Autumn (6 page)

“He shouldn’t be held at all. They wouldn’t even let me see him,” I said. My lip quivered. I tried to stop it, but I couldn’t.

Susan’s shoulders slumped.

“Just tell me it will be okay,” I said.

Susan looked out the diner window. “It’s not up to me. As I’ve said, this situation is unprecedented.”

“That’s not the point,” I said exasperated. “The point is that he hasn’t done anything wrong.”

Susan shook her head, sitting back in her chair. Her hands gripped her mug of coffee so tightly that her knuckles were white.

“We have to help you learn about being a Fairy,” she said, ignoring my protests about Holt’s situation.

“Maybe while we’re at it we can teach Mrs. Cheshire some manners,” I muttered.

“Yeah, I’ll be right behind you on that one. Maybe behind a steel door.”

For the rest of the morning the two of us talked. I had turned off my phone so that the million texts Carley would send me wouldn’t interrupt. Holt was more important anyway. At some point Susan asked me how strong the designs were under my skin. When I let her examine them she seemed relieved by how faint they looked.

I noticed that Susan sent a couple of texts while we were talking, but I didn’t think much of it until we had left the diner.

“Who were you texting?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I was texting Samuel.”

“You what?” I sputtered. It’s a good thing I no longer had a hot drink in my hand, because I probably would have spilled it everywhere.

“I can’t see him,” I protested, although a part of me really wanted to.

“That’s going to be hard given that he’s going to help you learn how to be a Fairy for the sake of your future husband, who isn’t him.”

“See,” I said, “that sounds terrible.”

“What sounds terrible?” Samuel’s familiar voice, quiet and low, sounded behind me.

I nearly jumped out of my skin.

He looked the same. I had pictured him growing to the size of an elephant or something, but he was the same blindingly attractive Winter Fairy he had always been. I had thought that once I started to become a Summer Fairy I would stop feeling any kind of pull towards Samuel. At some point my streak of being wrong had to end. At least, I hoped it would.

Susan was staring at me. I realized that Samuel had asked a question.

“Nothing,” I managed to answer

“Whatever you say.”

I continued to stare at Samuel, unsure what to say and looking for some sign that he didn’t hate me.

“Why did you agree?” I asked finally. We were still walking. It looked like we were heading for the Castleton High School, although what was there for Fairies I couldn’t guess.

“I saved you from the Water Sprite, didn’t I?” he asked. He hadn’t looked at me since he first walked up.

“What does that have to do with this?” I asked. At some point it would have made sense to me if Samuel had started siding with his mother. He was her child, after all, and it must have angered her that he constantly defended me, even in the face of her intense opposition.

“Well,” he said, “you were supposed to be my future, and what kind of person would I be if I didn’t do my best to take care of you?”

My stomach twisted. “Supposed to be,” he had said. So he knew now that we would never be together, but he had thought, all summer, since the first time he saw me, that maybe things would change and I would at some point end up as the Queen of the Winter Fairies.

I had pictured it. They couldn’t have a worse Queen than they did with Mrs. Cheshire, not that I would ever have said as much to Samuel. She only cared about some old way of doing things, and she had never liked me. Obviously.

Now that I understood just how much force she exerted in the Fairy community, I was surprised that Samuel hadn’t dropped everything and tried to give me his Rose the first time he saw me. His mother probably would have liked that. Everyone staying in their proper place and doing what they were supposed to do.

And there would never have been a chance for Holt and me to spend time together, at least not in any meaningful way.

“What are you thinking?” Susan asked me.

I shrugged. “Just about how complicated everything is,” I said.

“It’s not complicated any more,” said Samuel, his voice still quiet. “You and Holt have made everything remarkably clear.” He tried to hide the hurt in his voice, but I thought I still heard it. I wanted to apologize or say something to comfort him, but I was probably the last person he wanted comfort from.

Instead, I settled for saying, “Hurting you was the last thing I wanted.”

“Just don’t,” he said. “I’m going to help you learn how to be a Fairy because that’s what the Supreme Council wants. There’s no other reason.”

“Your mother wants you around me?” I asked. I wasn’t sure I believed that.

“It’s on her orders,” he said. “Do you think I would be here otherwise? I think she views it as poetic justice for me. I’ve defied her all summer, so I deserve this. At least, that’s how she sees it.”

“You don’t want to be around me?” I asked in a small voice.

“Leave him alone,” said Susan irritably. “He’s doing the honorable thing. His duty. Holt should have done the same.”

I kept quiet as the pain grew inside me. Susan’s condemnation hurt more than anything, maybe because I had expected her to be happy for us. But she wasn’t. The world was not built of beautiful flowers, even in the Summer Fairy Kingdom.

We had reached the high school: my new school. It was hard to picture myself there that fall; classes and academics would all feel so insignificant, and the other students would be walking around worrying about whether or not the football team had won. Okay, I probably wouldn’t have cared about the football team even if I hadn’t recently become a Fairy and accepted the Summer Prince’s offer of his Rose. But still.

“What are we doing here?” I asked. “Going to give me a tour?”

“No,” said Samuel. “They have a garden. Since school is about to start and everyone is avoiding the place, it’s private. Soon enough they will be spending all kinds of time here, but in the meantime we are going to start teaching you about being a Fairy.”

I wanted to see Holt, and I wanted Holt to teach me about being a Fairy, not these two people who were only doing it because they had to. No matter how bad the situation was, the ache inside me would have lessened a little if I could just have seen him, with his smile and his bright green eyes lighting up when I walked in. Nothing would have reassured me like that would have.

But I knew better than to ask Samuel about Holt. It would have been like rubbing salt in a wound, and Samuel deserved better than that.

What I was never able to say was that I thought he deserved better than me: someone who didn’t love someone else, even a little.

“Where do you want to start?” Susan asking, talking to Samuel as if I wasn’t there.

“We should just show her stuff,” he said. “It’s good we’re both here, because that means we can show her some of the similarities and some of the differences between Summer Fairies and Winter Fairies.”

“Isn’t your power growing?” I asked Samuel. It might have been my imagination, but I thought he flinched a little at the sound of my voice.

“Yes,” he said. “It is. My mother is happy. Once winter comes she is going to be twice the terror she’s been. If you thought summer was bad, you haven’t seen anything yet.”

“That’s true,” said Susan, almost sounding amused. “She really takes it to a new level once winter comes.”

I hadn’t been to the high school before, so passing the nice soccer fields, the baseball diamond, and the softball fields was all new for me. But we were heading past all of them, down a dirt path.

“How do you know where we are going?” I asked

“It’s an old hangout. We’ve come here a lot in other summers.”

The path was now cutting through a wooded area. With my newly-acquired Fairy powers I could hear the sound of running water ahead of us. We were heading for a stream of cold, clear water, sprinkling over dirt and rocks. It would be a nice place to learn how to be a Fairy.

“Lots of what we need to teach you is rules and etiquette,” said Susan. “We just aren’t starting with that because....”

“Because I obviously don’t care about rules and etiquette?” I asked bitterly.

I thought a small smile played across of her face.

“Something like that,” she said.

Next to us, Samuel was quiet.

When the stream came into view it was just how I had seen it in my mind’s eye. I loved that I now had a picture in my head of the place I was walking to before I saw it, and the image was always beautiful. Seeing beauty in everything was one of the gifts that Fairies had. It was a gift I hoped they never lost.

There was a small stone bridge over the stream, and we arranged ourselves on it. The stone felt cool on my legs and I shivered a little.

“You shouldn’t be cold,” said Susan.

“I’m fine,” I said. “I’m not that cold.”

“No,” she said. “Really, you shouldn’t be cold. Use your Glamour to warm yourself.”

I sighed. I wasn’t sure what she meant, but I tried, scrunching up my forehead and imagining a nice roaring fire.

“What on earth are you doing?” Samuel asked, almost laughing.

“What?” I asked. My legs still felt cold and I didn’t like the fact that Susan and Samuel were laughing at me.

“You draw warmth from the stuff around you, not by imagining a big stuffed blanket,” said Samuel, folding his arms.

I tried again. And again. And again.

Eventually, at the end of what felt like hours, I started to understand that the flowers and plants could give me warmth, at little cost to themselves.

“Nice work,” said Susan. I was relieved that she sounded sincere. I don’t think I could have taken much of Susan hating me.

“Thanks,” I said.

“How to be a Fairy 101 is a success,” she said, grinning. “Lesson number one complete.”

I wanted to see Holt.

Once the three of us had finished with our “lesson,” I waited for Samuel to leave, but he didn’t. Instead, Susan found a reason to excuse herself, saying something about cooking dinner.

“Literally,” said Samuel, “a worse Fairy cook does not exist.”

“I just need practice,” she said as she walked away.

“I suppose you want to know about Holt,” said Samuel. He was walking with his hands in his pockets. He had started to loosen up a bit while I practiced, but now he was stiff as a board again.

“Yes,” I said. Something in my heart lifted and I scarcely dared to breathe. “That would be nice.”

“He’s at the house. He’s going to be kept there indefinitely. Knowing my mother, it could be a long time. She is enjoying seeing him arrested, and I don’t think she’ll give in easily to any proposal to let him out.”

I nodded. I had expected all of that.

What I didn’t expect was what he said next.

“If you want to see him, you can,” he said, his voice was so quiet that I thought I might not have heard him properly. I wasn’t graceful on the best of occasions, and even my new Fairy strength didn’t keep me from almost falling.

Samuel reached out to steady me, the old familiar jolt coursing through my skin. I saw his eyes widen a little before he quickly looked away.

“I guess you will grow into your Fairy grace,” he said dryly.

“One can only hope,” I answered.

“When can I see him?” I asked, trying to keep the eagerness out of my voice. I didn’t want to hurt Samuel more, but I desperately wanted to see Holt.

“Soon,” said Samuel. “I would wait a few days, just so that my mother can think he’s being adequately punished, but once that’s done the Supreme Council has agreed to let you visit once a week.”

“Once a weak? That’s no time at all!”

Samuel’s shoulders drooped and I instantly felt bad.

“It’s the best I could do.”

I let the implications of his words sink in. He had done this, made sure I could see Holt, and I wasn’t even being grateful. Samuel had never stopped doing things: for me.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

Samuel just nodded.

“Look, we’ll see each other soon. We have all the Fairy lessons to get through. Right now, I should go.”

Without so much as a backwards glance he walked away, leaving me standing alone on the grounds of my new high school.

What a way to start the school year.

I trudged home. Carley was leaving soon and we had something to plan. She had decided that we were going to have a goodbye party for her. She insisted that we were going to have a great time.

I wasn’t so sure. And anyhow, I didn’t really want to have a party. What I wanted to do was curl up in a ball on my bed until all this was over.

At some point I would have to talk to Mrs. Roth about what she had done and what she refused to do. I would need all my energy to confront Holt’s mother, and I didn’t want to spend any of it on having some party. Carley, though, rarely tolerated arguments.