The Secret of the Dread Forest: The Faire Folk Trilogy (18 page)

Keelie picked it up. “Gee, thanks.” What was she supposed to do with it?

On the other side of the clearing, Elianard stumbled from his cot and staggered toward his weeping daughter. He fell to his knees beside her. “Elia, I have failed you. I wanted the forest to be whole for you, for your future, but I have doomed us.”

Keelie remembered Jake’s words, that to not help someone was to curse them. She looked at the sword and felt the amulet’s cold kiss against her skin. Why had Einhorn given it to her? What use would it serve now?

She pulled the cord over her head and walked to Elianard, who looked up at her, pale and shaking, his face creased with pain and sorrow.

“I am sorry, Keliel Heartwood. I have wronged you and your father, and all the forest guardians. I am so sorry. I deserve my fate.” He glanced at his daughter and his pain lifted momentarily, showing tenderness. “Will you be a friend to Elia?”

Forgiveness. It was tougher than retribution. Keelie held out the cord with the thorn-wrapped silver acorn dangling heavily at its end. “I give this to you, from Jake. From my Uncle Dariel the Tree Shepherd.”

Elianard stared, transfixed, at the amulet that had been his undoing. Keelie watched him put the cord over his head. He seemed to think this was part of his punishment.

Another green whisper and Keelie looked over to Dad, who winked at her and motioned to what she still held. She offered the wooden sword, hilt first, to Elianard as well. “This seems to be for you.”

Puzzled, he took the hilt, then jerked back as he was hit with a jolt of green magic. The wooden blade sizzled and sparked, and from its tip smoke curled as the process reversed itself and it once more became steel. The green
magic that had made it wood was seeping into Elianard’s arms.

Elia stumbled to her feet as Elianard stood, healed. He threw his arms around his daughter and held her tightly.

How about that, Keelie thought. Elia had been right— she
was
the one to heal Elianard.

Above them Ariel cried out a warning, and Keelie saw that Niriel had turned to run.

Zeke stood in Niriel’s path. “I am the master of the forest. Your fate is to wander the earth, forgetting your heritage. Remember us not. And return on pain of death.” Dad raised his arms and the trees swayed. The Council assembled beside him, Grandmother included, although she looked heartsick. Together they raised the magic that would send Niriel away, as Jake had been sent away a hundred years before.

Niriel stood tall, but Sean cried out and begged them to stop.

“Father, I love you.” His words were lost as a wind whirled into the circle. Niriel’s robes lifted, the edges trailing away into dark fog. The change had begun.

Niriel’s eyes were focused on his son, as if he would try to remember this one thing forever. Keelie’s chest grew tight. She couldn’t bear to watch. Niriel’s love for his son was in his eyes, even as he surely felt the magic tear his memories away. Was this how Mom looked just before the plane crashed? Had she tried to take the memory of Keelie with her to the other side?

Niriel’s robes were almost all fog, and his fingers had lengthened strangely, the tips fading, but the rest of him was here. Keelie hadn’t been able to stop the plane, but maybe it was not too late to stop Niriel’s destruction.

“Stop!” She put all of her power into her shout. The trees listened, the earth shivered, and the fae stood still. “Stop the spell.” Keelie lowered her voice to address the Council. “If Elianard can be forgiven and healed, then why not Niriel? The elves must change. Vengeance is not the answer, nor is a punishment that harms the innocent.” She pointed toward Sean’s grief-ravaged face.

The Council members looked at each other, then at Grandmother, who had hidden her face in her hands. They nodded at Zeke, who dropped his arms. The wind died down. The spell was broken.

Green shot through Keelie as the trees cried out to her, and she saw Grandmother raise her hands, amazed, reaching up toward the high canopy above them. The trees were talking to her once more.

Keelie opened her mind and heard them. Despite Jake’s death, there would be much rejoicing tonight, for the forest was restored.

Zeke scratched the earth at the edge of the great clearing, and Niriel was free. Sean, who had stood outside the circle, shoulders bowed and looking sick and very alone, ran into his father’s arms. Keelie felt Dad’s hands on her shoulders and turned to hug him tightly. “It was Mom,” she said. “I thought that maybe Mom felt like Niriel, just before the end.”

Dad kissed her hair and said nothing, but she felt a
tear hit her neck and tightened her arms around his waist. Knot rubbed against Keelie’s leg, kitty-sized once more, and she heard him speak again. “Alora wants yeow.”

She stared down at the cat. Maybe hearing him talk was not such a good thing. She let go of Dad. “I’ll be right back.”

He nodded, and as she returned to the now huge treeling, her father and Sir Davey went over to Sean.

“So what do I call you if you aren’t the bratty treeling any more?”

“What are you talking about, Keelie? Of course I’m still the treeling. I just need bigger twinkles. And more of them. Now.”

The aunties laughed in her head.
She is the Queen Tree of the Dread Forest, Keelie. Our own Great Tree.

Keelie shrugged. She wasn’t up to laughing right now. Poor Jake. He’d come home to die. She wondered if she should hug Grandmother. A scary thought.

“What’s the matter, Keelie? Didn’t everything turn out the way you wanted? You are safe, and the Dread is back. I’m in charge, as the Wildewood and the Dread Forest meant it to be. Your father is the Lord of the Forest. What more can you want?” Alora seemed perplexed.

“My uncle died. I know that for trees it’s different.”

“We’ll have a Lorem for him.”

“Not the same. I’ll miss him. Elia will probably miss him more. She loved him. And he loved her.” Keelie wiped fresh tears from her eyes.

“Stop it with that salt water thing. I warned you. Very well, this will stop it.”

A grinding sound filled the clearing, and all laughter stopped as Alora’s roots gave way, exposing a dark corridor under the now-massive tree. “Now you can go Under-the-Hill whenever you want.”

“Thanks.” Keelie tried to sound enthusiastic.

A flutter of movement near the dark opening revealed a swarm of
feithid daoine.
Then the darkness vanished in a blinding glow of white and the clatter of hooves on stone.

The elves grew close, shielding their eyes from the brightness that filled the clearing. When they could see again, a unicorn stood before Alora, its long horn a slender spiral of glimmering silver.

Awed, the elves bowed in reverence as the unicorn walked around the circle, looking at each of them. It stopped before Zeke and touched him with its horn, then it did the same to Keliatiel before going to Keelie.

“Oh, Alora, thank you.” Keelie looked into the unicorn’s soft green eyes, so beautiful that she wanted to weep from the joy of having him near her.

The unicorn bowed its head to her, touching his horn to her heart. A bubbly happiness fizzed through her, erasing the pain of Jake’s death. She frowned. She didn’t want to forget Jake, but the unicorn had moved on to the other side of the clearing, where the crowd of elves reached out to touch him.

He tolerated their hands, but pushed them gently aside until he reached Elia. The elf girl looked frightened, as if
he would stab her with his lethally sharp horn, but instead he looked at her long and lovingly, then he shimmered and dissolved to silvery mist.

A cry of disappointment went up, but from the mist stepped a white-robed man, tall, handsome, and sharpearred… and very familiar.

Elia cried out, holding her hands to her hide her face. He pulled her wrists down and kissed her lips.

He turned to look at Keelie, and winked a bright green eye.

She gave him a thumbs-up. “Welcome back, Uncle Jake,” she whispered, and went to hug a sparkly tree.

Keelie sat against the big pine on the ridge and watched the forest below. Gone was the earth-moving equipment, and even the bare dirt. The magic that had flowed down the mountain five months before had erased all signs of human work. Spring was just around the corner, and buds were starting to appear in all of the forest’s trees.

Ariel had caught a thermal and was just a hawk-shaped speck in the sky. She was still dark, but so beautiful that she made Keelie’s chest ache. Her joy in flying and hunting was wonderful, except for when she brought Keelie torn-mousie love presents. Only Knot enjoyed those.

Keelie wondered how the elven spokesmen would explain the forest’s change to the town. Of course, with the Dread’s effect working full force, it was unlikely that any human would want to build this close to the Dread Forest ever again.

She scratched her arm, dislodging the
bhata
that clung to her sleeve. The fairies really had a thing for her now. They were everywhere, too. Who knew there were this many stick and bug people? The forest was crawling with them.

A giggle sounded from the other side of the tree. Keelie rolled her eyes. Elia and Jake were all over each other again. She couldn’t bring herself to call him Dariel, although he sure looked different now that he was the unicorn lord of the forest.

She will bear a child,
a voice whispered in her head. She looked at the bhata that was climbing up her jeans leg, its holly berry eyes intent on her face.

Really?
The thought of Elia as anyone’s mom was pretty scary, but it would make her a local hero, and Elia loved attention.

It hit her that she would be Aunt Keelie. She smiled. She kind of liked that. No, wait. If Jake was her uncle, then his baby would be her cousin. Not as cool. She’d hold out for being called Aunt Keelie.

Aunties are cool.
The voices of the oaken aunties, the Queens of the Dread Forest, trilled at each other.

I want to be an auntie, Alora said. When are you going to have an acorn, Keelie?

Not for a long, long time.

The
bhata
nodded in agreement.

Leaves crunched under booted feet, and Keelie watched as Sean jumped over the stream, then waved at her. He wore a Silver Bough Jousting Company jacket, since they were working hard for the upcoming Renaissance Faire season and he was now in charge. Since the trial, Lord Niriel had kept to the forges, working the fires and twisting steel into beautiful new swords. Recently he’d gone to Germany to work with the Black Forest elves on a sword-smith exchange. A new swordmaster would soon take his place in the Dread Forest.

Some of the Dread Forest elves thought that pardoning Lord Niriel had been a mistake, but Sean was so happy and relaxed these days that Keelie knew it had been the right thing to do. For right now, at least. And since Risa’s father didn’t want his little girl involved with Niriel’s family, the wedding was called off. Risa didn’t speak to Keelie, but she had seen the elf girl watch Sean, her face full of yearning. Risa kept busy with her gardens, drying herbs and bottling herbal elixirs. The rumor swirling around the village was that Risa would soon be joining the faire circuit, starting with the Juliet City Shakespeare Festival in California. Keelie suspected that Sean’s relief at being off the hook would soon be ended.

Keelie was going to be at the High Mountain Ren Faire
with her father in May, and she knew that her grandmother had plans for them to visit several failing forests. Keelie was now considered an expert in forest renewal. She was going to hold out for getting a driver’s license first, since she’d been taking lessons with Zabrina—a few more dings on Vlad the VW didn’t seem to bother her new friend.

She lifted her hand to return Sean’s greeting, then stood up and brushed off her jeans, deliberately shutting out the tiny voice of the prophetic
bhata.

Whatever the stick fairy had to say about her and Sean would have to stay a secret. She ran down the hill toward him. She couldn’t wait to find out on her own.

A forest dweller, Gillian was raised by gypsies at a Renaissance Faire. She likes knitting, hot soup, and costumes, and adores oatmeal—especially in the form of cookies. She loathes concrete, but tolerates it if it means attending a science fiction convention. She’s an obsessive collector of beads, recipes, knitting needles, and tarot cards, and admits to reading InStyle Magazine. You can find her in her north Georgia cabin, where she lives with her large, friendly dogs and obnoxious cats, and at
www.gilliansummers.com
.

Keelie’s adventures continue!
Watch for Book I of the Scions of Shadow Trilogy.