“We come in peace,” I said quickly, holding up my hands. “We would simply like to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind. It will take up only a few minutes of your time.”
The dragons—whose genders I was still unsure of—loosened a little, and exchanged glances.
“Who are you and what do you want to know from us?” the darker blue dragon boomed. I felt a cold wind blowing my direction—the beast’s breath touching me.
We approached within ten feet of the creatures and stopped.
“We are from The Shade,” I explained. “My name is Benjamin Novak. I’m here with friends and family. The first question I would like to ask of you is: how long have you been here on this island?”
Both of them shrugged. “We don’t keep track of time like that.” The second, lighter blue dragon spoke up.
I guessed the question was kind of arbitrary anyway, considering that dragon years were different from others.
“Okay,” I said, deciding to simply cut to the chase. “Quite some time ago, a group of five children might’ve passed this way. Peculiar children, with vampire bodies and Hawk wings. They escaped from your neighbors, the harpies. I would like to know if—”
“Hm,” the dark blue dragon rumbled, stalling my question. “Yes,” it said slowly, “I remember.”
“Remember what, exactly?” I asked, anticipation rising in my chest.
“The five young ones. We caught them stealing our food. They came right near our cave and ravaged our lunch… We soon showed them some etiquette, and the risks of trespassing into a dragon’s territory…”
“What did you do?” I asked, my fists clenching.
“We blew them away,” the second dragon replied. “They went flying, somewhere south of here… though we cannot be sure.”
“Do you remember talking to them?” my father asked. “Did they say anything to you?”
“They spouted some excuses for why they were foraging—because they were hungry,” the dark blue dragon said.
“They also said that they had escaped the harpies and were looking for their real parents,” the other dragon added.
Looking for their real parents. Well, at least they’d figured out that the harpies weren’t their real parents. Being trapped on an island their whole lives, since they were babies, I imagined they would have been brainwashed by the harpies to think that was exactly where they belonged. They had never known a world outside of it, after all.
But where would they have gone from here? Where would they have even started on their search? They were so young, after all. Would such young children have survived a journey across the supernatural realm, filled with predators? Since they had human blood in them they would be more appealing to more species.
“Thank you,” I said to the dragons. Although they were still eyeing us suspiciously, they seemed to have gotten over the doubt that we might start attacking them.
“So that is all you can tell us?” Ibrahim clarified.
“Hm,” the light blue muttered. “There is one more thing. Those birdwomen came searching for them some hours after the children came by. We have reason to hold a particular grudge against those harpies, so although they asked us if we had seen the children, we lied and said we hadn’t… before blowing them off our land, too.” The dragon’s face split in a cruel grin.
Good. At least the kids wouldn’t have had those harpies on their trail.
As the dragons retreated into their cave, I turned to face the rest of my group.
“So we have only one additional piece of information,” my father said, rubbing a hand over his forehead. “They were looking for their real parents.”
“Yeah,” I said, my voice trailing off as I slipped into thought. Now we had to try to put ourselves in the shoes of those kids, and figure out where their next destination might have possibly been.
I guessed their first logical step would be to find out exactly what they were. I doubted the harpies would have told them they were part human, part vampire, part Hawk.
But how would they find that out? By the sounds of it, the dragons hadn’t been exactly hospitable or open to questions when the children had come here searching for food. They would have moved on somewhere else… maybe found somebody else to consult?
It was hard to imagine five-year-olds undertaking such a task. All I could think was that these kids had to grow up fast while under the “care” of the harpies, and learned to work together to survive. It must’ve been a joint effort to escape the harpies in the first place—the children would have had to plan it carefully.
“Let’s consult the map again,” I said.
Ibrahim drew it out while the rest of us gathered around him.
The warlock sighed. He pointed to the next island in our vicinity, one that looked larger than this ice dragon residence.
“We could keep moving from island to island, I guess,” Ibrahim said. “Though something tells me, as they were part Hawk, their instinct would have driven them to warmer lands. After stealing food from the dragons, they would have had energy to attempt this.”
Ibrahim studied the map for several minutes, hmm-ing on occasion. Then his finger fell on a long landmass further south. God knew how many miles away it was.
“This here,” Ibrahim explained, “is probably the nearest major landmass that has a moderate climate. Since we have already started on this route of wild speculation, I would say that if there was any way they survived the flight across this icy ocean to warmer temperatures, this would be a land where they stopped for rest and likely to fill up on more food.”
“And what is that land, exactly?” my father asked.
“The Dewglades,” Ibrahim replied. “Land of the marsh dwellers.”
“Marsh dwellers,” several of us repeated together.
I had never come across marsh dwellers in the flesh, but we had all heard a thing or two about them over the years we had been operating the The Shadow League. They were an interesting bunch, to say the least.
My father couldn’t look more unenthusiastic if he tried.
“Marsh dwellers,” he repeated again. “Are we really prepared to marsh dwellers?”
Ibrahim shrugged. “Can one ever be prepared for marsh dwellers?”
My father and I locked eyes.
We had both already come to the same conclusion; now we were simply procrastinating. Prepared or not, we were going to The Dewglades.
Ben
Ibrahim did not touch us down on land when we arrived at The Dewglades’ location. Although we arrived at a rocky shore, the warlock kept us hovering in the air. We all needed to go over some basic protocol before setting foot in this place.
“So,” Ibrahim said. “Let’s have a recap about marsh dwellers for those of you who are less aware of them. By physical appearance alone, they seem quite harmless. Indeed, they are spirits renowned for their beauty, both the men and the women. They are, in essence, creatures of seduction. In that respect, they are similar to nymphs—but marsh dwellers are more mischievous. They prey on members of the opposite sex—first comes beguilement and then comes dinner. I am definitely going to need to put protection around all of us when we touch down. And stay close together. Don’t step out of my spell. And do not, and I repeat do not, go wandering off by yourself.”
I didn’t miss the way Ibrahim’s eyes settled a little longer on my uncle Lucas as he gave the warning. Lucas was all right most of the time, but he sometimes got carried away and took off on his own excursions.
“I don’t know how we’re going to get any information out of these creatures,” Ibrahim continued. “I don’t know what their attitude will be toward us. Maybe they will be talkative, maybe they won’t. We’ll have to play everything by ear… Any questions?”
Nobody said anything.
Ibrahim descended with us to a marshland—although it wasn’t like any marshland I had ever seen before. Small trees with vibrant, turquoise leaves populated the landscape. The leaves were dens
e and curly, hanging from loose branches like willows, and covering the treetops like mops of hair. The canopy the leaves formed was thick, such that when we descended through it and our feet hit solid ground, we were in a new world altogether: a world of crystal-clear brooks and streams, all interconnecting in a kind of spectacular maze. The patches of ground between the waterways were dewy, verdant and sprouted with tall green grass, the soil giving way beneath our feet. The vegetation was a feast for the eyes; clusters of delicate blooming flowers spanned every shade of the rainbow, and plump, pink, round fruits that resembled peaches in size and shape trailed from the branches like hanging temptation. Glowing orange and blue butterflies fluttered over our heads, creating a natural light that made the water glisten and the place look even more surreal. Whimsical. Fairytale-like.
This place truly was stranger than a dream.
The fragrance of the flowers was already seducing my senses. I felt heady just breathing it in.
“All right, guys,” Ibrahim said, eyeing Micah and Kira, who were already venturing a little too far away as they gazed around. “Remember what I said. We need to keep together.”
Where do we look first? must’ve been the question running through everyone’s mind as we looked around this fantasy world.
“Maybe we should just start calling out,” I said. “Who knows how long it will take us to come across someone.” This country was big. We hadn’t been able to see the end of it from the sky, even though we had been fairly high up.
“I agree,” Ibrahim said.
And so, as we began to move through the waterlogged landscape, all of us began yelling.
“Hello?”
“Dwellers!”
“You have visitors!”
Nobody knew quite what to shout out to these strange creatures we’d never even laid eyes on before, and everything we did come up with sounded comical. But the only thing that mattered was that we were making noise.
After traveling for about half an hour, still, nobody had come to us. Ibrahim decided to transport us deeper into The Dewglades, hoping that it would speed things up.
Even in spite of Ibrahim’s warnings, I was very tempted to suggest that the fae leave and go off on our own to make this search faster. But although we were usually fully capable of getting ourselves out of trouble with our ability to thin ourselves, the fact that these marsh dwellers had the ability to play on one’s mind, and were so unknown in general, made me too nervous to dare leave the group. We were stronger together, and with Ibrahim to remind us what we should and should not be doing.
We disappeared with Ibrahim and reappeared again in an area that was just as eerily beautiful, but with more open space. The trees here weren’t as low-hanging, making the moory world seem larger, less claustrophobic. More butterflies flew among the leaves here, too, casting more dancing light around us.
“We’ve got to figure out where their residences are,” Ibrahim said. “I don’t know enough about marsh dwellers to know where exactly they live. In case you couldn’t guess, I haven’t actually been here before.”
We began to yell out again, disrupting the sacred, quiet atmosphere.
A splash came from our left. Quick footsteps moved through marshland. We all fell silent, freezing and gazing toward the noise.
Whoever was approaching was making expert use of the bushes and trees in front of us. Even as the footsteps drew closer, the entity remained unseen. It must have been keeping in an eerily dead straight line behind one of the trunks. Then the footsteps stopped. Slowly, a small hand slid around a trunk directly in front of us, followed by a bare arm and then a face: the face of a young woman, framed by long, silky brown hair. Her ears were slightly pointed at the tips, and her skin was pale as alabaster. Her features on the whole—small, cherub-like, and delicate—were undeniably attractive. She stepped out fully from the tree, revealing herself to be naked except for a flimsy chain of white flowers draped around her lower waist.
Well, this isn’t awkward at all.
Her appearance was somehow made more uncomfortable by the fact that I was standing right next to my father.
Everyone was kind of lost for words for a few seconds, even the women among us.
Ibrahim was the first to break the silence, which was a good thing. In spite of his lack of experience with marsh dwellers, he still knew far more about them than the rest of us did.
“What’s your name, girl?” he asked.
A smile spread across her lips like honey. “Ottalie,” she cooed, soft as a dove, even as a blush crept to her cheeks.
“Ottalie,” Ibrahim repeated, maintaining eye contact with her. I noticed a bead of sweat slipping from his forehead. He was under the most pressure right now; his spell was what was keeping us all protected from this mysterious being. “Would you answer a few questions for me, Ottalie?” Ibrahim asked, his voice going soft to mimic hers.
She pressed her lips together, suppressing a broadening smile. She slipped her hands behind her back, where she held them, bashfully. Her pale green irises twinkled as she remained gazing back at Ibrahim without answering.
“We don’t mean you any harm,” Ibrahim went on in his quiet tone.
Even at his words, she backed away slightly. Her back hitting the tree trunk behind her, she glided around it, until she’d gone out of sight again.
But no footsteps sounded of her walking away, and we could hear her soft, shallow breathing. She remained behind the tree, just… waiting.
She was playing some kind of game.
Ibrahim inhaled, glancing nervously from me to my father. “Let’s move forward,” he muttered beneath his breath.
Our group approached the tree cautiously, stopping about five feet away.
“Ottalie,” Ibrahim repeated, like he was coaxing a child. “I would like to speak with you.”
Her hand extended around the tree again. Her forefinger outstretched and curved in a subtle beckoning motion.
“I am shy of the others,” came her whisper. “I wish to speak only to you.”
Ibrahim groaned, cursing quietly. “Looks like I’m going to have to use coercion,” he whispered. “I’d been hoping to avoid that.”
He outstretched his palms and moved forward, as if to summon the marsh dweller to him. But before Ibrahim’s spell could even reach her, she had darted off, swift and light as a spirit, through the trees. As though she could sense Ibrahim’s intentions.
We darted after her. If we lost her, we’d be back to square one.
“Wait,” Ibrahim called.
She let out a high-pitched giggle, which echoed eerily around the forest.
“Chase me if you want me,” she called back.
Ibrahim narrowed his eyes as we hurtled after her. I could see that he was attempting to get her when she dodged a tree and came into our direct line of vision, but she was so swift. As though she was flying, rather than running through the sludge.
We were also being impaired by the speed at which the solely-physical beings among us could run, i.e., everyone other than us fae. We weren’t that far behind her. And it was just one marsh dweller. One girl. If I could just grab her…
As I caught Lucas and Kailyn’s eye, I could see that they were thinking the exact same thing. We just needed to catch up with her and pin her down, for Ibrahim to cast whatever spell he wanted to on her.
“Ibrahim, we should—”
Before I could even finish my question, Lucas gave in to impatience and zoomed forward, away from Ibrahim’s protection.
“Wait, Lucas!” Ibrahim shouted.
The urgency of Ibrahim’s voice shook me. This was a bad idea after all.
I was about to follow Lucas and pull him back, when, in a blur of alabaster, the marsh dweller soared toward Lucas, and the two went tumbling into a rolling brook.
“Lucas!” all of us roared, hurrying to the water’s edge.
I expected to see the two of them underwater; perhaps the marsh dweller had been trying to drown him. Inst
ead we saw a far more terrifying sight… nothing.
Just the rocky bottom of the stream. No signs that my uncle had ever entered the water at all.
Lucas and the marsh dweller had vanished.
Lucas
I had been lost in some kind of deep sleep, cocooned by warm liquid, thick as honey.
As my senses slowly returned to me, my brain lit up from an unearthly scent, a fragrance made in heaven itself. I hadn’t even known that it was possible to derive so much pleasure from a smell.
I drew a breath, my eyes slowly lifting open. My first vision was a ceiling of virgin white flowers. They were bound together in garlands, and draped so thick that I couldn’t even see what the ceiling was constructed of.
My neck creaked as I tried to sit upright. I was lying in a… wooden bathtub? And the substance around me was real. It was warm and thick and even the color of honey, and yet, it was not honey. It did not smell like it; its scent was woody. It smelled like resin.
As I regained feeling in the rest of my body, there was something strange about my feet… something not right. They felt weighed down. As I lifted them up in the bath tub, I almost yelped.
These weren’t my feet.
They were solid blocks of resin, starting at my ankles.
Either this was a nightmare, or I was tripping out on something. What was the last thing that had happened to me? What was the last thing I remembered?
I had been zooming through trees, chasing that… thing. That woman. Then she had flown at me suddenly and dragged me underwater. I’d felt her lips touch mine and then… that was it.
Oh, God. What is going on?
My eyes swept around me, taking in the rest of my surroundings. I was in some kind of room constructed entirely from wooden logs. The loose, melted resin surrounding me was warm, making it hard for me to gauge the exact temperature of the room outside, but it felt moderate, if not a little cool.
That girl. That marsh dweller. She brought me here. What has she done to me?