I Belong to the Earth (Unveiled Book 1) by J. A. Ironside

  I stood in the space between that I had glimpsed before. The light place… I gazed round. It was very light but there didn't seem to be much of anything. I felt Haze's fingers tighten on mine. No shadows here. It was safe though. The place I stumbled into earlier. Where all the answers were. Weird, I’d thought this was mine. I guessed, like darkness, there was light in everyone. There were three people with me.

  Kate gazed round in wonder. I was sure it was only the presence of Hardiman that kept her from spinning off in search of adventure. Hardiman stared warily at the light. It was not something to be trusted.

  And Helen. She had thrown off none of her own restraints. She cowered in her servant's greys with her arms clutched tight around her. She wasn't my prisoner any more but she was too frightened to move.

  It worked. I was right. Bringing Kate through, dragged Helen after her. Blood for blood. Kate really did bind them with blood, when she sacrificed that black hen centuries ago. I wondered if that was why Helen stayed. Because she was bound to Kate. Or did she take pleasure in seeing the pair who had terrorized her thwarted? Or… worse than that; Helen believed in hell. Believed it with fanatical certainty and believed Kate would drag her there. How would it be, if all those girls who had died over the years, had been fed into the Pattern Helen had made, just to keep her rooted in the vicarage? Just to stop her going to the hell she so ardently believed in?

  My sense of calm wobbled at the thought. I pushed it away. Deal with it later.

  "Where have you brought us, girl?" There was fear as well as suspicion in Hardiman’s voice.

  "To a place of choosing." The words came naturally and fell without breaking into stammered pieces. "You can choose here, where to go." I knew this was true. I just didn't know how I knew.

  Kate and Hardiman linked hands. From the wonder on their faces it was the first time they'd really been able to touch since Kate died.

  Helen glowered at me with frightened eyes.

  "You owe us an explanation, Helen," Kate began in a silky tone.

  "No." I held up a hand. "You can choose revenge or love. Not both."

  "So she is to go unpunished after trapping us for two hundred years?" Hardiman glowered.

  "She'll pay." I looked at Helen sadly. Her, I couldn't help. "People who don't love anyone, even themselves, are their own kind of hell. She'll pay."

  "Hardiman, let us go! Why waste time!" Kate tugged at his hands, a wicked smile on her lips.

  "Where? All this light…" He raised a hand to shield his eyes.

  This was it. I’d brought them here—wherever here was—now what was I going to do with them? They had done horrible things. Unforgiveable things? I couldn’t just let them go free where they might cause more harm. I glanced at their interlinked hands and the vision of them searching for each other on the moor flashed through my mind again. I pictured the scene differently, with Kate and Hardiman together on the moor, as they always should have been before Helen separated them. There was a rightness to it. A feeling of coming home.

  I felt their eyes on me. I needed an answer. Without knowing why, I trailed my good hand through the air in front of me. Instead of empty air I felt the fine, silky edges of layers of reality, stacked against each other like sheets of tissue paper. For a moment, I felt the full weight of my power here. I could send them anywhere. To paradise or punishment or simply to another version of reality… I could force them to do my will, break them for a change… I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding, grabbed the edge of one of the layers that just felt right, and gently tugged.

  A view of the moor opened up around us. Summer time there, filled with purple and white heather in full bloom, bees buzzing lazily. I let go of the temptation to punish them. Who was I to stand in judgement? To use a power I didn’t fully understand for petty revenge.

  "I don't know if there is a real heaven or a real hell,” I said, meeting Kate’s eyes and ignoring Hardiman’s darkening scowl. “But I know you belong together. You belong on the moor, together, where nothing can separate you. I think you belong to the earth."

  “You’re sending us back?” Hardiman fixed me with his icy, black gaze.

  “I’m offering you a choice. The next best thing. A… a plane removed from my reality. The moor but not my moor.” I met Haze’s eyes. “You won’t be able to affect anything in my world. You won’t be able to do any more harm. Maybe people will get glimpses of you but that’s all. You might even be the only two people there,” I concluded, forcing myself to be completely honest. If they didn’t take my offer…

  “Is that all?” Laughing, Kate pulled Hardiman after her, into the summer’s day, out onto the moor. I watched the two of them fade as the doorway I had opened closed. Haze's shadows made me think of it. I thought there must be good places as well as bad.

  They went without thanks, without a look, without a word. Save one. One final thought that Hardiman flung into my mind. A parting gift, because his kind didn't like to owe.

  Amy.

  I knew where she was. I had to get back. Now.

  But there was one last thing I had to do here.

  "Helen?"

  Her expression was a mixture of fear and hatred.

  "Helen can't you let it go?"

  "Never." She hissed. She reached for me, fingers clawed. Of course she couldn't let go. Her whole existence was invested in punishing Kate and Hardiman. Had been for centuries. What was she, if she let go of that? Breaking the Pattern made her nothing again. Worthless again. At least in her eyes. I took a step back and a blast of wind swept past. The scent of rosemary and violets was over powering, like piercing- bright light is on the eyes. The wind dropped. And Helen was gone. I was glad I didn't know what choice had been made for her. Glad I hadn't had to make it.

  I sighed and stepped through a crack in reality back to my own moor.