Chapter 26 Rachel

A Chapter by Selena Cane, Anne Hudson, Charlotte Jensen

Chapter 26 Rachel

My eyes flutter open and I see a flash of movement in the corner of the room. I hear the door close softly. I shut my eyes quick, unsure of what I’d seen. I risk taking a few brief peeks at the newcomer. It’s a fairy, standing in the corner of my room, near the door. She wears a purple old-style looking dress. The skirt part has ruffles and comes to her knees and the top has puffed short sleeves. She wears white and purple striped tights and long sleeves coming out of her dress. The outfit seems radical, different from the other fairies I’d seen around, but of course, it’s not like I’m a fairy expert. She has long, dark, brown, straight hair and straight bangs that look like they needed cut a month ago. I hear running and yelling outside my room. Several feet shuffle by, and my visitor peeks out into the hallway. With one quick look back inside, she steps out and gently closes my door.

I sit up slowly. I hear banging on a door outside and the movement of more feet. In a few seconds, Tailith and Aanya burst into the room. Tailith switches on the lights. [Or should I say runs in with a lamp? Do these people have electricity?] Accustomed to the dim lighting, I blink rapidly as I am blinded by the light.

“Rachel! Are you okay?” He asks, in a rush.

“What? Of course, I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Yes, Talith, why did you wake me up and drag me into Rachel’s room at the break of dawn?” Aanya questions him.

He looks at me as if it’s painfully obvious. “There was a dark fairy in your room!”

“What?” I say again, rubbing my eyes. “How would you know- oh, right, never mind. That was a dark fairy?”

Evelina suddenly rushes into the room. “Are you all all right?” she asks.

I briefly wonder if she saw the fairy escaping my room, but shrug it off. I couldn’t imagine she had. We assure her that we’re fine and she speaks frantically.

“There seems to be a spy in our midst. You don’t need to worry. Spies don’t tend to be dangerous, but there have been several requests for you to leave immediately. Sorry, no time for pleasantries.” She rushes down the hall and yells behind her, “Come on, then!”

We stumble out of the room, trying to follow her best we can. She turns around corners and weaves through halls. Finally, I see sunlight up ahead. Evelina flies out into the air. I ram into Aanya as we reach the edge, almost sending us both over. Evelina seems to remember us last minute and hurries back to us. Magic whirls around once again, shoving us off the cliff. I have a momentary feeling of weightlessness before I quickly grow back to full-size.

Evelina, now smaller than a pickle compared to us, motions us forward. We walk quickly through the tangle until the place concealing the spy is long past. We then slow down our pace. Evelina, who’d stayed in front of us thus far, floats toward us as we walk.

“I apologize for the hasty exit, but you can’t be too cautious when dealing with dark fairy spies. To Deventon you said?”

“Yeah. Why do the evil fairies want to spy on you anyway?” Tailith asks.

“Don’t you think it’s a bit insensitive to call them ‘evil’ fairies?” I point out.

“Sorry,” he apologizes. “I’ve just got a bad feeling about them.”

“You mean a bad feeling, or a ‘bad feeling’?” Aanya questions him.

“Little bit of both?” he responds.

Evelina looks at Talith oddly. She looks as though she is about to ask him something, but decides against it. After a moment, she explicates. “Dark fairies, light fairies. Evil fairies, good fairies. There’s no shortage of names. The bottom line is, we strive for good and they don’t. They wish to exploit our every weakness. Spying tends to be a very good way to learn someone’s weaknesses.”

We nod and walk quietly for a few minutes more. I look around at the odd trees, feeling their various barks as we walk past them. I can’t help but feel that Evelina is staring straight through me.

“Where did you all say you were from?” she enquires.

“Oh, you know, just the other side of the Forest of Unknowns. We’ve kind of been living the hermit life,” Aanya says, glancing at each of us as if to say, “Tell nothing more.”

We stride further through the forest and Evelina gradually flies further and further in front of us. I feel a little relieved to no longer be under her scrutiny.

“So were you ever planning to tell anyone about the spy that was in your room?” Aanya interrogates me.

“No, I was a little worried about finding a way to get back to Earth without telling anyone we’re from there.”

“Come on, doesn’t that seem like the kind of thing that you don’t tell anyone?”

“Yeah,” I admit. “But I don’t think me telling them about the fairy is going to help them at all.”

“But it’s certainly not going to win us any points with them if they find out she was there and you kept it from them.” Tailith points out.

“You’re right, Tailith,” I concede.

“Talith,” he corrects me.

“Of course Tailith,” I reply.

I hurry up a little to catch up to Evelina. She visibly brightens when she sees me, but I don’t know, she kind of seems almost worried that she has to talk to me. I recount what happened earlier that morning to her and she darkens at the news.

“That sounds like Dacia. She’s been spying since she was little. Never have caught her.”

I eye her suspiciously. It almost sounded like she was speaking fondly of the girl. I push the subject out of my mind, something it seems I’ve been doing a lot of lately. I fall back and walk with Tailith and Aanya. I spot a few fairies here and there as we walk, but no big complexes. After walking for about an hour, my head is in the clouds. I almost run into a giant twisty tree with lots of knots in it, and let out a small shriek, but last second I make it passable and walk straight through it. Then I notice Evelina staring back at me.

“How did you do that, dear?” she asks sweetly.

I stare at her for a long moment before Aanya elbows me in the ribs. “Um… Do what?”

“That tree, you walked right through that tree,” Evelina replies, floating over near the tree.

“I did? Must be a weird tree I guess.”

“Yeah,” Talith jumps in. “It’s probably just a magical tree. Probably anyone could walk through it.” He winces slightly as he walks right through the tree. I almost don’t make it passable in time.

“Strange,” Evelina agrees. “I’ll have to remember to have someone look at it later. After I take you all to Deventon.”

We walk the remainder of the day through the forest trying not to use our powers at all. Tailith works to conceal his throbbing headaches as he explains some stuff about fairy magic and their woodsy life, none of which I absorb. I’m just too distracted with maneuvering through the trees and thinking about Letherland. Oh, and resisting the urge to go invisible and run off to explore, there’s that too.

When we finally reach the edge of the forest, Evelina bids us farewell and gives us a few very strange looks. The rest of the road to Deventon seems fairly straight-forward: just over a few hills and to the giant population of people.

“That was kind of weird, don’t you think?” I ask them.

“Which part, the spy or the weird questions about our superpowers and unknown origin?” Tailith wonders.

I laugh. “All of it.”

“Come on,” Aanya says, “Evelina was nice.”

“And suspicious,” I add. “Don’t forget suspicious.”

“Three strangers show up who appear to be able to do weird things and appear to be lying about where they’re from, that doesn’t seem suspicious to you?” Tailith points out.

“I didn’t say we aren’t suspicious. I just mean that she is.”

“Maybe a little,” Aanya admits.

We walk on for a while with no one in sight until we bump into a man walking diagonal to the path.

“What’re you kids doing out here so far from the town?” he questions us.

“Just heading to it, is all,” I reply.

He gives me an odd look, but changes the subject. “Did you kids seem my brother, Nat? He was around here recently. He’s close by.”

I look around, but see no footprints or signs of anyone else here.

“How do you know that?” Aanya enquires. “I don’t see anybody.”

“Oh you know, we’re twins; Letherland twins; Lether-twins whatever you want to call us.” He says it as though it explains everything. “I was talking to this guy once, and I asked him ‘what other type of twins are there beside Letherland twins? Why not just call us twins?’ Then he said something real smart-alecky like, ‘Well, what if you’re not born in Letherland?’”

Tailith clutches his head, “Letherland-born twins can sense each other’s location and sometimes each other’s pain as well.”

The guy looks at Talith as if he’d just said the most obvious thing in the world.

“Anyway, I’m Mathew, but you can call me Matt. And oh look there’s my brother, Nathaniel, but you can just call him Nat.”

Another man comes bounding up the hillside to our left. He waves to Matt. When they’re finally standing next to each other, I compare them. They have the same thin beard that stretches from side burn to side burn and short brown hair. In fact, they look very much alike. The only clear difference in their appearances is that Matt is fat and Nat is not. They both seem like very Jolly people.

“Well, nice to meet you,” I say.

“And you as well,” they reply in unison. Then they hook arms and gallop down the hillside singing a song about lost travelers.

“Well that was rather odd,” Aanya states.

“I would tend to agree with that,” I concede. “You alright there, Tailith?”

“Tali-”

“Oh look!” I yelp. “In the distance, it’s the town!”

“Yay,” Aanya responds, with a little less gusto than I’d been hoping for.

We begin again to walk toward Deventon.

“Hey, if you guys want, I could go invisible and scope out the place before we go in. Eh? Eh?”

“I don’t know about that,” Aanya says, tilting her hand from side to side.

“Well, at least think about it. We’ll be there within the hour.”

“Hey, Rachel, what’s that purple thing in your hair?”