by Sarah Peters
And then the music started up in earnest.
Drums and guitars and something that sounded like flutes, and everyone around us surged into motion, laughing and swinging each other around, and I was dragged in with them. A fairy grabbed my left hand, and another grabbed my right and suddenly we were dancing in a large circle around the bonfire, rings and rings of fairies all stomping their feet and singing.
I tried to ignore the pounding beat for as long as possible, instead searching the crowd for Finn’s familiar hair, and I’d thought I’d spotted him, only to realize it was Bo dancing in the ring ahead of me in his nicely ironed autumnal sweater and not-skinny jeans. There weren’t any other humans here—or at least none I could see—and we stuck out like two unseemly pimples on a prom queen’s nose.
The circles broke apart as suddenly as they’d formed, and I was crowded into the space in front of the stage.
The drums beat, the guitar sang, and the bass and flutes throbbed.
And the fey danced.
I didn’t realize until someone took my sweaty hands in their much cooler, much drier ones that I’d been dancing and dancing and dancing and hadn’t realized how much my feet hurt. “Huh?” How long had I been pressed between the mass of fairies? I shook my head, trying to ignore the pulsing music even as it tried its best to consume me again, and stared down at the clasped hands. The fingernails were tinted black, but it wasn’t Tobias’ claws.
“Heya hot sauce,” Finn said. I got the impression it wasn’t the first time he’d said it. “Fancy meeting you here.”
It was Finn! Real Finn! Moth wings and all! I snatched my hands free and threw my arms around him, squishing us together. “YOU’RE ALIVE!”
He hugged me back, prancing us from side to side to the beat of the music. “Of course I’m alive,” he retorted. “But what are you doing here?!”
I pulled away. That’s right, he’d been switched since Homecoming and had no idea. “Ok so first off, you didn’t tell me that BabyNappedFinn’s real name is Bountiful Harvest OR that he doesn’t share pesto sandwiches, so we’re here to return him and collect you. Oh, and Becca has a sheep head.”
Finn eyed me. I eyed him back. “What did you do to Becca?”
“Why are you blaming me?!” I protested, even though it was definitely my fault. “Oh, but speaking of, can you gather your fairy friends – like seven or eight of them—and take off her curse?”
Finn snorted out a laugh. “Are you kidding me? These fairies hate me. I’m just a changeling.”
This reminded me! I whacked him in the shin (gently) with my foot. “Also, you’re the Corn King’s son?!?!?!?!?!? You didn’t tell me you were fairy royalty!!!!”
“It’s not important,” Finn grumbled, rubbing his shin. He took my elbows when he straightened up. “Cat, you shouldn’t be here though. Like, really you shouldn’t be here.”
“But I’m here to save you! And help Becca. And get rid of Bo. And win a bet.”
Finn’s eyes moved over my head and he grimaced at something behind me. “They’ve noticed I’m not dancing. I’ve gotta go—but Cat, seriously. Get out of here while you can. Please.”
“Not without you!” I protested, but Finn had popped himself to the size of a bat and zipped away.
Two seconds later, three hassled looking fairies pushed their way through the crowd to me. They were all unnecessarily large and aggressively decked out in flowers. “Where did he go?!”
“Whom doth thee refereth to?” I inquired innocently.
“That changeling escaped again,” one that looked like a cross between a coyote and a fungus growled, revealing a row of spore-speckled teeth. “He knows his reward and duty.” They shoved past me.
Well that was a bit menacing!
It bothered me that Finn hadn’t leapt at the chance to escape. And he was goofing if he thought there was any way I’d leave before All Was As It Should Be.
From the stage, someone began to sing. The crowd roared their approval, and the swell of their magic caught me up again, wiping away my concerns until there was only the music.
I danced
And danced
And danced.
I’m not sure what made me think about Tobias, maybe it was a glimpse of leathery bat wings or a flash of pale eyes, but the thought shook me out of the trance induced by the magical music. I shuddered to a stop, wiping at my eyes. The bonfire had been reduced to only a few logs, and the sun had started to break over the horizon. Around me, fairies swayed and twirled, still caught in the electrifying, addicting music, still going strong. They laughed and sang as if we hadn’t just spent the whole night dancing.
My feet ached and my head seemed too light, too empty. It was like that one-time last year where we’d stolen some of Becca’s dad’s whiskey and gotten drunk on her roof. Nothing seemed stable and focusing on unmoving objects gave me a headache. I took a step and winced as pain laced up my legs and I stumbled from a bout of dizziness.
“…Tobias?” I asked, an afterthought to the reminder that’d pulled me out of the trance.
No answer.
I hissed when I tried to take another step and bent down too fast. I lost my balance and landed on my butt in the mud from our trampling, dancing feet, narrowly missing being stepped on by the fairies around me.
From my spot on the ground, I tore off my shoes. My feet came away bloody, the insides of my shoes stained with dark and old blood. The back of my heels were a disaster, blistery and raw and wet, and the skin practically peeled off on the sides of my feet and under my toes.
“Wow yikes,” I heard myself intone.
I held my shoes in trembling hands and couldn’t bring myself to stand up.
My breath felt too shallow and too fast in my rapidly heaving lungs, and the sight of the dancing fey shot another bullet of fear through me.
Finn had been right. I should’ve left.
I dropped my shoes and scrabbled in my pockets for my phone to call—someone, anyone —but I couldn’t find it.
Too late, I remembered it still sat drowned and dead on my bed where I’d left it.
Awesome. Super. Just super great.
I shuddered and pulled my legs up to my chest, wrapping my arms around them and burying my face in my knees. Had I been dancing overnight? Or had a full day passed? Or longer??? Was Rip-Van-Winkle a fairy thing? Or was that just a sleeping thing? There were stories about people getting stuck in fairyland for like, years, right? Could that happen here, even if we weren’t in the fey realm? The only sparkle of light in the possibility that’d I’d been dancing for years was that at least I wouldn’t have to turn in my Euro Lit homework.
And where was Becca? Had she been forced into the melee too? Had she gotten out? What if they’d tried to feed her?
The thought of Becca trapped under some wicked fairy’s thrall spurred me into action.
I couldn’t bring myself to stand up—not like I was too scared that if I did the music would get me again, pssh no. I just didn’t want to hurt my busted up feet—so I left my ruined shoes in the mud and crawled between the legs of the dancers, away from the sound of the music.
I crawled between scales and skin and fur and feathers, under bark and rock and leaves and something made of smoldering black ash until I realized I my hands no longer dug through churned mud, but instead pristine, prickly, prairie grass.
I looked up.
I could see the nearest buildings of the Prairie Sky Spa looming over the grass, but closer, wooden table upon wooden table supporting enough food to feed an empire spread were in an impressive buffet line. A few fairies loitered near the tables, but none looked at me as they swept back and forth.
I crawled on my knees towards the closest table, and rested my back against the legs, closing my eyes and finally letting out my breath. Everything hurt, as if I’d been running a marathon instead of dancing. My throat felt dry and my eyes burned from dirt and dust, and even the muscles of my face ached, as if I’d spent too much time smi
ling. Yes, I could see my obituary now— “Catherine Eloise Wadell, aged 17, dead by smiling for too many hours.”
“—an idiot, that one,” a voice said nearby. “Humans really don’t know anything, do they?”
Another voice, deeper and more gravelly, chuckled. “She was offered all the riches a human could want, and what did she ask for? A useless antique ring.”
Oh, shoot. They were talking about me.
Instinctively, I shoved my hand into my pocket. Yup, ring still there, acorns still there.
My head swam from relief, and it took me a few seconds to realize the fairies were still on the same topic.
“It wasn’t always useless, you know,” a chirpy voice interjected. “I still remember the Storm Queen. She never let that ring off her finger, not for a day. The Corn King had to pull it off her dead body after the Winter Queen got her.”
“Yeah sure,” gravelly voice snorted.
“It’s from the fey realm, pretty sure,” the first voice decided. “Magic, probably.”
There was an expectant pause, and Chirpy Voice delicately said, “The Storm Queen never told anyone what the ring was for. But she’s been dead these twenty years and no one’s managed to raise her up yet so we’re likely not going to ever find out.”
My hand gripped the ring more tightly. Ok, so a magic ring with unknown properties. Seemed like a safe thing to have in my pocket.
“Speaking of no one finding out—" the first voice let out a low chuckle, “anyone else see how pissed the Corn King was when Bountiful Harvest walked back in?”
“Oh, poor dude’s going to get it good,” Gravelly Voice agreed with a snigger that only sounded minimally sympathetic. “Banished back to the humans, and he doesn’t even last a week before he lets two mangy humans and a disgusting Winter Fey twists his arm so he can come back. Too much of a daddy’s boy’s, always has been. Ha!”
Their voices were getting quieter, and I realized they must be moving away. Cautiously, I peeked around the edge of the table and saw the backs of three fairies, each carrying a plate stacked with food.
I turned back around.
Yup, it was official.
Fairies were the worst.
Tobias, a Table, and a Tail
I exhaled. Inhaled. Exhaled again.
With a “YOUAREABADASSWARRIORQUEEN,” I forced myself onto my poor feet, wobbled, and then steadied myself against the table.
The smell of food hit the breeze, and said breeze blasted directly onto my face.
My stomach roared, as a nice gentle reminder of just how hungry I was.
Whoever had catered this fairy party had to be a genius. The table closest to me was covered in pizzas. Breakfast pizza, thick crust, thin crust, stuffed, Neapolitan, pepperoni, sausage, cheese, veggie, Hawaiian, even dessert pizzas.
And there, right next to my hand, a wood fired pizza with the telltale scent of basil and pine nuts drifting off it.
Pesto.
A pizza slathered in pesto, mozzarella, and tomato. Fresh and hot, with only one slice taken out.
My hand, almost against my will, inched closer.
“Don’t you ever listen to anything I tell you?” A hand smacked down next to mine, rattling the platters and startling me out of my pesto pizza daze.
I looked up to meet Tobias’ narrowed eyes. His dark hair fell in his face, barely covering the curve of his pointed ears. He looked faintly sweaty, and quite discomposed, as if he too had been shaking his tail feathers for the past however long. Well, tail, more than tail feathers. Speaking of, his furry tail slashed between his legs. I really did have a lot of questions about that tail.
“Hey, wazzup.” Nonchalant, I slid my hand off the table. I tried to play it cool, and lifted the hand, scratching one cheek. “Thought you came here to protect me?”
“I came here to win our bet.” Unasked, he took my elbow and steered me under the pizza table. Ah yes, our familiar sanctuary, lurking under tables. His eyes moved to my bare, raw feet as I crawled under. Exhaustion had hit me like a brick to the face, but I still had enough sense of mind to appreciate this current interlude underneath a table, hiding from a party. Why change a good thing, right?
There was enough room to sit without having to hunch, but I still pulled my legs up to my chest and bent over them.
“What happened to your shoes?”
“Shoes are for shmucks.” I stared across the field towards the writhing mass of dancing fey. “How long was I in there?”
He shrugged as he settled down next to me. “Well over nine hours.”
I sort of felt like barfing.
“Where’s Becca?”
He gave a large tent pavilion to the left (HOW had I not noticed that before?!) a dismissive wave. “The Imposter Finn pulled her out of the dance around three am. I believe he was giving her a tour of the court.” His shoulders lifted in disinterested elegance. “She wanted to see inside the spa, from what I heard.”
I gave him a suspicious stare. “He’s the worst and you just let him hang out with her alone?!?!”
Tobias scoffed and muttered something that sounded an awful lot like, “what harm can a human do?”
I wanted to hit him over the head with a history book or maybe like, yesterday’s news report, either which would clearly demonstrate all the kinds of harm humans could do, but instead I bit my cheek to hold back my retort. I asked, “So if you can’t change people’s heads back to normal, are you good at any magic?”
(This was also asked to distract him from my true prize, which was touching his tail. I had no idea if it was a heinous breach of personal space, like touching a butt without permission, but it looped around my back, the tip so close to my hip that it’d be the easiest thing to accidentally put my hand down and pet it. Was it soft?! It looked soft. Was it prehensile?! I needed to know.)
Tobias lifted an eyebrow which was an uncalled attack on my weakened defenses and stretched his legs out leisurely. A fairy with a plate piled full of chicken wings passing the table didn’t notice and tripped over them, barely managing to balance the towering plate as it swung and swayed. I stifled a giggle.
“Of course I have magic, and of course I am good at it.” Tobias turned his pale-eyed glare onto me. “I was born the traditional way.”
“Born traditionally, yes. Like a turtle, did you have to crawl from egg to sea in order to find safety?”
He gave me A Look.
“Turtles come from buried eggs, you came from a buried chestnut, don’t make this weird,” I protested.
His look turned exasperated.
“Would you rather be compared to a duck? Or a platypus?”
“I would prefer,” he grumped, “if you used your brain for once. Since my birth, no one here has been born through magic. I have more magic than my peers because unlike them, my creation came from magical, not mundane means.”
I resented the accurate accusation that I wasn’t thinking hard enough, but only a little. I was too exhausted to use my brain. All I had left was stupid stubbornness. “It’s called the miracle of birth, not the mundane means of birth,” I muttered, “A lot more work goes into cooking up a baby inside a body than just digging a hole and planting some nuts.”
Tobias eyed me. “I wasn’t insulting the means of your birth,” he eventually said.
“You were just informing me that your birth was superior,” I concluded. I rolled my eyes. “I mean, sure, yes, it’s way more badass the way you burst out of the flower planted under a birch tree like some zombie bursting out of a grave. But like, the real question is why did they plant you under a birch tree and not a chestnut tree, if you were planted in a chestnut???”
“The point is that I have more magic,” Tobias said, after the heavy pause between us grew too much for him. “And others of my kind tend to forget this.”
Unexpectedly, he reached down and placed a hand on my ankle. Something that felt like warm Jell-O spread across my foot, and where it touched my bloody skin, it tingled and numbed
. I extended a foot and watched in amazement as the skin bubbled and knit together, the blisters seeping away, and the blood cracking off as my wounds healed.
“You’re a fairy nurse? Like Blissey in Pokémon?”
He ignored that. “I have two skills which my queen finds particularly useful. The first is that I can increase or decrease the natural speed of healing in a body. The second is that those with little magic can’t lie to me. Even those with more magic find the task difficult.”
