Chapter 2
Mavick
Edwin is nowhere to be found when I storm out on the king.
Thanks to this convenience, I stomp in my periwinkle dress through the familiar tunnel leading to Mavick’s cottage. Tears flow freely down my cheeks, cold against my too-hot face as I move in the near dark.
I have known of faeries, of Sanctuary and the diverse fae who call it home, for as long as I can remember.
For as long as I can remember remembering.
In books read aloud by Mother to lull me to sleep.
Woven into lyrics hummed by wet nurses and maids to calm me.
Painted into portraits along forgotten hallways.
But they were not real. Sanctuary was fictional.
Faeries were subjects in storybooks, cautionary tales meant to teach children lessons, products of mortal imagination. At least I believed so—until I met one.
And meeting Mavick was well… fate.
Living in a castle is dreadfully dull. Growing up, I was never alone, surrounded, always watched—by my mother, servants, maids, caretakers, tutors, guards, the like.
It’s hard to believe now how lonely it was.
To be the only child in a room full of people who were paid to pay attention to you.
It did not take long to master the art of evading my keepers.
Once untethered, I ran my fingers along empty hall walls, pushing and prodding pretty drapes, massive oil paintings, investigating every nook and cranny to see if any secrets revealed themselves.
One day, when I was eight years old, I found it.
A large tapestry. It was a unique work of art—a bustling scene of a bazaar.
But it was no ordinary market. There were merchants with goat legs and human top halves.
Regular human bodies with fish heads and faces.
Tall slender figures in robes, graceful and poised like ballerinas, but too skeletal, their bony faces shrouded in darkness.
Horned or winged characters, some humanlike and some far from it.
It was at the dead end of a long corridor which may have once been guest quarters.
I wouldn’t know. We’ve never hosted guests here in my lifetime—no balls or fancy dinners or welcoming of courts.
No excitement whatsoever. My small fingers traced the tapestry’s fringed edge.
I gave it a tug. Nothing at first. Just as I was about to move on, my eyes settled on a tiny crack peeking out from the opposite, bottom corner.
There you are, I grinned to myself.
The bottom left edge of the tapestry lifted enough to allow me entry.
I stumbled down the dim tunnel, crudely carved into the stone wall beyond the strange scene.
Mild paranoia crept in at the lack of light the farther I traveled, and I was about to turn back when my eyes caught the unmistakable glow of faint blue.
At first I thought it was a trick, my mind seeing what it wanted to see, but my feet moved forward as though beckoned.
An arch of the most brilliant swirling and luminous liquid stood at the tunnel’s end.
Its surface was like that of a lake, a moving mirror.
Rippling even in the dense, still air. When I dared to step closer, half expecting to see myself staring out of the black-blue depths, I gasped.
There was no reflection at all, only the ever-glassy finish.
A soft heat, a droning hum, radiated from it like it was a living being standing before me.
I’d never seen anything like it. Call it curiosity, call it stupidity, but my fingers reached to touch the shining liquid.
I didn’t know until too late that it was, in fact, a door—a passageway.
My small frame was yanked through with such momentum that I lost all sense of up or down.
I was launched into brief, weightless nothingness.
But within two blinks, I found myself winded and crumpled, face down on a dusty old carpet woven with vibrant, sticky threads of various colors.
The static warmth of the archway was gone.
I felt it for a measly second before being catapulted onto this scratchy, hard floor.
“Well,” said a voice—more like a shriek—from somewhere above my head. “I knew one of you mortals were fated to stumble in here eventually.”
Slowly, I stared up into quite an odd face.
They were small in stature, not much taller than me, an eight-year-old girl, and well…
They were human-shaped. Their skin was a soft, fuzzy pink all over, like a newborn piglet, body draped in a loose and shiny fabric swatch reminiscent of a silk pillowcase.
Four dark eyes—two stacked pairs—blinked down at me, framed by cloudlike, raven-black hair.
It seemed to float around them. They were neither man nor woman, but somehow both.
Even more slowly, I rose to my feet, my trembling hands held high in surrender.
“It’s teatime,” they said, unbothered. Like a mortal child didn’t just plop onto their living room rug uninvited.
As they turned their back to me, two delicate wings caught in the light.
They protruded from an exposed patch of skin between the faerie’s shoulder blades.
They appeared to be made of the air itself. Wings!
“Sit! You heard me. I know your kind have ears for listening.”
What a strange thing to say, I thought to myself, not daring to speak.
I found the nearest cushy armchair and sunk deep down into it, as instructed.
With the faerie out of sight, having crossed into what I assumed was a kitchen, I took in the room.
It was small, but warmly lit, and cluttered from floor to ceiling with books, trinkets, and random mundane items—a whole shelf dedicated to crude toothbrushes, another to miscellaneous, threadless sewing spools.
The mismatched furniture was all variously sized, and a fire was dying out in the hearth at the corner of the room.
There was a doorway where surely, thirty seconds ago, I crashed through unannounced.
But it didn’t look like the glowing, glassy passageway, as before.
It was plain. As mundane as their collections.
I sat unmoving, unsure of what else to do as I waited for them to return.
“What’s your name, girl?” the faerie asked, reappearing at my side.
They had entered the room so quietly that I didn’t even notice them, despite the rattling tray of tea they clutched with long, slender fingers.
They placed it on the crooked table before me with surprising grace, and in a swift, airy motion, offered me a small mug of a smoky green liquid.
I couldn’t help but inspect their sharp talons.
I hesitated at first but was trained even at that young age to not dare be rude.
So, I took the cup and stared into it, fighting a grimace.
“It doesn’t bite, child,” said the faerie, reading my worried face like a book.
They sat unperturbed in the chair across from me, unblinking and observant as a crow.
Even with their alarmingly shrieky, high-pitched voice, it was clear they were making an effort to be kind.
I brought the mug to my mouth and took the shyest sip.
This tea tasted like hot butterscotch mixed with tomato juice.
The color, consistency, and flavor made very little sense.
I pushed down the impolite urge to smack my lips in disgust.
“I’ll go first, as I see you’re timid. My name’s Mavick.”
Mavick, I thought to myself. Like magic.
What an unusual, yet fitting name. I was uncertain of which gaze to meet, the top or the bottom pair of eyes, so I settled on the bottom.
It was hard to tell if they were even focused on me though, as they lacked irises.
Only inky black orbs stared back at me, the reflection of myself and the room in which we sat multiplied by four.
“My n-name,” I said, stuttering, voice hoarse and meek, “is Thea.”
“Oh!” they exclaimed and I jolted, sloshing hot tea into my lap. They did not notice as they continued on, “Where are my manners? I didn’t even think about how my usual form may frighten you!”
Manners? Odd for them to be worried about manners when I materialized on their cramped living room floor without notice.
Before my eyes though, they began to change.
An inexplicable silvery mist filled the air, like the aftermath of a slew of popped bubbles.
I blinked it away only to find an unassumingly docile woman sitting across from me.
I tried to resist my mouth sliding open in shock but failed.
“Glamours, you know,” Mavick said, like I had any clue what that meant. “When and if we want to blend in with you mortals.”
We sat in silence for a long while. Mavick the sharp-eyed crow, me the twitchy fieldmouse.
I had no idea what to say, how to hold a real conversation with anyone, let alone a faerie.
Mavick did not seem to mind my lack of sociability.
And when I left half an hour later, they were cheerful, smiling in their human-skinned disguise.
“This was nice, Thea. You are welcome here any time.”