C.E. Murphy - Truthseeker

“Maybe it’s good,” she echoed, dissonance running over her skin. It wasn’t a lie, but she didn’t believe it any more than Kelly had.

They’d stopped at Kelly’s bank less than five minutes after Dickon left them, and Kelly had withdrawn most of her savings. “Eight and a half thousand,” she’d said when she got back in the car. “I left about forty dollars in the bank. This is all we’re going to be able to get, unless you’ve got accounts in other names.” The last was directed at Dafydd, who nodded vaguely, as if he hadn’t understood the implied question.

The Seelie were, by Lara’s estimation, a fragile-looking people to begin with, but even so, Dafydd’s weakness frightened her. His bones seemed to shine through parchment-fine skin, as if he faded before their eyes. He’d burned up too much power: the truth of that rang through her in ceaseless waves, like water at the shoreline. Whether he could recover with time and rest, she didn’t know. It seemed all too likely that, cut off from the Barrow-lands, he would never regain his strength.

He’d given them the address of his storage unit in Peabody, and at Lara’s urging, the combination to its lock, before fading into a restless drowse he hadn’t fully woken from. The car they’d found there was new enough to be unremarkable, but old enough to lack the global positioning system that most new vehicles were automatically fitted with. With luck it wouldn’t matter; with luck no one would trace their change of vehicles and be looking for a mid-range blue four-door Corolla. Lara glanced behind her to where Dafydd sprawled gracelessly across the seat as he dozed, and said “With any luck” aloud.

“I’m not going to assume luck is on our side. Lara, look, not like any of this was planned, but do you have any kind of … plan?” Kelly’s fingertips tapped the wheel, quick nervous rhythm. “I’m running on adrenaline and spy movies here. I know about not using credit cards and sticking to blue roads instead of interstates, but beyond getting us out of the greater Boston metropolitan area, I don’t know what to do.”

Lara pressed her temple against the window, watching the roadside scenery turn to a blur of green. “I keep thinking we need to go to Wales.”

“Wales? What, like in Britain? Not a chance, sister. I don’t think eighty-five hundred dollars is enough to buy us fake passports, even if I had any idea where to go to try to get that kind of thing. Wales? Are you serious? Why?”

“Because it’s where Dafydd said he was from. That the Barrow-lands are close to it, in terms of how his world and this one map to each other. Ioan said something about how once upon a time people from this world were able to cross to the Barrow-lands through underground paths.”

“Long ago,” Dafydd murmured from the backseat. “Long ago. Even in Oisín’s time it took royal blood casting the worldwalking spell, and that was a long time ago.”

Lara twisted around, hooking her arm over the back of the seat. “Hey, you’re awake. How do you feel?”

Dafydd took a breath, held it, and on the exhalation admitted, “Terrible.”

“You look awful.” Lara wrinkled her nose at the raw truth, but it got a chuckle from Dafydd. She smiled wanly in return, then found herself echoing his deep breath and long exhalation. “Have you ever heard of a worldbreaking weapon? Not me, but something that might have been used to destroy Unseelie territory?”

He frowned. “The Unseelie lands have been drowned as long as I can remember, Lara. Having spent so much time in your world, I’d say it was probably just a result of climate change.”

Unexpected burrs ran through his words, pulling their truth out of tune. Hairs stood up on Lara’s arms, reinforcing the feeling of wrongness, and she blurted, “No,” without meaning to. “Whatever it was, it wasn’t climate change. My power’s getting stronger, Dafydd. I’m starting to hear it now when people are wrong even if they believe it’s the truth.”

Delight lit his face briefly, pushing his weariness away. “Truthseeker indeed.” Then a touch of dismay creased his features and he relaxed into the seats again. “But I’m wrong?”

“I need you to try and remember any legends or stories Oisín might have told you. Did he ever mention someone named Brendan?”

“There’s a mortal name,” Dafydd said absently. “Brendan, ah, Brendan the sailor. They were friends from before he came to the Barrow-lands, I think.”

Lara, under her breath, said, “No,” as the words soured in her mind, but Dafydd continued undisturbed. “I remember, just barely.” His eyes closed and he sank further down, voice rising and falling in a soft murmur. “He was blind with age already, Oisín was. I never knew him as a sighted man. But he used to carry a stick, a walking staff. Carved bone, I think. A gift from my mother, I think. I only remember him having it after she died. I asked once if I could have it, because I barely remembered her and I hoped it would remind me. But he said we had to give it to Brendan, to take across the sea.”

Hope surged in Lara’s stomach, making a knot as nauseating as fear. “Did he say where across the sea?”

“I supposed he meant to Tir na nÓg, the lands to the west. I never asked.”

“But Brendan was Irish,” Lara whispered. “Across the sea to the west was America, for him.”

“So it is here,” Kelly said triumphantly, then made a face. “Or it was at some time.”

“No.” Music had turned to a crescendo with Kelly’s first statement. Lara turned to grab the dashboard with both hands, as if she could direct the car through will alone. “No, it is here. Still is. It felt true when you said that, Kelly. Pull over, can you pull over?”

“Uh, yeah.” Kelly pulled off, tires scrabbling over gravel as she went too near the ditch. “What are you going to do?”

“It’s here. It’s here somewhere. I found a path through the Seelie forest back to the palace, maybe I can find one here. It’s got to have some kind of similar feeling, doesn’t it? They’re both magical constructions.”

Dafydd climbed out of the car as she spoke, leaning heavily on it as he pulled Lara’s door open as well. He offered her a hand, and a faint smile as she looked up at him in concern. “We can share a little of thought and emotion with those we’re close to,” he reminded her. “And I hold the image of the staff in my mind. But I can’t do it within the confines of that vehicle.”

“You can’t at all! You don’t have very much power left!” Lara got out, more to herd him back into the car than to accept his help, but he caught her hand.

“If there’s an item of Seelie, or even Unseelie, power here, Lara, it’s more likely to lend me strength than anything else in your world. It may mean my survival.”

“Even if you burn out looking for it?”

“I believe the risk worth taking.”

“Either way,” Kelly said from within the car, “make a decision. We’re not exactly in suburbia, but I don’t like you standing around outside the car when there’s an APB out on us.”

Dafydd tipped his head toward the vehicle. “Kelly makes a compelling argument.”

Lara raised a palm in defeat. “All right. If you can give me the image, I think that’ll help me build a path. How do you do this, like with a …” She trailed off, but lifted her free hand to Dafydd’s face, approximating a gesture she’d seen in film trailers.

Dafydd laughed out loud. “A Vulcan mind meld? Would that make it easier?”

Color rushed Lara’s face. “Actually, yes, I think so. It’s sort of familiar.”

Kelly leaned over the passenger seat, peering up at Dafydd as he confidently settled his fingers against Lara’s cheek and temple. “Today has been one hundred percent full of suck, and yet at this exact second I gotta say I love my life, because I’m watching somebody perform a mind meld for real.”