Autumn (4 page)

Mrs. Cheshire stopped inches away from the bars. I moved as far away from her as I could. I didn’t care any longer if she thought I was afraid of her. I was.

“You’ve troubled my family long enough,” she hissed. “I don’t know what fate was thinking when it decided you should marry my son, but you aren’t good enough to shine his shoes.” She smiled. There was no mirth in it.

I leaned towards the bars.

“It amazes me that he turned out to be a decent Fairy with a mother as evil as you,” I told her quietly, with my last bit of bravery. Before she could attack me in response, the small Divoni grabbed her by the arms, holding her away.

I could see out of the corner of my eye that Holt was giving me a shocked look.

Maybe being a Fairy had changed me. I didn’t know. Maybe it was the shock of having Mrs. Cheshire suddenly reappear in my life to arrest me. Whatever it was, I hated her, and I wasn’t going to pretend I didn’t.

“Down you go,” said Alderoy, I looked behind us and screamed as the cage unceremoniously plunged us down into the black abyss below.

I felt like I was falling and falling, until suddenly the cage slammed into a hard, dirt floor. I cried out when all my weight landed on my wrist as I tried to break my fall.

“Holt?” I called. We were in total darkness. Somewhere I heard the drip of water, and the air smelled heavily of earth.

There was no answer.

“Holt?” I cried again, louder.

Nothing. He was suddenly gone.

Wherever they had sent him, it wasn’t with me. It made sense for them to separate us, I supposed. We were dangerous criminals who had to be kept apart.

I particularly was likely to do all sorts of horrible things. Left to my own devices I might even take a shower.

When I had fallen, the bonds around my wrists had released, leaving me free to crawl around my prison. I found nothing except a blanket in one corner, but since it smelled too much like the wintry chill of the Cheshires, I didn’t touch it.

Exhausted, I let the tears come again. This time, alone under the earth, I didn’t try to stop them. Instead, I curled up on the ground into the smallest ball I could.

The hours Holt and I had spent happy felt years away, and even the faint designs that appeared under my skin if I looked really hard didn’t lighten my heart.

I don’t know how long I slept, but I woke up to the sound of a door creaking open, and in walked Divoni, wearing the same clothes he had had on when he arrested us.

He kept pushing his red hair around nervously, but then he had been nervous the night before too, so I decided he was always that way.

He wrung his hands together as he stood in front of me. “I hope you slept comfortably,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said dryly, “it would have sucked if I had had to sleep on the ground in the dark or something.”

“Oh, um, yes, well um,” said Divoni.

Obviously he wasn’t used to dealing with angry teenage girls. We were far more formidable than we were given credit for, I thought smugly.

“You are free to go,” he said.

My ears perked up and I scrambled into a sitting position on the ground. I don’t know how much scrubbing I would have to do to get all the dirt out of my hair.

When I didn’t get up, Divoni repeated himself. “No,” he said. “You are free to go.”

I let the implications of his words sink in.

“Where is Holt?” I demanded.

Divoni cleared his throat. “I am not at liberty to say at this time.”

I started to argue, to rage at him, but he held up his hands. “We have a few things to discuss first.”

“Yeah, let’s discuss how much Fairies suck,” I said. “I think I could have a pretty long conversation about that one. For instance, am I supposed to feel like we’re lucky we weren’t murdered by Mrs. Cheshire? You let her come back just to punish us?”

“She is a member of the Supreme Council, she would always be dealing with a matter such as this.”

“Since she has such a personal interest in the outcome, do you really think it’s a good idea to let her be involved?” I demanded. “Have you heard of the term conflict of interest?” Seriously, it was ridiculous.

“I do not have to explain myself to a child such as yourself,” said Divoni, puffing his small chest outwards.

I got to my feet. I didn’t want to be sitting when this pompous man started lecturing me.

“Here is what you must know,” he said. He pulled out a piece of folded paper and unfolded it, nearly dropping it twice.

Then he squinted.

“Oh, glasses,” he muttered.

I rolled my eyes and waited.

Finally, he started to read:

“What Holt did was desperately against Fairy law, and Mrs. Cheshire has a right to exact her revenge. She plans on doing just that.” Which translated into, “Even if she hasn’t said so, she is enjoying keeping Holt chained in a dungeon as long as she possibly can. You might be getting out, but he’s not.”

Mr. Divoni continued. “Fairies are very unhappy with your wanton disregard for our laws and your entrapment of one of our Princes.” Translation: “All Fairies hate me with an unbridled passion normally reserved for slugs and snakes and will exact their revenge against me whenever possible. They also think I’m a slut who has somehow convinced Holt to offer me his Rose against his will.” Wonderful. I wondered if even Susan or Samuel would speak to me. Probably not, if Mrs. Cheshire had anything to say about it.

“And lastly,” said Divoni, “We cannot have errant almost-wives of Fairies running around doing whatever they want. It could be disastrous. The Summer Queen also wants nothing to do with you, which means it will be difficult to know what to do with you until everything is concluded.”

I pressed my lips together. It hadn’t occurred to me that I would be something that “had to be dealt with” and that Mrs. Roth would reject me, particularly after what Holt had given me. I also never expected to be facing all this without Holt by my side.

“So, what is going to happen?” I asked tightly.

“Well, Ms. Susan has offered to teach you, so she will keep you in hand and start you off with the very basics. You are not allowed to perform any Fairy magic without her permission. Understand? None. If you do, Mrs. Cheshire will be the one to deal with you.”

Divoni didn’t seem like the brightest bulb, but he had figured out that I would do anything to avoid Mrs. Cheshire.

I took a deep breath and nodded. At the thought that Susan had kept to her word and was going to help me, the tiniest bit of relief washed over me. Maybe she would know where Holt was as well. I wondered how Samuel would fit into everything.

Then an imagine of Samuel flashed into my mind, and I wondered if he knew what had happened. I wondered when he had found out, and what he was doing when he did. I wondered what he was doing now. Those ever-observant blue eyes flashed into my mind. I hated to think of them in pain.

So, translation for Divoni’s third rule:

“If I put so much as one foot out of line I will be in the cell next to Holt’s, and there is no powerful Fairy family to speak for me (since it seems that Mrs. Roth has renounced any responsibility for or claim to Holt or me).”

Mrs. Cheshire would be watching my every move -- Divoni had as much as told me that. I wasn’t sure what I could do to make Mrs. Cheshire angrier than I already had, maybe blink the wrong way. I would have to be very careful, otherwise who knew what could happen.

“Lastly,” said Divoni, “Under no circumstances can you leave Castleton until all this is straightened out.”

I gasped.

“But the summer is over,” I said incredulously. “I don’t live here.”

There was no sympathy in Divoni’s eyes.

“You do now,” he said.

Translation: “Uh oh.”

When Divoni told me I was free to go, he meant it. He expected me to follow him out of the dungeon, and all my pleas to find out what had happened to Holt fell on deaf ears. I followed Divoni’s little body up a long flight of stairs, where there was almost no light and I fell repeatedly. After spending the night, or day rather, since we had been arrested at dawn, curled up in a ball, my legs need to remember how to work again. Divoni didn’t help me.

We reached the top of the stairs and I found myself in a part of the Cheshires’ house that I had never seen before. I guessed that it must have been at the back, where Samuel wouldn’t have taken me when I visited as a friend instead of as a prisoner.

It was sparse, all dark stone. Divoni led me down a long hallway with no windows, so I had no way to know what time of day it might be. I asked Divoni how long I had been asleep, but he ignored me.

Finally we reached a small door, painted black. Without ceremony Divoni opened it and a blast of cool fall air hit my face. It was cold. Summer had definitely ended. And now it was night again.

Divoni stood aside and beckoned me forward, making it clear that he wanted me to leave immediately. I had almost hoped to run into Samuel, but I would have no such luck. I wondered if Samuel even wanted to speak to me; there was a chance, I knew, that he wouldn’t want anything to do with me ever again. I didn’t know why that made my chest feel tight.

“I assume you can find your own way home?” Divoni asked, raising his ruddy eyebrows. Gathering what I had left of my dignity, which given that I was covered in mud wasn’t much, I ignored his question.

Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to piss off another member of the Supreme Council, but I couldn’t help it. I was too angry.

I walked out into the night without so much as a backwards glance. The door, as it turned out, led onto the street. I had worried that I would have to walk across the grounds to get out and possibly risk running into Mrs. Cheshire, but luckily I didn’t.

Except for the fact that my whole body was screaming in stiff pain, I was glad I had that solitary walk home. I needed time to process what had happened. I assumed that I had slept the day away and had therefore only spent a few hours in jail, but that was hardly relevant.

What mattered was Holt.

And he was still in prison.

I wished I could hold his hand again.

I wondered if I would be lucky enough to have had one of the Fairies perform a spell on Carley and her mom, so they wouldn’t know I’d been missing.

I wondered what was possibly going to happen to me this fall. I had been expecting Divoni to tell me his first rules; that other Fairies were angry and that Mrs. Cheshire wanted revenge were about as obvious as the fact that Nick was in love with Carley. But his last rule, that I wasn’t allowed to leave Castleton, was going to be a big problem.

I sighed. How was I going to pull that one off? Carley was already leaving; she would be gone in a week. Nick wasn’t, though; he would be staying in Castleton. Maybe I could stay with him. It would be weird, but I didn’t want to think about what the Fairies would do if I tried to leave.

Of course, who knew what my parents would think. I could only assume they wouldn’t be happy about any of it.

I trudged home in the dark of night. I wasn’t expecting anyone to be up when I got there, so it was a surprise to see Carley’s light shining under her door.

“Autumn?” she called out softly as I passed.

Too tired to try to avoid her, I opened the door. She was in bed under her comforter, her blond hair in two braids on either side of her face. If I did that I would look like an idiot, but Carley looked cute in anything. She had her laptop propped on her knees, but she closed it when she saw me.

“How’s Samuel?” she asked brightly. “Wow, you totally look like death warmed over.”

“Samuel? And thanks,” I said dryly.

“Yeah,” she said, “one of those horrible girls, Lydia, Leslie, I can’t ever keep them straight, stopped by to say that you had fallen asleep there last night and then the two of you had gone to the beach. Was there some hot bonding time? Tell me everything. Have you noticed how insanely unfair it is that two really hot, older guys like you? Because I’ve noticed it’s really unfair.” She shook her head in mock sadness.

“Yeah,” I said, trying to muster a smile. “Big drag.”

“Exactly,” she said. Her eyes sparkled. She was under her pink covers. Everything in her room was pink, even though she swore that when she went to college she’d try to have a secondary color like purple.

“So, tell me everything,” she said, bouncing in her bed.

“I’m really tired, Carley,” I told her. In reality I wasn’t tired. I was just numb, but since I couldn’t explain everything to Carley, “tired” would have to do.

Carley’s face fell and her red lips pushed out in a pout.

“Can I tell you about Nick?”

I was about to tell her that I was too exhausted when I realized that hearing about Nick might be a welcome distraction. I walked into her room and plopped down at the foot of her pink bed.

“Definitely,” I said. “Are you guys okay?”

“NO,” she cried, frustrated. “He told everyone we were dating. The nerve!” She leaned towards me and lowered her voice. “He told Samuel.”