C.E. Murphy - Truthseeker

“What about—” Lara broke off both speech and action, stopping halfway to her feet, then sat back down abruptly, fingers steepled hollowly in front of her mouth. “What about my mom, I need to call her before I turn up on the evening news. And Cynthia, she didn’t believe me when I called. And … and look at what I’m wearing,” she whispered. The light woven shirt and breeches she still wore under the armored leggings would draw curious glances in the best of circumstances, which she didn’t foresee in her immediate future. “And I should call Dafydd. See him. Something. He must think I’m …” Dead. Lost. She wasn’t even certain what words to use. “Seventeen months,” she whispered into her palms, and Kelly, slowly, crouched to pull her hands away from her mouth. Lara let her, trying to control the trembling that rushed through her.

“Okay. It’s going to be okay, Lara. Look, you stay here for a minute, okay? I’m going to call my boss and see if I can leave Ruth in charge, or if she can come in, or if I can close the shop early. This is an emergency,” she said gently. “I’ll take you home, we’ll get you changed, and we’ll go from there. Okay? Okay.” Kelly squeezed Lara’s hands, then went into the front of the shop to make the necessary calls.

It was absolutely absurd, Lara thought, to fall apart now. She’d traveled between two worlds, ridden in battle, and commanded more power than she’d ever imagined possible. The prospect of dealing with a handful of mortal details shouldn’t be overwhelming enough to shut her down entirely, but even the endless music of truth was barely a static rush at the back of her mind. It was the disappearing time: that was the worst of it, the most bewildering. Lara put her face in her hands again, waiting silently for Kelly’s return.

It was preceded by “God, you look awful. Here,” and as Lara looked up, Kelly rustled a candy bar from her purse. “When was the last time you ate?”

Lara whispered, “Apparently about a year and a half ago,” and took the candy hungrily.

Kelly snorted laughter and sat, looking like she wanted to hug Lara again but was trying to let her eat. “Trish is on her way. We can leave Ruth in charge, so you eat that and we’ll go back to my place. I kept some of your clothes.” A wistful smile played over her lips. “I just kept thinking how sad you’d be if you came home and it was all gone. So I kept some of them, and look, you came home, and now you don’t have to be sad.” Her voice broke on the last words and, candy bar or not, Lara surged forward to give her an awkward hug.

“S’okay,” Kelly whispered into her hair. “S’okay, Lar. We’ll get it figured out. C’mon. C’mon, let’s go, okay, hon? It’s going to be okay.” She drew Lara to her feet and led her out of the back room, repeating, “It’ll be okay.”

And Lara, grateful, heard nothing but truth in the promise.

Boston’s streets were unimaginably loud after a single day in the Barrow-lands. Lara stood on the tiny balcony that Kelly’s apartment sported, red and white lights of traffic blurring in her tired vision. The day had disappeared into reuniting with her mother, whose disbelief and relief at Lara’s return had led, for the second time, to the telling of where she’d been. The second and, Lara expected, the last: no one else would accept the truth for what it was.

She had more than half imagined her mother would tell a story of some old family legend, a story of some ancestor who claimed she’d been stolen away to fairyland, and had borne a child to an elfin lover. It would be the sort of tale Gretchen Jansen would never have told her truth-sensing daughter for fear of upsetting her in the same way stories of Santa Claus had.

But there had been no such story, nothing to laugh or wonder over. If such a thing had ever happened, it was long lost to history, but Lara thought it more likely that Emyr and Dafydd were right: that her magic was only human, and all the more unique for it.

Gretchen had reluctantly returned home as night fell, leaving Lara both glad to have seen her and utterly exhausted. There would be more of the same tomorrow and, she feared, for days to come: she hadn’t even yet been to Lord Matthew’s, much less to the police. Sharing her story with her mother and Kelly was by far the easiest of what she would face over the next several days. They knew her well enough to accept it, even in all its wondrous impossibility.

Her bones ached from weariness, and probably from having ridden horses and carried swords and flinging her armored self through a breach between worlds and landing hard in a sandbox. Despite tiredness she let out a rough laugh and leaned hard on the balcony’s iron fence. Sleep evaded her: the streets were too loud, or, more likely, her emotions were too high. She, who had spent a lifetime rooted in pedantic truth, who had never believed such a thing could happen, had become a time traveler, and was lost in both the awe and horror of that fact.

The clothes Kelly had kept for her had been tucked into boxes whose lids were dusty, and the tissue paper her jewelry had been wrapped in was fragile and creased with a year’s disuse. Proof, in small ways, that yesterday had been a long time ago.

And there were other matters to dwell on, too, if she let herself. Not just Dafydd’s imprisonment, but the history Ioan had hinted at. There’d been no mistruth in what he’d recounted, but she was unaccustomed to trying to sort history from legend. The way humans turned men into legends often rang false with her; she had no idea what the reality behind Robin Hood was, but no version of that story, passed off as history, had ever struck a true chord in her mind. By those lights, Unseelie legend might have been born of fact, which opened a window on a much larger landscape than she’d originally been asked to see.

She said, “Changes that will break the world,” to the street below. Ioan’s worldbreaking weapon nagged at her; if it was something she could find, or wield, it might help bring answers to light. But it was long lost, whatever it might have been. Or lost, at least, to the Barrow-lands; that was what Ioan had said. Lara’s gaze went unfocused, city horizon turning to a blur.

Lost to his world, and what better place to lose it than hers? They were linked, but only royalty could work the worldwalking spell, and if Emyr had cause to hide a weapon in her world, it would shed more light on why he was so displeased with Dafydd’s hundred-year sojourn across the breach.

“Lar?” The bedroom door opened, Kelly’s voice pitched just loud enough to carry. Lara waved from the balcony and Kelly came in to lean in its doorway. “I heard you talking. You okay?”

“I don’t know. I’m confused.”

“I can’t imagine why.” Kelly made a face as she came out to the balcony. “Sorry. I lost the habit of not being sarcastic out loud.”

“It’s okay. I’ve been gone a long time, and you only ever had to do it with me.”

“But I’m probably a nicer person when I keep the snark on the inside.” Kelly peeked down at the street nervously, fingers knotted around the rail. “I never come out here.”

“I know. I don’t understand why you’re willing to spend an extra hundred dollars a month for an apartment with two balconies when you’re afraid of heights.”

“Hundred and fifty. Rent went up. But Dickon and I are moving in together soon, so it won’t matter.” Kelly gave the railing a tentative shake. “You could probably stay here, if you wanted. Move in, I mean, and have the place to yourself when we get married. It’d be easier than looking for a new place to live.”

Surprise cascaded through Lara like cold water pouring down her insides. “I hadn’t thought that far ahead.”