Dreams and Shadows (12 page)

“Some lady. I don't know who she was.”

“Well, why don't you take us back to meet your Bendith?”

“Okay!” Ewan turned, running excitedly back toward camp. “Come on!” he called back with a wave.

Colby turned to Yashar. “What's a Bendith?”

“A child thief.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” said Yashar.

“So they stole that little boy and are turning him into a fairy?”

“Yes. Colby, listen to me very carefully. Remember what I told you about fairy food?”

Colby repeated the instructions in a monotone voice, as if he'd been forced to say them a hundred times. “Don't eat or drink anything a fairy offers you, no matter how good it looks, or you'll be stuck with the fairies forever.”

“That's right. And you mustn't forget that you're walking into fairy time; things will not all happen as they seem. Time does not adhere to fairies the same way it does to you or me; it slips and slides off them like a duck shedding water. Sometimes fairy time is slow time; a day in fairy time is a week in our world. But a week could also be nothing more than a day. Such is the riddle of glamour. Remember that. Now, go catch up with your friend. I'll be right behind you.”

Colby smiled, pretending to understand more than a single word he'd just heard, and ran off to catch up with Ewan.

“I still don't think you should be able to see me,” said Ewan, disappointed. “I've been working real hard at not being seen.”

Colby nodded. “Well, I'm special. I made a wish.”

“A wish for what?”

“A wish to be able to see things I normally wouldn't see, like fairies, angels, and stuff.”

“That's not fair!” said Ewan.

“What do you mean that's not fair?” asked Colby.

“Some of us try real hard to be invisible. But you just get to see us.”

“Yeah, but that's all I can do. I can't turn invisible or anything.”

“Oh.” Ewan pondered that for a moment. “Well, that might be fair.”

“What else can you do?”

“Nothing yet, but I'll be able to do other stuff one day.”

“So you're gonna be a fairy?”

“Yeah, after my becoming.”

“What's a becoming?” asked Colby.

“It's a special day where I stop being a boy and start being a fairy all the time.”

“Oh, I want a becoming too! How can I be a fairy?”

“It's real hard. You have to spend years learning and drinking lots and lots of fairy milk.”

“Oh,” said Colby. “I'm not supposed to eat or drink anything the fairies give me. You can't ever leave if you do.”

“Why would you want to leave?” asked Ewan.

“What do you mean?”

“Why would you want to leave? There's nothing out there but people and they're just cattle.”

“There's more than people,” said Colby.

“What else is there?”

“Well, there are lots of things. Yashar has told me about angels and ghosts and monsters and wizards and . . . um . . . there is other stuff, I think. Do you have TV out here?”

“What's TV?” asked Ewan.

“You don't have TV? Do you have video games?”

“No, what's that?”

“Oh, well, we have TV and video games too. That's a pretty good reason to want to leave. It's pretty neat. It's a box that they tell stories on, and a video game is where you get to control the story and jump over things and shoot stuff and stuff.”

“Shoot?”

“You know, with a gun?” asked Colby. He made a pair of fist pistols and pretended to open fire at Ewan. “Bang, bang,” he shouted, but Ewan, completely unfamiliar with the concept, had no idea what to make of it; he merely shook his head. Colby stared at him, his eyes wide and jaw slack. “Man, you really don't know anyth . . .”

Colby trailed off midsentence, walking abruptly into a sudden fog of drunkenness. His entire body felt warm, fuzzy, his head swimming in a numbing sea. Everything was hazy, dreamlike, colors exploding into starbursts, revealing layer upon layer, dancing in perpetual motion, as if each shade were a drop in a kaleidoscopic ocean.

Colby's depth perception shifted radically; approaching an object seemed to flatten or deform it, causing the very strange sensation that the world had been bent out of shape then returned to its original form as best as the bender knew how—leaving millions of tiny creases and imperfections that Colby now noticed for the first time. He floated; while his feet still touched the ground, he felt buoyant, drifting through an ocean of ecstatic elation. Everything was muffled, as if he were twenty feet underwater, his body tingling, tickled by a thousand fish while he was down there.

For minutes he stood still, stuck in a thousand-yard stare, gazing into a chimerical world he'd long daydreamed about. The trees were the same; the ground was the same; the air was the same. And yet, it was all very different. The same color, but different; the same texture, but different; the same world, but different. Colby stood on the edge of forever and let the sensation wash over him—not just buzzed, but thoroughly drunk off it.

Such was fairy time, and he was swept entirely into its flow.

“Come on. What are you waiting for?” asked Ewan of his new friend.

Colby grinned, dazed, staring dumbstruck into the woods. He looked up at Ewan, trying to shake off the euphoria, but it wouldn't pass. He would be swimming in this feeling for a while. “Sorry,” he said. “I'm coming.” Together they continued up the hill, each step fighting a current rolling steadily against them, as if they were metal men walking through a magnetic field. The trees buzzed with static, like a thousand cicadas screaming.

They walked for what seemed like forever. Time was irrelevant now. A day was just the shifting of the sun in the sky, nothing more. Everything began to make sense. The interconnectivity of every living thing was transparent, obvious—even if Colby didn't know what any of those words meant. He got it now. The universe was a magical, beautiful place; bristling with energy, full of life, overflowing with joy.

Up the hill. Down the other side. Fields of flowers rippled in the wind, exploding with smells. Tinkling notes of fairy music wafted in on the afternoon. There was so much to take in and so little ability to process it all that Colby didn't notice as pixies began to flutter about, closing in, circling the boys. There were four in all, each six inches high, beautiful, shimmering in glamour.

“A boy!” exclaimed Caja, the smallest and shrillest of the four.

“Indeed, a boy! A boy!” echoed Broennen, the prettiest of the lot.

“Oh, it's not that big a deal,” said Melwyn, shrugging apathetically and narrowing her eyes at the interloper.

Only the fourth pixie, Talwyn, showed any reservation at all. She hovered ten feet away, flitting back and forth from behind a large oak, catching only glimpses of the young boy, assembling them together to form a complete picture in her head. Once she saw her sisters swarming the boy, flying as close as a span to him without a single reflexive swat to strike them down, she peered around the tree and took a good, long look, folding her arms and narrowing her eyes. “I don't trust him,” she said, pronouncing judgment. “He shouldn't be able to see us.”

“That's what I said!” exclaimed Ewan, happy someone was finally agreeing with him.

Colby looked around, smiling nervously. “What are these things?” he asked.

“Field pixies.” Ewan smiled.

“Oh, you're ceiling fairies!” said Colby.

Ewan leaned over, whispering. “Seelie,” he said under his breath.

Colby whispered back. “That's what I said. Ceiling.”

Ewan tried again, still trying not to let the pixies hear. “No,” he said “SEE-LEE. Seelie. No
ling
. See-lee.”

“Oh, seelie,” Colby whispered back.

“Yes. Seelie,” said Caja with both hands on her hips, floating inches from his head. She cocked her head disapprovingly, wondering whether it was a good idea to have a new boy around at all. This one seemed rather thick. “Who
are
you, anyway?”

“I'm Colby.”

Caja looked at her sisters.

“Go on! Go on!” they said in unison. Each fluttered about, trading places, never flying in one spot for more than three seconds at a time.

Caja nodded. “And what do you do?”

“What do you mean?” asked Colby.

“What do you do? What are you? What is your reason for being?” she asked, as if he was simply too stupid to understand.

“I'm a kid,” he answered.

Unimpressed, she pressed on. “And?”

“And I can see things,” he continued.

“See things?” she pressed further.

“That other people can't.”

“OH!” she exclaimed. “Well, that's
quite
special! And how did you come by that?”

“A djinn spit in my eyes,” he answered.

The four fairies hovered in place, bewildered, their wings still beating furiously, their limp jaws dangling open. “Ew,” said Talwyn. “Gross.”

“Ew, I know, right?” agreed Broennen.

“I don't think we should let him pass,” said Melwyn. “All in favor?” Four tiny hands shot into the air at once. It was unanimous.

Ewan looked worried, troubled that he might not be able to bring his new friend to camp. Then he smiled, leaning over, whispering something into Colby's ear. Colby furrowed his brow, shaking his head. “Uh-uh.”

“Do it,” urged Ewan.

Colby continued his exaggerated head shake. “No way. You do it.”

“I can't,” said Ewan.

“What are you two up to?” asked Caja.

“I'm not doing that in front of girls,” said Colby.

“If you don't, you'll never get to the village. They won't let you.”

Caja glowered, wary of Ewan's scheming. “Ewan?”

Colby hung his head, sighing deeply. Then he stripped off his shirt, turning it inside out, and put it back on. The pixies' eyes grew wide with shock and for a moment it seemed as if the entire wood had gone silent.

Talwyn covered her mouth, pointing. “His shirt! It's . . . it's . . .”

“It's inside out!” cried Broennen. The pixies burst into fits of laughter. Each spiraled out of control, careening, flailing about the forest, chortling with churlish, uncontrollable laughter. They spun, flitting; wheeling about the wood as if dangled on the end of a string whirled above the heads of the boys. “It's inside out!” Broennen repeated. “Inside out!”

“How silly! How silly he is!” cried Melwyn.

Ewan grabbed Colby by the arm. “Quick! Let's go.” Colby nodded and the two ran off together up the next hill. They sprinted as fast as they could, their little legs carrying them up and over the hilltop, then down toward the small valley dip below. Behind them they could still hear the wild laughter of the pixies, a sound seemingly chasing them, driving them like stampeding cattle down the slope. “Don't look back!” yelled Ewan to his new friend “And whatever you do, don't turn your shirt back right side out!”

“Okay!” yelled Colby, falling behind. Colby wasn't nearly as athletic as Ewan, who gracefully darted over rocks, weaving in and out of trees. He kept up as best he could, but the sharp pain of a cramp through the side of his stomach soon brought him to a stop. Overwhelmed, Colby, with a single arm, propped himself against a tree, wheezing, trying to work through the discomfort.

Ewan looked back over his shoulder, saw that he had lost Colby, and, without slowing down, swung around on a tree trunk to backtrack.

“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god,” Colby panted. “Who were those girls?”

Ewan stopped in place, not even winded. “Those were the pixie sisters. Talwyn, Melwyn, Caja, and Broennen.”

“They were mean!”

“I think they were just playing.”

Colby looked up, confused. “So why did we run?”

Ewan smiled. “Because they are nasty pranksters, and I didn't want to see what they had in mind for . . .” Slowly, Ewan's smile drooped as he trailed off. “Uh-oh.”

Colby soon shared Ewan's worried expression. “What do you mean, uh-oh?”

“Don't look behind you.”

Colby turned around. Behind him, not five feet from where he was standing, stood a brown pony, ornately saddled, staring right into Colby's eyes. Its mane was braided in places, long red plaits running down through nicely combed hair. This was no wild horse, but rather someone's kept beast, wandering in the woods alone. The pony threw its head back, motioning to its saddle.

Colby smiled broadly, his eyes flung wide. “A pony!” Reaching with an outstretched arm, Colby attempted to stroke the pony's mane.

“No!” shouted Ewan. “Don't! It's a trick!” Colby recoiled, now wary of the pony, taking two slow steps backward. “I told you not to look behind you.”

“Sorry,” said Colby.

The pony tossed its head furiously and whinnied, stamping its feet in the dirt. Suddenly it began to shudder, like a dog shaking off water, shrinking, as if it were casting itself off into thin air. Horsehair became skin, the saddle a belt, the mane a shock of hair atop a human head. This was no pony; it was a little girl.

She looked all of thirteen, face freckled from ear to ear, with long hair—redder and deeper than Colby's—and two long braids running down to her waist amid a sea of tresses. Her hands were balled into angry fists resting on her hips and she scowled long and hard at Ewan. “How dare you, sir,” she spat. “That was a right old trick I had goin', an' you had no place takin' it from me.”

Ewan shook his head. “He's my friend. I found him. And if anyone is going to tricks him, it is going to be me.” He grinned wide at Colby. “I choose
not
to tricks him.”

From deep within the forest came the dull, muted thud of a gallop—another pony, equal in size to the first. It ran, its hooves kicking up dust as it tore full bore toward the three children. Its saddle was as ornate as the first, but this pony appeared more powerful, much less done up. Rounding a large oak, it set eyes on the children and, without missing a stride, shook and went from pony to boy, his bare feet still carrying him straight toward them.