Golden Girl (12 page)

My uncle leaned lightly against my thoughts. He made them shift, slowly, so I could feel the change and follow it. One move at a time, we found the key in the pocket of my magic. We brought it out and set it into the lock of the world. I turned it, we turned it, and the world twisted
around us. Lorcan tugged on my hand and on my thoughts. Together we moved. We stepped sideways, turned in place and rounded a corner, and stepped down. My mouth went dry and my ears popped. Everything shifted and blurred. I couldn’t tell if we’d really moved or not, because I couldn’t see anything. Then I could see too much.

Shake and I still stood in that dingy boardinghouse room, but now I could see under it and through it. I could see the stained plaster walls, but also the lath and frame beneath them. I could see the boards that frame used to be, and the logs the boards used to be, and the trees the logs used to be. I could see the street, and the dirt roadbed underneath it and the blank dry ground under that—all the states of existence for this single place, all stuffed one inside the other.

My mouth wouldn’t move, but my thoughts still shaped the question.
What is this?

We’ve moved betwixt and between
. I felt the smile in Shake’s silent words.
You’ve opened a gate from the human world, and now we are between all worlds
.

I didn’t like this. Nothing felt solid or remotely real. I couldn’t even feel the floor beneath my shoes. People flickered in and out of my vision like fireflies. I didn’t dare look up to see all the skies shifting overhead.
Seeing
didn’t even seem the right word for what I was doing. The world came straight in through my skin. I knew the texture of the path we’d traveled to get here, and how the places where the
motion was the fastest were warmer than the places where the states of being were stuffed most tightly together. Slowly, fear bled away, to be replaced by something close to excitement.

What’s that?
I asked, looking toward a patch of shadow. That shadow was neither flickering with motion nor stuffed tight with different states of being. It was something different.

What?
came Shake’s answer.
Show me, niece
.

There
. I tried to focus on it. It felt warm to the touch of my thoughts and magic, like a stone lying in the summer sun.

Shake took hold of those ideas and turned them over to get a better look.

That’s one of the thin places
.

A thin place?
It didn’t feel thin, or like a place. It felt more solid than anything else around me. It felt loose too, like I could wrap my hand around it, lift it up, and move it aside.

The mortal and fairy worlds are in constant motion. They rub against each other, and sometimes they rub each other thin. Sometimes a hole is worn between them, creating a natural gate that anyone can pass through. Some of these holes heal over quickly; others last a long time and are seized by one court or the other
.

A picture of the Fairyland amusement park, where I’d first met my grandparents, formed in my mind, and I knew
it had come from my uncle’s thoughts. I countered with a picture of the Waterloo Bridge, and Rougarou crawling out from underneath. I felt him agree.

You can’t see this hole, though?

No. I can’t shape it either. But you could
.

How?

How do we do anything? Reach out for it. Wish for it. Try, niece
.

He was pushing me, almost daring me. Maybe I should have hesitated, but I wanted to understand, and here was a chance. Things that had been buried deep bubbled up to the surface. I wouldn’t have to search for a way to power my magic. I wouldn’t need music or wishes or strong feeling. Here I was the magic and it was me. I’d left the human on the other side of the open gate. All I had to do was reach out to that new piece of warmth and stillness I’d found. It was a hole and it was a door, and it led to the outside. I reached for the key, just as Lorcan had showed me, and held the key toward the lock. If I’d been in my regular human self, I’d have been taking a deep breath. I set lock and key together and made them twist. Easy as breathing, I felt the gate open wide, until I was looking out from betwixt and between to a whole new world.

A city waited on the other side of my gate. Its air wrapped around us, silent, heavy, and dense, but also as warm as the welcome of your best friend and filled with all the good scents there were. Golden trees spread their branches over towers of obsidian and silver. No stars burned overhead and
no sun, only a blank indigo sky. But it wasn’t dark at all. The whole world—the ground, the trees, the blossoms, even the stones—shone from the inside out with sweet golden light. I knew that light. I’d seen it before, but I couldn’t remember when. It grabbed hold of me the way the sound of my father’s name had. I wanted to melt into it, take it into myself, and become part of it at the same time. I stepped closer, and my uncle followed right behind.

Where is this?

Can’t you guess, Callie?
Uncle Lorcan’s laugh sparkled through me.
It’s our home
.

A wall stretched right up against the gate. It was about as high as my waist and its stones shimmered with the same golden light as the trees and the gleaming black towers. Vines twisted around and between the stones, shining green, gold, ruby, and emerald. As a fence, it didn’t look like much. I could climb right over it. I didn’t have to just see home; I could be home.

Then one of that wall’s shining stones stretched and shivered. The twisted vine around it stretched too. There was a sharp pop and the stone opened a single eye, cold and clay-colored.

“Who’s that?” The stone crawled out of the wall and squatted right in front of us, looking like a bullfrog with vines for legs and crooked arms. “Who comes knocking at my door?”

“Who’s that?” the stone repeated. Its tongue ground against its teeth as it spoke. “Who’s that come sneaking?”

Pop, pop, pop
. The other stones jammed together in the wall opened their eyes. They were all the same cold clay color, and they all had the same long twisted limbs and grinding teeth and tongues.

“Who? Who?” They grated as they heaved themselves toward us. “Who? Who?”

“Shake …” I backed up.

But Shake stayed right where he was, and his amber eye flashed. I mean it really flashed, like someone had struck a match inside him. Now I knew why the golden light in this place looked so familiar. This was the light the fairies carried inside them, even when they came to the human world.

“Down, all of you!” my uncle shouted. “Down before the heir!”

The frog stones froze, except for their eyes. Those gray clay eyes all swiveled toward me. I felt their gaze like hail dropping against my skin.

“Her,” said the first one.

“Her, her, her, her,” echoed all the others. Their recognition hit as hard as their gaze did, as hard as their words did.

“Down!” Shake’s order cracked over that flock of frog stones. His will pressed against them, forcing them backward until they hunkered down into their hollows. But they didn’t go easily, and I could tell they didn’t want to stay.

“Quickly now. I won’t be able to hold them for long.” Shake pushed me forward.

This time, though, I found the sense to dodge sideways. “Are you nuts? I’m not going in there!” The stones rumbled and strained. They ground their teeth together and pushed against Shake’s commands. I could feel the hatred welling out of them, the way I felt their stares and their words.

“You’re not going to get another chance like this, Callie. There are those here who will help us both.”

“Help us do what?”

Shake rolled his one good eye in exasperation. “You want to free your parents? So do I. But we can’t do it alone. Come on. I can take you to my friends.” He reached for me again, but I yanked my hand away.

“You didn’t say anything about this.”

“I wasn’t sure we’d find a thin place. There’s no time to argue. Come with me, now.”

My uncle was grabbing for my thoughts the way he was grabbing for my hand. He wanted to knot my wishes up with his. The problem was, the closer he pulled me, the better I could see what was going on inside him. I saw that Lorcan was scared. He was seeing faces—people made of sticks and twigs, or drops of water and pure wind. He saw animals with human faces and humans with horns and tails like Halloween devils and shining, tall, perfect people carrying bronze spears. He’d promised all these people he’d bring me back. He’d promised them power if he got to the Midnight Throne. That was how he’d got out into the human world. He hadn’t been cast out at all. He’d escaped from wherever my grandparents had him jailed. All these people had helped him get free, in exchange for that promise.

Now he was stuck. Because we can’t break our promises.

“You hoped we would find a thin place,” I said slowly. “You brought me here on purpose.”

“All right, yes. It doesn’t change anything. There’s help for us here, but you have to go
now
.”

But while Shake was trying to tighten his grip, his hold on the frog stones slipped—not much, but enough.

“Her, her, her, her.” The stones opened their eyes again,
pop, pop, pop
, their words and their eager anger going off like firecrackers, sending out sparks. “Send the word. Spread the word. It’s her, her, her, and she’s with him. Him, him,
him
!”

From root to branch and stone to stone, the warning
traveled like a signal down a telephone wire. Everything in this whole world that had its own little mind and thought and spirit—which was just about everything—was waking up. All those minds turned toward Lorcan … and me. None of them was happy, but all of them were hungry.

“Close the gate!” Lorcan shouted. “Close it!”

The stones bounded forward, shouting and hating. I scrabbled at the gate’s edges, struggling to hook my magic around them. But the stones had jammed themselves into the gate. They were hungry and greedy. They wanted to get through, to see what was on the other side, to grab some of it up and take it for themselves. If they succeeded, if they got us, the king and queen might let them keep little pieces of us and anything else they scooped up from the other side of the gate, so they could change, grow, become new and stronger things.…

The first of the stones heaved itself toward me, tendrils reaching, teeth bared. I screamed and jumped back, but not fast enough. Twisting gold fingers tangled around my wrist, ice cold and steel strong.

Lorcan swore. He grabbed hold of the frog stone’s fingers, and I felt a burst of magic. The stone screamed, and its fingers snapped. Shake howled with pain and effort as he caught me around the waist and hauled me off my feet, across the threshold, and into the betwixt and between.

Panic and anger knotted together inside me. I reached deep and held tight, pulled and twisted. The stones cried out. They wept and strained, but the world closed in front
of them, and they were gone and it was just betwixt and between flickering around me and Lorcan.

And while I was standing there getting my head around the fact that I’d just almost gotten killed by a herd of living stones, Lorcan smiled.

Well, that was closer than I’d hoped
.

I knew it! I knew you did that on purpose!

But all the outrage I could muster slid right off him.
I wanted to bring us help, and I hoped that when you saw your home you would be drawn to it
.

You tried to trick me! Again!

How did I trick you? You wanted time; I’ve given it to you. You wanted to know how your powers work; I’ve showed you
.

I wanted time to sleep!

Then sleep. You know I will not let anything hurt you. I can’t. I’ve made promises, niece, and you’re a part of them
.

I’m supposed to trust you after what you just did?

I did nothing. You did that to yourself. Sleep as long as you like. When you wake up, we step back through your gate
. His thoughts pointed and mine followed.
Or when you’ve had the chance to think better of it, you will open another gate, and I will take you to meet my friends
.

He wasn’t going to stop. He’d bully, cheat, trick, and coax until he got me there. The worst part was, part of me wanted to just give in and do what he said. I wanted to see more of the Unseelie world beneath its indigo sky. I wanted
to find out if my uncle really had friends who could help me find my parents. But I couldn’t do it. I didn’t dare. Lorcan had been straight about exactly one thing since I’d asked him to show me my own magic: I did, in fact, know just what he was. I hadn’t wanted to believe it. Now I had to do something about him before he dug his hooks in any deeper. The truly frightening part was, I had a plan.

I made the thoughts as small and whispery as I could.
How am I going to fall asleep here?

Little niece, little niece, you know we can give such gifts to one another
.

He was telling me he could put me to sleep. I felt him urging me to trust him. I’d sleep sweet and easy, and when I woke up, he’d show me how to walk to whatever world I wanted to reach, just like he’d shown me how to open the gate to betwixt and between, and to the Unseelie world beyond. We were family. I could trust him. I had to trust him. Everything depended on it.

We can send each other to sleep?
I faced my uncle.
Really?

Truly
. He smiled indulgently. He thought his little niece was finally coming around, and maybe he was right.

Okay
. I took a deep breath, and I reached down into my magic, where Lorcan was already waiting.
Go to sleep, Uncle
.

Both his eyes flew wide. He tried to pull away, but he was too late. I knew what sleep felt like—the warmth and
the slow drift into comfortable darkness. I raised all of that and passed it over to Lorcan. Because he was already inside my blood and bone, he had no chance to get away.