This story is a continuation of "A Mile With Sorrow." If you'd like to start the whole adventure from the very beginning, the first story chronologically is "The Scar." The canon of this story is current up until "Black Magic Sanction," at which point it takes a left hand turn, incorporating a few plot elements of "Pale Demon" and advancing five years into the future. A humorous summary of the major plot elements of this fanfic series (up to but not including "A Mile With Sorrow") can be found in "Ash and Evie in Fifteen Minutes."
The cover art is my original sketch of Ash, as modeled by Gavin Rossdale (swoon). The original photo can be found at: handson . provocateuse . show / gavin_rossdale (You'll have to remove the spaces in the link to get it to work.) It's incomplete because I always get bored around the legs...I'd rather be writing. ;)
A brief summary of the story until this point follows:
Yvette Therese Sinclaire and four other witch friends were born pre-Turn. They had the misfortune of meeting Ash, a familiar-hunting demon (protégé of Al, actually). The story "The Scar," told from the point of view of Evie many years afterward, details how Ash manipulated and tricked the little group, and how Evie alone escaped with a scarred face.
Why Evie then went and fell in love with the guy forty years later is still beyond her.
She's not all that happy about it, especially considering that it's partly due to a compulsion Ash placed on her as a teenager. Given everything they've been through together since, she's pretty sure he loves her back as much as a demon can love, though Ash has often said he only hangs onto her out of pride and to stave off boredom. Ash is also a compulsive liar. Evie has categorized their relationship as sort of a marriage of necessity, with both parties gaining from the association and happily infatuated in the bargain…even if she can't stand his line of work, and he finds her scruples rather stifling. Equally irritating to Ash is the fact that he actually takes this relationship seriously, to the point that he's considering whether he must give it up for the sake of Evie's future sanity.
Oh, and Evie's a demon, too. How Evie survived has not been explained. Ash attributes it to her mother's immune deficiency disorder, which might have left her mother incapable of mounting an immune response to the Rosewood enzyme (which would mean that Evie's dead mother was a demon, too). But Rosewood cases are on the rise and Rosewood children are living longer. It may be that Evie is simply the product of witch evolution. The elves would dearly love to know how this is even possible, and have managed to trick Evie out of a DNA sample to find out. As a demon woman, Evie must be trained properly, or the sheer power she can command could easily damage her mind beyond repair. Demon women can channel far more power than the men, and untrained ladies have created rogue ley lines and scarred reality in other dreadful ways. Evie's need is especially great because she taught herself to spindle, and does it improperly.
Given that she tries to blow up her demon lover every time he's tried to train her, she's reluctantly turned to Al. Her relationship with Al has until this point been mutually antagonistic, probably because she's tried to blow him up too, and Al doesn't hold with that kind of nonsense. Also, Evie brings back some painful memories for Al, reminding him of his long-dead wife at a time when he'd really like to entice Rachel back into his life after a major falling out. At this point in the story Evie has a reluctant truce with Al, who she respects and semi-trusts even if he still skeeves the hell out of her. Rachel, on the other hand, gave into her desire for Al, then regretted it the next day—to the point where she allowed Trent to help her fake her death after the battle with Ku'Sox. Al knows she's alive now, but is wisely giving her space.
Evie's only other option for training and potential life partner is Dali, who comes highly recommended by Newt. The fact that Newt is pushing Evie toward giving up Ash for Dali strikes Evie as suspicious for any number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that nobody can stand Dali. But as everyone seems convinced that Dali is the better choice for protecting Evie's mind, the ever-practical Evie has reluctantly agreed to give the matter some thought. Particularly since when demons succumb to madness, they don't die— they're shuffled off to the surface and forgotten.
In addition to all her personal angst, Evie is embroiled in a complex plot that seems to involve demon, Coven, and elven factions either working together or playing off each other. From what she has been able to ascertain, Zaebos and Newt (the brain trust that came up with the bright idea of Ku'Sox) hatched another harebrained scheme to escape the Ever After by convincing elven scientists to create a demon woman. Zaebos had access to the demon DNA storage area. With the cooperation of Coven witch Brooke, and the funding and scientific expertise provided by Ellasbeth Withon's extended family, Hope (child of Zaebos and a witch named Delores) was born. Although Evie doesn't have all the details, the deal seemed to be fairly straightforward: In exchange for a healthy, fertile demon woman, Zaebos would supply the elves with a pre-curse elven DNA sample so that they could engineer their own cure. Should the elves fail to turn over Hope, Zee would take Ellasbeth's firstborn child instead. Zee has an odd, creepy obsession with elven infants.
Of course, Trent and Rachel screwed that all up with their recent independent acquisition of an elven DNA sample. That, and Newt has predictably forgotten her own involvement in this scheme, and decided to adopt Hope after Hope lost control of her own demon magic and lost her family into the strange ley line anomaly she accidentally created. Hope had discovered the painful circumstances of her birth when Delores tracked her down, but the magic she unleashed in response took her memories of that day and damaged her mind. Delores was later silenced permanently by the Coven to cover up their involvement in Hope's birth. Evie's certain that Hope created an unfinished tulpa, which is warping a portion of UCLA's campus and wreaking havoc on the already unbalanced Ever After. There's a possibility that Hope's adopted elven family are trapped alive inside, frozen in time.
But since Newt has turned on Zaebos and won't let him have Hope, Zee has turned his attentions to Ellasbeth and Trent's newborn child, Lucy. Rachel fled with the child, ripping open yet another hole in reality in the process, but Zee followed her back to Trent's gardens where Evie was hanging out with her new gargoyle, Crescendo, and her elven friends. What happened next is unclear, but it resulted in Evie's death. Ash was not with her at the time. He, Dali, Al, and a band of ex-Coven witches (Pierce, Brooke, and Adrian) were busy trying to remove the Coven from the playing board. The Coven's spells protect an area of vital importance to the demons: the nexus of the ley lines, a critical structural support of the Ever After that the demons would very much like to have back in their control. Unfortunately Oliver (who has become strangely mentally unstable recently) got the drop on them. The demons were banished, and it's unclear whether the witches are still alive or not.
The previous story began after Ku'Sox killed Ash (he got better) and the emotional fallout that ensued. It seemed appropriate to end "A Mile With Sorrow" with Evie's death (she gets better) and the equally emotional fallout that follows. But Ash and Evie have walked their mile with sorrow, and this final story is about finding hope in darkness, and the reemergence of beauty after destruction, and if not total redemption in the eyes of the world, at least peace with one's self. As the poet Rumi said, "Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place."
The title is inspired by a poem by Kahlil Ghibran, reproduced below. I'm so happy that Karen Moning turned me on to this wonderful poet. My writing is heavily influenced by her Fever series. And of course I have to say thanks also to Kim Harrison, who has created this amazing world that I'm playing with and I hope she'll forgive me for all the liberties I'm taking with her characters.
On Beauty, by Kahlil Gibran
And a poet said, "Speak to us of Beauty."
Where shall you seek beauty, and how shall you find her unless she herself be your way and your guide?
And how shall you speak of her except she be the weaver of your speech?
The aggrieved and the injured say, "Beauty is kind and gentle.
Like a young mother half-shy of her own glory she walks among us."
And the passionate say, "Nay, beauty is a thing of might and dread.
Like the tempest she shakes the earth beneath us and the sky above us."
The tired and the weary say, "Beauty is of soft whisperings. She speaks in our spirit.
Her voice yields to our silences like a faint light that quivers in fear of the shadow."
But the restless say, "We have heard her shouting among the mountains,
And with her cries came the sound of hoofs, and the beating of wings and the roaring of lions."
At night the watchmen of the city say, "Beauty shall rise with the dawn from the east."
And at noontide the toilers and the wayfarers say, "We have seen her leaning over the earth from the windows of the sunset."
In winter say the snow-bound, "She shall come with the spring leaping upon the hills."
And in the summer heat the reapers say, "We have seen her dancing with the autumn leaves, and we saw a drift of snow in her hair."
All these things have you said of beauty.
Yet in truth you spoke not of her but of needs unsatisfied,
And beauty is not a need but an ecstasy.
It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth,
But rather a heart enflamed and a soul enchanted.
It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear,
But rather an image you see though you close your eyes and a song you hear though you shut your ears.
It is not the sap within the furrowed bark, nor a wing attached to a claw,
But rather a garden forever in bloom and a flock of angels forever in flight.
People of Orphalese, beauty is life when life unveils her holy face.
But you are life and you are the veil.
Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.
But you are eternity and you are the mirror.