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Chapter 72

Pup’s group had met up with Owen and Brom in a little farming community on the west side of Datro. It had been Jordy’s idea to try there first, since it was the village where he and Brom had originally come from.

Jordy’s parents had been overjoyed to see him. It turned out that Brom had arrived with Owen and their entire changeling patrol a week or so earlier, and Brom had explained that they had not perished as everyone thought.

The farmers had welcomed Brom’s changeling friends and there had been talk of sending someone to Owen’s old farmstead to test the waters there, so to speak. Apparently a lot had happened in the months since the farm boys had been conscripted to join Datro’s soldiers in the city’s poorly disguised push for expansion. It was the last straw in the generations-old tradition of weeding out the mutated children only to give them to the city for use in their factories. Now Datro had begun to require their so-called ‘normal’ children as well. Yet they still expected to be fed. It was no wonder the farmers had quickly become disillusioned with city politics.

There had been mutants living in the farming communities all along, ones who had been hidden or whose mutations were not so noticeable. When outsiders came by, these mutants, some of them quite old, faded into the background until the strangers were gone. However, they felt no need to hide in front of Pup or Owen’s groups, and mingled quite openly with the newcomers, much to Pup’s surprise. It explained why the farmers were so quick to accept the changelings.

The runner who had been sent to Owen’s old home returned with an older man and two younger ones. The old man teared up when he saw Owen, although the youngsters only stared at the changeling, bewildered and a little shy. This was their older brother, whom they’d never met.

They were not the only new arrivals. Hard on their heels rode another couple, by their looks normal, but their worn and dusty clothing bespoke long days of travel. They had been on the road since spring, and before that, had been searching all the prior summer and fall until the freak early snowstorm had put a stop to it. It was just coincidence that had them following Owen’s family to yet another farm.

The woman’s eyes showed a glimmer of hope underneath the layers of grime. She wiped her face with a cloth and peered at the people gathered in front of the farmstead. “Have you seen our daughter?” the woman asked, zeroing in on Pup, who had made no attempt to hide his mutation. He had assumed the two had come with Owen’s father. Dressed only in trunks which had a special accommodation for his short tail and did nothing to hide the abundance of downy hair on his upper body, Pup cocked his head curiously, although it wasn’t the first time he had heard such requests.

“Did your daughter escape to the forest?” he asked kindly. Not all of the mutants who tried to find the hidden villages made it, but if their child had, Pup would do his best to try and locate her.

The woman nodded, then turned to her husband, doubt showing suddenly on her tired face. “We think so—at least, we hope so. Her name is Roselle Mattison and she disappeared a little over a year ago.”

Pup’s mouth dropped open. “Short, blonde? She has a friend named Norah?”

Amazingly, he had met Roselle’s parents! They had never given up on their daughter, never believed the tale that she and her friend Norah had been kidnapped by mutants and murdered.

So Pup took a gamble and had sent one of his scouts ahead to speak privately to Will and arrange a meeting at a neutral spot. Pup didn’t believe the Mattisons were spies, at least not wittingly, but it was better to be safe. He wanted Roselle to make the choice whether or not to accept her parents’ attentions. After all, Pup really did not know all of the circumstances regarding Roselle’s leaving. Perhaps she had been trying to get away from her parents, and perhaps there had been a very good reason for it.

None of that proved to be the case, however, as Roselle flung herself into her mother’s arms, babbling happily through her tears about Will and the new baby. Her parents had looked shocked to find out their only daughter was a mother herself now, and only a little less shocked when they met Will, having already met Pup. Mr. Mattison surreptitiously glanced behind Will as they shook hands, and the relief on his face when he discovered that Will did not have a tail made Pup smile wryly. A little extra hair they could overlook, apparently.

Roselle’s parents were surprised to see how sophisticated the Hanan compound was, and were surprised all over when they finally realized the connection between the Hanans and Avery.

“He said he couldn’t help us,” Mr. Mattison said bitterly. “From the start he was convinced young Norah was dead, and our Roselle right along with her. He used it as an excuse to muster soldiers to ‘take back the forest,’ as he called it. Most of the city went along with him. He even asked me for money to support his cause, but I wouldn’t give it to him. How was cutting trees to make roads or killing a few mutants,” he glanced guiltily at Pup, “going to help me find my daughter?”

Another shock for the Mattisons was finding out that Norah, whom they’d met once or twice in Datro, was a mutant too. The other sprites, in unspoken agreement, stayed away. It wouldn’t do to muddy the waters any further. Let Roselle’s parents think Norah was simply a mutant, nothing more.

Meeting and holding their perfectly normal little granddaughter went a long way towards their acceptance of their daughter’s situation.

They only stayed a few days, and Pup escorted the couple back to the outskirts of Datro. Jim and Miriam had both invited them to remain, but Mr. Mattison declined, saying, “Someone’s got to oppose Avery. Not all of us agree with his politics.”

They worked out among them a system of communication, with Pup volunteering to be the go-between. Surprisngly, Adam spoke up, insisting that he be the one to enter Datro. “It’s my inheritance,” he explained. “My problem to solve.” He meant Avery, which the Mattisons quickly realized made sense. Adam was Avery’s grandson, and half of Datro would belong to him one day.

“We’ll make sure you’re well-known to the people that matter,” Mr. Mattison promised, after hearing the story of Adam’s strange abduction—although not the reasons behind it—by his grandfather. “Avery won’t be able to try that little trick again.”

The Mattisons left the Hanan estate without ever having set eyes on another sprite besides Norah, and that was just the way the sprites wanted it.

X x X x X x X x X x X

Valin left the humans to their reunions. Norah had put an idea into his head and he wanted to pursue it further. Slipping away from the Hanan compound, Valin quickly made his way to the hourglass-shaped pond that had formed when both his and Neistah’s underwater gateways had come together in the woods outside the iron fence.

This place was a nexus of some sort, an important location that would affect both the mortal world and the faerie realm.

Valin dove into the pond on Neistah’s end, circling briefly around the bottom to ascertain that no trace of a gateway remained, before he arced in a graceful curve over the shallow neck that connected the two ponds. He circled the second pond as well and then did what he had basically forbidden Norah to do—he took out his knife, silver rather than the bronze his Lady preferred, and cut his hand. The blood dissipated quickly in the water. Almost immediately, the water began to shimmer as a gate formed, and kept on forming, until it overlay the entire pond, stopping only when it reached the narrow neck which separated Valin’s Pond from Neistah’s.

Too quickly Valin realized his mistake. The gate was the water, and Valin was in it! He was sucked through the opening between worlds and ended up in another body of water, the parallel of the mortal one, in faerie. However, until Valin and Neistah’s gates had created the mortal pond out of water from the Great Northern Lake, such a place had not previously existed on either side. Where was he, then? In no part of faerie that he knew.

“Ah, brother, did you miss me already?” Rellan arched his brows as Valin shot to the surface. Rellan’s hand reached down, and Valin grasped it, letting himself be pulled up to a place where the very skies sparkled an intense blue and the grass beneath his feet writhed with power. Rellan had obviously been waiting for him, but how had he known Valin would create a gate in this precise spot? Because it was a blood gate, it would remain open until the seething energies subsided. All along the edges of the faerie reflection of his pond—and Valin noticed it was just his pond, not the double-hourglass of Neistah’s and his—tiny red flowers had sprung up, effectively ringing in the entire pond. This would become a functioning gate, which is what Valin had intended, only not here!

This was their father’s realm, the realm of the bright fae, to which Norah had banished Rellan. And now Valin had given his brother a gateway back into the mortal world! A crafty smile crossed Valin’s features—if only his brother could use it. Rellan was not a sprite. The water would prove a barrier to him. “How did you guess I would come here?” he asked Rellan, who so far had made no threatening move towards him.

“Where else but a pool which, until a few months ago, did not exist on this spot? Why else do you think I went looking and found the boundaries between here and there had thinned?” Rellan scowled, and Valin recognized the look as one he often wore himself. He vowed to make an effort not to scowl so from now on. Rellan continued, “Until that little mortal girl of yours strengthened the walls again. So I came here, knowing eventually one of your kind would show up. The pool appeared here for a reason.”

Valin muttered, “She’s not mortal,” although he wasn’t completely sure of the fact yet. Only time would tell. Rellan grinned like he could read his thoughts. Perhaps Rellan only meant to antagonize him. If so, he was doing a wonderful job. “What reason?” he asked.

Rellan gazed innocently at him. “To bring you home at last, or . . . .” He let his words drift away. “What is the lovely Anais doing these days? Does she still prefer her quiet green pool to the big lake that the rest of you frequent? Now that she no longer holds the land . . . .” Rellan’s words drifted away again, but his meaning was clear.

Long ago, when Valin and Rellan both loved the same woman, Rellan had attempted to spirit Anais away to the bright realm but she literally wasted away without her water to sustain her. Finally Valin, himself a creature of both the bright and watery realms, had taken Anais back to her own part of faerie, to the everlasting wrath of his brother Rellan, who thought Valin had stolen her from him. But it was not Rellan whom Anais had rejected; it was his world, which, although bright and pleasing and unendingly beautiful, was not filled with myriad waterways and comrades who shared more than just the water but their very thoughts with each other.

Rellan had tried to take Anais back, had protested and begged and finally threatened, but although she did love him, she refused to leave her world and chose Valin as her lover instead, firming the boundaries against Rellan when he wouldn’t leave her alone. When Neistah had been born, it was unclear who was the father: Rellan, or Valin. But Neistah was so much a creature of the water that it soon became evident that he was Valin’s.

Now Rellan had a pond in his own world where Anais could swim and be happy. Valin had an instant of doubt. Would Anais come back to Rellan if she could?

“You could remain here, too.” Rellan spoke softly, too canny, or perhaps Valin’s face, so like his brother’s, revealed too much. “We could both love her like we did once.”

“You misunderstand Anais,” Valin replied just as softly. His brother was not an evil being, only arrogant and, if truth be told, lonely. Perfection wearied after a while. “Anais holds the land still. The child holds her world where it connects to ours, but she has a long way to go before she will replace the Lady. Anais will not leave.” Valin spoke with a surety he was not sure he felt. It was a good thing his brother could not read his thoughts. When Valin had met with Anais to report Rellan’s return, he had asked her point-blank whether or not she was giving up her hold on the land. Secretly, Valin had been afraid that if Anais relinquished the land, she would fade away into nothing. Anais had laughed, but she hadn’t denied it. She had only assured him she was not yet ready to release her hold on the land completely, and that had been enough to reassure Valin.

Rellan’s disappointment was palpable. “Then there is nothing more to say.” He turned away, dismissing Valin with a slight shrug. “Use the gate to return to your dreary mortal world. You know where to find me should you so desire. This realm is as much yours as the other.”

It was the first time Rellan had ever intimated to Valin that he acknowledged him as one of the bright fae. “Rellan?”

The other fae turned.

“I will come back. And I will bring Anais with me.” Valin did not wait to see Rellan’s reaction. He dove into the whirling liquid gate and let it pull him through to the other side, the dreary mortal side, as Rellan had said. Rellan was right and he was wrong. This mortal plane could be dreary, with none of the brightness of the faerie realms, but it had a beauty all its own, one that fascinated the darker fae, and went a long way to explaining them as well.

By nightfall, the gate had subsided into a shimmery pool, visible only to fae eyes, and no longer a gaping wound in the universe. This side was also ringed with tiny red flowers wherever the water touched the land. It had become a gate, a very wide gate, that connected only to the bright fae realm, but that was more than Valin had expected would happen. All in all, he was satisfied at how this day had turned out.

Neistah was not going to be at all happy to learn that his trysting place with his own fair lady was now only half the size, unless he wanted to visit his uncle on the other side.

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