Spread your wings and let the Fairy in you Fly! ~ Author Unknown
Ever have your life move in a terrifying direction so fast that you get motion sickness? I have that feeling right now. It’s flinging my stomach all over the place and filling me with absolute dread. I’m headed to a place that scares the crap out of me and my body knows it.
Standing at the edge of the forest, staring at the beat up wooden sign displaying the town name Redwood in bright, red letters gives me an awful sense of doom that I can’t shake. Nausea is another side effect that reinforces the desire to turn around and run as far away as I can.
Flattening a hand against my stomach, I pray for it to calm down. I don’t want to projectile vomit in front of everyone. That would suck and show them how afraid I am and that’s not something I want to do.
This crappy pukey feeling appeared the minute Nagan told me I was moving back here to this place I want to forget but can’t. No matter how hard I try, it sticks with me like a deep splinter buried inside of the most vulnerable place inside of me.
This is the town that where it all started. This is the mouth of hell I mistakenly thought I was never going to have to deal with again but because I trust Mada—I trust Nada, I’m here.
Redwood is where I was born. Where my mom went the rest of the way to crazy and tried to kill me. The woman who, although awful already, snapped and stabbed me twenty times with an enchanted dagger.
I catch myself subconsciously rubbing one of the scars on my stomach through my shirt. I shove my hand in my pocket to keep from doing it again. It’s a nervous tic I can’t seem to shake.
“Keri, I know this is hard on you and I am sorry for that but Mada has predicted that this is the next part of your journey and the will of the forest, and all that horseshit,” Nagan says, from where he stands beside me at the edge of the Dark Forgetful Forest.
A forest that for me, has lived up to its cheesy name because I was forgotten about, until now.
I look over at Nagan—more like, up at him—my centaur foster-father. His tail flicks in irritation, but I know that for once it’s not with me. He’s no happier about me leaving than I am. It’s something he made abundantly clear while he prepared me for this crappy journey.
Strangely, I don’t feel any bitterness about it. Especially towards Mada, the Mother of the Forest. I’ve always known that one day I’d have to leave the safety of the hidden places and leave my family behind.
I look over my shoulder, squinting to look deeper into the shadows of the trees feeling the Sluagh behind me. All them are just as sad as I am, and I genuinely don’t want to leave them. They’re the ones who put band-aids on my scabbed knees. Who taught me how to run through the trees as nimbly as a squirrel and how to disappear into the shadows like a ghost. They also taught me how to fight like one of them and how to cuss even though because of my mother’s constant swearing, I don’t. It’s a thing.
They’re my family and they’re a great family and no matter how much I wish it, none of them can come with me. The Sluagh are feared for a lot of reasons, the least of which is their inability to turn into a humanoid.
“You are not going alone because we will not have you unprotected. Ciar is going with you,” Nagan reassures me and shocks me at the same time.
In surprise I look behind me and from within a canine face covered in fur so black it disappears in the shadows, green glowing eyes meet mine. On four silent paws Ciar creeps to my side. Even as a canine he’s still a head taller than me.
Ciar is a Puca but not just any, he’s the original and up until now I thought he hated my guts. On top of that, he’s even older than Mada and she’s so old that the dirt on her tree is petrified. So how does someone older than Mada’s dirt plan on fitting into a Menagerie?
“I thought you hated me, Ciar?” I ask.
Nagan raised me to be blunt and to speak my mind. But with Ciar that’s a lot easier to think than actually do. I’m a little afraid of him sometimes, something I’ll admit without any shame. There’s something about him that says the smart decision involves running in the opposite direction.
Stronger people than I get that feeling about him.
‘Never that, monster girl,’ he answers, in my mind.
The fact that he has no lips means he can’t speak from his mouth and he has always spoken to me in such a way. But I can talk out loud, so I say, “Ciar, I can take care of myself. You don’t—”
‘Don’t tell me what I need to do,’ he interrupts.
Well, there goes that argument. It’s a guaranteed loss the minute he responds in a contrary way. I never win one against him, no matter what we’re arguing about, which is often. He and I can’t seem to see eye-to-eye on much of anything.
For this and many other reasons, him coming with me makes absolutely no sense. Mada didn’t order him to, no one orders him to do anything. Ciar may live in the forest but she isn’t his boss. He does what he pleases. Something made him want to come with me, because that is the only reason he would.
He turns his big shaggy head—that, in my opinion looks more wolfish than the dog that Pucas are reputed to be—to study me with those green eyes. I shiver, I’m sure I’ll find out soon enough.
Needing a distraction, I turn back to contemplate the sign and I can’t help but be sucked down into a vortex of memories. I was nine years old when Nagan found me bleeding in the ditch, dumped there by my mother. He told me that I was minutes from death and they were barely able to save me.
She is not someone I like to think about, not when I can help it. Every good memory I have of the woman is completely eclipsed by one specific moment, she left me—her only child—to die like a piece of garbage. The only thing that saved me are the creatures standing around me. My friends from so long ago, my family now and they mean more to me than anything else in the world. They make up one of the most revered and feared group of creatures in existence, the Wild Hunt.
That same Wild Hunt went after my mother a few days after I was found. This is one of those crimes in our world that you can’t get away with, not for long anyhow, and never without some kind of magical backup to protect you. Murdering a child or attempting to is one of Faerie’s cardinal sins and the magic that gives us life and sustains us won’t abide by it. Neither will the Sluagh. They saw through her fake persona while no one else but me did.
I don’t really know much about my mother’s past, truth be told. I know she was some type of—Fae because the Hunt going after her is proof of that—it’s the specific type that I’m not sure of. Because she played at being human so well, even smelled like one, I was fooled right along with everyone else. I grew up with the false belief that my father was Fae and my mother was a human who was left to raise me alone.
Now, because she’s dead, no one can give me answers. I know I’m not human because I’ve never looked human or even like a Halfling but, I don’t know what I am. Even the Sluagh who chased my mother for weeks until they found her don’t know her actual Fae nature. All they know is that the magics exposed her as Fae. Nagan told me once whatever it was, wasn’t the pretty elf-like kind. The Sluagh started the Wild Hunt before the Hunt magic called them. He says my pain called them. Which means I’m connected to them somehow.
With a sigh, I take one last, long look at my beautiful family and then step out of the forest onto the road. Taking my first steps towards a future I don’t want but will face head on.
I’m not a coward.
Nagan stomps the ground with a hoof and snorts. I can’t turn around to look again or I’ll beg to stay. My pride won’t let me beg, at least as long as I can keep from looking.
“I’ll miss you all.” With those last words, I begin to walk and manage with an incredible amount of will, to not look back.
Screeches and roars echo behind me.