Silverblind (Ironskin) (24 page)

Tam and Dorie returned to their cave on the side of the cliff. Dorie read Tam’s book, and Tam scribbled in a notebook, lost in thought. It was a good hour later before they felt things had relaxed enough that Tam could watch Woglet and Dorie could return for the remaining eggs they needed for the ironskin. She climbed out of the cool cave and instantly felt the humidity again, a hot pressure that soaked her to the skin even without rain. Slowly she looked up at the beautiful nests of silver wings and felt torn in two.

She had proven that the baby wyverns could return home, and this bore her up. The eggs they clandestinely took today would not have to be shared with the lab. But the raid at Dr. O’Donnell’s this morning—the risk. Could she swear that all the children she took today would be returned home safely?

Yet, how could she not finish saving the ironskin?

A distant crack of thunder urged her to action. Dorie went as quickly as possible, retrieving the eggs and taking them to the cave, and before long she had the eighteen eggs necessary to complete her goal. They were able to slip away, move carefully out and down the ravine. The ravine was dry now, the little bit of water that Dorie had tried the other day, gone. They set down the incubator and crates to shake out their hands and Dorie said, “They could have all gone back then. All the ones the lab took. They could have gone back.”

“Yes,” said Tam, and then they were silent, looking down the ravine to where they had seen the fey on the first day. The first drops of rain splattered on the dusty creekbed. Far down the ravine she could sense the fey, out of sight.

They were standing there together, and they were so in harmony that Dorie thought now, it has to be now. I have not told him but I must, for it will weigh on us forever.

“I have something to tell you,” she said, forcing the words past her lips. “It’s difficult.”

“Something new you want to take to people?”

“Something about me. I’m not … I’m not exactly who you think I am.” I’m not
what
you think I am, either.

His eyes stayed on the far end of the river, which was good. She didn’t know how she would get it out if he stopped and turned to look at her. “Go on.”

“I know … I know you’ve been hurt in the past by people pretending to be someone other than they are.” His empty hands trembled, but he said nothing.

She took a deep breath. “I wanted to tell you that first day but I thought you would still hate me. My name isn’t Dorian. I’m not even really a boy. I’m … I’m your cousin. Dorie.”

Tam backed away, behind the crates, balling his fists in his pockets. “That’s not funny,” he said. Thunder cracked and the drops fell faster. Tam pulled his hat down, hiding his eyes.

“I know it’s not funny. It’s just … true. I wasn’t having any luck getting work as a girl so my friend Jack suggested I try applying as a boy. I just happened to meet you the first day I was trying it and then I didn’t know what to do.”

“This is just the sort of prank my cousin would try to pull,” he said in a low voice. “Seduce some poor unsuspecting boy and convince him to pull jokes on me.”

“I would not,” said Dorie, stung. Seducing was not part of her nature, no matter what she looked like. How could he believe that of her?

“I thought…” Tam turned away, picking up the crates and lashing them inside one another as if for something to do. “I thought we were friends.”

We are, she thought. I mean, I want to be. That’s why this is so hard to say. I wanted to tell you. The words would not come.

Tam strapped the incubator and crates to his back and prepared to climb out of the ravine. He pointed past her, down where he had been looking. “If you’re telling the truth, then there are your friends. I’d keep company with them if I were you.”

She turned, but though she could sense the fey down there, she could not see them. And then she heard a whistled song curl past her ear. Not the Midsomer Suite, but something more like what he had played at the club the night before. An eerie,
calling
sound, and just as the song at the club had made her think of betrayal and loss, so this clearly said,
come to me, come to me.…

Blue.

First a haze, then a fog. Coming from the end of the ravine.

She turned to him, but he had broken off the song, and was climbing, away from her. “Tam,” she said, but he did not stop.

The rain came then, as he climbed and climbed. It thundered up the dry ravine, came through the whirling wave of blue. Rain did not bother the fey; they mingled with the clouds and rain and thunder, coming toward her.

“Tam!” she cried, as he disappeared over the top of the ravine, back into the forest.

Woglet nuzzled her ear.

“Come on,” she said, and there was a great horrible open cavity in her chest. “We might as well go meet them.”

The blue scarves thundered around her and she gave herself to them. She did not recognize any fey that she had met before, but they recognized the fey in her. Woglet flew among them, interested, and they made space for him and let him be. Her sadness and shame loosened as the water washed a summer flood down the ravine.

With their help she faded out, not just halfway, but all the way blue, and turned over and over with them, floating through the trees as if she were pure fey. Dusting, she had always called it. Dissolving into motes of blue. She could feel herself spreading out, mingling with the others, reaching through the rain and trees and sky. She was part of everything, and she could see how you would come away with the fey and drift like this forever.

Long ago the fey had had a strong leader. The Fey Queen had pooled through the fey consciousness, mingled with them, brought them humans to play with, gave them things to do. Ordered punishments as she felt necessary. She had been that leader a long time. Subsequent attempts to replace her had failed.

Now the fey had no one.

And they were dying.

That is what they told her as they drifted: they told her of loss, of separation. This one had been taken, that one had vanished. They did not know why or where. They knew that they were all growing weaker.

<> asked Dorie, in the way that fey “talked.” <>

<><><>

<> said Dorie.

<><>

The Great War had started partly because the Fey Queen had been trying to resist the industrialization that was poisoning the land, the water, weakening them. And now …

It did not matter how long you lived, or how bored you were when you thought you still had thousands of years in front of you. And what was boredom, to a fey? A long holding pattern, a restless sense that the sunlight was not as clean, the air not as pure. The old games of intermingling with a human for a century or so and letting them go was no longer fun, no longer rejuvenating.

They were dying, and vanishing, and they wanted the old world back.

<> Dorie told them. <>

<> they told her. <> <> <>

Dorie twined and twirled. <> she promised. <>

In answer they turned her over and over, rolled her along, and up and up the mountain. Woglet flew behind them, darting in and out of the blue, apparently unperturbed by either the rainstorm or the fact that wyverns and fey were supposed to be antagonistic.

They went higher than Dorie had ever been. The rainstorm was fading now, sweeping through. Everything was cool and washed, and little rivulets ran down the tracks and ruts beneath them. She was not sure how she would get down from the mountain, if she wasn’t entirely blue. As they drifted, she could hear the same thoughts rippling through the blue: <> <> <>

There were caves high up on the mountain when they finally touched down. The rain was at a patter now, a few straggling drops. There was a circular clearing there, in the mud. Blasted looking. Nothing was in it—no trees, no grasses, not even the invasive ivy that pervaded the lower levels of the forest.

The fey did not go through it, or even over it. They stopped well back from it.

<> they said, and she said, <>

<> <> <>

They disentangled from her and she solidified to human and moved around the visible scorch marks, looking inside. It did not look strange, except for the fact that everything was dead. No mice. No birds. Woglet swooped around the circle, looking at it with curiosity.

The fey moved around Woglet, thrumming with interest. <> they said. <> <> <> <> <> <> <>

<> she said.

They thrummed as if they did not know how to explain, or were trying to find the imagery to describe it. While they hovered, Woglet burst through the circle and went straight in, swooping around in aerial acrobatics.

It distracted Dorie from the fey. “Come away from there,” she told Woglet, as she went after the silly thing … or tried to. There was a nasty cold feeling at the edge of the barrier that didn’t want her to cross it. She pushed a little, and felt it push back in waves.

Panting, she stopped and looked at the circle again. Perhaps it was not just plain air after all—perhaps there was in fact a slight shimmer. Especially if she looked at it sideways, with fey senses.

Yes, from that angle there was more than just a shimmer. There seemed to be things moving inside. Woglet, yes, but with her fey vision she thought she saw birds flying through, and then, more strangely, a shimmering version of herself. Was it a mirror? That Dorie was in field clothes like her, but … her mouth grew dry. That Dorie was in
girlshape
. What was she seeing? That Dorie walked through the blasted circle and vanished as she crossed the ring that held This Dorie back.

“What are those,” she said to herself, but the next thing that happened was she saw wings, huge glinting wings, far bigger than any wyvern, pass through the circle and vanish like the Dorie. She turned to inquire of the fey, but they were scattering at the sight, zipping off in all directions into the forest.

She swallowed and turned back—the huge beast crisscrossed the circle again and was gone.

Woglet turned his head, apparently tracking the enormous thing’s passage. It was so big it could eat him like a snack, and Woglet wouldn’t have a chance of fascinating something that size, not with those enormous mirrored eyes it had—

Her heart dropped into her belly.

It was a basilisk.

Tam was right. They had returned.

“Woglet. Woglet!” she shouted, and when he didn’t return she gritted her teeth and pushed herself through the thick air. It felt like forcing your way against a head-on wind. Another shove and she was through the barrier. She straightened—was hit with a sharp wave of dizziness. The circle, the forest, went in waves around her; she was on the deck of a ship and everything else was an ocean in a storm. In the haze she saw a flash—a fey, two, three, flickered in front of her and then were gone. The air around her was blue and howling—far worse than any thunderstorm. She cried out and sank to the muddy ground, putting her head to her knees, waiting for the dizziness and visions to subside.

Slowly, slowly she stood up inside the circle, looking around for Woglet. He was splashing in a puddle, apparently completely unaffected by the strangeness of the circle. Where was the basilisk she had seen? Dorie took a half-step toward her wyvern chick—and was again buffeted by the same vision of the fey. She swallowed hard against the dizziness and opened her eyes, watching to see if she could sort truth from illusion, for surely there were no fey in the circle, were there? They had gone. But without another human with her, she had no way of telling if these visions were affecting her human side, fey side, or both.

She moved her head very carefully, then held it still even as the nausea threatened. The fey appeared through a mist, clearer and clearer. The blue swatches swam through the air in front of her. And then—they contorted, twisted. She felt a pull like keening, deep inside. They strung out and melted into a million particles. Gone.

The wings flashed back again through the circle, and this time she was seeing them full on, not sideways with fey senses, but clear and visible. Steam curled from the beast’s mouth; the silver eye oriented to stare down at her—she shrieked and rolled, grabbing Woglet and fetching up hard against the barrier. Her panic was affecting her—did she need to be human or fey to get back out of the circle, or some mixture?

The basilisk swooped back as she thought that perhaps her fey side could slip out, slither around whatever strange thing this was, and she let one finger go thin and blue as she pushed against the boundary. Her head spun, she was going somewhere and she was staying here. She was melting into droplets and her head whirled, as if all the thoughts were bouncing around, fetching up hard against her skull. If only she hadn’t told Tam—she could be with him right now. If she had told him the first day—maybe she would have discovered he’d forgiven her long ago. He would have asked her to Helen’s meeting, not Annika.… The tip of her finger was spinning out, out, out, pulling the rest of her, melting—

Pain pulled her back.

Dorie jumped back, panting. The blue outline of her hand was missing the tip of a finger. It still felt like it was disintegrating, even not touching the barrier. She made her hand go back to human and nearly fainted from the pain. The tip of her index finger was gone, halfway down the nail.