Page 127 of Time's Fool

He found himself scurrying between one gigantic trunk and another, aiming for the side away from whatever spell was boiling past. And avoiding the shards of wood splintering into the air everywhere, the burning clumps of leaves falling onto his head, and the groups of war mages, hedged about by levitating lights, running by. They were making targets of themselves in order to draw the witches out, whilst hidden forces skulked in the darkness.

But Kit was a vampire; he skulked better than everyone else, and started to make fairly good time, trying to follow the scent of his lover through the chaos and mayhem.

Only to run into someone else instead.

He drew up abruptly, as something fluttered by his face like a delicate piece of silk, barely visible in the night. It should have been completely so, as it was darker here, to the point that even his vision wasn’t very helpful. The fight was running in patches, with ever-shifting combat areas that left some parts of the wood dark and still, whilst others were a cataclysm of spell light and fast flowing death.

But he’d reached one of the quiet ones, except for the howls of the wind. And the thick trunks and heavy undergrowth blocked much of that, at least down on the forest floor. Far above his head, the gale was lashing the treetops, sending a rain of leaves down onto him.

That’s all it was, Kit told himself.

Falling leaves.

And then another feather-light touch brushed his arm.

It was quickly followed by another on his thigh, and another in his hair, and yet another tickling the back of his neck, which caused him to reach for a leaf that wasn’t there, because they weren’t leaves.

They were spirits.

Kit stared around in wonder, with the brilliant scars that the spell fire had left on his vision fading enough to allow him to see what had been invisible before: a graceful dance going on in the air overhead. It would have passed by too fast for human eyes, but in slow time he could see ephemeral, almost jellyfish-like creatures riding the winds of magic across and through the trees. Hundreds of them.

Some had human torsos or even fully human bodies. Others were mere smears of color that didn’t really resemble anything. But they were everywhere, and not ghostly pale, but almost as colorful as the battling people he had just left behind.

And just as murderous, he thought, as one of the creatures suddenly came screaming at him through the trees. It had what looked like a war mage cloak flapping out behind it that disintegrated into smoky tatters, like spectral wings. Most of it was dark, but the face was bright with color, allowing Kit to see a great maw open up as if to swallow him whole.

He screamed, and not a manly sort of thing, either, but something a ten-year-old girl might have uttered. And tried to run. Only to hit a tree a moment later because he’d still been looking behind him, hard enough to shatter bark and leave him reeling. And then shuddering all over when what felt like a mighty storm blew through the middle of him, as if all the rage of the heavens had suddenly been concentrated onto his body.

He screamed again, and flailed and grabbed the invader, for it was the ghost that had just attacked him, pushing into his body as if trying to make it his own. But Kit grabbed it with hands that weren’t the ones on the end of his arms, which were busy trying to fight his way out of the undergrowth. And wrestled with it, thrusting the vile thing out of his body and screaming and clawing at it all the while.

The attack stopped as abruptly as it had begun, leaving Kit heaving and staring and face to face with an annoyed looking ghost.

“You might have said,” it told him.

He stared at it some more. He could hardly fail to do so, as they were almost nose to nose. So close that he could vaguely make out the distant battle through the creature’s half transparent form, but couldn’t concentrate on it, which was not smart considering how fast it could shift.

But he thought he might be forgiven as he was staring a ghost in the eyes!

“M-m-might have said . . . what?” Kit whispered, after an understandable pause.

“That you’re not dead-dead,” the ghost said. “It’s confused enough out here without your lot running about. Try to stay out of the way, won’t you?”

“Out of the way?”

“Of the feast!” it said, grinning, and then it was gone.

Kit stumbled back from the fluttering remains of the coat as they swept across him, and grasped a tree to steady himself whilst looking upward. And finally understood what he was seeing. A great battle for humans was a great feast for hungry spirits—and the things that fed on them, as something that was definitely not a war mage’s remains swept through the trees, gobbling up the colorful shades like a shark in a school of fish.

Kit Marlowe had seen a great many things in his short lifetime, some of them wondrous, others terrible. But he had never completely lost his nerve. Not even when battling a dragon over the skies of Amsterdam.

But staring up at the carnage above him, he felt something snap within him, and he finally discovered his breaking point.

He ran.

* * *

It was a calm spring morning, and the tree was just a sapling. It and Gillian, for they were now the same, swayed in the breeze coming off of the ocean. There were no trees in front of it in this era; the forest had not grown so far yet. Just grasslands, a few rock formations poking their heads up here and there, and wildflowers scattering their seeds on the wind.

A group of people appeared in the distance, coming from farther down the cliffside. Probably from one of the small fishing villages scattered about, their boats going out to bob amongst the waves on the morning tide, and coming back in the evening hauling their catch. Their children came up here sometimes to play, running around and gathering pretty stones, and their young people to play in a different way, rolling about in the high grasses and moaning so loudly that the birds had taken it for a new call, and added it to their repertoire.

---