by Anthea Sharp
She leaned back, looking up the flat expanse. To her surprise, the ceiling was gone. The glass wall extended up and up, into a pale sky filled with puffy clouds. It was impossible to tell if the wall ever ended.
There had to be some way to get through. She tried her dagger blade, but it didn’t scratch the surface. Banging the pommel against the glass didn’t do anything, either. Her close-range arrow bounced off, careening dangerously past Spark’s head before disappearing into the field of swords. And the wall seemed to simply absorb every spell she threw at it.
Well. Hoping she was right about the three wishes, she rubbed the copper apple again. For a second she considered asking for magic beans, but there was an easier way than climbing a vine and fighting a giant up in the clouds. Besides, that storyline had already been done.
“Laser cutter,” she said.
The apple opened, emitted its glitter and light, then snapped shut. At Spark’s feet lay a laser cutter, just like the kind her dad used in his contracting business. She put the apple back in her inventory, then picked up the laser.
It hummed when she turned it on, and it didn’t take long for her to cut a ragged oval in the glass wall. Mental fingers crossed, she set her palm in the center and pushed. For a second the glass resisted, and then the oval fell out. It hit the marble floor and shattered, crashing into long, glittering splinters. Clearly the fey folk hadn’t heard about safety glass.
Spark put the cutter away and ducked through the hole she’d made, careful to avoid the shards of broken glass. She drew her boot dagger and took a cautious step down the hall, the words of her spells at the tip of her tongue, her senses alert.
One hard challenge, one easy one. These things usually went in threes, and she hoped the last challenge wouldn’t prove deadly.
With her next step, she heard music—a lilting melody backed by a swift-strumming rhythm. She glimpsed motion out of the corner of her eye, and whirled around. Nothing.
She turned back to face the end of the hall, and caught her breath at the light and energy before her. Graceful dancers turned and dipped on the floor, their faces strange and beautiful, their hair sheened with starlight. Most had wings sprouting from the backs of their elegant evening clothes: jewel bright butterfly wings, gossamer wisps of light, the translucent panes of a dragonfly, and the dusty feathers of night moths.
Glowing orbs flickered and bobbed over the dancers, and the music was so strong it set her feet to tapping. She bent and tucked her knife back into its boot sheath. Beyond the throng of dancers, the silver apple shone.
Timing her steps to the music, Spark slipped between the nearest couple. Whenever she saw an opening, she darted through. Yes! She was getting closer and closer.
At last she gained the edge of the marble dance floor. She looked up in triumph—only to see that somehow she’d ended up back where she had begun. Instead of standing in front of the niche holding the silver apple, she faced the hole in the glass wall, the floor around her still sparkling and dangerous.
Dammit. She turned to face the dancers once more. Tapping her lip with one finger, she watched the swirls and patterns of the dance. Maybe she’d gotten turned around in there. One more try, and if that didn’t work, she’d have to change tactics.
This time, the dancers appeared to be more aware of her. She was jostled a number of times, and once a cat-eyed maiden hissed at her. When Spark reached the edge, she wasn’t too surprised to find herself before the glass wall once more.
Okay then.
If she couldn’t get through on her own, she’d have to find a partner and dance her way across. She tried stepping onto the floor and waving, but it seemed she was once again invisible to the dancers.
The gorgeously gowned and extravagantly suited dancers.
She glanced down at her clothing: the leggings tucked into rugged boots, the rustic vest and woolen cloak. Definitely not the thing to wear to a ball.
Taking a deep breath, she summoned the copper apple again. If she was wrong, she’d waste the final wish. Giving the fruit a rub, she whispered the words.
“I need a fancy ball gown.”
The apple did its glittery thing, though instead of closing it simply vanished. Her last wish, gone. She desperately hoped it had been the right one.
Wish a whoosh, a gown made of gauze and satin floated down out of the air. Its bodice was deepest rose, the skirts shading out to purple. The overskirt was a silver material that flowed and glimmered like water. It was gorgeous, though not exactly the best outfit for doing battle.
If this worked, though, she wouldn’t have to fight. Spark pulled off her cloak and placed it, and her bow and arrows, into her inventory. She kept her boots on, with the dagger firmly in place, then tugged the gown over her vest and breeches.
It fit, settling around her like rays of sunset, the skirts just skimming the floor. Now all she needed was a partner.
As if the thought had summoned him, a tall faerie approached. He was clad in silken fabric that flowed from deep purple to midnight black. His long, pale hair hung unbound down his back, held away from his face by a circlet of braided ivy.
He was completely dreamy—if you counted nightmares in that description. His eyes were full of terrors, and Spark swallowed, hard, when he held out his hand.
“Dance, milady?” he asked, in a voice that sounded soft. The way a cat’s paw was soft, until it shot out its wickedly sharp claws.
But she didn’t have much choice if she wanted to get to the far end of the hall and snatch the silver apple.
She put her hand in his, trying not to flinch when his extra-long fingers closed over hers. His skin was cold and pale, as though he were crafted of the marble surrounding them. With a sharp smile, he drew her into the dance, one hand at the small of her back.
Spark gingerly set her hand on his shoulder. It hadn’t escaped her notice that his teeth ended in sharp points. The music rose about them, moving into a waltz tempo. Good—she kind of knew how to waltz, as opposed to the fancier moves she’d seen the dancers making earlier.
Despite her inexperience—did waltzing with her pillow when she was in middle school count?—she found herself moving with ease. Her partner guided her surely about the floor, and there was probably some faerie magic in the air that helped. The hardest part was keeping track of where she was in relation to the apple.
Every time she got the location fixed, her partner would swirl her around and she’d lose sight of the silver apple again. His grip was firm and implacable, though he didn’t look at her as they waltzed. She was just as glad not to be the focus of those incredibly scary eyes.
Spark counted under her breath. Every twenty-four steps they’d circle back to the niche holding the apple. She counted twice more, to be sure.
The next pass around the hall, she was ready. At twenty-one, she braced herself. Twenty-two, lifted her arm. Twenty-three, ducked out into a twirl. Twenty-four, reached, ignoring the painful pull of the faerie’s grip.
She leaned out, stretching toward the shining silver fruit. Her fingertips brushed it, and it wobbled.
No—she’d missed.
In slow motion, the apple teetered and plummeted from its niche. The music slowed, and the dancers let out gasps of horror. Spark lunged, ripping free of her partner’s grasp, and hit the floor hard, one hand outstretched. Her other wrist bent too sharply, trapped between her and the marble, and she felt something give way with a snapping pain.
The apple fell into her palm, heavy and solid. Despite the agony in her left wrist, Spark smiled. Quest complete.
She looked up, expecting the fey dancers to rush her, demanding their prize back. But the hall was empty. She’d beaten all three challenges and won the silver apple.
With a whimper, she sat up. She tried to wiggle the fingers of her left hand, and hot fire flashed along her nerves, leaving her gasping.
Great. She’d won this round—but now she had a damaged wrist, and she hadn’t finished questing through to the D
ark Court. Spark tucked the apple away, then rose to her feet, bracing herself against the smooth marble wall.
Now what? The idea of facing the queen one-handed wasn’t appealing. And if Jennet and Tam were right, her wrist would be injured in the real world, too. She had to log off and get medical attention. And somehow explain how she’d ended up getting hurt.
Before she could take a step forward, the air around her whirled with golden light. Everything lurched, the walls bowing inward, then out. Spark squeezed her eyes closed, fighting the sudden nausea. Now was not the best time for the game to decide to transport her to the next level. Though she could log out there, and hopefully return to the same place when she got another chance to play.
But when would that be? Vonda wouldn’t let her sneak another session on the FullD, and then there was the little problem of her wrist. Spark doubted VirtuMax would allow her to sim until it healed—which would thrill the Terabins. No, she had to finish this now.
Biting her lip hard to distract herself from the pain, Spark opened her eyes.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“Thomas,” Aran said, ducking out of his room.
The bard looked up from the low couch and left off strumming his guitar.
“What is it?”
“I need to see the place where the game interfaces with the Realm of Faerie,” Aran said. “If you know where that is.”
Time for him to get started on his assignment for the queen—and figure out if he could actually succeed.
Thomas plucked out a melancholy chord, then set his guitar aside and rose.
“Very well. I am honor-bound to aid you, though I like it not. Although I doubt you will be able to accomplish this task you’ve accepted so foolishly.”
Aran gave him a close look. “Since you’re the one responsible for hooking the game up to the realm in the first place, why doesn’t the queen get you to do this reverse-hacking?”
“My connection with the mortal world is broken. Even had I wanted to, I could not do this thing for her.”
“Fair enough. Don’t sound so excited about it, though.” Aran let the edge of sarcasm in his voice mask his anxiety. He still had zero idea how he was going to pull this off.
“Come,” Thomas said, holding the tent flap open. “Though I urge you to consider returning to the mortal world. You will see soon enough how impossible the queen’s request is.”
Aran followed him out into the constant night. “Maybe.”
Was the bard only helping because he was certain Aran would fail? Well, he’d prove Thomas wrong. Somehow.
They walked silently through the dark oak forest surrounding the court. When they ran out of trapped-faerie lights, Thomas raised his hand and conjured a ball of silvery blue radiance. It reflected eerily off the branches and points of light in the bushes that looked like watching eyes.
“I don’t suppose you have any advice for me?” Aran asked. “You know, being the lead programmer and everything.”
“No.”
Thomas did not elaborate, and Aran knew better than to press.
Soon, the oaks were replaced by pale-barked trees with shimmering leaves. Everything was washed of color, but he guessed that, even in bright light, the trees and leaves would be rendered in black and gray. Moonlight slanted down into a clearing ahead. At the edge of the trees, Thomas halted.
“Step into the faerie ring,” he said, pointing to the circle of mushrooms at the center of the glade. “When you reach your destination, mark well the location of the clearing, so that you may come back to this place.”
“Wait—you’re not coming?” A splinter of panic lodged in Aran’s throat.
“This is your quest, BlackWing, not mine. I shall await your return.”
A million scared questions clamored in Aran’s mind, but he refused to ask any of them. Thomas had made it clear he was on his own, and totally expected Aran to tweak it. Swallowing back his fear, he strode past the bard and into the moonlit clearing.
When he stepped into the center of the mushroom-bounded circle, a cold wind pricked his skin. The air wavered, and the wind increased, buffeting him furiously. Aran hunched his shoulders against the gusts. After a few moments the air quieted. Shaking his hair out of his face, he looked up and saw that he still stood in the center of the faerie ring. But everything else had changed.
Twilight deepened the air, the last light of sunset tipping over the horizon, and the world held more color. The moss under his feet was a deep, velvety green. The mushrooms surrounding him shone like small moons, and the pale-barked trees did, in fact, have silvery leaves.
In front of him, like a mirror image, stood another clearing. Unlike his, the late afternoon sun illuminated the rich colors of flowers surrounding the faerie ring. And the mushrooms were different, a mix of the pale ones surrounding him and bright red ones, speckled with white.
Even weirder, another clearing lay beyond that one. Sunlight streamed brightly down, making Aran squint. All the mushrooms in that ring were the red ones with white spots.
Okay. He folded his arms, unwilling to step out of his own clearing until he’d figured things out.
He thought back to when Spark had played the demo game. The opening sequence… what had the clearing looked like? He was pretty sure the original game of Feyland had a faerie ring with both kinds of mushrooms, just like the middle clearing.
The ring surrounding him was made entirely of the moon-pale ones, and it had brought him to this place from the Dark Court. If he had to guess, he’d say the mushrooms were signposts, of a sort.
So where did the red and white ones lead? Was there yet another world tucked away behind the game’s interface?
“The Bright Court,” a high voice said.
Aran spun, his heartbeat revving. “What? Who’s there?”
“Puck, at your service.”
The sprite nimbly bounded down one of the pale branches. The branch bent under his slight weight, bringing him face-to-face with Aran.
“The bright what?” Aran asked, trying to get his racing pulse back under control.
“Court.” Puck gestured to the sunlit glade. “Yon gateway leads there.”
That made sense, in a tweaked, faerie-world kind of way. If it was always night in the Dark Court, then it must always be day somewhere else.
“Who’s in charge of that court?” Aran asked. “And why didn’t I end up there?”
“The Bright King rules the Bright Court. He is not as cunning as his sister, nor as schooled in the art of snares and trickery. Though, when he chooses to use it, he has power aplenty.”
Aran filed that information away to process another time. It was good to get some solid answers to his questions. As long as Puck was forthcoming, he’d keep asking.
“So, the middle clearing. Is that the way back into the real world?”
The sprite gave him a faintly disgusted look. “Real? Everything you have experienced is true, and each of the courts is as real as your own realm.”
“All right, sorry. It goes to the human world?”
“Indeed. Well puzzled, mortal.” Puck leaned forward and tweaked Aran’s nose, then catapulted back, laughing. The branch swayed as he deftly caught his balance.
“Hey!” Aran rubbed his nose. “Was that really necessary?”
The sprite ignored his question. “The center clearing is bounded by a wall, naught but a thin crack between it and the realm. Can you see the protections with your mortal eye?”
“No.” Aran stepped out of the circle of pale mushrooms.
Slowly, he walked toward the middle clearing, hands extended. Sure enough—at the place where they overlapped he encountered an invisible barrier. It was slightly rough, as though made of unpolished granite. He ran his palms over the surface, searching for the crack.
At last he found it, barely wide enough for the edge of his thumbnail.
“This is the crack that lets humans into the realm?” he asked. “I’m not sure how anyone could even fit th
rough there.”
“’Tis a metaphor,” Puck said, in a tone that implied Aran was denser than rock.
“Why doesn’t the queen send a bunch of goblins with pry bars over here and just, you know, force it open.”
“T’would not succeed. Let me show you.”
Puck leaped from the branch, turned a somersault, and came to hover next to Aran. He lifted his hands, and greenish light spread from his long fingertips. When the light touched the wall, Aran sucked in his breath.
Lines of code encircled the center clearing. X-y scripts and commands glowed, as clearly as if they were displayed on a screen. Numbers and words and complex figures spun out, Puck’s magic spreading like a virus until the entire wall was illuminated. And it was constructed of nothing but programming.
Freaky.
Aran set his fingertip to one of the lines and flicked. The code obediently moved up, and another line took its place.
“This is it,” he breathed. “I just need a way to input.”
And he had one. He whirled to face Puck.
“Can you get me to the tent, then back here?” Aran asked. “Quickly would be good.”
The sprite looked at him, a mischievous glint in his dark eyes. “I can. Step with me into the ring, and I will take you where you need to go.”
Aran leaped back into the center of the faerie ring. He could so do this. Grab his tablet—and the dinosaur—then run some of his hacker scripts into the wall. He was certain it would work.
And when it did… he’d be completely set. He’d return to the real world with enough wealth to at last take control of his life. No more subsisting on the edge, unable to get a job, or even a date, because of his criminal record.
Money meant freedom. Independence. The chance to finally follow his dreams, instead of living on the edges of other peoples’ hopes.
Exhilaration sang through his blood.
“Hurry it up.” He beckoned to the sprite, who was sauntering over the soft mosses.