As I shimmied along the ledge with my bare toes feeling out the best stone, my canvas bag bounced on my knee, tempting the thundering shower of water to soak it. It took a little finesse to get under the falls without getting soaked and not every trip was positive; I used to keep a few slightly-damp towels on the other side in case of mishaps and missteps. Ducking under the last little bit, I was greeted by a warm fire and the strong scent of burning herbs. Holding my hand up, I did a short incantation and wiggled my fingers. There is no less ridiculous way to describe some steps in magical casting. An inhuman, chortling sound came across my lips as I blew out, echoing like a flock of birds were unsettled somewhere in the cave. Dropping my hand, the sound stopped and I stood rolling on my heels.
“Took you long enough,” muttered a tall woman in a deep, creaking voice as she stepped out from behind a towering stalagmite of solid quartz. As she came into the light, I could make out the weathered bark of her dark face; she was like a tree come to life. Her eyes were drops of amber set in front of a flame and her fingers clasped a long, green staff with leaves sprouting from it. Covering her wooden body were layers of moss and leaves draping like a living dress.
Smiling, I replied with a slight bend of my knee, “Elowen. Good to see you again. You’re growing well.”
She pursed her lips and sighed, “I still don’t know why I’m here, Aster. I don’t appreciate being summoned without cause, especially to this side of the portal. And in particular when it’s by a-”
“-a human. I know,” I cut her off smoothly. The Lady of the Trees and I had a, well, at times contentious relationship. Most of the time, though, it was very cordial; the key was not asking her for anything, which I was about to do.
“As the Keeper of the Gate, you ought to know better than to just lollygag around,” she continued in her older-than-dirt tone, “and what’s this spellwork here for?” She held her fingers near the bowls of fire I’d set up and glared into the light.
Clearing my throat, I replied, “Well, I have been at this for three centuries and sometimes I want a little vacation.” At that, she turned to set me with a look that would melt most mortals. “And since no one ever comes to relieve me, I thought I’d try out a little alert system,” I explained, trying to keep the childish whine out of my voice, “so if anyone tried to get through the portal, this circle would trap them and I would be alerted.” Still, the piercing look. “Look, I have left this cave for very brief periods to, you know, look out at the stars and enjoy life a little, but this spell could make it possible for me to have a real life,” I concluded.
Elowen put her hand on her hip and sighed, “Well, you know why you’re here. You know what you did to find yourself the Keeper out in the land of mortals.” In all the time we’d known one another, all the way back to my birth, Elowen had been like a second mother to me; she did the whole real-talk thing better than anyone I knew.
“Yeah, I did one stupid thing and I’m cursed to live forever out here, unable to leave,” I snapped, dropping my bag on a stone I used as a table. Turning, I waved my hand to part the waterfall. With a glance back at the tree woman, I made a running jump through the hole in the water. I soared through the air and a tinkling sound echoed in my mind and between the trees; it was horribly loud and everything around me sparkled like it was about to burst into flames.
Having stepped to the edge of the falls, Elowen called, “I meant to ask how you got out into the world!” Her voice boomed and made the nearby trees shiver with terror.
“Oh!” I gasped and turned. Taking a breath, I did the long incantation to break out of the containment spell, I moved my fingers and, one by one, the web of intricate and delicate spellwork fell off. When I stood there, free from its bonds, I turned my hand to create a tiny flame and dropped it into a nearby bush. Catching immediately, it spread into a ball of fire before I trounced it with another wave of my hand. I looked back at Elowen and shouted, “If memory serves me, the enchantment stopped me from doing damage to anything, magical or not.” She stayed silent. I chuckled and closed the hole in the falls before making the short journey back up the side of the cliff.
When I returned, she was standing with her back to me. “When did you create that spell?” she asked, sounding nervous. The only other time I’d heard that tiny waver in Elowen’s voice was the day I was exiled to this shitty job. It was like she couldn’t look at me.
I chuckled mirthlessly. Touching my mouth, I replied, “Hundred years ago, maybe. Perhaps a little longer.” Suddenly, she turned, uncertainty clear on her features. “You guys didn’t want me so why would I come back? I just use it to go out into the mortal world,” I sighed. Once, it had been painful; staying here. Now, this was home, kinda. This was pretty well all I’d ever known. “I’ve seen warriors and hunters and creatures of every claw and tooth come through here, even queens and knights. I’ve done the job you asked of me and requested nothing from any of you,” I continued, feeling the anger I’d felt centuries ago bubbling up again.
“Your sister came through when she was queen?” Elowen asked quietly. I’d found that tree folk tended to not, excuse the pun, beat around the bush, so this indirectness put me off a little.
Tempering the anger, I snapped, “I saw her once while she was queen, then I saw my great-niece, and then my great-grandniece. Neither of them knew who I was.” The Lady of the Trees was staring at her hands. “Do you know what that’s like? I was erased. They, you maybe, erased me,” I murmured, sitting down on a large rocky outcrop and trying very hard not to cry or throw something.
We stayed in a state of tension for ages before Elowen finally asked sheepishly, “Perhaps you’ve been erased as the princess, but I’ve heard a tale several times perpetuated by people I would largely rely on for such information of a monster at the end of the world.” She was staring at me now, the vine-y tendrils flowing from her head swayed gently. “They made it sound like there was a horrifying, destructive beast in a dark castle, but I saw no such thing,” she continued, watching my expression, “and I certainly wasn’t caught up in something’s web.”
Nodding, I stood up and stretched my arms. I smiled at the tree woman and threw my right fist into my open left palm. The world shook, thunder cracked, and the cave around us dissolved into a jagged black obsidian castle. Where there had been a tiny room, there was a huge, cavernous throne room fit for a queen. Above our heads, a charred bone chandelier swayed lightly with candles burning. Candelabras all over the room cast bright light as gaping, organic holes punched through the stone let in natural light. I moved my hand and the doors behind me opened on a sharp outcropping of a balcony and I turned to face the sun.
“How did you-?” Elowen began, but I was taking a run toward the edge of the tower and didn’t hear her.
As my toes left the ground, I whispered the familiar, transformative words and took the leap. Spreading my arms out, my skin turned to stone-hard scales and webbing stretched into wings across my arms. Claws and teeth grew sharper and longer, and suddenly everything was fiery and hard. I flexed my wings just before I touched the ground and dove up into the air before Elowen’s shocked face. Touching down just inside the door, I padded thunderously to the middle of the room and blew a few fire rings at my chandelier. I could see the tree woman was sufficiently terrified so I smiled with sword-sized teeth and took a deep breath. The journey back was a little more painful, but I was always happy to have fingers and fully-functioning vocal cords; using telepathy to speak to people was annoying.
“I recognize that I wasn’t the right choice for queen, I really do, but I will not concede that I am far more powerful than my sister ever was,” I murmured as I shut the doors again and walked barefoot into a smaller room. This one had several expansive windows that made Elowen gasp. On the left was a view from the cliff on the other side of the portal; it was a stunning view of a large swath of the kingdom. The middle was inside the actual throne room. The right was of the ocean back home. It sparkled in the fading sunlight. Because of the twelve-hour time difference, it was morning here and soon-to-be night there. Sighing, I explained, “The mortals can only see the falls; they’re in the basement, basically.” The woman was just staring out into the world. “The containment spell only works on me when I’m there, but I don’t go out of my way to cause destruction. I may have stopped a few adventurers from getting through, but I think I was doing this world a service,” I added, sitting down on the bench in the middle of the room.
For a long while, we remained stationary. Elowen seemed in shock. I was trying to forget about everything I’d been so mad about; I’d pushed it down for so long that when it did pop up, it was almost explosive. Centuries later, the scars were still pretty fresh. I forgot them sometimes, hid them from the world and myself.
Finally, I felt calm enough to stand next to Elowen and, together, we watched a lone knight crossing the throne room with a large iron lantern. Sometimes I missed normal, boring stuff like that; it was nostalgic.
Clearing my throat, I changed the subject for us both, “To get back to the issue at hand, Elowen, as the Keeper of the Gate, I have to inform your side of the portal that it’s in danger.”
She looked at me and frowned. “What do you mean?” she asked, cobwebs of home falling from her mind.
“Mortal development, I’m afraid,” I replied, heading back to my throne room and leading the tree woman down the winding staircase and out the front door. The black obsidian rose up and around the original waterfall, encasing it entirely but leaving the entire surrounding intact; I didn’t dare alter it. Instead of a simple cliff face, it was now a cliff with a large stalagmite protruding out from the front of it, engulfing a large portion of the front like a dragon. We wandered down the long trail on the edge, taking sudden switchbacks every few minutes.
“Not very wagon-friendly,” Elowen commented when we finally arrived at the base. She was staring up at the massive, obtrusive building.
Chuckling, I replied, “I don’t get many visitors, anyway. And, even if I did, I probably wouldn’t get them from that side of the Gate.” I headed off between two trees and plucked my way along, ducking branches and jumping bushes. “It’s about two hours south,” I called back to the tree woman, pulling a phone out of my pocket. When I turned back, she was gone so I stopped and searched for good, mortal road trip music. I put on some Hendrix and slid the phone back into my pocket, working a small, powerful spell. After a few seconds, the guitar riff rippled through the trees and the world was alight with screaming strings, crashing drums, and deep beats.
Elowen finally caught up to me and we headed out as she stared around, searching for musicians. I let her be confused for a good half hour before finally explaining, “Transference and amplification charm, if you’re wondering.”
“Of your own device?” she asked, staring at me as I hummed along with a rocking Tragically Hip ballad. I nodded and kept on walking. She struggled to catch up to me and gasped, a little out of breath for a tree, “Have you written any of your custom spells down? In a book, perhaps?”
I stopped and she almost ran into me. Shaking my head, I snapped, “What? You wanna take my genius back with you? Tell everyone there that I should have had the throne? That I would have had the power to prevent three wars and hundreds of casualties over the years?” My anger was bubbling up again.
“Well, I mean, maybe it could be-” she started before fading away, uncertain what to say.
I cut her off as she found her voice, “Could be a bargaining chip? For my freedom?” For a moment, I was too angry to speak. “Or servitude? You could let them know who’s been protecting them all these years,” I growled, wanting to hurt her and the whole damn world I left behind. But I had a new job, so I just added, “I don’t serve you anymore. I protect this place from you, from your side.”
The next hour and a half, neither of us spoke. Birds and squirrels chatted with one another overhead as the music I was playing echoed around us; this was like my heaven. Sunlight dripped from overhead leaves in intricate, organic patterns on the mossy forest floor. Trees swayed here and there to the natural rhythm of the world.
When we reached the point where I could just barely hear the construction, I stopped and turned off the music. I stood staring up into the trees expectantly until Elowen asked, “What?”
Chuckling, I stepped up to a tree and placed my hand on the rough bark, shutting my eyes. “Oh, Lady of the Trees, can you not hear them screaming?” I purred, opening my eyes and looking at the woman.
She shook her head and replied, “No, Aster, I can’t. They aren’t alive, not like they are back home.” Frowning, she added, “There’s energy, but not that kind of life.”
I straightened and grabbed her wrist, pulling her towards the tree. “That’s where you’re wrong. Come, put your hand here,” I commanded, pressing her fingers against the trunk and taking a step backward.
For a few seconds, she stood listening, feeling. “No, all I can hear is your heartbeat. You’re stressed, worried,” she finally murmured.
“That’s not me. That’s the trees. But, yeah, I am worried. About this world,” I sighed, listening for anything larger than a raccoon amongst the underbrush; I didn’t have an invisibility charm that would definitely work on Elowen so we needed to steer clear of construction workers. “But really feel it, Elowen,” I pleaded, “Tap into that, these trees are all connected.” I couldn’t figure out a better way to help her understand this place, this world. “Look, they speak to each other, just in a different way than the ones back home. Even I can hear it sometimes,” I continued, trying to convince her with everything I had.
She shut her eyes and put both hands on the trunk, her fingers entwining across the surface as she listened. “They’re humming?” she murmured with uncertainty.
I smiled. I’d finally gotten through to her. Nodding though I knew she was focusing still, I replied, “Talking, that’s talking.”
As she continued to link with the towering tree, she spoke in a sort of trance, “It’s not in a language I can comprehend.” Breaking free, she looked around at the trees as though she expected to see a familiar face but didn’t. Suddenly, she furrowed her brow and looked at me. “That’s how you feel here? Like you’re speaking a different language?” She was the maternal woman I’d known for so long again, caring, forgiving.
“It was,” I replied, breathing around the lump in my throat, “But then I started listening to the music. The music is just fantastic. Stunning.” Emotions were roiling; not just anger, but love and peace and good things, deep things.
Smiling, she prompted, “Like that, what we were listening to?”
I nodded and continued, letting the emotions left over from the music sparkle in my words like sea glass left on the beach after high tide, “Yeah, but there’s also music with so much heart you can’t stand it. You can feel the pain and the exultation and the horror, the sadness, the joy. Through their music, the mortals have immortalized their deepest emotions, encased them in the fragile plastic of CDs and records. It’s like life everlasting, music.” Before I was entirely overtaken by the mere memories of music, I cleared my throat and pointed through the trees. “It’s uh, it’s just over there. The trees are talking about destruction, they’re pleading for it to stop,” I murmured, trying to block out the noise.
“What are the mortals doing?” Elowen asked in her official tone.
Holding my arms out, I replied, “They’re building housing through this whole area.” When she blinked at me with her eyebrows raised, I tried a different tactic. “They’re expanding their territory and creating a new settlement,” I tried in colloquial terms, “Generally, they cut everything down and then build their little buildings and streets before putting in a few new, manicured trees and shrubs.”
Nodding, she asked, “But they can’t see the castle?”
I chuckled and replied, “True, but they can destroy it and the waterfall. They want to, in their plans, use the river as part of the design of a kind of creekside oasis. But that means segmenting it behind the waterfall to have better control and flow down the way.” Elowen was trying to picture a modern mortal settlement without ever seeing one so I cut to the punchline, “They’re going to stop the flow of water from our world because the falls won’t go through the cave anymore. Actually, there probably won’t be a cave anymore”
“Oh,” she murmured, understanding the issue now, “So?”
I cleared my throat and sighed, “Well, we don’t know what would happen if magic stopped flowing here.”
Rolling her eyes, she explained in her most condescending tone, “Dear, the magic coming through is just overflow and it only affects the direct vicinity.”
I shook my head. “No, it doesn’t. I took a trip across the world and, guess what? Magic worked, in full,” I snapped, feeling hot again. Taking a deep breath, I added, “This world is saturated with a low level of magic. I have no idea what would happen if that stopped. Or if the portal were destroyed.”
Elowen started to walk back and I followed, trying to force the anger to ebb by expending energy; it worked, to a degree. “Then we would keep all the magic, Aster,” she finally sighed as though it were the most obvious and correct option. “Who’s side are you even on?” she muttered under her breath.
Running up in front of her, I threw my hands up to stop her. “Again, Elowen, our worlds are intertwined. I think this world acts as a kind of filter,” I explained. When she glared at my hands, I dropped them and continued, “The magic is unstable on the cliff back home above where the waterfall is, right?” She nodded. “Well, this world skims just enough off the top to allow the magic our world has to be useful. We have to do something.”
“Fine, what would you like me to do?” she asked, centuries of rings in her eyes. I shut my eyes and cast us both back into the throne room of my castle so we could speak more freely than that close to the mortals. Chuckling as she stared around us, she snapped, “You could have done that to get us there instead of walking two hours?”
I laughed and nodded before getting back on track. “Send someone, Elowen. Tell someone. Do something,” I pleaded, taking her rough hands in mine. Nodding, I muttered, “I can’t protect both worlds all by myself anymore. And I shouldn’t have been asked to.” I dropped her hands and stared at the throne I’d built for myself out of stone.
After a minute of consideration, Elowen suddenly commented, “You won’t become queen.”
Scratching my head, I turned back to her with a fire trying to burn through me. “I don’t want the throne, the real one. I don’t want to be anything or beholden to anyone,” I replied quietly. I chuckled and noted, “If I wanted the throne, I’m pretty sure I could have just taken it, you tree. I could have burned through your forest and killed anyone that didn’t want to bow.” The dragon in me was rearing its head in those words; I didn’t let it out much for that reason. It could protect us all, but it could also destroy everything if I didn’t keep a handle on it. “Really, I want someone, anyone, to help me fix this and then I would be happy to never speak to any of you again,” I stated, pushing the monster in me down again.
“Why me?” she gasped, still looking shocked from my well-mannered outburst.
Growling, I asked, “What do you mean?”
She searched for the right words and clarified, “Why summon me, specifically? You know lots of people over there, still. You know who’s alive with this window spell.”
I smiled. “The trees,” I murmured. Throwing the doors open to the balcony, I continued, “I thought you’d be the most receptive because, even if they aren’t in the same world or speak the same language, the trees here are your responsibility, too. It’s all one forest, Elowen.” I stepped out onto the jagged stone to survey my pseudo kingdom. When I turned back, I let the dragon’s eyes and claws come out to solidify my unspoken threat. “Even if you don’t care, you need to go back and make a big issue out of it, Elowen. Mountain out of a molehill,” I demanded, letting anger flow through. Tilting my head, I chuckled and made a pun, “Make a castle out of a cave, maybe.”
Pretty Twisted Mirrors 