Fire Touched (Mercy Thompson, #9)(92)

Okay, it could have been anywhere near Walla Walla if there had been beer cans on the ground and a sun in the bright blue sky. There was no sun in the sky. There were shadows, and, from how the shadows lay, we were approximately the same time as it was back on the reservation. I just couldn’t see any reason for the shadows.

From what Zee told me, time in Underhill could be capricious—but not as badly as in the Elphame of the fairy queen I’d encountered. We might lose or gain a few days or possibly a week. But we were unlikely to lose years or decades.

I turned slowly. We had a clear field of vision, but I couldn’t see anything that looked out of place. At the thought, I turned to look for the small building we’d exited from—but there was no sign of any building anywhere.

“Do you know which way to go?” I asked. “Have you been here before?”

“I don’t think that I’ve been here, precisely,” he said. “But I know which way to go. Mostly I find my way around by the way it feels here.” He thumped himself on the chest.

I tried, but I couldn’t feel any kind of pull or push in the magic.

“It took me a while,” he said. “This way.”

And he set off, straight up the hill. We walked for hours. Aiden’s terror subsided, though it never quite left him. Adam ranged a little, his nose to the ground and his ears alert, but he never traveled out of sight. He didn’t chase the white bunny that first appeared in glimpses, then ran across our path. Twice.

“He’s not a dog,” I commented loudly, spinning in a slow circle to look for something, I don’t know what it was. “He’s not going to chase a rabbit and leave us behind.”

I could feel the urge to chase that rabbit, and I seldom felt the need to hunt when I was on two feet. Adam didn’t even lunge at the rabbit when it emerged from a hollow just beyond his nose.

He did growl, though.

“It’s not a real rabbit,” said Aiden unnecesssarily. “After a while, even before I had magic, I learned to tell the difference. I survived a long time without magic—but I had friends then.”

“What happened?” I asked.

He laughed without humor, but his voice was relaxed. “No need to sound so careful,” he told me, his gaze on the strange sky. “It was a very long time ago, even by my reckoning. There were five or six of us humans left behind when the fae were banished. At first, we were overjoyed. We played all day long and ate the food in the larder—and there was always food in the larder. Last time I went back there, a very long time later, there was still food there—but there are other things living in the Emerald Court now, things that feed on those weaker than they. Like me and like you.

“Evander died first,” Aiden said. He was walking faster as he talked, and he kept looking behind us. “He was the youngest of us—you learned caution very quickly in that court, or you died. I don’t think Evander would have survived long even if we hadn’t been abandoned in Underhill. Evander first, then Lily and Rose—I don’t remember what their human names had been. Lily just disappeared from her bed one day, and Rose quit eating. Then it was just Willy and me. For a long time, it was Willy and me. Then we found this pretty little girl crying next to a stream. We took care of her and told her stories.”

There was nothing behind us that I could see or smell. I touched Adam lightly on his head and looked at Aiden. Adam watched him a moment, then broke free to run down the hill half a dozen yards before circling back.

There was nothing following us. Aiden didn’t seem to take note of Adam’s useless search. He looked up at the sky again, and as he did so, I realized that warm feeling on the back of my shoulders was gone. Above us, dark gray clouds roiled, and as soon as I saw them, a chill wind picked up.

“Willy figured it out first,” Aiden said, picking up the pace again. We weren’t running, but it was a swinging walk that would take us places fast. “He said it was because she always knew where to find berries and which path we should take. But Willy always had a bit of the gift—he could see things that others didn’t.”

He paused, this time looking down at the path we were on. He turned a little to the left, a steeper climb. “Never follow a path while you’re in Underhill,” he told me. “The only things here that make a path are things you don’t want to meet.”

The hill was steeper than it had been, steeper than it looked.

“He talked to me about it first,” Aiden said. “But I didn’t believe him. Underhill was just where we were—like Caledonia or Ulster, right? Willy could make up things, too—he was the best storyteller. I thought he was making up a story right up until he died and proved himself right.”

For all that he’d said it was a long time ago, Aiden’s breath was shaky. “Underhill can’t kill, not directly. But if she wants you dead, you die. Sometimes quickly but usually slower. She can’t feel pain, so it fascinates her.”

A cold wind blew down my neck just then. “Aiden,” I said, “we’re on a path again.”

We walked—and now Aiden wasn’t the only one who could feel something following us. I felt as though if I turned around, I would see someone. When I did, there was no one there—except the ghosts.

Underhill was a haunted land. Most ghosts I’ve been around—and I’ve been around a lot of them—haunt places where people might be found. Churches, homes, stores—places like that. The ghosts that I’d been seeing were tucked into hollows under trees and hiding under branches. All of them were children. One of them had been following us since Aiden had started talking about the children he used to run around with. I wish I could believe that it was the ghost who was watching us—but his regard felt desperate, as if he thought we might be able to save him.