Of Fairytales and Magic by Emma Hamm

Chapter 22

Freya stood in front of the wall where the last figurehead remained cast in bronze. The deer skull stared back at her with almost a smile on its face. As though it knew it was the most difficult of gods for her to defeat, and that she was unworthy of this position.

Eldridge stood beside her, Arrow stood on her other side. They wouldn’t let her fail, no matter how difficult this became.

She took a deep breath and nodded. “This is it then. The final trial.”

“It is.” Eldridge took her hand. He drew her attention to him, where he held something out. A twisting cord of shadows suspended the ring he had given her. The dark gemstone glittered even without a single speck of light touching it. “Just because you can’t wear it on your finger, doesn’t mean you can’t wear it at all. I thought you would want this back.”

Her eyes burned with tears. This was what she needed. An omen of hope that she could hold on to the moment that deer skull became real and watched her with glowing red eyes.

She took the necklace in her grasp and pulled it over her head, as if the chain might break with the slightest movement. “Thank you,” she whispered. “This helps.”

Eldridge pressed a kiss to her forehead and then turned her to look at Arrow. The little goblin dog stood wringing his paws, staring at her feet as though he couldn’t bear to look her in the eyes. “Miss Freya,” he started, then swallowed and stopped talking.

“I’m going to come back, Arrow.” She hoped. Oh, how she hoped she would return as the same person they knew.

“No, it’s not that.” He cleared his throat with a soft growl, then looked up to meet her gaze. “I’m coming with you this time. Everything bad seems to happen when I’m not there, and I think it’s important that I... Well. I need to be there with you this time. I won’t hear any arguments.”

Damn these tears. Arrow couldn’t come with them. He was too pure, too precious, too dear to lose to an old god who might use him against her.

But she also couldn’t deny him if he wished to be the hero this time. They had done so much without him already, and he wanted to help. Who was she to say that he couldn’t?

She loved him as much as she loved Eldridge. They were a family, the three of them. No matter how hard life got, or what life threw at them, they would meet the difficulties together. This situation was no different.

Freya dropped onto her knees in front of him and cupped his dear face in both her hands. “Of course. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

His eyes widened and glazed with tears, though she knew the goblin dog would never let them trail down his cheeks. “Good. That’s good, Miss Freya.”

She squared her shoulders and turned back to the bronze figure waiting for her to take her fate into her own hands. “Eldridge?”

“Yes, love?”

“What did you say this one was called again?”

There was a long pause before he reluctantly replied, “Death.”

“Of course.” She nodded. “And that’s the only name he goes by?”

Eldridge didn’t reply, but that was all the answer she needed to know what he meant. He didn’t go by another name, and he was a personification of something she should fear.

For what was the most terrifying thing to a mortal if not Death itself?

No time for hesitation. She reached out and put her hand on the face of the skull and gently pushed. It sank into the wall as though the metal face melted, leaking into the warm wood and then depressing into nothing. The door beyond swung open and revealed nothing but darkness beyond.

The pitch blackness sent a shiver down her spine. What waited for her this time? What would this monster desire as a sacrifice?

She held out her hands. Eldridge slipped his fingers into her right, his own long and lean. The warmth of his palm held a strength that she fed from, and let sink through her entire body. He was here. He would never let her go.

Arrow put his paw in her other hand, and each toe pad reminded her that she was loved. The fur on top of his feet was proof she had come so far in her life. After all, she had started this journey hating goblins, and all they stood for. And now? She couldn’t live without this goblin dog who was her greatest companion and who supported her in every wild and crazed journey she took them on.

Squeezing both their hands tight, she guided them into the darkness with her.

It was so quiet in this place. She almost thought she couldn’t hear a thing until Arrow let out a particularly loud breath.

“It’s cold,” he muttered. “Too cold for it to be natural.”

Gooseflesh rose on her arms, and she had to agree. It was a terrible cold that sank beneath her clothes and ate away at her flesh. The frigid air wiggled all the way down into her bones, turning her entire body so stiff that it was hard to walk.

“Come on,” she said. “We have to keep going.”

“Where are we going?” Arrow asked. “How do you even know what direction to walk?”

She didn’t. But that power inside her seemed to know what direction to take her, and it wanted her to move forward. Ever forward. It didn’t matter what direction really, only that she kept their feet moving because there was something coming. Something behind her that could devour them all whole if she didn’t keep them safe.

Freya imagined the little light in her belly. The one that meant more than anything else in this entire universe. That light guided her forward, and it tugged her toward a future where she and that little life were safe. Where they could live together in a castle made of starlight and the dust of a thousand universes.

“Forward,” she repeated. “We just keep going forward.”

And so they did. For what felt like hours but she knew they were fighting against a power that she couldn’t see or feel. She could sense it. All around her. That cold sensation wasn’t just the place they were in. It was a person who was watching. Waiting. Contemplating whether she was worthy of seeing it.

Or him.

Death waited for her. She knew that without question. And as the last step between her and becoming the Autumn Thief, she was waiting to see him, too.

Finally, the shadows parted before them like curtains on a grand stage. The cold slid from their shoulders as though they had been wearing it like some horrible, hooded cloak. And her eyes cleared.

Floating in the center of all that darkness was a small, red glade. The ground was a circle of sunshine and autumn leaves surrounded by oak trees burning bright red. Another tree stood in the center, though this one was much older than the rest.

The cold air warmed at least a little. Not enough for the gooseflesh to disappear on her arms, but it was a start.

Freya released the hands of her companions and took one step onto the bed of leaves. They crunched beneath her feet, the sound satisfyingly loud after so much silence for what had felt like a lifetime.

“There,” she said with a long sigh. “We made it, I suppose.”

“Freya...” Arrow’s voice was filled with a sense of foreboding. “Look at what the magic did to your clothing.”

She stared down at her sensible brown pants and white shirt, only to find that they had disappeared. She wore a blood red dress she didn’t recognize. It covered her body like someone had poured liquid over her. From neck, to wrist, to feet, she was swathed in crimson fabric. Like the Autumn Thief had been, long ago. Although, she didn’t remember Lark ever having worn something quite so tight.

She hummed under her breath. “Well, I would hazard a guess that Death didn’t like what I was wearing for the first time meeting him. Is that a fair enough assumption?”

Eldridge walked in front of her, wearing the same clothing he’d had on before. Travel clothes, certainly. And matching what she had brought with her on this trip. Freya looked to her left and saw Arrow was wearing the same thing as well.

Her stomach twisted into a knot. Why had she been the only one to change her clothing? The other two were here to see this old god with her, were they not?

But she already knew the answer to that. Of course they wouldn’t be there with her. They hadn’t with any of the other trials either. They had always been kept away from her while she fought on her own.

She met Eldridge’s worried gaze and tried her best to smile. She didn’t want him to think that she was afraid when he had obviously come to the same conclusion as her. He knew how this worked. He knew they couldn’t change the way this had to all play out, even if he was god-like himself.

She hadn’t even told him that she knew. Oh, heaven’s above. There was so much she hadn’t said to him yet, and not enough time for her to say it all.

“I love you,” she said, staring into those starry eyes and hoping he saw how much she needed him to be okay. “I’m ready for whatever comes.”

Slowly, as if he were moving through water, Eldridge put his hand on her belly. The warmth from his palm seeped through her skin and rattled her to her very core. As if the life that was growing inside her, barely perceptible as it was, recognized the magic of its father.

“Stay safe, my love, my life, mother of my child.” His fingers flexed on her belly, but then he withdrew. “I don’t want you to do this alone, but I fear I don’t have a choice.”

“Neither of us do.”

Movement shifted through the trees behind Eldridge. But she wasn’t ready for that yet. Not when there was so much more left to say.

She looked away from whatever approached them and laid her hand on Arrow’s soft head. “Thank you for coming with me, even if it was for such a short amount of time.”

“I’m going with you all the way, Miss Freya.” Her dear goblin companion drew himself up straight as his namesake. “They can try to stop me.”

“I don’t know how I got so lucky as to have you in my life, but I am grateful for it every day. You’re the best friend I could ever have asked for, Arrow. My sweet, brave, handsome goblin dog who has never once let me down.” She tried so hard to keep the tears from falling down her cheeks. “But I don’t think you’re going to have a choice.”

He opened his mouth to argue, and then his eyes glazed over. The expression on his face was similar to the one she had seen in the caves in the Spring Court, when magic had overwhelmed both him and Eldridge. But this time he was half aware of the world around him.

A shiver traveled down Freya’s spine. It was long past time for her to see what Death himself had sent.

She turned to see two women peel themselves from the bark of nearby trees. They were entirely nude, or perhaps their skin was the same as the bark. Rough textures decorated their body in tiny pits and raised edges. Their hair was made of long, pale, sticky ribbons. That hair attached them to the trees they had peeled themselves away from. Freya wondered if these women could ever escape from the prison of this place.

They reached for both Eldridge and Arrow, drawing her companions into their arms and holding them tightly against their chests.

Arrow crawled into the tree woman’s arms. The strange being drew him to the roots of her tree and then sat cross legged. Arrow curled up into a tiny ball in the space her legs created. He looked like a fox tucked in for a long winter with his tail over his nose like that.

Eldridge slowly sank onto the ground, one leg outstretched before him and the other raised so he could prop his elbow on his knee. His eyes saw her movements. He tracked her as she walked in front of him, but he didn’t use anything other than his eyes. The strange creature kept her hand on his shoulder, but it didn’t look like she was forcing him to remain in place.

“They are helping for a little while.” The deep voice sank through all her anxiety and fears, dispelling them immediately. He had the voice of an actual god. The kind of voice that made her want to fold up in his arms and listen to him talk for hours.

Tears pricked her eyes again, for some strange reason. She didn’t know why. Or how.

But she knew who was in the glen with her.

She straightened her back, squared her shoulders, and balled her hands into fists. She would not be afraid. She would not give him that satisfaction.

And then she turned to greet Death.