She’d had the weirdest dream. She rolled over to mentally run through what she remembered of it and noticed that her bed swayed gently with her movement. That wasn’t normal.
A physical sensation of recall flushed through every cell in Cassandra’s body. It felt like dread.
She opened her eyes. She wasn’t in her bedroom. She was in a small room with solid, sand-coloured walls. Instead of her bed, she was again lying in a soft hammock under velvety blankets with a fluffy pillow beneath her head. Sunlight and fragrant fresh air streamed in through a large open window.
Last night, realising that Cassandra couldn’t fly to one of the upper bedrooms, Brack and Chayton had ‘built’ a room in a corner of the ground floor for her. Oonnora was right: it did appear to be magic. The distinction was academic anyway: the result was the same whatever you chose to call it.
The first bit of magic occurred when Chayton removed his top. Cassandra stared, mesmerised, as he reached up to undo a fastening behind his neck, then slid the fabric down his torso, over his hips, all the way to his big, bare feet.
Cassandra almost choked on her tongue.
They started building by deciding where the outermost corner of the room should be. Chayton knelt down and rubbed his fingers over the floor until Cassandra saw it beginning to roughen and eventually loosen enough that he was able to dig a hole. With tight buttocks straining his trousers, arm muscles rippling, and veins bulging, Cassandra could have watched him dig holes all night.
Brack approached, holding what Cassandra initially thought was no more than a bundle of leafy branches. As he lowered it into Chayton’s hole and pushed the sand back in, she realised that it was a plant with roots still attached. To a human, it would have been no more than a tiny seedling.
From there it became spooky. Brack, with a look of intense concentration on his face, began touching the tips of the plant with his fingers and sweeping his hands in gentle upward arcs. His movements were surprisingly coordinated and graceful: at odds with Cassandra’s perception of him as an oaf. The branches lengthened and divided, intertwining like a vine on steroids. The sweeping arcs Brack drew became wider as the vine grew. He aimed it in two directions, perpendicular to each other, until eventually two living walls enclosed the corner. Meanwhile, Chayton worked inside the room to create a deep window, and whenever the plant came up against the walls of the house, he dug an opening for it to continue its growth outside.
As Brack stuffed spaces with bundles of grass, Chayton jogged outside with the bucket. Moments later, he was at the newly made window, handing the bucket, now full of muddy sand, through to Brack. Brack emptied it at the bottom of his wall and returned it to Chayton to refill, then he smeared the sand upwards over the screen. The vine seemed to be sucking the sand along its branches. The process was repeated again and again until, in a remarkably short time, the entire structure was covered with sand. Finally, Brack and Chayton ran their hands over the soft, damp wall. The sand compacted as hard and smooth as marble and became indistinguishable from any other wall inside the house.
Throughout this metamorphosis, Brack and Chayton were concentrating intensely; more than that, they seemed to be giving part of themselves to the building. Afterwards, they both sat slumped against the wall. Brack’s wings drooped down and splayed out on the floor, Chayton’s were folded up and crushed behind him. Cassandra was transfixed, staring at Chayton’s smooth, muscled torso, now shining with sweat. His hair was damp at the ends where it brushed his shoulders. She was almost overcome with an urge to throw herself into his lap and slide her fingers over the slick bulge of his chest. Then Tani walked unexpectedly across her line of sight and snickered. Cassandra’s cheeks burned with mortification at having been caught ogling. Thank goodness Chayton was too exhausted to have noticed. She looked back at him – at his face this time – to verify that he truly had been oblivious and watched, transfixed, as his slumberous eyes lifted to meet hers. He winked slowly and smiled. She turned and stumbled into the kitchen for a glass of water.
Tani was sent outside to retrieve the hammock Cassandra had slept in that afternoon. It made a beautifully warm and comfortable bed when it was hung up and furnished with blankets and pillows. Oonnora brought in a table and a chair, draping the table with a pretty lace tablecloth.
Whether it was due to the traumatic events of the day taking their toll or Oonnora stroking her arm, Cassandra slid into a deep sleep.
But now she was wide awake and she could still hear helicopters.
Suddenly, she knew they were searching for her. She ran through the house, past the startled family sitting at breakfast and out the front door. She stumbled blindly through the bush, renewing the injuries Oonnora had healed yesterday, and somehow made it to the crystal glade in the middle of the village. She stood, panting, in the centre and looked up. She could hear a helicopter but couldn’t see it. She waited, staring into the sky, until it came into view directly above her. Salvation! She waved her arms frantically and called out, despite knowing logically that they would never hear her. She at least expected them to see her. She expected them to circle around and land on the beach. They didn’t. They flew past, following the shoreline to the west. That was when Cassandra remembered that she was approximately ten centimetres tall. There was no way anyone was spotting her from a helicopter.
She sat on the ground.
Hot, silent tears trickled down her cheeks.
— CHAPTER 7 —
The Search
Cassandra sat for hours.
She listened to helicopters sweeping up and down the foreshore and into nearby bushland and neighbourhoods. From time to time, she caught sight of one overhead. She also heard sounds of a ground search: dogs barking, people shouting. She contemplated trying to make her way towards them, but her memories of the futility of running after her father yesterday held her back. Anyway, surely they would eventually find her if she stayed put. That was the first piece of advice drummed into children the minute they were old enough to understand the concept of getting lost in the bush: stay in one place. She did wonder what the dogs would do if they were the first to come upon her at this size. She decided to worry about it at the time.
So she sat … and waited
… and waited
… and waited.
Between helicopter flyovers, Cassandra examined her surroundings. The area was even more beautiful than she had thought when she first saw it yesterday. Of course, she was seeing it from a vastly different perspective now. Patches of tall, seeding grasses swayed around the edge, bordered by pigface flowers as big as tractor tyres, with wide pink, purple or orange fringes enclosing brilliant yellow centres. Before she had shrunk, the canopy of the bush had been no more than a few metres above her head. Now the crowns of trees towered above her, hundreds of times her height, as if she’d been transported into an ancient forest.
Cassandra looked around and tried to identify the way she had come in yesterday. She scanned the perimeter, but nothing looked familiar. She looked up higher and scanned again. It was then that she saw the overhanging branch she had ducked under on her way in, now way up in the sky above the grass forest. She realised it was actually the trunk of a ti-tree, twisted and curled so that, from this perspective, it resembled a bridge curving above the ground. Having a point of reference, she could see that all the twisted trunks and branches of the ti-trees and banksias were still there, but now they were enormous structures, familiar, yet suddenly alien because of her size and the company she was in.
Fae walking across the glade kept well clear, staring warily at her on their way past. Cassandra watched them in a strangely disconnected way. They were every permutation of beautiful, and it seemed incredible that there could be so much variation between them. It would have been impossible for Cassandra to choose a favourite – unless Chayton had walked past: then she would have had no trouble deciding whatsoever.
Time dragged on, and Cassandra’s faith in the rescuers diminished despite he
r best efforts to keep it alive. By mid-afternoon, her hunger pangs had grown from discomfort to outright pain. As the afternoon aged into evening, the sounds of the search ceased and Cassandra no longer had the energy to continue to hope. Why had they not come near her? She wasn’t very far from the boatshed. Why were the dogs and rescuers not walking all over her?
Oonnora approached and took Cassandra’s hand, but Cassandra yanked it back before Oonnora could provide any sort of aid. She heaved herself up and stalked in what she guessed was the direction of the house on her own, ignoring her injured feet in heroic defiance. Hope had died and anger fed off its carcase. She found the house – thankfully, because she wanted no help from Oonnora – and marched directly to her room. A basket of bread rolls sat on her table, but she ignored it. She preferred to feel mistreated, despite evidence to the contrary. Her hunger pains, scratched skin and wounded feet provided fuel for her rage.
She passed the night lying in her hammock, feeling angry and helpless, and sleeping fitfully. She was standing at her window, staring out into the night but not really seeing anything, when the sky started to lighten. She grabbed the basket of bread rolls and left her room quietly, being careful not to wake the family. She would have preferred not to accept the rolls, but she was too hungry and there was nothing to be gained from acting the martyr anyway. She would be hurting herself more than them by not taking some.
Before the sun had fully risen, she had set up camp in the same place as yesterday. She knew that the helicopters were useless, but surely today the people on foot with the dogs would find her. During the night, she had concluded that the searchers must have divided the search area up into sections. Yesterday, they had covered the area to the west of the boatshed and today they would come east. Of course they would. There was no other answer for them not walking over this area hundreds of times. All she had to do was wait.
Mid-morning came and went. Cassandra was forced to accept that the search had been called off, or at least moved to a different area. There were no helicopters, no dogs and no people. She couldn’t even hear her father calling out, no matter how hard she strained to hear. Had he given up so easily? Wasn’t he planning to devote his life to wandering up and down the foreshore looking for his lost daughter?
Oonnora sat down beside her. Cassandra wanted to tell her to get lost, but she was exhausted and defeated – for the moment.
‘You need to let go.’
Cassandra hated the pity she heard in Oonnora’s soft voice. How dare she pretend to be sorry? ‘You people did this to me. You’re not even people, you’re … you’re fairies,’ Cassandra spat.
‘Fae.’
Cassandra sat staring out into the bush – anywhere but at Oonnora.
Oonnora took a slow, deep breath, only to let it all out in a rush. ‘There was no choice once you had seen us, Cassandra. We can’t trust you with the knowledge of our existence.’
The words were agonizing. In all honesty, Cassandra wasn’t confident she could trust herself with the knowledge, either. Surely nobody could experience all of this and then never speak of it to another person? On the other hand, if that was the bargain she had to make in order to get back home … ‘What if I promise never to tell?’
‘There’s no way we could be certain you would keep that promise.’
‘I would. I …,’ the futility of what she was saying occurred to her with the words coming out of her mouth, ‘… promise.’
They sat together in silence for a while. Oonnora began to reach her hand towards Cassandra, then hesitated. ‘Can I just …?’ Her hand moved the extra little bit and rested lightly on Cassandra’s arm. Cassandra’s scratches and wounded feet healed, but when she felt her mood begin to improve, she jerked her arm away.
It was freaky, what these fairies could do.
Cassandra asked the question she suspected she didn’t want to hear the answer to: ‘Why didn’t the searchers and the dogs come through here?’
‘We make them believe they’ve already covered this area. They wouldn’t have seen you anyway, Cassandra. Not even the dogs.’ Oonnora looked genuinely apologetic. ‘I’m sorry.’
Cassandra closed her eyes. She was suffering from such an intense hatred of the fairies, or fae, or whatever they wanted to call themselves, that she actually visualised herself leaping to her feet and tearing down every house in the village with her bare hands … or better still, growing back to human size and stomping them all underfoot.
She did her best to slow her breathing and relax her muscles. She listened to her heartbeat pounding in her ears and concentrated on calming it. She tried to quench the aggression surging through her body. When she was positive that she was in control, she slowly peeled her eyes open.
Oonnora had disappeared.
— CHAPTER 8 —
Pictures of You
Cassandra spent the rest of that afternoon and the following three days in her room: angry and upset, hating the fae and hatching and discarding escape plots. She only came out to go to the toilet and then only when it became urgent.
Oonnora, Tani and Chayton took turns bringing Cassandra her meals. Tani was on breakfast duty, Oonnora on lunch, and Chayton brought in dinner.
The first evening, when Chayton delivered Cassandra’s dinner, Cassandra was curled up in her hammock. Her eyes were puffy and red from crying, and her nose was becoming chaffed from blowing and wiping. Just watching Chayton walk in brought forth more tears when she had thought she was all dried out. His inhuman beauty symbolised her bondage. Even his voice, when he spoke, was bewitching. He laid her dinner on the table and leaned against the wall, staring at her with a thoughtful expression on his face.
Cassandra felt self-conscious lying in her hammock, crying pathetically. She ducked her head and rubbed her eyes, but it didn’t do much more than smear salt water all over her face. ‘Don’t look at me.’ She sniffled as quietly as she could.
Chayton laughed and stepped away from the wall towards her. ‘Why not?’
‘I’ve been crying.’
‘I can see.’
‘I must look terrible.’
‘I don’t know.’ Two more steps brought him to the side of her hammock. He wiped her tears with his fingertips and she felt her face dry. Her mood improved, too. ‘You look a lot better than you did when you first appeared yesterday. At least you’re the right size now.’
‘Were you there when Eerin shrunk me?’
‘No, but a friend of mine was. He sent me a picture.’
‘A picture?’ These fae didn’t seem to be the Instagram type. ‘Can I see it?’
‘Okay.’ His gaze intensified until he seemed to stare through her. It was a bit creepy. She stared back. Was he having some kind of seizure?
Chayton blinked and refocussed on Cassandra’s face. ‘Apparently not.’
‘What?’
‘Did you get the picture?’
‘What are you talking about?’ Cassandra wondered if she should call Oonnora; he’d clearly just had some kind of psychotic episode.
‘I just sent the picture from my mind to yours. You didn’t get it?’
‘No.’ Could he really do that or was he teasing her? ‘Are fae telepathic?’
‘Of course.’
‘You can read minds? Tell me what I’m thinking.’ Cassandra suddenly realised that she should clear her mind of all lustful thoughts about Chayton just in case he wasn’t joking, but simply thinking about it was enough to conjure up the image of his bare, sweaty chest. Think of elephants. Think of elephants.
Chayton laughed. ‘No. We only receive messages that are sent, and we can pick up people’s emotions, unless they’re blocking them. Most fae block their emotions most of the time.’
He brushed the hair back from her forehead with gentle fingertips. Why couldn’t human boys be so sweet? ‘You, for example are feeling sadness, anger, fear, …’
Cassandra pushed his hand away and pictured elephants before he found lustful or infatuated. ‘How do
you block emotions?’
Chayton stepped back and crossed his arms over his chest. There was a smugness to his smile that suggested it wasn’t elephants he was seeing. ‘You just do.’
That was something Cassandra would have to investigate further. ‘So, if you can send and receive messages telepathically, why do you bother to talk out loud at all then?’
Chayton laughed again. ‘It’s more basic than that: a knowing, a signal, sometimes a picture or snippet of memory. You have to be careful with it though, because once you put something into someone else’s head, it merges with their thoughts and memories, so if you send someone negative notions about themselves and they’re not strong enough to resist, that idea can become woven into their self-image.’
Cassandra could see that taking bullying to a whole new level. ‘So someone could send you a message like, I don’t know … you smell … and you’ll start believing that you smell?’
‘Only if you’ve got a weak mind.’ Chayton gave a sharp laugh as though he would never have that problem.
He suddenly glanced at the door. ‘Anyway, there’s your dinner.’ He walked out, closing the door behind him.
Cassandra rolled out of the hammock and looked at the food: a mushroom, a berry and a bread roll. She picked up the bread roll and stood at the window, watching the day darken into twilight and then night.
The following morning, Cassandra woke up to Tani storming into her room, slamming a breakfast tray down on her table and storming out.
‘What?’ Cassandra heard her snap at someone outside. ‘How would you like me to do it?’ The reply was too soft for Cassandra to hear.
The tray held a plate, a basket of bread rolls and some pots of jam with little spoons sticking out of them. Cassandra loved bread and jam. She sat beside the table with her chair turned around so that she could look out the window, and spent most of the morning eating bread and jam, and thinking of escape.
She hadn’t long finished when Oonnora brought her lunch in.
Oonnora stared at Cassandra for a few moments as though trying to decide what to say. ‘Would you like to come outside, Cassandra? I can show you around Gillwillan. It’s a lovely day.’