Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“Oh, the oak and the ash, and the bonny ivy tree. How I wish once again in the north I could be.”
Carys looked up when she heard the familiar words. Jack Green, his beard just a little greener than it had been the night before, was singing under an apple tree in Jibril’s garden, staring at her with a twinkle in his eye.
“Why are you singing that?”
It was the morning after their ammonia-drenched trek in the woods, and Carys was sitting in the garden, soaking in the morning sun and trying to gather energy for whatever the day might bring.
Possessed sea monsters.
Enchanted bears.
Another horrible and violent nightmare.
And she still felt no closer to figuring out what she was supposed to do.
Carys was waiting as the last of her friends washed up in the only bathroom of Jibril’s tiny cottage. They had all hosed off in the garden the night before, but the pungent smell of ammonia lingered in her nose.
And after the elation of success had worn off the night before, exhaustion had hit and there was nowhere to sleep save for the floor of the cottage.
She was sore, stinking, and hungry.
And Jack was singing Macha’s song, apparently just to tease her.
Despite her small victories, there was still a goddess roaming through the Brightlands, and she didn’t feel any closer to understanding how she was supposed to fix it.
“While sadly I roam, I regret my dear home” —Jack’s eyes were fixed on her— “where lads and young lasses are making the hay…”
Carys started to get angry. “Macha sang that song in Gorne Wood.”
“Did she now?”
Jack knew she had. Somehow he seemed to know everything, and he still expected her to fight the Morrígan blindfolded.
She wanted to drive back to Scotland. She wanted to fly back to Baywood.
She was exhausted, and she wanted to be anywhere but the front garden of another enigmatic supernatural who just wanted to mess with her head.
The Green Man continued singing. “The merry bells ring and the birds sweetly sing—”
“Why are you still singing that?” Carys snapped. She was exhausted, confused, and losing her patience. “What are we doing here?”
“You needed to protect Jibril’s hives and chase off that bear. Well done.”
“Okay, why?” Not even the peace of Jibril’s garden could soothe her temper. “You all seem to know things, but you don’t tell me anything. So… what am I doing here?”
Jack leaned against the trunk of the apple tree. “What are you doing here, Carys Morgan? You’re not a goddess. Not even a fae. You’re a human and a Brightkin. You’re barely a dragon lord at all.”
At the slap of his words, Carys felt as small as a child being reprimanded in school.
“You were tricked by a goddess and fumbled the one task Epona gave you by letting powerful, magical blood spill on Saris Plain.”
Her temper was piqued. “You forgot the part where Cadell and I broke the fae enchantment that stopped that battle from turning into an all-out war.”
“Actually,” Jack said, “the blacksmith did that.”
He wasn’t wrong.
“Face it,” Jack continued. “You’re no candidate to be a hero.”
“Good point.” She scrambled to her feet. “Well said. The good news is I have a passport. Why don’t I get on a plane and fly out of here? Go back to California and let you all figure out your old-god politics without me.”
Jack’s voice grew deeper, and his skin flickered with a bark-like texture before it smoothed out again. “This is your mess, Carys Morgan. You let a powerful goddess into the Brightlands.”
“Oh yeah?” She leaned forward. “And who locked her up in the first place?”
“Epona.”
“So tell the horse goddess to come and get her.”
“Oh, but that’s not the way the story is written.
” Jack picked a dandelion and the stem grew in his hand, the bud blooming bright yellow, then immediately turning to white fluff that drifted away in the breeze.
“I don’t write, myself. They sang my songs long before they could write.
But others came after. Jibril and the Builder.
They love a good word.” Jack looked up into the canopy of the apple trees.
“Love a good scroll, those two. People of the books and all that. Your kind.”
“Do you just love spouting nonsense?” Carys wanted to hit him.
“See, it’s all about stories. Storytellers like you. Don’t have to be written. But they can be.” Jack stared into the trees, and his green beard grew longer as the ivy in the garden bed wrapped around his legs.
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Sit down, Carys Morgan.” His eyes locked with hers.
Carys took a seat, but she glared at him the whole time.
“Bad stories weave enchantments,” the wild man whispered. Then he smiled. “But good stories can break them.”
He was finally telling her something important.
“I have to break another enchantment?”
How was she supposed to break an enchantment in the Brightlands? In the Shadowlands, steel could break fae magic. Dragon’s blood could break fae wards. In the Brightlands? Steel was everywhere. And dragon blood meant nothing.
What had Jibril told her yesterday? Ideas are all that is needed to create a god.
“Macha is enchanting the world right now,” Carys said.
“Is that what she’s doing?” Jack picked a blade of grass.
“So how do I break that enchantment?”
“How?” The blade of grass grew between Jack’s fingers until a nodding head of golden seeds bloomed from the end and those seeds fluttered away in the breeze, taking their grains to other parts of the garden. “You have to tell the right story.”
“To whom?”
Jack shrugged. “That is not for me to say.”
Once again, she was seconds away from throttling an ancient nature god.
Duncan opened the front door. “Carys?” He walked out, holding a cup of coffee. “Have a cup of coffee, lass. Jibril just brewed it.”
She took the mug of coffee prepared with milk and a little sugar, just the way she liked. She looked up at Duncan, who winked at her and blew her a kiss.
Carys’s heart eased just a little bit. She sipped the strong coffee before she spoke to Jack again. “This man just saved your life, Jack.”
Jack threw his head back and laughed.
“My mother escaped all this, you know. The magic and the scheming.” Carys stood up and brushed the grass off her pants. “And every day I’m pulled in deeper, I understand more why she wanted out.” She started walking toward the van.
Jack called to her back. “There is no out for you, daughter of two worlds!”
Carys walked to the passenger side, only to see Jibril already in the front seat where she usually sat. “You.”
The man in white nodded at the garden. “Jack will stay here and rebuild the apiary while I take you to the Builder. I believe we are simply waiting for the rest of your party to bathe before we leave.”
“There is room for more than one bathroom in that house.”
Jibril raised a single eyebrow. “I usually don’t have seven houseguests.”
She hated that he had a point. “Okay, so who is the Builder? Is he going to tell me how to defeat the Morrígan?”
Jibril slipped on a pair of dark sunglasses and raised a mug to his lips.
It smelled like spiced tea. “Humans are such linear thinkers; you want things right away. Clear directions. But stories rarely work that way. I’ll take you to Blean Woods.
Then the Builder will point you to the next turn that you must take, just as I did last night. ”
“Last night I chased an enchanted bear into the forest while I was soaked in ammonia that still reeks—even after two showers—then I collapsed in a sleeping bag in your sitting room.” She sipped her coffee. “I’m losing patience with the mysterious directions, Jibril.”
He smiled demurely. “That may be, but you show great potential as a hero. I was impressed by your bravery and your inventiveness last night. Plus the bees approve of you.”
“The bees approve of me?”
“It’s a great compliment, to be admired by bees.” He sipped his tea. “Not the dragon though. They still don’t like the dragon.”
The drive to Blean Woods was less than four hours, but it felt longer sitting in the back of the van instead of next to Duncan.
Especially because sitting next to a silent Lachlan made her already testy mood even worse.
Laura and Cadell were talking quietly behind them, and Angus and Naida were sleeping in the far back.
Lachlan was sitting next to her like a statue, staring at the passing motorway.
“Are you ever going to talk to me again?” Carys finally asked.
Lachlan glanced at her from the corner of his eye. “I’m talking to you now.”
“You’re sulking.”
He turned to her, and a corner of his mouth turned up. “I’m sulking?”
“Yes.”
“Sulking. Like a child?”
“Sulking like a man who didn’t get what he wanted,” Carys said.
“And what do you think I want?” He leaned closer, and it was impossible to resist the wave of memories that his scent and his heat provoked. “Hmm?”
Lachlan in her bed, his arms around her.
Lachlan holding her up when she could barely function.
Lachlan swinging her around the dance floor at the pub in Baywood, laughing as he sang.
“I don’t know anymore. I just don’t want you to be so angry.” She looked up and saw that he wasn’t sulking anymore. His lips were parted, and his eyes were locked on hers.
“I never thought of you, you know. Before she died. I never thought of you once.” His voice was bitter, but his eyes were aching. “And now I’m realizing that Duncan must have thought of you every day after seeing Seren and me together.”
I never thought of you once.
“That’s hurtful,” Carys whispered. “Whether you realize it or not, that’s hurtful, Lachlan, and I know you’re grieving again, but—”
“I don’t know why I’m still alive,” Lachlan continued. “When he realized what I’d done—how I went looking for you—I don’t know why I’m even alive.”
“I’m not some kind of prize for you to fight over.” Oh, she was just picking winners today. “Laura?”
“Yeah, hon?”
“Can you trade places with me?”
Her best friend didn’t even hesitate. “Sure.”