Page 91 of Earthbound

I arrive at the cavern’s edge. Hady waits for me.

I go to embrace her, but she pushes me away. This time I know for certain: she is terrified of me.

‘Is this what you wanted?’ she says. She is crying. I try and wipe away her tears but she will not let me touch her.

‘No. I did not want the humans to die,’ I admit. I grieve too, does she not see that?

‘There are only a hundred fae left, Afa. Do you know how many people you have killed this day?’

Many hundreds of thousands.

The hunger in me is not sated, but I don’t say this to her. She can feel it.

I notice that the home she has built for us is woven with a barrier of magic. I marvel at her genius. Because the truth is, Hady has always been the better binder.

‘Is this the protection spell you have been working on?’ I ask.

I step forwards across the threshold but I am accosted by a thicket of brambles that grow and force me to retreat.

‘You are not welcome here, Afa,’ she says.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I have bound those who reside in here to the human souls in the obeah, you cannot kill one without the other. I will not let you erase the fae. You are not a god.’

Can she not see that I am? I reach for the roots of the brambles that separate me and Hady, but I feel resistance.

‘Your magic will not work here,’ she says.

‘How?’

‘I have bound our children’s blood to the land; it is theirs to mould, not ours.’

The tree, the tree she had grown. A complex binding, to incorporate the humans and fae too.

‘You have been planning this,’ I say.

‘A contingency only.’

I am revulsed, betrayed. ‘Why?’

She answers my question with one of hers. ‘Did you ever think what you would say to our children when they asked where their people were? Both humans and fae gone?’

I have no answer.

‘When I had you promise to not speak the spell it was not just for the sake of humanity, but to protect you. Afa, you are lost. You no longer know why you fight, only that you wield a blade and strike without thought.’

Anger is hot in my veins. ‘You speak to me of cost, of sacrifice, but you have turned the humans into parasites. Their life force and your magic is bound together.’

‘Not parasites,’ she hisses, and it startles me. ‘We will live in harmony here.’

‘Without me?’ I say.

She looks away. ‘Your ancestors were right to forsake their power.’

I am wrathful now. ‘Who are you to pass judgement? You are fae, you cannot understand what it is to lose your history, your power.’

She looks sadly at me. ‘I am the mother of your children, Afa.’