Post by Liessel on Apr 6, 2024 10:52:51 GMT -5
They'd been climbing.
And climbing and climbing.
Up a stair that was a tight fit for Aurelia Dumitru, let alone Liessel Erphale, let alone Adam Larrow.
Adam didn't say a word until they were nearly--had to be--had to be--to the top.
"I'm not sure what I thought would happen."
"Maybe that you thought she'd hear you," Liessel said with a small huff of a breath. Going down had been much easier than climbing up that endless flight of stairs, "I can try speaking to her on your behalf when I come again. --If you'd like."
"It's not my behalf," Adam said very softly, as if he feared being overheard. But this was only what he'd said to Missus White. "What's the point of existing this way if there aren't any real answers that aid people?"
"I don't think it's that the answers aren't there," Liessel answered, keeping her own voice muted, "I think it's that they -- those who hold them -- want us to prove that we are worthy of them. It is an unbalanced way of viewing things, I think, because anything that can be done to prove that worth can also be proven, by them, to not be good enough."
"She hates Aurelia. I think she distrusts me because I was with her." Adam had followed Liessel once again, and was now talking because the squeeze of the passage had him fearing he'd stop short of fresh air if he didn't distract himself. "And I'm not convinced she has any answers." He huffed, not from frustration so much as to keep his breathing even. "I don't know what to do if she doesn't. If the Dame doesn't. If there are no secrets."
"I could tell," Liessel stopped herself from looking back over her shoulder toward Adam's shadow, "Aurelia does not trust her, or like her very much either," Liessel frowned.
Step after step.
Step after step.
Up they went.
"If there are no secrets, then we work on figuring out the practicalities ourselves. With the Flynns gone, it might be a little more messy -- a little less streamlined and proven in method -- but if answers will not come, for whatever reason, from those like Missus White, then we make do and discover them for ourselves. At least, that is what I think should be done. I'd like to help you, and that couple that you spoke of."
She wouldn't see his nod, but the pause for it was there, a break in their soft talking. Adam, aching from the twist, wondering not for the first time at how they'd gotten Temmis Ashbroom down this godforsaken passage, thought back to the day he'd met that couple. He'd begun setting up his table again, going from market to market, to his old fairs once people had shaken off the Lost Day and taken up their lives once more. "They need it. And I've not had the pearl show me anything like what I saw with them before. I've thought maybe it meant I was growing into it. Or that the pearl itself was getting used to me. The Dame told me that she knows for a fact that the pearl has never been--that no one ever did with it what Missus White did. I read for her with it, and she wouldn't tell me what it showed her. I think she's afraid of it. She's argued that I should be allowed to keep it, or the others would have taken it back, but I think she fears it."
"Items, like the Pearl, often come with great and continuing price. If the Dame fears it, she likely has a very good reason for that." Liessel drew in her own huff of air, forcing herself to remember to breathe as most steps were taken, "She might choose to never share that image with you. And I do not know the history of the Pearl, but if it has been used in a way that it was not intended, that too would have a price. I wish I could offer more than that but, since I cannot, would you share with me what you saw when you read for the couple?"
Do you believe in fate?
Adam was quiet for another turn. Any minute, they might feel the fresher air of the late summer evening up in the church, and detect the beginnings of their voices becoming less contained. He licked his lips. "I saw a magpie trapped in a bottle, tapping at the glass with its beak." That was easy enough to sum up. The feeling that had come with it was less so.
"A magpie?" Liessel asked, her feet pausing as this time she could not stop the urge to glance behind her to see if she could catch sight of Adam. In her question was a frown, one that would be heard more than seen given the dimness and tightness of the passage, "Is there some significance to that imagery? Symbolic or otherwise?"
"I don't know," he told her, nearly running into her. Her stopping was like a bottle suddenly being corked. If it hadn't been for the strange directionless glow of the passage, she'd have seen nothing. Adam met her gaze, but gestured quickly. "Don't stop," he begged, making himself breathe.
If she did start moving again, he'd get his breath even again and go on. "I felt it like I was seeing it and living it. Seeing it in there, trying its strength against the glass, unable to even begin to spread its wings, and feeling like my own heart was beating like a hummingbird's wings. Desperate."
Desperate was such a sane little word. Wholly inadequate to the actual sensation.
Adam said, "And then I... or the pearl... --I don't know which--said--" He frowned at Liessel's back. "I don't know why I used that word: 'said.' But when I think back on it, it feels like something I was told. So I'm going to... just use it. I was told that the ground falls away under that glass and that bird and from under other bottles and birds.
"That's when I knew I needed help."
Don't stop.
Her steps started again, Liessel pushing onward through some sense of hesitation that was outweighed by her feet agreeing with Adam that it was not time to let curiosity reach the finish line before they reached the top of that passageway.
"That sounds like a warning of some kind." Liessel would have felt her frown deepen if she wasn't focusing on taking the steps before her and remembering to breathe as the number ahead became less than those behind them. She prayed it was less than those behind them. "I will see if I can find anything on the significance of the magpie and those bottles when I get to the office tomorrow."
"Their girl is in Faerie," Adam said flatly. "Don't ask me how I know that, either. But I know it. She's on that side. Maybe she's the magpie, or maybe she's not."
"Then, what we need is someone who can get over there and find her. That, I have no idea how to do. I cannot cross that border without feeling as if I've been turned inside out. I wish I knew who Avery's contacts were over --" Her words stopped because she did have a name of one. But Fae were tricky, and Liessel was not prepared just then to think of what price Loriai would ask for. She didn't even know if she'd be able to find the fairy she'd met in Denver! And then, there was Cyrus who she also did not know how to get into contact with.
Maybe the great mother Willow?
"Who?" Adam asked it, but just as quickly was saying, "I've spoken to my friends from the Bells. They've assured me they would search, and put the word out, but they each took pains to tell me that it's not like searching here." He was surprised that sometimes he forgot that Liessel and Aurelia were not actually, officially members of the Twin Bells. That realization struck him now, and he felt the need to add: "That's part of the purpose of the guild. The layers of the world are represented; their denizens often welcomed into our numbers."
"One by the name of Loriai," Liessel offered. Her thighs were burning, feeling as if they were on the verge of turning numb but upward she continued to go. The opening into the church had to be just ahead of them, "And then there is Captain Singh. I would trust Cyrus over Loriai. I met her in Denver. She tried to bargain with me. She offered information on my home, the state of my father, for the life of Felix." She huffed in another breath heavily and continued, "I think, given that you have connections you can trust through The Bells, and that I have no idea how to reach Cyrus, we rely on those you are comfortable with. I know the situation is dire, but compounding the issue by trusting something like that, I feel, will only make it worse."
Adam didn't bother to nod; she couldn't see it, and the tight fit of the stair was oppressive. "We have Folk of the Bells who associate through trades. I'm not sure they know how to do anything else. You learn to navigate that... It's not the same thing as if you or I lived that way. And the trades aren't superficial. The Dame says--some of them say--that there's no such thing as an empty word or gesture to them. They truly are getting the stuff of their lives from such exchanges. A transfer of the ability to live."
"It is like air to them," Liessel agreed before making a soft 'whew' sound with her next breath. She considered herself a fairly in-shape person. She'd beaten tracks across a garden, vaulting debris like a fish sprinted through water. But she was not a fish here, and that small upward bound passageway was by no means water. "I think, the kind of worth they put into things like that. Everything has meaning, everything has weight for them."
"I didn't know you were familiar," Adam said with a little wonder. "Your people know the Folk?"
"I've talked to a handful of them," Liessel said, throwing her voice back over her shoulder toward Adam, "And after Denver, I've done a fair bit of reading. I had no idea about anything involving any Fae until I found myself staring at Loriai as she stepped out of a mirror in the place we had rented in Denver. I was petrified. I had no idea what I was looking at, and then I saw her again in the middle of that fight, and then another toward the end of it -- I nearly sold myself away just to remove a large chunk of the danger that was hounding us. If it hadn't been for Avery, and his connections, I wouldn't have made it back. I decided then to learn as much as I could."
Her own voice sounded--felt? Different. A strange quality. Hinting that at last they neared the opening in the floor of the church. One or two more tight little turns.
"It's like air to some of them, then," Adam told her gently. "And I don't blame you. It's hard to sort out what's important to any of them, what they feign is of importance, what they mimic, and what they honestly misunderstand."
"I think we're almost there," The relief within her was as real as the tiredness in her legs.
"They were quite confusing for me, at first," She admitted, trying to keep herself from glancing back toward him again. They were almost there, and they had to keep going. Up there were pews, places to sit and catch their breaths! "And I am not entirely sure that I understand them, even now. Do you --" She cut herself off and made a small thoughtful little noise, "How do you tell the difference between them? How do you sort it all out without insulting them?"
She'd hear the relief in his own voice as Adam detected the change, too. "The Twin Bells... To be a part of it, they have to make certain agreements. Bound agreements. To make those, they have to have the capacity to understand them, and us, enough to even begin. So from the start, our friends you see there are more able to interact with us than many of the stranger Folk."
Fresh air would meet Liessel's face. One half turn after that, real light filtered down. Not bright; it came from within the shelter of the little church; but it was daylight and not magical light.
"It's one of the reasons--Oh, thank God," Adam breathed, though he'd never given any sign of believing in God. "It's one of the reasons all that magic was terrifying for them. And for us. On the Lost Day. It cut our their hearts. Made the best of them into animals. Enemies."
That fresh air did not put any more of a bounce to her step than what was already there. Her legs were simply too tired for renewed vigor. But it did offer an end to the long trek up the tight passage, and that alone was worth pushing up those last handfuls of stone steps. If only she could make her feet move faster...
"I am so sorry that that had happened to them. That they had been pulled through it to lose themselves like that. It is a terrifying thing to both go through and to witness." It was a burdened topic, one that could carry so much grief, and in spite of that she took another huff of air unable to help it, "I do not think I offered it before -- but my condolences for any friends lost to that, Mister Larrow. I hope we never see the likes of a day like that again."
Finally the opening above. The steps would carry Liessel up and out, the constriction of the passage giving way to headroom, shoulderroom, fresh air, wide space--
Adam climbed out after her and just sat right on the edge of the wall where it went down, breathing deep. Even the summer air felt cool and crisp by comparison with the passage.
The topic had to keep for a moment while he felt as if he were filling out to his full shape again. He straightened his back and worked his neck.
"It shouldn't have happened in the first place,' he said. "We had to fight them. We didn't have a choice. Those who survived know that, but it broke something I hadn't realized could break. I didn't know magic could drive that kind of wedge... not only between my friends, but even between the Folk and their own wills."
Once out into the wider space, Liessel was slipping herself free from the heavy robe she wore, the one that had been given at the edge of the pond they'd come up through, and found herself a seat against the wall of the church not too far from where Adam had dropped himself.
She, too, sunk into letting herself even out and feel more like herself again by stretching her toes within her boots, and spending half a moment wondering if any offense would be taken should she remove them all together. It was just as Adam started speaking again that she gave into that urge and shifted herself to start that process. But she was listening.
"Magic is another thing that I had no idea about until I got here. I was quick to understand that it was capable of so many great things, and yet it could be very dangerous. While a wonderful tool, it could also be a grave weapon. It need not have a sharpened blade to be able to cut."
Adam still wore his own robe.
For the moment, there was no sign of Catherine, and no sign of Ewan. Whatever Amrilaine had done before descending, it had not entangled the pair in the church longer than this in her wake.
"But your people had a kind of their own," he said, keeping his voice quiet in this place, grateful for their privacy and for the good air and--for now--a detour to a topic that was easier to manage for him than the matter of the missing girl and Missus White's attitude toward him. Easier, too, than his awareness that Dame Ashbroom had not truly spoken up for him.
"I had never considered it magic," Liessel told Adam, her voice tightening for a brief moment as she pulled one foot free from its boot, "To me, what we had was -- divine. Not gods -- not in the sense that they are seen to be here, gods that is, but something close to that. There were no spells, or enchantments. We had the blessings, and our prayers, and of course rituals but that is as much as any religion I've come to know here."
"Does it still feel different to you?" He regarded Liessel with real curiosity.
She was mid-tug of her other boot when Adam asked that question. She let the shoe rest heavily against the floor before her, just next to her leg as she took a moment to think about that.
"I, honestly, hadn't thought about it before this," She told Adam after a moment, "But I think, given everything that I've seen, and what we've just heard from Missus White, and with all the little hints of where my people began, I think it does. Whatever The Guardians have become, they were once beings that had been here, in this land. They had roots here, ties to certain aspects of life here, and perhaps even the oldest of us still to grace this earth. That is not divinity, though it may appear to be such and though there may be a touch of the divine within them. But if it is magic, does that make me a magician, or does it make me something closer to what Lady Ashbroom and Missus White are?"
Adam had to sit with that thought for a few moments.
It was good timing: he needed to sit in general for a few moments. The climb had been just as confining as he remembered it, but the other aspects of what he'd heard added to his sense that he needed to think carefully, feel his way forward, and not just speak to speak.
"What's the difference, then?" he finally asked softly. "To you. What's the difference--Or... What makes something divine, or not divine?"
Her boots were placed aside softly, tucked against the wall just next to where she sat. Her socks were still damp, but she didn't take them off just yet.
"I -- am not sure. I had thought before all of this, before finding myself in this land, that divinity was close to god-hood. That it was from beings who held little to no connection to the world, except through the touch of the Sisters. But back then I didn't realize how weak they had been, I didn't realize that their touch to the world I lived in was so light and that they needed that connection through me. Their divinity, and so also the touch of the divine I had within me, had been because of that disconnection. I had been raised to believe I was blessed far beyond what any other person in Harroway could be -- divine right, I think you would call it.
"But how has that changed, then?" Liessel frowned slightly as she rolled the thought further around in her head. What was the difference? "I think the difference is perspective."
Adam had something he wanted to say--to ask--but he made that wait a beat, too, so he could ponder. But it was not long before he leaned forward slightly. "You said 'that is not divinity,'" he said. "As if that was clear to you, before. And you--am I following correctly? You seem to be saying that you feel the difference is a removed aspect--a disconnection, you said."
"Yes," She gave Adam a small nod, "It had been my understanding that The Guardians were god-like, a little removed --" Liessel paused to shake her head and correct herself. "They had been very much removed from the lives of The People. They seemed like gods. I have heard them called that, too, while I've been here. But they are not. They never were. They are just beings of immense power, or they had been at one time."
Adam smiled slightly, nodding to her. "That's different from how I've thought of gods. Though I'm not sure this missing girl's grandparents would turn down the help of a being of immense power, or a god, or any creature that might be able to get her back."
"On subject of her, I would very much like to speak with the girl's grandparents to see what details they might be able to provide about their missing granddaughter. My connection to The Guardians is not what it had been before we went to Harroway, but that does not need to stop me from doing whatever I can to help them. I will need details for that: a name, and a likeness. Her age. I might be able to get ahold of Cyrus through The Fens, but it is a risk as I do not know much about how things work there. Failing that, if the Flynns and Aurelia call, I can get instructions on how and who to contact, or how to even find her myself. Having that information on hand already would be helpful."
Adam nodded again, his mouth held in a thoughtful frown. At last, he arched his back and shrugged out of the robe, and stood up on the top two steps. "Her name is Mary Hodgkins," he said first.
The name came, and Liessel's first reaction was to reach into her bag for her notebook. What she drew out of her satchel was her notebook, but it was still a wet and sloppy mess with pages that had been ruined in their swim through the spring.
She'd have to remember and write it down later. "Mary Hodgkins." Liessel repeated, slipping the notebook back into her bag and then looking up toward where Adam sat. She repeated the name several more times inside her head before asking, "What else do you know about her, Mister Larrow?"
"There was some sort of argument," Adam told her slowly, "and her grandmother is torn with guilt. Her grandfather gave me their card, but it's at the Bells. It had a Kensington address." He moistened his lips and got to the trickier part. "I told them I'd get back to them in two days... but that was when you all were still abroad. I haven't made headway, and haven't called on them to follow up. I don't know if they'd come at a summons any more than I know if they'd see me if I appeared on their doorstep."
Liessel felt herself frown in thought as she took that in. "Would you be willing to try to contact them for me? If there are any questions raised about why it took so long to reach back out to them, tell them that --" She let her words drop off for a moment, "Tell them that there was a sudden emergency and the friends you needed to contact for this had been taken out of town unexpectedly. If they do not want any part of it anymore, then I will take the card and see them myself and offer some apology for the delay if needed."
Adam stood very still for a time before he snapped out of his thoughts, met Liessel's eyes again, and nodded, "Of course. I hope every day that word will come from my guildmates as well, but as yet there's been no word."
The young woman nodded up toward him, "In the meantime, I will see what I can do about getting word to Cyrus. If you hear anything let me know, and I will do likewise."
"I will. --But how will you get word to him?" The young man looked around. The church was theirs, for the moment still.
"I am not sure," Liessel said with a shake of her head, her braid shifting awkwardly against the wall behind her, "I don't know how any of it works, but if Aurelia can get messages from him there then there has to be a way to leave one in return."
That brought them back to something entirely different. That message. Adam stepped away from the stair that went to black at its own disappearing turn under the floor and peered at that darkness. His thoughts made the descent back to Missus White in an instant, while it had taken his feet an uncomfortably long time.
Liessel let him have that silence for several moments, watching him and then the darkness at the edge of the hole from where she sat. She, herself, was trying to replay when she had seen in her mind, trying to pluck out, again, any sign that White might have been trying to cover her tracks. At length, she blew out a soft sigh and muttered, "I wish I could read her better. I just don't know what to make of it."
"Are you truly considering learning here?"
Her eyes fell back on the hole and stayed there as she answered, "I do not know. I think I need to talk with her again, and maybe a few more times after that, before making my decision. It will also depend on how much freedom I can retain for myself. I do not want to tie myself to another form of service that would have me locked away from life, not when I am just starting to finally live. I have too many things I want to try, too many things I want to see -- and then there is Mister Schoen. I'm not willing to give him up. He is one sacrifice I am not willing to make, him and the others -- my father -- I need to be free."
The young fortuneteller's brow was furrowed, but he nodded slowly. "It's fragile yet, isn't it, for you. This new world. Mine is, too." He smiled tentatively to her. Her eyepatch had made it through a dunking and more already. "I'd like to be a man with something to offer. Something of value. If we can do anything to find Miss Hodgkins, I think that would mark a good start."
Liessel sat there, her eyes shifting away from the hole in the floor to rest on Adam and his eyepatch. She could easily remember the day she had made it for him, fumbling with a needle and thread while clumsily working with the shreds of linen from a pair of pants that didn't make it through a rotten day. At least she could give that fabric a second life.
She smiled up at him and shook her head, "I think, Adam, that your value does not need to be proven. If you cannot see it yet, then know that it is seen by others. I think you have plenty to offer, more than enough for this world. I think that you are standing here, that you came here with the intent of helping someone you cannot even say you barely know is proof enough of that worth. We will find her. It might take us a while, but it will happen."
Silence for a time.
Not silence, actually.
What had seemed daylight when they'd been emerging from the passage had, of course, been moonlight. And in through the open windows of the church it beamed, catching on every pale thing, lending all the darkness a metallic sense of shape. In, too, came the sounds of Glastonbury Tor--once the Isle of Avalon. Crickets out in the grass; more distant calls of mating frogs down in the marshy lows. They had to wait for the Dame's return if they meant to return to London as quickly as they'd arrived. They would return by water.
To Adam, it was a familiar chorus of sounds. A beloved chorus. It was home as much as the Bells was; more home than his little flat in London.
"Maybe we'll be the arm of the divine."
And climbing and climbing.
Up a stair that was a tight fit for Aurelia Dumitru, let alone Liessel Erphale, let alone Adam Larrow.
Adam didn't say a word until they were nearly--had to be--had to be--to the top.
"I'm not sure what I thought would happen."
"Maybe that you thought she'd hear you," Liessel said with a small huff of a breath. Going down had been much easier than climbing up that endless flight of stairs, "I can try speaking to her on your behalf when I come again. --If you'd like."
"It's not my behalf," Adam said very softly, as if he feared being overheard. But this was only what he'd said to Missus White. "What's the point of existing this way if there aren't any real answers that aid people?"
"I don't think it's that the answers aren't there," Liessel answered, keeping her own voice muted, "I think it's that they -- those who hold them -- want us to prove that we are worthy of them. It is an unbalanced way of viewing things, I think, because anything that can be done to prove that worth can also be proven, by them, to not be good enough."
"She hates Aurelia. I think she distrusts me because I was with her." Adam had followed Liessel once again, and was now talking because the squeeze of the passage had him fearing he'd stop short of fresh air if he didn't distract himself. "And I'm not convinced she has any answers." He huffed, not from frustration so much as to keep his breathing even. "I don't know what to do if she doesn't. If the Dame doesn't. If there are no secrets."
"I could tell," Liessel stopped herself from looking back over her shoulder toward Adam's shadow, "Aurelia does not trust her, or like her very much either," Liessel frowned.
Step after step.
Step after step.
Up they went.
"If there are no secrets, then we work on figuring out the practicalities ourselves. With the Flynns gone, it might be a little more messy -- a little less streamlined and proven in method -- but if answers will not come, for whatever reason, from those like Missus White, then we make do and discover them for ourselves. At least, that is what I think should be done. I'd like to help you, and that couple that you spoke of."
She wouldn't see his nod, but the pause for it was there, a break in their soft talking. Adam, aching from the twist, wondering not for the first time at how they'd gotten Temmis Ashbroom down this godforsaken passage, thought back to the day he'd met that couple. He'd begun setting up his table again, going from market to market, to his old fairs once people had shaken off the Lost Day and taken up their lives once more. "They need it. And I've not had the pearl show me anything like what I saw with them before. I've thought maybe it meant I was growing into it. Or that the pearl itself was getting used to me. The Dame told me that she knows for a fact that the pearl has never been--that no one ever did with it what Missus White did. I read for her with it, and she wouldn't tell me what it showed her. I think she's afraid of it. She's argued that I should be allowed to keep it, or the others would have taken it back, but I think she fears it."
"Items, like the Pearl, often come with great and continuing price. If the Dame fears it, she likely has a very good reason for that." Liessel drew in her own huff of air, forcing herself to remember to breathe as most steps were taken, "She might choose to never share that image with you. And I do not know the history of the Pearl, but if it has been used in a way that it was not intended, that too would have a price. I wish I could offer more than that but, since I cannot, would you share with me what you saw when you read for the couple?"
Do you believe in fate?
Adam was quiet for another turn. Any minute, they might feel the fresher air of the late summer evening up in the church, and detect the beginnings of their voices becoming less contained. He licked his lips. "I saw a magpie trapped in a bottle, tapping at the glass with its beak." That was easy enough to sum up. The feeling that had come with it was less so.
"A magpie?" Liessel asked, her feet pausing as this time she could not stop the urge to glance behind her to see if she could catch sight of Adam. In her question was a frown, one that would be heard more than seen given the dimness and tightness of the passage, "Is there some significance to that imagery? Symbolic or otherwise?"
"I don't know," he told her, nearly running into her. Her stopping was like a bottle suddenly being corked. If it hadn't been for the strange directionless glow of the passage, she'd have seen nothing. Adam met her gaze, but gestured quickly. "Don't stop," he begged, making himself breathe.
If she did start moving again, he'd get his breath even again and go on. "I felt it like I was seeing it and living it. Seeing it in there, trying its strength against the glass, unable to even begin to spread its wings, and feeling like my own heart was beating like a hummingbird's wings. Desperate."
Desperate was such a sane little word. Wholly inadequate to the actual sensation.
Adam said, "And then I... or the pearl... --I don't know which--said--" He frowned at Liessel's back. "I don't know why I used that word: 'said.' But when I think back on it, it feels like something I was told. So I'm going to... just use it. I was told that the ground falls away under that glass and that bird and from under other bottles and birds.
"That's when I knew I needed help."
Don't stop.
Her steps started again, Liessel pushing onward through some sense of hesitation that was outweighed by her feet agreeing with Adam that it was not time to let curiosity reach the finish line before they reached the top of that passageway.
"That sounds like a warning of some kind." Liessel would have felt her frown deepen if she wasn't focusing on taking the steps before her and remembering to breathe as the number ahead became less than those behind them. She prayed it was less than those behind them. "I will see if I can find anything on the significance of the magpie and those bottles when I get to the office tomorrow."
"Their girl is in Faerie," Adam said flatly. "Don't ask me how I know that, either. But I know it. She's on that side. Maybe she's the magpie, or maybe she's not."
"Then, what we need is someone who can get over there and find her. That, I have no idea how to do. I cannot cross that border without feeling as if I've been turned inside out. I wish I knew who Avery's contacts were over --" Her words stopped because she did have a name of one. But Fae were tricky, and Liessel was not prepared just then to think of what price Loriai would ask for. She didn't even know if she'd be able to find the fairy she'd met in Denver! And then, there was Cyrus who she also did not know how to get into contact with.
Maybe the great mother Willow?
"Who?" Adam asked it, but just as quickly was saying, "I've spoken to my friends from the Bells. They've assured me they would search, and put the word out, but they each took pains to tell me that it's not like searching here." He was surprised that sometimes he forgot that Liessel and Aurelia were not actually, officially members of the Twin Bells. That realization struck him now, and he felt the need to add: "That's part of the purpose of the guild. The layers of the world are represented; their denizens often welcomed into our numbers."
"One by the name of Loriai," Liessel offered. Her thighs were burning, feeling as if they were on the verge of turning numb but upward she continued to go. The opening into the church had to be just ahead of them, "And then there is Captain Singh. I would trust Cyrus over Loriai. I met her in Denver. She tried to bargain with me. She offered information on my home, the state of my father, for the life of Felix." She huffed in another breath heavily and continued, "I think, given that you have connections you can trust through The Bells, and that I have no idea how to reach Cyrus, we rely on those you are comfortable with. I know the situation is dire, but compounding the issue by trusting something like that, I feel, will only make it worse."
Adam didn't bother to nod; she couldn't see it, and the tight fit of the stair was oppressive. "We have Folk of the Bells who associate through trades. I'm not sure they know how to do anything else. You learn to navigate that... It's not the same thing as if you or I lived that way. And the trades aren't superficial. The Dame says--some of them say--that there's no such thing as an empty word or gesture to them. They truly are getting the stuff of their lives from such exchanges. A transfer of the ability to live."
"It is like air to them," Liessel agreed before making a soft 'whew' sound with her next breath. She considered herself a fairly in-shape person. She'd beaten tracks across a garden, vaulting debris like a fish sprinted through water. But she was not a fish here, and that small upward bound passageway was by no means water. "I think, the kind of worth they put into things like that. Everything has meaning, everything has weight for them."
"I didn't know you were familiar," Adam said with a little wonder. "Your people know the Folk?"
"I've talked to a handful of them," Liessel said, throwing her voice back over her shoulder toward Adam, "And after Denver, I've done a fair bit of reading. I had no idea about anything involving any Fae until I found myself staring at Loriai as she stepped out of a mirror in the place we had rented in Denver. I was petrified. I had no idea what I was looking at, and then I saw her again in the middle of that fight, and then another toward the end of it -- I nearly sold myself away just to remove a large chunk of the danger that was hounding us. If it hadn't been for Avery, and his connections, I wouldn't have made it back. I decided then to learn as much as I could."
Her own voice sounded--felt? Different. A strange quality. Hinting that at last they neared the opening in the floor of the church. One or two more tight little turns.
"It's like air to some of them, then," Adam told her gently. "And I don't blame you. It's hard to sort out what's important to any of them, what they feign is of importance, what they mimic, and what they honestly misunderstand."
"I think we're almost there," The relief within her was as real as the tiredness in her legs.
"They were quite confusing for me, at first," She admitted, trying to keep herself from glancing back toward him again. They were almost there, and they had to keep going. Up there were pews, places to sit and catch their breaths! "And I am not entirely sure that I understand them, even now. Do you --" She cut herself off and made a small thoughtful little noise, "How do you tell the difference between them? How do you sort it all out without insulting them?"
She'd hear the relief in his own voice as Adam detected the change, too. "The Twin Bells... To be a part of it, they have to make certain agreements. Bound agreements. To make those, they have to have the capacity to understand them, and us, enough to even begin. So from the start, our friends you see there are more able to interact with us than many of the stranger Folk."
Fresh air would meet Liessel's face. One half turn after that, real light filtered down. Not bright; it came from within the shelter of the little church; but it was daylight and not magical light.
"It's one of the reasons--Oh, thank God," Adam breathed, though he'd never given any sign of believing in God. "It's one of the reasons all that magic was terrifying for them. And for us. On the Lost Day. It cut our their hearts. Made the best of them into animals. Enemies."
That fresh air did not put any more of a bounce to her step than what was already there. Her legs were simply too tired for renewed vigor. But it did offer an end to the long trek up the tight passage, and that alone was worth pushing up those last handfuls of stone steps. If only she could make her feet move faster...
"I am so sorry that that had happened to them. That they had been pulled through it to lose themselves like that. It is a terrifying thing to both go through and to witness." It was a burdened topic, one that could carry so much grief, and in spite of that she took another huff of air unable to help it, "I do not think I offered it before -- but my condolences for any friends lost to that, Mister Larrow. I hope we never see the likes of a day like that again."
Finally the opening above. The steps would carry Liessel up and out, the constriction of the passage giving way to headroom, shoulderroom, fresh air, wide space--
Adam climbed out after her and just sat right on the edge of the wall where it went down, breathing deep. Even the summer air felt cool and crisp by comparison with the passage.
The topic had to keep for a moment while he felt as if he were filling out to his full shape again. He straightened his back and worked his neck.
"It shouldn't have happened in the first place,' he said. "We had to fight them. We didn't have a choice. Those who survived know that, but it broke something I hadn't realized could break. I didn't know magic could drive that kind of wedge... not only between my friends, but even between the Folk and their own wills."
Once out into the wider space, Liessel was slipping herself free from the heavy robe she wore, the one that had been given at the edge of the pond they'd come up through, and found herself a seat against the wall of the church not too far from where Adam had dropped himself.
She, too, sunk into letting herself even out and feel more like herself again by stretching her toes within her boots, and spending half a moment wondering if any offense would be taken should she remove them all together. It was just as Adam started speaking again that she gave into that urge and shifted herself to start that process. But she was listening.
"Magic is another thing that I had no idea about until I got here. I was quick to understand that it was capable of so many great things, and yet it could be very dangerous. While a wonderful tool, it could also be a grave weapon. It need not have a sharpened blade to be able to cut."
Adam still wore his own robe.
For the moment, there was no sign of Catherine, and no sign of Ewan. Whatever Amrilaine had done before descending, it had not entangled the pair in the church longer than this in her wake.
"But your people had a kind of their own," he said, keeping his voice quiet in this place, grateful for their privacy and for the good air and--for now--a detour to a topic that was easier to manage for him than the matter of the missing girl and Missus White's attitude toward him. Easier, too, than his awareness that Dame Ashbroom had not truly spoken up for him.
"I had never considered it magic," Liessel told Adam, her voice tightening for a brief moment as she pulled one foot free from its boot, "To me, what we had was -- divine. Not gods -- not in the sense that they are seen to be here, gods that is, but something close to that. There were no spells, or enchantments. We had the blessings, and our prayers, and of course rituals but that is as much as any religion I've come to know here."
"Does it still feel different to you?" He regarded Liessel with real curiosity.
She was mid-tug of her other boot when Adam asked that question. She let the shoe rest heavily against the floor before her, just next to her leg as she took a moment to think about that.
"I, honestly, hadn't thought about it before this," She told Adam after a moment, "But I think, given everything that I've seen, and what we've just heard from Missus White, and with all the little hints of where my people began, I think it does. Whatever The Guardians have become, they were once beings that had been here, in this land. They had roots here, ties to certain aspects of life here, and perhaps even the oldest of us still to grace this earth. That is not divinity, though it may appear to be such and though there may be a touch of the divine within them. But if it is magic, does that make me a magician, or does it make me something closer to what Lady Ashbroom and Missus White are?"
Adam had to sit with that thought for a few moments.
It was good timing: he needed to sit in general for a few moments. The climb had been just as confining as he remembered it, but the other aspects of what he'd heard added to his sense that he needed to think carefully, feel his way forward, and not just speak to speak.
"What's the difference, then?" he finally asked softly. "To you. What's the difference--Or... What makes something divine, or not divine?"
Her boots were placed aside softly, tucked against the wall just next to where she sat. Her socks were still damp, but she didn't take them off just yet.
"I -- am not sure. I had thought before all of this, before finding myself in this land, that divinity was close to god-hood. That it was from beings who held little to no connection to the world, except through the touch of the Sisters. But back then I didn't realize how weak they had been, I didn't realize that their touch to the world I lived in was so light and that they needed that connection through me. Their divinity, and so also the touch of the divine I had within me, had been because of that disconnection. I had been raised to believe I was blessed far beyond what any other person in Harroway could be -- divine right, I think you would call it.
"But how has that changed, then?" Liessel frowned slightly as she rolled the thought further around in her head. What was the difference? "I think the difference is perspective."
Adam had something he wanted to say--to ask--but he made that wait a beat, too, so he could ponder. But it was not long before he leaned forward slightly. "You said 'that is not divinity,'" he said. "As if that was clear to you, before. And you--am I following correctly? You seem to be saying that you feel the difference is a removed aspect--a disconnection, you said."
"Yes," She gave Adam a small nod, "It had been my understanding that The Guardians were god-like, a little removed --" Liessel paused to shake her head and correct herself. "They had been very much removed from the lives of The People. They seemed like gods. I have heard them called that, too, while I've been here. But they are not. They never were. They are just beings of immense power, or they had been at one time."
Adam smiled slightly, nodding to her. "That's different from how I've thought of gods. Though I'm not sure this missing girl's grandparents would turn down the help of a being of immense power, or a god, or any creature that might be able to get her back."
"On subject of her, I would very much like to speak with the girl's grandparents to see what details they might be able to provide about their missing granddaughter. My connection to The Guardians is not what it had been before we went to Harroway, but that does not need to stop me from doing whatever I can to help them. I will need details for that: a name, and a likeness. Her age. I might be able to get ahold of Cyrus through The Fens, but it is a risk as I do not know much about how things work there. Failing that, if the Flynns and Aurelia call, I can get instructions on how and who to contact, or how to even find her myself. Having that information on hand already would be helpful."
Adam nodded again, his mouth held in a thoughtful frown. At last, he arched his back and shrugged out of the robe, and stood up on the top two steps. "Her name is Mary Hodgkins," he said first.
The name came, and Liessel's first reaction was to reach into her bag for her notebook. What she drew out of her satchel was her notebook, but it was still a wet and sloppy mess with pages that had been ruined in their swim through the spring.
She'd have to remember and write it down later. "Mary Hodgkins." Liessel repeated, slipping the notebook back into her bag and then looking up toward where Adam sat. She repeated the name several more times inside her head before asking, "What else do you know about her, Mister Larrow?"
"There was some sort of argument," Adam told her slowly, "and her grandmother is torn with guilt. Her grandfather gave me their card, but it's at the Bells. It had a Kensington address." He moistened his lips and got to the trickier part. "I told them I'd get back to them in two days... but that was when you all were still abroad. I haven't made headway, and haven't called on them to follow up. I don't know if they'd come at a summons any more than I know if they'd see me if I appeared on their doorstep."
Liessel felt herself frown in thought as she took that in. "Would you be willing to try to contact them for me? If there are any questions raised about why it took so long to reach back out to them, tell them that --" She let her words drop off for a moment, "Tell them that there was a sudden emergency and the friends you needed to contact for this had been taken out of town unexpectedly. If they do not want any part of it anymore, then I will take the card and see them myself and offer some apology for the delay if needed."
Adam stood very still for a time before he snapped out of his thoughts, met Liessel's eyes again, and nodded, "Of course. I hope every day that word will come from my guildmates as well, but as yet there's been no word."
The young woman nodded up toward him, "In the meantime, I will see what I can do about getting word to Cyrus. If you hear anything let me know, and I will do likewise."
"I will. --But how will you get word to him?" The young man looked around. The church was theirs, for the moment still.
"I am not sure," Liessel said with a shake of her head, her braid shifting awkwardly against the wall behind her, "I don't know how any of it works, but if Aurelia can get messages from him there then there has to be a way to leave one in return."
That brought them back to something entirely different. That message. Adam stepped away from the stair that went to black at its own disappearing turn under the floor and peered at that darkness. His thoughts made the descent back to Missus White in an instant, while it had taken his feet an uncomfortably long time.
Liessel let him have that silence for several moments, watching him and then the darkness at the edge of the hole from where she sat. She, herself, was trying to replay when she had seen in her mind, trying to pluck out, again, any sign that White might have been trying to cover her tracks. At length, she blew out a soft sigh and muttered, "I wish I could read her better. I just don't know what to make of it."
"Are you truly considering learning here?"
Her eyes fell back on the hole and stayed there as she answered, "I do not know. I think I need to talk with her again, and maybe a few more times after that, before making my decision. It will also depend on how much freedom I can retain for myself. I do not want to tie myself to another form of service that would have me locked away from life, not when I am just starting to finally live. I have too many things I want to try, too many things I want to see -- and then there is Mister Schoen. I'm not willing to give him up. He is one sacrifice I am not willing to make, him and the others -- my father -- I need to be free."
The young fortuneteller's brow was furrowed, but he nodded slowly. "It's fragile yet, isn't it, for you. This new world. Mine is, too." He smiled tentatively to her. Her eyepatch had made it through a dunking and more already. "I'd like to be a man with something to offer. Something of value. If we can do anything to find Miss Hodgkins, I think that would mark a good start."
Liessel sat there, her eyes shifting away from the hole in the floor to rest on Adam and his eyepatch. She could easily remember the day she had made it for him, fumbling with a needle and thread while clumsily working with the shreds of linen from a pair of pants that didn't make it through a rotten day. At least she could give that fabric a second life.
She smiled up at him and shook her head, "I think, Adam, that your value does not need to be proven. If you cannot see it yet, then know that it is seen by others. I think you have plenty to offer, more than enough for this world. I think that you are standing here, that you came here with the intent of helping someone you cannot even say you barely know is proof enough of that worth. We will find her. It might take us a while, but it will happen."
Silence for a time.
Not silence, actually.
What had seemed daylight when they'd been emerging from the passage had, of course, been moonlight. And in through the open windows of the church it beamed, catching on every pale thing, lending all the darkness a metallic sense of shape. In, too, came the sounds of Glastonbury Tor--once the Isle of Avalon. Crickets out in the grass; more distant calls of mating frogs down in the marshy lows. They had to wait for the Dame's return if they meant to return to London as quickly as they'd arrived. They would return by water.
To Adam, it was a familiar chorus of sounds. A beloved chorus. It was home as much as the Bells was; more home than his little flat in London.
"Maybe we'll be the arm of the divine."