Dylan got to his feet. He towered over the men, but he didn’t even think of trying anything. Those axes looked really sharp.
“I don’t suppose you’d like to tell me what’s going on?” he asked.
“Not our job,” snapped the second guard, holding out a pair of handcuffs. No, not handcuffs. Shackles. Handcuffs were the thin things cops used. These were two bulky bands of iron connected by a thick chain. “Give me your hands.”
“What is your job then?” Dylan asked, keeping his hands firmly at his sides.
“Our job is to put these,” the guard said, waving the shackles in the air, “on you and get you up to see the Queen before she has a conniption. That all right with you? Or you want we should go back and tell Her Majesty you’d rather not?”
There was something about the way he said it that let Dylan know that not seeing the Queen would be a very bad idea. So he stuck his hands out and let the little man put the shackles around his wrists. Then the guards pulled him from his cell and escorted him—one in front and one behind—down the hallway.
The two dwarves ushered him up out of the dungeon, through a crowded courtyard where strange faces peered at him with not much interest, and into a castle. There was no other word for it. A castle with a courtyard and a dungeon and, somewhere inside, a Queen. He wondered if there was any chance that this was all a dream. Maybe he was still asleep back at Connor and Vivian’s house. Maybe he had never woken up, had never gone to school, had never met Daphne and Aislin, had never gone through the door. Maybe it was all a very, very elaborate dream. But his head throbbed and his arm ached and he had never had such a long, detailed dream in his life. It had to be real.
But it couldn’t be. Could it?
He was marched through a maze of corridors and stairways until he stood in front of a set of large wooden doors. Two more uniformed guards stood on either side of the doors, staring stoically ahead. They were almost identical copies of the two men escorting him. How many short, bearded, surly men were around the place?
“Open up,” one of Dylan’s escorts grumbled.
The doors were duly pushed open, revealing a room larger than the gym at Dylan’s last school. It was much cleaner as well. Also more crowded. Dylan couldn’t believe how many people there were, all jostling elbows for a chance to catch a look at him. Like the faces in the courtyard outside, these were strange. To call them people was using the term lightly. He was pretty sure none of them were human. They were tall, thin, short, fat, green, purple, blue, bald, hairy beyond belief, horned, winged, and even glowing. It was too much to take in.
Dylan took an unconscious step backward, away from the bizarre crowd, and was promptly shoved forward by one of his guards.
“None of that, boyo. Go on.”
Another shove propelled him unceremoniously into the room. One of his guards plunged into the crowd, forcibly shoving people aside to make room for him to follow. The second guard had to keep prodding him in the back to get him to move. The last thing Dylan wanted to do was to walk through all those strange, creepy people. One guy had a tree growing out of his head. An actual tree! A short, squat woman dressed in a hideously pink gown had bat wings sprouting from her shoulders. A young girl with silvery blond hair had a horn growing out of her forehead like a unicorn. It was like some kind of freak show nightmare.
But he didn’t have much choice—the second guard made it pretty clear that backing up wasn’t an option—so he followed, slowly making his way to the front of the room.
A small green guy with scaly hands reached out to touch him.
“No touching!” snapped the guard behind Dylan as he slapped the green hand away. Dylan began to think that maybe the surly little man wasn’t so bad after all.
Finally, they reached the edge of the crowd. Dylan stepped past a little girl whose hair appeared to be made of flower petals and a guy whose skin shimmered like sun on water and found himself standing in front of a small stage. Or possibly a dais? He thought he remembered reading that word in a book somewhere. Whatever it was called, several steps led up to a raised platform on which sat a huge throne. It must have been over seven feet tall and was made of a rich, dark wood. There were designs carved into the back and arms—intricate knots and flowers and trees.
A woman sat on the throne. Even sitting, he could tell that she was unusually tall for a woman. Well, a woman in his world. Who knew about this place? Her face was pale and perfectly sculpted—high forehead, thin nose, and full lips. She reminded him of some pictures his last History teacher had shown them of statues of the Greek goddesses. Aphrodite or maybe Athena. Except her expression was much colder than any he had ever seen on a statue. Her hair was long and black. It hung past her shoulders and almost to her waist. She wore a long dress of some kind of shiny purple material and a silver crown that sparkled with black stones. Her skin was as silver white as the moon on a clear night.
There were children all around her, lounging on the dais, hovering around the throne, sitting at her feet. They ranged in age from teenagers to toddlers. One little girl, a pretty blond with dimpled cheeks about two years old, was sitting on the woman’s lap. She didn’t look extremely happy to be there, though, and kept glancing at the other children as though hoping one of them was going to rescue her. Dylan saw the boy who had visited him down in the dungeon sitting at the edge of the dais, his legs dangling over the side as he pretended to be bored by the sight of Dylan and his guards.
All of the children wore silver collars around their necks. Even the baby on the woman’s lap.
It occurred to him that the room had gone silent. Completely silent. The kind of silent that you get when no one even dares to breathe because something is very, very wrong. Everyone was staring at him. He could feel every eye in the room burning into him. He glanced around, trying to figure out what he had done wrong and noticed that his guards were kneeling on either side of him, their shaggy heads bent to the ground.
Oh right. She was a queen. You were supposed to bow, right?
Feeling stupid, he bowed because some of the children looked really frightened and maybe this Queen woman wasn’t someone he wanted to make angry.
As he straightened, the Queen spoke. “Remove the shackles. They’re hardly necessary. After all, he’s not a prisoner here.”
One of the guards hastily removed the shackles. Dylan rubbed at his wrists and looked around, wondering what he was, if not a prisoner.
“So, you have returned to us, Glyndwr.”
Her voice was low and silky and strangely alluring. Given the way everyone spoke about her and the fact that she appeared to keep children as pets, Dylan was pretty sure the Queen was not a nice person. But as soon as she spoke, he wanted to sit at her feet and put his head on her knee, the way one of the collared boys was doing.
Realizing how crazy that was, Dylan shook his head and said, “Um…Who’s Glyndwr?”
The queen’s red lips curved into a smile that did not reach her eyes. “Ah, yes. Aodh mentioned that you have not yet remembered who you are. You will soon, enough, I’m sure. Being home, with your own kind, will awaken your dormant self.”
“My own kind? You mean them?” he asked, nodding at the children.
The Queen laughed softly and the room exploded into riotous mirth, which was silenced almost as suddenly as it had begun by the Queen’s raised hand. “No. Not them,” she said disdainfully, glancing down at the children around her as though they were something that had crawled out from beneath a rock. “My people, your family,” she continued, gesturing expansively to the room at large.
Dylan looked back over his shoulder at the strange assortment of people the Queen had just called his family. “Yeah, I don’t think I’m related to any of them. No wings, no horns, no warts.”
“So droll, Glyndwr. What would life be like if we all looked like one another? Like humans,” she sneered. “Don’t worry. You’ll fit in soon enough once the glamour begins to fade.”
“Okay…If you say so,”
Dylan said. Nothing she was saying made any sense, but he was having to fight the urge to rush up the dais steps and kiss her feet. Going along with her crazy nonsense seemed easier than arguing.
“Hmm…” she said, resting her chin in her hand as she stared down at him. “I think perhaps it’s time I told you a story. You’d like that wouldn’t you?”
“Sure,” Dylan said, forcing himself to look at a spot just above her head. What was it about her voice? He had been fine before she started to speak, but now…He could feel himself wanting to gaze adoringly at her face. He had never, in his whole life, gazed adoringly at anyone.
When she spoke again, she sounded amused. “Very well, Glyndwr. Let us begin with…once upon a time. Isn’t that how fairytales begin in the human world? And this is nothing if it is not a fairytale.”
She began to speak of a world that was peopled by all that was beautiful and perfect. A world that was full of doorways into other worlds, including the one inhabited by humans, who would occasionally wander in through one of the many doors that led to this beautiful world. They returned to their own world to speak of the magical folk they had met there, whom they called fairies.
Then she explained that the world of fairies was ruled by a kind and generous Queen, who had a key to all the doors that led to other worlds. She left the doors open, so
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