Alex opened his eyes and blinked several times to adjust to the sudden brightness. The sky above was blue and dotted with fluffy white clouds, and he was lying in a small clearing of new grass, dotted with white and purple flowers. Tall trees grew on all sides, their leaves a vibrant green that seemed almost too bright to be real. He frowned. Hadn’t just yesterday been the winter solstice?
The sound of humming drew his attention, and he eased himself into a seated position. Slightly behind him and to his left he found the campfire and, kneeling beside it, was a familiar figure in white. The ballerina poked at the fire with a long stick, stirring the flames higher. At the sound of his movement, she turned around.
Celesta gave him a bright smile, and even her gait seemed cheery as she hurried over with a bounce in her steps. Her wings were iridescent in the sunlight, and a few strands of hair had fallen loose from her tight bun, framing her face with gentle curls. Even life-size, her features were still just as delicate and doll-like, with a button nose, pink lips, and large, expressive brown eyes.
“You’re awake!” She dropped gracefully to the grass beside him and pressed a hand to his forehead. “No sign of fever.” She picked up his right hand, which he now noticed was unbandaged, and turned it over. “And your other wounds seem to be healing for the most part. I wasn’t sure how you would react to Faerie, being a mortal and all, but so far it seems to be positive. Other than your left hand, that is.” Celesta dropped the hand she held and reached across for the other. Though the cut across the palm had scabbed over, the skin around it was a dark, angry red. “But you didn’t have that injury before, which means it probably came from something from Faerie. Maybe the rules are different in that case? We’ll have to ask Drosselmeyer; he would know. I’m Celesta, by the way. And you’re Alexander Monde, right?”
The little ballerina finally stopped long enough to take a breath, and she looked up at Alex, as if waiting for him to respond.
The previous events in the hospital room, the mirror, the spring air, the toy-turned-woman before him–it all pointed to one logical explanation.
“I’m dreaming.” Alex said the words out loud, hopeful that perhaps by doing so he might prod his brain into waking and find himself back in his, if not comfortable, then at least familiar bed.
Celesta laughed, the sound light and musical like the tinkling of bells. “I hope not. If you’re still sleeping that means I am, too.” She pinched the back of his hand that she still held.
Alex yelped and pulled it out of her grip. “What in the blazes was that for?”
“See? You’re definitely awake.” She sat back on her heels and looked up at him with an open, innocent expression.
He sighed and pressed his fingers to his temples. If her pinch hadn’t convinced him, the growing headache he was experiencing was a testament to her words. “Where are we?”
“You’re in the realm of Faerie,” Celesta answered, looking around them. “Somewhere in the Spring Court, though I’m not entirely sure of our exact location.” She tapped her chin with one graceful finger. “Someplace east of Arboris, I believe. The trees are too well-maintained to be far from the Dryads and they rarely venture west–too close to Autumn, you know, and they’re frightfully vain about losing their leaves. Then again, I probably would be upset, too, if all of my hair started falling out. Wouldn’t you? You have such nice hair; I’ve never seen curls like that on anyone other than fauns. Speaking of fauns, I haven’t seen signs of any, which means we must still be a ways from the Summer Court. So, the short answer is that we’re in Spring, somewhere in the forests to the east of Arboris and north of Summer...”
The majority of her words bounced around meaninglessly in his head. All the talk about dryads and fauns and spring and summer meant nothing to him, and it took a frustratingly long time for her to get to the “short” answer. “Do you always talk this much?” he asked gruffly.
She paused, mid-sentence, and looked at him in surprise.
Well, blazes. She had still been talking while he tuned her out to make sense of her answer. Alex had the common decency to at least feel a pang of guilt for interrupting her, but at the same time…it was far more words than were necessary.
Celesta blinked at him twice, and Alex could have sworn her wings drooped. For a brief, agonizing moment, he was afraid that he had made her cry.
But instead, she smiled sheepishly at him and chuckled. “I’m sorry. I’m by myself most of the time and so talking out loud makes it seem less lonely, you know? But I have been told I could talk the ear off a tree if I tried, and I do tend to ramble when I’m nervous. I’ll do my best to keep my stray thoughts in check.” She adjusted her shoulders and folded her hands primly in her lap, looking up at him with rapt attention. “What else would you like to know?”
For starters, how in the blazes did I even get into this situation? And how do I get out of it?That seemed like too broad of a question, and Alex wasn’t sure he had the stamina to sit through whatever long-winded answer this talkative ballerina would have for him. Instead, he turned his attention to the thought that had been sitting in the back of his mind ever since he first saw her wings.
“Are you some kind of fairy?” The words sounded just as ridiculous coming out of his mouth as they had floating around in his head, but it was hard to deny them given his current setting.
Celesta tilted her head curiously. “Well, technically, we’re called Fae. Faerie is the name of the realm.”
“And do all…fae have wings?” Alex circled his hand vaguely in her direction.
“Some, but not all. Gryphons and dragons do, for example, and you might find the odd Pegasus or two, but they’re pretty rare. Pixies are the only kind that look mostly human, though.”
“So, you’re a pixie?”
She reached up and tucked a stray lock behind her ear, drawing Alex’s attention to its gently tapered tip. “I’m half-pixie. My father was an elf.”
Ah, yes. That would explain the mouse king’s comments about her being a half-breed.
“And the king–the one leading the black army–he’s your uncle?”
Her expression darkened in the closest thing to a frown he had seen on her face yet. “Yes. It’s all quite scandalous, really. My father was the oldest son of the late Winter King, Maeth. During his youth, he went through a rebellious phase and ran off with a traveling troupe of performers and fell in love with a pixie. He brought her back to the Winter palace in Iysen, but Maeth wanted everything kept quiet and so mother was sent to live in one of the royal residences near the Autumn border. My father visited as often as he could get away, especially when they found out mother was expecting.”
There was a quiet sadness in her tone that spoke of a long-lived and familiar grief, and Celesta shifted, examining her fingers as she interlaced them and pulled them apart. “Mother died during childbirth and father of a broken heart not long after. I became uncle’s ward until I reached adulthood, and the crown was passed on to him in the meantime.”
He recognized the unspoken pain in her words and resonated with the loss of family. But it was her final words that captured his attention. “What do you mean by, ‘in the meantime’?”
She looked up at him and wrinkled her brow. “Weren’t you listening? My father was the oldest son of King Maeth. He was the crown prince. I don’t know what kind of customs you have in the mortal realm, but in Faerie the crown passes down family lines. When I turned twenty, the throne of Winter became rightfully mine.”
