“Nothing particularly interesting, unfortunately. I could try insulting her and seeing if that brings up anything.” He laughed as he said it. “Though I don't think that will help us with narrowing down what's happening any more than we already have. I think speaking to the hag is probably going to be our best bet in this regard.”
“You were calling her a witch before,” Florian noted. “Now you're saying hag. Is that the same thing?”
“Ah, my mistake. Yes, the words are essentially interchangeable, though I supposehaghas a more negative connotation,” Jerah said, grimacing. “But to be fair, this witch is a rather frightening creature to behold. Using the old magic the way they do... It has a corrupting influence. There are consequences to bending the rules of magic to their limits. She's exceedingly tall for one, and rather ugly, just like in the human stories about hags: stringy hair and yellow teeth and all that.”
Florian frowned at that. “And we'll have to go talk to her? We can't send her a letter or something?”
Jerah laughed at the prospect of it. “A letter! Well, we could certainly try, though something tells me we wouldn't get a reply. No, if she has something to say to someone, she'll send a little animal messenger; but if we want to speak to her, we'll have to go to her.”
“I see,” Florian replied slowly, though he wasn't entirely sure he understood. “Well, add that to the list of things we'll have to do, then.”
“Here, one last thing to try,” Jerah said, pushing his notebook into Florian's hands. “Why don't you try reading it yourself? Maybe that will do something.”
“More reading,” he sighed, but he nonetheless accepted the notebook and started to read. Jerah's handwriting was careful and neat, so it was easy going.
Queen Soleil of the Summer Court is described as a striking woman, with a deep sepia complexion, golden hair, and pale blue eyes. She was briefly sighted during the failed first attempt at containing the Nova Blight; however, there are no survivors of this incident, so it is unknown if she is still alive, if her appearance has changed, or what control she might exert over the Nova Blight, if any.
Reading the description, as simplistic as it was, conjured a vivid image in Florian's mind. He could see her clearly: a tall, willowy woman, her features as intimidating as they were beautiful with the strange otherworldly look he could never quite place that he'd come to associate with the fae. Her golden hair was quite long and cascaded past her bare, richly tan shoulders in beachy waves, and in stark contrast to her bronzed skin her eyes gleamed a pale, pale blue, almost white with how faint the blue tones came through. Like the foam of waves on the beach. As he thought it, her lips curled into a sly smile, and if he could just focus he might hear her voice—
He blinked, and the image was gone.
“You said you never saw her? You don't know what she looked like?” he asked, his head snapping up to look at Jerah who glanced down at him in surprise.
“No, never,” he said, shaking his head. “It's uncommon to have pictures of anyone not in your own social circle, not the way it is on Earth. So I was never able to find any pictures of her or anything. Just the general description from written records, the accounts of her coronation, gossip newsletters... That sort of thing.”
The fact that the Veil had once hadgossip newslettersmade him want to burst into laughter, but he felt if he turned his attention away from the thread that he'd manage to catch, it might be lost forever.
“I think I saw her,” he said, squeezing his eyes shut, trying to hold onto the image that had appeared for only an instant in his mind's eye. “I don't know if this is really what she looked like, but I had a... A flash, a woman I could see for just a second. She was tall, and her hair was sort of wavy and long, and she did have pale blue eyes, but super pale, almost white. She had dark skin and a narrow face and her nose pointed up a little bit at the end. She was beautiful.”
He paused. The last part hadn't been his own words. While she had certainly been lovely in the brief vision that he had, Florian had not been thinking of her beauty: only the features he could pick out and describe in the unlikely event that Jerah might somehow be able to confirm whether that truly had been her visage. But beautiful? The thought hadn’t crossed his mind until the moment the words had already passed his lips.
“I didn't mean to say that,” he added quickly before Jerah could respond; but when he opened his eyes again, his father was already jotting something down in a separate notebook. “That last part. That she was beautiful. I wasn't... I mean, she was, but that's not what I was thinking about.”
Jerah frowned, but he continued to write without speaking. With a glance at the clock, presumably to note the time, he made a final few scribbles on the paper, before finally setting down his pen and meeting Florian's eyes.
“Anything else?” he prompted, and Florian shook his head, brows furrowed.
“No,” he said slowly. “No, just that... I had that same feeling, like I knew her somehow.”
“I have a few theories,” Jerah sighed, leaning back in his chair. “But we don't have nearly enough information to know for sure either way.”
“What are you thinking?” Florian asked. To his surprise, Jerah's frown deepened at the question.
“Do you really want to know?”
“Of course,” he answered quickly; but even as he said it, he started to feel uncertain. He was mostly at a loss, but the few thoughts that he did have were something like being reincarnated, or possessed, or haunted, or something even worse. Part of him almost didn't want to know if Jerah suspected the same thing. “Well... I don't know. You said the hag would know for sure?”
“No, I don't know if she would. But if anyone would, I'd say she'd have the best chance of having answers,” he said. One hand lifted to press against his mouth, a few fingers running through his short beard as he seemed to mull the situation over. “Well, here's my leading theory, at least, if you want to hear it.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“A soul becoming tethered to something or someone is not unheard of in the Veil,” Jerah said. Florian stared at him, but his father continued to look down at his notes. “It's possible a lingering spirit of the Summer Court has latched onto you, perhaps somehow knowing you're involved in this prophecy. Or perhaps it was already connected for some unknown reason, creating the situation the prophecy would need to come about? But I don't know who, or why, or what this means in regard to the prophecy. Hence my continued thought that the hag could give us more definitive answers.”
“So it's like I'm being haunted?” Florian asked. His heart had sunk when Jerah had started his explanation, but now it was hammering a quick, nervous beat against his ribs. Considering that he had so recently learned that an entire magical world existed alongside his own mundane Earth, he wasn't sure why the thought of ghosts being real was so unsettling to him. It seemed silly, but still he couldn't calm his nerves.
“Haunted? Hmm, not quite, no. Often when this happens, there's no consciousness or intention behind the spirit, only some unfinished business that keeps an echo of its former self on the Veil, and that business acts as a tether. So it may be trapped somewhere that has significance to it, or it may latch on to someone involved somehow.” Jerah paused, then grimaced before adding, “I suppose that does sound a little bit like haunting. I promise, though, there's certainly no malicious intent if itisa lingering spirit. While we don't really know for sure, the general consensus is that these fragments have no consciousness of their own. It's more like a remnant of powerful feelings that linger beyond the grave.”
“I guess that doesn't sound so bad,” Florian sighed, and it was mostly true. It certainly could have beenworse, he thought, though he still would have preferred to not have some old fae spirit connected to him for any reason. It seemed like more of a distraction than anything that could help them at this point.
