THEY WALKED FOR AGES along many cool, gloomy corridors lined by paintings of unsmiling Humans wearing strange, fanciful outfits, a couple of stuffed animals that she took firm exception to, a corridor lined with wholly inaccurate and – well, frankly disturbing scenes of purported Faerie life – and from there up a short staircase to a brighter corridor lined with dark wooden doors. He showed them into a bright, white-painted room with a low wood beam ceiling and a view down upon a central courtyard full of tired plants. Yaarah could not possibly have fit through its windows, set in tall but exceedingly narrow clusters of five once more. Not even useful for letting in much air. What was the point? Clunky Human attempts at decoration?
The man departed with a murmured, “Dinner’s at seven, as usual.”
No drama, no fuss. The room even appeared to be made up for a draconic occupant no larger than a Felidragon, with an arrangement of pillows covered by a large throw rug over in one corner and a low desk beneath the window overlooking the courtyard.
Allory wriggled her way out of the travel pack. “So?”
“So far, so peculiar. Tygra’s always had a flair for the dramatic, trrr-prrrt, but that … I don’t know what to make of this. I need to think.”
“Tygra, eh?”
“Aye.” He flashed her a brief grin before tossing his pack into an unoccupied corner. “Kind of puts the proverbial snarl into my thinking, she does.” When the Fae girl snickered politely, he added with a mournful air, “I’m fairly convinced she rather enjoys turning me into a drivelling simpleton at the snap of her claws. It’s just – I can’t … do you see? We’re friends but we can never be any other sort of … friends. Life doesn’t work that way.”
“I understand,” she said softly.
Dragon felines and non-Dragon felines, he meant. Seemed her friend had an eye for more than just scholarly detail and a vigorous sense of integrity.
Turning about, Yaarah arranged himself upon the cushions in a very cat-like curled-up posture, but everything in his manner bespoke dejection. Distraction needed?
Allory said, “Something weird happened on the way in.”
“Mrrr-frrr?” He sighed moodily.
Pausing about a foot from his muzzle so that she could gaze up into his eye, she told him about the small man and the exchange at the outer entryway.
The Felidragon pulled on his whiskers in bewilderment. “I don’t understand. Durhelm Castle never used to be like this.”
“I’m not sure coming here was the best idea, Yaarah. I’m worried.”
“So am I, but we’re here now and this is definitely the right place to start making our inquiries. We’ll be safe at the College of Azure Scholars – this is one of eleven Scholar Colleges, the one I’ve always stayed at before. I’ve connections here. The students are on a break, I’m told, so that means I can be even more discreet than usual, mrrr-crrr … and this room is safe. I’m going to slip out and re-establish contact with those I consider the most trustworthy, while you stay here and keep a low profile.”
“Eleven inches tall,” she scoffed. “How low can I go?”
According to his gloomy glance? Lower still.
How not to respond to a joke!
As the Felidragon moved toward the dark, heavily varnished wooden door, Allory called, “Would you leave a window open please, Yaarah?”
“You will not show yourself, mrrr-frrr?”
“I promise. I’d just prefer to have some fresh air in this strange man-cavern.”
“Good idea,” he grumbled, moving over to wrangle open one of the very stiff window locks. “Claustrophobic?”
“Stone is different to the jungle, Yaarah.”
“Aye. Now, I must warn you that I might be away for a while. Don’t go anywhere.”
“I’ll just perch on a daisy and work on my sparkle, shall I?”
“What did those Pixies say? Pish-piddle pops?” Yaarah winked cheerfully at her, although good cheer must surely be in short supply in his world. Agitation, aye. Plenty of that which she read in the set of his spine, the twitching of his whiskers and the restive flicking of his tufted ears. “Back in a … ah, no promises. Don’t hold your breath, hurrr-harrr-harrr, you might turn blue.”
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Chuckling at her bogus scowl, he banged the heavy door shut behind him.
Alone.
Isolated in a vast purpose-built stone house with struts of dead timbers, in a city teeming with unfamiliar, loud Humans, it was hard not to feel dispirited. Allory took in her surroundings. The throw blanket was a stylish teal colour. That was it. The rest of the room was too austere to think upon, the featureless walls a prison no Faerie could possibly escape. Fighting the sudden onset of the very claustrophobia she had foolishly invited to her cocoon, Allory flitted to the window to take a deep breath of the cool air.
Touching the soul locket, she assessed its heft, its existential encumbrance – had it grown heavier? How was she not used to its weight and presence yet?
Reminder to self: she could escape if she needed to. This was no prison.
Little better outside, wasn’t it? The square courtyard garden tucked into the centre of this enormous building could have been lush, but it lacked spirit, almost as if it had given up somehow. A few lacklustre flowers out there would barely feed a peckish Faerie. Not many flowers in this realm at all. Allory would have wanted to sample a couple of the window boxes on the way in, but the pickings struck her as pitiful. Certainly – she frowned. Interesting. Over to her left side, through a screen of the same insipid yellowish bushes that fringed a covered walkway in what she assumed was meant to be an ornamental display but alas, lacked the slightest ornamental function, stood a small pond. Two red-crested marshlarks pottered about in its shallows, half-concealed by overgrown tuffets of white-fronded reeds. What caught her eye was a tiny central island sprouting a petite, neat and very dead tree. Her eyes flicked repeatedly to the slim silhouette. What kind of tree was it? Why was it hunched over just so, cradling its torso as if in pain?
She rubbed her upper arms briskly. Brr. What a weird shiver.
Strange. That tree gave her the heebie-jeebies. Her Momfae would have called it a wingtip-crumpler. Had something died out there that she felt … what? Did she sense the echo of a soul’s lament?
Shuddering more violently still, she fell away from the windowsill, caught herself in the air and landed on the wide, dusty floor. What was wrong with her? Unnerved by this cold stone house? Stunk into stupefaction by all the odorous manifestations of Humanity?
Distraction time. For half an hour, Allory forced her spindly limbs through all the forms of armed and unarmed martial arts she could remember. Given the daily exercise she had prescribed herself, she was pleasingly much less out of breath at the end of the first set than usual. Progress? As if. She threw herself into a series of far more familiar aerial routines, whizzing about at high speed whilst dicing up imaginary enemies for vegetable stew. Close enough. Having vanquished all the vegetables in her world, she ran horizontal laps around the walls about eight feet up as a form of protest.
Walls? I laugh at walls!
Aye. Assaulting innocent walls and helpless vegetables. Aiming higher than ever.
Reverse course. Panting hard now with the constant exertion of running plus the additional wing-work, she raised her sights in a literal sense and ran across the bare ceiling with her wings buzzing for balance. Her tiny bare feet pattered like a mouse scuttling in earnest pursuit of its next meal. Suggids! Wrong trajectory! To her annoyance, gravity instantly reasserted its dominion even over her strawweight frame and sent her careening down toward the desk.
She snarled up her own wings! What?
Crash.
Well, more a strange sort of splat. Allory picked herself up in bemusement and dusted off her wings and limbs. Nothing broken? Even stranger. She had always been told she had brittle bones and to be fair, she recalled having various limbs in cocoon-casts at least eleven times during her childhood – and once, lest she forget, her entire torso up to her neck for four months. Now? She had almost bounced off a hard wooden surface. Not that she wanted to test the effect again, because it hurt. Several fat bruises beckoned. Instead, she walked gingerly over to peer down at an oval brass and glass lamp she had not noticed before, set beside the desk rather than atop it.
Flitting down, Allory alighted on the bulb and tried to figure out how the thing worked, all those complex gears and metal rods, did it turn its light about for some purpose? She scented an aromatic oil but could see no way a little person could light the wick. Ha. Probably some primitive Human technique, she sniffed, like rubbing sticks together in the hope of making fire. One had to wonder how many real Humans her mentors had met, however. A people who could build such monolithic monuments to ugliness must have mastered many technologies.
Had their construction works killed that sad tree?
Unbidden, she found herself pressing her nose and antennae up against one of the windows. The tall metal frame allowed her to peer out through the thick, clear panels without being seen. Allory scanned the courtyard. An old woman dressed in an outfit long since faded from its original green scraped wearily away with a rough broom along the path across the patch of yellowish lawn. As if tugged by strings, her eyes picked out the tree again. Immediately, she sensed such a draw that she braced herself instinctually but did not fall out because, of course, she was behind glass.
She tore her eyes away. Watch the garden. Anything but the tree, the epicentre of too many emotions for her to apprehend at once. The scene blurred unexpectedly. There had been happiness here before, glee and carolling laughter and contentment … and a grand, exotic botanical design that came alive before her eyes, a kind of shadowy yet dynamic vision of yore. Allory sensed a presence for which she had no words. She sensed a soul’s heartrending paean …
No.
How could the visions attack her like this?
No! Panting harshly, she tore herself away and slid off the inside windowsill down to the floor of the room. Oh, suggids. Suggids! The little Faerie curled up in a foetal ball beneath the corner of the throw blanket, that would be her. Hiding like a child beneath her favourite Faesilk blanket, safe in the cocoon – in a cocoon where she should have been safe, but never had been.
How could she face the anguish she sensed out there?
What was this ghastly place?