Glimmers of Scales

by Emma Savant

  “I’m ready,” she announced.

  I didn’t even have time to yell before the black curtain parted. Instead of revealing the Oracle’s face, it opened onto a long dark tunnel that disappeared into the heart of the Fountain.

  I couldn’t move quickly enough. Before I could force my feet to move, or even force my mind to realize what was happening, Imogen had stepped into the pool. She turned to look over her shoulder. Our eyes met for a long, silent second. Her blush-blond hair glinted in the soft reaches of the streetlamp and her eyes flashed their reflection.

  And then she was gone.

  I ran forward, hand outstretched, as the water closed over her with a roar.

  The scream that hadn’t been able to claw its way up my throat finally erupted into the night. I threw myself into the Fountain and clawed at the place she’d disappeared. Solid stone met my hand behind the icy curtain.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  I didn’t know how long it was before I felt Lucas’ arms pulling me back. He wrapped his arms firmly around my shoulders, and I let him steer me away from the rush of water and back over the lip of the pool.

  I was soaked through. My body shivered like it was strapped to a jackhammer, but I wasn’t cold. I couldn’t feel anything but a deep panic that felt like it was here to stay, like one long scream that went on forever.

  “She’s gone,” I said. “Lucas, she’s gone.”

  The Fountain roared to life with another enormous spray of white water.

  “Whoa!” Lucas shouted.

  I heard his feet stumble backward on the pavement, but I held my ground. The Oracle’s face appeared as the white water fell into the pools with an echoing splash.

  I marched toward her.

  “Where is she?” I demanded.

  “Imogen is safe with me,” she said.

  Her voice was too calm. Fury rose up, prickling the hair on my arms and making the hair on my head feel as though it were about to catch fire.

  “Where is she?” I repeated, as though the almighty Oracle was too stupid to understand the first time.

  I had spent my whole life fearing and respecting this being. Now, I wanted to reach through the water again and hit her shimmering pale face until it cracked like porcelain.

  I felt my hands knot into fists. “Why did you tell her?”

  The Oracle’s face didn’t move, but it seemed to take on a sinister expression, not something I could see but instead an energy radiating from the Fountain and into my bones.

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “That is none of your business,” I said, and while part of me couldn’t believe my audacity, the other part of me wanted to take the world’s largest flame torch to the Fountain until it disappeared and left her with nowhere to go and nothing to hide behind.

  Too late, I remembered the ring on my finger. Amani had seen it all. And, I realized, I didn’t care. This wasn’t Amani’s business, either.

  “What did you do to her?” I said.

  “Imogen has declared her allegiance to me,” the Oracle said. “You will see her again. In the meantime, I advise you to appreciate your friend’s wisdom and choose your side accordingly. I can change your world, Olivia Feye. I can give you Imogen back. I can make Lucas love you. These things are child’s play for the people who are wise enough to follow me.”

  I opened my mouth to shout at her, but her voice cut into my head.

  “We will speak again.”

  And then her face was gone, and the looming sense of dread emanating from the Fountain was gone, and the streetlights seemed brighter, and Lucas was breathing hard behind me.

  I waited, half-expecting her to erupt again with some new and thrilling way to ruin my life. A scream rose up in my throat. I choked it back and waited.

  The park stayed still. A car drove past the fountain.

  A long silence hung between us, snaking through the tree branches and flooding the ground on which we stood. I couldn’t speak. Lucas couldn’t speak, but a blend of fear and confusion slipped up and down his veins with his blood. Every heartbeat held the questions what and why. I felt every last one of his breaths, and I stared hard at the nearest streetlamp to focus my energy on it and push him out.

  Before I could manage it, he spoke. “What just happened?”

  There was no way to explain. I couldn’t even begin.

  And then other people crept into my awareness, an excited presence and a vaguely familiar one I couldn’t quite place.

  Lily skipped around the edge of the Fountain, her footsteps as light as if she was dancing. She had cut through the park, and she dragged Evan along by the hand. He followed as though he wasn’t even aware he was doing it.

  I hadn’t gotten much of an impression from him when we’d first met, and I didn’t get much of an impression now. The enchantment that dripped from him, though, was strong enough to knock me over. His glazed eyes had trouble focusing on me, and he couldn’t seem to tell exactly where his feet were.

  “Faerie godmother!” Lily cried.

  The pure glee in her voice made my stomach twist in knots. She ran toward me, Evan jogging awkwardly behind. She let go of his hand to throw her arms around my neck.

  “We did it,” she whispered into my ear. “Thank you!”

  I pulled her off me, my eyes searching hers.

  “Did what?” I demanded.

  “Evan and I are together!” she said, as though this was the greatest announcement anyone had ever made. “We’re in love!”

  “I’m in love with her,” Evan repeated, looking too seriously at me.

  “You’re in love with your fiancée,” I said firmly.

  “I’m in love with Lily,” he said.

  My hands flew to my temples. I didn’t have enough hands to hold myself together. My seams were unraveling.

  Lily’s face glowed. My stomach turned over.

  “The Oracle granted my wish!” she said. “She knew it was all right for all my dreams to come true! And now they have!”

  “What is happening?” Lucas said. We all ignored him, me because I could only handle one crisis at a time, Lily because she was a self-centered monster, and Evan because he was clearly stoned out of his mind by some enchantment.

  “After we spoke, she appeared to me in the park,” Lily said. “And oh, faerie godmother, she’s lovely, and she wants me to be so happy! She wants Evan and me to get married, and he can take photographs and I can paint and sculpt and together we’ll be the most perfect couple! So we made a bargain.”

  I grabbed onto her arm. It wasn’t quite enough to keep me steady.

  “I know,” I said. “I was there. She granted your wish.”

  “She’s done so much more than that,” Lily said.

  An undercurrent of warmth swept through her voice, an almost religious fervor that made nerves prickle up my spine.

  “She knew one wish wouldn’t be enough to guarantee a lifetime of love,” she said. “And she wants Evan and me to be in love forever. But a spell like that needs such incredible magic. So I promised to give her my voice—my allegiance and support for when she tries to save the Glimmering world, and the allegiance of all the mermaids I can convince—and in return, she wove an enchantment that binds him to me forever!”

  “I love her,” Evan said.

  I wanted to slap him awake. He’d at least been pleasant and alive when we’d met. The man in front of me was a glassy-eyed puppet. And Lily didn’t even notice.

  “You couldn’t make him love me, but she did, and oh, faerie godmother, we’re going to be so happy!” she said. “Thank you for telling me about her!”

  How was it possible for so many things to go wrong so quickly? I’d come here to alert Queen Amani to a potential hot tip. I hadn’t meant for the world to fall apart.

  I needed to be alone.

  “You should probably go have your happily ever after,” I said.

  I couldn’t believe how flat my voice sounded. I couldn’t believe I managed to ha
ve a voice at all.

  “We could get champagne,” Evan said, way more earnestly than any beverage could justify.

  “Oh, darling!” Lily cried.

  She tried to hug me again, but I stopped her.

  “Go,” I said. “Now.”

  She was too excited to notice that her arms hadn’t managed to fling around my neck.

  “Thank you, faerie godmother!” she said.

  She turned to Evan and kissed him, the kind of deep, intense kiss that should have meant the movie ended well.

  They ran off into the night together, Lily laughing and Evan repeating “I love you! You’re beautiful! I love you!” over and over, like an obnoxious talking doll that only knew two phrases.

  I’d been holding my breath without realizing it. I let the air escape on a long, tired sigh that wanted to take my whole body with it. I wanted to crumple to a heap on the ground and pass out for a hundred years like a good old-fashioned Sleeping Beauty.

  Instead, I turned to Lucas. His shoulders and legs were tense, ready to run.

  How was I supposed to break this kind of news to a Humdrum? I’d spent my whole life wishing I was one of them. I’d never once thought about what I would say if I ever had to tell one of them about us.

  In the end, I didn’t have to. He ran a hand across his lips and chin as though smoothing an imaginary beard and blurted, “You’re magic.”

  Two words, I thought, with a surprised part of my brain that didn’t seem to realize how much crap had just happened. Two words covered it.

  I nodded, keeping a close eye on his face. He breathed in and out, slowly, as though worried he’d startle himself if he wasn’t careful.

  “That fountain has a… sorceress in it.”

  “A faerie,” I said.

  “Right,” he said. “And you’re—”

  “A faerie.”

  “You’re both faeries.”

  “That would be correct,” I said.

  “That would be hard to digest,” he said.

  “That would be why I never mentioned it,” I said.

  We stared at each other for another long moment.

  My skin tingled. The only thing I wanted was to sit down somewhere far away from here, but I couldn’t collect the pieces of my mind enough to figure out how to make it happen.

  “And you like me,” he said. “You and Imogen fought about it.”

  “I liked you,” I corrected. “And yes. We’re both idiots. She’s a bigger idiot,” I added, jerking my head toward the Fountain, which rippled innocently.

  “Who is that thing?” he said. “That… faerie?”

  “That’s the Oracle,” I said. “You’re not supposed to be able to see her, but I guess she decided she just needed to complicate my life. Wouldn’t be the first time.”

  I wanted to knock myself upside the head for coming here tonight. How had I thought that was a good idea? I’d spent my whole life fearing and honoring the Oracle. How had I underestimated her here, at last, when it finally mattered? How had Amani been crazy enough to think I could handle this?

  “And she’s evil?” he said.

  “How’d you figure that one out?” I said.

  The breeze prickled my skin into goosebumps, or maybe it was fear at saying something like that so close to the Fountain.

  I had to get to Amani.

  I felt for the silver ring. It was hot to the touch; I hoped that meant she was still watching.

  I walked away toward the road, gesturing Lucas to follow me. I didn’t look back.

  Not until the now-familiar roar of spray hit my ears. I turned around to see the Fountain erupting back to life.

  My blood stopped cold in my veins. Her eyes bored into me.

  “And they lived happily ever after,” she said.

  Her voice sliced through my mind and sent pain reeling in spirals through my head and down my neck. She laughed, a giddy, manic sound, and then the spray of water fell and crashed to the pool with the weight of a thousand gold coins.

  The coins poured from the Fountain and littered the rippling curtain with flashes of yellow. They filled the pool, cold metal pressing against cold metal until they looked like hundreds of tiny goldfishes struggling for room. Lucas’ eyes were huge. I grabbed his arm.

  “Run,” I said.

  For the first time that day, someone was smart enough to listen to me.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The next morning was a morning like any other.

  It shouldn’t have been.

  The world should have ended. It should still be a darkened expanse filled with the clinking of gold coins. Instead, the sun shone out over trees whose leaves were just beginning to change. The ring on my finger stayed cool and quiet, though Amani’s voice still echoed in my head: Behave as though it’s life as usual. I’ll come find you soon. Daniel and I had ignored each other over breakfast like always, and my classes had been quiet and uneventful, though I didn’t remember any of them five minutes after.

  I caught Lucas’ eye in the hallway between Language Arts and U.S. History. He looked as distracted as I was, but we didn’t get a chance to talk, and part of me was glad.

  I couldn’t stop the roaring of the Fountain in my ears.

  When I got to work, the Oracle’s Fountain stood quiet and bubbling, as it had every day since I’d begun working at Wishes Fulfilled. I gave it a wide berth.

  On the top floor, my feet plodded down the too-thick runner carpet in the hall. I hovered just outside the doors of Wishes Fulfilled, unable to force myself in.

  How was I supposed to justify what had happened to Lorinda? To Tabitha? To my parents, when, Titania forbid, they found out? I suddenly didn’t have a client. And Lorinda always knew everything. She’d know I was somehow involved in the life-altering spell that had made Evan lose his mind, and worse, she’d know I was involved in a Humdrum being exposed to our world.

  She caught sight of me in the open doorway and walked toward me in a pale pink suit.

  “Olivia!” she boomed.

  I cringed, waiting. But then she smiled, and her smile was huge.

  How could anyone smile on a day like this? I couldn’t think straight.

  I held stiff and still while she squeezed my shoulders, her professional distance forbidding a hug but the excitement on her face making it impossible for her to stay away.

  “Congratulations!” she said. “We are so proud of you!”

  I let myself be patted on the back while my mind reeled.

  Nothing made sense. I wished she’d stop talking so I could check my ring and see if Amani wanted to talk yet.

  “Really well done, Olivia,” Tabitha said, coming up behind Lorinda. She wore a little black dress covered in a slouchy cream shawl, looking as always like an elegant witch instead of pastel Lorinda’s second-in-command. “I know that was a challenge for you, but you did what needed to be done. Good job.”

  I looked from one approving face to another. “What?” I said.

  “Your case,” Lorinda said. “The Oracle said you were unable to collect your gold yourself, so she had it delivered to the company account this morning. I transferred your portion to your bank.”

  “My what?” I repeated.

  “Your bank,” Lorinda said. She chuckled, as though my dimwittedness was delightful. “You’ll find a healthy bonus there. The Oracle expressed her gratitude for your innovative thinking and felt you deserved a financial reward. I called your father to congratulate him and to find out if you were with Pacific Lunary Credit Union or Magpie Bank. We really need to get your direct deposit set up.”

  “You called my dad.” I was a parrot, repeating words without having a clue what they meant.

  She clapped a hand on my arm.

  “I’m so sorry about that, dear. I assumed you’d told him already,” she said. “He didn’t have a clue what I was talking about, but I know he must be so proud of you!”

  “I’m sure he is,” I said. I blinked at her. “Wait. I thought
you didn’t want… that… to happen. Because of King Pacifica.”

  Tabitha edged in, her gentle voice a relief after Lorinda’s.

  “We think you worked it out brilliantly,” she said. “The alliance you proposed between the Oracle and King Pacifica was accepted. It was a risky move, but I think you satisfied the Oracle and Neptune. I don’t know why we didn’t think of it sooner. Him stationing his sea nymphs in her fountains, her monitoring the land and protecting the tributaries that lead to the river—it’s the perfect solution.”

  “And true love still gets to win in the end!” Lorinda said.

  An ache crept up my jaw and into my head. Lorinda’s emotions began to press in on me, an almost maternal pride that felt as suffocating as her hand on my shoulder.

  I tolerated their congratulations for a few more minutes, until finally, the giant conch shell that served as Lorinda’s Glimmering phone started blowing like a foghorn from her office. She bustled off.

  Tabitha had been watching me a little too closely. She glanced to the copy machine, where Aster, one of the Junior Godmothers, was visibly eavesdropping.

  “You okay?” she said.

  I shrugged. “Sure.”

  “It must have been a busy week. Why don’t you go find something really busy-looking to do in your cubicle?” she said. She nodded toward Lorinda’s office. “She’ll be a minute.”

  She didn’t need to tell me twice.

  I pulled up my bank account online. After Elle’s case, I’d finally moved my money from a coin jar in my bedroom to Magpie Bank, and now I scanned my account for the latest transactions. I refreshed the page, convinced the number there was wrong.

  The money was listed in gold coins. I wasn’t sure exactly what the exchange rate to US dollars was these days, but the rough estimate in my head screamed loud and clear that I had enough to pay for college flat-out here if I kept myself on a budget. I stared at the deposit line, blinking and waiting for the numbers to fade away, or for a digit to drop off the end. But nothing on the screen moved except the flashing Pythoness Apothecary: “Bewitching” supplies since 1937! banner ad at the top of the page.