Emerson’s Story

Chapter 4

Four

The darkness evaporates to reveal Dash at my side and a garden bathed in the golden glow of sunrise. The same garden I saw from the balcony minutes ago. I shove Dash away from me, drop onto my knees, and throw up on the grass.

“Lovely,” he says when I’m done. “Thank goodness I didn’t take you back inside the house.”

“What happened to … to Val?” I gasp, trying to swallow down the urge to throw up again and failing.

When my retching finally ends, Dash says, “She’s fine. One of my teammates got her out of the ground. She’s already forgotten the whole thing.”

“How could she have …” My words trail off as I look up and see one of those miniature winged horses soaring through the air behind Dash. I climb slowly to my feet and look around. The roses and leaves are still faintly glowing, but their luminescence is less obvious now with the sun’s golden light filtering through the trees. The little horse lands in a shallow part of the rock pool and begins frolicking, tossing droplets of silver water about as it plays. Wherever the water lands, a silver mushroom pops up.

My brain keeps repeating the same message: I must be dreaming. This is not possible. I’ve gone off the deep end and entirely lost my mind. But I don’t think my imagination is capable of coming up with this kind of fantastical detail. And everything seems so real. The fresh scent of flowers, the prickle of grass beneath my feet. The sour taste of puke in my mouth.

“Explain,” I whisper. “Make this make sense.”

Dash folds his arms over his chest. “Okay then. Once upon a time there lived a little girl whose name was—”

I cut him off with a glare. “Don’t turn my life into some fairytale crap. Just give me the facts.” Something bright flies from the tip of my tongue, and my immediate thought is that I must be so angry I’m actually spitting saliva. But no. It’s a spark of light. The same kind that crackled around my hands after Pete was somehow thrown away from me. Fear slithers down my spine as I clamp my mouth shut.

“Okay, here are the bare-bone facts,” Dash says. “Magic is real, and it exists in a realm that overlaps with the world you grew up in. Fae live on this side; humans and all the other non-magical creatures you recognize live on the other side. I’m a faerie, like you. I’m also a guardian, which means I’m trained to fight dark magic, dangerous fae, that sort of thing. The day you and I first met, I had an assignment on your side of the veil.”

“The day you ruined everything,” I murmur, remembering my mother wailing, covering her head with her hands, shouting about things that weren’t real.

Dash looks annoyed that I’ve interrupted his story. “You have got to stop hating me for that. You know they would have taken her away anyway. Maybe not that day, but soon afterwards. She wasn’t in her right mind—”

“Don’t you dare talk about her.”

“Anyway,” he continues loudly, “nobody was supposed to see me, but you did. And with that color in your hair, I knew you were a faerie. But then it kind of flickered and was gone, and you couldn’t see me anymore. It was as if everything magical about you was suddenly bottled up, inaccessible. Once we were done with the assignment, I mentioned you in my Guild report, and they—”

“Your Guild report?” I say with a snort. “You were like twelve. Does this Guild of yours breed child soldiers or something?”

“No. We’re not soldiers, and by the time training is done, we’re not children anymore. And I was thirteen, not twelve. I’d just begun my training. It was a group assignment, but we were all in different areas of the park, and I was the only one who had any interaction with you. So yes, I reported it afterwards. Faeries with dodgy magic who think they’re human shouldn’t be ignored.”

“Oh, right, because I’m probably a danger to society or something like that,” I say with a roll of my eyes.

“Potentially, yes.” Dash’s tone is deadly serious, and an image of the ground ripping open comes immediately to mind. I wrap my arms around myself and look away. “I don’t know if the Guild investigated you at all,” Dash continues, “because it was none of my business. I got on with my training, and it was about six months later when you showed up near another one of my assignments. Then a few months later you were there again.”

“I remember seeing you,” I murmur. “I figured you must live somewhere near Stanmeade. I thought it was weird, since it’s so far away from where I first saw you. In that park near where Mom and I used to live. But I was so mad at you that I didn’t focus too much on it being a weird coincidence.”

“Well, the Guild didn’t think it was a coincidence. They thought something else might be going on. That maybe your weird on-off magic was causing problems, or attracting trouble-makers or something, and that’s how I ended up with three assignments near you. But they couldn’t find any connection, and someone on the Council said you should be left alone. That the Guild shouldn’t interfere with you unless there was evidence that your magic really was breaking free and causing trouble. But the rest of the Council wanted someone to keep tabs on you, just in case. They complained about it being a waste of time and resources for a trained guardian to do it, though, so I volunteered.” His mouth pulls up one side in a half-grin. “We were encouraged to take on extra projects outside of training. It looks good on the resume. Shows initiative or something.”

I throw my hands up. “Wonderful. You’re my flipping babysitter.”

“Uh, I think detective might be a more accurate comparison.”

“Stalker, maybe?”

“I mean, it was like this ongoing puzzle, trying to figure out what was wrong with you and how you ended up in that awful little human town.”

“Perhaps mad scientist would be more fitting. Highly offensive mad scientist.”

He folds his arms over his chest. “I think we should stop the comparisons. You clearly don’t understand the importance of what I do.”

“And you clearly think far too highly of yourself. But then, I’ve always known that, haven’t I.”

“I think, Emerson,” he says with an annoying smirk, “that we should focus on the great many things you haven’t always known.”

His words bring home the seriousness of the situation. I try to tell myself yet again that I’m dreaming or high or drunk, but it’s a weak lie I have no hope of believing. I shut my eyes and press my fingers against my temples. “So I’m not crazy after all,” I murmur. “The strange things I’ve seen—creatures that shouldn’t exist—they’ve actually been real.”

“Yes. Well, unless you really are seeing things that aren’t—”

“Wait. Wait, wait, wait.” I open my eyes, step closer, and grasp his T-shirt as hope comes to life inside me. “Does this mean my mother was never crazy either? The voices, the hallucinations … her mind didn’t make them up? They were actually there? Because, I mean, if I have this … magic—” it still sounds so odd to apply the word to myself “—then she must have it too.”

“Actually,” Dash says carefully, removing my fists from his T-shirt, “the Guild sent someone to Tranquil Hills to check on your mother after the third time you showed up near an assignment. They couldn’t sense any magic in her.”

“So … she’s …”

“Yes. I’m sorry. She’s always been sick.”

I turn away, not wanting him to see the crushing disappointment. I remind myself not to be surprised, though. Of course it was too much to hope that Mom might actually be sane. That’s the way life works, right? You hope for something, and then life kicks you in the face and laughs at you.

I clear my throat. “So it must have been my father then. The loser I don’t know at all. He must have been—you know—like me.”

“Well …”

When Dash doesn’t finish, I turn back to look at him. “Well what?”

He screws up his face, then says, “Please don’t hit me.”

Dread stirs in the pit of my stomach. “Why would I hit you?”

“Because … Okay, look. You’re not a halfling. We know that for sure. You’re a faerie, and that means you must have had two faerie parents. So … therefore … the woman locked up in Tranquil Hills Psychiatric Hospital isn’t your mother.”

I stare at him, unable to speak. His words seem to echo around my head. Isn’t your mother … isn’t your mother … isn’t your mother.

“Silence?” Dash says eventually. “I guess that’s better than screaming and hitting and telling me I must be—”

“Shut up.”

How can Mom not be my mom? For some reason, this is harder to comprehend than anything else. She’s my mother. She raised me. Everything was great until her crazy moments started becoming a little harder to hide. Everything went to hell soon after that, but before, when she was normal, life was good. It was just me and her against the world. We were a team.

I bend over, my hands pressing against my knees, and breathe deeply. “It can’t be true,” I manage to say past the nausea. “There must be some other explanation. Something you people have missed. I don’t know what, but … something.”

“Emerson …”

“I think I might be sick again.”

Dash pats my back briefly. “Well, at least we’re outside.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“There’s a very effective tonic for nausea. We can go inside and get some.”

“With my life, you idiot.” I straighten. “Everything is completely screwed up. I’m a magical freak, my aunt wants to get me locked up somewhere far away, my mother is apparently not my mother, and—and these damn spark things won’t get off me!” I shake my hands as flickers of light dance about them once more. “Not to mention there’s video footage of the whole disaster at the Masons’ farm. It’s probably online already, and soon the entire world will know that I’m—”

“Hey, calm down. The world isn’t going to know anything. Do you honestly think this is the first time we’ve dealt with something like this? Of course it isn’t. We’re not amateurs. Most people’s memories of last night had been altered by this morning, although we missed a few who still need to be dealt with, including whoever took that phone to the cops. But that footage will have vanished within the next few hours, I can promise you that.” He gives me a reassuring smile. “No one will remember that you were involved, and the top story on the news will be about the unexpected earthquake that ripped through Stanmeade.” He tilts his head. “Speaking of which, can you tell me what actually happened? Why did the ground tear open like that?”

“Why?” I stare at him. “Because apparently I have magic that suddenly decided to—and I quote—explode all over everything. Those were your words, right?”

“Yes, but I thought I heard you say something before it happened, and that’s not—”

He cuts himself off as he looks over my shoulder. I swivel around and see a young woman walking toward us. “Well,” Dash mutters. “That was terrible timing.”

“Oh, because our alone time is up now?” I return my gaze to him. “Boohoo. I’m devastated.”

His eyes narrow slightly. “You should be. There’s something very important we need to—”

“Dash, we gotta go,” the woman says as she reaches us. “One of the Guild Councilors is waiting to see the girl.”

I’d like to point out that ‘the girl’ has a name, but I’m more concerned by what this woman just said. “A Councilor? Why?”

“Because you’re a faerie who’s been living in the human world,” Dash says as the woman bends down and writes on the grass with a pen, “and now that your magic has appeared, you have no idea how to use it. There are protocols in place for this kind of situation.”

“Protocols?” That sounds far too clinical for my liking.

“Yes, of course. They’ll put you into their special program for people like you. Other fae who, for whatever reason, grew up in the human world without knowing how to use their magic. They’re mostly younger fae, but every now and then someone older turns up, like you. It’ll be fun.”

No it won’t. It doesn’t sound fun at all. I don’t want to meet strange people and learn how to become a member of their stupid magic club. I want to get back to my real life and pretend none of this happened. Or perhaps hide in a corner and fall apart because Mom isn’t even my—

Don’t go there, I instruct myself. I don’t fall apart in front of other people. Especially not Dash.

“Shall we get going then?” he asks, gesturing to the ground where a dark hole has appeared beside the kneeling woman. A dark hole not of earth or rock, but of … nothing. My brain tells me I should be shocked, but I think I’m beyond that point now. Nothing seems impossible anymore.

“Em? Ready to go?”

Ready to go? Such a simple, ordinary question. The kind of thing Val might say when she arrives at my place before school. Or Chelsea might say to Georgia when they’re on their way to the shops. Or Mom used to say, with her hand reaching out for mine, when we’d finished playing at the park in the afternoon and had to walk home.

Mom.

An image of her flashes before my eyes again. A little house, wild roses in the garden, number twenty-nine on the old wooden gate. Mom pruning the bushes, and a young version of me dancing around her and singing while our new puppy chases butterflies. Mom who isn’t my Mom. My heart cracks a little. I shove the pain aside. Later, I tell myself. Deal with that later. Fall apart later.

I take a deep breath that sounds as shaky as I feel. “Yeah. Let’s go. Just … can you get me that anti-nausea tonic first?”