Kaleidoscope (Faylinn Series) (16 page)

That actually sounded like a really good idea. My mom and I hadn’t really hung out for a long time. I couldn’t even remember the last time it was only the two of us.

“I’d really like that.”

She smiled. “Let me get the laptop. I’ll check the movie times.”

“Okay.”

As she walked away, I swiftly turned to face the woods and waved my arms to have him head to the side of the house, but there was no movement from the trees. How could he not see me? I probably looked like a giant monkey jumping up and down and flailing my arms.

Great
. I hadn’t thought this one through. There must have been a glare on the window. Cameron couldn’t see me. Just as I was about to open the sliding glass door, Mom walked back in.

“You have any preferences on movies?”

I spun around to her. “Umm. . .anything funny.” Cameron was probably wondering what the hold up was.

She sat back at the table and scrolled through the movies. “Jackpot, that new romantic comedy came out today. 6:15, 7:45 and 9:30,” she read off. “If we go now we can grab a quick dinner and do the 6:15 showing.”

“Great!” I said, too enthusiastically. She looked at me and laughed.

“Okay. I’ll go grab my purse.”

As soon as she was out of the room, I threw the sliding glass door open and pointed for him to make a run for it. Thankfully, he listened and booked it out of the trees. He smiled goofily as he held up his hand to his ear in an I’ll-call-you gesture before he disappeared around my house. I closed the door and breathed a sigh of relief.
Phew
. I raced to the garage door so I looked like I had done something while she was gone.

“You ready?” She smiled as she turned the corner.

“I was born ready.”

She chuckled and we headed out for our first girls’ night in months.

“Why don’t you wear your hair down anymore, Calliope?” she asked as we drove down our street.

I shrugged; figuring indifference would work in my favor. She lifted her hand from the steering wheel, her hands outstretched to touch my hair and I pulled back, barely dodging her touch.

“Oh, come on. It’s my favorite when you wear your hair down,” she whined.

“I like changing it up, trying out different hair styles.”

She reached out again.

“Mom,” I said more firmly, shifting out of her reach. “You’ll mess it up and I’ll have to do it all over again.”

“Oh, who do you have to impress? It’s just me tonight.”

“Well, it would just be a pain.” My arms curled in front of me, seeking comfort close against me.

Mom chuckled. “Okay, Miss Defensive. I’ll leave the hair alone. It does look cute today,” she amended.

“Thanks,” I said, biting my bottom lip. I was going to eventually mentally beat my brains to a pulp if I didn’t get a better hold on not getting defensive.

My life depended on it.

• • •

That night I lay in bed unable to find the peaceful serenity of sleep, tossing and turning as the floodgates opened in my mind, pouring out the countless issues I couldn’t find solutions to. It wouldn’t shut off. I jerked when my phone began to ring and Cameron’s face glowed on my screen. He had actually called.

“Hey,” I answered warmly.

“Hey, you in the clear?”

I chuckled quietly. “Yeah. My mom was home, but I played it off and we went to the movies.”

“Oh man. Good. I’ve been stressing about it all day. I thought we were toast when you didn’t come out. It felt like an eternity.”

“My acting skills have improved since all this started,” I yawned.

“You in bed?”

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t wake you did I?” he questioned with a weird hint of concern in his voice.

“No, I was just laying here. Got a lot running through my mind.” I twirled one of my curls through my fingers and played with the point on my ear. There were times when the tips would still catch me off guard and other times when it felt like they had been there all along. They had become a part of who I was.

“You want to talk about it?” Cameron’s voice interrupted my wandering thoughts.

“Talk about what?”

“I don’t know. Whatever’s running around in that head of yours.” His familiar voice was soothingly soft. It reminded me of the Cam I used to know, who never missed a goodnight call before this last summer.

I sighed; relieved I was slowly getting my Cameron back. “It was just something my dad said the other day. He questioned what happened to the fae from other colonies that got pregnant and weren’t supposed to.”

“Did you find out the answer from your fan club?”

I chuckled lightly, not in the mood to contradict him. “Not yet.” I exhaled. “What kind of a kingdom do I belong to? Where no one gets a choice. Where fae disappear and die for no good reason. The Keepers are there to protect them from invaders and keep the peace within, but who’s there to protect them from the one they really need protecting from?”

Cameron remained quiet for a moment. I could hear him considering his answer. It wasn’t as if I had really expected an answer. People had searched for the answers to world peace and the end of hunger, but they couldn’t solve problems bigger than themselves. Was this just one of those problems that could never be resolved?

“It’s not your burden to carry, Callie. I think what’s important is that you are safe here, away from the tyrant who will never lay a hand on you.”

I nodded without answering. If only it were that easy. If I felt comfortable with that answer I wouldn’t have been lying in bed, searching for solutions in my head all night long.

We sat in silence for a few minutes, listening to one another’s breathing. There was a time when we would stay on the phone all night long until one of us fell asleep. I remember several occasions waking up with my phone either drained of battery or his shallow breathing on the other side.

His breath was becoming shallower now.

“Are you falling asleep?” I quietly questioned.

“Maybe.” He yawned.

“Go to bed. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Sure thing,” he said softly. “Good night, Cal. Sweet dreams.”

“You too.”

T
o keep myself from having more awkward situations with Kai, Declan and I set up a schedule for when he would be in Faylinn. Of course I didn’t tell him that’s why I wanted to know when he would be around, but I think it was implied. For weeks I went to the clearing to get what I liked to call my Faery 101.

It was essentially a question and answer session where I asked all the questions and Declan answered them. He never acted put out by my incessant need to know everything and always answered to the best of his ability. Kai showed up less than half of the time, which left me feeling a million different ways, but I chalked it all up to nerves because he was a wild card. I never knew what to expect with him, so obviously my emotions would have a wide range of highs and lows. I didn’t really care whether he was around or not. I just wanted to be prepared for one or the other.

• • •

Clearly, the fae didn’t have technology, but it baffled me to think of living in such simplicity: living off of the land and eating only what was grown or lived in the woods. They weren’t vegetarians as I imagined them to be. I learned that they might not sleep on tree limbs, but that some of their homes were in the trees, like tree huts. They were allergic to all things metal, so everything they built was from nature, all things from their surroundings—wood, bone, clay, animal teeth, and rocks.

“It’s a common misconception that we’re allergic to only iron. Though iron does block our magic, I am affected by lead, steel, and silver just the same as iron,” Declan explained.

“So is that why you stay in the forest? You’re invisible so it’s not as if anyone could see if you wanted to leave.”

He nodded. “We don’t have to actually touch metal to be affected; simply being in the proximity of it weakens us. But since you are only half, I assume you are immune to it. You are lucky.”

That
did
make me feel lucky. If I became allergic I would be forced to leave. That was one power I hoped would stay the way it was.

“How about the eyes? Why are they so vibrant?”

“Why are human eyes not?”

I shrugged. “DNA?”

“Who’s to say what is normal? Green, blue, and brown might be normal to humans, but it’s perplexing to us. Just as the make-up of a human’s DNA and so forth creates eye color for them, it does the same for us. It’s just in the fae DNA. Maybe it’s what we eat; maybe it’s fae magic. It’s just the way it is.”

I nodded. I knew being a faery was never going to truly be logical to me. They could teach and try to explain until their cheeks turned blue, but it wasn’t going to make sense. I just had to accept that.

“You two travel from Faylinn every day. How far away is it?”

Declan stood from the roots and began to roam the area. I noticed neither of them could ever stay in one place for long. It made me wonder, if they got restless so easily, how they managed to keep themselves entertained in these trees every day. “Well, it takes about an hour with our speed. It’s probably about 200 miles away,” Declan replied.

I looked up and saw Kai resting on his usual limb in the trees, a large fig leaf placed over his eyes as his bobbing foot crossed over the other. He remained silent, most likely ignoring us down below.

“How is Faylinn protected? You said there were thousands of you? How can an area that is inhabited by that many faeries be overlooked?”

“Faylinn is guarded by wards, like invisible fences. When humans pass by they don’t even see it. In actuality, it doesn’t even take up any part of the forest. Once you pass into Faylinn it’s like passing into another world. The passageway just happens to be placed in this forest.”

I was quiet for a moment, drinking in the knowledge. Once my head wrapped around the idea I threw out the next question.

“Is anyone else allowed to leave? Or is it just you two?”

Declan didn’t answer right away. And he wouldn’t meet my eyes either. “Honestly, we shouldn’t even leave, but it hasn’t been an issue thus far.”

“What if Favner finds out?” The thought of either of them getting in trouble worried me. Well, the thought of Declan getting in trouble bothered me. I might revel in the thought of Kai being put in his place.

“He’ll kill us,” Kai’s voice drifted down from his branch. My head jerked up to the sound of his tone, so straightforward, not a hint of fear or concern.

“You don’t know that, Kai,” Declan lectured, leering up at him.

“It doesn’t mean I’m not right,” he replied with the same casual tone.

“He would really kill you for leaving Faylinn’s boundaries?” My eyes flickered from Declan across the clearing to Kai above.

“No. He wouldn’t kill over that,” Declan confirmed.

Kai mumbled something from his limb. A look of frustration crossed Declan’s face as he glared up into the tree.

“What?” I asked.

“Kai just is being a tyrant.”

Kai scoffed, but said nothing more as if he couldn’t be bothered with us or our conversation anymore.

“Declan,” I prompted. “My dad brought something up the other day that I hadn’t thought of before and it bothered me.”

“What was that?”

I bit my lower lip. “What happens if a fae from another colony aside from the Nesters get pregnant?”

Declan pressed his lips together. I had seen sorrow in Declan’s eyes before, but nothing like the anguish that masked his gaze now. “They are terminated,” he said softly.

“The faery or the seedling?” I murmured, matching his tone.

“Sometimes both. The termination is meant for the seedling, but sometimes the mother doesn’t survive.” I swallowed and he turned his head away from me, looking to the soil.

“Why?”

“Declan,” Kai cautioned, but I didn’t understand. “You don’t have to—”

“No, it’s okay,” Declan said, gritting his teeth before carrying on. “You see, the connection between a mother and her seedling is very strong. I’ve heard the bond is like no other sensation. Of course when a mother is with child she can sense the baby. She can feel its movement and so forth. For fae women that sensation is heightened. They can sense what the seedling wants, what the seedling feels. It has to do with the accelerated process of the pregnancy. So when a seedling is terminated, the mother feels their pain, their loss and. . .” he trailed off and I didn’t have to ask him to finish that thought. I didn’t want to ask him to finish. “Most times it’s too much for them to handle.”

Tears pricked my eyes, but I kept them from falling. “But if termination could mean losing a faery, why would Favner risk it?”

Declan peered back at me under that thick gaze of his lashes as if I should know the answer to this by now. “It’s punishment, Calliope. A deterrent from thinking they could somehow hide it. A lesson to be taught to those who think they could get away with it. ‘If death is the outcome, so be it,’ I once heard him say.”

I should have thought better of my question before I asked it, but I didn’t. “Do you know someone that this happened to?”

“
Don’t
.” Kai landed at my side, finally making an appearance, warning me. I had overstepped, but I couldn’t take it back.

Declan answered me anyway. “My mother was past her seedling bearing years, but apparently the fates didn’t feel she was finished. Favner found out a week before the seedling was ready to come.”

My chest ached, compressed under the weight of his words. Why had I asked? Why couldn’t I keep my curiosity to myself?

“Declan.” I swallowed. “I’m sorry. Had I realized. . .”

“Calliope,” he murmured. “It’s okay. It happened a few years back.”

“How many?” I asked hesitantly.

“A little over six years.” He looked back to the ground, surprisingly keeping his composure.

I winced. That must have felt like months or less in Faylinn time. I reached out and rested my hand over his. He flinched slightly, but didn’t move his hand. There were no words I could say. I didn’t know loss yet. I’d never lost anyone that close to me before.

The sun started to set, dimming the natural light in the grove of trees. “You should probably get back home, Calliope. It’s going to be dark soon,” Declan encouraged.