Jewel…noticed a four-year-old of indeterminate gender in PJs and holding a stuffed something by one appendage.
“Are you a angel?”
“Uhm…no, I’m a færie,” Jewel told the (judging by the voice, probably) girl…“
“What kind?” The child’s chin just cleared the bottom of the mirror’s frame. She squinted at her reflection.
Jewel gave herself the once over and decided the truth would just have to do. “I’m the treasure seeking kind.”
A Missing Child and a Lot of Swag
As Jewel the Pixie stepped out of the mirror, her foot slipped off the edge of the divan.
She grabbed the inner side of the heavy brass frame but not before catching her thigh a good smack on the mirror’s lower edge. The other one flew up, clods of dirt arcing through the mirror and into the room. She managed to avoid falling, but did land gracelessly on the couch.
“Ow.” The pixie rubbed her aching thigh. After a few seconds, the pain faded and she could attend to the crinkly cellophane sound of her crumpled wings.
Sitting up, Jewel reached over her shoulders, gripped a wing in each hand, and pulled. She felt the snap as they returned to their flat state, thankful they had no nerves in them.
Standing, she and had just done the same for her lower pair of wings, when she noticed a four-year-old of indeterminate gender staring at her.
He/she was in PJs and holding a stuffed…something by one appendage. “Are you a angel?”
“Uhm…no, I’m a færie,” Jewel told the (judging by the voice, probably) girl.
The child seemed to give this some thought. “Where’s your wand?”
“Wand?”
“Your wand. You know, the one you grant wishes with.”
“Oh.”
While Jewel was thinking of an answer (and hoping no one else was awake), the girl wandered over to the couch and climbed it, dropping her toy as she did so.
Finally, not being able to think of anything clever, Jewel said, “I’m not that kind of færie.”
“What kind are you, then?” The child’s chin just cleared the bottom of the mirror’s frame. She squinted at her reflection.
Jewel gave herself the once over. Muddy hiking boots. Denim trousers. Ratty wool pullover, that didn’t quite conceal a fondness for fatty desserts. Finally, the ends of frizzy blonde hair. With a mental shrug, she decided the truth would just have to do. “I’m the treasure seeking kind.”
The girl didn’t appear to have heard. Tentatively, she reached up and touched the surface of the mirror, tapping it three times it with a fingernail in need of clippers. “How did you get through?” Dark, suspicious eyes turned to her.
Feeling unaccountably guilty, Jewel shrugged. “Færie magick.”
The child heard the question mark Jewel had tried not to say. “Show me. I want to go through the mirror.”
“But you don’t even know what’s on the other side!”
“What is on the other side? Monsters?” sounding doubtful.
“Well…” The pixie never had mastered lying. Thinking of how disappointed her aunts would be, “No. But it’s not a place for little girls.”
“You look like just a girl.”
Jewel was short, as mortals measured such things. “But I’m not. I’m over three hundred years old.”
“Oh.” That she believed. Jewel really sucked at lying. “How come you don’t look old?”
“Færies live a long time.”
The child yawned cavernously.
“I think you should go back to bed.”
“I want a drink of water.”
“I’ll get you one.” Jewel left the room.
⁂
It took a while to make sure of the time (well after midnight) and to assured herself that no one else was wakeful (parents and an older brother all soundly sleeping).
By the time she returned from the kitchen, the girl was curled up on the divan, stuffed whatever clutched tightly, snoring softly.
She breathed a sigh.
Placing the cup on a sideboard, Jewel set about looking for silver. With luck, she could gather enough to satisfy her tribe and be gone before first light.
In one respect, at least, this night was a success. Jewel found silver cutlery, silver jewelry, many old silver coins, and an entire hutch full of silver service ware.
When she returned to the room with the mirror, grunting and trying not to clink too loudly, the pixie was feeling quite proud of herself.
The little girl was gone.
‘Probably gone to bed,’ she told herself.
Then she saw the stuffed animal tucked under the divan.
“Feck!”
Into the Mittelmarche
Jewel dropped her bag o’ swag. It clanged loudly in the predawn stillness.
She barely heard, as she was already halfway to the stairs. A quick search confirmed the worst.
The child was gone.
She peeked out a curtained window.
No chance the girl had left the house through a regular door. Not unless she really enjoyed blizzards in the dark, anyway.
She returned to the sitting room and spent a few minutes standing in front of the mirror, not seeing herself.
How could the child have gone through the mirror? Was she fæ? Did someone help her? This was really going to screw up her route tonight.
With an unaffected sigh of frustration, Jewel grabbed her swag and after a moment’s thought, the stuffed thingy. and climbed up onto the divan. Placing her free hand on the mirror, she muttered a few syllables under her breath. Her reflection vanished; replaced by a scene lit by a greenish moon.
With a grunt, the pixie hoisted the bag of silver up and through the mirror, hearing it clang on the roof tiles just on the other side. With rather better grace than her entrance, she climbed up and through the frame, leaving behind only a little dirt—and the home lighter by a few pounds of silver.
And one small child.
From this side, the mirror looked like a window into the room. Another touch, a few more sub-vocal words and it looked into a disused hallway.
A glance at the slanting, snow-covered roof confirmed her fears. Fresh tracks, too small to be hers, led to the drainpipe descending from the corner of the building next to her.
Quickly, Jewel stuffed the toy animal into her swag bag before slinging the latter across her back. Slipping only once, she made it to the iron drainpipe and shimmied down with very little cursing at all.
The green moon, almost but not quite the moon of Œrth, lit snow-blanketed fields. The track that led to the woods and beyond, to the edge of the Mittelmarche, was a clear depression winding its way away. There had been too much traffic to say for sure if the girl had followed it.
Looking back toward the village, didn’t give Jewel any more information. She could search it, but that would mean house-to-house in the dark and no certainty that, if the girl were there, she wouldn’t just leave before Jewel could find her. This demimonde had more hiding places than anyone could search in a lifetime.
No question about it; she needed help.
Aunt Agate was not going to be pleased.
⁂
Through the forest, she went. The familiar trees—large, ancient, and rather scraggly looking—glowed gently in the perpetual night.
‘What creatures she heard were a comforting familiarity. Jewel rarely spotted one, as they fled the wide rut she trod as soon as they heard her. She caught only flashes out of her eye’s corner .
This was her world, the world of the in-between. The other, normal world was too strange for the færie.
She felt exposed when going there. Naked.
The path ahead forked in two, dividing at a huge bog oak erected as a marker long ago. Jewel walked right up to it.
Placing her left hand on the damp wood of the dead tree, she walked around it three and a half times widdershins, reciting a magick rede she knew well. Her hand dragged along the ancient wood; shocks like static prickled her hand and up her arm.
The first two times ’round, she saw the path she had come from revealed as she rounded the bulk of the tall stump. The third time, another path replaced it.
This one was narrower and paved with silver flagstones that shone in moonlight now a pale blue. Quickly, she walked onto it.
Immediately her trailing boot hit the silver stone, the forest changed. The trees quickly morphed from oaks to willows that hugged a path now curving sharply to the right as it climbed a small hill. She ascended, swag bag clinking at her back.
Branches trailing whiptails of almond-shaped leaves tickled as they brushed over Jewel’s face and hands. In places, they overarched the path, dimming the bright moon. The silver ingots of the narrow road covered fat half-exposed roots that would have made the trail a trial without them.
A few twists and turns, a couple more hills and a small dell and she was home.
At the far end of the blue moonlit clearing was what appeared to be a collection—or better—a pile of cottages. Doors and windows, most small and sort of square-rectangular-ish, ascended and receded up a slope that went far into the woods beyond. Half the windows glowed with light from within; few færies kept regular hours.
Whitewashed plaster and wattle topped with thatch, heaped with more wattle and daub; it made a confusing profusion of bits of cottage that formed one huge multi-family, multi-generational dwelling. Much of it, she knew, was hidden, dug into the hill itself.
It was home.
Her door was two thirds of the way up.
The swag bag was a heavy burden after the distance she had already hauled it.
She could walk up.
Well, she could.
It was just that flying was simpler here.
Swinging the bag around to her front, Jewel hugged it to her trunk. fluttered her wings, and jumped lightly into the air.
Things went very well for the first three seconds. Then she remembered how out of shape she was. Most times, the pixie barely managed this without the extra weight.
Clenching her flapping muscles as hard as she could, the pixie felt the stutter increase and heard a noise not unlike the buzzing of a stalling chainsaw. She rose in fits and starts, with discouraging moments of working as hard as she could just to keep her altitude.
Several painful eternities later, she was above the small stoop that fronted the door of her home. She stopped flying and didn’t so much land and collapse. The drop of three feet was enough to cause her knees to buckle. As Jewel overbalanced backward, she dropped the swag to grab the post to the left of the door.
She missed.
The sound of her “shite!” of panic was almost drowned out by an end of the world crash as near fifty pounds of silver candlesticks, cutlery, bowls, a tea set, coins, necklaces, rings, and an entire dinner service hit the ancient boards of the porch.
The færie fell flat and slid off the roof of the dwelling below. A panicky grab and she was hanging over a ten-foot drop by two sweaty fistfuls of thatch.
As the last gloinging of a bowl stopped, she heard the door open and an adolescent voice she knew too well said, “Hi, Jewel.” It was the lack of surprise in his tone that really hurt.
“Hello, Feldspar. Little help?”
“Okay,” sounding exhausted at the mere thought.
A couple of dull thumps on the ancient hardwood and the round face of her patruel appeared above her. He grabbed a wrist in each meaty fist and pulled her up with ease.
“Thanks.” He towered over her, already beginning to show the signs of the mountain troll he would become. He was gentle natured, even so.
Jewel began to gather up her swag. “Is your mum about?”
“She’s over to Aunt Beryl and Uncle Bluejohn’s having tea.” As she bent over the grab a silver candle-stick, the stuffed whatever-it-was suddenly appeared in her line of sight. The pixie looked up into the stupid, kind face of her cousin, holding out the toy for her. “Thanks.” She smiled her thanks.
His return smile, brightened her mood.
Good deed done, Feldspar left Jewel to her cleanup and thumped back into the dwelling.
Sent to Uncle Onyx
Beryl and Bluejohn lived three over and one down.
Landing rather more gracefully back on her stoop with her bag of recovered swag, Jewel decided not to go through the labyrinthine dwelling of her tribe to the dreaded meeting—too many greetings, too many questions about her early arrival. She’d be an hour getting to her destination. Walking the roofs was quicker and just as safe.
Almost.
She dumped the bag just inside the door and hastened to her Aunt and Uncle’s place.
Given the night’s events thus far, the pixie was surprised to arrive without incident, a mere five minutes later, at the proper entrance .
She knocked twice and pulled open the oak door.
Four sets of hard, cold eyes, ringed by wisdom-wrinkled flesh, bored into her; the game of Syrat forgotten. “You should still be out,” said the Elder, Diamond.
‘Damn!’ Jewel thought. ‘Why did she have to be here?’
Jewel began to feel that hot shivery sensation she always did when confronted with a misdeed. Deep breaths; that was the key.
The stares made that harder. They always did.
Jewel started with the good news. “I got more tonight already than I did all of last week.” She considered a smile, and then thought better of it. Good thing, too.
“You should have gone back out, then. There’s hours of night left in the World.” This from Agate, the only aunt she had been prepared to deal with.
“I would have, but I ran into a little problem.” She winced at the guilty sound in her voice. She had meant to sound more adult—more like this wasn’t her fault. Her past was against her there, though.
“Explain.” Oddly for her, Diamond sounded less menacing. Jewel didn’t know if this was a good thing or not. Best not to dwell on it.
The pixie described what had happened as thoroughly as she could. Several times questions interrupted her. Jewel had a tendency to skip over things and recite events in the wrong order. The interruptions made it worse.
Sometime during the interrogation, her anxiety quieted. Mildly shocked, Jewel realized the reason. Judging by their expressions, were all four were worried.
Finally, she reached the end of her tale, wishing she could have done the whole thing better. Her flush was simple embarrassment, now.
Not that it mattered. They weren’t paying her any attention, now. Instead, they traded stares with each other.
Not for the first time, Jewel wished she knew how to share conscious thoughts as well as her elders did. To her, the mental tetralogue was just low muttering, like a conversation in another room. She caught the word, ‘Glyph,’ and immediately started sweating.
“Jewel,” Aunt Agate said.
“Yes, Aunt Agate?” The older faerie wore a look that Jewel had rarely seen, one of sympathy. Jewel’s armpits were already damp, now she could feel a trickle down her back and between her teats. This was not going to be good.
“We think the child might have been stolen by a Dark Fæ.”
“But they’re gone…aren’t they?” Jewel was trembling, now.
Diamond answered, voice now as hard and cold as her name, “Gone, but not extinct. Their return has always been a possibility.”
“Wh-where did they go?” Jewel did remember childhood lessons. She wanted more reassurance more than knowledge now. The Dark Fæ had been a nightmare since childhood.
“Back to the place they came from. It was sealed behind them by great magic, as you should remember, young lady.”
Uncle Bluejohn, voice cavernously deep, said, “It would take great magic to unseal it.”
“That’s why we’re sending you to your Great Uncle Onyx in Glyph,” Agate said.
“You want me to fix the hole in the Dark Fæ’s prison?” It wouldn’t be the worst thing they’d required her to do.
A familiar and, just now, comforting look of mild contempt briefly crossed Agate’s features.
Uncle Bluejohn said, “Don’t be daft, girl. We’re sending you to Onyx so he can help you get the child back.”
⁂
It wasn’t that Jewel hated the City Glyph. She loved it, in fact. No other place she’d ever been or heard of had ever entranced her so.
No. It was where the city was that caused the shakes. Glyph rested on one end of a titanic spire of stone adrift in an eldritch sky that stretched on forever in all directions.
Not one to dwell on the unpleasant, the pixie concentrated on how much she looked forward to seeing Uncle Onyx, again. The old man was her favourite relative. He seemed to understand her awkward brand of crazy.
Jewel really wanted to put some sleep between herself and the trip but, like Agate had said, there were hours of night left and she’d normally be out for most of it.
She managed to detour back to her rooms for a change of clothes, at least.
Looking rather natty—for her, anyway—in a long red coat, silk scarf, and rather shinier boots (there was nothing to be done about her hair, tragically) the pixie set out, wings shivering in anticipation, to the Portal that would take her to Glyph.
The stuffed whatever was in a rucksack slung at her side, along with a packed lunch and spare knickers; well, one never knew.
Jewel flew most of the way, looking quite graceful. Descending was much easier than going up, after all.
⁂
Back at the bog oak, she circled the tree deosil until the moon turned blood red. It took seven revolutions this time.
Following a twisty path paved in rusted iron, Jewel strode confidently through the haunted wood of Dunswollem, where many had died an Age ago fighting the Dark Fæ.
She loved the spirits that flitted about the low torturous branches, hooting and shrieking.
It was only for show, she knew. With a reputation like Dunswollem’s one must keep up appearances.
Too soon, the pixie emerged from the trees.
In a clearing bathed in blood light, was a single standing stone. She approached slowly, the silver sigil at the menhir’s top making her shiver.
As Jewel halted a pace from it, facing the sign, the moon cast her shadow directly onto the stone. Thinking of the sound of dying wind and the smell of boiling cabbage, she solemnly said, “tomato omelette.”
An orange-y point of light shot out of the stone. It was soon joined by hundreds of other amber sparks, spiraling and flaring outward like a trumpet bell. They thrilled Jewel’s skin where they touched her, feeling more like icy cold water than fire. She could hear a deep roaring sound that vibrated all along her bones.
But all that happened every time.
Taking a deep breath, and hoping to remain the master her fear of open spaces, the pixie stepped into the vortex.
Jewel turned to watch the red-lit meadow stretch and fade behind her as the Portal swallowed her up.
Jewel in the City Glyph
The reverse happened almost immediately.
A vision condensed from the blankness, unswirling itself—and Jewel was standing in a brick-lined hall.
Twenty feet ahead was an entranceway sealed off with more bricks.
The rough ceramic was a cracked and faded yellow. Light from dirty, cobweb-infested windows high on either wall let a pale yellow light into the space. As Jewel turned, to the exit, the daylight morphed to green.
Behind her, the corridor continued and took a right turn, just as she remembered. She’d arrived at the usual place.
Onward.
Passed the turn, and Jewel was at the top of a steep staircase. Downward she went. Just ahead was a landing with an archway on the right that looked like it had once had a door. It opened into an empty room.
From where she stood, the pixie was a dozen feet up from a dusty wood floor. There must once have been a stairway going down as well.
Now, the only way to get down was flying.
The room before her had no exits. A few more high windows let in the green-turning-bluish light. The space was utterly silent.
She left the opening and continued straight, down another set of stone steps to another landing.
After three more flights, each interrupted by a landing, Jewel was in gloom and had to feel ahead for the door she knew was there.
Her grasping fingers found the pitted iron ring. She pulled. It didn’t budge.
She pulled again harder, grunting.
With a loud squeal, the door suddenly surrendered.
It was very heavy. Jewel stumbled backward to get out of its way, landing on the steps. Only her pride—which was used to the abuse—was injured.
Blue-turning-red-violet light flooded the bottom landing.
Chagrin and reactionary fear forgotten, Jewel the Pixie stood and strode into the sphere-light of the City Without a World.
⁂
The spheres overhead were mostly red, streaked with purple. Like a shoal of tiny fish, dark yellow ones began moving in from her left.
Back down at ground level, the cobbled street was broad, winding and, just here, bare of foot traffic. Glyph had little traffic of any other sort.
Jewel turned right and began to climb the gently sloping road.
Though she hadn’t been here two years, the neighborhood remained familiar to the pixie; so far, anyway. One of the things she adored about Glyph was the city’s morphing geography.
The layout of the City of Portals changed over time, for reasons no one the pixie had asked could fathom. Jewel thought the Hermetists must know; they had built Glyph, after all.
Between one visit and the next, streets would branch where they had not; stop where they had gone straight. Continue at former dead ends. Long roads would end up short; side streets become boulevards.
The winding thoroughfare Jewel trod at the moment was as she remembered it; lined with small shops and the occasional two or three storey tenement. Eventually, there were people. The district she had come from was sparsely populated and mostly commercial. The one she was entering, was chiefly residential.
Humans and other sorts of people, did she see. Even a few fæ, though not many and none with visible wings. Jewel’s gossamer appendages drew some glances and a smile of two, but no one stared. Nothing in Glyph was unusual enough for a second look; at least as far as the residents were concerned.
Many people were strolling; a few were moving purposefully, some even pushing carts.
A hideously loud noise caused her to turn around at one point.
The source of the cacophonous roar was a mechanical, six-legged vehicle that belched smoke and steam. A gentleman with enormous curling horns emerging from the thick, black hair on his scalp was driving it out of a narrow lane she had just passed.
The transport was loaded with stone, partly worked, that was likely going to end up part of some building or other.
With no warning other than the insane noise, the machine clanked onto the avenue, scuttling stiltedly downhill.
Other than a few frowns, colourful profanities, and some fist shaking from those in its path, no one seemed to notice.
Giggling at the scene, Jewel carried on.
Her sense of the familiar began to fade as she rounded yet another sharp corner in the ever-rising road. Jewel began to wonder if her regular path when visiting Uncle Onyx had changed direction on her. Just as the pixie was thinking of asking someone, she spotted the landmark she’d been looking for.
When Jewel was last here, the fat round tower of brown stone had marked the crest of the street. Beyond it now were more towers, most greater in height than its sixty feet.
The pixie’s eye was drawn to the farthest structure, recognizing the wall that girt the city Glyph. Past that only were only the spheres—periwinkle and canary yellow, just now. She suppressed a shudder at the mental image of the endless drop on the other side of that wall and carried on to the tower.
Once there, Jewel found the patch of stone on it that was more red than brown and began trailing her hand on the rough stone as she followed the road that hugged the tower’s base. Uncle Onyx’s house should be visible once she’d made half a circuit.
Jewel passed the point where the road should have straightened to show her the side street her Uncle’s house was on. The road continued though, still following the tower’s curve. Reluctantly, she kept going.
Soon the pixie was sure something was wrong. The road shouldn’t be sticking to the tower for this length. The second time she passed the spot where the slightly reddish stone in the wall was, she knew she was in trouble.
It was at moments like these that cool rational thought was quite helpful.
Jewel opted for panic.
Racing back around, she arrived again at her starting point, sweaty, panting, and with a cramp in her side that almost doubled her up.
Only vaguely did she remember knocking up against an old woman halfway back who hadn’t been there before. Belatedly, Jewel hoped she was all right.
After wiping tears of fear from her eyes, she reached out and caressed that same reddish rock.
Okay. The road had changed.
She stood and thought about her predicament, while her heart and respiration returned to normal. Should she continue? Or would it be better to try another way?
The former might get her really lost, and ‘lost’ in Glyph was serious; sometimes fatal, sometimes worse. The latter meant asking or scouting herself. Asking was unlikely to help; it was doubtful the natives would have noted the change. Also, she didn’t recognize any of the structures here, so looking on her own would be a fool’s errand.
Jewel craned her neck, trying the see the merlons around the tower top. She could fly up and look around.
She imagined the probable view from that height and rejected the idea. Looking at four-dimensional space always made her tummy do flip-flops.
No choice, really.
Mustering as much nonchalance as she could, Jewel turned around and began her circuit again. The light turned deep magenta as she walked. The spheres were either very large or very close. They appeared to be barely moving.
Lights along the edge of the street flickered on, some making quiet buzzing sounds. The light they threw upward added to the infernal aspect of the day, though they did make it easier to see where she was going in the sudden gloom.
Her calm was getting harder to maintain. Jewel’s wings began to flutter, as they always did when she was nervous. She tried stopping them from moving but had only limited success.
The pixie concentrated on the road ahead.
She passed the reddish stone a second time and continued on, ignoring the sudden hammering of her heart.
Once more around the tower and the buildings had changed. They seemed to be private homes. Rather nice-looking multi-storied ones, too. Lights were on behind some of the drapes.
Her anxiety began to quiet. She was able to still her wings.
Jewel had just passed the stone for the third time when the street finally showed signs of straightening. As she walked, she peered ahead nervously, hoping to see the familiar pile of black stone that was Uncle Onyx’s home.
There it was!
The pixie was running toward it without having made the conscious decision to do so. Her satchel hammered her left hip with every step. That was annoying, so she took off and flew the last thirty yards.
She would have managed a graceful landing if she hadn’t underestimated her speed. Swinging her legs down and flapping furiously, she tried to bleed enough momentum to avoid crashing.
The thump as she flattened herself against Uncle Onyx’s front door probably meant she wouldn’t have to knock, at least.
The door opened before her head stopped spinning.
“Hello, Jewel,” again, no trace of surprise, though he did sound pleased to see her. She tried to sit up, grunting, arms flailing.
Onyx grabbed both wrists and pulled her to her feet and into his arms.
They hugged fiercely for a moment, the much taller Onyx smelled of frankincense and tobacco. His robe was soft and warm.
They broke. Jewel backed off half a step and looked up into his bespectacled, smiling face. “Hello, Uncle.”
“Come in, we’ve been expecting you.”
“We?” She crossed the threshold and headed for the sitting room, where Onyx spent most of his days. She went through the dark archway and there sitting in Jewel’s favourite deep leather chair by the fire was the little girl.
Found: One Waif
Jewel just stood with her mouth hanging open as Onyx placed friendly hands on either shoulder and gently piloted her into the book-lined room. “I think you two know each other, slightly.”
He gestured her to another chair, just as comfy but too far from the fire for the pixie’s preference. Uncle Onyx took his preferred chair.
The girl wore the same pajamas she had been in hours ago. She was snugged under a thick blanket. There was a tall glass of milk (mostly gone) on the table at her elbow. She wore a slight frown as she looked at Jewel.
For a while, they just stared at each other. The girl blinked first.
Feeling like she’d won, Jewel turned to her Uncle. “How did she get here?”
“I’ve never been sure. She has described the journey to me during several visits, but I can’t make much sense of it.”
“Wait… ‘several’? She’s been here before?”
He nodded.
Looking back at the girl, Jewel noticed a gloating smile on her face. It looked like a squinty-eyed tongue could emerge at any moment.
The pixie was tempted to reply in kind, but something else was nagging at her. She asked the girl, “You asked me how I got through the mirror, but you went through it yourself. How?”
A shrug. “I jus’ made it go away, tha’s all.” Again, that annoying little grin.
“So, why did you ask me how I did it?”
“I thought I was the only one who could. You must of cheated.”
“Well I didn’t. I used faerie magic.”
“Huh.” The little girl crossed her arms, obviously doubting the whole fabrication.
To Onyx, Jewel said, “Why does she come here?”
“She’s been adventuring for quite some time, I gather. I found her one night five months ago on the edge of the Dark poking around, so I brought her here. Ever since, she comes to see me every few weeks. Today, she came to tell me that someone was in her house.” They shared a grin. “I knew it had to be one of our tribe. After she described you, I figured you’d be coming here.”
Jewel nodded. “Aunt Diamond sent me. Well, her and Aunt Beryl, Aunt Agate, and Uncle Bluejohn. They were afraid one of the Dark Fæ had taken her.”
Onyx raised an eyebrow. “Not much to worry about on that score. They’re still safely locked away.” He paused. “Did Diamond share that concern?”
The faerie nodded.
“I’d better look into it. Could be trouble. But—” he clapped his hands—“now that you’re here, how about a snack and a story?”
Jewel grinned. “Oh, yes please!”
The little girl spoke the same words, at the same time, in the same way. Again, the two females shared a stare. This one dissolved into giggles.
Soon, Uncle Onyx was back with a tray of hot cocoa mugs and oatmeal cookies. He set it on the table between the two girls, moving the near empty glass of milk out of the way.
After grabbing a mug and two cookies, Onyx returned to his chair.
Jewel and the girl each took a mug. They both reached for the same cookie.
A chill that ran through Jewel’s hand when it touched the little girl’s. It didn’t surprise her as much as it might have. The girl had managed to work out how to go through a mirror, after all.
Judging by the expression on the latter’s face, it had surprised her, though.
Before she could recover, Jewel asked her, “What’s your name?”
“Carolyn.”
“Not that one. The other.”
A little blush this time. ‘Carolyn’ knew the secret was out, now. “Emerald.”
The smile they shared was genuine and warm. “Hi, Emerald, I’m Jewel.” They shook hands, each one braced for the sensation this time.
“I know. I heard Uncle Onyx call you that.”
“Oh, right. Well, I have one more question.” Reaching into her bag, Jewel pulled out the stuffed whatever. “What is this thing, anyway?”1
- See the final page for the answer.
—Gideon Jagged
Innsmouth, March 2020
Copyright © 2020 Gideon Jagged
All Rights Reserved