My sisters and I skitter through the grass like we’ve done since we were runts, carrying lanterns twitching with fire. It’s late, almost midnight. Juniper strides toward the pen where a foundling fawn waits on its stalky legs, the tuft of its tail flicking. Approaching the creature, she brushes its spotted fur and whispers secret tidbits.
Cove tiptoes to the pond where a gleaming water snake zigzags through the ripples. That breed of serpent is native to Middle Country; the trade poachers who’d coveted the brown marbled scales had gutted the reptile’s family. Not long after, Cove had found the lone survivor wounded.
The snake relishes her play-splashing and retaliates with a watery thwack of its tail, sprinkling Cove’s nightgown.
I head for the makeshift aviary. At the base of a tree, I set down my lantern and whip— keeping my weapon close feels necessary after today. I climb the trunk ladder, ascending the rungs, and burrow into the leaf-crusted awning. A dozen cages and nests dangle from the boughs, the doors permanently open so their inhabitants can fly in and out, so long as they’re able to. Until they can return to their habitat, the net I’ve arranged in the rafters protects them from predators.
A starling rides on a swing near one of the birdseed funnels. I’m glad to see her broken wing has mended. She’s ready to be released.
Above her, the aristocratic resident falcon stands vigil. That’s a defensive one, make no mistake. Poachers stole him from an outlying acreage last year, and the trauma did a number on the bird’s sense of trust in humans.
That’s the thing about our home. It’s a refuge for stray, orphaned, and foundling animals. My family’s rescued too many creatures to count, giving them a home at the Fable Dusk Sanctuary.
Atop one of the branches, I make myself comfortable and whistle. A hermit thrush flutters onto my thigh and whistles back, and we start a tune.
Afterward, I scurry down the tree, then grab my lantern and whip. Deeper into the sanctuary, an enclosed wagon hunkers beneath a willow. Tendrils of verdant leaves droop from the boughs and encompass the oval vehicle, faded teal paint coating the caravan’s exterior, reminding me of an ancient jewel box propped on wheels.
I hop up the iron steps and duck through the door, setting my light and weapon on the rug. The flame illuminates a treasure trove of chipped and scratched toys. A stack of shelves along the back display a stone maze set; a woodland board game, the pieces shaped into raccoons and chipmunks; and a little glass fish tank.
Costumes hang from pegs. An owl mask and a pair of moth wings. A crown of deer antlers, a fox muzzle, and a cloak of porcupine quills. A seahorse tail and a serpent visor with a forked tongue.
Normally, this wagon offers comfort. No such luck tonight. I still hear that flute and feel those mysterious eyes on me.
I need to get rid of the burden. I need to do something that’ll tickle my funny bone.
When Cove glides into the wagon, I restrain myself. However when Juniper marches up the steps, her studious mien appearing through the door’s small window, I yank the curtains closed in her face. Cove chokes back a laugh, and I snort.
Cove’s a beanstalk, whereas I’m average height, but Juniper’s short legs ensure that she doesn’t have to bend under the door jamb. She stomps inside and smacks my shoulder while I plaster a bunch of sloppy kisses on her cheek, squishing her face until it resembles a sponge.
My sisters add their lanterns to mine, and we settle cross-legged around the candlelit blaze. When Juniper isn’t carrying a weapon, she’s fondling an encyclopedia. Sure enough, she plucks reading spectacles from her nightgown pocket, reaches for a book from the floor stack, and thumbs through it. “Tell me again—”
“Let’s recite our favorite Fable,” I prompt.
Juniper snaps the book shut. “No. Don’t you dare, Lark.” She turns to our sister while gesturing at me. “Cove, tell her.”
“We don’t have a favorite Fable,” Cove supplies.
“Not what I meant.” Juniper bristles, then levels me with an I’m-not-fucking-around scowl, her eyes narrowing through the lenses askew on her nose. “This is hardly the appropriate time for a distraction.”
“You’re never in the mood for a distraction,” I say. “What’s a few lost minutes? I promise, you’ll be the only sister to predict our fates. Nobody in this wagon’ll have the answers before you do, so loosen your knickers.”
“I resent that.”
“To be fair, you resent anybody who’s smarter than you,” Cove reminds her.
“Choose diversions wisely, lest they lead to downfall,” Juniper says, quoting a lesson from one of the Fables—I think it’s The Fox and the Fae—before moving on to The Stag Hunts a Doe. “Intelligence is the ally of intention and the foe of lethargy.”
“How’s about I go first?” I clear my throat. “Under the vicious stars—”
A pillow smacks me in the beak. “Will you please stop tarrying?” Juniper grouses over my curse, too exasperated to adjust her lopsided spectacles. “You need to take this seriously.”
“You think so?” I snap, rubbing my nose. “As opposed to the fun I was having while galloping for my fucking life?”
Cove sighs. “One day, I will get you to stop cursing.”
“One day, I’ll get you to start.”
“Lark.” She sets her hand on my thigh. “It wasn’t your fault.”
A lump congeals in my throat. I turn away before they see what those words do to me.
If I hadn’t picked the wrong bed partner. If I’d figured out a better direction to lead him and his cronies. If I hadn’t trespassed into Faerie. If I hadn’t endangered my sisters.
We might be the first mortals to cross that border and then step right out. But nobody enters Faerie undetected.
Earlier, when we slogged back home, we’d bundled ourselves in my bed. I’d whispered to them, recounting everything I heard and saw in the forest before they got there. Juniper had made me repeat myself a dozen times, then she plunged into one her books, trying to decipher what kind of pickle we’re in.
When Juniper failed to glean a single clue—since no human has ever returned from the Solitary wild—she threw the tome across the attic. My sister prides herself on being a know-it-all and can’t handle loose ends or getting anything wrong.
What we do know is simple—and not so simple—about the Faeries who reign in Middle Country. Far from this village reside the Courts of Flora, Suns, Harvest, and Moons. Closer afield to Reverie Hollow live the Solitary Fae, who’d long ago laid claim to this rural region. Uninterested in the politics of the distant Seelie and Unseelie Courts, the Solitary Fae spend their lives independent of the kingdoms.
Notwithstanding, all Faeries have similar goals when it comes to humans. As nonmagical beings, we’ve been judged the lesser species for eons. Those monsters believe we’re only good for amusement or servitude. Either they’re slipping into our village undetected—glamoured to look like us—or they’re manipulating the elements to wreak havoc on our lives, or they’re luring mortals into their realms, to who knows what end.
Then came the uprising. We call it The Trapping.
Nine years ago, the Folk’s games took their toll on the peasants, farmers, and merchants of the Hollow. Done with being terrorized, the enraged villagers armed themselves and invaded the Solitaries’ domain.
Here’s the gist. The villagers didn’t go after the Faeries.
They went after the wildlife.
The mystical fauna of Faerie give the landscape its life force. Without them, The Solitary Mountain, Forest, and Deep would deteriorate. And without the land, the Fae would weaken. Eventually, they would fade altogether.
Since humans don’t have the power to battle the Fae, capturing the animals was an indirect tactic. The villagers stampeded into the wild at dawn with iron blades, arrows, forks, traps, and cages. Our blacksmith had even invented a net strung with bits of iron.
They seized droves of wildlife while the Folk slumbered, the iron weakening those
creatures to the point where they couldn’t defend themselves. Many of the fauna were killed, deemed a plague like their kin. Whenever I think about that, shame curdles in my belly.
Of course, a handful of the Fae awoke from the upheaval and charged, hellbent on saving their fauna. Rage tends to strengthen willpower and fists. There’d been a brawl, which led to bloodshed, which led to broken necks and broken skulls. By a force of conviction and iron, the inflamed villagers managed to capture the Fae rescuers and then slaughter them.
All except three.
As the story goes, they escaped, retrieved the few surviving animals, and returned to their domain. After that, the remaining Fae appointed this infamous trio monarchs of the Solitary wild: rulers of the sky, woodland, and river.
Ultimately, The Trapping failed. Since then, the Solitaries have vowed eternal revenge. Their kind attack us more spitefully than before. We know this from messages they’ve left, carved into human scalps, or nailed into human chests, or scrawled across foggy windows, or engraved into tree trunks, or swirling inside water wells.
Beware of the wind, the roots, the water.
The unknown is harrowing. We can’t say what happens to mortals after they’ve been lured into Faerie. What’s more, nobody ever knows who’ll be next.
If a commoner strays past the Triad uninvited? Well, that’s just as fatal.
My sisters and I shouldn’t be alive. That doesn’t mean we’re in the clear.
A hand cups my jaw. Cove’s blue gaze swallows me whole. “It wasn’t your fault,” she repeats. “It wasn’t anyone’s fault.”
Another body scoots closer until we’re tethered together, our foreheads pressing. “You didn’t make us go after you,” Juniper says. “Do you hear me?”
I hear them both. And I would’ve done the same thing, if it had been one of them. I would have torn into that wilderness without a second thought.
This is the sweet and salty truth. I don’t love anything as much as I love my family—sisters, father, and animals alike.
Plus, one traitorous face that I can’t seem to let go of—the source of that blue feather.
We break apart, the lanterns sketching our figures across the curved wagon walls. Juniper twists around to dump the book onto the floor, the sheer fabric of her nightgown stretching. A tattoo of crossbow bolts forming an X peeks through the material, a relic from her childhood.
Juniper’s voice brings to mind roasting campfires—snappish, smoky, and busy. “Fine,” she says. “I’ll postpone contingency plans for the next seven minutes.”
Cove chirps, “I vote we spend those seven minutes cursing that brigand for paying Lark a visit.”
I recall my whip flogging that poacher to the ground. “He paid all right. After getting what he wanted. Right lousy lover, if there ever was one.”
A rosy pool surfaces on Cove’s cheeks. “Was he gentle?”
When I give her a smarmy look, she amends, “Were you gentle?”
“Now what do you take me for?”
“That’s rudimentary,” Juniper declares. “Every time you look at a man, you either take his virginity or resurrect it.”
“For Fable’s sake.” Cove points to her chest. “Sister. Sitting right here.”
I kick her ankle playfully. “Someday, an irresistible bloke will take you by surprise. I can’t wait until your time comes.”
“I’m perfectly fine making you wait. And I do not want to hear another word.” She covers her ears. “Do not want to hear it. Lalalalalalaaaaaaaaaa.”
Our chuckles peter off fast. Cove glances at the starlight leaking through the wagon window. Her lisping tongue slips over itself as she collects our hands. “Whatever happens to one of us, happens to each of us.”
“Together,” Juniper agrees with a nod.
“All or nothing,” I say. “So how’s about a Fable?”
Juniper chooses the first one that we ever read, back when Papa Thorne was teaching us our letters. We wiggle toward the flames, our voices ghosting through the space.
“Under the vicious stars, in the rural plains of Middle Country, it’s dark and light at the same time,” Juniper starts.
“Under the vicious stars,” Cove continues, “mystical tales float through the sky, and root themselves in the woodland, and swim in the river.”
“Under the vicious stars, the crests rise, and the forest sniggers, and the waters rage,” I narrate. “Under the vicious stars, an Owl crossed paths with a Lark. And the Lark said…” My mind stutters. “And the Lark said…”
For crying out loud, I can’t remember the next damn line. How is that possible, when I babbled it hours ago?
Cove’s about to chime in when Juniper caws at her to let me figure it out. While they bicker, I get up and pace, thinking, thinking.
“Juniper, would it burden you to show mercy for once?” Cove pleads. “Let me help her. A mere hint is what she needs.”
“It doesn’t work that way.” Juniper snatches one of her books off the floor and gives it a hearty shake for emphasis, her spectacles twitching. “Fables must be recited smoothly and without preamble, in order for them to have the most thorough impact. You would know that if you’d studied The Nature of Fable & Fae Narrative: A Very Concise, Very Annotated History. I’ve read it twice.”
“In that case, you can read my middle finger just as many times.”
“How quaint. Cursing without actually cursing.”
“I didn’t have to study that book. You parroted the whole forsaken thing to me while I suffered from harvest fever.”
“Were you truly listening when I read it?”
“Show-off.”
“Slacker.”
“Fables eternal,” I chuckle while strutting to the door, cranking open the tiny window, and letting the restless night comb through my hair. “Quit your jabbering, and lemme think.”
Yet I can’t think. My sisters are still arguing, but they’re not serious anymore because they’ve started chortling. Any minute, they’ll be tumbling around, swatting each other out of jest.
Usually, I’d join in. But I’ve never had trouble remembering this Fable. It’s called An Owl Meets a Lark—ha!—and it’s about Faeries finding their mates, which happens either when they’re linked by a force of nature or…
I forget the second way. I think it’s got something to do with kissing.
Anyhow, I improvise. “Let’s see,” I say, speaking to the trees and stars. “And the Lark said, ‘Will somebody snatch these two so I can have a break?’”
That shuts my sisters up. It shuts them up so quickly that I laugh. Swinging around, I tease, “I knew one of these days, I’d make you speechless.”
I stop teasing and blink at the floor where my sisters should be.
But they’re gone.
4
I’ve seen magic tricks. I’ve seen those tricks performed at bonfires and festivals, at markets and jubilees and assemblies in town. I’ve seen pranks between rowdy, dusty pip-squeaks. I’ve also been the prankster.
And I’ve definitely played disappearing acts on Papa whenever he forbade me to go somewhere. One time I did it and never forgot what happened next.
But I’ve never seen a magic trick, or a prank, or a disappearing act that stalled my heart. I’ve never lost my breath because of a joke, because those jokes meant no harm, because they weren’t real.
This is real. This means harm.
I dash across the wagon, skidding to where my sisters were a second ago. There’s nothing but cool air and my shadow slanting across the floor.
I wheel one way. “Juniper?”
I whirl the other way. “Cove?”
If today had been a normal one, I’d be calling their bluff. I’d be poking through the caravan, knowing it’s a game, and I’m it. We’d play hide-and-seek, not caring about being too old for make-believe. I’d be gnarling my voice into a goblin’s rasp and stalking around, expecting to catch them.
But today hadn’t been a normal day. And
my sisters aren’t gone because they want to be.
I remember the Fae wilderness and those hidden eyes feasting on me.
A gale blasts through the open window, blowing the door wide and snuffing out the lanterns. I snatch the tinderbox from a stool in the corner. Plummeting to my knees, I fumble with the flint and fire striker, my hands quavering something harsh as I try to reignite the wicks. The flames hiss and sputter out, hiss and sputter out, hiss and sputter out.
Another howl of wind surges into the vehicle, striking a path beneath my nightgown. I drop the tinderbox tools. Beneath the sheer material, an invisible touch skims my thighs, raising gooseflesh across my skin. Aside from in the wild, this frisky intrusion has happened at other random times in my life.
I yank the garment into place and leap to my feet, my voice raging. “Juniper! Cove!”
Why aren’t they clucking? Why aren’t they giggling? Why aren’t they jesting?
Why aren’t they here? They were just here!
Come out. Come out, now. Come out, come out, come out.
Am I asking them? Or is someone asking me?
The unspoken questions curl like fingers. One of those vaporous digits flicks its way inside my noggin—beseeching, coaxing.
Something’s here. Someone’s here.
That something, that someone, is playing music. The notes of a flute sneak into the wagon, riding a blanket of air and tinkering around my limbs. I remember this deceptive melody. I’m fixing to shout at it, but the sultry tempo vanishes as swiftly as my sisters had.
The wind batters everything in sight. Costumes go flying, toys topple off the shelves, and the lanterns overturn.
A winged shadow slices across the rug. I veer toward the door, where an owl launches inside and flaps hectically along the walls, then circles me. I bat away the creature, and it slingshots into the night, its wings snapping into the sky.
Swiping my whip from the floor, I race out of the wagon. Ripping down the steps, I halt on the grass and gawk, locks of hair swatting my cheeks. A draft rattles the willow tree and beyond, the branches croaking, the boughs entangling.
Kiss the Fae (Dark Fables: Vicious Faeries Book 1) Page 3