“Only that you would go and fetch the particularly fair friend we rode past on our way here, and bring her and your father to dine with us tonight to celebrate the new season. We would love the pleasure of your company, and it has been a long time since you’ve visited.”
“Ah, Jane!” Fern cried. He was already halfway up the hill before the Elf had finished his sentence. With a wave of guilt, he realised that he had forgotten her. Jane was sitting against a tree with her eyes shut. Fern’s footsteps faltered as he was struck by her radiance. He knelt at her side and said gently, “Jane, it’s over.”
Jane looked at him and gasped. “God, look at you! Oh, I’m so glad you’re not dead,” she said shakily, as though she was about to cry. “I don’t know what I would have done if...” Then she realised what she’d said, and looked away embarrassed.
“I am not. Definitely not dead.” he said quickly. An awkward silence followed. Fern remembered the invitation to the Elf festival and pounced on it quickly.
“We’ve been invited to join the Elves tonight for the new season festival. I think you would enjoy it.”
“But Fern, I have to find my friends. I’m getting worried.”
“I know. We will stay only one night, and then I’ll take you to find them. I promise.”
“I want you to teach me to fight,” she said suddenly, and Fern looked at her sharply.
“All right,” he said after a moment, “...right now?”
Her gaze was withering as she looked at him. “Obviously not.”
She followed him back to the battlefield where the search was on for survivors.
Jane had a sudden urge to throw up, but she mastered it and helped with the search. There was a muffled cry, and she looked over to see Fern kneeling over a slight, broken body.
“Ah, no,” he whispered desperately.
Jane ran over to him and saw a young girl lying on the ground unconscious.
“I don’t think she’s dead yet,” Jane said, noticing that the girl’s chest was rising and falling. “She might just have been knocked out. Who is she?” she asked.
“My sister. She shouldn’t be here. Father!”
An elderly man, quite handsome for his years, came to them, supporting his arm awkwardly. “Oh, Gods! You seek to take my only daughter? What is she doing here? I commanded her stay at home,” the man cried.
“She is not dead,” Jane assured him. “I don’t know what’s wrong with her though.”
The man turned to Jane. “And who are you?”
Fern said, “This is my friend Jane.”
“I am King Cornelius of Cynis Witron,” the man introduced himself.
It took a moment for Jane to realise the meaning of his words, and then she turned to Fern, her mouth agape. “Then you are...?”
He cleared his throat. “Uh ... yes. Prince Fern, at you service.”
Chapter 9
“I need to go for a walk and clear my head, Fern,” Jane said.
“I’ll go with you.”
“I’m perfectly capable of...”
“Yes, I know—all the same, I’d like to come.”
Jane looked at him and clicked her tongue in frustration. “Fine then.”
They walked in silence for a while. And suddenly she was laughing. She stopped walking and held her sides. Fern looked at her as if she’d gone crazy.
“What’s so funny?” he finally asked.
“This is ridiculous!” she gasped. “All of this. I can’t believe any of it! Everything here is so different to anything I have ever known that I just...” Jane trailed off and stopped laughing. Fern looked at her, his eyes gentle. He just nodded, and they started walking again.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I must seem mad.”
“Yes,” he said and she smiled despite everything.
“Do you ever get over seeing something like that?” she asked. “So many dead...”
His strides were long and she struggled to keep up with him. “Of course,” he told her. Then he sighed. “Not really. I suppose you just get used to it.”
After a moment she said, “What if we don’t find them?” He didn’t reply. “What if I can’t find a way home? Fern, what if I’m stuck here forever on my own?”
Fern glanced at her and shook his head. “You’re not alone.”
Jane looked down at the ground as they walked, feeling caught off guard like she always did when she was around him. “You have your own life, Fern. I can’t ask you to keep helping me like this.”
“You’ve not once asked for my help,” he reminded her, smiling. “I’ve offered it each time. And you know Jane, it’s not up to you—I rather like following gorgeous girls around and frustrating them to their wits end.”
Jane blushed, but covered it with a derisive laugh. “You do frustrate me,” she muttered.
He only grinned. “Is that why you want to learn how to fight? So you can lop my head off next time you lose that temper of yours?”
“Partly. But mostly because I don’t want to have to rely on you every time we get into trouble.”
He nodded slowly, and then spread his hands. “Tell me, Jane,” he asked lightly, moving to walk backwards in front of her and winking. “Do you have a fiancée?”
She stared at him. “I’m only seventeen.”
“Yes? Do not tell me you are not yet promised to anyone?” He looked truly surprised.
Jane started to laugh. “Fern, in my country you don’t get ‘promised’. You marry whomever you fall in love with. And certainly not when you’re still a teenager!”
“So nobody has suitors until they are older? How much older?”
Jane frowned, a bit confused. “We don’t get married until we’re older, but we have girlfriends or boyfriends before that,” she explained.
“Then do you have a boyfriend?”
Jane opened her mouth and then shut it again, feeling flustered. “I’m perfectly happy on my own. I don’t need someone else to make me feel better about myself,” she said.
He watched her as they walked. “I’m not sure I understand,” he murmured. “Loving someone isn’t about making yourself feel better. It’s about sharing your happiness with them and making them feel better.”
Jane didn’t know what to say. She folded her arms and then unfolded them again. “I take it you have a girlfriend then.”
“I have many.”
Jane stopped walking and looked at him. “What? Are you trying to be funny?”
“Not this very second,” he replied, his eyebrows arched. “A ‘girlfriend’ is someone you spend time with, but don’t intend to marry, yes?”
“I suppose. Sometimes.”
“Then I have many.”
“Your arrogance astounds me, Fern,” Jane snapped suddenly, shifting the mood between them.
“It does, does it?” he murmured.
“Yes. In fact, it infuriates me.”
“Well good, I am glad to have had some tiny impact on the Ice Queen,” he said flatly, surprising Jane.
“What, no witty retort? No goofy grin?” she asked. “Aren’t you going to sing a song and make me laugh just to get out of the moment?”
“I won’t bother, since you seem to resent my efforts so much,” he snapped. “How about instead I just let you stew on your temper and sulk?”
“I do not sulk!” Jane said.
Fern stopped walking and turned towards her, their faces only inches apart. “You’re killing me, Jane,” he exclaimed. His eyes seemed to glow with intensity. Her heart thumped painfully in her chest. “You who are so content to be alone, never needing help from anyone.”
“Oh, so you do have the capacity to feel something other than amusement or self appreciation!”
“I do when I’m around you,” he growled angrily.
“Well you’re killing me too—you can’t take anything seriously. No wonder you have to have so many girls—you couldn’t possibly allow yourself to get into a situation that might be real! And how
could you ever presume to tell me what love is, when clearly you have no idea at all?”
They stared at each other, breathing heavily. And suddenly Jane felt strange, hot and prickly, covered in goose-bumps and her stomach churned. Her face was flushed with excitement and fury, and her heart felt like it might beat out of her chest. Fern took a tiny step towards her, making something in her head scream out in warning. What was he doing? Her eyes flickered away from his, needing to break the contact, and were caught by something in her peripheral vision.
They had come, without even realising it, to the edge of a wide river. Jane gasped, as she spotted something flickering in the water. She tore away from Fern and stumbled to the river bank.
A lifeless body stared up at her with vivid blue eyes. Jane almost gagged.
“Jane, what are you...?” she heard Fern behind her, but it was as if he were very far away.
The body wasn’t floating; it was just sitting in the water, swaying with the tide. Its skin was grey and clammy. It was dead—a corpse—but it was moving.
It pointed a shrivelled finger up at Jane and beckoned her to the water. The sightless eyes peered out, capturing her, pulling her downwards. With a splash Jane didn’t notice, she was under the surface in a beautiful water world. She couldn’t breathe, but when she saw the figure, she forgot her burning lungs.
She was now floating before a radiant woman—no longer the bloated corpse Jane had shrunk away from, but a beautiful, young, living woman. Long blue hair billowed around her naked torso. But below the hips was something exquisitely strange. A blue fish’s tail, long and slim, flowed where her legs should have been.
It was a mermaid, and just as beautiful as she had ever imagined one to be. But the eyes were scary hollows that seemed to hold ages within their depths.
It reached out and touched Jane’s throat with a long slim finger and the pain in Jane’s chest stopped and she could breath again.
The mermaid spoke in a deep seductive voice. “Do not feel with your mind, Jane. Feel with this.”
She pressed her hands over Jane’s heart, then moved them up, so that they were resting on either side of Jane’s head. Staring deeply into the mermaid’s eyes, Jane saw to the ends of this earth and back again, and everything within it. And then she saw what she had most desperately wanted to see.
Harry was in a hall with Luca and Anna. He looked angry, as though he had been through a great deal. Anna and Luca both looked healthy, but something worried them. The vision faded before Jane had a chance really to see where they were. A little groan escaped her lips at the disappointment, and the mermaid struggled hard to hold control of Jane’s mind.
The girl shook her head and met the eyes of the mermaid. “Where are the others—Mia and Jack?”
The mermaid hesitated briefly, then decided that it was best she knew. “Safe. They are safe. But you will not see them for a long time. They have a journey of their own to complete before the six will meet again. It is important that you do not look for them.”
Jane’s mind was pulled away from her friends, and she now saw the sacred race of the unicorns blossom from the earth. She saw their beauty and grace, and loved them with all her heart. Jane cried out when she saw them hunted and killed by men for the rare healing magic of their horns.
The mermaid lost her power over Jane, but before the girl could struggle free, she grasped Jane’s head tightly, and with a huge burst of power, sent a vision into her mind. There was still something more important to show the girl.
Jane saw Leostrial on his stolen throne. She knew of his inhuman powers from Fern’s stories. Then she saw a change come over the king. Like a shadow. Jane felt fear creep into her heart. She stared into his black eyes, full of hatred, and she cried out again at the power he held. Something had filled him with unnatural hatred and fury and had made him more powerful than she could imagine. She could not tell what he wanted, and this was what scared her, because she knew that with the power he held, he could do anything.
Then, last of all, she saw something that made her gasp. She saw the one God—The Great One, who had ruled alone over Paragor since its beginning, and she saw all the atoms inside him split apart and become many Gods, each to rule over an element of the world—life, death, love, war, even the earth and the ocean—each less powerful than they had been as one. Then, understanding the true power of the Gods and where it lay, it ended. Her eyes snapped open, but she wasn’t the same anymore. Her mind held a knowledge that no human had ever held before.
Jane couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t feel anything. Her body was numb with the burden of what she had seen.
The mermaid withdrew her hands and looked with despair on the lovely girl floating before her. Bloodred tears streamed down the mermaid’s face. Jane was dying. The weight of seeing something so powerful was killing her. Humans were not equipped to see The Great One. Jane had needed to see him, and the Mermaid tried to explain.
“Without knowledge, you cannot understand, Jane. And you need to understand what it is you must do. Now you can begin to feel. Feel with your whole body and soul, not just your head. You must save this world. And to do this, you must feel love, unlike ever before. Love will overcome.”
“I don’t want to save the world.” The thought surfaced like a bubble out of Jane’s mind, and the mermaid stilled. Then finally, because she did not know what else to say, she uttered the simple words, “You must.”
Then she reached out and tied something around Jane’s neck—the only thing that would save Jane, but the girl was too exhausted to look.
The Mermaid lifted her onto the bank of the river, and kissed her on the forehead. She whispered one final thing in Jane’s ear, and then she was gone. Jane was left lying on the ground in a state beyond healing by anything human, completely overwhelmed with the weight of what she had seen. The last thing she saw before she sank into unconsciousness were Fern’s grey eyes as he stared down at her.
Chapter 10
It had only been a day since Samshon had healed Anna, but concern for her friends had grown as each hour passed. She felt lucky to be alive and to have crossed over to a safe place in Paragor. But she had no idea if the others had been so fortunate. So when she saw the two figures in the doorway, she let out a cry of relief as some of her fears were extinguished. She rushed to her friends. One of them had seen her, and was now racing just as fast and as wildly to get to her.
Then they met, and Harry grabbed Anna tightly. In their haste to reach each other, they bumped lips and Anna laughed hysterically. Harry grinned. Luca was at their side. Harry turned and gave his friend a big hug.
“All right?” Luca asked softly.
Harry grinned and nodded.
Anna noted the lines of exhaustion on his face, but she stilled her worries for the moment in her happiness at seeing him.
Satine stood in the open doorway, struggling to close the huge doors. They were enormously heavy, and no one had moved to help her. The unicorns had taken off back into the sky the moment she and Harry had dismounted, leaving them with no chance to say goodbye.
Satine smiled as she watched the three Strangers greet each other. She was happy for them, but at the same time couldn’t quite focus on them. Trying to quell the frantic beating of her heart, Satine’s eyes swept the hall, but he was nowhere to be seen. She had almost wished that he would not be there, even after seven long years. It would be too hard to see him in public.
Out of nowhere, Satine heard a quiet cough behind her, and instinctively knew who it was. She took a deep breath and turned to face him. He was exactly how she remembered him—dark and fierce, tall, sharp.
Would he be the same? The boy she had once known? Had once loved? And, more terrifyingly, what would he think of her?
Her eyes drank him in hungrily, but she made sure to avoid his gaze. His dark eyes would capture her, and she needed to be composed.
“Interesting entrance,” Prince Accolon of Uns Lapodis murmured, la
ughter in his eyes. His tone was mocking. Gods, if only he knew the truth. She didn’t even know their son’s name. How could she tell him she’d let the child be sent away?
She turned away from him without a word, and walked to where the king sat. Satine and Accolon knew how to act in public so that their secret was safe. He had once written her a song, she remembered. That was the closest he had come to publicly admitting that he loved her. She’d been sixteen, and he’d been living in her father’s palace for tutoring. Accolon had stood during the nightly meal and, in front of the whole court, sung Satine a love song he’d been writing in secret. Gods, she’d been so embarrassed! Her cheeks had burned, and afterwards she’d yelled at him in fury.
“How could you be so obvious? The whole kingdom no doubt knows our personal affairs!”
“Calm down,” he’d implored. “Nobody knows for whom it was written! Even now they are speculating in the taverns that it was some nobleman’s daughter of whom I sang.”
Satine had stared at him. And then she’d said, “Why don’t they speculate that it was about me? Don’t I seem good enough for you?” making him laugh.
“There’s no pleasing you, is there?”
She had never forgotten that song, not one word of it. She could hear it again, even if others could not.
But this was not the time to reflect on the past. Satine needed to speak to the king, and show him the stolen diagrams. It felt like a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders to know that this was the end—she needn’t go back to Lapis Matyr ever again. The thought niggled at her.
“Satine, what are you doing here?” The king’s eyes were cold. He seemed angry.
“I had to come,” she said awkwardly. She had not expected him to be this unwelcoming.
“I should have known you would not be able to finish this one single thing for me. Your job was vital, yet you threw it away. One cannot rely on a woman.” He shook his head. “Nothing could be so important that you should leave.”