The Wingsnatchers

by Sarah Jean Horwitz

  “Now. About what you said.”

  “I am sorry,” said Carmer. “It wasn’t your fault we got kicked out of the Symposium. Your help was the only reason we got so far in the first place.”

  “You know it,” agreed Grit, crossing her arms. She sighed. “And I suppose I’m sorry, too. I shouldn’t have jumped down your throat about . . . you trying to help me. You’re the only human who knows or cares what the Mechanist is really up to, Carmer. I could . . . we could really use your help.” Grit looked down at her feet.

  “Of course, Grit,” said Carmer. “But I don’t know how much use I’ll be.”

  “Oh, I think you’ll be quite useful,” insisted Grit, looking impish. “But we’re all going to have to work together on this one.”

  “All? You mean with the other faeries?”

  Grit nodded and vaulted onto the brim of Carmer’s hat. She looked nervous and a little green, even compared to Bressel.

  “Carmer, I think it’s time you met my mother.”

  17.

  MEET THE PARENTS

  The walk to the Great Willow was much less eventful than the journey up Widdershinner’s Hill, for which Carmer was grateful. The path seemed to know where they wanted to go and adjusted itself accordingly every few yards or so. Grit sat with her feet dangling off the brim of Carmer’s hat and filled him in on the details of all she’d observed at the Hyperiopower installation. Bressel trailed nervously behind them, darting this way and that.

  The spruces and pines around them soon gave way to a grove of beeches, silvery trunks shining in the moonlight.

  “We’re here,” said Grit, and Carmer stopped. Aside from a few leaves rustling in the breeze, Carmer could neither see nor hear any evidence of faeries.

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  Grit thumped her fist against his hat.

  “Ow, okay!”

  “Look,” she said. “Bressel, a little help?”

  “I still don’t think this is a good idea,” complained the green faerie, but flew closer all the same. She hovered inches from Carmer’s nose, beating her wings faster and faster, until a golden, shimmering powder fell from them and was carried on the breeze right into Carmer’s face.

  “What the—” He sneezed, and Bressel flew out of reach with a little shriek. Carmer rubbed his eyes and blinked.

  Standing quite incongruously in the middle of the grove was a sprawling weeping willow that most certainly had not been there moments before—or, at least, not to Carmer’s human eyes. He still didn’t see any faeries, but it seemed to him that the rustling of the leaves had gotten louder, and if he listened hard enough, he could hear a chorus of whispers traveling back and forth all around them.

  “It’s all right, everyone!” Grit called. She stood up on his hat. “You can come out now! This is Carmer, and I promise, you have nothing to fear from him. He saved my life—more than once—and he’s going to try and save all of us. The Mecha — the Wingsnatchers took his family from him, just like they’ve taken ours. Please at least listen to what he has to say.”

  “What have I got to say?” whispered Carmer nervously.

  “Relax, we’ll think of something,” Grit hissed. She raised her voice again. “Just . . . tell them about the Mechanist.”

  And so Carmer did. He told his invisible audience about his first time seeing the Hyperion in action, his meeting with Grit and the Autocats, their disastrous trip to the mine, and Carmer’s refusal to join the Mechanist. As his story went on, little pockets of light sprang to life in the Great Willow branches and all around the clearing. He saw flashes of pointed ears; bony limbs the exact texture of tree bark unfurled as they listened to his tale, and pale iris-colored faces blinked at him with great pools of inky black eyes. Though he stuttered and stumbled through bits of the story, their attention never wavered, and by the time he caught up to the present, the beech grove was full of golden, glowing faerie lights.

  “And so . . . and so I told the judges I’d sabotaged my mentor’s magic, so he could still compete. I’m all alone now, and I’m not sure what I’m going to do about it. But if I can help save your friends and expose Titus Archer for what he is, then . . . well, at least something good might come out of this mess.”

  Carmer had tried to keep a stiff upper lip, but he couldn’t help the small crack that crept into his voice at the word “alone.” To his surprise, a portly faerie with curly gray hair who looked like a flying plum alighted right on his shoulder.

  “Oh, my poor dear,” she fussed, patting his ear affectionately.

  This broke the other faeries’ silence entirely. Soon more of them were flying up to him, circling him and Grit and peppering them with questions and condolences.

  “Could you really stop the . . . the dyno-whatsit?”

  “The dynamo. And I think so, if I knew where it was.”

  “The other faeries are still alive!”

  “Princess, are the Wingsnatchers really cats?”

  “Thank you for saving Princess Grettifrida!”

  Grit hopped down to Carmer’s shoulder. “Hey! I hardly needed saving.”

  “What a fascinating story,” said a cool, deliberate voice that echoed throughout the clearing. All chatter ceased at once, and the faeries flew back to the Great Willow, which had undergone yet another transformation. The head and torso of a beautiful woman was carved into the trunk, like the figurehead of a ship. The bark making up her hair and eyes was a rusty red that reminded Carmer uncomfortably of blood. “Yes, yes. Such bravery from ones so small.” The bark moved and rippled as the figure spoke.

  Carmer didn’t miss the plural in that sentence, and by the angry noise she made, neither did Grit.

  “Come closer, Felix Cassius Tiberius Carmer III,” crooned the face in the Willow. “Let me look into the eyes of the boy who would manipulate my fragile daughter and expose us all for his own ends.”

  And things had been going so well. Every ounce of common sense Carmer had told him to cut and run, but he put one foot in front of the other all the same, until he was standing right in front of the likeness of Ombrienne Lightbringer, a queen of the faeries.

  Her red eyes bore into him with such intensity that Carmer was sure they could see every selfish thing he’d ever done, every invention gone awry, every accidental minor explosion in the Manse’s lab, every time he’d said the wrong thing to the wrong person. Memories of incompetence and guilt settled in his gut like a slimy creature determined to make a home there. But whatever those red eyes saw in him, they kept it to themselves.

  “My daughter believes I should name you a Friend of the Fae,” said Ombrienne. “Do you understand what that means?”

  Carmer thought of Madame Euphemia and hoped it would not necessitate the purchase of puppets. “N-not exactly, no.”

  “To name you Friend is to lay ourselves bare before you. To give you a glimpse into the realm of Faerie and let you keep it in your pocket for the rest of your life. To allow you to call upon us in times of need. To share a small part of our magic to do with as you will. This is not a gift given lightly, and certainly not to little boys who hold faerie princesses hostage.”

  “He wasn’t holding me hostage!” protested Grit. “I stayed with Carmer because we agreed to help each other. I keep my promises, and so does he. We need human eyes on the inside of the Mechanist’s operation. And with a little faerie help, I think Carmer’s the man for the job.”

  A few of the faeries nodded and flickered their lights in assent.

  “How do you propose to infiltrate this man’s headquarters, free our people, and make it out unnoticed? What is to stop him from coming after you and doing it all again?”

  Carmer and Grit exchanged looks. They hadn’t really thought that far in advance.

  “The final round of the Seminal Symposium of Magickal Arts is tomorrow tonight,” Carmer said. “That would be our best chance to sneak into his lab at Theian Foundry. The Mechanist will be at the Orbicle all evening—his assistant,
too—and he’ll be so focused on the competition, he won’t be paying close attention to anything else.”

  “How can you be sure?” asked Ombrienne, a bark eyebrow raised skeptically.

  “Trust me, Mother,” assured Grit. “The Mechanist is a guy who likes to win.”

  “If we could use faerie magic to distract the Autocats—”

  “And put my people in danger?” interrupted the queen.

  “—we might be able to get into the lab unnoticed. I can’t promise I can free the faeries then, but at least we’ll be able to see what we’re up against.”

  “Absolutely not,” said Ombrienne. “The Seelie fae have already been dwindling in numbers for many years. I will not have you putting my few remaining subjects in harm’s way for a sightseeing trip. If you’re so determined to help, you can prove yourself by figuring it out on your own.”

  “Carmer’s already proven himself, Mother,” said Grit. “And who knows how long before the Mechanist starts to install Hyperiopower in the rest of the city? Before he can stroll right into the Arboretum with all of his stolen magic and capture us all? This isn’t the time to hide in our trees or burrow into the ground like mice in winter. We can’t hole up in here forever, Mother. The world outside is changing, and it won’t be long before it reaches our gates. It already has.”

  Ombrienne turned her rust-colored eyes on Grit. “I suppose I’ll never hear the end of this if I refuse,” she said, sounding for a moment more like a normal put-upon mother than a ruler of realms.

  A few cheers went up from the assembled faeries. Grit beamed, but Carmer was still wary. He was not in the habit of being judged by women wearing trees for faces.

  The trunk of the Great Willow shuddered, and the faeries started to hum. Their harmonies, so close and effortless, blended into an eerie, ethereal tune that made Carmer sway on his feet where he stood. Grit squeezed his shoulder and he snapped to attention.

  “What?”

  “Just . . . try to keep your wits about you,” warned Grit in a whisper.

  Her advice was timely; the next moment, Queen Ombrienne’s larger-than-life likeness popped out of the tree with a twisting, crunching sound that echoed like thunder. Her waist was still anchored to the tree trunk, but her upper body stretched toward Carmer and Grit, a wooden statue come to life. A shining staff appeared in her right hand. It was an apple branch cast in silver, topped by three perfect, golden blossoms ringing like bells. The sound was even sweeter than the faerie singing, and Carmer had to fight to keep his eyes from drifting shut.

  Ombrienne extended the apple branch toward Carmer. White light spilled out of the cracks in the bark of the Great Willow, between the queen’s wooden joints and out of the curls of her mossy russet hair. Carmer shielded his eyes from the brightness.

  “Felix Cassius Tiberius Carmer III.” Ombrienne’s voice was no longer smooth and cool. It sounded like thunder and lightning and the roaring of the wind all at once. “Do you pledge your allegiance to the court of the Seelie Fae? To protect it, and all the fae, in times of danger? To guard the secrets of our magic with your life, and to use the power given to you wisely and justly?”

  There was a small part of Carmer’s mind that was still very much tethered to reality, and it sent off little warning bells pinging in alarm at the exact wording of such an oath—surely he should consult a lawyer before entering a binding agreement? What exactly was the difference between this “Seelie” and “Unseelie” business Grit talked about?—but much bigger parts urged him to say yes, to agree to anything the faeries wanted. The white light grew even brighter, but he didn’t want to look away anymore. He wasn’t sure he could.

  “I do,” Carmer said. “I swear it.”

  He grasped the end of the apple branch and the world exploded in gold and white. A jolt of energy rushed through him, from deep beneath the ground under his feet all the way up to the top of his head, and probably into the stars above. A pointy offshoot of the branch pricked his finger, drawing a drop of blood to the surface, but he felt no pain. He dimly wondered what any humans nearby must think of the light show suddenly emanating from the middle of a public park, but then realized they probably couldn’t see it at all. He could now see what most people could only dream of.

  Golden sparks illuminated everything in the grove. Where previously Carmer had only been able to see a thorny foot here, a shimmering wing there, or an indiscernible flicker of bobbing light, he now saw everything.

  Carmer saw water sprites making the ripples of the pond at the foot of the Great Willow dance in glittering, swirling waves. Knobby-kneed hobgoblins danced a jig around the trunk, jumping higher than cave crickets over and under the giant roots. Hundreds of flowers went in and out of bloom in quick succession along the weeping boughs to the beat set by mushroom-eared salamanders banging drums of petrified wood.

  There was music everywhere. A nightingale choir perched on one of the branches reminded Carmer so forcefully of a barbershop quartet that he laughed. Crickets in rainbow armor—armor!—played on their wings like violins. And above all, the faeries, every one of them in the grove, sang their haunting song.

  Still on his shoulder, Grit turned her light on. She looked pleased but alert. “Carmer,” she called over the music.

  He grunted, distracted by the wonders around him.

  “Carmer!” she yelled in his ear.

  “What?!”

  “Promise me you won’t eat anything!”

  Carmer’s hand was fused to the apple branch, and it pulled him forward to Ombrienne—but he could no longer see her face in the tree. The Great Willow was bathed in bright light and splitting in two, right down the middle, and the voices that called to Carmer from within it could not be ignored. Wind rushed around them like a hurricane; Grit dug her heels into the wool of Carmer’s coat and held with all her might.

  “What? Why?”

  “Just promise me!” yelled Grit. They were silhouettes against a doorway of white light.

  “All right, all right!” agreed Carmer, but he wasn’t really listening. He could barely hear her above the roaring wind.

  Carmer stepped across the invisible threshold that led into the Great Willow. The faeries streamed in after him, all of them rushing toward the light. With a last great whoosh, the tree swallowed them whole.

  Only the falling leaves and the skittering squirrels bore witness to the disappearance, and they weren’t telling anyone.

  Time passed differently in the Faerie realm; ten seconds could have easily been ten hours, for all Carmer knew. He was both inside the Great Willow and outside it, standing in the Arboretum he recognized and the Arboretum that was sharper and brighter and more magical than any human could comprehend. He was fairly confident he was in not another world, per se, but a diverted reality. It was a sideways-world, he decided—the place where Madame Euphemia’s vardo existed, just outside the everyday here and now, where the shadows you noticed out of the corner of your eye or that sent shivers up the back of your neck were suddenly right in front of you, asking if you’d like to dance.

  And dance Carmer did, with faerie lights and will-o’-the-wisps twinkling from every branch of the Great Willow. The tree had widened around them to the size of a grand ballroom, and though Carmer knew he and Grit were most definitely not the same size, it didn’t shock him when her head suddenly came up to his shoulders and her hand fit snugly inside his as they twirled round and round.

  “How are we doing this?” Carmer laughed, ducking and weaving through the other dancing bodies. Everything seemed so much funnier than usual, really. “Can you always change your size like that? All this time running around inside my hat . . .”

  Grit shook her head and led him under an arch of branch-like arms that sprouted green shoots as they passed. The dryads responsible for this show burst into fits of giggles and ran off into the crowd.

  “It takes far too much magic in the regular world,” said Grit. “Even royal faeries can’t sustain it for long, not with
out—”

  “Wait, wait,” Carmer said, stumbling a little. “Are we really not, er, in the regular world?”

  Grit gripped him by the elbow and steered them toward the edge of the dance floor. “It’s hard to explain,” she sighed. She reached up and wiped a lock of sweaty hair out of Carmer’s face and straightened his hat; the little door in its side had swung open. She, of course, wasn’t subject to such human afflictions as sweat. “I’d say it’s more like what the world was before it decided on what’s real and what’s not.”

  Carmer got it. Sort of. He nodded, but his head felt so heavy he almost fell forward. Grit grabbed him by the shoulders. She may have been human-sized to him then, but she most certainly wasn’t human; her yellow eyes were still impossibly big, her ears still pointed beneath her pinecone crown.

  “I don’t know why I’m even talking to you,” she laughed. “All the magic in the air makes humans’ brains fuzzy.”

  Carmer was about to protest that his brain was most certainly not fuzzy in any way, but then some of the faeries started shooting off fireworks (or whatever the faerie equivalent was) and his gaze was glued to the night sky.

  “I have to find out the composition of those!” he crowed, craning his neck for a better view. “Do you know if the stars in them are pumped or rolled?”

  Grit just stared at him. “You are unbelievable,” she muttered, smiling all the same.

  “Do you want to get closer?” asked a group of dashing-looking young men who danced into view, a graceful tangle of green armor and silver hair.

  “Elf-knights,” whispered Grit in Carmer’s ear.

  The elf-knights didn’t have wings; they stood on shining leaves the size of tabletops that hovered over the ground. Their leader held out a hand to Carmer and cocked his head toward the fireworks above.

  “Um . . .” Carmer looked to Grit. He had enough presence of mind to remember that her feelings about flying aids were conflicted at best.

  “My feet burn holes in them if I get too excited,” she said, shrugging at the floating leaves, “but you should go!”