Angharad
After confronting the horror of her fears made real, roaming the silent halls of her mother’s realm filled her with apprehension and awe.
On Hara’s beach, only the water offered insight.
The depths revealed untold stories and threads of memory that brushed her arms and legs like seaweed.
She had only to grab hold and pull.
But the sand was barren, featureless and blank, with hazy shapes in the distance that were obscured by mist, the way the future appeared to her Sight.
As she and Gideon walked along the spiral corridor, Hara studied the eerie way the upper levels ascended into darkness.
They could reach them, if they cared to.
This was how her mother saw the past, the present, and the future.
Levels to climb and descend, going on forever in either direction.
They passed dimly lit rooms and halls, and Hara knew that they would find her mother somewhere on this level.
She had been here before in her dreams as a child.
Now she knew that they were brief glimpses into her mother’s present.
It felt strange and nostalgic, seeing it in person.
The very air smelled of her mother, and a yearning instinct quickened her steps.
She glanced in each room as they passed, her heart in her throat.
Most of the rooms were empty, while others resembled rooms at the palace.
One had gnarled trees and vines covering what looked like their abandoned hut in the mountains.
Then a voice rang out behind them.
“Who are you?”
Hara stopped dead, and she turned.
Her mother stood just a few paces away, watching them warily. She was exactly as Hara remembered her. No new lines etched her face, and her hair was long and thick. She looked barely older than Hara herself.
“Mother,”
she breathed.
The woman took a step forward.
“What did you call me?”
“Mother, I’m Hara. Your daughter, .”
“My daughter is a young girl,”
said her mother, tilting her head slightly.
“Are you not . . . my past self?”
“No, Mother. I swear to you, I am Hara,”
she said desperately.
“Hara . . . but . . . how long has it been?”
asked her mother, bringing her hands to her mouth.
“Twenty years since you were captured,”
said Hara, and her voice trembled. Had she not aged in all this time?
“How can that be?”
her mother said, looking away from them with lost eyes.
“How long do you think you have been here?”
asked Gideon beside her.
After a long moment, her mother turned toward them, looking slightly dazed.
“It feels as though it has only been a day. But you . . .”
She stepped toward Hara and hesitantly reached for her. Hara walked forward until they were only a step apart. She closed her eyes as her mother caressed her face with cool fingers.
“Oh, my little Hara. So much lost time.”
Their arms came to wrap around each other then.
The ache and the unknowing that had festered for years, like sores that refused to heal, caused Hara’s tears to spring free. She remembered her mother’s embrace as a child, warm and all-encompassing. But now it was different.
Now they were of the same height.
Her mother took them to a small room, unadorned except for three straight-backed chairs that appeared. The room had been empty when they had passed it by earlier.
They told her mother everything that they knew of the coup and what had happened afterward, and she listened in round-eyed horror. Then Hara told her of her life with Aunt Merowyn and all she had learned of healing and her life in the village.
Her mother laughed to hear her tales of squabbling with Aunt Merowyn, the spoiled court child rebelling against the brusque naturalist. To her mother, all this had happened only a few days prior. Her lovely face was untouched by age, and Hara could see who Seith had fallen in love with. Hara found it wonderful and strange and a little melancholic.
When they told her of Hara’s return to Montag in order to find her, warmth softened her scolding.
“It was so risky of you to come here, Hara. I can’t believe you would be so foolhardy.”
She was quiet for a time, and Hara was desperate to know what she was thinking. What must it be like to realize that decades had passed by without you?
“Until just a few moments ago, I thought my little girl was safe and hidden in the south. I thought my sister was waiting for you. And now I hear that she is long dead, and you . . .”
She raised watery eyes to Hara.
“I missed your life.”
The dull yellow lighting that suffused the space flickered slightly.
“We came here to free you from this place so you do not have to miss anything else,”
said Hara.
“I’ve tried to find a way out, love. But there is nowhere but here.”
Hara thought about the fae’s trick, hoping that it would have more meaning now that they were entrenched in the stone’s glamour. Retrace and do the hard thing. How had Turnswallow done it? What had his realm looked like?
“Hara,”
said Gideon in an undertone.
“What if you tried to enter someone’s present who isn’t here inside the stone?”
“Like who?”
“Sarai?”
he said.
“Would that pull us out of here?”
“Seith will know what to do,”
said her mother suddenly.
“Seith is a traitor,”
said Hara. She had glossed over the details of Seith’s involvement in the coup, not wishing to soil their reunion with his treachery. But it seemed her mother still held some trust for him. Hara could not abide it.
“He betrayed you, Mother. He erased your visions from your memory.”
“He would never do that,”
said her mother with shocked eyes.
“Why would you say such a thing?”
Hara and Gideon exchanged a glance.
The Commander’s diary said that her mother’s mental state was fragile after her memories had been erased so many times. Now that they had revealed twenty years were missing from her life, Hara was afraid they might have broken what remained of her sanity. Hara worked to control her voice, speaking in a low, soothing tone.
“Mother, how do you find someone’s influence? For me, it looks like water.”
“Go into one of these rooms,”
said her mother, waving a hand.
Strange, but simple. They left the room with the three chairs, and Hara took both of their hands in her own. Then she felt for Sarai as she walked into the next empty room. She found her instantly. Only instead of threads of seaweed to grasp, she appeared as a faint scent that Hara pulled deeply into her lungs.
When she opened her eyes, they were in a white laboratory almost identical to the one at the palace. The only difference was that it was much tidier, and the usual scraps of metal were cleared away.
And there was Sarai, bent over her work station. She did not glance up as they approached her, and Hara turned back to look at Gideon uncertainly.
Then she realized that just outside the door, the tall, circular corridors loomed. They were still inside the stone.
“It was a good guess,” she said.
She waved her hands before Sarai’s face, but her friend did not react. There were no other doorways in the laboratory that they could take, and when Hara thought about it, there wouldn’t be. Sarai did not have Sight, and so she only occupied her present. As they turned to leave the room, Hara glanced back at her friend bent over the table. Something about the tidy workstation struck Hara as odd. Why would the stone replicate every detail of Sarai’s surroundings, except for the metals?
When they exited the room, Hara started, halting her steps.
A tall figure stood on the balcony, gazing down at the levels below.
“Seith!”
said her mother, quickening her steps with her arms held aloft.
Hara’s anger surged up at the sight of him. It appeared Seith had followed them into the stone despite their threats and against Hara’s wishes. She brushed past Gideon as she charged forward. She did not care if her mother was elated by his appearance. He needed to know that he was not welcome.
Then the tall figure turned, and Hara let out a small scream.
It was taller and more slender than Seith, and it held out its arms to embrace her mother. But it was not her father. The thing wore a mask of Seith’s face, unmoving and stiff as though it had been painted.
And then a distorted copy of Seith’s voice spoke from behind the mask.
“. I’m so glad you are here.”