like we’re just vibrating on a different frequency.”

  Lily could understand that ‒ after all, the other worlds, Elphame, all of the other worlds were not in some other place in the universe, they existed alongside this world, just vibrating on a different level. Each world
occupied the same space, just not visible and tangible to the other worlds, except in certain places where the veil was thinnest.

  Lily looked through the door into the living room, searching for as sign that Kieran had been there recently. The TV, which was almost constantly on when Claire was in the house lay silent, and was covered in a layer of dust. Of course that didn’t mean anything ‒ according to Bryony there hadn’t been any electricity for at least a year. There were some empty crisp packets, beside the sofa, but they could well have been there for months as well. The whole room looked abandoned, littered with a detritus of every day miscellany, including mould infested cups and a couple of plates that had the remains of what looked like pizza, before it had turned into a new form of life.

  “It looks as if he was here for at least a while after everything fell to pieces,” Connor said, “This could still just be camouflage. We should search the rest of the house.”

  Lily gave a determined nod.

  “Of course, Kieran might be upstairs in his room,” she said, trying to keep her voice from choking. As much as she wanted to believe that, she knew that the chances of it being the truth were growing slimmer by the minute.

  “Don’t think the worst until you have to,” Connor said.

  Lily gave another teary nod and padded silently up the stairs, Connor at her side, stopping outside Kieran’s door and reaching for the door handle.

  Her hand just went straight through it.

  “Okay, that’s… not good. How do we get inside? Is there a way we can touch things?” she asked.

  Connor gave the barest hint of a smile.

  “I can if I really concentrate, but it’s not easy. You might need to practice,” he said. Lily wasn’t annoyed exactly… well, yes, actually she was annoyed, that there was yet another thing Connor could do that she couldn’t, but right now she was too desperately worried to want to make anything of it.

  “So how do we get through the door?” she asked, her voice a little waspish.