Page 22 of Devils and the Dead
I winced, thinking this was an overly harsh punishment for theft. There had been times in history where a thief suffered amputation or even death, but this curse was horrific.
Is your name Tinsel?I had assumed so, as the other spirits had repeated his name.
Yes. It’s not their fault. I would have endured my fate, but they should not have been punished.
Who cursed you and the others?Tinsel had said “her,” but I wasn’t sure if I should be looking for a powerful witch, a sorcerer, or a supernatural being. Many of those living in Accident had the ability to perform specialized magic. Curses would be forbidden under our laws, but clearly someone had done so and gotten away with it—at least until the werewolves had moved to the mountain, and a freak storm had brought this very tree down across their main access road.
Our Queen.
I frowned, trying to think of anything I might have learned about the elves when I’d been a child growing up in Accident. But the elves had vanished before I was born, and I wasn’t sure the societal structure of the other fae was the same as that of the elves.
Was your queen with you and the others on Savior Mountain?
No. I stole before we left. Almost a century passed, and I thought my theft had gone undetected. But elves live for tens of thousands of years, and the queen must have eventually noticed. She somehow discovered I was to blame. Then she punished us all.
She came to Accident and punished you?I was outraged at the idea that a hostile supernatural being had entered our town and cursed an entire group of our residents, and none of us had known about it.
Yes. But she could not find the Everbloom and left without it.
Probably because the bitch was worried that the longer she stayed, the more she risked discovery and the wrath of some truly powerful witches.
I hid it. Tinsel’s voice was smug. I knew she would punish me even if I handed it over. And although she implied she would release the curse if I told her where the Everbloom was, it was not a promise or a vow, or even a statement that would be impossible for her to break.
Fae always kept their word. That sounded like a good thing, but the fairies in town were really good at dancing around any sort of commitment, making you think they’d said one thing when they’d actually said something quite different. It made dealing with them incredibly tricky. If the fae living in Accident were that slippery, then I was sure this queen was…well, the queen of slippery.
Why did you take the Everbloom?I asked.
It blesses the land. Anywhere you plant it, growth flourishes for a mile around.It made our new home feel like…home. We no longer wished to live under the iron rule of the queen, but we loved our homeland and missed it. The Everbloom brought the magic of our land to the mountain we claimed as our own.
At first I imagined the flower to have some sort of pesticide/fertilizer combination magic, but that didn’t seem to be in keeping with the complexity of the fae’s reverence for life and the cycle of being. They would be fine with insects, bacteria, and blight, but the Everbloom must allow all life to co-exist without one destroying the other.
I hadn’t gone to Savior Mountain at all as a child. Honestly I hadn’t gone there until Cassie had given it to Clinton’s pack as a way to make peace among the werewolf factions.
The colors are brighter, the birdsong more melodic. All is in harmony with the Everbloom.
Is it still on the mountain? I asked, because although Savior Mountain was beautiful, it wasn’t otherworldly beautiful. And the birdsong sounded like…well, birdsong everywhere else. The werewolves were having the usual struggles with their crops. I’d seen trees that were dead and one good breeze from hitting the ground. I was pretty sure the animals there suffered from the usual ailments. Maybe the queen had found it and taken it with her. Or maybe someone else had.
It is still exactly where I placed it when I arrived on the mountain.
I rolled my eyes, thinking Tinsel wasn’t any different from the other fae when it came to prevarication and avoiding a straight answer.Does it no longer work? Life on the mountain seems to be just like life on any other place in Accident.
Without elves present, the Everbloom slumbers. It will not release its magic around any but elves. Even other fae cannot stir it to act.
Then there wouldn’t be any damage to the mountain or to the werewolf enclave if it were removed. Tinsel hadn’t revealed its location in an attempt to save the others. And it had probably been a good plan. If he’d handed the Everbloom over, they would have had no leverage over the queen.
And I’d have no leverage over the queen—leverage I hoped to use to free Tinsel and the others.
Where is this Everbloom?I asked. Where did you hide it?
This time I felt a breeze stir the scents of the decaying log around.
I cannot tell you. If I do, then she will know through the curse.
Do the others know where it is?I pretty much knew the answer, but just wanted confirmation.
No. But those who know me, who seek with a pure heart and a love for all things living and dead will find it.
I felt the voice falter, the scent of lavender and lemon balm fading.
