The Guardian’s Echo

The Dancing Shadows: Penny

I watched Soren, my changing eyes showing me things I never noticed before. Things I certainly wouldn’t be able to see if I was still in Chicago. The magic he’d used for the alarm was a low, humming grey mist that rolled around us like thunder clouds.

It brushed against me and the lavender light didn’t just flare from my skin, it twined around his grey magic. The colors didn’t clash with each other. Instead, they settled together like a sunset. It felt like a missing puzzle piece clicking into place.

I sat against the tree, my head tilted, waiting for him to tell me his secret. My brow arched slightly in anticipation. “I saw someone in the courtyard.”

The moment the words left his mouth, his magical alarm didn’t just hum. It sang out a high, piercing note.

Two figures stepped into the pale firelight. They weren’t the majestic, sometimes terrifying Fae of the palace. They were half-man, half-goat, with curly horns and mischievous eyes. They both were carrying flutes made of hollowed bone.

Their eyes fell on me first, and their faces melted into expressions of distant recognition. They fell to their knees, their hooves clicking on the iron-bark roots. The older one had a beard full of moss, and he whispered, “The Guardian’s daughter has the eyes of the dawn.”

“Rosariel?” I asked.

“The Guardian,” they insisted.

“I’m her granddaughter,” I corrected with a gentle smile. “Rosariel had two children, both boys. My father was her son. My name is Penny.”

Across from me, Soren was stiff. I could feel his anxiety radiating off of him in waves. He didn’t have to tell me for me to know that he was nervous about the satyrs recognizing me.

The satyrs were friendly though. And chaotic. They shared a skin of fermented berry juice and offered to “bless” our camp, which turned out to be a small, seemingly erratic dance that I enjoyed watching. They introduced themselves as Philo and Rook.

They shared some fruit with us, and gathered by our fire. After a while, Soren asked, “By any chance, have you seen anyone else in these woods tonight?”

The playfulness vanished as if it had been sucked right out of the air by an unseen force.

Philo, the older satyr, looked at the fire, the flames reflecting in his yellow eyes. “The stars are out of step, Silver-Shield,” he finally answered. “The Weavers don’t walk the solid path. They walk through the cracks in the glass as they search for the anchor.”

My brows pulled together, confusion obvious on my face. Before either of us could ask for clarification, the satyrs heads lifted. It was as if they’d heard something on the wind that neither Soren nor I could hear. They vanished into the thicket with a startling speed, leaving behind only the faint scent of wild thyme and the sound of a final, discordant note on a flute.

The silence that followed felt heavy now. I looked to Soren. He looked just as confused as I felt, with an added guilt that he’d kept a secret from me. He finished his confession about the flickering figure he’d seen last night.

I started comparing what he’d seen to the flickering visions I’d started seeing. Were those the cracks Philo had mentioned? Was the flickering figure Soren had seen a “weaver?” And what was the “anchor?” A sudden chill washed through me that had nothing to do with the night air.

Soren’s confession and the cryptic message from Philo had put us both on edge. Soren moved his bedroll next to mine as he dropped the act of propriety and protocol. He took my hand, his thumb tracing my knuckles. The dimming fire was still reflected in his lavender eyes. “I won’t let anything happen to you, Penny,” he promised. “Not while I breathe.”

“They’re looking for the anchor,” my voice was quiet as I repeated Philo’s words. “Soren, what if I’m the reason the weavers are here? Whatever they are? What if my grandmother left this world to protect me?”

He didn’t pull away, he gripped my hand tighter. “When your grandmother left the Highlands to take up her role as Guardian, she met a man in the court. Valerius. He was the king’s brother, Torian’s uncle. Valerius and King Cassian had already suffered quite a bit of loss prior to the war. There’s not much that kills elves, but the few things that do take them rapidly. The Salt-Wasting Disease had claimed their mother, something Valerius never really learned to cope with. Then he and Rosariel fell in love. He’d already spent a lifetime searching for a way to bring his mother back, to no avail. When the Great Time War broke out, and Rosariel realized the only way to protect the realm was to close the gates between worlds and leave with the temporal key, it broke Valerius completely. He believed she was dead, killed in the war by his own family. He disappeared for two hundred years. When he reappeared two winter solstices ago, he tried to usurp the throne. He wanted to find the temporal key and rewrite history to make a world where Rosariel never left and his mother never passed. I don’t know what the weavers are or what they look for, but what I do know is that Queen Anya isn’t just the new Guardian. She is the Anchor of the Nexus. She’s the very thing it flows through. Whatever the Weavers’ intentions are, I don’t believe they’re good.”

We sat in silence for a moment as he let me process the reality of our situation. Grandma had written about Valerius in her journals, and my heart ached knowing that they had suffered such a loss.

My attention was pulled back to Soren as he squeezed my hand again. “Your grandmother left to protect the future. If you’re an anchor in this world, then I’ll be the chain that holds you to it.”