Illusions

by Aprilynne Pike

  “Am I ready for that?” Laurel asked hopefully.

  “Almost certainly not,” Yeardley said in his most matter-of-fact tone. “But practice needn’t always lead to success, after all. I think it would be good for you to begin learning the basic concepts of fabrication. And this seems a fine place to start. An identification powder, like Cyoan,” he said, referencing a simple powder that identified humans and non-humans. “Except you would have to figure out what separates the castes on a cellular level, and I’m unaware of much research in that area. It simply doesn’t lead anywhere.”

  “What about thylakoid membranes?” Katya asked softly. As one, they all turned to face her.

  “What was that?” Yeardley asked.

  “Thylakoid membranes,” Katya continued, a little louder this time. “In the chloroplasm. The thylakoid membranes of Sparklers are more efficient. For lighting their illusions.”

  Yeardley cocked his head to the side. “Really?”

  Katya nodded. “When I was younger we sometimes stole the phosphorescing serums for the lamps and . . . um . . . drank them. It would make us glow in the dark,” she said, lowering her lashes as she related the childish antic. “I . . . had a Summer friend, and she did it with us one day. But instead of glowing for one night, she glowed for three days. It took me years to figure out why.”

  “Excellent, Katya,” Yeardley said, a distinct note of pleasure in his voice. “I would like to discuss that more fully with you in the classroom sometime this week.”

  Katya nodded eagerly.

  Yeardley turned back to Laurel. “It’s a start. Focus on plants with phosphorescing qualities that could show evidence of a more efficient thylakoid, and try to repeat the kind of reaction you get with Cyoan powder. I will work personally with Katya, here at the Academy.”

  “But what if she’s not a Summer faerie?”

  “Then you would be twenty-five percent closer to your goal, would you not?”

  Laurel nodded. “I need to write this down,” she said, not wanting to admit to Yeardley that she had no idea what Katya was talking about. But David probably would. Laurel grabbed a few note cards from her desk where—after last summer—the staff always kept them stocked, and sat by Katya. Katya spoke quietly as Laurel wrote down the basics and fervently hoped that the biological terminology was the same in Avalon as the human world.

  “Experiment when you can, and we’ll see what Katya and I can come up with here,” Yeardley said. “I’m afraid that’s all I can do for you tonight.” He paused, giving her an approving smile. “Glad to see you again, Laurel.”

  Stifling her disappointment, Laurel returned his smile as he left the room, closing the door behind him. After the near-fit she’d thrown getting here, the whole visit felt very unproductive.

  “Did you hear that?” Katya said, her voice low but excited. “He’s going to work with me personally. I’m part of your entourage now,” she added, taking Laurel’s hand. “I am going to help with a potion that might be used in the human world. I’m so excited!”

  She grabbed Laurel’s shoulder, pulled her in, and kissed both cheeks quickly before darting toward the door. “Next time you’re here,” she said, poking her head back through the doorway, “come see me first, okay?” She clicked the door shut behind her, leaving the room feeling quiet and empty.

  “We’d better hurry,” Laurel said to Tamani, walking past him without looking him in the face. She didn’t want him to see her discouragement.

  After a short and silent walk back to the gateway, they approached Jamison’s circle of Am fear-faire, all standing at attention, but Jamison did not stir from his quiet conversation with Shar. After a few seconds, both men nodded, then looked up at Laurel and Tamani.

  “Did your visit to the Academy bear fruit?” Jamison asked.

  “Not yet, but hopefully soon,” Laurel replied.

  “Are you ready, then?” Jamison asked.

  They nodded and Jamison reached out for the gate. As it swung open he looked first at Shar, then at Tamani. “The Huntress and the Wildflower should be watched closely, but do not let them consume your attention. What remains of Barnes’s horde will surely be looking for an opportunity to strike. If you need anything—reinforcements, supplies, anything—you have but to ask.”

  “We will need more sentries. For the Wildflower,” Tamani said. Here, away from the Palace and the Academy, he was confident again, speaking easily and standing tall.

  “Of course,” Jamison replied. “Anything you need and more. We will keep Laurel safe, but she needs to remain in Crescent City. Especially if we are to see how these events will play out.”

  Laurel was a little uncomfortable with how close that sounded to Laurel is the bait. But Tamani had never failed her before, and she had no reason to believe he would do so now.

  Chapter Nine

  AS SOON AS THE GATE CLOSED, TAMANI TURNED TO Shar, hoping—and doubting—that his old friend was okay. “So, did you get what you were after?”

  Shar shook his head. “Not really. But I probably got what I deserved.”

  Don’t be so hard on yourself, Tamani thought, but he said nothing. Never did. However difficult it was for Shar to visit Japan, Tamani doubted the experience was half as bad as the emotional torment he always put himself through afterward.

  “Who did you go to see, Shar?” Laurel asked.

  Shar met her question with silence. Tamani placed a hand at the small of Laurel’s back and gently urged her to walk a little faster. Now was not the time to be asking Shar about Hokkaido.

  They stopped at the edge of the woods and a grin played at the corners of Shar’s mouth. “Hurry,” he teased Tamani. “The sun will be setting soon and you have school tomorrow.”

  Tamani swallowed his frustration. He hated his stupid classes and Shar knew it. “Just answer your blighting phone next time, okay?” Tamani said, getting in a parting shot.

  Shar’s hand flitted to the pouch where his phone was stowed, but he said nothing.

  Once he and Laurel were in the convertible, Tamani pulled back onto the highway and set his cruise control considerably lower than he had on the way to the land. The sun was still an hour from setting, the breeze was cool, and he had Laurel in the car. No need to hurry.

  They traveled a ways in silence before Laurel finally asked, “Where did Shar go?”

  Tamani hesitated. It wasn’t really his place to spill Shar’s secrets, and technically he was only supposed to tell Laurel things she needed to know to fulfill her mission. But he preferred to think of that particular order as a strongly worded preference—and besides, it was at least plausible that the Unseelie had something to do with Yuki’s appearance. “He went to go see his mother.”

  “In Hokkaido?”

  Tamani nodded.

  “Why does she live in Japan? Is she a sentry there?”

  Tamani shook his head, a tiny, sharp movement. “His mother is Unseelie.”

  Laurel sighed. “I don’t even know what that means!”

  “She’s been cast out,” Tamani said, trying to figure out a better way to say it—something that sounded less harsh.

  “Like, an exile? That’s what Unseelie means?”

  “Not . . . exactly.” Tamani bit his bottom lip and sighed. Where to begin? “Once upon a time,” he began, remembering that humans liked to start their most accurate histories this way, “there were two faerie courts. Their rivalry was . . . complicated, but it boiled down to human contact. One court was friendly to humans—the humans called them Seelie. The other court sought to dominate humans, enslave them, torment them for amusement, or kill them for sport. They were the Unseelie.

  “Somewhere along the way, a rift developed in the Seelie Court. There were some fae who believed that the best thing we could do for the humans was leave them alone. Isolationists, basically.”

  “Isn’t that how the fae live now?”

  “Yes,” Tamani said. “But they didn’t used to. The Seelie even made treaties wi
th some human kingdoms—including Camelot.”

  “But that failed, right?” asked Laurel. “That’s what you said at the festival last year.”

  “Well, it worked for a while. In some ways the pact with Camelot was a huge success. With Arthur’s help, the Seelie drove the trolls out of Avalon for good and hunted the Unseelie practically to extinction. But eventually, things . . . fell apart.”

  It pained Tamani to gloss over so much detail, but when it came to the Unseelie, it was hard to decide where one explanation ended and another began. And it would take him hours to explain everything that had gone wrong in Camelot. Especially considering that, even in Avalon, the story was ancient enough for its accuracy to be disputed. Some claimed that the memories collected in the World Tree kept their history pure, but—having conversed with the Silent Ones himself—Tamani did not think it gave answers straight enough to qualify as historical facts.

  He would have to do his best with what he had.

  “When the trolls overran Camelot, it was taken as final proof that even our most well-intentioned involvement with humans was doomed to end in disaster. The isolationists rose to power. Everyone else was branded Unseelie.”

  “So part of the Seelie Court became the new Unseelie Court?”

  Tamani frowned. “Well, there hasn’t been an Unseelie ‘Court’ in more than a thousand years. But Titania was dethroned, Oberon crowned as rightful king, and the universal decree was that for the good of the human race the fae would leave humans alone forever. Everyone was summoned back to Avalon, Oberon created the gates, and for the most part we’ve been isolated ever since. But the idea that faeries should meddle in human affairs—as benefactors or conquerors—crops up sometimes. If anyone gets too zealous about it, they are exiled.”

  “To Hokkaido?”

  Tamani nodded. “There’s a . . . detention camp, not far from the gate. We send them there because we can’t have them in Avalon causing unrest, but we don’t want them to meddle with humans, either. They aren’t really a separate kingdom, but everyone calls them Unseelie.”

  “When was Shar’s mother . . . kicked out?”

  “Maybe fifty years ago? Before I sprouted.”

  “Fifty?” Laurel laughed. “How old is Shar?”

  “Eighty-four.”

  Laurel shook her head with amazement. “I’m never going to get used to that.”

  “Sure you will,” Tamani said, poking her in the side, “about the time you turn eighty.”

  “So why did Shar go see her today? Does he think Yuki is Unseelie? And what did he mean about Glamour?”

  Tamani hesitated. They were really getting into shady territory now. “All right, here’s the thing about the Glamour: It’s total madness. But it’s the kind of madness that sounds just plausible enough to suck you in. So what I’m about to tell you, you have to understand—nobody really believes it. Nobody sane, anyway. And just mentioning it in Avalon can make trouble.”

  When Laurel sat up a little straighter and folded her hands in her lap, Tamani realized his warning had succeeded only in piquing her interest. Sometimes she could be so human! “Let me start this way: Have you ever wondered why humans look so much like us?”

  “I guess I don’t usually put it like that,” Laurel said, favoring him with a smile, “but sure. David says it must be convergent evolution—we fill similar, um, ecological niches. Like sharks and dolphins, only . . . closer.”

  Tamani suppressed a grimace; he hadn’t intended to bring David into this. “Well, the Unseelie believe that we did this to ourselves—that before the Glamour, we didn’t resemble humans at all. That we looked more like plants.”

  “What, like green skin and stuff?” Laurel asked.

  “Who knows? But the Unseelie think one of their ancient queens, a Winter faerie called Mab, used her power to change our entire race—to make us look more human. Some of them think she was granting our wish to blend in with the human world. Some think it was a punishment, for trying to live like humans, falling in love with them, that sort of thing. But they all agree that a seedling who sprouts near a human settlement will physically resemble the humans who live there.”

  “So a faerie born, er, sprouted in Japan would look Japanese,” Laurel said, and Tamani could almost hear her making connections as she spoke. “Seems like that would be pretty easy to test. All the Unseelie children would look Japanese. So Shar went to see if Yuki escaped from the Unseelie . . . prison?”

  “Except the Unseelie are forbidden to Garden, so there’s nowhere for a young faerie to come from in the camp. There hasn’t been a faerie sprouted outside of Avalon in over a thousand years. And we don’t exile seedlings.”

  “Wait, what does that mean, forbidden to Garden?”

  “They are . . . not allowed to reproduce,” Tamani said, wishing she hadn’t asked.

  “And they can stop them how?” Laurel said hotly.

  “The Fall faeries give them something,” Tamani said. “It destroys the females’ ability to blossom. No blossom, no seedlings.”

  “They cripple them?” Laurel said, her eyes flashing.

  “It’s not exactly crippling,” Tamani said helplessly.

  “It doesn’t matter!” Laurel exclaimed. “That’s not a choice anyone has any right to mess with!”

  “I don’t make the rules,” Tamani said. “And I’m not trying to say they’re doing the right thing. But look at this from Shar’s perspective. Because his mother was always secretly Unseelie, as a seedling Shar was taught about the Glamour. Among other things,” Tamani added cryptically. “Then his mother was branded Unseelie and sent to Hokkaido. Today we told him about a faerie who comes from Japan, where we keep the Unseelie. The fact that Yuki claims to have sprouted in Japan and happens to look Japanese doesn’t prove that the Glamour is real—you’ve seen how diverse our appearances are by human standards—but in Shar’s mind, it’s just one more thing connecting her to the Unseelie.”

  “So why didn’t you mention the Unseelie before—when Yuki first showed up?”

  They pulled up to the first red light in Crescent City and Tamani turned to face Laurel. “Because I think Shar is jumping to conclusions. The Unseelie are guarded very closely, and with good reason.” Tamani paused, remembering the one time he had accompanied Shar to Hokkaido. It had been terrifying to hear the pure insanity pouring from the mouths of fae whose eyes were so clear and intelligent—conspiracies and secret worlds and tales of dark magic that were clearly impossible. “I’ve seen the facility—they keep careful records of everyone there. Once you’re in that camp, you don’t leave until you die.”

  “So if Yuki’s not Unseelie, what is she?”

  “That’s what we need to find out,” Tamani said, looking back at the road. “The idea of a wild faerie, with no allegiance to Seelie or Unseelie . . . that’s not something we ever expected to encounter. But I don’t see any convincing alternatives.”

  “So what do we do now?” Laurel asked, looking up at him. Her earnest gaze was so open, so trusting; her pale green eyes blazed in the day’s dying light. Tamani didn’t realize he had started to lean toward her until he had to catch himself and pull back.

  The next step would have to involve Laurel, even though he wished he could keep her out of it entirely. “Klea handed you an opportunity to befriend Yuki. Hopefully you can find out more.”

  Laurel nodded. “Hopefully. She doesn’t seem to like Klea’s plan, though. I get the feeling she’s avoiding me.”

  “Well, keep trying,” Tamani said, doing his best to sound encouraging. “But be careful. We still don’t know what she can do, or whether she intends to hurt you.”

  Laurel looked down at her lap.

  “And work on figuring out her caste,” Tamani added. Then, remembering that Laurel didn’t like that word—for reasons he suspected he’d never quite understand—he corrected himself. “Season, I mean. Just knowing that would make a huge difference. Then at least we’d know something.”

  �
�Okay.”

  Tamani pulled his car into Laurel’s driveway and she looked up at her house. She put a hand on the door handle, then paused.

  “Is Shar . . . Unseelie?”

  Tamani shook his head. “His mother tried to raise him that way, but Shar was never much of a believer. And after he met his companion, Ariana, the last thing he wanted was to get kicked out of Avalon. Ariana and their seedling, Lenore, are his whole world. As far as Shar is concerned, no price is too high for their safety—or the safety of Avalon. Even if it means his own mother has to live and die in exile.”

  “I just wondered,” Laurel said softly.

  “Hey, Laurel,” Tamani said, catching her wrist just before she was out of reach. He wanted to take that wrist and pull her closer, wrap her in his arms, forget everything else. His hands started to tremble with the wanting and he forced them to still. “Thank you for coming with me today. Without you, we wouldn’t have gotten in at all.”

  “Was it worth it?” she asked, her wrist limp in his hand. “We didn’t find anything out. I hoped . . . I thought Jamison would know something.” She looked at him, her eyes only now reflecting the disappointment she must have been feeling all evening.

  Tamani swallowed; he hated letting her down. “It was for me,” he said quietly, his eyes focused on their hands, so close to being joined. He didn’t want to let go. But if he didn’t, in a few seconds she would subtly tug her hand away, and that was worse. He forced his fingers to open, watched her arm drop to her side. At least this way, it was his choice.

  “Besides,” he added, trying to sound casual, “it was good for Jamison to find out about Yuki and Klea. Shar is kind of . . . independent. He likes to figure things out on his own before he passes any information on. He’s stubborn like that.” Tamani leaned back in the driver’s seat, one arm resting atop the steering wheel. “I’ll say hi to you in the halls next week,” he said, smiling. And with a rubber-and-asphalt squeal, he sped away from Laurel’s house, resisting the urge to look back.