The Terrible Truth of Faerywood Falls

by Blythe Baker

  My heart sank as he drove away.

  He still blamed me. For all of it.

  My eyes stung as I turned to grab my bike, knowing I wouldn’t be able to face Alessa…and knowing that she’d likely go home and tell Lucan all about my encounter with Cain here today anyway.

  Things would never be the same with Cain…would they?

  I’d ruined whatever it was that was between us. Maybe even for good.

  The lump in my throat grew larger.

  I’m sorry…I thought, blinking tears from my eyes as I pulled my bike helmet on. I wish I could take it all back.

  13

  After my encounter with Cain, the last thing I felt like doing was work. All the joy and excitement I’d been feeling on such a nice day had been washed away by the heartache I’d been fighting to bury.

  I thought that when we saw each other again, we would’ve found some way to work things out between us. But it seemed that Cain had just dug his feet in more, and was all the more devastated about what happened.

  And his comment…

  “It’s never just a few questions...Though maybe for you, that’s all this relationship ever was.”

  My heart ached as I played those words over and over in my mind.

  In one breath, he’d told me that I’d meant more to him than he’d meant to me.

  But that wasn’t true. He did mean a lot to me. That’s why I wanted things to go back to normal between us. I knew it was ridiculous to think that he’d just forget about everything that happened, but I wanted reconciliation. I wanted things to be good. I wanted to be able to go to him, wanted his help…

  As I made my way to Abe’s shop, I started to ask myself some very hard questions.

  Did I want Cain in my life for him? Or did I want him around for the information he’d given me?

  Every time I’d gone to see him, every time I wanted him to meet with me, it had been to discuss one of the many, many deaths that I’d found myself mixed up in. He’d graciously answered my questions every time. He even saved my life on more than one occasion.

  He’d known my secret…maybe even from the very beginning. And yet, he’d never treated me any differently. If anything, he’d just wanted to protect me.

  I couldn’t say the same about others in my life…

  I tried to get myself together as I got closer to Abe’s, but I was having a hard time doing that.

  It wasn’t wrong that I’d developed feelings for Cain during those times I’d met with him, and gone to him for help. That wasn’t wrong, was it?

  And he couldn’t tell me that he’d had feelings for me from the beginning, either. There was no way.

  Yet, he’d somehow convinced himself that he was nothing more than a lackey to me. He believed I didn’t care about him.

  And that was ridiculous. Of course I cared about him. Today should’ve proved that.

  But maybe it didn’t…

  I parked my bike behind the antique shop, my shaking fingers slipping three times as I tried to close the lock, grumbling the whole time.

  And you…I said to Athena with my thoughts, bitterness encouraging me to let some of the pressure off the valve inside my mind. No words of encouragement now, huh?

  I felt her shift in the pack against my back. I don’t think anything I could say to you right now would make things any better, she said. If I tried to disagree with you, you’d be angry. And it’d be the same if I agreed with you.

  What? Am I that unreasonable? I asked her.

  It’s not that, Athena said. You’re hurting, and so is he. This is something that just might take time to heal –

  I let out a groan of frustration, and did my best to shut off my mind to her as I walked in through the back door of the antique shop.

  “Hello?” I called halfheartedly. “You in here, Mr. Cromwell?” I asked.

  “Up in the front, dear,” he called back.

  I gently shrugged my backpack off and unzipped it, allowing Athena to slip out and scurry away into a hiding place she’d picked out for herself.

  I knew I should’ve been kinder to her, but I was just so frustrated with Cain that I couldn’t think clearly. I told myself I’d apologize to her properly later.

  I set my backpack down on an empty chair behind the counter before wandering out onto the store floor. I found Abe near the bookshelf, organizing a new box of donated items.

  Like I always did, I wondered if any of the books in that box were magical like the red, leather-bound tome that Silvia Griffin had broken in to steal had been. I checked the shelves frequently for any number of new books that seemed out of place, but had yet to come across any others like it.

  Abe looked up at me as I approached, the wrinkles in his face deepening as he smiled at me. But as soon as he really looked at me, his smile faltered. “What’s wrong? Did something happen?” he asked, standing up straight.

  “Oh…it’s nothing,” I said. “Just life stuff is all.”

  His look told me he knew there was more to my words than I was willing to let on, but I was grateful that he didn’t push me at all.

  “Here’s the check from Lynn,” I said, pulling the envelope out of my back pocket and handing it to him.

  “Wonderful,” he said, smiling as he took it. “Let me go add that to the other deposits going to the bank this afternoon.”

  He opened it up as he walked back toward the cash register.

  I walked over to the box of books he’d been going through. Dipping my hand inside, I lifted a few, glancing briefly at their titles. Ahoy, Mateys! Stories from the Seven Seas was the first I found. Underneath that was Love So Sweet.

  I put the pirate book back on top, my heart sinking as I thought about Cain again.

  But a book beside it caught my eye.

  The Mermaid and the Lost String of Pearls.

  I picked it up. There was a simple, colorful image of a mermaid with blue hair and a pink tail holding a long, glittering strand of pearls.

  I glanced back at Abe as he walked back over to me. “Ah, I haven’t seen that book in some time,” he said, pointing at the mermaid smiling up at me from the cover. “That was written by a woman who used to live in Faerywood Falls some years ago.”

  My heart skipped a beat. “What do you mean used to?” I asked.

  He looked up at me, adjusting his glasses on his nose. “She’s passed away oh…ten years now? That was one of the last books she’d written.”

  I flipped through the first few pages.

  There once was a mermaid who lived at the bottom of Moon Lake. She was a pretty mermaid, and loved all of her fish friends that she played with every day.

  I looked up at him. “It’s a cute book,” I said.

  He nodded. “She had others like it. She had one about a little girl who was best friends with a cat that she could talk to, and another one about a little boy who could transform into a dog.”

  My ears perked up again. That’s too much of a coincidence, isn’t it? I asked Athena.

  Oh, you’re speaking with me now? She asked in annoyance.

  I hesitated, biting down on the inside of my lip. Yes, I said. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to take my anger at Cain out on you earlier.

  I know you didn’t, she said. I’m sorry things didn’t go better with him. But this author Abe is talking about…who is she?

  “Who’s the author?” I asked, closing the book’s cover to look at the name on the front. “Bev Johnson, huh?”

  “She probably only sold a few dozen copies of each,” he said. “I offered to sell some here for her when she was alive. But she loved these stories. She wanted kids to find joy reading them.”

  “That makes sense,” I said. “So you said she was from Faerywood Falls?”

  “Yep,” he said. “And she based all these stories in Faerywood Falls, too. And she…well, never mind.” He turned back to the box, chuckling under his breath.

  “What?” I asked. “What were you going to say?”

 
“It doesn’t really matter,” he said.

  “You can tell me,” I said, my senses alert. Whatever he was going to tell me was going to change something…I could just feel it.

  He sighed, standing back upright. “You’re going to think this sounds ridiculous,” he said, shaking his head again. “She claimed that all these children’s stories were based in reality.” He widened his eyes like we were sharing a secret joke, like he thought she was just some crazy old woman who wrote books.

  “How so?” I asked.

  “She believed that these…beings, or what have you, actually existed,” he said. “She wrote a story about a faery she met in the forest once, claiming it happened when she was a little girl.”

  My stomach lurched. Could he mean…she’d encountered an ancestor of mine?

  “And this one, she told me that she’d met a mermaid that lived in the lake,” he said. “She said the mermaid told her there were all sorts of things that lived under the water there.”

  “Like what?” I asked, wondering what sort of malicious thing could’ve been after Annie and me.

  “Oh, well, she claimed they were all nice creatures, all her friends,” Abe said. He shook his head.

  “So you didn’t believe her?” I asked.

  Abe looked up at me, surprise coloring his face. “I’m surprised you’d entertain these thoughts. Of course I didn’t believe her. They were fairytales. Nothing more.”

  A chill ran down my spine.

  That author had to have been Gifted, I said to Athena. She knew so much that she wrote whole books about them. Shape shifters, beast talkers…even these mer-people.

  It was almost a relief to know I hadn’t been completely crazy that day in the lake.

  Don’t you think it was probably dangerous for her to write so openly about the Gifted like that? Athena asked.

  You’re right, I said.

  I looked over at Abe again. “So…how did this author die?” I asked.

  “That’s the tragic thing,” he said, picking up a pair of books and sliding them into their new homes on the shelf. “She was found dead in her home before her fiftieth birthday. She hadn’t married, didn’t have any children of her own…”

  “Did someone murder her?” I asked.

  “No, nothing like that,” Abe said. “They say it was a heart attack or stroke or something like that.”

  I wasn’t convinced, though. If the Gifted in this town had taught me anything, it was that they liked to keep their secrets, and would do anything to ensure they were never discovered.

  I finished out the rest of the day at the antique store, and helped Abe close up shop just as the sun was sinking down behind the trees.

  “Enjoy your ride home,” Abe said. “This might be the last night you can ride without freezing to death in a long time.”

  The air was getting cooler now that the bright sun had dipped down closer to the horizon. I wished I’d had the chance to enjoy it properly, maybe out having a picnic or something instead of being cooped up for most of the day.

  Oh, well…I thought as Athena and I headed off back toward home. At least it was nice in the first place and other people got to enjoy it for me.

  As we rode, Athena peeking her head out of the backpack and sniffing at the air, we discussed what Abe had said about the local author Bev Johnson, and how she’d written about the Gifted so openly.

  “It’s obvious Abe doesn’t believe any of that,” I said. “But whenever anything else that even seems supernatural has come up, he’s said the same thing.”

  For not believing in that stuff, he certainly seems to know a lot, Athena said.

  “Abe and his late wife were staples in this community for a long, long time,” I said. “I’m sure they heard their fair share of weirdness over the years, especially working at a place that is notorious for having magical items occasionally.”

  I pedaled outside the small town’s limits, and we were engulfed by the trees on both sides of the road once more. The sun beams flickered through the branches, casting long, dark shadows across the road in thick stripes as we rode.

  “If she was right about the beast talkers and the shape shifters, then she had to be right about the people living in the lake,” I said. “Which sort of explains what Cain said to me earlier today. There is some kind of group living in the lake.”

  That’s a little unsettling…Athena said. Seeing how often we went swimming last summer.

  “I know…” I said. “And the time I flipped over the boat was the first time that anything had attacked me like that. What about that time Lucan’s gardener tied a weight to my ankle and tried to drown me? How come nothing attacked me then?”

  Something must’ve been different this time…Athena said.

  There was a movement in the woods beside me, drawing my attention toward it.

  But when I looked, all I saw were the dense trees and the sunshine beyond.

  Goosebumps popped up all over my arms.

  What is it? Athena asked. Did you see it, too?

  “Yeah…” I said. “We need to be careful…especially if it’s that big creature that Dante is hunting.”

  I picked up the pace, my heart racing as I strained to get us back to the Lodge as quickly as I could.

  “I think you’re right, though,” I said as I took the narrower road toward the lake, the glittering water in the distance at the bottom of the hill. “Something is different this time. If the creature that tried to drown me attacked me because I was investigating Annie’s death, it’s possible that it is trying to ensure I never discover the truth,” I said.

  That makes the most sense, Athena said.

  A shadowy figure appeared from behind a tree alongside the road up ahead, making me grab tight to the brakes.

  My tires screeched as I came sliding to halt, nearly toppling off the bike.

  When I looked up, my heart in my throat…the shadow was gone.

  I gritted my teeth. “Alright, now someone’s just playing tricks on me…”

  I saw it too, Athena said, and she let out a low rumbling growl from her small chest.

  Who could it be? I asked her with my thoughts, not wanting anyone else to overhear me.

  There are too many people in question right now, Athena said. How could we be sure?

  I don’t know, I said. I put my feet back onto the pedals and set off again. I needed to get out of the open, and needed to get to safety.

  My heart raced as I continued down the hill, growing closer and closer to the lake.

  Was it Becca or Greg, both who’d been so upset over Annie’s death? Had it all been an act? Or maybe it was Paul Chase, who definitely had seemed innocent enough, but maybe was bitter if he feared he might lose his job over a misunderstanding?

  It could have been any of them. But I didn’t want to stay and find out.

  I let out a pathetic screech as a shape appeared out of the shadows.

  It was no ordinary human. Its indistinct form was nearly twice as large as a man. It was blurry and difficult to make out, because it was so fast.

  The faster I rode, the faster it ran through the trees, so quickly that I could only catch glimpses of it. It was like it had some kind of magical ability that prevented me from being able to focus my eyes on it.

  We have to get out of here, I said. That’s the thing that attacked me up on the cliffs. That’s the thing that dug its claws into my back and gave me those awful scars –

  But my thoughts were drowned out by a terrible growl that echoed through the trees, sending chills down into my very bones.

  14

  Just as I was about to break the line of trees that surrounded the lake, the giant, shadowy beast stepped out in front of me.

  Instinctively, I squeezed the brakes again, as tightly as I could. The tires skidded across the gravelly ground, sliding down the road.

  The bike toppled, and I went down with it, a yelp escaping me as the ground raced up to meet me.

  Stars popped in
my vision as I tried in desperation to cover my head.

  My helmet smacked off the ground, and the bike pinned my leg to the road, dragging it along as I slid. Pain shot down from my knee, where the chain from the bike was digging into my flesh, and the asphalt on the other side was tearing my skin to ribbons.

  I finally stopped, gasping in deep breaths, the pain in my leg so severe that I feared moving the bike in the first place.

  Adrenaline kicked in, though, and I untangled myself from the tires and handlebars.

  I could barely put any weight on the leg that had been pinned underneath the bike, and dark red blood beaded around the bits of gravel dug into my flesh. With trembling fingers, I touched the wound.

  It wasn’t deep, but it was long, and if I didn’t get all those tiny rocks out, my skin would likely form over them and give me one wicked infection.

  I looked up, but the creature had disappeared from the road in front of me.

  Marianne, are you alright?

  I looked down and saw Athena standing in front of me, her teeth bared in a snarl.

  “I think so,” I said. “Are you?”

  I’m fine, she said. But I –

  Another echoing growl emanated from the woods around us, like the sound of a hundred bears snarling in a chorus.

  That’s it! Athena shouted in my mind. She let out a growl of her own and turned, dashing off toward the forest.

  “Athena, wait!” I called after her.

  I struggled to my feet, and my leg screamed in protest. Fresh blood oozed from the wound, glistening in the late afternoon sunlight.

  I gripped my thigh, hoping to cut off some of the circulation, and headed off after Athena.

  I reached the grass when I heard a terrible cry from the inside of the trees…but it wasn’t the monster.

  It was Athena.

  My stomach dropped, and ice flooded through my veins, immobilizing me.

  No. Not Athena.

  “Athena!” I cried, taking off into the trees, ignoring the pain in my leg.

  The darkness of the shadows enveloped me as soon as I was past the first few trunks of the trees.