Silva
There was a note of smoke on the air, a slight breeze carrying the acrid remains of a faraway bonfire, competing with the pungent smell of trees around her. It was the first out-of-place thing she noticed as the door to the Plundered Pixie creaked heavily, spilling her stumbling out into the alley . . . or at least, where the alley should have been.
Silva gasped at the sight around her. The alley behind the bar was gone.
She was meant to be standing before paved concrete and blacktop, swept down fanatically by the building's fussy, type-A owner. The dumpster that was emptied once a week should have been right there. Beyond it was the spot where Tate kept his sleek racing motorcycle, just before the empty space where his car ought to have been strategically parked before the Pixie's back door to prevent any wanderers from getting too far up the narrow drive. He kept a neatly tied stack of compressed cardboard for recycling beside the dumpster, which was hosed down weekly, along with the rest of the alley. She had neverneeded to hold her breath to keep from retching when venturing out the door that Tate used most often, never needed to pick her way across broken glass and smashed bottles. The alley was kept as neat and orderly as the pub, as the restaurant, as his clinically clean apartment.
Right now, his car was on the other side of the lake, which was where they were meant to be headed. And the only reason they were venturing into the alley at this time of night in the first place. The alley that was not there. The alley that was gone.Gone!
Silva spun in circles, her mouth gaping each way she turned. Instead of concrete and fencing, she was surrounded by trees. Towering, ancient-looking trees, each boasting trunks so thick they would have required several clones of herself, all holding hands, to encircle their bases. White birch with peeling bark and oozing black pines, stretching to the heavens and blanketing the ground with their needles. Above, the black sky held a strange violet cast, and the moon hanging over the Pixie’s flat roofline flooded the area in cool white light.
She could make out a thicket of bramble, heavy with dark, ripe fruit, just ahead. If this were an afternoon walk, she might have exclaimed in delight at the sight of the wild blackberries, tugging Tate forward and holding up the hem of her dress to fill with the sweet, pungent fruit. It would have been the perfect end to their mini trip out of town, a picture-perfect snapshot in her memory, softening the knowledge that she’d played the most minor role in the execution of his party.
She would smear blackberry juice over his lips and kiss it away, leaving them both a laughing, sticky, berry-smeared mess, too much in love for anything else to matter . . . but they’d not stumbled upon this berry patch in this strange forest hours earlier and Tate had not materialized in the doorway behind hernow. Instead of her rosy-hued daydream, something inside her blared out a warning not to approach the fruit.
She clenched in panic.A forest? What is going on?!
Despite the heavy tree cover, Silva could see a clearly delineated pathway of packed earth cutting through the trees, leading off where the alleyshouldhave been.Am I meant to follow that? Do these trees think I’ve never read a book or heard a story? Following the path leads right to danger, always.
Leaning back through the Pixie’s door, empty and black like a toothless maw, she was relieved to see the familiar outline of the building’s interior appeared intact. But the short hallway was empty and the staircase beyond was silent. She was alone. Terror tightened her insides. Silva didn’t understand what was happening. She was alone in this strange, silent forest where the alley should have been — Tate’s footsteps had been a heavy thud on the staircase behind her, but now he was gone too, leaving her with nothing familiar but his old girl’s swung-open door.
As if it could hear its mention in her thoughts, the Plundered Pixie shuddered and groaned, the old building itself beseeching her to come back inside.
It’s a trick of the light. The news said there was a solar storm. Maybe this is just an aurora. What . . . what if he’s out there somewhere?
“Tate?” she called hesitantly, wincing at how overloud her voice seemed, breaking the tranquility of the forest before her. Silva floundered as she let go of the Pixie’s door, suddenly feeling unmoored, her arms shooting out as if she were on a tightrope and in danger of tumbling to the ground.Maybe you are.“Tate?” she called again, stepping away from the door. There was no answer.
The sky was wrong, somehow.Everythingwas wrong at that moment, but the sky in particular stood out to her. The sky above Cambric Creek always looked the same. The starsshifted, constellations moving across the sky with the seasons, but the positioning of the lights around town never did, same amount of light pollution, no matter the time of year, no matter the weather. The sky above Cambric Creek was familiar and trustworthy.
So too, she had come to discover, was the sky above the Plundered Pixie. Greenbridge Glen's light pollution was minimal, the rolling green hills of agriculture being the perfect backdrop for brilliantly colored sunsets, indigo and violet swirled skies, threaded with pink and a red smear of crimson at the horizon at sunset. In the middle of the night, the sky above Tate's apartment would be awash with starlight, more pinpricks of light in discernible shapes than she had ever seen over her hometown, with the muted glow of the resort hotel just to the left.
Thissky was all wrong. If she set aside the fact that this forest had no business being behind the pub, the sky alone was enough to set off alarm bells in her head. The moon was misplaced, was sitting in the wrong station of fullness, and even more disturbing — it was far too large. Golden and low, a comically giant crescent hung above the trees that shouldn't have been there at all.
The moon should have been nearly full, sheknewthat. She and Dynah had been comparing horoscope apps that tracked the moon stations earlier that same week, and just that night Ris had mentioned a full moon dinner put on by the Lunar Society happening later this week. The oversized, slender crescent hanging above her was just a day or two off the new moon, and Silva shuddered at the implication — if this hallucination would have gripped her any earlier, she’d be sitting in pitch-black darkness.
The stars that winked overhead formed constellations completely unfamiliar to her eyes, and sheknewwhat stars should have been overhead. After all, she was a silmë elf, andregardless of what criticisms Tate might have of modern Elvish observation to the old ways, she had grown up dutifully studying the stars for which their kind were named, earning high marks in requisite Astronomy all through school.
How is this happening?Whatis even happening?!This must be a hallucination, Silva told herself as she took another few hesitant steps.Ainsley probably had drugs baked into the cookies for the party or something. There's going to be a giant centipede that tries to talk to you and a cat who will ask to borrow your shoes.
Perhaps, she thought with far too rational a mind to be someone locked in the grips of hallucination, she had never left Tate's apartment. Perhaps they had gone to bed after all, and this was simply a dream she was having from which she desperately needed to wake.
It must've been a trick of the light, for she could see every detail of the forest around her with startling clarity, even though the overhead streetlamp thatshouldhave been there had been subsumed by that giant moon. The oversized crescent gave everything an ethereal glow, allowing her to see each leaf and stem, the pebbles lining the packed earth pathway, and the strange clusters of flowers blooming beneath the moon. There was a hint of mistiness to the air, like a slowly dissipating fog, adding to the otherworldly atmosphere. The air was sweet-smelling and verdant, and ahead, farther up the pathway she would absolutelynotbe following, Silva could see the glimmering reflection of a small pool just off the trail.
“Tate!”
That time she did not hold back, calling out as loudly as she could, hoping that he would materialize from the trees, or else that she might wake up from this dream. Glancing over her shoulder, she looked back to ensure he was not there as shecalled, waiting for her at the dark doorway to the pub . . . the pub that was now at least fifty feet away.
Silva shrieked when a flocking of small birds erupted from a nearby tree, startled by her shout. The birds swooped down as she screamed, dropping to the ground, and covering her head. Their feathers grazed her forearm as they moved in what felt like a far-too-threatening formation, disappearing into the mist in a flurry of beating wings, leaving her gasping.
When she pushed shakily to her feet once more, Silva jolted, nearly dropping to the ground again. She was even farther up the pathway, no more than ten feet away from that crystalline pool, despite it being in the middle distance just a moment earlier.
Whether she was dreaming or not, it was the sight of that little pond that made tears finally well in her eyes. The surface of it gleamed beneath the moonlight, perfectly round, edged in purple and yellow flowers, so much closer than it had been just a few heartbeats earlier. The water was still, giving it a shining, glass-like appearance, like something out of a painting. Silva didn't know why her heart felt as if it suddenly possessed claws, tearing its way up her chest to the back of her throat. Panic filled her. She didn't understandwhythat little pond seemed so terrifying, but the voice in her head had begun to scream at her to run.
She listened.
Spinning around, she nearly sobbed to see that the Plundered Pixie was so far back she could barely make out its outline in the darkness. Taking off in a sprint, Silva focused on the trail before her and the black brick doorway she had left behind. She was filled with the gut-deep certainty that if she took her eyes off the Pixie's doorway for even a moment, it would vanish, and she would be trapped here forever.You should never have wandered away from it in the first place. Don't look away, don't look away. Whatever you do, don't look behind you.
She had only taken at most three or four steps into what should have been the alley, but now she was running pell-mell up that packed-earth path, farther away from the bar than should have been possible.You’re never going outside alone again. You might never leave Cambric Creek again. Tate’s going to need to pack a bag and get comfortable at your place.
