Page 147 of Mama Si's Paradise

Freedom.

I’d gotten everything I’d been hoping for since I climbed on the boat with Mama Si that dreadful day—freedom.I was free, and Ineverhad to go back to the Whispering Woods again. With this ring, I never had to go back!

Tears in my eyes. I turned around as the snickering sound I knew well filled my ears, to find Shadow flying in circles over my head as if he were calling for me.

Leaving the mirror behind, I followed his lead, eyes on the rock that I couldn’t see the tip of, wondering how the hell I was going to get off this place.

“Where are we going, Shadow?” I asked as the dragon led me to the left. Walking on those small rocks even with sneakers on was pretty difficult.

Rocks and more rocks and the sky and the open air—that’s all I saw. A miracle I hadn’t thrown up yet, especially with this heat. I was sweating within the minute, and I had no choice but to take off my leather jacket and leave it right there on the shore. The shawl would stay with me to cover my head just in case, until I figured out a way to get off this Isle and get back to the real world.

“Is there a boat somewhere around here?” I asked Shadow, as if I really thought he could give me an answer. “Is there—oh.”

Stairs. There were stairs carved out of rock where Shadow’s long tail was pointing. Stairs that went up and up and up—all the way to the top of the Aerie.

“Really? You want to me to climb those?” I asked Shadow, whose only response was that sound he made, like a reptile or a squirrel, or something in between.

“A boat would be nice, Shadow. Aboat—not stairs.”

Except there was no boat here on this beach, just rocks for about twenty feet around the base of the cliff, which covered over ninety-nine percent of the Isle’s surface. I’d seen it from a distance the day Mama Si brought me here, and I’d seen it through the mirror in the castle and on the map engraved on Romin’s round table. The faeries lived atop the rock and deep inside it, and if I had any hope of finding the best way out of here, I had to ask around. I had to talk to other people. Tofaeries. To see them from closer up, see their wings and their hair and their faces.

Excitement shot throughout me, and before I knew it, I was walking up the stairs, holding onto any sharp edge I could find because they were incredibly steep. Some steps were missing, some half-ruined, and the farther up I went the more I was sure that I’d be falling back to the ground before I made it all the way up.

Shadow followed me, flying close by everystep of the way, but he could do nothing if my foot slipped. He couldn’t carry my weight with that size, and I should have thought harder on that. I should have known my arms and legs would grow numb soon.

But by the time I realized my mistake, I was already halfway up the rock, and to try to descend those stairs again would be insane. Fear had my heart slamming in my chest, and it was a relief not to try to control it for once—not that I could in those moments.

“Don’t look down, don’t look down, don’t look down,”I chanted to myself with every new step I took. I could hardly feel my fingers and my legs, but I moved because what other choice was there?

Then I began to hear the sound.

Shadow called to me with a screeching cry as if to tell me to hurry. As if to tell me that I was close to the surface. Close to the faeries—actual faeries.

The energy boost that sound gave me was incredible. Before I knew it, I gripped the edge of the sharp rock of the surface and pulled myself up with all my strength.

Safe.

Solid rock under me. I sat at the very edge of the cliff, trying to catch my breath, to calm my racing heart, to massage my numb hands. I was cut in several places and I hadn’t even felt it, but most was dry blood and the wounds had already closed. The Enchanted, as the brides told me, healed very, very quickly.

“I made it,” I kept whispering to myself, shocked at my own statement. I’d made it all the way up the half missing stairs of the side of this cliff, and I was somehow still alive.

My legs shook, but I forced myself to stand up anyway to take in my surroundings. Fuck, it felt like I was on top of the world. I saw everything from up here. The sky and the ocean in each other’s embrace. The Isles—Dragons’ Den with itslarge mountain in the middle to my right, and Sirens’ Lair in the distance to the left, but I could only see its silhouette.

Ahead of me, right in the middle of the other Isles, was the Whispering Woods.

My God, it was massive. I had seen so little from where Mama Si had stopped her boat that day. I’d seen but a small fraction of it, and now the stories about hunting and animals and mountains finally made sense. The Whispering Woods was bigger than all the other Isles, it seemed, and every inch of it was covered in darkness.

I’d been in that darkness until possibly just an hour ago, maybe a little more. I’d been in there, stuck, trapped, unable to see this gorgeous sky, to feel the warmth of this sun.

I turned toward the sound of people walking and talking and laughing, and I was shocked all over again. A big crowd was gathered maybe thirty feet away from me behind a row of smaller trees with big green leaves hanging on the healthy-looking branches.Brownwood. Trees that were alive—not the dead-looking ones of the Whispering Woods.

As if hypnotized by them, I went a bit closer, and I saw colors. So many bright, beautiful colors that I’d missed so much in that castle. Before the minute was over, I was in front of that tree line looking directly at them.

So many people—possibly hundreds, and not only faeries, but others without wings as well. A couple wore black robes and witch hats, and others had scales over their shoulders. People from the other Isles, just like Valentine said.

I stumbled forward, taking in everything that went on around me—the music, the faeries playing it here and there, some with flutes and some with instruments that kind of looked like violins and guitars but not quite, and another with a set of drums in front of him, slamming two round rocks against them in a perfect rhythm. They were all playing the same melody from different partsof this…Bazaar.

That’s what the bright blue ribbon attached to one of the wooden stands said—The Faerie Bazaar,and they soldeverythinghere.

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