Zane kneeled beside me. “Worth a try.”
“Okay, this time, when we feed it with magic, I’m going to try to guide it to do what I want,” I told him, and he nodded.
I had a vision for this place. I wanted fae to feel welcome here, for it to be a place where all of Faerie could come to embark on a tour of Ethereum, and in return, a beautiful first introduction to our world for the citizens of Ethereum as well.
Nellie was sulking off to the side because in every court, she’d asked if we needed help, and every time, I’d told her no. This time was different. This was the faestone from my court, and I believed that meant I was going to have more control over it than I’d had with the others.
“Nellie, come assist me,” I called out.
“Me?” she said, shocked, her tongue red from gummy candies we’d picked up for her at the last village.
“Yes. Come help me.”
She bolted over, eagerly looking down at me.
“Place your hands on my back, and when I say to, I want you to push some of your magic into me,” I told her.
She frowned. “I don’t usually push—I pull.”
I nodded. “That’s the problem. You take sickness into yourself, but I’m going to teach you another way.”
She pressed her mouth into a firm line, concentrating. “Let’s do this.” She rolled out her neck, and Zane and I smiled at each other.
Zane and I pressed our interlocked fingers over the faestone like we had in other courts, and then, with Nellie’s help, all three of us poured our magic into the stone. It took Nellie a few minutes to get the hang of pushing her magic rather than pulling, but eventually, I felt a burst of fresh magic feeding Zane’s and mine, and I knew it was time.
Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes and began to imagine the layout of the land Zane and I had crossed over in the past two days, as well as what I knew about it from the maps I’d seen.
I started with the trees, creating a wide path, large enough for two carriages to pass side by side, that wove its way through the Savage Lands to create roads to all four Faerie courts. I then made the trees shift into a variety of species: oaks, maples, weeping willows, and cherry blossoms.
At one point, Nellie gasped, but I kept going.
Next, I worked on the ground cover. Instead of dead brush and gnarled ferns, I arranged things in a more orderly fashion, transforming large sections of the landscape into a well-thought-out garden while still keeping some patches throughout the territory the same. It was important to me not to completely change the Savage Lands. There was a wild beauty to this place that I still wanted to preserve.
Next, I made moss flourish along the tree trunks and thencovered the exposed ground in a thick blanket of grass or fields of wildflowers. With the help of Zane and Nellie’s magic adding to mine, I made flowers from all four kingdoms sprout up along pathways and in open fields. I coaxed trees to bloom and some to grow to almost impossible heights.
By the time I was done, I was utterly exhausted.
“I’m finished,” I said, opening my eyes and pulling my hands away from Zane’s.
When I looked at the result of our combined magic, I gasped. It was even more beautiful than I had imagined.
A wide dirt path lined with stones now flowed through the ravine, straight to the golden portal. Along its edges were rows of purple and pink flowers, with a second row of blue and yellow blooms behind them. The mixture of trees in the surrounding area was breathtaking, especially with the vibrant green moss growing along their trunks.
“It’s so pretty,” Nellie said behind me, and I glanced over my shoulder at her.
“And you helped make it that way,” I told her. “I couldn’t have done it without your magic. You’re very powerful.”
She smiled shyly and ducked her head, her cheeks turning as red as her hair.
Still smiling, I glanced over at Zane to see him peering through the portal at the small village thoughtfully.
“You know,” he said, “I’d always intended for one of these outer villages to be a hub of sorts for trading and additional train connections. What if Weldstone Village became the first train station to connect to Faerie?”
I blinked at him. “Connect to Faerie. Are you talking about running a train through the portal?” I never would have thought of that idea on my own, but the portal was huge, so there’d be enough room to lay track and run a train through it.
Zane nodded. “We are one people now. What better way to show that?”
Excitement coursed through me at the thought. I could already imagine where the train platform would go. Just off to our right, near the giant willow tree.
