Memory's Wake Omnibus: The Complete Illustrated YA Fantasy Series (78 page)

Memory stepped back, knocked by the words. Would her quest mean death for this creature no matter what? Was that a price she was ready to pay? She stared at the creature’s black eyes, unseelie eyes, trying to feel only hatred for it. She couldn’t. “I will make sure you are safe.”

The faun huffed. “That is a pretty lie.”

Erec stared down spitefully at the creature. It was clearly easier for him to hate the white beast. “My queen does not lie. Make the deal, beast.”

“I don’t want to die!” the faun cried, scaring a flock of black birds from the branches above. They fled into the darkening mauve sky.

Memory had worried that the faun, after being trapped, would simply welcome death as the gaunt she’d once faced did. But her behavior seemed like that of a child. A small terrified child. It looked young, but that was no indicator for an immortal creature like the fae. Still, Memory wondered if maybe it wasn’t as old as other fae she’d known. It trembled as Memory moved closed to the cage. The faun really was afraid of death, and Memory knew it. She wished she did not know it, because it gave her the leverage she wished she didn’t have to use.

She tried to speak kindly. “Agree to the deal, and maybe you will die, later, at some time. Or maybe you won’t. Maybe you will live. But if you do not agree to our deal you will die now.”

“I will Brand you.” The faun’s voice was a desperate whisper.

Eloryn frowned, clearly troubled by everything. “You can’t. We have not touched you and not attacked you. We’re offering to free you, not hurt you.”

Erec sniffed and lifted his chin. “Say the words if you must.”

The faun gasped, and stuttered, its eyelids screwed shut. “Bronmarbh Aileadh.”

Memory tensed, scared that maybe it would work, that they hadn’t followed the law thoroughly, that their loophole wouldn’t protect them. But it did. Not one of them was marked with the Brand.

“Monsters. You are monsters,” the faun whimpered.

Looking down at the huddle of white fur, shivering on the muddy ground, the faun seemed so small and childlike that Memory did feel like a monster then. But she knew the fae were tricksters and would change how they looked for their own benefit. She remembered the banshee who looked like a child before it transformed and attacked. She remembered Hope, looking the mirror image of herself before she brought the tower down around her and her friends. Her lips grew tight.
Monsters? The unseelie fae are the monsters.

Memory’s voice turned cold. “Do we have a deal?”

The faun gathered herself up onto her knees. “So be it. I agree to your bargain. May it be everything you desire. This is our binding deal.”

“Our deal is binding,” Memory finished, sealing their agreement under fairy law.

Memory signaled Eloryn who spoke her behest words. The behest was long, and Memory knew it was a complicated one, that even Eloryn, who normally could create new behests on the fly, had to plan and run past Bedevere for confirmation. The iron webbing retracted, forming back into molten lumps, and then finally into their original forms. Memory’s knife, Eloryn’s arrowhead, Clara’s button, Roen’s dagger, and a spearhead for Erec. They collected their pieces off the ground.

The faun staggered to her feet, her eyes still wide with pain and body coated with sweat and a smell that reminded Memory of nickels rubbed together in a hot palm.

Memory worried the faun would flee, vanish into the Veil, and everything would have been for nothing, but the creature remained. Sullen, she stared at them with frightened eyes, standing back a few feet and wrinkling her nose as they put their iron away.

“This is goodbye then,” Memory said, looking at Clara.

Clara fidgeted with her fingers, her face pale already from watching the caged faun. “I could… I could come with you.”

Memory dropped her head and raised her eyebrow in an ‘oh really?’ expression.

Clara smiled a small, embarrassed smile. “To be honest, I’m not sure right now if I’m more scared to go with you or stay behind without you. Oh I wish you didn’t have to go. I cannot stand to see you all walk away knowing you may not come back. You are heroes, every one of you, and I’m just…”

Clara blinked back the tears that stood in her eyes but one fell anyway, leaving a long gleaming trail down her cheek, highlighting her freckles.

Memory blinked back tears of her own. Clara was like the mom Memory never had. A young mom who did outrageous things with her daughter, but a mom nonetheless. Would she ever see Clara again? Would any of them?

Yes
, she told herself.
We will all return, safe and sound and with Will.

Memory gave Clara a quick hug. “Go back to the palace and make me some of those delicious pastries with the custard and hot caramel inside. We’ll be back before they get cold.”

The faun snorted, her velvety nose pointed into the air. “If you are ready to go we need to go now.”
Before I lose my nerve and break a binding oath,
went unsaid but Memory heard those words anyway. Maybe they were the faun’s, or maybe her own.

None of them spoke for a long moment, inhospitable glares passing between the humans and the faun.

Eloryn moved to stand beside the white fae, slowly, as though approaching a feral cat. “What’s your name?”

“Shonae,” the fae replied, huffing and backing a step away. “What does it matter to you?”

“I’m Eloryn, that’s Roen and Erec and Clara. Memory you already know.”

“I wish I did not.”

Memory felt her top lip twitch into a sneer. “We all wish a lot of things.” Eloryn gave her a look but Memory ignored it. Will was more and more lost with each passing second and she had no time to make their guide feel better.

“We are ready to go,” she said.

“To our deaths, then,” Shonae said and turned around. Her white tail flicked up as she waved a swirling Veil door into existence in the middle of the fairy ring and trotted through.

Erec took the lead, one hand on the spearhead sheathed in his belt. Eloryn looked at Memory and then Roen. Roen stepped forward and Memory felt a twinge of envy at the protective arm he put around Eloryn’s waist. It was overcome by worry though, worry she really was taking them all to their deaths. Her friends she loved the most, who had just claimed the love between them, who were so happy together, about to start a life together.

They stepped through the Veil door one at a time. Memory went last, waving to Clara as she left the human world.

Small strands of loose purple hair tickled Memory’s cheeks and lips, brought to life by the wild winds within the Veil. Pressure built and popped in her ears and she stepped clear, out into the land of the fae.

She took a deep breath to clear her lungs of the tightness of Veil travel and the air tasted rancid and dry on her tongue, like mud and burned sugar. Her stomach curdled. Blinking, Memory shivered at what lay before her.

The world of the fae. Tearnan Ogh.

In her mind she’d imagined rainbows and sparkling streams where unicorns frolicked around pots of gold, or some other fairytale images. But the world she saw was bleak and lifeless. A shadowed husk of a world.

She’d heard the fae speak of how their world held none of the natural life force that the human world did, the life force they needed to survive, but to see it in reality shook Memory. It disturbed something deep within her and scared her in a primal way. What could have caused their world to become like this? Did the fae pay for their immortality with the death of their world, or did they kill it carelessly the same way humans seemed to be doing with their own?

Murky ink-black puddles and pools made a patchwork pattern across dead, cracked ground. The water rippled occasionally as some loathsome creature turned below the black surface. Angular, broken trees with immense, hollowed trunks, turned gray with petrification, crowded around them. Their buttressed roots forked out into the water in woven cages. Memory touched the nearest tree to her and it was cold like stone.

No one in her group moved, frozen, as they stared at the world before them.

Shonae watched them in return, the corner of her furred lips turned up in a small smirk. “The wilds of the Unseelie Court. My… home.” The smirk faded.

Memory frowned.
This wasn’t the deal, not where we needed to go.

But Eloryn nodded slowly. “Your home. We would have needed a seelie fae to be able to take us directly to the realm of the Seelie Court.”

“Then how to we get from here to the Seelie Court? How long will it take?” Memory asked.

“Don’t fret human, I want to be free of you as fast as possible. We will travel the briar path. It won’t take long.” Shonae sniffed the air and tucked her shoulders up close to her neck. “This way. Keep quiet.”

Shonae broke away from them, leading off across the rough ground. Her hooves beat swiftly along the dirt and the group of humans had to walk fast to keep up with her but she always kept well ahead, just within sight. Memory knew Shonae did not want to be too near them because of the iron they were carrying. It would sap her strength, which was the last thing either of them wanted. Memory needed Shonae up and moving. She needed to get to Will. Yesterday.

Under Memory’s feet, the path sparkled lightly, as though the dirt was made of crushed glass. The hazy mist filled the air and pooled on the ground in thicker swirls.

Memory felt a strange surge of relief as she passed by a small tuft of flowers, growing in an odd arrangement along the top of a fallen log. Maybe there was some life left in the world. The flowers were star-shaped translucent bells, hanging from long stems, and tinkled sweetly in the light breeze. Memory reached to touch one. It slid gracefully over her fingertip so smoothly that it took a few seconds for the pain to register. Memory cried out and clutched her finger, staring in shock at the thin razor cut the flower had sliced there.

From the front of the group, Memory heard Shonae chuckle.

Eloryn dashed over beside Memory and clutched her hand as well, working swiftly to wrap the finger in a bandage. “Don’t let your blood drop on them. And don’t touch anything else.”

Memory just nodded, staring at the plants. She could see now that they weren’t real flowers at all, but finely spun glass and fairy gold, made sharp as a knife. Raising her head, she looked out behind the log and saw a wide field of the faux-flowers, spreading out into the stone forest. “This place officially receives my stamp of creepability. I don’t even want to know what would happen if my blood dropped.”

“At least we don’t seem to be headed that way,” Roen said over Eloryn’s shoulder.

“No, instead we get to travel through the hopscotch of deadly black swamps,” Erec said cheerfully from behind him.

“Fantastic,” Memory said, and they all moved along after Shonae again.

The farther they walked, the closer the dark waters seemed to close in around them, until soon they walked along a thin pathway between the growing swamp.

Along the curved roots of one massive tree, white shapes fluttered like butterflies, then blew away. Just ash on the wind.

From the tops of the poisoned pools rose a dense mist that coalesced into shapes as they passed them. Faces leered at them, and voices rang out from visages whose mouths vanished long before the wails that came from them did.

There was something so terrible and sad about the sounds that Memory wanted to stop walking, lie down and weep tears into the lifeless ground. She could feel her pace slowing, her breath catching.

This is just fairy tricks, horrible monster tricks.
Her resolve hardened and she ignored the mist, staring ahead at Shonae only, keeping her eyes on her guide.

In front of her, Eloryn gasped. “Alward.”

Memory had never known Alward alive, only seen his dead body briefly, but she still recognized him there in the swamp. Grayed blonde hair tied back in a ponytail and round glasses balanced on his nose, he seemed real, solid, as he struggled against a sea of ghostly faces surrounding him.

“Ellie!” he cried.

“Steady,” Roen murmured.

Eloryn winced and looked away. “I know. It’s not real. It’s an obvious trick.” She spat her accusation out at the world around them. “As if we’d fall for something so simple.”

Memory nodded, proud at Eloryn’s strength. But still she could see her sister’s mouth move, as though saying silent spells to keep herself strong.

“It wasn’t him,” Memory said in a low voice.

“I know that, Mem.”

“It still hurt though.”

Eloryn’s eyes closed for a short moment. “Terribly.”

“I’m sorry.”

Eloryn gave her sister a small smile. “They won’t take us so easily.”

There was an echo of evil laughter and a plump raven with a white streak from beak to tail soared overhead. It landed, tangling its wings in a skeletal tree branch before uttering hoarse caws at them.

“Ellie!” the raven cried, its voice a mix between bird and human. “Ellie!” The caws came faster, harsher, sounding like the laughter.

Eloryn’s face drew still. “Come on, we’re moving too slow. We stick together with all our iron and they can’t touch us.”

Memory knew she was right but she also knew that the fae were hardly finished. They would throw whatever they could at them in the attempt to get them to split up. The iron had unsettled them. They were desperate to divide the iron’s strength, and the group’s as well.

Patches of grass along the path rustled as they walked along. Shonae seemed to avoid it, bounding and hopping around it as she led. Memory tried to do the same, but missed a step, and the black grass she placed her foot down on shattered and crumbled, as though it had been burnt to a crisp so fast it had kept its shape perfectly until touched.

Ahead across the black swamp and through the trees, a huge patch of vines reared up in a wide screen that curled around on itself in a way that made Memory’s stomach do the same.

Shonae stopped, sniffing the air, her wide nose twitching.

“Is that the briar pathway?” Eloryn asked.

“No. Beyond there.”

Shonae craned her neck, looking off to either side. The vines seemed to spread as far as they could see in each direction.

“Let’s just go through then,” Erec said, drawing his iron spearhead into one hand, and larger bronze sword into his other.

“Wait!” A voice rang out from behind them.

“Clara?” Memory squinted, and saw a figure running up the path behind them, a shadow within the mists.

“Could she have followed us here?” Roen asked warily.

“It’s probably not her. It’s probably another trap,” Eloryn said.

A small shriek reached them and the figure stopped moving.

“What if it’s not?” Erec growled. He took a few steps toward Clara. “We shouldn’t have left her behind. She’s come after us.”

“Erec!” Clara cried out. “Help me, I’m stuck. Something… something is holding me.” Her voice was broken with sobs.

“It’s probably not her,” Eloryn said again, but she didn’t sound sure anymore.

Erec seemed sure, and began running.

Roen’s arms shot out, gripping Erec around his waist. He wrenched side to side, trying to break free.

Memory’s heart jumped into overdrive and she began fumbling for her pocket.

“Please! It’s hurting me!” Clara’s cries ripped through the air and the shadowed shape down the pathway writhed and crumpled.

Eloryn came and stood in front of Erec, still bound in Roen’s arms, staring him down, trying to talk him down. He began to still.

“It is not her,” Roen whispered.

Down the pathway, the mist thinned, clearing a view straight to the person there.

“It is her!” Erec roared, ripping at Roen’s hold again.

It did seem to be her. Clara, just as they’d last seen her. Her feet had sunk into a boggy spot and a heavy figure made of fog and black water shot up from below her. Dark tentacles wrapped her body and grabbed her by the throat, squeezing so hard that her friends could see her flesh pinching closed.

“Clara,” Memory called out. “CLARA!”

The small piece of mirror in her hands flashed and the image shifted. It spoke back to her.

Erec’s arm flailed out and cracked against Roen’s face. Blood trickled from a split in Roen’s lip. Erec broke free, stumbling down the path to Clara.

Memory ran in front of him, holding the speaking mirror up in front of his face. “It’s not her. Clara is safe, back in Avall. Look. LOOK.”

Erec stopped in place, panting heavily.

Clara’s voice came through clear from the broken glass. “Mem? I’m so sorry, it took me a moment to realize why my pocket was yelling at me. Is something wrong?”

Erec met Mem’s eyes. He looked away again, down to the ground. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I was foolish.”

“It’s okay,” Memory said to him. Then to the glass she said. “We’re all okay.”

“Well, don’t scare me like that then!” Clara scolded.

Down the pathway, the imposter Clara giggled in a sharp, high pitch. She merged with the larger monster behind her, coalescing into a single immense scaly form that slunk away back into the dark waters. The disturbing giggle continued to echo around them.

“Sounds like you’re having a wonderful time,” Clara said, the edges of her freckled nose filling the small mirror.

Erec had walked back and muttered a few manly mumbles to Roen and they shook hands. Both of them were covered with sweat and the blood coming from Roen’s lip had already begun to dry. “Let’s keep together,” Roen said. “The fae are not going to stop trying to trap us until we are out of here so let’s get out of here.”

“Agreed,” Memory said.

Eloryn already had her eye on the next hurdle, the thick tangle of vines ahead. She’d approached them, and started speaking her words of behest.

Shonae eyed them all carefully.

Memory took a deep breath. They were all still together, so far.

“Hello! Hello? Are you still there? Is this thing broken? Oh, of course it is broken…”

Memory grinned. “Sorry Clara, just wanted to check you got back to the palace okay.”

“I’m just sitting on my bottom while you’re all off in Tearnan Ogh, and you call back to see if I’m fine? Other than being worried to death about you all, everything is just splendid.”

Memory laughed at Clara’s tone. “We’re doing great. Fairy tricks at nil points. See you again soon. More than just your nose that is.”

The mirror filled with Clara’s poking out tongue, and Memory chuckled as she put it back in her pocket.