“Yes! They’re everywhere.” Her face transforms with wonder, her stare riveted on the surrounding trees. “Their clothes are made from petals and leaves, and they have more musical instruments than humans have invented. Each fairy is holding a different instrument—there must be hundreds!—and they’re singing in a language that sounds familiar. It isn’t quite English, but it has such a similar sound.”
“Don’t step inside the fairy ring,” Romina warns. “Or you’ll be spirited back to Fairyland.”
“Backto?” Cannon repeats. He is Aisling’s best friend, andher total opposite. He has the most serious face of any child I’ve ever met and is always worrying. It’s good for Cannon to have an Aisling. He’d never get into any fun trouble without her.
Luna laughs. “Where do you think she came from?”
“That’swhy their language sounds so familiar,” Aisling quips. “I was born there, but when I was a baby I flew out of Fairyland on a dandelion puff—fairy babies areverysmall, you know—and when I blew into this world, I adapted to my environment by growing bigger, to look like a regular human baby and blend in.”
“I found her sitting in the back garden, in a row of vegetables like a summer squash,” Luna says. “Grandma Dottie knew she was coming. She’d seen her in a vision.”
“And we knew we could never give you back,” I join in, thinking about what it was really like on the day Aisling was born. Luna in labor, gripping Romina’s hand, moaning that she couldn’t do this alone; Romina promising she would never have to while I fruitlessly dialed Luna’s ex-boyfriend over and over, unable to get past a full voicemail box. “You were too perfect.”
Ash’s expression is almost trancelike, face upturned. “If only you could see all the fairies here,” she says to us. “And so many ghosts, too! They love the music.”
“Isn’t it incredible?” Luna agrees. The song changes and we detach, Ash demanding that Cannon spin with her. My sisters, Teyonna, Trevor, Nitya, and I rush toward the fairy ring, then back, toward and back, while skipping around it, insuch a brisk frenzy that sweat drips from my temples. “I forgot he knew how toreallyplay, not just mess around.”
“Who does what?” I ask Luna, half listening.
“Morgan. That’s his band, Heavy Mettle.”
My steps falter, gaze cutting across the fairy ring. Morgan Angelopoulos is unrecognizable without his loud Day-Glo prints, strikingly elegant in a suit black as Death, hair trimmed a couple inches and swept neatly back. His bow slides over violin strings, left hand gripping the neck, his fingers moving deftly.
His eyes meet mine, and my chin drops.
“He can dothat?” I hear myself sputter. “Then why does he subject me to such horrible shrieking with that thing?”
Morgan watches me narrowly for another moment, as though he heard what I said even though that’s impossible from this distance, and then focuses on his work. The two men accompanying him, one tall and burly with an auburn ponytail and the other fair as alabaster with golden curls spilling over his forehead, are lost in their music. I don’t think I’ve ever seen either of them before. The late hour, the moonlight, excitement, the song so lovely that it stirs my emotions to an unreasonable degree—it all collides into the strangest fancy that at least one of the people heremustbe fae, weaving a spell over the rest.
I study Morgan as though I’ve never seen him before. It is the eeriest sensation, gripping me like cold hands on my arms and legs, rooting me to the spot: it is almost as if, all this time, I have merely been looking at his reflection in a darkenedwindow, and not at the man himself. If there is such a thing as fairies, then this must be fairy music. I’ve never heard a human produce anything half as enchanting.
Whoishe?
Pale, raven-haired, dark-eyed. Quick with a grin and also a lie, always on the cusp of amusement no matter the situation. I know him, and I don’t. My eyes glaze over as I watch him watching me, my vision going bright and shiny at the edges, like light striking a mirror.
And this is when I hear a voice, gentle as dandelion fluff from Fairyland, emanating from behind him:
“The clock.”
Fifteen
Peer through a three-holed Odin’s stone and you’ll see the fae folk. Odin’s stones with four holes will allow you to glimpse fae-made illusions, which are just as pretty as they are dangerously seductive.
Legends and Superstitions, Expanded,
Tempest Family Grimoire
I’m walking towardit before I can think, passing them, listening.
“Old and new,” it goes on.
Morgan turns to watch where I’m disappearing to, silvery violin notes tracing my steps. “Zelda?”
“Ahhhh!” I’m clobbered by Aisling, who hugs me tight around the middle, her flower crown drooping with missing petals. She’s rosy and beaming. “This is the best birthday of my life.”
I am tugged back into the fray, disoriented.The clock. The clock. The clock.
E T O
