For Your Heart (Hill Dweller Retellings) (38 page)

    
Her face strains in agitation.  “They’re not going to believe that faeries exist, Netti.”

    
I smile at her, trying to look reassuring even though I’m so jumpy and out of sorts, I couldn’t keep my dinner down.  I’m already emotionally drained from this morning with Celeste.  I should feel good.  I think I might have already saved someone’s life today, so I should be ready for round two.  I should be calm and firm.  I can’t get too stressed out because I don’t want to cause too much stress for my baby. 

    
But how can I not be stressed with what I’m about to do?  I try to focus on something else.  “You’d be surprised what Amber will believe.  She believed in the Green Man myth, didn’t she?  Play it up like it’s something out of one of our books.  And then tell Dad and Celeste something else – or just be there for them.  It’s hitting Dad bad enough thinking Tamrin ran away.  I can only imagine if he thinks I ran after him.  And I think you and Amber should pool your funds and buy Celeste a puppy.  Right now, she needs unconditional love and something that will rely on her.”

    
She lets out a sigh and rubs her forehead, her anxiety palpable.  “You better come back.”

    
“I intend to.”

    
Frowning, she pulls me into a tight hug.  “I don’t like this.  I’m scared.”

    
I lock my arms around her.  “Me, too,” I whisper into her hair.  “Pray for me.”  The only thing that will get me through this is divine intervention.

    
“Ya,” she huffs, pulling away.  “Where’s Doctor Who when you need him, right?”  We both giggle, and then start to cry.

Leaving the house on a big save-my-knight-from-certain-doom adventure seems flat and without fanfare.  I exit through the sliding glass doors, Neko-Neko – tail held high – leading the way.  He goes straight for the path I could never find.  Of course a cat could see the path that my own eyes lost long ago.

    
As some sick part of me starts mentally singing “We’re Off to See the Wizard,” I glance back to where Emily is leaning, arms folded against the late-October cold, in the doorway and give a little wave.

    
She pitches herself upright and gives me a diligent salute.  “
Faito
!” She yells.  ‘Fight’ in Japanese.

    
I take a deep breath, let my eyes wander back to Carver Hall Park, and let it out.  “Okay,” I say to myself.  “Ladies and Gentlemen, prepare to be amazed.”  I take a step and then another and another until I’m full tilt running, and dive into the park.

    
If it were any other day and this any other situation, I might think this trek through Carver Hall Park is nice.  The leaves are in color – the height of autumn’s breath fading them to yellow, red, and orange – the air is crisp, the sun is still warm.  Not that there is much sun under the canopies of oak, maple, pine, and birch.

    
Still, the ferns and other underbrush are dying back, so it’s a little easier to see and travel the trail than when I first searched for it almost two months ago.  At least it doesn’t feel like the forest is trying to eat me like the day I met Tamrin.

    
Part of me wants to veer toward the garden and fall into Tamrin’s arms, but it won’t help anyone if one of us is caught.  I have no idea when the court will come and collect him, so I keep on the path and continue.

    
I heft the cloak in my arms.  It seems like such a simple, useless thing.  I suppose it’s too much to hope it’s like Harry Potter’s cloak of invisibility.  I could use some mega supernatural combat gear.  Like the whole arsenal in the back of the Winchester’s Chevy Impala.

    
It’s well past dark by the time I come to the spot Mushroom Woman showed me in the vision.  This is the path Timmy, no,
Tamrin
and I followed so long ago. The unbeaten trail intersects with another path.  At the point where they meet, two massive, old trees have grown into each other so their conjoined bodies make a sort of doorway.  Someone has scratched their name into the bark of one.  I run my fingers over the wound. 
Miles.
 

    
Focusing my flashlight down, I examine the paths.  The lane I came down is mostly undisturbed, the leaves lying graceful and the fern fronds dipping across the hidden way.  The other path is muddy, churned, and stamped with hoof prints, the fern fronds snapped and ground dark with bruises.

    
The faeries have already come down this path.

    
Shivering, I direct the flashlight along the path as far as it will go.  It’s heading toward the rose garden.  This must be the path Tamrin uses to get back and forth to wherever the gate leading to Otherworld is.  They’ll be bringing him along this road.

    
I step off of the path and settle behind a squat evergreen.  For a long time, I point my flashlight at the Miles Cross-Trees.  I memorize everything that stands between me and the road.  And then I huddle under the green cloak and I turn off the flashlight.

Tamrin

     When I hear the ring of elfin-forged bells strung about the bridles of the horses of Summer, part of me wants to follow Enmire’s example and crawl into a tree to hide.  I haven’t heard from or seen Jean today.  She hasn’t come to free me.  Which means either she didn’t find an answer and couldn’t face me, or Roxel has discovered her efforts and has trapped her.

    
I’ve been throwing myself at the boundaries of my invisible cage, screaming and raging because I’m certain Roxel has done something to keep Jean away.  But it’s no use.  I’m trapped here.  Even if I hide, they will find me and I will be shamed for my cowardice in the face of my demise.

    
I meet Enmire’s wide, terrified eyes, give him a nod goodbye then walk into the clearing and wait among the roses that now lay dead and twisted.  I had thought that pulling them up might free some other poor soul from Roxel, but they all died upon pulling.  Something inside me says the humans who once belonged to these hearts are long dead.  Their fate like mine – fodder for the tithe.  And having now destroyed the last remaining vestiges of their existence, I don’t know if I’ve done them a favor by freeing them or destroyed the only remaining memory of their lives.  Perhaps this was a memorial garden – a way for Roxel to atone for what she has done to the countless humans she has abducted, tempted, and turned upon.

    
Like always, Roxel is first among her people in the long line leading from Leah’s gate.  She walks her steed directly to me and stares down at me, long and hard and ruthless.  There is none of the affection she once showed me.  Only cold hatred for the one who bit the hand that fed him the world.  She gave me everything…except the thing I really wanted.

    
I take a deep breath and square my shoulders.  “Where’s Jean?”  I demand.

    
Ignoring me, Roxel makes a sharp hand gesture.  Her guards come alongside her and slide from their mounts, pikes at ready as though I’d fight them.

    
“Roxel.” I try to sound calm although my heart beats in fear that Jean might be somewhere among the horses, already prepared as a tithe.

    
“Strip and bathe him,” she commands.

    
They come at me and, though I don’t make a single move to fight, my own comrades at arms wrestle me to the ground and strip me of my dignity.  Twyla and her Talent for water come next, drawing up icy water from the old well near my garden and dumping bucket upon bucket over my head until I am shaking and nearly purple with cold.

    
The thin white silk breeches and shirt they wrestle onto me stick to my freezing flesh like new layers of skin.

    
Next comes the armor.  More beautiful and ornate than anything of the Knights of Summer have ever worn.  It’s only forged by the dwarves every seven years, only warn by the sacrifices of Summer – so we may look more enticing to the Hunter who claims us as the tithe to Hell.

    
While the armor was made to fit me to perfection, Roxel’s guards are not gentle with the leather straps.  The only thing keeping my skin from bleeding raw is the silk and my cold-corded muscles.

    
A lovely white stallion is dragged up through the rest of the horses.  The creature snorts and his eyes roll wide, as if he knows he’s about to carry me through the Nethergate and into the arms of the Hunter.  What horrors await me in Hell?  Is that where I’ll truly go?  For years I’ve always thought I was an
Aos Si
.  A strange one, but one nonetheless.  I assumed if I ever died, I’d go to Hell like all other
Aos Si
.  But I’m not an
Aos Si
.  I’m a human.  I could go to Heaven or Hell.  But not like this.  Not if she offers me directly into the hands of the Hound of Hell to satiate him for the next seven years.

    
I smooth my hand over the horse’s forehead and shush him.  “Easy.”  I mount on my own and when they all turn, I follow along willingly.  I will not cry or run from my death.  My only regrets are that I could not touch my Jean one last time, that I couldn’t hold my unborn child just once, that I decided it was a good idea to walk through Carver Hall Park on the night of Halloween all those years ago.

Jeanette

     Dark and silent.  Dark and silent.  Not a breath of wind or the chirp of a cricket or the scuttle of an animal through the underbrush.  It’s like the world knows and it’s holding its breath.  Waiting.  Like me.  It’s scary. 

    
I shift.  My bones feel stiff and a thick blanket of clouds have blown over the stars and the moon.  I am blind.  I am cold.

    
I take a deep breath, let it out.  “There’s nothing here,” I whisper to myself.  “Just me.  Just me and I’m going to stay right here.”

    
I’m going to save Tamrin.

    
More time passes in the stillness.  My butt numbs.  My brain blanks.  I’m beyond fear.  Now it’s only the waiting.

    
Waiting.

    
Waiting.

    
What time is it?

    
I pull my cell phone out of my breast pocket and check, the bright light making me blink and tear.  After midnight.  Still nothing.

    
I bite my lip.  What if the witch was wrong?  What if this isn’t the place?  Maybe Tamrin is already dead.

    
“No,” I growl to myself.  He’s fine.  I’d know if he was dead, wouldn’t I?  Like I’ve always known he was still alive?  It’s a saccharine notion, but it calms me anyway.    

    
A lazy breeze shifts the branches, making dead leaves flutter down.  I lift my chin, relishing the sharp air on my numb skin.  It grows and grows.  Stronger, like a flood of icy air, until it tugs me backwards, cuts through my clothing, and howls in my ears.

    
Tink, tink, tink
.

    
I sit bolt upright.  What was that?

    
Tin, tink, tin, tink, tin, tink.

    
Bells.  I ball my fists and stand.  I know that sound.  It was branded in my mind the night Timmy was taken.  How could I forget?  In the distance, flickering in and out of tree trunks and falling leaves, a narrow dart of light lances through the park.  The faerie court is coming.

    
I slide from my rock and crouch close to one of the Miles Cross-Trees, fingers digging into the bark until it hurts.  The pain is a reassurance; I am real.  This is truly happening. 

    
I hear the thundering hooves.  The standard beat of a brisk trot, the jangle of ornate tack and delicate bells ringing with each step.  Over it, there’s an almost imperceptible din, sounds of this world, but not.  Cheers and jeers, whispers, and cries both humanoid and animal.  I press myself close to the tree, willing no one see me, and peek down the path.

    
It’s like a scene out of Sleepy Hollow.  A corridor of trees glowing eerie from the inside, their branches bending and swaying at the passage of a hundred thousand invisible things that rattle reality.

    
Jaw clenched, I force myself to squint hard at the oncoming, invisible hoard.  Delicate shapes and shadows dance along the trunks, tiny flashes of light twinkle.  The ground churns and takes on the imprints of dozens of paws and claws and hooves.  But I see nothing concrete taking the steps.  Out of nowhere, rose petals of all colors and shapes explode into the air, tossed up only to be snatched by the wind and thrown in my face.

    
The crowd grows closer, begins to pass.  I hold my breath and close my eyes.  It’s terrible and wonderful all at once.  My heart thuds hard against my chest and I think my fingers might fall off if I scratch at the bark any harder. 

    
These must be faeries.