Chapter Five

“You’ve got to have a home,” Eric said. “Everyone has a home.”

“I don’t.”

“You live next door to me.”

“Yeah,” Allie said. “But that’s not home. It’s just where I live.”

“What’s the difference?” Eric asked, and then something exploded outside, which distracted the entire class.

Marliana and Lerilian awoke to find they were missing a third of their party.

“He went off to pee,” Leril said, leaning on a tree. “Most likely. And got lost, or something.”

“Zeph’s not that stupid,” Marli said. “Do you really have that bad of an opinion of him?”

Lerilian shrugged. “I have no comment on the matter.”

“Mm-hm.”

“He’s annoying. The guy clings to you like static magic, Marli.”

She blushed. “He’s my friend, Leril. My best friend. Since we were kids. And I haven’t seen him in literally centuries. He’s intelligent and sweet, if overly chivalrous at times.”

“Eh, well, I don’t know him.”

“And you never will if we don’t find him. Where the hell could he have gone off to?”

Leril shrugged. “I don’t know, but wherever it was, he went by cart.”

“What?”

Leril pointed at the ruts in the soft forest ground. “Were those there last night?”

“They’ll come after me,” Zeph pointed out, trying not to notice the sickening pain shooting up his hands.

Malus ignored him, picking at his fingernails. It was a constant problem, the blood just wouldn’t come out. And Daemonicus liked her men to at least attempt to look clean.

“You picked me up out of my camp, you know I have friends. I’m not gonna tell her how I did it. They’ll come get me.”

“Hm. Well, good,” Malus said, and grinned. “You’re a noble kind’a guy. Maybe you’ll react more if we torture one of ‘em, hm?”

…He hadn’t thought of that.

Daria swore loudly and climbed from the wreckage of a baby-blue 1964 Lamborghini. She’d kept it from new. She’d kept it from new, dammit, right off the assembly line, the sixth model the company had ever even come out with, that she was so proud of, that she’d kept for nearly half a century without a scratch, and now her beautiful car was a heap of scrap metal.

The driver of the truck was fine, of course. He’d taken the turn too wide and she’d been… going a little too fast, okay. In any case, her beautiful, ancient, lovely 1964 Lamborghini 350 GT Coupe had slammed sideways into the trailer. Which was, apparently, filled with iron bars. The poor thing had been shredded.

Daria would have been, too, only she was immortal. Therefore, she was merely furious. Her clothes tattered and burned, hanging on by a thread, her hair a mess, her torrent of vulgarities turned to the truck driver.

Those words will not be recorded here. The writer doesn’t want the book to go up in flames before the reader touches it.

“Where are we going, then?”

“Honestly?” Tarn asked. “I’m kind of just letting my girl lead us. See where she lands us, you know?”

“Your girl?”

“The ocean,” Tarn said. Her teenager showed in a roll of her eyes. “My lady the sea. That’s what Anna always…”

Tarn’s teeth tangled up in her lip. She… wasn’t ready to talk about Anna.

They were sitting on the deck. Tarn stood, and went below without a word. Jade was glad for that, and stared out at the ocean.

They walked through the woods, side by side, staring at the tracks in front of them.

“It just seems too obvious,” Marli said. “Wagon ruts? Really? It’s a red herring or a trap.”

“Or Zeffy wanted us to follow him.”

“He’d kill you if he heard you call him that. Especially inside a nonsensical sentence like that one.”

“Ah, right. That’s your pet name for him.”

“Nickname.”

“If you insist.”

Marliana rolled her eyes. “You’re an insufferable bastard half the time, you know that?”

“A loveable insufferable bastard.”

“Not really.”

“Ah, so I’m not an insufferable bastard?”

“Not loveable,” Marliana said, refusing to play this game.

“Ah, and you’re lying.”

She stopped, whirled to face him. “Leril, my best friend is missing. Possibly kidnapped—“

“By who?”

“I don’t know. He wouldn’t just walk off.” Marliana sighed. “It’s… strange, alright?”

“Mm-hm. Honestly, I don’t see a reason to worry. I mean, we know he’s not dead.”

Marli slapped him.

The class pressed their noses to the outer windows, looking down at the wreckage below.

“What do you think happened?”

“Are they okay?”

“I think so, she just looks mad.”

“How is that woman not dead?”

Allie blinked. The hair of the woman below was long and dark. She was shortish, and she wore dark blue, and suddenly she looked familiar.

Allie decided that she must be going insane, and darted out of the room.

“You do realise,” Zeph said, eyeing a small set of needles with a wary eye, “that torture has been discounted as an effective method of obtaining information for… centuries, at the very least, right?”

Malus didn’t respond. He was too busy making sure the knives were in good condition.

“I mean, really. People give faulty information. Say anything to stop the pain. And. And I’m immortal, I can handle a lot of pain. So really, you can’t trust anything I say, right?”

“I’ve never really found that true.”

“Haven’t. Haven’t you.”

“Mm-hm,” said Malus, and there was a clink of metal.

The water skimmed under her fingers as she let it run down her skin, trailing in strange circles and shapes on her hands, twisting into words only Tarn could ever understand.

“She hates me, you know,” she whispered, touching a sea-drenched finger to her lips. The hammock of her cabin rocked with the ocean outside. The ocean in her hands washed around her fingers, alive with the magic that coursed through Tarn’s body.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with the girl. Damn princessa, damn… Damn Anna and her damn sickness, I…”

Pain. Pain and memories.

“…I miss her.”

Of course she did.

“I loved the woman, you know. I took this damn princessa on board to give me a purpose. I mean… I’m not Anna. I can’t travel the world and find the odd little cracks that make it fascinating. I can’t do that. So maybe a ferry service. Maybe something. Maybe anything. I had to move. But now I’m just drifting again.”

The water grew warm with her body heat.

“…Drift me someplace better?” the teenager asked, and kissed the wet on her fingers. “Water-damn-it, drift me someplace busy. No more dead ends.”

And Daria saw the young girl dart out of the school, and their eyes lock, and all fury drained.

She’d know her best friend’s face anywhere. Even as a child. After all, that was the face that had saved her life once. They’d met as children.

The young girl paused. Their eyes met. Daria frowned, backed away a bit. The truck driver, confused, looked back and forth between them.

“Look, just call a fucking tow truck or something,” Daria snapped. “And a lawyer. A damn good lawyer.”

He backed away.

“What’s your name?” the little Allie asked.

“Daria Yallen,” Daria replied. Her wedding ring glinted silver on her finger.

“Do you know mine?”

Daria wasn’t sure how to respond to that. “Perhaps. I can guess—I mean, there are only so many names in the world.”

“And out of all of them, yours is Daria.”

“Well, yes. There are others.”

“Daria Yallen, of all things.”

“Yes, well.” There was nothing to say to that. Which was why she could have kissed the truck driver when he returned to tell her he was suing.

The thing about the water was, it used to be alive.

Not to say it isn’t anymore. The ocean is far more lively than the land, even now. It’s constantly moving, rushing, churning, playing with shores that no longer play back.

But it used to be alive. The ocean had thoughts, if scattered ones, and opinions, if shifting ones. And, while very few people could interpret what she was thinking, they existed.

And, to those people, the ocean was kind. They were her friends, her lovers, her guardians. She treated them well, and they were kind to her in turn. When a young girl, barely seven, begged the ocean to carry her to safety, well, she would. And when an older girl, barely twelve, begged for a life away from that of a serving girl, a life at sea, well, she would gladly help.

And when Tarn, now sixteen, begged for something to do, well, she could help there, too. Of course she could.

So she did.

Allie refused to leave Daria’s side, which somehow managed to simultaneously annoy the woman and bring up a tender feeling of friendship in her heart. Of course Allie wouldn’t leave her—she knew Allie well enough, even the childish one. It was just that it would be really convenient at the moment.

“Where do you live?” the kid kept asking. “How old are you? Do you live with anyone?”

“In a flat nearby,” Daria answered, brushing Allie away. “Older than you and younger than… Well, older than you. And yes, I have roommates.”

“Who?”

“Friends of mine.”

“What are their names?”

“Why are you interested?”

“Because it’s Walter, isn’t it? Walter and Allie, like me—only she is me, isn’t she—“

“Kid.” Daria turned from the police officer to look at Allie. “Please. I’m trying to—“

“Trying to what? Can’t you just fix the car?”

Her face went blank as she looked at the remains—oh, shit—of her baby. Eyes like ice glanced at the wreckage—twisted, barely even recognisable as a car. “What do you think I am, a miracle worker?”

“Hell if I know. You’re immortal, aren’t you?”

Daria’s mouth opened, closed. “I… How much did she tell you?”

Allie grinned. “So you do know her!”

…Busted. Well. Daria said nothing. She really couldn’t think of anything to say.

“Alright, listen. Tell Walter to call my parents, he’s babysitting me at his apartment tonight, capish? And I want all three of you there.”

“It’s ‘capisce’,” Daria muttered.

“Bah. See you at four.”

The thing about fate is, it doesn’t actually exist. Granted, there’s always the minor interferences, ripples in time caused by people with a knack for music or words—arts whose medium is time itself. Fate only really occurs when someone writes a story too well, or sings too beautiful a song; however they define time magic.

Fate only really occurs when logic intervenes with reality.

This will make sense in a chapter or two.

It was dark, on the ocean, and the night was clear. From here, unlike the cities, you could see into infinity when you looked up—worlds upon worlds upon worlds, known and unknown, stretched above Tarn and into the black. The stars sparkled, twinkled, shone in the sky, completely failing to draw the girl’s attention.

She knew what the stars were—giant luminous spheres of fusion, flaming, turning hydrogen into helium that lit up the voids of space. She wasn’t an expert, exactly, but they had long ago surrendered their mysteries to the world.

No, the stars held no interest for Tarnmare Yallen. What fascinated her was the darkness.

That was something she did not know, and something nobody would ever fully understand. Who knewwhat lay in wait there—planets, perhaps, more than the single other world they knew of? Travellers? Things unimagined? The darkness between the stars was what filled Tarn with a strange, adventurous sense of wonder, and excitement.

Because she did not know.

“Beautiful, aren’t they?”

Tarn rose from the planks of the deck and looked at the princessa, slightly irate, slightly glad for the company.

“What, the stars?”

“Yeah.” Jade smiled, sat next to her, looked up. “You can’t see them this brightly in the city. Too much ambient light.”

“Yeah,” Tarn mumbled.

“I remember my mother used to tell me stories about them,” Jade said. “About the Hunter Irion, the man Dea loved. See?” She pointed out the pattern in the sky. Eons later, the name wouldn’t have changed much, and nor would the story.

Tarn nodded. “My mentor, Anna. Showed me the stars, too.” Tarn pointed. “You see where he’s giving the sea-snake the finger? The middle star? It’s a red dwarf. Rare in its colour, old in age. Usually dwarf stars are white—Anna said she’d only ever come across three red ones, and she wasn’t sure why. It’ll be gone within the next century, maybe even the next decade, and Irion will no longer be giving the sea-snake a rude gesture. Kind of sad.”

Jade blinked. “Really?”

“Yup.”

Silence.

“…Do you ever wonder what’s out there?”

“Well, Shastan, somewhere.”

“Second star to the right of the horizon, Anna always said. Thirty-six degrees from True North,” Tarn muttered, and pointed. “No, I mean… what else? There’s one planet with life out there. We know that. So… there’s bound to be more.”

“Maybe,” Jade said, and she shrugged.

“Did you ever think about that?”

“Not really.”

Tarn rolled her eyes. Just her luck, stuck with a frilly, dumb princessa in the middle of nowhere, running from tides-knew-what, and she was…

Jade was not Anna. The thought snuck up behind her and hit her over the head. It was so obvious, really. Of course Jade wasn’t Anna. Anna had been old, intelligent, quirky, and was also dead. Compare that to the living, frilly, blonde princessa, and… No shit Jade wasn’t Anna.

Tarn really couldn’t blame the girl for that. She should stopblaming the girl for that.

So instead, Tarn thought, sheshould try to be Anna. Do what her mentor would have done, asked what her mentor would have asked. Don’t be cynical after you make your observations, the woman would have said, probably in a cynical tone. Ask questions. Discover the whys.

“Why not?” Tarn asked on reflex.

“Why would I?” Jade asked in return. “It doesn’t effect me. Why would I care what’s out there?”

Tarn blinked. She sat up. “You’re gonna be queensomeday!”

Panic. Right, Jade hadn’t known that Tarn knew.

“How did you—“

“Please. I’m not so dumb that I wouldn’t recognise the Princessa Inherent. Jade Stone, heir to the throne, running away from home.”

Jade was on her knees in an instant. “Please, please don’t tell. Don’t turn me in. I’ll pay you double—“

“We can work something out.” Tarn sighed. “Listen, princessa. I know who you are. So you wanna tell me the whole story?”

“This is ridiculous,” said Marli softly. “Why would anyone want to kidnap Zeph? Of all people. The guy wouldn’t hurt a guppy.”

“Maybe it’s someone who really hates guppies,” Leril suggested.

“You’re a moron.”

“Love you, too.”

They trudged on, following no real path. The ground had dried out a little ways ago, and Zeph’s trail with it. Lerilian was hungry, and Marli was tired, but each was too stubborn to admit this to the other, so they made good time. They were weary, and dirty, and half-hopeless.

“Maybe he just ran off,” said Lerilian. “Maybe he got swallowed whole by a Great White Shark. Maybe he decided he hates us all.”

“I can see why you’d drive him away. Maybe he went insane after all your inane blubbering,” Marli said.

“Maybe he went insane after hearing the extent of your attempt at a large vocabulary,” Lerilian rebutted lamely.

“Maybe he went insane after hearing the extent of your comeback ability. Which is, to put it nicely, limited.”

“Maybe you drove him away with jealousy. You’re always so sweet and kind to me, Marli.”

“Oh, yeah, you can feel the love.”

“I can. You’re positively mad for me, aren’t you?” Leril batted his eyelashes in a ridiculous manner, and Marli couldn’t stifle the giggle. “Aha! See, a reaction!”

“Yeah, sure. You’re hilarious.”

“And an admission!”

“Of what? Oh, I’m sorry, I was talking about your face.”

“Mature.” Leril grinned. “Where are we headed?”

“Everywhere and nowhere,” Marliana said.

“So we’re lost.”

“Pretty much. Zeph had the map and anyway…” She sighed. “And anyway, I want to find him. I… need to find him.”

“Aww. You miss your boyfriend.”

“He’s not my boyfriend. He’s—“

“Your best friend, yes. We’ve all said that to ourselves at one point or another.” Leril elbowed her as they hit the crest of a hill, overlooking a valley.

There wasn’t much that held interest, really, about the valley itself. It was steady, shallow but large, and slightly rockier than most. Trees were abundant there, and life teemed through the branches. The two humanoids hit the summit of the hill in a spot where the trees conveniently parted, and they had a beautiful view of this quaint, lovely scene.

However, they completely and utterly failed to notice it.

Their attention was distracted by the overbearing citadel in the middle.

“You know,” said Leril, “I’m gonna place my money that your just-friend’s in there.”

“That would be just like him,” Marli agreed.

And when she went back to school—“Yes, I’m Allie’s aunt,” Daria said, “I’m sorry I distracted her from class, she was worried. It was a nasty crash.”—Allie couldn’t focus. The day went by slowly, hours ticking by like the seconds before summer break. Steady, nearly backwards… but only seconds long.

“She doesn’t look like your aunt,” Eric said as she reentered English Class. “She looks like one of those people you’re always drawing on the sides of your essays.”

“Why are you looking at my essays?”

“They’re good pictures and they’re well-written essays,” he argued. “Who was she?”

“My aunt,” said Allie. “I told you.”

She never did understand how he knew she was lying.

“So we need a game plan.”

“We could go up and ring the doorbell.”

Marli refrained from slapping him again.

“Marli, you aren’t thinking clearly.” And it was odd. Leril touched her shoulder, genuinely concerned. “Just because it’s a giant creepy castle doesn’t mean they took Zeph. Just because he’s gone doesn’t mean he was kidnapped. We need to think of this logically.”

“He wouldn’t just walk off, Leril. We’ve exhausted the topic.”

“No, we’re just exhausted. Wanna hear my vote? We use up what’s left of our alcohol supply tonight, and we sleep on it. And figure out what the hell to do in the morning. For all we know, he snuck off to take a piss and we walked off without him.”

Marliana bit her lip. She was absolutely terrified, for some reason, and she wasn’t sure why. A shiver ran through her spine—just one, just once, but Leril felt it.

“Hey,” he said softly. “Hey, Marli—“

“You shut up,” Marli grumbled, and sat down on the ground without preamble. “And no drinking,” she added as he reached for a pouch of beer in one of the packs. “Honestly, elfboy. We’re gonna need our wits about us.”

“You,” Leril said, dropping down next to her, “call me witless on a regular basis. Your argument is moot.”

“Screw you.”

“Well, if you insist—“

Marli punched him, but it was halfhearted. She just didn’t have the energy to fight anymore. Not right now.

“Come on,” said Lerilian, “That’s the best you’ve got? You really are worried.”

“No shit,” Marliana muttered. She sighed and leaned back on the ground, stared up at the nearly-dark sky. “Leril, you have to understand. I’ve known Zeffy since I was a kid. And coming from me, that’s a pretty damn long time.”

“He’s immortal. So are you. You’ll see him again.”

“When? In another thousand years?”

“Maybe,” said Leril, and immediately regretted it. Marli turned away from him, and curled up into herself. “But—but it’s not likely, Marliana.”

“It’s possible.”

He placed a hand on her side. “Marli, you’ll see him again.”

Marliana smiled a bit. She was being childish and she knew it. “I know that. It’s when I’ll see him that’s the problem.”

“Al, you don’t have any aunts. Both your parents were only children.”

Allie hated lunch. It gave people time to talk to her. And ask her questions.

“You probably ran out there because she looks like that girl Walter’s always talking about, right? One of the people in the story,” Marci continued, eyebrows tilted in a raise. “They aren’t real.”

There was a woman, infinitely old, who wore her hair in pigtails like Allie did.

“Says what you know,” Allie muttered.

“So you went down, freaked out, and creeped out some old lady. Nice job, Al.”

Allie sighed.

“Unless you were right,” said a very familiar shaggy-haired boy.

“Why are you even sitting here?” Marcella asked. “Seriously, I’ll be branded on the loser list for life. It’s bad enough I hang out with dreamer girl over here.”

“She has a valid question,” Allie said. “With all this charming company, I don’t know why you sat at our table today.”

“I happen to like the charming company,” said Eric. Allie wondered the world suddenly seemed to narrow down—suddenly Eric was the only other person in the world. His eyes had turned her way.

She blushed faintly, and the world expanded again. “Yeah, well.”

Marci emitted a loud, annoyed noise, and Eric laughed. It was charming.

“So,” he asked, ignoring Marci’s audible vexation. “Were you right?”

Allie looked at her cafeteria tray. She’d heard a rumour once that the schools got the food the prisons rejected. The peas were little green marbles, and the pasta was crunchy and soggy at the same time—she had no trouble believing this.

“Yeah,” Allie said. “I was right.”

“Liar,” Marci grumbled.

“No, really. I was. I’m visiting her tonight.” Allie forced herself to look up, and meet her best friend’s eyes. Marci stared back with bovine disbelief—Allie wondered what countless prepubescent boys saw in them. Marci always had a few hanging around these days. Whenever Allie asked why, Marci always rolled her eyes and laughed. Allie wasn’t sure her friend knew the answer.

“Yeah,” Marci said.

“Honest. You wanna come along?”

She looked at Marci when she said it, and sincerely hoped Eric took her up on the offer.

They finished off the beer that night.

One of the pluses that came with immortality—hangovers were a thing of the past. One of the minuses—the pleasant effects of alcohol wore off quickly.

So it was with a lot more alcohol in her than the elf that Marli’s head ended up on Lerilian’s lap, and it was with a lot less alcohol in his system that Leril ran his hands through her hair. His fingers began to play along her shoulders, too, venturing to her upper arm...

“I think I kind of...” Marli sighed. “I miss him, Lerilllllian.”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed that,” Leril said. “Why?”

“M’ best friend,” she said, trying to work her way through the mudslide of her mind. “Think I love him.”

“Oh?” Leril said. His hand slid down to the curve of her waist, sending tingles down through her stomach.

“Think so. Think I have for a while. Think...” Marli sighed. “Think he should hate me. Because I didn’t back then when he did.”

“When he did what?”

Marli raised an eyebrow at him. “When he loved me, elfy. Keep with the system. Up with the. Up with the conversation.”

“Pfffffffft,” he said. Marliana rolled her eyes.

“You’re stupid.”

“You’re mean,” he retorted.

“You’re mornic. Moronsic. Stupid.”

“You’re hot,” said Leril, and the two of them burst into drunken giggles. His hand moved again, and Marliana found herself kissing him.

She pulled away. “Random,” she said. Leril laughed.

Allie went on her own that afternoon. Vague disappointment had settled down somewhere in the pit of her stomach, but it was lifted up by butterflies—she was too nervous, and excited, to be sad.

Her finger reached out and pressed the doorbell, gentle, and leapt back at the sound as if burned.

Holy shit this was a bad idea. She must be insane. What if nobody answered? What if Walter was just playing a joke—he’d hired those women—Daria didn’t exist and neither did—um. Well, Allie knew she existed. But time travel? Really? Was she buying this?

...Yes. Allie couldn’t help it. She needed the story to be true.

There were footsteps, and Walter opened the door. She looked him in the eyes.

He wasn’t joking.

Allie walked inside. Her sneakers made a loud squeaking clunk on the hardwood floor.

There was a longish length of hardwood floor that led out from the doorway. To her right was a small kitchen, expensive, made mostly of stainless steel and polished marble counters. In front of her, the hallway turned. There was a closed door just inside her vision.

To her left.

To her left, there was a small expanse of carpet. On the carpet sat a couch, two chairs, a television, and some of the most overloaded bookshelves Allie had ever seen in her life. There was a coffee table, as well, scattered with CDs, records, and sketches.

The carpet was surrounded by three walls and a few windows, and where there weren’t windows there were paintings—originals, Allie thought. Some looked very old.

She forced herself to look at the two women sitting on the couch, and took a deep breath.

“Hey-lo,” said the brunette smoothly.

“Um, hey,” Allie whispered. “It’s true.”

“It’s true,” said Daria. “We’re real.”

Allie took a step forward—hesitating, unsure, terrified. The sole of her shoe landed, impossibly loud, and the world did not shatter. She did not wake up.

She took another step.

“Tell me the truth, then,” Allie said. “The whole story. Beginning to end. Please.”

Walter placed a hand on her shoulder. “You... might want to sit down.”