Veil of Shadows (14 page)

“Is that another trait that I am supposed to have, but do not?” Cerridwen asked, her bitter mumbling reminding him of the way she had been in the Underground. If she adopted those mannerisms again, it should be much easier to control himself in her presence.

“Whatever traits Fae blood lends me, it also lends you.” He turned toward the direction he.d been walking in, but his feet remained rooted to the ground, as if to say that this was the place, and going farther would not suit his purpose. He.d forgotten how insistent the land could be. “You must stop using your mortal ties as an excuse to deny your Faery existence.”

“How do you propose I do that?” she asked, folding her arms across her chest. “I have never felt as though I were a Faery, not truly. Until we had left the Underground, I had never seen the sky without grates barring me from it.”

“You behave as though I am asking you to undertake an impossible task,” he scolded. “All I am asking is that you acknowledge what you are.”

“You are asking that I become something I never was, in order to suit a group of Faeries I have never met, and others who betrayed my mother.”

“Yes, they betrayed her. And they will betray you, if they feel that you are not a competent leader. To be a competent leader in their eyes, you must be truly Fae. Because you are part mortal, you must be twice the Faery they are. And because of what the Humans have done to them, you will have to gain twice the trust from them.”

She stalked away, in the wrong direction, but he did not stop her. Let her feel it for herself, he prayed. The Old Gods might be missing, but the heart of the land was still there. Even on the Astral Plane, the spirit of the Earth had been a palpable force. It was what had drawn the Faeries to Éire a millennium ago, and what had kept them there when the Humans had invaded centuries later.

Please, he urged the spirit. Let her recognize you. Let her recognize herself.

She.d gone only a few angry, marching steps before she stopped. A frown wrinkled her brow.

“This isn.t the right way.”

“No, it is not.” He chose not to elaborate.

“Well, which way is it? I am angry, and I just want to go back—” She stopped before she said the word. “I just want to go back to the camp.”

“Home,” he stressed the word, “is nearby. You simply need to concentrate, and you will find it.”

“I will concentrate, and I will become lost in the woods, and you will never see me again.”

She put her hands on her hips. “Tell me where to go.”

“If I tell you where to go, it will defeat the purpose of coming out here.” Somehow, her outrage became more endearing as it grew. He was having a bit more fun tormenting her than he should.

“This is a test then?” She did not sound pleased with the idea. “I did not ask you for your advice. I did not ask for a lesson.”

“And yet, I am giving you one.” He leaned against the trunk of a tree and peered up at the gray sky through the leaves of the trees, struck again at how peaceful and fulfilling it was to be in nature. The rough bark pricking at his clothes and the rustle of leaves overhead was almost enough to make him forget the hundred years underground. For the first time, it seemed the wounds his soul bore from that ordeal could actually be healed.

Cerridwen.s wounds were of a more complex nature, and would not be healed by the simple touch of bark. She needed the essence of the forest brought to her, not just the material.

For a moment she looked as though she would shout at him, but that moment passed and all that was left was a tired despair. Her shoulders slumped. “Whatever lesson it is, get on with it. I grow tired of being out here. It is cold, and I am hungry.”

Forgetting his earlier resolve not to touch her, he went to stand behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. She jumped. He decided it would be best to pretend that he did not know the reason for her skittishness.

“You cannot find the way because you do not know the land,” he explained. “And you do not know the land because you have never been introduced. You have lived upon concrete and metalworks and those strange plastic surfaces. Humans believe they know their way, because they have maps and surveys. They find immovable markers and track their location by those. But those markers, no matter how permanent they are to Humans, change over the centuries. There is a better way, for our kind. Have you ever had a course in healing?”

She shook her head, eyes downcast as if embarrassed. “No, I did not. Well, I did, but I was not…”

“Proficient?” he supplied.

She twisted her hands together in front of her body. “I could not see the tree.”

“The tree of your life force?” he clarified.

“Yes.” Her cheeks burned scarlet. “It was one of mother.s healers that taught me. Or tried. I informed her that I could not see this tree that she spoke of, but it did not seem to be a concern to her. Without knowing how to take that first step, the rest of her teaching was lost on me.”

“Of course it would be.” The foundation of Faery magic was the direction of energy, and that energy stemmed from the tree of life force inside every Fae. If Cerridwen could not connect to hers, she could not manipulate forces outside, or in. That she had gone without that precious resource for her entire life was a crime. “Close your eyes,” he commanded her gently.

She did as he instructed, but scrunched her face up. “I do not think I have this tree. You are wasting your time.”

“You have it,” he said, not wanting to spend time on pointless negativity. “You have just never found it.”

“If it is supposed to be inside me, there are not many places left to look.” She gave a laugh, then fell oddly silent, her face flushing again.

He ignored her comment. It was for the best. “Any tree has roots in the ground. Imagine similar roots, reaching from the bottoms of your feet into the Earth.”

“I have never seen tree roots. I wouldn.t know what to imagine,” she said, somewhat petulantly. “Until now, the only trees I have ever seen were the ones in Sanctuary, and I did not know their anatomy then, either.” She sighed in frustration, her agitation rising again.

“This is why it wouldn.t work before, with the healer.”

“It will work,” he encouraged her. “We are in a forest. If ever there was a place to learn about trees, it would be here.” He remembered the roots of the great tree that had broken through to the Gypsy quarter. He could describe it to her, but how? How could any Faery describe a sight of nature, which they should have been born to? The roots of a tree, clouds in the sky, the feeling of wind against wings. It was unexplainable. It simply was.

He would have to show her. “Come here.” He took a few steps to a tree and knelt at its base. He cleared away some of the detritus atop the soil with his fingers, exposing the rich, black soil that was the flesh of the Earth. Shifting into the other sight, he saw sparks of energy, vibrant green, racing toward the branches of his fingertips. That energy left, became hands of its own, cut into the soil, parted it, so that when he shifted back into normal sight the ground had opened down to a bone-white tendril nestled in the earth.

“There,” he told her, pointing. “That is the root of a tree. But there are many of them, for just one tree.”

Cerridwen knelt beside him, fascinated not just by the structure of the tree, but the act that had exposed it. “You just moved your hand,” she said, awe tingeing the edges of her words.

“You just waved your hand, and you made the ground open.”

“I did not make the ground do anything,” he corrected. “I used the force of my energy to manipulate the earth. But if the forest had not wanted you to learn this lesson, it would not have cooperated with me.”

She turned face to his. “And I could learn this?”

“You could learn more than this,” he assured her. “You just need someone who is a better teacher than your previous one. Someone who is willing to work with you.”

She stood and brushed off her knees. “Well, now I know what roots are. So, you were saying? Every tree thrusts roots into the ground?”

Cedric did not need to use the other sight to call his energy back to himself. When he did, the ground sewed itself shut, pulled the forest debris back into place, as though he had never been there. “Yes, every tree has roots. Including the tree of your life force. Close your eyes. Feel your own roots in the ground.”

She made a face, but did as he told her.

“I do not feel anything,” she said, after a few short moments.

“It might take time. You must be patient.” He paused. “Try again. It is why your feet stay on the ground, why you do not float aimlessly above the land. You are as connected to the Earth as these trees above us. You root deeper, though. In the very spirit of the Earth.”

He waited in silence while she continued to stand, eyes closed, pale face upturned to the even paler sky. As he watched, her expression of hopeless frustration gave way to the flickering of an uncertain smile. “I think I feel it,” she said, swaying slightly, as though testing the invisible connection to see if she were really tethered there. “Yes, I can feel it!”

“Now, imagine what those roots look like,” he instructed. “Unless you are gravely injured, your life force should be—”

“Green!” she interrupted. “I see it! It is green!”

Cedric could not help his own smile then. “You are seeing in the other sight. Good. The roots beneath your feet should be wild and tangled, but they should join into two ropes that enter your feet and stretch up through your legs. Do you see them?”

She nodded. “I see them! I see where they join. And I see—” She opened her eyes slowly. “A trunk?” she asked, as though her answer might be wrong. “And branches.”

“Branches into your arms and head,” he agreed with a nod.

“It is brighter at the center. I saw my beating heart.” She closed her eyes again. “Why could I not see this before?”

“Because you did not know what you were looking for.” He joined her in the other sight, and saw her standing next to him, the misty outline of her around the glowing green source of her life. “If you look closely, you can see your energy moving. It can take different forms. For some, it is sparks. For some, bubbles. Or liquid in glass. Others see it moving as light or fire.”

“Great round bubbles,” she said dreamily, lost in the other sight. “Moving so fast. Some toward the center, some away.”

“You can direct them. It is all a matter of telling them where to go.” He reached for her hand, pressed his palms to hers. This time, she did not jump at his touch, lost in the wonder of new discovery. “If you needed to heal, you could send energy to your injury. If it is minor, you could take care of it yourself in this way. If you were whole, you could help another…. Imagine I needed healing. Can you see my hand, touching yours?”

“I can,” she said confidently. Her fingers flexed under his.

“See if you can move your energy toward me, flowing out of your hand and into mine.”

She tried, and slowly her energy changed direction. Bubbles moved toward his hand, but when they reached the ends of the branches that were her fingertips, they exploded against

the boundary of her skin with a pop. Cerridwen made a surprised, “Oh!” and jerked her hand away.

“No, you were doing well,” Cedric encouraged her. “You simply have not mastered this skill yet. You cannot expect to do everything perfectly the first time.” He took her hand again.

“Now you know the difficulty of the task. Your energy can be fragile. It can burst. But rather than pushing it headlong, forcing it to break free of your physical constraints, imagine that we are fused together, and you are not sending life force out of yourself, but into a temporary part of yourself.”

He opened his eyes and saw lines of determination creasing her brow. He wanted to reach out and smooth them away, to cup her cheek in his palm. But he could not bear to distract her from her lesson simply because he had a weakened resolve.

On her second try, she managed to move more energy toward him, and the path of it was less stilting than before. When the bubbles reached the ends of her fingers, a few of them did break, but others continued on through. They entered his body with a white-hot shock, and he struggled to concentrate, lest he lose himself as the very essence of her flooded through him.

“Very good,” he said, keeping his tone even through sheer force of will. “Now, give me your other hand.”

Their palms touched, and his energy leaped at hers, eager to find an outlet now that his body was overloaded by the addition of hers. Her fingers trembled beneath his as the circuit completed between them. She gasped, a sound so like the ones she.d made that morning that her life force speared through him.

“Anything that gives energy can receive energy, and the same is true reversed.” He forced aside a tremor of longing. “At times, you might need to draw energy from another source. Plants, rocks. Wind is more difficult—it can be capricious, and won.t often bend to the whims of a creature tied to the earth element, like yourself.”

“And animals? What about Humans?” she asked, eager with the promise of new knowledge.

“No,” he said gently, sternly. “Animals are our equals, but they cannot give their consent. Their consciousness is different from ours. Plants, rocks, trees are not subordinate, but they are amenable to our kind and can communicate with us as animals cannot. The life force of a Human is weak. You will not feel it. And you must never take without their consent. To do so would be Vampirism, and we have nothing in common with the creatures of the dead.”

Their hands were still linked, the energy still mingling and flowing between them. He opened his eyes. A sheen of perspiration sparkled on Cerridwen.s brow, her perfect lips parted. The feeling of her mouth under his had seared his memory like a brand, and everything in him urged him to burn that recollection deeper.

The change in him would not, and did not, go unnoticed in the other sight. At once, she dropped her hands and rubbed them against her thighs, as if to remove the feeling of him from her palms.

So, she regretted the morning, as well. He should not have felt disappointed at this. It was for the better. His rational mind knew this, but it did not ease the sting of his need.