Page 13 of When Sorrows Come

Every one of the deeper roads through Faerie has its own requirements—and its own costs. So far as I’m aware, only the Shadow Roads are still widely accessible. The Blodynbryd can reach the Rose Roads, but there are only two Blodynbryd left in the world as far as I know, so it’s not like they can set up a bus service. All Cait Sidhe can access the shadows, when they want to, although how well they navigate them and how long they can stay inside them is tied to the same sliding scale of power as whatever it is that makes a kitten a Prince or Princess, and eventually a King or Queen. As San Francisco’s King of Cats, Tybalt had been the living anchor of the Shadow Roads for decades, and when he set them aside, Raj would be right there to pick them up, keeping them accessible for the cats of their Kingdom. All the other roads might fall and be forgotten, but the Shadow Roads would endure as long as there were Cait Sidhe to run along them.

Tybalt stepped into the shadows, which parted for him like theater curtains, and we were plunged into a lightless, airless void, all heat and light replaced by the pounding of his heart and the thudding of his feet against the unseen ground. I curled into his arms, utterly helpless in this place where I would always be an intruder, no matter how many times I was invited, no matter how much he loved me.

Faerie keeps its secret places well-hidden when it can, and well-protected when it can’t. The Shadow Roads would suffocate me if I dared to relax and stop holding my breath.

Or they’d try, anyway. Access to the shadows is a gift of the Cait Sidhe bloodline. Being basically impossible to kill, no matter how hard you try, is a gift of mine. I’ve drowned, been stabbed, bled to death, and—my personal favorite—fallen from such a great height that impact with the ground broke every bone in my body. And every time, I’ve gotten better. If Tybalt tripped and dropped me in the darkness, there was every chance I could stay lost there for decades, suffocating and then recovering, only to suffocate again without a chance to take a breath and start searching for my own exit.

Was it any wonder that when he carried me, I didn’t struggle or try to get away? I’ve been dropped on the Shadow Roads once, when Raj’s father, Samson, led a short-lived rebellion against Tybalt. Those few seconds ranked among the most terrifying things I’ve ever experienced, and that’s saying a lot, given what else I’ve been through.

Now, though... now he carried me, the smell of musk and pennyroyal suffusing the... not air, because there was no air, but the space around us, so that they tickled my nose even as I held my breath to keep the cold from getting in. I could feel the ice forming in my hair, but his body was warm against my own, and his arms were tight, and I knew I was safe.

Just as my lungs began to truly ache from my refusal to take a breath, Tybalt tensed, and leapt, driving us out of the dark and back into the light... sort of. Gone was the eternal semi-twilight of a city after sundown, replaced by the much deeper natural dark that gathered among the redwoods of Muir Woods.

He set me on my feet and took a step away, breathing heavily. I coughed, leaning forward and putting my hands on my knees as I remembered how to breathe. It wasn’t the easiest thing ever.

“Well, wasn’t that better than a long drive with our merry band of fools?” I finally wheezed.

Tybalt laughed. His voice was still thready and strained, but he already sounded better. He straightened, offering a smile as he pushed his hair out of his eyes. There were no ice crystals onhim. Someday, I’ll figure out how the Shadow Roads manage to simply chill him, while they put me all the way through the deep freeze.

“If it grants me more time alone with you before our lives descend into chaos, it can only be of benefit to me,” he said.

I snorted and straightened in turn, walking over to him. “Liar,” I said.

He raised an eyebrow. “And why am I a liar?”

“As if there has ever been a time when our liveshaven’tdescended into chaos.” I offered him my hand. He took it, tucking it into the crook of his arm as he began leading me deeper into the wood.

It was early enough that the evening dew hadn’t had time to settle, leaving the wooden paths constructed by the forestry department for tourist use dry and easy to walk along. I still focused on my steps as I thawed out, trying to concentrate on not taking a tumble and landing us both in one of the park’s many rushing streams or piles of poison oak. The signs reminding tourists to stay on the path aren’t only for the protection of the native plant life. Poison oak is one of those experiences I can absolutely do without, and healing fast doesnotprotect me from topical allergens.

There’s been less of it in Muir Woods since Arden came back, reopened her knowe, and turned the place into a hotspot of fae activity. There are no local Dryads yet—it takes time for their trees to sprout and grow—but Hamadryads, who have the ability to transfer their bond between home trees, have been moving into the redwoods, and Tylwyth Teg like our friend Walther have been encouraging the local plants to grow in ways more beneficial to the Court.

I guess this could sound like interference with a protected biosphere, and technically it sort of is, but encouraging native ferns and flowers to grow at the expense of the poison oak isn’t the same as digging things up or poisoning their roots. Between the Hamadryads and the Tylwyth, I expected Muir Woods to be free of harmful plant life that wasn’t somehow necessary to the animal inhabitants within the next ten years. And good riddance.

But right here, right now, it was still a good idea to be cautious. My eyesight isn’t as good as Tybalt’s, and so I let him lead the way, guiding us through the trees until globes of bobbing light began to appear in the branches overhead, glowing pale and lambent and filling the air with something very much like starlight. I hugged Tybalt’s arm closer and kept walking, smiling as the chime of ringing bells announced the approach of the park’s swarm of pixies.

They swirled around us only a few seconds later, a living storm of Christmas lights, red and blue and green and pink and orange and yellow. They rang frantically the whole time, making sure we noticed them. As if there had been any chance we wouldn’t? I held out my hand, palm upward, and a few seconds later a pixie the color of a Blue Raspberry Jolly Rancher landed there, snapping her wings shut with a decisive chime.

I smiled at the diminutive figure. Most people view pixies as pests, but thanks to my tendency to get into trouble, I’ve had the opportunity to know them a little better. They’re intelligent, family-oriented people who keep their tiny communities as safe and cohesive as they can in a world that’s built to a scale much too big for them. Poppy, the Luidaeg’s Aes Sidhe apprentice, was a pixie once, before she traded her innate magic to save Simon’s life.

We don’t do anything simply in this family. Never have, probably never will.

“Well met,” I said, and the pixie chimed answer, inclining her head in greeting. Pixie voices are too high-pitched for people my size to understand although they can understand us well enough when they want to. I think sometimes they pretend we’re too slow and our voices are too deep just to excuse ignoring the things we ask of them.

This one was, thankfully, in a more genial mood. She lifted her head and smiled at me, the expression almost imperceptible on her tiny, glowing face.

“Will you light our way to Arden?” I asked. The pixie nodded enthusiastically and launched herself back into the air, wings glowing even brighter than before. She rejoined the swarm, and they all swirled around us like a glittering windstorm before unwinding into a gleaming ribbon that pointed the way toward the knowe.

Tybalt smiled at me fondly. “I remember finding you arguing drunkenly with one of their cousins over... you know, I don’t think I ever found out exactly what you were arguing over. The sort of thing which seems of immense importance to the inebriated, no doubt.”

I sighed. “I miss being able to get drunk when I wanted to.”

“I know, little fish. I also know that I would prefer you alive and sober to drunken and dead, and the very thing which prevents your drinking will keep your other choices from stealing you away from me like a thief in the midday sun.” He put his hand overmine, squeezing my fingers briefly. “To every cloud, a silver lining; to every curtain call, an encore.”

“Sometimes your optimism confuses the hell out of me,” I said. “With everything you’ve been through, I’d expect a bit more bitterness.”

Tybalt laughed. “I spent enough time very bitter indeed to understand that clinging to joy when I find it is the most essential thing in the world. Part of my coming to understand that is your fault, October. I realized quickly that if I dragged my feet with you, I would wind up weeping at your grave, and I have better things to do with my time.”

I rolled my eyes. “It’s a good thing you weren’t born in the modern era. You would be the most obnoxious theater kid ever to get completely obsessed with whatever’s hot on Broadway right now. And there’s nothing sadder than a fae theater kid dreaming of Broadway lights.” There’s iron in the groundwater in the Kingdom of Oak and Ash. That’s not a new thing, and the fae were able to scratch out a living there for a long while, but nothing lasts forever, even in Faerie, and as humanity built their great towers higher and higher, and the old cannonballs in the harbor rusted and polluted the shore more and more, it became obvious that anyone with an iron allergy needed to get out of there.

---