“The Glass Mountains,” Athena told me.
To my dismay—and just as in the dreams and visions—they did seem to be actual glass. As we rode closer, the peaks grew taller, jagged edges gleaming sharp, catching passing clouds and shredding them. The smaller, slightly more rounded foothills became more clear over the course of the day. But even this mountain girl didn’t see how anyone could travel through those intimidating sharp valleys.
“Do people really manage to traverse these mountains?”
Fergus snorted out a laugh. “Only the crazy ones. And the heroic types. Same thing, really.”
I gave him a sour look. “You did it.”
“Guilty on all charges.”
“Is there any other way to reach Titania’s palace?”
“I’ve been trying for years—that’s why I’m riding your coattails, Lady Sorceress.”
Just great.
We stayed at a Brownie village that night, in the foothills of the Glass Mountains. Staying with the Brownies meant lots of cheerful singing, brandishing of the light-up pillows I’d invented, and being left pretty much alone. Larch joined us with a pack mule loaded with supplies and said he’d stick with us from then on.
“Did Blackbird make it onto the ship for her voyage?” I asked in an innocent tone over dinner. Starling bit her lip, staring at her plate, and Athena looked amused. Fergus visibly flinched. Go me.
“She did, my lady sorceress.”
“I think she won’t find what she’s looking for.”
Larch rolled a blueberry eye in Fergus’s direction. “It appears not.”
“Any way to get her a message, do you suppose?”
“No, my lady. Quite impossible.”
“I hate to think of her, all alone, undertaking such an enormous journey, all for a lie.”
Fergus glared at me over his tankard. “Come from a Catholic family, do you, Gwynn? You’re quite expert with the guilt.”
“I like to think I come by it naturally.”
He sighed. “What would you have me do? We’ve just established there’s no way to get her a message.”
“Make it right.”
“How am I to do that?”
“You could go after her,” Starling said to her plate.
He glanced at her, surprised. “I can’t do that.”
“You can,” I pointed out. “You choose not to.”
Fergus clamped down on the words he had been about to say, pressing his lips together and shaking his head. “You don’t know how things are. What she did.”
“Actually, Daddy—” Starling tossed her hair back and stared him in the face, “—we do know.”
“Do you then?” He breathed and reached out to touch a shining lock of her hair, faltering when she pulled back. “Then you understand, Little Bit, that it was never about you.”
“It is about me. You can’t parse out who gets hurt when you make choices like that.” Starling sounded surprisingly calm. Not the daughter Fergus remembered, by the look on his face. “I’m here to find my brother too. This quest belongs to all of us. You could let us do this and go find Mother.”
Fergus looked pained. “I can’t.”