Wayfarer

Six

In the glare of the streetlamp Veronica’s hair was pale as tallow, her skin the color of ashes. “You kept me searching a long time for you, human boy,” she remarked. “And yet, somehow…the look on your face makes it all worthwhile.”

Linden slid down behind Timothy’s shoulder and crouched on the top of his pack, willing herself not to panic. Veronica’s spell had bound Timothy but left her free to move: Perhaps that meant the other faery hadn’t seen her. So, if she stayed very still, maybe she’d have time to think of a plan….

“That drab little creature has left you unattended, has she?” said Veronica, trailing a finger down Timothy’s cheek. Linden expected him to flinch, but he only stared past her unblinking: Veronica’s spell had bound him so fast that he could not even speak. “I would call that a foolish mistake…though she was a fool to begin with, thinking she could steal you away from me.”

She brought her other hand to Timothy’s cheek, leaned forward-and her gaze fell on Linden. With a hiss she jerked back. “You! So tiny, and with wings, no less-what in the Empress’s name-?”

Stiffly Linden pulled herself upright, trying not to put too much weight on her injured foot. “Timothy is under my protection,” she said with all the dignity she could muster. “You cannot have him.”

Veronica breathed a laugh. “Little one, you amaze me. When I believed you had stolen the boy so you could take his music for yourself, I admired your impudence even as I swore to make you pay for it. But now you ask me to believe you were trying to protect him? A mere human, with nothing in his head but music and ignorance?” Her lips compressed. “Come now, tell me the truth and I may yet spare your life.”

The menace in the other faery’s voice made Linden tremble, but her outrage was stronger than her fear. “I mean what I say,” she retorted, and then, summoning up all her courage and her faith in Knife’s example, she added, “I will fight you if I have to.”

Veronica’s skeptical look shaded into contempt. “Then you must have lost what little wits you ever possessed. To blatantly display your faery nature by taking this ridiculous little form, and to ally yourself with a human in defiance of the Empress’s decree-”

“Empress?” Linden interrupted. “Who is this Empress you keep talking about?”

“Not know the Empress?” Veronica’s eyes narrowed. “Do you mock me? Or are you testing my loyalty? If you think I could ever be tempted to show mercy to rebels and humans, then be assured that I will prove you wrong-right now.”

With a flick of her fingers she knocked Linden from Timothy’s shoulder, sending her tumbling backward into the air. Then she seized Timothy’s face between her hands-

Linden cried out and flung herself forward, but there was no need. Something like a small bird flashed out from the darkness and struck Veronica across the back of the head; her eyes glazed over, and she slid to the pavement.

“Veronica?” whispered Linden, hovering above the fallen faery. The bird thing had vanished as quickly as it had appeared, and Timothy still hadn’t moved; she had no idea how to free him from the spell. But then a hooded figure stepped out from between the buildings, and she caught the unmistakable scent of another faery. With surprisingly powerful-looking hands the stranger tore Veronica’s spell to glittering tatters until Timothy gasped and stumbled forward, free.

Linden’s heart leaped. “Don’t go!” she called out as the stranger backed away. “Please, I need to talk to you!”

The other faery hesitated, then made a beckoning gesture and vanished back into the darkness. Linden was about to follow-then noticed that Timothy was still standing there, apparently too dazed to walk. She gritted her teeth and willed herself large again, then grabbed Timothy’s wrist and pulled him along with her.

The strange faery led them through the alley, past a row of metal bins overflowing with rubbish and walls scrawled with painted symbols Linden didn’t recognize. All she could do was limp along with Timothy in tow, wincing as cold grime crunched beneath her feet, and praying she didn’t step on anything else sharp.

The passageway led them onto another street, where they walked a few more paces before stopping in front of a wall covered with colorful scraps of paper and yet more scribbles of paint. Linden was just about to ask what they were looking at when the other faery raised a hand, and a hidden door opened in the wall.

Stepping inside, they climbed a narrow, creaking staircase to its very top, emerging at last into a single tiny room. The air inside smelled musty, and the ceiling bowed over their heads, cracked and stained from years of slow leaking. The wallpaper had peeled away in strips, the carpet was black with mildew, and when their guide pressed the light switch the naked bulb sizzled fitfully in its socket.

“All right,” said Timothy, shaking himself free of Linden. He looked tired, but now his eyes were clear. “So now that you’ve rescued us, do you mind telling us who you are?”

The stranger turned, pushing back the concealing hood. Linden stepped forward eagerly-and her throat closed up with shock.

The faery who had rescued them was a male.

Timothy was still so dizzy from the aftereffects of Veronica’s spell, it was an effort at first to tell who he was looking at. But gradually his rescuer’s features came into focus, and he knew. “Rob!” he exclaimed.

Linden whirled on him. “Rob? This is the musician you were talking about? But he’s…” Words seemed to fail her as she looked back at the other faery, her gaze traveling up his figure to linger on his broad shoulders and the spare, angular bones of his face. “I don’t understand,” she faltered.

“I thought you were a friend of Veronica’s,” said Timothy, unable to keep the accusation from his voice.

Rob seemed unfazed. “Our people make no friends,” he said, “only allies and enemies. But for now, I am your ally, and not hers. She won’t find you here.”

For now. That didn’t sound too reassuring to Timothy, especially after the way he’d seen Rob play his guitar back at Sanctuary. What if he’d rescued them from Veronica just to steal Timothy’s music for himself?

“You mistrust me,” said Rob. His voice had fallen into formal cadences, with a rich, rolling accent that sounded centuries older than he looked. “I do not blame you for it. But I give you my pledge-I mean you no harm.”

“But you’re a faery,” said Linden in a plaintive voice. “And you’re male. How can that be?”

“I am as real as you,” Rob told her. “But enough idle talk. Tell me, who are you and where have you come from?”

His eyes were on Linden now, so intent that she might have been the only other person in the room, and Timothy felt a flicker of irritation. “What about giving us a chance to rest a bit first?” he said. “Linden’s hurt, and I want to look at her foot before-”

He broke off as Rob swung around and gave him a hard look. All at once Timothy became aware that there was a bed just a few feet behind him, and that he was even more tired than he’d thought. He backed up slowly until the mattress bumped against his legs, and then sat down.

“Timothy?” said Linden, sounding anxious, but her voice seemed to be coming from a great distance. And the bed felt so soft, the springs trembling invitingly beneath his weight…. It wouldn’t hurt to lie down just a moment, would it?

He slumped over, his head dropping onto the pillow. The world around him faded, and Timothy sank into a deep, dreamless sleep.

“You put a spell on him,” Linden accused Rob as Timothy began to snore. It was all she could do to speak firmly, and not betray the nervousness she felt inside.

“Not quite,” said Rob, looking amused. “I merely took away the chemicals in his body that were keeping him awake. You might even call it a healing.”

“Healing?” She was taken aback. “But you did it so easily…. I thought that healing spells were the very hardest magics to perform.” Or at least, that was what Valerian had told her, and surely the Oak’s Healer ought to know about such things.

Rob shrugged. “For you they would be, no doubt. Just as the glamours that you and Veronica create would be all but impossible to a male such as myself. But you should know that without me telling you. Sit down.”

Linden tensed. Was he going to put her to sleep the way he had Timothy?

“Or not, if you prefer,” Rob said with a touch of exasperation. “But it will be difficult for me to heal your foot if you insist on standing on it.”

Embarrassed, Linden sidled over and sat down on the end of the bed where Timothy slept, lifting her bandaged foot for Rob’s inspection. The male faery knelt and cupped her heel in one hand, deftly unwinding the bandage with the other. He considered her injury a moment, then laid his fingers against the wound and said, “Done.”

She could feel a tingling warmth where his hands rested, but no pain. Wondering, Linden pulled her foot back and turned it over. There was no sign of blood or bruising, only a tiny white scar.

“And now,” said Rob, “you are in my debt twice over.”

“I am,” Linden admitted, coloring at the directness of his gaze. “What would you ask of me in return?”

“Knowledge, no more. But I warn you, I have a great many questions-and if you lie to me, I will know.”

His tone was mild, but the warning in it was unmistakable. Linden took a deep breath. “I accept your bargain.”

“Why did you save the human boy from Veronica?”

An odd question, considering he’d just rescued the two of them from Veronica himself. “She was going to take his music. What else could I have done?”

Rob stooped and lifted Timothy’s guitar from its case. He ducked his head under the strap, sat down in the room’s only chair, and began to play, fingers wandering over the strings. “You could have taken his music for yourself,” he said. “Or let Veronica take it, and escaped from Sanctuary unharmed. Instead you defied the Empress’s decree, and risked your own life, to rescue him. Why?”

Linden sat back a little, moving carefully so as not to disturb the sleeping Timothy. “I never even thought of doing anything else,” she admitted. “I mean…his music means so much to him. And what Veronica was doing-tried to do-was wrong.”

Rob’s left hand slid down the guitar’s neck, his right plucking soft chords as he spoke. “Wrong?” he said. “How so? He would never have known what she took from him, or remembered how it was done. When he awoke, he would only find that his skill at making music was not what it had been, and in time he would give it up and move on. Where is the harm?”

“But it’s stealing,” protested Linden, shocked. “You don’t take from people without giving them something in return.”

“People?” said Rob. “Faeries, perhaps. But humans? What do we owe them? They have abilities we lack and envy, but they would say the same of us. We could kill them or herd them like cattle if we chose, but instead we allow most of them to live without even suspecting our existence. Having granted the humans so great a favor already, why should we give them more? It is not as though they are our equals.”

He spoke without hesitation, but his tone was colorless, as though he were reciting a speech he had given too many times. Still, hearing him say those words made Linden feel queasy.

“Like cattle…” she echoed, and then with sudden passion, “No. No, I don’t believe that. The Great Gardener-”

She stopped, unsure. Did these city faeries even believe as she did? Or were they like Timothy, certain of nothing but doubt?

“Go on,” said Rob.

“When the Great Gardener planted the world,” Linden went on carefully, trying to remember the story just as Queen Amaryllis had told it to her years ago, “the humans were appointed to rule it and tend it and look after all the other creatures. And the first faery, Lily-she was supposed to help them by watching over the garden and letting them know when the plants or animals needed care.

“The Great Gardener promised Lily that if she did her work faithfully, she would in time receive a mate of her own. But as the days passed, Lily grew impatient. She left the humans and flew off to see if there were any others like herself, and when she returned, the garden was in chaos and the humans were gone. So the Great Gardener punished her by taking away her creativity.”

“That hardly seems fair,” said Rob dryly. “What about the humans?”

“I don’t know their part of the story,” admitted Linden. “But I’m sure they were punished too. The point is, humans and faeries were meant to work together. We need each other.”

Rob gave her a pitying look. “A child’s tale,” he said, “left over from a time when our people were too ignorant to know better. I would not be surprised to find that the humans made it up themselves, to keep us in our place. But you are a young woman now, and surely, you are too intelligent to believe such fables?”

Linden was flustered. To be treated as an adult was flattering, even more so when the speaker was a male of her own kind. And to be called intelligent pleased her as well. But the contempt in Rob’s voice when he dismissed the beliefs that she had been raised with, things she felt in her heart to be true…

“If being intelligent means agreeing that faeries are the only people who matter,” she said, “then no, I suppose I’m not. But if that’s what you really believe, then why did you help us?”

Instead of answering, Rob bent his head over the guitar and began a lilting, mournful melody. Linden watched his averted face a moment, then added more quietly, “And who taught you to play?”

Rob’s hands fell away from the strings. “Enough,” he said in a harsh voice as he took off the instrument and laid it back in its case. “It is my business to ask questions, not to answer them. Or have you already forgotten the terms of our bargain?”

Linden reddened. She was so used to talking freely with Knife and Paul and some of her fellow Oakenfolk, it was easy to forget that most faeries used conversation only as a tool-or a weapon. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Please go on.”

Rob was silent a moment. Then he said, “I may regret asking this, but…are you one of the Plant Rhys Ddwfn?”

“Plawnt hreece thuvin?” repeated Linden, puzzled. “What does that mean?”

“The Children of Rhys the Deep,” said Rob. “And since you do not recognize the name, then clearly, I was mistaken.” He swore under his breath. “I should have known. That one of the Children would come to me-it was too easy. But where else could you have come from, to know nothing of the Empress and be generous even to humans?”

“Do you want me to tell you?” asked Linden.

Rob slumped back into the chair. “I suppose you may yet say something worth hearing,” he said, though his voice held little hope. “Very well, go on.”

Linden sat up straighter. This might be her only chance to explain why she had come to London, to make Rob understand the Oakenfolk’s desperate situation and persuade him, if he could be persuaded, to help.

“My name is Linden,” she began, “and I come from a place called the Oakenwyld….”

When she had finished her story, Rob sat for a long moment without speaking. Then he said in a voice that rasped with disbelief, “You mean to tell me that you and your fellow Oakenfolk-every one of you-are female, and always have been? For five hundred years you have lived alone in your Oak, and never seen a single male of our kind?”

Linden nodded, relieved that he finally understood. “Until I met you tonight,” she said, “I had no idea that male faeries even existed.”

“And before this Jasmine you spoke of came along and cast her spell, your people used to have their children by humans?”

“Only now and then,” said Linden hastily, blushing. “Most often we took girl children the humans didn’t want and turned them into faeries instead. But we can’t do either of those things anymore. Not without our magic.”

Rob shook his head. “Impossible,” he murmured. “After all these centuries…”

Linden’s heart thumped painfully. Was he saying that it was too late to help the Oakenfolk? She was about to plead with him, but Rob cut in:

“And you truly believe that all you need do is ask, or offer some crude bargain, and the rest of us will rush to help you, just like that?”

“I–I don’t know,” she said. Put like that, it did sound hopelessly naive. “But I had to try. There are only a few of us left alive now. And now that the spells that protect the Oak are weakening, soon it won’t even be safe for us to live there anymore-”

“Then why not ask your human friends to take you in? Surely there must be room for you all in that big House of theirs.”

“But that wouldn’t be fair to them,” protested Linden. “And it wouldn’t be safe for us, either. One or two of us might be able to hide away in the House, but not all. And if the other humans found out, they’d try to capture us, study us-”

“Then perhaps you should have thought of that before you threw in your lot with the humans in the first place,” said Rob coldly as he got to his feet. “Because I can tell you that the Empress rules the whole of this great island, and no faery under her command will ever give help to one of the Forsaken.”

“The…Forsaken?”

“I had believed you to be no more than a legend,” Rob went on in the same flat tone. “Faeries who so loved humans that they would serve them like slaves, choosing even to wed with them and bear their children rather than be true to their own faery blood. Traitors and renegades, exiled from the rest of our people centuries ago. If the Empress knew that I had helped you, even in ignorance…” He pulled up his hood and moved toward the door.

“Wait!” Linden leaped off the bed and darted to intercept him. “Where are you going? You’re not going to tell her, are you? Please!”

Rob closed his eyes, as though he could not bear to look at her. “No,” he said. “But Veronica will not be so discreet-and she was not the only one who witnessed your rescue of the human boy. It will not be long before the Empress learns what you did this night and draws her own conclusions. And then your life, and the boy’s, too, will be forfeit.”

Linden stood rooted, trembling with horror and fury. Then she burst out, “Well, if that’s the kind of law you live by here-if that’s what your Empress calls justice-then it’s no wonder my people decided they’d be better off with the humans!”

“Linden…” It was the first time Rob had spoken her name, but she was too upset to care.

Hotly, she went on: “Maybe we are renegades, as you say, but at least we know enough to care about something besides ourselves. At least we still remember that we belong to the Great Gardener, and not to some Empress who goes around putting people to death at the flick of a wing! I’m sorry I wasn’t one of your precious Children of Peace-”

“Rhys,” said Rob.

“-but if you ask me, it makes no difference. Because if they’re known for being generous and kind to humans, I can’t imagine that they’d be any more impressed with your attitude than I am!”

She finished the sentence with a glare, daring Rob to make some caustic retort. But unaccountably, his stern expression softened. He reached out and touched her hair, letting the brown curls tumble between his fingers.

“You are young,” he said. “And altogether too innocent to survive in this hard world. But you have courage. And the human boy-he played well tonight.”

He glanced over at Timothy, still sprawled oblivious across the bed. “Let him sleep a little while longer, then wake him and go to the nearest train station. My people are not fond of places where many humans gather; you should be safe there until you can find transport out of the city. Return to your Oak quickly, and remain there, and you may yet escape the Empress. I cannot promise you anything more.”

Linden caught his arm. “But if we leave, how will I find the help we need? Surely not all the other faeries serve the Empress-if I just knew where to look-”

“That,” said Rob, “was what I had hoped you would be able to tell me. So it seems we are both disappointed.” He shrugged away from her grasp, flung the door open, and was gone.

“Timothy. Wake up.” Linden was shaking him. “We have to go.”

He groaned and rolled onto his back, blinking his sleep-gummed eyes against the light. “What, already?”

“Yes, right away. Rob’s gone, and-” She cast a nervous glance at the open door. “We can’t stay here much longer.”

Timothy swung his legs around and sat up, squinting at his watch: 5:47 A.M. Beyond the cracked window the sky was still dark, the streetlights glowing eerily through a haze of mist. He felt dislocated, as though he had wakened on some alien planet. “Okay,” he mumbled, “just give me a few minutes.”

“There’s no time to waste.” She dragged his backpack and guitar case toward him. “If any of the Empress’s faeries find us, we’re dead.”

Abruptly he was wide awake. “What?”

“Just come,” begged Linden. “I’ll explain on the way.”

As they stepped onto the landing, Timothy nearly tripped over a pair of leather shoes sitting just outside the door. “What the-” he said, but Linden had already snatched them up.

“Rob must have left them for me!” she exclaimed, slipping them on and bouncing a little. “They fit perfectly.”

“How’d he know your size?” asked Timothy, but to his surprise, Linden only blushed and hurried down the stairs.

She told him the story as they walked, passing one street after another on their way toward the nearest train station. The glamour she’d put on herself before they’d left the flat made her look like an ordinary human girl in a winter jacket and jeans, but it plainly wasn’t keeping her warm: By the time she had finished speaking her cheeks were rosy with cold, and she was hugging herself in an effort not to shiver. Timothy fished his last sweatshirt out of his backpack and handed it to her.

“Oh, I am grateful,” she breathed as she floundered into it, rolling up the sleeves that drooped over her hands. “But you haven’t said anything.” She looked up at him, eyes big with apprehension. “Are you angry?”

Timothy shoved a hand through his hair. “No, it’s all marvelous,” he said bitterly. “I’m glad you and Rob had such a nice chat. Lovely people, your folk.”

“I’m sorry.” She looked stricken. “I never imagined it would be like this. I thought if I could only find more faeries, everything would be wonderful. But to meet them, and then hear that they all despise us and call us Forsaken…and even worse, that they’re ruled by someone evil…”

“So now we’ve got no choice but to run back to Oakhaven.” Timothy stomped on a discarded soda can and kicked it aside. “It’d be one thing if I’d been gone a week, or been in an accident or something. But coming back to Paul and Peri’s the morning after I left, because I was scared of a lot of homicidal faeries-that’s just pathetic. They probably haven’t even found my note yet.”

Linden said nothing. Her head was bent, her face invisible behind her turbulence of hair.

“On the other hand,” he continued, “it’s the perfect excuse not to go back to Greenhill. Hello, Mum and Dad, England’s fine, I met some faeries and now they want to kill me. Sure you don’t want to send me to school in Canada instead?”

Linden gave a quavering laugh and then, to Timothy’s horror, burst into tears. He grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her away from the road, hoping desperately that she’d calm down before someone stopped and demanded to know what was going on.

But though Linden put her hands over her face and sobbed until her body shook, none of the passing cars even slowed down. And once she’d wept herself into dry hiccups and wiped her eyes on her sleeve, Timothy was finally able to make out what she was saying:

“I’ve done everything wrong,” she choked. “I thought I could help the Oakenfolk-I thought I was helping you-but all I’ve done is put all of us in worse danger than ever. What if the Empress sends her people after us? What if they find the Oak? Valerian was right. I wasn’t ready for this. And what am I going to tell the Queen when I see her?”

Timothy regarded her helplessly for a moment. Then with sudden decisiveness he took Linden by the elbow and marched her along with him until they reached the train station. He steered her inside and made her sit down on one of the benches before taking both her hands in his and saying in the low, firm voice he used to calm his little sister, “All right, yes, it’s a bad situation. For both of us. But we’re still alive, and we’ve made it this far. That’s good, isn’t it?”

Reluctantly, Linden nodded.

“So we’ll get you on the next train to Aynsbridge, and you can go back to the Oak and tell the others what happened. At least now you know that there are other faeries out there. Male faeries, even. That’s got to be worth something.”

Linden rubbed at her reddened eyes. “But if all the other faeries want nothing to do with us, and all we can do is sit in the Oak and wait to die-”

“Who says that? Maybe the faeries here in London won’t help you, but you can always go to some other city-or another country, if you have to. All you have to do is hide in the Oak for a few days until the Empress gives up looking for you, and then try again. What about these Children of Rhys that Rob mentioned? They’re faeries, too, aren’t they?”

“Yes, but we don’t even know where to find the Children, let alone whether they’d be willing to help us. And we’re running out of time.” Her expression was desolate. “Even working together, Valerian and I can’t protect the Oak the way the Queen used to. If we’d done the wards properly, you’d hardly have noticed the tree at all when you came-but you walked right up and touched it. We might be able to hide from the Empress, but what good will that do us if we just end up being found by the humans instead?”

Timothy let her go and stood up, shoving his cold hands back into his pockets. “I don’t know. But I can’t see you’ve got any other choice.”

Linden was silent, her gaze on the floor. Then she said, “You’re not going to come with me, are you? You’re going to keep running away.”

She didn’t sound accusing, only resigned. Timothy hunched his shoulders uncomfortably. “Look, it’s not that I don’t want to help you. I just don’t know what use I could be, especially if the Empress and her people do come after us. You might be safe in your Oak if you can keep up those spells long enough, but all they’d have to do to find me at Oakhaven is look through the window. They might even figure out that Peri used to be one of your people and decide to punish her, too. Is that what you want?”

Linden looked stricken. “No!”

“Right. So if you ask me, it’s better for everyone if I don’t go back to Oakhaven. Besides”-he tried to keep his voice light, but somehow the old bitterness crept in-“Paul and Peri already made it pretty obvious they didn’t want me around.”

“Only because they were afraid you’d find out about the Oak-”

“Because they don’t trust me, that’s why!” The words came out louder than he’d intended, and Linden flinched. With an effort Timothy controlled his temper and went on, “By now they should know what kind of person I am. But apparently they think I’m the kind who’d smash up a five-hundred-year-old tree for the fun of it, or stuff faeries into specimen jars and sell them for pocket money, or-”

“Or hit someone and get yourself sent away from school?” said Linden.

That stopped him. Timothy’s bruised mouth twisted in frustration, but he couldn’t think of anything to say.

“I know you’ve been hurt,” Linden told him quietly. “But you should know something else, too. Ever since the first time you came to Oakhaven, Knife-I mean Peri-has been telling me about you. She always said how clever and funny you were, and how much she enjoyed having you stay. But she also warned me, whenever you came, that I mustn’t come to the House until you’d gone. It’s not just you, Timothy-she doesn’t trust anybody with our secret. Because the secret’s not hers to share.”

Timothy hesitated. Then he dropped down onto the bench beside her, staring at the floor.

“I can’t go back,” he said heavily. “Not yet. Just…I’m not ready.”

Linden didn’t say anything for a long while, and he wondered if she was angry. But when she spoke, her voice was calm:

“Then you’ll just have to come to the Oak with me.”