Elven Legacy

Chapter 108

Tessa

Surrender everything you think you know. About who you are, about the world, about life.

It came naturally to her as a mantra, as the three of them sat in a circle. She held Matt's hand in her right, Leery's hand in her left. Her eyes closed against the ever-changing light of the torches. Matt's skin felt dry and calloused, and Leery's hand had a strange granular texture that sent shivers creeping up her arm. She tried not to scrape her skin on his claws. Soon, though – sooner than she had expected – she got used to it and relaxed.

Surrender everything you think you know. About who you are, about the world, about life.

Tessa never knew what it was Leery did to help them, but it happened seamlessly, effortlessly, as natural as falling asleep after a long, active day spent outdoors in the Felleran winter. Like diving into a warm, turquoise sea. Like taking a very strong dose of sin, letting her mind forget who she was and how to worry. Like closing her eyes as she flew on Karma's back and feeling like she had become the phoenix. No separation.

Reality shifted, tilted, and rotated upside down. It felt like falling into nothing. Or falling into everything. She was not afraid.

Once she found herself standing still, otherworldly patterns, moving shapes she could not name, emerged and rose up around her like walls. Before she could focus her gaze on any one such pattern, it all coalesced into something familiar. Her mind adjusted, taking stock.

Pale stone walls, softly burning candles in small alcoves, tall narrow window, arched at the top, wind seeping in and ruffling the blue linen curtain. She tilted her head, gazing curiously out the window, but even as the curtain parted she could not tell whether it was day or night, summer or winter outside. She blinked a few times, but it appeared reality had ceased to exist outside that window, for there was nothing there. The kind of nothing her mind couldn't make sense of.

She tried taking a step forward, only to realize she was no longer standing—

Tessa opened her eyes. She lay on a large bed, in the same stone-walled room as before. The white sheets smelled crisp and fresh, like they'd just been washed and hung to dry earlier today. Over the sheet was laid a vast swath of white fur. She felt neither warm nor cold, and couldn't decide whether she should push away the fur.

Her body felt small in this vast bed. She brought a hand over her face to look, and it was unmarked. Her hair was long again, very long, like she used to wear it when she was sixteen years old.

A door opened. A woman and a boy stepped in the room, and before the door closed again Tessa could see that there existed nothing beyond it. As if this room hung, suspended, lonely, in the center of some incomprehensible emptiness. A fragment of uneasy fear – as if something forgotten – filtered through her. Only to be forgotten again, as she recognized them.

The woman was blonde and fair, graceful and elegant as she held the boy's hand. He was perhaps seven years old, and he had his mother's eyes. Pearl-gray eyes, delicately shaped. He was a beautiful child, though he looked frightened at the moment.

"He wishes to sleep here again tonight," the woman explained with a fond smile. "Would that be all right?"

Tessa leaned up on her elbows.

"Of course," she said. "Come, get in here Jaden."

The boy rushed over to the bed and climbed up, slipping hurriedly under the sheet and fur beside Tessa. Even with the both of them in the bed, there was still plenty of room to spare.

"Nightmares again?" Tessa turned to look at him. The boy nodded, though he seemed less frightened already. "Which one was it tonight? The wolves? The spiders?"