Chapter 10 - Tell me, Tell me
"So who exactly lives here?"
"Everyone who dies goes to the gate. If they prove themselves worthy enough, they can come through to here and live in this part, they rule the lands while I sleep"
"And why do you sleep?"
"Not telling."
"Okay…what about angels? Do they live here too?"
"…In a sense, I suppose. But not all angels can keep their wings."
"What do you mean?"
"Not telling" going by the grin on her face, Jack guessed she was enjoying withholding the information from him. Still, he hadn't expected her to tell him everything right away. The two of them were sitting in the branches of the oak tree, Hallow tilting her head back to the sky. Jack tilted his own back to follow her view.
"Tell me something."
"Like what?"
"Anything. Tell me anything about you." The grin faltered a little, and Jack poked her in the shoulder, "Hey. C'mon will you? I'm not gonna judge you for anything. Tell me…" he remembered a game Jamie had told him about when he got a new girl in his class that was shy. It didn't do much, but it got the girl talking at least. Maybe he'd have better luck that way "…tell me your favourite animal!" Hallow turned to face him and blinked a few times at the question. She'd probably been expecting questions probing into her past. Fingers crossed them. She shook her head a little,
"Random question, isn't it?" Jack grinned this time,
"Would you answer it if it wasn't?" Hallow made that small giggling sound again, staring to the sky and closing her eyes, humming softly. For a while longer they were silent, until Jack felt the urge to fidget. He wasn't used to sitting in silence and stillness for too long. He began, instead, to notice the forest. How it was alarmingly still. No birds, no rustling leaves. The silence was eerie.
Jack wondered why it was so quiet here. It had seemed like it would be full of life here. Full of creatures to see and know and explore. But it seemed besides from Sally, Jack and Hallow's own brother. He'd yet to se anything. Where was everything?
"Dragon" the word, a sudden contrast to the silence, sounded louder than it could have been, but it was enough to startle Jack into looking around at her, she smiled at him, "You asked my favourite creature. Dragon. Riding a dragon…" she sighed, a soft smile gracing her features and she closed her eyes, "it's an incredible feeling. There's a mutual trust between rider and steed, and there has to be. You may be on the scaled back of a creature more than ten times your size, but that same creature could throw you off in an instant. There is no dominance. There cannot be. The dragon is ultimately the one in charge, but it will listen and take you where it is you want to go as long as it likes you enough - the same as any steed. Humans…they think they can own, manipulate, mould into what they want. But there's so much more to it than that. You lose the beauty. The thrill is when you DON'T posses it. When you are possessed BY it. That is true for Dragons more than anything. They belong to the skies and to their dens, not to the men or even to me. They trust you to respect that. You trust them to carry you. It's exhilarating, to feel that bond, to feel scale and muscle shift under you, hear the heavy beating of wings pushing back air and carrying such a huge creature as well as your own weight along. It's indescribable…"
Hallow gave a soft sigh, obviously lost in a memory. Jack smiled at her, before reaching out and tapping her on the shoulder, her entire body jerking before she blushed, smiling, "Sorry, sorry…got carried away"
Jack shrugged, "You seemed happy enough" he smiled, "so I'm guessing you have dragons here then?" Hallow nodded, "What else do you have?"
"…Erm…Dragons, Demons, Mermaids, Werewolves, Elves, Fae, Ghosts, Wyrms, Nymphs, Sirens, Golems, Vampires, Angels, Faeries, Ghouls, Zombies, Gryphons, Lamia, Skeletons…don't even get me started on everyone and everything that lives in The Town. This whole place houses anything the human mind can create, as well as anything it has ever feared. The things here are vast in quantity, even I don't know exactly how many there are or how spread out they are." Jack looked confused at that,
"If there's so many, how comes this area's so quiet? If there were creatures around, wouldn't we hear them?"
"They never come here unless I tell them to...well, besides from the wood nymphs but I can't exactly stop them. This is my area and usually mine alone. I come here to think or relax. Normally when I first wake up I'll come here before-" she gave a gasp as she looked up at the moon, "-I'm late!" Jumping from the branch, she ran in the direction of the trees,
"Hey, wait! Late for what?!"
"Meeting with the queen! The wood nymphs will guide you out!" Jack watched her disappear into the trees before jumping from the tree and heading to follow. Suddenly, the entire clearing filled with soft, disembodied laughter. He stepped towards the clearing only to find the way blocked by trees. They creaked around him, their branches bending and stopping his path. When he tried to climb through them, they just became thicker, blocking him.
"You shouldn't follow…" the voices echoed around him,
"And I guess you're the wood nymphs, huh?" a high pitched giggling, like a spring breeze, tipped with cold as it rolled past him. He guessed that was a yes, "Where's she even going?" there was a soft hum in the air, then Jack's eyes were drawn to the tree. The bark seemed to be shifting...were those? There were shapes pressing out of the bark, the rough texture coming with it. In an almost chameleonic manner, the shape of arms, shoulders…a head and torso eventually pulling away from the bark, elbows still connected as he rough texture faded into dark skin, green eyes and long brown hair. Elbows and waist down still connected and faded into rough bark, but from the top, Jack was talking to a woman.
"Oh…so that's what a nymph is." The creature in front of him laughed and around him Jack could see other creatures slowly coming apart from their trees. The dark skinned one in front of him leaned forward a little.
"To the Fae…to the Fae…Our lady meets with the Fae" the voice seemed to carry to him without the Nymph's mouth moving. Watching the creature lean towards in from the tree, he heard a noise like creaking branches, bright, glowing green eyes looking at him from underneath long lashes, "what business do YOU have to follow?" Jack paused.
What business did he have? He'd met her, like he wanted. There was no business left really! So what was the right answer…? The Nymph grinned with unnaturally white, unnaturally sharp teeth at his hesitation. That was when he realised his answer, and returning the grin with one of his own,
"She seems like someone who doesn't get a good time very much, so I just want show her what fun is." The Nymph's head tilted with the same sound of creaking branches, dark mouth parting to show razor sharp teeth that had the hair on Jack's neck rising.
"She will expel you if you follow. However…we shall let you scry for her."
"Scrying?" the Nymph laughed,
"The art of seeing without being within sight. Using glass, mirror, water…or ice…" The nymph turned her head to the left. Following her gaze, he saw a few small branches of her tree and those of the tree next to her locking and weaving together, like interlocking fingers, eventually forming an oval shape in the centre about a foot by a foot and a half. Slowly, it dawned on Jack what they expected and he tapped his staff to the edges of the branches, dragging it along until a thick sheet of ice formed in the oval, his distorted reflection looking back at him. In his peripheral vision, he could see the nymphs in both trees wincing and shivering. Hm…
He looked at the sheet of ice for a few moments more before turning back to the trees, "what am I supposed to do now? I made the ice, but you're not really giving me much to work with. Is it a spell or what?" the nymph gave a smile, giggling echoing around him before the girl leaned towards the ice pale and softly murmured,
"Domine tenebras videat…" Jack didn't know much Latin, only the odd word here or there that he'd picked up from various people (doctors and historians mainly. Boring)and definitely not enough to translate what they were saying. As the woman-like creatures blended back with their trees, Jack watched as the ice began to turn paler, them clearer. Slowly, his ice pane became a mirror. Shapes forming inside…More than just Hallow. As they came into clearer focus, he felt a shudder run up his spine.
Definitely more than just Hallow.
I'm supposed to be asleep because it's gone 11 here, but I waned to get this chapter put up by valentine's day just like I promised. A warning: I'm going to France for a holiday next week so no writing will be done during that period. I will endeavour to upload chapters as fast as I can and if inspiration strikes maybe you'll have one up Sunday before we go.
Thank you everyone who reviews and comments and follows and favourites. Please request any tricks you'd like to see, I have a few planned for later chapters but help is always handy!