And saw instead what seemed like the whole universe.
Just there, laid out in miniature, in a bowl of ivy and brambles.
Clear as day, thanks to the glow cast over the whole scene. Then she realized with a jolt: it wasn’t just a glow. It was theirmoon. They had made an actual moon, somehow, in a sky as vast to them as hers was to her. Then somehow, they had dotted that sky with stars. Every single one a different color, and of a sort she could never have imagined. Even after what Seth had said, even after everything she’d thought, pastels were the thing that came to mind.
But this wasn’t pastels. It was like the veil. It was almost holographic.
She thought of kaleidoscopes, of mirror balls. And even more so when her eyes adjusted enough that she could see them.
Because they weren’t easy to glimpse. They were fast—just flickers of movement at first. And so small she honestly mistookthem for motes of dust. But then one of them flitted directly into the beam of that great light, and turned just so, and ohgodit stole her breath. It stole her words. She wanted to say something to Seth—to grab him and say “Oh my goodness oh my goodness.”
But she couldn’t. It was too much.
It was a whole tiny person.
She could see it had a perfectly formed, pretty little face, skin a deep brown, leaves woven between locks of curled hair. Clothes made out of bark, tiny hands and tiny feet, and when she squinted, oh yes, there it was. A set of wings, fine as gossamer, iridescent as oil in water, and fluttering so fast she could hardly make them out. She had to wait until one landed on what looked like an upturned can of beans, before it really became clear.
Then of course it was the can of beans that had her attention.
The way they’d carved windows into it. And used cobwebs instead of glass.
Two of them emerged from a door made out of a bottle cap, as she watched.
And there was more, there was more. There were streets lined with pencil cases, and makeup palettes turned into hot tubs. Old Barbie cars full of seething little bodies of all shapes and size; bottles filled with fairies licking the obviously intoxicating insides.
And all of it, always, surrounded by magic.
Suffused with it, in a way she could feel even more strongly than she had with the veil.
This didn’t just hum inside her. Itsang, down deep in her bones. She saw one of them—naked and plump and pink and streaked with mud—hurl a bomb of stuff that sparkled when it exploded, right in the face of the fairy no doubt responsible for the filthy state it was in. And when it did, two things happened:
Said fairy immediately turned into a tiny frog.
And Cassie felt her entire body vibrate.
A great burst of words went through her head:I can do that, I can transmogrify, I just need caterpillar cocoons and the reflection of starlight in a puddle and walnut shells, lots of walnut shells crushed into a fine powder.
And oh god, it was just. It was so overwhelming.
It was everything she’d ever hoped was waiting for her, just beyond the reach of reality. Which was probably why, when Seth turned to her, he said, “See, I told you they were a completely awful, terrible nightma—Oh mygod, are youcrying?”
And she couldn’t say anything about it.
He was absolutely right. Tears rolled down her cheeks.
“Of course I’m crying. It’s all so beautiful.”
“Cassie, one of them is eating its own toenails.”
“Honestly, stuff like that only makes it more amazing. It makes it more real. They are real beings, they really exist, even though they’re tiny and they have wings and they light their world with a moon they made up,” she said, and wanted to say more too. But she had to stop for a moment, because she was getting choked up. And when she finally managed to continue, she could only ask, “I mean, can’t you see how wondrous this is? How amazing? How beautiful?”
Then felt incredibly silly about it.
Because he didn’t answer right away. He was silent for quite a while. And then he gave her a single, solitary, sad-soundingyes—but when she turned to look at him, he wasn’t even looking at this amazing, beautiful thing. He was looking at her. He was staring at her, only her.
Much to her exasperation. “You’re not even paying attention to them,” she chided.
And in response he sort of jerked. He seemed flustered. Like he’d been caught red-handed cheating on a test and couldn’t think of a good way out of it. He just looked at the fairy world spread before them—as if to make up for not listening or not seeing what she saw.
