Rhiannon paused. For a moment she seemed to waver, but then Heather laughed, and her laughter was like an icicle through the heart. Rhia stepped back and held out her hands, dropping the stake on the ground.
She whispered, “Fire, burn through me,” and a spray of fire shot forth from her fingertips, surrounding Heather, lighting the gossamer gown aflame.
Heather screamed as the flames roared to life, feeding on the cloth. The next moment, she threw herself into a snowbank, extinguishing the burning material. When she rose, a murderous smile filled her eyes.
“I can play rough, too, my darling daughter.” Another whisper, and this time the forest shook, the ground beneath our feet shifting. I lost my balance and fell, as did Rhiannon. Kaylin went sprawling over a tree trunk. Chatter and Grieve caught hold of trees to keep themselves afoot.
Heather was intoning a dark chant, deep and ancient, and terrifyingly old, and the tree next to Rhia began to topple toward her. I screamed as Chatter rushed forward, grabbing her around the waist and rolling clear just as the tree landed where she’d been standing.
I unfurled my fan. “Tornado force.” With a wave of my hand, the fan let out a low howl as a funnel cloud appeared, ripping trees from the roots as it headed directly toward Heather. My aunt screamed as the twister bore down on her. She held up her hands.
“Rock and boulder!” The earth shook between the force of the tornado and the thrusting up of some giant behemoth—and then I saw it was no monster, but a huge boulder propelling itself to the surface. Heather ducked behind it as the twister raged over her. Any normal magic-born or yummanii would have died from the force of my attack, but she belonged to the Indigo Court. She held on to the rock, her fingers exerting incredible strength to keep herself from being sucked into the vortex.
As the tornado shrieked off, I felt a tremor from my fan—it raced through my body and I wasn’t sure what was happening but I had no time to figure it out now. I grabbed my stake—this could end only one way—and headed over toward Heather.
But Rhiannon was in front of me. She’d broken free of Chatter, and stake raised, she raced to her mother. Her other hand was a ball of flame that coalesced around her fingers, shifting fire that seemed to barely faze her. Heather was just managing to stand again, when Rhiannon reached out and sent the ball of flame singing off her palm, straight into Heather’s face.
Heather screamed as the fire caught her hair and sparked it to life, her red locks becoming a mane of flame. Once again she dropped to the ground, rolling, but as she did so, Rhiannon leaped on her, catching her on her back. She straddled Heather, bringing the stake up above her head with a wild-eyed, glassy look.
“You would kill your own mother?” Heather’s voice was soft, so much like it had been before she’d been captured. Her face a mass of burned flesh, she reached up for Rhiannon’s neck and grabbed her.
Rhiannon began to choke as she struggled against Heather’s grasp. In a raspy voice, she gasped out, “You are not my mother. You are not my mother.” Tears raced down her cheeks and fell onto Heather’s face, sizzling against the burned flesh.
And then, in a silent moment, Heather paused. Her hands fell away from Rhiannon’s neck, and she spread them wide to her sides, waiting. Rhiannon wavered, staring down at Heather.
“You have seconds, only seconds, my love,” Heather whispered. “Please, just do it. Release me. I can only keep hold of my sanity for a few seconds at a time. I love you. Don’t let me hurt you, don’t make me fight to the death or you will surely die. I am too strong, I can bend the earth to swallow us up. Rhiannon, my baby, you must let me go.” Heather’s voice was tender, like I remembered from childhood.
“Mother…I can save you—I can…” And then Rhia stopped and shook her head. “I can’t save you. There’s no coming back for you, is there?”
Heather began to weep through the burned flesh that scarred her face. “Unlike Grieve, I died. I will never live again. And I choose not to live in this state, controlled by a monster, turning into a monster. I have done horrid things since she took me. I cannot live with them on my conscience. Either I become the horror she plans, or I die. Bless me with the gift of death, Rhia. Please, please, don’t make me live like this.”
Bloody tears poured down her face. Rhia began to sob and so did I. But we had no choice. We had moments, perhaps seconds, before Heather faded back into the freak that Myst had created. I slowly knelt beside them and reached down, kissing Heather on the forehead.
“I’m so sorry I didn’t get here in time to save you, I’m so sorry I was too late,” I whispered, pressing my hand to her cheek.
Heather’s starry darkened eyes glimmered and I could feel the rush of fury coming on her again. I turned to Rhia. “Quickly. It has to be now. Do you want me to do it?”
“Help me. I have to do it, but help me, Cicely. I need you.” Rhia gave me a horrified look and I put my hands on hers, holding the stake above Heather’s chest.
Heather smiled, then, in one last moment of clarity. “I loved you as my own daughter, Cicely. Know that. And Rhiannon—you will know your father in time. Trust me. You will know.” She closed her eyes and a snarl came to her lips. “Now, before I retreat—now, it must be now!” Her voice was frantic.
I held tight to Rhia’s hands. She was gripping the stake with an uncanny strength, but she was frozen. I came to her rescue and began to drive the stake down toward Heather’s chest. Rhia dropped her head back, a silent scream on her face, and she ripped the stake from my hands and plunged it into Heather’s chest by herself. A spray of blood fountained up, spattering us both, leaving a dappling of crimson against the snow.
Heather let out a low scream that echoed along the slipstream, and then a rush of wind passed by, and Ulean was there, cloaking us. My aunt lay still, a bloody symbol of what we’d been driven to.
Rhia stared at her, a look of horror on her face. And then Chatter and Grieve were there, lifting us up, away from Heather’s body. As they led us away, Kaylin went in and what he did, I could not see, but when we turned, the body was no longer there, just a spreading crimson stain, freezing to the snow as the flurries raged around us. A small pile of dust whipped up and away, into the wind.
I let out a shudder, then a sigh, and pressed my face into Grieve’s shoulder. He kissed me softly on the cheek, then on the lips, demanding and fierce, and I lost myself in the feel of his lips against mine, of his skin against mine, of his body entwined around me. We stood, like two silent trees, rooted to the spot, tongues barely touching, softly dancing under the falling snow, until the exquisite pain of losing my aunt, of watching her die at our hands, was forced back into a corner, and blessed numbness swept over me.
Turning, I caught a glimpse of Chatter and Rhiannon. He was doing the same, comforting my cousin, kissing her, holding her, and she had lost herself in his embrace. My heart skipped a beat. This was the way it was supposed to be. Rhiannon and Chatter. Grieve and me. It felt right. It felt true.
Another moment passed, then Kaylin cleared his throat. “We should be off. I know it’s hard, but we have to reach Grandfather Cedar. We aren’t far. Let’s go.”
I broke away from Grieve. “You’re right. And on we go.” As we took up our march again, my heart was both heavy and yet—inexplicably light. We’d just killed the one woman in the world I thought of as my real mother, and yet we’d freed her. Torn her from Myst’s grasp. We’d given Heather the final gift, that of release.
I hung back, reaching for Rhiannon’s hand. We walked awhile, trudging through the snow, hand in hand. She seemed oddly calm, but I understood what she was feeling. The numbness was a blessing.
And whatever lay ahead of us, we would meet the challenge and do our best, no matter the outcome.
Another twenty minutes and Grieve said something to Chatter. Across a little clearing, we could see the cedar from my dreams—the cedar Lainule had indicated as the entrance to the tunnels leading to her heartstone.
“Grandfather Cedar,” Grieve whispered, a reverence in his voice. And indeed, the tree was taller than most any tree in the forest. It towered dark against the sky, a sentinel guarding the forest, with a trunk wide enough to build a home in. “We must find the tunnel.”
Chatter parted a swath of ferns. He knelt and blew on the surface of the snow, a faint flame whispering from his lips to melt the snow. After a moment, the glimmering outline of a door with a brass handle atop it came into view. The door in my dreams.
“Can anyone else see this?” I asked, hoping that we’d leave no trace once we climbed into the tunnel.
“Only those of Cambyra blood,” Grieve said.
Kaylin nodded. “He’s right. I can’t see it.”
Rhia stood still, staring. “But…but…I can.”
“What?” I whirled, staring at her. “You can see it?”
She nodded, her lips pale, as she stared into my eyes. “I can see the door, Cicely.”
“Does that mean…Grieve, are you sure that only those of Cambyra Fae should be able to see it? Because if so, that means…”
“Rhiannon also possesses Fae blood in her veins.” Grieve looked at her. “You possess fire magic, like Chatter.”
“No,” she whispered, pressing her fingers to her throat. “I can’t be part Fae. Mother…she would have told me.”
“My mother never did. And Heather said you will know your father in time.” As I stared at her, a suspicion began to form in my thoughts, but I kept it to myself, not even wanting to dwell on the possibility at this point.
“We must hurry. We can speculate on Rhiannon’s heritage when we have found Lainule’s…treasure.” Grieve touched the door handle and it sprang open to his fingers, as if it had been waiting for him.
I peered into the darkened opening. A swirl of color began to spin, gold and green and brilliant blood red. My dream, this was my dream.
I looked up at the others. “We have to take a leap of faith here. No hesitation, only action.”
And with that, I swung my legs over the edge, inhaled deeply, and before they could stop me, I pushed myself over, falling into the swirl of color, leaping into the rabbit hole.
Freeze-frame…falling down, deep, there’s a swirl of green and gold, and a streak of red, and I’m in the middle of a giant kaleidoscope…and I am turning in the air, head over heels, skydiving into a magical well, playing Alice down the rabbit hole…
Freeze-frame…and the plunge mellowed, the currents catching me up like a parachute. I was able to catch my breath and as I looked up, all I could see were faint glimmers that might have been movement, or just the swirling color of this psychedelic journey I was taking.
Freeze-frame…and the sparkling colors vanished as I slid through a low-hanging cloud and landed on my butt, in a deep, dark tunnel, coming down hard on a stone floor. I pushed myself to my feet and moved. If the others were following me, chances were they’d be landing right about where—
Just as I darted to the side, Kaylin landed on his feet in a crouch. He moved to the side next to me. Rhiannon was next, and she nearly took a nasty tumble, but Kaylin managed to catch her before she fell. She flashed me an anxious look as we waited. Within another moment, Chatter and Grieve had joined us.
“How do we get back up again?” Rhia glanced up at the swirling, nebulous, glowing clouds that covered the entrance to the portal. “And what about the trapdoor?”
Chatter shook his head. “Not to worry, I cloaked the entrance. But as for getting back up through that, I have no clue. We’ll figure it out when we come to that point.”
I moved over to examine the wall. It was glowing with the same shimmer that the other tunnel had had, only this one was brighter, warmer. I leaned my forehead against the smooth wall. Something within the glassy tile connected with me, sparking off images of summer nights, warm and delicious and filled with ice-cream cones and stargazing and dragonflies. I could almost smell the dusky summer evening riding the slipstream as Ulean swept this way and that.
Grieve joined me. “What do you feel, my love?”
I took his hand, slapped it against the wall, palm first. “Tell me what you sense, can you feel it? Can you feel Lainule’s heart? This is her private sanctuary. Can you feel the essence of summer, deep within the structure of the tile?”
He closed his eyes, took a long, deep breath. And then, as he started to shake his head, his eyes flew open and he jolted back, panting raggedly as he dropped to his knees and curled over, hiding his face with his hands. “I remember…I remember…” The pain in his voice tore me to shreds as I ran to him, knelt by him.
“Are you all right? What happened?” I wrapped my arm around his shoulders, but he shook me off.
“I…remember what it was like…what I was like before she turned me.” He slowly sat up, loss spreading across his face like a blight over the land. “I am tainted. I am tainted. How can I ever be whole again?” A snarl rose to his lips and his eyes narrowed. “How can I live in two worlds at once?”
Chatter rushed forward. “Grieve, can you hear me? You must listen to my voice. Follow my voice. Follow it home. Follow me.” His words took on a dark tone, swirling like autumn leaves, and I found myself falling into their cadence as he spoke.
Grieve snarled again, and I could see the Shadow Hunter within him, waiting for release. But he remained in control, his expression set, as he fixated on Chatter’s face. I did not speak.
“Follow my voice home, follow it back…follow the thread through the snow. Can you see the snow around you?”