Wayfarer (8 page)

Linden reddened. She was so used to talking freely with Knife and Paul and some of her fellow Oakenfolk, it was easy to forget that most faeries used conversation only as a tool—or a weapon. “I'm sorry,” she said. “Please go on.”

Rob was silent a moment. Then he said, “I may regret asking this, but…are you one of the
Plant Rhys Ddwfn
?”

“Plawnt hreece thuvin?” repeated Linden, puzzled. “What does that mean?”

“The Children of Rhys the Deep,” said Rob. “And since you do not recognize the name, then clearly, I was mistaken.” He swore under his breath. “I should have known. That one of the Children would come to me—it was too
easy. But where else could you have come from, to know nothing of the Empress and be generous even to humans?”

“Do you want me to tell you?” asked Linden.

Rob slumped back into the chair. “I suppose you may yet say something worth hearing,” he said, though his voice held little hope. “Very well, go on.”

Linden sat up straighter. This might be her only chance to explain why she had come to London, to make Rob understand the Oakenfolk's desperate situation and persuade him, if he could be persuaded, to help.

“My name is Linden,” she began, “and I come from a place called the Oakenwyld….”

 

When she had finished her story, Rob sat for a long moment without speaking. Then he said in a voice that rasped with disbelief, “You mean to tell me that you and your fellow Oakenfolk—every one of you—are female, and always have been? For five hundred years you have lived alone in your Oak, and never seen a single male of our kind?”

Linden nodded, relieved that he finally understood. “Until I met you tonight,” she said, “I had no idea that male faeries even existed.”

“And before this Jasmine you spoke of came along and cast her spell, your people used to have their children by
humans
?”

“Only now and then,” said Linden hastily, blushing. “Most often we took girl children the humans didn't want
and turned them into faeries instead. But we can't do either of those things anymore. Not without our magic.”

Rob shook his head. “Impossible,” he murmured. “After all these centuries…”

Linden's heart thumped painfully. Was he saying that it was too late to help the Oakenfolk? She was about to plead with him, but Rob cut in:

“And you truly believe that all you need do is ask, or offer some crude bargain, and the rest of us will rush to help you, just like that?”

“I—I don't know,” she said. Put like that, it did sound hopelessly naive. “But I had to try. There are only a few of us left alive now. And now that the spells that protect the Oak are weakening, soon it won't even be safe for us to live there anymore—”

“Then why not ask your human
friends
to take you in? Surely there must be room for you all in that big House of theirs.”

“But that wouldn't be fair to them,” protested Linden. “And it wouldn't be safe for us, either. One or two of us might be able to hide away in the House, but not all. And if the other humans found out, they'd try to capture us, study us—”

“Then perhaps you should have thought of that before you threw in your lot with the humans in the first place,” said Rob coldly as he got to his feet. “Because I can tell you that the Empress rules the whole of this great island,
and no faery under her command will ever give help to one of the Forsaken.”

“The…Forsaken?”

“I had believed you to be no more than a legend,” Rob went on in the same flat tone. “Faeries who so loved humans that they would serve them like slaves, choosing even to wed with them and bear their children rather than be true to their own faery blood. Traitors and renegades, exiled from the rest of our people centuries ago. If the Empress knew that I had helped you, even in ignorance…” He pulled up his hood and moved toward the door.

“Wait!” Linden leaped off the bed and darted to intercept him. “Where are you going? You're not going to tell her, are you? Please!”

Rob closed his eyes, as though he could not bear to look at her. “No,” he said. “But Veronica will not be so discreet—and she was not the only one who witnessed your rescue of the human boy. It will not be long before the Empress learns what you did this night and draws her own conclusions. And then your life, and the boy's, too, will be forfeit.”

Linden stood rooted, trembling with horror and fury. Then she burst out, “Well, if that's the kind of law you live by here—if that's what your Empress calls justice—then it's no wonder my people decided they'd be better off with the humans!”

“Linden…” It was the first time Rob had spoken her name, but she was too upset to care.

Hotly, she went on: “Maybe we are renegades, as you say, but at least we know enough to care about something besides ourselves. At least we still remember that we belong to the Great Gardener, and not to some Empress who goes around putting people to death at the flick of a wing! I'm sorry I wasn't one of your precious Children of Peace—”

“Rhys,” said Rob.

“—but if you ask me, it makes no difference. Because if they're known for being generous and kind to humans, I can't imagine that they'd be any more impressed with your attitude than I am!”

She finished the sentence with a glare, daring Rob to make some caustic retort. But unaccountably, his stern expression softened. He reached out and touched her hair, letting the brown curls tumble between his fingers.

“You are young,” he said. “And altogether too innocent to survive in this hard world. But you have courage. And the human boy—he played well tonight.”

He glanced over at Timothy, still sprawled oblivious across the bed. “Let him sleep a little while longer, then wake him and go to the nearest train station. My people are not fond of places where many humans gather; you should be safe there until you can find transport out of the city. Return to your Oak quickly, and remain there, and you may yet escape the Empress. I cannot promise you anything more.”

Linden caught his arm. “But if we leave, how will I find the help we need? Surely not
all
the other faeries serve the Empress—if I just knew where to look—”

“That,” said Rob, “was what I had hoped you would be able to tell me. So it seems we are both disappointed.” He shrugged away from her grasp, flung the door open, and was gone.

 

“Timothy. Wake up.” Linden was shaking him. “We have to go.”

He groaned and rolled onto his back, blinking his sleep-gummed eyes against the light. “What, already?”

“Yes, right away. Rob's gone, and—” She cast a nervous glance at the open door. “We can't stay here much longer.”

Timothy swung his legs around and sat up, squinting at his watch: 5:47
A.M
. Beyond the cracked window the sky was still dark, the streetlights glowing eerily through a haze of mist. He felt dislocated, as though he had wakened on some alien planet. “Okay,” he mumbled, “just give me a few minutes.”

“There's no time to waste.” She dragged his backpack and guitar case toward him. “If any of the Empress's faeries find us, we're dead.”

Abruptly he was wide awake. “What?”

“Just come,” begged Linden. “I'll explain on the way.”

As they stepped onto the landing, Timothy nearly tripped over a pair of leather shoes sitting just outside the door. “What the—” he said, but Linden had already snatched them up.

“Rob must have left them for me!” she exclaimed, slipping
them on and bouncing a little. “They fit perfectly.”

“How'd he know your size?” asked Timothy, but to his surprise, Linden only blushed and hurried down the stairs.

She told him the story as they walked, passing one street after another on their way toward the nearest train station. The glamour she'd put on herself before they'd left the flat made her look like an ordinary human girl in a winter jacket and jeans, but it plainly wasn't keeping her warm: By the time she had finished speaking her cheeks were rosy with cold, and she was hugging herself in an effort not to shiver. Timothy fished his last sweatshirt out of his backpack and handed it to her.

“Oh, I am grateful,” she breathed as she floundered into it, rolling up the sleeves that drooped over her hands. “But you haven't said anything.” She looked up at him, eyes big with apprehension. “Are you angry?”

Timothy shoved a hand through his hair. “No, it's all marvelous,” he said bitterly. “I'm glad you and Rob had such a nice chat. Lovely people, your folk.”

“I'm sorry.” She looked stricken. “I never imagined it would be like this. I thought if I could only find more faeries, everything would be wonderful. But to meet them, and then hear that they all despise us and call us Forsaken…and even worse, that they're ruled by someone
evil…
”

“So now we've got no choice but to run back to Oakhaven.” Timothy stomped on a discarded soda can and kicked it aside. “It'd be one thing if I'd been gone a week,
or been in an accident or something. But coming back to Paul and Peri's the morning after I left, because I was scared of a lot of homicidal faeries—that's just pathetic. They probably haven't even found my note yet.”

Linden said nothing. Her head was bent, her face invisible behind her turbulence of hair.

“On the other hand,” he continued, “it's the perfect excuse not to go back to Greenhill. Hello, Mum and Dad, England's fine, I met some faeries and now they want to kill me. Sure you don't want to send me to school in Canada instead?”

Linden gave a quavering laugh and then, to Timothy's horror, burst into tears. He grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her away from the road, hoping desperately that she'd calm down before someone stopped and demanded to know what was going on.

But though Linden put her hands over her face and sobbed until her body shook, none of the passing cars even slowed down. And once she'd wept herself into dry hiccups and wiped her eyes on her sleeve, Timothy was finally able to make out what she was saying:

“I've done everything wrong,” she choked. “I thought I could help the Oakenfolk—I thought I was helping you—but all I've done is put all of us in worse danger than ever. What if the Empress sends her people after us? What if they find the Oak? Valerian was right. I wasn't ready for this. And what am I going to tell the Queen when I see her?”

Timothy regarded her helplessly for a moment. Then with sudden decisiveness he took Linden by the elbow and marched her along with him until they reached the train station. He steered her inside and made her sit down on one of the benches before taking both her hands in his and saying in the low, firm voice he used to calm his little sister, “All right, yes, it's a bad situation. For both of us. But we're still alive, and we've made it this far. That's good, isn't it?”

Reluctantly, Linden nodded.

“So we'll get you on the next train to Aynsbridge, and you can go back to the Oak and tell the others what happened. At least now you know that there are other faeries out there. Male faeries, even. That's got to be worth something.”

Linden rubbed at her reddened eyes. “But if all the other faeries want nothing to do with us, and all we can do is sit in the Oak and wait to die—”

“Who says that? Maybe the faeries here in London won't help you, but you can always go to some other city—or another country, if you have to. All you have to do is hide in the Oak for a few days until the Empress gives up looking for you, and then try again. What about these Children of Rhys that Rob mentioned? They're faeries, too, aren't they?”

“Yes, but we don't even know where to find the Children, let alone whether they'd be willing to help us. And we're running out of time.” Her expression was
desolate. “Even working together, Valerian and I can't protect the Oak the way the Queen used to. If we'd done the wards properly, you'd hardly have noticed the tree at all when you came—but you walked right up and touched it. We might be able to hide from the Empress, but what good will that do us if we just end up being found by the humans instead?”

Timothy let her go and stood up, shoving his cold hands back into his pockets. “I don't know. But I can't see you've got any other choice.”

Linden was silent, her gaze on the floor. Then she said, “You're not going to come with me, are you? You're going to keep running away.”

She didn't sound accusing, only resigned. Timothy hunched his shoulders uncomfortably. “Look, it's not that I don't want to help you. I just don't know what use I could be, especially if the Empress and her people do come after us. You might be safe in your Oak if you can keep up those spells long enough, but all they'd have to do to find me at Oakhaven is look through the window. They might even figure out that Peri used to be one of your people and decide to punish her, too. Is that what you want?”

Linden looked stricken. “No!”

“Right. So if you ask me, it's better for everyone if I don't go back to Oakhaven. Besides”—he tried to keep his voice light, but somehow the old bitterness crept in—“Paul
and Peri already made it pretty obvious they didn't want me around.”

“Only because they were afraid you'd find out about the Oak—”

“Because they don't trust me, that's why!” The words came out louder than he'd intended, and Linden flinched. With an effort Timothy controlled his temper and went on, “By now they should know what kind of person I am. But apparently they think I'm the kind who'd smash up a five-hundred-year-old tree for the fun of it, or stuff faeries into specimen jars and sell them for pocket money, or—”

“Or hit someone and get yourself sent away from school?” said Linden.