“It’s how they hide.”
“So they actually use something.”
“They kind of have to. I mean, people would trample them.”
She pictured it when he said it. A bunch of hikers, unwittingly stamping on a twee little fairy village. Though if what he had said was true, the village probably wasn’t that twee. Or even a village. It was something else. Something she had a lot of questions about.
“But the veil means people can’t trample them somehow?”
“It makes people swerve around them.”
“And it does something different to us.”
The nonhumans, she thought. And this time her inward shiver was less pronounced. Like it was starting to sink in. It was starting to be a thing she could accept.
In part, she thought, because of Seth’s eminently matter-of-fact and kind of goofy way of describing things. “Yeah. We see it,” he said. “We can go through it. But if we breathe it in, it will absolutely wreck us. It will just make you feel like the most drunk you’ve ever been in your life. You won’t even be able to stand up straight or remember what you did.”
Though of course she knew why he was describing it that way.
She felt it immediately, and not with her witch senses. With her Seth senses.
“And did someone tell you that before you ever tried going through, or did you find out the hard way?” she asked, one eyebrow raised. And in response he grimaced and hung his head.
“Yeah, I found that one out the hard way.”
“Woke up hungover and missing one shoe, huh.”
“Only because the fairies stole it. Some of themlivein it now,” he said, almost marveling.
It was okay though. She understood why the marveling was happening.
“Holy crap, you weren’t kidding about them being menaces.”
“Oh, you don’t even know the half it. Sometimes they get inside your walls.”
“You mean like… you mean likeThe Borrowers?”
“Yeah, but ifThe Borrowersate your cat,” he said. Then before she could dig deeper into that little nightmare, he added, “Now stay low.” And just started crawling forward. As if she were going to be able to follow him, with the concept of cat-eating bug-sized people in her head.
“Seth, wait,” she hissed after him. But he was already halfway through the veil and still going. And once he was through she would be out here, in the woods, amongst the shadow people.
So she shuffled forward, reluctantly, through the mossy undergrowth. Clothes snagging on twigs and brambles, dirt getting just about everywhere, breath held before she even reached the shimmering thing. Then she got to it and realized:
It wasn’t just the fairies making her nervous.
It was this curtain of colors. The one that she could now feel buzzing and humming faintly against her face, her hands. That she could feel buzzing and humminginside her body—as if some part ofitresonated in some part ofher.
Someone like me made this, she found herself thinking.
And ultimately it was this idea that made her plunge forward.
Quickly, so she didn’t have time to think about it too much.
Though she kept her eyes closed as she did. And she didn’t open them, even after making it through. She just lay there on what felt like a bed of yet more twigs and dirt, taking tiny sips of probably alcoholic air. Looking at nothing, taking in nothing, not even sure if Seth was with her still.
Until she felt his hand on her shoulder.
His breath against the side of her face. A hushed whisper:Hey, you can look now.So she did. She let her eyes open a tiny bit. Just enough, she felt, to only see the smallest part of whatever horrors they were perpetrating.
