Chapter 1

Tamisin had to dance. Although the sky was overcast and the full moon was hidden behind the clouds, the moon still called her to raise her arms, twirl on her toes, and move to music only she could hear. Her long blond hair floated around her, brushing the wisteria blossoms each time she twirled by her parents’ back porch. Her bare feet left imprints on the grass as she stepped around the bird-bath in the center of the yard. Her eyes, raised to the concealed moon, didn’t seem to notice what was around her but shone as if she had glimpsed something far more wonderful than anything either the human or fey world could offer.

When Tamisin Warner danced, she was as graceful as a woodland creature, her movements as fluid as water rippling over unseen stone. Each step, each gesture, evoked the essence and mystery of the fey world. Anyone who had ever seen her dance could tell that it was as hypnotic for the dancer as it was for the spectator.

That night, Tamisin had been dancing for only a few minutes when the fairies arrived. They came in a cloud of sparkling lights to hover around her, watching silently until her very last gesture. When Tamisin’s arms fell to her sides and she took a long, shuddering breath, the fairies fled.

Fairies were nothing new to Tamisin; she had been a child in a human family the first time she felt the urge to dance under a full moon and had seen fairies every month since. Even so, she had been shocked when wings sprouted from her own back and she learned that she might not be as human as she’d always assumed. In fact, no sooner was she whisked off to the fairies’ land than she learned that she was adopted and her birth mother was Titania, the queen of the fairies. According to Titania, her birth father was a human named Bottom who had died centuries before. She also learned that the fairies were very strange, so she had found her way home to the human world again. Still, it seemed neither place felt right.

After the first month back in the human world, Tamisin began to feel restless. She started going for short walks around the neighborhood and one day ended up in the woods behind the school, standing in front of the two tall trees that formed a gate to the land of the fey. There were no shimmering lights between the trees, which meant that the gate wasn’t open. A few days later Tamisin went for another walk, purposefully heading in a different direction, and ended up in the same place. She tried it again over the weekend and wound up standing in front of the still-closed gate.

Tamisin arrived at school early the next morning to wait by her boyfriend Jak’s locker. He was a cat goblin and had visited the land of the fey with her. “What’s up?” he said as he walked down the hall. He gave her a quick kiss and added, “You’re never here before I am.”

“I just wanted to talk,” she said, leaning against the next locker as he started his combination.

“Is something wrong?” he asked, frowning.

“Not wrong, exactly. Just odd. You’ve been busy with basketball practice and, well, I’ve been really restless lately and have started taking walks. The weird thing is, no matter where I go, I end up in the woods behind the school. There’s a gate near that waterfall you took me to last autumn.”

Jak’s frown deepened. “You’ve been going to a gate to the land of the fey?”

Tamisin nodded. “Yes, but it’s never open. And I’m not trying to go there. I just end up standing in front of it somehow.”

“Do you want to go back to the land of the fey already?”

“Not really. I’m sure I will someday, but not yet. I hated that so much time passed here while we were there for only a few days. We missed Thanksgiving and Christmas and Petey’s birthday. I really wanted to be here for my little brother’s birthday party; I was going to put it on for him this year.”

“What about Titania?”

“I don’t have any burning desire to see her again, if that’s what you’re asking. She is my birth mother, but I don’t think I’ll ever feel as close to her as I do to Mom. Janice is the only mother I’ve ever known. She took care of me whenever I was sick, she read me to sleep when I was little, she taught me how to tie my shoes . . . She’s Mom, and I guess she always will be. Titania is beautiful and exciting and pretty amazing. But I feel more like she’s a really cool aunt I didn’t know I had until now. What about you? Do you ever think about visiting your old home?”

“You mean my uncle Targin’s cave? All the time,” said Jak. “And then I’m grateful that I don’t have to. You have no idea how much happier I am here in the human world. I have friends here, and family who care about me. Gammi is the only relative I have who showed me any kindness, and she lives here now. And Bert is like a big brother who would do anything for me. He may be a bear goblin, but I’m closer to him than I ever was to my cousin Nihlo. I still have nightmares where Nihlo is chasing me through the corridors, threatening to lock me outside at night so the lamias will eat me. You can’t imagine how scary that was for a little kid. At least here there aren’t trolls, or manticores, or other creatures that would want to eat you.”

“That’s true,” said Tamisin.

“I couldn’t go back now, anyway,” said Jak. “I’m sure all the cat goblins hate me for siding with Titania against my uncle Targin. Given half a chance, they’d probably skin me alive and serve me for dinner.”

Tamisin shifted the books she was carrying. “You wouldn’t have to see your relatives. The land of the fey is a pretty big place.”

“Why would I want to go back? I have everything I need right here. Including you.”

Tamisin smiled. She was glad she’d talked to Jak. Just telling someone about it made her feel better. She really didn’t want to go back to the land of the fey, at least not for a good long while.

Although she tried to put the gate and the land of the fey out of her mind and stopped going for walks, the desire to visit the gate continued to build inside her. A few weeks later she couldn’t stand it any longer and returned to the woods behind the school. There were still no shimmering lights between the trees. Nor were there any the next time she went, or the time after that. She no longer tried to fight the urge to go to the woods, but every time she went, the gate was closed, and she became increasingly frustrated.

“Is something wrong?” Jak asked one day at school after she had snapped at her friend Heather.

“Yes, but you won’t want to talk about it,” Tamisin told him, slamming her locker door.

“What is it?” he asked. “Did someone do something?”

Tamisin shook her head. “Nothing like that. It’s just that . . . I went to the gate yesterday, but it’s closed—again!”

“How often have you gone there?”

Tamisin looked away. “At least twice a week for the last two months. But don’t worry, it’s been closed every time.”

“Are you trying to go to the land of the fey?” he said, sounding incredulous.

“Yes . . . No . . . Maybe . . . I don’t know what I’m trying to do!” she said. “I guess I just want to see if I could go back. If I wanted to, I mean.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I know how much you don’t want to go back!”

“So you’d go without me? Tamisin, do you know how dangerous that would be?”

“Not if I went through the gate behind the school. It goes directly to Titania’s forest.”

Jak put his hands on her shoulders. “There is no completely safe place in the land of the fey. Promise me you won’t go alone.”

“I can’t promise anything,” she said, pulling away.

“It’s Titania’s kiss. It makes you want to go back to her.”

“Then it was a pretty powerful kiss! I can’t sleep most nights, and when I do, I dream about the land of the fey. I went flying last week, but the urge to go through the gate kept me flying in circles above it when I saw it was closed again. I can’t fly or talk to fairies or dance without wanting to go through the gate even more, so I’ve stopped flying, and I’ve yelled at the fairies so often that they come around only when I dance. The one thing I can’t do is stop dancing, and believe me, I’ve tried. I’ve barricaded my bedroom door with my dresser, and I’ve tied my ankles to my bed, yet I still find myself outside dancing with my hair a tangled mess and my feet bare and half frozen. I don’t know what to do, and it’s driving me crazy!”

“I’ve heard that no one can withstand the compulsion of the fairy queen’s kiss,” said Jak. “But I didn’t know it was this bad. I guess you don’t have any choice about returning to her.”

“Well, I’m not going, am I?” said Tamisin. “She kissed me, but she must not really want me there if the gate is always closed. Unless . . . Do you know of any other gate that leads directly to Titania’s forest?”

Jak shook his head. “Sorry, I don’t.”

Tamisin leaned against the locker behind her and closed her eyes. “It’s probably just as well. I’d have to tell my family before I left, and I don’t know how they’d take it.”

Although Tamisin didn’t mention the gate to Jak again, she had no intention of quitting. She continued to visit the gate every few days but never did find it open. Then one night Jak invited her to his house for dinner. Knowing how much his grandmother liked mice and raw meat, she wasn’t sure she wanted to go. When she arrived, she was relieved to learn that Bert was cooking dinner. He served panfried trout, biscuits with honey, and berries that he’d bought frozen and weren’t quite thawed.

“Dinner was delicious,” she told the bear goblin as he licked berry juice from his fingers.

“Glad you liked it,” he said. “We had fish last night, too. Catfish,” he said, grinning at Gammi.

“Odd name for a good fish,” said the old cat-goblin woman. “We had it ’cause my cousin Sulie came for a quick visit,” she told Tamisin. “The gate between the cat-goblin clan home and our backyard was open, so she stopped by. Didn’t stay more than a few hours, which is just as well. For some reason the gates are slow to open but close mighty fast. We had a good visit, though. I liked catching up with all the goings-on back home.”

“If she was here for a few hours,” said Jak, “I wonder how long she was gone from the other side.”

Gammi shook her head. “There’s no saying. Time passes differently here and there from one visit to the next. Why, I remember when—”

“Excuse me,” Tamisin said, turning to Jak. “Do you mean to say that the gate behind your house was open and you didn’t tell me?”

Jak saw the look on her face and his expression turned serious. “I didn’t think it mattered. You wouldn’t want to go through it anyway. It leads to the center of the cat-goblin clan!”

“Just because you don’t want to go that way doesn’t mean I can’t! I could fly from there to Titania’s forest.”

“And have a dragon pluck you from the sky? Or a flock of harpies mug you? Or a goblin shoot you down with poison-tipped arrows? Flying can be just as dangerous as walking in the land of the fey. I don’t want you going there by yourself, and I don’t dare go through that gate.”

“Or any gate, apparently!” said Tamisin. “You know I want to go back, and you haven’t even looked for another way to get there.”

“I didn’t know it was that important to you,” Jak began.

“How can you say that?” Tamisin pushed her chair back and stood. “I told you I was checking the gate every few days to see if it had opened. If it wasn’t important to me, do you honestly think I would have kept going back? It’s gotten so bad that when I go to the woods and the gate is closed, my heart pounds, my stomach hurts, I break out in a sweat, and I can barely breathe. I’m having anxiety attacks just because that gate is closed, and I’m having them every single time I go there. This isn’t like wishing I could go to a party and being disappointed because I can’t go. This is like needing to swim to the surface of the water because I’m at the bottom of the pool and running out of air! Thank you for dinner,” she told Bert and Gammi. “I hate to eat and run, but I really need to go now.”

“Tamisin . . . ,” said Jak, but she had already left the room. A moment later she was out the door and hurrying down the sidewalk.

Tamisin was furious. Jak knew exactly how important this was to her. He was the one who had told her about the effect the fairy queen’s kiss had on people in the first place! He was afraid to go back, so he didn’t want her to go either. Well, forget him! She didn’t need him, or Titania either, for that matter. If the fairy queen had wanted her to return to the land of the fey, she would have made sure Tamisin could get back. Tamisin had heard somewhere that fairies were known to be fickle; her mother had probably already changed her mind about having her half-human daughter around.

As days passed, Tamisin’s resentment grew. The desire to return to the land of the fey became her constant shadow. Short of living beside the gate and waiting for it to open, there wasn’t much she could do, so she did her best to focus on being human.

One day her mother passed by the bathroom while Tamisin was putting on makeup. Tamisin looked up when she realized that her mother was watching her.

“Why are you covering your spreckles?” her human mother asked. “I thought you stopped doing that a while ago. And you’re wearing your hair down over your ears. I think it looks so cute pulled back into a ponytail.”

Tamisin shrugged. “I’m trying to look more human, and that’s really hard with pointed ears like mine, or glittery freckles on my cheeks.”

“Is everything all right? Your father and I have noticed that you don’t smile as much as you used to, and we hardly ever hear you laugh. You know you can talk to us if something is bothering you.”

“Nothing is bothering me,” Tamisin said, forcing herself to smile. She loved her parents and didn’t want to hurt them; she was sure that hearing how much she wanted to return to the land of the fey would upset them.

That night, Tamisin was on her way to bed when she passed her parents’ room and overheard them talking in quiet voices. She couldn’t hear much other than her name, but they sounded worried. Although it made her want to run into the room to reassure them, there wasn’t anything reassuring about the way she felt, and she really didn’t know what to say.

Tamisin continued to visit the gate, her frustration growing each time she saw that it was still closed. She would have had plenty to say to Titania about the kiss, the closed gate, and the confusion that she felt over going to the land of the fey, but with no way to talk to Titania, she turned her anger on Jak.

“Tamisin!” he called down the school corridor one day after she’d spent weeks ignoring his phone calls and avoiding him at school. “We need to talk.”

“No, we don’t,” she said, turning away so she wouldn’t have to see the hurt in his eyes that was reflected in the pit of her stomach. She knew she was being unreasonable, but seeing him just made her angrier. Not only had he not told her about the gate but he was half cat goblin, and reminded her all the more of the land of the fey. It was harder to feel human when Jak was around.

A tree frog called from her neighbors’ lily pond, sounding like a chick in a henhouse; the noise brought Tamisin fully back to the present. When she saw that she was standing in the yard in her nightgown once again, she shook her head and sighed. Tugging her fingers through the snarls that twirling had whipped into her hair, Tamisin started toward the back door, hoping she had come out that way so the door would be unlocked. (Once, she’d climbed out her bedroom window to dance and had to climb back through in the middle of the night.) She had almost reached the steps to the porch when she sensed movement behind her and glanced back. A human-sized fairy stood in the trees at the edge of the yard. Tamisin gasped. Usually the fairies who watched her were tiny—and harmless.

The fairy stepped out of the shadows and into the light cast by the carriage lamp beside the door, revealing his narrow face; his thin, pointed ears; and the tilt of his bright green eyes. He was taller than most full-sized fairies and wore the subdued browns and greens of a warrior. Sweeping his peaked cap off his head, he bowed in a courtly manner. “I am sorry to startle you, Your Highness. My name is Mountain Ash. You’re Princess Tamisin, are you not?” he asked.

“I am,” she replied.

“I had heard of the pull fairies feel when you dance, but I did not know how strong it was until I experienced it for myself. I am glad the rumors were true, for it helped me find you. I’ve come to give you news about your father.”

Tamisin frowned. “My birth father died hundreds of years ago.”

“Someone has lied to you,” said Mountain Ash. “Your father is very much alive. If you come with me, you will see that I’m telling the truth.” The fairy held out his hand as if to grasp hers.

Tamisin took a step back. This was too much like the stranger danger they taught little kids about in school. “There’s no way I’m going with you,” she said. “I have an English final in the morning, and I need to get some sleep.”

The fairy warrior sighed and moved toward her. “I had hoped it wouldn’t come to this,” he said, and raised his hand toward her cheek.

Tamisin slipped out of reach, but before she could take another step, his hand was touching her shoulder, and an instant later, everything began to change. She started to run, but her entire body felt fizzy, as if bubbles were popping inside her. Tiny lights exploded around her; she could see them even after she shut her eyes. When she opened her eyes again, the trees, the house, and the birdbath all seemed to be growing until they towered above her. Soon the grass itself was higher than her head. She cried out when an enormous hand closed around her and squeezed just enough to pick her up. Then she fell into the gaping mouth of a brown sack and was engulfed in darkness and stale air. She landed on her side with a gasp as her breath was forced from her lungs.

“Oberon thinks it’s time you met your real father,” Mountain Ash’s voice boomed as the opening over her head shrank to a tiny circle, then disappeared altogether, cutting her off from light and any hope of fresh air.

Tamisin rolled over and tried to stand, staggering when the bag rose and the bottom curved under her feet. Small bits of dried leaves crunched beneath her, releasing the scent of mint. She could tell that she was rising by the way she suddenly felt heavier. There was a rushing sound in her ears, and Tamisin passed out.