Glimmers of Scales

by Emma Savant

My spell snaked on ahead, but it wasn’t connected to me anymore. Instead, it attached itself to the light bubble and pulled us along.

  “Is this safe?” I said. “From the Oracle, I mean. Will this hide us from her?”

  Amani looked sharply at me. “Yes,” she said.

  “Good.” I took a deep breath.

  This was the most audacious, crazy thing I’d ever done. No one in their right minds would accuse the Oracle of something like this, especially to the Faerie Queen.

  But I trusted Amani. I had to trust her. If I was right, she’d know. If I was wrong… I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.

  The words tumbled out of my mouth as fast as I could form them. She listened as we walked, her mouth drawn into a tight line. I couldn’t tell if she was upset or not, but I kept talking, forcing myself to remember everything Lily had said.

  “She talked like it was a game,” I said. “Like Glim kids started it and then the Oracle started supporting it.” I could hear my voice getting too high and too fast. “I know how crazy this sounds.”

  “It’s not crazy,” Amani said in a low voice.

  Startled, I looked up. Her face had hardened into a mask.

  She stopped walking and stared forward into the empty street, then closed her eyes and took in a long, deep breath.

  It didn’t seem to help. Her shoulders looked as tight and hard as a stone statue’s.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  She winced as though I’d punched her. I could feel the panic and fear boiling up inside her. She took another deep breath in, fighting to control it.

  A familiar silver shield began shimmering at the edges of our bubble, and vines began to uncurl around us. Amani watched them grow and then, with a long sigh, the bubble faded back to white.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I, uh…”

  She trailed off and looked down at me, her eyes searching as if I had the words she needed.

  “I know you work closely with the Oracle,” I said. “This must make your job a lot harder.”

  “It’s more than that,” she said.

  I could see her evaluating me, trying to decide how much she could say. And then, her defenses seemed to crumble. Her shoulders relaxed and her entire face seemed to soften, not in a gentle way but as if she didn’t have the strength to keep herself together.

  “I wanted to be wrong,” she said.

  “You knew?” I said, but she winced, and I moved to the more important question. “What do we do now? Can the Oracle just be replaced?”

  Could Amani do that? What would happen to the city?

  “The Oracle is like the Faerie Queen,” Amani said, her gaze distant and glazed. “The Glimmers change but the job stays the same.”

  “So can you deal with her? Are you—”

  Was she strong enough? I didn’t know how to ask that.

  “I don’t know,” Amani said. “Um, I don’t think so. It’s not just the job, it’s—Kelda and I have a lot of history.”

  It was my turn to search her face, and I felt almost burned by what I saw. Amani was hurt and she was afraid. And I understood her, because I was afraid, too.

  “Kelda,” I said.

  “The Oracle.” Amani fidgeted, tapping her fingernails against her palm in a frantic rhythm. “We grew up together. We’ve always had different ideas of the way things should be done.”

  Questions burned on my tongue. I pressed it to the roof of my mouth to keep myself silent.

  Amani squeezed her hands into fists and seemed to steel herself. She looked down at me again, and this time, she seemed to see me.

  “We need to keep going,” she said. We began moving again, following the spell. My gaze focused as the vine's tip turned right and disappeared around a brick corner.

  I held out a hand and the vine stopped dead, then shriveled and crumbled to dust as I let go of my hold. The magic dissipated in the air. It had been a small spell, but I felt its absence. It left an emptiness behind, a drained feeling like being tired.

  My aura would fill back up. Quickly, if the runoff from Queen Amani’s crackling magic had anything to do with it.

  “Lily’s not going to find Evan,” I said.

  My heart threw itself against my ribcage. I heard Lily’s voice in my head: Does the Oracle really grant wishes?

  Amani was already ahead of me.

  “I heard this was a difficult case,” she said.

  I didn’t bother to ask how she knew. She’d been watching me.

  Everyone had been watching me.

  “What should I do?”

  “Normally I’d say it’s up to your professional judgment,” Amani said. “But I need your help.”

  “You have it,” I said.

  A wild look had lit in her eyes, a mad faerie gleam I hadn’t seen there before. I dared myself to reach out a hand and touch her arm.

  “Your Majesty,” I said, suddenly understanding that she needed to know this. “You always have my help.”

  She looked down at me, and surprise mingled with her fire.

  “I need you to go watch,” she said. “Take the ring. Go find your client. And just watch. See what happens. I can’t do anything; she’s so elusive and I can’t prove anything with her sprites protecting her. This could be bad, Olivia. I don’t want a war.”

  “No one wants a war,” I said.

  I pulled my ring out and slipped it off its chain. It settled snug on my finger.

  “She wants a war,” Amani said. She grabbed my shoulders. “Be careful.”

  It was almost midnight. The Oracle would spring into being when the clock struck twelve.

  Amani ripped open a hole in the fabric for me to escape through, and I ran.

  Water fell from the Oracle’s Fountain in sheets that rippled black and silver in the night. The street was quiet, the road deserted. The sidewalk glistened from the rain.

  From the sidewalk, as far from the Fountain as I could be without stumbling backward into the road, I watched.

  Lily stood at the bottom of the wide steps that led down to the Fountain. She had her arms wrapped around her body against the cold and the darkness.

  It was ten minutes to midnight.

  My phone buzzed in my pocket, briefly interrupting the sound of rushing water. My heart skipped a beat and Lily turned, her red hair shifting like a patchwork cloak behind her.

  “Olivia!” she said. Her voice was too bright. She knew she’d be in trouble.

  I waved her off. Blood pounded through my body, making my arms throb and my chest ache, but I had to be casual. I walked down the steps. Every step closer to the Fountain made my body feel tighter, but I forced my attention onto my client.

  “I thought you ran off to find Evan,” I said.

  “I did better than that,” she said.

  Even in the darkness beneath the trees, we stood close enough that the joy on her face was impossible to miss. She clasped her hands together in front of her chest.

  “If I go see Evan tonight, I’ll have to keep seeing him until I convince him to marry me. But with the Oracle’s help, all our problems will be solved. I can’t believe we didn’t think of it earlier!”

  “Wow,” I said.

  Lily couldn’t tell the difference between real and sarcastic enthusiasm and beamed at me.

  “I asked him to meet me here in half an hour,” she said.

  I took a step forward. The Fountain’s water rippled ominously in the dark.

  “Asked him how?”

  She pulled a small flip phone out of her pocket. Its front screen flashed on, vivid white and painfully bright.

  “I got this from Goose House,” she said. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but I suspected you would try to take it away from me. It’s a… what’s it called… pay-as-you-go. I help in the kitchens and they pay for my phone. Everyone in my Land Life Communications class got one.” She looked down and added absently, “I’m learning to text.”

  Her eyes shone in the light of the
phone, and they seemed bigger than usual.

  I bit the inside of my cheek and tried to count slowly to ten. I got as far as seven before blurting, “Lily, you have an appointment to see him soon. And we’ve been talking about how you’re not supposed to contact him on your own for months. Literally months. This is not a good idea.”

  I glanced at the Fountain. The Oracle hadn’t emerged yet; even so, I could practically feel her eyes on me.

  But Lily’s attention was glued to the phone’s glowing screen.

  “He agrees with you,” she said. Her voice came out flat and suddenly devoid of its love-crazed sparkle. “He said his fiancée doesn’t like us seeing each other. I don’t know why he told her about me.”

  “Because he’s a good human being?” I said.

  She wasn’t listening. Her fingers flew across the little keyboard and she hunched down against the breeze.

  “I’ll tell him it’s an emergency,” she muttered.

  “Lily,” I said, but she whirled on me.

  “You have to make him love me!” she cried.

  When I didn’t instantly agree, she turned back around to face the Fountain. She rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet like she’d had legs to fidget with all her life.

  Tiny droplets of rain prickled against my face. I pulled out my own phone. Six minutes to go, and I had two texts, one from earlier in the evening and one from just now.

  Lucas: Did you get a chance to talk to Imogen?

  Lucas: She’s acting really weird.

  I threw a tiny invisible bubble around my hands to protect my phone from the rain and texted back while I typed. Lily stared resolutely at the Fountain in front of us.

  Olivia: We talked at her sister’s wedding. She has problems. But she’s not my problem.

  Four minutes to go.

  Lucas: What happened between you two?

  I didn’t have time for this. Imogen was a tiny drop in the ocean of my problems right this second. I went for honesty.

  Olivia: You happened. Imogen knew I liked you, and she lied to me and started dating you without talking to me first. And I’m happy you’re both happy, but I don’t need someone in my life who treats me like that.

  I shoved the phone back in my pocket, and the Fountain erupted.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I’d seen it before, but I still stumbled back as the water burst into the sky in shimmering silver geysers. The Oracle’s face flickered behind a curtain of water and her voice filled my mind.

  “Lily Pacifica,” the Oracle boomed.

  Lily trembled on her feet. In spite of myself, I reached out a hand to steady her. She sank into a low curtsy.

  “Your Sorcerousness,” she said.

  “Your Honor,” I whispered.

  “Your Honor,” Lily repeated, but the Oracle spoke over her.

  “You have come on an errand of true love,” she said.

  “Yes, Your Honor,” Lily said.

  She was over her awe at once, rapture replacing her nerves and filling her eyes with light.

  “He is my soulmate, the only one who can ever make me happy,” she said.

  The Oracle’s pale face rippled behind the softly falling water. “Your parents disapprove.”

  “Yes, Your Honor,” Lily said. “I don’t care.”

  “You would choose this human over your inheritance?” the Oracle said, as if anyone had to ask.

  “Oh, yes,” Lily said. “He is all I want, Oracle. Please.” Lily glanced sidelong at me and offered a tiny apologetic smile before saying, “My faerie godmother has tried her hardest, and I appreciate her efforts, I truly do. But Oracle, I can’t bear another day without him. Please, grant my wish.”

  “And what is your wish?” the Oracle said.

  I twisted the ring on my finger, feeling for the mirror, making sure it faced the Fountain. I held my breath and silently willed Lily to not say what I knew she was about to say.

  She stepped forward until her new legs teetered on the edge of the Fountain’s pool. Her whole body thrummed with yearning.

  “I wish,” she said, her voice clear and resolute. “I wish for Evan Costner to fall madly in love with me, tonight. For him to recognize that I am the only woman he could ever love, and to take me into his heart and his life with no hesitation or reservation. I have given up my world for him. I want him to give up his for me.”

  The words, romantic on the surface, turned my stomach over. But I forced my traitorous faerie features to behave. I was here to be the calm, supportive godmother, letting her client make her own choices while still guiding her Story with a careful hand.

  My job was to do, not to judge.

  The Oracle’s water sparkled as threads of silver magic fell through the flickering curtain of water. The Oracle’s spells were strong enough that even elf glass couldn’t shield me.

  “Step into the Fountain,” the Oracle ordered.

  Lily obeyed at once. She slipped out of her shoes and into the dark pool as though those steps were the only ones she had ever been destined to take. Her pale white feet shimmered beneath the surface as clear water lapped around her ankles.

  The silver threads swam for her like fish attacking prey. They latched on to her, wrapped around her ankles and slithered up her body beneath her skirt to emerge from the neck and sleeves of her shirt. The lines glinted as they wrapped around her arms and snaked across her enraptured face.

  I flinched and closed my eyes against the sudden blaze. White light shone from each thread as if each silver surface reflected pure moonlight.

  And then the light faded, and the threads were gone, melted into Lily’s own network of veins as they pulsed silently beneath her skin.

  She let out a deep sigh. Her eyelids fell closed, and I reached out a hand to steady her. But she didn’t sway. She stood for a moment, then stretched out her arms as if getting used to her body for the first time.

  And then she stepped back out of the pool. A dark puddle dripped onto the cement. She bowed low.

  “Thank you, Your Honor,” she said.

  “May you live happily ever after,” the Oracle said, and then her white face shifted slightly and turned to me. “I wish to speak with your godmother.”

  “Of course,” Lily said.

  She bowed again and stepped back. She looked behind us, down the street, but Evan wasn’t there yet. He would get lost and be unable to find our block, or get distracted, or accidentally miss his turn. He was a Humdrum; he wouldn’t be able to find us until the Oracle was gone.

  I felt for the ring with my thumb. The mirror still faced outward.

  The hairs on my arms stood up. The Oracle had always intimidated me, but she had never frightened me. Not till now. I shielded my emotions instantly, directing them all toward Lily and my case.

  “Thank you, Your Honor,” I said. I stepped forward. “I hadn’t intended to resolve the case this way, but now I see we should have come to you in the first place.”

  “You did well enough,” the Oracle said. “But we have more important things to discuss.”

  The ring burned hot on my finger. I focused my attention onto Lily and how angry I was with her. That was a safe thing to think about. That was the only safe thing right now.

  “Times are changing,” the Oracle said. “Our community is growing. There are more Glimmers in this city than there were when you were born. Indeed, there are more Glimmers in this city than there were yesterday.”

  There was nothing to say to that, so I waited. But she waited, too. The silence stretched out until I shifted and said, “My dad says our population is growing.”

  “And how is your father?” the Oracle asked. “He is a fine leader in our community.”

  This hadn’t been the line of questioning I expected. I shrugged.

  “He’s having some trouble at work,” I said.

  The moment the words came out, I regretted them. My dad’s job was a problem because he hadn’t been able to catch the person targeting the H
umdrums. That person was right in front of me. It wasn’t a conversation I wanted to bring up.

  “I’m aware of his difficulties,” she said. “Do you know why he’s having such trouble?”

  “Not really,” I lied. “I just know he’s under a lot of stress.”

  And he took it out on us, and it was all thanks to her. I filed that thought away; I couldn’t follow it through to any kind of conclusion without letting my emotions leak out to where the water rippled in the light of the street lamps.

  “Your father is attempting to protect the Humdrums from Glimmers who wish to see them gone,” the Oracle said. “The Humdrums are being attacked in increasing numbers, and your father wishes to shield them. But it’s a losing battle.”

  “Who wants to see them gone?” I said, hoping her confession might make a difference. “What makes it a losing battle?”

  “I had hoped a faerie of your caliber would go deeper," the Oracle said. “The question, Olivia Feye, is why.”

  “Why what?” I said. There were too many possible questions, and I was pretty sure I’d asked some of them already. “Why is my dad trying to protect them? Or why are they being attacked in the first place?”

  “That’s the one,” the Oracle said. Her voice was warm with approval. It sent prickles down my spine.

  I heard Lily’s footsteps behind me. I didn’t know if she could hear this conversation, but I was almost grateful to her for standing there, keeping me from being alone with the Oracle.

  “There is a storm brewing,” the Oracle continued. “We Glimmers need space to grow and breathe.”

  “So someone’s getting the Humdrums out of the way,” I said.

  The someone felt huge in my mouth, and I wondered if she could see through my feigned ignorance to my fluttering heartbeat.

  “Glimmers are superior,” the Oracle said. “A superior organism’s needs must take precedence. Even you must understand that.”

  It was hard to see her expressions; all I could tell was that she was pale, with dark eyes, and that she stared at me as intensely as I stared back at her.

  “My dad’s mentioned things,” I said. “Hauntings.”

  “They cannot be scared by anything they do not already fear,” the Oracle said. “These attacks on the Humdrums—what are they? Have they been harmed? No. They run from their own fear. Their run from their own legends, their own ghost stories. They fear us, and so they flee.”