C.E. Murphy - Truthseeker

“Living forever doesn’t mean remembering forever. The past fades as it does for mortal memory as well, but for us, it stretches so far back that our own lives become legend. Only a truthseeker can strip away the fog and tell us what truly happened.”

“Which you think is …?”

“I believe—my people believe—that we were once, if not masters of this land, at least equals in its governing.” Ioan fell silent, leaving an air of expectation that Lara sighed into.

“And? Do you know what that answer sounds like, to me? It sounds like a half-tuned orchestra. The strings are groaning against each other and the wind instruments are creaking like they’re falling trees. Whatever it is you’re not saying makes what you have said sound like a lie. Half-truths aren’t enough.”

Ioan pulled his face long, another expression that seemed more human than the Seelie usually indulged in. “Very well. We also believe it was Emyr, or his court, who called worldbreaking magic and drowned our lands and drove us underground.”

Lara interrupted, “Worldbreaking magic.” Oisín’s prophecy danced through her mind and sent hairs rising over her skin. If the power was something that lay outside her, it suggested there was some hope of returning home, rather than her very travel between worlds presenting a threat. “What kind of magic was that? How do you break a world?”

“With a weapon long since lost to us.” Ioan shrugged, hands spread in loss. “If such a thing existed outside of legend, I think it can no longer be in Annwn. I’ve searched,” he said more softly. “What can break a world can perhaps heal it as well. But without it, all we have are stories that say we’ve been persecuted by the Seelie for longer than memory allows us to recall. Without it, only a truthseeker’s help may permit us to regain our rightful place in this world.”

“Only a truthseeker’s help.” Something in the words stood out, making their obvious content so shallow as to be meaningless. Lara got to her feet, suddenly uncomfortable. “Tell me what you mean by that.”

“If our legends are revealed as history, then I’ll need a truthseeker’s vision to turn the tide of war in my favor.”

“Emyr mentioned that,” Lara said thinly. “That truthseekers could say something and through force of will make it true.”

“The most powerful, yes. If your skill isn’t that great, then I would give you maps of our lands so you might show me ahead of time where our enemy will strike, and give us the advantage.”

Lara lifted her gaze to the far side of the pool. She heard music, not in Ioan’s words, though his conviction rang there, too. No, it was a chime, a warning that seemed to start behind her heart and fill her chest. “And if your legends are just that? Legends? If there’s no lost worldbreaking magic, if the Unseelie are trespassers on Seelie land?”

Ioan’s silence drew out long enough to answer her without words. Lara’s heartbeat fluttered, a butterfly sensation that clawed her breath away. Her ears pounded with the relentless thin tone of bells, almost drowning out Ioan’s eventual response. The words came slowly, as if he was only just coming to realize the truth: “I’m sorry, Truthseeker, but I can’t let you go.”

A breath hissed through her teeth. “So you’re not such a good guy after all. You’re very reasonable, but not a good guy. I can’t let you keep me.” She recognized the music now, recognized the feeling it built in her, though it had been far less intense in the forest outside the Seelie citadel. It rang so loudly a path appeared, striking its way through her heart and leading into the pool, where it reflected hard against silver stones.

“I think you cannot stop me.”

Lara whispered, “But I can,” and stretched out a hand toward the water. “There’s a true way through these woods. A true way home again.” Laughter akin to panic knotted itself in her throat, and she reached for the only phrase she could think of that would unlock a magical door: “Open, Sesame!”

A silver-shot door tore apart the bottom of the pool, water draining at a tremendous rate.

Lara dove in, leaving Ioan’s shout of protest behind.

She hit muddy earth with a squelch, breath knocked away. Silence rang out around her, more than just a cessation of music. It had a quality that said an instant earlier the air had been full of voices and laughter, and that surprise had taken delight away.

She ached with the impact against the ground, armor jabbing her uncomfortably, but not badly enough to force her to move. For a brief eternity she lay where she was, facedown in damp earth, struggling for breath. She thought she might be glad to lie there forever, except an uncertain voice said, “Lady, are you okay?”

Lara flipped onto her back in a spray of wet sand. Sunlight burst in her eyes, blinding her before a ring of children leaned over her, curious faces blocking out the sun. A dozen or so, more children than she’d seen in total within the Barrow-lands, and all of them with ordinary round human ears and varied skin tones and eyes that ranged from brown-black to pale blue.

“Are you okay?” a little boy asked again. He was dripping: all of the children were, despite the brilliant sunlight.

“I think so.” Lara sounded hoarse, but no discordance rang with her answer, relief in itself. “Where am I?”

“The farm park,” the boy said. “Where’d you come from?”

“Fairyland,” Lara said without thinking, and a little girl smiled brilliantly.

“Are you wearing fairy clothes? They’re all shiny!”

“That’s armor, dummy,” the boy said scornfully. “Like the Power Rangers wear.”

Lara sat up, the ring of children moving slightly to keep her surrounded. Sunlight glittered off a metal slide only a few feet away, her landing-place the sandbox at its foot. Swing sets and jungle gyms were strewn about, children arrested in their playing to watch the gathering around Lara. “The farm park? Is that in Boston?”

The little boy looked nonplussed. “We live in Arlington. Are you crazy?”

“I don’t think so. Thank you for …” Lara trailed off, words lost under a barrage of fairyland questions from the girls and a growing interest in her possible insanity from the boys. Her hand went to her hip, looking for a cell phone that was still back in her office at Lord Matthew’s. She encountered an empty scabbard instead, and dismay seized her. “I really must look like I’m from fairyland.”

The children scattered as running footsteps heralded an adult’s arrival. Lara lurched to her feet in time to be greeted by a scowling, worried woman who snapped the children farther away before demanding, “Where did you come from? A pool full of water fell out of the sky, and then you did. I didn’t seen a—an airplane?” She looked skyward, and Lara did, too, remembering urban legends she’d read about scuba divers found in the middle of forest fires, dropped there by helicopters scooping seawater to battle the fires with. She wished she had a similar story to explain away her arrival.

“I’m not sure how I got here. I’m sorry, but could I possibly borrow a cell phone?” she asked, abruptly hoping she could brazen it out. “I left mine at work yesterday.”

The little girl grabbed the woman’s hand. “I think she’s magic, Mommy. She says she was in fairyland.”

Lara winced, painfully aware that “being in fairyland” sounded like a euphemism for drug use. The woman pursed her lips, looking Lara up and down, then wordlessly drew a cell phone out of her purse and offered it. “Thank you,” Lara whispered, and edged out of the sandbox to sit on the bottom of the slide as she dialed the only phone number she had memorized.