A Fairy Tale (19 page)

“Maeve had already left my family the first time she tried to take your sister. She was not acting on my orders or on my behalf.”

Sophie’s vision swam. She pulled her feet into fifth position and tightened her muscles so her legs wouldn’t buckle under her, and still she felt she might collapse. She had to remind herself to breathe, and then her breath came in short gasps. “You mean, all that time …” she whispered, then she shook her head, blinking back tears. She’d given up everything that mattered to her to keep her sister safe, and it had all been for nothing? Fourteen years, stuck in a small town, teaching kindergarteners how to do pliés, when she could have been dancing her way around the world. It was too much to bear. She opened her mouth to release the scream that felt like it was coming up from the depths of her soul, but instead a laugh came out. She doubled over with hysterical laughter, unable to stop herself, even as her sides ached and the tears she’d been fighting spilled out of her eyes.

With every ounce of will she had, she forced herself to stop and straighten to look Tallulah in the eye. “Well, I suppose that was silly of me, wasn’t it? It’ll teach me to play the martyr without fully understanding the situation.” On the bright side, it apparently wasn’t her fault that Jennifer Murray had gone missing—at least not directly.

“You were correct that there was a price, though,” Tallulah said in a tone that chilled Sophie’s soul.

“What was your price?”

“I hadn’t decided. Not your sister. I don’t know what I would have done with her. I am not quite altruistic enough to say that seeing you dance was reward enough, though it does bring me great joy. Even if you’d asked me, I’m not sure I could have said what I wanted from you. You were wise to leave me when you did. The price would have become steeper than it already is.” A trace of a smile crossed her lips. “And you do still owe me, little one.” She frowned, tilted her head as she studied Sophie, then cupped Sophie’s face with both hands. A glimmer of recognition flickered in her eyes, and she released Sophie’s face. “It is time for you to make good on that debt.”

“What do you want?”

“A song.” She swept away from Sophie and went to sit on one of the fallen pillars.

“A song?” It was more customary to ask for a first-born child, a loved one, or years of a person’s life. A song was small change.

“It is a beginning, not the whole payment.” Tallulah turned and beckoned to the fairies hiding in the trees. “Come out, children. I don’t believe she will harm you today. She’s in a relatively good temper.”

Beau, however, wasn’t, and he growled again, then barked. Sophie leapt to grab his leash and pull him back from the fairies who were creeping out from behind the trees. She recognized many of them from her childhood, but there were several new ones. There were also some missing: Maeve and those who had gone with her.

The fairies settled on the ground around the circle. “Now,” Tallulah said imperiously as she faced Sophie, “I recall that there was a delightful song you sang for us when you were a child, something your grandmother taught you. I would like to hear it.”

Feeling like there had to be a catch, but unable to see the danger in a song, Sophie sang the old folk song about finding a lost love. She could practically hear her grandmother’s voice in her head, not cracked and broken the way it sounded now, but strong and vibrant, the way it had been when Sophie was very little and her grandmother sang while rocking her to sleep.

At the end of the song, her fairy audience applauded. Tallulah regarded her quietly, her face somber. Then she abruptly smiled and clapped her hands. “Music!” she called out. “Dance for us, my child. Show me what you’ve been doing since you left me.”

The last thing Sophie felt like doing was dancing, but she was afraid of what Tallulah would ask if she refused. At least no one she cared about would be harmed by her dancing. This was a far lower price than she’d feared. She nudged Beau off to the side with an admonition to behave. He growled at the fairies and lay glaring at them, but he stayed put. It didn’t take long for the lively music to find its way to her feet, and soon she forgot about her wasted sacrifice, her lost dreams, and her worries about the future as she submerged herself in the dance. Once she was dancing, the fairies joined in, twirling and spinning around her.

Someone took her arm, and she rose onto one toe, prepared to let him turn her or support her in an arabesque, but he grabbed her so hard he threw her off-balance. Someone else grabbed her from the other side, and she knew this wasn’t about dancing anymore. She dropped off her toes and planted her feet, refusing to budge as her captors tried to drag her away. Tallulah and the others hadn’t yet noticed anything amiss, and Sophie took quick action to rectify that. She lifted one knee and then brought her foot down, toe first, onto the bare foot of one of her captors, just behind the toes. The reinforced toe box of a pointe shoe wasn’t something one would want slammed into one’s bare foot with any degree of force. The fairy instantly released her with an impressive scream, which brought the rest of the group to silence.

That was what she’d hoped would happen—she’d always found it far more effective in a struggle to get attention by making her enemies scream rather than doing the screaming herself. Screaming took energy that she could better devote to defending herself, and then there was the psychological advantage of putting the other person in the role of victim. It was just as true in a fairy war as it had been in junior high. When she knew Tallulah was looking at her, she said, “Was this your plan? Are you working with Maeve, after all?”

Instead of answering Sophie, Tallulah glared at the fairy still holding her. “Release her!”

“We no longer answer to you,” Sophie’s captor said in a way that made Sophie want to jab her elbow into his ribs. Unfortunately, the way he held her made that impossible, and he was smart enough to move his foot before she could stomp on it. She leaned into him while he was still off-balance from trying to avoid her pointe shoe. He wasn’t ready to support her weight as well as his own, and both of them fell. She scrambled frantically away, wondering why no one was helping her. Not even Beau had joined the fight, though she could hear him barking.

When she looked up, she saw why she was on her own: All the other fairies, Tallulah, and Beau were behind a shimmering barrier and couldn’t reach her. She got to her feet and ran toward them, but she couldn’t get through the barrier, either. She was trapped, and her bag containing her iron horseshoe and the skillet was on the other side of the barrier.

The fairy whose foot she’d stomped grinned as he moved his hand in a throwing motion and a silver chain appeared, circling her right wrist. “You’re coming with us,” he said, reeling her in. She fought every step of the way, and then when he was pulling on the chain with his entire weight, she stopped fighting and rushed forward, which sent him reeling backward. The other one went to his aid, grabbing higher up the chain and giving it a good jerk. Once he got her close enough, he slapped her hard across the face, sending her sprawling to the ground.

Gravity was on her side, so she grabbed the chain with her left hand and pulled with all her might, bringing the fairy down on top of her. Before he could react, she rolled over to straddle him and stretched the chain across his throat. “Didn’t your mother teach you that a gentleman never strikes a lady?” she said.

She sensed the other one coming up behind her and shouted, “Back off!” Surprisingly, he did so. She turned her attention back to the one who was starting to gasp for breath. “You work for Maeve, don’t you?” she asked, forcing her tone to remain calm and pleasant, like they were chatting over tea.

He didn’t answer, and the chain writhed in her grasp. She got it back under control and wound it around his neck for good measure. “What does Maeve want with my sister—or with me?”

He gasped and sputtered, and the other one approached again. “I said, back off!” Sophie shouted in a burst of fury. She was surprised to see him go flying until he bounced off the shimmering barrier. Did she do that?

She eased the chain away just enough for her captive to speak, but all he did was clutch at her arms. The chain still wound around her wrist and in her grasp grew warm, then hot, then scorching. She let go, but it remained on her wrist. Her eyes watering with the pain, she brought her chained wrist against the face of the captive, who had tried to get up the moment she released the chain. Then she couldn’t take the pain anymore and shook her wrist, trying to get enough air circulation to cool it.

Much to her surprise, the chain uncoiled. She was pretty sure she’d done that. Not necessarily on purpose, but she’d hoped to be free of it, and now she was. In other circumstances, she might have been startled by her ability to do these things, but this wasn’t the moment to question it. She needed to use it.

She held her hand out to the fairy beneath her, willing him to leave her alone, and he fell backward. The other one approached, and she willed him back, as well. She struggled to her feet, put her hands on her hips and said, “I don’t know what Maeve’s game is, but I want you to tell her something: She can release my sister, and then we’ll talk, but until then, I will do everything in my power to get my sister back.” She couldn’t resist a grin. “And you may have noticed that I do have power.”

She waved at the shimmering barrier, and it vanished. Beau rushed forward, barking madly, and Sophie stopped him with a raised hand. That time, she felt the power surge through her. The odd thing was, it was a familiar feeling. Had she been doing this sort of thing all along, thinking she was swaying people by the force of her personality? She shoved the question aside as one of many things she needed to think about later.

She moved to stand over the fairy she’d been strangling. “Now, get out of here, and if I see you again, I won’t be nearly as nice. This was a warning. From here, I play dirty.”

He started to get to his feet, but Tallulah intervened. “No. He is mine. You are part of my family, Padraig. And now you betray me by attacking my guest?”

“I have sworn allegiance to Maeve,” he said, though he looked somewhat ashamed of himself.

“That makes you a traitor, and you know what I do to traitors.”

Sophie stopped her with a hand on her arm. “No, I want him to take that message for me. He’ll suffer enough for failing in his mission, I’m sure.” She turned back to Padraig and shouted, “Go!”

He didn’t need urging. He and his colleague ran for dear life. Sophie couldn’t help but notice that many of Tallulah’s people had also disappeared into the woods. She released her mental hold on Beau, who came straight to her side and took up a protective position between her and Tallulah.

The fairy glared fiercely after the fleeing traitors. “I wonder how many spies Maeve left in my family,” she snarled. Her eyes softened, and she took Sophie’s right hand, raising it to nearly eye level and studying the angry, blistered burn on her wrist. “Fiona!” she called over her shoulder. “Bring the balm.” To Sophie, she said, “I will tend your wound.”

“What will that cost me?” Sophie asked. The pain had been washed out by the adrenaline rush but was returning, and seeing how ugly the burn was made her queasy.

“For the healing, nothing. You have paid me with the most entertaining show I have seen in far too long. There will be songs and stories about this.”

A fairy who was even shorter than Sophie brought a small crystal container. Tallulah passed a hand over the top of it, flipped the lid up with her thumb, dipped her fingers into the container, brought them up to her lips and blew on them, then gently drew them around the burn on Sophie’s wrist. It stung at first, then cooled, dimming the pain. Soon, the blisters were gone and the flesh was left smooth, though red and shiny, like a days-old burn that was healing. When she was finished, Tallulah sent Fiona away.

Still holding Sophie’s hand, Tallulah said, “While I ask no payment for the healing, I have another demand of you to settle our debt. You were made an offer earlier today, or perhaps you thought it to be a challenge. You must accept it.”

Sophie suddenly felt cold. She shivered and wished she could free herself from Tallulah so she could wrap her arms around herself. “Do you mean …They’re for real, not crazy?”

“Yes, they’re real,” Tallulah confirmed. “You must do this.”

“I can’t!”

“We’ve seen here that you can.” She drew herself even taller, looming over Sophie and speaking in a voice that lost all gentleness and warmth. “I could demand your first-born child, your sister, that nice young man you’re becoming fond of, or even your own future. This is not such a big thing I ask. That is your task, and then we will almost be even.”

“Almost?”

“I will ask one more thing of you soon.” She released Sophie’s hand and rested her hand on top of Sophie’s head. “You were born for this, my fierce little one. Now, run along.”

Once, during a sisterly squabble, Emily had accused Sophie of being a robot because she was so calm in situations that would make most people scream, cry, or curl up in a corner in a fetal position. Sophie countered that in a crisis it did no one any good to scream, cry, or withdraw. She merely pushed her emotions aside to deal with at a more appropriate time so she could focus on the matter at hand. She was sure she looked robotic now as she bent to pick up Beau’s leash and made her way calmly over to where she’d left her bag, but everything that had just happened was so overwhelming that if she even let herself consider it, she’d be tempted to find the gateway that led back home so she wouldn’t have to deal with any of this.

She sat down and mechanically unwound the ribbons from her ankles, took off her shoes, wrapped the ribbons around them, and placed them in her bag. She slid her feet back into her street shoes, then put on her sweater, buttoning the bottom two buttons at her waist. Slinging her bag over her shoulder, she stood, took Beau’s leash, and left the clearing, sensing for the gateway.

A rustling in the underbrush nearby told her that someone was coming. But where was the gateway? It was hard to find it when her senses were more occupied with the potential threat. She put her hand in her bag and gripped the handle of the iron skillet.