The Truth of Things Unseen

Beneath a Mound of Stones

The third time I saw the Fae girl, she was buried beneath a mound of stones.

The world flickered and scrolled as I moved through it, as though it were not real, like a painting in tatters, flapping in the breeze, the pieces swinging into alignment, fluttering, torn, flying away in the gale.

The tower was a ruin. The ship was gone, the ropes cut. It had fallen while I was running.

So very far away. My dagger was metal-heavy in my hand.

The trees were dead and cold. Lichen hung from the hoary branches like loose bandages. I tiptoed through the open space, hunting for anything alive. The grass was frozen. It crunched beneath my boots.

The lawn was strewn with bodies. There were men and women there I did not know, some stuck with arrows, some mashed, some torn apart. They were covered in frost, so I could hardly see the faces. The eyes were frozen and blue.

The castle had fallen. The Caer Llandrel, which not even Layonidel could breach, was a heap of rubble and broken timber. One turret still stood, swaying in the icy breeze. I looked for the little star, but the window was dark, the roof gone, the white curtain torn.

The wind caught at the edges of things. It lifted small pieces of world. They fluttered and fell away, fading into fragments.

A tree disappeared. A body was caught up, then dragged into nothing, as though it had never been, as though whoever it had been had never lived at all.

"Fen!" I screamed. My voice echoed back at me, shivered into a thousand pieces, tumbled over and over like slate down a mountainside.

"Fen!"

The walls were closing in. With a low rumble, the ruined castle scrunched in on itself and vanished. The lawn was shredding away into darkness, the tips of the blades detached and shaded into grey-white nothing. I began sprinting. The breaking world howled behind me like wolves.

The tower was garlanded with flowers of every colour, swags and sweeps of flowers brighter than any maypole. Lillies leaned in at the base on fleshy stems. Honeysuckles and passion flowers chased each other round and round the walls, tangling like lovers.

The roof was down, and one of the walls slumped inwards. I vaulted the fence, scrambled to the top of the pile and began pulling away masonry. The stems bound each stone tight. They held the mound together as though embracing it. I drew my blade and hacked at the flowers, but they twined around one another, gripping ever tighter to the stones, a tomb of flowers, and I sat atop it weeping as the wind howled and the world came undone.

The sky grew dark. The flowers hung like sad little ghosts, leaning in.

My heart beat faster. All the flowers were leaning in the same direction.

I scrambled halfway down the mound, ignoring the pit that yawned beneath me, following the flowers. I brushed them aside, and they yielded. There was a hollow here, a small arch. Inside was brightness. The space was full of dust and rocks. I began lifting them out, raking them with my fingertips. I touched skin, and the brightness intensified. There was a foot and a leg. I tugged and the stones shifted, and then she slid free, limp in my arms.

I held her close as the pit hummed beneath us. I could no longer see the grass. The ruined tower was an island of flowers in the centre of an enormous, slow-turning ocean of nothing. I climbed to the summit, dragging her with me. I brushed the dust from her face, stroked her hair, and watched the world closing in.

Someone was dragging her. She opened her eyes just a crack. A man in a cloak with a little beard was pulling her up over stones. It was her tower, the ruin of her tower. The tower that they had taken from her.

Llan! He had promised not to leave her, and he had sailed away anyhow, in the ship with Taliette. Sailed away without her.

The man laid her out on the rocks. It was uncomfortable, but she kept her body limp. As long as he thought she was asleep or dead, she would be safe. He started brushing the dust off her face, trying to get a good look at her. He would see her brightness, and all would be lost. She wanted to scream, but she remained still.

I am a stone. I am a patch of dull grass. There is no Fentallion here.

It was a puzzle. She could solve it if she thought about it hard enough. She opened her eyes just a crack. The man had stopped touching her face and was staring out into the darkness. He had an ugly iron knife in a sheath at his belt.

Still, she lay unmoving. She didn't even know if she could move. What if she was already frozen forever? Experimentally, she twitched her toe. A rock by her foot shifted just a little. Not frozen forever, then.

The man was still staring out. He hadn't noticed.

She was still, but she was breathing. I watched the small movement of her chest, up and down, up and down. The wind had quieted. The world was coming to a close. How to wake her? Could I find my way back to the tunnel? Was the tunnel still there? I leaned in...

...he leaned in, and just like that, she knew what to do. She gripped the handle of the knife. Her thumb worked the clasp, and it slid out. She flipped it around and pressed it up into him. Pressed it hard...

...and I fell back, coughing. There was no pain. It was like being punched, a shock, and then a stinging that built into an ache that filled my stomach, and then she was up and standing over me...

...and all the rage spilled out of her.

She screamed at him. "You stupid, stupid, you bastards, stupid, why couldn't you just leave us alone? We never did anything to you! Never did anything," and she was sobbing and stamping on him, over and over with her heel.

The man was gripping his stomach where she had stuck him. Curled around the knife that she had put in him. She wanted another knife. She wanted to keep sticking knives in him until he understood.

She heaved up the biggest rock she could lift and dumped it on him. It bounced off his chest. She kicked him in his back, over and over, and he curled into a ball, holding himself, trying to talk, and she was kicking him in the head and the shoulders, and anywhere she could reach, and spitting on him.

"You bastards, you bastards! You could have just left us! You could have just left us! We were happy!"

And he was coughing and trying to speak.

But there was only one thing to do. Llan had gone in the pit with Taliette. There was only one place to go. She sprinted to the edge of the ruin and leapt.

And the pit swallowed her up.

And the world closed in on me, the flowers were snuffed, and all went dark.