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HALLIE TURNED OVER in bed yet again. She’d been trying to sleep for over an hour, but it evaded her.
Maybe it was the dancing, floating golden pixies that drifted around the room like fireflies.
Maybe the enormity of her task and her lack of progress.
She glanced over at Wyn and felt the tension again, nearly palpable.
She squeezed her eyes closed and rolled over again, willing her body to relax, her mind to stop its restless loops. It jumped from Nathan to Wyn to Kat and then cycled back again and again. Worrying about failing the bargain. Losing Kat for good. Being stuck here the rest of her life.
Losing Wyn.
Wyn was probably right that it was Hallie’s fault they’d started drifting apart after the funeral. And if she wasn’t careful, Hallie would end up completely alone.
With a frustrated huff, she threw the downy white blanket off of her, dropped her feet onto the soft, cool moss carpet, and threw a robe over her shoulders. Then she was out the door, her steps silent on the spongy floor.
The forest path was empty and quiet save for the chirping of spring peepers. One of the small frogs hopped across the path in front of her, and she sidestepped quickly to avoid it. Mist drifted as always, painted blue and silver by moonlight, and the light faded to black in the deepest reaches of the forest between demesnes.
She cinched the belt of the robe and looked in each direction. She’d already been to the left, toward the dining glade and where she had first been brought to the Court. To the right was the library, but she hadn’t been any deeper into the forest.
She turned right, her bare feet quickly growing cold against the damp earth of the path. She passed many demesnes, assuming they were the quarters of the nobles and perhaps some of the servants. They were marked by small steps made of roots and moss leading to thick mist between two thick trunks, just like the entrance to her own guest suite.
She walked for at least ten minutes, and the sound of the peepers grew louder with every step. The firefly-like pixies were drifting back, too, adding their warm golden light to the cold light of the moon.
Her feet carried her deeper into the woods. Maybe this walk in the crisp night air would soothe her spirit and allow her mind to finally rest.
Yet, the more she walked, the more she felt her mind drift. A pixie settled on her shoulder and laid one tiny hand on her jaw, her eyes full of concern, but Hallie did her best to ignore her. And the burning tears in her own eyes.
There was a time she’d shared a night much like this one with Kat. The girls had grown up together, had even been neighbors for years. One night when they were eleven, they snuck out after bedtime and back into the woods behind their houses. It was late summer, so the fireflies were out en masse, and Kat had brought a jar. They must have caught at least twenty of the tiny bugs, leaving them in the jar and using their light to find their fort in the woods, one tucked neatly in a small clearing. They’d stayed up until the early hours of the morning, watching the stars and talking by the light of fireflies until they were too tired to stay out a moment longer.
The pixie fluttered off her shoulder, joining the ones flying in front of Hallie. They veered off the path onto a grassy trail shooting off to the right. She followed, curious where they might lead her.
The grass began to speckle with what appeared to be deep purple flowers, but it was hard to actually tell the color in the moonlight. The trees turned from aspen, hemlock, and hickory into the ghostly white of birch, growing farther apart and allowing in more of the moonlight. Above her, the stars twinkled peacefully, oblivious to her mortal chaos.
The pixies drifted forward, and Hallie followed. They climbed a small ridge, and then the forest returned.
But this forest was different from the rest of the Court.
The trees here were bigger, towering above those behind her, their gray trunks as wide as a car. Moss draped the thick branches like garlands, and tiny lights in blue and pink and white glittered in the fronds. About a hundred yards deeper, a small pond glimmered in the night. The trill of the peepers seemed to emanate from there.
And below, between the massive trees, stood a number of stones, evenly spaced around a single large monolith.
Hallie ventured down the hill toward the stones, the pixies fluttering around her and ahead of her, tinkling with pleased little songs. The trees seemed to reach toward her, welcoming her, and as she approached, the air grew warmer. The chirping of the frogs greeted her as she took the first steps from the grass onto the loamy earth.
She approached the largest stone, a chunk of granite carved with intricate repeating patterns and topped with a gold statue of a Fae woman, her head bent and arms out toward the viewer. The script on the stone was in Fae, but Hallie knew enough of the language to make out some key words. It appeared this stone was a memorial to someone important, someone who had passed away during the War of the Courts. It had been a turbulent time for the Fae, when each of the seasonal courts were still young and establishing their boundaries, a bloody, violent time that no human had borne witness to.
Could it be that the Spring Court had lost one of its royals? Who else would have such a lovely statue?
But then again, perhaps it wasn’t a memorial at all. Just because it referenced a war didn’t mean it was for the dead. Perhaps it was simply a record, a history of the people.
Humans knew so little about the Fae. Even in her studies she’d never learned more than the myths and legends of the Fae’s interactions with the humans.
Besides, if the Fae could resurrect in the Spring Court, why would they need a memorial?
Hallie settled onto a bench under one of the trees, and the pixies settled next to her. She stared at the stones, at the pond, losing herself in the same thoughts that kept her from sleeping and wondering why Fae who could resurrect would have a graveyard.
