Chapter 19
KIERA
This was so embarrassing. Talk about your walking disaster. Bags of stolen money, guns, bad guys, spilling hot chocolate all over myself (not to equate it with the rest, but come on…), and now this!
Sean came crashing through the trees and—spotting me—slipped in some grass still slick with frost and skidded to the edge of the lake.
His eyes widened in alarm, making me think this wasn’t just embarrassing but perhaps something more serious.
“Do something!” I cried.
“Let me think,” he said.
“About what?!”
A minute ago, I’d been stopped on the path by a hoard of tiny, green sluglike creatures with razor sharp teeth and ghoulish smiles. They wouldn’t let me advance or retreat, and in my attempt to get past them, I’d staggered into the lake and was now up to my knees in frigid water.
The creatures had followed me into the water, surrounded me, and now…here we were. My water-logged coat felt like an anchor around my neck.
“I don’t have particular sway with grindylows,” Sean said, and his tone was as grim as his face.
“You’re way bigger than they are,” I said.
“So are you,” he replied.
“I can’t feel my feet.” I lunged left and a half dozen of the nasty little creatures hissed at me.
Just the surprise of it made me scream.
“Stay still!” he cried, sounding terrified. Then he criss-crossed his arms overhead, apparently trying to draw the little monsters’ attention to himself. “Hey! Don’t you know who you’re dealing with?”
“I doubt they’re going to be impressed by my online profile, Sean.”
He ignored me. “You’ve surrounded a Sidhe. A high fae and a priestess.”
A Sidhe? I didn’t know what that was, but at the moment, I couldn’t have felt less like a princess. The heel of my boot had gotten sucked deeper into the muck at the bottom of the lake, and as much as I yanked up my knee, my foot wouldn’t come loose.
A couple of the creatures cowered at Sean’s warning, but most looked up at me with suspicion.
“Doesn’t smell like a Sidhe,” one of them gurgled. “Smells like a nymph.”
“That’s because she’s been spending a lot of time with me,” Sean said. “But I’m telling you, you’re asking for trouble fucking around with that one. She eats grindylows for breakfast.”
One of the little monsters gave me an assessing glance, but another bared its razor-sharp teeth and lunged at me.
I screamed.
Sean cried, “No! Don’t scream. It riles them.”
I finally got my foot loose, and I took a few steps to the left.
The horde of little green monsters shifted with me.
I staggered to the right, but they mirrored my movement.
“Sean,” I whined. “Help.”
“I’m coming,” he said. “Just…stay still. Don’t provoke them.”
He took a step toward the water, muttering something about loose screws and death wishes.
Several of the grindylows turned on him and snarled.
Sean barked out a succinct, “Fuck!”
“She’s ours,” one of them said. “Stay back, or we’ll bite.”
That didn’t sound great. They were tiny. And so were their teeth. But then, the same could be said of piranhas.
I knew my concern was valid when Sean stopped his advance and held up his hands, palms out. His face was ashen.
“Sean?” I asked. He wasn’t really going to leave me to them, was he?
I’d hoped these creatures were a mere annoyance. No more dangerous than Darrel or any of the pixies who delivered my packages.
“Don’t worry,” Sean said, but he sounded worried. “I’ll get you out of there. Let me think.”
“Can’t you just come get me?” I reached out to him.
“I’m no good to you dead.”
My whole body jerked. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Sean raked his hand through his hair, his face strained with panic. He didn’t have time, however to answer my question, or come up with a plan because, at that moment, the ground began to tremble.
It wasn’t a lot. Just a faint vibration that made the surface of the lake jump and a few lingering leaves fall from the trees.
Sean glanced up at the branches, then down at his feet, and he frowned.
“What’s happening?” I asked.
For the first time, the grindylows looked afraid. Their circle around me loosened, and they watched the water as if expecting a predator to surface.
They weren’t far off.
“Snake!” one of them cried.
But it wasn’t a snake. It was a long, snakelike tree root, twenty feet in length. It shot out from the creek bed like a striking cobra, then swiped across the surface of the water, sending half of the grindylows flying into the forest. The other half dove deep and disappeared under the dark water.
Get out, said a voice in my head. You’ve ruined your boots.
This was both good advice as well as terrible but unsurprising news.
I clambered out of the water, my heavy coat streaming water, my feet soaked and freezing. My ankle boots were definitely beyond repair. One of the heels had snapped off in the lake.
“That was a lucky break,” I said, breathing hard and limping to shore. “But what the hell was that?”
“She always had an excellent slap shot,” was Sean’s strange reply.
“She?” I unzipped my coat, then considered taking off my boots and walking barefoot through the woods. “Who are you talking about?”
“Her.” Sean’s face was grim, and his teeth clenched.
I looked up and saw that he was pointing toward an oak tree not more than ten feet from the water’s edge.
At first, I didn’t know what had his attention. Then I looked a little harder. “Is that…?”
I walked closer, stopping within three feet of the tree. There, in the rough bark, was the faintest outline of a woman.
“Mom,” Sean said, “this is Kiera Jones. Kiera…this is my mother, Veridia.”
The tree gave a barely perceptible tremor, and the voice in my head said, Pleased to meet you.
“Uh…likewise.”
Sean shot me a questioning glance.
I had questions of my own. Questions like: your mom is a tree? And…didn’t you say she was dead? And…how is she talking inside my head?
“Thanks for the assist,” Sean said to the tree. To his mother. “With the grindylows.”
Who are you to my son? Veridia asked and though she didn’t turn in my direction, the question was clearly directed at me.
“I’m…a friend,” I said. “A good friend.”
Sean raised his eyebrows in confusion, but it didn’t seem to be at my words. Rather, he seemed surprised I was talking at all.
You’re not a fae, Veridia said.
Again, her voice echoed inside my head. Now, how did she do that?
“Uh…no,” I said, wanting her approval but not sure how to earn it. I’d never talked to a tree before, and Sean’s expression was still so unreadable, I wasn’t sure how to react.
But just as beautiful, she replied.
Oh. Okay. Wow. I let out a breath. That was nice. My own mother had never said anything like that to me.
Though you need to dress more appropriately for the woods, Veridia said.
“I know,” I said, chagrinned. “I have a tendency to dress less for function, more for style.”
Sean leaned back and folded his arms, scowling at me, then at the tree.
Under any other circumstances, I would have defended my clothing choices, but right now I had too many questions discombobulating my brain. Like, had his mother always been a tree? Did Sean turn into a tree? How was Sean born from a tree? If we had children, would they be trees?
The last thought caught me off guard, and I was really, really glad for my earlier research about dryads not being able to read minds. But…if I was hearing Veridia in my thoughts, was she the exception to the rule?
She didn’t jump in with an answer to my tree-children question. She didn’t even appear to be smiling. Or frowning for that matter. She was there, but not there. She died, but she lives.
I worry about my son, Veridia said. It’s not good for him to be alone.
“Um…sure.” I glanced nervously at Sean, halfway expecting him to rise to his own defense, but although he was scowling, he said nothing.
You seem like a strong woman, Kiera.
“Thanks.” I glanced at Sean again, this time anticipating his laughter because the last several minutes hadn’t exactly been a demonstration of my strength. I’d been overtaken by a pack of tiny green slugs.
Sean wasn’t laughing.
Grindylows are not to be underestimated, Veridia said. They are lethal to nymphs.
Lethal? Oh my god. My hand trembled as I laid it over my heart. Sean had waded into the water when those things were lethal to him?
But even a human would be temporarily paralyzed by their bite, Veridia added. Still, you didn’t panic.
“Didn’t I?” My heart pounded under my hand.
You didn’t cry. You didn’t surrender.
That was food for thought. For the first time in my life, I had reason to be grateful for my childhood. “I had a pretty rough upbringing. Crying never got me anywhere.”
A muscle jumped in Sean’s jaw.
Take care of each other, Veridia said as her outline began to fade from the tree bark.
“Wait!” I raised my hand to touch the tree, then curled my fingers into a fist, not wanting to be too bold.
Still, I continued to watch as the outline of Sean’s mother slowly faded from the tree. Or was she still there? Somewhere. Somehow.
Finally, when it became clear the moment had passed and she was gone, I exhaled heavily and said, “Wow.”
“Don’t tell me she spoke to you,” Sean said bitterly.
My head twisted sharply away from the tree to look at him. “Well…yeah. Couldn’t you hear her?”
“She never speaks to me.” The tops of his cheeks went red, and the pain in his voice was palpable.
“Sean, I’m…I’m sorry.”
He swallowed hard. “What did she say?”
“I… I think she likes me.” I laughed a little at that. It sounded absurd. “I think she saved me from the grindylows because she wants us to be together. She wants me to take care of you.”
Sean softened a little at that, but only a little. “Let’s get back to the cabin.”
But I wasn’t ready to go.
“I knew dryads were tree nymphs,” I said, “but I didn’t realize you could actually turn into trees.”
“If we stay still for too long, it can happen by accident.” Sean reached out to me, wanting to take my hand. “For most dryads, though, it’s a choice.”
I moved closer and took his hand in mine. “Your mother chose to become a tree?”
I glanced back at the oak. It didn’t seem like an improvement in life, but what did I know?
“She’d had enough,” Sean said simply. “So she stopped moving. By the time I realized what was happening, I was too late to stop her.”
Ah. I was getting it now. Veridia, Sean’s mother, was the woman he’d been one second too late to save. That second had made all the difference.
“She’d had enough of what?” I asked, turning back toward him and looking up at his tortured face.
“The world,” he said.
“Turning into a tree seems like a dramatic response to something a lot of us feel from time to time.”
“Maybe.” He brushed his thumb over my knuckles. “Or maybe she’d just had enough of me.”
Before I could express my doubts about that, Sean cleared his throat and added quickly, “Are you ready to go back? You’re soaking wet.”
“What she did wasn’t your fault.” I squeezed his hand. “It had nothing to do with you.”
I could tell from the way Veridia had expressed her concern for Sean, that she still cared deeply about him.
“Exactly,” he said. “She didn’t give me a single thought.”
I shook my head because I knew what it meant to have a mother who didn’t give her kids a single thought. “She still cares about you. She loves you.”
Sean gave me a withering glance.
I took a different tack. “Can she reverse it? Become a dryad again?”
Sean shook his head. “She’s rooted.”
“So, she never leaves this spot?”
“Actually, she’s rooted to the trees, but not that particular tree. Her spirit can move from one oak tree to another.”
I scrunched up my nose, wanting to know the details while recognizing, no matter what explanation he gave me, I’d never truly understand.
I shifted my weight, and my sock made a squelching sound inside my boot. I glanced down and grimaced. “Should I break off the other heel?”
“Even if you did,” Sean said, “you’d get some nasty blisters, hiking back in wet boots.”
I sighed. “I already have one. Maybe I should go barefoot.”
“I doubt your feet are that tough. Get on my back.”
“You’re going to carry me?” I glanced down the path in the direction of Sean’s cabin.
“Thought about it.” His tone was lighter now, but his expression still held hints of a darker mood. “You’re not too heavy.”
I scoffed. “I’m not exactly light, and it’s got to be half a mile. Maybe more.”
He gave me another withering glance, this one reminding me that I wasn’t dealing with your average man. He would have no trouble hauling my ass back to the cabin, even if we had to cover twenty miles of uneven terrain.
“Fine,” I said.
He turned his back and dropped into a squat.
I climbed on.
Sean grabbed me behind the knees and bounced me up into position.
I wrapped my arms around his broad shoulders.
“Pay the fare,” he said.
I kissed the side of his neck.
“Nice,” he said, and we were off.