Fire and Bone (Otherborn #1)(45)
“Enough.” This isn’t a joke. If we don’t hurry, it’ll be too late—nothing will bring her back. “Place it on the lintel there.” I nod to the frame of the crypt’s entrance. “But once it touches, we only have a few seconds to slip through before it closes back up.”
She nods. “And you’re doing the steering so we don’t end up in Oxnard or somewhere else horrible?”
“Yes, just be sure you hold on to me.”
She slides her arm through mine, hooking it around my bicep. Then she nudges us closer to the lintel. “Here we go.” She directs Sage’s palm to the rim and squeezes her eyes shut in anticipation as she presses it down.
A crack of green light appears at the center of the doorway, and the whistle of rushing wind pulls at the air. The fissure fractures until it opens fully, like a shattered mirror. And we step through.
EIGHTEEN
FAELAN
Bending space is never as simple as walking from one location to another. It wreaks havoc on a cellular level for a human, and Aelia’s blood is more human than Other. While I manage to land on my feet as the passageway releases me, Sage still in my arms, Aelia collapses on the mossy ground in front of me with a whoosh of breath, gasping and gagging. Then she crawls into a cluster of high ferns and begins to vomit.
I only have to crouch for a moment, holding Sage tight to my chest to keep from dropping her. I breathe through the flip of my gut, the buzzing in my muscles, the fading crackle in my ears, used to the odd sensations after hundreds of years of traveling through passageways.
Aelia, however, continues to throw up.
I steady myself and look around. We’re in a small thicket. There won’t be any humans this deep in the forest, only animals and the occasional wysp—a small creature made of water that lives in the river just north of here and sometimes hides in the fog.
I try to be patient as Aelia whimpers and releases the contents of her stomach for several minutes, but after a while it becomes a little melodramatic, with her mostly just pressing her head into the moss and complaining to herself.
Eventually, I tell her I’ll leave her there alone and move on to my destination if she doesn’t suck it up.
“I hate you right now,” she mutters. She wipes her mouth and shivers, swallowing, but she stands and follows me through the tree line into the deeper wood.
The energy of the trees wraps around me, the rich life soaking through my skin, settling my nerves better than any drug. The white birch and ash creak; robins and siskins titter in the branches above. I spot a merlin eyeing us from a Scots pine, and a red deer pauses in her feeding, turning her head to watch us pass.
The early-morning air is misty on my skin, smelling of moss and approaching rain clouds. I try to focus on the beauty around me. That way maybe I won’t notice the chill of Sage’s forehead against my neck. I won’t think about how fast she’s grown cold. Her death will be final very soon—I can only pray it hasn’t happened already.
I have to stop a couple of times to confirm the scent of my path, making sure I’m still heading the right way. The man I’m seeking isn’t one who likes to be found. I’ve met him only once before, in a time I like to forget, but it’s been a while, and much of the forest has changed since then. The farther in we go, the more I see how aggressively it’s been cut back. I have to wonder if the man’s even still here.
He has to be. I need him to be.
We finally find the clearing blanketed in yellow and purple flowers, with the familiar giant of a juniper tree on its far side. I hesitate, not sure I’m seeing right. It’s exactly the same as I remember from seven centuries ago, when I was a boy who brought a secret message from Queen Lily into these trees. The juniper is a massive, twisted malformation, the taffy-like trunk and branches tipped with green, reaching several dozen feet into the air. It almost looks like a tormented beast as it grows with its arms stretching and curling around several nearby aspen and birch, like they’re huddled together in solidarity.
Something moves out from the line of trees on our right, a figure stumbling along in the underbrush, holding a twisted rowan staff. He too looks exactly the same as he did all those centuries ago—though perhaps a bit more disheveled, if that’s possible. He’s still wrinkled, with ratty silver hair. He’s wearing a hat that looks like a bird’s nest and patchwork cloaks of green-and-brown wool, woven together with vines and feathers and bones. The ferns behind him shudder like something low to the ground is following him. His scolding filters over the clearing. “No, no, Atticus, stop teasing Fauna. She’s having a tumbly-bumbly time. And we need nuts! Yes, yes. Dinner doesn’t sing itself.”
I can’t see who or what he’s talking to. And I need to be careful. The man has quite the reputation for turning intruders into trees if he doesn’t like them. Trouble is, I don’t have a lot of time to endear myself to him.
Aelia stumbles out of the ferns behind me and whines, “Nature sucks. How much farther?”
“We’re here,” I say, nodding at the clearing.
Her gaze travels over the expanse of yellow and purple and pauses on the hunched wise man. Her eyes widen. “Him? He’s the help? But . . .” She squints. “Who is that?”
“The wizard of the wood, Lailoken.”
“Wait.” She turns to me. “Do you mean that human from the old stories? I learned about him in my training; he was supposed to be completely nuts. He turned a whole village into toads because they didn’t laugh at his joke.”