‘Yeah, the rocket they sent into the comet cost about a zillion dollars, so they’re really careful with it, y’know.’
Of course. Humans had used their technology to fly into a comet and bring some of its dust back to Earth. I didn’t doubt they were careful.
Sam looked wistful. ‘It’d be awesome to get that close to something that’s flown all over the solar system. Wish I could. But they won’t let me near it, even though I’m Dr Seabolt’s son.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. I’d like to grant his wish. All I’d need to do was visit Sam once I had stolen some of the comet dust. But how would I explain what I’d done? He would know me for a thief – a thief who would steal from his father.
I should go.
I had what I needed now. Much as I longed to stay beside Sam, time was passing. I had to get to the comet dust ahead of Lily Morganite. And if I didn’t go now, it would only become more difficult to leave, because every minute I spent with Sam he seemed more fascinating. I wasn’t sure why. It was like being enchanted.
I stood up carefully so I wouldn’t fall over. ‘Thank you for helping me.’
‘Going already?’ He stood too, and I could hear his breath, a little quicker and louder than it had been a few seconds before.
I wished I could explain that I was trying to stay ahead of an evil fairy. ‘I’m late.’ I stuffed the list of locations into a pocket in my Earth trousers.
‘Too bad.’ Sam picked up his phone. ‘Can I snap a pic? For my sister.’
I put both my hands up, furiously shaking my head no.
‘Camera shy?’ He sounded surprised.
‘Yes,’ I said firmly.
He put the phone down. ‘It’s fun talking to a girl about comets,’ he said, and his face turned a little red. ‘Especially a girl with purple eyes.’
I smiled. ‘It’s fun talking to a boy with eyes full of amber light.’ I wanted to touch his cheek and I didn’t stop myself. The minute I reached out, he did too and put his hand over mine. I could feel the pulse in his palm against my skin, and I wanted to kiss him, though I knew such a thing was absolutely forbidden.
Pulling back, I turned for the door.
‘Do you want me to walk you home?’ Sam asked. ‘Where’s your house?’
‘Not far.’ Depending on which portal you use. ‘But don’t come with me.’ It would be very awkward trying to keep up with my lies.
Looking over my shoulder, I saw disappointment in his face. ‘OK, well, see you around,’ he said.
I opened the door. ‘Goodbye,’ I said, longing to stay.
Chapter Twenty-four
THE TRANSPORT SPELL IS ONE OF THE GREAT ACHIEVEMENTS OF FEY MAGIC. THIS SPELL CAN MOVE EITHER AN OBJECT OR A PERSONAGE ANY DISTANCE INSTANTLY. THREE THINGS ARE REQUIRED FOR A SUCCESSFUL TRANSPORT. ONE, THE DESTINATION MUST BE CLEARLY HELD IN MIND. TWO, THE ONE CASTING THE TRANSPORT SPELL MUST KNOW EXACTLY WHERE HE OR SHE IS. THREE, THE TRANSPORT CANNOT CROSS WORLDS.
A TRANSPORT SPELL USES LEVEL 8 MAGIC. THE AMOUNT OF RADIA NEEDED DEPENDS UPON THE VOLUME OF THE OBJECT OR PERSONAGE BEING TRANSPORTED. THE WORDS OF THE SPELL ARE ‘TRANSERA NOS.’
Orville Gold, genie historian of Feyland
IN CASE SAM was watching, I walked down the pavement from his house and around the corner, feeling terribly clumsy. My breathing was so rapid it was as if I had been flying fast for miles and miles, and I could still feel Sam’s hand over mine. Waves of warmth poured down to my toes, warmth that turned to shivers of regret. What had I done?
I had used the one human I cared for most; used him to tell me what I needed to know so I could steal from his father and his world.
But I didn’t want to use him. No, not at all. I wanted to be his friend.
More than his friend.
I stopped under a cluster of aspen trees growing near the pavement. Their leaves dangled like thousands of slim pendants; I would have liked to fly into the branches and rest there for a while.
If only I could leave the dust alone. If it hadn’t been for Lily Morganite, I could. Why did she have to seize every single thing in her path that might make her stronger? Wasn’t she strong enough already?
Since meeting Lily, I had turned into a thief and a liar. I had become someone who sought out troggy smugglers and took advantage of innocent humans. What would become of me as I continued to fight her?
Maybe I should stop.
But if she got control of even more radia than she already had, there was no telling what she’d do with it. I had to keep the comet dust away from her.
Ducking behind the aspens, I restored my fairy form and repeated the spell for invisibility. Then I took out the piece of paper with the list of locations. Did Lily know where the dust had been taken? If so, she might already be raiding these places one by one.
If she could find them.
I could gather the comet dust by transporting to each place on the list. But a transport spell would not work unless the destination could be held clearly in mind. And of course, I had never been to any of the places where the comet dust was being kept.
Would my Feynere powers allow me to transport to the address of a place I’d never seen? And suppose I could do it – what if Lily were looking for the same spot? At a hundred years old, she must have taken many journeys to Earth, maybe even more journeys than Laz. She would know how to find what she was after.
What if I ran into her?
I studied the first address on my list: the University of Colorado.
If I cast a Feynere spell and it didn’t take me where I wanted to go, would it take me somewhere else? For all I knew, it would flatten me into the piece of paper I held. I’d be locked away like those who had been stuffed into the genie bottles of old, unable to leave unless a human with minimal magic found me somehow and triggered the spell to release me.
‘Hush,’ I told myself, and infused my wand to the transport level. ‘Take me to the comet dust at the University of Colorado.’
Immediately I was standing in a clean room. The lighting was strangely harsh: bright, yet cold. White countertops had been scrubbed so many times they looked worn and faded. Greenish walls held framed documents, and a sharp, rather unpleasant scent I could not identify hung in the air.
Two people were in the room with me.
I recognized Sam’s father immediately. Tall, with fiery red hair that clung to the back of his neck. The last time I had seen him was through a fey scope looking out from my world. He had been in a hospital bed recovering from a broken arm, a blow to the head, and a mysterious case of amnesia. He might well have died if I hadn’t helped him recover his memory.
Yes, my fondness for Sam had led me to break another law of the fey. It’s not as if I didn’t pay attention to all that Beryl had taught me. I knew it was forbidden to take any magical action on behalf of a full-grown human. I knew that we fairies and genies were allowed to cast spells only for the benefit of our own godchildren until they turned sixteen. It wasn’t Beryl’s fault that I broke the laws she taught me; not her fault I went to Earth the first chance I found, long before my godmother training could begin.
When Sam asked me for help finding his father, how could I say no? I, who knew what it meant to lose a father, to live without him, to wonder what had become of him!
I still didn’t know how or why Michael Seabolt had been hurt, but I suspected mischievous fey folk had been involved. It seemed likely, because my spell had reversed his memory loss. If the amnesia had come from a physical injury, I could not have done anything about it.
And I didn’t regret helping the man who stood in front of me now. His arm was still in a cast, and his head was neatly bandaged, but he seemed well otherwise. And he looked up as if he sensed my presence.
A wingspan away, a black-haired young man sat clicking keys in front of a screen like the one on Sam’s phone, only bigger. He was typing. I knew about typing, though of course we fairies and genies didn’t use machines to write.
The young man t
ook his hands off the keys. ‘Doctor Seabolt? What’s up? You hear something?’
‘Thought I did, yeah.’ Michael tilted his head. There were sounds all through the room: a soft buzzing and whirring from the lights and the machines – and also my breathing.
I held my breath. Sam’s father looked around for a moment, his hazel eyes sharper and harder than his son’s. He shook his head. ‘It’s nothing. I’m just spooked. They tout the security on this stuff, but it’s not all that great, if you ask me.’
He gestured at a vial next to his elbow. I stared at it. Inside was something resembling grains of sand.
The comet dust.
‘Yeah, kind of weak.’ The young man stretched his arms. ‘Well, time to call it a day.’ He typed a few more letters and then the screen in front of him went dark.
I exhaled as slowly and quietly as I could. Sam’s father was carefully shrugging his shoulders out of a white coat, which he tossed in a bin.
I wanted to take the vial right then while no one was looking. But what if these men were blamed for the loss? It would be bad enough for them to find it missing the next day. So I waited while Michael placed the comet dust in a metal box with stout clasps. The young man watched, his brown eyes alert. He glanced at the clock on the wall before making notes on a piece of paper attached to a board.
Together, they unlocked a metal cupboard that had the sheen of steel. It took two keys, one from each of them. They shut the box in the cupboard and locked it again. Then they scribbled on the paper.
The young man smiled. ‘We’re out of here.’
Sam’s father flicked a switch. The harsh lights went out, leaving only a dim bluish glow from a row of smaller lights on the wall.
The door clicked behind the two men.
I waited only a few seconds before going to the cupboard they’d locked. When I touched it, I flinched in pain. Steel was made partly of iron. Feynere or not, the iron hurt me. Somehow, the humans had chosen a container that would keep out fairies and genies. Others might be able to endure the pain of touching it, but no other member of the fey could break steel. I could. In a fit of anger, I had once turned a band of iron to dust.
Lily might be able to charm or deceive a human into opening the comet dust with keys. Or she might hover invisibly until they took it from its box. But her magic would be useless against the locks I faced.
I flicked the locks with the tip of my wand. ‘Open,’ I said.
The cupboard door swung outward.
I touched the box inside too, and repeated the magic. The clasps fell away.
Lifting the vial from its resting place, I examined it. Though small, it would be big enough to hold all the comet dust from the other locations too – unless Sam was wrong about how much total dust the humans had collected. Each place I went, I could transfer the dust into this one vial.
I hated stealing something so precious from the human world – something many humans had worked hard to gather. It didn’t seem right. And when Sam heard the dust had been taken, would he think of me? I thought of his trusting eyes and open smile, and sighed.
Opening the vial, I sniffed the contents. The dust smelled unlike anything I’d ever come across – on my world or here on Earth. Smelling it made me feel both light and dark. The light rippled, roared and rushed; the darkness sifted, swirled, expanded.
And I had a sudden thought: What if I used this dust to make some aevia ray myself?
I gave a hop of excitement, and my wings unfurled. With a bottle of aevia ray, I wouldn’t fear a fight with Lily Morganite. Her stolen stores of radia wouldn’t make her untouchable. If we had aevia ray, my friends and I could replenish the radia that had gone missing from Feyland. The durable spells could be restored. We could shower gifts on humans: delightful gifts such as musical and artistic talent, inventiveness …
Best of all, if my family had drained their stores of magic by fighting glacier spells, I could give them back their lost radia. I could even give them extra.
When I found them.
I stowed the vial in my jacket, then blasted the cupboard in which it had been stored until there was nothing left of it but curling bits of melted metal. It was my parting gift to Michael Seabolt. No human would be able to account for what had happened; Sam’s father would not be blamed for such a thing.
Bursting with the need for action, I studied the paper in my hand. Infusing my wand, I touched the next address on the list.
‘Take me to the comet dust at the University of Chicago.’
After Chicago, I went to New York University and then to the Harvard campus, picking up comet dust. At each location, I transferred the amount I found into the vial I had taken from Michael Seabolt.
Next, I headed to Oxford and Munich. In both those places I set off alarms, pulsing red lights and screeching sirens. The storage cupboards there were more elaborate too, though no match for my magic. I arrived after people had left things locked up for the night. By the time anyone rushed in to investigate, I was gone. My last collection point was Stanford University. It was earlier there, so I had to wait for the humans to leave. But once they did, I took their comet dust.
It cost me hundreds of radia to complete all the transports and stay invisible, but I did what I had set out to do. I had the comet dust, combined into one small vial, now nearly full. I had it all.
I checked the sorren charm around my neck before taking the Pixie Portal through Sam’s basement back to Tirfeyne. The minute I came through the portal, I marked it in my mind so I could find it again, taking careful bearings. I didn’t want to use up more Feynere magic locating it in the future.
This time, the rolling hills covered with grass and the scent wafting on the breeze did not overwhelm my senses. Far from it. If anything, I felt repelled. I was in no mood to spend two days and nights frolicking with a band of pixies.
I caught movement at the top of the hill. The pixie sentry, no doubt. Hastily I transported to my mother’s room.
Chapter Twenty-five
PORTALS TO EARTH SHOULD NEVER BE CREATED LIGHTLY. A DOORWAY BETWEEN WORLDS IS NO TRIVIAL MATTER, AND TOO MANY OF THE FEY ARE WILLING TO FLOUT THE LAWS OF THE LAND TO BECOME SMUGGLERS. TO THOSE LAW-BREAKERS, A SECRET PORTAL IS WORTH MANY THOUSANDS OF RADIA, AND THEY WILL GUARD ITS LOCATION WITH STEADFAST PURPOSE.
Orville Gold, genie historian of Feyland
MY FRIENDS WERE waiting, but they didn’t exactly give me a delighted welcome. Andalonus was the only one to return my grin. Leona was apparently still miffed at how I’d transported away without giving her a chance to join me; she wasn’t truly scowling, but then Leona Bloodstone didn’t have to scowl to make her anger known. Her eyes had a slaty glint, a sure sign she was trying to control her temper. And though Meteor’s face lit up for a half an instant when he first saw me arrive, he immediately frowned.
‘You said you would be here,’ he grumbled.
I spoke in a rush. ‘I’m sorry, but I didn’t want to waste time. Listen to this – I have it! The humans really did collect comet dust. They used their technology and—’
‘You have comet dust?’ Meteor interrupted.
‘Yes!’ I brought out the vial and waved it. ‘Every speck they had on Earth.’
Leona dropped her grudge immediately. ‘Zaree, you’re a wonder!’
‘How did you find it?’ Andalonus asked.
It wasn’t easy to tell them how I’d gathered the dust without mentioning Sam, but that’s what I did. I had to dodge two dozen pointed questions from Leona, but the genies didn’t pry. Meteor seemed to understand I had secrets to keep. Maybe he also guessed the nature of those secrets, but if so, he said nothing. Andalonus just listened.
When I got to the point in the story where I thought of making aevia ray myself, both Leona and Andalonus got so excited at the thought of defeating Lily Morganite and restoring Feyland, they started zooming around the room yelling with glee.
But then Leona stopped in mid flight and turned to Meteor. ‘There must
be more to aevia ray than comet dust, and we don’t know the other ingredients,’ she lamented.
Meteor’s emerald eyes looked newly polished as he smiled at her. ‘Yes, we do.’
I leaped at him, and he scooped me into his arms. It was our turn to fly through the room together. We spun joyfully, and for a moment I might have been taking my first dance with the pixies, I felt so light and carefree.
Then Andalonus bounced in front of us. ‘So tell us, O master know-it-all,’ he said to Meteor. ‘Are the rest of the ingredients for aevia ray as easy to get as comet dust?’
‘Ha,’ I said as Meteor and I floated to the floor and let go of each other.
‘Oh yes, so easy,’ Meteor answered. ‘For one, aevia ray requires troll magic.’
I cringed.
‘Not to mention the cooperation of gremlins and pixies,’ Meteor continued. He flipped a scroll out of his robe. ‘Here’s the list.’
I took it and sat between Andalonus and Leona to read Meteor’s neat script.
Aevia Ray
1. Comet dust (cosmos)
2. Nectara elixir (trolls)
3. Gift of a biscuit (gremlins)
4. Song (pixies)
5. Something cherished (leprechauns)
‘Trolls, gremlins, pixies and leprechauns?’ Andalonus snickered. ‘Are you sure you’re not missing anyone?’
I felt queasy. ‘Nectara elixir? What’s that?’
‘It’s something closely guarded even among the trolls themselves,’ Meteor explained. ‘Something they reserve for their royals. They never let anyone else near it.’
Andalonus grinned. ‘Yes, they do. If it’s guarded, they allow guards near it.’
Meteor snorted.
Andalonus levitated. ‘And what about the “gift of a biscuit”?’
‘That one item on the list took me hours to decipher,’ Meteor said. ‘It didn’t say biscuit – it said a lot of ancient gibberish about gremlin treasure. I had to look in eight different scrolls to be sure that this “treasure” was actually sweet flat cakes. Then I remembered it’s well known gremlins like biscuits better than anything.’