Page 21 of First Light
The moody grey skies covered them, and Carys could see no hint of sunlight. In the deep shadows of the hardwood forest around them, she caught glimpses of movement, thin figures darting among the trees, but she heard no birds.
There was a scattering rush of leaves as the wind picked up the fallen detritus and whirled it across the path.
“And you’ve been here before,” she said. “You walked through that when you were young?”
“Yes.”
“What is this place?” Carys was looking around, and she knew in her gut that this wasn’t Scotland. Or at least no version of Scotland she knew. The landscape looked familiar, but there were no roads and no people in sight. She didn’t see cows or sheep. There were no electrical lines or signs telling her where they were. The light felt flat somehow, as if the sky was painted a wash of grey blue that never changed.
“It should be night,” Carys said.
“No, because it’s night in the Brightlands, which means it’s day here.”
An alternate dimension? The thing that Laura had always told her was possible but she hadn’t really believed. How on earth had they gotten here? By walking through a forest?
“Duncan, please.” She stopped walking. “I need a real explanation. Where are we?”
He turned and glared at her. “I asked you if you believed in fairy tales and you said you did.”
“I believe in fairy tales as a metaphor for life and the human experience. They’re a learning tool to teach culture and…” She looked around at the strangely familiar but wholly foreign place. She pinched her hand. Hard. “This isn’t ametaphor.”
“Oh really?” He scowled. “I warned you to go back. Now we’re here, so unless you’ve finally given up on this ludicrousquest?—”
“No.” She wanted to find Lachlan. She had to, but she needed answers now. “I want to keep going, but can you…”
There was a distant cry overhead, and it was not a bird. Or it wasn’t any bird that Carys had ever known.
“I’ll answer your questions, Carys Morgan.” Duncan’s voice was low and urgent. “But right now we’re in the Borderlands. This is dark fae country.”
Dark fae.This could not be real. She was losing her mind.
“And they do not like humans trespassing,” he continued. “Especially not Brightkin like us. It’s very wild here, so we need to keep going.”
She looked back at the forest. “But he brought us.”
“They can’t stop us from entering because we came with Dru, but they don’t like us—he’s not very popular either—and we need to keep walking.” He glanced around. “We’ll be safer in the lowlands.”
“Okay.” Carys nodded and started to walk again. “Okay.”
Duncan reached back and took her hand, squeezing it as they walked.
Dark fae. Duncan had said dark fae like they were real.
And whatever Dru had been bleeding back there, it was not human blood, which meant that Dru… wasn’t human, or at least he wasn’t human like she and Duncan were.
Wait, was Duncan human?
The movement in her peripheral vision was subtle and quick, but anytime she turned her head to look, the forest was a still landscape, like a painting hanging on a wall, save for flashes of red hawthorn berries breaking the monotonous canvas of brown, green, and black.
“Stop looking,” he whispered. “They’ve noticed you.”
“The dark fae?”
“Please, for the love of all things holy, be quiet and let me explain when we’re nothere.”
She sucked in the torrent of far more important questions and muttered, “Really glad I’m not wearing that red coat.”
He grunted something that might have been a laugh.