Chapter 23

Without Narlayna as their guide, Tamisin wasn’t sure which way to go. They could go straight ahead, but she thought they had gotten turned around a bit when they walked through the ruins. “I need to see where we are,” she said, spreading her wings behind her. “I’m not sure which way to go from here.”

“I still don’t like the thought of you going anywhere by yourself,” Jak said, looking worried.

Tamisin shrugged. “We don’t have a choice. I should have reached my mother long before this. Have you noticed that the sound has changed?”

The booming was louder and coming closer together. Unlike the simple spells that had made noses grow and vines twine around ankles, trolls were involved now and there were patches of forest that were dead. The war was changing, and it was only getting worse.

Tamisin’s eyes met those of her two friends before she turned to Jak. “If I’m gone longer than ten minutes, Irinia and Malcolm should take you to the beach. I’ll meet you there later.” It had already occurred to her that if she was going to fly, she might as well fly all the way to her mother. When Jak began to scowl, Tamisin rose into the air before he could try to stop her.

“Wait!” he cried.

“I can’t,” she called to him. “I should have done this sooner.”

Leaving her friends behind was hard, not only because she felt safer when she was with them but because she worried about what might happen to them when they were on their own. Leaving Jak behind was even harder; it felt as if she’d only just found him again.

As she climbed into the night sky, Tamisin began to look around. The higher she flew, the farther she could see, so she rose until the trees lost their individuality and formed a mass below her before she turned northeast. Aside from the fuzzy patches where the dust had spread, the air was clear, with a cool breeze that made her shiver.

Birds flew by now and then, most of them just above the treetops. They seemed to be fleeing from the northeast corner. Tamisin was watching them when she noticed that a loud thunk preceded each boom. After the boom, lights arced above the trees, but still not as high as Tamisin was flying. She would have thought the lights exploding below her were pretty if she hadn’t known that they were weapons.

Tamisin was eager to see her mother now. She thought of Titania laughing at something she’d said, or looking proud when she saw how well Tamisin could dance on the night all the fairies danced in the moonlit glade. It had meant a lot to her that she was able to do something that made her mother proud. They would never have the relationship that they might have had if Titania hadn’t sent her away, but they had begun to create their own special bond. At the thought of the fairy queen fighting for her, Tamisin beat her wings even harder.

When she first started looking for Titania, the night had been silent except for the whisper of her wings and the regular booming. Now Tamisin began to hear a distant rumble; as it grew louder, she realized that it was the sound of falling water. A few minutes later she could see the moonlight reflecting off something shiny. When the next boom sounded, she traced the arc of the lights back to the top of a waterfall. Angling her wings, Tamisin headed in that direction. If her mother wasn’t there, she had to be somewhere close by.

As Tamisin began her descent, she finally saw what was making all the noise. In a clearing near the waterfall, fairies were using oversized slingshots to launch large seedpods into the air. When they reached a certain height, the pods exploded, releasing razor-edged seeds that spread out until they hurtled toward the ground in a blaze of light, shredding leaves and cutting through everything below.

Tamisin was wondering how she could reach her mother without flying into the rain of seeds when, out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of something moving. Turning her head, she saw a shape that had wings but couldn’t possibly be a bird. Its body was too long, and it had four legs and a long, thin tail. Tamisin knew when she saw its human face that it was a sphinx. She had never seen one except in mythology books, and even then she hadn’t realized just how frightening they could be. As the beast drew closer, Tamisin tried to think of what to do, but her mind was made up for her when the sphinx opened her mouth and roared.

Tamisin dipped her wing, turned, and fled back the way she had come. The wings of the sphinx made a whump, whump sound that grew louder the closer she flew. “Come back!” the sphinx screamed in a woman’s voice, but it was a harsh, ugly noise that made Tamisin beat her wings faster.

Another boom, another shower of lights below her. Tamisin hadn’t intended to look back, but when the sphinx screamed again, Tamisin looked without thinking. The sphinx’s face was that of an older woman with streaming, gray hair and broken, discolored teeth. Her crazed-looking eyes glared at Tamisin, who abruptly turned away and put everything she had into beating her wings.

She was panting, her lungs aching, when the light of a tiny fairy shot past her. A moment later there were dozens, then hundreds, and the entire sky around her seemed to twinkle. The sphinx roared again as the fairies flew back to surround the beast. Although Tamisin didn’t see what the fairies did, the sphinx screamed as if she’d been stuck with pins, turned tail, and flew off.

The wind picked up then, changing from a gentle breeze to a powerful, driving gale. Half the tiny fairies continued to pursue the fleeing sphinx, but the rest turned around and flew to Tamisin, leading her in a spiral down to the ground. Lightning flashed as she landed on a rocky outcrop and felt the first drops of rain.

Tiny fairies joined her. A moment later, one of them grew to human size and Oberon stood beside her. “Look!” he said, holding up his arm to point at clouds gathering in front of the moon. “Titania is using the weather as a weapon.”

The storm was getting closer and it was going to be big. Rain and debris whipped through the air. When lightning cracked the night sky, making it as bright as day, Tamisin saw uprooted trees plow through their neighbors, flattening them. Then the hail came, balls of ice bigger than a child’s head smashing into the ground with heart-lurching thuds.

Although the rain drenched the ground around Tamisin and Oberon, and the hail hit only feet away, nothing touched either of them. Oberon stood watching the sky as if he expected Titania to tire soon. He didn’t seem to notice Tamisin shivering beside him.

The electricity in the air was flowing into her, drawn like metal to a magnet. It crackled along her skin, and when she looked down, she could see it there, a swirling, seething white-gold light caressing her arms and hands. Instead of hurting, it felt warm and invigorating. She let it gather, enjoying the sensation, until her entire body prickled. Although she heard Oberon shouting, the words meant nothing to her. At that moment, the only things that mattered were the storm and the power it was pouring into her.

Even after the wind died down, the clouds broke apart, and the hail stopped entirely, energy continued to fill her. Now it was a burning sensation that seared her nerves with an almost-pain. She would have flung herself out of its reach if she could have, but she was frozen in place, her body rigid.

It didn’t occur to Tamisin that she was drawing power from her mother until she dropped her gaze from the sky and found Titania standing in front of her, looking tired and pale. “Are you all right, my darling?” the fairy queen asked, reaching for her daughter.

Tamisin shook her head ever so slightly. Energy crackled off her, making Titania draw back. Concern filled the fairy queen’s eyes. “What have you done, Tamisin? What are you doing here with Oberon?”

“I asked him to stop the war,” Tamisin said, her voice sounding strange and distant in her own ears, “but he said he was simply defending his home. I was on my way to see you when your storm began. I’m begging you both to stop. This has all been a big misunderstanding. Oberon was certain that I was his daughter. He said that you lied about my father, but I know you didn’t. My birth father was human, wasn’t he?”

Titania sighed. “Yes, my dear, although it would have made things so much easier if he had been fairy.”

Tamisin could read the truth in her mother’s eyes and knew that only magic could have made her believe that her mother had lied. “There’s really no need to fight Oberon,” said Tamisin.

“There’s more to it than that,” said Titania, glancing from Tamisin to Oberon. “Oberon took you by force when you should have been left to live your life as you chose, then lied about me when he should have known that I have never lied to him.”

“Is that what you were doing when you didn’t contact me or send for me—letting me live my life as I chose?” asked Tamisin, her words catching in her throat.

“Of course, my darling! Did you think I was neglecting you? I kissed you so you would know that I wanted you to visit me, but I never wanted to make you come to the land of the fey unless you wanted to. It was your choice and would have remained so if Oberon hadn’t interfered.”

“But fighting him like this is wrong! I believe that you still love each other. Mother, Oberon wasn’t trying to take me away from you. He just wanted to get to know me.”

Sparks shot off Tamisin’s fingers and the ends of her hair when she turned to face Oberon. “You used magic to make me stay, but I know that you did it because you wanted to learn more about me. When I thought we were related, I was happy to call you Father. Even though you’re not my father, you are married to my mother, which makes you my stepfather. I can still call you Father if you’d like.”

A flicker of a smile replaced Oberon’s grim expression. “I’d like that,” he said, but then he glanced at Titania and the smile vanished. “However, I’m not the one who can stop this war. Talk to the aggressor if you want the fighting to end.”

“I came to get back what was mine!” said Titania. “None of this would have happened if you hadn’t sent your fairy to steal Tamisin from her home!”

“And how else was I ever going to meet her? If it had been up to you, I would never have learned of her existence!”

“Please stop!” said Tamisin. She reached for their hands, but stopped when she saw the sparks leaking off her fingers. “I’m asking for one thing, and I’ve never really asked for anything from either of you before. All I want you to do is stop fighting and talk to each other without making accusations. And please agree to this soon, because I feel as if I’m about to explode!”

Titania looked at her, alarmed. The electricity had continued to build inside of Tamisin even after she’d absorbed everything from the storm. She was trying to hold it in, but sparks had started to pour from her fingertips, and she could feel her hair crackling around her. Suddenly Tamisin wasn’t sure just how she was going to get rid of it all.

“Yes, yes, of course,” said the fairy queen. “What did you do to yourself, Tamisin?”

“I just wanted you to stop fighting,” Tamisin said, her voice sounding fainter. It was taking everything she had just to hold in the power.

Titania glanced at Oberon and he nodded. “If Titania has agreed, I no longer have any reason to fight. I’ll let it be known that if anyone questions our honor, I’ll banish them from all of fairy land. We are the king and queen, after all.”

“Thank you,” Tamisin whispered, squeezing her eyes shut. “Stand back. I’m not sure how this is going to work.”

Although she hoped that they had gotten out of the way, Tamisin was no longer able to look for fear that if she did, the electricity would pour out of her in their direction and burn them to little crisps. Instead she tilted her head back, raised her arms toward the sky, and relaxed, willing the electricity to go straight up.

Like water released from a dam, the power surged through her and out her hands, aiming toward the barefaced moon. The first rush of electricity tore at her nerves so that her entire being felt scorched and raw, and it was all she could do to stand upright. When the overwhelming excess was gone, the rest flowed through her in a soothing, more controlled way. The deafening roar in her ears made her wonder if she’d ever hear again, but as the last of the electricity trickled out, she heard voices talking, although she couldn’t tell what they were saying.

Emptied, Tamisin staggered, but Titania and Oberon were there to hold her up. “Are you all right?” the fairy queen asked.

“I’m better than all right,” Tamisin said, and she knew that it was true.

The next morning, Jak and Tamisin were taking their breakfast to the rocks above the shoreline when they saw Titania and Oberon talking to a group of fairies. As Tamisin drew near, Titania moved away from the others to join her.

“I just wanted to tell you that Oberon and I were talking last night, and we may try something we haven’t done in a very long time. We’re thinking about living together again. Sometimes we would be here, and sometimes in my forest.”

Tamisin smiled. “I’m glad to hear that; I bet your fairies will be, too.”

“The fairies that I sent to watch over you told me that the gate near your home was closed every time you visited it. We’ve been having problems with the gates, and now it’s time that I looked into it myself. As for returning to the human world—come see me when you’re ready to leave. My warriors will escort you to my forest and help you find an open gate. I’m going to stay here for a few days, however. Oberon and I have some catching up to do.”

Once they were alone again, Tamisin turned to Jak and said, “I owe you an apology. It wasn’t your fault that my mother’s kiss made me want to come back, or that the gate wasn’t opening and I couldn’t get through. I’ve never been so frustrated in my life! I am sorry I acted kind of crazy, though.”

Jak leaned toward her to rest his forehead against hers. “And I’m sorry I didn’t help you when you needed me. I didn’t know the compulsion Titania placed on you was so strong until you told me that night. I started looking for another gate, but the one behind my house never opened again, and I couldn’t find any others that were open. I wanted to tell you, but by then you didn’t want to talk to me. Do you believe me when I say that I love you?”

Tamisin laughed. “How could I not believe you? You admitted it under the influence of truth nectar, so it has to be true. The thing is, I love you, too. I may not have shown it, but I never stopped loving you. I was miserable without you. My poor parents couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me.” Tamisin frowned and her eyes grew distant. “I left without leaving word. My parents have no idea what happened to me. I wonder how much time has passed.”

“You’ll be back soon, and you can tell your parents what happened. I just hope we haven’t missed our entire summer vacation,” said Jak.

Tamisin looked horrified. “That would be awful! I had so much planned!”

“I hope those plans include me,” Jak told her.

“From now on all my plans are going to include you. And the first thing I plan to do is this.” Her eyes were shining when she brushed Jak’s lips with a feather-light kiss. Suddenly his arms were around her and the kiss was anything but light.