Emerald City Dreamer

by Luna Lindsey

  And Orven lay unmoving, staring up at the roofless walls under the green leaves and yellow sun.

  The gyoja, seeing the images of her beloved Wodan and Yggdrasil destroyed, regretted consorting with King Olaf. She could not undo her spell without losing her life at Orven’s angry hands, so she allowed that once Wodan’s name was spoken again in the grove, Orven would be released.

  Orven stared at those crumbling walls for two centuries. Few came to that place, and those who did had forgotten Wodan’s name and could not recognize the ruins for what they were.

  Until one day, when a woman and her child were lost. They came across the ruins, and the girl asked about the strange carvings on the stone walls, with the horses and knots and battles and strange writing and the chiseled faces of men. The mother explained this was an old pagan place, and that these woods were haunted by ghosts and evil spirits. The girl asked what pagan meant, and the mother explained it was the old religion practiced by her grandparent’s grandparents. Those who sacrificed humans and left their babies in the fields to die – lies of course – did not worship Jesus, but a much older god named Odin.

  With that, the gyoja’s spell was broken, and Orven was renewed. The woman and child were afraid at first, but Orven thanked them and helped them find their way out of the woods. He blessed their lives for three generations after.

  When Orven returned to the ruins, he cried for a month. The geas was broken, yet his memory of being compelled to complete the cathedral overtook him. He wanted to start again.

  But the magic had all dissipated from the woods. The toradh which had once been plentiful there had turned stale, like the scent of dried flowers. Worse, Sigurd’s beautiful designs had long since rotted in the rains of the forest. Without them, he was lost.

  It would have been the eighth wonder of the world. The pyramids of Egypt, the Taj Mahal, the Sistine Chapel, they all would have seemed like mud dwellings in the shadow of what he nearly completed.

  And so he chose to be faeborn, hoping to learn architecture from human guilds and schools, so he could transform his memories into drawings and begin again.

  Ezra’s life had been another failed attempt.

  Orven rested against a decaying wall and thought on the irony of it. He had been born Christian many times, but this timthreall, he’d worshipped God in a grove, part of a Christian faith that taught him to abhor buildings.

  They were wrong, but so was he. He’d spent his life chasing something worth less than a dream, and he was no more a builder now than he was the day he stacked broken concrete to the mocking laugher of fae and man alike.

  If he wasn’t a builder, and wasn’t a god, then what was he?

  CHAPTER 42

  *

  SCARF’S FACE NOW APPEARED in both side mirrors. And in the wet asphalt. And in every reflective surface she passed. Even in the droplets of rain gathered on the windshield. The wiper blades squeaked, but they would not remove him from the edges.

  No parking spaces near Jett’s house. She drove up into the next block. Still no spaces. His ugly face leered out at her from the windows of parked cars.

  She made a U-turn in the roundabout.

  Asphaltia, Asphaltia, full of grace, she prayed, half-seriously, half-desperately to the goddess of parking. Please grant me a parking space. At least it took her mind off Pogswoth, and sometimes the prayer even worked.

  This time it did. Someone pulled out of a spot just a few houses down from Jett’s place. Her little car should fit.

  She pulled up alongside the car ahead and glimpsed Scarf in its mirror. She stuck her tongue out at him, put her car in reverse, and turned her head to look behind.

  He was in the backseat.

  Jina slammed on the gas, and then slammed the brakes. He fell forward suddenly, then back.

  It was the fastest parking job she’d ever done, and the worst. At least she’d managed to not hit anything. She grabbed the sword and ran.

  A forest grew up around her, hiding the urban surroundings, but she ignored the misleading paths, knowing that this sidewalk ran straight to Jett’s house at the end of the street. She yanked the katana from its scabbard and sliced through the brambles that rose up against her.

  The dense canopy of trees blocked her view of all the houses, but they did not entirely hide the fire hydrant she recognized and remembered being two houses from the corner. She slashed at the blackberries and pressed forward, until she pulled a muscle in her arm.

  Something stopped her forward momentum and she lurched to a halt. Looking down, she saw that damned striped scarf tied around her middle in a knot. He tugged and she lurched backward, but kept her feet.

  Jina whirled around and found herself nose-to-nose with the ugly korrigan. She swung at him awkwardly, but he ducked, laughing.

  “Don’t make me hurt you,” he said. “You’re no good to me hurt.”

  He was playing with her. She knew at any moment, he could cast any number of spells and have her away. This wasn’t a fair fight, and both of them knew it. So she swung her sword again, this time aiming for the scarf.

  The knot sagged and the scarf dropped like a limp rag. Pogswoth reached out and grabbed the hilt of her sword. He screamed as the metal burnt him. She let go and it landed on the ground.

  Jina turned and ran the final distance.

  “Ah, shit,” she heard him say from behind. “Her house.”

  Jina reached the edge of the yard and started to run diagonally across the lawn.

  “If I can’t have you,” Pogswoth shouted, “then she can’t either! Day shall be as night on you!”

  There was an odd feeling deep down in her bones. It didn’t hurt, but something had switched off, like a light that was too dim to see by.

  Her feet thudded on Jett’s porch, and still she ran, until she slammed into the door. The glass shook.

  She pounded on the door, her rehearsed speech forgotten.

  Pogswoth did not approach. He stood on the sidewalk, laughing. “Now you will come to me. On your own. Because you want to.”

  Like that would happen. Jina pounded harder, calling out before it even opened, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Jett won’t you please forgive me?”

  The door flung open to reveal the face of the goth girl from the support group just two weeks earlier. Only now Jina could see her eyes, sunken hollows smeared with black.

  Before Jina could open her mouth, the girl’s icy fingers wrapped around Jina’s arm and yanked her into the house. She was dragged stumbling into the living room and dumped in a heap.

  “Where is Jett?” Jina sobbed.

  “The Lady attends who she wills, when she wishes,” the girl rasped. “You will wait on the floor.”

  The boy appeared – what was his name – Fiz. He stood watching, raccoon tail twitching, masked eyes narrowed. Jina could see him now. She could see all of it, the growing things over the whole living room. She’d shifted into Tir Nan Og. She could see his ears, too. He reminded her of Ezra, and she fell to weeping, forehead against the floor.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I know you can never forgive me, none of you can.”

  The goth girl paced, her arms folded.

  Jina remembered Ezra’s limp body on the floor. Dead. “Oh God, especially not now.”

  She saw the tip of a bare toe, and looked up past the silk robe into Jett’s blue piercing eyes. Dream surrounded her, and Jina thought she’d never seen a more beautiful creature. Nor one so fierce.

  “My love…” Jina whispered.

  “Do not call me your love.” Jett crossed her arms, impassive, like a snowdrift. “Had you slid a knife through my heart, you could not have betrayed me more.”

  Jina felt as if a knife had been slid into her own heart. “I’m so sorry. Please forgive me. I never meant to hurt you,” she said, her voice breaking.

  “My heart is stone, now. You can no longer harm me. Or anyone else.”

  Jina wept. Her soul rent. She dared hope that at the e
nd of this fairytale, love would win. Now that hope seemed lost. Still, she tried.

  “My love… I need you to listen. Show grace. Clemency. Something.”

  “I will listen, as the tree listens. It is not words, but wind which sways the branch.”

  Jina wasn’t sure if that was a good thing; at least it was something. Now she didn’t know where to start.

  “Pogswoth is here,” she blurted. “The guy from my concert, and the bar. He followed me here.”

  “I know,” Jett replied with the same chill. “You came here expecting me to protect you from him? After betrayal? After murder?”

  Jina’s heart sunk, as if it could sink any lower, and it did. “I… I was safe with Sandy. But I left. I left the Order. I renounced it, and left their protection, because I knew we’d gone too far.”

  When Jett did not interrupt, Jina continued. “I know what you do. You protect the fae, right? You keep them from becoming unseelie. You shelter them so they have no reason to hate the world, so that no hatred or spite can grow within them.”

  Jett merely stood over her, her lips pursed together.

  “That’s what I want,” Jina said. “I didn’t want Ezra to die.” She wasn’t sure what would be right in Jett’s eyes – she did want to kill Haun. And Pogswoth. They deserved it. Ezra didn’t. “I only wanted to help humans. But Sandy’s doing it wrong. I admit my part in Ezra’s murder, and I denounce it and I’ve left. Can’t it be enough?”

  Jett merely stood there, her arms crossed, peering down like an unrelenting judge.

  “I can’t stand to see you like this, Jett. It’s the worst punishment I can imagine.”

  “Oh? I can imagine far worse,” Jett replied, turning her back.

  Jina’s remorse turned to fear. Ice glazed her spine as the three others gazed down on her. She realized she had been using human appeal to reason. And this woman was no human.

  “You are a hunter,” Jett began. “Hunters have destroyed kingdoms. Hunters have murdered thousands, tortured thousands more. They have suppressed dreams, incinerated art, and slaughtered imagination. They have taken the purity of human faith and repressed it, controlled it, and channeled it for their own petty ends. Those I knew and loved were burned at the stake, or were imprisoned in eternal solitude in isolated fragments of the shattered Tir Nan Og.”

  Every word pierced Jina. She wanted to contend, to explain that she wasn’t like that, but all she could see was Ezra’s body on the floor in answer to each point.

  Jett paced now. “I have been left to rot in their prisons, watched our groves destroyed, seen our faecasts repainted as portraits of demons, and heard our stories retold as cautionary tales about how to avoid the devil. Hunters did all this, and you are a hunter.”

  “Not anymore,” Jina protested.

  “Chicanery. You have always lied.”

  “No, it’s not like that. I didn’t know who you were when we met.” Jina tried to stand. She couldn’t. Vines on the wall reached out and entangled around her middle. Jina’s throat constricted and it became hard to breath.

  “Please, Jett,” she sobbed. “You promised you wouldn’t hurt me.”

  Jett scowled. “I promised I had no intentions to hurt you. That was before you hurt me.” Jett looked to Ivy. “Lock her in the basement until I can decide how to use her.”

  “Please…” Jina whispered. In desperation, she sang a little bit from an unfinished song she’d written for Jett.

  I’d sacrifice my fears for you, my love,

  Release the cargo I carry, behind,

  Your lilting waves on the surface above,

  Calm the seas of my stormy mind.

  “Go n-ithe an cat thú is go n-ithe an diabhal an cat,” Jett said, coldly.

  “I don’t…”

  Fiz grinned as he translated, “May the cat eat you, and may the cat be eaten by the devil.”

  Ivy’s fingers dug into her wrists. She struggled against the frail girl, but those thin limbs belied hidden strength.

  Jett was as stubborn as Sandy, and just as full of blind hatred. At no point would it have been possible for Jina to find common ground between these two. Even if she could have convinced Sandy to speak with Jett, Jett would have attacked. There was no mercy on either side. No understanding.

  But at least maybe Ezra would still be alive.

  Ivy dragged her through a messy kitchen, past a tree growing near the wall. Then she shoved her through a door. It slammed behind her, and she heard a skeleton key turning in the lock.

  Jina found herself standing on the wooden steps of a dimly lit basement.

  She tried to remind herself that Jett was a different person than Haun, but the smell of must and damp took her back to that time. None of her therapy mattered anymore. All the terror returned as if she were there once again.

  She regretted coming here, walking into the house voluntarily, just like she had the time before. Stupid. Stupid.

  Jina recognized her panic attack for what it was. She’d had these before and had learned to calm herself. She rocked herself on the step, taking a series of regular, deep breaths until her loud heartbeats slowed.

  Jina pulled out her phone, but it did not light up. She pressed the power button repeatedly – it would not turn on. No surprise. Haun had rendered her phone useless, too.

  There may be a way out. A window? She ran calming words through her mind like rosary beads while descending the steps.

  The basement was a medieval great hall. This relaxed her somewhat. It made her think more of geeks and D&D games rather than imps bent on torture and terror. She focused on that idea. A nerd’s dream room, that’s all, with tapestries, furs, and goblets mixed in with dice, action figures, and an old guitar.

  Aside from the stairs, there were no other exits from this basement, except two small windows near the ceiling of each of three walls, which let in a little street light. She might fit through one of them, if she could get it open. Jina stepped closer and fiddled with the latch above her head.

  Just outside, a raccoon waddled past. She jumped back and watched him pass the next window, and the next. There were no windows on the north side of the house, but soon he returned, making a full circuit to start again.

  Fiz. She wasn’t going to get out that way. And even if she did, Pogswoth waited for her.

  Her only way out was through Jett.

  If that was a way out.

  CHAPTER 43

  *

  JETT KNELT ON A BAMBOO MAT in a cream-colored kimono, her hair bound high on her head.

  Spread before her lay the implements of the Way of Tea, all of them very old and of simple beauty. A wooden ladle balanced on the opening of a large water pot over a brazier. Beside it was the flat, curved tea scoop and a stoneware jar of powdered matcha tea. The whisk stood on end, drying in the air. The last sip of dark green tea swayed gently in the bowl perched on her fingertips.

  In this space of serenity, she contemplated.

  She had never seen a hunter express regret. They were always dogmatic. Always. They sought, with singleness of mind, to destroy the demons they had so conveniently made of her kind through statue, woodcut, and inquisition.

  Yet Jina’s remorse felt real – Jett could taste it on the blas na haislinge of Jina’s storm as soon as she entered the brugh. It pierced through Jett’s cool anger and caused her anguish.

  She brought the bowl to her lips a final time, the flavor very fresh, like spring leaves and hay.

  Clumps of dark green powder stuck to the sides. She used the ladle to scoop water from the pot into the bowl, and then swept it with the whisk, turning her wrist just so, stopping at each turn and reversing direction. She poured out the tea-tinged water, wiped the bowl with a folded silk cloth, and set the bowl aside. Then she attended to each implement as if she were cleaning her own soul. Of what, she wasn’t sure.

  The dream tore her in two. Jina’s words returned to her, bits and pieces from each encounter. Jett tried to piece them together. W
hoever hurt Jina in her past must have been fae.

  The necklace – it had been an amulet to protect her, yet she had entered the brugh without it. Jina trusted in spite of her past, and came here seeking hospitality, protection from an unseelie. The dream required something for that. Jett’s human side also suggested that she trust as Jina had.

  Warring with this idea, her fae side screamed for justice and sought to guard against further deception. Where had trust ever gotten her when humans were involved?

  Jett took a pair of chopsticks hewn from simple pine with fragments of bark remaining at the ends. These had once served sweets at tea gatherings in feudal Japan. With them, she picked up the single lump of black sesame mochi, and slowly chewed.

  Was it a wonder the dream would tug her both directions? Her little flower may indeed be Bláthín reborn, her bard. Jett yearned so for a return to that most joyful time in her life. Yet Jina also manifested those who caused her the greatest pain, the fiagai who took Bláthín from her.

  Perhaps it would be justice enough to give her a gift and send her on her way, with Pogswoth nipping at her heels. Be done with the matter. Wash her away like those little green lumps in her teacup.

  There were consequences for offending the fae. Always, there were consequences.

  Jett looked down into her hands at the broken chopstick and let the splinters fall through her fingers to the floor. As they fell, faint guitar chords wafted up through the vent. And then Jina’s voice.

  She was writing.

  The song was void of rhyme or form. It was pure, drawn from a well of raw emotion, like a gentle scream.