The Unmaking (The Last Days of Tian Di, #2)(56)

“It has been said that the Ancients gifted humans with ingenuity instead of Magic,” commented Jalo. “It would seem that the end result is almost the same! You have learned to make nature do the work of Magic!”

They left the ruined temples and the lake of the Crossing behind them and flew over rolling green plains in which the ugly stone fortresses of the Giants towered. From the air they could see for miles, the great jagged mountains cutting across the horizon to the north and the Ravening Forest a fringe of green in the east.

“Are you really Immortal?” Nell asked Jalo.

“We are,” he said. “There are two realms inhabited by Faeries – the Kingdom in Tian Xia and another that we call the Far Realm. A Faery can go there only when he or she has fulfilled the allotted time in this realm, however long that may be. They say the Faery knows when the time has come to go. I often wonder what I will find in this Far Realm but none return and so we do not know.”

“So Faeries cannay die from illnesses or injuries?” Nell asked.

“Great Magic is required to kill a Faery. There are stories from long ago but it is difficult to say if they are true. I have heard it said that humans live only a hundred years or so. Is this true?”

Nell laughed and said, “A hundred years is a very long time for a human! Most dinnay live to be quite so old as that.”

The Faery regarded her with stupefaction. “Such a brief time!” was all he said for a while. “And then?”

“Some humans believe in an afterlife. Some believe there’s nothing at all.”

“What do you believe?”

Nell shook her head. “I dinnay know. Nobody knows.”

“How long will you live?”

Nell laughed again. “Humans dinnay know when they’re going to die,” she said. “It just happens, sometimes very suddenly. If I’m lucky, aye, I’ll live to be an old woman of a hundred. But I could die this afternoon.”

Jalo looked horrified at this. “Is it so easy to die?”

“I hadnay thought of it as easy, but I spose it is,” said Nell. “Compared to other beings, we do die very easily.”

“Are you not afraid?”

“I spec we learn not to dwell on it too much,” said Nell thoughtfully. “Or praps we get used to the idea. It’s just how it is. I hate to think that I’ll disappear from the worlds, not be Nell anymore, praps not be anything at all. But then, we wouldnay cherish our lives so much if we didnay know how short a time we have.”

“How fragile and noble humans are!” said the Faery, deeply moved. He looked at her tenderly. “I cannot imagine it. While you are with me, I will do my utmost not to let you die.”

Nell laughed but she was rather touched, too. “Thank you,” she said. “That’s comforting.”

They were passing over the land of the giants. One of the unwieldy fortresses was under siege, smoke and fire pouring out of it. Brutish giants surrounded it, swinging great blades and hurling boulders at each other.

“Look!” Nell cried, waking Charlie, who had gone to sleep.

“Giants are always at war,” Charlie said, unimpressed.

“True enough,” Jalo concurred, but Nell watched the battle until they had left it behind them.

“There is a rarer sight,” Jalo said suddenly, softly, touching her arm and pointing out the window. She had to crane her neck to look up where he was pointing and saw only a streak of deep crimson flashing by them.

Charlie looked pleased. “They say a sighting is good luck,” he said.

Jalo nodded and smiled.

“What was it?” asked Nell.

“The Vermilion Bird of the Sparkling Deluder,” said Jalo. “It flies over all of Tian Xia. Nobody knows why. Keeping watch, perhaps.”

The foothills rose up gradually into the ferocious mountain range that ran as far as the eye could see from east to west, ice-bound peaks lost in swirls of cloud. The Faery leaned forward and told Ander where to set down in a clearing on a snowy mountain.

“There is a cave somewhere here!” Jalo shouted as they bundled out of the chopper. The wind was fierce and the ground slippery. “Wait for me by your helicopter and I will find it. Please be careful not to die.” With that, he disappeared among the thick pines.

Ander wrapped himself in blankets and took a nap in the helicopter, while Charlie and Nell wandered about the clearing a bit to stretch their legs. They had been flying all day and the light was beginning to fade from the sky.

“I dinnay know why you jumped on Jalo that way,” Nell told him. “It made for an awkward beginning.”

“I saw him pointing a sword at you,” protested Charlie. “It looked to me like you were in danger and I was helping.”

“I wasnay in danger. He was just a bit nervous at first,” said Nell. “You should check before you go leaping on someone, aye. He might have cut you into bits with that sword if I hadnay stopped him.”

“Lah, that’s twice you’ve saved my life then,” said Charlie. He glanced at her from the corners of his eyes. “I’d resigned myself, you know. I couldnay have made the Crossing without you. I was just hanging onto your voice.”

Nell shushed him. She had just become aware of a pair of bright eyes watching them from a dark hump she had, until then, assumed was the stump of a tree.