“Aye changeling, how goes yer first day as a fae?” said Gilly, standing next to me in her kilt. I hadn’t noticed her come up, probably because she was so short. She reached up and took a handful of the dirty lumpy things, putting a few on her plate and popping one in her mouth.
Well, that explains a lot of things.
“I’m good. How about you? What’s new? Those, um, dirt balls look ... yummy.”
“Dirt balls? Ah, ye be talkin’ aboot the truffles. A rare delicacy these are. I could eat the whole of ‘em, I could, but it wouldna be polite o’ me to do that ye see. Nowadays, ye doan see too many people worryin’ themselves about manners, but not me. Manners are what makes this world a good place ta be; in fact, just the oother day, I was tellin’ Gander ... ”
I tuned Gilly out while I put a few things on my plate. The rambling gnome didn’t even realize I wasn’t listening. I didn’t want to be rude or anything, especially when manners were some sort of issue for her, but I wasn’t going to shortchange my brownie and risk not having a maid. If I had to choose between having a gnome as a friend and a brownie as a servant, the brownie was going to win every time. I had to finish my breakfast and get back to my room pronto.
“ ... and he says to me, ‘Gilly’, ye gotta stop with the ... ”
I cut her off. “I’ve got to go eat now, Gilly. Enjoy your ... truffles.”
I walked away as she ignored my departure and continued talking to whoever walked up to the buffet behind me.
“Who was that?” asked Spike with a big grin on his face as I sat down.
“That is Gilly. She’s a gnome, and she eats dirty truffles and wears a mini-kilt that is waaaay to short in the back. I suggest that you never look directly at her ass-end, as she is prone to bowing – and then bad things happen with the kilt I’d rather not talk about right now.”
Everyone around me laughed, including one of the werewolves I remembered seeing last night standing next to hot werewolf guy – the one who had planned to eat Becky, Tony and me in the forest just a couple days before. I pushed the thoughts of Tony away quickly before they could ruin my morning and thrust me back into the world of never ending sadness again.
I looked over at Chase’s plate. “Holy shit, Chase, no wonder you’re so huge.” His plate had enough food for five people on it. It even had some of the moving meat on it. “Um, not sure if you realize it or not, but some of your meat is still alive.”
Chase speared the squirming meat with his fork and stuck it in his mouth, watching all of us as he chewed.
We stared at him, both repulsed and curious about what was going to happen.
He swallowed, licked his lips and said, “Salty.”
Finn and Spike started laughing loudly. Becky smiled. I just shivered. I had to stop watching the others and just focus on finishing my sausage and eggs. I poked my sausage a few times to make sure it was good and dead.
“I see you like the angulas, Chase,” said Jared, sitting down next to him.
Chase shrugged.
“The tiny eel you just ate. Angula. They’re good. A little salty for my taste.”
“Oh, ugh! Chase, you just ate a live eel,” I said, disgusted all over again.
“No, it wasn’t alive, just moving as if it were,” explained Jared. His explanation was a typical fae answer – clear as mud.
Whatever. I didn’t feel like talking to him yet. I guess I partially blamed him for Tony and me being apart right now. Maybe if Jared had been honest from the start, Tony wouldn’t have felt so overwhelmed and ... I don’t know ... out of his element or whatever.
“Come on, guys. We have to go gift our brownies and get to training.”
“Gift our what?” asked Finn.
“You have to give a little token of your appreciation to the fae who will be cleaning your room and clothes and stuff. There’s a basket of tokens over there on that table.” Becky gestured to a wicker basket full of wrapped things. They looked like candies. “The brownies can’t touch that basket – it’s spelled – but we can. We’re supposed to take one thing out per day and put it on the silver tray on our dressers.”
“Spelled? How’s it spelled? B-A-S-K-E-T, right?” asked Finn, obviously confused.
“No, goof, spelled as in ‘enchanted’ – a witch put a spell on it.”
“Oh, okay. Gotcha. Whatever you say, boss,” said Finn, amiably.
We all went over and grabbed a token. Mine was wrapped in shiny, bright purple foil, about the size of a big gumball you can get from a machine at a pizza place for twenty-five cents. We made our way down the hall to our rooms. Chase and mine were first – we left our tokens on the trays. Becky, Finn, and Spike had rooms that were pretty far from Chase’s and mine. They left their tokens and we started back towards the dining hall/meeting room. I got all confused following Becky who was acting as our guide.
“How do you find anything here? I’m already lost.” I asked, frustrated. “How am I supposed to sneak into your rooms at night if I can’t find my way?”
“The halls are spelled – this whole place is actually. It’s done on purpose to keep the Dark Fae from being able to get in and cause trouble.”
That reminded me of those voices I’d heard outside the bathroom, but before I could say anything, Becky continued.
“You’ll learn how to find stuff at your first training. It’s pretty easy once they show you. If you don’t know the secret though, you can wander around just one hallway forever. Every door looks the same and sometimes you don’t even see doors. Stuff changes all the time. Or at least, it looks like it’s changing. It’s really not though. At least, I think it’s not.”
Spike looked at her nervously. “What do you mean, you ‘think’?
Chase and Finn moved in front of us, seeing the dining hall door just up ahead. I guess they’re eager to start the training. Dopes.
Becky shrugged. “I haven’t been here long enough to really understand a lot of what goes on. I’ve only had one day of training. I’m sure we’ll all figure it out eventually.” She quickened her steps up to catch up to Chase and Finn who were opening the door at the end of the hall.
She obviously wasn’t too concerned, so I decided not to worry about it either.
Spike was shaking his head as I walked up. “I don’t know, man. First I find out I’m a life sucker, then I find out my mentor is Valentine the fruity incubus who might have the hots for me, then I find out some fae is gonna steal my stuff if I don’t give him a present every day – and now I find out this place is a maze I could get stuck in forever? I’m starting to regret my decision.”
I couldn’t tell if he was serious or not. “Spike, I think you should see what happens today before you start regretting anything. That’s what I’m gonna do. Nobody said this was going to be easy.”
“I’m not worried about easy. I’m just worried about my sanity when all’s said and done.”
“I thought you liked crazy,” I said, openly flirting.
He flung his arm over my shoulder as Chase opened the door. “Your kind of crazy, yes. Fae crazy? Not so much.” He dropped his arm and smacked me lightly on the butt as I went into the room ahead of him. He’s lucky there were fae witnesses there, otherwise I would have given him a good karate chop for that. I turned and gave him the evil eye instead, but he just laughed and mouthed the words, “Behave yourself.”
I whispered back, “Never!” just as Céline walked in the door on the opposite side of the room.
Just then I remembered about the voices I had heard the night before, outside the door of the bathroom. It was too late to talk to Becky and the guys about it now, though. I had to remember to bring it up at lunch.
“Time to start our training. Come on guys, you can follow me.” Becky walked over to the same door Céline had just entered through. She left the main room, the guys trailing out behind her.
Chapter 5
“Ready for your first training session?” asked Céline, walking over to me.
“How come I’m not going with them?” I asked, watching the door shut behind my friends.
“They have a different training schedule than you do. Yours is ... customized for now. That may change in the future.”
She turned and walked back over to the door Becky and the guys had just exited from, grasping the door handle and stepping out into the hallway. “We’ll see how you manage today.”
My friends had already disappeared from the corridor. Must be that magic hallway thing. I followed her until we reached a door at the far end of the hallway. I thought for sure we were going to be walking out of the fourth obelisk when we went through, but when I stepped out and looked around, there was no waypoint and no clearing. We were in the middle of the Green Forest. I turned back around to look at the door, but it wasn’t there anymore. There was an ancient tree, but no door, no hinges, and no handle. Fucking magic. Again.
“I thought we were doing something at the lake today,” I said, remembering the vote at the meeting yesterday about something with me and a possible affinity to Water.
“You will later. But first, I’d like to start our morning session just getting a feel for what you’ve already developed on your own. Let’s sit.”
She sat down on a fallen log, and I sat on the ground in front of her.
“Tell me about your experiences with the forest.” She stared at me patiently, waiting for me to begin.
Her silver eyes and cool manner were a little intimidating. I felt a little shy, which is a weird sensation for me. My connection with The Green was kind of personal in a way, so it was difficult for me to just start blabbing away about it. I didn’t want to brag, but it was hard not to feel like that’s what I was doing when I talked about it, because it was so friggin cool and amazing. It’s almost like I didn’t want to say anything because it was so private and so good. I didn’t want to cheapen it. I was unable to make sense of it in my head at that moment, so I just sighed loudly instead of talking.
“I sense a reticence in you. Why do you not wish to discuss this?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s like, private or something. It’s personal. Between me and them.”
She cocked her head to the side. “Them? Them who?”
I gestured around me. “Them. The trees. The leaves. The plants. The Earth ... Them ... The Green.”
“The Green.”
She said it as a statement, not as a question, so I said nothing.
“You said The Green.”
“Yes, I did.”
“Why did you call it that?”
I shrugged my shoulders again. “I don’t know. It just seemed to fit. Why? Is that wrong?”
“No, not at all. It’s actually correct to say that. It’s what the green elves call the forest area.”
“Well, when I say ‘The Green’ I’m not necessarily talking about the forest area.”
“Explain, please.”
“The Green, for me anyway, is not just the forest area ... it’s everything in it and all the energy that flows out of and through it and around it – the energy that comes from the plants, the creatures, the air, the ... shit, I don’t know. All the stuff out here.” This is stupid. I threw my hands up and let them drop down beside me. My fingers unconsciously dug themselves into the soil. I felt the responding glimmer of The Green, waiting for me to connect.
Céline’s eyes dropped to my hands.
“Why are you doing that – with your hands?”
I looked down at my hands, confused. “Doing what?”
“Putting them in the earth like that?”
I let out a burst of frustrated air. “Damn, are you going to ask me why I do every little thing? Look! I’m rolling my eyes now, do you want to know why I’m doing that?”
Céline gave me an indulgent smile. “I apologize. I am treating you like a lab rat.”
“Yes, you are,” I said, only slightly mollified since she got my sarcasm and wasn’t offended by it.
“I should have explained some things to you first. Let me begin again. Do you want to hear what we know about you and what we don’t know about you? That might make my questions easier to manage.”
“Sure, go ahead. Gimme the scoop.” I was more comfortable right now with listening instead of talking
Céline clasped her hands together in her lap. “Okay. So, our current working theory is that you are an elemental. An elemental is a fae that has ties, through the magic, to one or more of the elements – the elements being Earth, Air or Wind, Fire, and Water. Some include Spirit as an element, but for purposes of our discussion that is not relevant. Because you have shown to have a very strong and uncommonly close tie with The Green, we suspect that your elemental strength comes mainly from the Earth.”
She glanced down at my hands that were once again digging themselves into the ground – I couldn’t seem to help myself. I pulled them out and shook them off, laying them in my lap.
She smiled and continued. “Some particularly strong elementals have ties to one other element. The Siren, the one you know as the Lady of the Lake, suspected that you might have a tie to her world, the one that includes the element, Water. Once I get a feel for your Earth connection, after lunch, we will go see if she is correct about your connection to the Water element.”
“How are we going to do that?”
“That has not yet been fully determined. We who are on the council will discuss it during the lunch break. So, to continue ... we have not had an elemental with the Light Fae for several hundred years. Some of us were around when the last elemental was alive, but none of us really knew his magic very well. He was a private individual, choosing to stay with his element more than other fae.”
“What was his element?”
“Air.”
I frowned, trying to picture how that would work. “How does a guy hang out with air?”
Céline sighed. “He would connect with the air and disappear into it. He essentially was air. Eventually, he was air so often, he was never fae anymore. His spirit faded away until it was gone. It was sad, really. It began, maybe seven hundred years ago, or more ... ”
“Well that sounds completely messed up. Is that going to happen to me?” What? Was I going to turn into a tree or something? How old was I going to get? Was I going to go crazy eventually?
“No. We know the dangers of wallowing in the magic. We will train you, to the best of our abilities, to manage your ties to the elements.” She cleared her throat and sat up straighter, continuing, “You may have noticed the strong reaction from the fae when Anton announced you were an elemental.”
I nodded.
“This is for a couple of reasons. First, you are the only Light Fae of your kind. Your powers, if you can learn to harness and use them properly, are nearly unrivaled in the fae world. Even the witches are second in power only to an elemental. This is both a good thing, and a bad thing.”
“How so?” I was trying not to feel all badass about the idea that I was going to be able to kick some serious butt soon, but it was hard.
“It is good because as we said, there is a war coming. The Dark Fae are building their numbers. We do not agree with their philosophy, but they do not care. At some point, they are going to force us into a confrontation. Having powers like yours on our side would be extremely beneficial to our cause and to the cause of the humans, whether they know it or not.”
Hmmm. Savior of the human race. Do I rock or what?
“It’s a bad thing though, because even among the Light Fae, there will be some who are jealous of you, who are threatened by you, and who will want to do you harm. Fae can be vain and arrogant. It is a natural condition for those who are supernatural and can readily compare their superiority to a world full of weak and fragile humans. But obviously, vanity is dangerous. It clouds good judgment, encourages rash behavior, and in general causes antagonistic feelings. We of the fae are big believers in both positive and negative energy. Unfortunately, your unique powers will cause some de
gree of negative energy to enter our carefully guarded Light Fae world.”
“Great. So I have enemies before I’ve even earned them.”
“Well, to some degree this is true. But we believe that our fellow fae, the ones who we feel are most apt to be jealous – I’m including witches and some others – will eventually come around to our way of thinking and see you as the ally Anton, I, and others think you could be. If you decide to be, that is.” She raised her eyebrow at me in friendly challenge.
Did I want to be their ally? I wasn’t sure that I even had a choice. If I weren’t their ally, then I’d be with the Dark Fae. I didn’t know much about them, but the idea of Tony or my mom being eaten by an orc? No way, man. Not gonna happen. Now, my mother’s boyfriend ... different story. I’d put some freshly chopped parsley on his head if I thought the orcs would like it more. Fucker.
“I don’t plan on going over to the Dark Fae, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
“No, not at all. What I’m saying is that you can put your best efforts into learning to use and control your powers and thereby earn the respect and admiration of your peers. Or, you can put in minimal effort, learn a few things, and then either be killed or get someone else killed when we eventually have a conflict, thereby earning yourself an early grave, disrespect among your peers, or both. It is entirely up to you.”
I looked at her with my mouth agape. “Well holy shit, Céline, don’t sugarcoat it for me or anything.”
She laughed. “There is no point in lying to you. You are an adult in our world. You make – and live with – your own choices.”
“No sense in lying to me now, you mean.”
Céline leaned over and took my hands in hers, staring me right in the eyes. For the first time I noticed that her irises weren’t still, like normal people’s eyes. The gray was swirling, moving, twisting around itself. It looked like ... the wind, the way artists sometimes drew it.