Chapter Nineteen

Alec approached the caravan circle on silent feet, keeping to the darkness just beyond the campfire’s light. He leaned against one of the brightly-colored wagons and waited. The notes played by the lone fiddler were haunting, low, the song of returning to a homeland where you no longer belonged. He had heard it many a time, a guest at just such a bonfire.

Few knew the Ellyll were the unseen eyes and ears of the Otherworld. They were the silent, the few. The forgotten. They existed on the fringes, wanderers, their caravans dotting the landscape between.

They were of the ancient race, the one there before time, before the gods created and entered the Earth realm. As their deities slipped across the veil, to the wilds unknown, it had been that ancient race of Ellyl who joined them. They who lived among the humans, worshipping their gods and plying their magic in a world only just born. When the gods retreated, the Ellyll, now a race that looked nothing like the humans and, yet, nothing like their ancient homeland ancestors, followed, but to find a much-changed Otherworld.

Their home was nothing more than a distant memory, their magic diluted by Earth and the humans with whom they had mingled. The faeries they had once resembled were strange and no longer welcomed them into their towns and cities. They belonged not with the faeries, nor with the humans, and so they wandered, keeping to themselves, stoking the fires of fear and distrust. Many called them elves for their pointed ears and their slender builds, their lack of magic. It was a reminder that even with their immortality in the Otherworld, they were no more magical than the horses pulling their wagons.

“Your hair is much changed, pet. I almost did not recognize you.”

She was a slight thing, like her people, with silvery hair and moon-white skin. She was dressed in a simple green tunic over a calf-length brown skirt that showed off the intricately stitched stockings under the laces of her gilles. He gazed down his nose at her, not straightening his stance, his eyes sharpening at the jab.

“And you are just as you’ve always been.”

She lifted a shoulder, not looking at him but at her people gathered together around the fiddler. “It’s been some time since last you joined us.”

“Has it?”

They both knew he referenced the fact that time stood still here. Events played out, one falling after another, but otherwise, they dwelled in a place where time stood still. Nothing changed in the Otherworld.

But in terms of events, many had passed since he saw her last. It was with these people he had finally come to terms with the fact that his life would never be as he imagined it. He had come back to the Otherworld and been lost, without direction. In those days, he and Delyth had become friends of sorts, and it was she who had first instructed him in the ways of the healers. With her he found he enjoyed the mending of bones, the stitching of flesh. He far preferred it to the hunt. To killing. He owed her for much of the peace he eventually found.

“What brings you to us?” she murmured.

He had known those soft lips, once. When he was broken and thought he would never be able to piece himself back together. She had helped with that, too.

A lump formed in his throat. “I found her,” he whispered, his voice threatening to break. “And I think she has slipped back here. Have you, do you know anything?”

She raised her nearly-invisible eyebrows and turned to him for the first time. “You ask me to track down your dead once more?”

He repressed a shudder at the thought. “No, no. She would have passed through the veil alive. She is looking for someone in one of the solstice courts.”

“You wouldn’t need to be asking your questions here if a mortal were sniffing around the kings. Especially the way things are.”

He narrowed his eyes in a question he didn’t need to ask.

“An emissary of Arianrhod, a witch of the Archives, tricked Arawn out of his general. She dragged him from the battlefields before the great battle of the Ford and disappeared with him, likely back to the Archives. His fury rings through every corner of the kingdom.”

The Archives were Arianrhod’s domain, where she had retreated with her magic-wielders when the gods abandoned his world. But Alec knew Arawn’s general wasn’t cloistered in the Archives to the North, and by the amused look in her eye and curve of her lip, he had a feeling Delyth knew it as well.

“If you hear whispering of the names Evie or Calum—”

“I know,” she murmured. “Will you be at the cabin?”

He shook his head. “If she isn’t here, there’s one other place she would go. If she’s not there, I’ll send word of where you can find me.”

“May Debrenua grant you speed.”

“Thank you, Delyth.”

She nodded and Alec slipped back into the night. Delyth turned back to the campfire, her gaze on the four crows watching from a tree branch at the edge of the clearing.

****

Stone circles dotted the landscapes of the Otherworld. Some were less powerful than others, though no physical characteristics told of their strength. Alec always used the whisperings of the winds within their diameter to determine how best to use them.

Alec squinted at the symbols on a small piece of paper. The closest stone circle to the Ellyll’s camp was a few kilometers away, in the middle of a farmer’s field. With each trip across the veil, he marked the location of the stone circle on a crude map he drew on the back of a title page he tore from a poetry book. He kept it rolled up in his pack, always within reach when he needed it for unexpected trips. It was usually tucked up against a raggedy leather-bound notebook used to record each jump. In the beginning, he allowed his own timeline to get so jumbled; he was seen by his professor and fellow students two places at once. Delyth was the one to suggest he keep notes for himself. Or, rather, she threatened to beat him over the head with his own shoe if he didn’t get his act together.

He rolled up the map and shoved it between the journal and the other artifacts he could ever need this side of the veil or the other. Each little knickknack connected with a time and place, ensuring he returned to the correct year and location. They were especially important when the stones lacked a powerful connection to the mortal world. Finding himself on the wrong continent only happened once, and he never wanted to repeat the experience.

The journey across the gently rolling fields was lit only by moonlight and stars. The farmers of these valleys had long plied their trade, this ground a part of their bones. They tilled and tended their crops and the pasture beasts with a loving hand, the bountifulness of the land all they needed. These were not rich people, but they were also not people in need of monies. There was no poverty in the lands of the gods.

Around him, the night creatures played, the sprites giggling in the grasses, their laughs like the chatter of chipmunks, the pixies flitting in the air, their songs the hum of their wings. They glittered prettily, buzzing through the air like brightly colored fireflies, their magic whipping behind them like condensation trails left by aircraft. Pixies were always most plentiful in the valleys of the warm-lands and kept away those who were unfamiliar with their kind. They avoided those passing through Hafgan’s and Arawn’s kingdoms and he rarely saw them up in the mountains near his cottage. Seeing some flit around Evie one evening at the cottage was a rarity, he had lived through many battles of the ford before he had seen his first pixie.

The white standing stones rested on the crest of a hill, their smooth surfaces surrounded by a sea of waving wheat. As he approached, he swung his pack forward. He dug out a small signet ring and the ornament he used when last he had been in the Otherworld. This particular circle had a stronger bond with where he wished to go, but he wasn’t taking any chances. As he swung the pack back over his shoulder, he walked into the circle and listened to the tales it whispered.

And then he thought of the one he once lost. Of her home.

And of Evie.