Ironside (Modern Faerie Tales 3)

"Corny?" Luis frowned.

"Neil," Kaye said. "I mean fix Neil's curse.”

"No," Luis pushed the boat hard and it slid out onto the water. Luis hopped in, making them rock wildly as he sat. He looked over at Corny, and there was something considering in his gaze. "Too still and not salt.”

They didn't paddle, but a strange current propelled them across the lake, past the drowned trees. Beneath the dripping hull of the boat the water was choked with vibrant green duckweed, as though a forest grew underneath the waves.

Green and gold fish darted under the boat, visible though the ice hull. Fish had to keep swimming to breathe, Kaye thought. She knew how they felt. There was nothing safe to think about, not Roiben, not her mother, not all the people slowly dying on the far shore. There was nothing to do but keep going until despair finally froze her.

"Kaye—check it out," Corny said. "It's like from a book.”

Through the mist, Kaye saw the outline of an island filled with tall firs. As they got closer, the sky grew lighter and the air became warm. Although there was no sun, the shore was lit bright as day.

Corny glanced at his watch and then held it out to show her. The digital numbers had stopped on December 21 at 6:13:52 p.m. "Bizarre.”

"At least it's warmer," Kaye said, rubbing his arms through the coat, hoping she could rub the chill out of him.

"That would be better news if we weren't in a boat made of ice.”

"I don't know about you all," Luis said. He smiled slightly, almost like he was embarrassed. "But I can't even feel my ass anymore. Swimming might be better.”

Corny laughed, but Kaye couldn't smile. She was putting Corny in danger. Again.

The last of the haze blew off and Kaye saw that each tree on the island was white with cocoon silk in place of snow. She thought she could see masses of caterpillars writhing at the peaks of the trees, and she shuddered.

The boat dug into the soft mud. They climbed out, feet sinking slightly so there was a sucking noise with each step across the shore.

Stupid mud, Kaye thought. Stupid boat. Stupid faery island. She found herself suddenly exhausted. Stupid, stupid me.

There was music, distant and faint, accompanied by the sound of laughter. They followed it into a grove of flowering cherry trees, the blooms blue instead of pink, petals falling like a shower of poison with every slight breeze.

She thought of something the Thistlewitch had told her when she had explained to Kaye that she was a changeling: The child's fey nature becomes harder and harder to conceal as it grows. In the end, they all return to Faerie.

That couldn't be true. Kaye didn't want it to be true.

Corny shivered once, hard, like his body was shaking off the cold, and toed off his sodden and mud-covered shoes. It was warm, but not hot, on the island—so perfect a temperature, in fact, that it was as though there were no weather at all.

A few of the Bright folk strolled on the grass. A boy in a skirt of silver scale mesh held the hand of a pixie with wide azure wings. Clouds of tiny buzzing faeries hovered in the air like gnats. A knight in white painted armor looked in Kaye's direction. A singing voice, heartbreakingly lovely, drifted down to where she stood. From the branches of the trees, pointed faces stared down.

A knight with eyes the color of turquoises walked up to meet them and bowed deeply. "My Lady is pleased by your arrival. She asks that you come and sit with her." He glanced at her companions. "Only you.”

Kaye nodded, worrying her lip with her teeth.

"Beneath the tree." He gestured toward a massive willow, its drooping branches covered with struggling cocoons. Every now and again one of the silken purses would rip open and a white bird would flutter loose and take flight.

Kaye made herself lift one of the heavy leathery branches and duck underneath.

Light filtered through the leaves to glimmer on the faces of Silarial and her courtiers. The Lady of the Bright Court did not sit on a throne, but rather on a collection of tapestry cushions heaped upon the ground. Other faeries were strewn about like ornaments, some of them horned, others thin as sticks and sprouting leaves where hair might have been.

Silarial's hair was parted in two soft waves at her brow, the strands shining like copper, and for a moment Kaye thought of the pennies that had fallen from the man's mouth in Luis's apartment. The Bright Lady smiled, and she was so stunning that Kaye forgot to speak, forgot to bow, forgot to do anything but stare.

It hurt to look at her.

Perhaps like great pain, great loveliness must be forgotten.

"Will you have something?" asked Silarial, gesturing to bowls of fruit and pitchers of juice, their surfaces beading from the chill of the contents. "Unless it is not to your taste.”

"I'm sure it is very much to my taste." Kaye bit into a white fruit. Black nectar stained her lips dark and ran over her chin.