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Puck nodded vigorously. “Oh yes. Very ominous.”
Afraid to ask. Desperate to know if I might yet have found a loophole. “How did they cross?”
Puck laid a finger alongside his nose like Old Saint Nick did in those rosy-cheeked paintings ofThe Night Before Christmas, mismatched eyes twinkling. I fingered the dagger I’d wished up when I dressed myself, taking Liam’s advice to keep one near, and contemplated stabbing Puck with it. Which would accomplish nothing.
“Okay—can you take me? You took me over once before, right?”
Puck clapped his hands and squealed. “Oh, pretty Gwynn, I thought you’d never ask!”
Chapter 30
In Which I Finally Figure Out How to Use the Ruby Slippers
‡
There appear to be at least three ways to cross the Veil: via the Wild Hunt, the elemental spirit animals and with someone who can open a gate. So self-evident it kills me to writeit.
~Big Book of Fairyland, “Rules ofMagic”
Ileft Starlingand Walt in charge of the castle, with the others—including Larch’s amazingly effective army of Brownies—to assist.
Marquise and Scourge offered to take the rebels into custody and I agreed, to their delight. A reward for their loyalty and a bit of payback for the others.
Puck and I left by the front door.
Why that seemed odd to me, I didn’t know. Probably partly that there evenwasa front door, the gate no longer magically spinning. Grooms had to bring our horses around to us, walking them through the halls. Other parts of the castle were manifesting the signs of Rogue’s nonpresence in this universe. I only hoped the towers would all hold. We crossed the drawbridge, the moat monsters leaping happily and spraying water. I was glad to see they’d survived.
The field of blue Stargazer lilies had not. Trampled by armies of fae and withering without Rogue’s sustaining magic, the meadow had become a sludgy mess of decaying vegetable matter. It hurt my heart to see it—which amazed me that I could still feel anything—and I had to look away. Maybe I’d instead passed into this state where I felt everything, my own self pushed to the Technicolor extreme that Faerie induced.
Felicity, happy to be freed of the castle, tossed her mane and kicked up her heels. Puck sang me songs of pigs and rain barrels and other nonsense. It didn’t surprise me one bit that we rode into the pathless countryside, back toward the hills like the one I landed on.
We turned the horses to roam free and I poofed their tack, so they’d be comfortable. The hair prickled on the back of my neck as we approached the spot. I might well have known it, if I’d chanced to walk near this particular hill. It carried the same chill as the path near Devils Tower, the sense of an open door and the draft wafting through.
Puck looked at me expectantly.
“What do I do?” I asked.
“I know whatIdo.” He laughed, carefree. “What doyoudo?”
“Can’t you carry me over—like when I was a baby?”
He looked aghast, sizing me up as if I’d asked him to carry an elephant. “No. That only works with babies. They’re different, you know. Babies. And pigs.”
“Great. Why did you say you could take me then?”
“I said I thought you’d never ask. You got yourself here. Why can’t you go back the same way? You’re the sorceress. I’m just…” He shrugged. “My gift is travel.”
“And mischievous obstinacy.”
He spun in a circle, a manic, Armani-clad Julie Andrews with arms outstretched. “I am alive with mischief.” Then he stopped on a dime and winked. “See you on the flip side.”
Then he walked through a doorway and was gone.
Of course I tried to follow. Which meant I ended up walking back and forth across that hilltop about a dozen times, feeling like a complete idiot. I’d done it before, yes, but on impulse. And in an aspen grove. There was no convenient totem tree here for me to tie a lock of my bloodied hair to.
Still.
You got yourself here. Why can’t you go back the same way?
