Page 6 of A City of Emeralds and Envy
Alice and I sit crosslegged in the old barn, facing each other across the damp straw, our faces lit by the lantern she brought along. The barn roof bellies inward, sagging and rotten, but it offers decent shelter from the rain. Fiero snuffles around while Alice tells me the strangest story I’ve ever heard—all about magic and faeries, and what really happened to her when she disappeared.
Anyone else might have trouble believing her tale. Not me. I’ve lived with magic ever since I can remember. And I’ve been waiting for a moment like this—a gateway into bigger things, into knowledge. I can see the door now—it’s open a crack, and all I want is to charge through it.
Best not to act too eager, though. I must be careful, and not let my mask fall off entirely.
“This is the book?” I point to the volume she’s clutching. “The one you took from Lord Drosselmeyer?”
“The very same. Only its true owner can use it, so if I gift it to you, you should be able to work magic with it, and perform a spell for me.”
I keep my voice soft, wondering, and uncertain. “But I’ve never done anything more than a bit of—well, I call it ‘agitation.’ I can agitate the small particles that make up non-living things—move them faster.”
Alice tilts her head, keenly curious, so I explain further. “I can feel the tiny bits that make up a substance like the stew or a cup of water, and I can agitate those bits, which produces heat or vibration. I can’t do it to living things—but if a living creature is already in motion, I can make the whole movement faster—speeding up a horse’s gallop, for example. I don’t use my power often, because… well, you know how wary everyone is around here. When I do risk it, sometimes I mess up the magic. But people usually attribute my mistakes to clumsiness or bad luck.”
“Yes, I know how people are around here.” Alice nods sympathetically. “And I won’t tell anyone what you can do. All I’m asking is that you accept the book. Maybe we can find a spell that will let me return to Faerie.”
An urgent need coils serpentlike around my heart, constricting it so fiercely I can barely breathe. The longing vibrates my nerves, sings in my blood, louder and louder as my fingers creep toward the book she’s holding out.
Wait. Not too eager. Slowly, now, carefully.
I have to say the things she’ll expect me to say.
“To Faerie?” I lift my eyebrows. “But what about your family? I can’t imagine leaving mine, no matter how fascinating another realm might be.” I feign a shiver. “By your own account, Faerie is a rather terrible place. Why do you want to go back?”
Color stains Alice’s pale cheeks. Her eyes glimmer with a mix of desire, fear, excitement, anger, and determination.
“Have you never been curious?” she says. “Have you never wanted to understand something so badly you’d do anything to figure it out? Have you never been seized by the desire to learn, to grow, toknow?”
I have, and I like her all the more for the confession. But the Dorothy I’m pretending to be has simple thoughts and simple wants, and in her voice I say, “I don’t feel like that. Mostly I try to finish my work as quickly as possible so I can sew. I love sewing. Are you saying you want to go back to Faerie just to—learn things?”
“That, and—there are some people I need to see.” She blushes deeper.
“The Fae males you mentioned. The ones who held you captive.” When she was telling me her story, I could hear the passion in her voice when she spoke of them. She did not tell me everything, but I suspect Alice is no longer a virgin. Another similarity between us.
“They were—indescribable,” Alice says quietly. “And I—can’t stop thinking about them. They’re in my head, always—one of them like a poison I’m addicted to, and the other as a sweet pain, the most precious kind.”
“Sweet pain,” I echo. That, I understand. The pain of a tender love, a first love. My love can never return, so there is nothing to hold me here.
“I’ll look through the book with you, but I can’t promise anything,” I tell Alice. “And if you do find a way to get back to Faerie, you have to say goodbye to your siblings before you go. Your first disappearance was hard on them.”
I don’t tell her that when she was gone, Saylie cried for hours in the dark. Sometimes I crept into their house at night, past the drunken father and the exhausted mother, just to check on the child. If she was weeping, I made pretty, soothing visions dance above her trundle bed until her lashes drifted shut. Too young to keep a secret, she talked about them in the morning—but everyone else thought she was speaking of her dreams.
“I won’t leave until I say goodbye,” Alice promises. “Do your parents know what you can do?”
“They know I have an ability, but we don’t discuss it. I use it at home sometimes, but only when they’re not looking. They don’t like to be reminded that I’m different. We don’t talk about awkward things in my family, only cheerful ones.”
“Sounds better than the constant arguments in my house.” Alice gives me a wry smile.
“It’s quieter.” I return the smile cautiously, feeling that flicker again, that instinct—this is someone I can trust.
Alice and I have never spent much time together—she’s always leaving the house as I arrive, or returning home when I’m heading out for the evening. She’s nearly a year older than I am, and though I’m as pretty as she is, I’m rather envious of her lovely gray eyes. Mine are mismatched. My real pride is my thick brown hair, which I usually keep bundled into two loose braids to cover my misshapen ears.
“Here.” Alice holds out the book. “I give you the Tama Olc, ancient spellbook of Faerie, to be your own possession.”
I reach out, and my fingers close on the spine.
My blood ignites.
Power roars through me, currents of shrieking flame that race along my veins and scream inside my brain. My heart thumps, huge and volatile, and in my head echoes a voice, chanting strange words. My lips crack apart, forced open, and the voice from my head issues into the air of the barn—air that is whirling, round and round, tossing my hair and Alice’s. Her fingers and mine are still galvanized to the book. I can’t let go, and I don’t think she can, either.
