Sarana’s words echoed in my head as I fought against the loneliness. I longed for the touch of another person.

“No matter what happens you cannot leave the enchanted forest. It is not safe.” And then the other words that raised my level of nervousness and anxiety even higher, “They cannot be trusted.” She spoke of the humans as if they were so different, but after all this time alone, I hardly cared.

I could feel Rose’s eyes on the back of my head, watching and studying me. It was her way when she knew I was thinking hard about something that I didn’t want to talk about. Since I’d gone through the change she left me to my own thoughts more often than she had before. I didn’t get the ceremony that was the tradition of my people, but the fairies had thrown me a little celebration.

My silence wasn’t to shut them out. At least that wasn’t my intention. I had too many thoughts and ideas racing through my mind. I’d had the nightmare again and it had rattled me in a different way. They were coming frequently. The worse the forest got, the more they came.

Rose deserved to know what was on my mind. Somehow I knew that Sparrow already understood, in her way. The past few days I would find her with treats I’d long forgotten she had. Treats she’d buried and now had the urge to retrieve. She would eat them as she lay beside me; her warm coat under my arm and my hands running gently through her fur.

I couldn’t leave without her.

Rose appeared out the corner of my eye. Her shimmery yellow glow gave her away. The shock of fire red hair and lips the color of fresh blood accentuated her pretty little freckled cheeks.

“Amarilla?”

I paused a moment and took a deep breath before turning to her.

“Yes?”

“I need you to come with me. There’s something you need to see.” Her voice was almost shaking. I’d never seen her afraid. I jumped up quickly, bumping Sparrow and causing her to drop a berry fig treat I made the year before.

“Sorry, girl.”

Sparrow stood with me and we both followed Rose.

We walked for nearly fifteen minutes through trees. We passed weathered and empty cottages, old picnic areas, the Center for Enchantresses, and the old school house. It was near where I once lived with my parents, but I returned to the area only on rare occasions. I’d tried to go back and make it a home again but after a few months I’d given up and left. It held too many memories of a life that had been taken away, along with all the people.

I silently cursed Dameldun again as we passed it all and landed at a part of the path that emptied into a clearing. Rose stopped flying.

“What is this, Rose?”

I had never seen it before but there it was. The path continued but what lay ahead was not the forest I knew. The leaves were green and bright flowers grew. Colors I hadn’t seen in at least two years filled in the edges of the path. The ground was covered with yellow daffodils and pink tulips and even bright red roses.

“Is this a part of our forest? When did Sorseluna start getting better?”

I was in awe. Perhaps part of it was healing.

“No, it’s not part of Sorseluna. I don’t know what it is or even where it is.”

Suddenly a blue jay dove down in front of us towards the ground where a dying worm writhed in the morning sun.

“It’s so quiet over there,” I whispered.

A flock of white birds flew in formation, seeming to come from over us but they had appeared out of nowhere, materializing just where the scene of the healthy woods began.

“Rose? What are we looking at?”

“The other fairies and I have been watching it since we noticed it yesterday morning. It just appeared. None of us have seen it before but we think it may be another enchanted forest. But-,” Rose stopped speaking and looked at me sadly.

“But what?” I urged her to continue.

“We can’t go in. We tried flying down the path and just as we think we are entering, we find ourselves just flying down the path that was once here. It’s as if this forest we are looking at right now is sitting in a different dimension, Amarilla.”

“It’s right here, but we can’t enter it.”

The words left my lips and I understood that the glimmer of hope I had was gone just as quickly as it came.

“Can anything from there come through?” I wondered if they could see us too.

It didn’t seem like they could. The animals were coming right up to the line and then would vanish where they should have been walking by our feet or flying over our heads. I was curious. For the first time in years something besides surviving had sparked my interest.

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