12
Open the Gate
Rosmerta
With everyone in town preoccupied by the trial, I had the perfect opportunity to put my plan into motion. Even after the court proceedings were finished, there would be some kind of function at the faeriekin castle to host the Fae who had come from the Otherworld to observe the trial, and the townspeople of Madrone would also want to hang around and discuss the case.
Still, I was worried about people seeing Akasha and me out in public, so I decided to wait until after dark. The full moon would also be up by then and add extra power to the spell. While we waited, I spent the last few hours explaining to my daughter what she was going to do. We would probably only get one chance at opening the gate, so I had to make sure that it went without a hitch.
A little after five o’clock, Angelica called to let me know that the Court’s criminal hearing had been extended to the next day. “They’re scrambling to put together all of the evidence that they can,” she said. “I don’t think they were really prepared. The weirdest part was that your daughter Rosa wouldn’t talk at all when they put her on the witness stand. Her friend said that she’d taken an oath of silence, and they didn’t know when she’d be able to testify.”
That didn’t sound like my daughter. “What’s going on with her? Is she having second thoughts?” She could feel guilty about turning in Elizabeth.
“I have no idea,” Angelica admitted. “But if she doesn’t end up testifying tomorrow, I think the trial will basically be over, and most of the charges will be dropped due to lack of evidence.”
“Good news for us.” I listened to the rest of her summary of the trial and thanked her for the update. I wanted to ask more, like if she could tell from a distance how Sir Allen was getting by in lockup, but I didn’t dare.
Around six, the sun finally went down, and I took Akasha with me downtown. We drove there in my car, but I had my broom in the back just in case things went south.
In the center of town, between the International Order of Odd Fellows Building and the drug store, there was a grass square with an ancient madrone tree, the town’s namesake. It was so large that from a distance, it could be mistaken for an oak. Unlike younger madrones that had red, peeling bark, the old tree had darkened to a deep brown. Just above my head, the massively thick trunk split in half, becoming two trees that spread out over a hundred feet wide at the canopy. Right now, the grass was covered in snow, most of it hardened into ice, with mud on the ground, but most of the snow had fallen from the branches.
My daughter and I knelt as I had seen us in my vision, on the icy ground just at the base of the trunk. I held out my hand and Akasha reluctantly put her hand in it.
She looked straight at me—in the past week, she had grown to match my height. Her lower lip quivered. “Is this going to hurt?”
I tried to give her a reassuring smile. “I’ll be as gentle as possible,” I promised. “But this is going to be worse than just a little pinprick.”
From my purse, I drew out the dragon scale and the knife I’d sharpened just that morning. I laid the dragon scale on the ground between us, and braced myself to draw the blade’s edge across Akasha’s hand.
She closed her eyes and turned her head away.
I was as gentle as I could be, barely parting the skin of her palm so a thin line of red appeared. Just as in my vision, her face twisted with pain and she sucked in her breath sharply, but she didn’t cry out.
There wasn’t quite enough blood to drip down, so I turned her hand over and touched it to the scale directly. With only a little smear, the whole scale seemed to drink the blood in, turning from gold to crimson in an instant.
I’d said no words in my vision, so I was silent now, hoping for the magic to work. Something in Akasha’s Fae blood must call through the Veil to the other side.
Akasha had already yanked her hand back and she was cleaning the cut with an antiseptic wipe. She held up a bandage. “Will you help me put this on?”
I waved her away, not daring to take my eyes off of the scale. Nothing seemed to be happening. “Heal yourself with your magic,” I said absently.
She grumbled and clutched her hand to her chest, but she was preoccupied with staring at the scale too, and didn’t say anything else.
Was the usual light of the dragon’s scale starting to get even brighter, despite the darker color? And then the color seemed to fade away, revealing the cool blue glow of twilight. Through the hole, I could glimpse the green of trees.
I grabbed Akasha’s arm and pulled her to her feet with me. We started to back away from the tree, because now the hole was getting bigger, spreading across the ground and up the trunk of the tree.
Strangely, the tree didn’t disappear as the gate to the Otherworld spread out. It seemed to be part of both worlds. Because it was so large, the gate had to grow very wide before there was space for anything but the tree.
But then the grass under our feet was lush and purple, and the gate around the tree was almost large enough to drive a car through, and a centaur stepped through the opening. She looked around, sniffing the air of the mortal world, and then saw me.
She inclined her head a little toward me. “You’ve opened a gate,” she said, and smiled. “My thanks.”
I couldn’t think of the right thing to say, but she’d already turned away and run off down the street, her hoofbeats ringing on the pavement. I looked back at the gate to see who would come through next.
I felt the power of the Otherworld rippling through into ours, and the waves must have been felt on the other side as well, because I could see more magikin approaching the open gate to investigate. But the next one to step through was a Fae, tall and imposing with his unnatural beauty, sweeping a dramatically long coat aside as he walked.
He looked down at Akasha and smiled. “Why, who do we have here?”
13
Run Away
Akasha
I’d never been in Faerie before, so I had no idea what to expect when the gate opened. At first, it didn’t really look that different, just more forest and trees. But something about it felt different, like time was slowing down or stopping altogether. And though I was supposed to belong to that other world, too, and there was something in my nature that had called it out, I felt weirded out by the strangeness of it. What I saw was impossible, like a dream—trees in all different seasons at once, a waterfall flowing upward, strange animals that didn’t even look like the magikin I was familiar with.
I took another step back and looked around. Near us the snow was melting on the ground in many places, and I saw lush purple grass beneath our feet. Flowers sprouted up in the blink of an eye. It made no sense, defying every law of nature that I knew of, and my head hurt with the crazy magic.
By the time a Fae stepped out and addressed me, I just couldn’t take it anymore. I turned and I ran as fast as I could down the street, away from everything that I didn’t recognize.
But the magic followed on my heels. I saw the lights in the stores around me flicker and die. Flowering vines grew up over the supermarket. And it felt like I was running through molasses, or else that effect of time slowing down was actually real, because my stride dragged until I was barely moving at all. Magikin ran past me—centaurs, satyrs, pookhas, even a unicorn. They were going to overwhelm the town, and then what would they do?
Someone was screaming—then I realized it was me. I clamped a hand down over my mouth, afraid of attracting the wrong kind of attention. I ducked into the first door that I saw and found myself in What a Drip. There were only a few people sitting at the tables, and a barista looked bored behind the counter. Just as I entered, the lights shut off.
Someone—not me this time—screamed, and a chair crashed to the ground.
“It’s okay,” the barista called into the darkness. “There’s a backup generator. It should come on in a minute.”
But this was no ordinary winter power outage, from a downed tree or frozen
power lines. The backup generator didn’t turn on. Instead, the gray light of twilight began to come in through the windows, giving enough visibility for me to see shapes but not details or colors.
When I could see, I dove behind the island of sugar and cream in the middle of the room and ducked my head down to hide from the door.
The barista craned her head over the counter to look at me. “What’s going on out there?”
“Some kind of weird magic thing,” I gasped. “Don’t go outside.”
Then the door swung open again, and I smelled fallen autumn leaves on the breeze that swept into the cafe. Small bare feet slapped the ground, hopping into the room.
Before whatever it was could reach the counter, I scrambled around to the other side of the island, still keeping my head low.
Grating, high-pitched voices rang out in a chorus: “Goblins want to try kah-fee! You make-a kah-fee?”
Goblins were troublemakers. They weren’t allowed to live in the mortal realm. A few visited on Halloween and other holidays, watched over by faeriekin guards to keep them from playing too many tricks, but they never stayed long. A whole horde of goblins running loose in the streets would be enough to terrify anyone.
The barista answered in a shaky voice, “Um, yes, we serve coffee here. To—to paying customers.”
One of the goblins laughed, a sound like tumbling rocks that hurt my ears. “Goblins pay! Goblins have gold! You like-a gold!”
A sack of metal coins hit the counter with a clink. The barista suddenly jumped into action. “Of course! What can I get for you?”
“We try it all! Make-a one of everything!”
While the goblins were distracted, I decided to make a break for it. I looked around wildly for an escape route. There was only one entrance to the cafe, and I didn’t know what else might be lurking outside. But then I saw the restroom doors in the back. There were two single restrooms, each with its own locking door.
I peeked around the corner, just to check the situation. The barista was making several drinks at once, and the hiss of the espresso machine filled the room. The goblins were jumping up and down to watch her work.
Keeping my head down below the edge of the counter, I crept toward the restroom as fast as I could. No one saw me move; the other customers were all too busy staring at the goblins. I made it into the bathroom, shut the door, and locked it fast behind me.
I instantly regretted my decision. I was stuck in a tiny room, with no lights and no windows, and no way out but the way that I came in. Muffled through the door, I could still hear the cries of the goblins as they eagerly waited for their drinks. I shuddered to think of what the little monsters would be like once they were full of caffeine. Madrone was in for trouble.
I didn’t think it would be like this. Mom promised me that opening a gate would just give her power against the Faerie Court, because she would get allies from the other side to join her cause. They would keep her from going to jail and let me go back to school. The gate was supposed to be under our control. Instead, all of the magic was leaking out into our world and changing everything, and it looked like anything that wanted to could get through. What had gone wrong? And what was going to happen now?
I leaned against the door and slid down until I sat on the floor, hoping that it was clean enough. I hugged my knees to my chest and waited. Someone had to come and fix this. Someone had to know that things had gone wrong, and know how to make it better again. All I had to do was wait until it was safe outside again.
14
Is This a Nightmare?
Rosamunde
My alarm clock didn’t go off. When I woke up again with a start, it was mostly dark outside already, with only a faint light coming in through the window. I rubbed my eyes and looked at the clock, but the digital face was dead. Had I yanked the plug out to stop the alarm without ever waking up? I’d done that once or twice before.
I groped for the reading lamp on my bedside table and hit the switch. Nothing happened. I flicked it several times, then stumbled to the wall switch next to the door and found that light was also dead.
Great. The power must be out. Weird, because there hadn’t been a storm in over a week, and I didn’t remember a weather advisory for today. And the timing was awful.
I stared around the room for a long moment, trying to think about what I could do. Finishing the cloak was still the most important thing. But I couldn’t work in the low light.
Was the power out in just our house? I glanced outside, but I could barely see the house next door. The two windows that I could see over the fence were both dark, but this early in the evening, that didn’t mean much. I’d have to go outside to see the rest of the street.
But first, I had to find out what time it was. I reached into my bag and found my phone. The screen flickered on, but made no sense: no signal? The time flashed 5:99, then 13:04. And then the whole phone just died without a single battery warning.
I punched the power button, but nothing happened. I’d never seen such a strange thing before. Sometimes magic blocked the signal or it couldn’t find the cell towers out in the trees, but it never just turned off on its own.
I wanted to hurl the stupid thing across the room, but I fought back the urge and stuck my phone in my pocket instead. On the off chance it started working again, I would want to have it with me.
I opened the door to my room and looked out into the hallway. The walls stretched out endlessly before me, a blank gray gloom disappearing into the darkness. I blinked and looked again, because the door to the bathroom should have been only a few steps away. Maybe I just couldn’t see well without the light? I stepped out and reached for the door handle that I knew was there.
But as far as I went, the hallway just kept going, and the dim gray light followed me, never showing me more than a few steps ahead, well past where I should have passed the door to my dad’s room and then the living room and then the edge of the house…
I sat bolt upright in bed, drenched in sweat. I shook my head to clear away the nightmare. It had felt so vivid. My mind must’ve been messed up from the lack of sleep the night before.
But oddly, my alarm clock still hadn’t gone off to wake me up. It was mostly dark outside. I looked over to see the time, but the digital face was dead. I glanced down and confirmed that it was still plugged in to the socket.
Then I hit the switch on the reading lamp, and again, nothing happened. Turning my head to stare out the window, I saw the neighboring house was dark. Things were getting really weird. Had I known about the power outage somehow even in my dream?
I got up and reached into my bag, but my phone wasn’t there. Then I looked down and realized it was in my pocket. With dread, I pulled it out and watched the numbers on the screen flicker without any signal: 5:99. 13:04. Then it died again.
Warily, I put the phone down in the center of my desk, forcing myself to keep my breathing even. Now was not the time to panic. I looked at the bedroom door, wondering if the hallway was still the same. I couldn’t face that endless corridor a second time.
Something really weird was going on. It had to be something magical. Another spell of my mom’s? This felt too big to be her.
I had to go for help, but to ask for help, I had to be able to speak. After keeping my silence at the trial, I couldn’t just give up on the test. Now was the time to finish it.
I pulled the unfinished pieces of the cloak out of my bag and arranged them on my bed. It had to be enough.
With a deep breath, I threaded yarn through a big needle and started stitching the edges together. They were all uneven, and none of them were quite the same size, so I had to fudge things and leave a few gaps to make it all fit together. The end result was something so ugly that a grandmother wouldn’t buy it at a flea market for her dogs to sleep on. But it was all that I could manage.
At last, I stood up with the cloak in my hands, closed my eyes, and swung it over my shoulders. Surprisingly, the whole thing settled nic
ely on me. None of the dried leaves or fibers poked out to scratch me, and it was light but warm. It actually felt kind of cool to wear something that I’d made with my own two hands. This was the pride Lindsey must have felt when she finished a new dress she’d designed. Not that my ugly cloak could compare to her beautiful clothes, but still, it was an accomplishment for someone who wasn’t crafty enough to finish a friendship bracelet at sixth grade science camp.
I opened my eyes and turned to the little mirror on the wall to admire my handiwork, and when I did, I realized the room looked different. I hadn’t noticed it in the low light before, but now I saw that the angles were a little crooked, like the whole room had been bent while I was sleeping. The bedroom door had also shifted over two feet to the right. And although it was still dim twilight, I could see everything just fine. Maybe my eyes had finally adjusted.
I opened the bedroom door and found the same endless corridor. No way was I falling for that again. Luckily for me, our new house was only a single floor, so it was easy for me to climb out the window with my broom and my bag.
The first thing that I noticed when I stepped outside was how warm it was. The snow had all disappeared from the ground, but there wasn’t a lot of mud or puddles left to show where it had melted. I looked around and saw that the houses were all dark, but I found it reassuring to see that everything was more or less where I’d remembered it.
Then I spotted the gnarly old apple tree down the street. I blinked and walked closer to make sure that I hadn’t seen it wrong, but the closer I got, the more flowers I saw on the twisted branches. How long had I been asleep for? Had spring come already?
Fae of Calaveras Trilogy Box Set Page 59