Chapter 13 #2
“The light lands,” she starts, her mind working overtime, “is the country of the light fae… and the dark land… is the country of the dark fae?”
I nod, and I tell her no more, because she doesn’t need more on her mind. I’ve dumped enough on her.
This is her lesson in the basics.
She simmers in that a while.
She smokes the cigarette, doesn’t let it burn down on its own, and I cook the pasta in silence, drain it in the sink, then stir in the sauce by the time she’s ready to speak more.
But all she says is—
“Well…” She flicks the cigarette into the sink. It sizzles in a mug of murky water. “Fuck.”
In answer, I give her a tight smile, probably more of a grimace than anything.
I feel the caution nipping in me, writhing like a pit of worms in my gut. “Do you hate me?”
Her hands slap to her thighs. “That depends.”
My mouth twists.
That stark look of hers turns on me. “Did you know it was coming?”
The blackout.
The plague.
The warriors.
I shake my head. “No. The dark ones have been trying to expand their darkness from their lands for longer than I’ve been alive.
I didn’t… I knew they were still trying, but no, I wouldn’t have gone on this trip if I suspected there was even a chance that they would suddenly succeed and start invading this world. ”
Tess nods, faint. “So what do we do? What about those wormhole things you mentioned—bridges, right? Can’t we go through those?”
I shake my head, teeth biting down on the flesh of my bottom lip.
“Why not?”
I backstep for the drawers and rummage through the second one for the little marble ball I spotted earlier. I scoop it into my hand, then a flat button in the other before I hold them both out for Tesni to see.
One marble, one button.
An incredulous look steals her face, but she watches.
I lift the marble, pinched between my fingertips.
“Earth is round.” I lift the button, “and it touches this world.” I push them together.
“See how the marble presses into the button and covers so much of its centre? But the rest of the marble is untouched by the button. The part of the marble, the part of earth, that touches the button—”
“Is the button your world?”
I nod. “Yeah.”
“So the part of this world that’s touching the fae world… that’s Norway, Britain, Ireland… That’s where they said the blackout was coming from on the radio. It changed a few times, but it was all in that part of the world.”
“Northern Europe,” I confirm.
She pushes off the window frame she was leaning on. “That’s where the bridges are?”
The corners of my mouth tuck into my cheeks. “It’s not like we can swim across the Pacific to the shores of Britain.”
Tesni raises her chin—and that hollow stare chills me. “If we did go across the Pacific, we would end up in Asia, not Europe.”
Still, she studies me. Piecing everything together.
She sags with a huff. “That explains a lot, actually. You never know things like that—things we learn in primary school.”
I set the button-marble combo down on the counter, then reach for the stove and turn the dial. The bubbling of the saucy pasta is well overdone.
The flames disappear.
“And like, you didn’t know what Art Attack was…
or a Polly Pocket… or Pokémon. You didn’t know what Pluto was…
or NASA. And like, that time we were at the zoo, and you were staring at the tiger like it had fallen out the sky.
And the monkey, and you like, fell back, and knocked your head on the sign?
” She chokes on a bitter sound, a scoff.
“I just always thought you went to a really shit school… or you were homeschooled and didn’t want to admit it. ”
A smile twists my lips. “Are you sure you don’t hate me?”
Tesni rolls her eyes. “Of course I fucking hate you. But it’s temporary. It’ll go away.”
The grin I give is lopsided.
Tesni’s way of giving me the reassurance I need, when she herself is so determined to shut down.
If I didn’t know her, it might hurt me.
But I see what they don’t.
I see that she’s trying.
Tesni doesn’t try for people she doesn’t give a shit about, and she sure as hell isn’t going to worry about their feelings.
I dish the pasta under her pensive stare.
“How did they get here?” she asks. “I mean, if the bridges are only in Northern Europe… how the fuck are the dark fae in Canada?”
I have no answer.
I don’t know how that happened, how the warriors got onto this continent from the other, if they have boats that they took from the shores of the bridges, or swam over oceans, I just don’t know.
Boats would be the obvious idea.
But how would they get their boats through the bridges to this world? And I don’t see a dark fae figuring out how to operate one of the high-tech ones here.
I don’t have the answer.
So I shrug.
It’s a lame response.
“I don’t like it,” I confess. “I don’t like how they were just marching by us like that… Only one of them left their unit, and it was because Ramona shot him. Then the general called him back—”
“What?”
I blink at her.
“You said the general called him back. You understood that language?”
My nod is faint. “The general told that warrior to stop. ‘It is not yet their time.’” I hate myself for doing air quotes. “Then when he still didn’t go back to the road, the general said, ‘You will feed your bloodlust in the Great Return’.”
“The Great Return?” She makes a face. “The fuck does that mean?”
“I don’t really know. The Great Return,” I consider it, mull it over, “and the fact that they just walked by us. If Ramona hadn’t shot, she would still be alive.”
Tesni flinches at the reminder.
“The army wouldn’t have stopped on the road like that,” I go on, “and they wouldn’t have touched us.”
A bitter answer comes, “Yet.”
“Exactly. Yet.” That lures her gaze to me.
“I think, maybe, they’re headed to the coast. If they did sail over the ocean, and they came from east coast of this continent, and they are headed to the west coast…
what if, when they reach the shores, they go on over another ocean…
or they turn back around—and start the return journey? ”
Tesni’s face is pinched, quizzical, dubious. “So they sail across the ocean, just to walk this continent east to west, just to go back home? Their fucked up version of a marathon?”
My tongue drags over my bottom lip. “If I’m right… Then when they reach their destination, their turning point, they come back through, and it’s on that Great Return that they will push us out of hiding… and wipe us out. I think it’s a strategy to flush us all out.”
“Us…”
“Anyone who survived the plague… and the blackout… I’m guessing strategy—but make no mistake, Tess, the dark fae are here to end us.”
The distant sound of water running lures our gazes to the wall opposite. On the other side is the bathroom.
“Emily’s up,” she says, soft, distant.
I reach for the forks and ram them into the bowls.
The pasta should be cool enough to eat now.
Tesni turns a look on me, one that runs me over, up and down. I almost think she’s about to spear me with vicious words when, “Don’t tell her.”
I blink. “Emily?”
“We don’t know her, not really. And it’s dangerous for anyone to know that you’re one of them.”
“I’m not one of them, I’m of light.”
Tesni rounds on me. Her low tone is a warning, “I don’t think people will make that distinction.”
Before I can say anything, the door creaks open behind me, and Emily bustles in, blankets wrapped around herself, rustling over the linoleum floor.
Tesni gathers the bowls then carries them to the dining table, like nothing at all happened. She sets a bowl down in front of Emily, and I know she is right.
No one else can know.
Not even Emily.
Not Ramona, if she was still alive.
Not Lousie, if she had lived longer.
Not Ruby, if the plague didn’t get her.
No one, but us.