Broken (17 page)

I came to the first table, examining the necklaces and jewelry
— it was some of the finest gold work I’d ever seen.
The merchant was an old woman. She nodded to me with a smile, but
said nothing. There was a mirror on the table, but I couldn’t
see my reflection — only that of a strange old man. He winked
at me.

I continued on, a number of the folk nodding their heads to me,
some almost bowing. I realized the scarf must be symbolic of
something important, so I nodded back and smiled. I felt like such
a fraud, but it was getting me through the crowd unmolested.

One table was selling fresh fruit — apples and berries. The
young woman offered me an apple. I wasn’t sure about taking
it. It was red. The first thing that ran through my head was what
happened to Snow White. Brokk indicated I should take the apple, so
I did as I was told. I pocketed the fruit after nodding my thanks
and moving on. I didn’t eat it, although it was tempting. I
was getting hungry.

Further along, the little Faeries were playing, flitting about
the tables. I could swear a couple of them looked familiar, like
from my dream, or perhaps I’d seen them growing up. They
giggled, waved, and flew off.

I noticed some whispering behind me. I listened, but the words
were in a language I did not understand. I didn’t do an
about-face to catch them, but I did pause long enough at a tent
with no wares outside. Covered in a fine, purple cloth, it had
nothing to indicate what I would find inside. I gave up on trying
to overhear whatever gossip was happening at my expense and poked
my head in the tent.

The inside was dark, with a few candles struggling to light the
space. It was much larger than it seemed from the outside with a
table in the middle. Behind it sat an old woman. She motioned for
me to sit in front of her and grinned. Somehow I was expecting her
not to have teeth. She did, but not that many.

I parked myself with Brokk sliding off my arm. He stood on the
table beside me as the woman took my hands. Turning my palm upwards
she ran her thin, bent finger along my skin. She leaned over to
look at my hand, rubbing it with her thumb, as if trying to erase
the lines.

I wasn’t sure what made me stay. A part of me wanted her to tell me about my future. Was I going
to live? Was my end coming soon?

The woman looked into my eyes, and in hers I saw the emerald
ones I’d come to know.

Then she creeped me out when she spoke with Chris’s
voice.

“Katherine, what are you doing here? This is
dangerous.”

My heart leapt. “Chris, oh my god! Are you all right?
Where are you?”

“I’m okay,” he replied. “She has me in
the Winter Court. Don’t make the trade Katherine.
She’ll kill you once she has what she wants from
you.”

“We’ll get you back,” I said. “Just hang
in there.”

“Katherine,” he said. The old woman smiled.
“If I don’t make it through this, I want you to
know—oh my god! Katherine, it’s a trap! Get out of
there! She’s there with you!”

I blinked.
What?

I was too slow to move. The old woman changed in front of me,
her hair turning golden and curly.

She seized my arm. “Now I’ve got you!”

Chapter 21

I pulled my arm, trying to get out of Morgana’s iron
grasp. My heart was pounding in my chest. I looked to Brokk for
help. He was gone.

I decided there was no way she was taking me without a fight. I
couldn’t punch for shit with my left, but that didn’t
stop me from trying. She ducked my first shot, but I hit her with
the second. It didn’t faze her. She was trying to reach my
other arm, but I used her grasp to pull myself up on the table. I
was about to kick her when Jonathan stormed into the tent, with
Brokk on his shoulder. I put my foot against her chest and shoved.

As she toppled backwards, her nails dug into my skin, ripping my
wrist. The pain surged up my arm. I moaned and leapt off the table.
Jonathan grabbed me, his blade out. He pushed me back through the
tent flap, and we scurried through the market.

“How did she know I’d go in there?” I asked. I
nearly bumped into an old man in breeches. Jonathan escorted me
around the man in a whirl, like it was a dance, and we were off
again.

When we reached the willow under which I’d sat, he paused and
looked back.

“You shouldn’t have gone into the market,” he
said. He wasn’t angry, but his voice had a hint of
irritation. He pinned the brooch back onto my shirt.

I looked at the gouges in my wrist. They were red and angry.

Jonathan grabbed my arm, having a look for himself. The bleeding
wasn’t heavy, just a mild trickle. It stung though. I wrapped
it in the scarf.

“Let’s go,” he said, but veered from the path
we had taken when we came in. Instead he tread across the open
field in a crisscross pattern.

It took me a moment to realize he was searching for something.
We kept this up for a good ten minutes before he yanked at a couple
of white-flowered plants. He chewed the stems and spit them into
his hand.

“Give me your wrist,” he said.

I lifted my hand and he removed the scarf. He took the chewed up
plant bits and smeared them onto the gouges. I braced myself for a
sting, but it actually soothed the pain that was there. Then he
wrapped the scarf back around it. Brokk leapt from his shoulder to
mine.

“I needed to treat that first,” he said. “It
needs to heal fast. She can use the scent of your blood to track
you.”

He looked about, pausing to watch a couple of ravens alight in a
nearby pine.

“She’s watching me. She can’t see you now that I’m near you, but she knows we’re together.” He
looked back. The market was nowhere to be seen. “We need to
find shelter. Maybe a human place to hide. I know it’s still
morning, but I think we’re going to need to lay low for the
day and night. It will give us a chance to plan.”

I nodded, and so began the trek once more.

I still wanted some
answers though.

“You didn’t tell me how she knew I’d go into
that tent?” I asked.

“She knew we would try the market. This was the closest
one. I should’ve been smarter, I should’ve known she’d have
spies.” He brought us back to the main trail, and we made our
way towards a town on the horizon. “When you entered the
tent, the medium could see you. She’s human — or used
to be, anyway, and must work for Morgana. Once you made contact
with Chris, Morgana knew it was you. She took control of the medium
and seized you through her body. The medium was meant to hold you
until Morgana arrived.”

That seemed to make enough sense. I felt a little foolish for
not having listened to Jonathan’s advice about staying put. I
glanced at Brokk from the corner of my eye with something of a
scolding look. He shrugged and had that sheepish look of apology.
His cheeks even reddened a little. I tickled him to let him know
things were just fine.

The pain in my wrist had subsided substantially. It was nearly
gone.

“What’s with this scarf?” I asked.
“People were looking at me like I was royalty.”

He glanced at it. “Either they recognize it as hers, or
they recognized the embroidery as the Summer Court. Either way,
they would do well to treat you carefully. Morgana commands fear
and respect in the fey world, more so the fear. They either think
you’re one of the Court, or high in Morgana’s favor
— high enough to wear her scarf openly.”

A man walking a mule passed us by on the other side of the road.
He looked familiar. We both nodded and greeted him.

“So, now what?” I asked after he’d passed.

We closed in on the village ahead of us. “We find a place
to stay,” he said. “I still have enough money to get us
some food and a night here.”

That sounded fine to me even though it was a little early in the
day. I wished we could’ve driven the distance that was left, but if
she saw Jonathan in a car it was a sure guarantee I would be in it.
We’d be easy pickings. One large, well-aimed bus would do the
job nicely.

“What do you think she’ll do to Chris now?” I
asked. The question had to be asked, whether Jonathan wanted to
hear it or not. I still hadn’t sorted out my feelings for
him, but that didn’t stop me from caring about
Chris.

Jonathan didn’t seem to mind. He shrugged.
“I’m surprised he’s still alive frankly. I never
expected her to make the trade fairly. She’s probably using
him for her own devices.”

I wasn’t sure what to make of that, but I didn’t
cherish the notion of Chris being used in any way by her.

“He said she has him somewhere in the Winter Court. Where
is that?”

We approached a white-washed inn with a slate roof. Jonathan
stopped outside, waiting for the couple that exited through the
creaking wooden door to move beyond earshot.

“In the Faery Realm. Once we get you to your family home,
I’ll go after him.”

I wasn’t sure he’d be going alone, but I left it at
that.

We slipped into the inn. It was quaint, with a stone hearth at
the far end of a tightly packed space. I wondered if we would find
a room at all, but then as I heard the accents of the patrons that
were lined along the bar, I realized that this was the local watering hole with a smattering of
guests.

We had a
choice of a couple of rooms including, when the old woman took a
look at the two of us, the honeymoon suite.

“That won’t be necessary,” I said. “A
room with two beds please.”

I watched Jonathan for a reaction. He just smiled.

The woman handed me the key and we made our way up to find a
room with two single beds. It was a cramped space, with barely any
room to get past the beds to the washroom at the side. There was a
small window looking out to the street below to which Jonathan made
a beeline. He seemed pleased with the view, nodding his head in
satisfaction. I supposed he wanted to know what might be coming for
us in the night.

I left him there.

My priority was a shower — piping hot. I was desperate to
get out of the foot-killers and my clothes felt like I was going to
have to peel them off my body. I checked my backpack. I had clean
undergarments, but nothing else. I was going to have to buy
something if possible. I desperately needed a better pair of
shoes.

“I need a shower,” I said.

The dimples in Jonathan’s cheeks were huge as he grinned.
“So do I.”

I waited for something more, unsure if I would actually want him
to say the words or not.

Instead he winked at me and said, “Ladies
first.”

I smiled and made for the shower.

I took my time in there. I felt like I’d needed one for an
eternity. The events of the last few days, as well as trying to
sleep with a tree trunk for a mattress, had turned my body into a
bag of knotted muscle. Everything ached. To top it all off, I felt
I hadn’t had a moment to think — to try and make sense
of everything. It was like the fight-or-flight response had kicked
in and all I could do was keep moving. I needed to pause, to take
the time to gather my thoughts.

After a shower to scrub out what felt like days’ worth of
grit and sweat, I filled the tub. There were no rose petals or
salts to add to the water. I had never been into that sort of thing
until my roommate had left hers in the bathroom once. I’d tried
them, just to see if I’d had been missing something. Oh, had I
ever. After that, I had started searching for others and found ones
to my own liking. Sadly, today was going to be a plain bath water
day.

Still, it soothed my aching muscles. I examined the gash in my
wrist. It was healing nicely for such a short period of time. I
wasn’t sure if Jonathan had done something to the paste he
had rubbed on it, but it looked better than it probably would have
with conventional means.

I tipped my head back, watching the steam rise. I let my mind
drift — thinking about Morgana.

I had taken something from her. That had to mean something. If
given the chance, I would do it again. But
what
would be useful to take
was another question. Whether I could take something with me
into
the dream was still another. Maybe I could take Jonathan’s
blade. If I could hurt her, just scratch her or something, perhaps
it might frighten her enough that she’d leave me alone. Maybe I
needed to find a way to scare her like she was doing to me.

My thoughts then drifted to Aunt Marigold. How much of this had
she known? I still had so many questions — ones I would
likely never have answered now. I felt a little ashamed of thinking
that — it was selfish. The woman was dead, after trying for
so many years to help others, to avenge her brother’s death.
Dead in a place she’d thought she was safe. She’d lived like
a hermit only to be taken anyway. Was that going to be my fate in
this house we were making for?

I thought of Chris, captured because of me. That bothered me the
most, I think. I had no idea what Morgana might do to him. I knew
it wasn’t my fault she’d taken him, but the guilt was still
there, like a weight around my neck trying to drown me in a pool of
remorse. To top it all off, I missed his company.