Chapter Eleven - Teresa

The air was still when the boar finally died. My ragged, heaving breaths barely made a sound after the echoes of my scream had faded. It was just me, nearly doubled over as I pushed the spear deeper and the corpse’s hot blood dripped down onto my hands.

The clapping broke the quiet. It was slow at first, building up to a crescendo as I opened my eyes. The Fae stood ahead of me, a semicircle at the mouth of the ravine. Their mouths were open in predatory grins, teeth just a shade too pointed and perfect to be Human bared to the wind. Laughter started as they met my eyes, it and their voices bouncing around the circle.

“It seems our elder knew best, once again.”

“A tool it may be, but one with some use left in it.”

“To think that a weapon was all it needed to give us a proper show!”

“Such theatre, too. What a stage! Truly, the work of the Grower.”

“’tis a pity that it didn’t last. Mortal work crumbles all too quickly.”

“A repeat is in order, wouldn’t you say?”

One raised a hand, and the others turned to look. His – and he looked distinctly masculine compared to the others – grin was tighter, just quirked lips and appraising eyes. He’d thrown the first spear as they took me, and his voice had a depth to it that the others lacked.

“No need to hurry, my friends. Even tools cannot see constant use. Why, we wouldn’t want to break our new plaything just yet.”

Almost sadistic, even if there was no overt malice as he went on.

“We should let it claim its trophy, now. Then we should share our good fortune. It can hardly be the new sensation if we don’t let it be seen.”

He kept his eyes on me as the others looked away, words bouncing between them fast enough that I could barely follow that dissolved into a sibilant cascade of tittering laughter.

“Ooh, we should have a proper ball! A banquet! It’s been weeks!”

“Shall we invite the others of Ash?”

“Why limit ourselves?”

“And what of entertainment? A lacking ball simply won’t do.”

“One of my other pets has quite a talent for music. I know some scions of Summer that might loan us theirs for the proper atmosphere.”

“I bartered for a gaggle of Autumn’s rejects a handful of centuries ago. One broken philosopher for a cadre of mutes; they should suffice for proper service.”

“Spring will beg to come as soon as they hear. They could…”

The masculine one shook his head and the others fell silent with what might have been irritation flickering across their faces.

“Nay, an event such as theirs can come later. We wouldn’t want our prize soiled – a master’s product deserves some dignity. There’s no need to test the limits of our oaths when we have all the time across the worlds. If Spring is to come their tithe must be something more tangible. There shan’t be time just yet for something custom.”

“Oh! They could grovel!”

Just like that the emotion passed and they were smiling again, none stealing more than glances at me. All except the man who hadn’t looked away or blinked.

“It’s settled then. Do tell our lovely cousins that this will be the first of many, if you would.” He tapped a finger against his lower lip. Even from dozens of feet away I could hear it, an unnaturally loud clink. The sound of glass striking glass. “Let us begin, say, when the day of its world turns. I’ll prune our shrinking violet into something more presentable.”

A chorus of affirmatives rang out and most of them vanished, instantly. Only he stayed. His glowing eyes, the color of wet ashes, finally slid up to meet mine as his grin faded into something that I would’ve said was thoughtful on a Human. On him, it was like he was deciding how best to take me apart and put me back together.

“Go on then, Seedling. Some traditions must be observed even among beasts and toys. You slew your foe, so now you claim your prize.”

I didn’t move.

Honestly, I wasn’t sure if it was safe to.

They’d tried to kill me. Or at least, let loose things that were trying to kill me. One should have, would have, if they hadn’t stopped it. It didn’t matter that the scars had faded during the next chase; I could still feel the rocks digging into my back, the sizzling burn where its drool had hit me, that awful stench of rotten meat that wafted from its jaws. Even though my arm somehow moved normally I could still feel an echo of the pain from when every single bone in my shoulder splintered just from its weight.

It didn’t matter that they’d healed me between; I’d been unconscious. They weren’t nice. There was no way he was being serious, it had to be another joke or test. I hadn’t beaten them in anything, hadn’t done anything exceptional. I’d barely even survived this one; I’d probably even cheated when the Lady talked to me. People in fairy tales never got off easy from that and I was holding a spear that was in no way, shape, or form something I’d made.

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So I just stood there poised to run, holding tight to the spear that was still embedded inside the boar’s corpse. He, apparently, found that funny.

“I know you have ears, toy, and your eyes clearly function. Perhaps your brain is yet to grow in? Or your tongue, for all it wagged earlier.” He tilted his head and laughed. It was a harsh sound, completely unlike the others. A cross between a crow choking on a piece of carrion and stones grinding together. The smile he put on after that was even creepier than what the other Fae had worn. “Time is limitless. My patience…”

I blinked. He was in front of me.

“…is not.”

I jerked back on reflex. There was only a moment of resistance before the spear followed with a wet shunk. Its tip sliced cleanly through the skull before leaning vaguely in the Faerie’s direction as I tried to scramble back and away. The second it did, the smile disappeared and he moved. A hand tore it from my grasp and flung it to the side where it sank several feet into the wall. Before I’d even started to process the frictional burning in my hands, his other was at my throat.

It wasn’t touching me. His fingers were almost three inches from my skin and just barely visible when I tried to look down. My neck wouldn’t move, though, and I could feel something cold and hard pressing down on my throat. Not forceful enough to hurt, but enough to make taking anything more than a shallow breath difficult.

The same invisible pressure was on my wrists, too. My skin was dimpling like it was being squeezed, but whatever was doing it couldn’t have been a hand. A looser hold, like the air itself was pressing in against me. Lighter than the vice at my throat, still not getting into anything I could call actual pain. Just discomfort and mounting anxiety that left me lightheaded as I felt myself lift from the ground to get to his eye level.

He let me hang there, gasping in just enough air to function, for a few long seconds before speaking.

“Now now, Seedling, don’t mistake tradition for restraint. You are mine and you will not forget that. Raise your hand at me again and you’ll beg for something as final as an ending.”

His eyes were glowing like the others had been. Unlike theirs, his weren’t completely static. For a single heartbeat, colors swirled inside them, something magical that went beyond what I’d seen with the Sight. They felt achingly familiar, dredging up memories that made the fluttering thing that I could still feel watching through my eyes turn away. Whatever it was blurred through my mind too quickly to see, leaving nothing but those roiling colors and a wave of dejection and regret.

The Fae’s face twisted a few seconds before he dropped me. That much was clear even through the tears welling up alongside the foreign emotions that oozed from of the spot in my chest where my – my friend from the ritual had touched me.

I hit the ground with a puff of ash and sucked in as much air as I could. A wheezing fit and the accompanying burn in my throat and chest were what pulled me out of my own head and the cloying, cold, foreign depression. The ice slowly faded from my veins as the distance presence either calmed down or pulled back its feelings. When my eyes cleared up, I watched the last of my coughs send a cloud of dull silvery powder flying out.

There were no words or actions from the Faerie as I wiped my mouth off and tried to get my heartbeat back to something normal. He just stood there; feet planted squarely between the two pools of blueish blood that had dripped from the boar. One came from the edges of the hole where a stake had pierced it, the other dripped from its mouth and rolled down from me. Not a single droplet of it, nor any speck of ash, had clung to his boots.

He didn’t even seem to have broken the crust of it on the ground.

From this angle on the ground, a single tusk was perfectly framed against the backdrop of the sky at the end of the ravine. It sparkled in the faint light, colorless and crystalline. Even transparent as it was, it had the faintest similarity to what had been behind the Faerie’s eyes. I screwed my eyes shut as soon as that registered but no rush of foreign emotions came through this time. My friend either didn’t care or wasn’t looking.

There was a long sigh and then a wet crunch followed by the sound of rending metal.

“A visual choice then? How novel. Shame that it was so predictable, though. Even a hollow mortal is wont to take glitter over substance, I suppose.”

There was a pause and a snap. Scraping and tapping and a sound like ripping paper overlapped softer words. They were almost nostalgic. “The material is…passable. A hollow remnant of a greater past laid low by violence; how fitting for a weapon’s first trophy. Perhaps your choice was adequate after all, Seedling, delayed though it was.”

I was starting to push myself up to my hands and knees, eyes still closed, when he added, “Now, with that done, it’s time to move on.”

He snapped his fingers, this clink closer to a rock being thrown into a window.

Reality twisted.

A burst of unnamable colors flashed behind my eyelids while the ground wavered and vibrated. For an eternal instant the world itself seemed to crush in around me, stretching and pulling me into shapes that weren’t physically possible. Then I snapped back. The ground shifted. I collapsed again, my muscles like jelly and my stomach lurching. Even with my cheek flat on a cool, smooth floor it felt like I was spinning.

When I twitched in an attempt to move I noticed the change under me. This was a floor. Level, and far from the bottom of a ravine. The only grit was what had already been clinging to my cheek, and as I flailed around – in what had to be an undignified way – I realized there were no bumps or rocks anywhere. Once I got my eyes open and blinked away the muck, I saw an expanse of deep brown shot through with rings of lighter tan as it spread out.

Wood.

An entire floor that seemed to be carved from a single smooth block of it, no boards or joins. Just a smooth expanse of its grain, each ring thicker than I was tall and flowing uninterrupted into the next. The smaller striations I’d seen at first were lighter colored, fading away when I looked at something further than a few feet away and blending into the overall tone of the room. The floor turned into the far wall without any change, though it was as uniform a color as anything here; a rich, unblemished mahogany.

There was a door in the middle of the wall, the grain on the wood running at a different angle. The table next to it though, matched the walls. It looked like it had been grown straight out of them. The stool in front of it was the same shade as the lighter striations, but disconnected. Above the table was a wide mirror that, from here, just showed the ceiling. It was an exact match for the floor, save for the four spiraling cages that hung down from it. In between the lattice of thin wooden strands that made up each was a white crystal that glowed with a faint, cool light. Somehow, they didn’t crisscross the room with shadows.

I didn’t think too hard about how there was no way the crystal could’ve fit through the holes in the lattice. It was hardly the weirdest thing I’d dealt with lately, especially since I’d literally just been teleported here. Or something like that.

If it was teleportation, it sucked.

The side of the door that didn’t have the table had a few pegs sticking out of the wall at head height. Nothing else I could see stood out from here. Looking around would probably be a good idea, but there was a door. If I could just get to it…

As soon as my arms were steady enough, I pushed myself to my feet. Then I took a few wobbly steps forward and froze. My entire body locked into place. My lips sealed shut even as I tried to scream.

“You didn’t think I was gone, did you? Are you really so simple that you would think something absent just because you could not immediately see it? Even the Flower you spawned from had more wit.”