Fable: An Unfortunate Fairy Tale Book 3 (22 page)

Mina stood and stared at his coat. This
wasn’t a shade of red that had ever appeared on a horse; it was
blood red. She had to wonder if the other kelpies had actually
stepped out of the water, what color their coats would have been.
This was the Fae plane. Nothing came in average packaging.

Both horses came and stood in front of them.
The white one leaned down, and Nix nimbly leapt upon his back. The
red one followed suit, and Mina did her best to not embarrass
herself as she fumbled onto the kelpie’s back.

The horses turned and began to run alongside
the river. Mina couldn’t help but feel the excitement of riding a
mythical creature in a foreign land and grin. She laughed out loud
and wrapped her fingers around the red kelpie’s mane. Nix looked
over his shoulder and laughed with her at their exhilarating ride.
They ran unbelievably fast. The trees, boulders, and forest whisked
by, and with every step the kelpies took, a clear wet hoof print
was left behind.

She reached down and patted the horse’s
neck, and whispered, “You’re magnificent.” She wasn’t positive, but
it seemed like the horse shook his head at her and proceeded to
show her how magnificent he was by racing ahead faster, catching up
to Nix’s horse and then passing him at a river bend. Mina couldn’t
help but turn around and blow a playful kiss at Nix as they sped
past him. His face showed complete shock, but he leaned forward and
whispered to his horse, and then the race was on.

The kelpies raced neck and neck through the
woods. They were as playful on land as they were in the water,
taking turns, letting one horse run ahead, then running up a
separate pass to jump in front of them in surprise. When Mina was
once again in the lead, they ran too close to the riverbed, and a
huge wave erupted out of the river to dump right on her head.

“
EEEEEEK!” Mina shrieked
as Nix ran past again. “That’s not fair!” she called after him.
Red, for she had no other name to call him by, took off like a cat
after a mouse and did something completely uncalled for. He jumped
into the river and disappeared beneath her, forming into water
again. Mina flailed in the water, thinking the horse was completely
gone, but then she could feel him, like a giant current that had
her in the palm of his hand, and they were speeding along the river
at breakneck speeds, even passing Nix and the white
horse.

It was the oddest and scariest thing she had
ever done, to whiz down a river at such speeds. She thought she was
going to smash onto a large rock, but the current of water that was
the kelpie moved her out of the way. When they were ahead of Nix,
the current picked up Mina and literally threw her out of the river
toward the rocky embankment. Mina screamed and flung her arms out
in front of herself to try to break her fall, but at the last
minute, the wave flowed after her and then under her. Reappearing
as the red kelpie, the horse made a watery snicker and kicked up
its heels at the horse behind them.

She clutched his mane and cried out loudly,
“Please don’t do that again. Or at least give a little warning next
time.” She wasn’t sure, but she thought he bobbed his head in
agreement.

The horses calmed down their crazy Kentucky
Derby after Red was the obvious winner, and then they slowed to a
peaceful pace.

“
So tell me about
yourself,” Nix said.

“
What? Now?”

“
Yes, I want to know what
it’s like to be human, and why you would sacrifice everything to
save your brother.”

Mina thought for a minute and then began to
tell him about her life. How they always moved from state to state
until the curse found them. She told him of how her friends would
sometimes get wrapped up in the tales as well. When he became
increasingly interested, she decided to tell him a little about
each of her friends.

“
Who’s Nan?” he asked when
she described the Snow White quest.

“
Well, Nan has been my
best friend ever since I moved to Kennedy High School. She kind of
took me under her wing and refused to let me become the obvious
wallflower. She adored my brother Charlie, is a huge reality TV
fan, and loves…loves her cell phone.”

Nix’s face took on another odd expression,
and she realized that he didn’t know half of what she was talking
about. He probably didn’t know what a high school was, or a TV, or
a cell phone. It was so easy to just assume that since Jared and
Ever knew, that all of the Fae on this world also knew.

“
Brody is—” She sighed and
felt herself get a little dreamy. “Brody is the most handsome, most
popular guy I know, and he also happens to be really sweet. He
plays on the water polo team at school, and I think you would like
it. It’s a game with a ball and net played in a swimming
pool.”

Nix’s eyes lit up at the mention of water
polo. He made Mina spend the next half hour describing everything
about this wonderful game played in the water. Mina was sure that
she only knew enough about the sport to fill two minutes, but she
found out that she knew more than she thought she did.

“
I sure would love to play
this water polo here on the Fae plane. Might be a little difficult
finding a water creature with the right appendages and limbs to
play.” Nix then became lost in thought as he obsessed over trying
to re-create the game here. “I could make a net out of the forever
weed.”

“
What’s forever
weed?”

“
A weed that lies in the
deepest parts of a river. If you wander through it, it wraps around
you forever…until you die.”

“
And you want to make a
net out of it? What if someone crashes into it? And it wraps around
them and won’t let them go?” she blurted, horrified at the
thought.

He looked at her as if she was dumb. “Well,
any real water creature knows that you just don’t crash into
it.”

She let him ramble on until the conversation
became quiet again.

“
I’m sorry, I didn’t let
you finish,” he piped up.

“
Finish what?”

“
Your story about your
friends. Do you have any more? I would like to know more about your
life. Raina was my only friend, and now that she’s gone, I-I think
you are my only friend now.”

Mina felt her throat contract with emotion,
and she had to force back the tears that threatened to spill forth.
What if everyone in her life turned or changed into some kind of a
monster and she lost them forever, and she was left alone. Would
she be willing to live a life of solitude and die young? Or would
she choose the path of darkness? A shiver ran up her spine, and she
couldn’t help but feel a tingling of apprehension. She had almost
given in to the power, and used it once to cause a terrible
accident that killed her friend. Until the Fates, or Maeve, the
Queen of the Fae, intervened and made a bargain with Mina. Save her
son, save her friend. Just one more reminder to never trust the Fae
completely.

The horses slowed and came to a halt
overlooking a cliff. They were still traveling parallel to the
river, which now barreled over the same cliff into what looked like
a 300-foot waterfall. It was the first time Mina could actually see
the Fae world from a high viewpoint, and what she saw took her
breath away. The world was similar to her own human world but
completely different. There were two separate suns and three moons,
two of which were already making their appearance in the sky. The
mix of the suns setting and moons rising created a kaleidoscope of
colors painted across the canvas of the sky. If she turned her
head, she could see a shooting star trail across the dark blue
heavens and disappear into the pink sun. It didn’t make sense, it
couldn’t possibly make sense, but it felt so right.

“
It’s beautiful,” Mina
whispered.

“
It can be at times,” Nix
said wearily. “At others times it’s too perfect.” He waited until
the final sun had almost set, and then he pointed in the distance,
to what looked like a white snow-capped mountain surrounded by a
beautiful crystal lake. “There. That’s where we’re
going.”

“
I don’t see anything.”
Mina strained and tried to stand taller on the horse to look. She
saw a small carriage in the distance, pulled by what looked like a
chimera, approach the south side of the lake. The carriage and
beast crossed onto a large stone bridge that blended perfectly into
the shimmering hues of the lake, unless you were looking for it.
She looked ahead to see what was on the other side, but the bridge
looked unfinished—like someone had forgotten to complete the north
end. The carriage never slowed and didn’t seem deterred by the lack
of a road. One minute it was there, and the next second the
carriage had disappeared into thin air.

“
Where did it go?” Mina
gasped.

“
Wait for it. Wait for
it,” Nix chanted, and pointed to the sinking sun and the middle of
the lake.

Mina strained her eyes, staring at the spot
that Nix had referred to, and then as the sun sank below the
horizon, it appeared: the rest of the completed stone bridge that
led to a double arched white and gold gate and up to the front
steps of a glorious palace. In the moonlight, the walls sparkled
and shone, reflecting back the last of the suns’ rays.

Her breath caught, and a single tear slid
down her cheek at the magnificence of the Fates’ home. The north
side of the palace nestled into the mountain, protecting it from an
invasion. Towers pierced the sky, seeming to disappear among the
soft white clouds. Torches inside the castle were lit, and window
by window the castle was alight in a soft ethereal glow.

Nix explained that the palace could only be
seen at sunset and sunrise, and was hidden the rest of the day.
Something flew over the castle, and Mina thought she saw a griffin
patrolling the sky. A second one came to land on an outcropping on
the mountain and glared watchfully over the lake. Of course the
Royal Fates would be protected. She scanned the main entrance into
the palace and saw what the veil had hidden. On the other side of
the bridge were guards. Not small human guards—the giant
variety.

A second later the veil was back up, and the
palace disappeared behind its protective glamour once more.

She swallowed nervously. “Now what? How do
we get inside with all of the guards?”

“
Oh, the giants and the
griffins are the least of our worries. We aren’t sneaking into the
palace by land or air.”

“
Of course we’re not,” she
replied sarcastically.

“
The kelpies once told me
of another way in.” His smile widened.

“
Uh, Nix?” Mina called out
worriedly, but it was too late.

Nix smiled. He nudged his horse forward, and
it took off running toward the waterfall, then dove off the cliff.
Her horse, without prompting, followed the white one and leapt into
the air.

Chapter 23

“
Oh, no, no, NO NOOOO!”
she screamed as the horse underneath her flew through the air to
disappear once again. She felt herself falling, and every inch of
her body flailed, trying to stop the terrifying descent. She
couldn’t catch her breath; she could no longer scream. The jagged
rocks at the bottom of the waterfall came rushing toward her, and
just when she thought she would be crushed to death, a ball of
water appeared around her like a protective bubble and she hit the
water hard, but not hard enough to cause any damage.

Inside the bubble, she bounced and moved and
was bashed around by the rocks, but nothing could pop the bubble.
She was still holding her breath, and a few seconds later they
cleared the rocks and dangerous falls. Her bubble appeared above
the water, and then a few seconds later the transparent horse was
once more securely underneath her. He was swimming quite happily
along the stream.

“
Holy waterfalls! Let’s
not do that again…ever!” Mina gushed, holding onto Red for dear
life, scared that he would disappear again.

Nix was farther up, and she heard him laugh
out loud. Mina looked underneath her and was surprised that the
kelpie now resembled a hybrid of a horse and seal. Its long tail
was powerful and beat against the river currents rapidly. She was
cold and wet, warmed only by the heat from the kelpie itself. She
was now extremely grateful that they had traveled by land most of
the way. Within minutes they drew closer to where the palace lay
hidden.

There was a slight buzzing
and
pop!
as they
passed through an invisible barrier and the glamour dropped, and
there before her was the Fae palace. There wasn’t a storybook in
all creation that could capture the beauty of the palatial
structure. The palace walls shimmered as if they were covered in
mystical fairy dust. The arched gate was made of silver and gold,
and a sun and moon were prominent in all of the decorations and
flags that adorned the castle. Even from a distance she could see
the sun and moon shapes embedded into the stone bridge itself. Even
the street was made of marble pieces in the shapes of silver moons
and golden suns.

Mina’s heart began to beat
wildly when she saw one of the giants harassing and arguing with
the driver of the carriage. Apparently, he was not welcome, and a
second later a scream and a
whoosh
was heard as the carriage, driver, and chimera
went flying into the air off the bridge and into the
water.

Within seconds two pairs
of green eyes glowing in the shadows appeared from beneath the
bridge and started toward the shocked driver, who was struggling to
make it to shore. Nix leaned over and whispered
trolls
to her. Mina didn’t need the
prompting; she knew exactly what they were. The chimera was able to
quickly get out of the water, and flew to the bridge and took off
running, but the Fae carriage driver was not so lucky.