The Steward (11 page)

“But I don’t understand why he’s here, and please don’t tell me I’m going to have to take the Water trial with him anywhere close.” I allowed concern to register on my face where she could see it.

Sara studied my expression for a moment and suggested that we go sit down. I wanted answers and she had promised to provide them. I agreed with her, so we climbed the stairs to my bedroom together. Collapsing on the foot of my bed, I pulled my boots off—it felt good to flex my toes. She walked to the window and stared out for a moment, then turned to me, peeling off the red cape she’d been wearing.

“There is a lot I need to tell you, but you’ll need to be patient.”

“I’m all ears.”

I leaned back on my elbows. It felt good to recline, and the knot on my head didn’t seem to be throbbing quite as badly. Sara walked over to my bed and sat down, embracing a thick white pillow.

“Many thousands of years ago, a rift formed among the Fae over what to do with humans.”

“Over humans?” I asked, a bit confused.

“Yes. As hard as it may be to believe, the Fae vehemently disagreed over whether to allow humans to survive. Bear with me—this is complicated. Early men were superstitious, as Devin and I said earlier. Though humans were naïve and easy to manipulate, some Fae nevertheless found them endearing and wanted to help them learn to live in harmony with their surroundings. We had to make a serious choice, however. For thousands of years we took solid forms to experience the physical world, but because of the superstitious nature of men, we generally avoided revealing ourselves.”

“I’m still not sure what you mean by
experience the physical world?
”

Sara explained that the physical realm was a mysterious and wonderful place for the Fae. In their natural form, the Fae were not able to see, taste, touch, feel, or smell as physical creatures do. The first Fae who experienced physical existence was as wonderstruck as I had been in the cave.

“We experience the world in our own way, that is true, but I never smelled a rose, or experienced the simple beauty of a dew drop on a flower petal the way that physical beings do on a daily basis—until I took physical form. When our kind learned of physical existence, it opened up an entirely new universe to us. Much like the awe you experienced in the cave, I will never forget seeing a flower through physical eyes for the first time.”

“The
patterns
in the cave were remarkable. That vision was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, but it wasn’t real,” I said.

She smiled at me. “Oh yes, Maggie, it was real in the sense that what you saw closely resembles what the Fae experience in our natural state. We created it for you so that you would have a reference from which to put this conversation into perspective. It’s important that you understand what we are and where we come from. Much depends on you, Maggie, and it’s my job, for the time being at least, to teach you.”

“Okay,” I said. I curled up on the foot of the bed. “Please, go on.”

Sara nodded. “At first, there were very few people in the world, and we didn’t often cross paths with them. Early people simply existed, much like any other species in the physical world. They lived in small breeding groups and there was nothing particularly remarkable about them—no offense. Little groups of humans moved from place to place. They hunted, they ate, they reproduced, and they died.”

“How long ago are we talking about?”

She tilted her head, allowing her long curly white hair to fall over her shoulder. “More than one-hundred thousand years ago,” she said.

I felt numb for a moment as I contemplated how much time that was. But before I drifted too far off in thought I composed myself and, like a child listening to a bedtime story, I asked, “What happened next?”

“What happened was nothing short of amazing. Humans did something no other species in the physical world had ever done—your ancestors developed art and culture. People settled in many different areas and began to grow in number. Like the Fae, humans were attracted to particularly beautiful, fertile places and it was no longer possible for us to avoid one another. For many of my kind, there was a simple solution. While we thought it best to avoid humanoid form because it frightened ancient men, we could appear in forms that humans were accustomed to—birds, insects, small and large mammals.”

“Not everyone agreed, I take it?”

“That’s true. Besides the complications arising from those who simply insisted on taking human form, there was another problem. My kind has the ability to take many different physical forms, and we learned that with each form we inherit a different ability—or sense. We experimented for thousands of years. In raptor form, we experience acute eyesight but our sense of smell was diminished compared to other forms. In the form of a bee or butterfly, we could see an incredible spectrum of light and a broader range of color than in raptor form. In canine or feline form smell was enhanced but color was limited. We discovered that by taking human form we were able to smell, see color, and taste in a combination unique in the physical world.

“It was quite easy to meld some physical forms, like human and bird or even human and bee, at the same time. We learned how to pick and choose the senses we wanted to experience. One of the most pleasant combinations to Fae is taste combined with smell—canine or bear combined with human. But those manifestations have terrified humans for millennia. Although the legends are somewhat exaggerated, it is a fact that a few encounters ended tragically.”

“Oh god, the Werewolf-Bigfoot thing again?” I asked in disbelief. The old movie
An American Werewolf in London
came to mind and a violent shudder ran though my bones.

“Yes and no. The shapes are real, but the mythology of full moons and silver are nothing more than Fae and human invention.”

“Vampires?”

“As depraved as it sounds, there are a few Fae who like the taste of blood.”

“Let me guess, the Unseelie?”

“Not exclusively Unseelie, but the majority, yes. For some, the images and emotions of fear that people project are as attractive and enjoyable to experience as the smell of mint leaves. Thousands of years ago, those Fae learned they could easily create fear in people by changing shape, and given the frail nature of your physical bodies … let’s just say that a few Fae hold great pleasure in causing pain, or worse. I’m sorry.” Her lower lip pooched out slightly and her eyes shifted downward as she read the horror on my face.

A shiver rattled down my spine when I realized that all the nightmares of my childhood could easily take physical form. Worse yet, I had just met a Fae at the top of the hill who was more than willing to accommodate.

“But I don’t understand what this has to do with Chalen and the Unseelie.” I tried to push the images from my mind.

“You see, Maggie, given the increasing numbers of people and our practice of taking physical form, it was a just matter of time before humans noticed our presence. At first we compelled, or glamoured, people who got too close to us. We made them forget, but that became unmanageable. What complicated things even more was that for many of us, observing and interacting with humans became one of the most enjoyable facets of taking a physical form.”

I was astonished. “Why? If I could do what you do, I’m not entirely sure I’d bother.”

“Art and music. In our natural form, we manipulate energy as a form of artistic expression, but it is wholly different than the art and music of people. For thousands of years we created and changed things in the physical world, that’s true. But in a few short years, humans began to manipulate the physical world to a degree that we noticed even from our natural form. It was impressive enough to us in Naeshura, but in physical form, it was astonishing.”

“What do you mean by that, that you noticed from your realm?”

Sara smiled at me and nodded her head as if she knew I’d ask that question. She said, “The changes humans make to their surroundings in the physical world show up in our world as unique and beautiful energy patterns, but that is all. You see, in our natural form we’re aware of energy patterns in the physical world, like those made by birds or people, but we cannot interact with them directly. To put it another way, if I take my natural form right now, I could tell where your energy is in the room, but I couldn’t see you, talk to you, smell you, or hear anything you say. The Fae must be in physical form to interact directly with the physical world.”

* * *

Sara and I talked for three hours before she left. I felt a connection to her, and to this place, that I hadn’t expected. The cave changed everything, I had to admit, just like Aunt May said it would.

Before the moment the floor moved, Arkansas seemed like a prison sentence. Afterward, though, it became the most exciting place I had ever been—I was connected. I shook my head, thinking it might dislodge the feeling, but it didn’t. I
was
connected—connected to the soil and the stones. It was my birthright, I suppose. The overwhelming sense of emptiness I felt when we arrived here was replaced by curiosity. The Fae. Wow. But there was still a problem—my desire to move back home was as strong as ever. I knew how to fix that. Sell. The bigger problem was figuring out how to break it to Aunt May.

I wandered to my window and half-heartedly looked
at the cottage garden below. Sara floated through the gate and down the path toward her cottage. She looked back at me for a moment and smiled before disappearing into the trees.

The digital alarm clock on the mahogany nightstand read four-thirty. Everyone would be back from Fayetteville before long. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and realized that I looked like I’d been trapped in a cave … on my head. I knew I needed to take a bath before they got home and started asking questions about the grime on my face and in my hair.

Justice yawned and stared at me without raising his head. He followed my every move. I knew he was just waiting for me to look directly at him, so I watched him out of the corner of my eye as I strolled to my dresser. He did his best to keep his head still so only the whites of his eyes moved. He didn’t trust Chalen, and for that reason I loved him.

“Are you going to look after me while I take my bath, Justice?”

He wagged his long tail just a bit, and lifted his head as if to say, “I think I better, clumsy human.”

“Well, okay then, can you run the water?”

His tail went crazy and he cocked his head slightly. I imagined him saying, “Sure, as soon as I grow thumbs.”

As I moved toward the door he came off the bed in a graceful bound, snorting as he reached me and nuzzled my free hand. In the bathroom he settled on the heavy white rug in the middle of the floor.

The sound of the water filling the copper tub was soothing, but it was nothing compared the feeling of immersing my body in the bubbles—every muscle immediately relaxed. The hot water stung my skin until it surrendered in blissful numbness. As the remnants of the cave washed away, I thought about what Sara had told me.

It disturbed me that a disagreement over what should be done with humankind had caused all the problems between the Fae clans. The Seelie clan wanted to protect and work with people. The Unseelie wanted to destroy us—they saw humankind as a threat. The leader of the Unseelie Elders, Zarkus, had predicted that men would be a destructive force on the planet—that people were destined to spread and consume. Zarkus argued that humans were ultimately flawed because of our short life spans.

The Unseelie warnings made sense, as much as I hated to admit it. The Unseelie believed that because people were only on the planet for a short period of time, we’d only be concerned with what we could do, what we could have, and what we could consume in the time we have here. In many ways, the Unseelie were correct.

Sara told me that the clans battled on two occasions—five thousand years ago and again two thousand years ago. Although she didn’t provide much detail, even when I asked, she made it clear that many people and many Fae had died in both. During a large battle, when nearly everything living in both realms hung in the balance, she said the leaders of both clans reached an agreement. They made a pact to stop the war. As much as the Unseelie despised human beings, they feared their own destruction even more. Sara told me that the Seelie outnumbered the Unseelie, and the latter knew they could not prevail without risking everything.

I understood that. The devotion the Seelie had shown to people actually comforted me, but I was disturbed by something else Sara said. She told me that over time some of the Seelie, including many who had been our greatest advocates, grew disillusioned with humankind. They questioned whether the Unseelie might have been correct after all. What bothered me the most was that, on some level, I agreed. Knowing how much the Fae loved and were connected to the world, I could only imagine how frustrated they became over the past two hundred years. As I turned that over in my head, I felt a little ashamed that I had lived my life like most people my age—ignoring anything ugly or inconvenient. That notwithstanding, I knew things like massive oil spills, the loss of forests and the extinction of animals couldn’t be winning people many points.

When I pressed the issue with Sara, she told me not to worry about those things. She restated what Devin had said in the cave—that my role in all of this was to assist the Fae in protecting this place, and nothing more. But earlier she’d emphasized how important my role was to the Fae. So when I asked her whether there was something she wasn’t telling me, she paused for several seconds, silently staring a hole through me.

“Maggie,” she finally said, “things between the clans are … quite strained. I won’t deny that. You are
extremely
important to us. Please, just focus on the task at hand—preparing for the Air trial.”

Her words felt like a riddle, like she told me some secret without actually saying it. I couldn’t tell whether she didn’t want to say anything else or couldn’t say anything else. I learned that the Fae had watched me the entire time I’ve been in the Weald, and I felt certain they orchestrated the events that forced my family to move here—Aunt May had said as much. It didn’t make sense that they’d go to all that trouble, if I was correct, to have me simply play nanny to a forest. Yes, something else was going on—my curiosity was piqued. For the time being, though, I needed to think about something else. I forced the subject out of my mind.