“I want to go to the Fair Lands and help the Wraith, and I want you to go with me.”
“That’s absolutely mad.” Oliver’s eyes were wide.
“Why?” She met his gaze stubbornly. “He can’t have that much more magic than you and I put together. He’s human, isn’t he?”
“Well, yes, but he knows what he’s doing. He’s brilliant, and he probably has a whole team helping him. I know nothing about the Fair Lands, except that they’re perilous and unpredictable, and neither do you!”
“All we have to do now is find a way into the Fair Lands.”
“No, Lily.” Oliver looked panicked. “It’s a terrible idea. What if the Fair Folk catch you?”
“What if they don’t? I’ll be careful. I won’t go wandering around foolishly. I just want to see how it is there, and whether there is anything we might be able to do to help the Wraith.”
The opportunities for a young lady to find passage through the veil to the Fair Lands without being discovered by her parents were few and far between. Lily didn’t even know how to start looking, but decided that feeling around with her negligible magical senses was the most logical starting point.
She tried at various points around the city when she was out visiting Araminta or the dressmaker with her mother, but she had no success until one day when they passed near the children’s home. She held her breath, trying to figure out from which direction the feeling came.
It was a fuzzy, indistinct sort of unsettledness, and the direction was difficult to pinpoint. The movement of the carriage made the exercise all the more challenging. The only thing she was sure of was that the feeling came from somewhere between the palace and the children’s home, perhaps a bit to the south. It was a wide area.
Later that afternoon she asked Oliver to take her on a drive. Her mother looked a little confused by the request, but Oliver, seeing her expression, readily assented.
They hired a carriage and had the driver let them out as near to the feeling as Lily could determine. Once she and Oliver were alone, she murmured to him, “I felt an opening near here, I think. There was something strange.”
Little groups of people strolled up the street, and Oliver and Lily turned to look around and wait for them to pass. When the people were out of earshot, Oliver said, “What does it feel like?”
“I’m not sure how to describe it. Like a hole, or a pluck in the fabric of the world. I wish my magic were stronger,” she said in frustration.
“I can’t sense it at all,” Oliver said consolingly. “Where shall we go from here?”
He let her lead him down the street and into a disused alley. At the far end, there was another turn, and Oliver hesitated. “This really isn’t a place for a lady.”
Lily frowned. “We won’t be here long. I just want to see.” The little alley ended in a dirty little courtyard between several buildings. She drew him toward one corner. “Something here feels strange.”
She put her hand against the wall, and it passed into the stone as if through water. She flinched in surprise, and Oliver jerked her away from it.
“Did it hurt you?”
“No, it was just strange.” She looked up at him. “Let’s go.”
“Lily, please don’t do this.” He looked at her seriously. “I cannot keep you safe in the Fair Lands. I know nothing about them, and I have virtually no magic.”
She trembled with the strength of longing within her. “We won’t go far. I just want to see it, Oliver.”
“This is a terrible idea. What will I tell Mother and Father if something happens?” He pleaded caution, but he wanted to go, to see the Fair Lands, to be part of the adventure.
“Come with me.” She looked up at him. “You know I can always come back and go alone.”
He met her gaze. “Don’t, Lily. Please don’t. I’ll go with you now, if you promise me you won’t go alone. Ever.”
Lily bit her lip. “All right.” A pang of guilt assailed her. She had manipulated him, although it had not been planned. The words had slipped out, a sudden ‘what if I…’ rather than an intentional threat. But he had agreed now, and she did not have it in her to stop now.
She stepped forward into the strange, transparent wall, gripping his hand tightly. Passing into the veil felt like a wash of cool water over her, and she sucked in a surprised breath at the chill.
Oliver stood close and edged slightly in front of her. “It’s a tunnel.”
Lily wasn’t sure what she had expected, but a boring, dark, stone tunnel was not it. Something moved in the distance, and Oliver took a cautious step forward.
“What is that?” he whispered.
Lily shook her head wordlessly. The light from the courtyard behind them filtered in weakly and the shadows moved as if they were alive. The darkness in front of them shifted.
A short distance ahead, she saw a wooden door against the left wall of the tunnel. “Why don’t we try that door?” she whispered.
“It’s so close. Are the Fair Lands really that close to ours?” whispered Oliver in reply.
“I don’t know.” Lily strode forward with a sense of purpose, pulled Oliver after her. The door had a strange knob in the exact center, and she placed her hand on it with trepidation.
The knob turned easily without a sound, and she peered out cautiously before she stepped out. They appeared to be in a garden.
In the distance, there was strange, quick music made by unfamiliar instruments. A clear, high voice sang a wailing song above the musicians, and other voices sang and talked in lower tones. An unfamiliar rhythm tugged at Lily’s feet, and she resolved not to dance.
Many of the plants in view were flowering, but none of them were familiar. There were tiny white star-shaped flowers in great low mounds lining paths of cobalt pebbles. Green flowers as large as her face drooped from fuchsia-trunked trees to her left. Before her were bushes with leaves that sparkled like gold in the silver light, which came from a moon far too large and close.
A rabbit-like creature with pointed ears like a fox and fur of a deep violet stared at her from beneath a bush, wiggling its nose. To her right, the cobalt path led beneath an arbor covered in deep blue roses.
Lily stepped out onto the path cautiously, and Oliver was only a step behind.
The little creature bared pointed teeth at them.
“Go away,” Oliver whispered.
It hissed like a cat, then turned and flipped its long, fluffy tail at them in dismissal.
A deep voice from very close said, “Someone is here.”
Oliver pulled Lily back with him into the tunnel and slammed the door shut just as another voice began to reply. The door handle jiggled, and Oliver pushed Lily ahead of him and ran.
The exit was not where they expected it to be, and they ran with panic in their veins before tumbling, with no warning, out into the same courtyard they had left.
Oliver steadied Lily. “That was awful and you’re never going back,” he said.
“It was beautiful!” At his flat look, she added, “And terrifying. You’re right. I don’t know what I could do there. But I wish I could… I don’t know. Do something.”
“You promised, Lily.”