Chapter 13
A Pocket Full of Sunshine
Instead of feeling turned inside out, Cha exploded into radiant light.
It felt as if every cell in her body had been trapped in darkness and was liberated at last. She was coming apart and didn’t care because it felt so damn good, like the best orgasm ever, except it went on too long and she began to struggle to find herself again.
Through warping slow motion, Dy—a supernova of spiraling golden locks and exploding blue eyes—said “Touuuuuccchhhhh Waaaaarrrrggggg.”
“Eeeeeyyyyyewwwwww,” Cha replied, wondering why even their voices were distorted.
With surprising speed, given the weird warping, Dy seized Cha’s wrist and flattened her hand against Warg’s slimy side.
Except it didn’t feel slimy for once. Instead he felt like a cool and solid drink of water in a searing desert.
And her body drank that in, her cells reassembling into the correct size and sequence.
Shrinking back into her body felt like closing the door on a dark and windowless room—but one she was happy to hide in for the next several hours.
Cha had never considered herself a den animal, but she could see her way to it now.
“Wow,” Dy breathed in rare wonder. “High, pure yellow ley line. This is like flying into the sun.”
Cautiously, Cha squinched open the eyes she hadn’t realized she’d closed. The windows gradually brightened as Dy removed the shading.
Spread before them was a landscape of butter yellow and sparkling gold.
It looked like something out of a fairytale, the happy, childrens’ kind, with rolling hills of cloud-soft grass and occasional trees spreading gracious branches, leaves glittering as they fluttered as if they’d been made of beaten gold or copper.
Cha had never seen such beautiful trees, the thick trunks a deep bronze and the elegant canopy supported by limbs finely etched against a sky pale as dawn when the cool colors of night first give way to warming sunrise.
Birds flew in vast flocks, darker points of copper against the soft sky, switching directions in one swirling moment to the next.
Over the next hill, a herd of unicorns grazed peacefully, snowy white on the buttery grass, all lifting their heads to watch Big Betty sail past, gentle violet eyes doelike in wonder, their shining horns like exclamation points.
Beyond them the land sloped down, giving way to sand that glittered gold, lapped by the gentle waves of a sea that looked for all the world like molten gold.
So much so that Cha would hesitate to touch it, for fear of having that part of her body immediately melted away.
And yet she wanted to, with a longing that shocked her.
Not at all unlike the burning desire for Azul she couldn’t seem to shake, the need for him outpacing all the shouted warnings of her sadly mortal nervous system.
Directly ahead, at the apparent destination of the ley line they traveled, a palace stood on a towering conical mountain overlooking the volcanic sea.
It looked as if it had been carved from a yellow diamond—or from a citrine—Cha supposed, though she hadn’t seen many of those.
They weren’t particularly valued by humans, though there had been some in Phinny’s box of bribery jewels.
She couldn’t say why she got the impression it had been made from a single jewel, especially at this distance—though at the speed of the yellow ley line, that distance was diminishing rapidly—except that she somehow knew it had been.
Or perhaps that it had been blown like a bubble from a tiny seed, fragile as a soap membrane and yet unbreakable.
It blazed like a second sun on the cliff.
Actually, she corrected herself, like the only sun as—despite the pervasive, effervescent glow of the sky, there didn’t seem to be a sun visible.
“Is it nighttime here?” she asked, almost rhetorically.
“That would explain the lack of a sun,” Dy answered patiently like she might with one of her kids asking a stupid question.
“But it’s so bright.”
“Not as bright as Moonstone,” Dy replied. “Besides, you know unicorns are nocturnal. They wouldn’t have been out if it were daytime.”
Had Cha known that? Hmm.
“Well, it’s certainly beautiful.” Cha lifted her chin at Dy’s disbelieving look. “What? I can appreciate a beautiful landscape.”
“Take your hand off Warg,” Dy suggested with a twist of a knowing smile.
“Ugh.” Having forgotten she put it there, Cha lifted her now thoroughly slimed hand and emitted a little screech of shock for the shift in perspective.
All that had been soft became sharp, the cloudlike grass like tiny shards of glass.
The once gentle sea—still that volcanic shade of molten gold—seethed with malice.
The flocks of birds dove and swooped with menacing grace, slicing across the sky.
It was all the same, but different. Certainly no longer what anyone would call beautiful. The shift made her wonder about Azul, and how he’d appear with a bit of lodestone grounding. Maybe she didn’t want to know, coward that she was.
The palace, looming ever larger in their field of vision, still shimmered like a soap bubble jewel, glowing like a sun.
But now it clearly appeared to have been constructed, not so magical.
Though that seemed odd. Clearly there was magic aplenty radiating out of this landscape.
“It was glamoured?” she asked, somewhat unnecessarily, because why else would Warg’s grounding have changed what she saw?
“Yep,” Dy replied. She could see through glamour pretty easily. She’d once described it as like flicking sunshades on and off.
“But why bother?” Cha complained. At Dy’s sideways glance, she added. “We’re not even supposed to be here. Why implement a huge glamour?”
“Glamour works on other fae, too,” Dy explained with some exasperation. “Honestly, did you attend any of the classes on fae magic and their internecine politics?”
“I’m sure I attended some,” Cha allowed, shifting in her seat.
She knew she’d had to because if she hadn’t put in minimum attendance, she’d have been expelled and where would she have lived then?
Not back on the farm, that was for sure.
But attending class and paying attention were two different things.
Back then, all she’d cared about was what she needed to know to ride the ley lines.
In sober retrospect, she could have used some of that information on the internecine politics—whatever that meant.
“So,” she said, trying to sound casual and knowledgeable, “internecine is another kind of magic?”
Dy turned and stared at Cha in full disgusted disbelief. “Seriously?”
Dy didn’t need to be looking at the ley line to navigate it.
Big Betty knew what she was doing and Dy possessed the ability to sense the course of the ley and any obstacles, but Cha couldn’t help glancing nervously ahead.
They were going really fast. Faster than she’d ever experienced.
Probably she’d be much happier if she were driving.
“Internecine means involving conflict within a group, usually marked by slaughter,” Dy informed her bitingly.
“Okay, okay.” Cha held up her hands in surrender. “Forgive me for not having your vocabulary. I don’t know how you memorize all that shit anyway.”
Dy took a deep breath, clearly gathering her patience. “The point is not your vocabulary. The point is that you’ve involved yourself in fae internecine politics with the same careless breeziness you approach every damn thing.”
She wasn’t wrong, but… “Knowing an obscure vocabulary word and understanding what I’m walking into with rescuing Prince Charming are two very different skill sets.
I excel at thinking on my feet—or on the ley line—and I can and have extracted myself and others, including you, from any number of dicey situations. This will be fine.”
“Will it?” Dy continued to glare at her balefully.
“It’s a little late to second guess,” Cha pointed out. And pointed to the onrushing glaringly bright fairytale palace.
Dy turned her baleful glare on the palace, which was frankly a relief. “Fuck me,” she muttered, slowing Big Betty to one of the outside leys, which was still about three times as fast as Obsidian fast black. “Do you have any idea how we’re handling this?”
Cha eyed the structure. “Play it the way we planned. Let me and Katu out and we’ll escort you in.
Pretend that we were hired to bring this valuable shipment here.
We allow them to sell them the agnicurna for yellow dust. You take the cargo home.
Meanwhile, I’ll find Prince Charming, extract him from whatever sticky web he landed in, and we’ll be right behind you in Katu. ”
Dy slowed them even more. “You and Katu will have to exit on the fly. I can’t drop to a full stop until we’re there, it seems.”
Alas for that. “Katu can handle it, can’t you baby cat?”
Katu sawed in happy agreement, as eager as she to get back on the ley, to be the bosses of their own destinies again, instead of passive passengers.
“Just… be careful,” Dy cautioned.
“Yes, Mom.” Cha was already climbing back through the compartment door, Katu squirming past her and leaving her with a face-full of fur.
“I’m serious.” Dy smacked her thigh and Cha wiggled her butt in Dy’s face in retaliation, making her partner laugh. “This high yellow is unlike anything I’ve ever encountered. It’s fast fast.”
“Understood,” Cha replied, trying to sound sober and responsible while her insides danced in sheer glee.
“Cha.” Dy grabbed her booted ankle just before she finished squeaking back through. “I mean it.”
Cha shook her foot vigorously, dislodging the grip of caution. “I’m always careful.”
“You are never careful!” Dy’s voice followed her through as the door closed behind her.
“What fun is careful, right, baby cat?”
Katu answered with a disdainful tail swish.
If she was the careful type she’d never have become a ley rider in the first place.
Never become a smuggler, or taken that rotten job that landed her in Moonstone jail.
Never picked up the delicious man-candy of a hitchhiker who turned out to be a fae prince in hiding, nor would she be in Citrine at that very moment, staging an improbable rescue.
She wouldn’t be about to ride pure high yellow. Katu transformed, rear to the back of Big Betty, ready to play. Cha vaulted into the driver’s seat, blood pumping with excitement. The next best thing to sex.
Big Betty’s back door lowered. Dy had them on the slowest side ley possible and the countryside still blurred past in a yellow streak. Cha gave the signal and Big Betty suddenly accelerated, sending them flying down the ramp and into the whirlwind.