by Dean Murray
She'd tried for casual, but something about her tone set alarms off inside of my mind.
"What aren't you telling me about Jace?"
"What? Nothing important. Why?"
The alarms cranked up in volume by a few decibels. "You've made it pretty apparent that you and Jace aren't on the same page when it comes to the stuff that happens after kissing. Given that, I can't help but think that there is something you're not telling me. Otherwise you'd be cheering me on rather than telling me to slow down."
"Did you ever think that I might just be worried about you two, that I might be concerned that you're navigating into treacherous waters given the history between the two of you and the fact that he remembers most of it but you don't?"
It was a good explanation, but I wasn't sure it was the full truth. Still, Kat seemed like she was going to just get her back up if I got all confrontational about it.
"Okay, Kat. That makes sense. I'm sorry that I doubted you—if you say that's all there is to worry about, then I believe you."
Kat sighed. "Even Jace can't get away with laying a guilt trip on me—at least not very often—but you come back from the dead, lose all of your memories, and still manage it like a pro."
"There's something else."
"Yes, there's something else, but I promised Jace I wouldn't bring it up yet. It's not anything about Jace, but it's relevant. Honestly, I wouldn't even care except that I know the old you cared. I wish I could convince myself that you wouldn't have minded. I'd love nothing more than to be egging you and Jace on, but I can't do that and still be a good friend to the girl I used to know."
"Do you have any idea how cryptic that is?"
"Yeah. Believe me when I say that I wish I could just tell you."
"Were Jace and I not happy together? Did he…did he cheat on me?"
"No, don't be silly. Jace is practically perfect and the two of you were ridiculously happy together. I'm sorry, I just can't tell you more. Now go enjoy your time with him."
It wasn't a very good answer, but I chose to just focus on the fact that Jace and I had been happy and leave it at that. If it had been someone else stringing me along like that I wasn't sure I could have left things alone, but despite her sometimes bipolar behavior, I really did believe that Kat was my friend and that she had my best interests at heart.
I slipped out of the RV and walked over to the fire, but there wasn't any sign of Jace. I considered going out into the darkness to find him, but I knew I'd probably just get lost if I did that so I just sat down next to the fire and threw some more wood on it.
It took a few minutes, but pretty soon I had three-foot-high flames which chased the darkness back almost twenty feet. It was a good thing too because I was starting to get a little freaked out. I could have counted the number of times I'd been out camping on one hand.
Mom had never been much of a camper—especially back when we'd been younger. Once she'd left us Dad had been too busy working to take us on any camping trips.
The little hollow where we'd parked the RV had looked welcoming and open during the day, but now that night had fallen it felt like the trees were starting to press in on me. Even worse I didn't recognize most of the sounds filling the air around me. The insects, with their two-part humming chorus were especially discomforting, and I had to fight the urge to go back to the RV and take refuge behind the heavy vehicle's locked doors.
I was fighting a losing battle, but Kat was perceptive enough to figure out why I'd flee the great outdoors, and she'd never let me hear the end of it. I just needed to gut it out for a few more seconds, maybe a minute or two tops, and then either Jace would return or Kat would finish doing the dishes and come out.
The sound of buzzing wings brought me around to the left, but when I looked there wasn't anything there. Based on the way the wings had sounded, I'd half expected to see some kind of massive white moth. Moths had always freaked me out a little, but even a moth the size of my fist would have been better than turning to find nothing.
The insect buzzed past me again, now on the other side, and I spun around again. I was acting like a crazy person, but I couldn't help myself. The feeling of someone being out here, watching me was just too strong to do anything else.
I spun around again, and this time I caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of my eye. I'd only thought that being strafed by a fist-sized insect would be preferable to not knowing what it was that was circling me.
It wasn't a moth, not as fast as it was moving, but it was fist-sized, which meant it was the biggest insect I'd ever run into. My skin had started crawling a few seconds before, but that glimpse added a chill to the uneasiness I was experiencing. My skin now felt like it wanted to get up and run away.
I started back towards the RV, wanting to run, but afraid that I would trip on something and that whatever it was would attack me before I could get back to my feet.
Something came at me from the right and I slapped out blindly, trying to swat my attacker out of the air. The edge of my hand connected with a glancing blow against something, and then things happened almost too fast for me to follow.
The buzz got louder and deeper as my attacker came directly at my face, and then the night lit up with a glittering green glow that scared me so badly that I tripped over my own feet and fell down.
It was the same bug that had knocked me over in Jace's bathroom, only it was way bigger. My fall had gotten me out of the line of attack, but it looped around, flying erratically and much faster than I could have possibly run.
Escape wasn't an option, but my desperately seeking hands found one of the heavy branches that we'd gathered to use as fuel for the fire. I grabbed the improvised weapon as the insect streaked forward, dive-bombing me in an unmistakable attack.
I swung the stick with all of my might, hoping to knock the glowing menace out of the air, but it just juked down…and landed on my chest.
I'd been expecting to be stung, or bitten, but it wasn't an insect at all. It was a miniature, perfectly formed girl who was about an inch and a half tall. Oh, and she had glittery green wings.
"Why are you such a hater?"
I was speechless. Her voice had a tiny, high-pitched quality, but other than that it was perfectly understandable.
When I didn't immediately respond she jumped up and down on my breastbone. She wasn't heavy enough to hurt me, but the sensation was still uncomfortable. She obviously wasn't an insect, but my instincts hadn't caught up to what I was actually seeing yet and having her bouncing up and down was still making my skin crawl.
"Can you at least see me now? I've been buzzing around your head for days now and getting nothing. Back then all I wanted was for you to be able to see me. Now that you can see me, you're trying to smack the crap out of me. So much for progress."
"I can see you."
She zipped into the air so fast that she was nothing more than a solid green line. Apparently me finding my tongue was an even bigger shock to her than it had been for me.
"Wait, come back!"
For a second I thought she hadn't heard me, but then I saw a shimmering trail working its way back towards me, zigging and zagging as though to make sure that I wouldn't be able to hit her. I finally realized that I was still holding the branch that I'd been using as a club, and set it down—although not without reluctance. She was too fast to hit, and I wasn't going to be able to make it to the RV before she could land on me again, so all that was left was hoping that she wasn't going to hurt me.
"Are you going to try to hit me again?"
"No! What are you?"
She darted to a stop just in front of my nose and frowned. "Isn't that just the way that it always works? People are all too caught up asking what someone is to even care what a person's name is."
I forced myself not to sigh, but it was hard. Even my dad couldn't usually get away with talking to me like that. The last thing I wanted was to be lectured by this little diva.
I pulled myself
up into a sitting position. "Hold on there, Tinker Bell. Don't try to act like it wasn't you who strafed me the other day in Jace's bathroom. I nearly cracked my head open because of you. Also, that led a pretty embarrassing incident involving Jace seeing me in nothing more than a towel. Before you go off acting like some kind of Miss Manners diva I think you at least owe me an apology."
She looked a little crestfallen. "I am actually sorry about that. It was the first time you'd ever seen me. How was I supposed to know you'd pick that moment to react when you hadn't noticed me the hundred other times I ran into you?"
"Wait, you used to run into me on purpose?"
She shrugged. "Do you have any idea how boring it is to be invisible? People talk like it's awesome in the movies, and it kind of is, but not so much when everything is built to a scale two hundred times your size and you can't ever turn the invisibility off. Then it kind of sucks."
"So you decided to take your frustrations out on me? What's your name by the way?"
"Bethany—my name is Bethany. But as long as we're pointing fingers, it's your fault that I was in the situation at all. You created me and then you disappeared just like you said you would, but you never told me it was going to take so long for Jace to find you again."
"Wait, I created you?"
Bethany gave me a look that seemed to say that I was being dense. "Of course you created me. Where else would I have come from?"
"I don't know, Bethany, this is all new to me."
I could hear footsteps, but they were coming from the wrong direction to be Kat. Either Jace was coming back, I was about to be murdered, or my hallucinations had just gotten worse.
"Selene, who are you talking to?"
I looked at Bethany, who had just settled on my knee and dropped down to sit cross-legged, and then shrugged in response to Jace's question.
"Honestly, I'm not sure. She says that her name is Bethany and she's about two inches tall and has shimmery green wings. Oh, and she says that I created her."
Jace's eyes went wide. "Is this the first time you've seen her?"
"No, she charged into me in your bathroom yesterday, but she was a lot smaller then. That's why I fell down. I thought she was just some kind of exotic beetle. I take it that you can't see her? Do you have any idea what she is?"
"An unexpected complication."
Bethany jumped back to her feet and shot Jace a dirty look. "I can hear him, you know."
"She doesn't like being called a complication. She's glaring tiny little daggers in your direction."
Now it was my turn to get the stink-eye. "I'll have you know that a person's importance has nothing at all to do with their size."
Jace made a calming gesture in the direction of my knee—apparently he'd figured out at least roughly where she was.
"I'm sorry, Bethany, I spoke without thinking. And Selene doesn't know any better."
"I don't?"
Jace nodded at me. "Apparently not."
"Well whose fault is that, Teacher Smarty-pants?"
That earned me a wince. "Mine, but in fairness I had no way of knowing this was going to be an issue. There are a hundred different things that I need to tell you, and only time to get to one or two of them on any given day."
Bethany seemed to be considering his response. "I'm inclined to allow it. Of course it means I like Jace even less than I did before, but that's no great loss. He's been such a bore. Going on and on about missing you anytime he thought there wasn't anyone around to listen. Like he was the only one suffering because you were gone. I spent eighteen years invisible and dodging flies the size of houses."
"She says that she doesn't like you very much and that you're a whiner. Do either of you want to start filling me in?"
Bethany waved airily in Jace's direction. "He can do it. It's way past time for him to start earning his way back into my good graces."
I gave Jace an expectant look. He ran his fingers through his hair. "So your Greek mythology books didn't just talk about gods, they also included legends about monsters that either helped or hindered the gods and heroes."
"Like Perseus' Pegasus?"
"Yeah, or the Minotaur, or any of a few hundred other creatures."
Bethany sputtered. "I am not a creature!"
"She didn't like being called a creature—I think you just lost a few more popularity points."
Jace was looking a bit like he was wishing he could put his hands on an industrial-sized fly swatter, but he managed a strained smile.
"All of the stories have some kind of mythical beings that aren't gods or heroes, but the legends about fairies are the ones that seem to have gotten the most details right."
It was my turn to wince. "Hey, I'm sorry about calling you Tinker Bell."
Bethany shrugged. "It was an honest mistake. Besides, I've seen her on television and she's really quite pretty and it appears that her favorite color is green too. Tell him to hurry up and get to the part about me being Seelie."
"Hey, Jace, what's a Seelie fairy?"
"Can you please ask Bethany if it would be okay for me to explain where fairies come from first?"
I looked back at Bethany, who gave me a resigned nod. "She says go ahead."
"Okay, so Kat explained to you that there are three types of emotions that can power our abilities, right? Well, as nearly as we've been able to tell, not all of the memories that disappear from inside of our heads are actually consumed by whatever effect we are putting into place."
"That doesn't make sense. Why would we lose more memories than we need to? That doesn't sound very efficient…"
Jace shrugged. "This is more your area of expertise—or at least it was—than it is mine. The best way to think of it though is like a fire. When you burn a log a lot of it is converted to heat and light, but you always end up with some ash left. You can't just put in less wood and avoid getting any ash out, no matter how much or little wood you burn there is always going to be some ash."
Bethany looked like she was getting impatient, but I made 'settle down' gestures at her and she sat back down and started using her wings to spin herself around in circles.
"Okay, so every time an Awakened creates an effect they end up with a bunch of magical ash."
"Sort of. The amount of ash is proportional to the size of the effect and how many of their memories went into powering it. Fairies seem to be nature's way of addressing the 'wasted' memories. Any fairies who are around when an effect is powered automatically absorb some of the unused memories."
"So they are para…I mean symbiotes."
"Yes, exactly. Younger fairies tend to be more than willing to help 'their' Awakened out in return for being allowed to feed on the 'wasted' memories. As fairies age, they tend to be less and less attached to their creators. Once they hit a certain size and power, they can absorb baseline memories from nearby humans, and the most powerful of both the Seelie and Unseelie courts have even been known to attack Awakened, taunting them into using effects so that they can feed."
I was suddenly nervous at having Bethany sitting on my knee. I tried to keep that off of my face, but she looked up at me and shook her head.
"I'm not going to attack you."
"Really? Because you kind of already did in the bathroom and then you were dive-bombing me just a couple of minutes ago."
"Look, I already explained that. I was just bored, and touching you makes me feel more solid. I'm a Seelie fairy."
Jace gave me an expectant look, obviously frustrated by the fact that he could only hear half of the conversation, and ready to be filled in.
"She said that she didn't mean to hurt me and that she's Seelie—whatever that means."
"Yeah, sorry, I'm getting to that part next. So nobody is exactly sure where fairies come from, but your working theory according to your notes was that fairies exist all around us at all times, and occasionally when an especially large measure of power is expended, it is enough to give one of the embryonic fairies a form that lets
them interact with the rest of our world."
"Wait, so when she says that I created her…"
"You must have expended enough power in your faceoff with Sandra's last incarnation to allow her to manifest the form you see right now. Honestly, I'm surprised. To hear Kat tell it, the fight didn't last very long, and the damage to the surrounding area was pretty contained. It's pretty rare for a new fairy to be born without an extended, devastating fight."
I started to respond, but something that Bethany had said earlier was tickling the back of my mind. "I don't think that's what happened at all, Jace. Bethany said that I told her to follow you around because you would eventually lead her back to me. Could I have told her that in the middle of a fight like that?"
"No. Usually fairies don't appear until at least an hour or two after the expenditure of power occurs."
"So I created her before then—probably six or seven hundred years ago the last time that I died."
I looked at Bethany to see if she wanted to weigh in, but she seemed completely engrossed with studying her nails now. Jace was pacing.
"No, Selene, that's not how it works. Fairies only stay invisible like that for the first little while. Once they unite with their creator they lose their invisibility pretty quickly."
"So, she spent the last six or seven hundred years looking for me and never found me?"
"No, fairies are really good at tracking down their creators. Their ability doesn't work until we are Awakened and actively creating effects, but once we are, it usually only takes them a few days to find us. You must have created her a short time before you were killed."
My head was starting to hurt again. "That doesn't make sense. Why would I have burned up a huge chunk of memories just before going into a fight for my life where I was probably going to need all of those memories?"
"I don't know. Kat didn't know anything about what you'd done, and that means you had to have worked the effects while she was asleep, to keep her in the dark."
"Maybe that's not it at all, Jace. I'll bet that Kat and I burned through a ton of memories while we were running away from Sandra and the rest of her pantheon. Maybe our combined expenditure of power—along with whatever Sandra and the rest were burning up—was enough to bring Bethany into existence. Doesn't that make a lot more sense?"
