The hagstone tingled with energy as she ran her fingers over its water-smoothed surface. It probably wouldn’t work inside but she decided to hold it to the window and gaze outside at the oak tree by her bedroom. She squinted through the stone’s small aperture and was rewarded to see a cluster of dancing pricks of pastel-colored lights in the oak’s outermost branches.
Utterly amazing. She had to help them in this battle. After tonight, only three days remained until Samhain. She could hang on for three more days. In the morning, she would cast a series of protections spells, something she would have done earlier had she known she was in personal danger. Too bad she didn’t inherit her mother’s incredible supernatural abilities. But she could call Callie and ask her advice.
For the first time in the long day, her body sagged in relief. She should have called Callie days ago. At any rate, she was taking action and that made her feel more in control. She went back to the living room and studied her spreadsheets. She was way, way behind in schoolwork. She would revise her spreadsheet after Samhain to make up for the lost time.
Cheered, she went to the bathroom and splashed her face with water and brushed her hair. Good grief. Skye dropped the brush. More purple highlights had sprouted at the crown and temples. It was bad enough when the first purple streaks announced themselves overnight when she turned sixteen. She’d heard of people turning prematurely gray, but purple?
Skye would never forget the look on her mother’s face when she walked into the kitchen the morning of her sixteenth birthday, pointing to her hair, and screaming ‘look at this.’ Mom had turned from the stove, a pan of scrambled eggs in one hand. One look at her daughter’s hair and the pan clattered to the floor, yellow globules of eggs spreading over the black and red checked linoleum. Michael walked in and hooted with laughter. “What the heck did you to do your hair?”
“Nothing,” she’d protested.
“Next time you want highlights, buy a box of Clairol,” her mom said, cleaning up the spilled eggs with trembling hands.
“I didn’t do it.” Skye pulled at the purple streaks in hysterics. Mom placed her hands on her daughter’s head, bent over and whispered in her ear. “It’s okay.” No matter how much Skye pleaded, her mom refused to ever discuss it again. She knew something, of that Skye was certain.
She took a deep breath and stared in the mirror. “Add ‘call Mom’ on my to-do list tomorrow,” she muttered. This time she would demand an answer to this bizarre hair phenomenon. Either that, or she might one day end up with troll doll hair sprouting all over her scalp. She checked out the wounded flesh, relieved to see the swelling had subsided. She desperately wanted a bath, but decided it wasn’t worth washing off the antidote medicine too soon. It could wait until morning.
Normally she lay in bed in her deep indigo blue bedroom imagining she was a magical mermaid enveloped in a warm sea. But now the day’s images swirled in a vortex of confusion. Her mind kept looping through the Unseelie preying on the pixies, then turning their attention to her. Tonight wasn’t random, she was being singled out. It couldn’t only be for helping Kheelan. The Fae hadn’t seemed all that interested in him this evening. Only her.
She was too tired to think. Blackness descended like a veil of peace. Her body sank in its vacuum, then rose and floated in the void. Effortless. She swam in black velvet, now punctuated with a few sparkling stars above. Her skin felt pleasantly cool and Skye gazed at her arms and legs, pale as lace in the moonlight and perfect – no burning punctures, no bleeding sores on her spine.
She soared in the blackness then descended to the top of the tree lines. The nearly full red-orange moon illuminated a landscape of silver and gray shadows. The silence gave way to familiar noises – wind swirls of rustling leaves and scraping branches, dogs howling in the distance. Ever lower, she flew between the trees and in and out of branches with unerring night vision. Faster, slower, up, down, even backwards, she maneuvered with a freedom and grace impossible when two-footed on land.
Ethereal visions came into focus. Beginning as balls of brilliant light they crystallized into beings of beauty and grace as she drew near. They came in every size and color under the rainbow. Some were tiny with baby pink skin and clothes made of flower petals. Others were several feet tall, with olive complexions and either red or green caps. Most sported delicately veined butterfly wings of blue, silver, purple and green. The females had long, flowing hair streaked in every shade imaginable.