Autumn

by Edwards, Maddy

Carley and I spent a quiet last day. We both got teary-eyed, but when Nick came over and saw girls crying he threatened to leave if we didn’t stop, so we did.

  Mrs. Hightower was in crazy form, getting ready for my mother to get there. My mother was due to arrive that evening so the four of us could have dinner together. Bizarrely, Mrs. Hightower had invited Nick, and because Nick would brave any situation, even one involving dinner with four females, to be around Carley, he was coming as well.

  My mother had decided to drive, because, as she told me in a phone call, she had a lot of stuff. I had only packed summer clothes when I came to Castleton, because I never thought I’d be staying on into the fall. Now I was there indefinitely.

  I tried not to think about it. Holt and I hadn’t had a chance to talk about our future or where we might live once we were officially together; he had been arrested before we ever had a chance.

  When my mother arrived, the first thing Carley said was, “Wow, it’s like you have computer software that tells you what you’re going to look like when you’re older. Only it’s not software, it’s your mother!”

  Everyone always said we looked a lot alike, same brown hair and brown eyes, except that she was taller. Luckily, my mom just laughed at Carley and gave me an evil grin before she said, “Isn’t that lovely to hear, Autumn?”

  “Yeah, Mom,” I muttered, “that’s awesome.”

  Mrs. Hightower and my mother chatted for most of the night. There were a couple of times when Nick tried to get Carley alone, but she wasn’t having it. Eventually she said, “Really, Nick, it’s my last night. I can’t be rude and leave Autumn.” Nick lapsed into an angry silence.

  I found the chaos of the night a relief. Nowadays, I looked for anything and everything to distract me from what was happening in the Fairy world. It was difficult, because I was reminded on a daily basis that I was a Fairy and that it was only going to get worse.

  Nick and Carley were destined not to resolve their relationship before she left for the fall. Soon after she told him to leave her alone, he did. He left. He said a polite good-bye to Mrs. Hightower and my mom, but he barely looked at Carley before he disappeared into the autumn night.

  After Nick had left and my mother and Mrs. Hightower had gotten comfortable in the living room, still chatting away, Carley pulled me up to her room.

  It gave me a pang to see it. Although she was leaving a lot of her stuff behind, she had packed up a lot of the pictures that had hung on the walls all summer, and two suitcases stood by the door. At least the pink bedspread wasn’t going anywhere.

  “How could he be so rude?” she demanded, mostly to herself.

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Carley,” I said, “he wants to date and you don’t and he’s not going to let you walk all over him. Get over it.”

  I realized how harsh I was sounding and flinched, but it was too late. Carley rounded on me.

  “Look,” she said. “I know you have been a real crab lately and I do hope you straighten out whatever is going on with gorgeous Holt and gorgeous Samuel, but don’t take it out on me.”

  Knowing that she had a point and being relieved at how forgiving a friend I had, I nodded and apologized.

  “Now,” she said. “What is going on with those two boys?”

  I shook my head. I still couldn’t tell her the truth, so I said, “I want to be with Holt, but it’s...complicated.”

  “Hum,” said Carley. “I don’t know. You always look super happy when you’re with Samuel.”

  I shrugged. I didn’t feel super happy. I just felt tired.

  “You’ll figure it out, and you’d better keep me updated,” said Carley. “I want to know everything.”

  “Of course,” I told her. “I promise to tell you everything.” And even though it was another lie, it felt good to know that Carley would be there for me no matter what.

  The Hightowers left early the next day. I got up to say a bleary goodbye, then went back to bed. I started at my new school the next day and I would need all the rest I could get.

  I wasn’t looking forward to meeting Samuel and Susan at UP UP and Away later in the day, mostly because it took an effort to be nice to Samuel now. It took an effort to do absolutely everything. I was sure that as long as Holt was imprisoned, nothing would feel right.

  On top of that, people’s reactions to me were getting weirder. I had to actively avoid people to stop them from coming up to me as if I were a perfectly wrapped Christmas present, and talking to me for hours.

  I should have been happy about giving other people happiness, but I was so stressed myself that I never quite got there.

  Strange things were happening to me because I was a Fairy. My senses were heightened and everyone reacted oddly to me. I could be walking down the street and suddenly people would start to follow me, smiling. Susan and Samuel had said that my powers would appear slowly, but I wasn’t enjoying how they were appearing. People following me around was creepy.

  Once, a lady was crying, and when I walked past she stopped. She was sitting on a bench with a garden at her back, and the flowers literally started blooming again, where a second before they had been wilting with the autumn cold.

  I had gasped and she had looked up at me, and instantly her face brightened with a smile.

  The other weird thing that was happening was the designs under my skin. Not only was it really freaky to see dancing silver designs under my skin in the shower, but I think it was how other Fairies recognized me. The designs were getting stronger.

  At least they weren’t visible to humans -- which I wasn’t any more -- because my mother would have totally lost it if she had seen them. She would have thought they were tattoos, and at best she would have made us go back to live with Dad. Or she might even have decided she’d transfer me to some crazy ultraconservative school in the middle of nowhere. The night I turned seventeen she and I had a quiet dinner together. Nick was busy and there wasn’t anyone else who wanted to be there that could.

  Since I had been ordered not to use my powers I couldn’t use them on my mom, to, say, do anything I wanted, which was a major bummer. She and I had agreed that I would keep working at UP UP and Away after school. It wasn’t like I expected to have much of a social life; people who transferred schools had a hard enough time even without any Fairy complications. I had my new Fairy duties and my visits to Holt to look forward to, but I was sure I would have plenty of time for UP UP and Away.

  Susan, Samuel, and I agreed that we would get together twice a week. I wanted to ask why Samuel had to be there, since I was sure Susan could teach me what I needed to know on her own, but Holt had told me to be nice to Samuel, so I was.

  I even bought him a hot chocolate and managed not to harass him about the Holt situation. A bit of the tension in my chest released when Samuel told me (without my having to ask) that he had spent several hours after I left the day before making sure Holt was more comfortable.

  Susan had hugged him in appreciation. When I was with the two of them I studied Susan’s body language closely. There had been a time when I was sure that she liked Samuel, but none of those old signs were there. Apparently the stress of what Holt and I had done had leaked far beyond just the two of us and the Queens, to affect the whole Fairy Court.

  I continued to work at the cafe, but now I never made a mistake. I was able to catch glasses when they fell out of my hand and hear people behind me without looking. I felt more capable of protecting myself. There were perks to being a Fairy.

  Chapter Eight

  I almost skipped to my next visit to Holt. All week I had been peppering Samuel and Susan with questions about our situation and how Holt was doing. Susan had finally had to threaten not to tutor me any more if I didn’t stop being annoying.

  I stopped, but not talking about the one thing that was always on my mind was probably the hardest thing I have ever done. I wouldn’t have managed it except that by the time Susan ordered me to leave her alone about it, it was only
two days until I was going back for my second visit to the Cheshires’.

  The visit was on a Saturday, which was a relief. I wasn’t working until that evening and I didn’t have to worry about homework from school until the next day. High school in Maine, as I had found out during my first week of classes, wasn’t as bad as I had thought it would be.

  No, I didn’t know anyone and I ate lunch with Nick every day, and yes, I was behind in some subjects and ahead in others, but all in all everyone had been nice and I hadn’t felt like the total outcast I had expected to be, which was good, because I wasn’t sure I could take much more stress.

  My mother had also settled into Castleton nicely. She said she missed my dad, but she also loved the view of the ocean and the fresh air. Besides, she had discovered what I already knew, the pretty much everyone in Castleton was nice.

  My mother wouldn’t have been so positive if she had known that she’d been tricked into coming here by Fairies, but in all seriousness she would never have believed it anyway. This was one of the bonuses to having a supernatural boyfriend, I mused as I knocked on the back door of the Cheshires’ place.

  My one relief in the past week had been that there had been no sign of either Mrs. Cheshire or the other members of the Supreme Council. If I had seen Divoni or Alderoy again I would have been tempted to give them a piece of my mind, and that probably wouldn’t have been good for anyone.

  Instead of Samuel appearing when the door opened, as I had expected, it was a less familiar, though no less formidable, face that looked out at me.

  “Hi,” I said to Samuel’s grandmother.

  I had met her only once before, earlier in the summer when I had been spending a lot of time with Samuel after Holt had disappeared. Those times had been fun, but they felt like a world away. I knew I was supposed to call her Granny.

  “Come in, come in,” she said. She was short and hunched and walked with a cane, but she reminded me of her grandson, with blue eyes and pale skin. “Samuel should be along in a few minutes. Young men get so distracted sometimes.” She smiled and I realized that she found herself rather amusing. It was almost a relief. I saw very few signs in her of her daughter, the Winter Queen.

  I had begun to wonder if the Winter Queen was really part of the family. Maybe she was descended from pigs instead. I liked that idea a lot.

  “Follow me,” she said, motioning with one gnarled hand and hobbling down the darkly lit passage. Now that I was forced into a dark space with this woman I found myself wishing that I had asked Samuel more questions about her. Even though she didn’t act like her daughter, I worried that any second she was going to turn around and transform me into a popsicle.

  “How have you been?” I asked, trying to be polite. My voice echoed off the walls and further reminded me that I was alone. Well, almost.

  “Oh, fine,” she said, not turning around. We continued our slow pace.

  I watched the bend of her head. She was a Fairy, but she didn’t feel like the other Fairies to me. Now that I was a Fairy myself, I could identify when there was another Fairy around without having to even wonder. But not with Samuel’s grandmother. I could tell that she had powers, but not what kind.

  I could also tell that she had been the one at the door for a reason. I just had to wait her out until she explained herself.

  We were getting close to the door to the basement -- and Holt -- when she turned around to face me. Her eyes were in shadow, giving her body an eerie glow.

  “The more important question,” she said, as if we were continuing a conversation that we had never started, “is how are you doing?”

  I stared at her, so shocked to be asked the question I didn’t know what to say.

  Hearing the words come out of her mouth reminded me that no one, except when my mother asked how my first week of school had gone, had bothered to ask me that since everything had happened with Holt.

  The Fairies were all too angry at me to care, and Carley was too wrapped up in her own problems -- named Nick -- to wonder.

  “I’m...um, fine?” I stammered out.

  The old lady raised her eyebrows at me and I coughed nervously.

  “I’m sorry,” I tried again. “I don’t know if I know what you are asking.”

  In response she pursed her lips together until they disappeared into one thin, white line.

  “This last week has been a shock for you,” she said. “My daughter...is difficult. She wants what is best for her family and she does not care who she hurts to get it. Some might admire that quality and in many ways it is admirable, to care about your family so much....”

  She trailed off without finishing the thought, then continued: “Anyway, I know she has made life difficult for you. Then again, you have made life difficult for yourself.” She gave me a stern eye. Even she wasn’t going to let me off the hook for what Holt and I had done.

  “But,” she sighed, “I can understand young love. To a point anyway. I think Mr. Holt Roth should have known better, but of course he probably wasn’t thinking at the time, and there was no reason to expect YOU to know any better.”

  Her words confused me. I let her keep talking to see if she would start to make sense as she went on.

  “My point is that I do not believe you knew what you were doing when you entered into this. Dare I say that you were not even in a state to discuss it.”

  Her eyes on me were unsettling. They reminded me of the night Logan had confronted us, of his anger and then his unbridled fury.

  Confronted with that, the next thing I had known was waking up to the world of Fairies and Holt. To say that I did not know what I was entering into was true, but what if I had known? How could that possibly have changed my decision? What was this woman’s point?

  “What are you trying to tell me?” I asked. The only benefit to not being able to see Granny’s face was that she couldn’t see mine, either.

  She sighed, glancing over her shoulder. Having reassured herself that we were still alone, she looked back at me.

  “What do you know about why Holt hasn’t been released?”

  I chewed on my lip. I wanted this conversation over with. I had come here to see Holt, not to be quizzed by the Winter Queen’s mother.

  When the old lady didn’t look like she was going to budge I said, “I know that Holt saved my life and that his mother deserted him -- and me -- and that your daughter is on some sort of vendetta against us.”

  Samuel’s grandmother sucked air in through her teeth. At first I thought that what I had said was going too far, but slowly she smiled.

  “That is really all you know? No one has told you anything else? It’s all very well and good to see what people are doing, but don’t you realize that you don’t know why they are doing it?”

  I blinked. “What are you talking about?”

  She folded her hands in front of herself. She reminded me of one of those aristocratic old English women I was always seeing on TV shows.

  “Why is Holt not being released?” she asked.

  “Because he broke the law.” I thought it was obvious.

  “What is his punishment to be?”

  “I assumed he would be sentenced to jail time or found innocent, which would have been easier if his own family had supported him instead of throwing him to the wolves.”

  Granny cackled. “Are you calling my daughter a wolf? Lovely. It is not the first time she has been identified as such.”

  I couldn’t bring myself to see the humor in the situation.

  “Am I wrong about his punishment?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I suppose they could sentence him to jail, but that is really the human realm. As you can tell from his confinement to the basement, we don’t really have jails in our world.”

  “You’re trying to tell me that he’s in something other than a prison?” Maybe this woman was crazy after all, just like her daughter.

  “I am trying to tell you the punishments they are deciding between.�
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  “What punishments other than prison are there?”

  Suddenly, a fear grasped at my chest. I wanted to put my hands to my stomach and double over as nausea swept over me. “Are they going to strip him of his Fairy powers? His role as Prince? Is that possible?”

  In one moment of clarity it all made sense, all that shocking business of Mrs. Roth backing away from her son and refusing to condemn Logan. If Holt was no longer in line to become the Summer King, the role would fall to Mrs. Roth’s next child, her son Logan.

  I wanted to scream in frustration. How could no one have told me?

  Here I was, going along, la di dah, worrying about nothing more than the question of when they were going to let him out. I had assumed it would be within days, which was partly why I was dragging my feet about learning to be a Fairy; I wanted Holt to teach me. Not that Susan and Samuel weren’t excellent teachers, but they weren’t Holt.

  “No,” said Samuel’s grandmother sternly. “I’m afraid that’s not the worst of it.”

  It was like a car crash happening in slow motion, where I could see everything moving but I couldn’t do anything to stop it. Slowly, all the windows shattered into a million shards as I watched.

  I had to ask. I had to get up the courage to ask. I just didn’t know how.

  “What’s the worst of it?”

  “The worst of it is that there are still Fairies who think you should have accepted, and still will have to accept, Samuel’s Rose, as you are his destiny.

  I started to protest that that was no longer possible, but Granny shushed me with a raised hand.

  “What you forget, but shouldn’t,” she said, “is that this is all unprecedented. The notion that there are rules to be followed, conventions to be observed, is simply folly. It is why my darling daughter is having so much of her way, bless her conniving heart.”

  I rather thought conniving was too nice a term for that woman.

  “You still haven’t told me what the worst of it is,” I pointed out. I could barely contain myself now. I felt as if I was a balloon being blown up more and more, past my capacity.