Chapter Fifteen

The next morning, Izzie was knocking at my door at the butt-crack of dawn. When I let her in, still in my pajamas, she eyed me with an amused smirk. “Is that what you’re wearing to go traipsing around in a spirit world with Mr. Cheekbones?”

Deciding not to admit that he’d already seen me in my pajamas, I stepped aside to let her in.

“You’re really not coming, Iz,” I said with a yawn.

“We’ll see about that.”

“Okay, but let’s say I’m right. How are you going to cover for me with Gran? She won’t buy the same excuse twice.” I crossed to my suitcase and pulled out a fresh set of clothes.

“Why are you asking me that? This is your whole idea,” Izzie snapped.

“But you’re better at improv,” I said, stepping inside the closet to change.

“Is that your way of telling me I’m a good liar?” she asked, her voice carrying through the door.

I tugged the fresh shirt over my head. “No, it’s my way of telling you you’re a brilliant actress.”

“Well, you’re not wrong there. What are you doing?”

Finished changing, I’d crossed to the window and lifted the bug screen. “Sneaking out.” I took stock of my options by leaning over the edge and observing the garden and the side of the house. Directly below was a white wooden trellis. Honeysuckle vines wound up the wood, with tiny yellowish-white flowers peeking out in the dark green leaves. I wasn’t sure if the old trellis would hold my weight, but I wasn’t that heavy and…well, the fall wasn’t that far.

“Through the window?” Izzie hissed, hurrying over to grab my elbow.

“I just heard Gran downstairs. She can’t see me leaving or she’ll get upset. This is better, trust me,” I said, thinking of the worried look she’d had yesterday.

“I’m coming down, too, then.”

Rolling my eyes, I hoisted my leg over the window sill, my bare foot finding purchase with the diamond shape of the trellis. “Okay, fine. You do you.”

Slowly, I lowered myself down the trellis. It trembled slightly, but it held strong. I hopped down the last few feet, my sneakers finding a cushioned landing in the soft grass and dandelion weeds curling up from under the edges of the house. Izzie dropped down next to me and together we snuck across the garden to the tree line.

We didn’t have to wait long for Alder to show up, and much to Izzie’s aggravation, Alder took my side, saying exactly what I’d predicted. “There’s no way I’m giving you any more,” he said.

Izzie glared at the two of us, like we were somehow in on the whole thing together. As if I’d choose to join up with an estranged nature spirit and unlock mystical gates guarded by giant magic animals for funsies.

“I don’t like any of this,” she growled, then turned to Alder, sticking a finger in his face. “If you let anything happen to her, I swear to Beyoncé—”

“What are you going to tell Gran?” I asked, interjecting before Izzie could describe a creative way to castrate my childhood friend.

She sighed, her shoulders slumping. “I guess I’ll have to think of something. She mentioned something about her Bridge Club yesterday. So we might go play cards with some old biddies who smell like Mary Kay products.”

I gave my friend a swift hug. “No amount of Starbucks gift cards in the world can thank you enough.”

“Oh, there’s an amount, you just can’t afford it.”

As Izzie headed up the porch steps, Alder and I turned toward the forest. After we passed through the bushes of pastel-colored chrysanthemum, Alder muttered, “She scares me a little.”

Laughing, I jogged into the trees, Alder following behind me. I could’ve sworn I heard him chuckle, too.

…

We emerged into a clearing with a stream. Blue mana flowed everywhere, weaving into the grass and up the trees, winding around the branches and coating the leaves with it. The mana’s origin seemed to be the stream, with the mist-like energy clouding above the water like the bottom of a waterfall.

Edging closer to the creek’s bank, I could see the mana move like it was the current itself, and maybe it was. Under the glassy surface, tiny minnows swam, following the mana’s and the water’s flow as if they were merely passengers. Perhaps they weren’t swimming at all. Dipping my hand into the stream, the blue mana wound around my fingertips and I could actually taste the water. The chill temperature and its freshness coated my tongue and bled into the reservoir of mana that was building within me.

At the earth gate, I had felt the mana simply by stepping into the meadow, and now I could feel the water’s mana—its energy—like a tangible thing, stirring deep inside my chest and pooling in my gut. It was the first time that I truly identified this mana Alder claimed I possessed. Would I be able to use it somehow? Or was collecting it all I was able to do?

I glanced over my shoulder to find Alder watching me intently, his eyes back to gold and his silver hair white in the sunlight.

“Have you seen Raysh recently?” I asked him, though that hadn’t really been the question on my mind.

He scanned the forest, hands flexing at his sides. Mana sparked from his fingertips like smoke from electrical charges. “No, I haven’t. I can lead us in the general direction, but beyond that, we could go around in circles for a while.”

I ground my teeth together, irritated. Both at myself for not thinking to look for Raysh sooner, and at the arrogant fox for not being here to carry out his emissary duties. But even if I had thought to find him sooner, I’m not sure I could’ve. He had simply appeared on my chest and appeared in my car before.

The only option was to wait for him.

Alder seemed to reach this conclusion as well, because he stuffed his hands in his pockets and shrugged. “I’m sure he’ll find us,” he said, though I could detect just a hint of doubt in his voice. “We should get moving in the right direction at least. It may take us a while to reach the water gate.”

A jumble of nerves and excitement coiled tight in my chest. The next spirit gate. I could picture Mom in the meadow, pleading for me to save her. To unlock the gates in time for the solstice. We still had two days left. It had better be enough time.

The weight of our deadline hung over me and my stomach flipped with apprehension. We needed Raysh to show us the way.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t like we had any other option than to just move forward without him and…pray.

We walked for a while, the stream we followed widening to the size of a small river. It still wasn’t very large, but it was shallow with big, sharp rocks sticking up from the bed, tossing the water up and out, making it froth in white water rapids.

Alder grew tense beside me, his eyes glued to the crystal water racing over the rocks and exploding in bright white bubbles.

Partly to set him at ease, and partly because I wanted to, I took his hand, interlacing our fingers. He didn’t say anything, but the muscles in his arms seemed to ease slightly. And his cheeks reddened.

At his palm against mine, I felt that gaping wound in my chest yawn wide and tremble inside me.

I thought of what Izzie said last night. You better not be falling for him.

I’d never trusted a boy enough to give him the label of boyfriend. After hearing all the rumors of how boyfriends and girlfriends cheated on one another and the nasty things they said behind their back, I’d always opted for what was safe. No one could abandon me if they didn’t get close in the first place, right?

Of course, that hadn’t stopped the pain of losing someone who was supposed to be there for me forever. No matter what. When I’d gotten amnesia and was taken to the hospital, I was told that I had parents who were worried about me and loved me and were going to take me home. I’d been relieved. I might not have known these people, but it was better than being completely alone in the world.

But then I’d watched her leave one night out the back door after a shouting match with my father that had woken me up in the first place.

It shouldn’t have hurt as bad as it had. Had I even loved her yet? Maybe not then, but I’d trusted her. Trusted her to be there for me, to help me navigate a world without memories, without a past. Without an identity.

And she’d failed me.

“Briony?”

I looked up and Alder’s face was close. His autumn breath chilled my hot, wet cheeks.

Once again, I hadn’t even realized I was crying in the first place. It was like stepping down from Izzie’s car all over again, nostalgia and longing kicking me in the gut at once, leaving me completely stunned.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, his gaze raking over my face in open, deep concern.

“Nothing, I’m good. Just allergies.” I sniffed, wiping at my eyes and cheeks, thoroughly humiliated. I couldn’t remember crying when Mom had even left that night. But I was now, apparently.

Out of freaking nowhere.

“Briony—”

I ducked my head away and cleared my throat. “I’m fine.”

Alder hooked my chin and wiped at a rogue tear with his thumb, continuing to look at me in a way that somehow ripped me in two. “Your fine is definitely not fine. We talked about everything when we were kids. And I know it’s not really like that between us anymore, but…” He sighed. “I’m just saying, if you need to talk, I want to listen.”

His offer was tempting, extremely tempting, but then I remembered the poison ivy episode. How worried he’d been then and was now. I’d felt his guilt like it had been my own emotion. “I really am fine.”

He studied me, then shook his head. “Of course you’re not. How can you be? You lost ten years of your life and now you’re on a rescue mission for your mom, all because of me.”

“No, stop.” I threw my hands up. “I knew you’d do this. It’s why I didn’t want to say anything. I don’t blame you. None of this is your fault. You were just a kid.”

“It doesn’t matter. I should’ve never gotten involved in your life—”

I took a step back, like I’d just had a drink thrown in my face—nineties sitcom style. Except there was no laugh track in the background, just a devastating silence. It reminded me of my conversation with Izzie, but for some reason this hurt a thousand, million times worse. “What? So you’re regretting being my friend?”

Alder winced. “That’s not what I said.”

I folded my arms. “It’s what you just implied.”

“Briony, I’m just saying that it would’ve been easier for you, and safer, and we wouldn’t be caught up in all this mess if we’d never—”

“Just. Stop.” My growl was that of a mountain lion’s. I’d never once blamed him for all this. He’d been a stranger to me, but earnest, and kind. And seemed to have truly missed me. Missed me like I was the reason that maybe he had a gaping hole in his chest, too.

But this…this stung like a rejection. It was like finding my father crying at the kitchen table, with my mom nowhere to be seen.

A long silence stretched between us. Then, after what felt like eternity, Alder spoke. “Honestly, I wish I could regret it. I think it would make me a better person if I did, but…”

With my chin still tilted downward, I raised my gaze to watch his expression carefully, waiting for the rest.

“I loved being with you. Every day was an adventure when we were together. There’s no way I could really regret it. I’m just too selfish.”

Before I realized what I was doing, I had taken his face in my hands once more. “Please, always be selfish.” My thumbs brushed his cheeks, and my fingertips lightly raked across his jaw.

“My, my, am I interrupting something?”

Alder and I jerked apart, whirling around to find Raysh standing on the other side of the stream. His paws poised daintily on an old oak’s roots that stretched a few feet and disappeared into the side of the river bank.

“Where have you been?” I snapped.

“I was finding the water gate and its key,” he said, jumping down from the tree roots and leaping effortlessly across the creek.

“You didn’t already know?” I asked as the fox trotted over to us.

“Must I remind you that I am very old, and it has been five hundred years since I have visited the water gate? Besides”—Raysh sniffed—“foxes don’t like water.”

“How far away?” Alder asked.

“It’s still a ways up the river. You’ll know when we get there.”

…

Groves of hemlocks and American beech, even more rare trees, like the elusive white willow with its long draping curtains of leaves or gray poplars, lined our trail to the gate. Sprites—a raccoon with ivy woven into its fur, and a possum with a tail covered in brambles—dove into flowering shrubs and scampered up trees when we got too close.

Meanwhile, the river grew wider and calmer. Our first clue that we were getting close was when the river was joined by a smaller brook, then another. It was as if all the streams and brooks and rivers in the ethereal plane were converging into one place.

One central location.

One gate.

The trees around us thinned, eventually revealing a big beautiful lake in the distance. The mist all around us was light blue, full of astral energy. The air was charged with power, and the whole forest was silent, as if holding its breath.

Weeping willows, river birches, poplars, and alders grew along the lake’s edge, their leaves fluttering gently, a green mist trickling off to merge with the blue of the lake’s mana, creating an aquamarine fog that disappeared into the sky.

It was breathtaking.

I could’ve stood there forever. The lake’s surface reflected the trees and the mountains that seemed to stretch on behind it. What was truly magical was that I’d seen this scene in the physical world.

Even with all the spirit world’s mystical and magical energies enhancing its beauty…it wasn’t all that different from what was back home.

Yes, my home. The Smokies…this valley…it was my home. My heart thudded at the thought.

Alder’s hand brushed mine, and I flinched back to the present to see him pointing at a small island in the middle of the lake. It had a few thin trees, but mostly wildflowers dotted the edge, their petals just barely grazing the water.

“Is that where the guardian is?” I asked.

Raysh chuckled. “Foolish girl. That is the guardian.”

I was about to ask the fox what he meant, when the island moved.

Chills danced over my skin as I realized what I was staring at.

A head emerged from the waters of the lake, sending waves through the once calm, placid surface.

The head of a turtle.

“Cowabunga,” I whispered.

Alder snorted next to me, obviously amused by my childhood cartoon reference. A tingling warmth spread through me at my ability to make him laugh.

Below us, Raysh pawed my shoelaces irritably. “Can we focus, please? Getting this key will be challenging.”

“You still haven’t told us what the key is.” I gestured to the island-turtle resting in the middle of the lake. “And how the hell are we supposed to get close to it? I don’t suppose you have a canoe?”

Just as the words were out of my mouth, the turtle dropped its head into the water, and blew a stream of ice across the surface of the lake.

“What’s it doing?” I asked.

“Keeping the waters cool.”

I glanced at Alder, then back at the ice bleeding into the lake. It wasn’t the rivers feeding into the lake. It was the lake feeding the rivers. All of the chilled water of the Smokies could be traced back to here.

“That’s why all of the waters in the Smokies are so cold. Even during the summer,” I whispered.

Alder smiled. “Yep, it’s a constant fifty-two degrees. You can thank the water guardian for that.”

Once it was done blowing its icy breath over the water, it dipped its head all the way under and the island started to move—fast, given its massive size—toward the rocky shore that was a quarter of a mile away. Its powerful legs, the size of an oak tree’s trunk, thudded onto land, and waterfalls cascaded over the edges of its shell. Slowly, it turned, showing the shell’s underside—smooth, pearly pink, like stone. Or was it an actual shell?

It was impossible to tell without getting closer.

“There’s…there’s no way. I mean, it’s huge. How can we get around that thing?” My voice got higher with each word, all trace of my earlier humor gone.

“You have to, the key is the guardian’s shell.”

I stared at the fox, dumbfounded. “The whole thing?”

“You didn’t have to use the whole rack of antlers on the earth guardian, did you? So, only a piece of its shell should work.”

“Then how…” My words trailed off as I noticed the light pink, purple, peach, and gray stone fragments littering the shore. Most were probably too heavy and large for me to pick up, but there had to be at least one I could carry. The great turtle moved its giant body to rest against the shore, closing its eyes lazily, as if enjoying the sunlight like a regular turtle. As it settled against the rocky shore, slivers of the shell’s underside chipped off, dropping to the ground like discarded flower petals. The lake lapped up the fragments, tossing them into the deep blue depths of the water gate.

“You’re a good swimmer, right?” Alder muttered, scanning the shore.

“How did you know that?” I couldn’t remember telling him about my swimming before.

He shrugged. “You liked swimming as a kid. I figured you’d keep with it.”

I sucked in a breath. It wasn’t just that Alder remembered, but the fact that something from my forgotten childhood had remained the same.

I’d always wondered if I’d been a different person before the fire. If the flames had burned away the first Briony Redwrell and a new Briony Redwrell had walked through them.

And if they had, then was that why Mom had left?

Had she been comparing me to the daughter I’d been to the daughter she now had? Maybe she’d wanted the old me back.

So it was good to know, a relief really, that simple things like my likes and dislikes remained the same. That I was not just a person made of my past, but my own person, and not even the strongest forest spirit in these mountains could take that away from me.

And I wouldn’t have known that if I hadn’t met Alder. More and more, he was making me understand why we’d been friends in the first place.

He caught me staring and his eyes seemed to spark. “What?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I said, jerking my gaze away. “You were saying about swimming?”

“There’s a small river that leads closer to the spirit,” Alder said, pointing toward another river that flowed out into the Smokies. It cut through the rocky shore that the turtle lounged across. “We can swim down it and get to the shore without it noticing.”

“I think you mean swim up it. The current is coming away from the lake.”

“I can control the current.”

“You know, I really should’ve called that one.”

Alder hid a smile as we moved through the forest in the direction of the river, Raysh following behind us, silently slipping through the undergrowth, his tail swishing this way and that. When Alder waved his hand across the river, blue mana trickled out of his fingers like rivulets, merging with the mana in the river and, in turn, adjusting the current.

Leaving Raysh by the bank, Alder and I slipped into the water. I hissed out a breath through my clenched teeth at the freezing temperature and gave a violent shiver. Then we dunked our heads below the surface, submerging ourselves into a world of aquamarine, the plants and water mana blurring together to create a pastel hue that was…well, ethereal.

Alder swam ahead of me, moving through the river like Michael Phelps. I was able to keep up fairly well but had to pull and kick a little harder than normal because of the extra weight of my clothes. Alder was fully clothed, too, but it didn’t seem to bother him one bit. Being a nature spirit, able to literally control the current around us, clothes probably didn’t weigh him down as they did for a normal human. He didn’t think to even take off something as simple as his shirt.

Pity.

Alder stopped swimming, thrusting out his arm and stopping the current. The water stilled to that of a swimming pool and he kicked his way to the surface. I followed, our heads breaking the surface.

Blinking water from my eyes, I noticed that we were still nowhere near the guardian. Why had he stopped?

Then I saw the hint of something stick out from the water. Like a shark fin. Clearly, that was impossible, but the water sloshed around us, like something big was coming.

“Briony—get out—” Alder started to yell, but it was too late.

Something knocked against my leg and I was pulled under.

Precious air escaped my lips as two shapes raced past me with the speed of missiles, jet streams of bubbles trailing behind. And then the current was back, pulling me to the right, and I followed it, knowing it was better not to fight it.

But I managed to get my bearings, pulling myself level. I almost wished I hadn’t, though.

A whole swarm of gigantic fish charged for us in an underwater stampede, throwing the current of the once-calm river into raging white rapids.