Chapter 8
Chapter eight
Dreams & Dirt
“This is a dream…” I whispered.
We were no longer standing amongst the trees, but on a rocky precipice.
To the south, a robin’s-egg-blue sky and a seemingly boundless forest laid below us, cradled in a broad valley which was girdled by the craggy foothills of the Pallasian Mountains.
Many of the treetops had already begun to fade from summer-green to autumn-gold, creating swirling designs through the canopy.
Designs that seemed almost deliberate, like they had been painted with an artist’s brush.
“Welcome to the true Forest of Arden,” the Devil said softly in my ear.
I shifted, trying to move away from him, but my feet slid violently on the wide, flat stone beneath me, and I let out a scream as I pitched forward.
His hands closed around my waist, yanking me back from the edge of a roaring waterfall, which poured over the drop we were standing on.
A cold spray of water jarred me back to my senses and I backed away from the edge as far as I could, straight into the Devil’s warm, solid body.
His hands moved to my hips, gripping tight, and I strongly debated between staying where I was and shoving him away.
“This is the real forest?” I cried over the rush of the waterfall. “The kingdom of the Fair Folk?”
“Would you like to see it?”
I couldn’t help but laugh at the insanity of it all. “Yes! Anything to get back on solid gr—”
He gave a gentle push, tipping me out into the abyss, and the rest of my words were drowned by another scream. I twisted, flailing wildly and trying to grab hold of him, or the rock, or anything solid, but he did nothing—just watched me fall with a damnable smile on his strange face.
Consumed by mist, I plunged toward the water below, toward certain death.
Even if the pool at the base of the waterfall was deep, the impact alone would shatter my body.
I tried to curl into myself and sent up a desperate prayer to the Holy Family, but then I heard laughter and looked up.
The Devil was diving beside me, wings tucked against his body, spray coating his face and hair as he dropped.
“Hold tight!” he called, angling himself beneath me.
As soon as my hands connected to his shoulders and my knees clenched around his hips, the wings on either side of me snapped out and I was thrown violently forward.
My forehead smacked into his upper back, but he didn’t falter.
The legends about faerie strength must be true, I thought, because we were now soaring only a few feet over the crystalline pool at the base of the falls, and he seemed to have no trouble at all carrying my weight.
With my arms wrapped tightly beneath his, and legs locked around his torso, I managed to raise my head just enough to shout in his ear.
“You are a vile bastard!”
He just laughed again and dropped closer to the pool, which stretched away into a large lake.
Prying one of my hands away from his chest, he pulled it down and dipped my fingers into the cool water.
I laughed faintly, almost enjoying it until I saw a human-like face looking up at me from beneath the surface and tried to jerk my hand away.
The Devil held it in place, however, and banked, turning to circle the interior of the lake.
“There’s something down there!” I cried. The creature followed us, extending a pale blue arm lined with scales and a long, spiked fin.
“A naiad!” he called back. “It’s very bad manners to pull away!”
He kept a firm grip on my wrist and the naiad gingerly touched my fingertips with her own, then smiled, showing rows of pointed teeth.
She vanished suddenly, dipping into the depthless blue of the lake and reappearing moments later holding a perfectly round, white stone.
Having pressed the token into my outstretched hand, she dove again and did not resurface.
The Devil released me and I clutched the stone to my chest, then pushed onto my other elbow so I could look ahead.
We did one more circuit of the lake and finally soared past the rocky shore.
I felt him pull his wings up and his body shifted from beneath me, so I executed a rather graceless dismount and tumbled across the grass.
The Devil landed on his feet and ran a few steps to slow himself, then tucked his wings in and turned.
The infuriating smile on his face sent me into a rage, so I scrambled up and hurled the white stone at his face with all my might.
But it only took a twitch of his hand for a solid wall of golden light to stop my missile in midair and it fell to the ground at his feet, useless.
“You could have killed me!” I shouted.
“You said you dreamt of flying.” His expression bordered on genuine confusion and it only deepened my fury.
“So you push me off a fucking cliff?”
“Yes…and then I caught you, so you could fly…”
I swayed on the spot when I realized that there was not a hint of malice or sarcasm in his voice. “You must be insane,” I muttered.
“Perhaps.” He took a step forward and held out his hand. “Are you hurt?”
“No, I’m not.” Even though a million more questions churned inside me—about the naiad and the forest and his magyk and my debt—I clenched my jaw shut, once again unwilling to give him the satisfaction of seeing my curiosity.
“Then why are you angry?”
“You….you don’t understand why I’m angry?
” I fumed. “You hurt someone I love, then use a kiss to spirit me away, brand yourself with my holy symbol, show me real faerie magyk, then shove me off a cliff, all in only a few hours, and you don’t understand why I might be less than pleased with all this… mayhem?!”
“Only the best mayhem for you, May,” he said, leaning in close with a wicked grin.
I gritted my teeth against the taunt, then turned away and wiped the sheen of spray from my face using the front of my skirt.
Just as I finished, my eyes fell on Will’s silver ring, and an overwhelming sense of despair shrouded my thoughts.
He had refused to run with me, refused to throw the contest, then panicked, blindsided by Johar’s inhuman test of loyalty.
It was clear now that, even if I made it home, our love would never see the light of day.
Since he had kept none of his promises, I saw no reason why I should keep his ring.
Fighting back a well of hot tears, I pulled it from my finger and hurled it into the lake.
A finned hand shot up from the water to catch it, and I saw the splash of a colorful, scaly tail.
“Are you finished?” asked the Devil, who had come to stand behind me. “Or would you like to tear your clothing, beat your breast, and wail a lament for your lost love?”
I spun to face him. “Careful what you wish for, Devil. I will take great pleasure in wasting every minute of your precious time.”
“Since you mention it, time is something we cannot spare just now.”
“And why is that? Why do you need my healing gift when you clearly have your own?” I motioned to the burn mark on his chest, barely visible beneath the edge of his tunic. He glanced down, but merely shrugged.
“All the Fair Folk heal quickly. Our lack of time has nothing to do with your debt and everything to do with tomorrow being the changing of seasons.”
“The what?”
“You would call it the Autumn Equinox,” he said impatiently. “The day when the Fair Folk gather to celebrate, and to watch our beloved king and queen perform their sacred dance, which turns the wheel here in the Arden.”
I was breathless for a moment. “And…this happens tomorrow?”
“In the evening, yes,” the Devil said. “There’s to be a revelry.
So, we must go quickly if we are to make you…
presentable.” He ran his eyes over me again and I looked down at my simple gray dress, which was now filthy, torn, and wet.
But the thought of attending a faerie revelry, with the Devil of Arden, no less, sent me into a fit of laughter.
I doubled over, bracing my hands on my knees.
“Now I know this truly is a dream,” I gasped between breaths, shaking my head and turning back toward the lake. I heard him move closer, standing just behind me again, but still jumped when he whispered in my ear.
“Then why not make the most of it until the sun rises? If this is a dream, you will wake eventually, yes? Your precious Abbey, your darling Will, your garden, and your iron city. All will be just as you left them. So, why not let yourself dream for once, May? Let everything become as you would like it to be.”
He put an arm around me, offering his hand.
I hesitated, every nerve in my body screaming that this was no dream.
Ever since making my bargain with him as a child, I’d lived with the knowledge that magyk was real, but fear had prevented me from seeking it out again.
Now, here I was, surrounded by nothing but magyk, offered a chance to see it up close, to experience all the things I’d always been too terrified to even imagine.
While that terror still held a near-death grip on my heart, there was also something else—an incessant, palpable itch nestled beneath my breastbone.
I had never truly belonged anywhere. Not with the Sisters, not in Nottingham, not out on the road with Tuck, and now not even with Will.
The very last thread had been cut, unmooring me from a world in which I’d never found my place anyway.
No longer knowing, or even caring, if I risked my life or my soul in doing so, I turned to look up at the Devil’s contradictory eyes.
Eyes that never seemed to see anything but me.
“Very well, Devil,” I said, placing my hand in his. “Show me a dream.”