“Is that…did you splint that?” Joey asked, pointing to the creature’s immobilized leg.
“Basic field dressing,” I said with a shrug.
Rufus, ever helpful, had stuck a pack of toothpicks in with our cooking gear. I’d broken one in half, filed down the ends, and given the pieces to my patient with another bit of padding. Fortunately for us both, he knew what to do, and the thin fiber that had held his hair back unwound into a long enough rope to secure the splint. I’d let him set the bone—my fingers were too large, I suspected—and he cried out as he did the deed, but at least his injury was stabilized.
Joey watched as the creature cupped his hands in the water in my plate and drank a few long gulps. “Correct me if I’m wrong,” he said, “but I’m pretty sure Colin said that doesn’t exist.”
“Do you think he’s ever spent a lot of time poking around out here?” I replied.
“Well, no, but…come on, the wings!” he protested. “It’s got little butterfly wings!”
“He’s got little butterfly wings.”
“Okay, he, then. They’re still…” Joey gestured at the creature, then threw up his hands in frustration. “What the hell is he?”
“Beats me,” I said, “but he’s hurt. We can’t just leave him, man.”
I’d deposited him on my semi-clean towel, and the softness and the fire’s heat were having an effect on him. He was struggling to stay awake, but he must have been exhausted after the night, and as Joey and I watched, he carefully rolled onto his good side and closed his eyes. Joey stared at him until he was asleep, then returned to the tent without a word. A moment later, he came back with a tissue and carefully covered the little guy. “Rest day it is, then,” he said, and sighed. “Who wants jerky?”
Our guest woke mid-morning, sat up in alarm, then cried out when he was reminded of his injuries. He looked down at the tissue covering him, then up at us in query. Joey grabbed his own arms and mimed a shivering fit, and the creature’s head bobbed in comprehension. Easing himself into a sitting position, he looked around at the remains of our campsite, then at the trees, and pointed his arm toward the deadfall, babbling in his unknown tongue.
“Well,” I muttered, “that’s pretty clear. Side trip?”
“Do we have any idea how far?” Joey asked as the creature looked back and forth at the two of us, searching for signs of understanding.
“Nope. But he can’t hobble around—if we leave him here, he’s probably a goner.”
“I know,” he said, pushing himself to his feet with a grunt, “I was just hoping you could give me some good news.”
I motioned for my patient to stay still, then shouldered my backpack and knelt beside him. “Help?” I said, extending my hand, and offered him a finger for support. Draping the tissue around his neck, he clutched my finger, then rose and limped onto my open palm. Once settled, he wrapped the tissue around himself as well as he could—the wings made this somewhat tricky—and again pointed toward the woods.
“Impatient, isn’t he?” said Joey as he stuffed my towel back into my sack and drenched the fire. “Can you make any sense of him?”
“Not a word,” I replied, holding him out like a living, glowing compass, and with the creature navigating, we set off into the unknown.
I’ll say that there are more pleasant ways to hike than with one hand outstretched at all times. We had to take a break that morning when my arm cramped up, and another when my passenger suddenly felt the call of nature. He crawled to the edge of my hand and took care of business over the side, and I looked away, partly to give him a little privacy, but mostly because I had no idea how to cope with the situation. There are moments in life that don’t come with instruction manuals, and I seemed to be stumbling into them all that year.
By nightfall, my arm was an aching mess, but the creature continued to point us through thickets of weeds until Joey pushed aside a curtain of leafy vines and revealed a wide clearing. We froze up on instinct—clearings had been nothing but trouble to that point—but then I spotted the flashes of color darting in and out of the grass and trees. My passenger squeaked and pointed more emphatically toward a massive tree on the far side of the little meadow, and, trusting that he would have given me some signal if there were spiders to worry about, I obliged.
We weren’t halfway across before we were surrounded by more of the creatures, a buzzing, chirping rainbow that flew around us like a swarm of oversized gnats. Our guide said something to them, and the cloud parted, flanking us like an escort but allowing us passage. I cut my eyes to Joey, who shook his head and tramped onward without stopping to give too much thought to our state of affairs.
The tree toward which we were directed was ancient, a mammoth specimen that would have taken half a dozen men to encircle. As we approached, a few of the creatures landed outside a hole in the trunk—not a natural cavity, as I had first assumed, but a delicately carved entryway into the living tree. I stepped up to the hole, mindful of the eyes on me, then carefully brought my passenger level with the floor. Immediately, four of his similarly dressed fellows appeared and hoisted him to his feet, then hustled him off down the tunnel into the trunk.
Unburdened and suddenly at a loss, I stepped back and showed the others my empty hands. “We’ll just be going,” I said, hoping the meaning was clear enough as I continued to backpedal, and I turned to join Joey. “So,” I told him, “I’m thinking that camping here might not be the best idea—”
“Stranger!”
The voice was high and warped, like the cry of a child who’d been sucking far too much helium, but I pinpointed it to a blue-glowing creature back at the hole. After seeing that the remaining guards weren’t about to attack me, I returned to the tree and looked her in the eye, trying not to think about her almost total lack of clothing. “Me?”
She seemed relieved to hear me answer in Fae. “Queen talk you,” she replied. “You wait.” I nodded, and she disappeared back down the tunnel.
“What’s all this?” Joey asked as he stepped closer.
“I’m not quite sure,” I murmured, considering the number of sharpened thorns that had appeared around us in the last seconds, “but I think we’re about to have an audience.”
“With whom?”
I started to shrug, but I froze as a tiny woman draped in a green toga stepped out of the tree and stared at us. She was larger than my patient had been—maybe eight inches high—and her wings were delicate confections of violet, blue, and black. She glowed with a soft purple light, and her black hair, which fell to her waist, was crowned with a tiny circlet of what appeared to be baby’s breath.
I looked at Joey, then back at the newcomer, and hoped I wasn’t about to screw up. “Your Majesty, I presume?”
She smiled and daintily dipped her chin. “Well,” she said in perfect Fae, “isn’t this a surprise.”
We made camp in the clearing that night at the queen’s insistence. Lailu, as she introduced herself, had questions, and the night was already too dark for us to find a new campsite. Once Joey and I had built a fire and pitched our tents, she flew out of the tree with a handful of guards, settled on top of my backpack, and clasped her miniscule hands. “Tell me why a pair of daig are crossing the forest,” she said, raising her voice over the crackling fire. “What business have you here?”
I lay on my stomach atop my sleeping bag beside her and propped my head in my hands, the better to understand what she was saying. Her Fae was virtually unaccented, but she was a fast talker, and her voice’s pitch made the words seem almost foreign. “Daig, ma’am?”
She waved her hand at Joey and me. “You. Daig. The giants who shape the world.”
“Oh…uh…” I looked to Joey for help, but he only made a face and shrugged. “Joey and me, we’re not daig, ma’am. We, uh, look like them, but…no world-shaping powers here.”
Her head tilted in bemusement. “Daigul? Perhaps the Lady was mistaken, then.”
“What lady?”
“The Lady,” she repeated with great emphasis. “She warned me you would come. Kuni was injured, and two daig would bring him home. She told me this last night when he did not return to us.”
“I’m really sorry,” I said, scooting closer to her in case the problem was my hearing, “but I don’t know what lady you’re talking about. You’re the first person we’ve had a conversation with in weeks.” That earned another puzzled head tilt, and I tried, “Many days. How many, Joey, twenty-two?”
“Twenty-three,” he muttered.
Lailu considered this, then seemed to come to a decision and nodded. “She has not made herself known. I see. But she knows you.”
“But who—”
She spread her arms. “The land. The Lady is the land. And she…” Lailu paused, choosing her words. “She is concerned for you. Tell me,” she said, picking her way down my backpack to stand in the grass, “has something happened? We do not concern ourselves with daig matters, but the Lady’s visit left me troubled.”
Joey cleared his throat. “Oberon’s done something to…to the other king,” he said, quickly cutting his eyes to me. “We’re trying to learn what happened.”
The little queen examined each of us carefully. “You have Titania’s look about you,” she said to me after a long moment. “The Lady had told me she was dead. This new king…blood to you, is he not?”
“He is,” I admitted—and the gears clicked. “Ma’am, this Lady of yours…fair hair, brownish-green eyes, a little shorter than me? Kind of tiny all over?” I added, realizing as I said it how absurd that detail must be to our hostess.
Joey stared at me curiously, but Lailu smiled. “So she has revealed herself,” she said. “I cannot speak to her relative size, I’m afraid—you’re all enormous,” she said dismissively, “but when she appears, that sounds much like her form.”
My brow furrowed. “When she appears?”
She nodded. “The Lady often speaks here,” she explained, touching two fingers to her smooth forehead. “Warns me.”
I sat up and turned to Joey. “The realm. The voice in Coileán’s head. She’s talking about Faerie…”
“How do you know—”
“Because I’ve seen her!” I cried, slapping the ground. “She tried to warn me the night we ran. I dreamed about her, and she told me to get out.” I ran my hands through my hair and shook my head. “You know what this means? Friggin’ Faerie has been on our side all this time. If we’d opened a gate instead of going the lake route…”
His dark eyes widened as his jaw dropped. “The last three weeks—”
“All that walking—”
“Giant fucking spiders—”
The queen waited while we talked over each other, airing our every grievance with the realm’s idea of the great outdoors. When we finally lapsed into stupefied silence, she said, “The Lady told me you would be weary when you arrived. You are safe here for the night. Take your rest—you’re guarded.” She pointed skyward, indicating the lights that flickered through the trees ringing us, then began to pace through the grass on bare feet. “Two daigul walk the woods for days and days, and the Lady watches over them—she cannot be pleased with Oberon if she has not warned him of your coming.”
“You’re sure she hasn’t?” Joey muttered. “I mean, do you have any idea how far she’s let us walk of late?”
Lailu’s lips curled into a smirk. “If she had, you would be dead. She protects us, too,” she continued, folding her arms. “When the daig fought amongst themselves, the Lady led us here to safety. I have protected my people since. The daig do not know where we are…and the piq do not intervene in daig affairs.” She offered a brief shrug. “Not that there’s much we could do, you understand. We are like daigul, only…not quite so big.”
“You can’t enchant?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No. As I said, like daigul.”
Fearing the worst, I hesitated before asking my next question. “How far are we from…uh…the daig? Titania’s palace?”
The queen mulled this over. “Several days’ journey, but not days and days. Maybe three. Maybe five. Not more.”
I realized I had been holding my breath as Joey let out a long exhalation beside me. “That way?” I asked, pointing in the direction of the ever-present tug.
“Precisely.” She stepped back and nodded to her retinue, who took wing and retreated to the tree. “Stay here tonight,” she said again when we were alone. “Go your way in safety. Your presence in the land will remain our secret, I promise you.” She hesitated, then murmured, “You have put me in your debt. The favor you did me was unasked, but that does not negate the good. Kuni is my brother’s son, and I feared him lost. Ask of me what you will, now or later, and if I can even the scales, I will.”
“Oh,” I rushed, “you don’t have to—”
“I insist. Your name, daigul?”
Joey nodded me on, and I whispered, “Aiden. The old queen’s son.”
Lailu smiled. “A daigul, prince among the daig, asleep in my garden. I never cease to find wonders. Rest easy,” she said, and flew off into the shadows.
Our food supplies were running low—the fresh meat had run out once again, leaving us with the last of the jerky to carry us through until we found something to kill—but Joey had noticed a few blackberry bushes on the edges of the circle, and no one stopped us as we helped ourselves. Given their size, I figured it would be pointless to ask the piq for a meal. Still, even hungry, I slept like the dead. For the first time in weeks, both of us got a full night’s sleep. We woke just after sunrise to find the fire little more than ashes, but flashes of light in the foliage reminded us that we could afford to lower our guard. After eating quickly so as not to waste the day, we packed and started onward. I caught Joey looking over his shoulder as we hiked into the trees, and I guessed what he was thinking: in case of danger, we knew at least one relatively safe place to hide.
Once the clearing was out of view, Joey leaned close and said, “Piq. Pixies.”
“Yep.”
“Those were pixies.”
“Looks like it.” A thought occurred to me then, and I groaned. “You know we’re going to have to tell Stuart, right? He’d be all over this.”
Joey snorted and pushed aside a low limb. “They seemed decent enough. Why would you want to unleash Stuart on them?”
“Point taken. But we’re telling Coileán, yeah?”
“Oh, hell, yes,” he muttered. “Soon as we find him. ‘Hey, boss. Just spent weeks in the woods tracking you down, and just so you know, there are friggin’ pixies out there. If you’re going to keep calling yourself a faerie, you might want to check out the adorable competition.’”
I laughed to myself. “Those wings, man. He’s going to be so pissed.”
Joey came to a halt and grabbed my shoulder. “Okay, for everything we’ve been through together, you’ve got to promise me that you won’t tell him unless I’m there. I’ve got to see the look on his face.”
“Deal,” I said, grinning, “if you’ll do the same for me.”
We walked on, skirting a weed-choked pond, and Joey fell in behind me when the path narrowed. “Listen, Aid…”
“Yeah?”
He hesitated. “Look, I don’t want to jinx us or anything, but…assuming we make it back in one piece—”
I reached out and rapped my knuckles on the nearest tree. “Continue.”
“Superstitious much?”
“It can’t hurt,” I said, stepping to the side as the trail widened again. “What’s up?”
Joey shifted his backpack and kept his gaze pointed ahead. “If we make it out of here…Helen and I…”
I waited for a moment while he sought the words, then said, “You’re going to ask her.”
The little I could see of his face under the beard and grime began to flush. “So what do you think she’d say?” he mumbled.
“I’m not the one dating her.”
“Come on, bud, be hon
est with me. Snowball’s chance?”
There was something small and scared in his eyes, and I pushed my discomfort with the topic aside. “At least,” I allowed. “But if I were you, I’d bathe first. Maybe shave. At least tame the chin beast.”
Joey’s shoulders relaxed, and he rubbed his beard, then found something foreign trapped within it and tossed the debris to the side. “Don’t be jealous of this gloriousness.”
“You look like you’ve got a still hidden back in the woods, man.”
“It just needs a trim.”
“Yeah, with a weed whacker.”
He shoved me toward a tree, and I laughed. Maybe, I thought, the inevitable wouldn’t be so bad after all.
The land had been undulating for the past few days, which Joey took as a good sign. We’d both been to the mountains north of the palace—perhaps, Joey mused, we were passing through the edge of its foothills. The terrain had slowed us somewhat, but we called an early halt that day after only a few miles of trekking when we crested a ridge and came across a flock of wild sheep in the valley below. Though they slid away when we stepped from the trees, the sheep didn’t bolt, and we spotted several lambs among them. The herd stuck together in a tight, white clump, making the most of the little meadow, and Joey arched an eyebrow as we quietly dropped our packs.
It was too good an opportunity to pass up. I’ve never been a fan of mutton, but with our supplies as low as they were, I wasn’t about to turn my nose up at a windfall of fresh meat. We butchered an ewe and two lambs in the valley, then dragged the carcasses back up the ridge, where we made camp and started cooking. As night fell, we stuffed ourselves, and Joey took the first rest while I looked out over the valley, relishing the sight of an uninterrupted swath of starlight.
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