When you‘re staring death in the face, time has a funny way of slowing down. Or maybe, in this realm, it really did move slower, who knows?
All I knew, as I stared into the boar‘s beady, cunning, hungry eyes—tiny in its cow-size body—
was that ever since I‘d dropped my cell phone into our swimming pool, I‘d begun losing things. One after another.
First my sister. Then my parents and any hope of going home.
I‘d tried to roll with the punches, be a good sport. I‘d made a new home for myself in a bookstore in Dublin. I‘d attempted to make new friends and forge alliances. I‘d said good-bye to pretty clothes, my blond hair, and my love of fashion. I‘d accepted shades of gray instead of rainbows and finally embraced black.
Then I‘d lost Dublin and my bookstore.
Finally I‘d lost myself, even my own mind.
I‘d learned to use new weapons, found new ways to survive.
And lost those, too.
My spear was gone. I had no Unseelie flesh. No name in my tongue.
I‘d found Christian. I‘d lost Christian. I was pretty sure he‘d ended up being dragged off one way in the vortex, while I‘d been sent another.
And now I‘d lost the stones, too. The pouch was on the ground, far beyond the boar, drawstring tight. I couldn‘t even hope for an accidental shift.
The dirk strapped to my forearm wouldn‘t begin to pierce the animal‘s scale-plated hide. And I had to wonder: Was this the whole point? Was it about taking everything from me there was to take? Was that what life did? Made you lose everything you cared about and believed in, then killed you?
Yes, I was feeling sorry for myself.
Fecking A, as Dani would say—who wouldn‘t at this point?
Fire worlds? Water worlds? Cliffs? What crappy cosmic power was in charge of deciding where the stones sent me next? Were the blue-black slivers of whatever they were so despised by the Silvers that if a realm couldn‘t spit them all the way back to the Unseelie hell, it would settle for trying to destroy them—therefore, oops, me, too? Was I being deliberately flung into the jaws of danger?
Or, as I‘d begun to wonder lately, had the destruction of me begun a long time ago? Hidden in obscured dreams and forgotten memories.
What did I have left?
Nothing.
I crouched, staring furiously across a space of grassy field at a beady-eyed boar that I swore wore an evil smile on its tusked face.
It snorted and pawed the ground.
For lack of anything else to do, I snorted back and pawed the ground myself. Bristled and shot it a look of death.
Beady eyes narrowed. It lifted its heavy-jowled head and sniffed the air. Was it trying to scent fear? Too bad. There wasn‘t any rolling off me. I was too angry to be afraid.
Where the hell was everyone when I needed— oh! Once before I‘d thought myself without options, while I‘d still had one left.
As the boar assessed my victim potential, I scowled at it, baring my teeth while easing a hand beneath my coat and into my back pocket.
I slipped out my cell phone. Water poured off it. Would it even work? I snorted inwardly. I was still expecting things to function according to understandable laws, as I crouched here in the seventh alternate dimension I‘d been in recently. How silly of me. I flipped it open and laid it on the ground.
The boar ducked its head, readying for the charge.
I didn‘t dare raise the phone to my ear. I punched buttons as it lay there. First, Barrons, then IYCGM, and finally the forbidden IYD. This definitely qualified as dying. I waited. I don‘t know what for. Some miracle.
I guess I‘d been hoping that using IYD would do something like magically transport me to safety at the bookstore. Or Barrons would instantly materialize and rescue me. I waited.
Nothing happened. Not a damned thing.
I was on my own.
Figured.
The boar dropped its head menacingly. I gazed longingly at the pouch dozens of feet behind it. It pawed the ground, shifted its haunches. I knew what that meant. Cats do it before they pounce. I pawed at the ground and gave a deeply enraged snarl. I felt deeply enraged. I shifted my haunches, too.
It blinked beady eyes and grunted thickly.
I grunted back and pawed the ground again.
Standoff.
I had a sudden vision of myself from above.
This was what I‘d been reduced to: MacKayla Lane-O‘Connor, descended from one of the most powerful sidhe-seers lines, OOP detector, Null, once Pri-ya, now immune to pretty much all Fae glamour, not to mention possessing interesting healing abilities, on the ground on my hands and knees, dirty, wet, wearing a badly battered MacHalo and singed boots, facing off a deadly wild boar without a single weapon except fury, hope for a better tomorrow, and determination to survive. Wiggling my butt. Pawing the ground.
I felt a laugh building inside me like a sneeze and tried desperately to suppress it. My lips twitched. My eyes crinkled. My nose itched and my gut ached with the need to laugh. I lost it. It was just all too much. I sat back on my heels and laughed. The boar shifted uneasily.
I stood up, stared the boar down, and laughed even harder. Somehow, nothing‘s quite as scary when you‘re not on your knees.
―Fuck you,‖ I told it. ―You want some of me?‖
The boar regarded me warily, and I realized it wasn‘t a mystical creature. It was just a wild animal. I‘d heard lots of stories about people in the mountains of North Georgia who‘d gotten away from wild animals through sheer bluff and bluster. I had a lot of that to offer. I took a furious step toward it and shook my fist. ―Get out of here! Shoo. Go away. I‘m not dying today, you jackass! GET OUT OF HERE NOW!” I roared.
It turned and began to slink—inasmuch as a thousand-pound wild boar can—away across the meadow.
I stared, but not because it was retreating.
My last command had come out in layers that were still resonating in the air around me. I‘d just used Voice!
I had no idea whether the boar had been driven away by my lack of fear and threatening bluster or by the power of my words—I mean, really, can you Voice something that doesn‘t understand English?—but I didn‘t much care. The point was, I‘d used it! And it had come out sounding pretty darned huge!
How had I done it? What had I found inside myself? I tried to recall exactly what I‘d been feeling and thinking when I shouted at it.
Alone.
I‘d been feeling completely and utterly alone, that there was nothing but me and my impending death.
The key to Voice, Barrons had said, is finding that place inside you no one else can touch. You mean the sidhe -seer place? I‘d asked.
No, a different place. All people have it. Not just sidhe -seers. We’re born alone and we die alone.
―I get it,‖ I said now.