“What’s this elf-person want?” Zoë asked, peering out over the zipper of her backpack.
Inside Zoë’s backpack was a chamber about thirteen feet in diameter. It was not a neat, house-like space, like within the princess’s bag. Rather, it was a messy collection of her belongings. Underwear, lingerie, comic books, jeans, and old soda cups lay scattered every which way. Rachel had sat down on a purple fake-fur coat with black leopard spots. She was a bit embarrassed when the thing poking her knee turned out to be a large, lacy, black bra with cups larger than her fist. She glanced at her own unimpressive chest and sighed glumly.
Outside, Sigfried called. “Um, Griffin…how do I get this to stop dragging to the right?”
“Left lever down…but just a bit!” Rachel stuck her head out of the pack.
Beneath her, by about a man’s length, flowed the gray-brown waters of the Hudson. To the right, she could see the shore of Roanoke Island. To her left, the forest north of Storm King. Somewhere in front of her, unseen by either her eyes or her memory, a chameleon-elixired Sigfried was riding her steeplechaser by himself for the first time. Rachel winced as they jerked suddenly to the left.
“Just a bit!” she cried.
“Er…got it. No wait, now, we’re…argh!”
The view from the backpack spun wildly, trees and rocks and the far shore flashing by. The sky turned sideways. The river water drew immensely closer.
Splash!
Water rushed into backpack. Cold spray shocked her face. Zoë shouted and lunged to secure the zipper. She had only just begun to slide it, when the deluge stopped. Looking out, Rachel saw the river bobbing beneath them and Lucky’s head above them. The gold and red dragon craned his neck and peered at them, one jade eye filling much of the opening of the bag.
“I got ’em, Boss,” the dragon raised his head, “but the broom got away.”
“Oh, Griffin, that’s rough,” commiserated Zoë.
“It should turn visible now that I’m not on it,” called Sigfried. “Maybe you can hunt it down.”
Rachel stuck her arm out of the bag and waved her hand around. “Varenga, Vroomie!”
The steeplechaser, just a faint line in the distance, turned obediently and zoomed back to her outstretched hand.
“Wow.” Zoë blinked. “That was cool, Griffin.”
Rachel shot her a half smile.
“What do we do now?” asked Zoë.
“I’ll take care of it,” replied Rachel.
Music practicals might not be her strong point, but flying she understood intimately. Rachel jumped onto the seat of her bristleless and ducked her head. She shot out of the backpack and flew down low over the Hudson. She could hear Sigfried’s teeth chatter as he shivered in the late October water.
“Obé!” She ended the magical effects of the chameleon elixir that was hiding Sigfried from her sight. Then, she cast tiathelu.
Sigfried weighed well over a hundred pounds, and the water made him heavier. Rachel strived and grunted, but she was unable to lift him. All she could manage was to pull his upper body out of the river. Sighing, she settled for dragging him through the river toward the shore. Lucky dived down and grabbed his master’s robe in his mouth, helping her to pull.
Siggy whooped with delight. “This is great. Bet you could water ski this way.”
“Okay, I’m going to let you go as we approach the rocks. I don’t want to bang you into something.” She released the cantrip and leaned forward, panting from the effort of lugging Sigfried’s body through the water.
Siggy sank out of sight. A moment later, he reappeared coughing and sputtering. He stood up and walked to shore. Rachel suddenly felt very grateful that the river was shallow
here, for it occurred to her that it was very unlikely that Sigfried knew how to swim.
“We are out of view of the school and the proctors,” Rachel called down to him. “Why don’t you get in the backpack, and I’ll fly.”
Siggy climbed, dripping, into Zoë’s red and blue backpack. Lucky flew it to Rachel, who put it on over her robes. Then, she darted off around the coast and to the north.
She shivered as she flew above the rippling river. She had a sweater under her robes, but it was not proof against the late October chill. The autumn colors were nearly gone, the upper slopes of Storm King Mountain entirely bare. Lower down, sparse spots of red and orange remained. The waters of the river ran full of floating points of color.
Rachel shot over the north-most part of the island and over Dutchman’s Cove, until she crossed one of the stone walls that was part of the wards hiding the Roanoke Tree—apparently, it was a much more powerful obscuration than was ordinarily used, because ordinarily, Rachel was able to see through them, but not this one. The great tree with its seven massive branch-es—each one sporting a different kind of bark and leaf: oak, beech, birch, ash, elm, hickory, and maple—rose before her like a wall of rough wood. She zipped around, flying low over the great fence-like roots as she searched for the nine-foot tall hollow in its side.
As she approached the tree, Rachel could feel the hush, the exhilaration—that awe-inspiring sense that the folk of the forest were near. She slowed down and raised her head, floating slowly through the forest, listening. Soft sounds teased her ears. Was that laughter? Bells? The wind? Even when she recalled her memory, she could not quite make it out.
Fairy noises were like that.
Rachel smelled the tantalizing herbs of the Elf’s garden before she saw the great hollow. Illondria stood waiting for them. She wore an iridescent gown, the color of the sky reflected off autumn leaves. When she moved, it rustled like a wind passing through the forest. She waved to them. They landed. The elfin woman welcomed them warmly, quickly bundling the soaking Sigfried into the tree, when he emerged from Zoë’s backpack.
Within the trunk was a wondrous dwelling—cabinets, chairs, tables and more, all carved from the living tree. At the far side of the room, a spiral staircase swept upward and out of sight. The glow of will-o-wisps brought out the warm grain of the polished wood. The air smelled of wintergreen and fresh sap.
Inside the cheery chamber, a fire burned. Rachel halted and gawked at the fireplace. The dancing flames were blue and green with hints of lavender at the bottom and edges. Instead of curls and points, each tongue flickered into shapes—horses, castles, cars, rabbits, clouds, mountain peaks. Heat came from it, or at least Rachel thought it was heat, for the autumn chill vanished, but, she was not sure she felt heat. Perhaps it was radiating cheer and well-being.
The elf woman glided behind the spiral staircase and out of sight. She came back with an earthenware pitcher, the sides of which were the color of running water. The glaze was so cleverly crafted that it looked as if liquid were pouring from the top, running down the vessel. Even after Rachel touched the cool, dry sides, her eyes refused to give up the illusion. Illondria held the pitcher over some rose-colored, fluted, crystal glasses and poured. What she poured, Rachel could not say. It flowed, and yet it did so in a languid manner, as mist might if poured from a teapot. The color was pearly yet tinged with the glow of a sunset.
“Don’t worry,” the elf woman’s voice rang like sweet bells as she set the glasses before them. “This is safe for your kind. It will not make you unfit to eat the food of the mortal world.”
Zoë shook her green head, her braid and its feather flying, and stepped back. But Sigfried lifted the drink and quaffed it. His expression went funny, and he blinked rapidly several times. After squeezing her eyes shut and hoping for the best, Rachel took an exploratory sip.
Her mouth remained dry, and yet something entered it. It was sweet and light, like drinking the scent of honeysuckle, and yet it reminded her of mountain tops and a thunderstorm over the moors. A warmth spread through her that had nothing to do with heat or cold.
“That’s…brilliant!” crowed Siggy, extending the arm with the glass in it. “May I have another?”
The elf woman shook her head. “That would probably be unwise. Your kind seldom drink such draughts. To drink too much might bring on…unexpected results.”
“Really?” Siggy perked up. He was no longer shivering. “What kind of results? Cool ones? Can I grow a second head? Make music come out of my ears? Turn into a dragon? I’d love to turn into a dragon. That would be the best. Here, give me another swig!”
With a gentle smile, Illondria whisked the pitcher back behind the spiral staircase.
Rachel took another sip. The sorrows of the last two months tasted salty and sour in her mouth. Then, they faded a bit, with only the tingle of a minty sweetness left.
Disconcerted, Rachel put the glass back on the table.
Zoë made a noise in her throat. She was staring upward, looking this way and that, her mouth slightly open. Rachel was pretty certain that the other girl was looking at something Rachel could not see.
“Oh!” Zoë cried, when the elf woman returned. “So this is why it’s so easy to get around Roanoke at any hour of the day or night! I thought it was because Sarpy sleeps so much. Those are your dreams we’re walking through! They’re…huge!”
Illondria smiled. “I was once a queen of the Lios Alfar. Our dreams encompass worlds.”
“I can see…all the way to the moon,” Zoë said. “That’s something!”
“To the moon! I want to fly to the moon!” Sigfried cried fiercely. “If we made a flying broom the size of a sequoia, do you think it could reach escape velocity? We’d have to have Griffin fly it, though. I wouldn’t want to go into a tailspin in low earth orbit and fall off. That could end badly. What do you think, Lucky? Think we could leave tonight?”
Lucky, who had stuck his long flickering tongue into Rachel’s abandoned glass, pulled it back quickly. “Oh definitely, Boss.” He cocked his head. “Wait, there’s gold on the moon, right? Not just cheese?”
“Tons!” Sigfried declared. He had pulled a half-eaten marshmallow out of his pocket, stuck it on the jeweled end of his wand, and was trying to roast it over the blue and green flame. The marshmallow did not catch fire, but it did seem cheerier. “I read in a magazine that satellite pictures have shown that the top foot of regolith—that’s moon soil to all you uninitiated—at the south pole of the moon has 100 times the concentration of gold of the richest mines on earth!”
Lucky straightened up on his legs, so he stood as tall as a large dog. His long scarlet whiskers twitched. “Yes! Yes! Tonight! We’ve got to get to the moon before the evil scientists get there and take our gold!”
Rachel was not certain if Lucky meant to imply that there was a group of evil scientists out there, or if he just meant that the scientists who had discovered the moon gold—and thus might take it from him—were evil.
“Whoa, Nelly. Hold your horses…or brooms…or dragons,” Zoë waved her hands back and forth. “No one’s going to the moon today. Okay? Hm? Eventually…maybe. But we’d have to find out stuff, like whether there’s air on the dream moon.”
The elf woman returned and held her hand out to Zoë. “Come, Miss Forrest. I shall give you a gift. It will make it so that your companions shall not need to hold your hand to keep from falling back to the waking realm when you walk in the land of dreams.”
“How’s this going to work?” Zoë whipped her braid around, suspicious. The feather thwapped rhythmically.
“I will put a Rune upon your body—you may pick the place. These are the sacred Runes guarded by the World Tree. There will be pain, but only briefly. This Rune will allow you to make the dream stuff near you more solid.”
Zoë rocked back on her heels. “Pain versus not losing my friends, not falling into foreign kingdoms filled with demon worshippers, and not getting expelled. Done!”
Illondria took Zoë up the spiral staircase. There was a blood curdling scream. Rachel clutched the back of a chair. Siggy popped the strangely-cheery marshmallow into his mouth.
While chewing the gooey, sugar-treat, he mumbled, “Y-u scre-med like ’at, too.”
“Hey, what about me?” Lucky watched with large, liquidy, puppy eyes as his master chewed.
“Oh, sorry, Luck.” Sigfried took out a Snickers bar with a bite taken out of it. He stuck it in the blue-green fairy flame for half a minute and then tossed it to Lucky. The dragon swallowed it in one gulp and then burped with satisfaction.
Footsteps on the staircase. The tall elf woman glided back down, followed by a pale Zoë who was holding the right side of her stomach.
“Miss Elf,” Rachel curtsied politely—she felt too shy to call the great woman by her name, “do you know if there is a temple to Saturn anywhere in the world? Or whether the demon who wishes to summon him up will have to consecrate a new one?”
“A temple to Saturn?” Something like fear moved behind the stars that served the tall, graceful being for pupils. “No. Not that are standing. He was overthrown.”
“So…if someone wanted one, they’d need to consecrate the ground first, on the dark of the moon, right?”
“You mean defile,”—the Elf drew herself up. She seemed to tower above the rest of them, vast and terrible in her majesty—“not consecrate. They would need to defile the ground with the blood of a loved one, probably a youth or child.” She shuddered. “’Tis a vile ceremony. Why do you ask?”
“Some lesser demon wants to call up the demon who was also named Saturn.”
“She means Muldoon or Memphis? Something like that,” volunteered Sigfried, trying to lick the sticky marshmallow innards off the several-thousand-dollar ruby on the tip of his wand.
“I know of whom she speaks.” Illondria’s voice was soft like a distant wind. “Please, never say his name. Especially here.”
“They are trying to summon him,” Rachel said worriedly.
The elf woman lay a comforting hand on Rachel’s arm. “Fear not, little one. There’s no danger of his coming.”
“Then he is not dangerous?” Rachel asked hopefully.
“Oh, he’s dangerous! He is the most dangerous of them all, save one. But he is…” the elf woman glanced up and to the south, though whether she was looking at the polished wood of the chamber wall, into her dreams, or beyond to some distant land or vision, Rachel could not tell, “…otherwise occupied. He will not come.”
“He almost came at Beaumont. He threw Siggy from the tower.”
“What?” The elven woman’s skin grew several shades less luminescent, as if her blood carried a glow that diminished when it ran from her face. “No. It must not be! You are certain?”
Rachel nodded. Illondria whispered something under her breath. Recalling several times, Rachel was nearly certain she had said: “Phanuel’s sacrifice cannot have been in vain!”
“Who is Phanuel?” Rachel asked curiously.
The elf woman gave her a very kind smile. “Someone you would have liked very much.”
“Why is this particular demon so dangerous?” asked Zoë.
“He must be stopped at all costs!” cried Rachel, remembering the moment in the tower. The pain rose again in her chest.
“At all costs!” echoed Sigfried, his eyes like burning coals.
“Do not let his corruption touch you, children.” The elf woman looked at them with some concern. She stared off to the south again, as if lost in thought. Turning back to Zoë, she said, “All demons are dangerous, because they bring with them evil and destruction. But many of them are limited in the accomplishment of their evil by their own vices. Their devotion to their besetting sin, be it anger, lust, or sloth, interferes with their ability to carry out their fiendish plans. Sooner or later, their own weaknesses draw them away from their intended path. But there are two to whom this does not apply: the Prince of Darkness and the Prince of the Earth.
“We will not speak of the Prince of Darkness.” The Elf shuddered like a willow in a gale. “The one you speak of is known as the Prince of the Earth. He is different from the others. He is clever, supremely intelligent. And his besetting sin is desperation—and his resulting ruthlessness served rather than impeded his cleverness.
“To this end, the Prince of Darkness made this one the governor of the fallen material world. Among his other infernal inventions, the Prince of the Earth invented the Tyranny of Time, the force that makes it so that all things mortal run down and go bad and grow old. From that, he introduced the idea that a bad thing done now might produce a good thing in the future. He called this idea: sacrifice.
“In the early days, eons ago, when he truly was the Prince of the Earth, and all the worlds of Sideria bowed to him, he would not even send rain unless the sacrifices had been performed to his satisfaction. He was a tyrannical ruler. He even ate his own children, lest they threaten his reign. Eventually, all the powers—those Below, those Above, and those in the Twilight Lands—joined and overthrew him.
“But even that was not enough to stop what he had put into motion. In the long run, to end the Tyranny of Time called sacrifice, the One on High was required to send—” the elf woman’s voice suddenly cut off. “But we are not allowed to speak of that here.”
“Why not?” Siggy scowled. “Why not speak about things that are true? Who is stopping us?” He pulled out his wand, as if he planned to attack the one doing the stopping.
Rachel considered what they had just learned. Stepping forward, she lay a hand on the elf woman’s arm. “Tell me, are we behind some kind of enemy lines? In the territory of the demons, perhaps?”
The elf woman tilted her head thoughtfully and then nod-ded. “You might put it that way, little one.”