Sariel hugged them close, opening his wings to curl around him and Day both as he gently urged them forward. “I am right here.”
“Are we in Faerie again?” Seymour squinted.
There weren’t any signs of a weird circus, but he couldn’t help but feel that the very air around them was somehowwrong.
Sariel nodded. “Yes.”
“Woo.”
Day shivered, whispering, “It’s creepy.”
“Very,” Seymour agreed.
They walked forward toward the light, and the tunnel opened up into a vast open space.
It was the courtyard of a large industrial building, its concrete columns and cracked walls overgrown with wild flowering vines. There was every color of the rainbow here, blooming in big bunches that Seymour found oddly beautiful against the hard contrast of the clearly manmade structures.
The area appeared to have been abandoned for decades, and nature had been busy reclaiming every inch of it. The ground was covered in soft green grass, there was a tall tree full of pinkblossoms overlooking a lush bed, and a giant floating wall of glass rectangles hovered above it all.
Overhead, the vines had created a dense canopy, blocking out any possible natural source of light. It was hard to tell where the current illumination came from, but it was as bright as a summer day, though a tad hazy if Seymour turned his head too fast. He’d had dreams with more clarity, and a soft breeze blew by out of nowhere, stirring up a cloud of odd fuzzy bits like a bokeh filter on its highest setting.
Although there was no audible music, there were at least a dozen people dancing around the tree in fantastic costumes—some of them looked to be from hundreds of years ago, with powdered wigs and white makeup; a few from perhaps the Wild West, right down to the spurs on their cowboy boots; a man whose silk gown rivaled Day’s own in terms of pattern and design; and still more from other time periods and places all across the globe.
There were so many Seymour wished he recognized but didn’t dare try to identify, lest he feel any more ignorant than he already did.
India? China? Japan?
He had no idea.
But they were all beautiful.
White skin and brown skin and Black skin with countless shades in between, bright eyes and dark ones—every last person wasstunning.
But human, Seymour realized, as he kept looking.
They were all human.
Ah, except for the pair of giant naked men in the middle of the writhing crowd who were clearly in charge of this insane rave.
And of course, one of them didn’t have a head.
The headless man who led the dance was metal, a towering sculpture of bulging human perfection crafted from bronze. Parts of his body had a vivid green patina, and the same flowers growing on the columns had taken up root in the joints of his shoulders. They cascaded down his back like a big cape, twirling around him with every flawless step.
The other man who followed was even taller but much more slender, possessing an eerily unnatural beauty and grace reminiscent of the twins. His skin was a soft shade of mint green, his eyes solid black, and he had a magnificent pair of emerald wings with long tails. His hair was white, plaited into a thick braid that nearly dragged along the ground. One of his arms was silver metal, though its craftsmanship was superior and more lifelike than that of his dancing partner.
If it wasn’t for the seams at his wrist and bicep, Seymour would have thought the tall man had simply painted his arm with makeup. He was also not technically naked, as he had a piece of glittering cloth curled around his lower body, the rest flowing behind him like a wispy train of spiderwebs.
Despite the difference in their size—the green man having at least three feet, if not more, on the metal one—they moved with an effortless elegance that the other dancers could never hope to replicate. There were moments where time itself seemed to slow just to accentuate the swing of the green man’s hips or the firm flex of the metal man’s biceps, and Seymour was equal parts turned on and absolutely terrified.
Wow.
So.
What the fuck did they do now?
Seymour didn’t see any sign of the twins or the chest with the head they’d found, and he wasn’t sure what their next move should be. He looked over at Sariel, trying to catch his eye.
Sariel firmly shook his head.
