Elfhame (Skeleton Key) (21 page)

His face came close, and then his lips pressed against hers, warm and fleeting.

By the time she blinked the moisture from her eyes, he had dropped his palm from where it cupped her face, and taken a step back, facing the space between the stones.

“Take my hand one more time,” he said. “I will speak the Rune of Opening. If we succeed, the door will appear, and you will be able to step through into your world.”

She nodded and laced her fingers with his. Their rings clinked together, and a flicker of azure flame arose—but something was awry. She turned toward Bran, sensing a strange, cold darkness lodged deep within him.

“
Edro!
” he cried.

Blue fire leaped from their joined hands, covering the stones with a wash of flame. The air between the stones shimmered, then cleared to reveal the Darkwood. The trees looked drab and colorless compared to the vividness of Elfhame. She hesitated and glanced at him a moment, searching his face.

“What is wrong?” she whispered.

The glimglows streamed through the doorway, and Bran released her hand.

“Go, Mara.” His voice was tight. “Quickly, before it closes.”

It was what she wanted. Why, then, was her heart so heavy, her steps so reluctant?

“Go!” He set his hand at her back and pushed her forward.

The doorway flickered. This was her last chance to return home. She must take it.

“Farewell, Bran,” she said, then pulled in a breath and darted forward, directly between the stones.

The cool, moist air of the mortal world enfolded her, and the smell of cedars stung her nose. She turned around, to see her husband outlined faintly in the doorway between the worlds.

He lifted his hand, and she mirrored his movement, the ring on her finger glowing dully.

Goodbye, my love.
His words were a whisper on the wind.

The blue flame covering the stones winked out. The doorway closed, and Mara was left alone in the Darkwood, her cheeks wet with inexplicable tears.

A
s it turned out, the journey back through the Darkwood was not as difficult as the headlong flight that had first brought her to the stones. Mara had arrived back in her own world on the cusp of dawn. The greyness of the forest slowly faded, color seeping back into the world as the light grew stronger.

The glimglows darted ahead of her, marking the way, and this time there was no dark and feral beast pursuing her, no breathless dash through the trees with panic pulsing through her veins.

Dry needles crackled under her boots, and berries hung red on the bushes. She could not believe it, but somehow fall had come during the few short days she’d spent in Elfhame. What must her parents think? They would be certainly be distraught at her long disappearance.

Urgency firing her steps, she began to run through the forest. The glimglows still danced ahead of her, but as the first rays of the sun streamed through the trees they began to fade, visible only in the shadows, then finally not at all.

No matter, though—Mara had reached the familiar part of the Darkwood where she’d often collected firewood. Side aching, she slowed her steps to catch her breath. A bright red cardinal flashed through the trees, brilliant as a drop of fresh blood in the sunlight.

The blessed, beloved sunlight.

Mara stopped in a patch of it, closing her eyes and lifting her face to feel its heat. Tears pricked behind her eyelids, but of gratitude this time, not grief. Despite the ache in her heart, she was home.

Joy settled in her belly, blossoming like a flower when she reached the edge of the trees and stepped out onto the lane leading to the cottage. The smell of baking bread and frying sausages hung in the air, and she could hear the high voices of children.

There had been no children in Elfhame, she realized, and she would never know why.

Then her younger sisters skipped out the door of their cottage, and Mara began to run, flying down the lane to her family.

“Pansy!” she called. “Lily!”

The girls looked up, squealed, and dropped their schoolbooks to pelt toward her.

“Mara, Mara!”

Drawn by the commotion, Mara’s mother came out on the stoop, then yelled for the rest of the family. In moments Mara was engulfed in a flurry of hugs and exclamations and more hugs, right there in the lane outside the cottage.

“Step back, give her room,” Mara’s mother said, though she was the one who still had her arm about Mara’s shoulders. “Oh, heavens, we thought we’d lost you. Where have you been, child? And what is that about your neck?”

Mara lifted her hand. The necklace had traveled unscathed between the worlds. Her siblings stared at it with wide eyes, and her father frowned and leaned forward for a better look.

“I opened a door deep within the Darkwood,” she said. “It led to the land of the Dark Elves, called Elfhame, and I had such adventures there.”

Her mother shook her head in disbelief, and Pansy and Lily gasped. Her older sister, Seanna, glanced at the ring on Mara’s finger.

“Hmph,” her father said, though he could hardly say that magic didn’t exist, now that she’d returned with the proof of it shining about her neck.

“Come inside, everyone.” Mara’s mother shooed them toward the door. “Mara can tell us all about it in the privacy of our own kitchen.”

“How long was I gone?” Mara glanced at the yellowing leaves of the birch trees.

“Nearly five months,” Seanna said. “And yet nothing at all has happened while you were away.”

“That’s not true.” Mara’s mother shut the door behind them, then went to fill the kettle with fresh water. “Thom the woodcutter’s son got married to the fishmonger’s daughter.”

Mara blinked. Not that she was sorry to hear it, but clearly his affection for her had been fleeting, if he’d found another girl to marry after just a few months.

“His loss,” Pansy said. “Mara’s come back a rich woman. What are you going to do now?”

“I’m not sure.”

Much as she loved her family, she still did not want to stay forever in Little Hazel—but somehow she could not imagine traveling the world without a tall, stern man at her side. That was impossible, though. Bran was in Elfhame, and he could never fit in her world, just as she never had in his.

A great wave of weariness washed over her, and suddenly she wanted nothing more than to sleep. Sleep and forget.

Instead, she ate a bowl of porridge and drank the tea her mother brewed, and recounted her adventures to her family. Every word she spoke made the ache inside her grow. When she got to the part about her role in the prophecy, her sisters exclaimed.

“Never say you married him!” Pansy said. “That dreadful creature? Oh, Mara, how horrible for you.”

“It wasn’t, truly. The Dark Elves are not beasts, though they might look frightful to us. Prince Brannon ever treated me with respect.”

I care for you, more than you will ever know.
The memory of his words pierced her heart.

She held her breath as the realization crept over her that perhaps she’d made a dreadful mistake. She’d been so set on returning home, on all the things she thought she could not bear to live without, that she’d missed what was blooming right beneath her nose. A strange, glowing flower under a sky filled with two moons.

Bran.

“Forgive me,” she said to her family. “There is more to tell, but I’m tired beyond words. Once I’ve rested, I’ll finish my tale.”

Her mother murmured with concern, and her brother patted her back.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “If any of those Dark Elves come out of the forest, we’ll defend you.”

She did not waste her breath arguing that he had it all wrong. Instead, she gave her family a weary smile and headed up the stairs to her long-abandoned bed.

But despite her words, sleep would not come. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw visions of Elfhame: Bran battling the spider creature, Anneth smiling, blue flowers glowing with their own light. Bran again—always Bran, his stern, angular features printed in her memory.

“I could not stay,” she whispered into her pillow, and it was true.

She was a stranger, an awkward mortal outsider. Even with Bran’s support she would have pined away, yearning for her family, for the world she’d been torn from. But now that she was home, she yearned instead for Elfhame.

No, not quite. She did not long for the land of the Dark Elves, but for one Dark Elf in particular.

Brannonilon Luthinor. Her husband.

No matter how far she traveled in the mortal lands, or what new adventures she experienced, she knew it would never be enough to replace her memories of Elfhame, or of him.

At last sleep overtook her. Her dreams were full of starry flowers and a bone-piercing cold that sapped all her strength, until she lay down beneath the double moons and closed her eyes forever.

The next day she was no less melancholy. At breakfast, she finished recounting her story. When she ended her tale, her mother gave her a curious look, but said nothing.

Going out into the sunlight helped, but only a little. The strange coldness had settled inside her, along with a restless feeling that she’d forgotten something important. That night, as evening fell, Mara found herself looking toward the Darkwood and searching for glowing lights beneath the trees.

Again, she dreamed of searing cold, but this time it was Bran who suffered, his violet eyes leached of color, his skin growing pale as ice.

“Mara,” he whispered.

She woke with a start in the early morning darkness, her heart pounding, the ring on her finger hot to the touch. Bran needed her. Somehow she knew it to the depths of her soul.

But how could she possibly reach him?

She had no appetite at breakfast. Her conviction that she must return to Elfhame grew with every passing hour.

At midmorning, once the family had all left, Mara’s mother coaxed her out into the herb garden and sat her down amid the rosemary and thyme.

“I don’t know what’s amiss,” her mother said, “but something surely is. Did you bring a wasting sickness with you out of the Darkwood?”

“I don’t think so.” Mara twisted the blue ring on her finger back and forth. Despite the sunshine, she shivered. “Perhaps I am heartsick, but it is nothing that will harm you.”

“Do you love him, then?” Mara’s mother gave her a long look. “You know that your father and I have never thought much of those tales of magic and such, but it’s clear enough something strange has touched our family. Touched you. If you’ve fallen in love with a prince from a magical world then I think you must do something about it.”

“You’re right.” Mara drew in a deep breath of warm, herb-scented air. It did nothing to dispel the cold creeping through her. “I need to return to Elfhame. I fear something is very wrong, and I must be at his side.”

“I was afraid of that.” Mara’s mother shook her head, her face sad. “Did we regain you, only to lose you again so quickly?”

“I hope not. But I’m going into the Darkwood tonight. I don’t know if I’ll ever come back.”

“My darling child.” Mara’s mother leaned forward and enveloped her in a warm embrace. A single hot tear dripped down onto Mara’s hand. “If that is what you must do, then we’d best make a fine supper and say a proper farewell. Just in case we never see you again.”