Poppy gave me a sidelong look. “Not your fault. You’re wingless, but you’ve never hurt us a’purpose, and that’s all we’d ask from you. Chin up, shoulders back, wings straight, like my mama always used to say. As long as you don’t fly into anything you shouldn’t, you’re probably doing all right.”
We had reached a large toadstool, the sides smooth and white, the cap bright blue and spangled with silver spots. Poppy leaned in and knocked.
“Open-open, harvest’s come,” she said.
The sides of the toadstool rippled before splitting to reveal the room inside. Quentin was sprawled on the floor, bound with the same combination of plant materials and sap as I had been. I rushed inside, crouching down to remove his gag and check his pulse, which was slow and steady.
“The fresh air will wake him,” said Poppy. I turned. She was standing in the “doorway,” the glow from her skin easily compensating for the loss of moonlight. “We don’t have strong magic for the most part, not like you wingless, but what we have, we have a lot of practice using. Your other person is in the toadstool on the next branch over.”
“That’s Simon,” I said, turning back to Quentin. “I’ll wake him when I’m done here.”
There was a sudden loud ringing behind me, like the pixie alarm system had just been activated. I turned again, this time reaching for the knife at my belt.
Poppy was staring at me, eyes wide, hands clasped over her mouth. “Simon Torquill?” she squeaked.
“Um, yeah?” I said.
She didn’t say anything after that, just launched herself into the air and flew away, still ringing like a five-alarm fire.
“That can’t be good,” I said, and stood, and ran after her. Quentin would have to wait until I was sure that Simon wasn’t about to get himself murdered. If anyone was going to do that, I was pretty sure that it was going to be me.
ELEVEN
POPPY WASN’T KIDDING about Simon’s toadstool being on the next branch. Pixies might be content to walk when they were at home, but that didn’t prevent them from building without concern for petty little concepts like “gravity.” Their homes—most of which appeared to have been built from chunks of wood and bark, unlike our organic toadstool prisons—extended both up and down from the level where I stood, and spanned multiple trees.
It wasn’t hard to know which one contained Simon, as it also appeared to contain every pixie that had been present when I woke up, and several dozen more on top of that. It was like watching a Christmas tree rave in the process of getting started, since they were all glowing, and some of them were flashing, giving the whole thing an unsettling strobe effect.
There was what looked, at my current scale, like at least a twenty-foot gap between me and them. Whatever magic they had used to reduce us all to pixie-size hadn’t been kind enough to give us wings, or otherwise equip us for life in a pixie-scaled environment.
Since I couldn’t fly, I settled for the next best thing, cupping my hands around my mouth and shouting, “Hey!”
A few pixies turned in my direction, looking surprised to see me standing there. I had time to wonder how many unwitting guests they had wandering around the place, if I could be such a shock, before two of them launched themselves across the gap, wings working furiously, grabbed me by the arms, and flew back the way they had come.
At first, I was too surprised to struggle. Then I was slightly too smart to struggle, since being dropped would have been . . . bad. I’ve fallen from a great height before, great enough to break every bone in my body, including a few that Jin—our resident healer—said she hadn’t been sure could break. Being roughly six inches tall would probably make the landing less traumatic, but I wasn’t willing to bet on it, not when the pixies didn’t seem to be acting in a malicious way.
They set me back on my feet at the other branch, where a conscious, groggy-looking Simon was standing in the mouth of his own toadstool, awkwardly patting a sobbing Lilac on the shoulder. The purple pixie’s wings were flat against her back, making her stand out in sharp relief from the rest of the pixies, whose wings were in constant, chiming vibration.
Simon met my eyes across the crowd of diminutive onlookers and grimaced apologetically.
“I forgot,” he said. “Their colony was much smaller the last time I came through this way, and they didn’t have the resources to defend themselves against travelers. Or to set traps.”
“Thought you were dead,” wailed Lilac, and went back to sobbing.
“I know, dear, I know,” said Simon. He stopped patting her shoulder and began stroking her wings instead, the way he might have stroked a cat. The motion seemed to soothe her. “I’m so sorry. I couldn’t come to see you, any of you. I would have, if I could.”
Lilac looked mollified. That didn’t mean she stopped crying.
“Okay, wait, I missed something.” I pushed my way through the crowd of pixies. They let me by easily. Apparently, the fact that I’d been captured in the company of Simon Torquill, of all people, meant I was owed deference now. “Why would you have been visiting the local pixie colony? What possible reason could you have had for visiting the local pixie colony?”
“Ah,” said Simon, looking relieved. I’d asked him something easy. “I helped them establish it.”
I stared at him. I didn’t say anything. Saying anything would mean acknowledging what he had just said as something that made sense, and I wasn’t ready to do that.
Simon sighed. “Before Patrick married his mermaid and moved to the Undersea, he cultivated a remarkably large colony of pixies in his workshop. As an unlanded Baron, he was afforded a certain amount of courtesy by the other noble households, and if he wanted to keep, ah, ‘pets,’ they weren’t going to stop him, even if they were going to laugh at him behind their hands. The fashion then was for—”
“I’m going to stop you there, because I’m pretty sure I know what the fashion was.”
Simon nodded, looking relieved. Lilac’s sobs were slowing. That may have contributed to his relief. “Patrick didn’t want to leave them defenseless, but he couldn’t take them to the Undersea. This land was unclaimed, and close enough to Amandine’s borders that it seemed likely to stay such. He asked me to help them resettle.”
“You carried an entire pixie colony from San Francisco to here.”
“Yes.”
I paused. “Poppy was in Muir Woods. They’re moving between the Summerlands and the mortal world. How . . . ?”
“They use the knowes, as a rule, or they use the door I opened for them.”
I stared at him again. “You opened a door. For the pixies.”
“Yes. It’s in a tree in the Golden Gate Park botanical garden. It’s quite small. No one larger than a squirrel is even likely to notice that it’s there.”
“Best door,” said Poppy proudly. “Most colonies haven’t got one. We do lots of hunting through it.”