Paranoia, Pixies and Prophecies

by Melinda Chase

  “Wait a minute,” I said, staring at Hunter in confusion. “How did you get here?”

  “A leap of faith.” Though his cheeky grin was absolutely adorable, I was not at all in the mood for it. “I just jumped in the exact same spot you disappeared from.”

  That explained it. I couldn’t help but grin back at Hunter once he’d explained it.

  There weren’t many people who would have jumped after someone like that, especially knowing where they were going. And, since Hunter didn’t possess any magic, this place was that much more dangerous for him.

  “I should really work on thinking before I act,” I sighed, turning to survey the forest around me.

  I heard a rustling in a nearby tree and turned to investigate it. The tree itself was gorgeous, with its striped trunk. The branches were thick, and leaves that adorned it looked like they were made out of pure gold.

  The rustling grew louder, and a sinking feeling started to form in my gut. I wasn’t sure what sort of creatures to expect from this world, and I realized with a bolt of terror that it could be something that wanted to kill us.

  The leaves started to shake, and I’d almost managed to convince myself to turn and run when the creature appeared.

  And it was absolutely adorable. The thing was small, about twice the size of a squirrel, with a fat white body that reminded me of a rabbit’s, a triangular head, two huge, pink ears, a long tail with a ball of fluffy white fur on the end, and a pair of large blue doe eyes with long, thick black lashes.

  “Hi,” I grinned softly at it. “How are you?”

  The creature blinked twice at me, seemingly trying to figure out whether I was friend or foe before it let out a high pitched little squeak, whipped around, and retreated back into the tree.

  So much for making friends.

  “What was that?” I asked Hunter.

  “No idea.” He shook his head, watching the place where the little rodent had disappeared. “We should start moving, though. It’s never good to stay in one place for too long.”

  Something about his tone threw me off. It was dark and ominous, giving me the distinct feeling that he knew something I didn’t. I turned and looked at the forest again, but this time, I was trying to take it in as Hunter would.

  It did feel dark. There was something strange about the stillness like it wasn’t meant to actually be there. My gut said that this place was supposed to be teeming with life, the kind that made people happy.

  Honestly, this wasn’t at all what I had expected from the fae world. Sure, the colors were bright and happy, giving the appearance of a wonderful place, but it was the feeling underneath it all like there was darkness hanging in the air, permeating everything around it.

  Hunter and I traipsed around the forest for a few moments, attempting to get our bearings.

  “What are we supposed to do here?” I asked aloud, though the question was meant more for myself than for Hunter.

  “You’re the boss,” he shrugged. “You get to decide.”

  Even though I normally loved being the boss and hated being told what to do, this was one of those moments where I wished Hunter had just pointed me in the direction of what we needed to do, because I was totally lost. I’d launched myself through the portal without even thinking about it, and landed right in the middle of some random forest. As far as I knew, I wasn’t anywhere near Magda or Laslow, and I had absolutely no idea how to find either of them.

  We wandered through the forest for a few minutes, weaving and ducking around the massive, vibrant plant life. I couldn’t help but look around, wondering what all the plants were and what they could have been used for.

  But, outside of that little squirrel-like creature we had seen, there was no other life, it appeared. If there was, then it had decided to stay extremely hidden from Hunter and me, keeping out of view for as long as we were roaming the forest.

  Eventually, we stumbled upon this wide dirt road, clearly fae made in origin. And when I say stumbled, I mean that literally. I tripped over a little vine that had snaked in front of my feet, seemingly with a mind of its own, and just when I thought my head might come crashing down on another rock and split wide open this time, my hands fell flat against hardened dirt, the product of a pair of hands instead of nature.

  “Should we follow this?” Hunter asked as he helped me up.

  “Looks like it’s our only option,” I replied. “At least this will take us somewhere, right?”

  No sooner had I spoken than a great, loud rumbling flared up behind us. It sounded like a thousand horse hooves pounding the dirt, coming straight for us.

  “Get off the road,” Hunter ordered, yanking me off of the beaten dirt path and into a patch of brambles just along the side of it. The two of us hit the deck, ducking to avoid the prying eyes of whoever was coming.

  It sounded like an army. I wasn’t even thinking about the sharp thorns currently poking my smooth blue blouse, probably ripping it beyond repair or the way the branches of the little bushes were pressing into my sore biceps and aggravating my muscles.

  I kept my eyes focused solely on the road, waiting to see what sort of army was coming.

  Hunter’s breath was heavy in my ear, but it caught in his throat as soon as the travelers came into view.

  It was an army. There was no mistaking that, not when the horse-like creatures traveled together in perfect time, and the elves that had mounted them were wearing blood-red uniforms. The two at the front, tall elves with upturned noses, long black hair, and beady black eyes, even had medals adorning their uniforms.

  An elven army. I should have been both shocked and excited to see such a thing, but I couldn’t shake that feeling of darkness that had accompanied me ever since Hunter and I had landed in this realm. The feeling had only grown when the elves came into view.

  I took a moment to look at their horses.

  Those aren’t actually horses, I realized as I took in the massive wings on the sides of the creatures. They were pegasi.

  And abused ones, by the looks of it. I could see painful metal spikes sticking out of many of their hooves, and the bridles they wore were so tight most of them had blood trickling down their snouts. The sheer evil of it made my blood boil, and if I hadn’t had the wherewithal to realize that fighting against the cruelty would probably do nothing but lead to my death or imprisonment, I would have launched myself from the bramble patch and demand these evil elves let their pegasi free immediately.

  Maybe there was a bit of truth to those stories about the evil fae after all.

  Hunter must have been able to read my mind just then because he slowly reached his hand out and clasped my thigh. I glanced over to see him shaking his head in warning, making completely sure I didn’t plan to storm this army with my almighty power of one.

  I tried to force myself to relax, sinking back on my haunches just in case my instincts attempted to get the better of my mind. At least this way, I’d have a bit more space to travel, and hopefully, Hunter could knock me down before I did something truly stupid.

  We waited until the army passed- which took a while. The unit was massive, made up of at least a thousand soldiers, all on the back of pegasi. And all of those poor creatures were clearly being abused in some way.

  But, once the army was finally all the way down the road and the sound of their stomping was nothing more than a slight buzzing in the distance, Hunter and I emerged from our hiding spot.

  “They are awful!” I gasped as soon as we did, turning to glare down the road. “Did you see those poor creatures.”

  “Yes,” Hunter grimaced. “This is… not what I expected.”

  “What did you expect?” I asked curiously, hoping that Hunter might have some sort of answer.

  “I don’t know,” he shook his head, rubbing his temples with both of his fingers. “We were made to think this world was full of thieves and bandits, lower-class forms of life. People with no organization. Savages.”

  “Those were defini
tely savages,” I pointed out darkly.

  “Not that kind,” Hunter shook his head.

  “I know,” I sighed, turning to glance down the road again. “I don’t think that anything we’ve been told is the truth. But that just begs the question: where did it come from?”

  “There had better be a damn good answer for that,” Hunter growled. He swiveled his head to glance up at the sky. “Come on, let’s keep going. I want to see if we can find someplace to sleep before it gets dark.”

  “What happens when it gets dark?” I asked.

  Hunter glanced at me, and the look in his eyes was one of worry and complete fear.

  “Let’s just say that little squirrel creature is the least of our problems as far as the animals here go.”

  14

  Hunter and I walked along the path for hours. I couldn’t tell what time it was, exactly, because the sun didn’t seem to follow the same pattern it did back home. Which made complete sense, of course, but that didn’t negate how difficult it was to tell time. In fact, when we had arrived, the sun had been high in the center of the sky, which I had assumed meant it was somewhere around noon.

  And after hours of walking, the sun was still high in the center of the sky. It hadn’t seemed to move even a single centimeter. Hunter was just as stumped as I was, so we both decided our best course of action was to follow the road and hope we came upon a town sometime before the sky decided to get dark on us.

  I, for one, did not want to find out what sort of dark and dangerous creatures Hunter had been alluding to. My mind was already running rampant with ideas- dragons, vampire bears, and other monsters that I wasn’t sure were even real.

  The more we walked, the more I began to realize why I was here.

  “We need to find Magda and get her out of here,” I announced to Hunter, so suddenly I nearly made him jump. We’d been walking hand in hand, in silence, for so long that the mere sound of my voice felt like a piercing scream.

  “Okay,” Hunter nodded. “Is this just what you want, or did you have a vision?”

  “I wish,” I sighed. “That would make it so much easier to find her. I guess I’d call this… a feeling? Like my intuition, but stronger.”

  Hunter studied me curiously as we trotted along.

  “I think your powers are growing.”

  “Can they do that?” I asked nervously. I wasn’t even sure I had a handle on the powers I’d been given, much fewer ones that were more powerful.

  “Anything’s possible,” he replied. “But the feeling you describe feels like it’s more than just a feeling or a guess. And it would be the next sensible progression.”

  “Hmm,” I nodded, mulling over the possibility. I wasn’t sure I wanted my powers to grow just yet- or ever. “Well, whatever it is, I think we should just find Magda and take her home. I’m sure she doesn’t want to be here. And then if we need to, we can always come back.”

  Hunter fell silent for a moment, but I could feel his eyes on me, studying me.

  “What is it?” I asked, knowing full well that he had thoughts he was still a little nervous to share.

  “You just seemed so sure about finding Laslow a little while ago.”

  He had a fair point. One I knew he’d bring up, and one I wasn’t sure I was quite prepared to answer just yet. Even so, I knew he deserved some sort of explanation. After all, he had jumped through a portal for me.

  “This world is enormous,” I replied. “And neither one of us knows where we’re going. It could take us years to find him, and then what are we going to do? I don’t think it’s going to be all that easy to just break him out. I think it’s better to wait. Maybe if there were more halflings, all of our power would be enough.”

  “But the old elf—”

  “Didn’t put a clock on it,” I pointed out. “For all we know, nothing’s going to happen for years. We were hired to find a missing woman, so that is exactly what we are going to do.”

  My tone made it clear that there was no room for argument here. Hunter, sensing that, just nodded and fell silent. I knew he’d do whatever I wanted, even if he disagreed with our course of action.

  But what I didn’t want him to know was that this world made me nervous. I’d leaped through the portal in a moment of pure insanity and now, here I was, in a foreign world where I knew no one, trying to fight some sort of war that didn’t even seem to be happening.

  The old elf might have thought that I was the one who needed to fix everything, but a large part of me wanted to believe he was wrong. This wasn’t my world. It felt so different and foreign that I couldn’t have claimed it even if I wanted to. Someone else could fight all those battles and end this civil war, while I was at home trying to get a handle on conjuring a water ball without flooding my kitchen.

  Another half an hour passed in relative silence, with nothing but the sound of our footsteps to fill our ears. I spent it gazing at the flora and fauna that made up the world of the fae, committing it to memory so that I could relay it all to Mom, Grams, and Marcella when I got home.

  Provided they didn’t kill me first, of course.

  Before I knew it, though, we’d stumbled on exactly what we were looking for. A little town just on the side of the road made up of cobblestone pathways and wooden buildings. It looked like it was straight out of the south of France, minus the bright paint colors. I actually gasped when I saw how beautiful the town was.

  And the people.

  So many fae all in one place. The fae I’d dealt with before had been evil- hard and nasty looking, with strange colored skin and terrifying eyes. But these fae seemed the opposite of evil. There were elves, tall and graceful, wearing long white and gray robes, milling about and strolling through the road. There were also little dwarves, ones that looked much different from the dwarves I’d come to know. They were small in stature, of course, with long beards made of silky hair and tiny button noses.

  I realized after I saw one touch a dying plant and revitalize it that they weren’t, in fact, dwarves. They were gnomes.

  Tiny fairies flitted about, leaving little bits of glitter in the air.

  “Close your mouth or you’ll let the flies in,” Hunter murmured in my ear. “We’re supposed to be from here, remember?”

  “Shoot, you’re right,” I whispered back, snapping my jaw closed and tugging at my hair so it hid my ears.

  I didn’t look a thing like any of these elves, but I had a feeling that was the closest thing to a human witch that existed here.

  “Let’s sit down and have some food,” Hunter told me, steering me off of one of the cobblestone pathways and toward a tiny little cafe off the side of the road. It reminded me of a mix between what I imagined an old fashioned saloon would look like, and a restaurant in the middle of Disneyland.

  I couldn’t believe the Council wanted to call these people savages. The horrid soldiers who were mistreating their pegasi, sure, but the rest of them?

  They seemed so normal and unassuming. Maybe they had a few bad apples, and some tricksters, but they were far from what I would call savages.

  The moment Hunter and I walked in the door, raucous laughter surrounded us. All around the restaurant, groups of fae sat, talking amongst each other and leaning over to talk to other tables, like everyone was part of one massive circle of friends.

  I couldn’t help but smile as I saw a group of female dwarves and elves in the corner, all holding pints of a swirling pink liquid.

  “To the single life!” They cheered, clinking glasses together before chugging them down at the speed of lightning. A dark-haired elf finished first, holding her glass aloft victoriously, with a slight drip of pink liquid still running down her chin.

  “Ladies,” she started, her speech a little slurred from what I assumed must be some sort of alcohol, “I shall spend the rest of my days mourning the loss of Firenze. But, I shall also spend the rest of my days cursing the hag that he plans on marrying.”

  With that, the group burst into l
aughter, tossing their heads back and guffawing up at the ceiling like a gaggle of drunk frat boys.

  “Hello!” A round-faced young elf suddenly appeared right in front of us, as if having come from thin air. “Would you like a seat?”

  “Yes, please,” Hunter nodded.

  “Follow me.” The young elf led us toward the back, where there was a round table right in front of a stained glass window. Two leather seats were on either side of it. Hunter and I took our seats a little awkwardly, trying not to look like we had no idea what we were doing.

  Until the waitress stood there, staring at us, and we made it very clear we had no idea what we were doing.

  “Oh!” She gasped suddenly, knocking herself on the head. Her long brown hair swung backward, revealing her pointed ears, and I found myself subconsciously tugging at my own hair to hide my ears again. “I am meant to inform you of the food our chef has prepared today. We have a plate of boiled yoargwie meat, a stew made from the belly of a young dragon, and a salad composed of the freshest wildflowers you can find. And to drink, we have nectar or a special cocktail of gnome blood and fairy dust.”

  So that was the strange pink drink. Suddenly, it wasn’t all that appealing to me anymore, no matter how happy it had made those women in the corner.

  “I’ll just have the salad,” I told the elf, not wanting to think about the other two dishes.

  “Same,” Hunter nodded.

  Instantly, the elf dashed off, like she was afraid she might forget our orders if she took too long.

  “What is with their food?” I hissed to Hunter.

  “No idea,” he replied. “I’m starting to really hate you for making us jump through that portal. I could be munching on a gooey hot cheeseburger right now.”

  “Ugh, don’t remind me what actual food tastes like, please,” I groaned.

  I barely had a moment to look around the restaurant before the elf appeared again, seemingly ecstatic over the salads she had brought us.