by Amy Bearce
Sierra blanched. That would hurt him even more.
Nell seemed to read her expression. “Don’t be a baby,” she snapped, which stiffened Sierra’s spine.
“Come on, Nell, you know how Sierra is about blood,” Corbin murmured.
Sierra mashed her lips together. They’d never let her forget that, would they? They’d all been in class the day Nell came to school two years ago with a bad gash over one eye. She’d been working for Jack by then, and learning how to fight. It wasn’t easy going in the beginning. The stitches she’d put in herself came loose in the middle of their lesson on the requirements for eldership. It certainly livened up the lesson. Blood gushed down Nell’s cheek, pooling all over the desk. Sierra got one look and had to close her eyes and put her head between her knees. Blood was not her friend, no indeed. Luckily, as a keeper, that wasn’t usually an issue.
“You’ll be fine,” Corbin added, holding the faun steady. “You can handle anything, Sierra. You can do this.”
She smiled, despite the nausea in her stomach at the thought of pulling out the arrow. Corbin always believed in her. She nodded and got into place, taking one more deep breath to steady her nerves.
Nell directed them. “Okay, Corbin, keep doing what you’re doing. He may faint when it’s done, so be ready. Sierra, it’s in a good place, as far as arrow wounds go. You have to grab the end of the arrow and yank. If you push it through, the fletching will tear him up. This is going to hurt him as it is. A lot. And it’s going to bleed. A lot.”
Great. With trembling hands, Sierra grabbed hold of the arrow. Sweat made it slippery, so she wiped her hands on her stained pants. Her lips felt numb. He was shivering, the poor thing.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, before yanking the arrow out with a solid, forceful pull.
His shriek echoed through the clearing, and goose bumps marched up and down her arms. Blood poured from the gaping wound. Her stomach twisted, and she turned her face away. Nell’s voice was low and soothing over the sudden ripping of cloth, and when Sierra looked back over, Corbin had already placed the bandage around the faun’s waist. The cloth was strikingly white next to the rich cinnamon brown of the faun’s skin. Her knees felt weak, so she plopped down next to him. The faun slumped over for a long moment, silent. He had passed out. Probably for the best.
“He’ll be okay,” Nell told her.
“I thought he was a deer,” Sierra explained, gesturing to the obvious reason she made the mistake. Her skin felt clammy.
Nell stared at Sierra for a long moment. Then a laugh sputtered through Nell’s teeth. She clamped her lips, trying admirably to hold it together, but Corbin chortled and her laughter spewed out.
“Only you, Sierra!” She leaned over her knees, laughing until she cried.
Sierra sat there stiffly, the wounded faun passed out beside her on Corbin’s legs, unsure what to do.
Nell continued, “First, you attract a fairy and now a mythological creature no one’s seen in years. And you don’t want anything to do with magic!”
The laughter must have awoken the faun, because he stirred and sat up. The others were too busy laughing to do anything, but Sierra ignored them and said, “It’s out now. You’ll be okay.”
She frowned over at Nell and Corbin.
Nell said, “Seriously, how on earth could you miss the whole human torso and head thing?”
Sierra shrugged. She had no idea how she’d missed that. She didn’t appreciate having Nell of all people point out her own foolishness. Not so soon.
The faun ran his hand down Sierra’s arm softly. He offered a gentle smile this time, and patted her arm again, soothingly. It was a friendly touch, not scary at all, and there was something of home there in the scent of rosemary and rain. Her shoulders relaxed, and she squeezed his hand to show her thanks for his offer of support. Her skin looked like snow compared to his toasty brown tone that blended nicely with the trees and with his fur. His collarbone was like a strange necklace around his neck, all points and angles, and his skin hung loosely on his boney arms like a too-large coat.
“We’ll take care of you,” she promised him. She’d take him along with them until he was better healed. The compulsion to do so was too strong to ignore. But none of them could go any farther today.
“We need to take a day to heal,” Sierra announced.
Nell tried to argue, but Corbin sided with Sierra. Between the arrow wound and Nell’s shoulder, one day seemed reasonable. Nell must have been hurting pretty badly because her arguments were weak, and soon she was dozing. Corbin tidied up the camp and made more grains.
The faun closed his eyes and leaned his head against Sierra, right on her shoulder, his weight pressing against her. A strange flutter in her chest reminded her of her fairy queen. As if the thought of her called forth her image, the flickering lights from yesterday roared into her vision. The taste of nectar swelled in her mouth, nearly drowning her. The world turned orange, black, and red. Sierra gasped.
The faun’s head snapped up, concern clear in his eyes. Nell awoke with a start at Sierra’s strangled intake of breath, and Corbin immediately began scoping the clearing.
“Did you see something?” he asked.
Nell narrowed her eyes at Sierra. “What’s going on?”
“The colors are back,” she whispered.
Jagged edges of lightning shot across the clearing, lightning only she saw.
Nell gave Corbin a quick summary of what Sierra shared right before the earthquake, about the strange dreams and hallucinations. There hadn’t been time to update him since the earthquake blew all their plans apart. Nell didn’t mention the accusation made or the threats exchanged at all. Nell looked at Sierra, lifting one eyebrow slightly. She smiled ruefully back and nodded her thanks at Nell’s tactful story-telling skills. Who knew Nell could be so smooth?
Corbin stared at Sierra, stared at the faun, then stared back at Sierra. Of the two of them, she was the strangest. Great.
She continued, “I may pass out again, but the faun still needs help. I’m not able to hold him anymore.”
When Corbin shifted the faun off her shoulder, Sierra shivered when the cold air hit where he had been. The streams of colors receded to ripples, and she caught her breath.
Sierra snorted a tired laugh and rubbed her hand across her forehead. She never washed her face last night, and dirt was still smeared on it. Manic hilarity tickled her throat again, and she dropped her head onto her knees. She concentrated on her breathing and hoped her vision would return to normal by the next day so they could go. They had to find a fairy queen soon, or they’d be out of time.
or dinner, Corbin made a nourishing broth, and the taste of nectar eventually faded from Sierra’s mouth. They had some dried mushrooms left, and he stirred them in with greens and porridge grains. They weren’t the kind Queen liked best, so Sierra didn’t mind using them up. The meal wasn’t tasty, but it was warm, and that was most important.
Sierra felt cold all the way to her bones, and her fingernails were a light shade of blue. The faun seemed utterly unconcerned by the wind whipping by, freezing their noses, but Sierra appreciated the warmth of the soup cup in her hands. The faun drank some, holding Corbin’s cup between wide hands that shook only a little. The faun didn’t try to communicate, not with signs or with writing or speech, but his eyes followed Sierra wherever she went. Maybe he was drawn to her the same way she was drawn to him. Magic.
She sighed.
They only had three bedrolls, so Corbin, being Corbin, offered his bedroll to the faun before Sierra could even wonder what to do. The faun refused, though, and lay down in the grass at the edge of the clearing. Sierra shrugged, imagining that was how he normally slept.
As the campfire died out, Nell squatted on her heels beside Sierra. “You know you can’t take him with us, right?”
“How can we not?” Sierra protested. The thought of leaving him behind felt too wrong to consider. She simply couldn’t.
&nb
sp; “Easy. We say, ‘Got the arrow out of you, sorry about that, good luck now’ and off he goes to frolic in the woods. Sierra, if you want to get back to your sister, you can’t adopt a stray pet!”
Anger flared from Nell’s choice of words.
“He’s not some wild animal, Nell. Look at him! Could you really send him into a winter forest with a bad wound, with human eyes staring back at you as you walk off?” Actually, Nell could, Sierra thought. But she couldn’t.
When Nell didn’t respond, Sierra pressed her point, voice harsh but still a whisper. “It’s not an option. He can’t hunt or gather with that kind of pain. It was my fault. He’s a magical creature, like our fairies. And what if he gets infected?”
The faun tilted his head toward them, and Sierra wondered exactly how good a faun’s hearing was. He was obviously not really asleep.
She continued, “I won’t leave him. We’ll figure out a way to keep him from slowing us down. Deal with it.”
She was too tired for this discussion. She scowled and returned to lie down on her bedroll. She’d figure out a way to find a queen to save her sister and keep her honor, too. She had to.
The next morning, Sierra’s vision was completely normal again, and she could move without falling. She started to call over to the faun to check on him but realized she didn’t have a name for him. Calling him Faun seemed too impersonal in the face of his pain and clear intelligence. But with him unable to tell them his name, assuming he had one, she saw no choice but to give him one herself. She sorted through various possibilities. Suddenly, she had a memory of playing with an imaginary friend when she was little, when Phoebe was still a baby. Sierra had called him Micah, and in her mind, he had brown eyes, brown hair and lived in her forest where she already spent so many hours. The name suited the faun. She smiled.
Nell asked, “What?”
“I have a name for him, if he likes it.”
“Let me guess,” Nell said. “Faun?”
She chuckled, and so did Corbin.
Sierra considered sticking out her tongue but opted for the high road. “I was thinking Micah, actually.”
They looked at her like she had turned into a faun.
“Micah? A faun named Micah?”
Laughter broke loose from them both, though Corbin obviously tried to restrain himself.
Sierra shrugged. Their opinions were irrelevant. She paced over to the faun, who was sitting on the boulder Corbin used last night. The bandage already showed red, making her wince. She knelt beside him. “Is it okay if I call you Micah?”
She held her breath.
Sierra’s reflection was clear in his wide, nearly black eyes, and long lashes curled up from them. The girls in town would have killed for eyes like his. He nodded slowly.
“Micah, then. Nice to meet you.” A smile bloomed unexpectedly across Sierra’s face, followed by one on his.
It was time to get moving, despite the difficulties. Traveling through a thick forest on the fabled Skyclad Mountains with an enforcer, a klutzy scholar, a keeper with strange visions, and a wounded faun would be a challenge.
They picked up where they left off, moving slower than they had been two days before. Nell grumbled at Sierra, irritated that she’d brought a wounded faun, but since Nell couldn’t move quickly anyway thanks to her shoulder, she had no room to complain. It made Sierra anxious to move so slowly, but there wasn’t anything else to do but press forward as best they could.
By mid-afternoon, they reached an area of trees so dense it was hard to tell which direction actually went up the mountain.
“So, which way?” Sierra asked. They could have flipped a coin if they had one left.
Corbin thought for a moment. “I don’t think it matters, as long as it feels like we’re heading higher. If fairies are still around, seems like maybe they’d be as far as possible from humanity.”
Micah snapped around to meet Sierra’s gaze. His mouth didn’t move, but he vibrated with energy. He tilted his head and lifted his eyebrows, like he was asking a question. For the first time, he was really communicating on purpose. Sierra almost slapped her hand on her forehead. Of course, the faun was the one to ask! This was his home, if he’d help.
The others weren’t looking at him as they discussed which direction they’d take. Sierra stepped close to him, though, close enough for his scent to slide around her. Her fingers itched to touch the soft fur again, but she forced them to her side instead.
“We need help. Have you seen fairies around?”
He nodded, and she shouted in excitement. The others gathered around them.
“Will you lead us?” Sierra asked.
Micah spread his hands wide and shook his head.
She hazarded a guess. “You don’t know where they are now?”
He shook his head.
Of course he didn’t know, thought Sierra. That would have been too easy. Disappointed, she sighed and turned, facing what she thought was the incline of the mountain. The ground was getting steeper, and snow stuck in clumps.
“Can you at least tell us which way goes higher up the mountain?” she asked him.
Micah nodded and pointed toward their left, beyond two particularly tall trees. Given that no one else had any better ideas, they decided they might as well go in the direction he suggested.
They settled into a rhythm over the next few days. They wore all their winter layers as they climbed higher and higher: coats, hats, scarves. There were few words, as everyone needed their breath to keep up the hike. Micah helped with meals. He was so gentle that even Nell stopped complaining about him. Corbin assisted Nell when she couldn’t do something one-armed. Sierra helped Micah when he needed to lean on someone. But he was getting stronger quickly, healing faster than Nell.
Finally, they reached a section of the mountains that dead-ended in front of them. They would have to go around the sheer rock face by turning left or right, in one of two different ways up the mountain, but no one knew which one would be best, not even Micah. They didn’t have time to wander aimlessly. They needed to know which direction to turn. The trees reached so high into the sky that they crowded out even the sun.
Frustration ate at Sierra. She stepped away from the others for a moment, needing a break from their debating. She closed her eyes and tried to think which would be the best choice. She remembered Queen, her golden glow, and wished more than anything to see her at that moment.
Which way? This way or that?
As Sierra turned to her right to examine one of the possible choices, the sound of dry rustling, like a thousand wings in flight, crashed over her. The taste of nectar filled her mouth, sweet honey and cinnamon. Stunned, she paused for a long moment. Was this the next step in her hallucinations? Was she getting worse? When nothing else happened, she examined the other way around the rock. The sounds and tastes faded to nothing. Intrigued, she faced right again, and once more the fluttering of wings filled her awareness, and sweetness flooded across her tongue. Was she losing her mind?
Then the world flickered in a rainbow of colors; an image floated superimposed over the mountain before her. It was a cave entrance, with gilded lilies blooming on either side of its black mouth. Green grass grew around the cave like an island, surrounded by thick snow on the ground. Impossible. An urgent need pressed against her heart. She needed to be at that place. The snow crunched under her boots in her mind as she stepped into the cave…
Her vision stopped flashing, leaving her in the here and now, aching with a strange sadness. Her lips still tasted of nectar. She realized she was sitting with her head between her knees, her braid hanging over one shoulder, the end of her hair brushing the ground. Her skin felt fevered. Her scarf and hat lay on the forest floor, and Corbin knelt beside her, fanning her rapidly with his hat, brow creased with concern. She didn’t even remember sitting down. Micah was next to her, eyes wider than ever. When Sierra looked up at him, he pointed to the back of his neck and then at her, the question plain on his face
.
“Yeah, I’m a fairy keeper.”
His brow furrowed, and he took two steps back, limping from his injury. His wide-eyed expression was hard to decipher, but it could have been horror, or perhaps disgust. Shock was a certainty.
An inexplicable sadness rose in her at his rejection. She’d tried to help him, and now, well, she guessed if she were a magical creature, she’d be afraid of anyone who somehow harnessed magic too. He couldn’t know about the elixirs, though, could he? Tiredness tugged at her. Not only the kind of exhaustion that needed a good eight hours of sleep, either.
She was tired of worrying about her sister, tired of seeking a fairy she didn’t want, tired of Corbin and Nell. The one thing Sierra wasn’t tired of yet was this new, interesting person-creature, but he acted horrified by her. She was more of a beast to him than he was to her. Maybe she was a monster for what she did, stealing from her own fairies. Jack certainly was, and she was his daughter, after all. Keepers should be protecting fairies from people like Jack, not working for them. She laid her head on her knees, too tired to move. She needed to go to that cave, but she didn’t know where it was, and right then, her heart was so heavy it tied her feet to the ground.
A long moment passed in silence. Corbin clamored to his feet and handed Sierra her scarf and hat, squeezing her hand in silent support as he did so. Micah unexpectedly sat beside her, breathing softly, but she couldn’t bring herself to look at him and possibly see revulsion on his face.
Corbin and Nell waited without a word. A lark sang somewhere in the trees far above them. The wind blew against Sierra’s naked neck, colder than ever against her skin, except on her mark, which simmered like it was bathed in summer sun. Standing felt beyond her.
Tentative fingers touched the top of Sierra’s hair, a caress. Micah slid his hand down her hair, stopping before the keeper mark. When he lightly touched her mark, warmth flowed along her spine. He brushed his hand on her hair again, reminding Sierra of the way Phoebe would comfort herself by petting Sierra’s hair. She squeezed her eyes closed and discreetly pinched her leg to bring herself back to the present. No time to cry over her sister, or over a faun who found her frightening but showed kindness anyway, or over wild visions that seemed absolutely insane. She tried to relax and wondered what those visions could mean.