Pia met Eva’s wide gaze in the rearview mirror. She was vaguely surprised that she managed to think of something coherent to say, as she asked, “Have you ever been here before?”
The captain shook her head. “Never sensed anything like that in my life. Can see why people think the Wood is an actual entity.”
James stirred in the front passenger seat. “I’ve heard it called the Bermuda Triangle of South Carolina. A company of Union soldiers disappeared around this area and they were never found again. That’s almost a hundred people who vanished into thin air.”
“Didn’t the Elves adopt a laissez-faire attitude during the Civil War like all the other Elder Races?” asked Johnny. “I thought they claimed that the war was a purely human conflict.”
James said, “I don’t think official politics would have had anything to do with those soldiers getting lost in that Wood, and if the Elves knew anything about what happened, they never said.”
“Weird,” said Johnny. He turned off his video game and tucked it into a pack between his feet.
Pia had also heard more modern stories of hikers who had gone missing in the Wood, to emerge confused and disoriented days later. Legend had it the Wood itself did not like uninvited guests.
She glanced one more time at the avenue of enormous oaks. They weren’t quite the size of Angel Oak, which was located a short distance southwest from Charleston. Angel Oak was reputed to be the oldest living oak in America, perhaps the world. But these oaks had to be at least several hundred years old.
Was it just her imagination, or did their branches stretch more toward the Wood than anything else? What would it be like for them to live so close to the Wood and yet unable to become a part of it? Or maybe they were close enough that they were a part of the Wood. Maybe they passed ancient secrets through the air with the rustling of their leaves, and she just didn’t have the ability to sense it.
As the SUVs pulled around the wide circle in front of the mansion, the double doors opened. A tall, slim Elven woman dressed in a raw silk pantsuit stepped out of the house. Pia recognized her from countless magazine articles and TV news segments, and from the teleconference last summer. She was Beluviel, consort to the High Lord.
Other people exited the house, all Elves, but Pia’s attention remained fixed on Beluviel, who was breathtaking. Dark, sleek, shining hair fell down to her long, slim waist, and her face was beautiful, with high cheekbones and wide, gracious dark eyes. Her hair was tucked behind the tip of one long, elegantly pointed ear.
But Beluviel’s physical beauty wasn’t what made her so striking. America’s media was saturated with the physically beautiful to the point of boredom. What made Beluviel unique was her rich, full radiance of presence.
All the immortal Wyr had a certain forcefulness in their aura, especially those who had been born at the beginning of the world for they carried a spark of creation’s first fire. Energy and Power radiated from Dragos. It seethed in the air around him. Pia’s own Power lent a natural pearl luminescence to her skin that was unique to her Wyr form.
What Beluviel carried was entirely different, the sunlit green of an eternal springtime. All Elves carried something of that brightness along with the sense that they walked lightly on the earth, but, Pia realized, it was stronger in Beluviel because the Elven woman was older than any other Elf she had met before. Instead of age weighing more heavily on her, it seemed to have the opposite effect. The High Lord Calondir was also one of the ancient Elves. He would carry that same shining, ageless light, tempered with a stern, elegant Power.
The other Elves had stopped just outside the house. Beluviel walked forward alone, her step as light and eager as a girl’s, a smile of joy on her bright face.
Suddenly it didn’t matter what Pia wore, or the nature of her troubles and insecurities. The political tensions that had brought her to South Carolina, along with the two SUVs filled with bodyguards, all seemed somehow inconsequential.
Stay back, she said telepathically to Eva as she climbed out of the car.
Oh fuck, said Eva with disgust. You gonna kill me, princess.
Just do it. As Pia walked toward Beluviel, she saw the Elven woman’s eyes fill with tears.
Beluviel said, “I see your mother in you even more strongly in person.”
The love and sadness in Beluviel’s voice were unmistakable. Everything blurred as Pia’s eyes flooded with moisture too. She put out her hands blindly. They were taken in a slender, strong, infinitely gentle grasp.
“I met your mother a very long time ago,” Beluviel said. “So long ago, it was a different age entirely, and humans had not yet begun to walk the Earth. She was always wary but predators had not yet forced her into reclusiveness.” A smile of reminiscence softened her lovely features. “The world was once a much larger place.”