“And maiden virgins are the only ones worth the risk?”
“The unicorns feed on their purity.”
“Like vampires?” I asked. As far as most humans and fae were concerned, vampires didn’t exist, but I’d spent years working in, dancing in, and running clubs and I’d seen things.
“Like what?” Jerome asked. Vampires apparently didn’t exist in Rubalia, even as myths.
“Never mind,” I said. “If they’re so scary-looking why do the maiden virgins even let the unicorns come near?”
Jerome shrugged. “I’ve never known one who has. I stay far away from them myself.”
“They do it because they can,” Vervain said. “Like jumping off a high bridge into water or climbing a rock wall. It is a thrill.”
“Makes sense,” I said. “Have you ever done it?”
“Not yet,” Vervain said. “I am still too young, they have no use for those they consider children.”
Our whole entourage slowed to a stop about twenty yards past the unicorn, next to a large, clear lake. On the far side, the land rose to a hill that rose into the mountains beyond. A crisp waterfall plunged down the hill-side and into the lake. “We’ll camp there,” Vervain said. “Behind the waterfall.” She and Jerome moved to the front, our view of what lay ahead now clear, and we followed as they led us around the lake.
The sun dropped and the cool air of dusk arose with the scent of wild onions and damp earth, as we made our way toward the roaring waterfall. We pulled on layers of clothing we’d removed in the day’s heat. Around the lake, ferns grew thick and swished around our ankles as we walked. The sun glinted off the lake, giving it a crystalline appearance. The sparkling waterfall was surrounded by an array of colorful and exotic-looking wildflowers. It was the sort of scene most humans would imagine when they thought of fairy land, much more so than aggressive, frightening unicorns or lizard people who took over your body.
As we got closer to the waterfall, we had to move in a single-file line to follow the narrow, dirt trail that led onto a stone ledge. Vervain and Jerome disappeared behind the rushing water and we followed. I wondered how we’d all be able to fit in this cave, but I wasn’t sure I cared. I was tired, my feet ached, and I was hungry. I’d camp in a mud puddle to get some rest and warm food.
I followed Frost into a dark tunnel, the ceiling just inches from the top of my head. Many of the men in our crew had to duck to get in. I walked, following Frost, into ever-growing darkness. Just as I reached and grabbed Frost’s hand to help me find my way without walking into a wall, bright lights burst into life all around us. As my eyes adjusted to the light, I realized it was coming from torches, all lit at once by some magic I didn’t know we had among us.
We had light, but there was no indication that we’d be stopping any time soon. We walked down the lit stone tunnels, until my knees were ready to give out. I was a dancer, not a hiker.
“Didn’t she say something about setting up camp?”
No one answered me and we walked on.
Finally, we stepped out of the tunnel into an enormous cavern, at the center of which was a sparkling, azure blue pond fed by some sort of underground aquifer. Vervain assured us the water was safe to drink and we filled our water bags and laid out our sleeping mats. There was nowhere for smoke to be released, so we couldn’t cook any food. We’d have to make do with the dried meat and forest greens we’d brought with us. I offered around granola bars I’d brought from the Non, but no one showed any interest.
We ate and then we laid down to get what sleep we could before we had to start walking again.
***
My feet hurt. My feet hurt and I would kill for a carafe of cinnamon latte. I. Would. Kill. We’d been walking for an hour, awake for a little more than that. We’d emerged from Vervain’s underground wonderland about ten minutes ago. We’d come out somewhere on the other end of the tunnel system she’d led us through and were closer to the mountains than I’d expected to get by the second day.
The landscape here was different, the trees shorter and farther apart. The sun wasn’t as brutal, dimmed a bit by cloud cover, and the air was still cool and damp with dawn’s breath. This forest was covered in bright wildflowers and there were no stinky puffballs. Not that it mattered, since my clothes were still covered in them from our first day in Rubalia. The stuff was worse than glitter to get rid of.
This forest, however, was full of small birds that looked a bit like flying piranhas, their teeth were so sharp. It didn’t matter how many times Vervain had rolled her eyes and reminded me they rarely attacked humans, I still ducked and bit back a screech every time one of them flew near.
Vin walked in front of me, Frost behind. Vin was humming to herself, a pretty tune I’d never heard before. “What is that?” I asked.
She smiled back over her shoulder. “I don’t remember the words. It’s something my mother used to sing to me when I was little. Being back here makes me think of it.”
“It’s about a little girl who gets lost in the woods and eaten by witches,” Pippi said. “It’s a cautionary tale.”
“Really?” Vin said. “I don’t remember feeling cautioned or scared. I just remember asking for that song again and again.”
“It could be different words to the same tune, depending on what clan you’re from,” Pippi said. “Though I also remember asking my mother to sing it to me over and over and I didn’t feel scared, either. The part about being free to roam the woods always sounded like a good time, and I figured I could take on the kid-eating witches and win, no problem.”
“That doesn’t surprise me at all,” I said.
A shout from the front of the line shut us all up. There may have only been thirteen of us, but we were moving in a single-file line through dense forest and I couldn’t see what was ahead or who had shouted. Benny had been in the front when we’d started, but the shout had sounded feminine. Were we being attacked by nightmares? Unicorns? Child-eating witches? I looked back at Frost, but he shook his head. His sensitive nose hadn’t picked up anything.
Another shout, this one masculine.
“We’re under attack,” a high-pitched female voice screamed behind us. It sounded like Bluebell. I hadn’t talked to her, yet, as she kept to herself. I hated that she was on this journey at all. From what I could tell, she was fragile, weak, and scared of everything. I’d voted against her coming, but Hieronymus felt it vital we have someone with both a viable claim to the throne and knowledge of the court as back-up in case both he and I were killed.
“It’s children,” Chelsea yelled, her feminine, husky voice unmistakable. “Stand down.”
Slowly, the single-file line moved and we came to a clearing where our small group could spread out. In front of us were about ten kids, all of them dirty and in various stages of undress, none of them appearing to be older than thirteen. I moved to the front to stand next to Lensy, and Frost and Pippi joined us. Each of the kids held small, reed-like pipes.
“This is what you big oafs were screaming about?” Pippi asked, sneering at Benny, Chelsea, and Chervil who’d been in the lead and now stood to the side, faces twisted in pain, expressions wary and suspicious.
“They shot us with Yellow-bellied Zarrow quills,” Chervil said.
Pippi turned her gaze to the kids, an impressed look replacing her disdain. “You shot my men with Zarrow quills?”
The tallest kid, a faun girl with thick black hair in two messy braids, stepped forward, her eyes flashing defiance. “Fae who’ve been taken by the nightmares don’t react to pain. We had to know you weren’t theirs.”
Pippi frowned fiercely. “Those quills don’t come out without causing a lot of pain, little girl. How many of my friends have you maimed?”
The little girl didn’t back down. I’d seen grown men quaver in front of Pippi with just a look from her. The little girl was either very stupid or very brave. “We only shot two of them. And we didn’t shoot anything important.”
“Th
ey shot me in the posterior region,” Benny whined. “I’ll be lucky if I can walk out of here.”
Pippi scowled. “Chloe can heal you, you big baby.” She smiled at the girl. “You should have done us all a service and shot him in the mouth.”
Benny glared at Pippi and muttered something about pots and kettles, but Pippi ignored him.
“Who else was shot?” Pippi asked.
“Got me in the shoulder,” Chervil said. “He twisted so that his opposite shoulder was visible. It was red with blood and the wound was still leaking, but he shrugged. “I’ll be fine. Don’t need any hoo doo healing.”
I knew little about giants as a species and even less about Chervil as an individual, other than that he gave excellent nature talks. I added hates magic to my list of knowledge about the quiet man.
“How’d you get the quills of a Zarrow, anyway?” Pippi asked. “They don’t give them freely.”
“Hedgerow shot one,” the girl said, pointing at a faun boy a head shorter than her. “If he’d been paying better attention, he could have shot two.”
“Zarrow are inhumanly fast and notoriously shy and rare,” Pippi said to me in a low voice, explaining what the others already knew. “Maybe we should take them along to help us fight the nightmares.”
“No,” the girl said. Fear showed in her eyes for the first time. “We won’t go back there.”
“Where are your parents?” Frost asked, his tone gentle, his empathy clear. He believed in pack, in family, above all else and I knew it hurt him to see children without guardians. “How did you get here?”
Hedgerow stalked over to stand next to the girl, a bow and arrow gripped firmly in one hand. He tapped her on the shoulder and jerked his chin toward the mountains. She nodded. “We shouldn’t stay here,” she said. “It’s too open. Come with us if you want to know our story. Or you may leave. Just do it quickly before you’re seen.”
We followed the kids to a small cave about ten yards from a stream. We ducked inside and squat-walked down a short tunnel to a large, well-lit open area. In the center of the open area sat about ten more kids, all of them as dirty and poorly dressed as the kids who’d led us to the cave. Most of them were fauns, but there were a couple of trolls and an elf. Around the edges of the cave were piles of leaves, ostensibly the kids’ beds.
“You may sit with us,” the girl said. “And I will tell you our story, but Hedgerow and Arden will have arrows trained at your hearts while you are here. They will kill you if you move too suddenly or do or say anything threatening. We will not cry over your life-less bodies.”
We sat and Hedgerow and Arden took up positions on either side of us, arrows drawn, stances steady and ready to shoot. I hoped they weren’t like kids in the Non, prone to fidgets and distractions that could get us killed. But they seemed nothing like Non kids. The haunted looks in their eyes, the grim set to their expressions, made them look unlike kids at all.
“Who are you?” the girl asked.
Lensy introduced us and explained why we were traveling through their woods. She gave them the cover story we’d concocted with Yarborough. It felt wrong to lie to the kids, but it was necessary.
The girl frowned. “The redcap said you were going to fight the nightmares. I do not believe you are going to offer them obeisance. You’re a little late, aren’t you?” she asked. “And you don’t have enough people. You will be added to the mountain of bodies they’ve already built.” The problem with cover stories, especially cover stories not everyone liked, was that it was easy to forget about them and even easier to slip.
“Who are you to tell us we’ll lose?” Pippi asked, speaking to the little girl like she would any grown associate. “You know nothing of us.”
“My name is Marjoram,” she said. “And I don’t need to know anything about you. I know the nightmares. They can’t be beaten. Our only hope is to find an unguarded portal and go to the Non. You should do the same.”
“Can you tell us what you know, child?” Lensy asked in a gentle voice that deepened Marjoram’s frown and hardened her gaze.
“I am no child,” Marjoram said. “The nightmares killed the child I was.”
The rest of the children intoned the word ‘killed’ simultaneously like it was part of a well-practiced chant.
“Tell us,” I said in my most calming voice.
Marjoram scowled and looked at Pippi. She didn’t begin to speak until Pippi nodded. I never would have believed it, unless I’d seen it, but Pippi had a way with these kids, as she had with Vervain, some sort of unspoken understanding shared by those who’ve experienced trauma when they were young. I wondered what Pippi’s childhood trauma had really been, an early betrothal didn’t seem like enough for the immediate connection she had with those kids.
“They came in the middle of the night,” Marjoram said. “They killed anyone who fought back, but they tried not to hurt those who were quiet. They said they had a plan for us and didn’t want us damaged.” Marjoram’s expression darkened. Her tone mechanical, like she was offering a recitation. “My brother fought back. He killed one of them before he died. I wanted to fight back, but I…I didn’t want to die. If I’d known…If I’d known where they were taking us, I would have fought.”
“We will always fight,” the children around her said, again in unison, in an eerie chant. I suspected Marjoram told this story often and the children had clearly been trained to respond to certain words. It seemed a good unifying technique, maybe even a way to build morale.
“I screamed for my parents, but I didn’t see them. I don’t know if they are dead or if they are slaves.”
“Slaves in body, not in mind,” the children chanted.
Marjoram nodded, her expression cold and hard. “They gathered all the children under thirteen into the middle of town and then they made us walk, for miles and miles. With nothing on our feet, they made us walk. We walked until we came to a big field, an elven farm, but they didn’t lead us to the house, they led us to the barn.”
“We are not animals,” the children chanted.
I froze, my whole body revolting against hearing any more. I knew where this was going and I wanted to pretend the children hadn’t seen or experienced what I knew they had. “You don’t have to tell us,” I said.
Marjoram ignored me, her gaze distant. “We speak so we will never forget.”
“We speak so we will never forget,” the children repeated. Then all of them, including Marjoram spoke a long list of names. I understood that we were hearing the names of the children who didn’t make it out alive.
I looked at my companions. Benny was pale, his frown severe. Pippi had tears rolling down her cheeks. Lensy was biting her bottom lip so hard, I saw a drop of blood well and roll down her chin. Frost’s jaw was hard, his expression revealing nothing.
I listened, my heart breaking a little more at the sound of each name recited.
“The nightmares took them from the barn and they never returned. We know that they were slaughtered and cooked and eaten like livestock, because the nightmares told us so. They wanted us to know the fate that awaited us, said our flesh tasted better when it was laced with our terror. I chose not to be afraid.”
“We will never be afraid again,” the children said.
“I chose to find a way out of there,” Marjoram said. “Our barn was guarded, but the nightmares underestimated us. They thought we were stupid, like animals.”
“We are not animals,” the children said.
“We watched them,” Marjoram said. “They didn’t lock us away, they kept us in stalls, like horses, because they thought the guards would be enough. We learned their schedule, and when we saw our chance, we ran.”
“If we cannot fight, we run,” the children intoned.
“They caught three of our friends before we made it to the forest.”
“Acacia, Cedar, Daphne,”
“Once we were amongst the trees, we split up and we ran as fast and as far as we could.”
“Because we are small and we have lived in or near forests all our lives, we could hide from them, we could get into places they couldn’t reach. We ran until we could run no more and then we headed for the first water source we could find. We met there. We had lost five more of our friends.”
“Flora, Holly, Anise, Willow, Belladonna.”
“Together, we headed North, because we knew there weren’t as many people here and the forest is safest.”
“Nature is our cover.”
“We found this cave and this is where we’ll stay, until our scouts find a portal and we can overthrow those who guard it.”
“We can get you to a portal,” Lensy said.
Marjoram narrowed her eyes. “Why should we trust you?”
“Because you have no other choice,” Pippi said. “How long can you survive here before they find you? How long do you think you’ll search before you find a portal on your own?”
Marjoram’s eyes shone and, for the first time I saw the little girl she’d once been, the vulnerable, frightened child she hid so well. “Will you take us?”
Pippi looked at me, and I was surprised to see her indecision. She wanted to help these kids. She’d give up a chance to wreak mayhem and violence to help these kids.
“We’ll be okay without you,” I said. “You’re loud enough going through the forest, you’d wake up the whole palace if you went there with us.”
Pippi didn’t smile. “You’re a horrible liar, Chloe.”
“Once you get to the portal, you can catch up with us and continue on with us to the palace.”
“How will I get to the portal?” Pippi asked. “I’ve got no sense of direction without street signs and concrete.”
“I’ll go with you,” Chervil said, his deep voice calm and certain. “I’ll remember the way we came and I’ll serve as some protection against any trouble you may encounter.”
“We don’t need protection,” Hedgerow said with a sneer. Marjoram quieted him with a look.
“We want to get to the Non,” Marjoram said. “We will be forever in your debt if you will take us there.”
Fairy, Neat (Fairy Files Book 6) Page 12