Of Fairytales and Magic by Emma Hamm
Chapter 7
Eldridge slapped the rump of the nearest horse, and both of the wild beasts wheeled away. They’d unhooked them from the cart, of course, so the creatures were free to go.
Freya hated seeing the wild look in their eyes every time they caught sight of the Stronghold. The horses knew something she didn’t, and that was an unsettling thought she couldn’t get out of her head. If the beasts wouldn’t go close, what waited for her?
She didn’t have a choice, however. The Stronghold contained the old gods, somehow. She turned on her heel, picked up one of their trunks, and started toward the giant set of front doors. The black wood hid much of the staining that covered the rest of the surrounding stone. The golden hinges were now covered in a fine layer of grit and what looked like moss.
“Open,” she said as she strode up toward them.
Nothing happened.
The Stronghold remained locked and hidden from her eyes, as though it refused to deal with a mortal Autumn Thief. And yet, she was the only one with the power that controlled this court. A building would not be the first thing to insult her.
Growling now, she gritted her teeth and glared at the doors. “You will open for me.”
They remained stubbornly shut.
Fine. If the Stronghold wanted to play a game like that, then she would play the game. Freya reached inside her and touched the burning flames that lingered in her soul now. The Autumn Thief’s magic changed every time she thought to look at it in her mind’s eye. First it was cold, then it was warm, then it was merely the faintest sound of crinkling leaves under her feet.
This time, a wildfire raged inside her. Almost as though the magic itself was insulted that the only home it had known refused to allow it entry.
Freya touched her mind to the magic and whispered a single word. “Go.”
It flew from her body and slammed against the doors. They pounded open as though a troll had bashed through the gates of this Stronghold, and the wooden slats struck the interior walls so hard, the golden hinges snapped.
Dust and leaves blasted into her face, whipping her hair away from her face and jerking her skirts like a flag in a storm.
Freya pinched her eyes shut, only opening them once the angry roar of the Stronghold was finished. The damned spirit of this place didn’t want her to come inside, and when she tried to force her way in, it wanted her to know just how unimpressed it was.
“That’s fine,” she grumbled. “I don’t want to be here either.”
Freya glanced over her shoulder for her companions, only to find the two men standing at the bottom of the steps with dumbfounded expressions on their faces. Even Eldridge’s eyes were a little wide.
“What?” she asked.
“When did you learn how to use magic like that?” he asked.
“I didn’t learn. I did the exact same thing I did in the Summer Court.” She huffed out an angry breath, still ridiculously upset that the fae didn’t understand that politeness got her farther than force. Ironically. “I asked.”
They trailed her up the steps, Eldridge holding a trunk and Arrow holding a smaller basket. But all of them stopped where the doors had once been.
Freya could almost feel their anxiety. It bubbled in her chest, too. She was the mortal here. Of course she feared going into the haunted castle that clearly didn’t want her to step foot inside the walls of its powerful, sacred place. Why were her companions so nervous, though?
She leaned over slightly and nudged Eldridge with her shoulder. “Go on, then.”
“Excuse me?” He stared at her with wide eyes. “Why am I the one who has to go in first?”
“Because you used to live here.”
Obviously. Freya expected him to guide them through the Stronghold. Preferably right out the back door and somewhere else, although she knew that was unlikely. At the very least, he could bring them to a comfortable bedroom where the spirits of this place might not prey upon their fear.
Instead, Eldridge did not do any of what she expected. He looked at her, then back at the Stronghold, then shook his head. “You were so dead set on being the Autumn Thief. I think you should go in first.”
“Why do I have to? I’ve never been here before. I have no idea where we’re going.” The trunk was getting heavy in her arms, though. She’d have to put it down eventually, and if that was outside the Stronghold, then she fully planned on waiting Eldridge out.
They could stay here all day. She wasn’t going in there first.
Arrow snarled, long and low. “I hate the two of you, sometimes. Fine. I’ll be the one to go into the haunted castle first.”
The goblin dog continued to snarl curse words behind him, but he strode into the Stronghold without a single issue. He left tiny paw prints behind him. Each pad left a perfect imprint in the dust covered floor. Then he disappeared into the shadows and all Freya could hear was the continual mutterings about royals who were supposed to be fearless and yet were cowards every time they were inconvenienced.
She shrugged and said, “Well, I suppose we should follow him.”
“I guess so,” Eldridge replied. He still leaned forward and peered into the shadows before he moved though. “I didn’t think it would be this easy.”
“I highly doubt it’s going to remain easy,” she grumbled, but then walked into the Stronghold before she changed her mind.
The interior lit up the moment she stepped inside. Countless sconces on the wall burst into flame. But there wasn’t much left in the castle for it to be as foreboding as she had thought. Dust, grime, and leaves covered the floor in a fine layer. Like the earth was trying to take this place back after it had suffered centuries of neglect. There was no great hall to enter. Just a sitting room where people would have waited to be brought to the next person who desired to see them.
The furniture was all turned over. A small fainting couch lay in front of them, flipped onto its side. Shattered glass covered the floor near a fireplace in the back. But everything else was missing. This room was empty, dirty, and sad.
Even the walls were showing their age. The stone had yellowed. Smoke marks smudged the walls above the pronged sconces.
“Huh.” Freya’s heart twisted with sorrow. “No wonder it didn’t want us to come in.”
Eldridge placed his box on the ground and muttered, “What are you on about now?”
“It’s embarrassed.” Now that she said the words, she could even feel the old building’s shame. “It doesn’t want us to see it like this.”
“It is a building. The shell of hidden magic, that’s all.” Eldridge reached for the fainting couch and gently set it back on its feet. But the way he smoothed his hands over the back made her wonder how much he believed his own words.
She didn’t think this room was the shell of anything. Freya could feel that there were beings who lived here. Powerful creatures that were obviously the old gods they spoke of. But she could feel something else as well. A sentinel. A guard who made sure that the gods were safe.
That feeling was the building. It was the Stronghold that had soaked in so many years of magic that it had taken a breath and lived. Every room had a heartbeat and thoughts of its own. Judgements that it made without the impression or opinion of others.
But she wasn’t going to convince Eldridge of that, or even pull his own thoughts out of his head. So she nodded and replied, “Where are we going now, then? I suppose we aren’t going to stay in the waiting room.”
His fingers lingered on the back of the fainting couch. “No, I suppose we cannot. I’ll take us somewhere safe. But first, we have to pay our respects, my love.”
She didn’t need to ask what he meant by that. Of course she knew. The gods had to be spoken with long before any of them fell asleep.
The silence pressed down on their shoulders as Eldridge left their things and trudged toward the door in the back. He opened it gently, just a crack, then took a long time to inhale. Was he waiting for something? Did he fear some monster would pop out at them?
He opened the door with a jerk, and a black mass charged toward them. Freya shrieked and threw up her arms. Was the Stronghold not yet done? What kind of beast would choose to live in a place like this?
No claws raked down her arms. No jaws snapped at her flesh.
She let her hands drop and glared at Arrow, who sat on the floor, wiping at the tears in his eyes as he laughed so hard not a sound slipped out of his snout. “I got you both,” he giggled. “That was hilarious. Did you really think I was some terrifying creature ready to gnash at your throat?”
“Arrow!” Eldridge snapped. “We could have killed you!”
Arrow shrugged and wiped one more time at his eyes. “I don’t think so. You’re both quaking in your boots so hard, you wouldn’t be able to fling a spell at anything. Too bad, really. Come on, I found something the two of you need to see.”
She’d yet to find her voice. Freya was so frightened that she thought her heart had stopped. She even pressed a hand against her chest, fully expecting to feel nothing beneath her ribs.
Still grumbling, Eldridge reached out his arm and gestured for her to tuck herself against him. “Come here. That damned dog is going to be the death of us both. I refuse to even call him a goblin at this point.”
She wiggled until she was pressed against his heart, her hand moving to his chest. “I don’t know why we keep him around.”
“Because sometimes he’s useful.” Eldridge pressed a kiss against the top of her head. “He’s lucky I didn’t turn him to dust where he stood. I would do worse to anyone who dared to touch you.”
A part of her wanted to ask why he’d held himself back, but she already knew.
The Autumn Stronghold was testing her already. The doors were the first bit of wondering if she was capable of holding this position. She’d passed that one, but no one knew what other tests she would have to forge her way through.
Any danger that Eldridge intervened with would only look poorly on her. And though he might want to protect her, at some point in this journey, he would have to stop.
“Let’s go,” she whispered. “Arrow tends to find useful things on our adventures.”
Together they strode out of the room and into a strange central hall. She thought of it as central because the entire space was circular. Even the walls had been covered with some kind of smooth plaster, then polished to look like metal, though the years had taken their toll on that as well. The farthest side of the circle was painted blood red, with three metal faces emerging from the smooth surface.
Arrow trotted over toward the faces, nodding at them with no small amount of fear. “That’s what I found. I don’t want to scare you, but...”
“The old gods,” Eldridge whispered. His voice rang with reverence. “I’ve never seen them show their faces so soon, or so blatantly.”
A voice chuckled in her head and said, “The mortal wouldn’t recognize us or know the tales.”
She kept that bit to herself. Some of what these gods said seemed to be entirely for her, and it didn’t matter if the others knew. Besides, this was her trial, wasn’t it? And now she could see who was going to judge her.
Striding up to the metal faces with purpose, she stopped in front of them and pointed to the one on the left.
This face was the head of an owl, though attached to a particularly feminine body. A barn owl, if Freya knew her birds right. The circular moon shape was beautiful and eerie. “Who is this?”
“We call her the Owl Mother. She looks over lost and wandering souls.” Eldridge stood beside her and tucked his hands behind his back. “It’s said that she is the mother of all goblins. But, as such, she’s the hardest on our kind as well. She has something to prove to the others, and her riddles are thought to be impossible to solve.”
Riddles. Of course there would be riddles. What faerie test would this be if they didn’t try her wit?
She turned her gaze to the next face, though she hardly thought of it as a face. The features were too long, the chin too pointed, the eyebrows too lifted at the end for it to seem anything other than demonic. The man’s ears were tipped at the ends, and his grin was full of malice. Twin pointed horns erupted from his forehead and curved back into the wall.
Eldridge shuddered. “Now that I’m no longer the Autumn Thief, I can say he was my least favorite. He is the father of monsters, the Horned God. A lover of mischief and trickery, who feeds off what others love. He devours memories, sometimes. Other times bits of flesh. I remember him as being cruel, and reveling that he made people afraid.”
That was the one she needed to be wary of the most, then. She should keep her eyes peeled every moment she was in his trial.
And the last. The last head was nothing but the skull of a deer. The coiled horns were jagged and raw, the eye sockets so dark she swore something moved inside them.
“And this one?” she asked quietly. “Who is this?”
“It merely asked to be called Death.” Eldridge swallowed hard. “It is the end for all goblins. The face we see when our time has finally come and immortality fails us. This is the last trial for us all, not just the Autumn Thief.”
“What does this one ask for?”
He met her gaze with haunted eyes. “I don’t know. I don’t remember. No one does after their trials. It’s as if this third task never existed in our minds, and that’s the way it should stay.”
Why were all these old gods so cruel? Why couldn’t this test merely be a moment where they looked inside her soul and saw whether or not she was worthy? Nothing was ever easy in the faerie realms, she reminded herself. Taking over an entire court couldn’t be simple.
“All right.” She returned her attention to the heads in the walls and took a deep breath. “I’ll be seeing all of you soon, then. I’m looking forward to it.”
Three chuckles echoed in her mind. Clearly the old gods thought those words were cute, but they didn’t believe her for a second.
Honestly, Freya wasn’t certain she believed her own words.
Eldridge cleared his throat and gestured for both Freya and Arrow to follow him. “Let’s get our things and find somewhere safe to sleep for the night. After all, we have a very long road ahead of us.”
