My sisters feel the same. So does Papa Thorne, but he keeps telling us not to say anything like that in public.
The elderberry bushes give way to reeds of green. Hunkering low, I’m a lark whistling through the grass. When I find the musical nightingale nesting at the base of a tree, I give it a bow and then twirl to its merry lullaby. Beneath the stars, I laugh and hop in circles…until something happens, because in a land like this one, things always happen. I spin so fast, yet my mask doesn’t fall. Instead, I do.
I fall because I’d been whirling too quickly, and a sudden wind chops through the underbrush, and the nightingale swallows its own whistle. It stops singing, then flees in a flurry of plumes. I land on my ass with a grunt and peer through the holes of my costume, gawking at the avian’s retreat.
Then I hear another bird.
A strange bird. A strange, screeching bird. A strange, screeching bird that I’ve never heard before.
The sound is something like a caw and nothing like a caw. I don’t know what to call it other than magical. I should run, run right now, run and find my sisters.
Papa would slay me. Juniper would lecture me. Cove would plead with me.
And I wouldn’t listen to them, so I don’t. After adjusting the lark mask, I crawl across the field, heading toward the glassblower’s forge. Muck stains my nightgown and cakes my nails. My white hair tumbles from my cloak’s hood, so I tie it into a knot and tuck it beneath the material, out of sight and out of the way. One of these days, I’m gonna take shears to my head.
The stone forge huddles in a pocket of trees at the end of a cobbled lane, surrounded by verdant stalks that move with the wind. The sliding door is bolted shut. Scurrying to the entrance, I flinch at the shrill noise thrashing from inside. My skin pebbles with delicious, stupid fear. What’s in there?
Who’s in there?
Because I can hear better now, I realize it’s not a bird, because birds don’t grunt and growl. The sounds jumble together, freakish, furious.
The forge trembles. I dart back on my haunches, pluck a feather from my mask, jam the tip into the bolt, and give it a jimmy. Dammit! Dammit, dammit, dammit, it won’t—yeah, it will! The lock slumps open like a mouth, emitting a thin wheeze. I cringe, because I’m probably doing something that shouldn’t be overheard, not by the glassblower—I forgot his name—and most definitely not by the thing inside his workshop. The villagers have clucking tongues and eyes as wide as the sky. If anyone catches me, I’ll be in a heap of trouble.
But then, nobody’s around at this hour. And I’ve already done plenty to get in a heap of trouble, so what’s one more crime?
The thing inside makes too much of a racket to detect me as I creep open the door and peek inside. Along with pails, funny-looking tools clutter the walls: tubes and pipes, tongs and clipperlike objects, and long rods. In a shelf case, glass balls with blue and green reflections perch on blocks that keep them steady. An elastic knitting of cobwebs spans the rafters, directly above an unlit furnace. Starlight and moonlight trickle through the roof.
It’s enough illumination for me to spot the cage. Behind the lark mask, my eyes pop. I grip the door, goggling around its corner at the curving iron bars, the iron door handle, and the iron latch. Stooping in the middle of the workshop is a figure. It flails about, fighting to get free. Limbs beat and scratch the bars, fingers singeing, tendrils of smoke sizzling. The prisoner doesn’t seem to care, just keeps battering the cage and making it shudder.
The figure’s head twitches, turning this way and that. The movements threaten and beg at the same time. It’s desperate stuff. The stuff of frustration. I can’t decide if the display is pitiful or perilous.
My heart jumps into my throat as I squint harder. I see loose trousers and an oversized shirt. I see tense shoulders. I see kneeling legs and bent fingers clawing at the iron. I see a hunched spine and a shadowed profile with a beak.
I see pointy ears. I see a boy who’s not a boy.
And when the not-boy stops throwing his tantrum, the back of his head snaps up in awareness. And when his head whips over his shoulder, I see a mask. And behind that mask, I think he sees me, too.
Small, dark blue feathers—the shade of nightfall—fan around his head, covering the upper half of his face. I imagine he’s got vicious eyes. In this murky forge, and from this distance, and because of the visor, I can’t make out those orbs. But I sure do feel them.
A Fae. This creature is a Fae.
I’ve never seen one of the Folk before. I’m either gonna retch or laugh. Probably, I’ll do one first, the other second, since I don’t do things halfway.
But I don’t feel like screaming. Maybe it’s because the Fae looks my age: ten. Or maybe he’s older, lots of years older. Don’t Faeries show their age slowly? Because they live forever?
My knees crush the dirt. My fingernails root into the forge’s door. My heart’s a mean bastard, fluttering in the hive of my chest.
The Fae’s gotta be one of the captured, one of the Folk who tried to save their fauna. Although I can’t see his eyes, I sense glittering irises that pierce the shadows. In spite of the costume, the Fae boy—who’s not a boy—traps me in the net of his stare. Behind those feathers, the weight of his gaze cinches around my neck and squeezes. And just like that, I know he’s doing it on purpose.
I don’t like this. I don’t like that he’s trying to scare me. I don’t like this because it’s working, so I’ll stop it from working.
Gulping down the fright, I slink to the threshold and stare back. We stay like that for the count of one hundred.
A murky nest of hair surrounds his face. Black? Blue?
It’s more than he can detect about me, since I’ve got my hair knotted inside the cloak’s hood. Best if I keep it that way.
Midnight coasts into the workshop, the shadows as thick as syrup. Outside, crickets rasp.
