Smoke and Mirrors (38)

Thirty-Eight

The Quest for Adrian

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It had been two days after our wedding and I hated not knowing if Adrian was safe or even alive. He was the only cousin I’d ever met before. Before he came along, I didn’t even know I had a cousin.

So when Sterling passed me in the hallway, I stopped him. “Sterling!”

He glanced at me and stopped. “What?”

I swallowed. “What about Adrian? And the unicorn horn?”

He sighed. “I know, but as King and Queen of Soryn, there are certain tasks we are expected to do. We need to visit the—”

“Look,” I cut in sharply, “frankly, I don’t care a duck’s quack what we’re expected to do. We’re also supposed to find that horn and fix all the little kids’ powers before they destroy everything. Are you forgetting what the town in the Shadow kingdom looked like?! Isn’t that more important than some stuffy old traditions?!”

“I know. Believe me, I know, okay? I haven’t forgotten about your cousin or the horn. But I have an image I have to—” He cut himself off at my glare and shook his head. “You don’t understand. We—”

“Nope, I don’t understand.” I clenched my fist. “Surely getting the horn back is more important, but y’know, what do I know.” I turned and walked away, glaring at the floor.

“Fine.” He flung the word across the room like it was a dagger.

I faced him suddenly. My heart caught his dagger and I smiled. “I’ll have myself packed and ready by this evening. When can we leave?”

He rubbed a hand across his forehead, over the scar at his hairline. “Tomorrow morning.”

I nodded again and walked away, relief flooding me.

***

The next morning we took a Steamer straight to the Wystilor. It took us about six hours, so by the time we stopped at the station, my tongue felt like cotton and my stomach burned with hunger.

“They don’t have ramen here by any chance, do they?”

“No,” Sterling replied. “Fall is a fairy kingdom, so they have it, but we’re not going there today. We’ll eat later.” He turned on me suddenly as we walked down the wood porch of the Steamer station. “Listen, you can not eat anything offered to you unless I say otherwise, okay?”

I stopped walking and wrinkled my nose at him. “Why would I let you decide what I eat?” The guy wouldn’t even try ramen before I forced him to!

“This is serious. Many of Wystilor’s foods are meant to cause hallucinations. This is the Dream realm, okay?! Trust me on this, if you want us to get out safely, don’t eat things from here and definitely do not take food from strangers, even if they’re selling it and it looks like a legitimate business.” He paused. “Another thing. Don’t think about a thing too much here or you’ll see it.”

I blinked at him, then looked up. In front of us was a small, thin spattering of tiny shrubs that went up to my ankles. Daylight poured like golden silk over the leaves, which created a calm, peaceful scene as they shivered in the gentle breeze. Birds and bugs flitted from the trees and clouds ghosted slowly past us.

However, the small shrubs faded into large trees that seemed to grow taller the farther down the pasture I looked. Eventually, I couldn’t see past the trees anymore.

“It looks pretty normal,” I commented.

He glanced at me. “That’s another thing. We need to occasionally describe what we’re seeing to each other so we make sure the other person isn’t hallucinating.”

I frowned at him. “I thought only the food could do that.”

“Well, sometimes tree pollen does too.”

I groaned.

We continued walking, but I stayed close behind Sterling as we waded past the shrubs and gradually moved deeper into the woods.

“I’m seeing trees,” I deadpanned. “Lots, and lots of trees.”

Sterling sighed, but said nothing.

The trees enveloped us the farther in we went. Before long, they were taller than both of us.

“Do you hear that?” asked Sterling.

“Hear what?”

“A. . . water source of some kind. It sounds close by. Can you feel it?”

I closed my eyes and stretched my senses outwards, feeling for every drop around me. I could feel the concentrated mass of water that made up Sterling. I shuddered, remembering how easily I’d killed that shadow elf when we were in Rafforun. I furrowed my eyebrows and tried to ignore his presence, then reached out beyond us. Somewhere nearby, I felt what seemed like small, rabbit-sized creatures skittering around.

I opened my eyes. “No water source. But I think there might be. . . rabbits or something? Nearby? I don’t know, are there rabbits here?”

He glanced at me and looked away. “Not in Rafforun. But that’s not the main focus right now. If there isn’t a water source nearby, then we need to get out of here quickly, before both of us become affected by the pollen. Start running.”

I blinked, and before I had time to process his command, he was already taking off.

I sighed and tried following after him at the same speed, but I was out of shape. Well, technically, since I’d never been in shape before, it was impossible to be considered out of shape, right?

After another twenty seconds of running, I realised something; breathless and wheezing like Darth Vader was my shape.

“What do you see?!” Sterling called back at me.

“Dirt and trees!” I repeated. Then I paused as a sneeze worked itself up. I pinched my nose tightly and scrunched my eyes shut in hopes that it would go away before I set the forest on fire.

“Well I see a pretty big deer just ahead,” he replied, slowing to a halt.

I almost bumped into him, but caught myself in time. “Where?” I wheezed, dropping my hand from my nose.

“Look through there.” He pointed at a gap that was laced over by branches and bushes.

I followed his finger and saw that, just through the trees, was the biggest deer I’d ever seen in my life. It was roughly the size of a cow or horse, and it sat there calmly grazing on the small patches of thin grass at the base of one of the trees. A patch of giant gnats swarmed its neck and it jerked around to shoo them away.

“Do you see it?” he asked.

I swallowed. “Yeah—I see it. Oh, what I would give to have my phone camera right now.”

He glanced back at me. “Phone camera? Like the phone I smashed when I—”

“Yup! When you broke into my apartment and tried to kill me. That one. You owe me big-time for that. Phones are expensive! In the Outside, when someone falls and hears a crunch, a lot of people hope it was their bone breaking and not their phone! You have no—”

“Hush a second!”

I pursed my lips and folded my arms. That deer did look pretty menacing. Could deer be aggressive? I wasn’t sure.

The deer suddenly perked its massive ears and darted off into the thick shadows of the brush.

I breathed a sigh of relief.

“Do us a favor and see if you can feel any more like that out there,” Sterling said.

I exhaled slowly and tried to feel for any water nearby. I could feel it in the trees, pulsing and moving, then in Sterling’s veins, warm and flowing, then some more floated around in broken fragments in the air. Some of it was under our feet in the soil, some of it was concentrated in certain plants and areas where an underground spring likely ran. If I let myself, I knew I could lose my mind in the thousands of ways my thoughts were being pulled. It felt as if I was fracturing myself over and over again every time I tried to focus on a new patch of water. Part of me was flowing in the trees, pulsing and moving. Part of me was in Sterling’s veins, then some more of me floated around in—

“Tessa.”

I snapped my eyes open. I hadn’t even realised they’d closed.

“Uh—no more. Deer, I mean. I don’t feel anything.” I felt breathless with anxiousness and awe over what had just happened.

He eyed me carefully. I thought I saw a flash of something behind his eyes—like caution. Or maybe fear. I knew he also remembered what I’d done to the shade bandit.

“Good,” he said, turning away. “Let’s keep going then.”