H K L
C
Old and new.Who on earth is lurking in here?
“Just wait till you’re fifteen,” Luna is saying to her daughter. “That’s when we let you cast your first spell.”
Aisling twirls. “It’s going to be amaaaaazing.”
Cannon smiles at her. “Which birthday present was your favorite?”
“The bluefairy pie.”
His face falls into a slight pout. “Who gave you that?”
“My husband, King Aelaric of Lowhill.” Her voice drops, but I’m close enough to overhear. “I stepped into the fairy ring, just an inch, when nobody was looking. In the span of three earth seconds, I lived ten whole years in Fairyland. I married a fairy king and became a real live fairy queen.”
Cannon’s mouth falls open in surprise, but fury catches up. “You did not.”
She grasps his wrist, eyes hypnotic. “Cannon, it’sgloriousthere, like nothing you can imagine. I really wish you’d gone with me! Maybe someday I’ll take you, but not just yet, because I’ve been trying to get back here for a while now. I missed my family, and they don’t have electricity in Fairyland. Although Aelaric is probably looking for me already. If the Fairy Council finds out I’ve run away, they’ll track me down in this realm and remove all the magic powers I’ve been developing.”
Cannon is still unhappy, but she’s piqued his interest. “What sort of powers?”
She is spared from inventing a response, however, when Luna announces it’s nearly midnight. “Twelve years old at twelve o’clock,” Luna pronounces, herding her daughter by the shoulders back to the rest of the crowd. “A powerful timefor magic.” She fishes a matchbox from the pocket of her cloak and strikes a flame, then sets it to the wick of a stubby white candle half-buried in the ground. “Make your wish.”
Ash shuffles forward. “I wish…”
She hesitates, staring into the blaze. The white candle appears to bubble, as if the wax is boiling. “I’m not going to say it out loud.”
She blows out the candle, her secret wish swimming upward in a plume of smoke.
Sixteen
In 1925, a circus train crashed in Moonville. The conductor claimed to have seen a bear on the tracks, which derailed the train; many animals escaped. All were eventually reported recovered, but sporadic sightings of zoo animals continued into the next century.
Local Legends and Superstitions,
Tempest Family Grimoire
I wish my niecegood night, feigning that I need to adjust the buckles of my boots so that I can linger behind. Luna loads up all of her lanterns except one, which I’ve absconded with, and piles them into the red wagon she pulled Ash around the neighborhood in when she was a baby. Then, once I’m alone, I face the empty clearing.
It’s smaller when I’m the only one here, somehow. And dauntingly quiet. I circle the ring of mushrooms in measured steps, around and around, eyeing it sidelong.
Quick, before I can stop myself, I leap inside.
A moment passes.
When nothing fantastical happens, I choose triumph. There is no reason to feel disappointed, because I had zero expectations of unusual results. “Ha! Nothing.”
“Trying to run away to Fairyland?” a voice inquires.
I jerk out of the fairy ring, smashing a mushroom.Bad luck, bad luck, a fairy’s going to coat the soles of your feet with molten gold as punishment.When I was small, Dottie told me a story about fairies doing such things, and it was so enjoyably ghastly that I never forgot.
Morgan slips one hand into his pocket, the other gripping the handle of his violin case. He watches me from a short distance, his gaze wandering from the smashed mushroom to the lantern I’m holding aloft, two of its glass panels blue, two of them green. Its shine paints him beautifully inhuman, like what you’d see looking back at you from beneath the surface of the sea in a fairy tale.
Heart thundering, I tell him, “It isn’t nice to sneak up on people.”
“Did you have a plan for if it worked?”
