Alison stood next to Keir, leaning over the stone wall of the bridge and looking upstream to the spot at the bottom of the fallswhere it had happened. On the banks of the river, there was a dense thicket of reeds and rushes. Weaving into them was a little path that wound up to the road. A fisherman’s path, perhaps.
It felt familiar, though Alison knew she had never traveled it before.
“I’ve been here. There, on the banks. I can feel it.”
Keir’s face was white as a sheet. “Let’s get you inside,” he said. “This is some lingering effect of the magic. We need to find those fairies and set this right.”
Alison reached back out towards the bank, but the feeling had faded. She wanted to go over there, to see if there was something more to find.
But she looked at Keir, and she saw his fear and worry, and she turned away from it.
She allowed him to lead her and the horses into town. They hitched the horses at the stable and went into the inn for a light lunch of cucumber sandwiches, which they ate as they walked around the village, Keir’s watchful eyes never leaving Alison.
“Really, I’m alright,” she said. “Just a strange memory. Something I experienced in another world—of course it would leave a mark.”
“We have a few hours before Rinka gets here,” said Keir. “Why don’t we go look for the fairies while we wait? Aras said they gather in the woods to the south of town.”
Alison finished chewing her bite of sandwich—the cucumber was so wonderfully refreshing on this hot, sunny day—and answered. “Not quite so absurd now, hmm?”
“Maybe not,” admitted Keir. “Do you feel up for it? We could walk through the shops like we planned—”
“No,” said Alison. “I want to go.”
And so they walked through the town, keeping out of the way of the locals who were busy washing windows and tidying up planters in anticipation of the royal arrival.
The river fed into a broad lake that ran most of the length of town before feeding into another stream to the south. The road to Sudport followed the stream into a dense hardwood forest, and this was the road Alison and Keir took.
Alison did not see or hear any of the things Aras and the spriggan had told them to look out for, but after walking a mile or so from town, she did spot a little trail off the main road that led into the woods.
It was narrow, only wide enough for one person at a time, and the way the light filtered through the trees had the effect of a spotlight on the entrance.
It was deeply inviting.
“Where are you going?” asked Keir. Alison had begun to make her way to the trailhead.
“Isn’t this so lovely?” she said. “It seems to pull you in.”
“It’s not any of the things we were told to look for,” said Keir. “And yet…”
“It feels right, doesn’t it?”
Keir looked less certain, but he followed her nonetheless.
The path wound into the woods so perfectly, it felt as though it was put there just for them. Even the well-maintained roads they’d traveled earlier in the day had more obstacles to overcome—fallen logs to traverse, low-hanging branches to pull back—than the path, which seemed somewhat unnaturally clear. It was brighter than seemed reasonable too, considering how dense the woods that surrounded it were.
Alison couldn’t tell how long they had been walking. The light didn’t seem to move with the sun across the sky in this place. But before too long, they had reached what appeared to be the end: the entrance into a cave.
She turned to Keir. “What do you think?” she asked.
“I think we’d be insane to go in there.”
The cave entrance was framed by moss-covered boulders, the woods growing up and around it, concealing it from view even just a couple of steps from the path. The air coming up from it was cool and damp and smelled a bit like a summer night: jasmine and campfire.
Alison hadn’t doubted the path until this point. Aras had said something about fouler things lurking in the woods than fairies, although he did mention that happening at night, and it was definitely still daylight.
The cave didn’t feel sinister—in fact, it felt just as inviting as the path had. But that aroused Alison’s suspicions. There was something too perfect, too appealing about this place.
It could be the makings of something lovely and ancient and magical.
