Succession at Seventeen

Chapter 5

Markus scoffed. “I’m older than your DAD.”

“Liar.”

“The fae can’t lie. Not even the Unseelie.”

This time it was Jeremy’s turn to scoff. “Fairy? Like the little flying naked girls?”

“You’re a nerd. Those are lesser fae, I’m court.”

“Uh huh, If you can’t lie and you aren’t human how has no one caught you?”

“I’ve only been asked what I was once and I told him I wasn’t human. He assumed I was being angsty. When they ask my age I tell them I’ve been here sixteen years.”

“So you can’t lie but you don’t have to give straight answers.”

“Yep.”

Jeremy thought about that for a few minutes while he enjoyed the bobbing view from Diana’s arms. “Why are you telling me this stuff?”

“You asked. I’m bored. She won’t be much of a conversationalist right now. And it doesn’t matter because you’ll be something’s dinner in less than two hours after we get there.”

“Ah...” That was the second time he’d said that. That was getting a little disconcerting. He came to something suddenly. “If we aren’t going to the...window, where are you taking us?” He looked up at Diana, ready to retort her sarcastic remark about how that should have been his first question. But she just kept staring around in wonder of the forest he knew she’d seen dozens of times from his bedroom window. It bothered him when she didn’t, he felt like he’d lost her.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Dude, I’m a rodent. I wasn’t this way this morning.”

“Point taken. Still, I want to see your face when we get there.”

“What does that mean?”

“That means SHUT UP and find out.”

“Ah...”

After a few minutes of walking Diana began to seem more focused and less airheaded. And the better she got the faster Markus pushed them.

“Here we are.” He said.

Jeremy looked around. They were more than halfway through the forest and to him there wasn’t anything special about the area. He was almost sure he could even see the TV antenna of his complex through the tree branches. There was nothing to mark this place out as different. There wasn’t even a solid path. They had been following what would have been at best a game path.

“THIS is it?” Jeremy asked feeling even more disappointed. Magic and everything finally showed it magnificent head in his life and this fairy pretender was leading them on a tour through forests he’d played in a million times before.

“Aulus!”

To Jeremy’s astonishment and Diana’s delight a tiny man appeared in the branches of a tree in front of them. On second thought, Jeremy couldn’t really call him tiny. Although he couldn’t have been even a foot tall his belly could be described as generous and his beard reached his waist. His clothes and hat were the deep dark brown of rain wet soil. And his fingers each sported claws instead of fingernails. Long raking claws that were stuck deep into the bark of the tree.

And now that he noticed it even the tree was strange. Three trunks spiraled from the same stump but each had different colors of barks and leaves. One even sported beautiful white and pink flowers. Suddenly Jeremy felt he didn’t know his forest at all.