For as much as I wanted Anyan, I knew that we did, indeed, need to talk. The last year of my life had been crazy, and I’d gone from being a cautious person to living like life was a swimming pool and I was in a belly-flop contest. I had no regrets, but Anyan was different.
There were things I wanted to say to him, before we plunged into any metaphorical deep ends.
I just had to figure out what those things were.
I nibbled on a biscuit, watching Gog’s large grey form bustle about preparing a pot of tea. The rest of us were sitting around the small kitchen table of the house we’d commandeered. Blondie sat across from me with Hiral at her side—the two seemed to be very close chums, something I couldn’t understand since the little creature had gotten no less unpleasant since he’d arrived. It turns out Hiral was a gwyllion, which was a type of mischievous spirit in Welsh mythology. The reputation for mischief was well earned, I’d realized, as I’d watched in horror as Hiral licked every single chip from a bag of “crisps,” putting them back into the bag as he did so.
I planned on throwing that bag out before we left, feeling sorry for the poor humans whose house we’d already misappropriated.
Magog had taken the head of the table to my right, leaving the left for Gog as Anyan sat with me on my side. Both the barghest’s and my heads were wet, although we hadn’t “conserved” any “water.” Still, it felt good to have changed into comfies, and Blondie and Anyan had done the same. Hiral, however, had already been dressed in what appeared to be a burlap sack, and Gog and Magog were wearing everything they’d come in with, including their coats.
I wonder if they ever relaxed, those two.
Once Gog had placed the teapot on the table and settled his big bulk in his chair, I turned to Blondie.
“So what, exactly, is going on?” I asked, relieved finally to have the chance to get some answers.
Blondie turned to me, placing her hand on mine.
“All of this involves the Red and the White.”
I cast a querulous gaze down at our hands, before raising my eyes to meet hers. She obviously thought I might flip out when she’d said that, but I was clueless.
“The Red and the White? Isn’t that a novel by Stendhal?”
Everyone looked at me like I was smoking the rock right there at the table, except for Anyan. He gave me the look he gives me when he realizes there is something important I don’t know, and that he probably should have told me.
I sighed, but it was more tired than frustrated. The fact was that I’d had to pack a lifetime’s learning into less than a year when it came to my supernatural heritage. Gaps in my knowledge were more like crevasses, but that was only to be expected.
“You’ve really never heard of the Red or White?” Blondie asked, making a cat anus face.
“Nope. Never.”
“Really?”
I flailed my hands at her, impatient. I hoped I hadn’t been dragged halfway across the world—and out of Anyan’s bed—for vague premonitions of dread. “Why would I say I’d never heard of them if I had?”
“Yes. Well. Think Lord of the Rings’s Ring Wraiths.”
“Okay.”
“Now think Ring Wraiths with death-rays for eyes and the ability to shoot nuclear warheads out of their wazoo.”
“What?”
Magog’s coat stirred as she shifted, her rough voice interrupting Blondie.
“Making light of this situation isn’t helping, Cyntaf. She needs the facts.”
“Magog’s right,” Anyan seconded.
Blondie shrugged, changing track.
“The Red and White are children of original Great Elementals, just like the creature underneath Rockabill.”
“They’re also Earth and Water?” I asked, confused. How could creatures that were kin to the gentle being under Rockabill be monsters out of legend?
Blondie shook her head, snorting a humorless laugh.
“No. All of Earth and Water’s children ran the gamut from harmless and gentle to powerful and gentle. Fire, as I’m sure you know from the creature, spawned all sorts of evil creatures on its own. Air, meanwhile, did not have many children: she was never as… together, shall we say, as the other Elementals. She was also powerful and distant, which made her very attractive to a being as covetous as Fire.”
I frowned. Fire was, from all accounts, a nasty piece of work. Something told me it wouldn’t be pleasant to be coveted by Fire.
“When Air resisted Fire’s advances, Fire grew enraged. Fire raped Air, and from that union spawned two creatures,” Blondie said.
My mind spun with the implications of Blondie’s words. I’d been so close to the being living under Rockabill; I’d shared its mind. I understood how it wasn’t like us. It wasn’t a creature of genes and DNA. It was as much spirit as substance, and its spirit was that of its parents.
“The creature under Rockabill,” I said, trying to articulate what I knew to be true, “it was born of Earth and Water. It was born of love and union. It’s because of that it was good. So to be born of Fire and Air, and born of violence…”
“The Red and the White weren’t beings you’d invite over for tea,” Hiral squeaked, sloshing his own cup in the air and causing it to spill. Blondie absentmindedly mopped up his mess with her napkin.
“Wait,” I said, finally catching up with what Blondie had been leading me towards, “the Red and the White are those creatures? That came from Fire’s raping Air?”
Blondie nodded grimly. “To our people, the children of Fire and Air were known as the Red Queen and White King. Begat in violence, they reveled in their birthright.”
“So what did they do?”
“They did everything hellish that you could ever imagine,” Blondie said, her voice sad. “From the moment they were born they were bent on destruction.”
“So where are they now? What happened to them?”
“They were destroyed, many times over. But each time, they’d rise again. This cycle repeated itself, for countless centuries. At first, there were enough of the children of the other Great Elementals to take them on. As that generation died out, however, it was up to those that remained—first those of us who had powers, pre-Schism, like me. What you call ‘Originals’ nowadays. Then Alfar and their armies.”
“That was till Cyntaf,” interrupted Gog, his low voice thick with admiration as he stared at Blondie adoringly. I noticed she flinched under his gaze.
“What did she do?” I asked the coblynau.
He turned his grey face towards me, his striations pulsing as he began talking, a physical manifestation of the excitement I could hear in his voice.
“She destroyed ’em, she did. For good. We’ve not heard a peep from ’em since she battled ’em, as our champion.”
My ears perked up at the word “champion,” and I looked enquiringly at Blondie. But I wasn’t the only one.
“Wait, that was you?” Anyan asked.
Blondie nodded and Anyan studied her for a moment. “This is all starting to make sense,” he said, eventually.
“What makes sense?” I asked, utterly confused.
Blondie thought for a moment, then sighed. “This is silly. There’s an easier way to do this.”
The Original stood and turned her back to us, only to strip off the tight, long-sleeved black T-shirt she now wore. Descending from her shoulder blades like trailing wings or drooping vines were two tattooed dragons: the left one white, the right one red.
I stood, moving toward her as I knew what to do. I indicated the others should follow my lead. When I was behind Blondie and close enough to touch, I raised my fingers to her inked skin.
It was time for a little show and tell.
My raised fingers made contact with the warm skin of Blondie’s back, and then I was no longer Jane True.
Standing in a field, the bodies of the fallen all around me. I saw the corpse of the power-mad idiot who’d let himself be seduced by the voices, and had released the Red and White from their slumber.
But his death gave me no pleasure, for now only one thing mattered: stopping the monsters.
I can’t do this, I told the voice in my mind.
[You have to,] the creature responded, its voice as calm and loving as possible.
They are too strong, I said, even my mental voice weary.
[Yes. They are. But I will help. My cousins must be stopped, and hopefully for good, this time.]
The creature’s voice went silent, but I still felt its presence in my mind. My head turned without my willing it, and I knew it was using my eyes to scan the ground in front of me. My gaze lit on the rough-hewn, double-headed ax of a dead goblin.
[That will do,] the creature said. [Pick it up.]
I did as the creature asked, bending down to pick up the labrys. As my fingers made contact with the smooth wood of the haft, I felt a burst of power so strong as to be painful surge through my body.
[Steady now,] the creature said. [This will hurt.]
The power grew, screaming out of me with my own cries of pain. My hands, controlled by the creature, gripped the labrys. It burned with power: power that I fed from a source I couldn’t understand—a mixture of the creature’s power and its connection to water and earth.