Between (19 page)

Keiran’s right. They simply stretch across the ground, ending at nothing.

Look for what doesn’t belong. I need to keep this in mind next time I want to go exploring in the Between.

I think back to this morning in the meadow. I don’t recall anything out of the ordinary, aside from every single thing about the field being out of the ordinary. I’ll have to go back and look again.

We keep walking, and Keiran’s hand brushes against my arm every now and then. Round pebbles gradually replace the thick vines beneath our feet as we step out of the shadows and the enormous lake stretches before us.

The glittering body of clear blue water is much larger than a pond, but it’s not nearly as big as I’d expected. Every lake I’ve been to covers acres and acres of land, enough to support hundreds of speedboats, sailboats, and pontoons. Here, only a few rowboats scatter across the surface, and it couldn’t handle much more. Amid the boats, heads bob up from the water now and then before diving back underneath. To my right, a giant catfish jumps out of the water and glides through the air before crashing back through the waves, and some young centaurs squeal in delight as water splashes on them.

I’m so glad I have my sketchbook with me.

There’s a trio of gorgons having a picnic on the far right, their toes barely touching the water. Almost directly in front of me, two pixies sunbathe across the flat top of a large silver rock that juts out over the water like a diving board.

A four-armed girl with long green hair calls to Keiran as we approach, and he lifts his hand, flashing the million-dollar grin. She waves for him to come over, and he shakes his head politely.

Most of the girls I see are eyeing Keiran, and I snort. “Please tell me your powers have something to do with attracting women.”

He grins, his cheeks reddening. “Are you saying I need supernatural help?”

“No really,” I say, walking with him along the edge of the water. “What are you?”

Keiran stops and takes a deep, heavy breath. “I knew I’d have to tell you eventually.” His grin vanishes, and his gray eyes turn serious. “I’m a vampire.”

I can’t decide if the split-second I spend believing him is a good sign or a bad one. I’m either finally adapting to the mystical realm or I’m the biggest sucker there is. I stare at him until I see a twinkle behind his serious expression, and then I laugh.

“What?” he asks. “Don’t I look like a vampire?”

“Well, it certainly explains your sparkle.”

He smiles crookedly. “I’m an elf.”

An elf? Without thinking, my mind places a red, pointed hat on his head to match his shirt. My mouth falls open. “Shut up.”

“It’s true.”

“Shouldn’t you be shorter?” I ask. “With pointy ears?”

“Right,” Keiran says, lowering his eyebrows, “and I live inside a tree where I make delicious chocolate-striped shortbread cookies all day.”

“Fair enough.” I start walking again, and he moves with me. A few older centaurs are resting under a group of trees watching the younger ones play. One of the women smiles at me, and I smile back. I’m getting really good at playing it cool. Some of this already seems normal to me. “So what do elves do?”

Keiran shrugs. “Build things, mostly. I can look at something and immediately tell how it was made so I can re-create it. For the Fellowship, we design and create tools and weapons.”

I step right up to the edge of the water. Along this side, the water drops off from the shore immediately. There’s no gradual decline into the depths. “How deep is it?”

“Bottomless. All lakes and ponds in Ellauria serve as portals for the water-dwellers,” Keiran says. “They take them to any body of water you can imagine on the other side—from the oceans to a puddle in a parking lot, and vice versa.”

Pretty deep.

Bouncing lights shimmer within its depths as though the lake is lit from below the surface. I bend over the water and my reflection grows larger, expanding more and more even after I stop moving. Just when I realize the face staring back at me isn’t my reflection at all, it bobs up from the water’s surface. I jump backward, dropping my sketchbook to the ground. Keiran shoots out a hand to keep me from falling.

I can’t take my eyes off the girl rising from the water. Her golden hair is streaked with pale blue lines that run the entire length of its waves. Her eyes are the color of the sea, a dark mixture of green and blue with flecks of silver, like sunlight glittering on water. She smiles at me before turning and diving back into the water. As she does, a gleaming silver tail splashes behind her.

I completely forget not to gawk. My inner five-year-old screams, “Mermaid!” and it takes everything in me to behave normally. I clamp my hand over my mouth and watch, wide-eyed, until I can’t see her anymore.

“You all right?” Keiran asks, holding me steady.

Oh, crap. Act normal. I bite my lip and smile. “First time I’ve seen a mermaid.”

“Really?” He drops his hands from my arms. “I’d have thought you would’ve seen a few, being a siren and all.”

Sheet. Right. I press my lips together and shrug. A breeze blows off the top of the water and swirls through my hair. I grab a few strands and twist them together.

“Well,” he sits down, “you handled it like a pro.”

My hands are still trembling with excitement, and I drop my twist of hair to show him. “It wasn’t easy.”

“You’ll get used to it.” He takes off his flip-flops and slips his legs into the water.

I sit down beside him and slide my legs in alongside his. It’s warm, almost too warm, but it’s refreshing. Four rowboats float near the middle of the lake filled with creatures I’ve never seen. A few of them look nearly human, aside from animal-like ears or hair made of flowering vines sprouting from their heads. The young centaurs are in a boat, tossing a ball back and forth with a group of mermen. Merfolk appear all over the water, springing up from the surface and splashing back down again. They gather in groups, talking and laughing in high-pitched squeaks and grunts.

Keiran rests his hands on the ground and leans back, tilting his face toward the sun with his eyes closed.

I don’t want to get used to this.

I want to feel this alive, this enchanted, every day. Getting used to things means losing sight of what makes them special. I don’t want to miss a single bit of the magic here.

I pull my pencil from the sketchbook’s binding and flip to the first blank page. Before long, the lake takes shape beneath my fingers, stretching from one end of the page to the other. The centaurs are a challenge—I’ve always had trouble drawing horses. Something about the way their legs move makes it difficult for me. I’m so lost in tracing details that when I feel someone watching over my shoulder, I forget for a moment that it’s not Sam. I glance up, and Keiran’s gray eyes snap me out of it.

My gaze lands back on the page, and I shake my head. Of course it’s not Sam.

“I’m sorry.” Keiran shifts his weight, leaning away from me. “Would you rather I not watch?”

“It’s not that.” I let my pencil fall and rest against my thumb. I wrestle with what to say; I don’t want to give away too much, but I’d like to be honest. I choose my words carefully. “There are things I miss about home. Drawing makes me remember them.”

Keiran rubs his hands through his hair, nodding. “Oh man, I know what you mean. Ellauria’s incredible, but there are things I miss, too. Snow. I miss snow like crazy.”

“It doesn’t snow here?”

He shakes his head. “Never. And sometimes, you need to watch it snow, you know?”

I study Ellauria’s clear sky. I guess there’s no reason for snow here. I’ve never wanted to live in parts of the world that only had one or two seasons. I love all four. The different sights and colors each season brings, the change and growth, the way the same place looks so completely transformed at certain points in the year. Bloom, grow, die, rebloom. I appreciate the cycle.

“Where’d you grow up?” I ask.

“I lived in the mortal realm up until I came here two years ago,” he says. “Different places. My dad moved around a lot.”

“So,” I roll my pencil against the page, “no specific place you think of as home?”

He gazes upward. “Not really. We never stayed in one place very long.”

I study his profile. What would that be like? I lived in the same hundred-year-old farmhouse in the same lonely little town my entire life. I feel so unsettled without a place to truly call home. Keiran doesn’t seem to care.

He sits up. “What do you miss most?” he asks.

“My family,” I murmur. I snap my head up when I realize that might not have been a safe thing to say. “I mean, they’re not here yet.”

He leans over his knees, looking into the lake. “Yeah. I really miss my dad. I haven’t seen him in a couple years.”

A couple years. I hope I don’t have to wait that long for Mom and Sam.

Keiran’s eyes stay on the water, but his hardened gaze and tense jaw tell me his attention is elsewhere. It’s so different from the smiling, flirty side of him, and I’m so curious about what’s behind the contrast. Is he wearing a mask as restrictive as mine?

There’s so much I’d like to ask. Where is his dad? Why hasn’t he seen him? Is it by choice, like when Seth left his family? Or something else? Is he dead? I open my mouth, then shut it. If I ask more questions, he might ask about my family, as well.

His head stays down, and I can’t decide if he wants to talk about his dad or if he’s embarrassed for mentioning him. Why
did
he bring it up, anyway? I wonder how similar our situations are, and if the Fellowship is forcing a secret on him, too.

There’s so much awkward filling the space between us right now that I’m struggling to find my way out of it. I rack my brain for something, anything, to say, but nothing seems right. “I should probably head back before Seth realizes I’m gone.”

It doesn’t exactly help with the awkward, but it’s the truth. I have no idea how long I’ve been gone.

Keiran’s head jerks like he’d forgotten I was there. His eyes land on the ground, my sketch, my face, and then he nods. He stands up and reaches down to help me to my feet. Trails of water stream down my legs, and the breeze feels cool against them. My skin will be dry in no time under this heat.

“Do you want to go back the way we came, or see a little more?” Keiran asks. “It’ll take the same amount of time either way.”

I can’t resist the option to see even more of Ellauria, so he leads me to the far end of the lake. We pass the centaurs again, but this time the younger ones are arguing with their parents about leaving. The path gradually slopes upward, carrying us high above the trees. He points out Artedion. I see the giant oak and the Clearing behind it in the distance. Below me and to the left I see the navy waves of the Meadow of Music. Another excellent viewpoint for a sketch. This would be gorgeous on canvas, with the rich, deep colors provided by oil paints.

The trees become scarce as the trail gets steeper and steeper. When it levels out, we’re at the top of a plateau. Piles of large and small rocks are arranged in various shapes. Flowering plants bloom amid the rocks, scattering the gray landscape with bursts of crimson and amethyst. Fairies flit about through the plants, tending to the flowers and positioning more rocks throughout the area.

Whoa.

I stop walking and stare at the fairies.

How had I not noticed this?

They’re all the same. Every single fairy is exactly the same height. They all have the same long, twiglike limbs. The only differences among them are from the neck up, like a variety of heads have been stuck on the same body. Even then, while their hair colors vary, all the styles are the exact same length. Their wings are sparkling pastel shades of pink, blue, purple, and yellow, matching their dresses which, of course, are all identical in style.

“Keiran! You made it!” Clara’s voice rises behind us, and I spin around.

She gets more and more breathtaking every time I see her. Her lips are fuller, her dark eyelashes thicker, even her eyes look more lavender than they did back at Mesmer. Her long, platinum hair flows across her shoulders in flawless, shiny waves. It’s like a team of hair and makeup artists jumps out to freshen her up when no one’s looking.

This does not endear her to me.

“Hey, Beautiful,” he greets her. She glides toward him, wrapping her arms around his neck and hugging him, pressing her body against his. He hugs her back, glancing at me over her shoulder.

I roll my eyes and smile. There are an awful lot of Beautifuls around here. I wonder how many girls’ names he actually knows.

“Charlie and I are on our way back to Artedion,” he says, pulling away from her. “Just passing through.”

“Your garden is gorgeous,” I tell her, leaning over some of the rock piles and brushing my hands along the tops of the flowers. It really is nice, especially set up here amid all the gray. If I had more time, I’d sketch it.

“Can’t you stay for a bit?” Clara frowns at Keiran, completely ignoring me and my compliment.

I look to the sky. I’ve never been good at telling time by the sun, but the fact that it’s noticeably lower than the last time I checked makes me nervous. Seth’s totally going to bust me. “I really need to get back.”

She purses her lips and exhales through her nose. “Then go,” she says, moving her neck back and forth.

I match her expression. “I don’t know how to get to Artedion from here.”

Clara wrinkles her eyebrows. “Haven’t you ever been to Ellauria before?”

The look in her eye shifts from curiosity to confusion. Being new to the Fellowship is my secret, but being new to Ellauria isn’t, right?

This is probably why Seth prefers me to be with him all the time.

Before I can respond, a boom shatters the air, loud and sharp like a gunshot. Keiran’s arms come around me and Clara, guarding us on instinct as he turns his head toward the sound. There’s a split second of silence before the screams follow, coming from everywhere at once, bouncing off the rocks.

“Oh no,” Clara breathes. “The lake.” She pulls away from Keiran and zooms down the mountain, the rest of the fairies swarming behind her.