Spirit (9 page)

Chapter 5

After
the food had been consumed, the group began to scatter to the various crudely
erected shelters, though some creatures disappeared over the hills. I sat and watched
the flames gutter until only glowing embers were left. Those tiny sparks of
heat were all it took to change my life, to steal it away. I realized I hadn’t
thought about Steven or Jodi or getting back to my old life for over an hour.
The draw of the Slaugh was a sneaky one; if I wasn’t careful, I would be like a
mortal trapped in the Shide and all memories of my human life would be
forgotten.

I
blinked rapidly, shaking my head to clear it, and got to my feet. Gwyn had
disappeared somewhere. I looked up into the sky and realized the moon hadn’t
moved even an inch since I last looked at it.

“What?”
I whispered. How could that be? I last looked at the moon at least six hours before,
so how could it be in the exact same position in the sky? Was it perpetually
night there? Or did time stand still? Was there a difference? I closed my eyes
and shook my head again. That moon was just another thing that would distract
me from my goals. I started walking. I didn’t know where Gwyn had gone, but the
encampment wasn’t endless like that forest had been. I figured I could find a
six-foot tall elf with long silver hair among those creepier, smaller
creatures.

The
camp was eerily quiet, and now that I was out of the forest, the silence was
all the more pressing. Acutely aware of how loud and clumsy my steps were, I
tiptoed, terrified I would wake up one of the more intimidating creatures. When
I came upon an over-large shadowy lump in my path, I could smell the metallic
tang of old blood, and I knew I was in danger of disturbing the massive Redcap
I’d seen. I didn’t want my blood providing the new coating of red to his cap,
so I gave him a wide berth, creeping along on my toes.

Eventually
I heard the whicker of a horse and the soft sounds of a murmured song. Gwyn was
grooming his stallion. Gwyn was singing the sweet song in a language I didn’t
know, but as soon as he was aware of my presence, he stopped. Glancing up at
me, he inclined his head in a small nod, acting as though he hadn’t been
singing at all.

I
opened my mouth to speak, but that now-familiar and distant roar sounded,
stopping me. I turned when some of the members of Gwyn’s party called out,
cheering and mounting their rides. The dogs brayed as they took off.

“Where
are they going?” I asked.

“To
hunt,” Gwyn said.

“What
is that thing?” I stared into the distance as if I could see the monster
through the trees. I wrapped my arms around myself against the sudden chill.

“Best
you didn’t know,” Gwyn said. “It can smell fear.” I blinked at him, but he just
continued to brush his horse.

“Listen,”
I said, my voice catching awkwardly. I cleared my throat and tried again. “I
didn’t thank you for helping me out of the forest.”

“Aye,
very smart,” Gwyn said, his eyes following the path of his hand along the side
of the horse.

“What?”
I asked, my brow furrowing. I stepped closer, sure the distance between us had
made me mishear him.

“So
few mortals remember the danger in thanking the Fae,” he replied.

I
stopped then, staring at him. I heard my grandmother’s voice again, but it was
so far off, I couldn’t make out the words. What he said had stirred something
in my memory.

“Right,”
I said slowly. I walked toward the horse’s head. He loomed over me by a good
three feet. His dark eye was the size of my fist, but I mustered the courage to
reach up, touch his cheek, and pet him gently. “What are the dangers again?” I
asked, trying to sound as casual as possible.

“So
ye have forgotten,” Gwyn said with a
tsk
as he brushed the horse’s flank. I tried to scratch the horse’s nose, but my
reach wasn’t long enough and the horse had to dip his head forward. I kept my
mouth closed, not wanting to fall into some trap. “If someone thanks the Fae,
they are admitting that they owe them something.”

“And
that’s bad,” I said slowly.

“Because
who knows what the Fae would ask for in return of such wondrous generosity on
their part.”

“Right,”
I replied as if I had known that all along. Still I could hear my grandmother’s
voice, but it slipped further away by the moment.

“Though
it was very rude not to say something at the very least.” Gwyn
tsked
at me again before he started
working on the tail.

“I
appreciate what you did,” I said carefully. I finally remembered the magic word
that wouldn’t get me faerie-caught. I leaned around the horse and saw Gwyn nod,
accepting my vague thanks.

“Appreciative
though you may be, I believe you would still rather leave us,” he said, working
out a knot of tangled hair.

“I
want to go home.” I let my hand drop from the horse’s nose and walked around to
stand by its side to better see Gwyn as we talked.

“I
doubt that.”

“What
do you mean?”

“Well,
you died, did you not?”

“Yes.”

“But
somehow you made it here without the Wild Hunt being called upon you.”

“Yes.”

“So
I believe when the Light came for you,” he said as he stood up straight to look
me in the eye, “you ran from it.”

“I
wasn’t ready to die.”

“But
you did, and that Light would take you home, yet here you are. Therefore, you
do not wish to go home.”

“Of
course I do!” I barely caught my voice before I started yelling. “But I wasn’t
ready to die. Heaven, or whatever it is that’s waiting for me, isn’t my home.”

“It
is now.”

“No.”
I shook my head. “But I’m not going to play faerie word games with you. I meant
to say that I want to be alive again, back on Earth, living and breathing.”

“Ah,”
he said, tapping the brush in his hand.

“I
don’t even know how I ended up here to be honest with you.”

“I
hope you wouldn’t lie to me,” he said, his voice dropping dangerously low. I
had to think about what he meant before I realized some of the more human
expressions would be lost here and might get me into trouble.

“Sor-,”
I said, stopping myself before the word slipped out. If it wasn’t safe to thank
him, then I doubted it was safe to apologize, even casually. Gwyn lifted one silvery
brow as he watched me choke back the word. “I mean, it’s just a figure of
speech; of course I wouldn’t lie to you.” Gwyn nodded, but I knew the Fae lied
all the time; it was just a matter of twisting the truth to get what you
wanted. I had to be very careful while I was there.

“I’m
sure you know how you ended up here, you just didn’t know it would happen,” he
said, tossing the brush into a nearby bucket.

“Well,
I was trying to contact a friend of mine,” I said.

“Someone
still alive?” Gwyn interrupted me.

“Yes,”
I said with a sigh. He was going to take every damn opportunity to remind me I
was dead. “Anyway,” I said, waving a hand in the air, “I was trying to contact
him, but he thought I was some random spirit, and he banished me. I flew out of
the door, but instead of ending up outside the apartment, I was in that
forest.” I gestured behind me uselessly since the forest wasn’t there anymore.

“Ah,
so you do know how you ended up here.”

“No,
I told you, I don’t. He didn’t send me anywhere; he just banished me out of the
apartment.”

“And
so you are in the Outlands.” Gwyn dusted off his hands and started to turn away
from me. I ran to get in front of him and stop him from leaving.

“But
how? Why?”

“Because
he didn’t banish you to anywhere. The Outlands are nowhere and everywhere,” he
said, staring down at me.

“What?
So if he had tried to send me into the Light, I would’ve gone to Heaven, or if
he had told me to go back to where I came from, I would’ve gone outside?”

“Correct.”

“But
he just told me to leave and this is where I ended up?”

“Correct
again. The pixie girl can learn.” He tapped the tip of my nose before he moved
around me and started walking again. I rushed to catch up with him.

“So
am I stuck here then?” I asked.

“There
are ways to leave, if one is so inclined.”

“Well
I am inclined,” I said, starting to lose my breath from keeping up with him.

“Very
well,” he said cryptically.

“So,
are you going to tell me what they are?”

“What
what are?” he asked, and I realized I had walked into a damn faerie word game.

“Gwyn,
please tell me what the ways to leave the Outlands are,” I said through gritted
teeth. I stopped trying to keep up with him and just watched as he kept walking
a few paces. I figured he was just going to ignore me and continue on, but he
stopped, turned, and faced me.

He
held up one long finger, his voice changing slowly from the lighthearted tone
I’d grown accustomed to to something lower, darker. “What you must first
understand is this: It is almost unheard of for a captive of the Slaugh to
leave the Outlands.”

“You
said I wasn’t a captive,” I interrupted.

“Yes,
because we were not hunting you, but that does not mean you cannot still become
a captive. If you allow the Slaugh to take you, there will be no leaving, no
returning to Earth and to your life. You will ride forever with the Wild Hunt,
leaving only when invoked to carry out the wrath of another.” I felt my stomach
churn as he spoke. I noticed he was very careful not to explain to me how I
could become a captive if I wasn’t actually hunted and caught.

“All
right,” I said, “I’ll remember that. Go on.”

“There
are only two ways to leave the Outlands. The first,” he said, lifting that same
finger, “is you must travel to the very edge of this world. If you can find the
end of the Outlands, then the gates between worlds will open for you, and you
can leave.” I tried to wrap my head around the idea of a world having an end
and found fathoming it difficult. I shook my head to force myself to
concentrate and not wander off in daydreams.

“The
second,” Gwyn continued, lifting a second finger, “is you must be summoned.”

“Summoned?”
I repeated, shaking my head in confusion.

“Yes,
someone from that world may very well summon you to them. If you are not a
captive, they can draw you out.”

“And
if I am captive?”

“They
can only summon you as part of our host, to bring the Wild Hunt.”

“To
kill someone?”

“We
do not kill.” Gwyn finally dropped his hand to his side.

“What
do you do then?”

“We
hunt them,” he said simply.

I
thought about what it felt like to have something chasing me with teeth and
claws, spears and arrows. To always have that creeping feeling in the small of
your back, to never truly rest, sure that they were just behind you, forever. “So,
if you don’t kill them, what happens when you catch them?”

“This,”
he said, gesturing toward the encampment.

“So
if you’re invoked to bring justice to a…” I struggled to remember what my
grandmother told me about why the Slaugh was called. Finally, the words came to
me. “To an oathbreaker or a kinslayer, you don’t kill them? You hunt them and
then kidnap them?”

“To
ride forever.”

“Like
a spirit not at rest,” I said, more to myself than to him, but he answered me
anyway.

“Aye.”

“Is
that why time here doesn’t move?” I tilted my head up to look for the moon,
finding it in the same exact spot once again. “So that it’s like a never ending
night, no respite, no change? It just goes on and on?”

“That’s
as good a reason as any,” Gwyn said. He had lifted his eyes to the sky as well,
staring at the tiny moon.

“You
don’t know?”

“There
are many unknowns in these many worlds, more than time allows us to ponder,” he
said, cryptic as ever. Before I could press him further, he turned on his heel
and walked away, disappearing into the shadows so I could not follow.

***

Wandering
through the camp, I started to feel the bone-deep weariness of staying awake
for too many hours after too much exertion. Now that I could feel my body again,
and the aches and pains that went with it, all I wanted to do was lie down and
sleep for a few hours. But I didn’t know where to go. I didn’t know any of
these creatures, and none of them had extended a hand to me yet besides Gwyn
and he didn’t seem disposed to actually helping me. If I was honest with
myself, I was actually afraid to close my eyes around these creatures since my
grandmother’s fables echoed in my mind.