She drifted low to the ground. A mistake. A couple of young schoolchildren pointed and ran toward her with open mason jars. It took her a moment to figure out their game—they meant to trap her as she had once unknowingly trapped fairies as a child.
Skye flew away from her innocent predators, directionless until she heard the sound of singing with voices that tinkled like crystal. The sweetness and clarity of the notes drew her until she hovered spellbound above fairies and elves. They danced and paid her no notice. Midway through one of the Scottish reels, the fiddle-playing elves looked just past her right shoulder, terror in their neon eyes. The fiddles came to an abrupt, discordant stop. Curious, Skye turned to see what had scared them so.
Columns of wispy fog twisted in the night breeze, forming a wailing trio of banshee spirits with bodies as tall as the surrounding trees. Their long hair was a cascade of grayish-green Spanish moss and their gowns were of the whitest lace. It was hard to tell where their shroud gowns ended and their elongated arms began, so fair was their skin. Against starkly alabaster faces shone maroon eyes that shed black tears.
They opened their mouths and began their wailing laments, wordless and high-pitched. It made her think of death and pain. Helpless, she couldn’t move as they fixed that deathly stare directly at her. A breeze drifted them closer and the three banshees held out their arms, beckoning her to come to them in a deadly embrace.
No, she wouldn’t, she couldn’t. Wake up, wake up. Skye struggled to escape the nightmare. She closed her eyes to the banshees and with supreme effort, shook movement into her paralyzed arms and legs. Ever so slightly, she drifted higher, the wind propelling her to a lowlying oak tree limb.
Silence. The dream ended. Skye opened her eyes, expecting to be in her own bed and her own room with the familiar collection of crystals lining the top of the nightstand. She stretched her arms upward and hit something hard. Her fingers grasped the unyielding object and tested its rough surface.
Tree bark.
No, she must have dreamed she had awoken. That fairy poison had messed with her brain big time. Skye scrunched her eyes closed, tense with concentration. Wake up for real this time.
She opened them again and stared, eye level, into neighboring treetops tinged with silver and crimson moonlight. Skye gripped her thighs and felt the rough texture of bark against bare flesh. What the hell? No, she couldn’t be out in the woods stuck up in a tree. No freaking way. Violent shudders wracked her body and she teetered. Her hands and legs gripped the tree so tightly, she felt splinters imbed in her palms and thighs.
Afraid to move, she drew long breaths, exhaling puffs of smoke in the autumn air. If she didn’t do something soon, she’d freeze up here. She imagined some hunter finding her icy body, her long red hair tangled in branches.
Like David’s son Absalom in the Bible, she thought with mounting hysteria.
She’d worry later about how she got here. The first thing she had to do was get out of the tree. She looked down.
The ground seemed miles away.
There must be a way down. She studied the tree but couldn’t make out any more branches to scoot down. It was a straight shot from where she was stuck. She would have to repel to safety. Skye remembered a gym class drill where you were supposed to climb up a rope and repel down. Everyone but her had been able to reach the top of the ceiling. She’d only managed a few feet, but still got a wicked case of rope burn trying to get down. Even from that short distance, she had managed to land on her butt, resulting in a bruised tailbone that made sitting down torture for weeks. At least she’d been excused from gym a whole month.
She’d be lucky to escape from this mess with only bruises. Skye regarded her flimsy nightgown in despair. Not exactly athletic apparel.
An explosion of air and the flapping of wings by her face broke the night silence. Reflexively, Skye’s hands lifted off the tree limb and batted at the attacker. She swayed to the side, made a last, desperate attempt to hold onto something, and then her hands grasped nothing but black air.
She was falling.
Her heart hammered and she wondered how many bones would break when she crashed. If she was lucky, maybe she would go into shock before that happened.
Fly.
The insistent voice filled her mind, its vibration echoing like an internal drum. Skye’s body slowed and she harmlessly drifted the last few feet, landing upright on a bed of pine needles.