A Dinner, Enchanted
Alison
The cave was cool and damp, but it wasn’t dark, not completely. There was a shimmer in the air and on the walls, a glittering flicker of light that stayed in Alison’s peripheral vision with no discernible source. The glow was faint, but it was enough to illuminate the path, which wound through the narrow passages into the ground.
The only sounds were their footsteps and a faint echo of dripping water from far off.
“How far do you think it goes?” Keir asked from close behind her, his hand on her waist in case she lost her footing.
“Not far,” said Alison. Even as they spoke, the passageway ahead grew brighter, the craggy rock of the walls becoming more defined as the ground began to climb once more.
They rounded a bend, and suddenly the bright light of the exit flooded the final chamber. Alison walked towards it, Keir so near to her now that she almost stepped on his foot.
Emerging into the light, Alison realized they were no longer in the woods. The land that stretched before them wasn’t bare—it was heathland, a gently sloping open landscape covered in low-growing shrubs tinged with purple.
“It’s early,” said Keir, bending to observe the spires of lilac-colored blossoms. “The heather on our lands is just starting to bud.”
“No,” said Alison. “I think it’s late. Maybe not the season, but the hour.”
The sky, which had been bright with midday sunlight before they started on the path into the woods, was tinged with pink and gold, the hour before sunset.
Behind them, there was a strange churring sound: a high, fast strum, almost like a door creaking open or a chain pulling against stone. As Alison turned to see, the motion of a bird in flight caught her eye.
“A nightjar,” said Keir. “What a rare sight.”
It was nearly silent as it flew over their heads, its small, brown body swooping low into the heather and vanishing from their view.
“An omen of death, according to some,” said Keir.
A chill shuddered up Alison’s back.
Keir squeezed her hand. “Superstitious nonsense. I’ve also heard that they’re the spirits of lost children or the mortal enemies of goat herders.”
“Most of the superstitions I’d heard turned out not to be true,” said Alison, convincing herself as she spoke. “It’s easy to blame all sorts of ills on things you know little about.”
The bird took flight again, heading away from them into the heath. Alison tracked its flight, noting a path through the heather that led downhill towards a wood.
“Shall we follow the omen of death and see where it takes us?” she asked Keir, letting out half a nervous chuckle.
“We’ve come this far,” he said. “I feel something of a pull towards those woods. Can you feel it too?”
“Yes,” she said. The path seemed to have its own gravity. The pull of it was familiar—it was not unlike the pull that existed in the vine’s dream world, the compulsion that propelled her again and again into the river. “But let’s hurry. I don’t want to miss Rinka when she arrives.”
They followed the path through the heather—again, it was unnaturally clear and easy to follow—and as they did, the sky turned from pink and gold to a deep and vibrant red as the sun slipped behind a hill, and then to a rapidly darkening blue as it vanished completely.
Around them, fireflies began to take flight, the flashes of their light synchronizing as they, too, followed the path towards the woods.
As they approached, they heard music and laughter and the murmur of voices in conversation. The voices were much too deep to be those of fairies, and the shadows that stretched from the light of the woods into the last of the heather were long. Fulling shadows, or Halfling at least.
Keir stopped Alison, tugging on her arm. “I’m not sure this is right—” he started, but just then, something began to fly up the path towards them.
It was a fairy, or at least it looked just like one. It had the ordinary features—a human face, brightly colored hair (blue, in this case), and white feathery wings, which it used to hover a few feet above the ground.
It was dressed ordinarily as well, in a finely made white tunic with matching trousers that seemed to glow in the light of the rising moon.
Everything was perfectly ordinary, except for one thing…
“You’re enormous,” said Alison before she could stop herself.
The fairies of Herot’s Hollow barely came up to Alison’s knees when standing. This fairy was easily as tall as Keir, maybe taller.
They laughed. “I never get tired of hearing that. Come on,” they said, gesturing with their hand and wing simultaneously. “You’re late for your own dinner.”
“Excuse me?” Alison was still trying to make sense of it. She looked around the landscape, guessing that maybe they had been made smaller in this strange place. But the heather was the appropriate height, and although the trees loomed large ahead, they appeared no larger than usual.
“Your dinner,” they said, as if they could not believe she had forgotten. “It’s started.”
Alison looked at Keir. He was uneasy, his brows furrowed into their signature worried expression, but he shrugged as if to say, it’s up to you.
Alison looked back up the path towards the cave where they had come from. It was still there, still clear and obvious behind them. If this was some sort of trap, wouldn’t it have vanished by now?
Alison wasn’t sure, but they had been told to take this path by beings they had trusted, and although she wasn’t ready to abandon all caution, her curiosity propelled her forward.
She took Keir’s hand. Whatever lay ahead, they would face it together.
They followed the fairy into the woods. The fireflies filtered into the trees, joining a thousand tiny fairy lights that hovered and danced, illuminating the darkness.
Alison gasped. What she had expected to see based on the shadows she’d glimpsed beyond the wood was a campfire with a handful of fairies gathered around it.
And there was, indeed, a fire.
But it was a great, roaring bonfire in the middle of a clearing, and around it arose a city in the trees. Dozens of buildings wrapped around the tree trunks, a vast web of ropes and boardwalks extending between them. They were made of raw, natural materials—tree limbs that were still covered in bark, purple heather woven into a latticework, mossy roofs with chimneys of river rock—but they weren’t crudely made. There was an intricacy to the structures, an artistry finer than anything human hands could craft. An artistry that rivaled the finest of the elvish structures Alison had known in the city, as skilled as the carvings in stone the dwarves were known for, if perhaps less enduring.
Beside the bonfire, there was a long table carved from the trunk of what was once a mighty tree, a hundred-year-old oak, maybe. There were dozens of benches and stools pulled up to it, all uniquely made, and on its surface was the largest banquet Alison had ever seen.
There were many things Alison recognized: platters of meats, fish, and sausages; great loaves of bread and pretty plaited buns with a sticky-looking glaze; cheeses in many colors, some with delicate veins and others with thick red rinds; steaming bowls of bright vegetables gleaming with broth and butter; and bottles of wine and dark spirits in all shapes and sizes.
But there were also many things Alison had never seen before: strange-looking fruits in shades of sparkling blue, some of them covered in what appeared to be rabbit fur; pie dishes that seemed to hum with energy; goblets of golden liquid that fizzed and bubbled; and flowers braided into pastries, including the poisonous foxgloves Aras had warned them about.
“Come, friends,” said the fairy that had greeted them to the revelers gathered near the fire. They weren’t just fairies, Alison realized. There were all sorts of people here: humans, elves, dwarves, and even orcs and some of what she guessed were smaller folk based on their features: pixies, hobgoblins, and sprites, although all were around the same size in this space. “Our guests have arrived at last.”
A number of people came over to meet them before taking their seats at the table: a young dwarven man with red hair and a lazy smile; a pixie or maybe a korrigan (it was hard to tell without the height difference) with iridescent wings and a haughty laugh; a pair of human women, drunk on love or something like it; and several more fairies, their hair in all the colors of the rainbow.
Alison and Keir approached the table, unsure of where to begin.
“Much of it is poisonous,” Keir whispered to Alison.
“Ah, of course,” said their fairy host. They took a seat at one end of the table, gesturing to Keir and Alison to take the bench nearest to them. “Mab, if you wouldn’t mind.”
The fairy gestured to another. She looked much like their host, her hair a similar shade of blue, but she wore a long, white gown with beads that twinkled like starlight. “Of course, Genn,” she said simply, and then she flitted over the table and stood behind Keir and Alison, placing a head on each of their shoulders.
They froze, staring at each other in alarm. But Alison felt nothing unusual, and in another moment, the fairy had taken the plates in front of them. She half-walked, half-flew around the table, taking from various dishes until both plates were full.
“These should be to your liking,” she said when she returned. “And there’s nothing there that will harm you, through poison or otherwise.”
Alison’s plate was full of all the things she loved the most, and Keir’s was as well, although they were quite different.
“That’s an incredible gift,” she said to Mab. And then to Keir: “I didn’t know you liked blue cheese.”
“You made such a fuss about it that time, I didn’t want to admit it,” he said sheepishly.
Alison took the fork and knife before her—they were mismatched, like most things here—and dug into her plate. Although it had seemed like far too much at first look, she found that everything was in the perfect proportion for her appetite and preference. When she’d finished, she felt impeccably, pleasantly full.
There was conversation at the other end of the table, but on this side, they had eaten in silence, the fairies watching Alison and Keir closely while they ate their own dinners.
“Is it all to your liking?” the host—Genn—asked.
“Yes, thank you,” said Alison. “Perfectly so. Do you know why we’ve come? I’m afraid we can’t stay long; I’m due to meet with a friend in town.”
“All in good time,” said Genn. “First, we dance.”
They clapped their hands, and the table was clear in an instant.
“Come, friends. It’s time for the dancing,” they said to the gathered crowd.
As the table emptied, Keir asked Genn how they’d known they were coming.
“How does a moth know to follow the moon?” they said. “How does Jenny Greenteeth know who to drown?”
They did not elaborate further, and Alison was frightened to ask them to clarify.
Alison studied the crowd gathered around the bonfire. They were two dozen, maybe three, but the city beyond them must have held many, many more. She wondered how these guests were chosen and what was happening in the strange world beyond her limited view into it.
She was pulled from her wondering by Mab, the fairy who had made their plates. She came along beside Alison and closed her eyes, listening with a smile on her lips.
Alison listened too. The band had not begun to play again, but the air was filled with song: crickets, cicadas, and the nightjar from earlier, churring and chirping on its own.
“A wonderful chorus,” said Mab. “Gennet, play with them.”
Genn took a seat on a log, raising a fiddle into the air. They began to play, and at first, it was an odd little tune. The notes jumped around in rhythm with the night creatures until a melody began to take shape. It wasn’t like the melodies that Alison knew, nothing like the rowdy music of Mr. Smalls, the bard who was still hanging around the inn of Herot’s Hollow despite his repeated claims that he would be leaving any day now. It was organic and earthy, almost indistinguishable from the sounds of nature.
At least, it started that way. Several others joined Gennet, and as they added their instruments to the tune—a flute, several drums, and some sort of large stringed instrument played with a bow that Alison had never seen before—the tune grew into a lively dance.
Alison was concerned about the delay, hoping she wouldn’t be too late to meet Rinka, but they had come this far, and it seemed a shame to leave before they had any answers. “What do you say?” asked Alison, her hand held out for Keir. The others around them had begun to dance in a dozen different and wild ways, no set of steps alike.
They had never danced together before—there hadn’t been the occasion—and Alison worried for a moment that Keir would decline.
But he took her hand and led her to an empty space, and he placed the other hand on her waist and began to lead her around the bonfire with a surprising grace.
“I’ve successfully avoided having to do this for years,” he whispered to her. “I always hated it, not least because at court, it’s less of a fun bit of exercise and more of a dangerous political game. Dance with the wrong person in the wrong order and it’s a wild scandal. I’d rather face the king’s armed forces in open battle than go through all of that again.”
“And yet,” whispered Alison back, “you’re just so good at it.”
Keir moved so well that it didn’t matter that Alison didn’t know the steps. He made up for any awkwardness happening below Alison’s ankles, leading her round and round as the fairies looked on.
“Perhaps I was just waiting for the right partner,” he said and lifted her hand to his mouth to kiss.
“May I cut in?” asked Genn. They had left the fiddle behind, but the band played on.
Keir looked at Alison, who nodded. He let go of her hand.
“No, no,” said Genn. “She’s lovely, but I meant with you.”
“Oh,” said Keir, his face flushed in the firelight. “Sure, I suppose.”