C. E. Murphy - Wayfinder

“There is that difficulty,” Dafydd agreed. “One of several reasons to keep the truth hidden. I came to your world to find Lara, Dickon. Lara or someone like her. A truthseeker, to help my people find a murderer in their midst. I’ve been looking a very long time, and I swear to you, I meant for none of this to happen. Detective Washington never should have been injured, and I’m given to understand one other man died. That was never my intent. I would have protected them, and healed Reginald Washington when he fell protecting all of us, if I could have.”

“But you couldn’t because your fairy magic doesn’t work that way, except she”—Dickon pointed accusingly at Aerin—“managed.”

“It was not a healing,” Aerin repeated impatiently. “That skill is not mine to own. I have a gift of earthspeaking, and even this iron-ridden world was willing to respond. Your de-tek-tiv shares the strength of the land he was born to for a little while, is all. It will lend him what he needs to recover, if he has the will for it.”

“Yeah, well, what I get out of that is in the end Reg owes you his life, and regardless of how fucking weird this all is, he probably wouldn’t like it if the babe who saved his ass ended up on a dissection table for her troubles.”

Aerin flicked a glance at Lara, obviously wondering if the magic that allowed them to communicate had interpreted Dickon’s words correctly. Lara wrinkled her nose, but nodded, and Aerin’s eyebrows darted up in dismayed comprehension.

Dickon ignored the byplay, looking instead at Kelly. “And you. You can just run with all of this? Just like that? I don’t get it, Kelly. I just don’t.”

“I’ve known Lara since we were freshmen in college.” Kelly sat down on the edge of the couch, trying not to disturb Ioan. “I thought she was kind of bonkers at first, because she was always so careful with what she said and always looked sort of pained when somebody said, like, ‘Oh I’m fine’ when you’d ask how they were. After a while I figured out she just always knew if somebody was telling her the truth, and that she never told lies herself. It’s hard not to believe somebody like that when you’ve known them for years, even when they’re telling you something preposterous. It’s not really that I just ran with it. It’s more that I’ve had a lot of time to get used to Lara, and that’s what I ran with. That and I still think I was right. There was no happy way out of what happened at the garage and wasting any time at all would have cost David his life. It’s what I tried telling you in the first place, and now even you came around to it.” She made a gesture at Aerin, then fell silent, rubbing the ring finger of her left hand.

“Yeah, great, I’m the one who didn’t want to run away from a crime scene and somehow I end up the asshole in this scenario.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Dickon—”

Dafydd sat forward, interrupting Kelly with an uplifted palm. “We could spend hours throwing accusations and recriminations around, but I’m afraid we don’t have the time. I very much doubt Merrick has been sitting idle in the hours we’ve been gone.”

“Assuming it’s only hours,” Lara said. “Does the worldwalking spell automatically tie time together, or is that a separate component decided by the spellcaster, like deciding what buttons to use on a suit?”

Regret hit her unexpectedly. Less than a month ago in her personal timeline, she’d been given the opportunity to create a wardrobe for a client at her boss’s tailoring shop, a chance that would have made her a master tailor in her own right. The client’s suits had all been determined by the beautiful antique ivory buttons he’d brought in, salvaged from his own grandfather’s suits a century earlier. Someone else would have completed Mr. Mugabwi’s wardrobe, because the scant weeks of her own timeline had been well over a year in the mortal world. There were things she would never get back, no matter how the undertakings in the Barrow-lands played out.

Dafydd fluttered his fingers as if trying to pluck the answer out of the air. He looked exotic and prosaic all at once, an elfin prince sitting comfortably in Kelly’s living room, and despite the flash of regret, Lara smiled. There were things she would never have discovered, either, had she not risked stepping between worlds.

“It doesn’t bind the timelines together automatically, no. When I cast it to come here it was my will that let a decade pass for every day in the Barrow-lands. When I brought you there the first time, it was my intent to bind them more closely, so you would lose almost no time to the travel. But left on its own, without a deliberate concept of how much time should or might pass, it’s desperately arbitrary, Lara. Oisín hadn’t been in the Barrow-lands so very long when he first left us, but hundreds of years had passed in his native Ireland.”

“Your idea of ‘so very long’ and mine might be very different,” Lara pointed out. “Either way, I followed you back to Annwn less than half a day after Ioan brought you home. Whether Merrick meant for it to be or not, it was still six months there. We’ve spent most of a day here now. If it’s been another six months …”

“Then it’s possible the power balance has shifted entirely.” Dafydd turned his hand up in a familiar gesture: Lara had seen him call sparks of lightning between his fingertips that way before. This time, though his brow furrowed with concentration, nothing happened, and he closed his fingers again, loosely. “And I now lack the power to open the worldwalking spell myself.”

“It had to be done,” Aerin protested roughly. “You would still be caught there, or—”

Dafydd shook his head, stilling her objections. “It’s commentary, not accusation, Aerin. Lara’s opened a worldwalking path once. Perhaps she can do it again.”

“The Barrow-lands are a lot more receptive to magic than this world is, Dafydd. I don’t know if I can breach the walls if I start on this side, not unless I use the staff.”

For a moment everyone, even Dickon, looked toward the ivory staff propped in the corner of Kelly’s living room. Out of Lara’s hands, it was nothing more than an ornate and beautiful art piece, but the memory of its eagerness to be used sent a shiver over her skin. “There’s Ioan,” she said without much hope, and everyone looked from the staff back to the sleeping prince.

“Even if he were conscious, I think the magic would be his undoing,” Dafydd said quietly. “The Barrow-lands are not forgiving, and I fear what they might take from him in return for the magics.”

“There lies your problem, brother.” Ioan spoke without opening his eyes, though his voice was stronger. “You, as always, seek the magic of the Barrow-lands, which by their very name we know to be the lands of the dead. I will call on the magic of Annwn.”

Dafydd, after a moment’s long silence, turned to Lara and with utmost sincerity gathered her hands, kissed her knuckles, and, dismayed, asked, “Do I sound that pretentious?”

A giggle erupted and Lara pulled her hands free to cover her mouth. “Once in a while, yes.”

“Oh dear.” He looked back at Ioan, whose offense was written plainly across his features. “Regardless of what you call it, brother, the land is one and the same. I—”

“But it’s not.” Lara straightened as Dafydd’s words filled with an orchestra’s worth of untuned instruments. “He’s right, Dafydd. Annwn is what your world was when it was whole. The Barrow-lands are dying. You’re all dying. You must know that.”

Not for the first time, Aerin spoke when it became clear royalty would not. “We see that we are stagnant, but it is something we … ignore,” she finally chose. “Immortality grants that leisure. It’s difficult to believe or accept that we are dying when so few of us ever do.”