Dandelion Fire

by N. D. Wilson

  Frank found a door in the wall, pushed it open, and stepped aside, waiting for everyone to enter.

  Henry stepped in and squinted at the brightness inside.

  The room was large, circular, and lined with shelves. There were no lamps that Henry could see, no source of light at all. But the room was as blinding as the sun on snow.

  “This is active light,” Frank said. “That means it's shiny.”

  The other faeries laughed, but Monmouth and Henry both tucked their heads down, tears streaming down their cheeks. Henry's eyes hadn't adjusted, but he wasn't sure they ever would, so he looked up.

  The floor of the room sloped gradually down toward the center. Looking at that low point, he almost expected to see a floor drain like in some basement back home. Instead, there sat a broad, smooth stone, six feet across, with two shallow indents carved into its surface a couple feet apart.

  The shelves all around the room were lined with jars, from floor to the high ceiling. Near the door, there was a large cabinet, like an old card catalog in a library. Tate and Frank were pulling out drawers and flipping through stacks of small papers inside.

  Roland, his hair a vivid pumpkin in the extreme light, had collected rough sticks from somewhere and was walking down toward the smooth central stone.

  Monmouth had finally looked up as well and stood blinking beside Henry.

  “Weird, huh?” Henry said.

  Monmouth nodded. “How did we come to be here in the first place?” he asked. “We didn't arrive down here.”

  Roland looked up from what he was doing. “You come in the branches,” he said. “Go out the roots.” He balanced two sticks taller than he was in the indents on the stone and then set a knobby crossbar over the top.

  Tate had found the paper he wanted, and he and Frank had moved on to scanning the shelves. When they found the right jar, Henry watched the faeries move down to the precariously balanced doorway. Tate and Frank dipped their hands in the jar and rubbed water over the surface of the sticks. Then they poured out a small puddle on the stone between them.

  Tate slapped wet hands on his cheeks and then replaced the jar on the shelf and the paper in the cabinet.

  “Right,” Frank said. “Now's the time. It's not likely that we're heading for any pleasantness, but head we must. Tate?”

  Tate nodded, stepped up to the doorway, pulled his yellow hat down tight on his head, turned sideways, and slid through.

  For a moment, Henry could see him on the other side. He turned, looked back, and vanished.

  “Roland,” Frank said.

  “I'll wait,” said Roland. He looked worried.

  Frank shook his head.

  Roland approached the door, sniffed loudly, and walked through with his shoulders square. Just before he disappeared, Henry thought he saw him trip.

  “Monmouth,” Frank said. “Special wizard guest. If my father knew a wizard was seeing the roots of the mound, he'd be likely to die. He's already done that anyhow, so it'd be no great loss.” Frank nodded toward the door.

  Monmouth took his place in front of the door and inched forward. He was taller than the doorway, so he ducked his head, bent his knees, and shuffled into nothingness.

  Fat Frank looked at Henry, pursed his lips, and rubbed his knob nose with the back of his hand. “Well,” he said. “You've been no end of trouble, I can't lie. I hope you have the zing to make all this worth it. I don't want to ruin my life just to hustle toward the end of yours.”

  The two of them looked at each other.

  Henry walked to the door and turned sideways like Tate had. They were going toward Hylfing, toward danger. He was hurrying to get in the witch's way, to see Darius again. Ronaldo and Nella had known he would. His hand drifted toward his stomach, feeling the raised-up scars on his belly.

  “You know,” Henry said. He was talking more to himself than the faerie, trying to believe something. “A man once told me that sometimes winning a fight isn't as important as standing in the right place, facing what needs to be faced. And sometimes standing in the right place means you end up dead. And that's better than not standing at all.” Henry twisted around and looked into the fat faerie's dark eyes.

  “Oh,” Frank said. “That's a dark bit of philosophy for a lad. Think that way, and all you'll ever get is your name written on a bit of stone. What I say is, don't go playing unless you can win. Only sit down to chess with idiots, only kick a dog what's dead already, and don't love a lady unless she loves you first. That's Franklin Fat-Faerie's—”

  Henry was gone.

  Frank puffed out his cheeks and pulled a thread from his pocket. “Well, Franklin, that boy's not all cotton fluff, is he?” He began tying the thread around one of the supporting sticks. “He's got it pretty well figured, and you know it. We're all going to get ourselves dead, and only the gulls will want our after-bits. But,” he added, tugging gently on the thread, “I'll do my dying standing on the right spot, beside the son of Mordecai, even if he is a bit of a nunce.”

  Frank stepped back, scanning the room once more, looking for anything that could give away their direction. “Nonsense, Frank,” he said. “That's like saying losing's all right so long as you find the person that was supposed to kill you. All I need to do”—he stepped into the doorway—”is get that boy to a christening, even if he's got but five minutes of life left. That's the goal, Franklin. Then it can be hooves up, if you like, though I'm sure you won't.”

  Frank the fat faerie stepped through and disappeared. Then one of the legs of the doorway jerked and fell. The rest followed, clattering in the empty room.

  With no ways to brighten and no eyes to blind, the young light slowed and settled, puddling over the sticks and the center stone.

  There it slept.

  slid through, grazing his legs against rocks on both sides. He was glad he'd copied Tate.

  And then he felt the wind. And the rain. The smell of salt water surrounded him. He was standing in the dark, but a single slice, a crack full of gray dawn drew him forward. He had to take off his backpack in order to squeeze out of it, and he found himself standing on a beach covered with round stones the size of melons. A small boulder pier hooked out into the sea, or the surf would have been pounding over him. As it was, the pier was overwhelmed by the towering swell, just managing to trip the waves from the open sea. Spray climbed into the sky, taller than the cliff at Henry's back.

  “Henry!” someone yelled. He could barely hear anything. He moved farther out into the gusting rain and peered up the cliff. Monmouth and the faeries stood at the top, hooding their eyes and staring at something in the distance. Monmouth was the one calling for him.

  Henry slipped his way up the wet rocks until he stood beside them. Monmouth pointed, and Henry tried to shield his eyes from the downpour.

  In the distance, set on what looked like a peninsula, he could see what could only be a walled city. It was small and light, the color of sand, standing out against the black clouds behind it.

  Lightning flicked above the city, never absent for more than a few seconds, but the only thunder came from the surf.

  “Now what?” Roland yelled. “We should have gone closer!”

  “Too late now!” Tate yelled back. His hat was drooping over his ears in the rain, but the wind stood the brim straight up in the front. “Walk or sail?”

  Frank scrambled up next to them.

  They all turned, looking out at the great froth-topped salt hills in the sea and then back to the pale city, crowned with lightning.

  “Die now or die later?” Monmouth asked.

  “Later!” Tate shouted. “The boat wouldn't make it out of the harbor.”

  Henry huddled closer so he could hear. The others turned their backs to the wind beside him and leaned together.

  “Faeries sink!” Roland yelled. His red hair bristled like wire, struggling against the storm.

  Henry wiped his eyes and shivered. “Is all the lightning from the wizards? It's just striking over
the city.”

  Monmouth nodded. “The city can't last long.” Henry could barely make out what he'd said.

  “We'll see!” Frank yelled back. He was easier to hear. “Hylfing's got some old strength left in those stones.”

  “How are we going to get inside?” Tate asked, flipping the collar up on his coat and pocketing his hands.

  No one answered him.

  Henry unzipped his backpack and pulled out his already-wet hooded sweatshirt. At least it would keep the rain from stinging his skin and cut some of the bite from the wind.

  Frank began walking along the cliffs edge. The rain bounced off his head and shoulders, shattering into little droplets. All the faeries looked different wet. Their wild hair flattened and clung to their cheeks and tangled with their beards. Their clothes clung to skinny legs.

  Frank set a quick pace, occasionally jogging or even running. Roland and Monmouth didn't seem to struggle to keep up. Monmouth wasn't even breathing hard. Or Henry couldn't hear him above the wind. Tate straggled behind Henry, wheezing. That stood out well enough.

  The landscape wasn't too difficult. The cliff height climbed occasionally but stayed fairly level. Just inland, hills turned into near mountains, all of them treed. Despite the cold and the spray, Henry was grateful they weren't trekking over the steeper terrain, always staying within a few dozen feet of sea level.

  Following the coastline, the city occasionally disappeared as they looped in around a bay or cape. Each time the city reappeared, Henry hoped that it would look bigger. Instead, it seemed perpetually distant, until finally, feeling their way around a large rock promontory, the city had clearly grown. Henry could make out the shapes of the taller buildings, a cathedral spire, a round-topped tower. And as the lightning danced around them, still untired, he could hear the thunder.

  “See,” Frank said cheerfully. “The towers still stand. Hylfing has faced darkness before. There are words stronger than stone woven through those walls.”

  “How much stronger?” Henry asked.

  No one answered. The group stood, dripping, watching the storm assault.

  “I think we're going to find out,” Frank said.

  After that, Henry didn't need to be told to hurry. His tired muscles ignored themselves, and his burning lungs made a truce with their pain. He pushed himself, and even Frank hurried to keep his pace.

  If his real mother was alive, she was in there. If he had brothers and sisters, they were within those walls. If his aunt and uncle and cousins had survived, this is where they had said they would meet him.

  Henry didn't know what he could do. He only knew where he needed to be, where he was supposed to stand.

  As they grew closer, the thunder began to sound more like the war it was. It cracked like a whip and boomed like artillery. It jagged and staggered in its own echoes. Finally, as they rounded a point, the harbor opened up below the cliff in front of them. Hylfing sat on the other side.

  Frank had them all take cover in a grove of gnarled, wind-salted trees as they surveyed the situation.

  They could try to swim the harbor to the city docks and hope they made it and were allowed in. They could attempt the gate, which seemed just as unlikely, or they could try to climb the wall, which seemed even worse.

  Masts from two ships stood out from below the harbor water. Not one ship still rode the surface.

  “I think we have to swim,” Monmouth said.

  “Faeries sink,” Roland reminded him.

  “Henry,” Monmouth asked. “Can you swim?”

  Henry shrugged, shivering, blinking away rain. “I had lessons a long time ago, but I haven't tried recently. And that's a lot of water.”

  “You don't want to be in the harbor,” said Frank. “A strike to the water could kill you.”

  Tate pulled off his hat and twisted it hard, wringing out the water even as more fell. Then he sank to the ground and propped his back against a tree. “I don't suppose,” he asked, “that this is a good time to wonder why we came?”

  The thunder stopped.

  No one noticed at first, but the longer the lull lasted, the stranger it felt to all of them. Henry pushed aside branches, letting his eyes roam over the plain outside the city walls. He saw nothing. On his second pass, he caught the motion of something dark, a man in a cloak walking out from the distant trees at the foot of the ridge and toward the city. When he'd seen the first, he saw another. And another. And a dozen others, spread across the plain, all walking toward Hylfing.

  When the men in robes were close enough, arrows rose up from unseen archers within the walls and plummeted through the wind toward the advancing wizards. Thunder reawakened, and the city's bells chimed against it, mingling with the shouts of defenders.

  In all the noise, Henry heard something behind them, rustling the underbrush. Voices.

  Henry turned, and through the trees came four men in black robes, carrying swords.

  Tate swore.

  Roland and Frank both jumped to their feet as a wizard's curse rang out. The blow fell, a downburst of air, bowling them back to the ground.

  Henry's mouth hung open in shock. He couldn't move. But a hand, Monmouth's, grabbed him, pulling him behind a tree. The trees and brush crackled and snapped with magic, muffling the shouts of Frank and Tate, and strange voices using stranger words.

  Henry picked up a short, thick stick, stood up, and stepped out from behind the tree.

  The small wood was burning, and Henry saw everything in one frozen moment, swirling strength, the birth of smoke, a splitting tree. Two small bodies, dead. One with a yellow hat, still burning. The other facedown, broken, limbs splayed unnaturally, crowned with hair like an angry sunset.

  Three large bodies, wizards, with robes smoking where they lay

  Henry choked in shock, in anger, unable to move.

  There were more than four wizards. A whole crowd of them were moving forward cautiously. Henry could see Monmouth and Frank where they had ducked behind trees. They looked at him with shocked eyes. The wizards looked at him. All of them.

  “No,” Henry said. Something hidden inside him snapped, and warm strength surged through his veins. A word crawled out of his angry blood and onto his tongue, a living word. Yelling it with all the lung he had, Henry threw his stick at the wizards, harder than he had ever thrown a ball.

  The stick spun through the air, and as it did, it burst into green and golden flame, a spinning galaxy of bursts and blades. The swirl surrounded Henry, too. Green and gold spun and twisted out of his fingers, following the thrown sun—living fire, laughing like dandelions standing tall in a fresh-mown lawn, like dandelions that have cracked concrete with nothing but roots, like dandelions unafraid to be turned into ash, or cut or poisoned, ready to be born again.

  The stick split around the sword in the raised arm of the first wizard and struck him in the chest.

  He crumpled, his black robe, his black life, and the lives of those beside him, all swallowed by hungry color. The flame shattered and rushed through the wood, chattering on trunks, and sparking through needles and bark. And then the color was gone from Henry's hands. Gone from his blood. Five wizards slumped lifeless over the bodies of Tate and Roland. The rest had ducked away.

  Henry stood, weak and clammy.

  Monmouth and Frank hit him at a run, dragging him through the underbrush and ducking around trees, toward the harbor. Flame crackled and burst in a ball around them, knocking them to the ground. But they were up again and running with smoking hair, and Henry in between them.

  “Idiot,” Frank said. “Idiot.”

  Flame crackled again, farther behind them.

  “They won't wait long,” Monmouth said between breaths.

  “Nope,” Frank managed. “But they might be nervous after that bit of foolery.”

  Henry stumbled along, blinking and dizzy. He felt like all the blood in his body had drained out of his feet.

  They were out of the cluster of trees, running along the cliff be
side the water.

  “Daft,” Frank muttered, and managed to twist and slap Henry across the face. Frank stopped, and Monmouth stopped as well, watching the trees behind them.

  Frank sputtered, flushed with anger and burned skin, dripping with rain. He shoved two fingers into Henry's mouth and grabbed his lower jaw. The grip hurt, but the pain focused Henry's eyes.

  “Two faeren dead for you, Henry York,” he said. “Likely another soon.” He slapped Henry again. “You get into the city,” he said. “Get to your mother. Be christened. Rouse your father. Do you hear me?”

  “They're coming,” Monmouth said. “They know we've stopped.”

  “Do that,” Frank said. “And there just might be a city here in another week. Die, and everyone does.”

  “Frank!” Monmouth yelled.

  The fat faerie gripped Henry's jaw even harder, pulling Henry's face all the way down to his.

  “Write my name on a bit of stone,” Frank said, and he kissed Henry on the forehead.

  Monmouth was moving, backpedaling.

  Frank put both hands on Henry's chest and pushed him off the cliff.

  Henry choked on his own yell, limbs flailing as he fell backward.

  “Live, Henry York!” a voice yelled, and Henry hit the water.

  Below the surface, the world was calm. No wizards. No wind.

  No air.

  Henry wasn't sure that was a problem. He could stay down, simply drifting, and the world would never be crazy again.

  His mind was numb and confused, but his lungs were not. In a flash, panic replaced his confusion. He could see the surface. Orange light flicked in sheets above it. He kicked toward it and discovered that he couldn't move his right arm.

  It was stuck in a backpack strap.

  Henry struggled, tore the backpack off, kicked it away, and climbed toward the surface in a frenzy.

  His face burst into the wind and rain. Gasping, he looked up at the cliffs edge. He couldn't see anyone, but even through the wind, he could hear shouting.