Page 186 of Sigils & Spells

I would have glared at her if horses could glare, but instead I was distracted by a thought. If my human body was replaced with a horse body and my clothes just kind of disappeared when I was a horse, what did that mean about creatures in my pocket? Where was Alice?

Luckily, before I really started to panic, I felt little tiny claws on the back of my neck. Sugar glider Alice must be hiding in my mane.

I let out another breath, and turned my huge head to see Ruby staring at me wide eyed. She made a quick motion, moving her hand up to her mouth and shaking her head adamantly. She was mimicking putting food in her mouth. Don’t eat anything. That’s what she was saying.

I didn’t have any way to respond as a horse, so I just looked at her.

Ruby was still watching me, her eyebrows knit, before one of the Fae shoved her shoulder forcing her to turn. A moment later, another one did the same to me by pulling on the gold lasso, forcing me to face where the trees faded out into blackness. Why did it get so dark so fast away from the clearing? The sun was up and the trees couldn’t have been that thick, but it looked like the sun couldn’t find its way past the first trees.

Or maybe it didn’t want to.

The Fae led me through the trees. Darkness seemed to swirl around my hooves like dark mist. If I’d had any control of my body, I wouldn’t have been able to make myself set foot into that darkness.

The longer the lasso was looped around me, the less my body seemed to need me in order to move. And after a half dozen steps, the darkness seemed to swallow me.

* * *

The darkness was short lived.I’d imagined a forest without light, and pictured a long trudging walk through a stifling and dank forest.

But that darkness was so thick that it looked like mist, literally was mist. My horse mouth made a whiney-snort sound as the darkness that surrounded me parted, cut through by sunlight. I had to squint for a moment, the light dazzling after the utter lack of light, even if it had only lasted a heartbeat.

My hooves hit stone. The grass underfoot turned to a cobble stone bath. The forest was still there, now a solid line of trees with that dark mist coiling amongst the trunks. Almost all the way up against the tree line was the wide cobble stone path we now stood on. The path was lined with clumps of daffodils.

Opposite the forest was an empty field that stretched until it disappeared over the crest of a shallow hill. The grass looked as soft as it had in the clearing before. But this grass was filled with the golden heads of dandelions and white bursts of yarrow. Bees and butterflies flitted and buzzed between the flowers. It was beautiful, and every bone in my body wanted to lay in that grass, or pick the flowers to make a messy bouquet for Alice.

Like I’d seen through the hagstone, a thin, barely visible version of the glittery glow seemed to float over the field like a dewy mist. But I knew enough to know that meant the field was covered in magic.

I was too entranced by the field to notice where the Fae were leading me.

At first glance it seemed like there was nothing but the meadow and the forest, separated by the path, but the road was guiding us to a town. The strict line where the forest ended began to fade as we approached. The trees spread fewer and far between, but bigger. The cobble stone under my hooves began to twist around the trees, until we were back in the forest. Now though, the palpable darkness was gone, leaving only the bird and insect song that came with a forest. The trees here were massive. We cut deeper into the trees, but the light stayed bright and the trees only grew.

The town started slowly. First we passed what looked like a house, dug out of a small hill, with a door that looked too small. And then a cottage with organized farm-like rows of bright flowers, and then what looked like a field of doll sized houses.

As we entered the town, it seemed we also reentered the forest, but now the trees were further apart, with no sign of the palpable darkness. The trees seemed bigger here too. Not just tall, but thick, with wide foliage that cast the town into a gentle shade, without making it dark.

The further we went, the bigger the trees got, until the cottages were in the trees, built around them and carved out of their trunks without killing them.

We were approaching the center of the town. The cottages became closer together, and soon it wasn’t just cottages, but a market, lining the cobbled path. The market was calm, possibly because it was still so early, but still Fae creatures I’d read of in stories along with creatures I’d never heard of milled about stands with baskets of impossibly shaped fruits.

A hunched little creature with green, lumpy skin like a toad haggled with a short and stout bearded man, who I suddenly realized was a dwarf, over a silver goblet.

Somewhere in the distance were the gentle sounds of flute music and tiny glowing creatures who looked like fireflies but had the bodies of humans flitted around our heads.

Alice’s tiny claw dug into the back of my neck, and I wondered if she were seeing all of this. If she was as amazed as I was. The only reason I wasn’t stock still and gawking was because of the magic in the lasso that the mushroom woman led me by.

The Fae in the market barely glanced at us as we passed through, though a tall Fae woman with short tawny fur and wide antlers who held a bow at the ready and wore that same leather armor clothing nodded at the owl Fae as if in salute. He nodded back in that same curt way. They must be soldiers, or Maeve’s guard, and that woman must have been one of them.

The market ended, and opened upon some kind of town square, where the cobblestone spread out to a huge circle that melted into an incredibly wide staircase.

My jaw dropped, and I accidentally took a step back, pulling on the lasso, which burned a little at my disobedience.

What I had taken for so many trees creating a canopy of foliage, was not a forest worth of trees. Just one tree. One massive tree. It made redwoods look like twigs. The stairs that led up only covered a small part at the base of the tree, but it must have been as big around as a city block, and the top disappeared into its own foliage, but the tree had to be nearly a thousand feet tall. I’d been in major cities only a few times in my life, but none of those buildings were anything to this. Huge mansion sized houses were built into swells of roots, and all the way up the trunk were, what from here looked like glowing chunks of glass embedded into the side, but what had to be rooms. The tree seemed to glitter.

“Craeb Daithí,” the mushroom woman said under her breath, almost to herself. But once she did, she and every Fae guard bowed their heads towards the tree. I wanted to ask what she’d said, but it came out as a snort again. Somehow, the Fae seemed to know that I was asking a question, because even as she pulled on the reins again and I was forced back into a trot, she answered in a low voice. “Craeb Daithi. Our home tree. Maeve’s hearth.”

And she left it there.

We climbed the stairs which led up to a landing where the tree opened up into a cavernous hollow. The Fae didn’t give me long to gawk though, instead pulling me to the far left of the opening, down a huge root with a ramp carved into it. The root was wide enough to be a road, and I could see the droppings and hoof prints of other horses they must have led this same route.

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