Page 50 of The Iron Raven

I felt like I was inside a pinball machine, bouncing wildly from place to place with no time to stop, breathe, or think. Coaleater huddled in the corner with his arms crossed and his jaw clenched, looking straight ahead and waiting for it to be over. Nyx had drawn into her hood and closed her eyes as she leaned back, the picture of calm except for the tight press of her lips and the flexing of her fingers each time the carriage changed direction.

Finally, the ride came to another instant, jarring stop, but this time, it didn’t immediately surge forward. After a few seconds of waiting, bracing myself for another burst of motion, I gradually relaxed, letting my jaw, arms, knees, fingers, and other muscles uncoil. My butt cheeks were clenched so tightly they would feel like rocks for several days.

“Okay,” I breathed as my two companions slowly uncoiled as well, “that settles it. No more complaining about giant spider carriages. I didn’t think there could be anything worse, but apparently I can still be wrong every century or so.”

“That was...interesting,” Nyx mused, trying in vain to smooth down her hair. I reached up to feel my own and found it standing on end like a dandelion puff. Sparks snapped at my fingers as I withdrew my hand. “Where are we now, I wonder?”

“Let’s find out,” Coaleater rumbled, and shoved back the door, letting in a cool breeze that dispersed the charged air of the carriage.

My relief at being out of the carriage was short-lived as I hopped from the doorframe, dropped a few feet, and landed in a pool of standing water up to my knees. My hooves sank into the mud and with a yelp, I leaped for the nearest patch of land, only to find the nice, dry-looking spot of grass I’d aimed for was waterlogged as well. Finding a stump, I perched gingerly atop the wood, shaking out my hooves and surveying our surroundings.

Apparently, we had landed in the middle of a swamp. Pools of black, still water surrounded tiny islands of dry land, dead trees and long cattails poking out of the mud. A few feet away, the carriage floated above the offending water, the two hinds that carried it perched daintily on a rock. The driver, gazing down at me with a half-amused, half-apologetic look, shook his head.

“Forgive me, Master Goodfellow,” he called. “If you had waited a moment, I would have opened the door and also warned you to watch your step.”

“Oh, no worries.” I turned and gave him a wide, toothy grin. “It’s not like I can craft an elaborate prank where every time you venture outside you step in mud for the rest of your life. That’s not something a normal faery could do, right?”

His face blanched, losing the amused look as he stammered a much more heartfelt apology.

I felt a tiny prick of gleeful satisfaction. There was so much I hadn’t done in many, many years; maybe it was time to remind everyone, Iron fey included, why Robin Goodfellow was a faery you did not want to cross.

With a splash, Coaleater dropped from the carriage into the pool of water, not seeming to notice or care about the wet soaking his boots. Nyx was right behind him, only she leaped gracefully from the edge and landed on a mound of dry earth a few feet away. A gust of wind pushed her hood back and caught her silver hair, tossing it around her. My heart twisted, torn between smiling wistfully and hurling a mudball at her.

I looked around and saw the second carriage a few paces away, glowing against the darkness. Unlike our carriage, it had chosen to touch down on a patch of dry land, small but large enough for two people to stand on. Ash was helping Meghan out of the carriage, and Grimalkin sat a couple feet away on a rock, busily washing his tail. For just a second, I thought the cat’s fur looked twice its normal size, poofed out like the feline had just gone through the spin cycle in a dryer. But I blinked, or maybe the moonlight shifted, and the cat was back to normal.

With a crackle of energy, the two carriages sprang into the air, trailing sparks and light, and flashed their way across the swamp. Bouncing from rock to rock, they zipped across the ground like twin balls of lightning. In seconds, they had disappeared.

The three of us sloshed our way toward the rulers of the Iron Realm and their small, dry island in the center of the swamp. “Well, this is a lovely place,” I commented as Coaleater and I splashed up. The fur on my legs was already drenched; I saw no point in trying to pick my way across the dry spots. Unlike Nyx, who somehow did just that. “I take it we’re still in the Iron Realm?”

“Yes,” Meghan replied. “This place is called the Glowing Swamp, and it sits close to the spot where we’ll find the oracle, according to Grim. We’ll have to cross into the wyldwood first, but the border isn’t far. We just might have to get our feet a little wet.”

Beside her on an old log, Grimalkin sniffed. “Speak for yourself, Iron Queen,” he muttered, and hopped off the stump onto a nearby rock. “This way to the oracle,” he called back, trotting into the swamp with his plumed tail held high. “Do try to keep up, and donotthink to ‘accidentally’ splash water at me if you wish to reach your destination at all, Goodfellow.”

I snickered. “You wound me, Furball,” I scoffed as the five of us headed into the marsh after the cat. “Why would I use water when mud is so much more entertaining?”

The marsh was still as we followed the cat over puddles and small bits of dry ground, but it was hardly silent. Insects buzzed, a constant drone in our ears, and birds trilled somewhere in the reeds. Every so often, there was a nearby splash as some creature vanished into the dark waters, always gone before I could see it clearly.

Nyx glided along beside me, as graceful and silent as a shadow. A few paces ahead, Meghan and ice-boy led the way, and Coaleater sloshed tirelessly through the mud, steam curling from his nose and mouth to drift away on the breeze. I felt a twinge of nostalgia, of familiarity; how many times had I done this—me and my two closest friends, following an annoying cait sith toward an unknown destination? Circumstances would be different, and our allies would change, but somehow, it was always us four—me, Meghan, Ash, and Grimalkin, on a quest to save the Nevernever once again.

And yet, if that was the case, why did this time feel so different? Maybe becauseIwas different now. Maybe because the happy-go-lucky, smile-even-when-it-hurts, has-a-joke-for-everything goofball was gone, and the faery left behind made everyone slightly uncomfortable. Even me.

An orange glow suddenly lit the darkness, and we came upon a narrow wooden walkway stretching out over the swamp. A lantern hung from one of the posts, swaying gently and filling the air with a high-pitched creaking sound.

“This is the edge of the Iron Realm,” Meghan announced, stepping onto the boardwalk with an expression of relief. Mud clung to her knee-high boots, but the rest of her had escaped mostly unscathed, unlike myself and Coaleater, whose bottom halves looked like we had sloshed out from the set ofSwamp Thing. No one doubted or questioned her claim. Like all rulers of Faery, she was strongest while within her own realm and knew instantly when she had left her territory. “Where did you say the oracle lived, Grim?”

Grimalkin leaped atop one of the wooden posts and vigorously shook one back leg, looking indignant that it had dared get wet. Only after he’d sat down and licked it furiously several times did he deign to answer.

“The oracle lives deep in the Black Marsh, whose edge we have only now reached,” the cat replied, rising with a yawn and a wave of his tail. “It is not too far, but it is not terribly close, either.”

“Vague as always, Furball.”

“Does anything else live out here?” Nyx wondered, stepping easily onto the planks. She had managed to keep herself bone-dry through the entire trek, and I both admired her grace and envied her lack of soggy socks.

Meghan nodded, stepping back as the rest of us clambered atop the narrow boardwalk. “There are a few species of fey that call this swamp home,” she told the Forgotten. “But they’re shy and keep mostly to themselves. It’s likely we won’t see anyone until we get out of the marsh.”

After a few minutes, the dry land disappeared, the small islands vanishing beneath the muck, until it was a solid pool of black water and dead trees stretching away into the night. Colored fireflies appeared, bobbing over the surface like tiny Christmas lights, flashing red, green, blue, and pink against the pitch-black water. It was very quiet. Save for the tiny floating lights, nothing moved out in the swamp, no splashes of frogs or fish or startled turtles echoed around us. The surface was as still as a giant black mirror under the stars.

“I feel like we’re being watched,” Nyx murmured beside me.

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