Marny (2 page)

“It’s not a trick,” he said, frustration
starting to burn through him.

She watched the butterflies flit through the
sunbeams. “That’s a nice touch.”

He wanted to take her by the shoulders and
march her into the woods—except he didn’t trust those deeper
shadows. Strange creatures lurked in enchanted forests; at least he
knew that much.

“I’m touched you think so highly of my
skills,” he said. “But this isn’t me, I swear it.”

“Does anything else happen?” she asked,
completely ignoring him and staring into the forest. “Or is it just
static?”

He dragged the pizza box over with his foot,
then bent and grabbed the last piece of old crust.

“That’s disgusting.” Emmie wrinkled her nose.
“I don’t want your moldy pizza. Get some personal hygiene.”

“Shut up.”

He crouched at the border where his rug
turned into mossy forest floor, and waved the crust around.

“Wait, is that your magic wand?” his sister
asked. “You’re doing a transformation spell? Turn me into a
pepperoni. No, no—an olive.”

She cracked up, but Nyx ignored her, his gaze
fixed on the bushes where the little golden mouse-thing had first
emerged.

“Come on,” he coaxed. “Come out—yummy
yummy.”

Nothing happened. The shrubbery didn’t
rustle, and no creature appeared to snatch the crust from his
fingers.

Emmie folded her arms. After a minute, she
yawned.

“So, that part’s broken,” she said.
“Whatever. It’s still a super illusion, but I’m going back to bed.
You can show me more tomorrow, after you get it all fixed.”

Nyx set the crust on the moss and stood up.
Clearly his sister wasn’t going to believe him—at least not yet. He
was just glad he wasn’t crazy. Though it would help if Emmie would
actually wake up enough to see that there was no way he could have
engineered such a complex setup.

In the light of day, maybe the otherworldly
aspects would be more obvious. If the forest was still there
tomorrow.

“Fine,” he said. “Good night.”

Though how he would get to sleep with a
creepy magical forest in his bedroom, he had no idea.

“Night,” she said, opening his door and
shuffling out like an old woman, blanket still wrapped around
her.

She didn’t close the door behind her.
Typical.

Nyx shut it, then turned at the rustle of
leaves behind him. The little golden-furred creature was sitting by
the pizza crust, sharp nose twitching.

He almost yelled down the hall for his sister
to come back—but she was probably under the covers already, lost in
her book. And he didn’t want to wake up his parents.

“Now
you show up,” Nyx said to the little creature.
“Nice.”

It grabbed the crust and, with a flick of its
long, fuzzy tail, dived into the underbrush.

“And stay there.” Nyx folded his arms. Stupid
mouse.

He was thirsty, the back of his throat dry
with the aftermath of fear. All the water bottles on his floor were
empty, though, except for one that seemed to be growing algae.

“Don’t do anything,” he said, eyeing the
forest. “I’ll be right back.”

There was no answer. Just the brush of a
breeze riffling the silvery leaves, and the distant trill of a
bird. It would be peaceful, if it wasn’t so freaky. Nyx gave the
woods a narrow-eyed look and slipped back out of his bedroom.

It would be all right to go down to the
kitchen, since the trees hadn’t followed him when he’d gone to get
Emmie. At least, he hoped everything would remain stable.

He listened hard as he headed for the stairs,
the carpet soft under his bare feet. His dad’s snores filtered from
the master bedroom, but that was it. No weird sounds coming from
his own room.

He padded down to the lower level of their
house. When he hit the kitchen, the cold tiles made his toes
curl.

Halfway to the sink,
something happened. A sub-audible
pop
, a feeling like his ears had just
cleared. Nyx shook his head, then hastily gulped a glass of
water.

Still moving as smoothly and quietly as his
karate training had taught, he hurried back to his bedroom. He took
a deep breath and opened the door.

The forest was gone.

Dammit. He folded his right hand into a fist
and tapped it against his leg.

Except for the fact that Emmie had seen it
too, he’d think he’d just had a super-intense, vivid dream. But
no.

The enchanted trees had been real. The
creature that had eaten the pizza crusts. The flowers and
butterflies—those had all been there. A magical forest had
manifested in his bedroom.

Somehow, he’d figure out how it had happened.
And find a way to bring it back.

Deep under the hill, through misty halls and
jeweled forests, a king sat in the center of a shining glade. His
hair was golden, nearly as bright as the crown rising above his
severe, unearthly face, and his armor gleamed like the sun.

High above, a brilliant ruby cast warm light
over the gold throne and emerald grasses of the Bright Court. Harp
music filtered through the air, lilting a jig that a half-dozen
gnomes cavorted to. Pixies darted, bright sparks, through the jade
leaves of the nearby trees and over the heads of the fey folk.

Some of the court were beautiful as the dawn;
nixies with eyes a mortal could drown in, faerie maids with wings
like glimmering rainbows in the clear air. Others, like the hobs
and brownies, were squat and hairy, better fitted to concealment
among the stumps and shadows. Twig-limbed spriggan guards
surrounded the clearing, holding spears made of sharpened
blackthorn.

The Bright King raised his jeweled goblet,
his gaze distant and thoughtful. Something stirred in the air of
the Realm of Faerie, something mortal—and innocent. The king’s lips
curved in a faint smile. The lines of fate and foreshadowing
shimmered about him. It seemed that, once again, a human would
stumble into his court—and no doubt prove to be a very useful
tool.

June 21

M
arny Fanalua crossed her arms, earbuds fixed firmly in her
ears, and tried to ignore the smell of the long-distance bus, a mix
of grease, old sweat, and recycled air. The man across the aisle
from her was snoring sloppily, and the kid in the seat ahead lit up
the space with the blue glow of his screenie game.

At dawn, she’d be in Newpoint—the biggest
city she’d ever visited, over eight hundred miles from her home in
Crestview.

Anxious homesickness rose in her chest, and
she thrust it back down. She’d be fine.

It was just for a couple months, after all.
Landing a summer internship with Intertech was a big deal. Even if
she didn’t know how to navigate a large city, she’d figure out how
to get around Newpoint. Growing up on the edge of complete poverty
gave a person skills.

Besides, somebody from Intertech was supposed
to meet her at the station. Sure, the bus ride was a grind, but
she’d be there in… she flicked on her tablet and checked the time.
One hour and forty-three minutes.

She must have dozed. The sound of the driver
announcing their arrival in ten minutes made her blink awake, her
mind hazy from strange dreams of fey folk and fantastical magic. A
few wispy images remained: a silver-leafed forest, a young man with
gray eyes, an enormous white deer.

Impatiently, she shook her head. No more
faerie stuff.

Crestview, Feyland, and the creepy Realm of
Faerie were behind her now. This summer she was all about expanding
her world and figuring out more about herself as part of
Intertech’s student team.

“Wait, what?” her best friend Tam had said,
when she told him she was going away for an internship. “How come
you didn’t tell me about this?”

“Hey.” She patted his arm, gratified by the
hurt look in his eyes. “You’ve been busy, you know.”

Busy in all kinds of ways. His girlfriend
Jennet came first and foremost, not to mention his part-time work
with VirtuMax, which, while cool, he wasn’t supposed to talk about
due to “trade secrets.” Add in a terminally broken family, and the
fact that he was living with said family in Marny’s uncle’s
apartment over the garage, and—well. Tam had a lot going on.

Still, she was glad he cared enough to be
bothered that he didn’t know all the details of her life.

“Yeah,” she’d said. “Uncle Zeg found out
about this program, and we applied. I’ll be interning for
Intertech—you know, the big communications company—in Newpoint.
They want to expand their multigenerational platform.” Whatever
that meant.

“Good for you. But… Newpoint?” Tam had swiped
his hair out of his eyes and stared at her. “That’s a million miles
from here.”

“I know.”

It was appalling and exhilarating all at
once. But next year was her last year of high school, and how was
she supposed to figure out what direction to take in life when
she’d never even been out of the Podunk town where she was
born?

“This is because of No Compromise, isn’t it?”
Tam asked.

“Mostly.”

Nobody had expected Marny’s app to go viral
the way it had. She’d hoped that a few gamers would use the
avatar-modification plugin, but millions of people all over the
world adopted NoComp to change their virtual selves. Within a
couple weeks of the app’s release, chatrooms and forums all over
the ’net were full of avatars modified using her program.

And the gamers had gone wild, taking Marny’s
program to crazy and fun extremes she’d barely envisioned. Even
though she’d offered it as freeware, Jennet had made her set up a
donation button.

“What you’ve created has value,” Jennet had
said. “If some people want to pay you for it, let them.”

Marny hadn’t expected much, but in the
several months the app had been live she’d made almost enough
credits to help her family move someplace fancy, or buy them a
grav-car. Not that they wanted either of those things.

“Save it,” her mom had said. “College is
coming up. And you earned that money, fair and square. We know how
much time you spent on that program.”

True enough. While her friends were diving
deep in the prototype game of Feyland—and saving the world along
the way—Marny had devoted hundreds of hours to her app.

For years she’d had a fierce desire to be
able to make an in-game character that reflected who she was. A
big, dark-skinned girl who could take on whatever the world threw
at her. Not a skinny, overly busty cartoon caricature with big eyes
and pouty lips, or a fearsome warrior princess with tusks and
tribal tattoos. So, she’d written the app—and it had exploded.

“Huge congrats on the internship,” Tam had
said, giving her a hug. “We’ll sure miss you.”

“Same. Maybe I can come visit, if I get a few
days off.”

Doubtful, though. From what she knew about
Intertech, their internships were coveted. Once accepted, they
worked you hard. No extra days off to run home.

“You know,” Tam had said, a wheedling edge in
his voice. “You could always start sim gaming and come meet me and
the crew in Feyland.”

“Keep dreaming.” She’d scowled at him, to
show she was serious.

No way was she enclosing herself in a sim
system. The thought of sitting in the formfitting chair and pulling
the sensory helmet over her head made her breath tighten.

“You can get therapy and meds for
claustrophobia,” Tam had said.

“Sure. How about you pay for it.”

He’d held up his hands. “You’re a prime
gamer, Marny. I just wish you wouldn’t limit yourself to screenie
systems when there’s a whole immersive world to discover.”

She’d shrugged. They’d had this argument for
years, ever since Tam started simming when they were in elementary
school. Her first try with the sim equip had convinced Marny she
was not made for sim gaming, and subsequent experiences had only
proven the point.