Chapter 27
DAVID
We spent half the day hiking through monotonous forest. No creatures attacked and we never caught any sign of the Seelie. It started to feel like we were back in Yosemite on a normal hike. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do normal hikes anymore after this. There was something about all the times in the last few days that we’d narrowly escaped death that just made this seem a bit boring. I softly tapped my knuckles on the next tree trunk I passed. There was really no need to tempt the universe.
Cearo did make her bow and arrows useful. She shot a few squirrels along the way and stowed them for later. Evidently she was now Katniss.
When the sun was high in the sky, the trees thinned out, allowing the rays to beat down on us. We were all sweating buckets within minutes. Mom, Eric, and I all collapsed to the ground at almost the same exact moment. Cearo stood there, probably thinking we were all wusses.
“Okay, good a place as any to break for lunch,” Mom said. Instead of looking for the food though, she lay down for a breather.
Cearo relented and came to sit with us. She took out the squirrels and seared them one by one just by holding them. Her eyes flickered red each time before defaulting back to yellow. I was glad that they always reverted back, because while the power to cook our food without the smoke from a wood fire was useful, the red eyes kind of freaked me out. The other fire fairies I’d seen looked like demons.
We ate slowly, for once not feeling rushed or urgent to move. I attributed it to our apparent lack of pursuers. “Do you think the Seelie have given up?” I wondered aloud.
“No, they just don’t know where to look,” Mom replied. “Hopefully our luck will hold up.”
“What are the UnSeelie up to, you think?” Eric asked.
Mom shot him a confused look. “Why do you ask that?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “We’ve been so worried about the Seelie, I just wonder what the others are getting up to.”
“I doubt they even know we’re here,” Mom said casually. “Good thing too. Less fae to worry about, the better. Have you been hearing anything interesting out of the UnSeelie court, Cearo? Any good gossip from my old friends?” Mom chuckled. I doubt any of us could imagine Cearo gossiping or even deigning to listen to it. If she eavesdropped and heard some girls prattling on about nothing, I pictured her rolling her eyes and sending over a gust of wind to ruin their perfectly coiffed hair.
We all looked over at her, waiting for her to tell us no. She hesitated. “No, nothing of interest lately. I spend most of my time on Seelie land. They are more trouble.” We nodded and lapsed into silence again. I wondered if she just didn’t get the joke or if she had heard something. I went with the former. What could she have heard that would be relevant to us?
“So how far are we from this grove?” Mom asked.
“An hour, I would say, or less,” Cearo said.
“What’s there? Why do you want us to see it?”
Her face scrunched slightly as she thought. “You will like it.” She didn’t explain further. For once, I think she wanted to but didn’t know how.
“Well, let’s see this thing,” I said, standing. “Words probably wouldn’t do it justice anyway.” Cearo looked relieved when Mom and Eric followed my lead. We covered the scraps we were leaving behind, just in case, and then set off for the mysterious grove.
We got there less than an hour later, as Cearo had predicted. I knew we were there before she said anything. We had crossed a brook that actually sounded like it was babbling. On the other side was a small copse of trees, the grove Cearo had referred to. But that wasn’t why she brought us. Just beyond the grove was a field. It was a bright rainbow of wildflowers, exactly how I imagined the field Mom had talked about back in the swamp.
I turned to Mom to see her reaction. She had stopped and was staring, mouth agape, at the field. “…just like UnSeelie land…,” she whispered to herself. A second later, she was tearing through the field so fast she created her own breeze. She ran through the flowers and grasses, making them bend, grow, and multiply in her wake. It was magical. Eric joined her, running like he’d never injured his ankle. He didn’t affect the flowers the way Mom did, but he looked happier than I could remember him ever being. The two of them laughed and jumped through the field until they’d tired and then collapsed down on a bed of grass that looked softer than any pillow.
Cearo and I had stopped at the edge of the field, in the shade of the trees. We watched them, me smiling widely, and Cearo with the ghost of a grin. She sat down on a root and said to me, “You were right. She does miss it here.”
I joined her on the roots and leaned back against the trunk. “Yeah, she never talks about her old life, but you can’t argue with that display.”
“She never mentioned it on the human plane?”
“Nope, not at all. We always thought she was from England because of her accent.”
“Strange….”
“I guess she was just scared of people thinking she’s crazy. Or maybe of her family finding her. She doesn’t seem to like them too much.”
“She liked them. She was close with her mother, especially. She was afraid of her own curiosity about humans and how the fae would perceive it if found out. I believe she ran away due to fear of becoming a substandard queen.”
I pondered that. I had forgotten that Mom wasn’t just any fairy, that she was actually a member of one of the royal families. It was such a stretch from our normal life and the way she acted that I couldn’t begin to imagine it. I pictured her in a gown, sitting on a throne, giving orders to servants. It seemed like a joke, it was so unlike Mom.
“It sounds ridiculous to me that she was royalty. I can’t see her like that. She’s a baker and an artist — well, a frosting artist. We live in a tiny house, not a castle, in a concrete city where the only green areas are man-made.”
“That is much more ridiculous.” A small, but real, smile came over Cearo’s face as she imagined our life in L.A.
“You’ll have to see it for yourself,” I told her.
Her brows went up in surprise at that. She didn’t have time to reply though before Mom and Eric had come over to join us.
“This place looks exactly like where we met,” Mom said to Cearo. She looked around, taking in every detail. “And I really mean exactly.”
“I know,” Cearo said.
“Did you make it?” Mom sounded like she didn’t believe that could be done, but it was the only explanation she could come up with.
“No, it is a coincidence. I always think of you when I am here though.”
“Do you come here a lot?” Eric asked. “You should build one of your hide-outs here.”
“It is not a good place for one. The trees are too thin to go up and down is already taken.”
Eric jumped in his seat and started patting the ground, searching for whatever had taken the ground. “Taken by what?” he asked nervously. At that moment, his finger found a small hole and out of it popped a tiny, brown man. He appeared to be made of earth and twigs. He stood at no more than three inches tall, very easy to step on, but that didn’t stop him from telling Eric off. At least, I thought that’s what he was doing. His voice was so high-pitched and squeaky that I couldn’t actually understand him, but it was hard to mistake the yelling and shaking fist for anything else. At one point, he even ran up to Eric and kicked him in the leg. Brave.
“Did you even feel that?” I asked.
“Not really.”
Mom was laughing so hard she was tearing up. Cearo looked like she was trying really hard to hold back. Eventually the thing stopped ranting and just put his hands on his hips like he was waiting for an apology. A second later his foot started tapping.
“I think he’s waiting for you to do something,” I told Eric.
“What am I supposed to do? Did you understand any of that?”
I shook my head, but then Mom calmed down enough to say, “You probably hit him on the hea
d when your finger went in his tunnel. That’s very rude, Eric. Apologize.”
“Uh, okay. Sorry little, brown thing. I meant no harm.” His voice went up at the end like he wasn’t sure if he was supposed to mean no harm.
It didn’t look convinced of Eric’s sincerity. It looked to Mom and Cearo.
“He really is sorry,” Mom said. “He didn’t know you were there.”
Grudgingly accepting, he turned and disappeared back down his tunnel. Mom started laughing again and I joined in. Eric continued to look bewildered before finally morphing into amused with the rest of us.
“What just happened?” he asked between huffs of laughter.
“It’s a hob,” Mom answered. “They’re not dangerous, but they are intelligent, so you should mind your manners and not bonk them on the head. They will be very offended if you do.”
“How are you supposed to know they’re there?” Eric asked defensively.
“I guess I’m just used to looking for the tunnel entrances. Also we have one at home, so be careful not to step on him when we get back. Both of you have had near misses in the past and I’ve had to beg for forgiveness.”
“What?!” Eric and I exclaimed together.
“Yeah, he lives in the garage. He keeps to himself mostly, but there have been a few times one of you has gone running through while he’s trying to clean.”
“We have a hob living in and cleaning our garage?” I asked incredulously.
“How else do you think I’ve kept it spotless all these years?”
“How did it get there?” I countered.
“Hobs are the only magical creatures that still live in the human world. They’re rarely seen and they don’t hurt people, so they’ve gone pretty much unnoticed. Ours came with the house.”
“And you let it stay?” Eric asked.
“Why not?” She scowled at Eric for his prejudice. “Like I said, they’re harmless and they can be quite helpful. They’ll steal socks occasionally, but that’s a small price to pay for how great they are at tidying up.”
My eyes widened. This was life-changing information. “The identity of the sock gnome is revealed! I told you it wasn’t an interdimensional vortex accessible only to socks,” I told Eric.
Mom got the joke, but Cearo looked so confused. She asked, “Why would a gnome take socks? They would have no interest in them.”
I stared at her. Then I laughed even harder until my sides hurt. No one explained it to her, so the question stayed on her face. But she didn’t seem offended, and eventually she smiled along with us.
A few minutes later I noticed it had grown dark. When had that happened? We’d been here a while, but certainly not all day. I looked up to see that the sun was blocked by heavy, dark clouds. I was glad for the poncho Cearo had given me because it looked like I’d be needing it any second now.
“Wow, the weather changes fast here,” I commented.
The rest of them quieted down and took notice. Cearo’s face shot up to look at the sky just as the first snowflake came down in front of her.
“Is that snow?” Eric asked, disbelief clear in his tone.
“This is not good,” Cearo murmured.
“This isn’t natural, is it? The Seelie are doing this,” Mom said. All humor had vanished.
“I believe so,” Cearo replied.
“Shit, do they know where we are?” Eric spun around, searching.
“Can’t tell yet. Let’s get out of here quick,” Mom ordered.
We didn’t need to be told twice. We sprinted across the field, racing to get out of the open space, and only slowed slightly when we reached the trees on the other side. This wasn’t the thick forest we’d spent most of our journey in. It was sparse, thin trees and lots of brush that seemed determined to trip us. It was better than no cover at all though.
We ran as fast as we could without falling, but soon we had no choice but to walk. The ground was covered with bushes and brambles. They tried to grab hold of us with every step, sharp thorns latching onto our clothes and pricking any exposed skin. Not only did this make our getaway slow, we were leaving a really obvious trail.
“Boys, slow down for a second,” Mom called from behind us. “This isn’t working.”
“What are we supposed to do?” Eric asked.
“Here, let me get to the front. Cearo, you take the back. We should be able to move these out of our way and then back to cover our trail, like we did before.”
“It will be loud,” Cearo said. “They could still follow the noise.”
“All this crashing is already loud. At least this will be faster.” Mom passed by Eric and me. She used her earth element to make the thorny branches bend away from us, like she’d made the flowers in the field bend toward and away from her. Cearo was right, it was loud as the stiff branches cracked and shifted against each other, but it did give us a clear path.
We moved through it at a slow jog. Cearo made the branches fall back to approximately where they had been, but the bending had snapped a lot of them and they fell to the ground. The snow was coming down in earnest now, so hopefully that would cover the worst of it.
The temperature dropped unnaturally fast. Soon we were all shivering in the arctic air. Whenever we came to an area where Mom was having some trouble getting the branches to move enough, we’d continue jogging in place just to keep our body temperatures up.
We were facing a bush that was being particularly difficult when Eric spoke up. “Any sign of the Seelie? We should try to find someplace warm. We can’t go on like this all night.”
“He’s right,” Mom said, looking back at Cearo. “We need to get out of this weather.”
Cearo gave a sharp nod. “Let me see if I can tell how far this goes.” She climbed the nearest tree for a vantage point. She came back down only seconds later. “I have good news and bad news. The good news is there is no sign of the Seelie. I do not think they actually know where we are. The bad news is that because they do not know our exact location, they have spread this storm over a large area.”
“How large?” Mom asked.
“As far as I can see.” Her tone made it clear that even through the blur of snow, she could tell it went on for miles. The Seelie couldn’t find us and kill us personally, so they’d do it with a blizzard instead. The short spurt of happiness we’d found in the field had been slaughtered.
Finally, Eric broke the stunned silence. “We can’t be taken out by a damn storm. Not after all this.”
Mom and I both looked at him like we were preparing to break bad news to a child. As much as I wanted to agree and rally, we needed shelter now. The thorny bushes and spindly trees wouldn’t do. I glanced down at the fur blanket I still carried and it seemed entirely too little. It wouldn’t stop the snow from burying me by morning. The truth was, we hadn’t been prepared for this at all. I hadn’t even known this extreme weather was a possibility.
I opened my mouth but nothing came out. How was I supposed to tell him it was hopeless? Mom put a hand on his shoulder. She didn’t know what to say either though. I looked to Cearo.
She wasn’t paying attention. No, she was deep in thought, staring at nothing while she tried to work out this problem. And once again, she saved us.
“We need to get back to the hob colony.”