It was nearly silent as it flew over their heads, its small, brown body swooping low into the heather and vanishing from their view.
“An omen of death, according to some,” said Keir.
A chill shuddered up Alison’s back.
Keir squeezed her hand. “Superstitious nonsense. I’ve also heard that they’re the spirits of lost children or the mortal enemies of goat herders.”
“Most of the superstitions I’d heard turned out not to be true,” said Alison, convincing herself as she spoke. “It’s easy to blame all sorts of ills on things you know little about.”
The bird took flight again, heading away from them into the heath. Alison tracked its flight, noting a path through the heather that led downhill towards a wood.
“Shall we follow the omen of death and see where it takes us?” she asked Keir, letting out half a nervous chuckle.
“We’ve come this far,” he said. “I feel something of a pull towards those woods. Can you feel it too?”
“Yes,” she said. The path seemed to have its own gravity. The pull of it was familiar—it was not unlike the pull that existed inthe vine’s dream world, the compulsion that propelled her again and again into the river. “But let’s hurry. I don’t want to miss Rinka when she arrives.”
They followed the path through the heather—again, it was unnaturally clear and easy to follow—and as they did, the sky turned from pink and gold to a deep and vibrant red as the sun slipped behind a hill, and then to a rapidly darkening blue as it vanished completely.
Around them, fireflies began to take flight, the flashes of their light synchronizing as they, too, followed the path towards the woods.
As they approached, they heard music and laughter and the murmur of voices in conversation. The voices were much too deep to be those of fairies, and the shadows that stretched from the light of the woods into the last of the heather were long. Fulling shadows, or Halfling at least.
Keir stopped Alison, tugging on her arm. “I’m not sure this is right—” he started, but just then, something began to fly up the path towards them.
Itwasa fairy, or at least it looked just like one. It had the ordinary features—a human face, brightly colored hair (blue, in this case), and white feathery wings, which it used to hover a few feet above the ground.
It was dressed ordinarily as well, in a finely made white tunic with matching trousers that seemed to glow in the light of the rising moon.
Everything was perfectly ordinary, except for one thing…
“You’re enormous,” said Alison before she could stop herself.
The fairies of Herot’s Hollow barely came up to Alison’s knees when standing. This fairy was easily as tall as Keir, maybe taller.
They laughed. “I never get tired of hearing that. Come on,” they said, gesturing with their hand and wing simultaneously. “You’re late for your own dinner.”
“Excuse me?” Alison was still trying to make sense of it. She looked around the landscape, guessing that maybe they had been made smaller in this strange place. But the heather was the appropriate height, and although the trees loomed large ahead, they appeared no larger than usual.
“Your dinner,” they said, as if they could not believe she had forgotten. “It’s started.”
Alison looked at Keir. He was uneasy, his brows furrowed into their signature worried expression, but he shrugged as if to say,it’s up to you.
Alison looked back up the path towards the cave where they had come from. It was still there, still clear and obvious behind them. If this was some sort of trap, wouldn’t it have vanished by now?
Alison wasn’t sure, but they had been told to take this path by beings they had trusted, and although she wasn’t ready to abandon all caution, her curiosity propelled her forward.
She took Keir’s hand. Whatever lay ahead, they would face it together.
They followed the fairy into the woods. The fireflies filtered into the trees, joining a thousand tiny fairy lights that hovered and danced, illuminating the darkness.
Alison gasped. What she had expected to see based on the shadows she’d glimpsed beyond the wood was a campfire with a handful of fairies gathered around it.
And there was, indeed, a fire.
But it was a great, roaring bonfire in the middle of a clearing, and around it arose a city in the trees. Dozens of buildings wrapped around the tree trunks, a vast web of ropes and boardwalks extending between them. They were made ofraw, natural materials—tree limbs that were still covered in bark, purple heather woven into a latticework, mossy roofs with chimneys of river rock—but they weren’t crudely made. There was an intricacy to the structures, an artistry finer than anything human hands could craft. An artistry that rivaled the finest of the elvish structures Alison had known in the city, as skilled as the carvings in stone the dwarves were known for, if perhaps less enduring.
Beside the bonfire, there was a long table carved from the trunk of what was once a mighty tree, a hundred-year-old oak, maybe. There were dozens of benches and stools pulled up to it, all uniquely made, and on its surface was the largest banquet Alison had ever seen.
