Fractured Magic: Chapter Eighteen

Far beyond Gallontea’s walls, three orinians, a faerie, and a maranet emerged from a wide storm drain onto the shore of a lagoon. The dark water reflected the overcast sky above, but when rain began to fall, slow at first but gaining momentum, that image fractured into a thousand pieces. b

“I’d only just dried,” Maebhe whined.

Beside her, Kieran frowned and pulled his jacket up over his head.

“The storm drains’ll be flooded, soon enough,” Ivey complained as well, squinting up at the sky. “I’ll have to go back overland.”

He certainly hadn’t dressed for cold, biting rain, and Maebhe found herself shrugging out of her borrowed cloak. “Do you want this?” she asked, but Ivey hurried to stop her.

“Keep it. A few hours of discomfort for me are nothing on the journey you all have ahead of you.”

When Ivey started up the hill, the others trailed after. Only Maebhe ran ahead, stopping at the top and blinking owlishly at the valley below. It was bright, despite the rain, despite the storm clouds — but maybe that was just her eyes, used to darkness after the long journey underground. In the distance, past a break in the clouds, was a single dusk-soaked sun, turning the sky vivid red. The other had set hours before.

From where Maebhe stood, the Gallontean plains sloped gently downward and away, its tall grasses bisected by the Unity Road. Small towns and settlements sat scattered along it, as far as she could see, and somewhere beyond it all, Lyryma waited. Maebhe looked to the north, where Gallontea’s silhouette sat on the horizon. She could just make out the spired peak of Unity’s clock tower.

“I didn’t realize we’d gotten so far,” she said. Her curls clung to her head, rain-damp, and made her look smaller.

“We have a long way to go yet,” Drys said. “If we want to reach Lyryma tomorrow, we’ll need to cover more ground tonight.”

Ivey pointed to a small cluster of lights, far down the road. “If you make it to that farm tonight, I know a farmer who’ll give you a dry place to sleep. He lives on the far side of town; look for a barn with a blue and gold barn quilt, but don’t let anyone else see you.”

They said their goodbyes at the side of the road, Ivey returning to Gallontea while the others started their journey south. It was a long walk, longer than it had seemed from the hill, and they didn’t reach the barn Ivey mentioned until late into the evening. After some bickering, Kieran and Ide went ahead to the farmhouse while Drys and Maebhe stayed back; with their wings, Drys couldn’t risk venturing into sight, and with how crabby the steady rainfall had made Maebhe, she couldn’t maintain a conversation.

Half an hour passed before Kieran and Ide returned, Ide carrying keys to the barn and a large pot of soup for them all to share and Kieran’s eyes suspiciously red-rimmed. “They were very kind,” Kieran sniffed, at Maebhe’s questioning look.

It wasn’t exactly a comfortable night’s sleep, still damp and laying on a bed of hay with Ide’s feet in her face, but Maebhe figured it beat sleeping in the rain. And in the morning, the farmer’s wife woke them early, offering them a ride to the Lyryma Forest.

Maebhe elbowed her twin. “You should cry on people more often, if this is what it gets us,” she whispered.

And so she spent her morning sprawled in the back of a wide wagon, her head pillowed on Drys’ soft wings while she listened to Kieran and Ide chat with the farmer’s wife.

In the afternoon, the road branched in two directions, splitting around Lyryma Forest. One branch led east, circling toward the coastal Unity city of Adriat. The other led west, toward the Alfheimr province and Illyon. There was no road through the wood, and for good reason.

The farmer’s wife stopped her wagon there, in the shadow of Lyryma’s trees. “You’re sure you want to go that way?” she asked.

Maebhe eyed the tree line as she hopped to the ground. From here, they looked like any old trees, not scary or supernatural. Maybe the stories were wrong again. If Egil could still be alive, then Lyryma could be friendly.

“I’m afraid we don’t have much choice,” Kieran said, shaking the woman’s hand. “Thank you for bringing us this far.”

“It was my pleasure, dear,” she said, giving his cheek a fond pat. Maebhe fought the urge to roll her eyes. Her twin had always been popular among a certain crowd. In a final, ominous parting, the old woman said, “Be careful in those woods.”

Maebhe waved her goodbyes along with the rest, but turning her back on those trees made her shiver. She almost expected them to have moved when she turned around, but they looked exactly as they had before: simply, unassuming — pretty, even. There was little green left among them, changed instead to yellow and orange and the occasional vivid red. The wind rustled through them while she waited for someone else to take the lead. No one did. Looking over, she found them all eyeing the forest with the same unease — all but Drys, who gave her a cheeky wink.

“I don’t know about this,” Ide said, echoing Maebhe’s thoughts.

“It’s just a forest,” Kieran said, at odds with his expression. “Drys, tell them they’re being ridiculous.”

“They’re not. They’re wise to fear Lyryma,” Drys said, unhelpfully.

Kieran scoffed. Like Maebhe, spite had a way of spurring him into motion. He straightened his shoulders and, while the others looked on, marched into the trees.

“Are you going after him, then?” Maebhe asked Ide. “Because I won’t if you won’t.”

“He’s your brother.”

“And your fiance.”

When Kieran had passed almost entirely into shadow, he turned and waved his arms at the trio standing past the tree line. “Look!” he called. “I entered the forest and nothing bad happened!”

Maebhe sucked in a deep breath, pointed at Kieran, and screamed, “Kieran, behind you!”

Kieran moved faster than Maebhe thought him capable, whirling so frantically that he slipped and landed flat on his tail. Maebhe doubled over laughing, not surprised when Drys joined in. Even Ide fought not to smile. When he realized he’d been tricked, Kieran picked himself up and brushed the dirt off his pants. Maebhe could hear him cursing even a hundred feet off.

“You should be ashamed of yourselves! You—,” he called, cutting off abruptly when something dragged him into the forest, out of sight.

Ide was running after him before Maebhe could even process what had happened, but then she was following at Ide’s heels, quickly overtaking her and darting between the trees first — only to scramble to stop mid-stride when Kieran jumped out from behind a tree with a cry of, “Hyah!”

She had time only to scream before colliding with him. He fell, she stumbled and rolled over him, and they both landed face-first in the mud.

“You ass!” Maebhe shrieked. She tackled Kieran just as he'd started to pull himself back up, easily catching him in a headlock while he laughed too hard to defend himself. She shoved him into the mud, ignoring his muffled protests, and only released him when Ide arrived. Ide flicked him on the forehead, her tail simultaneously whipping out to snap against his arm.

“What have I told you about including me in your pranks?” she hissed.

“Not to do it,” Maebhe said smugly, sitting on her haunches in the mud.

“Don’t you dare,” Ide warned her. “You started this.”

“I quite like you all,” Drys said, delighted.

Using her sleeve, Maebhe wiped the mud off her face and glared at Kieran. As dignified as he could manage, half-covered in mud himself, Kieran said, “Don't look at me like that. I got you into the forest, didn't I?”

Loath as she was to admit it, he was right. They had all safely entered Lyryma forest, and as he’d said, nothing bad had happened. It was strange, though. As normal as it had looked from the outside, inside, it felt as though it had doubled, tripled in scale: Maebhe couldn’t see the tops of the trees from where she kneeled, but the roots that twisted over the ground were almost as wide as she was.

She thought of all the stories she’d heard growing up, about orinians vanishing in the woods, about monsters the size of houses and magics that stole your soul and changed you into something unrecognizable. Well. It was too late to turn back.

Once Maebhe and Kieran had picked themselves up, they pressed on. The deeper they journeyed, the more the trees’ canopies blocked the sunslight, the more the air around them warmed, the more the humidity clung to their hair and skin. Maebhe had to roll up Egil’s — now muddy — cloak and secure it to her pack. This climate was completely different from Gallontea north of it and Orean south. It should have been impossible.

Ahead of the perplexed orinians, Drys only sighed contentedly and stretched their wings. Maebhe watched the light dance across their golden feathers and let it distract her.

“What did you do to get locked up?” she called. In yesterday’s chaos, it hadn’t occurred to her to ask sooner.

Kieran elbowed her. “Don’t be rude.”

“As if you haven’t already asked,” Maebhe hissed, elbowing him back.

“I haven’t!”

“I don’t mind,” Drys said magnanimously. “I killed a Unity representative.”

Kieran and Maebhe stopped slapping at each other and stared, wide-eyed. “Really?” Ide asked.

Drys scoffed. “No. I flew too near Gallontea. Unity thought I was stealing secrets and sent a dragon after me.”

“Oh,” Maebhe said.

“You sound disappointed, May-vuh,” they teased. “Would you rather I’d really killed someone?”

Maebhe shrugged.

Drys laughed and shook out their wings. “It’s good to be back,” they said, shaking out their wings. “It’ll be even better to return to Home.”

“You’ve said that a few times, now. Don’t you mean return home?” Kieran asked.

“To Home,” Drys reaffirmed. “Home has many names, but this is the one we use with outsiders because it gives you the best understanding of what Home is. You could also call it a city, or a hub. Millions of nympherai make their homes in this forest, scattered to the winds, but during the dangerous seasons we all return to Home.”

“Dangerous seasons,” Ide repeated. “What does that mean?”

Drys shrugged. “Lyryma doesn’t follow winter, spring, summer like the outside world, but it has its own cycles. During some of those cycles, we need the extra strength numbers provide,” Drys said. The concerned look the orinians shared didn’t escape them, and they laughed. “Don’t you believe your own stories? When we say this forest is magic, it’s not superstition, and it’s not exaggeration. We have science and reason, too, but we still say this forest is impossible. But I don’t need to lecture — you’ll see, soon enough.”

Maebhe realized something, then. “Are there frìth in Home?”

Drys looked back at her, puzzled by her excitement. “Of course. Have you never met one before?”

“Never,” Maebhe said, shaking her head.

“Hmm. I know they used to visit Orean, on occasion, but I can’t remember if that was two, twenty, or two-hundred years ago.”

“You don’t remember?” Maebhe asked. For the first time, it struck her that Drys might be older than they looked. She’d only ever been around orinians; she’d forgotten how strange and diverse the world was. “I’ve never seen a frìth in Orean.”

“There haven’t been any,” Kieran clarified. “Not since the current King took reign, at least.”

“A word of advice, then: they’re very different from humans. The frìth of Home are the oldest people alive today, some of them even older than Lyryma itself,” Drys said. “That does affect the way they move through the world. Be patient with them; they don’t understand how little time you or I have, by comparison.”

Ears pressed to her head, Maebhe craned her neck to watch around them. She couldn’t imagine anything older than these trees.

“They also won’t hear of the outside world unless it’s on their terms,” Drys continued. “So I wouldn’t mention this kidnapping business.”

“But—,” Kieran started. At a warning look from Drys, he shut his mouth again. “Understood.”

The faerie turned to walk backwards, so they could survey the orinians. “No arguments from you, Ms. Maebhe?” they asked.

Maebhe’s eyes widened. Instead of answering, she warned, “Look out!” just as Drys backed into a tree.

With an oof and a dazed step forward, Drys twisted to look up at the tree trunk in surprise. None of them had noticed it there moments before, its gnarled, coarse bark covered in all sorts of strange, blue illustrations. It was as if it had materialized out of the dense foliage surrounding them. As Maebhe stepped forward, trying to get a better look at the illustrations, the tree trunk — the crooked, furry tree trunk — moved back. It picked itself right off the ground and jumped back several feet, a cloven hoof bigger than Drys’ head striking the ground with a thud.

With growing horror, Maebhe lifted her gaze. It wasn’t a tree trunk at all. It was a leg.

Bit of a cliffhanger for this one! This and the next chapter were actually originally going to be combined, but it was getting a bit too long, even for my standards. So we'll just have to wait and see what happens to the orinians next week. Thank you for reading!

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