CrossTown by Loren W. Cooper

Author:Loren W. Cooper
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Red Hen Press
Published: 2017-08-07T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XVIII

I TOOK my time, though I had things I needed to do. I had thought of Dulchen Fen for a number of reasons. Isolation and lack of inhabitants I ranked as perhaps chief among them. The Fae opposition should count me as dead, though the Whitesnake bounty would still be in effect. I didn’t want to risk that advantage through early exposure and identification. I needed to muddy the waters further and shake the hunters off my trail.

At the same time, there were places in Dulchen Fen that could heal wounds not physical. I knew of a place where perhaps I could recover some of the strength that the Jigsaw Man had ripped from me, a place where I could heal injuries still fresh from the recent struggles and regain my focus.

I roused myself and wandered off the road, detouring around the massive cairn. I climbed up the gentle slope, the long grasses whispering around my legs. I drank the fresh and untainted breath of the trees as I walked. There on the rising slopes of the winding hills, the trees grew thickly. No underbrush rose to choke the clear spaces between the trunks. Only the long grasses danced under the spreading boughs.

Down in the deceptively thick and deep grass of the narrow valleys that ran between the hills, the dead lay sleeping. Human and Fae lay mixed there, as together in death as they had been opposed in life. An unwary traveler, thinking to rest himself on that inviting turf, would find himself quickly mired in a bog of endless depth, sucked down to lie forever in the arms of the dead.

Above, the trees veiled their faces in long streamers of leaves, fleeing the terrible burden of memory. Light faded in the dusky colors of the leaves, and under the canopy of Dulchen Fen’s forest lords even memory faded into the thick rolls of deep green moss that covered the earth.

I walked further into the wood, stooping occasionally to gather seeds fresh from the trees. I needed those seeds for a bargaining chip. They could buy me some aid; buy me some time. And I needed all the time and aid I could get.

By the time I had a handful of seeds packed away in a coat pocket, I came to a small meadow. The grasses there lay in the embrace of the gentle murmuring of the leaves and the wind. As I had walked through the wood, I had caught occasional glimpses of ghostly white flashes. That dimly glimpsed shape could have belonged to a deer, though it stood larger than any deer I had ever seen. It could have been a horse, though it moved soundlessly, like a ghost. Bright glints of light glittered from the length of horn jutting straight out from her head. That pure presence paralleled my course. I smiled, pleased to see her waiting for me. Dulchen Fen had become a place where memories fell away. The keeper of that place could ease the burden of memory without consuming the self.

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