24
I pulled the Rust bucket up to the gates of the Fairy Crossing Community.
Sabine, the pale, white haired guard leaned out of the window of the small hut and her snowy white terrier yapped at me from the open doorway. Her eyes were slightly shadowed with the presence of her long lashes. The sapphire irises sparkled. Her lips were painted blood red today and she looked bored.
“Are you Elizabeth?” she asked in a full Italian accent.
I nodded.
Sabine rolled her eyes and pressed some sort of button, causing the gates to swing open.
“Your friend’s house is the third on Hedge,” Sabine advised, opening a copy of some cheesy teen magazine from the supermarket.
“Thanks,” I said, but she wasn’t listening anymore.
I put the Rust bucket in ‘drive’ again and placed my foot lightly on the gas. Maple Avenue was slightly desolate and the only real neighbors were the trees. I passed two old style houses and when I rounded the bend in the road, I immediately knew it was Zaria’s house.
All the girls from the table we sat at during lunch lay on the snowy lawn before a large Tudor style house. I realized they were making snow angels.
I parked the Rust bucket behind a Dodge Neon and reached into the backseat for my duffel bag, finding my cell phone in the process from where it had been thrown after the SUV had slipped off the road.
I slipped it into my pocket and got out of the Rust bucket, shouldering my duffel bag and pressing the lock mechanism on the key fob. The Rust bucket’s headlights winked at me.
“Liz!” Zaria yelled, excitement filling her voice.
I turned around and Zaria stood behind me with a huge smile on her face.
I gasped.
Zaria had reverted to the look she’d had when I’d first met her.
Heavy black kohl swarmed both eyes; her lips painted a shimmering frosted cherry. The hair at the top of her head dyed a vibrant fuchsia and blond and black streaks finished the bottom half of her hair. She was dressed in subtle gray and an electric blue, leopard print scarf stuck out of the collar of her sweater.
“Whoa,” I said in stunned amazement.
She giggled. “It’s awesome, I know.”
“Come on, this’ll be so fun.” Zaria laughed, grabbing my hand and tugging me along behind her.
Suddenly the trauma, pain and guilt of my horrible evening didn’t seem so dreadful anymore.
I followed Zaria up to the house, and inside.
Only a few moments later, we were all in our pajamas, prancing about the living room where Zaria’s grandmother had allocated the festivities, singing and dancing to cheesy boy band music. When the song ended we fell to the hardwood floor in fits of giggles.
“Okay, okay,” voiced a bold girl called Rosa. “Let’s play truth, or dare.”
Zaria sniffed reluctantly and tossed another log into the roaring hearth. “Rosa, you know I don’t like that game.”
“Oh loosen up Z!” Rosa giggled. “C’mon, give it a try.”
Zaria frowned for a moment and then obliged with a small nod.
“You first Luella,” Rosa smiled. “Truth or dare?”
The timid red haired girl thought for a second, and then said, “Dare.”
A wicked smile crept across Rosa’s lips. “I dare you, to call Alvin and tell him how much you like him.”
Luella’s face paled.
“Come on, you picked dare Luella,” Rosa said, holding out a sophisticated looking cell phone with a multitude of shining blue buttons. Rosa shook it twice for emphasis.
Taking a gulp, Luella cracked a small smile and took the palm-sized phone from Rosa. She dialed a few buttons, shaking when Rosa mouthed “speakerphone” at her.
“Alvin,” a masculine voice sounded from the phone.
Luella took a deep breath and shrieked: “I love you Alvin!”
Then she pressed the shining red ‘END CALL’ button on the phone’s keypad, and the flat object went skittering across the floor. Luella looked flustered, and a cowlick of hair had managed to escape her headband. Rosa rolled her eyes and out the corner of my eye I saw a slight frown spread across Zaria’s forehead.
“Your turn Zaria,” Rosa grinned and the other girls leaned in, their frowns mirroring hers. “Truth or dare?”
Zaria frowned and folded her arms.
“Come on Z, don’t be such a spoil sport.” Rosa frowned.
“Fine,” Zaria said sourly. “Lay it on me, Rosa.” I was surprised that Rosa didn’t flinch at the acidity in Zaria’s voice.
“Truth or dare,” Rosa repeated.
“Truth,” Zaria bit her lip and narrowed her racooned eyes.
I thought Rosa was secretly hoping that Zaria would say ‘dare’ but Rosa narrowed her eyes and asked, “Do you have the hots for Taylor.”
“No.” Zaria shot her down quickly. “Next person,”
“Nuh-uh,” Rosa disagreed. “Answer the question.”
“I already did answer your question.” Zaria replied.
“No, it wasn’t valid enough. A question like that deserves an explanation.” Rosa winked wickedly at Zaria. I thought Zaria wanted to strangle her right there and then, but then she righted herself.
“Taylor is untouchable, okay?” she explained in a rapid huff. “Now could you lay off me please?”
“Why is Taylor so untouchable?” asked Loyola.
“Because, Heidi likes him, and she’ll kill any one of us who starts to make the moves on him.” Zaria rolled her eyes. “Plus, Taylor’s not really interested in us anymore. He’s kind of pissed off that Heidi’s being such a meanie to us, and yet still he likes her.” She glared at Rosa. “Are you happy now?”
“Peachy,” Rosa admitted with a dazzling smile, then turned to me. “Say, Liz, what’s up with you and Xander?”
“I didn’t even pick ‘Truth or Dare’.” I stammered.
“Who cares? We’re all friends here; you can tell us the story.” She shrugged a bit too nonchalantly for my tastes.
“That’s enough.” Zaria interrupted with a look of great disdain on her face. “So not cool,”
“Geez, Z, you don’t have to be so mean about it.” Rosa wrinkled her glossy peach colored lips at Zaria.
“Neither did you,” Zaria retorted with a cold smile.
“Okay!” I broke it up. “No need for all the sass people, it’s a sleepover remember? We’re all friends here right?”
“Right,” everyone said in unison.
“Right…” Zaria said, brushing her long, fuchsia bang out of her eyes.
A few more hours of partying it up, we finally went to sleep, each one of us huddled on a beanbag, blanket or one of Zaria’s grandmother’s ancient sofas. However, I could not find sleep. My adrenaline had spiked since the episode with Naida earlier this evening.
My hands still shook with guilt.
She was evil, and she would’ve killed me if I’d hesitated, I’d killed Naida. I’d mercilessly sent a piece of wood through her chest. Did that mean Xander was free?
Her words still echoed in my head.
“You cannot kill thee, for that which is eternal cannot die.”
What did that mean?
A hitched breath startled me.
I sat up in the chair where I lay and saw Zaria’s colorful head peek out above a big quilt. She was shaking, murmuring things, things that didn’t make sense. It seemed like an awkward moment of déjà vu.
Suddenly, Zaria sat up, her face pointed directly at me. Her eyes, still smothered in black makeup stared lifelessly at me. Her pupils had disappeared and replacing them were amplified black veins. Her mouth twitched eerily, muttering words too low for me to hear. Grayscale images flashed across her frightening eyes like an old silent movie and she shook, almost as if she was having a seizure.
I quietly got up out of my spot, knowing that I had to shake her out of her vision before any of the others realized. I didn’t think any of the other girls knew of Zaria’s strange power, but if they did, seeing this would scare them.
“Zaria,” I said, trying to coax her out of the vision. I took her hands.
She flinched away from my touch, and her unseeing eyes fixed on me.
“Elizabeth,” she said in an eerie voice. “Your future is doomed. It has been from the beginning of your life, but you have not seen it as I have. The stars have aligned since your accursed birth; you have the blood of tainted mortals running within you, ignominious royalties, and the blotch of servants. I see through the third eye, that you are indeed court member, but death before dishonor you shall wear on your sleeve. It’s a smear of darkness on your soul. There are many daubs upon your future Elizabeth. When you depart, I shall miss you so.” She took a silent breath. “Come, I shall show you something.”
I found myself following a comatose Zaria out into the yard. The walls protecting the community from outsiders—namely Unseelie—held an ancient looking door. The door held a symbol on it, the design warped and twisted. It was ashen in the pale moonlight.
Zaria mumbled a few disoriented words and it flung open, into a vast prairie, heavily wooded but still protected by large walls. We walked for a while, until we came to a circular patch of concrete, untouched by snow. On the outside exterior, mushrooms encircled the flat plate of gray concrete. In the light of the moon, I realized that on this flat plate of concrete had intricate designs—hieroglyphics—carved into it, telling some kind of olden fable.
“I don’t expect you to know what this is. It is the solstice circle. It tells the story of the first war.” Zaria was growing excited as her hands passed over the intricate designs in the olden concrete. “It is said that Oberon, set the first fairies into the world, along with the power of Queen Titania.” Zaria said as her hands shaped a carving of a beautiful woman and an equally beautiful man, their hands forging a great ball of light between them. “Oberon drew his basic knowledge of fairies from Titania, who was the queen of the fairies from the other realms. Though Titania enjoyed the deference, Oberon did not sit very well with her. He wanted to change the designs of some of her creatures, so they became an independent race of both males and females capable of producing more offspring than Titania’s fairies.” Her hand passed across another carving of a great book written in some foreign language that made great sense to me. The beautiful woman first portrayed looked crudely angry as she held a fairy in her hand. The man held two fairies in his own palm and held an even cruder smile on his face. Around him were even more of the fairies in his palm.
“Some of Titania’s fairies only came in female forms and required humans or elves to reproduce with them whereas Oberon made all of his creations come in male and female. Seeing the diversified creatures that O’ma had made, made Titania’s blood boil with difference.” Her hand followed another carving in the flat plate.
The woman’s fairy held hands with a human male while the male’s fairies held hands. There was another carving of the magnificent woman, hands clenched as she looked upon the man and his creatures.
“Little did Oberon know that he had offended the queen greatly. Titania saw the modification of her creatures as a stain on the purity that she had spent a millennia creating.” The carving Zaria touched was that of the woman, her creatures transformed into ugly, disfigured and diseased things, keeling over in pain. “She thought Oberon was endangering the fabric of complex races that only she understood. Titania only ruled the Seelie and their courts, and she sought the aid of the Unseelie in vengeance to him.”
The carving Zaria touched now was large, the largest on the circle. Ugly creatures surrounded the beautiful woman and the beautiful creatures surrounded her with a transcription in an unfamiliar script written above her head.
“Titania opened a portal from her plane onto Avlis and dropped batches of both Seelie and Unseelie fairies to begin populating the world. Later, Oberon, unknowing of her perfidy granted her power in Avlis in gratitude for inspiring him.” The carving was that of the beautiful man clasping the beautiful woman’s hand. “Titania’s treachery and the dispersal of the Seelie and Unseelie eventually sparked a war with Oberon’s fairies, which lasted for many, many years.” This carving was that of the beautiful man’s creatures and the beautiful woman’s creatures beside the ugly Unseelie warring against one another.
“Titania banned Unseelie from the plane of Avlis quite a time ago. Unseelie never really accepted it because when Titania sought their aid in war, they made a deal. Unseelie have been trying to find portals to Avlis for years and years.” Titania clasped hands with an Unseelie, but the next carving was her standing on a portal, keeping the Unseelie out. “This is one of the only three portals to Avlis in the earthen world. The markings around the border are enchantment, a strong bond. Only an enchanter mastering all elements can break the spell binding the solstice circle to the portal, and only on the night of the solstice. Any other time and it doesn’t work.” She fixed her white eyes on me. “You can open this portal; you are the direct heir to the only enchanter that has lived for a thousand years.”
With that, Zaria’s eyes closed and reopened. She rubbed her eyes and her head, making her colorful hair unruly. She saw me staring at her and gasped.
“Oh crap, I knew I had another vision,” she said it nonchalantly for she knew I knew about her forebodings. “That was a really bad one ‘cause I can’t remember what I said.” She paused as if missing something. “What are we doing out here?”
“Sleep walking.” I lied, feigning a smile.
Zaria stared at the circle then took my hand and led me back to the house.
#
The evening after, just as the sun was about to set below the treetops, giving the whole atmosphere an eerie blue. I pulled the ancient SUV into its parking space and the vehicle responded to idleness by surrendering with a groan.
I got out of the Rust bucket, shouldering my duffel and kicking the door shut. The locks clicked into place a short moment after that, and I continued to the front step, gnawing on my lip nervously.
While I had been at Zaria’s sleepover, my mother had left a very livid response on my voicemail. Her words still sat on my skin, the hairs standing on end. I pulled my house key from my pocket and opened the front door.
The house was silent.
Brucie lay asleep at the foot of the staircase, and as I kicked off my boots, one of her big eyes opened and she licked her nose. I tiptoed through the house, being very careful to be quiet, for I could feel that my mother was here, and waiting up for me.
“Elizabeth, it makes no sense you creeping around like that. I can still hear you.” My mother’s voice sounded.
I jumped, and slowly turned on my heel to find her sitting up on the sofa, her hands crossed over each other in her lap. She had already taken to wearing her pajamas, even though it wasn’t even near time for bed.
I sighed.
“Elizabeth,” my mother began softly. “These recent… actions you’ve been carrying on with for the past few weeks I’ve been lenient with, but I won’t tolerate it any further. You’re starting to make me regret allowing you so much freedom.”
She sighed and stared out the window and a shiver of uneasiness made its way up my spine. Brucie sidled up to me, her tail beating against the back of my calves. She tried licking my fingers to gain my attention, but I curled them into fists. Understanding that I didn’t want to play, she made a whinnying noise in the back of her throat and disappeared into the kitchen.
“Grounded.” My mom announced.
“No way!” I cried. “That’s not fair mom!”
My mother stared at me for a short second with an unfathomable expression on her face. Her eyes were vacant and tired and she looked saddened.
I couldn’t tell if it was my fault.
“Nothing in life is fair Elizabeth.”