Autumn

by Edwards, Maddy

  Great kissing was definitely a perk to becoming a Fairy, whatever other powers I ended up having.

  When we broke apart Holt was smiling again. I was breathless.

  I could have looked at that smile forever.

  We were walking fast, and although I could tell he was happy, I also could see worry painted on his perfect features. I wished there was something I could do to unfurl his brow.

  Luckily, he never let go of my hand. I tried to keep breathing, to pretend that a frown wasn’t becoming stronger on his face, but it was hard. A deep sense of foreboding was growing around us.

  I really did understand that this was not just about me, but I didn’t want to think about the implications of what Holt had done. What about my life? My mother? What about the other Fairies? Holt wasn’t just choosing a wife, he was choosing a Queen, and I didn’t even know what that entailed. Wasn’t that bad? It felt bad. I felt like I wasn’t equipped.

  If I was now a Fairy, could I still go to college? Did I even want to? My mother had brought home countless college brochures, telling me I could never start too early. Carley and I had used them for kindling throughout the summer, not that I was ever going to tell Mom that.

  Carley had thought it was hilarious, but then again Carley laughed easily. She planned to go to a state school and she planned to love it. Her only requirement was that there was something like a sorority, and a football team. Lacrosse was pretty important too. “I like them beefy,” she had said, but Nick was there and had squirmed, so I sort of thought she had said it for his benefit.

  All the lights were on in Holt’s house, and I heard the breath rattle in his lungs as we drew closer.

  “It will be okay, remember?” I said. He nodded, but he looked ill.

  As we came to the yard, I started to understand why. Anger was radiating off the house; even the beautiful flowers in the garden felt scared. I hadn’t been expecting that. What would have happened that frightened the plants so badly that they were all wilting away from us?

  I started to walk into the house, but Holt tugged my hand. “They’re in the garden,” he said. His voice was so soft that I had to lean into him to hear it. All the happiness of the night was seeping away. I wanted to tumble forward, grab it, and stop its inexorable motion, but I didn’t know how.

  As we walked into the garden Holt moved slowly, as if he was trying to keep the inevitable from happening. Once we saw the Summer Queen, everything would be true; there would be no going back. I wondered how long it would take Holt’s family to accept me. I hoped it wasn’t too long, but now even Holt looked truly upset.

  It almost made me angry. This was supposed to be a happy moment. Holt had been forced to do what he had done, and his family should support him. No son should be afraid to go home to his mother.

  We rounded the corner of the house. There, in the open part of the garden where the dance at the Solstice Party had taken place, stood the Roths: the Queen, Susan, Casey, and several others I hadn’t seen before. Their faces were grim. Mrs. Roth’s lips were pressed together so tightly I could see only their faintest outline. Her face was white. Susan, who was almost always smiling, looked like she had been crying. Her eyes were red, and dark streaks ran down her cheeks.

  As it turned out, the Roths’ reaction to what Holt had done was worse than I could possibly have imagined. It looked like my Fairy tale was going to be fleeting.

  We stood before Mrs. Roth, waiting for her to speak. It took me a few seconds to realize that she was working to get out the words and simultaneously hold in her strongest emotions.

  “Holt,” she finally said in a strangled voice.

  “Mother,” he said, bowing his head respectfully. Her lower lip trembled. I think it would have been easier for her if he weren’t her son, if he were just some errant Fairy, but then again if he hadn’t been her son it wouldn’t have mattered who he chose as a wife. Now I would be Queen.

  “How could you?” she asked. She wasn’t looking at me, she was looking at him. It was like I wasn’t even there. All her grief and pain were directed at her oldest son.

  It felt as if she had just slapped me. Next to me, Holt looked stricken.

  “Let go of her hand,” she said tightly to him. At this, Holt revived a little.

  “Mother,” he started. I thought he was going to argue.

  “I am Queen,” she hissed out at him. “I would like to say that you had no idea what you were doing, but it is worse than that. You willingly broke Fairy law and the councils that had been set in place. You intentionally put your family and this Court at risk for your own ends. I am ashamed of you. How you could be so selfish....” She trailed off as her lower lip trembled more.

  I couldn’t bear another second of this. Holt realized what I was about to do and tried to stop me, but I ignored him.

  “How dare you talk to him like that?” I almost yelled. It was all too much. From the minute Logan had tried to kill me earlier in the night, Holt had been protecting me. His mother, instead of condemning her younger son, was yelling at her older one. It was too much.

  Mrs. Roth’s nostrils flared as she sucked in large gulps of air.

  “You,” she rasped at me. “Do not speak to me. You do not exist. I have twice lost a son tonight because of you.”

  I paused. Twice?

  “Where is Logan?” Holt asked quickly. I now realized that he was not among the group. Holt had thought he would leave, but I would have thought that the Summer Queen would know where he was going.

  A tear escaped Mrs. Roth’s eye. “Gone,” she screamed. “All I know is that he is GONE and it’s YOUR fault.”

  Holt shook his head. “He tried to kill her.”

  “He’s a teenager,” she shot back. “He wasn’t going to kill her. You were with her. You should have been protecting her.”

  “I did protect her,” Holt nearly yelled at her. “That’s what I was doing, protecting her!”

  “Not by endangering everyone you are supposed to be keeping safe,” she shot back, shaking her head sadly. “Not that way.”

  “There was no choice,” I said desperately. “He had no choice.”

  “There is always a choice,” said Mrs. Roth. “And you are NOT to address me. At all. Ever.”

  I now realized what she had wanted from Holt. She had wanted him to let me die.

  Stunned, I stopped talking.

  “Logan will be fine,” said Holt tiredly.

  But what about us? I wondered.

  “Of course he will,” Mrs. Roth snapped. “He’s not the one in trouble with the Supreme Council.”

  Holt flinched. It wasn’t a term I had heard before. Summer Court, Winter Court, those concepts were familiar to me, but what was a Supreme Council?

  I didn’t think now was the time to ask.

  “When will they be here?” Holt asked. He sounded so defeated, when just a few minutes ago we had been so happy. I felt as if a panic filled-bullet had lodged in my chest, and try as I might I couldn’t dislodge it. Fairies, Supreme Fairies, were coming for Holt? How could that be? He had only done what he needed to do! My thoughts ran one after the other, like little children playing, only these were not happy children. They were scared and upset.

  “We are already here,” said a voice from behind us. That voice made shivers run up and down my spine. It was so familiar, so cold in its precision, I could never have mistaken it for another. I didn’t want to turn around. Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that my night would end with Mrs. Cheshire returning to the Roths’ house. Maybe I hadn’t expected a party, but I also hadn’t expected to want to throw myself down and cry hysterically.

  “You called them?” Holt asked.

  “They already knew,” said his mother tightly. “You know how this works. Offering someone your Rose is not a small matter. Giving someone your Rose who wasn’t supposed to have it is unprecedented. You. Made. A. Mistake.”

  “I did not,’ said Holt fiercely. Neither of us had turned aro
und. I knew that if he waited any longer it would look like he was scared.

  With the Court’s arrival, all the light and warmth remaining in the garden had seeped away. I wanted to cry with the loss, but I was beyond crying. From the corner of my eye I knew that the flowers were wilting even as we stood there, and their sadness was deeper even than the changing of the seasons.

  I was relieved when Holt turned around without letting go of my hand.

  Standing behind us was Mrs. Cheshire in all her dark and evil glory. Standing on either side of her were two men. They were both older than Mrs. Cheshire, maybe in their sixties. One was tall and stocky, with a long white beard, the other was small, with tumbling red hair flecked with gray. They wore brightly colored suits, contrasting with the subdued Mrs. Cheshire. She smiled.

  “This is Divoni, and this is Alderoy,” said Mrs. Cheshire, sweeping her hand past them indiscriminately, “the members of the Supreme Council who have come to deal with the destruction that is Holt Roth.”

  After the Solstice Party I wouldn’t have thought that Mrs. Cheshire could look any crazier, but of course I had been wrong before. Actually, I was apparently wrong a lot when it came to Fairies and their level of insanity, or lack thereof. Now that I was a Fairy I could see that all three of the figures standing around me were powerful. I sensed Mrs. Cheshire and her cold strength; I was less sure about the specific qualities of other two, but I hoped they weren’t weaker than Mrs. Cheshire. Given her tendency to craziness, it wouldn’t be good if she was in charge of that Council as well.

  “It’s a bad business,” said one of the men; I wasn’t sure if it was Divoni or Alderoy. “Not sure how to handle it.”

  “We know exactly how to handle it,” snapped Mrs. Cheshire.

  This wasn’t promising. I couldn’t think of anything worse than Mrs. Cheshire calling the shots for something called a Supreme Council. I had been hoping that one of the men had some backbone, but the prospects didn’t look good.

  “We will cooperate fully,” said Mrs. Roth, pushing forward. “Whatever you direct, we will follow through with.” She bent her head low.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Holt’s jaw clench. I didn’t know what he was expecting, but being given up by his own mother probably hadn’t been it. Apparently there was a greater cost to Holt’s saving my life than either of us had realized.

  Mrs. Roth wouldn’t look at her son.

  When no one said anything further, Mrs. Cheshire, tired of waiting, elbowed the tall stocky man in the gut. “Alderoy!” she barked.

  He coughed and said, “According to the law, you are both under arrest.”

  Susan made a sound like a whimper, but it was quickly stifled.

  I stared at him. My insides twisted cruelly. “What? He didn’t have a choice!” I said again. “I was going to die.”

  “That would have been preferable,” said Mrs. Cheshire icily.

  “That doesn’t answer the question I posed to you earlier,” said Mrs. Roth. She was out and out crying at this point, unable to control the tears streaming down her cheeks.

  A cage of icy vines appeared in front of us. Until that very moment, as strange as the circumstances had become, I hadn’t thought I was in a truly surreal situation. Becoming a Fairy had felt like the most natural thing in the world. Being arrested did not. Seeing the cage made me wonder if I was dreaming. It was large enough for two.

  “I’m sorry, but the girl must come as well. We can’t allow her to infect any of the other Fairies,” said the short one, Divoni. He brushed a bit of his pile of red hair off his shoulder.

  “I don’t have a disease,” I cried. “All I did was accept a Rose.”

  “Do you have a Rose?” asked Mrs. Cheshire. She was in front of me so fast I took an involuntary step back. From the look on her face she already knew the answer.

  I refused to respond to her. It was the least I could do to repay her for everything she had done.

  “I’ll take that as a no,” said Mrs. Cheshire. A smile empty of all humor filled her face. I tried not to show my disgust, but when her expression darkened I assumed that I had failed.

  “Put out your hands,” said Divoni, walking up to me. He wasn’t much taller than I was and I stared at him in shock. He was going to lock me away in a cage AND bind me? No way.

  “This really isn’t necessary,” Holt protested.

  “It is if I say it is,” snarled Mrs. Cheshire. I flinched. She was in charge after all, and it didn’t look like Mrs. Roth was going to do a thing to protect her son. It was something I wasn’t sure I would ever be able to forgive her for.

  Divoni waited. Reluctantly, I put out my hands.

  I felt a tiny prick, like a little bit of lightning had touched my skin. The designs that had just started to show themselves flared briefly, then went dim.

  Alderoy, far bigger than anyone else there, proceeded to bind Holt’s hands. As they led us to the cage I noticed that light was just breaking through the horizon. The day was more beautiful than it should have been; it felt like there should be a raging storm to mirror my hurt and pain. I looked anywhere but at Mrs. Roth. I blamed her for the whole mess, for letting her younger son behave the way he had and for giving up her older son into the power of this insanity.

  Holt simply looked defeated.

  Stepping into the cage was like stepping into an electrical field, or at least what I imagined an electrical field to feel like. My brown hair fought its tie, giving up without much of a fight.

  “Where are we going?” I asked, my voice sounding distorted from the cage. “How long are we going to be there?”

  My mother would wonder if I had died. She would probably call the police, and by the time I got home -- if I got home -- she would have sent out search parties.

  Alderoy looked at me. For a second I thought I saw pity flash in his dark eyes, then Mrs. Cheshire stepped up to the cage.

  “Only people who aren’t criminals get their questions answered,” she said, “and let’s be honest, you are both criminals.”

  I thought about spitting through the Fairy bars at her, but knowing my luck it would probably just fly back in my face.

  Where was Samuel when I needed him?

  It was odd that I should think of Samuel at a time like this, but then again it was his mother doing the damage, and I had to believe that if anyone could handle her it was Samuel.

  Before they took us away in our floating prison, Susan ran up to the bars. I would have thought Mrs. Cheshire would try to stop her, but she just looked amused.

  “We will get you out,” Susan sobbed, her big, dark blond hair falling everywhere as tears ran down her plum cheeks.

  “Don’t worry. We will get you out.”

  It was all well and good for her to tell me not to worry, but the honest truth was that I was very worried indeed.

  Actually, I was terrified.

  Chapter Three

  Holt and I were arrested last night. I kept repeating that mantra over and over in my mind, as if by repetition I would be able to process it better. But maybe I never would. What was supposed to be a joyous occasion had turned disastrous, and I couldn’t think of anything worse that could have happened.

  When I stepped into the cage I started imagining where the Fairy jail might be. No one had ever said, no one had ever mentioned that Fairy jails existed. In the absence of any information, elaborate images of large structures made of ice and black vines formed in my mind. I wondered if they were underground or floating in the clouds. I was afraid of heights, so it would be just like Mrs. Cheshire to find a place to put me up high.

  They started walking us away from the Roths’. I could only assume that we were somehow invisible to passersby, not that there were very many of those this early in the morning. It was slow going, which somehow made everything worse.

  All my ideas about Fairy jails turned out to be wrong. All my ideas also turned out not to be anywhere near as harsh as the reality.

  It appeared t
hat the Fairies didn’t have a jail per se. Instead, they had a place where they put criminals. And if those criminals happened to be from the Summer Court, well, then they were taken to the Winter Court to be held.

  Which meant that Holt and I were being taken to the Cheshires’. We were being locked up in Mrs. Cheshire’s home.

  I thought I would die.

  Holt looked ill. Though I had a feeling he had known this was coming, it was no easier to stomach. Most of the blame for what had happened had been directed at him and only a little at me, though I thought I had heard one of the Summer Fairies saying something about how I had tricked Holt into offering me his Rose.

  Holt’s strong body, so confident a few hours before, slumped in sadness. His blond hair tumbled down into his eyes and he made no effort to push it away.

  The Cheshires’ house was as dark and foreboding as ever: large, imposing, and with a perfectly manicured lawn. I was relieved that there was no sign of Samuel, Lydia, or Leslie, although I wondered where they were. I was surprised that Mrs. Cheshire didn’t go wake them up so that she could parade Holt and me through the house and they could watch what she had done.

  Apparently the Cheshires’ place had a basement, though Samuel had been kind enough not to show it to me when I had visited, and for that I was grateful. But now I was being taken down there as a prisoner.

  The sensation of floating through the air, not under your own power to decide whether to go left or right, was odd. I hated the loss of control, but at least Mrs. Cheshire wasn’t the one leading us. She probably would have run us into a wall by now if she had been directing the cage, and I would have gotten to prison covered in bruises. As it was, I was simply furious and sad.

  I wanted to reach out and take Holt’s hand, but there were bars between us and I didn’t want to make Mrs. Cheshire angrier than she already was.