A Path of Oak and Ash (20 page)

27

Elizabeth sat crouched down in the bushes outside of Stella's Seafood Shack. It was a dive if she'd ever seen one. Looked like someone had taken an old gas station, gave it a coat of bright orange paint and turned it into a restaurant. To confirm her theory, four pumps still sat out front although they were covered in rust and one was bent at a forty five degree angle. The writing on the sign was in both English and Spanish, decorated with a picture of a smiling cartoon shrimp wearing a top hat waving at potential customers. Two vehicles were parked out front, three in the back, all at least twenty years old with varying degrees of rust and damage.

While she sat and observed only one vehicle stopped at the premise, a light blue truck with a broken right headlight. An elderly man exited the vehicle and went inside, emerging a few minutes later with a brown paper bag that more than likely contained take out. The scent of the eatery carried on the wind, as much as she detested seafood the deep fried aroma made her salivate, stomach turning in protest of her sedentary position.

After the truck left, she hobbled across the parking lot to the entrance. A bloody dirt smear tarnished the handle as she pushed open the door with her hand.

The inside was in better shape than the exterior, although the same eyeball searing color scheme had been used. Bright orange walls, neon green trim and blue chairs arranged by metal bargain tables. There was a counter lined by bar stools, topped with two display cases; one for deserts and another full of ice and clams, shrimp and lobsters. Soft music crooned in Spanish from a 1980's style FM radio with an aluminum wrapped antenna. A waitress in a pair of jean shorts and tee-shirt with the same goofy dancing food logo as the sign out front was humming along with a smile, wiping down the counter.

Soon as her brown eyes fell on Liz her smile followed suit, dropping into a gasp.

"¿estás herido?" The waitress rushed her in a panic, checking her arms and legs, then forcing her to one of the stools at the bar. "Siéntate, por favor." As Liz lowered herself down the waitress got her a glass of water and wrapped a track jacket over her shoulders. She wasted no time in drinking it, despite the pain it brought her cracked lips and raw throat. She knew she was suffering from slightly severe dehydration. "Estevan!" There was no response. Just the clatter of pans in the kitchen. "Estevan!"

A Latino man in his early forties-judging by his salt and pepper hair-emerged from the backroom through the double doors behind the counter. His emerald green soccer polo and khaki shorts carefully protected by a white apron with many food stains. The expression on his face was irritated, as though she shouted his name frequently in the same ear shattering pitch. "Si?"

"Polica."  The woman's shrill voice repeated it twice more, followed by a string of words that were too quick for Liz's tired mind to absorb.

Liz panicked. Waiving her arms.  "No. no. I don't need the police..err policia. I'm looking for Juan. Small Juan." She frowned, wishing she had taken Spanish rather than French. "donde esta pecenio Juan?" Wow she knew she butchered that.

The cook and the waitress exchanged a look.

"No habla espanol." She offered, trying to help her case.

"Anyone see you come in?" The cook asked in accented English, untying his apron while the woman moved quickly going from window to window, lowering the blinds then flipped the Open sign to Closed on the front door.

"No, I mean I don't think so." Elizabeth took note with growing alarm she didn't move, effectively blocking her into the cafe. Crap.

"Good." Behind her an all too familiar click sounded, the waitress had locked the front door.

28

His feet hit the ground hard, cascading an echo off unseen walls around him. Pushing forward he ran towards the sound of a woman crying somewhere before him in the endless void, her sobs tiny shards of glass serrating his soul. Unable to see through the black mist he stopped, unsure on the origin of the distress. The lamenting wails seemed to circle him, just beyond his reach. Spinning faster and faster…

Through the parted fog he saw the outline of a woman turned away from him, long wavy hair cascading in a waterfall down her back over a flowing green sundress.

"Mom?" There was no break in tears. "Mom!" He ran towards her. "Mom!" She didn't turn towards him, nor acknowledge his presence, even when he was close enough to smell the jasmine and vanilla of her perfume. Reaching outward with a shaking hand he touched her shoulder, her skin ice cold under the cotton cloth. "Mom?"

The woman that faced him was his own age; blond, beautiful and crying. Her dress wasn't a sun dress, it was a prom dress. Eyes closed, she still did not seem to know he was there.

"Liz. Liz are you okay." Carrick wiped her tears off her cheek. "Liz it’s me!" The viscosity of her woes felt strange on his skin, a metallic smell replaced the soothing vanilla. Carrick looked to his fingertips. They were...red.

Liz's face was streaked in blood, dripping from the corners of her closed eyes accentuating every sob. Drops of blood had landed on the light green silk of her gown, turning the cloth brown where they landed and spreading slowly outward. The mist around them was thickening, churning into smoke. The heavy smell of burning wood filled his nostrils while the thick grey cloud denied him air.

"Liz! Liz wake up!" He shook her violently, coughing as he struggled to breath. "Liz...please."

Her eyes flipped open, umber orbs that glowed through the abyss. "Carrick...."

Carrick sat up gasping for air, his body drenched in a cold sweat, blankets tangled around his feet. Groaning, he collapsed back onto the down filled mattress staring up at the wood planked ceiling of his room. His eyes morphing the lines and knots in the grain into a series of eye covered faces glaring at him in the early morning light.

It used to be that a dream was a dream, nothing more. Laugh it off, write it in a journal, and move on. Yet now with what he was, dreams were many things. Premonitions, manifestations of fears, warnings. Each and every category made the images he had just experiences terribly disturbing.

Her voice had been Lorcan's.
Chew on that Dr. Froyd.

Shivering, he swung his legs off the side of the bed. His waking senses picking up on the wonderful scent of breakfast, twitters of birds outside his window with Selene humming softly along somewhere in the main room. Carrick walked over to the window sill, opening the rod iron framed glass pane to welcome the late spring breeze. A serene day beginning in Dre'ien. Children playing along the paths outside their lofty homes. Workers meandered to their shops with no sense of urgency. A small family of deer grazed just outside the Elderwood, young fawns frolicking in play beside their timid parents. It was a sight that compelled him to forget the woes of man, to join in the revelry, resign to complacently taking up a post alongside his fellow druids, wed and raise a new generation in the security of the Glenn. As tempting as the premise was, today was not that day, although he prayed he lived to see it.

Carrick washed up with a bowl of spring water and a bar of their version of soap. The stuff was made with lye, just like back home, but that is about where the similarities ended. Powder from beet roots was used to turn the bar a lovely pink shade, the scent came from rose petals, the other ingredients were oils from soybeans and palm. He had originally hated the stuff, and their whole concept of a sudo shower, but Erik had given him a pretty vivid run down of all the ways his favorite brand and daily usage was decimating the quality of his skin and exposing him to further carcinogens. Yuck. Now he found he rather preferred both their 'druid brand' soap and washcloth in a bowl methods. It left him feeling refreshed, and more importantly, gave him time to steady his nerves. The fact that he couldn't remember a thing about Lorcan's face aside from those eyes still haunted him. At night, he'd taken to closing his eyes and concentrating on that evening with all of his will. Reliving every instance of the event, searching for some clue or indication of who and why.

Only to come up empty handed again and again. Whatever mental file he had on the psychopath had been deleted and purged from his recycle bin.

Toweling off his tan skin, Carrick grabbed some fresh clothes from his armoire. A white linen shirt, woven pants as dark as his hair, socks, belt...he went through the motions with about as much enthusiasm as one preparing for a 8 am calculous test. When he had successfully tied his boots, Carrick turned to the mirror. Using it as a guide he finger combed his hair, wishing it would grow faster. It was in that awkward stage of hanging in his eyes and not yet long enough to tuck behind his ears or pull back in a ponytail. He hated it, getting poked in the eyeball by brown locks was a subtle form of torture that always occurred at the most inopportune moments. On the bright side, the bruise on his cheek was gone. Just thinking about it made him that much angrier with Meliae. She just left him, left him there. Had Selene not come along he surely would have been killed. He felt foolish for following her in the first place, yet if he hadn't he wouldn't have determined what Lorcan was after. His mind weighed the risk and reward of the whole thing, trying to find a way to forgive Meliae. She was beautiful, fun to be around and had only been trying to cheer him up. And despite all of her positive attributes and well wishes, he found her actions unforgivable. With a smile he decided to take Aodhan up on his offer to introduce him to some of the druidic lovelies at the upcoming autumn festival. It was time to move on.

Selene was busy in the kitchen when he emerged from his room, her beautiful owl sleeping on the lowest perch above the reading nook.

"Good Morn to you Carrick! Sleep well?"

"Yeah." He lied, dropping his thick frame into the chair across from her. Along with fresh fruit, Selene had crafted half a dozen oat muffins, drenched in honey. He ate his meal in silence, unable to appreciate the intricate flavors on the expertly prepared plate. Despite the limited effect the sweet on his palate was having against the sour in his mind he devoured every bite as to not insult his...matron? For a moment he realized he had no real term for Selene. She wasn't his mother, nor aunt nor...anything really. Guardian? Yes. He'd go with that, even though he did not like the implications of control that came with the word.

"Thank you, it was delicious." Not a lie, it was.

Selene nodded, wrapping both of her long slender hands around her rust red tea filled mug. "I want to have a discussion with you Carrick."

"...about?" He knew he was going to get another earful for trusting that damned nymph. He honestly didn't need it, the fact that she had just left him out there like that made him want to tell her to go pound sand should she ever show her pretty face to him again.

"Trust." Ut oh. Even worse.

He gulped, the heavy oats sat thickly in his throat. "What about it?"

"You know what really defines Dre'ien from your human cities? It’s not our unity with the world in which we live, our attunement nor our familiars. It’s our unity...with each other." She took a sip from her mug. "We do not lock our doors, if we even have them. Crimes so prevalent in your world; the rapes, thefts, abuses of power...don't happen here. We openly share ideas, hypothesis, events, histories and even feelings. Knowledge is freely given on the premise of trust. I trust you with my life. Do you trust me with yours?"

Even though she had saved it, he couldn't say the words. "I just met you yesterday. You speak of trust, unity and all this oneness crap but in practice." He scoffed. "I'm treated like an outcast, looked down upon. My family members plot and plan my life without my knowledge. My father...my mother...hid me,
lie
to me. My
entire
life. So you want to say I have trust issues? Yeah. I do."

"Neither Brannon nor Erik have ever deceived you."

Carrick frowned, he considered omission to be a type of deceit and yet, even with that...all lies of omission led back to his mother. Perhaps that was the real truth he didn't want to face. "My mother-"

"What she did was very wrong, and yet equally justified in love. You should not judge-"

"Did you know her?" He cut her off in turn.

"No." Selene cleared her throat. "Brannon left to study the high hills one summer and did not return until two more had passed. He announced he had sired an heir. He spoke little of his bride, only that she was quite lovely and kind."

"She is." His response was more combative than he had intended. Perhaps it was because while Selene spoke of his mother, there was an undertone he couldn't quite put his finger on. It wasn't disdain nor superiority it was something else...

There was a moment of silence that stretched into unease. Carrick shifted in his seat.

Selene broke the silence first. "I am very sorry for your loss."

"She's not dead." He snapped, feeling twice as rude.

"Dead or alive, she is currently lost to you. Is she not?" Hard to argue that, and yet there was no way in hell he was letting her win this conversation. As juvenile as that was.

"How fitting is it the one crime you don't mention on your little superiority list is murder. Seems like all I've seen in your perfect little world is death." Carrick grumbled, images from his dream fresh on his mind.

"Death is a part of all life." Selene scowled, growing agitated. "I too, have faced the pain of loss. More than you could possibly imagine."

"What happened?" He blurted out before he could stop himself.

Selene exhaled, spinning her tea cup in her hands slowly. "When Lorcan returned, he brought with him a foul army that outnumbered us three to one. Every person of age was summoned to the lines, regardless of their combat training. Scholars, Menders, Leatherworkers, it didn't matter. They went because they were called, because they believed in our community and the principals we live by. Fourteen Lillevyn over three generations answered that call," she swallowed hard, taking a sip from her mug, "three returned." The words came out in a rush, her hands quickly raising her cup to her lips once more. Carrick lowered his own head, eyes focused on the single bright green apple left in the bowl on the tabletop. It was almost impossible to fathom, your entire family-immediate and extended-virtually wiped out in a day. Wow, he was a jerk.

"Carrick, whatever Lorcan has promised you. It’s a lie. It’s what he does."

"He hasn't promised-"

"He
always
promises, always has."

Carrick's head snapped up, taken aback. Selene had practically shouted at him.

"My sister..." Selene stopped herself, closing her eyes with a deep breath. "Many believe in the lie he offers right up until his knife is in their back, and even then they die smiling. So yes, you are correct. Murder is a problem in our perfect little world."

"No. I didn't mean-"

Her hand went up. "Save me your patronizing words. I am not a fool Carrick Slaine." Brushing a few onyx locks out of her eyes, her gaze remained locked on him. "I need you to look deep within yourself and make a choice. To really be one
with
us, you must be
one
with us. That means putting your faith in something larger than yourself. Setting aside your wants and dreams for the good of the whole. Are you truly capable of such selflessness?"

He realized the question was rhetorical when she rose from the table and quickly exited the Elderwood.