Chapter 46
Chapter Forty-Six
Autumn was trying not to think about it. She was just no longer certain which it she wasn't supposed to be thinking about, and she was thinking about it all anyway, so it didn't really matter.
About Boreus, about Auster, about the Highest and the awful nightmares she was having. They’d come out of nowhere, seemingly with no rhyme or reason. They were the sort of dreams that didn’t make sense in daylight, but were absolutely terrifying at night.
She’d been trying to tell herself that for days, but the dreams were stuck to her psyche like a burr on wool, and she couldn’t seem to shake them free.
It was just the fear of the unknown; she didn’t even know that Theria had returned to the Mountain.
It was all speculation, and that it had her so terrified was silly at best and idiotic at worst.
She wasn’t going to go anywhere without Boreus and Auster; they’d asked her not to, but being stuck in her own head with her silly fear wasn’t going to make her mind calm down.
Autumn knew she was just tired, that exhaustion and the dreams were combining to make her stupid and paranoid.
She just needed more sleep, and she would be fine.
And the thoughts that were churning just below the surface of her mind weren’t worth anything, and that was precisely the amount of credence she was going to give them.
It didn’t matter any longer. She loved them and they loved her, and just because her mind said otherwise didn’t make it the truth.
They were her truth; the way they looked at her and smiled was her reality. Nothing would change that.
Autumn shook the vicious words out of her head and smiled back at the men she loved. “I think it would be nice to be out in the sun for a while.”
“I’ll get a picnic together,” Auster rose from the table. “We can wander, and then maybe eat at the spring.”
Autumn nodded, smiling at the man she loved and shoving the negative thoughts down and away. She would sit with them later, when she was alone. She would pull them out, look at them, and then discard them as the trash that they were.
They left the house a little while later, hand in hand, basket with their lunch over Boreus’ arm, and did exactly what they said they were going to do.
There were a hundred little groves all over the Mountain, the greater part of them held a spirit of either a tree or one of the little pools that always seemed to be the center of the grove.
Most of them knew her from her younger days when she would wander the Mountain in search of someone that wouldn’t discard her or find her less worthy than her sisters.
She’d never managed it, not truly, and sometimes she wondered if they hadn’t been right.
Autumn shook her head, shook the thoughts and her mother’s voice out of her ears, and looked up at Boreus. He was looking around the little grove they were in, up at the trees as though they were something marvelous.
“You know, I don’t think I ever really took the time to just look at the Mountain.” He said. “It’s beautiful, you know? I wonder how many people take the time to just look at where they are.”
“Not many,” Autumn said slowly. “At least not in my limited experience. Mortals tend to always be rushing for something, and the others that live on the Mountain are so injured to their surroundings that they just don’t see them.”
“It’s a shame,” Boreus said, letting Autumn’s hand go and reaching for the trunk of one of the slim birch trees in the grove. “Take these trees for example.” He gestured around the grove. “They’re all the same tree, the root systems are all tangled together.”
“Really?” Auster walked forward, letting Autumn go and reaching for the same tree. “A bit like us then.”
Autumn was frozen, wanting to move forward, wanting to go to them, but they’d both let her go and she was loose. That meant she could run, far and fast, away from them and their false promises of forever.
“There’s something wrong with me.” Autumn managed to choke the words out. “Something is trying to make me run from you, I don’t want to, I swear it, but there’s something in my head.”
They were both back at her side in an instant, holding her. And just as if they had never been there at all, the voices stopped. Hiding in the depths of her psyche. But they were still there, still waiting to strike as soon as she was left alone again.
She tried to explain that, tried to tell them what was happening to her, but the words got stuck in her throat, stuck on maybe, stuck on the idea that they were lying to her.
That they wanted to kill her.
They didn’t, but that didn’t make the things that her words were stuck on any less jagged.
“Love, what is it?” Boreus was looking down at her, concern written all over his face. “Tell us, so we can help.”
Autumn kept her mouth shut, nothing good was going to come out of it and she didn’t want those words. Didn’t want the fear polluting their time together. It was nonsense anyway, and deserved less than none of her thoughts.
“I don’t know,” she managed to choke the words out over the others. “I keep having thoughts, and they aren’t mine, or they are, but they’re the old thoughts. The doubt and the pain that I felt before we loved each other.”
It was Auster’s turn to give her a concerned look. “We should go to the Highest.”
“Could you look?” Autumn asked, voice shaking. “I would like to be able to tell them more than that there’s something in my mind making me doubt you.”
“Alright,” he smiled at her. “If I can beat it back, I will. You’re safe with us, I swear it.”
“I know,” she smiled back. “I know I’m safe, I know that to the depths of me. These are just something clouding me and I want it gone.”