The Steward Read online

  THE STEWARD

  Book ONE

  Weald Fae Journals

  by

  Christopher Shields

  Visit Me At:

  www.wealdfaejournals.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2012 by Christopher Shields

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of the publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the Author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Contact the Author at www.wealdfaejournals.com

  Cover Art © 2012 by Christopher Shields

  Cover Art by Derek McCumber

  Editor Richard Shelton

  Kindle Edition

  For:

  Lance, Doug, Billy, Greg, and Danny.

  Forever loved.

  Always an inspiration.

  Never forgotten.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,

  But I have promises to keep,

  And miles to go before I sleep,

  And miles to go before I sleep.

  —Robert Frost,

  Stopping by Woods on a

  Snowy Evening

  New Hampshire

  PROLOGUE

  June Twenty-First, Nineteen Eighty-One

  The Weald, Carroll County, Arkansas

  Four weeks into their summer break, David and Kyle were up to no good. Each summer played out like the last, with both boys hell bent on mischief, although on the family’s remote property, the Weald, their options were limited. The boys were eleven-year-old cousins, best friends, and co-conspirators.

  They had stolen four cans of Budweiser, a half-pack of Marlboro cigarettes, and planned to share their spoils like they had at least once a week for the past month. Their favorite hiding place was the cave tucked into a bluff high above Beaver Lake. The cave was the one place on the Weald they thought Kyle’s parents wouldn’t catch them. Kyle and David were too young to know the real dangers on the family’s property, so they trudged up the hill to the bluff, blissfully ignorant. It was the opportunity the Unseelie were waiting for.

  Chalen, an Unseelie Fae, watched his prey from atop the hill, hidden from the boys’ view among the old trees and thick underbrush. The Seelie Fae had let down their guard and allowed the cousins, both potential Stewards, to roam the woods without protection. After all, why would the Seelie worry about the boys? The détente between the Fae clans had gone unchallenged for over two thousand years. Chalen’s foggy blue eyes never glistened or looked happy, but a smile formed on his pockmarked face. He was ecstatic. After two centuries of planning, who knew it would be this easy?

  Confident they’d snuck away unseen, Kyle, the oldest by nine days, tied a thick, knotted cotton rope around the nearest pine tree and tossed it over the side. He was the first to begin climbing down toward the opening. Though the edge of the bluff was ninety feet above the lake, he wasn’t afraid. He climbed into the cave dozens of times—he knew every toehold and crevice by heart. The toe of his Adidas sneaker found the first small ledge, and he shifted his weight to it. He gripped the rope, grinned up at David, and slung the knapsack over his shoulder.

  Still hidden from view, Chalen let the smile slip from his face as he concentrated on the bluff surface. With a slight pop, the stone holding Kyle’s weight snapped and gave way. It fell and shattered on the large slab of rock at the water’s edge. Kyle swung on the rope and wrapped his legs over a knot. The fear he felt quickly subsided as he pulled himself closer to the bluff with his right hand, and he laughed.

  Chalen’s eyes misted over—he’d truly missed the pleasure of tormenting humans. His satisfaction welling up with each blitz, he snapped the rope a few feet above Kyle’s left hand. A sharp breath caught in Chalen’s chest as he sensed the growing fear in the boys.

  Gripping an outcropping just below the ledge, Kyle screamed for help, his face contorting from the strain of swinging by one hand. David sprawled out on his stomach and fought to catch Kyle’s outstretched fingers.

  “Grab my hand!” he yelled, reaching down to Kyle.

  “I can’t hold on!”

  “Grab my hand ... I’ll pull ya up.”

  Kyle swung hard enough that their fingers touched once more, and David grabbed his hand. Kyle easily found another toehold and took several deep breaths.

  Soaking in the terror that both boys radiated, Chalen concentrated on the surface of the bluff. Droplets of water formed, slowly at first, then more rapidly. In seconds the entire surface became wet and slick, even though there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

  “What’s going on?” David said with a strained voice.

  “Pull me up! Pull me up!”

  Dizzy with rapture, Chalen decided to create more water on the bluff surface. He wanted to drag it out as long as possible. It was his job, sure, but he relished it.

  David struggled with Kyle’s weight. Water ran down their arms and snaked into the knapsack, filling it, making Kyle heavier by the moment.

  “Drop the backpack!”

  Kyle tried to dislodge it, but it stuck to his t-shirt and the straps pulled unyieldingly against his neck. Frantic, Kyle tried to tear it loose, but the pack clung to his shirt as though it were stitched on.

  “It’s frozen ... David, help ... oh god, oh god!”

  “I got ya and I ain’t lettin’ go.”

  Not yet, anyway, Chalen thought to himself gleefully. Water ran down the bluff in thick rivulets and slowly began to freeze. While David struggled to pull his cousin to safety, the bluff surface became a sheet of ice that filled every nook and cranny.

  Kyle’s cries for help sent spasms of pure pleasure through Chalen, who closed his eyes and basked in the euphoria of Kyle’s anguish.

  The ice grew up the vertical surface and spread underneath David. Each time Kyle struggled, every twist, every attempt to find footing on the smooth icy surface, he pulled David a little further over the edge. David sobbed uncontrollably. Every muscle in his hands and arms burned under the strain.

  Kyle stopped struggling and looked down, fidgeting. David felt him loosen his grip.

  “No you don’t!” David sobbed, “I ain’t lettin’ go.”

  The boys, who could almost pass as twins, exchanged looks. A smile formed on Kyle’s tear-soaked face. David cried even harder. “Don’t give up!” he screeched through his clenched teeth
, “Don’t let go ... promise ya ain’t lettin’ go.”

  “Maybe I can make it to the water.”

  “It’s too far!” David howled in agony, his hands going numb.

  Desperate, David pulled as hard as he could and Kyle moved up a few inches. Only a little further and Kyle might be able to reach the edge of the bluff. David struggled again but slipped on the slick surface. Kyle slid lower in David’s grip.

  Disturbed by the brief window of hope the boys experienced, Chalen decided enough was enough. He had one more surprise for them. A thick rope of water coiled around David’s body, his neck, and then down his arms. The boys stared in horror as the watery snake forced itself between their clasped hands. It took only a second to pry them apart.

  Kyle screamed as he plummeted nine stories to the rocks below, several feet short of the water’s edge. David stopped breathing as he watched Kyle hit the rocks, chest first. The dull thud echoed in David’s head. As he watched Kyle’s still form splayed on the rock edge below, a wave much higher than any other on the calm lake lapped up the surface of the table-sized stone and pulled Kyle’s broken body into the murky depths. Within moments he sank out of view. Only a bloody stain on the rocks remained.

  Chalen’s breath came in rapid bursts. His eyes rolled back in his head—he was delirious, but not quite sated. He steadied himself, feeding on every morsel of grief David experienced. Chalen reached out to David’s mind. You let go. It’s your fault Kyle died.

  David heaved, still lying prone over the edge of the bluff, not noticing that the ice and water had disappeared. The stone surface was dry, warm, and exactly as it should be on a sunny June day.

  You will remember nothing except letting go.

  Chalen left David alone at the bluff, begging for Kyle’s forgiveness.

  ONE

  THE DOOR

  I stared at the wide, glassy brown eyes reflected in the mirror just a few feet away. Mine, though I hardly recognized them. Only anger and fear looked back. The taut, puffy lids revealed too much white around the irises. Red veins, like frayed yarn, bulged beneath the wet surfaces. The shaking hands in the reflection, my hands, worked to press the wrinkles out of the smooth, olive skin above the brow. No use—the craggy lines returned instantly. The jittering eyes, the deep lines, the grimace plastered across the face, all ample evidence of the scream that wanted out.

  Abruptly, I diverted my attention away from the reflection, as if I were hiding my eyes from the scene in a horror movie where the actor is about to stumble into a dark room to meet his tragic end. Ironic metaphor.

  “Good lord, Maggie O’Shea, get a grip. It’s just a cave.”

  My words did nothing to dispel the mental pictures of being trapped by falling rocks in the dark, dank bowels of a mountain. Of all the things that one can be afraid of, caves were at the top of my list. I closed my eyes and tried harder to force the images away.

  I focused on the shiver that ran up my spine and worked its way to my icy hands, hoping somehow it would shake loose the vice-like grip my chest had on my lungs. After lacing on my hiking boots, new and stiff, I breathed deeply, letting the air slowly escape, and imagined myself back home in Florida, lying on a beach. I’m warm, hot even. What I’d give to be back there … in my real home.

  Over the past two years, my life had changed in ways I could never have imagined. My dad lost his job, and was forced to pick up two more to make up the difference. He worked longer hours, much longer, but in time we still ended up losing our house in Boca Raton. And despite my bitter arguments, and my prayers, bad luck forced our move to Eureka Springs, Arkansas … the Sticks. I begged my parents to stay in South Florida … well—I waged a short-lived civil war. But after they tired of trying to speak rationally with me, they told me how it was going to be.

  I snapped the handle of my hair brush just thinking about it. After another deep breath, I wrapped an elastic band around my fingers and pulled my long black curls through it to form a tight ponytail at the back of my head. The backpack, with flashlights, chalk, water, and a rope ladder, was still in the old cedar chest I kept locked at the foot of my bed. Who am I kidding? It’s her bed. The room had been my Great Aunt May’s bedroom until she became too weak to climb the stairs. Since our arrival two weeks ago, it served as my second story holding cell cleverly disguised as a bedroom—in a storybook cottage no less. Beyond the diamond-paned windows, the leafless trees and weathered bluffs of the Weald awaited me like the frozen exercise yard of some maximum-security prison.

  They … them … my family, were gone today, attending some college basketball game in Fayetteville, a town about forty-five miles to the southwest. Life goes on—theirs at least. Aunt May had engineered their adventure to leave me alone for the morning … to give me time to complete the first of the elemental trials—the Earth trial, as she called it.

  I liked her, even though she was a little odd—sort of a half-gypsy, half-hippie cross. Before we moved in with her, I’d only seen her in Florida. But she was always very kind, and my favorite family member. That’s not true, actually—my brother was my favorite. I adored Mitch. Except for the fact that he was annoyingly happy to live here, he was nearly perfect. An eight-year-old miniature version of my father—with Dad’s dark, leaf-green eyes, tawny hair, and irresistible dimples—he hasn’t really lived long enough to piss me off yet.

  As if leaving my friends, my city, and my sanity behind wasn’t enough of a wrench in my gears, our move may have wrecked my best chance for a scholarship—swimming. I was a swimmer. And I was fast. I had won the state championships in Florida last year at the age of fifteen. I didn’t know what else I was, if anything, but in swimming I was an athlete. Of that I was certain—that I could count on. I wasn’t a tomboy, but neither was I much for girly things, despite that Girlie Girl was Aunt May’s nickname for me. Swimming was me—it had been my whole life.

  Before we moved from Florida, I had several good friends—at least I thought as much, until they figured out we were broke. The snide comments about welfare and lazy parents revealed that only two of them were truly close friends. Lizbeth and Megan, my best friends, stood by me when the rest looked down their noses, and I hated leaving them. Their friendship was a cocoon that shielded me from the rest of the world. I had planned to stay there, close to them, and focus on swimming until I could emerge in three years as a college athlete, maybe even an Olympian. I had no idea, other than swimming, what I wanted to do with my life. Sometimes I felt like a loser when one of them talked about becoming a doctor or lawyer or whatever—I had no such ambitions. But I was happy there.

  Florida was home. The other kids in Boca Raton didn’t matter—their barbs were harmless to me. I excelled in self-control, and because of that I was a star in the pool. It was a place where I could rely on myself, a place where I could focus on the only thing I really cared about without anyone letting me down. Anyone. It was a place where it didn’t matter that my mother was half-Cuban, or that my clothes were second-hand. But there was no swim team in Eureka Springs, no chance to win a scholarship, no daily escape. Everything I ever wanted is gone.

  Anger forced my eyes to mist up. Enough of this! I swung my arms over my head to loosen up, though my range of motion was limited under a t-shirt, two sweatshirts and an insulated coat. I tucked my ponytail under a knit cap and pulled it tight around my ears. Sweat already began beading up along my spine. Better to be safe than sorry. I had to cross a mile of forest to get to the bluffs that towered over the edge of the lake—and to the caves. I shuddered.

  At forty-five degrees, it was warmer than it had been for the past two weeks. I nearly suffered frostbite when it snowed the first time. God, I miss the sand and the sun and having feeling in my fingers.

  The pit of my stomach felt more like a lead balloon as I crossed the wide wood-plank floor to the stairs. Why am I doing this?

  “Because of Aunt May, you dolt,” I reminded myself aloud. She needed me, and I had made a promise. Even though I didn�
�t have all of the facts at the time, I promised her that I’d go to the caves and take the Earth Trial. I have always tried to keep my promises—a moral lesson my parents taught me, and one of the few that stuck. I wasn’t a defiant person, but I wasn’t easy, either—apparently.

  Two days after we unloaded the SUV, on January third, Aunt May sent my parents on errands to Fayetteville and began telling me about the others who lived on the Weald. The Weald—that was what everyone called this place. It was a 2,400-acre estate of unspoiled woods on the edge of Beaver Lake in the Ozark Mountains. Before New Year’s Day, I had never visited the Weald, despite that my father’s family has owned it since 1826. My father, David, never talked much about it, and until I overheard him discuss moving here with my mother, Elena, he never once suggested visiting it.

  Because of that, I guess, I haven’t had the desire to see it myself. Being here, well, my instinct was right. In the dead of winter it was a cold, rough, formidable place with more leafless brown and gray trees than I’d ever imagined in my worst nightmares. It’s true—my fear of the woods is second only to caves. My latest nightmares seemed all too real, though, since I’d seen them with my eyes wide open.

  I let go of the massive bronze handle on the front door and sat on the stairs, taking deep breaths to settle my racing heart. Justice, Aunt May’s black Standard Poodle, sprawled out in front of me on the stone floor of the foyer. He was going with me. I was absolutely not going into the woods alone—not ever again.

  I knew I’d get through it, somehow, but fear still mingled with my thoughts. In the past, fear drove me, challenged me to beat it. When I was four, fear of the water drove me to learn to swim. After that lesson I never looked back. Dad said I was obstinate. It was true I suppose. This fear was different, though. Twice I’d seen a wolf in the Weald, and not one of the pretty ones on National Geographic. The one I saw was scarred and thin. It had hideous, foggy blue eyes and it … disappeared. Both times. Water, swimming, was easy. I could see the bottom of the pool. It never disappeared.