Chapter Five
ABBY
LILL HUNCHES FORWARD, planting her hands on her knees as she struggles to catch her breath. She looks exhausted, and she sways back and forth as she peers through the portal she’s just opened.
I watch her every movement, needing to make sure she’s okay, before shifting my attention to the portal. To the faerie realm.
It’s beautiful.
The window reveals a giant prairie, one so beautiful and large, it stretches as far as the eye can see. Thick, waist-length grass sways in soft, rhythmic movements, and I can practically feel the warm, summer breeze.
“Wow,” is all I manage to say.
Lill nods. “Yeah.”
This would never exist in the human realm. People would flock to it, and it would be destroyed within days. The lush, green grass would be trampled into the dirt, and it would be so full of tourists, it would be impossible to enjoy. That’s assuming they don’t bulldoze the entire area and replace it with an unused parking lot.
Lill is distracted, and I swallow past the lump in my throat as I stand and slip my backpack over my shoulders. I don’t know how long she can keep the portal open, and I need to get through before it shuts.
“The air looks different,” I say.
It truly does. The sunlight reflects off what looks like dust, little golden specks that glisten and float through the air. It’s everywhere.
“That’s magic,” Lill says. She grows quiet. “I never thought I’d see it again.”
I hum, staring at the back of her head.
It’s now or never.
Lill has no idea what’s happening, and I don’t stick around to see her reaction as I brush past her and jump headfirst into the portal. A small part of me is terrified it’s not going to work and I’m going to land face-first on our TV stand, but I can tell that’s not going to happen the second my body crosses the threshold of the portal.
There’s a brief moment of weightlessness, like my entire body is floating, before I crash into the faerie realm in an uncoordinated heap. The tall grasses I was just admiring brush against my skin before I land, and I grimace as I get a mouthful of dirt.
It hurts, but the pain hardly registers as I scramble to my feet and break into a sprint, desperate to put distance between me and the portal. I’m not sure how long Lill can hold it open or if she’ll jump in behind me and drag me out, but I’m not going to stick around and find out.
I run for about thirty seconds before peering over my shoulder to see what’s happening with Lill and the portal. Lill’s slow in her weakened state, so even if she is coming after me, I’ve got a good head start. She’s not behind me when I turn, though.
There’s only prairie. The portal is gone, vanished as if it had never been there.
I stumble back a few steps, finally allowing myself to take in my surroundings. The shimmering magic I noticed earlier is amplified, so thick in the air, it’s borderline distracting. I run my fingers through it, but it doesn’t feel like anything.
I can’t believe I’m here.
My palms are scraped up from the fall, but I ignore the slight sting as I brush my fingers through the tall grass. I’ve got bandages and antibiotic ointment in my bag, but I’m not going to use it for minor injuries. I need to save my supplies for real emergencies.
The grass is softer than expected, and the texture is similar to that of a flower petal. I can’t help but smile as I peer up at the cloud-covered sun. It’s no wonder Lill was missing this place. Something about it feels ethereal, too good to be true.
It’s a comfortable temperature, warm but not so much to cause discomfort. I pull off my sweatshirt and shove it into my bag, still in disbelief that I’m actually here. I had low confidence in my plan, even in the seconds leading up to Lill finally opening the portal.
I’ve never been able to convince her in the twenty years we’ve known one another, and I had no reason to believe this time would be any different. I’m sure not going to complain, though.
In my packed bag is an insulated water bottle and about fifty hydration packets. I wasn’t sure what environment I’d be faced with, but I’m glad I came prepared. Well, mostly. I would’ve packed more water had I known Lill would drop me off in the middle of nowhere.
The prairie stretches as far as the eye can see in every direction, and it doesn’t look cultivated or managed. There’s a manmade—faemade is probably the more accurate term here—structure far off in the distance, maybe a tiny cabin of sorts, but I can’t tell from where I stand.
I spin around, checking one last time that there’s nothing of interest surrounding me, before pulling my sneakers out of my bag. I bought a new pair for the trip, and I hope the high price equals good quality. I almost went with hiking boots, but sneakers seemed the better option. I’m glad I went with it.
My adrenaline is finally wearing off, and my hands shake as I slip on the sneakers and tie up the laces.
What’s Lill doing right now? I hope she’s okay after opening that portal. It looked like it took a lot out of her, and she was already so weak.
She must be furious with me, but I hope she knows I did this for her. I’m going to bring her back enough delysum that she won’t even know what to do with it. She’s going to live a long, healthy life. I’ll make sure of it.
It would have been helpful if she hadn’t dropped me off in the middle of fucking nowhere, though.
I know she’s from a large city, the damned capital, to be exact. Even drunk, she wasn’t taking the risk of being spotted by opening the portal straight to her former home.
I swipe my hand through the air, unable to resist the temptation. The shimmer is so distracting, even if it’s arguably the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I didn’t realize magic was tangible, and the little flecks are everywhere.
If this is how much magic Lill’s body was accustomed to, it’s no wonder she’s always so sick. The faeries ingest it with every breath, and the human realm has none.
It’s such a shame that human bodies can’t ingest and use magic, and I hope it doesn’t irritate my respiratory system. I have terrible seasonal allergies, and this looks an awful lot like pollen.
The magic swirls as I swipe my hand through it, the flecks moving with the wind. How do the faeries ever get used to this?
I need to concentrate .
The sun is high in the sky, so I assume it’s around the same time it was back home. It shouldn’t take me too long to reach the cabin, and it’ll hopefully provide me with a place to rest and collect my bearings. It might also be where I sleep tonight.
The sun will go down in only a few hours, and I don’t want to be caught in this open field when it does. I should stay here for the night and leave first thing tomorrow morning. I don’t know what kind of predators live out here, and I’d be a fool to think I’ll be top of the food chain.
I tie my hair up and begin walking, eager to get a move on. For all I know, opening the portal alerted some magic faerie people, and I don’t want to be caught standing here when they arrive. Will they punish me?
This would all be so much easier if Lill had been more forthcoming with her information. Getting her to talk about the faerie realm, specifically when she’s not blackout drunk, is like pulling teeth. I’m beginning this journey with nothing more than snippets of information and a whole lot of assumptions.
The walk to the cabin takes longer than I thought, at least an hour. The tall prairie grasses are surprisingly hard to maneuver through, and I work up a good sweat as I travel under the beating sun.
I use this time to perfect my plan, though.
I assume I’m near the capital, Bellmere. Lill once mentioned that’s where she’s from, but I need to find my way to the Redstall Forest. Lill said that’s the only place where the delysum plant she needs to survive grows.
All I need to do is find the Redstall Forest, pick a shit ton of the plant, and return home. The first two steps seem easy enough, and I’m hoping that by the time I’ve accomplished them, I’ll have learned enough about the faerie realm to find a way back home.
If Lill can open a portal in her weakened state, I don’t imagine it will be too hard to find another faerie willing to open one for me.
I’m not above begging—or fucking. I’ll happily fuck a thousand faeries if it means saving Lill. I was with several questionable men during my clumsy college years, so I’m sure I can manage sleeping with a silver-haired god or two. It’s hardly a sacrifice.
I’m sweating bullets by the time I reach the cabin. Well, it’s more of a shack. I was hoping for more, and I wipe my forehead as I do a lap of the exterior. The small, wooden building is rundown and clearly abandoned, but I’m still hesitant to enter.
What if there’s a magic death trap on the door?
Lill has told me about magic, but I’ve obviously never seen her use it. I have no idea what it does or what the faeries use it for, but I’m preparing for the worst. I’d rather expect the worst and be pleasantly surprised than grow cocky and end up roadkill.
There are three crooked steps leading up to a relatively solid-looking door, and I wipe my damp, scratched-up palms on my leggings as I walk up toward it. Nothing explodes, which I take as a good sign, and I squeeze my eyes shut as I grab the doorknob, twist, and push.
The door hinges squeak, and I wait an obligatory three seconds for death to find me before working up the courage to open my eyes.
“Oh.” I huff. “It’s a tool shed.”
A bunch of junk is piled up in the far-right corner of the room, and a few rusty farming tools are hanging against the back wall. I may be in a different realm than the one I know, but I recognize a shovel, spade, garden fork, and planter buckets when I see them.
That’s all there is, though.
I eye the pile of junk, debating whether it would be worth picking through, but it doesn’t look particularly safe. There’s a lot of rusty metal, and I see a plank with nails hammered into it in the back.
I’m up to date on my tetanus shot. I made sure I was up to date on everything before coming here, but I’m not going to push my luck. I don’t know what kind of medical care the faeries have, and I really don’t want to die here.
I sigh, looking around the shed once more. There’s a short, wooden chair toppled over on my left, a godsend if I’ve ever seen one. I don’t find anything else of interest, though. This isn’t precisely the shelter I hoped for, but it’ll do. The roof seems sturdy, and the thick, wooden walls are hopefully enough to keep any nighttime predators away.
It would suck to die on my first night.
I step farther into the forgotten structure, avoiding the splintered wood on the ground, and righten the chair. It wobbles, and I prepare for the legs to splinter underneath me as I tentatively lower myself onto the hard seat.
It creaks under my weight, which I think is quite rude, but it doesn’t break.
Besides the chair, the floor is the only other place to sit—and it’s covered in dust. I take a moment to rest before digging into my backpack and pulling out my water bottle. It’s full, and I send a mental prayer to the gods of insulation as I realize the water is still cold. Splurging on this stupid thing was the best decision I’ve ever made, and I let out a quiet moan as I unscrew the lid and take a few calculated sips.
I don’t know how long it will take me to find civilization or water, and I need to preserve what little I brought with me.
I allow myself only a few moments to rest before deciding to take the risk of searching through the junk pile in the corner of the room. There could be something helpful in there, and I need all the supplies I can get.
My movements unsettle the dust, and I wince as it gets into my eyes. The magic here doesn’t seem to be aggravating me, but the dust sure as fuck is. I turn and sneeze into my elbow before beginning my search.
After almost two hours of pulling apart and inspecting every piece of trash in the pile, I call it. Besides a half-broken pencil and what’s either the handle of a hairbrush or a very painful sex toy, there’s nothing to be found here.
I step outside, needing to get out of the dusty space before I cough up a lung.
The sun is quickly streaking across the sky, signaling this place is likely on a twenty-four-hour cycle like the human realm. That’s good. I know the human realm, and the more similarities I find, the better.
I don’t want the faeries to recognize me as fresh meat. That’ll only lead to questions I don’t want to answer, and I need to do everything in my power to protect Lill. There’s a reason she and her mother ran away from this place, and I’m not about to bring a bunch of faeries to her.
The wooden steps of the cabin creak as I plop down on them, and I rest my chin on my knees as I stare out into the seemingly endless prairie. I suppose I’ll just continue forward.
I’ll eventually run into something—either a person, building, or road.
I put in too much work just to get lost in a damn field and die from hunger or thirst. That’s too embarrassing a way to go.