As We Go Along, Ch. 7

I glanced at the others in the group. Braydon would be of no use - I was sure he knew things, but he would be unwilling to share them. Vesperzo seemed a likelier option. I'd pinned him as a know-it-all the moment I saw him, and know-it-alls loved to talk. However, before I could think of a question that wouldn't make me sound like a crazy person, Carrington asked me:

"Miss Harper, I've been wondering," he began.

Uh-oh.

"How did you come to be lost in the Darkwood?"

I'm really bad at lying on the spot. It takes at least one minute to come up with a good lie, and one minute is a long time in conversation. So I told the truth. "I don't know."

Vesperzo raised an eyebrow. "How, exactly, does that work?"

I didn't want to shrug like Colin. That would be rude. "I fell in a hole and I ended up here."

Okay, so that wasn't true. I'd climbed through said hole. But the landing had felt a lot like a fall.

"A hole?" Carrington asked. "In the ground?"

"Kind of." I grimaced at the ground. If I said my mirror had turned into a misty tunnel into another world, they'd think I was crazy. I didn't want anyone else to call me Mad Madalyn; my brother had already laid claim to that.

Braydon turned his head (he was in the lead) and said bluntly, "You're not from here."

I sighed. "No, I'm not. Wherever 'here' is."

"Then where are you from?" Carrington asked.

I hesitated. "Earth."

All four men brought their horses to a halt simultaneously. They all stared at me for a minute.

"Earth?" Vesperzo asked. "The world without magic?"

Lovely, I thought, we have an inter-universal reputation. "That's the one."

"Then how in blazes did you end up here?" Braydon demanded.

"A portal," Vesperzo said. "The hole was a portal, Miss Harper."

"I had that much figured out," I said. "My turn. Where are we now?"

"The Darkwood," all three said at once.

Colin remained silent, but he kept staring at me like I was from different planet, which I was. Or, a small voice in my head said, like you're from the same planet. I may not be able to lie, but I have a good intuition. Somehow Colin was more similar to me than any of the others were, and there had to be a reason for that. I filed my theory under "hunch" for the time being.

"Yes, but where IS the Darkwood? Is that the name of the world? Or is there more outside this?" I gestured to the dead trees around me.

"The Darkwood's just a big forest," Braydon said. "The world is called Chaeselor."

Okay, now we were getting somewhere. "And there's magic here?"

"More than most people are comfortable with," Carrington said. "Especially people from a world that supposedly has no magic."

"There aren't usually portals on Earth," Vesperzo explained. "To be precise, there are never portals on Earth. Earth has been a closed world for centuries. But now it's beginning to open again. Just one of the many strange things that have been happening lately."

"Like what?" I asked.

"Miss Harper, the Darkwood was once called 'dark' because the abundant leaves of the trees blotted out the sun," Carrington said. "Now look at this place. The trees went dormant last winter as usual. It's midsummer now and they're still dormant. Moreover, the sun never shines on the Darkwood anymore. It's forever shrouded in mist and cloud."

My shoulders bunched up the way they do when I hear something creepy. My spine felt all crawly, like my brother had dumped a bag of millipedes down my shirt. "Why?"

"No one knows," Colin said quietly. I jumped a little. I hadn't expected him to speak.

"Evil magic," Carrington said, shaking his head. "A powerful magic-user is doing this."

"That's all speculation," Braydon grumbled. "There hasn't been a magic-user in decades."

"I thought this world was magical?" I asked.

"It was," Vesperzo said. "But worlds sometimes lose their magic. It happened to Earth. It's been happening to Chaeselor for almost a hundred years now. Gradually the feyries and aelfs retreated to the Darkwood. The lesser creatures, the knomes and such, just disappeared. Charms above doorways and protective rings around villages stopped working. The witches have lost power and shriveled into cranky old women with a penchant for poisonings. The dragons have taken to the mountains and the sea. And now the Darkwood itself, the last bastion of magic, is under attack."

"Attack," Braydon spat. "I see no attack. It's just the next step in the Fading, Vesperzo. A natural step. In a few thousand years, the Cycle will happen again and it'll all go back to normal."

"I'm not such a believer in the Cycle as you are," Vesperzo said.

They'd lost me at Fading. "Cycle?" I asked.

Braydon opened his mouth. Vesperzo cut him off. "An ancient belief that magic goes away and comes back at intervals. Unfortunately, they're long intervals - thousands of years long. Thus, no one has lived long enough to actually see if the theory is true, and histories of that age tend to be... unreliable."

"The Fading is the part of the Cycle that's happening now," Braydon said. "The Revival is what's happening on Earth."

"You don't know that," Vesperzo snapped.

"You just don't want to believe Chaeselor is losing its magic," Braydon snapped back.

"Gentlemen, there is a lady present," Carrington said sharply. He smiled apologetically at me. "The best answer is, we don't know exactly what is going on. But it's almost certain a magic-user is involved somehow. Whether one believes in the Cycle or not, even a Fading wouldn't cause what's happened to the Darkwood as of late. It's become more magical, not less. It's just a different kind of magic."

"A deadly kind," Braydon said.

Carrington and Vesperzo shot him dark looks. Colin remained passive during all this, eyes ahead. I watched all of them carefully for the rest of the morning. Who knew where answers lay?