her for a moment longer, taking in the sheer silken wings. They were more curious than surprised. Presumably everyone in town had heard about them by now. She carefully folded her wings down against her back so that they would be invisible to anyone looking at her from the front. The curious watchers returned to listening to the board members discussing the funding of the new pool that was being put in up at the high school.
Her wings were why they were fifteen minutes late to the meeting and why her mother was in such a foul mood. She had wanted Leena to change into a more “appropriate” outfit. Leena, who didn’t see the point, had refused.
That was a new element to their relationship. Up until a week ago, Leena had never openly defied her mother. Her twin sister, Caitlin, argued with both of their parents all the time. She rolled her eyes, slammed doors, and flatly refused to do things that she didn’t want to do. But not Leena. Leena had always been the “good” daughter. The one who did exactly what she was told.
But that was all over now and her mother was having a hard time accepting that things were different. Mrs. Wallace just couldn’t, or wouldn’t, understand that Leena was not the same person that she had been for the first sixteen years of her life. She was a lot older, for one thing. At least part of her was. The part that remembered being Fionnghuala and all the others.
She was also the Lady, the protector of her people who had been revered as a queen in her own land. Here she had only five subjects, the five immortal guardians who had travelled from the Otherworld to this one to protect and watch over her as she slipped from one lifetime to the next.
And a whole town full of people who were descended from the group of fae folk who had also accompanied her when she came to this land, of course. They were her people, too, in a manner of speaking. They might not know who she was or acknowledge her leadership, but she was still responsible for them. For them all.
Now that she knew all of that, she no longer saw any reason to go on following her mother around, scribbling appointments in her schedule book, or even in attending high school—she had already graduated in her last life anyway.
The past week had been a tense one. She had overheard her parents discussing her one night. Her mother had said something about Leena’s defiance and her father had told her not to worry and that it was just a phase. Being a reincarnated being with memories of dozens of lives stuffed in her head and having to worry about the safety of not one, but two worlds, was just a phase?
Leena wished that were true.
In any case, she and her mother had argued about what Leena was going to wear to the meeting until Leena had pointed out that they hadn’t gotten around to having any of her dressier outfits tailored to accommodate her wings. She had hastily cut some slits in some of her more casual tops, but hadn’t wanted to risk damaging any of her nicer clothes.
So here she was, still dressed in her tank top and jeans, standing at the back of the small conference room in the district office building, listening to a dull litany of budgetary concerns while her mother fumed silently beside her.
She sighed. It would have been so much easier if she hadn’t woken up until she was an adult.
“—the door in the courtyard of the high school, which has become a matter of concern not only for the students and staff of Seelie High, but for the community at large,” one of the board members was saying. Leena stood up a little straighter and gave Mr. Strudwick her full attention. “There has been some suggestion that we demolish the door to prevent any further mischief.”
Demolish it? How? How were they going to demolish the door, she wondered in amusement. Did they think they could just knock it over with a bulldozer? It was constructed of a magic more ancient and powerful than even she could fully understand. No earthly power could possibly damage it. Although, she thought as her mood sobered, they could hurt themselves or possibly tear open the link between her home world and this one if they tried.
“We could put up a gate around it,” another board member suggested. “That would keep students away from it, anyway.”
Rolling her eyes, Leena began to move toward the aisle between chairs that led to the podium.
“Where are you going?” her mother whispered, grabbing her arm.
Leena turned back and said, “I’m going to go tell them to leave the door alone. If they start messing with it, someone will get hurt.”
“I hardly think the school board needs you to tell them what they can or can’t do on city property, Leena.” Mrs. Wallace’s voice was rising above a whisper now and people were beginning to turn around to look at them again.
“Mom,” Leena said as patiently as she could, “the door is my responsibility and—”
“We have asked Kira Nichols to share with us her experience of the door,” Mr. Strudwick was saying.
Leena stopped midsentence and turned to stare in amazement as a girl stood up in the front row of the audience and went over to the podium.
“They asked her to tell them about the door?” she said, forgetting to whisper altogether.
Kira
Same day
I stand up when the school board member says my name, feeling nervous. I don’t know what they expect me to say. I have told everyone from the principle to the mayor, who stopped by our house a couple of days ago, exactly what happened last Friday when I opened the door. I don’t know anything else about it, really. I certainly don’t know how to get rid of it, which seems to be what they want to do now.
On my way to the podium, I hear someone say, “They asked her to tell them about the door?”
I turn and find myself staring down the aisle to the back of the room where Leena, the angry girl from the pub, is staring at me.
She looks a little different. Last Friday she was dressed up in a long skirt and her long red hair was perfectly curled. Tonight her hair is pulled back in a ponytail and she’s in jeans. She isn’t wearing any makeup, either, which makes her freckles stand out more. And then there are the wings. She didn’t have wings the last time I saw her, although I had heard someone talking about them at school. I could hardly believe my eyes. A girl with wings. She really was a fairy, just like everyone was saying.
As she looks at me, her wings begin snapping open and shut. Clearly, she is agitated. More than agitated. I can feel her anger starting to burn again.
I don’t know what to do. I’m still not exactly sure why this girl hates me so much, but I really don’t want her to yell at me anymore. I’ve had a tough week. Opening a door to another world doesn’t exactly get you a lot of friends. At least not in New Elphame. Everyone was already pretty wary of me because they aren’t used to outsiders, but after the whole door thing hardly anyone will even talk to me.
I just want things to calm down, but Leena is looking far from calm.
“What are you doing here?” she demands as she starts to march down the aisle toward me. Her mother is holding onto her arm and tries to pull her back, but Leena just keeps coming, dragging Mrs. Wallace along behind her.
“They…uh…asked me to come,” I say as calmly as I can. I glance at my mom and she’s got that whole trying-to-communicate-telepathically expression on her face again. Maybe it works, because I can almost hear her saying, “Stay calm. Be polite.”
“Why? Why you?” Leena is close now. She raises a hand and for a moment I wonder if she’s going to slap me. Instead, she pushes me away from the podium and takes my place, turning her wrath on the school board. “Why her?” she is asking them.
Relieved that she’s going to yell at someone else for a bit, I look at her mother, who has finally let go of Leena’s arm and is staring at her daughter’s back in shock. At first, I think she’s angry, too, but then I realize that her eyes are watery like maybe she’s about to burst into tears.
I guess I’m not the only one Leena has been giving a hard time.
“This girl knows nothing about the door. She has nothing to do with it. She’s not special or magical or anything,” Leena says hotl
y into the podium’s microphone. The room is pretty small and I’m not sure that a microphone is even necessary to begin with, but she’s speaking loudly and her voice booms over the sound system, hurting my ears. It’s a little hurtful, too, to hear someone yelling about how not special I am, but at the same time, I’m glad that someone understands. I don’t know anything about the door. Everyone keeps expecting me to explain it and I can’t.
“You want to know what to do about the door? I’ll tell you. You leave it alone. You don’t knock it down, build a fence around it, or go anywhere near it. It is dangerous. You stay away from it. It is well guarded, I promise you. No one else will open it or even touch it. I will see to that. You,” Leena roars into the microphone, “will do nothing.”
Then she whirls back around to face me and snaps, “And you will stay away from me.”
Pushing between me and her mother, Leena strides from the room. Her wings are flapping furiously behind her and she is actually walking several inches above the ground, although I don’t think she notices.
Beside me, her mother lets out a long breath and says, “Where did I go wrong?”
Leena
Same day
A chilly autumn breeze swirled around Leena as she flung open the front doors of the district building and rushed outside. The sudden jolt of cold air startled her and she folded up her wings in