Chapter Thirty
My consciousness faded in and out, but I awoke to the rustle of feathers, the scrape of talons, and an eagle's white head jutting over me. Propping myself up onto my elbows, I snapped at the gryphon before me. “What do you want? Where am I?”
“Awaiting your destiny,” Griff said, his talons gleaming as they crossed the dusty floor.
It was like a dream, one where I was aware that it was happening and knew that reality was askew.
Despite my dizziness and the distant tingling in my arms and legs, I pushed myself to sit upright. “I'm fine with destiny, but I don't want to wait.”
The shadow was still about my body, however it seemed to have stopped about my shoulders, as though it were sleeping. It was as though it were waiting for Griff to speak with me.
Gryphons had unusual and uncharted powers. They preferred to keep it that way. I realized that the place he held me in was not a real place, not quite. It was half way between reality and a dream.
Griff didn't seem to have heard me. He was enraptured with his own image reflected in the remnants of a shattered mirror. He said, “That drake is dead, and you are destined to be Morgana's vessel…unless you give me your consent.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You wouldn't have something to do with my destiny, would you?”
Griff spoke to the mirror, laying his impeccably clean feathers flat as he ignored my words. “I left a small scroll for you in your pocket. Read it and you can join me in the skies. It is what you have always dreamed: To fly free, to soar through the clouds. Read it. Come with me.”
I found the tightly wound scroll no longer than my forefinger. I unfurled the roll, but I didn't read it. “You said the drake was dead.”
Griff answered with a nod, a sharp jab with harsh eyes, a completely inhuman response.
“Which drake?” I pressed.
The gryphon cocked his head in the mirror. “The one that's been tricking you. He led you into this. He endangered your life, and I am here to save you.”
Griff had read too many of the old fairy tales. He possibly thought humans easy to manipulate—which they might well be, but I wasn't just human. I was part fey, and feys didn't take well to being toyed with.
“Tricking me?” I repeated.
“Perhaps himself, too. He doesn't love you—he might think it, but the only one he will ever love is his dream dragon. Trust me, I know how these drakes work, and I swear to you you will lose him as soon as she sticks her nose into the room.”
I shouldn't have listened to a word Griff said, but I did. His words struck a chord, no matter that just and hour or two earlier, Mordon had told me otherwise.
My body shook as I got to wobbling feet, to no apparent interest of Griff. Even now he wouldn't spare me a dart of the eyes. I wondered if it had something to do with whatever spell he had put in place just now. The parchment crumpled in my fist. “You swear that Mordon, Drake Lord of Kragdomen, is dead.”
Now Griff looked up at me, his feathers slicked back on his head. “I do.”
He went back to admiring himself, fluffing up feathers ringing his neck.
I took one finger and pushed the mirror on its fragile stand, and it fell with a crack of brittle wood, the glass popping out of its place, tinkling on the floor in a thousand shattered pieces.
Griff's feathers raised up on his head as he watched the last shard of glass come to rest by his talon, a talon I now noticed had deep ridges and cracks in it. His eyes, all-black in the shadows, looked into mine.
“Then,” I hissed. “Understand my answer.”
I focused on the paper, remembering the first time I smelled Mordon's spiced embers. A small spark flew from my ring, nothing more than a sheen of light bouncing off the star streaked sapphire, and that spark touched the tip of the parchment.
With a breath of honeysuckle perfume, the paper bolted into flame so completely it left not a cinder, not a whiff of smoke to mark its passage.
Griff stared at that one shard near his talons.
Despite myself, I wondered what had gotten him tangled up in this mess—and then I knew.
A resurrection needed a skilled enchanter and scroll maker. It would not have taken long for Gregor Cole to realize that Griff's questionable business dealings made him easy to blackmail—particularly when Griff wasn't on the best terms with the market judges.
“I won't let you leave,” said Griff.
I took a breath and said, “You don't have a choice.”
I forced my eyes open.
Yells, chants, and crashes rushed back to me as I regained awareness on the floor. Wet earth was beneath my cheek, and a deadly shadow tightened about my neck. Hundreds of souls made this monster around my waist real. Each soul was trapped into slavery.
As I came back awake, I wondered if Griff had been a hallucination, a dream, or a strange spell. At the moment, I didn't care. Gathering up the last of my strength, I yanked my hand free of the shadow and grabbed onto the lip of the vase.
The world went dark, and then beyond dark. It was like night out in the desert where there was no moon or stars to shine, no light for hundreds of miles, and out in that dark there was something even darker, something that made goosebumps rise on the back of my neck and secretly plead for a sliver of luminescence.
With the soft breaking of clouds, the moon did come out, and the black shape was revealed as the haunted house of Ferret Drive, and the something even darker was the back of Railey as she dug a hole by the garden gate.
“I'm tellin' ya, help me or leave!”
I stood just behind her, laboring under fever and cold sweats as muscles ached up and down my body. I hadn't told her then about my new curse—I had been too afraid that speaking about it would make it real. I hoped that if I told no one and continued on life as normal, the curse wouldn't take form.
But the aches had grown worse and worse since Railey had tapped on my window. I had kept the secret then, but I thought perhaps I could change the outcome of that night now.
“Railey, I have something to say.”
“Quit yammerin' and git diggin'.”
I stared at her back, at the height of the house. I was going to stop and tell her, but next I knew, I found myself digging, wondering if I could remember where the attack had come from. It was all a jumble, a blur, shattered into a thousand forgotten nightmares until all that was left was a shadow.
Then I realized, this was no shadow, and this was no dream. It was happening again.
This was purgatory.
The shadow dragon woke from beneath the dead bushes and he struck Railey, his teeth sinking into her chest. She screamed.
I froze in place, my eyes scrunched shut just as they had been before I ran. I had returned, of course, but much too late.
Was I doomed to repeat this forever and ever? Was this purgatory as unchangeable as the past? Was this some demented movie I played in to amuse the Lady of the Vase? Or was it a lesson?
Magic-less, past the point of exhaustion, and my muscles cramping at every twitch, I faced down the shadow dragon with Railey's shovel in hand. The wood and metal passed harmlessly through the shadow, but I couldn't stop.
I screamed at it to leave and let Railey go. It had no effect, but I wouldn't back away. Gripping Railey by the waist, I pulled her. She screamed in pain as the shadow dragon's teeth cut her skin.
Nothing I could do was working. Nothing I could do would save Railey. Nothing could change the past, just the same way that nothing I could do would change the future. I was being drawn into the dragon, being taken into it with every scratch he made.
…but if there was nothing I could do, why was I so worried?
I let go of my friend, and for an instant, both she and the dragon stared at me. I took the shovel in both hands and drove it deep into the hole at my feet.
The dragon dropped Railey. She fell to a heap on the grass. I struck the earth again and again. Claws tore at my back, at first shadow claws, then real ones, sli
cing my back to slivers.
Then came a beak pecking at me.
I smacked the gryphon with the shovel and feathers fluttered down to my feet.
There was a femur in the hole. I reached for it.
“Stop! It's black magic!” Griff's voice hissed in my ear. “I'll give you yours back if you stop now.”
Would he have come out if this was how I had done this ten years ago? Would he have revoked his jealous curse?
I did not care.
“Get out of my life!” I cried, knocking him aside.
When he hit the ground, he was no longer a gryphon, but instead a woman. A tall, slender woman with coal curls luxuriating down her back, lips like embers, and eyes dull and sunken. She wore a noble woman's dress, burgundy and sable, velvet and silk, embroidery on the hem, tiny pearls sewn in the bodice.
“Morgana.”
The woman stood, and the dragon curled his head beneath her jewelled hand. “We should not fight. Not mother and daughter.”
If she said it to stay my hand, it worked. She had succeeded in rousing my curiosity. I said, “You are not my mother.”
“Not directly, but you are a descendant of the feys. And am I not Morgana Le Fey, mother to all feys who swore to protect and guard their sacred mother?”
It was a phrase I had heard my mother use, but it was widely accepted that the sacred mother meant mother earth, and tending to her with farming and gardening—not worshiping the world's most wicked witch.
“I do not know you, nor do I want to,” I said, hefting up the shovel again.
“Side with me, and I will restore your lover to his full health. What is more, your friends will survive and accompany you. Be my willing host, and I will find a new one swiftly, and I will pass from you without harm. While you are here, my pet will guard and protect you against the darkness in your soul.”
I considered it for a heartbeat. After all, I was not so sure that my shivering hands could deliver even one more blow. The ache in my legs made me want to curl into a tight ball and rub them. The fever overrode my sensibilities, and I wished to feel better.
Then I knew that though my friends may survive, Morgana made no other promises. They could be slaves, or worse.
I placed the shovel tip over the femur. I jumped on the shovel once, then twice. I used the blade like an ax and I chopped at the bone, striking it over and over until I became coated in sweat and blood. Cold teeth sunk into my shoulder, but I ignored them.
Then the femur split in two with a blinding flash.
Falling hard onto my tailbone, I heard Morgana cry in anger. Light pierced my eyelids as the shadow dragon collapsed into a burst of stars. Somehow I knew those stars were souls.
Morgana's hands were about my throat and she squeezed, lifting me off the ground and high into the air. She took me over the porch, past the roof line, over the trees and into the clouds.
“You will pay for your betrayal.”
There was no more air. By comparison, I was a tiny woman. A weakling. I had no hope of defeating her, not by a contest of brute strength. Even my cleverness was failing me. She was the founder of it all.
But I couldn't give up.
Darkness in your soul. Her words came back to me, and I realized that only Morgana could defeat Morgana.
I focused my slim illusion magic and made several illusions of myself from across time in my life when I had been facing challenges. Morgana giggled, a shrill noise that sounded as though it should have come from me, and she flicked each illusion aside with her finger, shattering them.
“Is that all you can do? I'm ashamed to call you kin.”
“Look again,” I said.
She turned her eyes to the broken mirrors scattered around her, and then she began to scream. Reflected in each piece was a dark memory. She broke the shards, making them smaller and more numerous.
I didn't know what it was she saw. It was for her eyes only. If I were to look, I would be caught in the same trap she was.
“No!” Morgana shrieked, and when I glanced at her, she was reaching for one of the shards. “Merlyn.”
I hit her forearms and fell free.
I fell down through an endless sea of clouds, staring upwards, knowing that at some time, my back was going to hit the ground and I was going to die. Or was I dead already? Could I die again, and be truly dead this time?
A claw caught me, a frosty claw that gave too much before the second claw stopped my descent. I was lowered to the ground, staring up at a silvery gray dragon.
Railey appeared at my side, whispering, “Thanks, bud.”
“I wish we weren't all going to be stuck here in dreamland,” I whispered back.
“That could be arranged,” said a new voice.
I looked at the new woman coming out of the house. She took the porch steps gracefully, blue eyes ones that I had seen before on the outside of the vase.
“Lady,” said Railey, bowing, then bobbing her pigtails up in a grin.
“You have contained my most famous prisoner. You have my gratitude,” the woman with blonde hair said.
“You will let us go?” I asked.
“I will let one of you go.”
I was tempted to step forth myself, but I knew I could not stand to live with having abandoned Railey. I could send her, but then that didn't help the other souls. “I want to send the dragon back. He came here as one piece.”
The woman paused, considering my request. A line formed between her eyebrows and she almost seemed to glare at me, so deep was she in her thought. My stomach twisted. At last she said, “Very well. And you shall remain.”
“Fera,” said Railey, but just like that, I felt her being pulled away from me, drawn out into the world beyond. I shivered.
“Can I strike a bargain for the release of my soul?” I asked the Lady of the Vase.
She smiled. “I do such bargains frequently. You may leave after three hundred years.”
I crossed my arms. That would not do, not at all. “I have something you want.”
Her cool eyes studied me skeptically, wondering what I could have that she did not. Certainly no material items. “What might that be?”
“Everyone else has one but you.”
She sighed in annoyance. I was taking up her time and using up her patience.
“A name,” I said. Before she could dismiss the idea, I continued, “It will be a trade because it will be my name, not some random thing I appoint to you. Unless you like being called Lady of the Vase.”
She frowned and stared into open space. It was a contemplative expression, cold and moody. Then she said, “I want to know the name before I commit.”
“And I want out of here. It is a fitting name.”
The Lady of the Vase crossed her arms, too. “Perhaps. But once you give it to me, you may no longer use it.”
“I won't. But if you prefer I can change all legal documents.”
The Lady shrugged and her eyes lit on mine. “I don't care for the laws of man. Very well, tell me what it is and I will consider it.”
I shook my head. “None of us choose the names we are given. Do we have a bargain or not?”
She bit her lip. She let out a sigh. “Very well. We have a bargain, and I expect you to inform the world that from now on, I am to be referred to as…?”
“Hope.”
The Lady—or rather, Hope—smiled as though she had won a bet. “It is fitting and a little cryptic, is it not? Very well. For your services, I have a gift for you. I was going to give it to you when you were released, which I suppose is now. You have always had it, but never known it. Be wise what you do with it.”
Hope touched my forehead with one skinny finger, and I felt a strange crawling sensation overtake my skin. My pulse quickened, then grew stronger, pulsing harder through my veins. In an instant I was dizzy yet not weakened. My bones ground together and my skin stretched, pulling taut.
“What is happening?” I asked, but there was no one around me anymore.
I was alone, and I was swimming in air; not falling, just swimming, held in nothing as a breeze soothed over my aches and replaced them with pleasure.
The wind shifted and blew me this way and that, but I was not afraid of it. I realized I wasn't swimming but flying, flying through this strange land and back to reality.