by Rainy Kaye
“Home sweet home, eh?” I say, helping Remy lift metal beams out of our way.
He doesn't reply as he heaves the beam to the side. It clatters, and the sound carries down the street. It's like a lucid dream, except instead of being asleep and knowing that I just feel awake, I know I'm awake but I feel like I'm asleep.
Across from us, a head with wild hair pops up from behind a pile of trash then drops back down. A boy. A very young one. Without thinking, I push past Remy and dart through the broken, cluttered street, over stacks of unidentifiable chaos, and jump down next to the pile. Pain shoots up my ankle.
“Hello?” I stretch to see around the trash.
The stench flicks at my nostrils, and I hold my breath. I inch around the garbage, but the little boy seems to stay just out of my sight.
A hand grabs my shoulder. I gasp, sucking in the thick smell of moldy bread, rancid meat, and metallic bitterness that I hope isn't blood. My stomach heaves as I try to force out the smell and memory.
“Let's go,” Remy says, taking my wrist.
I twist away. “I thought there was a. . .He looked really little.”
“A kid?” Remy shrugs. “You seem surprised.”
I am surprised. Why wouldn't I be?
Without a word, I let him lead me away, but I stare over my shoulder as I try to envision that tiny face contorting into something ready to kill me.
The streets don't get any nicer or cleaner as we make our way. . .somewhere. I don't know exactly where we're headed, and I'm not sure I want to know. I only know we need more elixir, and Remy intends to get us some here. I hope they sell it at the fae grocery store, right next to the pixie dust and glittery unicorn poop cookies.
There's a constant structure in the far distance, and it takes a while before I realize it's a wall, standing more than two stories tall. I expect it to end at some point, but it goes on either direction as far as I can see.
As I catch up with Remy, who is far too at-home in this mess, I point at the structure. “What is that for?”
“It divides the city,” he says, kicking a ball of dried brush out of his way. “Only witches can cross.”
“Cross what?” I scowl, and he nods toward the distance. I ask, “The wall?”
“Yeah, that thing.”
I slow down, trying to study him, but he keeps moving right along. Is he avoiding saying this, too? Is the wall another part of this world we're not allowed to discuss?
We turn the corner, and I halt to take in the scene. The shadows, specifically. They drape over the sky, obscuring light, and hang like curtains over the buildings, brushing the ground. Their movement is slow, waving, like caught in a perpetual breeze.
Remy leads me to one of the few houses still standing among the rubble and knocks on the door. I step back and give the building a once-over: it has a dome top, small windows, and flat gray paint. On the sill is an herb garden, dried tendrils of long-withered plants flopped over the edge.
The door opens, and my gaze rests on the small woman before us. She's wearing an enormous sapphire-colored headdress standing in three spikes that curl at the ends like elf shoes. Thin metal chains and small trinkets drape over it, forming a fringe around the edge of her face. Glittery makeup streaks out from her eyes and lips, and she's wrapped in a robe with flowing blue and white layers.
Her skin is flawless, but stretched tight and thin over high cheek bones. The long twists of her hair are light brown with strands of either blonde or gray, though it appears to be neither. I can't tell if she's twenty-three or ninety-three.
Her eyes focus on Remy, and her expression widens into a grin. “Made it back, I see.”
“Barely.” He huffs a chuckle. “I brought a visitor.”
“I noticed,” she says evenly, though her gaze doesn't seem to have touched me yet, even though we're right up on her. “Come on in.”
She steps back, and I follow Remy inside. The room is cozy, with a crackling fireplace in one corner and sturdy, rustic furniture stuffed close together, the kind that makes life here feel stable, permanent. It's a welcomed contrast to what is back beyond the door.
Green thriving plants hang in colorful pots from the ceiling, intercepted with chimes and strings of tiny lights inside wicker balls. Fabrics with rich patterns hang over the walls. The scent of cinnamon permeates everything, filling the air and enticing me farther.
I can't imagine ever wanting to go outside again.
“I'm so glad you came by,” she says happily, easing through the room to a far table and picking up a blue and gold metal canister. She tucks it under her arm and pries at the lid with her thin fingers. “I've brought you something.”
Remy visibly relaxes. Whoever this woman is—introductions aren't necessary in Fairyland, apparently—she brought him more Penumbra elixir. She's got his back.
The lid pops off, and she reaches inside the canister halfway up to her elbow. Then she retrieves three small bundles of dried leaves.
Remy's face falls, and he rubs together the fingers of his hand at his side. He doesn't say anything, though.
The woman hesitates, staring at me with sudden sharp interest.
“She won't tell,” Remy assures, and it takes a minute for me to realize he's not talking to me, but about me.
I glare up at him.
The woman shrugs, then returns the canister to the table and floats over to a mounted shelf to retrieve a metal tea kettle.
I nudge him in the side with my elbow. Hard.
He brushes me off and says in a quiet voice, “We don't make tea here. It comes from the other side of the wall.”
We're being secretive about. . .tea?
“Why would anyone care if you have it?” I ask, then look at the woman puttering around steeping bags in clay mugs. I guess it's okay to ask in front of her, since it's her secret.
He just shakes his head and nods toward a kitchen table. I sit next to him on a handmade chair that wiggles a little. The woman removes the tea bags and then offers me a mug. I wrap my hand around it and slowly, carefully bring it up to my lips, preparing to taste something magical. I take a small sip.
It tastes like tea. Earl Grey, to be specific.
I narrow my eyes at the mug, then scoot it away.
“I brought Remy tea the first time when he was just a boy,” the woman says, standing on the opposite side of the table. Apparently, there aren't any other chairs. I consider offering her mine, but she continues, leaning against a partition, “He was so excited that he told all the neighborhood children. They came looking for this special drink, and I couldn't share with their parents he had been referring to tea, so I pretended it had been something I made for a cough. They bought the story, and the children bought the hype. They never complained about taking medicine again, as long as they believed it was the same as what Remy had that day.”
I study Remy from the corner of my eyes. It's not too much of a stretch to picture him as a little kid, running around being excited over nothing. Women do it all the time and then get knocked up by them. I hate to admit it, but the thought of Remy as a child is almost adorable.
Almost.
Current Remy is less endearing.
He puckers his face and says in a low voice, “I need more, Gwendolyn.”
I start to offer him my barely-touched mug of disappointment, but halt. His expression says he's not referring to tea.
“All out,” Gwendolyn says, apparently catching his drift. I would expect this to be an actual crisis, but she seems unmoved. “The Penumbra beastie isn't taking guests today.”
I scowl, looking over at Remy, hoping to get his attention so he can explain what this woman is talking about.
He ignores me and says, “Ember and I can try.”
I don't know what he just volunteered us for, but it involves the word beastie and I want no part of this.
The woman shrugs. “I don't know why he would choose to see you.” Her gaze drifts over to me. “Perhaps he would be intrigued wit
h her.”
I scoot the chair back. “I want no beastie intrigued by anything to do with—”
Remy holds up his hand to silence me, and I resist the urge to slap it down.
“Gwendolyn is just explaining he might give us a chance to talk, because you're not from here,” Remy says to me. “That's all.”
Gwendolyn moves in a practiced way that doesn't shift her headdress as she rounds the table and comes up next to me.
“The Penumbra beastie lives in the Lunar Swamp just south of here.” She reaches down and smacks her moist palm flat into my forehead.
I try jerk away, but my vision is replaced with a twist of trees growing in wet ground among shallow pools of water. As she continues to hold her palm against my forehead, the view of the swamp shifts and changes.
“The witches used to be able to get in and out of the swamp, but now the wards have become unstable,” she continues. My view pans out, revealing a blue light surrounding the swamp. “We can only hope the Penumbra beastie is still able to control it.”
The visual being fed into my brain fades out, and Gwendolyn removes her sticky palm from my head.
“What happens if you touch the barrier?” I ask, envisioning being hurtled back with a bolt of electricity.
“Nothing.” She locks her gaze on mine. “That's the entire problem.”
I resist looking away. “So, if we do get in, what happens from there?”
“I need two of his teeth to make more of the elixir.” She turns and begins gathering the mugs from the table. “There's a man at the end of the block with a rickshaw who will take you for a satchel of tea. I can give you the tea, but I can't promise anything with the Penumbra beastie.”
All things considered, this quest seems harmless enough. We go to the swamp, we can't do anything when we get there, and we turn around, go home, and make cookies. Or something. Because at that point, there is no elixir, and we're back to using sage oil to kill the big bad fairies.
But at least we will have tried.
“All right,” I say, standing up. “Let's go.”
Remy looks up at me, eyebrows arched.
“What? This bog beastie doesn't scare me,” I say, without adding it's only because there's a barrier around the place and I won't be able to get to the creature. Best effort, class.
I don't know if Remy is also running on empty actions, or he's really ready to take on the Lunar Swamps. We say farewell to Gwendolyn and set off to make a deal with the man with the rickshaw. He's eager, just as Gwendolyn said he would be, and before long, we're loaded up in a green and yellow bicycle-style rickshaw. The man sings in a low voice as he takes us through the city and out into the open.
Of course, when we reach the swamp, the barrier is gone.
5
As soon as we give the satchel of tea to the man with the rickshaw, he leaves with a promise to return in one full day, but doesn't look back. No doubt, no sane person wants to be near the swamp. Especially now the blue barrier surrounding it is gone. If we can get in, creatures, I assume, can get out. The jingle of the rickshaw's bells fades into the distance.
“So, about this beastie. . .” I say, staring down at the mushy ground, and then raising my gaze to the thin, tall trees in front of us. “He's friendly?”
“Never met him,” Remy replies, sounding equally disappointed that we're actually going into the swamp. “But there were other wards. . .and they stopped working. . .”
I spin around to face him, narrowing my eyes. “What do you mean?”
“When the shadows came, the wards broke down. They were keeping the beasties out of the city, and the witches haven't been able to fix them.” He hesitates. “That's when the real destruction began.”
Great, so beasties aren't known for being fluffy balls of fun
I take in a deep breath of wet air. “We could just put sage oil on her.”
Remy gives me a questioning look.
“You know, the fae we locked in the car.” I gesture at the swamp. “Instead of venturing into this.”
“Doesn't really matter,” he says quietly. “I'm all out.”
I open my mouth to ask why he was carrying sage oil and when he ran out, then my brain wraps around what he really meant: he's out of the elixir for himself.
“Oh.” I take a few side steps away from him, and his face puckers into an unamused expression.“The shadows have never touched me,” he says.
“Because you had the elixir.”
He nods.
“How long does it last in your system?”
“I don't know.”
I take another step away from him and wrap my arms around myself, wishing I had robe like the witchy woman had. The weather is moderate, leaning toward warm, but I have plenty of feelings inside making me cold.
“Let's get moving,” I say, taking the first squishy step into the trees. “Before the shadows reach you, and you tear off my face.”
The walk is slow going at first, as my shoes continue to get sucked into the wet ground. I keep thinking back to kindergarten talks about quicksand, and how I grew up thinking I would run into it. As an adult, I knew the chances were pretty slim, and yet here we are. While it's not actually quicksand, it's close enough. Every sinking step makes my heart jerk a bit.
“You need to walk lighter,” Remy says from in front of me. “Pretend you're walking on water.”
“I think you're looking for someone else. Jesus is his name. There's a book about him.” Something lands on my arm. Sharp pain shoots up my skin. I slap my hand on the too-many-legged bug, refusing to investigate its grossness any further, and wipe it to the ground.
My feet continue to fall with heavy slaps. I'm busy trying to figure out how one goes about walking on water, when a branch whacks me in the face, right in the outer crease of my eye. I blink a few times and hunch over.
I hate this place already.
“Before you finish stepping down, start lifting your other foot. It's sort of a rocking motion,” Remy the Bog Walking Expert continues.
“Are there alligators here?” I ask suddenly, my gaze darting around the ground for a snout posing as a log.
“Nah,” Remy says casually. “The Penumbra beastie would eat them.”
I try to halt, but my feet sink even worse, so I'm forced to keep moving. I'm traipsing around a bog in fairy land looking for the teeth of a creature that can eat 'gators. This was not on the bucket list at all.
“What sort of god awful fairy world is this?” I groan and take another heavy step.
I focus on my feet again, trying to mimic Remy's movements. It just throws me off balance. I catch myself against a tree, only to find my hand swarming with what appears to be green bugs forming a mass. I pull away and keep moving, while studying the congregation. It's not bugs; it's rapidly growing mold.
I really hate this place.
With my other hand, I rip off the patches of green fungus, thankful my skin doesn't go with it, and throw it to the bog water where it just sits like a little island in the muck.
“What, exactly, does this bog beastie look like?”
“Never seen it,” Remy says like we're discussing some cliché 80s movie. “I think it's like a snake.”
“More of my least favorite things,” I reply.
A few silent moments tick by, and then Remy says, “It's here.”
I nearly scream, and I tense up not to pee myself. My gaze darts from side to side, then front, and farther. There's a lake up ahead, but nothing is moving along the surface.
I swallow hard. “Where...?”
Then I look over to where Remy is standing next to a small johnboat. A giant set of propellers, like a fan, sits on the back.
He was talking about the boat, not a beastie.
“We'll just take it across the lake and get out on the other side,” he says with the same measured ease that makes me want to throttle him.
I take a deep breath, then clomp-squish over to the boat, step inside—ignoring how i
t teeters on the water—and plunk down onto one of the seats.
“Aye, Captain,” I say dryly.
He grins, climbing in next to me, and bends down to start the ignition. The fan purrs up into a roar, and within no time, we're loose on the water, Remy at the controls.
I look back as the shore becomes increasingly farther away. The opposite shore is in the distance, but visible, and I take some comfort from that. At least I won't be in the middle of the water with no sense of direction or too far to swim back when the boat dies. And I'm sure it will.
I study the ripples the boat makes in the water and shudder. Swimming in the murk would probably be worse than just staying on board and starving to death. Hopefully, I won't have to make that choice.
“What happens if the barrier comes back up while we're in here?” I ask.
Questions just pop out of my mouth now that I'm in the middle of a bog in some kind of alternative made-up, but entirely real, world.
My words, however, are lost in the sound of the fan. So I lean over to Remy and speak louder, in his ear.
He pushes me back with a start.
“I don't know,” he shouts. “Never thought of it.”
So we're headed deep into a bog to face some kind of beastie neither of us knows anything about, in order to get the treatment Remy needs in order not to kill me at random. But at least there aren't alligators. That has to count for something.
The ripples build up, expand. Then I realize they aren't coming from us—they're coming at us.
“Uh, Remy. . .”
Something shoots straight up out of the water. The boat rises and falls. In front of us, a tower of flesh and skin and scales. The long shadow diminishes our boat to a speck.
Remy is yelling and pulling at the boat levers. I assume he wants to stop the engine before we crash head first into the beastie.
I lean back and stare upwards as the beastie's head bobs from left to right. To call it a snake would be a sore misrepresentation of everything serpentine, at least where I'm from. In Normal Land.
This beastie has large sheer fins along its body that jut out of the water, and what can only be fungus hanging like stalactites off its squared, protruding face. The mounds of its nostrils bounce as it seems to be taking in the air, probably investigating our scent before it decides to eat us.