by Inara Scott
“Black Ladies,” Zafira instructed, “if Kaia fails in her task, you will take her wings.”
She said it simply, but the entire hall went deadly quiet. There could be no worse punishment to a faerie. It was one thing to shapeshift into human form—when a faerie did that, her wings were simply absorbed into her flesh, their magic redistributed throughout her body. To lose her wings was another story, akin to removing her soul. Her magic would disappear and it would take with it the very essence of her being. Ultimately, she would become a dried-out husk of a creature, left to die slowly as her physical body disintegrated around her.
“I see.” Kaia tried to remain calm as a scream built up inside of her. She would not fail. She could not.
“Once you leave Faeria and cross through a Gate, I expect you to take your human form and keep that form until your task is complete.”
“And my punishment… ” Kaia tried to form the words but they were lost as her throat swelled shut. She swallowed hard and tried again. “Have you decided… that is… is there any chance you might reconsid—”
“Reconsider?” Zafira examined the reflection of her face in her bracelet for a moment before turning back to Kaia, a malicious gleam of pleasure in her eyes. “Nonsense. There is no need to discuss such matters. If you complete the task I have set for you, all will be forgiven and you will be welcomed back to Faeria. And if you fail, you may beg the Black Ladies for mercy, if you dare.”
§
The sky was beginning to darken as the Handmaids stepped forward to take Kaia into their arms for one final hug. They stood on the Faeria side of the Gate, far from the great doors and the red-eyed boggles who stood guard on the other end of the hall. She was just beginning to emerge from the fog that had consumed her since Zafira laid out her final threat. Blocking out all thought of the Black Ladies and the loss of her wings was her only hope for sanity. She focused instead on Garrett, and thinking about how she would achieve the task that had been laid out before her.
Analise buried her face in Kaia’s shoulder with a sob. “What will you do?” she cried. “Where will you go?”
“I’ll find Garrett,” Kaia said, trying to sound calm. “We didn’t part on bad terms, after all. As far as he knows, I was just some woman he had a one-night stand with who disappeared the next morning. Maybe he’ll be happy to see me.”
Mina shook her head. “I don’t know, Kaia. Men can be difficult about things like this. They don’t like it when women are in control, and having you walk out like that… well, just be prepared for him not to be happy about it.”
Talia gave Analise a not-so-gentle nudge so she could take her place, giving Kaia a good-bye embrace. “I have no doubt you can make the silly man fall in love with you. The bigger question is, how you will live without magic? You are not a human! What is Zafira thinking?”
Talia’s long nose wrinkled at the tip, and her eyes blinked furiously. She roughly brushed aside the tears Kaia knew she would never shed, for Talia refused to show weakness, even to her sister Handmaids.
“It won’t be easy, Talia, but if humans can do it, so can we. Zafira gave me a driver’s license and twenty dollars.” She held up her tiny leather purse proudly. “I’m well on my way.”
Even as she worked to maintain a confident air, the enormity of her situation ran through Kaia’s mind. She’d always had a credit card before when she entered the human world, and when that didn’t work, she simply used her faerie magic to convince men to give her whatever she wanted. How long could twenty dollars last? Men took money so seriously, and now she could see why. Once it was gone, she would be unable to buy food or a place to stay, and she had no faerie charm to enhance her looks and persuade men to do whatever she asked.
All bravado aside, how would she survive?
“Where will you go?” Talia asked.
“There’s a Gate in the Everglades, close to Miami,” Kaia said.
“That’s in the middle of a swamp. How will you get out? You’re a human now, Kaia. You can’t just fly around like you used to,” Talia reminded her.
“I can walk,” Kaia said staunchly. “Or swim. I can’t very well set myself down in the middle of the Ozarks, can I? It could take me a week to get to Miami from there, and the summer solstice is a little more than one human month away. I don’t have any time to waste.”
All three nodded, looking miserable.
Kaia tried to smile. “Look, I should be able to get to Miami pretty quickly. And I’ll just go from there. I may be a human in form, but I’m a faerie in my heart. I’ll figure it out, right?”
They tried to smile, but all four faces faded back to grim within a matter of seconds.
“Can we come with you?” Analise asked. “We could help you find somewhere to live, at least. Make sure you find Garrett before we go.”
“Absolutely not,” Kaia said firmly. “Zafira would be furious if you interfered and I can’t have that on my conscience.”
“She cannot take away who you are,” Mina hissed. “She can tell you not to use your magic and threaten to take your wings, but you will always be one of the Fey, Kaia. I don’t care what anyone says. You were born a faerie of the light and a faerie of the light you will remain.”
Kaia’s eyes filled with tears for the first time. “Mina, if I lose my wings... ” The thought was too terrifying to contemplate. “What kind of light faerie can I be without my wings?”
Analise let out another loud sob.
Talia elbowed her in the ribs. “’Lise, shut up! You’ll bring that damn imp here with all that wailing. Anyway, Mina’s absolutely right. No matter what happens, wings or not, Kaia will always be one of us.”
The four of them joined hands and gripped each other in silence, each well aware that, despite Talia’s brave words, Kaia would be unlikely to survive long. As if no longer able to contemplate such an event, Mina started to sing an ancient faerie hymn to the earth, and it was mournful and hopeful all at once. Talia joined next, her voice lower than Mina’s, husky and rich. Analise added her sweet soprano in a harmony above the rest, like a bird that wandered in and out of the trees, swooping low and soaring high until it was almost out of view.
When she had cleared the lump from her throat, Kaia added her own voice to the song. She had never considered herself much of a singer, not in comparison to her sisters, but this was a song to each other and to the earth that was their true mother, to the plants that sheltered them and gave them birth. And when it was done, she dropped their hands. Without another look, she walked to the Gate. The door swung open, and she walked through.
Chapter Ten
The door of the Gate Kaia used to enter the human world was in a mangrove tree deep within Everglades State Park, which she knew from past travel bordered the western edge of Miami. She pushed open the door and shifted her shape as she hit the warm, moist air on the other side. The transition hurt, more so this time than usual because she did it quickly, and it was as if her wings were being ripped from her body, her shoulders left naked and raw. She poured her human shape into a white sundress and flats. Zafira had allowed that much—clothing created with faerie magic. One outfit, no more.
As usual, her human limbs felt heavy and clumsy, and today they ached as well, perhaps with the certainty that they would be inhabited for many days to come. Or would it be weeks? How long would she be forced to live as a human? How long could it take to make a man fall in love? She had five weeks. Surely that would be enough time.
As Kaia stood at the threshold of the Gate, her face flushed. Sweat formed in beads along her forehead and the nape of her neck. Ahead of her the sun set in a spectacular display of red and gold.
Kaia didn’t care for the sunset. She’d forgotten how uncomfortable it was when human flesh reacted to the heat.
Faeries did not sweat.
She took one tentative step forward, and instantly lost her footing in the tangle of roots underneath. Sprawled on her stomach, her face inches from the brown water surroun
ding the thick grove of trees, Kaia took a deep breath and steeled herself not to cry.
Before she could move, she saw a dark shadow in the water, coming straight toward her supine form. Alligator? What horrible creatures lived in these waters? Instantly, she pushed against the roots and prepared to retake her faerie form, to launch herself into the air and out of harm’s way.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
The cool, mocking voice of the queen’s imp froze her mid-move.
“What?” Kaia scrambled to sitting and scooted back toward the trunk of the tree. “I wasn’t going to do anything,” she said, staring down at the water, where the dark shape had merged into the shadows of the mangrove roots.
“Right.” The imp’s familiar cherubic face and curly blond hair appeared in front of her and surveyed her from top to bottom. “Just remember, Faerie. I’m watching. You get one outfit. I’m not sure I would have gone with white, but that’s your choice. And you walk or swim to Miami. No flying.”
“Snitch.” She stuck her tongue out at him, but he did not react, just hovered a few feet above the water and studied its opaque surface.
“Ooh, there’s some interesting things in here,” he said with glee. “You might not want to swim, Faerie.”
Kaia took a deep breath and ignored the treacherous imp. She obviously would have to wait until morning to set out for Miami.
“This won’t be so bad,” she counseled herself. She’d spent most of her life in the wilderness. Of course, that had been as a faerie, not a human. Her first hint of the difference came seconds later, when the first mosquito had the temerity to bite her shoulder, followed seconds after that by another on her arm and a third on her neck. In faerie form, her blood would have killed the creatures instantly. As a human, she was fair game.
Kaia adjusted her position and hunched forward to pull her skirt over her knees. That didn’t help much. Because she only got one outfit, she had tried to hedge her bets with a simple dress of white cotton, which seemed cool and durable yet reasonably attractive. She hadn’t considered bugs. The dress was sleeveless and cut low across the back, leaving an excessive amount of her skin exposed to the hungry insects and giving her legs little protection from the endless, crisscrossing maze of mangrove roots.
Her growling stomach was the next evidence of the difference between faerie and human. Where she only needed to eat the occasional handful of berries and roots in her faerie form, as a human the stomach seemed the most important organ in the body, nearly driving her mad with its incessant growling, whining, and aching.
Resigned to what seemed inevitably to be the longest night of her life, Kaia settled her bottom into the space between two roots, arranged her dress around her legs, and leaned her head back against the trunk of the tree to sleep.
§
She awoke from her first night in the woods with a sore body, more itchy red bites than she could count, and a gnawing hunger in her belly. She started walking as soon as the sun rose high enough for her to see her way around the murky brown water. The imp appeared at regular intervals to mock her and give her reports of fourteen-foot alligators ahead. She didn’t know if he was kidding or not, but she was too tired to be skeptical so she heeded his warnings and generally followed the path he advised.
She wandered around for most of the day, until a park ranger in a motorboat discovered her poking through the swamp. She had a stick to flush out the alligators and a leaf to fan away blood-sucking mosquitoes, both of which she knew did little good, but at least they made her feel better.
Earl, as the ranger introduced himself, gave her water and a gooey foodlike substance he called an energy bar. She made up a hasty story about getting lost while out for a canoe ride, and abandoning her boat when it got stuck in the mangroves. He took her back to the nearest ranger station, and asked the questions she’d been dreading:
“Is there someone we should call for you? Where do you want to go from here?”
Panicked, Kaia realized she had no idea how to answer. I’m here to break a man’s heart, can you help? didn’t sound quite right, and neither did I need to find Garrett Jameson, but I have no idea what his phone number is, or where he lives.
What she really needed, Kaia decided, was to get away from Earl and his nosy questions.
“I’ll just call my friend Analise. She’ll come pick me up.” She pretended to make a phone call, and talked to the dial tone about her experience of being lost in the swamp and how she needed a ride home. “It will be a while,” she told Earl after she’d hung up, trying for some of her old persuasive skills in a small flutter of the lashes. “You’ve probably got to go back out and, er, ranger some more?”
“How long will she be?” Earl asked, removing his hat and wiping the sweat from his bald head with a bandana.
“Two hours at least,” Kaia replied.
“Well, I don’t think I can wait that long,” he admitted. “As long as you’re sure she’s coming?”
“Oh, absolutely.” Kaia nodded. “She’ll be here.”
As soon as Earl left, Kaia headed out on foot to the Gas-n-Git, a small gas station a few miles down the road with two ancient pumps, a graffiti-marked phone booth, and a convenience store with a sign out in front that proudly proclaimed “Night Crawlers Here.”
Kaia started with the phone booth and its tattered phone book, where she discovered that Miami had no fewer than twenty listings for a “Jameson, G.”
For a few minutes, she debated using her twenty dollars to go down the list and start calling each one of them, but it occurred to her that if she showed up at Garrett’s house looking and smelling like a swamp, the last thing in the world he was going to do was fall in love with her. Slam the door and laugh in her face, perhaps. Fall in love? No way. She needed a couple of days to recover from her ordeal in the Everglades, and somewhere to find food, a shower, and a change of clothes.
Unfortunately, she had no idea where she could do any of those things.
With a deep sigh, she decided she could no longer ignore the throbbing ache in her stomach. She walked across the gravel parking lot and pushed open the grimy glass-panel door of the convenience store.
The shop was small, with faded linoleum floors and the odor of cigarette smoke. An ancient, stooped man with a crown of snowy hair and a protruding lower lip stood behind a counter surrounded by tobacco products. Red suspenders held up a pair of jeans around his child-sized waist. He eyed her suspiciously, but did not say a word as Kaia made her way up and down the store aisles.
She surveyed the inventory carefully and pulled down pretzels, cheese crackers, a bottle of water, and a small container of shampoo. She paid for her items, exhaling with relief when the clerk accepted her twenty dollar bill without question.
“Do you have a bathroom?” she asked.
“In the back.” He nodded to the far corner and handed her a key on a large iron ring.
Kaia took her cache into the bathroom and locked the door behind her. She sucked in a breath as she took in her appearance in the mirror. Structurally, she didn’t look terribly different than she normally did when she assumed human form. She was still tall and thin, with rounded hips and breasts, long legs, and brown hair that fell almost to her waist.
Yet where she once made men cry with desire, she would be lucky now not to evoke a cry of horror. Her formerly beautiful eyes were swollen and puffy, with dark circles underneath. Her red, sunburned face was dotted with mosquito bites, and her hair hung wet, limp, and tangled around her blistered shoulders.
She took off her dress and scrubbed her body as best she could, trying to protect the raw skin on the tip of her nose and shoulders while removing as much dirt as possible. Her dress went into the tiny sink next, and she scrubbed the stained garment with the shampoo, cringing when she had to slip the wet fabric, still brown and slightly smelly, back onto her body. She flipped her long hair over her head and ran water over it, mortified by the light brown color of the water running of
f her head and down the drain.
She shampooed her hair twice and rinsed it as well as she was able. It hardly helped. The impromptu washing in the sink had done little to change the color of her dress, and her time in the woods had left something else she’d never contended with before on her legs and under her arms—stubbly black hair pushing up through the skin.
Hair. Under her arms. How long would it grow? She’d seen hair under men’s arms, of course, but assumed human women were hairless there, like faeries. Worse yet, this hair seemed to be rough and coarse.
It was vile.
Kaia wanted to throw herself down on the floor of the tiny bathroom and sob but there was a mix of sand and mud on the aging linoleum, which she feared had come from her own body. If it had, it likely contained the feces of various aquatic species, and she was damned if she was going to grind it back into her skin.
She gritted her teeth instead, picked up her bag of groceries, and unlocked the door.
“It’s not a shower,” the clerk barked at her, as she made her way toward the front of the store.
Kaia sighed. “You got a shower somewhere else?”
“Of course not. What do you think this is, a shelter?”
She considered his response. “What’s that?”
“A shelter?” He snorted with disgust. “A homeless shelter, lady. What do you think I’m talking about?”
A homeless shelter? Although it sounded like a paradox, from the clerk’s tone of voice, this was clearly something Kaia was supposed to know about. She felt a rush of excitement. If a homeless shelter was a free place to stay that had a shower, she could be in luck after all.
“Yeah,” she said casually, “a homeless shelter. Of course, that’s what I’m looking for. Say, I’m not from Miami. Any chance you can direct me to the nearest shelter? I’m meeting a friend in a few hours, and I could really use a shower.”
The clerk crossed his arms. “I don’t cotton to homeless folk here. You want to buy something else, fine. Otherwise, you better get out before I call the cops.”