Mara checked her trinkets on the table. “Sun is setting in Seattle. We should get a move on.”
I frowned. “But it was just morning in Venice Beach.”
Mara waved her hand at me. “Time in the in-between passes differently. It’s unpredictable.”
Trissa nodded, closing the blue door, and I caught just a glimpse of someone walking past with remembrance wreaths. Each person in the village would hang one on their door out of respect. When you had such a small population, any death hit the community hard, but my mom … she was special and now I knew why. She alone kept Faerie standing.
“Strap in,” Mara called out. I looked over to where there had been only one chair with a harness and now there were three.
“Wait…” I looked at Mara in shock and she winked.
How powerful was she? Clearly not powerful enough to rip off those cuffs … I wondered what got her imprisoned in the first place. The elders didn’t dish out punishments that easily. We were a forgiving people, so her crimes must have been bad. Really bad.
I strapped in, Elle next to me and then Trissa on her right. They were both wearing full leather battle gear, two swords each. I knew my mother had a guard and I’d asked her why once. “Because mommy’s job can get dangerous,” she had said. I’d just left it at that, never asking many questions because it seemed to make her uncomfortable. She just wanted to hear about my day, or go for walks on the river’s edge, not talk about work.
“Here we go!” Mara called out. That lurch pulled at my gut for a split second and then was gone.
Mara spun a dial on her desk. “Alright, Triss, I’m thinking two hours is enough? If you’re not back by then, I’ll send Bashur.” Mara checked her watch and stepped out from behind the desk.
I unclipped, feeling overwhelmed and sick to my stomach. This was all happening way too fast. But the thought of those leaves on the Tree of Life, dead and dry … the empty disks at the base of the trunk … it spurred me forward.
“Bashur?” I queried.
Mara grinned, “Didn’t want to overwhelm you last night and this morning, so I had him stay in my room.” She walked over to the second blue door, not the one we’d just opened, and pulled it back.
“BASH!” she called out into the house.
Elle and I shared a look. The sound of pounding feet padded across the floor, and one of the paintings rattled on the wall.
Mara motioned that we should step out into the hall and so we did, just in time to see a gigantic … dog … round the corner.
Two strips of drool hung from his mouth as the huge brown beast bounded towards us. He jumped up on Mara, licking her face and she burst into fits of laughter. “Bash, this is Lily, Violet’s daughter,” she told the dog as if he understood. He leapt down from her and came right over to me, sniffing my hands and then my feet. When he finally looked up at me, there was intelligence in his eyes.
“Protect her,” Mara told him. He barked once.
What the…?
“Elle, her guard,” Mara then informed him. He smelled all over Elle’s hands and legs and finally craned his neck to look up at her.
“Protect her too.”
Bashur barked.
“Is he … magical?” We didn’t have dogs in Faerie; we had gnomes, sprites, pixies and a whole host of other creatures, but not dogs. They were of Earth.
Mara shrugged. “I may have given him a little upgrade.” She winked again.
Whoa.
Bashur walked over and nuzzled Trissa’s abdomen, whimpering. Trissa knelt down. “It’s not your fault. You did good. Good boy.”
He whimpered again, tail and ears tucked under, and it hit me that he was missing my mother.
“Was he there when…?”
Oh my God.
Trissa nodded. “He saved my life. Got us out and back to Mara. Carried your mother on his back.”
I looked at his fur now and saw that it was tinged pink in parts.
Fuck.
I wasn’t prepared for these emotions. They went away and then they came back, and I was constantly shoving them down, wave upon wave of grief that I kept trying to repress.
I knelt down and stroked his head. “Thank you, Bashur. Because of you I was able to speak to my mom before she … left.” I pulled at the locket at my neck.
He licked my face and I stood, wiping the drool off.
Gross.
“Alright, I hate to be the asshole,” Mara called out, “but we have a small window of time. They will be moving the crystal after last night, so we need to move fast.”
Right. No time to grieve, no time to train or learn anything, just go, go, go.
“Weapons.” Mara walked to the weapons room she’d briefly showed me before. “Pick something small, Lily. Trissa and Elle should be watching your back. Your only task is to find and get that crystal out.”
I glanced at the wall numbly, cursing my mother for her stupid plan of wanting me to have an innocent childhood. I’d give up some of my clueless childhood for a bit of preparation about what the hell was going on right now.
“You’re good with blades in close combat. This is nice,” Trissa called over my shoulder. I spun and she handed me a black obsidian dagger. It was perfect. I slipped it into my thigh holster.
Mara reached up to hand me something, and the second I saw it my stomach dropped out.
The bag. The felt-lined, charcoal messenger bag my mother never took off. It looked freshly washed. “It’s special. Holds the crystal, and if a human ever looks inside, they will see old books.”
I nodded, tempted to ask if we could schedule in a quick crying session but knowing there was no time. Slipping the bag over my shoulder, I straightened myself.
“This way. Clock’s ticking.” Mara scampered through her house barefoot. We passed four blue doors along the way until we found ourselves in the laundry room.
“Open it,” she told me.
Taking a deep breath, I did. Crisp, dewy air hit me as I peered out into an open wooded area. We were on some kind of private land and rain was lightly falling from the sky. Trissa pulled on Elle’s arm and they stepped outside while Mara turned me to face her. “You’re the last seeker we have. I know you never got to see Faerie before it fell, but it was beautiful. It was a thousand times bigger than it is now … with proper seasons and rows and rows of flowers and three-hundred-foot-tall trees … animals that I can’t even describe. The land was so … alive.” Her eyes lined with tears and I was touched at her beautiful memories of Faerie, but wondered why she was telling me.
Leaning in, she grabbed my shoulders and whispered in my ear: “The elders don’t want to put too much pressure on you, but I think you can handle it. I want you to know that once you return all the crystals to the Tree of Life, Faerie will restore itself and you can travel across her lands discovering her endless wonders.”
Shock ripped through me and she pulled back to face me with kindness in her eyes.
“It was your mother’s greatest dream. To see Faerie restored.”
I’d seen maps of old Faerie in history class. It was huge, as big as Earth, and now we encompassed a space that was a mere ten miles wide. You could fly across town in a blink. What would it be like to restore Faerie to its former glory? Was that even possible? Her lesson shook me, and holy shit did I feel the pressure.