"Princess, please. Return to the cave now!" I guess he'd given up on Girl. Maybe thinking the more respectful title would lure me in. "It's not safe for you out there."
It wasn't safe for me at the cave either. I ignored Cason and flew like a bat out of hell. Diving and dodging market stands and tents and Hellions- the world around me blurred together like a smeared oil painting. I almost careened into the chest of giant dark angel but managed to turn at the last-minute flying right through the doorway of a tent. I needed to stop and catch my breath, or I wouldn't make it out of this place alive. My little bird heart throttled in my little bird chest as I roosted on a support pole near the vent at the top of the tent.
"You don't understand everything. You need to come back." Cason's anxious voice reverberated in my head.
I understood just fine. He and his kind were monsters. They consumed the flesh of other people. People that were alive. People like my mother. I wanted to throw up, I wanted to fly as far into the heavens as I could and never return.
I ignored Cason's words that flowed like a river in my head, non-stop begging for my return. I took a moment to scan my surroundings and decide my next move, knowing I had to get back into my body one way or another. I looked below and realized there were people inside this tent. People, like human people, not angels or fey or the Others. They didn't notice me though- and it wasn't just because I was a bird. They were in a trance of some sort. Four of them, seated in a square cross-legged with their hands resting on their knees, palms upward to the sky. A chant whispered in unison rose to my resting place. We beckon you. We create you. We set you free. Repeated over and over.
What the hell was this? And then... I heard Ariton. His voice strained as it was, yet still like sweet honey sung in my head.
"Calliope, you have to return. You can't stay in the bird forever. It will kill both of you if you stay too long. Please come back." I knew I couldn't stay in the bird, but I didn't know it would kill me if I did. The fact of the matter was, I needed to be in my body and that meant returning to the cave.
"They eat people, Ariton," my voice cracked. "Cason is one of them." When they attacked my mother all those years ago, I thought it was just that- an attack. I didn't realize until now what they had done to her and my father after I ran. I tried more than once over the years to get the police records. Their murder was never solved, and I believed if I could just get the records, I could solve it. Somehow I would find the monsters and bring them to justice. What a naïve child I was. The police wouldn't release the records to a minor. Nor would they release them because the photos contained within were more gruesome than I could ever have imagined.
"There is more you need to understand Calliope. Cason isn't dangerous. You know that. You have to return... I need you to return." He needed me to return. My heart squeezed at the sentiment and at the sound of my name rolling off his lips. I hated the weakness I had for Ariton. He could get me to do almost anything. Almost. I imagined him holding my hand back in the cave and a spring of hope bubbled up within me. He was speaking. He was okay. He wasn't going to die.
"How are you feeling Ariton? I thought...I thought I was going to lose you."
"I've been better, but I'm okay... for now. Cason made me some tea. It will bide me some time until we can get to The Moon's Well, but we need your intel to do it safely. Where are you right now?"
"I'm in a tent in the Hellion encampment. There's something weird happening here Ariton."
"What is it? What do you see?" I explained to him and Cason the scene taking place below me.
YOU ARE READING
Changeling
Fantasy"What, Calliope? You thought you wouldn't feel my hand, did you?" A timid smile pulled at the corners of his lovely mouth. "I don't know what I thought." I stared down at our hands resting together on the bed. A long concelaled and tightly w...
