Six
MAY HAD ELECTED TO stay home with Miranda while the rest of us went to court, something I would have interpreted as a favor if she hadn’t been so unreasonably gleeful about being the one who didn’t have to deal with the pomp and circumstance of a formal court occasion.
She’d even stood in the doorway and moved Miranda’s arm up and down to make her wave goodbye to us as we made for the car, thus proving that she knew exactly what she was doing.
“Remind me to hit her with a water balloon when we get home,” I grumbled, sliding into the driver’s seat and fastening my seatbelt across my waist.
“Only if I get to throw one as well,” said Tybalt, mirroring me in the passenger seat.
“Of course,” I said magnanimously, and looked to the rearview mirror, watching as Quentin and Raysel fastened their seatbelts.
Chelsea and Dean were going to join us in Muir Woods, the one traveling via portal, the other arriving with the Undersea delegation.
Technically Dean is sworn to Arden, since his demesne is on the land and not in the water.
And he does accept orders from her when necessary.
But right now, as we were arguing the validity of Dianda’s claim of offense, it seemed like a good idea to have the reminder, however small, of just how much support Saltmist had in the Mists.
We had asked Raj about attending, but he wasn’t able to get away from his duties in the Court of Cats.
Instead, he sent his best, and promised to have a representative attending Arden’s court to monitor it for him.
No one had needed to say anything about the fact that Tybalt could no longer be considered an objective observer.
He wasn’t, and hadn’t been for a long time.
“Everybody buckled?” I asked. I had watched them do it, but I’ve had enough terrifying car-chase experiences to choose safety over sorrow every time.
A chorus of assent came from all corners of the car. I turned on the engine, pulling out of the driveway.
Our house is in San Francisco proper, right next to Dolores Park.
Muir Woods is about an hour away by car on a good night.
An hour in a car with an anxious Cait Sidhe, a woman on the verge of a panic attack, and my somewhat-sullen squire is not and has never been my idea of a good time.
Still, I drove gamely on, not allowing myself the easy luxury of stopping for fast food or trying to find a shortcut.
“I could have carried you through the shadows, you know,” muttered Tybalt, seeing the way my hands were clenching on the wheel.
“You could have, but I didn’t want to make Quentin and Raysel take the bus,” I said.
“Hey,” protested Quentin. “I have a car. I could have driven us. Or we could have called Danny.”
“You’re not used to driving outside the city, and last time we had Danny drive us somewhere, we got abducted and Miranda nearly got abducted,” I said. “He’s still beating himself up about that. We’re not bothering Danny.”
Quentin made a grumpy noise and settled back in his seat, arms crossed and glowering.
I eyed him in the rearview mirror. “You know, sometimes I miss when you were respectful and obedient,” I said.
“It was always a facade,” he said primly.
“I know.” I sighed and kept driving.
Traffic was getting thicker, making it too dangerous to use a don’t-look-here to weave between the cars.
I focused on the road, while Tybalt tinkered with the radio, finally settling on a station playing folk music that would normally have put me to sleep, but was barely sufficient background noise under the circumstances.
We were all dressed for court under our human disguises.
May had been able to provide a dress for Raysel, while I was wearing a gown I had stolen from my closet in Amandine’s tower before the divorce.
Tybalt and Quentin were both in their own equivalent of formal wear, Quentin with tight blue trousers and a fitted brocade doublet over a white shirt, Tybalt in burgundy leather pants, a white linen shirt, and a black-and-gold velvet vest. No one would be able to say anything about our attire tonight, not if May and Jazz had anything to say about it.
Jazz could be a little flashier than was the current style, but I trusted May to keep us on the right side of “fashion disaster.” She had more practice than I did.
For all that I didn’t appreciate the number of cars on the road with us, we made good time to Muir Woods, and pulled into the parking lot associated with the park just before six, piling out of the car.
Tybalt moved to stand by the end, blocking me from view as much as he could while I cast a hide-and-seek spell over the car.
It would still be visible enough that no one would cause a wreck by trying to share our parking space or anything equally stupid; at the same time, it would be obscured enough that we wouldn’t get towed for being parked after park closure.
It’s a neat little piece of illusionary misdirection, and there was a time when it would have been well beyond my capabilities.
My illusions have improved with time, but they’re still not that strong.
It took me longer than it would have taken Quentin, but in the end, I got the spell up and moved to join the others, only a faint ache at the back of my skull reminding me how difficult that type of magic really was for me.
I couldn’t rub my head, since May had done my hair before we left the house, and so I settled for taking Tybalt’s arm and nodding toward the entrance to the park.
“Come on, crew. Let’s go see the queen.”
As a group, we walked out of the parking lot and down the short path into Muir Woods proper, enjoined not to litter and to watch our steps by every sign we passed along the way.
Many of them were decorated with colorful cartoon banana slugs, their little yellow faces leering at us with anatomically impossible expressions.
“Are those real?” asked Raysel, somewhat anxiously.
“No,” I said. “I mean, yes, banana slugs are real, but they don’t have teeth.
” It was strange seeing her as a human, even though she always wore her disguises when she went out with Chelsea; the illusion turned her eyes brown and rounded her ears, but left her hair essentially untouched, still fox-fur red and too effortlessly shaded to have come out of a bottle.
As a Daoine Sidhe, she was pretty, but nothing special.
As a human, she was barely shy of Helen of Troy.
That’s what different beauty standards will get you. We were in luck: the ranger working the ticket booth was surrounded by the faint gleam of a human disguise, marking her as a member of Arden’s court. I smiled as we approached her, meeting her eyes, and after a beat she returned my smile.
“Here for the private hike?” she asked, reaching under the counter and producing four paper passes.
“We are,” I affirmed.
“Thought so,” she said, and handed me the passes. “Everything’s been paid for, so you’re good to go. Stick to the paths.”
That last comment was less instruction than it was a warning to make sure we were alone before we made for the secret route to Arden’s knowe.
It was easier in the winter, when the park closed earlier.
Right now, Muir Woods stayed open until eight, making it difficult to avoid encountering humans on the way to court.
I nodded. “Of course,” I said. “Have a good night.”
“You, too,” she said agreeably, and waved for the next batch of visitors to come forward—these ones were human, and here for an actual evening hike from the looks of them.
I turned away to distribute passes among my group, and we made our way through the gate and into the park.
It can be difficult to express the majesty of Muir Woods to people who’ve never been there.
The redwoods are giants, looming above the land like sentinels standing guard against some unknowable danger.
A whole world blooms around their bases, ferns and tangled brush, poison oak and blackberry creepers.
It’s a breathtakingly primal beauty, and even the walkways and boardwalks the humans have scattered through the area can’t do anything to take away from it.
If anything, those little flecks of civilization just enhance the wildness of it all, providing a contrast that reminds me how old and venerable this place really is.
Those trees knew King Gilad, and a time before him as well.
They’ll know a time when all the kingdoms we acknowledge now are gone, and that’s hard to wrap my head around.
Lights darted through the trees, invisible to human eyes but beautiful all the same.
Pixies, their bodies and wings gleaming in a dozen different colors and even more shades and gradations of the same.
A few of them swooped down to spin circles around me, some even landing in my hair to hitch a ride.
They chimed inquisitively as they warmed, and I leaned toward Tybalt, so anyone watching us would assume that I was talking to him.
“Simon sends his love,” I said. “He’ll be coming to visit soon, so he can see the baby. I’ll make sure to come by Muir Woods and give you some warning before he comes.”
The pixies chimed appreciatively and threw themselves back into the air, presumably flying off to tell the rest of their colony.
Simon used to help take care of a fairly substantial pixie colony, and its members have had time to scatter through all the local colonies.
They still remember him fondly, and when he comes to visit the land, they like to descend and swarm him affectionately.
We kept walking. Quentin stopped to point out a banana slug to Raysel, who relaxed at the proof that they didn’t have teeth and were unlikely to eat her if she littered.