The last place he had felt whole.
The last place that had felt likehome.
Celesta was speaking again. “Did you win? The war, I mean. It seemed like the celebration last night was much too relaxed an atmosphere to be taking place in a newly-occupied country.”
Her grasp of the nuances of war and occupation aside, Alex let out a bark of mirthless laughter. “Ha. The only people who win in a war are the politicians who orchestrate it and tell the soldiers where to go.” He clamped his mouth shut before the next words could escape him.When you’re locked in a fight to the death with someone who could be your neighbor or your brother, but one of you has to die, there is no winning. There is only living to see another day, and both being grateful to make it to another sunset alive and hating yourself because you did.
The ballerina looked thoughtful but said nothing in response. She must have taken his words to heart, and for the next leg of their travels kept her words to a minimum. She spoke only to direct them at turnings or forks in the road, or once in surprise when a large snake slithered across the ground in front of them. Alex was afraid at first that he had hurt her feelings, but she still bounced lightly as she walked, and as the silence stretched on between them it was comfortable rather than strained.
Blazes, this woman seemed to be cheerful about everything.
A few more miles had passed before Celesta caught sight of something a ways down the road. Her wings perked up and a smile spread across her face. “Aha! There it is.”
Alex strained his eyes to try to find what it was that she had apparently been looking for. It was not immediately noticeable due to the surrounding trees, but as they drew closer, he saw that up ahead there was a slim, delicate arbor arching over the road. Leafy green vines twined their way up the sides, dotted with small white and yellow flowers. It looked like something out of a fairy tale (which, Alex admitted to himself with a small snort of amusement, it actually was).
“What is that for?” he asked, stopping a few feet in front of it.
“It’s a waypoint.” Celesta stood beside him.
He shook his head and was tempted to roll his eyes. “You say that as if I have any notion of what a waypoint is.”
“Oh! Well, to put it simply, it’s what will allow us to reach Arboris before nightfall. There are waypoints along all of the major roads and many of the side ones.”
Alex looked at the arbor skeptically. He could see where the road continued beyond it, stretching away between the trees. Nothing about the structure indicated that it was anything more than decorative. He stuck a hand through.
Nothing happened.
Celesta laughed. “Not like that, silly.” She grabbed his hand and closed her eyes, humming a fast, happy tune as she pulled him forwards under the arbor.
This time, his feet crossed an invisible threshold. He felt a pulling sensation as that of wading through deep water, and the world around him went dark for a moment. Alex blinked, and when he opened his eyes, he was stepping through the arbor in a completely different part of the forest.
The road beneath them was paved now. It ended not more than a quarter of a mile away at a pair of gates set within a tall wall, green with ivy. Trees taller than any Alex had ever seen before rose behind it, and in their leafy boughs he could see what appeared to be walkways suspended above the ground, connecting tree to tree. The distant, unmistakable hum of civilization met his ears.
Alex spun on his heel to look behind them, nearly knocking Celesta over with the sudden force of his movement. The arbor behind them looked just as it had before, and on the other side the pavement stretched away into the forest. There was no sign of the place they had been just moments before.
“How…? What just happened?” Alex asked, his mind struggling to comprehend the sudden change in location.
Celesta tugged him forward, towards the wall. “I told you: it’s a waypoint.”
“But how did we get here?” He looked back over his shoulder at the unassuming archway.
“Magic. That’s how the waypoints work. I sang the song for Arboris, and it brought us here.”
“So, it just…knows?” Alex frowned. The little ballerina still had a hold of his hand, and he pulled it free.
She laughed again. “It’s not sentient. But each waypoint has a specific melody tied into its magic, and if you play or sing the right one, it takes you there.”
“I thought you said not every musician can do magic. Do they just have to take the long way?”
She hopped over a missing stone in the pavement, extending her arms gracefully and adding in a little twirl as she did so. “You don’t need magic tousethe waypoints. To create them, yes. Drosselmeyer is the only one I know of that knows how to do that. But once they're made, the magic is already there and anyone can be taught the melodies for the different locations. We wouldn’t have been able to use it otherwise.”
The walls were growing steadily larger as they approached. “I saw you using magic last night,” Alex argued. The strangeness of it all had impressed the memory deeply into his mind. “You were glowing.”
“Pixie magic is different.” Celesta turned and walked backwards as she talked. “We can’t use creative magic like the elves can, but we also don’t have natural magic like the rest of the Fae. Instead, pixies can use their wings to absorb and redirect magic. It makes us excellent assistants.” She faced forward again with a little hop and a skip, and Alex once more mentally shook his head at the amount of energy and enthusiasm she exuded.
“Is that what you were doing last night?Assisting?” He wasn’t sure why the concept bothered him so much, but there was something about the knowledge that the little ballerina had been leaping and twirling across the battlefield without any form of defense that made him want to shake whoever’s idea it had been to send her out there. Whatever she might have said about musicians, they at least stayed away from the front lines. She had been out where the fighting was the thickest.
“Of course I was. Because my father was an elf, though I still can’t use creative magic, I am able to amplify the magic I absorb. I’m far more useful out amongst my people than I would be tucked safely away behind them.” Her face was serious, her voice fervent, and Alex could tell she wholeheartedly believed the words she spoke.
