The Unfinished Song - Book 6: Blood (2 page)

Vessia had heard the cruel nickname. She squeezed Kia’s shoulder. “Nobody thinks you’re a human.”

“Have you ever thought…what if I am?” Kia clutched Vessia’s hand as a drowning woman would grab a rope. “What if I were switched at birth or something? It happens.”

“Kia, you’re being ridiculous. Lothlo is your father, and Yastara is your mother. I was there on the day of your birth, and, even now, I see the light of your parents’ auras flowing in you.”

“I can’t see those threads.”

“I do.”

“I don’t even have six Chromas.
All
Aelfae have six Chromas. Only humans have less. Except me. The freak.”

“You’re not a freak.”

“The footprints all lead in that direction.”

“And I’ve told you before, you
do
have six Chromas. Some of your colors are just…weak. It happens, even to Aelfae.”

“Never to you. You’re the perfect Aelfae. Did I mention I hate you?”

Vessia kissed her forehead. “Keep trying. Don’t force it.”

“You do realize those two bits of advice are mutually incompatible, right?”

Vessia laughed and would have retorted, but she saw a shadowy figure move among the rocks on the opposite side of the circle. Swiftly, bone blade already in her hand, she moved to intercept the silhouette.

It was only Mrigana. A complex asymmetrical braid, sleek and black, cascaded down her right shoulder, decorated with purple nightshade blossoms. Like Gwidan, she wore a bow across her back.

“A word?” Mrigana asked. She glanced back over her shoulder at the others gathered around the fire. “Apart.”

Vessia moved closer and kept her voice low, as Mrigana had. “Share your worry; we’ll eat it together.”

“This is not the first time the humans have found us.”

Vessia had hunted down the same fear. Three times in as many decades, the humans had sent warriors to scour the Aelfae from their supposedly secret settlements.

“Their hunters are good,” said Vessia.

“Against our magic? Not
that
good,” said Mrigana. “And they showed no hesitation, no scouts, no testing party. They simply threw their whole army at us, all at once. As if they were
sure
we were here. They even knew the dance to part the rocks across the pass.”

“You think there is a traitor.”

Mrigana inclined her head.

“It must be one of the Cursed,” said Vessia.

Unfortunately, that was
all
the Aelfae these days, except the eight Uncursed who formed Vessia’s band. The human hex had spread like a disease, claiming more and more Aelfae every generation. The deaths of the young ones were the hardest to bear. Children were born only to wither and die before their parent’s eyes, little lives briefer than a blink. Other Cursed lived with the shadow for many turns of the seasons, seemingly hale, only to gradually wrinkle and wilt, as humans did, like a slowly rotting fruit. Vessia’s secret fear was the Curse that slipped in unseen and unsuspected; an Aelfae who took a spear to the chest, or a tumble down a cliff, might simply fail to rise again the next dawn. Without realizing it, they had been robbed of their faery immortality. Vessia had died many times, but always awakened the next morning. One day, she feared, she would not wake.

The Cursed who knew their affliction became bitter, desperate. They did foolish things. It had become necessary to hide secrets from them, to protect them from themselves. This was why only the Eight Uncursed knew the dance to open the pass to the Hidden Canyon.

Yet, somehow, humans had found their way in.

Mrigana brooded over an accusation she would not hatch.

“Surely, it could not be one of
us
,” Vessia argued against her unspoken words. “Why would any of the Uncursed betray the Aelfae?”

“Why, indeed. If we learn that, we will learn who among us is the traitor.”

“It’s not Kia,” Vessia said, this time arguing against her own doubt. “No matter what her troubles, she is no more human than you or I. She is Aelfae, and she is loyal.”

Mrigana shrugged.

“I refuse to start distrusting our own kind,” said Vessia. “Not without proof. If we bite ourselves, we do the humans’ job for them.”

“We may be immortal,” said Mrigana. “But we don’t have forever to defeat the humans in this War. One day, our people will run out of places to hide.”

“If that day comes, we will stand and fight.”

“If that day comes, we will lose.”

“Do you remember when we could see the future as well as the past? Before the humans came and wounded the world.”

“Yes.”

“You alone still have that gift.”

“Less and less.”

“Because Lady Death has stolen our future,” whispered Vessia. “You cannot see Aelfae in the future because we are not there.”

Mrigana bowed her head. “All I see of the future are glimpses…and always of humans.”

“There is something that might save our kind... but I was going to wait until our need was most dire to try it.”

“Vessia, our need is most dire.”

“Then I will announce it to everyone. Come.”

Vessia walked back into the circle and clapped her hands three times. The chatter stopped; even Kia left the shadows and came forward. The Uncursed stood around her, and around the fire, in a rough circle, ready to talk, fight or dance, at her word.

“I have found a way for us to travel the Faerie Circle again,” she told them. “To the future.”

“See the future?” Yastara wrinkled her nose. “In the Looking Bowl?”

Lothlo snorted. “That useless thing.”

“No,” said Vessia. “We will not just
see
into the Circle. We will
travel
the Circle, as we used to be able to do, before humans wounded the world and stole our future as their own. We cannot go to the old places to join the Circle; the minions of Lady Death guard the Seven Sacred Places. We cannot join the Circle outside a Sacred Place; the Curse of Lady Death veils the magic from us. But this will help us forge a new path.”

Vessia unfolded the cloth in which she had hidden her treasure,
then raised it over her head for them all to behold.

She held aloft an object the size of a sunflower, and made of woven reeds folded into six petals. Each petal was painted a different color: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple.

“It’s a windwheel. When the petals spin, they paint a rainbow on the wind. It will dance on its own as long as sky kisses earth. We need only start the circle. It will send our Patterns into the future, and it will draw us back to our starting point. With it, we will weave our Patterns into the light of a future day. And then, hopefully, return with what we learn.”

Vessia told each of them which Chroma to dance. Though each (except/even Kia) had six Chromas, they had their habitual favorites: Xerpen would take Red; Kia, Orange; Lothlo, Yellow; Gwidan, Green; Yastara, Blue; and Hest, Purple. Vessia and Mrigana would add more Red and Purple respectively, to seal the ends of the Rainbow.

They painted themselves in their Chroma colors, elaborate designs of whorls and chevrons, wavy vines, zigzags, and sunbursts. Vessia used white paint, as was her wont, with just a few dots of red for emphasis.

Mrigana, already vibrant in violet, sidled up to her. “Are you sure about this?”

“You were the one who showed me the urgency,” said Vessia.

“But the human army is advancing into the valley. Shouldn’t we prepare our people to flee before the enemy finds the Cavern of a Thousand Shells?”

“If we succeed, we will return to the same eyeblink we left. There will still be time to flee. Perhaps, though, we will have found a way to reverse Lady Death’s Curse, and we will no longer need to run.”

The eight Uncursed
damped out the fire with wet leaves, and placed the Windwheel on a stake in its place. The last wisps of smoke curled around the Windwheel like grey cats rubbing their backs against a post.

The dancers began to move. Their magic lifted a wind that stirred the Windwheel. The petals of the Windwheel left streams of light on the air as they spun faster and faster. The rainbow circle expanded like ripples on water, growing wider and brighter.

An explosion of unbearably bright light and a sound like exploding thunder tossed all the dancers like leaves in a storm.

Vessia smashed hard against a tree. Her ears throbbed, and her chest twinged painfully as she picked herself up off the wet leaves.

“Is everyone whole?” she asked shakily.

The others looked no better than she. Bruised and dazed, they gathered slowly back in the middle of the clearing.

“Did it work?” asked Kia. “For a moment, I felt like I was someplace else…”

“Yes,” said Lothlo. “Or it may have been the same place, but the trees were different, and the season…”

“But it’s the same now,” said Yastara. “And if we did travel to the future, I don’t remember it.”

“Neither do I,” said Kia.

“Neither do I,” said Vessia.

They all shook their heads. No one remembered his or her trip to the future, if indeed they had gone at all.

Gwidan threw his bow down on the ground in anger. “Damn, it didn’t work.”

“It
should
have worked,” said Vessia. “I don’t understand why it didn’t work.”

“That’s why.” Hest pointed. “The Windwheel is gone.”

They all gaped at the fire pit where the Windwheel had stood. It was gone.

“We were betrayed,” Mrigana said grimly.

She met Vessia’s eyes. Vessia nodded. Her heart felt like a stone. Mrigana had been right; the traitor had to be one of the Eight Uncursed.

“The human army is still out there,” Vessia said. “Our attempt to travel to the future failed. All we can do now is try to save our people in the present.”

The last thing she remembered was dancing with the Windwheel.

Vessia and the other Aelfae dancers began to move. Their magic lifted a wind, which stirred the Windwheel. The petals of the Windwheel left streams of light on the air as they spun faster and faster. The rainbow circle expanded like ripples on water, growing wider and brighter.

An explosion of unbearably bright light, and a sound like exploding thunder, tossed all the dancers like leaves in a storm.

Vessia lay flat on her back. The fragrance of wet leaves had been replaced by stale air. Her ears throbbed, and her chest twinged painfully as she tried to sit up. She couldn’t. She was lashed down to a stone table. The chill seeped through her back.

Before she could panic, a familiar, reassuring face appeared over her.

“Xerpen!” she said, relieved. “Did we make it? Is everyone whole? Are we in the future?”

“Yes,” said Xerpen. “We’re in the future. Sorry about the cords, you were thrashing around so much I was afraid you’d hurt yourself. But you don’t need those now.”

He cut the ropes around her wrists and ankles. Vessia rubbed her chafed skin. She must have been thrashing like a lunatic. The ropes had scraped her skin raw.

Vessia looked around. They no longer stood in the forest clearing. Xerpen was there, but none of the others. They stood in a cave…no, a house, made of small stacked stones above a floor of raw rock. A large loom, taller than several men standing one on the other, stood near the back wall. Gleaming threads of light snaked in and out of the weft and warp on the Loom. Six corpses—human—were scattered on the floor around the room.
Remnants of a battle?

Through a doorway reached by steps in the rock, Vessia could see a hummock that fell off into an uncanny darkness.

“The Windwheel worked,” Vessia said. “We are in the future. But we aren’t safe here. This is a human clanhold, and that darkness outside is not natural. We need to leave before the humans find us.”

“We are safe for now,” said Xerpen. “There are Vylfae here. They are keeping the humans in line.”

“The Vylfae are allied with the human tribe Orange Canyon,” said Vessia. “A Morvae tribe. No friends of the Aelfae, even by human standards.”

“Things have changed since our time, Vessia,” Xerpen said gently.

She stared at him. He spoke as one who knew, not one who guessed.

“How long have you been awake?”

“Longer than you.”

“By days?”

“By
years
, Vessia.”

Her jaw dropped.

“Our bodies never travelled physically,” he explained. “Your aura has been recovered from the past, and your youth has been restored—but only by re-weaving the memory pattern from your past onto your body from the present.”

“That’s not how the spell was supposed to work.”

“Much is different from what we expected. The others—I don’t know if they are awake yet, and if they are, I have no idea
where
they are.”