Dreamwalker's Bride - Chapter 396

Chapter 396: Ensconced
Ford felt Mia shake as if she were suddenly dunked in icy water. Her skin, where his fingers touched hers, went cold.

“Mia?” He jostled her shoulders gently. Her face was pale, eyes unfocused. “Mia??”

“Mia!” Anaisa looked directly into the younger woman’s face. “Look at me. Only me. Stop whatever you’re thinking about.”

“He’s enormous,” Mia whispered. “He’ll kill us all.”

“What’s that?” Martin was suddenly keenly interested in Mia’s mutterings, and Ford shot him an irritated look.

“Mia, what do you see?” He hoped that making her focus would jolt her out of this concerning state, but her eyes simply went larger, and more full of horror.

“He sleeps. He wears a crown on his head. A black crown studded with blood-red jewels.”

The words were slurred slightly, and Ford’s worry intensified.

“Who is it?” Anaisa whispered, her eyes searching Mia’s, though the younger woman looked distant.

“He sleeps. He sleeps on a gargantuan bed with a coverlet woven from the leaves of the trees. Trace… Trace is with him.”

“And Denholm?” Anaisa glanced towards the fortress, the castle that held the person who was most precious to her in the world.

Ford already held the person most important to him, and she seemed to be struggling under the weight of all she saw.

“I’ll look for him…” Mia murmured, almost too softly for Ford to hear. Alarm bells went off in his head.

“Mia, stop. Stop using your magic,” He urged. “It’s hurting you.”

Anaisa flinched as if she’d been slapped, her face burning nearly as red as her hair.

“Yes, Mia. Please stop. Please stop looking.”

“Denholm’s there… near Trace.” Mia answered, her eyes glazing over, wide open. When was the last time she’d binked?

“Good job, Mia. Stop it, now. Take a rest,” Grandpa urged. “Please.”

Webster lowered himself to rest, belly-down, on the earth, and Grandpa stood.

“Can you carry her?” He asked, and Ford, startled, nodded.

“Get her to the ground. Then, Martin, encase them both in rock as quickly as you can. Cut her off from the trees’ magic, and from any path of escape. If there are no paths, she shouldn’t be able to look for them.”

“Is she that bad off?” Martin had a frown in his voice, but Ford was gathering an alarmingly pale Mia into his arms with Anaisa’s help. At least his small drain on her magic should be moot while he held her.

“Rap twice on the rock when you need to come out,” Grandpa told the young man. “I’d put all of us in there, but we need to be ready for what comes, and I bet it takes less of Martin’s magic to make a smaller cave than a bigger one.”

The old miner’s mouth twisted into a wry smile. “As if the amount of power I use is of any consequence in this forest.”

“Look at what overuse of magic is doing to my granddaughter,” Grandpa snapped. “Just make it happen.”

Ford carefully descended via Webster’s helpfully extended leg, which made a kind of ramp down from the bulbous thorax of the creature.

Mia was going limp, and her breathing was rapid.

“I… see…” She murmured, and Ford hushed her.

“Just hold on a moment,” He took a deep breath before kneeling on the ground, “It’ll be all right. Just give me a second and it’ll be better.”

He walked between two trees, off the main path where they would be less out of sight. A strange orb of earth might draw some attention, and it would be more conspicuous out in the open.

Without Mia to look for danger, the others would be more vulnerable, so he needed to do what he could for now… not that Webster was completely inconspicuous, but at least he belonged in the general vicinity.

“Now, please,” He urged, kneeling. Mia was gathered into his lap, her head lolling against his shoulder. “Hurry.”

Almost instantaneously, all the light from the world was gone.

No, that wasn’t quite right. Everything was gone. The light, the breeze, the sound. It was quiet as an abandoned mine.

Except for Mia’s strained breathing.

“Mia,” He whispered. “Are you all right?”

He gulped, pulling one hand out from under her knees to check the size of their surroundings.

Ford could feel the roof above, and the side of the perfectly round encasement. Like a tomb for the young couple.

The thought made him shudder. He’d been trapped underground before, but this was different. He could get out anytime… right?

Surely a hard, loud knock on the stone would be felt by Martin, and he would release them?

One step at a time. First task, take care of Mia.

In the darkness it was very difficult to assess her condition. He couldn’t see her face. Couldn’t check whether her color was returning and her eyes were refocusing. It was as if they were invisible once again.

He sighed. One arm was still underneath her shoulders, but with his free hand, he stroked her cheek.

“Mia,” He whispered again. He leaned his cheek against her forehead, trying to feel for either fever or clamminess. “Please speak to me.”

She shifted slightly, and Ford quickly adjusted to try to give her the space she needed. She pressed into him instead, shivering as if cold.

“Please, say something. Is this better? Did this help?” He asked desperately. Grandpa’s plan had been a good one. Give Mia no paths and her magic would be moot. But would it take into account the fact that Martin could let them out anytime?

He didn’t know. Perhaps all of this was futile.

“I really need you to let me know you’re all right,” He pled, his heart clenching. “I haven’t even told you everything. I have so much I still need to say, and need you to hear. Please, Mia. Say something.”

He could feel her move again, but couldn’t quite tell how. It was her arm, he thought, and then her hand bumped his face as she reached for her own forehead.

“Mmm. Sorry,” She muttered, a little slowly. “What was that?”

Mia’s mind was racing. Pictures, ideas, images, paths, and more collided like little balls in her head, bouncing and crashing into each other with such intensity that she thought she’d explode.

And then it all went dark.

Quite literally.

For a second she thought she had died from it all. Was death just emptiness? Did it mean to see and know nothing?

It was not just dark, it was quiet. Peaceful, if it weren’t so disorienting. Did death mean peace?

No, she was breathing. So she was not dead, but… trapped? In darkness?

A panic began to rise in her throat until Ford’s voice tickled the loose strand of hair that hung next to her ear.

“Mia? Are you all right?”

A flood of comfort washed through her. While being trapped was one of her worst fears recently, his voice was a constant that she couldn’t set aside lightly.

As long as they were trapped together, things seemed all right.

She didn’t immediately look for a way out, like her instinct instructed. Instead, she tried to concentrate on flipping through the most recent images to flash through her mind. The dark was comforting.

Close, she realized. There were no echoes, so the space must be rather small, and hold no danger.

She let her brow relax. Ford was saying something else now, but she wasn’t listening. Sifting through the afterimages was taking all her attention.

The Emperor Wight in the enormous bed. Daniel’s storybook had once mentioned a hero who negotiated a treaty with the Emperor. A tenuous peace that involved staying out of each other’s lands.

The existence of such a ruler gave new credence to the legend mentioned by both the legend and Ford’s dream, and Mia’s mind stuttered over the implications.

The wights had been in human land. Had they broken the treaty?

But they were taking back a tree that they had described as ‘stolen’. Did humans break the treaty originally, then? Someone stole a tree from the bejeweled forest, provoking the wights’ incursion?

But the tree in the cave had been there for… well, Mia didn’t know precisely how long. Years, at least. A decade or longer, at the very minimum! Anaisa had mentioned in her retelling of Barnabas’s tale that the tree’s roots in the water source seemed to be the reason behind the concentration of magic users in the outlying farmlands…

So that meant that as long as humans had been getting magic powers, the tree had been there? Why didn’t the wights take it back before? Why now? And why kidnap Mia’s uncle and Denholm?

The forest was vast, was one tree really that important to them? Surely they could grow more?

Mia swallowed as she tried to process a hundred different thoughts that bloomed from the information she had now. Denholm was near Trace. Trace was in the room with the Wight Emperor, who seemed to be sleeping… for now.

She shuddered as the memory of his face bloomed in her mind’s eye. It was intimidating. Full of rage, and storms, and who knew what else?

Was he dangerous? She knew he was. The wights hadn’t killed any humans that she knew of–yet–but now that they were there to rescue Trace, she was no longer confident. Her mind swirled with danger even as the peace of the dark, quiet shelter settled her magic.

Encased here, there were no paths to anything she looked for. It was a relief, and a deep one at that. With Ford holding onto her, there was no pull whatsoever. If she concentrated on looking for Anaisa, a tug to her left pulled at her, the same as her magic worked at home.

But no longer was her mind overwhelmed. In relief, she shifted and sagged against the man who held her, ready to rest for a moment. They could find a way out after she felt a little better.

Ford’s hand held her cheek, and his face rested against her forehead. It was a very pleasant sensation, one she was taking a moment to enjoy before she was willing to get up and continue the quest.

She’d been on the verge of collapse under the weight of her magic, surely it wasn’t too selfish to take a moment to recover before continuing the mission? It would be better for everyone if she fully collected her wits and banished the awful headache.

As she came back to herself a little, she began to realize Ford’s body language was far more tense than she had initially thought. Was he worried?

“I really need you to let me know you’re all right,” His voice broke through her musings, anguished. “I haven’t even told you everything. I have so much I still need to say, and need you to hear. Please, Mia. Say something.”

Was she hallucinating, imagining this? She moved her hand to press her fingers to her temple to massage away the remnants of her lingering headache, but bumped Ford’s face instead!

She flinched, embarrassed, and hastily apologized. Hesitating, she wondered. The logical conclusion to his physical presence was that she was unlikely to have misheard him at such close quarters.

He hadn’t told her everything? What did that mean? Was he still keeping secrets from her, or was this something else? Something to do with the conversation that had been cut off so suddenly, after their kiss?

She refused to let hope spark too readily in her. Now was not the time or place, although she didn’t exactly know what the place was. Surely it wasn’t the time? Although, her mind did need a minute to rest and recover from the deluge of magic… surely it wouldn’t be a waste of time to find out what Ford meant, since they were waiting anyway.

“What was that?” She questioned as neutrally as she could, then bit her lip nervously. At least it was dark, and he couldn’t see her.

“Mia!” He cried, pulling her closer. He’d already been supporting her as she leaned against him, but now both his arms held her in a tight hug. “Are you all right? You’re not hurt, are you?”

She blinked, a little distracted, but not enough to abandon her line of inquiry.

“What was it you wanted to tell me?”