“Be on the lookout for fairy activity,” Alison reminded Keir.
“It feels absurd, listening for bells and looking for strange groups of mushrooms,” he said. “The fairies I’ve known have been like Aras: sensible, practical, and hard-working. If we’d heard it from anyone but him or the spriggan, I don’t know if I would have believed them.”
“I also thought the idea of a giant angry tree person was absurd until I met him,” said Alison.
“I still think that’s a little absurd,” said Keir.
Alison laughed. “It is, a little. But I’m still very glad to have met him.”
“Hopefully we feel the same about the fairies after we find them.”
Keir and Alison rode along in comfortable silence until they reached the turnoff to Weldan House. The forest opened, granting a view of the lane and the bridge over the river, the same river from the vine’s dreamworld that pulled Alison over the falls again and again.
The same river where Keir’s younger brother Danny had drowned years earlier.
“I’ve been thinking about it, and I’m going to stop by once we’ve gotten Rinka settled,” said Keir. He slowed his horse to wait for Alison by the turnoff.
She came alongside, as close as her horse would let her, and took his hand. “Do you want me to come with you?” she asked.
“No. I need to do this alone. To have a conversation with him, man to man. It’s long overdue.”
Alison wished he could leave this place and all of the painful memories that came with it forever. That he could turn his back on his father for good, and that they could live out the rest of their lives in peace.
But Keir was born to be the duke of these lands, and over the past few weeks as he had begun to reintegrate into Herot’s Hollow, Alison had seen a side of him she hadn’t expected. A side of him that viewed his responsibility over the land as not a burden but an opportunity. A chance to do things better than his father had done.
Keir leaned to give Alison’s hand a kiss. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m ready for this. I’ll reach an understanding with him, one way or another. And then we can enjoy the summer’s festivities here together.”
“Enjoy them, and maybe ruin them a little.”
Keir chuckled. “Maybe it won’t have to come to that, although I would hate to disappoint Gwenla.”
They continued down the road towards Fossholm, at last reaching the bridge into town. From the bridge, the falls were visible at a distance.
Alison felt the lurch of her body forward and the terrible drop, the sensation of losing the ground beneath her and hurtling into the churning waters below as she looked.
The past times she had been here in the company of her friends, she had looked away, willing the memory away and attempting to focus on the road ahead of her.
But this time, she stopped her horse on the bridge. She let the memory continue: the sensation of drowning beneath the surface, of being pushed down by the water again and again. The burning of her lungs. The pain in her arms, reaching for something solid but coming up empty.
And then, something else. Something pulling her upwards. Tugging her towards dying light and healing air.
The euphoria of feeling the air rush back into her lungs. A hand on her back and the sputtering of water.
A voice, singing, on the breeze.
The sensations were so real, so present, that she had not heard Keir’s voice.
“Alison. Darling, are you alright?”
“What?” said Alison. She didn’t want to break free from the memory, but Keir’s voice had come like a hook, pulling her from it even as she fought to hold on.
He had gotten off his horse, and he was standing beside hers, reaching his hands around her waist to pull her down.
“I’m fine,” she said, but the words were unconvincing.
“I shouldn’t have brought you here,” said Keir.
“Keir, I’m okay. I was okay. Something saved me, at the very end.”
