creepy hollow 03 - faerie war

  Stunned. Again. I guess I should have seen that coming.

  The cold is the first thing I feel. The pathways in my brain are still as sluggish as if someone blocked them with cotton wool, but I can definitely make out the cold. It seeps through my clothes and starts a shivering deep within me. I wonder what happened to my jacket, and then I remember transforming it into a mattress.

  The second thing I notice is the song. Distant, eerie, and beautiful, it conjures up images of travelers being lured through mists to their demise. It’s too far away for me to make out the words, but the hypnotic melody has woven its way into my mind in a way that makes it difficult for me to think about anything else.

  With a great effort, like lifting a slab of stone with only my hands, I finally force my eyelids apart. I’m lying inside a cage. My back aches from being pressed against the cold, hard pieces of metal, but I feel something softer against my right arm. I turn my head to the side and see Ryn’s face near mine. He’s still knocked out. I move my hand slowly—I don’t want to catch anyone else’s attention—until I find his. I squeeze it, but he doesn’t respond.

  I look through the cage’s squares of space and see frost-covered branches moving against an inky blue sky and twinkling stars. I think perhaps the cage is floating because the movement feels far too smooth for it to be riding over the ground. I twist my head to the other side and see a forest dressed in winter. I catch glimpses of statues and fountains with moonlight glistening from icicles. The ground is white. Not with snow, but with thousands of broken shards of ice that sparkle like diamonds. Everything is frozen in cold, stark beauty.

  This must be the Unseelie Court.

  I raise my head slightly to look ahead. I see two bald, tattooed heads not far in front of the cage, striding along at a steady pace.

  Oh crap, oh crap. How are we going to get out of this? The terrifying reality that we could soon be slaves under Draven’s influence crashes down on me. I squeeze Ryn’s hand again, but there’s still nothing from him. With my other hand, I reach for one of my guardian knives. I feel its comforting warmth form beneath my fingers, then let go before one of the riders can turn around and see me.

  I have weapons. I have magic. And when they open this cage, I’m going to fight like I’ve never fought be—

  Light flashes down from the sky in a crackling zigzag. It strikes somewhere in front of us, sending a shuddering boom through the air. Seconds later our cage crashes to the ground. My head slams into the metal at the top of the cage before I drop to the ground. I hear Ryn moan next to me as I scramble into a sitting position. He has a gash across one side of his face, probably also from slamming into the cage.

  I look out to see what’s going on. Both bounty hunters are lying motionless on the ground, the ice beside them melted.

  “What the freak happened?” I whisper. Did Draven’s guards do this? Have they gone back on their deal with the bounty hunters?

  Just then, a person slips out of the trees and runs toward the hunters. I can’t tell if the person is male or female, faerie or some other kind of fae. So I tug on the bars of the cage to see if anything broke when we fell. When I find it just as intact as before, I turn back to Ryn and start shaking him. He groans again, but he must still be lost in the stunner spell’s grogginess because his eyelids don’t even flicker.

  “Hey, you ready to get out of here?”

  I jerk back at the sound of the new voice, a knife already in my raised hand.

  “Whoa, hold on there, guardian lady,” a girl with short pink-and-blonde hair says. “I’m trying to help you.” Without waiting for my reply, she reaches for a lock on one side of the cage and inserts a key. A key she must have just lifted off the bounty hunters. With hands that I notice are unmarked, she swings the side of the cage open and says, “Come on, wake your friend. The Unseelie dudes will be here soon.”

  When more shaking doesn’t wake Ryn, I crawl out of the cage and grab his arms. I drag him halfway out before remembering I can move him with magic. With my arms spread forward, I lift him a few inches into the air. His boots trail across the ice shards as I maneuver him into the trees.

  Off to my right, the girl with pink in her hair is looking around. She has a large cylinder beneath her arm—a cylinder that looks suspiciously familiar—and is pointing it wherever her gaze falls. “Keep going until you get to the dragon,” she says.

  “Dragon?”

  “Yeah, he’s yours. I kind of . . . borrowed him. Hope you don’t mind.”

  Something whizzes by my ear and lands with a quiet thwack in the tree right behind me. I spin around and see a five-pointed star with black, razor-sharp edges embedded in the frost.

  “Crap,” I mutter. I quickly conjure up a shield of magic and use my mind to pull it over Ryn like an invisible blanket.

  “Look out!” the girl shouts. She opens the end of the cylinder and releases another bolt of lightning at whoever’s attacking us.

  I extend the shield to cover myself, but before I’m finished, pain slices across my left thigh. With my focus broken, Ryn drops onto the icy ground. I scramble for the shield magic, pulling it hastily over both of us, before dropping onto my knees and clutching my leg. The ice shards digging into my skin through my pants slowly turn red as blood spills from the gash.

  “Come on!” the girl shouts as she runs past me, dodging flying objects and magic sparks. “I’ll get the dragon.”

  “Dammit, Ryn, wake up!” I grasp my bleeding leg with one hand and shake Ryn with the other.

  “Can’t . . . move,” he mumbles. I see his eyelids twitch as he tries to open them, but he doesn’t seem to be having much success. Maybe they gave him an extra dose of stunner magic this time.

  I look behind me and see distant figures hurrying toward us. “Ugh, crapping crap.” I grab Ryn’s face and do the first thing that comes to mind: I press my lips down on his, hoping to shock him into waking up.

  The kiss only lasts a few seconds, but my brain has time to register several things: One, his lips are softer than I expected. Two, the eerie, hypnotic melody clears from my mind, and the sounds around me seem to dim for a moment. And three, the adrenaline spike I wish was running through him right now, jolting him awake from his enchanted lethargy, seems to be shooting through my own body.

  He moves. I open my eyes—when did I close them?—and pull back. He blinks. “Did you . . . just . . .”

  “Draven’s guards are going to catch us if you don’t get up NOW.” I try to inject as much urgency into my words as possible. He sits up and gets clumsily to his feet. At the sound of crunching ice, we both look around. Arthur is coming toward us, his great, clawed feet crushing the sharpened shards like salt beneath a pestle.

  “What . . . how . . .” Ryn says.

  I pull him forward, limping with every step I take. Another throwing star zooms by, nicking my ear. “Dammit.” I let go of Ryn and clutch my ear. He seems to have found his strength now, though, because he grabs me around the waist and lifts me up so I can scramble onto Arthur’s back. I swing my uninjured leg over the harness and hold onto the shoulders of the girl in front of me.

  “Good job, guys,” she says as Ryn climbs up behind me. “Oh, I’m Tilly, by the way.” She pats Arthur’s neck, and he takes off, snapping a few more branches in the process.

  I watch Draven’s guards and their sparks of magic growing smaller and smaller as Arthur climbs toward the stars. I keep watching, my neck twisted back, as flying creatures arrive and the men climb onto them. But they’re so far behind now, I doubt they’ll catch up.

  I look forward and find Tilly digging inside her jacket for something. The wind bites through my clothes, and I start shaking. I want to create a cocoon of heat around myself, but I also don’t want to divert magic away from my leg, which is hopefully beginning to heal. Before I can make a decision, Ryn wraps his arms around me, enveloping me in warmth. My first instinct is to wriggle away; his embrace feels unfamiliar and weird. But it also feels comforting??
?and, more importantly, warm—so I ignore the part of me that feels strange.

  “Okay, one of you needs to tell me what’s going on,” Ryn says, “because I feel like I missed a lot.”

  “I’ll tell you in a sec,” Tilly says, “if I can just . . . find . . . ah, here it is.” She removes a stylus from her jacket. She takes hold of one end and pulls—and the stylus grows longer. Longer and longer until it’s at least the length of Arthur’s wingspan.

  I’ve never seen anything like it, so I have to ask. “Is that—”

  “An extendable stylus? Yeah. Very useful at times.” She points it in front of her, so that it reaches past Arthur’s snout, and starts making little wiggling motions in the air. “Man,” she grumbles. “Writing doorways in the air is always a mission, especially with such a ridiculously long stylus.”

  “Let me do it,” Ryn says. He reaches over my shoulder for the stylus. “I’ve always been good at air doorways.”

  “You have to do it quickly,” she calls back to him. “Write the words, then drag the stylus across as fast as you can so we can fly straight through the doorway.”

  Ryn moves the stylus in small motions, then drags it quickly across Arthur’s path, pulling open a doorway faster than I thought was possible. We disappear into the darkness. I try not think of anything, allowing Tilly to direct the paths. Seconds later, light materializes in front of us. Blue sky and a midday sun greet us as we soar above the ocean.

  I look behind us, expecting to see manticore riders in the distance, but I can’t even see land from here. We must be really far out. Ryn hands the stylus back to Tilly, and she collapses it bit by bit back into itself. Then he wraps his arm around me again—despite the fact that it isn’t as cold here—and says, “Tilly, you were going to tell me what happened?”

  “Oh, yeah. I saw the bounty hunters capture you guys. I’m not supposed to leave the island, but, you know, I get kind of claustrophobic there sometimes. So I was out on my brother’s pegasus that day, and I saw what happened. I followed your dragon—he headed for land, but far away from the bounty hunter’s prison—and made friends with him. He’s a cool dude.” She rubs Arthur’s neck and leans forward to give his scaly skin a kiss. “Anyway, then I came back this morning on Arthur, hoping to break into the prison and get you guys out. I stole the lightning cylinder—super cool. I’ve seen them collecting during storms—and then discovered you were gone. When I found the bounty hunters, they were already going through a doorway with you. So I followed them.”

  “Wait, you followed them?” I say. “Through the faerie paths? But don’t you have to—”

  “—be in contact with them to follow them through? Nah. That’s what the textbooks say, but my brother taught me a spell that allows you to follow the person in front of you without actually touching them, as long as you enter the paths before the doorway closes. Sometimes it goes wrong. I guess that’s why it’s not in the textbooks.”

  “I’ve heard of that happening,” Ryn says. “It happened to you, V.”

  “Really?” I hate this no-memory thing.

  “Yeah, so I’m not sure where we ended up,” Tilly says, “but it was pretty creepy.”

  “The Unseelie Court,” I tell her.

  “Seriously?” She twists in the harness to look at me, and I nod. “Oh my hat, my brother is going to be so jealous. He and his friends are always trying to outdo each other with daring stuff. Of course, my mom would have a heart attack on the spot if she knew where I’d been. So, uh, please don’t tell her.”

  “Is that where we’re going?” Ryn asks. “To your home?”

  “Yeah, I thought you might want to get cleaned up and stuff before you’re on your way again.” She hesitates, then adds, “Oh my word, sorry, do you want to be dropped off somewhere else? I didn’t even ask.”

  “No, no,” Ryn says. “We’re actually . . . not sure where we want to be right now. And how would you get home if you left us somewhere with our dragon?”

  “Uh, the faerie paths?” she says as if this should be obvious.

  “But you’re not marked,” I say. “Draven’s guys monitor the faerie paths for people who aren’t marked. They’d come after you.”

  “Nah.” Tilly seems completely unconcerned. “That doesn’t happen where I live. We’re quite separate from the rest of the world. We even have our own time.”

  Ryn leans forward, and his breath tickles my ear as he says, “Where exactly do you live, Tilly?”

  “Oh, yeah, I didn’t say where we were going, did I? Sorry! The Floating Island of Kaleidos.”

  I’m not sure if this is something I’ve forgotten or something I’ve never known, but I have no idea what she’s talking about.

  “But . . . no one knows where that is,” Ryn says slowly.

  “Well, obviously I do, silly, because I live there.”

  “People live on the Floating Island of Kaleidos?” he asks.

  “Duh. Why else would we be heading there?”

  I’m starting to wonder if this girl is really all there upstairs, and I think Ryn might be thinking the same thing. I feel his lips next to my ear. A shiver races down my neck as he whispers, “If I say jump, don’t hesitate.”

  I nod and scoop my flyaway hair behind one ear.

  Ryn leans back a little and raises his voice to say, “So, Tilly, I’ve read that people have gone mad sailing across the ocean searching for the Floating Island of Kaleidos.”

  I roll my eyes. Way to be subtle, Ryn.

  “Yeah, well, it isn’t the easiest thing to spot,” she says. “You have to get really close to see it, otherwise it kind of just looks like a shimmer in the sky. It’s like . . . what are those things you get in the desert?”

  “A mirage?”

  “Yeah, that. But in reverse, because as you get closer you see that something is there instead of not being there.”

  I’m definitely questioning her sanity now.

  “See? Look over there.” She points forward, and I’m stunned to find that there is actually a shimmer in the sky ahead of us. Of course, there could be nothing on the other side of it.

  As we fly toward the shimmer, I feel Ryn’s arms tense around me. I guess I’m not the only one worried this might be some new, horrible magic we’re flying into. The shimmer changes as we get closer, glistening with colorful smudges like a painting left out in the rain.

  “And . . . welcome to my home,” Tilly says, spreading her arms out as we shoot through the shimmering layer.

  Despite all the magic I’ve seen in my life, my first reaction when I see the floating island is disbelief. The enormous piece of land is suspended high up in the air as easily as it might float on water. The underside looks like a mixture of rock and rich brown earth, and the top is covered in grass, trees, lakes, and mountains. Warm air caresses my skin. The scent of spring reaches my nose.

  “No way,” I whisper as Arthur soars toward the island. This place is a haven, untouched by the devastation the rest of our world is living through. Part of me wants to land here and never leave.

  As we fly closer, I see trees here and there that are larger than the others. Larger, in fact, than any tree I’ve ever seen or imagined. And along the branches I see shapes that look like . . . houses. Yes, those are tree houses, but nothing like the tree houses I’m used to, concealed so that no one knows they’re there. These are visible for everyone to see, cradled amongst the enormous branches.

  Tilly steers Arthur toward one of the lakes. He lands on the bank, his feet sinking into the squishy mud. “Well done, Arthur,” Ryn mutters. “The mud is exactly where we want to get off.”

  “Oh, is your name Arthur, big guy?” Tilly pats his neck and gives him another kiss. “I was wondering.”

  Arthur climbs up the bank, leaving muddy footprints on the grass beneath the overhanging trees. Tilly slides down, and I follow her. My leg screams at me when I land with a jolt. I guess it hasn’t had a chance to do much healing yet.

  “What happened?”
Ryn asks when he sees me gritting my teeth and clutching my leg.

  “A throwing star. It cut pretty deep, but it’ll be fine in a few hours, I’m sure.”

  “You sure? I can give you some healing magic if you—”

  “No, no.” I wave his concern away. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Okay, so, I’m not really sure where to leave Arthur,” Tilly says. “I hid him here after I first brought him back, but he burned down a tree and tried to eat my brother’s pegasus.”

  Ryn crosses his arms and faces the dragon. “Not cool, Arthur. You don’t eat other people’s stuff.”

  Arthur snorts a puff of smoke at Ryn, then starts shrinking. He keeps going until he’s no bigger than my hand.

  “So. Cool!” Tilly exclaims. “I didn’t know dragons could do that.”

  “Well, not all of them,” Ryn says as Arthur flaps his way up to Ryn’s shoulder. “You don’t have to worry about leaving him somewhere. He’ll come with us.”

  We follow Tilly along a well-worn path toward one of the giant trees. She bounces along as though she’s on some energy-inducing spell. The tree has a curving stairway wrapped around the trunk all the way up as far as I can see. Tilly starts jogging up, while Ryn slips an arm around my back.

  “Don’t argue,” he says. “I know you’re in pain.”

  We’ll be down here forever if I start arguing with him, so I don’t. Besides, it’s nice of him to help me up, even though I have a feeling he’s only doing it to be closer to me. We’re going to have to have a chat about that kiss so I can tell him it didn’t mean anything.

  Fortunately, Tilly’s house is along one of the lowest branches, so we don’t have to climb too high. She skips along the wide branch like a tree sprite and opens the door for us when we reach her house.

  “Welcome,” she says, stepping aside to let us in. The interior is small, but not as cramped as the quarters I’ve become used to with the reptiscillas and guardians. “My mom would probably say, ‘Please excuse the mess,’ but I honestly think it looks fine.” I hide a smile as I follow Tilly past a living area and into a bedroom with two narrow beds. “This is our spare room. I’m sure my mom won’t mind you staying here if you need to.”