“That doesn’t explain the dirt,” I said.
Simon actually laughed. “You see? I talk like what I am, because I expect to have forever to get to my point. The dirt, then. When Oberon said he was going away, and that we were all to move ourselves to the Summerlands, because he couldn’t trust us unattended in the deeper lands . . . oh, it was an exodus the likes of which I can scarce describe. Worlds upon worlds, some large, some small, all pouring into the bounds of one small realm. Deeper Faerie is not all of a size. Some of the realms are more properly considered islets, islands where the local rules of engagement have been established to benefit one race of fae over another. Avalon held no more than five hundred hearts when it was turned inside out and wrung dry for the sake of Oberon’s order, and it was one of the larger single holdings.”
“So deep Faerie is more like a bunch of really big knowes?” asked Quentin.
“In a sense, yes. If you took all of my brother’s land, not only the part which forms the knowe proper, but the gardens and the forest and every other scrap of it, and if you dropped it into empty space, out beyond anything, with only a thin channel of power to clasp the nearest anchor, it would become a seed, and from that seed would grow another realm, one large enough to house all those who dwelt there, slowly drawing power from them to fuel its own expansion. With no one living in them, the deeper realms can grow no greater.”
“Will they die?” asked Quentin.
“No. But they may slumber. The dirt.” Simon clapped his hands, not seeming to notice how I flinched away. “There are crops which only grow in certain soil, things that various of our newly homeless citizens couldn’t imagine doing without. The more entrepreneurial among them realized that with greenhouses and buckets, they could corner the market on those little tastes of home. People who carried dirt away from their abandoned lands are richer now than those who carried only gold and jewels.”
“So what are the berries around here?” asked Quentin.
“Something that arose in the Summerlands. I doubt anyone has eaten many of them, save perhaps for the local pixies: they’re as likely to be poisonous as they are to be delicious, and why should we take risks when we have so many of the fruits of home yet to enjoy?”
“Snob,” I said, almost fondly, and Simon looked pleased.
The trees were getting shorter and twistier, becoming almost parodies of themselves, while the mushrooms and toadstools were becoming taller and broader, casting umbrella-shaped shadows over the land. The glow came from their gills, and as the size of those gills expanded, so did the intensity. The earthy smell of fungus pervaded everything, sometimes almost obscuring the scent of August’s magic. I had to close my eyes a few times, trusting Quentin to guide me as I clung to the thread I was trying to follow.
Part of me was rebelling at the ridiculousness of the entire situation. I was following a magical trail over a century old, and I didn’t have the training to know whether it was the right one. Maybe I was on my way to discover August’s favorite mushroom-picking spot, and we should have been heading for Shadowed Hills after all. Or maybe there were a hundred trails like this one, a thousand, all leading somewhere different, a child’s map of the land surrounding Amandine’s tower. I had never really explored that much. My world had consisted of the tower and the woods between home and Shadowed Hills, where I had run night after night, looking for companionship, for warmth, for welcome. Amandine hadn’t made a home for me, and so I hadn’t felt like it was safe to use her as my compass.
It was hard not to be jealous of August. She had been the one to enjoy our mother’s attention when Amandine was present and focused, not mourning for the child she’d lost and resenting the one she had. It felt weird, yearning for my mother’s love when she was the reason I was hiking through a creepy toadstool forest instead of tucked safe home in my bed, but that’s the thing about parents: they’re never simple. They’re never straightforward. And try as we might, we can never quite be free of the shadows they cast over us.
The ground was getting marshy, tugging at our shoes and slowing us down. I scowled. “Next time Mom decides to ruin my night, I hope she does it after I’ve had time to change my clothes.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything, but your footwear is quite unsuitable,” said Simon.
I glared at him. It was almost a relief to have a person to glare at. Glaring at a situation is possible, but it’s never as fulfilling as we want it to be. “These sandals were totally appropriate for a karaoke bachelorette party,” I informed him.
Simon blinked. “I understood perhaps three words of that.”
“Time marches on,” I said airily. “I was at a party, these shoes were fine, then I was dealing with a home invasion and the abduction of my fiancé, and now these shoes are not fine. I don’t want to be barefoot in the middle of the creepy mushroom forest, I’ll deal.” There was a time when I would have been worried about blisters and chafing. Thankfully, that time was past. Any blisters that tried to form would heal as quickly as they’d come, and I would keep on going.
“I can try to improve them, if you don’t mind,” said Simon, with surprising delicacy. “You would need to remove them first, as I am forbidden to use my magic upon you, but I know a few tricks.”
I eyed him. “You want to transform my clothes?”
“Yes.”
“The old Queen used to do that to me all the time. Generally without my consent. Illusions weren’t good enough for her.”
Simon grimaced. “I won’t make excuses for her. Her ascension came at the cost of a good man’s life, and destroyed the lives of his children for far too long. I didn’t know the full scope of the plan before it was too far along for me to change a single thing in how it unfolded.”
“Wait,” I said. “You were there. I mean, a lot of people were there, but you were—were you already with Oleander? Do you know?” Everyone said Oleander had been responsible for King Gilad’s death. No one had ever been able to prove it.
“Shoes, please,” said Simon. He held out his hand.