by J. A. Curtis
That was quite the story. “Are you sure that is what happened?”
“What are you implying? That Nuada has lied to me, to all of us? Faeries can’t tell lies.”
He couldn’t be serious. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it?”
I paused. Lying had never been my strong suit. For some reason, the words always got stuck in my throat.
The manor came into view. Time was limited before other faeries would join us. I wouldn’t let this new revelation deter me from my point.
“Whatever. What if she’s mistaken? What if she is only teaching you what someone else taught her? All I know is Dramian wasn’t always the bad guy, or at least he won’t always be. To be honest, he didn’t seem all that bad when I talked with him. Whatever they were back then, they may not be the same now.”
“So you have seen a vision. Have you told Nuada?”
Good job, Mina. “Not yet.”
“She will want to meet right away. I will make an appointment for you to talk with her this evening.”
I hadn’t meant to give away my vision. It fit into the argument so well, I said it without considering the consequences. Now I was stuck. How could I trust Nuada while I had this persistent feeling like she was working things to her advantage?
“Are you sure she has told you everything? Have you ever asked for specifics? Or have you always just accepted everything she has told you?”
The anger he had been trying to control exploded out of him. “We bring you here, show you our world, and suddenly you think you can tell us everything we believe and do is wrong. You don’t know us, you belittle our ways. You don’t even know who you are!”
If our return hadn’t drawn a crowd, Arius’s yelling brought running faeries out of the manor, gathered in curiosity.
“Lower your voice,” I said quietly, but he continued his tirade. He jumped down from the golem’s shoulder, and I followed.
“You want to know what control is? This is control. Even though I am enraged, my faerie guardian isn’t pounding you into the dirt right now.” He shook his head, his face filled with disgust. “You know nothing.”
The golem melted onto his arm, and he turned and stalked away. The eyes of my fellow faeries bored into me, judging me.
Let him walk away. I didn’t ask to be queen or general. I didn’t ask to be brought here and thrust into faerie world.
But what if I could stop the fighting between Arius and Dramian? What if I could bring the two groups together? Maybe I did have something to offer.
“Halt, soldier!” I yelled at his back.
Arius kept walking—it was over. I had pushed Arius too far. Who was I kidding? Arius and Nuada had always run the show. I was merely a prop, and now that I wasn’t working out, they’d toss me aside.
Arius stopped walking, straightened his arms to his side at attention. I sought to hide my surprise. He stopped. A little late, but he stopped. Perhaps my reputation was salvageable, but I’d need to perform my part with exactness. And Arius would have to go along. Both were long shots.
I walked up to Arius, turning so I was in his face. A fire burned in his dark eyes, and his jaw clenched so tight a vein stood out in his neck.
“Who are you, soldier?” I said, loud enough for the faeries to hear.
The anger swirled in those dark depths, and for a moment, I feared he wouldn’t go along.
I stepped closer. “I said, who are you?”
“Arius of the Ettenmarch, Warrior of Thunder, Captain of the King’s Guard, Lieutenant General to her Majesty the Queen.” His voice cracked a little as he answered. His eyes told me how much he wanted to walk away. How much he didn’t want to answer. But he did, because he understood, because if Arius was anything deep down, he was soldier.
“And who am I?”
“I don’t know, m’lady,” Arius said, his voice emotionless and formal.
“Well let me tell you, soldier,” I said. “I am Commander, I am Leader. Your authority stops right here, with me. You disagree with me, you are angry with me, that is fine. But you will address me with respect at all times, regardless. Do you understand?”
“Yes, m’lady.” The anger in his eyes began to dissipate a little.
“That isn’t too difficult for you?”
“No, m’lady.”
“Because if it happens again, I will see you stripped of your rank and title. Is that clear?”
There was a collective gasp from the surrounding faeries, and I even heard someone whisper, “Can she do that?” I feared I had gone too far, but there was no turning back now.
“Yes m’lady, sorry m’lady,” Arius said, starting to appear cowed.
“Good.” I stepped back.
Arius’s head bowed, and he stared at the ground. “Punishment,” he growled in a whisper only audible enough for me to hear.
He was telling me to punish him? Isn’t that what I had just done? I tried to think of a punishment the faeries might respect.
“Now, you will stand out here in this position until dusk and you will ponder on the proper way to address your leader. And if I hear of anyone addressing you during that time, they will be on bathroom duty for a month.” I turned toward the faeries standing around watching, “Have I made myself clear?”
All the faeries came to attention, their bodies stiff, their eyes looking straight ahead.
“Yes, my lady,” they said in unison.
“Fine. Go about your business,” I said, and being careful not to glance at Arius, I turned and walked toward the front door of the manor. As I entered, a young faerie came bounding up to me, looking excited. I glared at the child and she stopped in her tracks, turned and scampered away. Before any other faeries tried to talk to me, I entered my room and shut the door. Crisis averted, for now.
I yanked off my gauntlets and tossed them on my bed as I walked over to the window that overlooked the front lawn.
Part of me wanted to go down and tell Arius to stop standing out in the sun like some idiot statue and to come inside. I pressed a palm to the window, my fingers blocked out his form below. How could I be the leader that Arius wanted me to be if he challenged my authority in front of the other faeries?
My fingers moved apart and there he stood, as still and stiff as the moment he had stopped walking. If he hadn’t played along, the only thing the faeries would have seen was the truth. I was fifteen! Yet here I was, strutting around, giving orders, and dolling out punishments as if I knew anything about what it meant to lead.
But I had always wanted to influence people and to be heard. And now I had a whole faerie army at my fingertips. And I wanted to lead them. Did that make me a good leader? Or just power hungry?
Corbin’s bracelet sat on my wrist, the blue and purple threads twisted together. What about Corbin? And Nana? And, and... my parents? My stomach churned harshly. I couldn’t think about them, not now.
I refocused on Arius. Perhaps I was wrong about Nuada, but Arius didn’t need to get so upset.
She was wrong. Dramian and the others, they weren’t dark any more than Arius or any of the faeries at the manor. If anything, my vision confirmed that. Dramian would either work with us in the future or—my fingers trembled on the cool windowpane—if I was Jazrael, then he had been a part of us in the past. A part of me.
If that were true, what was stopping us from coming together now?
9
Nuada and Kudava
“Trust your instincts. If something feels off, you’re probably right.”
“TELL ME WHAT YOU SAW.” Nuada stood, metal arm and natural arm clasped together behind her back, staring out her office window. A large wooden desk sat in the middle of the room with large plush chairs on both sides. Nothing hung on the walls, and the desk remained clear.
“I saw Dramian. He was helping us,” I said.
“Us?”
“Jazrael and the queen.”
The black ringlets on the back of her head appeared super tight—perm
ed or curled, I wondered. That couldn’t be natural. Made me wonder what else was fake about her. A large emerald ring sat on the ring finger of her natural hand. What could its significance be? Nuada didn’t strike me as the jewelry-wearing type.
“What did everyone look like?” she asked.
“Not ourselves. But we were here at the manor and Dramian was concerned—” I had to choose the right words to not give too much away, “—about our wellbeing.”
She glanced back at me. “I see. Is that it?”
“Pretty much,” I said. Vagueness—not an all-out lie, but still a deception. I had stopped trying to tell verbal lies long ago—whenever I did, I got caught. So, I became skilled at leading people around the truth. “The point is, Dramian may not be a dark faerie—”
“The point is, you have given me so little information that we cannot know anything for sure. Are you really so unversed in your ability that this is all you bring me in eight days' time?”
That was unfair. “Whenever I had these sorts of... visions before... I always thought they were dreams. After a while, I stopped paying attention to them, and they kind of went away.”
“But your ability has been with you since birth. Have you never received one vision you recognized as reality? Never even suspected that what you are seeing is beyond normal dreams?”
I glared at her. What did she want from me? A defense that I wasn’t as incompetent as everyone believed me to be? As I believed myself to be?
She sighed. “Forgive me, Mina. I thought this wouldn’t be so—forgive me. The abilities to behold the past or future are the most difficult to master. I should not have expected so much.”
There was so much I didn’t understand about this woman. How did she discover I was faeriekind? How did she find me after fifteen years?
“What is your ability?” I asked.
“I can walk in other faerie’s dreams.”
I wasn’t sure I liked where this was going. “You saw my dreams?”
“I have been walking in your dreams since you were a babe.”
My mouth hung open. She’d invaded my mind while I was asleep and vulnerable. Constantly. She’d spied on me, stolen those private moments from me. How dare she.
Nuada held up a hand. “Most dreams mean nothing to me. I wouldn’t remember any more than you would remember any random day of your childhood. The only information I was ever interested in was how to find you.”
“I don’t know if it makes it any better,” I grumbled. If I wanted her to keep talking, I needed to keep my outrage from taking over. “What about the missing faerie?”
“Her dreams have been less clear.” She sat and leaned back in her chair, her face inscrutable. “Finding the missing faerie is inevitable. But we must be patient. Relying on the inconsistency of dreams will take time.”
I’d offer to help, but I didn’t particularly care for Nuada’s methods. The thought of potentially becoming an accessory to kidnapping wasn’t pleasant. “Do you think she will know who she is when you find her?”
“Hard to say, but we don’t need her to figure out whether you are the queen or the general. Please come to me next time you’ve seen a vision. I am the only one who can help you determine who you are and what you are seeing.”
“But if you can walk in dreams, don’t you already know what I’m seeing?”
“Dreams, not visions, Mina. There is a difference. And concerning Dramian and what you experienced during your time with him—don’t be fooled. Whatever he once was or may become, right now, he is a dark faerie, and he will do whatever he can to win you over for his and Margus’s own purposes.”
She waved a hand at me, motioning for me to leave. Our little meeting had ended.
I shut the door, and the long hallway stretched out in front of me. Strange how I had gotten used to being around kids with no adults present. Of course, Arius kept them from breaking down into Lord of the Flies. Nuada seemed content to let them run themselves while she did whatever she pleased.
I shook my head. Who was this Nuada lady, really? I needed answers.
I stopped, my hand resting on the handle of the door to the nursery. Arius had said the domovye didn’t like unannounced visitors, but today would have to be an exception. I threw the door wide and stepped into the room.
A girl stood with her back to me, her body swaying back and forth, standing next to a long row of bassinets. I recognized the short, spiked hair. She spun to face me as the door banged against the wall. We stared at each other, her nose red, eyes moist. She clutched a small baby in her arms. Her eyes widened, and she spun away, setting the baby back in the bassinet and raking her face with her leather gauntlet. She turned and stalked toward me, her eyes narrowed into two shards of ice.
“If you dare speak of this to anyone,” she seethed.
“I-I won’t.” My back pressed up against the open door as she passed. She turned a corner and passed out of sight.
My surprise at seeing Thaya wore off. I walked over to the bassinet where Thaya had been standing and looked at the small baby lying there sleeping.
This must be Tily.
I touched the baby’s soft hand and marveled how only eight days ago, this was a fifteen-year-old girl who had crashed my party. That same person was now a tiny baby. How strange. And yet how special. Maybe falling wasn’t like death. It wasn’t like humans got the chance to be reborn. They had one life, and that was it. Thaya—all of us—should be grateful.
“You have brought disharmony here,” a voice said.
I turned. Kudava stood next to me. Her too-large eyes seemed to take in more than just my physical presence but bore straight through me. The horns on her forehead protruded, a reminder that although she might look mostly human, she wasn’t.
“I didn’t mean to cause Tily’s fall,” I said.
“Purposeful or not, contention and discord lead to dire consequences.”
“Um, sure.” I retracted my hand. “I was wondering if you knew who I was?”
The domovoi’s large eyes fell to the griffin on my arm. “Your faerie guardian suggests you are the faerie queen.”
“Arius thinks my faerie guardian could appear that way to protect the queen,” I said.
“The General’s first duty is to protect the queen.”
I sighed. I hadn’t come here for her to tell me the obvious. “So you don’t know?”
“The domovye do not get involved in the ways of the faeries. We do our duty and nothing more.”
That was helpful. “Okay, you know, you’re just not going to tell me.”
“If you do not know who you are, then the domovye cannot help you.”
“Fine.” I held back a growl. “But you were here fifteen years ago, right? When all of us fell?”
“All save Nuada and Margus.”
“Is the story she spins, about Dramian and Margus being dark faeries, about how they destroyed the Otherworld, about how we all fell, is it all true?”
Kudava turned to Tily, who had started to fuss, and picked her up. The baby calmed. “You ask dangerous questions.”
I stepped closer to the creature. “It's not true?”
“You were protected. You were sent among the humans so you would be safe,” she said, her voice a whisper.
“Safe from who?” I asked.
“The domovye do not get involved in the ways of the faeries. We do our duty and nothing more.”
I wouldn’t allow her to stop there. “Why is it dangerous to ask these questions? Who was I being protected from? Please, I need answers.”
“The domovye do not get involved in the ways of the faeries. We do our duty and nothing more.”
“But you were there! Couldn’t you—wait—has Nuada forbidden you to speak of this?”
Silence. The domovoi stared with her glassy eyes. If silence were ever an answer—I leaned in.
“What does she have to hide? If faeries can’t lie, why is every story I hear about that last battle different?”
“Okay, right, you can’t say.”
She placed the calmed baby back in her bassinet and tucked her blanket around her. “Ask no more questions of the domovye. It will only lead to contention and discord. Contention and discord lead to dire circumstances.”
She vanished. So someone had placed me among the humans to protect me. That differed from the Nuada version of events but still left me with more questions than answers. I left the nursery with a scowl on my face. Every time I learned something new, something that might lead me to figuring out who I was, I ended up with more of a mystery than before.
My hands itched, and I wished for my cell phone. What I wouldn’t give to talk to Nana right now. She’d tell me what to do. She always helped me with my problems. I didn’t always understand her advice, but somehow, she found a way to make everything okay anyway.
But I couldn’t imagine explaining all this to her over the phone. She’d never believe me. An angry growl escaped. At this rate, I would never figure out whether I was the queen or the queen’s general.
10
Rules of Flight
“In order to understand someone, you must learn about their past.”
RULE 1: DON’T BE SEEN.
Rule 2: Always fly above the cloud bank or at night.
Rule 3: On clear days, scout for humans.
Rule 4: During daylight hours, don’t fly higher than the treetops.
Rule 5: When in doubt, walk.
