I gave chase with all the speed I could muster, drawing close enough that I could see genuine fear in Infidel’s eyes as she tumbled toward the black caldera below. Even if Infidel had still been invulnerable, I don’t know if she could have survived a landing on volcanic stone without a net of vines to cushion her.
Then, rising from the caldera in a pale blue mist, a humanoid shape flew to intercept Infidel a half-mile above the ground. The foggy wraith reached out with ethereal fingers, stroking the shaft of the Jagged Heart. Light flashed from the tip of the harpoon, striking the stone below, and suddenly there was a hill of snow heaped a hundred feet tall, its base sizzling on the black rock. A second later, Infidel punched into the snow mound, leaving the perfect outline of her splayed limbs in the surface. The Jagged Heart dropped into the snow several yards distant, far enough away I didn’t worry she’d been impaled.
The ghost of Aurora continued to drift upward, raising a hand in greeting as she saw me. “You can see why my people built a temple around the harpoon.”
“Will she be alright?” I asked, staring down into the hole Infidel had left in the snow mountain. I couldn’t see anything in the shadows. The whole pile was melting at a frightening pace, an ever-growing puddle boiling off at the edges.
“It was like she fell onto a mountain of feathers,” said Aurora.
“I can’t tell you how happy I am to see you. You’ve stuck around longer than the others did after they died,” I said. “Does that mean I’ll have some company from now on?”
She shook her head. “I couldn’t leave until I saw the Jagged Heart had returned from the land of the dead. I assume your efforts were successful?”
I shrugged. “We’ll need to wait a few weeks to find out if she’s pregnant.”
Aurora gave me a blank stare.
“Oh! You mean did we kill Greatshadow?”
She nodded.
“She let him live. He let us go.”
She raised a blue eyebrow. “Why?”
I shrugged. “She had her reasons.” I didn’t want to admit that I didn’t fully understand Infidel’s choices. I hoped Aurora wouldn’t ask any follow-up questions.
Aurora looked north. “It doesn’t matter. The call of my ancestors is strong. I hear the songs they sing as they chase the ghost whales in the Great Sea Above. I want to join their hunt.”
“Go,” I said. “The Jagged Heart is in good hands. We’ll see that it gets home.”
Aurora gave me a smile that said,
I know,
then faded from my sight.
A half-mile below, Infidel climbed from a pile of slushy snow now only a few yards high. Her lips and fingertips were completely blue. She stumbled forward, dragging the Jagged Heart behind her, limping toward the circle of light atop the dragon skull where Zetetic and Relic waited. I flew toward Relic and said, “You’re in big trouble.”
He didn’t respond.
“Hey!” I shouted, waving my fingers in front of him.
Nothing. Yet, I was still relatively solid, as a phantom goes. I could see my own fingers, and was pleased to see I was still wearing my braided wedding ring. I seemed to have my full phantom body; I even had the clothing Zetetic had dressed me in. Why couldn’t Relic hear me? Or, maybe he could, and was just being spiteful?
Infidel climbed up onto the skull, her teeth chattering. She tossed the harpoon to Zetetic and said, “You. Carry this. Carry it over there, in fact. I’m freezing.”
He nodded and backed up about ten feet, so that she was no longer in the range of the harpoon’s aura of cold. He said, “You’ve changed since last we met. I like you with long hair. You could use a comb, though.”
“I could use a jacket even more. Brrr.” She leaned down and picked up the Immaculate Attire. “I wondered where this went.” She slipped the pants and vest on and the magical leather adjusted to fit her. With her arms outstretched as she dressed, her eyes lingered for a moment on the braid of hair still on her finger. I wondered why it had made the transition while mine didn’t?
Infidel didn’t dwell on the ring for long, however. Instead, while she pulled on the boots that went with the armor, she eyed Relic (we didn’t yet know he’d changed his name). “Your daddy is going to kill you one day. But he wants to build suspense first.”
“Greatshadow’s alive? How can he still be alive?”
“You’re the mind reader. You already know why I did what I did.”
His reptilian eyes narrowed into slits as he stared at her. “I... I can’t read your thoughts.”
She looked surprised.
“Oh no,” said Relic, rising up. “I could feel it earlier. During his sadistic assault, his spirit moved within me, ripping my mind as he snapped my body. But, with no other minds near that I could look within, I didn’t realize what he’d done. He’s torn the part of my mind that senses the thoughts of others! I’m blind!”
“It won’t matter once you’re dead,” said Infidel.
“Isn’t it enough he crippled me physically?” Relic growled, as his eyes burned like cinders. “He had to cripple my mind as well?”
Zetetic cleared his throat. “You may not be as crippled as you think. One of my teachers was the world’s foremost scholar on dragons. I could introduce you to him, if you’d like. He’s studied dragon skeletons at every stage of development. Reptiles possess amazing powers of regeneration. He might know how to break your bones and reset them properly.”
“That sounds painful,” said Relic.
Zetetic shrugged. “Just a suggestion.”
Relic nodded. “I will... consider the offer.”
He looked back toward Infidel. “I don’t suppose my father... that he... did he, by chance...”
“What?” she asked.
“Did he happen to mention my gender? Did he refer to me as ‘my son’ or ‘my daughter?’”
“Um, no. He called you ‘offspring.’”
Relic looked crushed by this news.
Infidel leaned over and picked up the Gloryhammer. She slung it over her shoulder. “This is mine now.”
“Really?” asked Relic. “What gives you a claim to it?”
“The fact that I will flatten anyone who tries to take it from me.”
“I find your reasoning quite persuasive,” said Zetetic.
Infidel’s feet lifted from the ground a few wobbling inches. The light of the Gloryhammer gleamed on the silver trim of her new boots. “This hammer will come in handy. Flying will make getting to Aurora’s homeland a lot faster.”
“Why are you going there?” asked Zetetic.
“To return the Jagged Heart,” she said. “Stagger told me that Aurora’s dying words were a plea to see that the harpoon was returned to its rightful home. I intend to make that happen. I need to do this mission fast. I can’t afford to spend a few months aboard a ship.”
“Why not?” asked Zetetic.
“She thinks she’s pregnant,” said Relic.
“I thought you couldn’t read minds,” she said.
“I knew of the Black Swan’s prophecy. I take it you reunited with Stagger?”
“I have the Jagged Heart, don’t I?”
“But he remains in the realm of the dead?”
She frowned, looking down at the braided band on her finger. “He sort of... faded out on the way back. But... but I...” She swallowed hard. “He’ll always be with me in my heart.”
“I’m here,” I whispered near her cheek. “I’ll always be here.”
“The bone-handled knife is gone?” asked Relic.
She looked a little pale as she nodded slowly.
“Then he’s lost forever,” said Relic.
Infidel rose a few feet higher in the air, looking straight overhead, toward the last place she saw me. “He trusted me,” she said, her voice faint. Then, she looked down, her face firm with resolve. “And I will spend every day of my life proving I deserve that trust. My leap-before-I-look days are behind me. I’m going to be a great mother.”
“Says the woman who just made a spur of the moment decision to fly to the North Pole via enchanted mallet,” said Zetetic.
“Just for that, I’m not giving you a ride out of this volcano.”
“That’s fine. I have the power to fly and am finally over my fear of heights,” he said, as their gazes locked. He jumped into the air, and stayed there. “You warmed up?”
“Warm enough,” she said.
He tossed her the Jagged Heart, which she caught in one hand. Her flight grew wobbly as she rose another couple of yards in the air. “Thinking-ahead Infidel sure wishes she had Tower’s little magic book to carry the harpoon,” she said.
Zetetic shrugged as he rose to her level. “Too bad it got burned up when Tower’s armor disintegrated.”
“No!” I shouted. “He has it!”
But, I hadn’t mentioned this to Infidel, so she merely said, “I guess I can rig up some kind of sling.”
Zetetic sank back down and offered a hand to Relic. “Can I offer you a ride?”
Relic sighed as he raised the claw that Nowowon had mangled least. “Any place in the world is safer than here.”
I floated next to Infidel as the three of them rose like balloons toward the edge of the caldera. The shadows of the vast pit fell away as we reached the sky and found the sun rising on the eastern ocean. Pale golden rays danced over a shimmering sea, bathing the treetops below with a radiance that made the dewy canopy look as if someone had spilled a bucket of glistening jewels.
And I finally got it. I understood what Infidel had meant when she said she’d already discovered Greatshadow’s treasure. It was the island itself, the last wilderness, and I knew, with the same certainty that I knew that stone is hard and fire is hot and water is wet, that there would be no better place on the planet for our daughter to grow up.
“I’m dying to hear the details of what happened in the spirit realm,” Zetetic said.
“What happened between Stagger and me is private, you creep,” said Infidel, sounding genuinely offended.
Zetetic shook his head. “I mean, the details of your confrontation with Greatshadow. The Jagged Heart should have killed him. You got close enough for conversation; presumably you were close enough to strike. Why didn’t you finish him? You’ve gambled the safety of the world by sparing him. What possible reason could have stayed your hand?”
“If I’d killed Greatshadow, all this would be gone,” she said, her eyes scanning the jungle as they slowly flew down the slope at about the pace of a good jog, heading toward Commonground. “My father’s men would come and set up lumber mills and mines. Before you know it, there would be farms everywhere. The priests would follow and build churches, and in a couple of years, this place would start to look civilized.”
“Indeed,” said Zetetic. “That was precisely the plan.”
“But it wasn’t my plan. I’ve spent the best years of my life here, and I like the island as it is: untamed and untamable. I grew up in a world of castle walls and armed guards and endless rules that shackled the soul as well as the body. I’ve had a taste of freedom now and will never give it up. I want to raise my daughter in a world that still has a place where the wicked may hide from the righteous.”
Zetetic slowed a bit. “Damn,” he said, with a nod. “That’s not a bad reason at all.”
Infidel shrugged, with an expression that told me she didn’t particularly care if he approved of her reasons or not. She flew on a little ways, until, suddenly, she looked back over her shoulder, her eyes wistful as she stared at the sky above the caldera, toward the spot where I’d vanished.
Then her distant gaze shifted, looking much closer, not quite to where I hovered, but not so far off either.
“You aren’t in this alone,” I said, with a reassuring smile.
I’m sure it was only a coincidence that, at that exact second, she smiled back.
THE END
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First, the inspiration: I started writing Greatshadow in the summer of 2009. At the heart of the story was a tale about a man and a woman who were secretly in love, but who never confessed that love out of fear of ruining their longstanding friendship. One reason that this story flowed so naturally from me was that I was caught up in exactly this situation. I spent nearly all my free time with a woman named Cheryl Morgan, a woman who I’d met only a few months after my previous girlfriend, Laura Herrmann, had passed away. When we met, I simply wasn’t in the right state of mind to pursue a new romantic relationship. Once I said we could just be friends, to my surprise, Cheryl wound up becoming my friend. Most of my life experience had taught me that the day a man and a woman agree to be friends, it’s pretty much the end of them speaking to one another. But, Cheryl and I wound up as best buddies. She was all that I could ask for in a friend. Which meant that, when I was interested in a romantic relationship again, I was afraid to bring up the subject. We had a really good thing going. A genuine friendship isn’t something to be trifled with.
And yet, there I was, writing a book about two star-crossed lovers kept apart by their reluctance to confess what they truly felt. It was impossible to write the fiction without constantly thinking about my reality. So, I’m happy to report that writing this novel forced me to finally talk to Cheryl about my true feelings, and discover that she felt the same way. We were married on November 11, 2011. So, let me give heartfelt thanks to Cheryl for being wonderful and patient with me, and providing me with the emotions that stand at the core of this tale.