Novel for NaNoWriMo (2010), Otherworld

This is the beginning of a second draft of the Otherworld/Fairie story that I posted earlier. You may notice similarities.

Liam:

            When Liam had put on his sweater and gone to find the Tree of Portals, that morning, he had very little idea of how much he was about to change his world. Well, his world and the Underworld, to be strictly accurate. The human world, the last and farthest of the three, would prove largely untouched by the repercussions of his actions, at least on the surface. Yet who can truly say how deep the ripples have gone. It is more than possible that we may awaken some day to find that we have been living in a dream, and that some ancient force has pervaded our everyday existence. But I digress.

            The morning was cool, but not cold; it was late spring in the Otherworld and a hundred flying things sang greeting at the rising of the sun. Liam awoke to this cacophony of trills and hoots and barking coughs and crawled out from beneath the lattice of hazelnut branches that had covered his sleeping-place. He stretched in the dawn light, pulled off his sweater, shook the leaves, dirt, torn edges, stains, and sweat out of it, and put it back on. In less than two minutes he had scaled one of the huge, ancient rowan (quickenbeam?) trees that monopolized that grove and was peering out through its topmost branches. The tree was growing on a little rise in the forest floor and Liam could see his father's castle rising out of the intensely green spring foliage, a ways off, and to his right. The kitchen fires had already been rekindled from the banked and still-glowing coals of the day before; he could smell the pleasant tang of burning apple-wood and see the smoke trace a faint line against the lavender sky. Slowly turning away, Liam looked in the opposite direction, up the slant of the ground to where the mountain could be seen rising to a jagged peak.

            'Go toward the nearest mountain,' Tara had told him when he had wondered, the day before, if it was possible to still find the Tree of Portals. 'If you call him with the right name, he should meet you as you go.'

            'How can he meet me?' Liam had asked her, 'Does he have no roots, as you do? How can a tree live without roots?'

            She had shivered her leaves at him, a mild rebuke, and said, 'The Tree of Portals, as you call him, has a root system that spans the worlds, touching all three. He has sprouts in each, but lives in the Soul-world, the Underworld. He moves his sprouts from place to place in such a way that it seems they have always been wherever they are seen, and they leave no mark behind them when they go.'

            'But does he still connect our Otherworld with the human world?'

            'I do not know, but I believe he does.'

            'With what name should I call him?'

            And Tara had told him a name which was the flowing of water underground, the clear beauty of a crisp breeze, the rich, earthy loam of a forest floor. It was new and old leaves, flowers of many kinds, sap and bark and heartwood, and roots. The name was a deeper magic than any Liam had yet known and he breathed it like a fragrance, holding it in his mind carefully, an overfull beaker which he dared not spill.

            In his mind Liam called the name and then, thinking that might not be enough, spoke it aloud. It felt as if a bit of the liquid had been drunk, and so he could proceed with less care. He was not particularly good at magic, having never been instructed in its use, but he knew what it felt like. This was definitely some kind of magic, but it was older than anything he had experienced before. All this he sensed

in the blink of an instant, as he was speaking, and then there was nothing. Wondering,

Liam spoke the name once more, but whatever that had been, it didn't seem inclined to

happen again.

            He climbed down, and dropped the last fifteen feet or so, landing gracefully

on tough bare feet, and doing so  startled a horned squirrel who chittered at him

angrily. He set off through the forest, heading away from his father's castle and

toward the mountain. The ground sloped gradually upward. Liam was more fit even than

most fae, and the incline gave him no trouble. He ran upwards, flitting through the

dappled shade, thin and streamlined as a greyhound.

            The fae are an enormously diverse race, incorporating many subgroups, but

some traits are common to almost all of them (excluding, of course, the unicorn and

her intelligent beasts). The fae are generally tall, and have some humanoid features.

They may have horns upon their heads or animal ears or a tail. About half are

strikingly inhuman; they are distinguishable from us at a glance. The others have

more subtle differences, and these are divided into two groups; the Tuatha de Dannan,

the more populous type and the last of the fae to have immigrated to the Otherworld;

and the Fomorians, the horned lords who still ruled the northern climes. Liam was one

of the Tuatha de, and actually looked quite human; tousled dark brown hair in need of

a trim, strong chin, long eyes under straight, dark brows, open-looking face, a bit

tall for a fifteen year old, and extremely slim, but he almost could pass for human.

Only his eyes really gave him away, a green as dark and intense as the shadows through

which he ran.

            As Liam gained altitude the trees grew less magnificent, more twisted and

gnarled. By mid-morning he was toiling up a steep slope, pulling himself upward by

grasping the sap-filled spring growth. His hands came away sticky and green, but he

didn't bother to wipe them off. He was looking for a sign even as he ran, some kind of

pointer to tell him where to turn. It seemed perfectly natural to him that he had so

little idea of where he was going. He always found things best when he was not

thinking of anything much and just let his feet carry him away. Liam had always been

a wanderer.

            So he was hardly paying attention and thus, when he tried to step onto empty

air, failed to catch himself, and tumbled headlong into the bowl of a little valley.

It was only about twenty feet across and clear of shrubs and bracken, as the foothills

had not been. The reason for this seemed abundantly obvious, for in the center of the

valley there was a great oak tree, which had grown as two separate trunks that wound

around each other in a quite unnatural way, and whose branches shaded the entire

valley, letting little light through. Even Liam, who was used to seeing strange things

every day, was taken aback by the growth of that tree. The first ten feet of each

trunk bowed out in such a manner as to create quite a wide aperture between them.

It was in the shape of an eye. He stood up, rubbing his bruised knees, and walked

slowly toward it. There was a humming in the air, an undercurrent of magic like a

great dynamo generating electricity, which grew more and more intolerable the nearer

he got. The sound/feeling pressed against his temples, set his teeth grinding, wormed

its way into his brain so that he gained a kind of fearlessness despite the huge well

of latent magical power growing right in front of him. Liam asked the tree if it was

the Tree of Portals. It didn't answer him, whether unfamiliar with the language or

simply being rude, he knew not. And he did not greatly care. What mattered was that

Liam was standing in front of the Tree of Portals, wearing a World Crystal on a strap

around his neck.

            He stopped about two feet outside the range of the exposed roots and sat on

the soft, damp grass. Then he took the crystal out and held it up so that the light

shone through. The World Crystal was as long as his middle finger, and as slim. There was a small hole drilled through its base, which was rough and uneven, as if chipped out in a hurry, through which Liam had threaded a bit of sinew and then tied that around the leather strap. It was transparent, but opalescent; a thousand flickers of colour danced it in its slight shadow. Turning the crystal in his hands made the light dance from one shadow to another, and where it crossed the tree, the bark began to glow with the same flickering sparks of color. Liam flashed the light across the trunks, into the opening between them.
            At once the hum grew to a roar and the whole tree lit up. It was like lightning in its brilliance, but kept going where lightning would have died in an instant. It was searing his eyes even though they were tightly shut it was burning him...

            Suddenly it was over. He seemed to be floating, but the light had blinded him, and he couldn't tell where he might be. Whispered words began to crawl through his head as if they'd been spoken aloud. They said, "It has been such a long time since anyone wanted to go there. Are you sure? You know it is strictly forbidden."
            "I know."
            "And you still want to go?"
            "Yes."
            "Why? There will be a reprisal."
            "I love a human girl," he answered, and opened his eyes. He was standing on the side of a strangely barren hill, looking east into the last ending gleam of a sunset. The landscape spread out before him was... solid, in a way that his world was not. Liam had a feeling that here if you turned a corner, you would end up just around the corner from where you were before. How strange. Behind him the Portal Oak whispered, 'I'll wait here for you.'
            "How do I find her?" His voice sounded petulant to his own ears.
            The Tree of Portals did not answer.
            So Liam started walking, as he always did when he didn't know how to find what he was looking for. He went downhill, because it was easier, and soon was tramping along beside a stream. By the time the moon rose he was jogging a very flat road, with huge, roaring beasts passing him every so often. They had glowing eyes, low to the ground, and were partly transparent; he could see dark lumps inside. They might have been people. Eventually Liam's feet carried him across the road. He turned onto the next lane he came to, following it as it wound between low stone walls and strangely sparse and stunted trees. One word pounded through his head, over and over, keeping time to the rhythm of his breath. A Call. Kirin. Kirin. Kirin.


Kirin:
            Kirin was asleep. In her dream she stood at the edge of a cliff, a sea breeze running invisible fingers through her short blond hair. Looking down there was only mist. It had risen almost as high as the cliff itself and extended to the horizon. A man crept up behind her, and as she sensed him coming a terrible fear rose within her. She tried desperately to turn around but found herself frozen. Struggle was useless, and tears leaked from the corners of her eyes as she was forced to listen helplessly to the steady tread growing louder. The man stopped not six inches behind her. She felt his breath stir the tiny hairs on her neck. Kirin felt all this with an odd duality; she was herself and experiencing terrible fear, but at the same time she was watching herself in complete detachment, an impartial observer. The man pushed her lightly exactly in the center of her back, and Kirin lost her precarious balance and fell head over heels into the mist. She caught a glimpse of his face before the fog closed around her; an inhumanly wide smile and sharp, pointed teeth.
            And quite suddenly Kirin was sitting up in her bed, sweating. The waxing gibbous moon peeked through her window, bright enough to clearly illuminate the rag rug, the doll house in the corner that her father had made the year she was born (it had electricity and running water), the pine dresser with her hairbrush and a multitude of clips, barrettes, and hair-ties scattered on top, a corner of the scarlet bedspread. Kirin sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed, feeling with her toes for the pink slippers. Sliding her feet into their fuzzy softness, Kirin tiptoed to the stairway door and opened it slowly, so that it didn't creak. Her room was the attic, and to get outside she had to go past both her father's room and her brother's.
            She crept down the hallway, and passed her father's room without a hitch. Just as she came abreast of her brother's door, however, it opened. A thin silhouette stood outlined just inside the threshold. "Where are you going?" Niall asked, stepping out to block her. He was a round faced boy, with blue-black hair and widely spaced green eyes, a bit too far apart for his otherwise good looks; he had a strong chin and prominent cheekbones, with naturally straight teeth and an intelligent mouth, which quirked a different way for each expression, as if it had a life of its own. At the moment it was stretched and one corner twisted down.
            "I just want to sit in the moonlight a little.