Page 95 of Broken Veil
“Would you say that about Naida?” Jibril looked at her from the corner of his eye. “She is your friend. She has sacrificed muchto accompany you to this world, and yet she makes that sacrifice without complaint because she believes in your mission.”
“Naida isn’t like other fae.” As soon as she said it, she heard herself. “I’m prejudiced against them, aren’t I?”
“You have reason to be suspicious, but yes.” Jibril turned at a gate that had a sign clipped to it, then walked up to the front door. “Anna and Paul have a new baby,” he whispered, holding out his hand. “We’ll leave the bread and honey in the basket here.”
Carys handed him a bright jar of liquid gold and a brown bag. Then they retreated from the front door without ringing the bell.
“The fae are a unique kind of creature,” Jibril said as they continued walking down the lane. “Closer to my kind than yours.”
“They’re supernatural beekeepers?”
“A beekeeper?” Jibril shook his head. “I am a beekeeper by hobby. No, I am… a messenger.”
“Jack called you a druid.”
Jibril smiled. “Of course he would, because he is an ancient of this land.”
“And you’re not?”
Jibril looked at Carys with kind eyes. “I am as you are. An immigrant. Born of one world but thriving in another.”
“Where did you come from?” Carys asked.
“Nearer and farther than you might think.” He opened another gate and left another jar of honey and bag of bread, only this time he rang the bell before he backed away. “Do you know why your parents crossed an ocean after you were born, Carys Morgan?”
She had a flash of another dream.
“The Brightlands was both too familiar and too foreign for your mother. Better a place that was new to both of us.”
She smiled a little bit at the memory of her father’s voice. “I think my parents wanted to live in a place that was new for both of them. A fresh start, kind of.”
“Then they have followed in the same path as countless others through history,” Jibril said. “I hope their life there was a blessed and prosperous one.”
“I think they were happy,” Carys said. “They seemed happy. Why didyoumove?”
Jibril shrugged. “I was drawn here when people who believed in my god arrived. There is no faith without an object of faith, Carys Morgan.”
“So you’re a god like Jack?”
Jibril shook his head. “I am only the servant of a god. A messenger as the bees are.”
“And what does your god want me to know?”
Jibril paused in the middle of the lane. “Briton walks along the edge of a knife. There are many gods on one small island. Old gods, new gods. Demigods and magical creatures sneaking through the gates.”
“We knew that already.”
“The gods of other lands have noticed. The gods in Europe and Asia are not pleased. They worry that instability in Briton will spread to their lands.”
“They think the Morrígan is going to set her sights on other places after she wreaks havoc in England?”
“She is a goddess of conquest,” Jibril said. “Born in the east, yet she and her sisters moved with their people, and now she is pressed against the sea, limited by the vast kingdom of Aegir. She can no longer move any farther west.”
Aegir was the old Norse god of the Atlantic. More of a personification of the sea, not so much an individual. The Morrígan was trapped by the sea itself.
“So they’re concerned she might look east and think it wouldn’t be so bad to return?” Carys asked.
Jibril nodded. “Just so, Carys Morgan. The world is interconnected in a way that it has never been before. Ideas spread faster than my bees can fly. And ideas are all that is needed to create a god.”
