by Amy Bearce
Sierra raised her eyebrows, wondering when they had discussed something like that. Maybe they had seen more of each other than she knew. But sunlight was disappearing every minute and, in the long run, it didn’t matter. What mattered was getting to Phoebe.
“Then let’s get going,” Sierra said, and they left the garden behind.
ierra, Corbin, and Nell settled into a comfortable pace. Corbin and Sierra argued about the best direction, best plan, best bets to find a wild fairy if they couldn’t trace their own. Best friends could argue like that, knowing they were still going to be friends later.
Corbin knew a man named Keeper Hannon, who was quite possibly the oldest fairy keeper alive. He lived two ports away, in the opposite direction of Bentwood’s town, so they opted to go there first. Corbin had interviewed Keeper Hannon many years before. After realizing a keeper mark meant forever being tied to the fairies, Corbin wanted to know what to expect. Luckily for him, he liked what fate had decided for him. Keeper Hannon was his mentor. Corbin was Sierra’s, and he swore if anyone knew what was going on, Hannon would.
Despite Sierra’s impatience, she knew they’d burn out if they ran the whole way. They were all in shape, but they weren’t elixir runners, and Corbin was definitely not naturally athletic. He slipped and slid along rocks, his long arms waving wildly to keep his balance now and then, but managed not to fall. One time last year, he’d even fallen into his own hatch, but his fairies loved him too much to attack him. If Sierra had done that, they’d have killed her for sure.
“We’re going to get Phoebe, okay, little sister?” Corbin said, using his pet name for Sierra. She smiled at the old nickname. He hadn’t used it in a while.
Nell was behind them, so Sierra could pretend she wasn’t there.
“Thanks, Corbin,” she replied, voice soft. “We’ve got to, haven’t we?” She looked up at her oldest friend, letting her eyes reflect her fear in front of the one person who would never judge her for it.
He put his hand on her shoulder. “I promise. We’ll do everything we can to save her, no matter what happens with our queens.”
Her eyes stung. Then Nell noisily cleared her throat behind them, drawing Sierra back to the realities of their situation. She wouldn’t give Nell the satisfaction of seeing her tear up. Instead, Sierra changed the topic and used the time to interrogate Corbin about fairies. Nell listened but said little, remaining slightly behind them. Her gaze on Sierra’s back was like a weight, but there was nothing to do about it.
“So, has anything like this ever happened before?” Sierra asked.
He shook his head. “Other than a queen’s death from old age when there isn’t a new queen to take over, I’ve never heard of a whole hatch dying at once. The queens would never leave the little ones unless there was no other option.”
She jumped at the possible explanation. “So maybe our queens died from old age? I have no idea how old Queen is… was… whatever.”
Nell snorted behind her.
Sierra stopped and spun. “What?”
“Queen? That’s your name for your queen fairy? Original.” Nell snickered.
Sierra glared, ready to let loose a scathing retort. But then someone else laughed, only this laughter didn’t sound mean. It was a giggle, not a snicker. And it came from Corbin.
She turned slowly. How could her most trusted friend side with that… that… Nell?
His shoulders shook, despite his obvious attempts to stand still and keep a serious expression. His lips kept sliding up in a grin before he managed to yank them back to a straight line. She could tell he was really trying not to laugh, but he was failing miserably. Sierra’s mouth opened, and she was, for once, completely lost for words. He looked over her head―not hard to do―and must have met Nell’s eyes. Then he burst into a shout of laughter and ran up along the path, his guffaws chasing him as he tried to avoid laughing at Sierra to her face.
Sierra raised her chin, deciding to completely ignore the older girl. She set off walking again, closing the distance between them and Corbin, who leaned on the tree up ahead, still laughing. She sighed. It was impossible to be mad at him. It was like trying to be mad at Phoebe, who, Sierra admitted, also found her choice of name for Queen amusing.
Nell’s gleeful smirk floated in Sierra’s mind. Nell, though, Sierra could be mad at, no problem. Sierra didn’t even look at her as they fell in step again.
“You’ve got to admit, it’s uninspired,” Nell pointed out, with a matter-of-fact tone.
“Maybe, but it’s also impersonal, and that’s the point,” Sierra answered as matter-of-factly back.
“You really hate her that much?”
Sierra paused a moment. She thought of her queen, the way she could fit in Sierra’s cupped hands. Queen’s body was dainty, with elongated arms and legs and a short little tail with an attached stinger. Almost insect-like, but not quite. Her limbs were incredibly elegant, seeming almost jointless the way they could move so gracefully. Long, silky golden hair draped around her body like a dress and her wings hung down her back. Glowing in a golden shimmer, her fairy queen had defined beauty. There was a pang in her heart. Sierra ruthlessly shoved the unwelcome emotion into a deep, dark corner.
“I don’t hate her. I hate my job. I hate having no choice about it. There’s a difference.”
The only noise after that came from the crunch of their footsteps. They reached Corbin, who had gained control of himself, only his upturned lips showing his continued mirth. That boy could always find something to laugh about.
He tugged on Sierra’s braid, offering a silent apology with that long-time habit, and picked up the conversation like there had never been a break. “No, I don’t think both of our fairies happened to get old enough to die at the same time. Sure, that would explain why the rest of the hatch was dead, but where are the queens? They don’t disappear when they die. They’d have been there. Plus, old fairy queens’ hatches produce significantly less nectar over time. Has your production dropped? Mine has, but not too badly.”
Sierra nodded and added, “Only a little, though. Not enough to hint at illness.”
She didn’t work hard at getting them to produce more, honestly. Jack took all the extra and pumped it into his business, anyway, so it wasn’t like she or her queen would have anything to show for it.
“How old is your queen, anyway?” Sierra asked him.
He glanced at her, eyebrows high. She couldn’t remember the last time she asked a question about his fairy. She tried to not think much about her job now that she had the skills she needed. Her unhappiness as a keeper was the only source of tension between them, given how much he loved being one.
“I’m not sure, but I don’t think very old. It’s only a feeling I have, though.”
Corbin’s queen found him when he was eight and watching clouds by himself in the meadow that would become their hatch grounds. He had told Sierra that bonding to his fairy was the most amazing moment of his life. “To know this magical creature wanted to be near me, always, and share her life with me… Oh, Sierra, I don’t know how it doesn’t make you so happy to be a keeper!”
Maybe it was because her fairy didn’t come for her until she was ten. For years before then, Jack tried to force Sierra to bond with any fairy queen, but it was rare for a queen to fly through the area. He sent her out for days anyway, refusing to let her back in the house until she could show him a queen, tame to her hand. He was ready for her to earn her place, to earn him money. He already wanted the free nectar for elixir-making, but Sierra didn’t know that then. She thought he wanted the glory of having a fairy keeper in the family, of continuing the family line. But that wouldn’t happen until the right queen showed up and stuck around. She was even relieved the day the queen arrived.
Sierra had been out feeding Sam some burnt bread pudding. She was supposed to throw it away, but she knew Sam had a special fondness for human treats. She had already been slapped once for burning the pudding. She figured if s
he got caught, what did a second slap matter? Then she saw the glow to her left. Her heart squeezed in her chest, and her breath simply stopped. Heat flowed through her, slowly and gently, like melted chocolate pouring through her body, rising in her like floodwaters overflowing.
She walked toward the glow, out of Sam’s paddock. It was a miracle she remembered to shut and lock his gate. A pulse of light fluttered in the air. The light moved into the forest, always a few feet ahead of her, leading her forward. In the darkness of twilight, she couldn’t clearly see the fairy’s size, but she knew she was a queen. Heavy warmth slid up and down her spine, centering at her keeper’s mark. This was her queen. She was calling. Sierra didn’t notice the grass at her feet or the branches pulling at her hair as she walked deeper into the forest. The scents of cinnamon and honey filled her senses and gave her such peace. She held out her hand, palm open. The queen landed in Sierra’s palm and looked her right in the eyes.
That was the moment a scorching heat blasted through her, searing through her keeper mark and rocking her on her heels. The sound of a thousand wings beating filled her mind for a single second that felt like an eternity. The fairy glowed incandescent, leaving Sierra’s eyes burning but unable to close. Then the whole earth seemed to shake its head and return to normal. Thrilled to her toes, she ran home to tell Jack and Phoebe. Sierra thought bonding to her queen would somehow make her life better. She didn’t know why; she just did. Maybe she could be as happy as Corbin always was. She allowed herself to hope. But instead, things got worse.
She didn’t realize what Jack’s plans really were until he started ordering her to take too much of the nectar too often. She thought maybe he was selling it to the healers, like other keeper families did. When she realized he was using a fairy’s magic for his own gain, she tried to refuse, but no one refused Jack for long. Now she was tied to Jack’s elixir trade in a permanent way, and he used her and her queen to make all those people addicted to his warped elixir, Flight.
The thought made Sierra’s shoulders hunch.
“Hey, what’s going on in there?” Corbin tapped the side of her head and grinned down at her.
Sierra smiled back and relaxed her shoulders. “I was remembering when Queen first came.”
He nodded, “I remember, too. You were so excited at first.” Sadness shadowed his eyes. “I wish things were easier for you, Sierra, I really do.”
A lump gathered in her throat. She swallowed hard and cleared her throat. She couldn’t stand to cry, not now.
Luckily, Corbin noticed her tension and nudged her shoulder with a smile. He always knew how to lift her mood. “Hey, do you remember when our queens first met? When the bottleflowers first started blooming in my garden? They played together all day, like romping puppies playing chase.”
“Yeah, and we chased them all the way to the bank, watching them like they were kites. Then we tripped and landed in the river.”
Corbin smiled. “Phoebe laughed for days at the river moss still stuck in your hair.”
He chuckled and pretended as if he were checking for moss in her hair.
Sierra rolled her eyes, swatting his hand away, but she couldn’t restrain her own smile. “She still teases me about that.”
Nell stomped by them and called out, “Wasting daylight.”
Corbin gazed after her and because Sierra happened to be so close, she saw the way his eyes ran up and down Nell’s figure. Then his gaze flicked back to Sierra, and he flushed. He spent an achingly awkward moment pretending to fix a strap on his pack before racing after their quickly disappearing companion.
Sierra was so shocked she actually couldn’t move for a moment. Her mind spun with the realization that Corbin thought Nell was attractive. Sierra supposed she should have seen this coming, but she was completely floored. Many of the men in her father’s alchemy crew looked at Nell like that, as something to be desired. But Corbin? And Nell? They couldn’t be more different.
An utterly ridiculous jealousy welled up inside her. The feeling tore through her like wild horses stampeding. It wasn’t that she wanted Corbin to look at her like he had looked at Nell. Sierra and Corbin were like brother and sister. She didn’t see him like that. But she didn’t like him liking Nell. She wasn’t good enough for him. Sierra clenched her jaw, wondering if Nell would steal her best friend, with her long blonde locks and tanned muscles. In that moment, she loathed Nell more than ever before―and that was saying something.
Of course, at the age of fifteen, Corbin was certainly old enough to court a girl, but she desperately didn’t want him to pick the one girl on Aluvia who hated her. He wouldn’t want to be Sierra’s friend if he became Nell’s sweetheart. The thought hovered like the dark clouds in the sky, and Sierra sullenly pushed the worry aside as best she could. Nothing she could do about it. She was here for Phoebe, not to stop Corbin from making a huge mistake.
Sierra kicked a rock as she went and sidled up beside them without saying a word. A faint thought floated through her head for a moment, like smoke from a distant campfire. Maybe one day, someone, somewhere would look at her and want her like that… one day… if she ever got out of this life… but she shook her head even harder. That wasn’t something she would probably ever have.
They hiked over paths of clay the color of old metal, nearly black. There was little discussion now. Sierra pushed away her uncomfortable feelings about Corbin’s natural reaction to a pretty girl. That was all it was, no doubt. He was only human. She was almost able to convince herself it was that simple.
As they walked, Nell and Corbin chatted about the upcoming village, discussing options of where to eat, where to stay. If he made Nell laugh now and then in the course of their conversation, he was surely just being his usual charming self, nothing more. Sierra ignored them and kept her eyes on the road.
The smell of ocean surf and dead fish floated on the breeze as they neared Port Mabon, the nearest port after their own. There was no fairy keeper here, so they paused only long enough to eat.
Nell said, “I know a good place.”
Ten minutes later, she led them to a tavern on the water’s edge, a two-story wooden building that leaned over the water as if looking for a fish to catch. Sierra hoped no earthquake hit while they were here. The rickety tavern, The Lost Dog, looked like it might tip straight into the water. She didn’t think any merfolk lived around these tiny docks to save them from drowning, either.
When they entered The Lost Dog, Sierra’s eyes took a minute to adjust to the darkness within. Lanterns hung from the ceiling, but they were set to lower levels than were normally found at reputable locations. A belated thought turned Sierra’s stomach. Nell was murmuring something to the barkeep, and Sierra wanted to slap her forehead. Jack never had only one purpose. She took a careful sniff, and yes, it was there: the sickly sweet fermenting fruit scent of the elixir known as Flight.
People had always used fairy nectar to escape life a little bit. Taken straight from the hatch, people could get some interesting dreams and become sleepy, maybe. Not keepers―they seemed to be mostly immune to natural nectar―but most people. Looser, more free with their words, perhaps. But about ten years ago, Jack figured out how to boil down its essence and mix it with chemicals until a single drop taken on the tongue was enough to cause hallucinations, nightmares, or dreams in anyone. Some users became completely relaxed; others felt blissful and invincible until the dose wore off. People loved it. They always wanted more, a fast way to escape their dreary lives. Once Jack had a reliable source of nectar through Sierra, he ramped up his production and began spreading his reach. This bar was a Flight den, an unofficial safe place for those who wanted to spend their hours dreaming and sleeping in a back room somewhere.
Nell glanced around in a way that made Sierra raise her eyebrows. Then Nell exchanged a simple brown-wrapped package for some coins. Sierra threw down her bag, disgusted.
“That’s it. Jack’s made me run Flight after all.” She pushed past Corbin and sn
apped at Nell, “How much more Flight’s in that pack?”
Corbin figured out what was going on and leaned his head down to Sierra to whisper, “Can we get arrested? We didn’t do anything.”
His gaze shifted from Sierra to the barkeep.
She shook her head. “It’s illegal, but since most village elders enjoy it, too, everyone pretends they don’t see a thing when Jack and his crew are in town.”
What she didn’t say out loud was that frequent use left most people really compliant. For village elders, a nicely numb, complacent village meant little trouble for them. They had many reasons to turn a blind eye.
Sierra got in Nell’s face. “We can’t stay here. You didn’t tell me this was a den.”
Nell leaned down a little to meet her nose to nose. The white flecks in Nell’s pale blue eyes made them look like winter. “This is business, Sierra. You can hate your father’s life all you want, but I’m working a job here and you will not mess it up.”
With each word, Nell jabbed her in the shoulder. Sierra clenched her fists until crescent marks cut into her palm.
She traced the bruise along her jaw. “Is this your idea of a good boss, then?”
Nell retorted with a harsh voice too low for anyone else in the tavern to hear, “You have no idea what you’re talking about. You didn’t lose your father when you were a kid.”
How could she say that?
“Really? My mother died when Phoebe was born,” Sierra spit out, inching closer to the bigger girl. “And my father is worse than useless: he’s dangerous.”
Corbin slid between the girls. “Ladies, stop. We need to eat and calm down.”
He put a hand on each of their shoulders. Sierra took a step back, out of reach. Nell appeared frozen to the ground.
Sierra stalked to a seat as close to the door as possible. The fumes from the elixir were fainter this far away from whatever room they were using, but she could smell it, grossly sweet like peaches gone rotten. Nell ordered for them and plopped down on the oak bench across from Sierra, wordless. Nell stared over Sierra’s head like she didn’t exist. Fine. She was glad Nell wasn’t right beside her.