“I got up early this morning and went for a walk,” said Tamisin.
“I saw Buttercup by the lake. She said she saw you returning from the other side of the briar hedge.”
Tamisin tried to think of an answer that wouldn’t give too much away. “I went to ask Narlayna to make me a dress for the dance,” she said, glancing at Irinia as she said it.
Irinia nodded and gave Tamisin a quick half smile.
“Ah,” Dasras said, appearing satisfied. “Then you’re going with me?”
“I guess I am.” Tamisin groaned under her breath. She’d talked herself into a corner; now she’d either have to go or leave the forest before the dance began.
Plucking a fat, red apple from the table, she tried to think of something to say to Dasras. She no longer felt as if she loved him; the little voice telling her that she did had died on the mermaid’s beach. There were a lot of things that she wanted to say to him, but none of them were pleasant, and she remembered Malcolm’s warning to be discreet. Telling him off would attract attention, as would starting an argument, so neither one would be a good idea now. Instead, she took a bite from the apple, delaying the need to say anything, and looked up when a tiny messenger fairy arrived.
Instead of going to Dasras, the fairy came to her. She waited while he grew to full size. “Colonel Mountain Ash wants to see you,” said the messenger. “Go to the fairy king’s clearing. The colonel is waiting for you there.”
“Why would the colonel want to see me?” she asked Dasras as the messenger flew away.
He shrugged. “I have no idea, but you should hurry. If the colonel wants to see you, it must be important.”
Chapter 18
Jak expected to go directly to the colonel, but instead Ragweed led the way to the middle of a briar patch and told him to wait there. After Ragweed left, Jak tried to say a few words out loud, but it took some time before he could use his own voice. His memory was coming back, too. He remembered who he was, that he had given the fairies a false name, and that he had come to get Tamisin. When he remembered how she had rejected him, he almost wished his memory hadn’t come back so completely.
After a while Jak stood to stretch his legs and peeked out of the entrance to the briar patch. Ragweed was standing at the far end, peering back the way they had come. He stopped a passing fairy who gestured wildly, obviously agitated. Ragweed began to pace after the other fairy left, but it wasn’t until a tiny fairy flew up to Ragweed and hovered by his ear that the big fairy finally became small and zipped away, leaving Jak in the briar patch unguarded.
Tamisin walked so fast that she was nearly running. Something had happened, she was sure of it. Could Titania have come for her? Could something have happened to Oberon? Maybe bad news had made its way from the human world and something had happened to her adoptive family. The thought that something bad might have befallen one of the people she loved made Tamisin’s breath catch in her throat.
The fog that had obscured the glade after Tamisin’s last visit was gone when she arrived, and she could see Mountain Ash waiting for her. “It seems you have a visitor,” the colonel said when she stood before him. “A cat-goblin boy has come to see you.”
Tamisin could see that Mountain Ash was watching to see her reaction. She took a deep breath, willing her heartbeat to slow and her cheeks to cool. “Who is it?” she asked.
“He says his name is Nihlo. Do you know someone by that name?”
Tamisin was disappointed and more than a little afraid. When she’d heard it was a cat goblin, she’d begun to hope for a moment that it was someone else, someone whose name she couldn’t remember. Could the boy I can’t remember be a cat goblin? she wondered, surprised at her own reaction.
She remembered Nihlo, though, and her lip curled in dislike. “I know him.”
Nihlo had wanted to kill her the last time she’d seen him. After leaving the land of the fey, she’d hoped that she’d never see him again. And now he was here. Tamisin was tempted to say that she didn’t want to see him, but with so many guards around she didn’t think he could hurt her. Besides, she was more than a little curious about why he would come so far.
A messenger fairy darted through the trees to hover beside the colonel. Mountain Ash held up one finger, motioning for the messenger to wait. “Tell me, what is Nihlo’s relationship to Titania?” he asked Tamisin. “Does he work for her?”
Tamisin shook her head. “No. As far as I know, Nihlo doesn’t work for anyone but Nihlo. He hates Titania and would hurt her if he could.”
Another messenger arrived, and another and another. They hovered in the air beside Mountain Ash, their twinkling lights quivering with the urgency of their messages.
“Just a moment,” Mountain Ash told Tamisin, and glanced at the fairy who had arrived first. His expression grew grimmer as he listened to the messenger. When the fairy finished, Mountain Ash turned to Tamisin. “You’ll have to excuse me. Titania’s forces have reached our border and have already mounted an attack. We’ll talk more about your friend later.” In an instant, Mountain Ash was as small as the messenger fairies and flying off with them.
Tamisin didn’t know what to do. Her mother’s army was attacking her father’s court? She’d heard of family squabbles, but nothing like this! Dasras had said that Titania loved her kingdom more than Tamisin or himself. However, if the fairy queen was deliberately starting a fight over her, Titania must love her more than the kingdom, or Oberon, or the fairies who were sure to get hurt in such a battle. Irinia and Narlayna had told Tamisin how fiercely Titania and Oberon could fight; the last thing Tamisin wanted was for anyone to get hurt because of her.
As much as she wanted to go home to the human world, she had to do something to keep Titania and Oberon from fighting. Would it help if she went to talk to them? But how would she get to her mother, and who knew where her father was now? Would they even listen to her if she could find them?
Jak was about to go in search of Tamisin when a small figure dressed all in brown appeared. “Come with me,” the brownie said, gesturing for him to follow.
“Why?” said Jak.
The little man set his hands on his hips and rolled his eyes. “Because I’m trying to help you, you big galumphing idiot! I heard the fairies. You were supposed to talk to Mountain Ash before he’d let you see the princess, but something came up and he had to go. The fairies were going to leave you here, twiddling your thumbs. Fine, if you don’t want my help, you can sit here and wait for your guard to come back. It’s too bad, though. The princess Tamisin needs someone to help her, and I thought you might be the one.”
“I’m coming!” said Jak as he hurried to catch up with the brownie, who could move surprisingly fast for someone with such short legs. “Are you a friend of Tamisin’s?”
The brownie looked surprised at the question. After a moment’s thought, he flashed a quick smile at Jak and said, “Yes, I guess you could say that I am.”
They paused at the forest trail. When they didn’t see anyone, they crept along the path, moving silently. Jak’s heart leaped in his chest when he saw a solitary figure and realized that it was Tamisin. The brownie slipped away as Jak started running. “Tamisin!” he shouted. “I’m here!”
At the sound of the familiar voice, Tamisin’s heart lurched and she felt a rush of excitement as she turned around, only to see a face she didn’t recognize. The emotions that filled her as he approached were staggering, but she was so confused that she couldn’t speak at first. Part of her wanted to run to him and throw herself into his arms, but another part told her to be cautious, that this was a stranger she’d never seen before. True, he was a cat goblin, but not the one she was expecting.
“You’re not Nihlo,” she said, taking a step back. She hated Nihlo; although she felt conflicting emotions when she saw this boy, hatred wasn’t one of them.
Chapter 19
Jak stopped in his tracks, stunned. “What? Tam, it’s me! I came looking for you. Is something wron
g?” he added when she retreated from him again.
“I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t think we’ve ever met.”
Jak was horrified. Either the fairies had sent her to the Land of Forgetfulness and her memories hadn’t come back, or Oberon had used his magic on her and made her forget people. It couldn’t be all her memories, though; if she knew he wasn’t Nihlo, she must remember his cousin, at least. Jak decided that Oberon must be to blame if her memory loss was so selective.
“We met at Worthington Academy; don’t you remember?” he said. “We ran into each other in the hallway—literally!”
“I know the academy, but I never met you there,” Tamisin said, rubbing her forehead as if it hurt. “Listen, I don’t know why you’re here, but this isn’t a good time. There’s a lot going on now and I have to talk to my father.”
Although Jak’s first instinct was to pull her into his arms, cover her face with kisses, and tell her that everything was going to be all right, he was afraid it would frighten her if she truly didn’t remember him. Instead he watched her walk away, hoping that she would stop to look back at him, and he felt a tightness in his chest when she didn’t. It was bad enough when she didn’t want to be with him, but even worse to see her not know him at all.
And what did Tamisin mean when she said that she was going to talk to her father? Tamisin had told Jak that her real father was human and had died years before. Could she have learned something new? Did she think that Oberon was her father? Maybe she was talking about someone else.
Jak began to follow Tamisin. He didn’t want her to see him trailing her, but he wasn’t about to let her get out of sight, so he waited until she’d turned a corner in the path before hurrying after her. Slipping into the trees, he followed far enough off the path that she wouldn’t see him if she did look back.
Although he knew he needed to look for the pink fairy dust and do what the sphinxes had suggested, he was reluctant to lose track of Tamisin until he knew more. It became harder to hide as they reached a more populated part of the forest. After almost tripping over a brownie lugging buckets of water from a stream, Jak apologized and moved back onto the path.
But then he lost sight of Tamisin. When he finally spotted her again, she was walking next to a tall, thin boy heading toward a large group of fairies. They stopped at a table where other fairies were gathered. The boy turned his head and Jak saw that his skin was an odd shade of blue and his hair was blue black.
It wasn’t long before Tamisin and the blue boy reached a spot where green-haired nymphs served food and drinks on a large flat rock covered with a filmy cloth. Fairies of all sizes were clustered around the rock, nibbling fruit and talking. A short distance away, fairy warriors were preparing for battle, but the main topic of conversation of the other fairies of Oberon’s court seemed to be the dance that was planned for that night.
Jak stayed back as Tamisin helped herself to a delicate tulip cup filled with some kind of liquid and selected a piece of fruit from a leaf platter. He watched as the blue boy frowned and said something to Tamisin when she reached for another piece. Her hand hovered over the fruit as if she really wanted it, but she looked up at the boy, then took her hand away. Jak heard a strange low sound and realized that it was coming from his own throat. He was growling. That blue boy was telling Tamisin what to do, and Jak didn’t like it.
Tamisin and the blue boy strolled off, leaving Jak on the far side of the group of fairies. He was looking for a way to go around them without being conspicuous when a trio of fairies spied him. Jak tried to ignore them as they pointed at him and giggled, talking about him in loud whispers, but when the orange-haired fairy approached him with the others right behind, he had to stop or risk making a scene.
“You’re new here, aren’t you?” the orange-haired fairy asked. Her gown was orange, too, and she would have been hard to miss in any crowd. When she stopped, a second fairy came to stand beside her. Her bright yellow gown seemed to give off a light of its own, and she had a wide face with large dark eyes that studied him as if he were some sort of slime mold. The third member of their group was a male fairy dressed in greens and browns. He nodded stiffly when Jak glanced his way, then turned aside as if bored.
“Yes, I just arrived,” Jak told the orange-haired fairy.
“I’m Lily,” she said, giving him a sultry look, “and these are my friends Sunflower and Hawthorne. And you are . . .”
“Nihlo,” he said, sticking with the name he’d already given. He started to edge around them, hoping they could take a hint, but Lily stepped in front of him. “I really need to go,” he told her. “If you’ll excuse me . . .”
“What kind of being are you?” Lily asked.
Jak hesitated. The fairy was forthright to the point of being rude, but maybe that was common in Oberon’s court. “I’m a cat goblin and—” Jak began.
“Cat goblin! Lily just loves cat goblins!” Sunflower said, and laughed so loud that all the fairies standing nearby turned to look.
Jak peered past the assembled fairies, looking for Tamisin, but she was no longer in sight.
“If you need someone to show you around, I’m available,” said Lily.
Hawthorne looked at her as if she’d lost her mind.
A jostling, thumping sound made everyone turn to look at the two warrior fairies sprinting past, carrying baskets filled with reeds. These were bigger reeds than the kind Lieutenant Spruce and his fairies had carried, and Jak recognized them, having seen them used in battle. When Titania’s fairies had fought his uncle Targin’s goblins, they had filled such reeds with dust of various colors. If Jak was to find pink dust, his best bet might be to follow these fairies.
“Good day,” Jak said, and this time he sidestepped Lily and her friends before they could get in his way.
Jak didn’t want it to be too obvious that he was following the warriors, so he walked slowly until he was out of sight of the gathered fairies before he began to hurry. When something boomed and voices cried out, the warriors began to run. Jak ran, too, abandoning the path to cut across the forest. He slowed as the fairies entered a clearing and set their baskets on the ground beside fairies who were already there. The new arrivals were talking to the other warriors when Jak crept through the trees to a sheltering maple, where he hoped to see what was going on.
As soon as he saw what they were doing, Jak knew he had come to the right place. The fairies who had brought the reeds handed them off to other warriors who were waiting. While the runners left the clearing, the new warriors took reeds from the baskets, filled them with dust from some round, squat jugs, and handed them to other runners, who carried the filled reeds to the far end of the meadow.
Unable to see the color of the dust, Jak climbed a tree to get a better look and almost fell out when he saw the number of warriors preparing for battle. He knew that Oberon had an army, but he’d never really thought about what that meant. The sky was alive with tiny fairies taking off and landing.
Hearing voices below him, Jak turned back to the warriors filling reeds and saw that more runners had arrived bringing more jugs of dust. From his new vantage point, Jak was pleased to see that he had a better view of the dust. The first few jugs were filled with yellow, the next held purple, the one after that held green, and, down at the end where he couldn’t quite see . . . blue.
Jak didn’t know what to do now. None of the jugs held pink dust. But if it wasn’t here, where was he going to find it? Perhaps the sphinxes had been mistaken. Perhaps it wasn’t pink dust he needed, but one of the other colors. If that were true, however, how would he know which one?
A whisper of sound made Jak start to turn around, and then he felt a hand on his ankle and his heart skipped a beat. He looked down, expecting to see one of Oberon’s warriors, but it was Lily, the orange-haired fairy.
“Shh!” she whispered with her finger to her lips. “You have a choice. You can go with me and answer my questions, or I can start yelling and
let all these brave, strong warriors know that they have a spy in their midst. Which one is it going to be?”
“I’ll be right there,” Jak replied.
Fearing that Lily would go back on her word and sound the alarm anyway, he scarcely breathed as he climbed out of the tree and followed her through the forest. When they were well away from the meadow, Lily stopped and sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree. Patting the trunk beside her, she said, “Sit,” and waited for Jak.
“I wasn’t spying,” Jak told her, although in a way he knew he was. He was also sure that no one would believe him if he told the truth, which he wasn’t about to try, because it was their king’s magic that he wanted to undo.
“Yeah, right,” Lily said, and pointed at the trunk beside her.
Jak sat as far from her as he could. “Let me guess: you want to know why I was in that tree.”
Lily laughed and shook her head. “Not at all. I want you to tell me about Tamisin.”
“What makes you think I know anything about her?” Jak asked.
“I saw the way you were watching her. You know her from somewhere, don’t you? You came here because of her. Tell me the truth or I’ll start screaming, and then I’ll tell the warriors that you were spying on them.”
“Yes, I know her,” Jak said reluctantly.
“Where did you meet her?”
“At school,” said Jak.
“Do you mean that horrible goblin school on that dreadful island out in the middle of nowhere? I’ve heard about that place. It sounds like torture to me. What happened? Was she making the royal rounds and stopped there to brighten the day of the poor little goblins trapped on the island? I bet honey wouldn’t dissolve in her mouth, that goody-two wings!”
“She’s not like that,” Jak said, even though he’d resolved not to tell Lily anything.
Obviously agitated, Lily hopped off the trunk and began to pace. “Don’t defend her to me!” she said, waving her hands in the air. “I’ve seen the way she smiles at everyone and acts like she’s their friend. Well, I don’t believe it for a minute! No fairy is that nice. She’s up to something, and I want to know what it is!”