“Is it horrible and evil and revenge-y? I won’t settle for anything less,” I threaten, meaning every word.
Alder grins, enjoying my newfound intensity and purpose. “It’s madness.”
I frown, wondering what that means exactly.
I don’t have to wait long, because moments later, I see thousands of tiny fairy lights blink through the gnarled tree limbs. They come to life and float like lightning bugs, and as they near us, I hear the soft chattering of… “Pixies?”
“Fae, forest children, they go by many names. They’re clever and tricky and know the elements of the environment better than any other. They’re the ones that control the whirlpools in the loch. You can blame them for your near drownings.”
My eyes widen. “Twice! Those little shits are the reason—”
“Oh, I wouldn’t talk about them like that. They’re pretty revenge-y when crossed. You’d fit in well with them, actually.”
I roll my eyes—even if he can’t see it in the darkness, it feels good. “So, what’s the master plan, then?”
“We wait,” he says, pulling me back down to crouch beside him. “And watch.”
I turn into Alder’s side, and he pulls me under his arm. It feels cozy, and I think the only thing that’s missing is a bucket of popcorn for the show. I think of American movie theaters and buttery popcorn and fierce action movies, and then I grow sad when I realize how short my time was in my last lifetime
I don’t remember many of the details of before, only the deep, aching sadness that overwhelms me when I think of how little I experienced in so many of my previous lives. I honor the beautiful madness of all the lives now, and I embrace the legends like the map I’d been so desperately in search of.
Fable.
It is fitting. My awareness is born of the legends and fables of this land. I like the reminder of their impact. Longer lasting than a tattoo, the fables raised me, and I will never forget that. I grew up surrounded by legends and lovers, my path weaving and bobbing with fiction as seamlessly as sentences on a written page.
Hold me in these pages forever yours.
I think of Olympia’s parting letter to Alaric, the connection between herself and the words blurry. Just as she wanted it.
The chattering of the forest children grows to a deafening decibel then, forcing my eyes to the shore as the wind picks up and the roar of the waves below the cliff thunders loudly. The night has turned from peaceful to chaotic in a moment. The silvery hair of the old man whips around his head, the wind spinning him in a circle until the ramblings of the fairy children seem to reach him. He crushes his hands over his ears, eyes wild as he appears to search the stars above Skye for the answers to the chaos.
He begins to shout, swatting at the fairies, no bigger than pinpricks of light as they surround his head. Even over the roar of the waves and the howl of the wind, I can hear their incessant twittering. Like humming live wires, their chatter grows until it sounds like a thousand hornets circling in the currents of wind.
Allistaire Macgregor Maclean begins to fight furiously with the tiny shimmering lights, like he is fighting with the stars for his fate. He stumbles toward the edge of the cliff, his bare feet no match for the damp rock and crumbling dirt. The wind whips higher up the cliff, a gust so strong it drops him to his knees. He hits the ground with such force he falls over the side, the side that welcomes him into a dark abyss.
“He’s gone.”
“Just like that,” Alder breathes. His warm palm at the center of my back helps ground me even though my muscles vibrate with the need to run to the cliff’s edge and investigate. I need confirmation of his death; I can’t help it. I need his evil hold over Skye to die.
The winds calm then, only the roar of the waves audible as the fairy lights flicker back into the woods before disappearing altogether.
“Do you think it was a painful death?” I ask, standing to move closer.
“Was it when you went over this edge?”
I shake my head. “No, but I died with love in my heart. He is rotten with evil.”
“I’m sure it was plenty painful, then.”
“Right in the spot where he ended the lives of so many innocent women. I hope the Salt Witch’s curse splintered his soul.”
“I think it’s safe to say we unraveled the spell from the ground up and gave it an entirely new meaning.” Alder places a kiss on my head. His touch always sends tingles spiraling through me, but it’s all heightened now that we’re sharing emotions from both realms. I still have leftover numb feelings sometimes, usually on the days I’m most disconnected from my true self. But the more I focus on my new life of service from this side, the more good I do, the more I expect the numbing sensations to dwindle. My soul is called to guide those left in the physical realm, struggling just as I had. I don’t feel like one of the legends, even though it’s true—I am the girl within the pages. I feel like only a simple soul, still taking the journey one step at a time, trying to live up to my potential, no matter which life I’m living.
I think of my grandparents, who died without knowing what happened that night on the cliff with Allistaire and my great-aunt Beth. She’d lost herself to his vile sins, her story buried beneath the waves of the rocky shore.
I wish I’d followed my heart into the legends sooner. I wish I’d known that Alder was the other half of my soul even then. He brutalized his own body to find me, and now here we stand, only repeating the cycle in an attempt to end it with the death of his father.
“I’m sorry you lost your father today.”
