20. Chapter 20

twenty

The moment she was entirely inside, Harper heard rumbling behind her. Turning back, she saw an earthen wall at her back—the portal was closed. She stopped for a moment and inspected the solid expanse. Would she ever see the other side again? Unable to resist the urge to try, she slipped the mirror from her pocket and closed her eyes, thinking open . But when she looked again, the wall still stood, a solid sentinel blocking her escape. With no choice left but to see it through, she marshalled her fraying nerves and began walking.

The tunnel seemed darker and colder than before, and its atmosphere harbored a festering sense of menace. In pulling out her phone for light, Harper found it dead. She frantically wrenched the mirror from her pocket and discovered, with relief, that it provided a subtle golden glow, allowing her to see a few steps ahead. The carpet of leaves lining the floor muffled the sound of her sneakers.

After creeping down the lonely, unnerving tunnel, for what she judged to be an hour, she approached the chamber she'd dubbed Merlin's Office on her previous trip. This time, instead of the heavy, nearly sacred silence, she heard grating, high-pitched, raucous laughter, an annoying buzz, and … what sounded like the footsteps of an army of small creatures. With it came the scent and oppressive atmosphere of an electric fire.

She scurried to the bend where the tunnel curved just before the room's entrance. Then, dropping to the floor, she pressed her full length as tightly as possible to the inside of the curve. Facing the wall, she pulled her hood over her head, placed her hands in her pockets, and became as motionless as a rock. There she waited, tense and cold, her hip cramping in agonizing spasms.

Just as she felt she couldn't lay there another second, the racket reached a fever pitch and erupted from the chamber's entrance like an exploding cannon. A wild river of insect-like creatures whooshed past her like shrapnel. She kept her breaths shallow for as long as she could, though none of the beings were moving slowly enough to notice her. After roughly five minutes, the shrieking, locust-like horde passed her by, the noise dimming as they moved down the passage, and all became quiet and dark once again.

Harper lay immobile, listening intently, for a few minutes more before opening her eyes. When she did, she found what looked like drab blue and iron-gray glitter sparkling on the walls and floor of the tunnel. After gingerly sitting up, she reached down to rub her aching hip and saw with horror that she was covered in it herself. Now that her chances of entering the realm unseen were diminished, she needed to hurry.

Cautiously, she peeked around the corner into the chamber. The formerly dignified room was in shambles. Chairs were overturned, ancient books lay scattered on the floor, grimy cups and saucers were dispersed among windowsills, tables, and even the floor. Puddles of spilled drink surrounded islands of dropped victuals. And all of it glowed blue and silver.

Harper froze when she saw the back of a small figure with straight black hair inside the room. The figure was muttering, while apparently tidying up the tremendous mess. As she began to back slowly into the tunnel again, the being suddenly straightened up and turned to look directly at her. To her shock, she found herself looking at a familiar face.

"Piper!"

Eyes wide with alarm, Piper held up a slim hand. Then she whispered, "Quiet Dearie! The next group will be arriving soon. They mustn't see you when they do!"

At that moment, Harper detected the sound of heavy chimes coming down the tunnel from the Fae Realm entrance, like church bells pealing in a hurricane. Piper hastily opened a small wooden door in the wall that Harper had never noticed, then motioned for her to crawl inside. Harper sat on the floor of the closet-sized space and wrapped her arms around her legs, breathing in the ancient, dusty scent of the wood, worn smooth with age. But when she tried to fit herself deeper into the space by burrowing beneath some shelves, she dislodged some pottery. The resultant clatter prompted her to freeze.

Then, with explosive force, another group of Others hit the room. Peeking through a small crack in the door, Harper saw more of the shimmering substance, but this time in shades of sewer green and tarnished bronze. These larger creatures, close in size to baseballs, shrieked as they entered the room, eating and drinking from the same half-empty plates and cups left behind by the previous contingent. She watched a round, heckling being, the color of a storm cloud, pull Piper's hair as another behind it laughed. After ten minutes or so of the maddening din, a sound like a gong being struck mushroomed from the entrance. Suddenly, as though a cork had burst from an agitated bottle of champagne, they rushed for the entrance, flying over and under each other in a frenzied race for the tunnel.

Once they were gone and all was silent again, Piper opened the closet door. Her usually sleek black hair now lay arrayed in tangles and heaps about her head, and her shirt was torn near the shoulder. Loads of sticky glitter clung to her like a second skin. As Harper left the closet, she shivered. The room felt much colder than before.

Piper's thin lips formed a tense straight line. "What are you doing here, Dearie? Never mind. You picked a bad day to come, you did! Don't you know it's the first day of our winter? Our rougher sort cavorts in your world this night."

Harper stretched with a groan. Her hips and knees objected strenuously to their confinement. But Piper gave her no time to tend them, grabbing her hand and pulling her toward the exit.

"Hurry, Dearie! The next group will be here soon. And each group is more fearsome than the last!"

As Harper remembered, the room lay very close to the tunnel's entrance from the Fae side. Piper's speed conveyed the urgency of their flight, and Harper scuttled behind her as quickly as she could manage.

Harper fleetingly wished she had spent more time running and less time practicing Tai Chi. She gasped for breath while her mutinous knees and ankles threatened desertion. "Piper! I can't move this fast! Can't we slow down a little?"

Piper didn't look back. "No time, no time! Come along, Dearie, do keep up, we're almost there!"

Just when Harper's knees gave their resignation notice, they emerged into the large field Harper remembered from her previous visit. This time, the sky was a thunderous gray, tinged with red, the ground covered in a flinty frost. Above the leafless trees circled large vulture-like birds Harper had never seen. Piper pulled her behind the old wagon where they quickly burrowed into an ancient pile of hay.

Piper kept a tight grip on her hand as Harper felt, rather than saw, another swarm of creatures emerge over the crest of the hill they had descended only moments before. The energy this time felt decidedly murkier and more ominous. The smell of rotting vegetation preceded it. With her free hand, she clung desperately to her mirror. A sneeze was threatening thanks to the dusty hay tickling her nose. But the chaotic roar was so loud it went unheard when it came. Where are you, Grandma? she thought in despair.

Once the tunnel absorbed the stampede, Piper pulled her hand again. They emerged from the haystack to race quickly down the hill to the now-barren beech and chestnut tree forest where she had met Grandma Sophie before. Once hidden by the tree trunks and undergrowth, Harper allowed her shoulders to detach from her ears.

Behind a thicket of holly bushes, Piper stopped for a moment and sniffed the air. Then she took Harper's hand once again. "Quick now, Dearie. We must find a place to hide you."

As they approached the spot by the river where Harper had chatted with Grandma, she was astonished to see a small village on the site. It looked archaic, like she imagined a village inhabited by peasants would have looked a century or more ago. Where had that come from? Then she spotted Earl Grey as he emerged from a doorway carved into a massive white oak trunk. Her fear and fatigue forgotten; she ran up to him, yelling, "Earl Grey! I'm so glad to see you!"

She stopped short on discovering that instead of joyful, he looked positively nettled to see her. "You shouldn't be here, Lass—today of all days! You're in great danger here."

Taking her hand, he jerked her to the doorway he had only just exited, then opening the door, he stepped aside. "Quickly now, in you go."

She forced herself through the small doorway and, on her hands and knees, crawled down a tight tunnel beneath the tree. She groaned. Why didn't I think of wearing knee pads? Earl Grey ignored her whimpers of distress.

Finally arriving at a small door, she pushed herself through it to find herself in a snug room, wider than it was tall, with a ceiling too low for her to stand upright. It was filled with plain wooden furniture: chairs, benches, and tables. Looking around, she saw they were all there: the brownies, the sprites, Ivy, Ash, and Hawthorne. She drank in the sight of them. But something was clearly wrong. Instead of happy, they looked scandalized.

What was going on? Wasn't she safe here from the Others? "I don't understand. I've missed you all so much! Didn't Grandma tell you?" She paused to look imploringly at each of them in turn. "I told her that I want you to come back. I do need your help. But it's more than that! I want your company . I realize that now. If I did anything to offend you, I'm sorry. Just tell me what it was, and I won't do it again."

The intolerable silence stretched out for a few more moments.

"Didn't Grandma tell you?" she whispered. Her throat suddenly grew very tight. "Don't you want to come back?"

Ivy stood so abruptly that her chair clattered to the floor behind her. "Queen Sophia no longer rules here. You shouldn't have come."