Chapter Forty-Seven: A Princess of Worlds

A storm a hundred meters up was a problem. I was used to being able to fly whenever I needed to go vertical, but that was no longer an option here. That left me with the option of artificial means of flight… that meant flying an aeroplane or, worse yet, a hot air balloon (neither of which I knew how to pilot) into a magical warp in a war zone. And, now that Nargillis would no longer be able to force Ben to make portals to Earth, the more predictably ground-level portals made by the Crown of Thorns would no longer be around. Only the chaotic, reality-bending evils of the Outer Realms would be doing the portal-making, and they seemed to prefer to send monsters through at a hundred meters up.

"It's a moot point, anyway - they've stopped all air travel on account of the storms… too many of the flying snakes were taking down aircraft," Lieutenant Dupuis said.

"Dragons?" I asked.

He shook his head. "No… big flying anacondas that spit acid. I suppose you haven't seen those yet."

"I have not."

"In that case, I hope you've got a magic beanstalk because otherwise there's no getting up to the things… perhaps if you went into the west hills they'd be lower…"

I shot up out of my chair. "Brilliant!"

Dupuis was puzzled. "… going into the hills?"

"No! The beanstalk! I just need an acorn… any sort of tree seed, really. Any kind of seed will do, but a tree will be the best."

"Well, that's easy, princess," the captain said. "There's a chestnut tree out back. I'm sure there are some seeds right there on the ground."

There were, indeed, plenty of seeds. I took my empty coffee cup and filled it with prickly green chestnut fruits and then begged the captain to let me go back to the front lines a kilometer off, since that was where I'd first come through onto Earth. If I assumed a spatial correlation between places on Earth and places on Alfheim, that's where I'd have to go back in… though that assumption might well be mistaken. And, perhaps the batting of eyes and the desperate tone of my s'il vous plait did it, or perhaps he knew the world was doomed without my help. Whatever the reason, he requisitioned the battalion's only truck to drive me as close as I could get.

Driving up, I felt sick to my stomach - I'd been on Earth for nearly four hours at that point. Afternoon had faded to evening, and my coffee jitters had me wiggling in my seat and biting at my fingernails. Four hours… that's how long it had been since I'd been zapped to Earth. There's no way my friends could have lasted four minutes against that monstrosity, let alone four hours. The most likely scenarios were that they'd died or they'd fled and, in either case, the Engine of Change had been running roughshod over Alfheim for four hours - four hours of tearing at the very fabric of reality.

Whether it was from the strange dysphoria of being back on Earth without Gaia's warm bloom of energy or the notion that my beloved might be dead, that I'd been zapped away before I could save them and that it would be far too late to do any sort of resurrection… I leaned out of the truck and vomited. The lieutenant shot me a sympathetic look.

"First time on a truck?"

I wiped my mouth with the back of my sleeve. "I've ridden on far worse things… I'm worried sick."

"Don't worry, princess, I'll stick with you. Just don't go firing the artillery this time, eh?"

"I appreciate it. And this isn't my first time on Earth. I'm fond of the place and some of its people. I'd prefer to save both realms if it's at all possible."

We reached the foremost truck station, about fifty yards from the front, and had to proceed through the trenches from there, crowding past harrowed, tired men trying to sleep or relax for the evening. Shifts were passing back and forth between the front and back lines, the front watch greeting their replacements as they swapped for the first night's watch. They smoked cigarettes, drank water or tea from their canteens, and gasped when they saw the Lieutenant Dupuis coming through with the fae princess. Some of them fell to their knees or went to trembling - they'd never seen a woman who looked like a fae princess, and definitely didn’t expect to see one near the front lines.

"Ange de miséricorde," one of them whispered - angel of mercy.

Wonderful. Apparently, I was an angel now. Probably not a very good one: to be frank, if it came between saving Alfheim and saving Earth, between my friends and family here and those in the fae realms? I'd probably choose Alfheim. Hopefully, it wouldn't come to that. As we approached the front lines, I noted that all shooting had ceased. Whether it was because of the incipient dark of full night or the fact that the dark was slowly giving way to the pulses and flashes of another wave of magical storms, I couldn't say. The sky had gone quiescent ever since I shot an artillery shell into the grinning face of the Engine of Change through one of the tears between worlds, but that lull had been short-lived. The storms were returning, and I'd arrived just in time. I clambered up the little ridge beyond the trenches, with Lieutenant Dupuis following close behind.

"You might want to step back," I said.

"I promised the Captain Blanchard I'd protect you, so you'll not get rid of me so easily." There was that winning smile again, though his eyes showed his worry clearly enough.

I shrugged. There were gasps from the men in the trenches nearby… and, looking up, I could see why. The sky had just opened up, pulsing violet arcing through the heavens… and those sinuous things issuing forth must have been the flying snakes. Wonderful. "Alright, then. Give me your pistol and hold on."

"Princess or not, mademoiselle, I'm not giving you my gun."

I unholstered his pistol and took it anyway. Dupuis froze up for half a second, frowned, and then resigned himself to the fact that I now had his gun. I needed it more than he did. Then I grabbed a handful of chestnut seeds and carefully planted them in the ground. I turned to the men in the trenches.

"Everybody get way back," I said. "Final warning." Then I proceeded to sing:

Plants of Earth,
     all plants of Earth,
     this is your final age, your final gasp,
     for all will be devoured
          by that void that grows
     unless you heed me now.
You do not know me -
     I am not of your world,
     and yet you hear the voices,
     feel the soul of far off cousins
          in my world of Alfheim.
     I have given them great favor,
          and I would save them,
          and I would save you…
          but for that, you must grow.
Dig deep into the Earth,
     for now is the time for greed,
     if ever there was a time for greed.
Grow high, and push me through the veil,
     and you shall grow there, too,
     and your cousins you shall grow with,
          and we will defeat this void that grows,
          you and I,
          fae and plant, united.

The fae magic I got through my connection to Gaia was weak on Earth, like a voice faintly echoing from across a great divide. But my woodsong was just as strong as ever, and I poured as much of my soul as I could into those chestnut seeds. They didn't know me from Eve but, as the magical warp rippling above opened to Alfheim, the plant soul of Earth was tethered to that of Alfheim, and with it came the inkling of trust - that I could be trusted and that the danger I spoke of was very real. And my magical power, coupled with the dire urgency of my message, pulsed those chestnut seeds into action. Beside me, Lieutenant Dupuis wept at the beauty of the song, for it was a tune of longing, of desperation, and of hope all at once, and it carried true even if he did not know the language of the wood.

Chestnuts are reasonably large trees, but they don't grow anything close to the hundred meters needed to span the gulf between the ground and the shimmering storm above. But the woodsong does not limit itself thus - I'd heard many trees in Alfheim, some that dwarfed the sequoias and redwoods and ponderosa pines back in the States. And I could sing their essences into the tree, and grow even those mighty trees far past their normal size. In fact, I think I sang the first Elder Tree of Earth (at least the first in memory) in that song, the vegetal plant soul concentrating enough to become a sentient being, albeit one far different in form from humans or fae.

The ground trembled, shoots sprang forth, and I leapt onto one, with Dupuis hesitating and then latching onto the branch right below mine. He noted that the branches were growing farther and farther apart and, at the last possible moment, leapt onto mine, terror flashing in his eyes. He nearly slipped, but a branchlet shot out at the last moment to boost him to my branch… trees can be considerate like that. And so we rose higher and higher into the night, the rush of leaves growing into the rumble of a raging waterfall, the crack and groan of branches growing, of bark pushing out from the expanding trunk, a panoply of growth sounds all around us. Soon, the green of the tree became suffuse with the glowing blue of the magical storm and the trenches below looked like little furrows filled with little pewter toy soldiers.

And, as the spirit of Gaia poured into me, I spread my wings and basked in her love - Alfheim was so close. I basked in her love… and felt her fear. As I pushed into my world, into Alfheim, I felt the terrible energy of the Engine of Change, huge and hulking and pulsing a ghastly magenta in the night. Slowly, it turned to me.

"What is that thing?" Dupuis exclaimed.

+++++

The eyes of the thing glowed their garish magenta again, charging up for another strike. Would it send me back to Earth? Send me somewhere else? Or perhaps this time, it would simply erase me from existence? I wasn't about to find out.

This.
     This is the source of chaos.
     This is the source of discord.
     This is the threat to life…
We do not strive for order,
     nor for chaos,
     but for the harmony along its razor's edge…
You are my sisters and brothers in life,
     and I cherish your growth,
     and I do not demand…
     I do not demand…
But we must destroy that thing.

The tree understood. It pulsed through the rift between worlds and thrust into the bleak ground of the Blasted Field, and when it emerged, a thousand other stalks accompanied it, spores and seeds long since gone dormant, dead but for the tiniest glimmer of plant essence. But they'd been resurrected by the woodsong, and now they surged forth.

As the hulking mechanical beast thundered forward, its eyes glowing and preparing to fire, the great roots and vines wrapped around its four clawlike legs and pulled, toppling the beast over with the groan of metal against metal. I heard it shriek, a horrible and metallic scream that seemed to pierce the fabric of space, echoing across all the realms of magic. Its arc of plasmic energy shot out with a little hum, arcing uselessly into the sky, tearing out a tiny point in the fabric of reality but nothing else. The next sound was the sound of ancient metal being rent asunder as a leg, and then an arm were ripped loose. Trunks pulsed through the machine's broken torso. For the first time, I realized there were other things skittering around, too - strange and rusted metal spiders the size of small horses attempting to flee the sudden growth of vegetation but utterly failing. The branches were stronger than iron, the trunks stronger than blast-forged steel, and they rent the machines with a brutal power that only an Elder Tree can summon.

I had to pull Lieutenant Dupuis away, or else would have both been surrounded and consumed by the vegetation. Since I'd sung the woodsong into being, I would have almost certainly been saved (though there are no guarantees, especially not in the Outer Realms). But Dupuis was a stranger to Alfheim and its plants… so he was in graver danger than he realized. I unfurled my wings and buzzed away, nearly taking him off his feet and dragging the man back another fifty or sixty yards, until we were both safe from the great, green growth. That growth slowed as it reached the outer ring of the Blasted Field, leaving a tiny band of dark, lifeless soil between the green of the jungle and the huge mountain of vegetation I'd just summoned.

"Did… did you do that?" Dupuis gasped at last.

"I asked nicely," I said. "Though I was certain to emphasize the urgency of our situation. Trees don't always respond well to subtlety."

The tree I'd summoned into being spanned between Earth and Alfheim, the only such tree that has ever existed, so far as I know. On Earth, I'm not sure what form it took, though it must have stood at least a hundred meters high at its crown, because that's how far it had to row to push me into the magical storm. Here in Alfheim, it was at least twice that, with branches so broad they spanned the most of the spot formerly occupied by the Blasted Field, perhaps four hundred yards wide. Leaves glimmered green in the moonlight and, as the glow of the magical storms abated, the sounds of the not-so-distant jungle slowly rose into a chorus of insects and frogs singing in the night.

There was rustling in the undergrowth, and I prepared myself for an attack. Perhaps one of those ghost monkeys. My assailant leapt out at me in a blur, too fast for my practice- and battle-honed reflexes to respond to.

"Laeanna! Oh! Oh, my goddess… you're alive! You're alive!" Meliswe planted kisses all over my face, essentially at random since she wracked with far too much emotion to do anything else.

"You're alive!" I sobbed. I embraced her and steadied her enough to kiss properly, her soft lips on mine, my hand at her waist, our tongues touching, her body warm and urgent against mine as we kissed in the moonlight. One of us tripped over a root, and we both stumbled, unfurled our wings, and wound up hovering in the air, kissing and slowly turning as our wings buzzed behind us. My heart felt such joy that I couldn't imagine I could feel any more.

"Seems like you're missing out, brother," Gaelin said.

Calivar shuffled out of the jungle after him. "I'm not. Just look at how happy they are… what could I possibly enjoy any more than that?"

"Nature robbed us when it limited us to one kiss at a time… say, who's that fellow?"

I pulled away from Meliswe long enough to glance down. We'd gradually elevated until we were about twenty feet off the round, our hair brushing against the lowest leaves of the great tree's hanging boughs.

"He's Dupuis… Dupuis, these are princes Gaelin and Calivar… oh! Hi, Ben! That's Ben, my best buddy."

"When you ladies are done, perhaps you can tell us about where in Alfheim you went for four hours?" Gaelin said.

I pulled away from Meliswe again. Men and their talking! "Not in Alfheim."

+++++

We only kissed for two or three more minutes before our wings grew tired and we touched down. Meliswe's eyes sparkled green in the moonlight, and it took all my willpower to pull back and refrain from another minutes-long kiss. Then I treated Calivar to a much-abridged version of our smooch and recounted what had befallen me when the Engine of Change (good riddance!) had zapped me to Earth.

They recounted their tale, too, because I couldn't imagine what had transpired in four hours that would have left the four of them safe in the jungle while the great Engine had neither caused much damage nor moved from its spot. I'd had something to do with that, it seemed:

"I thought our gooses were cooked," Ben said. "Damn if it didn't look like that thing vaporized you…"

"We really thought you were dead. Again." Calivar said - and, normally stoical, he started to tear at the thought. "I was so angry - I threw everything I had at it, and it didn't do one fiftieth of what your meteor did… but none of us can do meteors like that. I don't think anybody but you can, really."

Not to brag, but I had to agree - I'd heard of at least one wizard doing the same thing, but I doubted he could have done it with just a lump of rock and a lot of mana. "So… how didn't it vaporize all of you?"

"Well… it looked like it was about to," Ben said. "But I guess it wasn't satisfied with what happened to you, because when you vaporized, there was also a green pop and a smell of… I don't know… fresh air?"

"It is possible that Gaia intervened," Meliswe allowed. "She usually lets her children fend for themselves - after receiving the benefits of her grace, of course - but it might not take too much of a divine act to turn popping somebody out of existence into sending them into a different realm of existence. Hardly divine intervention at all…"

Ben nodded. "Yeah… well, I don't know squat about Gaia, but we didn't know Laeanna was alive at the time, obviously. But that damn thing opened another portal and looked like it was fixing to shoot its pink beam right through it. And then something a hell of a lot like an artillery explosion just rocked it! The thing nearly toppled over and, after it staggered back, it sort-of sat down and waited. And all of these metal spider things - you saw them, a lot like big, rusty daddy longlegs, they scrambled out from the other hulk near the hill and started pecking over the thing, like they were trying to eat it… turns out they were repairing it. Some of them attacked us, but Calivar and Meliswe have some decent magic… not that it's got anything on yours. So we ran into the jungle to get away from those things, but we couldn't do squat but watch as the others repaired the big bastard. Then it got up and turned toward us… I'll be honest, Laeanna, I thought we were goners. And then your wild tree stuff shot through out of nowhere and tore the lot of them to scrap. And then we spotted you, and you two ladies, ah…"

"I remember that part well enough," I said. "And that thing like an artillery shell? That was me firing the French artillery cannon I told you about… I guess Gaia sent me to Earth and the Engine wasn't about to let me get away… no dice, friend!"

"Not my friend!" Ben laughed.

"Nor mine!" Gaelin said. In another life, I think those two would have been as fast friends as Ben and I were.

I stretched and yawned - suddenly, I was dead tired. And was it really any surprise? In one day, I'd watched my husband, wife, and brother die, and then died myself. I brought us all back from limbo (along with my best friend), killed a mad king, and got transported to Earth by a great mechanical demon… transported right into the middle of a transdimensional war zone. I'd returned to Alfheim by creating a great Elder Tree, which I proceeded to grow in Alfheim to destroy that same mechanical demon. And then Meliswe and I had kissed… that part was quite nice.

"While I'd love to be back in the bosom of civilization right now, I think I'll settle for the big patch of vegetation where we know there aren't any bugs, snakes, or venomous monkeys yet," I said. "I'll bet the moss on those boughs is plenty soft."

"Um," Ben said. "How do we get up there? You know… the humans? Who don't have wings?"

I yawned again. "I'll sing you some stairs. Sleep time. Who's with me?"

Everybody agreed: it had been a long and draining day and rest was well-deserved. I staked out a great bough with a flattened, mossy top the width of a truck bed and sang some little branches into being to act as railings - we were sixty feet up and I didn't trust myself to fly in the right direction in time if one of us rolled in our sleep. I arranged a little area for the human men, too… but Meliswe, Calivar, and I would get our own little area. We needed our own little area.

Calivar lay there, shirtless (his short was pretty torn up anyway), the taut muscles of his abdomen shifting in the moonlight with his slow breaths. When he beckoned me toward him, I slid down and along his body, snuggling up against him with a gentle sigh. Meliswe lay herself along his other side, and we rested there for a moment, staring at one another across Calivar's broad chest, our eyes glittering like jewels in the moonlight. We giggled at one another at close to the exact same moment and leaned over our husband's chest to kiss one another while he ran his fingers through our hair and hummed happily. And we were still kissing when his hands gradually went slack and he started snoring, the leaves gently rustling in the breeze. We giggled again.

"We did it. We really did it," Meliswe said, and her soft fingers stroked my cheek, and then her hand went still as we both drifted off to sleep. The last thing she murmured before slumber engulfed me was, "my Laeanna."

And it was true. I was hers and she was mine, and no mad king, nor arcane evil, nor even death itself had been able to drive us apart.