Lies in the Dark

by Robert J. Crane

  Lockwood smiled, his wings waving gently, no faster than a heartbeat.

  “That’s a good way to describe it,” he said. “But there are a lot of things here that would intentionally try and trick you. While we are here, I need you to follow my every instruction, all right? And never wander away from me. It could be … detrimental. If any of the creatures here knew that you were human …”

  There was a bright flash in his eyes. “Right, yes. We need to give you a glamour as well.”

  “What? Why?” I asked.

  “The faeries here won’t believe you’re one of them without wings.”

  My heart skipped a beat. Wings? Of my own?

  “Now, they won’t work like real wings. They will flutter and move like mine, but they won’t actually be able to support you. So let’s avoid situations that call for flying, shall we?” He raised a knowing eyebrow.

  What a bummer. “Sure. It’s cool. Who wants to fly anyway?”

  “Sorry,” he chuckled. “All right, what sort of wings do you want?”

  “You’re letting me choose?”

  He shrugged. “Why not? Seems appropriate.”

  “What are my choices?” I asked.

  “Any color you can think of, and pick a winged creature. I can recreate their style wings for you.”

  “A butterfly, for sure,” I said. “Monarch. Those were my favorite butterflies back home in New York. And color …”

  I looked around. There were so many lovely flowers around, growing wildly at my feet.

  “Oh, I like that one,” I said, kneeling down and pointing to a small, five-petalled flower. It was a pale blue-green, like the Gulf of Mexico, with a glowing white center.

  Lockwood stepped behind me as I stood back up.

  I was about to ask him if it was going to hurt at all when I saw a flash of brilliant white light over my shoulder.

  “There we are,” he said.

  I blinked. I hadn’t felt a thing.

  I looked over my shoulder and gasped.

  There they were. Wings! A shimmering teal that looked just like a monarch’s.

  A memory of wearing wings just like this as a child rushed back to me, when I was older than seven, getting dressed for Halloween. I had wanted to be a fairy after I had fallen in love with a little pair at the store that you wore like a backpack. I had worn them every day for months afterward, until Dad had run over them with the lawnmower when I had forgotten them outside one afternoon.

  “They’re the same color as your eyes,” Lockwood said softly.

  “They’re … amazing,” I said, looking back and forth over my shoulders to get a better glimpse of them. They shimmered, fluttering without any effort on my part. “Was that … magic?”

  Lockwood nodded. “Indeed. I just applied a glamour to you. Anyone who looks at you won’t be the wiser. Would you like to take a look at yourself?”

  “With my wings? Uh, yeah.”

  He gestured a little farther up the path, and I followed after him. He turned off the path and walked into the tree line. Despite its beauty, the forest felt … forbidding somehow.

  Lockwood didn’t go far. Just inside the trees, there was a small brook that bubbled along merrily, the sound of rushing water both familiar and comforting. Some of it flowed off into a little pool to the side nearest us.

  “Go ahead, take a look,” Lockwood said, gesturing to it.

  I leaned over the side and stared down at my reflection, and gasped.

  “Whoa.” I had to touch my face to make sure I was actually looking at myself. My hair had changed color and grown. It was now the same shade of blue-green as my wings, and so long that it was tied into two loose braids that hung over my shoulders, small strands of ivy woven into them. My face was flawlessly smooth, showing no evidence of the car accident that afternoon.

  I was also wearing a long, flowing, sleeveless dress, adorned with what looked like real flowers. It was sheer, but a long slip in solid green beneath it provided modesty. It seemed to change color as I moved, shifting to different yellows and golds and greens.

  I looked down at my hands and arms, but I could still see the still fading marks from the faerie bites, along with the ratty T-shirt I had been wearing back in my room.

  When I looked back into the water’s reflection, the skin on my arms was unmarked, the dress back in place.

  “Your reflection shows your flawless self, because in Faerie, that is what is visible to others.”

  “So what I see in the water there,” I said, pointing to it, “is what you see right now?”

  “Yes. Your hair is changed because of the glamour I put on you, but even without the glamour, the reflection would still show you the very best version of yourself.” His smile faded. “We may not be able to lie, but lies remain in this world, nonetheless.”

  “Wow …” and then my heart sank a little. “Would it, for instance, show my mom without the extra stress weight she’s put on since New York? Or without the bags under her eyes?”

  Lockwood nodded.

  “Neato,” I said. “I oughta get a mirror made here for her for Christmas. Those suckers would sell like crazy, actually. I wouldn’t need student loans …”

  Lockwood shook his head, amusement dancing in his eyes. “It wouldn’t work quite like that. The illusion only remains in Faerie. Cross the boundary …” He shrugged.

  “You’d look normal in the reflection,” I said, looking down at myself. “Oh, well. I guess I’ll stick to crushing student loan debt like everyone else.” Even this news couldn’t bring me down, though. My heart was full to bursting with excitement. This whole experience—it was surreal. I still wasn’t convinced I wasn’t dreaming.

  But then I froze. Dad. Mom. Dinner.

  “Lockwood! I have to get back right now!” I said, scrambling back to the path. “My parents, they’re going to—”

  “Easy, Miss Cassandra, it’s all right,” he said soothingly, catching me up. “Time passes differently here.”

  “Differently? How?”

  “Faster than back on Earth. Now, if we hurry, we should be able to complete our mission and return before they ever know you were gone. Hopefully just a moment or two after we left.”

  “I better not get in trouble …” I said. “If I do, it’s on you.”

  He arched an eyebrow at me. “You seem to be quite capable of getting in trouble without my help, in ways that I couldn’t imagine,” he said, looking around the forest. “And I can imagine quite a lot.”

  “You may have a point there, good sir,” I conceded.

  “All right, let’s get going,” Lockwood said. “I don’t want to be caught out in the open like this. This way.”

  He started back down the path, in the opposite direction from the stream. We hadn’t walked far before another, smaller path broke away into the trees.

  “I don’t know why …” I said. “but I keep feeling really uneasy about these trees.”

  “That makes sense,” Lockwood said. “The trees know the truth about you. You had best hope that they don’t share your secret.”

  “The trees are … sentient?”

  “Magical, more like,” Lockwood said. “The trees hear everything, see everything. If you can befriend them, they are your greatest ally in Faerie. If you anger them … well … you very may well get lost in these trees for all eternity.”

  “That’s sort the vibe I was getting, yeah,” I said. “Note to self: don’t anger the foliage. It’s cool, guys. I only eat Earthly vegetables.”

  The path was winding, and the trees grew more dense as we walked. They angled over the path, boughs dangling as though to tickle my face.

  “You know, you might have given me the chance to pick better walking shoes if we weren’t taking the limo,” I told him, nearly falling on my face after tripping on a root that I swore hadn’t been there a moment earlier. Maybe the vegetation was already taking exception to me. They knew of the legendary Broccoli-Eating Cassandra, scourge of the Tamp
a farmers’ market scene, and were reacting accordingly.

  Ahead of me, Lockwood shrugged his shoulders, moving effortlessly through the trees. Clearly, he hadn’t offended the local flora.

  “Where are we going, anyways?” I asked. “The Summer Court?”

  “The court, yes, but indirectly. We will have to undertake a journey to arrive there, for my passage is barred in Seelie.” He drew a deep breath, seemingly undeterred. “And we are going to need to find some clever weapons.”

  I reflexively checked my bun for the stakes I often stored there, then remembered I had left them on my bedside table.

  “Stakes won’t work here,” Lockwood said, reading my mind.

  “Right. Not vampires.”

  “And you can’t bring metal here across the dimensions,” he said.

  “Wait,” I said, “so the old tale that faeries are weak to iron is actually real?”

  Lockwood nodded. “It absorbs magic. Since iron is not found in Faerie, and it is a metal that humans have found produces quality tools, it conflicts with our natures and hence can harm us.”

  “So it just, what … disappears if you try and bring it here?”

  “There are spells in place between the barriers of our worlds that prevents it from coming across, yes. A very complicated and delicate array of spells that could very well be broken if humans tried hard enough.”

  “Really?”

  Lockwood glanced over his shoulder. “Yes. Why do you think we are so very keen to keep our world hidden?”

  The idea of faeries being vulnerable to metal surprised me. Magic seemed so much more powerful than anything humans could use, but if their magic could be canceled out with iron …

  Well, at least I knew how to protect myself from faeries back home.

  “Wait a second—” I said, hurrying to catch up to Lockwood. “You drive a car. Isn’t it made from steel?”

  “Steel, being an alloy of iron, is not instantly fatal to us,” Lockwood said. “All the same, I tend to lean toward higher-end vehicles for their aluminum bodies.”

  “This is fascinating …” I said. “All this time I wondered what you were. One of the fae.” I shook my head. “I never would have guessed.”

  He smiled. “That’s the point, is it not?”

  We walked in silence for a moment, the bright trees swaying in the gentle breeze. The weather was utterly perfect. In Florida, I would have been swarmed with mosquitos, but here, there was no sign of insects. Which made it even more perfect.

  “Would you have told me you were a faerie if we hadn’t been attacked by them today?” I asked. “I mean, I saw that you have silver blood in New York. But would you have just … told me eventually?”

  Lockwood was quiet, his eyes fixed ahead as we walked.

  I didn’t want to press too much, but part of me really wanted to know the truth. And I knew he couldn’t lie.

  “No,” he said, to my surprise. “Not unless it was necessary. It would have been … safer for you that way.”

  Or maybe safer for him.

  I didn’t know if Lockwood just didn’t trust me, or he really believed he was protecting me. Either way, his confession hurt me more than I wanted to admit.

  The trees seemed endless. I wasn’t sure how long we walked, but it felt like a long time after Lockwood’s admission. The leaves crackled against each other, and I looked into the gorgeous sky, trying to spot it between the boughs. It shone like a reflection off of water, almost surreal.

  Caught up in my own thoughts, I was surprised when I was suddenly yanked to one side. Losing my balance, I fell hard, my knees colliding painfully with the ground.

  “What the—”

  But Lockwood’s hand clamped tightly over my mouth, stifling my voice.

  “Shh!”

  We had ducked behind some bush with tiny, twirling branches, and Lockwood was crouched beside me.

  What were we listening for?

  Lockwood was peering over the bush, and I could see the tension in his shoulders.

  He removed his hand from my mouth, but placed a finger over his own to tell me to remain silent. I nodded, and he resumed his gaze over the top of the bush.

  I pushed myself up a little to peer over the top as well, then quickly sank back down so as not to be seen.

  What the … ?

  I chanced a glance again, if only to be sure of what I had seen.

  Three men—no, not men, creatures—stood by what looked like an intricately carved wooden gate leading to … nowhere that I could tell. Enormous and grotesque, they walked on two legs, but their feet were cloven hooves. Great two-headed axes rested on their shoulders, and their heads looked like those of a feral pig’s, curved tusks and all.

  My heart felt like it stopped beating altogether.

  I would have rather faced seventy-five thirsty vampires head on than these … whatever they were.

  “D’you hear that?” said a wheezy, gravelly voice.

  With horror, I realized it was one of the pig creatures.

  He had heard us.

  Chapter 9

  “We really don’t have time for this,” Lockwood murmured beside me.

  Of course he wasn’t surprised by the appearance of those things. But he definitely could have warned me that there were creatures in these woods aside from pretty, sparkly unicorns.

  “What are those things?” I hissed from my place on the ground.

  I felt more vulnerable than I cared to be. No weapons, no way to defend myself. And Lockwood looked none too pleased that they were standing in our way.

  “We call them avara,” he said, keeping behind the bush. “Based on a word that means greedy in Latin.”

  “Greedy?” I asked. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  Lockwood’s gaze lingered on the creatures for a moment before glancing back to me. “Believe it or not, they used to be human.”

  “I thought you said that very few people knew about faeries and other mythical creatures … ?”

  “I did,” he said, jaw tight as he stared over the foliage at them, “but you aren’t the first of your kind to visit the land of the fae – only the first in quite some time. Whether they were lured here or they accidentally found a border, is unclear, but their desire for wealth or power or love drove them mad, causing them to wander the forests for a very long time …”

  I heard one of the avara snort angrily.

  “Their greed twisted them into swine. Remember how I told you that Faerie shows your true self?”

  “So pigs are a symbol for greed here, too, huh?”

  “For humans, yes.” He breathed quietly. “I see something quite different than you.”

  “What are we going to do?” I asked.

  “We will have to make a deal with them, I’m afraid.” He looked no more pleased about this than I was at even stepping out to face them.

  “Great,” I said. “What could go wrong, striking a deal with people so greedy that they’ve morphed into pigs?”

  “Indeed,” Lockwood said, his tone spiked with annoyance. “Just stay close to me. Still, their greed is a sort of binding upon their action. They won’t attack if we’re willing to give them what they want. And, Cassandra?”

  “Yeah?”

  His gaze was stern.

  “Don’t say anything.”

  “Why—”

  “Just trust me.”

  And he stood, stepping out from behind the bush.

  I scrambled to my feet and held my chin high like I imagined a faerie would. I don’t know what faerie, because Lockwood sure didn’t act that way, but maybe some highly pretentious faerie would.

  “Who’s this?” one of the avara snuffled.

  “Good evening, gentlemen,” Lockwood said, bowing fluidly.

  I tried to mimic the action, but I probably looked like a broken mannequin.

  “What do you want?” the second asked, his axe whooshing through the air in a clearly threatening practice swing. He aimed
it right at Lockwood’s chest.

  I had to give Lockwood props for not flinching, because my mouth had gone dry.

  “We seek passage through your gate,” Lockwood said.

  The avara all towered over Lockwood and me. They stood in place, neither advancing nor taking so much as a single step back.

  “I wish to bargain in good faith with you, toll collectors,” Lockwood said. I had a feeling that the only thing that made them toll collectors was the fact they were blocking the gate with weapons. “Out of respect for your clearly superior negotiating position, I will cut right to the chase,” Lockwood said. “I wish negotiate safe passage through the gate.”

  The avara laughed stupidly, their large bellies jiggling. I guess they were getting what they wanted here. “Only if we are the one to name the price,” one of them said.

  Lockwood’s jaw worked as he considered. Hopefully he’d be able to outwit them, because I didn’t know what we even had that could be used for trade.

  “What about some mitoar horn?” Lockwood asked. “I can provide you the highest quality.”

  “No.”

  “Then perhaps an ounce of gold?” Lockwood asked. “Straight from Earth.”

  The avara shook his head, his fingers curling menacingly around the haft of his huge axe.

  “Might I suggest a—”

  “A lock of your hair,” the avara said. And then he nodded at me. “And hers.”

  Lockwood blinked. I guess he hadn’t expected that request.

  Lockwood frowned. “What of some sleep tonic, eh? I have some right here in my—”

  “Your hair!” the avara snarled, taking a step toward Lockwood, prodding him in the chest with the haft of the axe. “Or you don’t get past.”

  My heart was hammering against my chest, but I didn’t let my anxiety show on my face. A lock of hair didn’t seem like a big deal to me, but Lockwood was clearly reluctant. Was hair some kind of currency in fae? If so, the contents of my shower drain could have made me a very rich woman here.

  “All right,” Lockwood said, clearly angry but resigned and holding his hands up in defense. “You bargain hard. I will offer you a lock of my hair, as much as you’d like, if you leave her out of the deal,” he said, gesturing to me.