Blue

The wind picked up with the thundering beating of their wings. My hair danced a senseless dance amidst the chaos and slapped my eyes more than once in split seconds. 

I flailed around blind, desperately fighting off the tendrils when Herman shouted, “DUCK!”

I fell forward with only dead leaves to cushion my fall and grazed my palms. Droplets of red oozed out of the fresh wound just as a pair of arms wrapped themselves around me and pulled me down with them. 

I winced and pried open my eyes to see Jayden Forst’s face beside mine, his eyes shut tight as the swarm of hornets dove for us with their stingers raised. They barely missed the tip of my hair as we rolled to the ground. I could feel his breath on my lips as clearly the holes driven by the hornets into falling leaves.

As if he was trained to do so, Jayden Forst recovered in a heartbeat and pulled me up with him. Half dragged and half urged, we broke into a run with Herman leading the way. We ducked under low hanging branches, hid behind dried trunks and slipped into cracks between larger boulders. The avenging hornets were relentless in their chase. 

The pixies living in smaller trunks were just lucky Herman was a great navigator so we didn’t uproot any of their homes in the process. 

Once in a while, Jayden Forst would turn to check if I was still with him but his steps never faltered and his grip on me was just as firm. For someone with legs thinner than mine, he was surprisingly fast. Herman on the other hand, had no problem trudging on as his lungs fed on the flow of magic from his locket.

The sound of my beating heart thrummed in my ears to rival our pursuers’. My breath came in whizzes and my pace began to falter. An ache I have never felt before crept from the soles of my feet to the lower half of my body, numbing the whole stretch of it. 

It was remarkable how Jayden Forst could continue to hold on to me even when I want to let go myself. The muscles in my legs felt too weak, too strained to go on. Only the thought of getting away from the hornets’ sting fuelled them to move one before another. 

Jayden Forst squeezed my hand and urged me to run faster. I could hear his rasped breath but his legs continued to spurt. His running form remained unaffected as he skilfully manoeuvred us through the dips and drops in the ground.

Is this really the Reader I knew? The weak, lanky boy who had appeared as if he hadn’t seen the sun in years?

Only for the briefest moments I let my mind wander—and it was that briefest moment that made me miss the protruded roots that rose in an arc from the ground. My feet slipped right under it as I ran. My ankle yanked forward with a sickening crunch loud enough to make Jayden Forst snap around.

I tumbled into him and we rolled onto the ground. Jayden Forst wrapped me into his arms, trying in vain to break our fall. His back slammed hard into a short trunk in our path. He winced but his grasp on me remained firm until he blinked his eyes open again. His gaze darted to the sky behind us and immediately back to me. 

“Are you alright?” he asked, a little breathlessly. The cold sweat between his brows hinted at the injury of his back. But if he felt it, he didn’t let on. Instead, he casted a quick look at my ankle that was slowly turning swollen. “This is bad…” 

“What happened?” Herman swivelled around and skidded to a stop before us at the sound of my yelp, showering a wave of leaves over us as he did. Except for rivulets of sweat clinging to his forehead and dampened his hair, he didn’t look or sound like someone who had been running with us in a life-and-death chase.  “You’re…oh darn it…sorry…I…I forgot that you…”

I shook my head to the curse he uttered under his breath. 

Being immortal meant you would grow to forget how fragile mortals were. No one would know it better than a fae mom who nearly lost her charge to mortality. 

“Can you stand?” Jayden Forst draped my arms around his shoulders and helped me to my feet—which buckled and still refused to cooperate. Darn his flower petals. Even Ariel would be stronger than me now. 

The fact that I have injured my ankle was enough proof. Without my wand, I was mortal. A hornet’s sting would be just as fatal, if not more. Especially for Jayden Forst. He shouldn’t be here. He’s my charge. Wand or not, I’ll have to protect him at least.

 “They’ll get us all like this, you guys should go on without—”An involuntary groan escaped when my injured foot slipped on the uneven ground. 

“Are you mad? If we’re going to run, we run together,” Jayden Forst’s voice raised over the din as he turned abruptly to me. A dead serious look that had almost never made an appearance flickered in his pale eyes.

A wave of buzz continued to approach us from the distance. I looked at Herman pleadingly to leave but he shot me a disapproving glare right away. No room for discussion. 

I bit my inner cheeks before any protests slipped to incur his wrath. Not even the Star could stop him after he tapped into his mother-hen mode. 

“Just hang on tight, butterfly,” Herman said, draping my other arm around his hunched shoulders. 

One on either side of me, the two matched my limping steps and began marching down the complicated, non-existence road of dirt and pebbles. Each step led us further away from the heart of Pixies’ Hollow and nearer to the edge of the forest that parted light and darkness. 

The Unseelie Court’s territory. 

Lucky for us, Herman managed to find a hollowed bark large enough to fit the three of us before we crossed the border. As territorial as pixies were, those born from darkness were much worse. Becoming a walking lump of red buttons from hornets’ stings seemed almost a child’s prank in comparison to what a kelpie could do to us. 

It was much darker inside, the open hole above us allowed little light in. Our knees were huddled together, even closer than when we were in the carriage, making it hard to breath and harder for my ankle that only seemed to worsen with each passing moment.

 I silently thanked the two for being considerate enough to keep away from my injured leg and squeezed closer among themselves to allow me more space. 

Moulds grew in abundance, filling the space with the humid stench of a room abandoned for centuries. Earthworms peeked out once in a while from the wet soil that thoroughly soaked through my dress, surprising Jayden Forst while Herman worked to brush away lines of bright red ants that mistook us as another large bark to climb over.

If we didn’t have two mortals in the group and if hornets’ stings didn’t hurt ten times the blisters on my feet—the ants’ surprise bites would have been annoying enough for me to bolt out of our make-shift sanctuary. 

“What do we do?” I asked, immediately hating that I sounded like one of the whiny pink creatures but begrudgingly felt like one. It was one thing to run out of fae dust, it was another thing to have a bag full of it but couldn’t use any. My mind just wasn’t oriented to think without magic. 

“Did Tink tell you where she would stay at this season?” Herman ask-whispered, picking a stray ant from his arm.

I shook my head. “Haven’t seen her since the end of last season, remember?” It had always been Primrose who would deliver the information we need these days.

Herman sighed just as the hornets swarmed past overhead. A hand instinctively shot to his mouth—forgetting the fact that my palms were currently covered in sticky mud. He glared at me, wiping his lips with the back of one hand. 

“We need something to distract them,” Jayden spoke finally, handing Herman a thin white handkerchief from the back of his pocket. Herman took it, grumbling.

I fingered my locket, checking that it’s still there. Its light had dimmed to almost nonexistence. “Those are trained hornets. Only Tink could stop them.”

“Does this Tink have a phone—wait, forget it.” Jayden Forst shook his head.

“A fone…?” Herman scooted neared when another wave of hornets barrelled past.

“It’s something we use to call another in my world—but never mind that. It’s stupid of me to even—”

“That’s it!”