by Skye Allen
“He won’t hurt you. Not that I mind coming to the party with a girl on my arm,” Nicky said. I’d grabbed her sleeve. Her arm was hard where I’d expected softness.
“I’m not scared, just—that was freaky. What was that?” I was totally scared. Liquid intestines, trick-knees scared. My heart beat so hard I could see my pulse, making my vision jolt in frantic lub-dub rhythm as I kneeled down to retie my shoe.
“Look.” Nicky pointed.
I didn’t see anything at first. And then I saw the figures everywhere. A woman tall enough to be on stilts glided past in a billow of creamy fabric. Her eyes were set too far apart to be human, and her skin was not the “milk-white” people say about pale skin, but the white of actual milk. A fat little boy with leaves for hair sat under a peach tree, cramming fruit into his mouth. A swing made of grassy rope was suspended from an oak, and perched on the seat was a short-haired girl in a red dress. I turned around to watch her as I walked, and when she swung past, I saw a second face on the back of her head. Another pair of cowboy boots kicked out from what I’d thought was the back of her. I tried to track her passing me, but I could not see both faces at the same time.
“Is it an illusion? Does she have two fronts? It has to be an illusion,” I whispered.
“Ssh, she can hear you.” Nicky steered me to a boulder that marked one edge of the clearing and leaned against it. I watched a small man trudge past under the burden of two buckets on a long pole across his shoulders. His fur-covered legs ended in hooves.
“Are those hooves?” I demanded. I took a deep breath. Pine and ripe peaches and the cold smell of running water. “You have to tell me what’s going on,” I said.
“This is a good spot,” she said to herself, sweeping the meadow with her eyes. She looked up and smiled at someone I didn’t see. But then I did: a little boy draped belly-down on an oak branch over our heads. The smell of fruit bloomed, and I looked over to see her slicing a peach with a utility knife, head down in concentration.
I stared at the half she offered me. All juice and deep yellow flesh and pale down. I was aware of her eyes on me as I ran a fingertip over the tiny red peaks in the hollow where the pit had been and felt bumpy dampness. The smell blotted out my vision, muted everything but my greedy tongue. I needed to have that smell inside me, fill my mouth with the silky texture, crush it in both hands. I cradled the warm fruit and was barely aware that I was eating it as the firm sweetness slid down my throat.
Then my half was gone, and my fingers were slick with juice. Nicky’s dark eyes were steady on my face. Her half of the peach was in her hand, held out over her head. I saw my arm shoot out for it before I knew it was going to. She turned away and devoured it in a few quick bites.
The swell of animal longing ebbed once the peach was gone. What had come over me? Now I felt calm, even while I tongued the last shred where it was stuck in a molar. Confident. Ready for anything. Possibly a little drunk. But I’d only been drunk two or three times, and it hadn’t been like this at all. This was a pleasantly dreamy sensation, not the spinny nausea of three shots of tequila poured into an empty stomach in a race with Neil.
Something rustled at the corner of my hearing and made me turn my head. Two little girls stood in front of a huge tree fern, staring at me like I was TV. The boy with the leafy head gave a gasp and slapped the ground on both sides of his chubby legs. Anticipation. That was what was on all their faces. They’re expecting me to do something.
Nicky wore the same expression, eyebrows cocked up in her mobile face. She licked juice from her thumb without lowering her eyes. “Sure. Where should I start?”
I didn’t know what she was talking about.
“You said, ‘You have to tell me what’s going on.’”
I shook my head as if that would clear it. “Well, you have to.” It occurred to me that something bad could happen to me in this place, but that idea was folded away in my brain like a scrap of paper with the phone number of someone you’re not planning to call.
“This is not the realm you’re used to. This is the place where dreams are made. You know deep down that you have always longed to come here.” She was teasing me now. Mouth darting up, eyes crinkling.
My vision sharpened, and then my hearing, and I had the sensation that whatever had just muffled my senses was wearing off. I let out a slow breath. The Woodcutter was never caught. He’s looking for you and your sister Laura. That was why I was here. “Huh? Seems more like a place where a girl could get mauled by a mountain lion. I think I should just—figure out what’s up with this Woodcutter guy that supposedly wants to get me and Laura, and go.”
She gave me one more searching look, sighed, and straightened her perfect cuffs. “All right. I can see you’re not easy to glamour.”
“Easy to what?”
“Let me back up. This place and its people are known by many names. Elves, goblins, dwarves are all my kin.”
“Your kin? What are you?” I knew that was rude. Neil had taught me not to ask about someone’s race.
“As a people we are called the Folk, or sometimes the fey. It’s best not to say fairies, not if you want to remain in our good graces,” she said with an incline of her curly head.
“Fairies are real. You said yesterday, but I thought you were—” Making fun of me. In this place it was easier to believe she’d been telling the truth. Was this what it was like for Margaret, when she first came here?
Nicky was a blur, moving to press her fingers over my mouth. I tasted smoke and peach, and for a second I was dizzy with a different kind of drunkenness. “I warned you not to use that word. Not here.”
I looked around the meadow from my vantage point at one end. Twisty orchard trees hemmed it in on the side nearest us, dense firs on the far side, obscured by drifting ground fog. Thistles spiked up in the grass. And everywhere, heads were turning. A long-limbed boy with blue skin and a basket on his back cut his black eyes at us. He ran a few steps, and the basket unfolded into wicker wings, lifting his feet above the grass. A cluster of squat drinkers turned leather-clad backs to us, clinking their brass cups together. I saw the frill of an oyster mushroom under the hat of one, then looked more carefully and realized it was his ear.
I had a million questions. “Do they look like that in the real—back home? Have I ever seen them before?” I jammed my fists into my jacket pockets and played with the change I found there, feeling it take on heat from my hands. Change from the real world.
“Most of the time mortals don’t see what they’re seeing, because they’re not used to seeing it. What the Folk really look like. If you saw a guy with actual mushrooms for ears, wouldn’t you think he was wearing a funny hat, or maybe look away out of politeness?”
“Because I thought he had a disease? Okay, yeah. But what about the girl with two faces?”
She smiled. “Some of the Folk don’t spend time in the mortal world. Or if they do, they wear a—kind of a protective glamour.”
“There’s that word again. What does it mean, like you guys are dosing me or something? What exactly were you trying to pull with that peach?”
“Oh, I’m botching this. I am botching this badly.” She raked her fingers through her dark curls, making them stand up around her face.
“What’s he?” I asked, pointing at the blue wicker boy.
“A sprite.”
Sprite. He was a soft drink. Anger tasted like aluminum in my throat. This was just an elaborate practical joke, some weird outdoor goth party where they brought new people to make fun of them. Nicky had gotten me going, almost believing her about fairies, just to strip off my dignity. “No. These are just really good Halloween costumes. I don’t know how we got to the park, but you can stop fucking with me now.”
I pressed down on my confused feelings and rubbed the heels of my hands into my eyes. I was going to go home and forget about Nicky, Margaret, everything. So she thought there was someone out to get Laura and me. Whatever that was about, I didn’t need
to find out, not right now, not badly enough to let her humiliate me. I turned around toward the path back through the trees.
It wasn’t there. The hilly field we stood in went on behind us until it disappeared in the fog.
I ran anyway, sprinting across the damp grass at first. When my breath started to sear my throat, I ran in its rhythm, breath-step-step, breath-step-step, as a cramp bit into my stomach. The change jingled in my pocket, and the ground felt spongy under the thin soles of my high-tops, too giving, like it was going to turn into mud.
I hadn’t even reached the swing with the two-faced girl by the time Nicky caught me. She ran around in front of me and put out a hand. How was she not out of breath? I was huffing. My face felt slick with sweat. I doubled over to pant.
She took my arms when I stood up, one hand on each bicep. I felt their heat through my denim jacket. “Josy. Don’t leave.”
“Can I, even if I want to?”
“I’ll take you home whenever you want to go.” There was concern in the way she squinted and inclined her head so it almost met mine.
“But I’m trapped here otherwise.” I gestured to the field behind us, where the woods had been.
“Listen.” Nicky pulled me out of the way of a rolling barrel being pushed by a man with furry legs. “Stay. I want you to stay. I’ll explain everything.”
I was still catching my breath. And I was still mad. Nicky was exactly my height, and she stood so close I could feel her breath on my face. I closed my eyes to try to untangle my feelings: the sting of shame at being set up, the fear that I couldn’t get home on my own, and the belly-deep tug of desire to bring her face even closer. I tried to ignore that. “I don’t want to be a prisoner at your freak show. And no more lying.”
“Oh, but I wasn’t lying,” she said. Her fingers twisted in her hair again. I wanted to follow them with mine, find out if it was as soft as it looked. “If I—you are a tough nut. What if I prove it to you?”
“Prove the weird fairy thing? You can keep trying.” Nicky winced, but I didn’t care if I offended her. Fine. Now I had a swear word to use. A magic word.
Nicky cast her eyes around, lighting on a girl with baby-chick hair in a lace granny dress and work boots. She looked completely normal. “Hey, Peas.”
“Don’t call me Peas. Hi.” The last breathy word was directed at me. She stuck out a hand covered with club-entry stamps and a phone number written in Sharpie. I shook it, and we smiled. Her eyes were brown. She was like me, no costume, no magic. A visitor to the circus.
“This is Josy. Would you do your thing?” Nicky said. Joking politeness. There was some kind of secret between them.
“With pleasure do I transform at your beck.” Sarcasm filtered through her sweet voice.
But then the air around the three of us buckled and shimmered, like when a plane takes off. The taste of some sharp herb hit the back of my throat, making me think of Christmas and cooking with Mom when I was little. And then the twist in the air smoothed out, and the girl was gone. There was a fluffy gray and yellow bird standing on Nicky’s wrist.
Its beak opened, and it spoke in a wispy human voice. “Voila.”
Holy crap. Okay, okay, okay. This is not happening. I looked at Nicky for a reality check. She was watching me without blinking. She said, “Show her what else.”
I watched the tiny beak open and heard the human voice come out. “Let’s not embarrass the poor girl. I’m changing back.” The air twisted again. I caught an impression of glitter and feathers, but the change happened so smoothly that I couldn’t tell the exact moment when the bird became the girl again.
She shook out her fluffy hair and flashed me an exhilarated grin, like she’d just finished a carnival ride. “Wild, huh?”
I nodded agreement. What did you say to someone who could turn into a bird? “What did she mean, what else? You turn into other animals?”
“I’m a shifter. Feathers or skin, they’re both my nature.”
“You should see her as a falcon on the battlefield.” Nicky slid a cigarette out of an inner pocket with slim fingers and lit it. The gesture seemed mundane in this bizarre place.
“I serve the Lady as I am needed. This is your first time here.” It wasn’t a question.
“You’re a shifter? What does that mean? Right,” I said. I recalled that I was talking to a stranger, two strangers, that I had no idea where I was or how to get home. I was accepting they were real, these nonhuman people. Whatever this place was, it wasn’t fake. I had the same dizzy sensation I’d had yesterday when I realized that whoever was moving the puppets around in Margaret’s little theater, it wasn’t Laura. It wasn’t anyone I could see. I took a deep breath and finished, “First time.”
“Well, sweetness, anything I can help you out with, this one here doesn’t clue you in, you just come to me.” Peas straightened my collar as she talked. The gesture was so maternal it gave me a stab of nostalgia. Where was Mom right now? I pictured her at the Taj Mahal, wrapped in a sari and blinking in the sun. She was obsessed with magic, the crystals-reincarnation-Tarot kind. But I’d never be able to tell her about this. It was too tangible, too real somehow for her blurry ideas, and it wasn’t like I could bring her here anyway.
If I ever even got to leave. I felt the stir of panic in my stomach. Why did they want me here? Just how trapped was I? Was this how Margaret first ended up here, seduced by the idea that there was some kind of danger to someone she loved? Maybe it was a protection racket. Maybe some of these… Folk… were at my house right now, trying to sell Laura a poison apple while I wasn’t home to talk sense into her. I shook out my arms to stop that thought.
“A shifter can change shape, animal, human,” Peas was saying. “Physics is fluid, right? Particles are moving around constantly. Solid objects aren’t really solid. Why not rearrange themselves into another form?” I hoped she’d shift again to illustrate that point, but she stayed human.
“Are you a—” I bit my tongue on fairy. “—fey?”
She laughed a laugh that was older than her smooth skin could let her be, a deep old-smoker laugh. “Oh yes. Almost everyone here is.”
I was on a roll, getting the lingo right. I could make this work. I was cool. “So what’s your real name?” I asked.
Her face furrowed for a second, then smoothed out again. “Most people call me Blossom. Most people who wish me not to peck their eyes out.” She said it jokingly, but there was a warning in her voice. “And, forgive me, I know that you are Josephine Grant.”
I tried to remember if I’d told anyone here my full name. Nicky could have told her that, but I was still uncomfortable with how much these people seemed to know about me. And she knew—
“You knew my sister Margaret,” I said to Nicky. “I have to know what she was doing here.” Here in this place that can’t be real. Except it is. Coming here must have changed everything for Margaret. How come I had no idea until now?
“Your sister was… known here. Known and very loved. She came to be like an adopted daughter after she found us. She was… oh, I have gone about this completely wrong, and there is no time now, none.” Nicky stuck her fingers into her hair again until the short locks stood up, making her look like a little boy.
The danger of this place bloomed up again like mildew. They knew all about my family. They changed into animals. And I had no way to leave. Not even Neil knew where I was. There was no time? What did that mean?
“Nicky,” I said, taking Blossom in with my eyes too, “why am I here?”
Blossom watched Nicky with wide eyes and her mouth level. The look that passed between them was charged with something: mischief, a secret. I couldn’t tell if it was good or bad.
Nicky sank onto a bare log that marked the border of the meadow. “As I promised you yesterday, the Summer Folk can protect you from certain dangers.”
“That Woodcutter guy, is he here? Is he a—Folk?”
Nicky tugged on my sleeve until I sat down next to her. Excitement
raced around my belly: touch, touch, touch. I tried to ignore the feeling and tucked my hair behind my ear as an excuse to turn my face away until I stopped blushing. “Not here, no. He is an agent of the Winter Court. There is a—how to explain this?—the whole fey realm is divided. Summer and Winter. The Winter Folk are pressing now to steal territory that is part of the Summer Queen’s—you would say jurisdiction.” She gestured to take in the meadow as a group of children tackled a woman dressed only in green maple leaves and pelted her with strawberries. I couldn’t imagine a more summery scene.
“So Summer’s good, Winter’s bad?” I asked. Both Blossom and Nicky nodded, Blossom with a dimple that made it look like she was trying not to laugh. “Where is this Winter place?” I added.
“They have areas where they tend to gather, or that are germane to them, that they naturally gravitate towards. Just like the Summer Folk do. We like sunlight and open fields and blooming plants,” Blossom said.
“They like the cover of night to do their dirty work. And she’s safe here, which is what the poor girl wanted to know. This is not Winter turf,” Nicky said, nudging Blossom.
“What does this have to do with me and my sisters?”
“The lives of mortals, their hearts, can provide a kind of fuel for the immortal world. It’s a sick, nasty magic. But it does work, and the Winter Folk don’t exactly have any scruples about using it.” Nicky paused, her expressive eyebrows drawn together in a question.
“I don’t follow.”
Blossom chimed in, “Pretty Peg—your sister Margaret—was taken by the Winter Queen’s Woodcutter as a kind of fuel for their power. Killing her—showing that she would kill a mortal for nothing but her own gain—made the Lady of Ice stronger. It drew more brutal and devious fey to her side. And Peg was so loved. She knew, the Winter Queen knew how that would hurt us.”
