Chapter Fourteen Beer, Bread, and Cheese #3
“Bobbins and Skeins” was awful drivel, and Kell sounded like he was strangling it.
His voice sounded like a marble in a glass jug.
But the magic didn’t care, and Saeldian’s next bolt of magic stopped the monster’s awful scream and knocked it backward into the water.
Kell braced himself for the monster’s splashing struggle to rise, but the ripples spread as time ironed them flat, and Saeldian stood staring at him, wide-eyed and speechless.
Kell couldn’t talk even if he wanted to. All he could do was watch Saeldian as shouting and footsteps grew gradually louder behind him. He didn’t know when he stepped close enough to lay hands on their shoulders, and Saeldian couldn’t take their eyes off him.
They licked their lips and said, “But I hate that song.”
Trust Saeldian to have feedback about the first thing he’d sung in years. “It saved us.”
“Kell!” Lorzok shouted. “Saeldian! Are you all right?”
“Here!” Kell shouted. He turned toward Lorzok’s voice and waved. More practically, Saeldian cast fireworks into the sky to mark their location. Jubilee wove around Lorzok to dash into Saeldian’s arms and pick them up off their feet.
“You were there and then you weren’t there,” she said.
Timtim hopped to Kell’s side, and Kell picked him up. The almiraj propped one paw on Kell’s shoulder and glared at him with flattened ears. Even his nose wiggled disapprovingly.
“I’m sorry, Timtim. We didn’t mean to get lost.”
“We could hear footsteps,” Lorzok said. “Then I realized that they didn’t sound right, so I turned around.”
“You could tell by our normal footsteps?” Saeldian asked.
“I could tell because you weren’t bickering.”
Saeldian laughed. “That’s fair.”
“What happened?” Jubilee asked. “How did you fall behind?”
“It was my fault,” Kell said. “I thought I saw someone I knew was dead, and then we tried to run, but it chased us.”
“Were you afraid?” Shuahn asked.
“Terrified,” Kell said. “Saeldian could fight.”
“It was an awful creature. If a beetle was a person, only somehow worse than that.”
“That wasn’t what I saw,” Kell said. “It was Ikariel.”
“A meenlock, I think. You’re lucky there was only one of them. You’re lucky we found you,” Shuahn said. “If you can’t keep up, you’ll just have to join hands and form a chain. You must stay together. And you must hurry. If it was a meenlock you vanquished in battle, it wasn’t far from more.”
“It was very kind of you all to turn back and search for us,” Saeldian said. “I’m ready to move on.”
“Good,” Shuahn said. “Stay close. No remembering.”
Again, she set off without looking back to watch the others scramble after her. Jubilee didn’t let go of Saeldian’s hand. They stretched the other out to Lorzok, who grabbed for Kell’s free hand. Together, they hurried to keep up.
“You’re here,” Shuahn said. “Hearthaven’s Repose is between those two trees.”
“Those two trees” didn’t belong among the wide, tall, needled evergreens.
They stood bathed in a rare beam of light in the shaded wood.
One of the trees, the one gamely holding on to long saw-toothed leaves that were colored like flame—deep gold, warm orange, and scarlet—stood in a circle of gently fallen leaves.
The other held stubbornly to still-green leaves, the branches heavy with oval pods.
Some of them had burst and dropped hard-shelled seeds.
Their trunks leaned toward each other, making an arch to walk between.
“You have brought us to the place you promised,” Lorzok said, “but how do you propose we return?”
Shuahn nodded to Kell. “That one won’t need my help to return. He found you when it counted and led you right to him. You should become a wilds walker, young Kell, once you’ve settled in a bit.”
“I’ll ask you about that when we return,” Kell said. “But are you going back? Now?”
“There’s a friend not far from here I’d like to visit.
Your little adventure with the meenlock gave me an excuse to drop by.
Get inside now, before a redcap stumbles by.
Success in your goals,” Shuahn said, and loped away much more quickly once unencumbered by slow-paced mortals.
Timtim wiggled restlessly in Lorzok’s arm.
Once he was on the ground, he hopped toward the two trees and paused to look behind him.
“I hear you, Timtim,” Jubilee said. “Let’s go.”
“Stay in sight,” Lorzok warned. “Don’t get lost again.”
It was only a few steps to the trees. Dried leaves crunched under Kell’s boot as he stepped beneath the ash tree’s crown, but he stopped to stare.
The tree was a woman.
The trunk Kell had thought was twisted had a man’s figure growing out of it, bent to reach to the other—a woman, who also stretched an arm that ended in fruited almond pods. The tips of their branches didn’t touch.
One step beyond them, Kell felt the border shivering through him as he crossed into night, where fireflies danced along the forest path to lead them to the light of a full moon reflected on the surface of a lake, with cottages gathered around its shores.
An elf with a veil of glorious autumn leaves over her long russet hair stood at the end of the path with one finger to her lips, asking for silence.
Kell bowed his head to greet her. She returned the greeting, and the ethereal layers of her gown fluttered as she led them to a raft.
She stood at its head while everyone boarded, and Kell tried not to overcompensate for its gentle bobbing as everyone settled.
Timtim did one of his excited hops where he twisted in midair, then rushed around the woman’s ankles before planting one adorable paw on her knee for pets. She touched the tip of his horn so a star floated above it, and Timtim hopped away proudly.
The barge sailed itself along the moonlit water to a small island lit with lanterns. People carried those lanterns, outlining their shapes as they gathered. A ceremony, probably. But what kind?
When the raft bumped against the pebbled shore, Kell had to take only three steps to realize that it was a vowsworn wedding.
Two young women, a dark-skinned elf and a satyr with short-cropped curls, stood on either side of a crystal casket, hands clasped above it as they vowed themselves into a marriage held fast by magic.
The magic of the ceremony wove around them, thanks to another eladrin holding each word of their vows.
Kell had heard about this only in stories: couples defying an unsanctioned match by sneaking away to marry with an oath of devotion, vowing over a monument of proven lifelong love—usually a grave where lovers lay buried. Not a single casket like this one. Not unless…
Kell’s heart fell. The lovers clasped hands over the casket of the magic-weaving eladrin’s beloved.
Terandis had said that Hearthaven’s Repose was a sanctuary of grieving what you lost, and what you still loved and couldn’t stop loving.
Who would know better about loving someone forever than an archfey who had made a domain with their lover’s grave at its heart?
Kell would be here for only one day. Whatever solace others had found wouldn’t belong to him. They had a job to do, and at least it was to restore something lost to this place. Setting something quietly right.
Kell drew near enough to hear the women speak of when they knew they loved the other.
The dark-skinned elf told her beloved satyr about a celebration the satyr had insisted she attend, and how they had held hands the whole time, as if they couldn’t let go, and then, eventually, she realized she didn’t want to.
Beside him, Saeldian ran their fingers along the back of Kell’s hand, from one edge to the other—and drew two short slashes to make it an arrow. Look.
The arrow on his hand lingered, warm where Saeldian’s fingers were cool. Just a signal. Only that.
Kell shrugged that shoulder. At what?
Saeldian drew a rectangle across his knuckles, and then Kell saw it—nestled at the foot of the flawless crystal lid was a cut, faceted oval rose-green-lavender-silver gem identical to the one they’d stolen from Lady Elezia Tarm.
Return the Kiss of Enduring Love back to its proper place without anyone realizing it had been missing. Simple! Once Kell fashioned a raft that wouldn’t leave a wake as it sailed to an island in the middle of a lake, this would be absolutely trivial. Like trading candy to a boggle.
The noble armored eladrin holding the oath woven from words was staring at him.
She was tall, wearing the armor of a heavy fighter, but she was also veiled in autumn leaves like their silent guide had worn.
She was beautiful and serene and a little bit sad—at his inattention?
Kell gave the tiniest apologetic smile and then attended the ceremony with full seriousness as the eladrin took the magic of every word the couple had spoken and bound it around them.
“You are one,” the tall, long-haired knight declared. “Bound by an oath no one may break, spoken over the reminder of what one of you will face when even death does not part you. Your love is everlasting.”
The women stepped backward over the casket, refusing to unclasp their hands even for this. They kissed, and Kell used their need for privacy to count how many cottages stared at this little island all the time before he joined the soft applause of the witnesses.
The couple boarded one of the rafts and sailed toward a cottage on the shore. Others boarded rafts to set off to other destinations. The archfey who had presided over the marriage stood where she was, expecting them.
Lorzok took the hint and moved forward. At the proper distance, he bowed.
“I am Ilondrel,” the eladrin said. “You have come close to the starless quiet of Hearthaven’s Repose, visitors. I feel your heart-sore weariness. You will find rest, but what else do you seek? What is your hurt?”
That was a request for an introduction if Kell ever heard one, and it was his job to go first.