twenty-six twenty-seven twenty-eight twenty-nine thirty

Bryce rocked back and forth on her heels, counting the bricks in the wall. She knew, in some dim back corner of her mind, that she’d have to get back to the party eventually, but for the moment she could focus on nothing but bricks.
 

thirty-six thirty-seven thirty-eight thirty-nine forty

A few bricks were cracked in half; did they count as one brick or two?
 

forty-three forty-four forty-five

The “indie” style of the Daniel J. Richardson Memorial Gallery — or, “The Dan,” as it was affectionately known by Battleground’s artists and art lovers — meant that about three-quarters of the bricks were painted a pretty pear-green, and the rest were bare, the paint painstakingly chipped off in an artsy recreation of wear and tear. Bryce ran her fingers over the paint’s chipped edge; the smoothness of paint and the roughness of brick grounded her, brought her back to reality.
 

fifty-eight fifty-nine sixty.

She stopped counting, noting where the sixtieth brick was located, in case she needed to escape again. She checked her hair, and her makeup (which had begun to itch), and her dress (which clung to her in a way that made her want to scream), and she walked out, plastering a smile to her face.

The Dan was opening three exhibits that night: “Circus of Your Mind” by Memphis Drake, “The Astonishing Adventures of Citizen Mask” by Gayle Humphries…and “They Themselves and I” by Bryce Payne. Bryce had arrived hours earlier, to approve the arrangement of her paintings, and overlook the other works she would be sharing the spotlight with. The Drake exhibit was abstract, vivid colors and shapes with no edges, the artist’s subconscious on canvas. The Humphries exhibit was black-and-white prints of unrealistic people and dramatic speech bubbles, inspired by the comic books and pulp adventures of the forties and fifties. The Payne exhibit was fantastical, dreamscapes and nightmares, drawing on the lore of Battleground Forest.

Memphis Drake was 24, a very recent graduate of Savannah College of Art and Design. Gayle Humphries was 47, an art teacher at Grove’s Hill High School and a semi-famous artist of the Battleground Area, having had several exhibits in other small galleries around the county.

Bryce Payne was 17, and had only last year been a student of Ms. Humphries. She’d run into her old teacher hours before. “Congratulations, Bryce!” she’d said. “It’s kind of amazing, isn’t it? You and I debuting our work side by side. Oh, I knew it would happen one day, I just knew it. You’re such a talented young woman, Bryce.”

“Bryce!”

She looked over her shoulder. This time, it wasn’t Ms. Humphries’ voice, but Memphis’s. Memphis Drake was a dark-skinned young man with short, scarlet-dyed hair, dressed in a sleek grey suit and a red bowtie that reminded Bryce of Dr. Who. He had a huge, toothy smile on his face, and obvious dimples in his cheeks. “You’re Bryce Payne, yeah?” he said. “Aw, crap, don’t tell me I have the wrong girl. That would be embarrassing.”

Bryce shook her head. “No, no, you have the right girl. I’m Bryce Payne. And you’re Memphis Drake?”

“I am.” He clasped her hand, shaking it firmly, and she winced, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you too.”

“I saw your paintings,” he said, “and…whoa, that’s all I can say. They’re amazing. I mean, really amazing.”

“So are yours,” Bryce said, and she wasn’t just saying it to be polite; “Circus of Your Mind,” abstract as it may be, was genuinely beautiful.

Memphis chuckled. He threaded his arm through hers, leading her to the back wall, where her paintings hung. “Aw, no, not really. I just threw those together. I only wish I could draw like you. That portrait, the black-and-white one of the boy, it’s almost a photo. I wish I could do that.”

Bryce’s cheeks turned pink. “Thanks,” she said.

“And did I hear Gayle say you’re only seventeen? She says she had you in her class last year! At Grove’s Hill!” He shook his head. “Man. What did I go to college for?”

The color in her cheeks darkened. “Your paintings are very good, Mr. Drake,” she said. “You shouldn’t put yourself down like that.”
He gave her a familiar funny look, the look that instantly told her she’d done something wrong; he tried to cover it with a smile, but

Bryce could see it all too clearly in his eyes. “I, uh, I was only joking,” he said. “But, thanks, anyway.”

“Oh.” She looked at her feet. “Sorry. I…I don’t….”

“Hey,” he said gently, “it’s okay. You didn’t do anything wrong. You just…you seemed so passionate, is all. There’s really nothing to be that passionate about. And you can call me Memphis.”

“Right. Well, Memphis, it’s just that I’m, ah.” Bryce coughed. It isn’t a bad thing, she reminded herself. That’s the whole point of this, isn’t it? To put it out there? To say there’s nothing to be ashamed of? “Autistic. I’m autistic. I don’t…I don’t get things, sometimes.”

“Oh. Oh!” Memphis’s eyes widened slightly, and he nodded. “Okay. I got it. So, no touching?” He took his arm away. “I’m sorry. I do that to everyone, I didn’t think to ask if it was okay. I need to get better about that.”

“It’s all right,” Bryce said gratefully. “Thank you for understanding.”

“No problem.” He gestured vaguely in the direction of his own exhibit. “You and I, we’re cut from the same artsy cloth.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean up here,” he said, tapping the side of his head. “OCD. I stayed away from medication for years because I thought it would ruin my art. Finally…well, I don’t really like talking about it, but something happened, something that finally pushed me to get help. I painted Lucky One — the first piece of  ‘Circus of Your Mind’ — my first week on meds. Nothing wrong with being wired differently, y’know?”

“That’s a beautiful piece.”

“Thank you.” They stopped, having reached Bryce’s exhibit. “So,” Memphis asked, “what’s your inspiration?” He gestured to the paintings. “I mean, obviously they’re about the Gentry. You can tell that from the title alone. ‘They Themselves and I,’ I like it. It’s clever. But what made you decide to tackle that subject?”

Bryce’s mouth felt suddenly dry. Should I tell him? she wondered. It would be easy to shrug the question off, talk about her Gramma who supposedly had the Sight, say it was Gramma’s visions that had inspired the paintings, rather than her own.

What would Memphis think if she told him that she had the Sight? That she had been privy to the supernatural goings-on in Battleground Forest for as long as she could remember? Would he believe it? Would he think it a joke, and laugh? Would he dismiss her Sight for hallucinations or an “overactive imagination?”

He must have decided she wasn’t going to answer. “Who’s the boy in the portrait?” he asked instead. He read the title card attached to the easel. “I’m guessing his name’s Fletcher.”

Bryce nodded, relieved to have something else to discuss. “Yes, Fletcher Gray.” Fletcher Carson Gray. “We grew up together. He was my best friend for a long time. He still is, really, though I don’t see him anymore. He went off to college this year.” Fletcher was the only person, outside of her family, to ever know Bryce’s True Name, and as far as she knew she was the only one to know his. Fletcher Carson Gray.

“You painted your best friend as a faerie, huh? How’d he feel about that?”

Seeing as Fletcher was a changeling, and Bryce was only painting what she saw, she was sure he hadn’t minded at all. “He seemed to like it. He said…he said he wasn’t used to being seen that way.” Which was, in fact, what Fletcher had said: “I’m not used to being seen that way, without all the glamour.”

“And what about this one?” Bryce turned to see which painting Memphis was admiring. Titania In Thorns, a painting that appeared on first glance to be nothing more than an incredibly intricate set of vines and thorns and flowers that wound together to cover the canvas corner to corner. Once you’d looked at it for a few seconds, though, a picture started to take shape in those vines and flowers. A picture of a woman. An unearthly beautiful woman, her features too perfect to be real, her eyes closed and her mouth set in a hard line, her hand reaching out as if to pull the viewer into her green world.

Bryce’s heart began to pound. “That…that shouldn’t be here,” she said, and she turned on her heel and ran, looking up and down the gallery for Mr. Beck, the curator. “Mr. Beck! Mr. Beck!” Partygoers looked askance at her, but she didn’t care. She ignored them when they called out “Oh, Miss Payne!” She ran all around the building with gritted teeth, chanting under her breath, the poem that came to her mind and her lips almost inadvertently whenever she was stressed. “If I were young as I once was, and dreams and death more distant then, I would not split my soul in two and leave half in the world of men….”

Finally, she found Mr. Beck, engaged in a conversation with a partygoer about “Citizen Mask.” “Mr. Beck!”

He turned. “Oh…Miss Payne. Hello.”

“Mr. Beck, I need to talk to you. Right now.”

“I’m talking to someone else at the moment,” he said, a hint of vexation creeping into his voice.

“It can’t wait,” she insisted.

He sighed. “Excuse me,” he said to his conversation partner, and he stepped away, following Bryce’s lead. “What is it?” he hissed. “I’m busy.”

“Titania In Thorns. It shouldn’t be in the exhibit. I told you, it was a commission! It isn’t for sale!” Bryce’s voice rose, creeping dangerously close to a shriek. Her heart was pounding out of control, and without realizing it she’d begun to beat her fists against her hips. She could feel the meltdown coming on, the way you feel your foot beginning to fall asleep.

“It’s not for sale,” he said. “It isn’t going up for auction. I can put a little sign up saying that if you want. But it was such a beautiful piece, Miss Payne, I just couldn’t have the exhibit without it.” He looked highly uncomfortable. “Are you okay? Do you need…a doctor, or something?”

Bryce shook her head, and quickly retreated back to the restrooms. She tried the door; it was locked. That was her final straw. She crumpled against the wall, holding her head in her hands and shaking. No tears came from her eyes, but her breathing was unsteady and jagged, as if she were sobbing. She kept on hitting her sides, hitting her head.

“Bryce.”

The voice that spoke her name was faint and musical, reminding her of a distant wind chime. Bryce’s eyes were squeezed shut, but she could feel the presence of the speaker beside her, close but not touching. The air smelled of sea salt and roses. “Bryce,” the voice said again, soothing. “I’m here.” Nothing else. Not it’s okay. Not calm down. Just I’m here.
 

I’m here, Bryce thought, might be the most powerful phrase in the English language.

The meltdown began to subside a moment later, enough for her to open her eyes and breathe normally again, though she still couldn’t find the energy to speak. The voice didn’t ask her to. “Do you want to write it?” it asked instead, handing her a slip of paper and a crayon (Bryce had no idea where she'd gotten it).

Bryce nodded, looking up at the voice’s owner. Acacia.

Dimly she wondered what those without the Sight saw in Summer’s Handmaid. She knew it couldn’t be as lovely as the dryad’s true appearance. Acacia’s skin was the shining dark brown of polished wood, her eyes and hair deep green, and the slip of a dress she wore all the yellows and reds of autumn leaves. She was, like the Queen herself, too perfect to be real, more sculpture than girl.
 

What are you doing here, Acacia? Bryce wrote.

“I sensed your distress,” Acacia answered.
 

You don't have to come every time I feel distressed, you know.

“I know. I wanted to. You know how boring it can get in the Court. What distresses you, love?”
 

They put the Queen’s painting on exhibit. I told them not to but they did it anyway. Her heart constricted with dread. Acacia, will the Queen be angry?

“Angry?” Acacia laughed. “Love, you know your Queen. If anything, she’ll be delighted. So long as the painting remains in her possession….”
 

it will! Bryce wrote hurriedly.

“Then she will relish the attention. She’s a Queen, Bryce. She wants to be looked at, and the thought of being seen by mortals, no Sight required? She’ll jump at the chance.”
 

Are you sure?

“Would you like to ask her yourself?”

Bryce’s heart leaped into her throat. “Sh…. She’s here?” she stammered, as her voice began to return.

“No, no. Not here.” She offered Bryce her hand. “There.”

“Ah….” Bryce only hesitated a moment. She needed out. The thought of walking back into that party, feeling the stares of strangers on her back, was a thousand times more frightening than anything that might be waiting for her There. “All right. I’ll go.”
Acacia took her hand, helping her to her feet. “Close your eyes.”

Bryce closed her eyes.

A moment later, she felt grass beneath her feet, a breeze in her hair. She opened her eyes.

She hadn’t visited the Seelie Court since she was returned home, over three months ago. But not a day had gone by in those three months where she had not thought about it. Sometimes with dread, but other times — most times — with longing. Whatever the circumstances of her coming, she felt more at home There than she did in her own world.

She looked down at herself, happy to find that the suffocating dress she had been wearing had been replaced by a garment similar to Acacia’s (if significantly less revealing): a knee-length tunic (or it might be a dress, it was hard to say), made of a soft blue-green fabric that complimented Bryce’s ginger hair and blue eyes. Her feet were bare, and when she reached up she found a crown of tiny flowers on her head. She was dressed as she had been in the months she lived at the Queen’s court, and it filled her with strange relief.

“Shall we?” Acacia said, offering Bryce her arm. Bryce took it, and this time, she didn’t flinch.

The gathering place of the Seelie was a grove of no fixed size; sometimes it seemed the size of a park and others the size of a town. It was surrounded on all sides by trees on the far horizon, though Bryce thought you could likely run for hours and not reach that horizon, and their branches were so vast that they covered every inch of the grove, tangling together in the sky above. Flowers grew, and faeries danced among them.

And in the center of it all, there was a hill of grey and white stone, with deep green moss growing over it. At the top of that hill was a tree built of woven branches, and on that throne sat the Queen of Summer.

She was even more beautiful in person than depicted in thorns. Her skin appeared nearly gold, her hair auburn-red and her eyes a vivid green. She wore a crown of emeralds, and her clothes seemed to be woven from leaves and petals, putting Bryce in mind of Peter Pan — a grown and very intimidating Peter Pan. Like most Summer fae, she kept her feet bare.

Bryce dropped to one knee, her eyes respectfully cast down. “My Queen,” she said. “I’m honored to be in your presence once more.”

The Queen tapped her pinewood staff lightly against Bryce’s shoulder. “Rise, my child,” she said.

Bryce rose, keeping her eyes trained on the ground, settling into the comfortably rigid routine.

“Look at me, child,” the Queen said, her words so familiar that Bryce could have said them along with her. “Have no fear.”

Bryce looked at her, with no fear.

“Why are you here, Bryce?” the Queen asked. “Tonight is your night! You should be reveling. Celebrating your success.”

“I was,” she said. “I was celebrating, until…. Well, something happened, my Queen, and I would prefer you heard of it from me.”

The Queen’s eyes darkened, akin to the darkening of the sky before a hurricane. “What has happened?” she asked, her voice turning cold and blank.

“Your portrait, my Queen —”

“You did not sell it?” she thundered.

“No! No,” Bryce said hastily, “never. I would never.”

“Then those mortal, Sightless fools at the art house? They think it theirs to sell?”

“I’ve convinced them not to sell it,” Bryce said. “I told them not to display it, at all, but they think it is theirs to display.”

“Tell them it is already claimed!”

“I have.”

The Queen’s face began to soften. “I believe you,” she said. “Oh, those fools. Those fools.”

“All the town will see your beauty now, my Queen,” Acacia cut in, practically gushing. “Isn’t it a blessing? This artist of yours has brought your image not only to the kingdom, but to the world beyond. To their world.”

The Queen settled back into her seat, nodding.Consideration played across her face. “Yes, my Handmaid," she said. "Yes, you are right. This is good.” A slow grin spread across her face, a quiet laugh rising from the back of her throat.

Acacia shot Bryce a glance, a secretive smile. I told you so, her eyes said.

“I am proud of you, Bryce,” the Queen said. “I am very proud.”
Bryce’s heart swelled with emotions she found it nigh-impossible to identify. She feared the Queen; of course she did. Only a fool wouldn’t fear the Seelie Queen.

Yet, knowing the gift she had given her, it was hard for Bryce not to love her, too, just a bit.

                                                  *****

The day after her seventeenth birthday, Bryce was Taken.

She knew the rules. Gramma, who recognized her Sight for what it was when she was only three years old, had taught her well. She had flowers growing outside her window, to welcome the friendly fae; she had a salt crystal on her desk and bits of iron hung above every window, to keep the unfriendly fae out. She didn’t look They Themselves in the eye — not that she looked many people in the eye, fae or human. She didn’t speak to They Themselves, unless they spoke to her first, and then it was only the shortest and most respectful of answers. She was home before dark. She stayed away from areas strong in magic.

The rules had not protected her.

She fell asleep late the last night of her sixteenth year, having stayed up to finished a sketch. She woke, past midnight, in the forest. She did everything right, and still she had been stolen from her bed.

She was laying under a tree, “the tree.” Everyone in Battleground knew “the tree”; it was in the town square, a two hundred-year-old oak tree protected by a low stone wall. (In any other town, that wall might have been a wrought-iron fence, but nothing in Battleground was built of pure iron.) It was said, by some, to be the strongest place of pure magic in the entire town. It was where fools went when they sought to make deals with They Themselves; Bryce had thought of coming there herself, once or twice, but reason had always won out.

The air around her smelled strongly of cinnamon and copper. Energy — magic — clung to her like St. Elmo’s Fire. Bryce got to her feet, braced against the wall, and glanced wildly around. “Hello?” she called. “Hello!” Her hands began to shake with, her eyes filling with panicky tears. She tried to climb the wall, but found her way blocked. A forcefield, she thought giddily. I’ve been abducted!

And then a moment later, the truth hit. Not abducted. Taken.

“No,” she breathed. “No no no no no no no…. I can’t. This can’t. Can’t happen,” she babbled. “I can’t be Taken! I can’t!”

“Oh, Bryce.” The voice was at her shoulder, a woman’s voice with an air of absolute authority. “Anyone can be Taken, child.”

Bryce turned, and saw her standing there. She hadn’t recognized the woman at first, but it was impossible not to realize that she was a Somebody. It was in the tilt of her chin, the glint of her eye, the set of her jaw and the way she folded her arms. “Hello, Bryce,” she said.

“Wh-who are you?”

“You don’t recognize me?”

“No,” she said honestly. “I don’t know you. How do you know me?”

“You,” the woman said, smiling, “are mine. My artist.”

“Your…your artist?”

“Yes. My portrait-painter. I gave you a gift in your cradle, so one day you might use it for me.”

She touched Bryce’s face, pushing her hair to the side, pressing her thumb to the center of her forehead.

Bryce remembered, then, though it couldn’t be called a memory, exactly. She saw it not from her own point of view, but from that of an outsider, a ghost.
 

A little girl, two years old or perhaps not even that, toddling around in the grass, picking the little yellow flowers that grew at the edge of the pond in Battleground Park. Her father, a man with blond hair (the little girl took after her mother) and a bushy blond beard, sits beside the pond on a picnic blanket. In overalls and a straw hat, he looks every inch a rustic farmer. A canvas in front of him and a box of pencils by his side; the canvas mostly blank, and what little he’s colored is bluish-gray, the image of the storm clouds on the horizon. “Bryce!” he calls. “Bryce, come back, sweetie. Stay where I can see you, okay?”
 

The little girl, little Bryce, doesn’t respond. She stops picking flowers, staring at something her father can’t see, her little mouth hanging open.
 

“Bryce!” Her father stands, strides over to her, and picks her up by her tiny arms. His daughter begins to scream, kicking her legs and pointing at nothing. “Hey, hey, hey, Bryce. What’s wrong?”
 

“Talking,” she says. She points. “Talking to the lady.”
 

“Lady?” His brow furrows. “Bryce, sweetie, there’s no one there. Come on back to the blanket.”
 

The Seelie Queen chooses that moment to reveal herself.
 

She parts a curtain in the air and steps forth, her scepter casually pointed at the artist and his daughter. “Harold Payne,” she says, “greetings.”
 

Harold Payne is awestruck. “Oh, God,” he mutters. “Oh, Jesus. You’re one of Them.”
 

“One of Them, Mr. Payne? I am the Queen of Them.”
 

“Oh!” He drops to one knee. “Have I done some wrong, fair Queen?”
 

“No wrong,” she says. “Much to the contrary. You have done great things, Mr. Payne. I seek a favor of you.”
 

“The Queen of the fae seeks a favor of me? A mortal? The world is upside down!”
 

“Your art is well-known in this town, is it not?”
 

“Well, I…I wouldn’t say that, exactly….”
 

“Whatever you would say, it is known enough to attract my attention.”

Again, Payne is awestruck, this time speechless.

“You were not born with your mother’s gift, Mr. Payne.”
 

“Gift? The Sight?”
 

“Indeed. I would, however, be willing to grant it to you. You would have a new world opened up to you, beauty beyond human imagining to inspire your work. I can do that for you, and much more. So much more. I only ask one simple thing in return: that you paint my portrait.”
 

“I…I….” Harold’s mouth snaps open and shut. “Thank you,” he finally manages. “There’s only one problem, my Queen.”
 

“And what might that be?”
 

“I am dying.”
 

The Queen shrugs her shoulders. “So?” she says. “I can take the sickness from you. I shall, as your payment.”
 

Harold shakes his head. “No,” he says. “Thank you, my queen, but no. That isn’t what I ask of you.”
 

“You do not wish to save yourself?”

“I’ve settled my affairs, and I’ve made my peace with God. I’m ready to go. What I ask is that you take care of my family, once I’m gone.”
 

“It can be done.”

“Wait a minute.”

Bryce came back to the present, tears filling her eyes. “That was you?” she asked.

She didn’t remember her father; he had died when she was only three. She did, however, have memories of the anonymous gifts that had kept her mother afloat in the years after…and she remembered flashes, that she’d dismissed as dreams, of a woman much like this who stood guard over her in her worst nights.

“It was.”

Bryce almost thanked her. She was filled with such emotion that she only remembered the rules in the nick of time. “But what does all this have to do with me?”

The Queen, wordlessly, touched her face again.
 

The little girl is home now, sleeping safely and soundly in her crib, the woman at the park already forgotten. A picture of innocence and peace under her knitted blanket.
 

A soft fluttering, and the Queen appears again, standing over the crib. “It won’t be finished,” she says softly. “If your fool of a father chooses to embrace his mortality, so be it, but I shall have to find another artist for my Court. He will not live long enough to complete the portrait.” She takes the child from her bed, holding her lovingly, motherly. “Do you have your father’s skill, I wonder?” A glance at the crayon drawings on the wall, and she nods. “Yes, I think you do. I think, with time — and perhaps with a bit of help — you could be even better than he. And you have something he doesn’t: the Sight. I think…. Yes, I think you could be a better artist than he.”
 

The Queen presses a kiss to the girl’s forehead. “With this kiss, I make it so. You will have your father’s skill with brush and pen, and more. When you are grown, I will bring you into my Court. That won’t be for many years yet, but I am patient, and I am long-lived. Fifteen years will go by a blink of my eye.”

Bryce snapped back to the present once again. The Queen was smiling. “And now, Bryce,” she said, “your time is here.”

“You’re…you’re taking me to your Court?” Bryce asked. Be calm, she commanded herself, though her knees were knocking. Respect the Gentry, Gramma had told her, but do not let them see your fear.

“I am.”

“You’re going to make me paint you. And when I’ve finished the painting, I can come home?”

“If you wish.” She patted Bryce’s hand. “Have no fear, my child. You will not be gone long.”
 

                                                     *****
 

The Seelie Queen walked down the streets of Battleground, wearing a human glamour; despite the glamour, she was still beautiful. Her eyes were still green and her hair auburn, but her golden skin had faded to a more ordinary light brown. Her dress, that had been woven from petals in the Court, was now a simple floral-patterned fabric. Her feet were clad in simple sandals. The only thing that remained the same between the Court and the human world was her crown; the string of golden leaves and emeralds still clung to her forehead, not quite as brilliant at it had been in her world, but still attention-catching. “Aren’t you worried someone might steal it?” Bryce whispered.

The Queen shrugged airily. “Let them try,” she said. “See how they like spending a hundred years as a toad. Or a toadstool. Or something equally amusing.”

Bryce pressed her lips together, taking a quick step ahead of the Queen to open the door of the Dan for her. The Queen flounced inside, and Acacia followed close behind. She paused at the door. “Can I talk to you for a moment, love?” she whispered. “Alone?”
Bryce whispered back, “Yes,” and followed Acacia through the crowd, to a quiet corner of “They Themselves and I”’s exhibition room. She paused by a painting, Portrait of a Young Dryad, that hung on the wall.

“Is this…is this me?” Acacia asked, running her fingers down the canvas.

Bryce nodded. “It is.”
 

Portrait of a Young Dryad, much like Titania In Thorns, appeared on first glance to be an ordinary tree. Upon closer viewing, however, the trunk of the tree became the slender body of a girl. The leaves became her hair. The blossoms, falling from the branches and blown in the breeze, covered her, became her clothing. The patterns in the bark became her face; she was smiling serenely, her eyes closed.

“It’s beautiful,” Acacia said softly. “It’s so beautiful, Bryce!”

Bryce’s cheeks felt hot. She didn’t thank her. Not directly.
Gramma’s rules said nothing about indirect thanks, however. Bryce threaded her fingers through Acacia’s, smiling in a way that made her gratitude undeniable. Acacia smiled back. “Are you coming back to Court?” she asked.

Bryce was taken aback. “I...can’t,” she said. “I have to take my summer classes, so I can graduate. Go to college. Have…a life, I guess.”

There was sadness in Acacia’s smile now. “Bryce,” she said, “you are the Queen’s chosen. You are one of us now.”

“No, I’m not. I may have the Sight, but I’m still human.”

“The Queen made you part of her Court, Bryce. You aren’t…. Well,” she backtracked, “you are still human in the strictest sense. But you don’t belong in this world anymore.
 

“Anymore.”

Bryce thought of all the times she’d been stared at when she rocked or flailed her hands in public. The disapproving whispers of her schoolmates when she had an unfortunately-timed meltdown. Her parents’ barefaced disappointment when she struggled in the most basic math and science courses, when she was placed in summer school, when her counselors suggested accommodation plans for college.
 

I’ve never belonged in this world.

She tapped out a rapid melody against her thigh. “If I were young as I once was,” she murmured, “and dreams and death more distant then….”
 

But do I really belong There?

In the “real” world, only a day had passed for Bryce in Faerie. To her perception, however, it had been three months. Three months of dazedly painting day and night, with a fevered inspiration she couldn’t pinpoint the source of. She’d become, as Acacia said, part of the Court. Faeries had greeted her as they walked by. They brought her food and drink from her own world, knowing she wouldn’t accept theirs (good food, too, her favorites). When she took breaks to rest her aching hands, the Queen’s Handmaiden would lead her for long walks around the grove, and they talked. They became close. Became friends.

Then there were the revels. Parties for Bryce were nearly hellish, but those were human parties. Fae revels were different. They made her happy, dizzy, dizzy-happy; without drinking a drop, she was intoxicated on music alone. Faeries pulled her into dances, one-on-one or in circles. Sometimes one would kiss her, on the hand or the cheek or full-on on the mouth.

It was Acacia who pulled her away, every time. Every time Bryce would complain, and every time Acacia would smile gently and lead her away from the torchlight circle, to the little hut where she slept. “You know the rules,” she’d remind her. “You can’t stay there. Those revels, they are deadly for humankind. You’ll lose yourself…perhaps worse. The Queen won’t stand to lose you.” And every time, Bryce thanked her later.

“They…. I mean, you,” Bryce said now, “the fae, you don’t see things the way humans do. I used to believe that you couldn’t love.” She looked at Acacia, at their intertwined fingers, unable to stop a blush from rising to her cheeks. “I don’t believe that anymore.”
Acacia kissed her lips. It was nothing like the kisses at the revels; it was soft, gentle, just a brush before she pulled away again, but it was real.

“But you know I can’t come back,” Bryce continued. “Not forever. You said it yourself, your world is deadly to me. I’ll lose myself, or worse, if I…become part of that.

“I’ll never be part of Faerie, Acacia. Maybe I’ll never belong here, either, but maybe that’s all right. I think some people aren’t meant to fully belong in any world. They’re emissaries, go-betweens. Dual citizens. I have the Sight; I think that makes me one of those.”

Acacia nodded. “I understand, love,” she said. She kissed Bryce’s hand. “Stay, if you wish. I will eagerly await your return.”

Acacia’s world was dangerous, and wicked. So was Bryce’s. That was what her days in Faerie had taught her: that there was no perfect world. There was no safe world.

It was time to stop searching for one.

Acacia squeezed her hands, then released them. “Go,” she said. “Rejoin your party. This is your big night, after all. And,” she added wryly, “I need to keep an eye on the Queen. Be sure she doesn’t get so puffed-up she goes and reveals herself to the world.”

“Bryce? Bryce, hello! Where are you?” Memphis’s voice joined the din.

“I’m over here!” Bryce called.

And with one last smile at her faerie companion, she rejoined her party.