C.E. Murphy - Truthseeker

“Kelly, I’m sorry.”

Kelly wiped a hand under her eyes before speaking snappishly in an attempt to keep further tears at bay. “It’s not your fault. If those— things —hadn’t attacked everything would be okay. Reg wouldn’t be hurt and Dickon wouldn’t have flipped out, but they did, so we’re just going to have to deal with that.”

“You shouldn’t have to.” Lara folded her arms around herself, then thought better of it and edged closer to Kelly, putting an arm around her shoulders. “At the most it should be Dafydd and me dealing with it.”

“Yeah.” Kelly sniffled. “Because you live in a vacuum, or something. We were all there when Reg got hurt. There wasn’t going to be any parceling out of whose fault it was. We all looked bad and there was no way to explain it.”

“Maybe I could’ve made them believe us.”

Kelly, red-eyed and puffy-nosed, gave her an incredulous stare. Lara ducked her head. “Okay, I might’ve convinced them we believed we were telling the truth.”

“And then they would’ve carted three of us off to the funny farm and the fourth to a government lab. There wasn’t much choice. I just didn’t know an adventure would feel like this.”

Lara sighed, images of Emyr and Ioan and of black-clad warriors meeting a silver-armored tide of enemies flashing through her mind. “Yeah. Neither did I.” She put her mouth against Kelly’s hair. “Maybe Dickon will—”

“Get over it? Adapt? Calm down? I donno, Lar.” Kelly’s voice thickened up again and she twisted to wipe her nose on her shoulder. “I actually think he’d have handled David being an elf if Reg hadn’t gotten hurt. I mean, he’s a big guy, he likes to ride his Yamaha, he does a little of the rebel without a clue thing, but he’s pretty squishy inside. Law-abiding. And I just went and …” She trailed off into a shudder that was more exhaustion than sobs.

“And proved yourself devious beyond any of our expectations.” Lara hugged Kelly harder, a mix of guilt and gratitude tangling inside her. “You really did save his life. Thank you.”

“He’s an elf , Lara. He’s got pointy ears. Did I just throw my whole life away for an elf?” She put her face in her hands, dragging a deep breath through her palms. “We should have kept going. I wouldn’t have to think so much if I was still driving.”

“Look.” Lara nudged her toward the car door. “Crawl into the backseat and sleep for a few hours, okay? I’ll stay awake, and maybe things will seem better when you wake up.”

Kelly sniffled again, then nodded as she climbed into the car. “Aren’t you going to tell me it’ll be okay, that Dickon loves me and that if he doesn’t forgive me he doesn’t deserve me? The rest of my friends would.”

“Yeah,” Lara said softly, and closed the door as gently as she could before whispering, “But you and I both know the truth’s more complicated than that.”

The silence of the upstate forest was nothing like the silence in the enchanted forest surrounding the Seelie citadel. There, the silence was absolute; here, if she listened hard enough, Lara could hear mechanical things. Distant airplanes, the thrum of car engines or horns; even voices raised where no one had seemed to be. But Dafydd had gone into the woods like a child seeking solace, and the quiet was a gift even for Lara.

The common phrase would be “there had been no time to think.” But there had been, long hours on the road in enforced silence, neither Lara nor Kelly eager to speak and disturb what rest Dafydd could get. The staff had eased the last hour of the journey, but traveling in the car was clearly bad for him when his glamour was released, and he’d made no effort to continue holding it once they reached the vehicle’s relative safety. So the silence had reigned, leaving her to her own thoughts.

She crouched at the pond’s edge, dragging her fingertips through it and watching ripples rebound against the incoming laps of water. Magic seemed like that to her, bouncing in unexpected ways. The staff Dafydd clung to had perhaps changed his world once already. Even with her best intentions, using it there could have unforeseen consequences.

“Changes that will break the world.” She sighed, then pushed to her feet and went into the forest more deliberately than she had the last time she’d entered a wood. Then she’d been hurt and angry and trying to escape. This time, if anything, she was searching for something.

For some one , truth be told, and for Lara, it always was.

It took longer to find him than she expected, as if he’d been wholly embraced by wilderness and it chose to deliberately hide him from her. It was absurd, but she was given no less to the fancy when she came on him sitting in a pool of moonlight, his shirt abandoned.

He looked like what he was, half-clothed and silver-skinned under the stars: an alien being, ethereal and beautiful and so terribly inhuman. A handful of half-interested bugs darted around him, even landed on his naked skin, but left again without tasting him, as if they knew his blood was wrong.

Moonlight was his friend in a way sunshine was not. He looked carved of it, looked like he was brother to it, and looked, Lara thought, as though he was drinking it in through his skin, vitality restoring as she watched. The staff lay across his lap, his palms resting on it, and even it glowed in the moon’s light, making it more ethereal and inhuman than before.

She stood where she was a long time, watching him in silence as the shadows changed and made leaf tattoos on his skin. There was peace in simply standing there, wrapped in calm, but eventually she whispered, “Does it help at all?”

He didn’t startle, didn’t so much as change the steady slow draw of breath, but after a little while he spoke. The words were music, incomprehensible at first, but as the moments went by, their meaning became clear. Seelie language and truthseeker magic wound together, making a story of sorrow and pain.

“A little,” Dafydd breathed. “The moonlight here is cooler. At home it would burn a path to my heart, strengthening me.”

“What will happen to you if you stay here?” Lara had an answer for that, one she didn’t want to consider, and Dafydd’s sigh said her fears were well founded.

“I don’t know. With the staff, I think I would survive. Without it … your world can only give me a fraction of what I need.” Dafydd put his hand to his chest, a spasm of pain tightening his features as he did so. “There is a wound here, Lara. An empty place where I once was connected to the Barrow-lands. I’d never noticed its presence until its absence told its tale. The pale magics of your world might flood it, but they will never fill it. I reach for things here, for the sounds of nature, the taste of the wind, the cool light from the sky, and they fall away from me.” His hand rose again, this time to capture one of the insects in his palm. “Like these biting creatures, your world simply does not recognize me well enough to give me sustenance. I might become a wraith if I stayed here. Like the nightwings became, before they took that man.”

“I won’t let that happen.”

He smiled suddenly, brilliant in the moonlight. “No. I don’t think you would, at that.” Finally he opened his eyes, then put out a graceful hand, inviting Lara to join him. She knelt by his side, then leaned in to kiss him.

“Good,” she whispered. “You’re still real. There are so many things I need to ask you, Dafydd.”

He nodded, gaze solemn. “So many things to talk about.” Then he smiled again and drew her closer. “What was it you said? ‘Shut up and kiss me’?”

Lara laughed. “I only said shut up.”

“That,” Dafydd said, eyes bright, “I can do.” Then, for all the honesty in his voice and promise in his words, he added, “You came for me. Thank you, Lara. You might not have.”