“Underhill,” said Aiden stoically. He was afraid, but he also smelled resigned, like the rabbit who knew it was dead and quit struggling. The confidence he’d shown us last night was gone. He cleared his throat, and said, “Sometimes the terrain is forest or desert, sometimes it’s a snowy mountaintop or an ocean so deep, you can’t find the bottom. If you blink, it can change—but it doesn’t matter where you are, Underhill is always there.” His voice tightened. “Watching.”
“What do you think will happen?” asked Jesse.
After a moment, Aiden said, “She’ll pretend to ignore us at first, I think. She’ll be mad at me, and she’ll want to take her time to decide what to do.”
“Why mad?” asked Jesse. Since Aiden was telling her more than he’d told Adam or me, I thought I’d just keep quiet and see what Jesse could pull out of him.
“Because I left,” he said. “None of us was supposed to leave her. And I was the last one. Water. Earth. Air. Fire. Her creations, she called us. Her children. The others died or were killed when they left her. She told me about it.” He hesitated. “I think she caused their deaths. Or did something that made the fae cause their deaths. I left last because I was afraid to leave.”
“So why are you going back?” Jesse’s voice was cool. “If she caused their deaths, don’t you think she’ll kill you?”
“No,” he said, when, I could tell, he hadn’t intended to say anything at all on the subject. “Not while I’m in Underhill itself—because that would be cheating. If we get attacked, and I can’t defend myself, that’s a fair death, but she can’t turn her hand specifically toward that end, or she’ll ruin her own game.”
—
When Adam turned off the highway and took the road that used to lead to the reservation, dawn was lightening the sky, though the sun herself wouldn’t be up for fifteen or twenty minutes. He drove steadily past vineyards and cornfields into the hill country. I was pretty sure that he’d driven farther than it had taken to get to the reservation, but it didn’t seem to bother him.
The road took a sharp turn I didn’t remember, then Adam had to hit the brakes hard so he didn’t run into the horsemen lined up across the road. There were three of them, each riding a white horse and dressed in gray. As soon as the SUV stopped completely, they turned their horses and began trotting down the road.
“Our guides?” Adam asked the backseat denizens.
“Ja,” said Zee. “Good to know that drama is still alive and well among the fae. Schimmelreiter. Bah. Theatrics.”
Adam was smiling his hunting smile as we followed the three galloping horses who moved as fast as the SUV could safely negotiate the narrow mountain road that bore no resemblance to the road that used to go to the Ronald Wilson Reagan Fae Reservation.
—
The road might go different paths, but the walls around the reservation had been left, block cement topped by stainless-steel razor wire. The guard towers were apparently empty, and the gates hung wide open. It looked abandoned, but it didn’t smell that way. It smelled green and alive, even through the filter of the SUV.
The horses slowed to a walk to cross through the threshold of Fairyland, and Adam slowed the SUV to follow them.
Zee made no sound as they crossed into the reservation, but I could smell Tad’s sweat. Aiden’s heart beat double time. Jesse and Adam were the only ones in the car who weren’t affected. I include myself as the affected. The one time before that I’d been in Underhill had been a scary, scary thing.
We followed the walking horses through streets that could have been in any unimaginatively-laid-out suburb in America as the sun rose and lit the world. The streets were set in a numbered grid—as if the original architect feared that people might get lost here. I knew how they felt, but I also thought that the hope that a sign could lead someone out of Faery was the belief of an innocent.
Magic was stronger here than it had been the last time I’d come. I gripped Adam’s thigh and practiced a swimmer’s breathing, in through my mouth and out through my nose, in an effort to block the overwhelming rush. It wasn’t as bad as when Beauclaire sank Cable Bridge, but it was bad enough.
“Are we feeling Underhill?” asked Adam in a low voice.
I looked at him. Adam wasn’t very sensitive to magic, but his wolf looked out through his eyes, so he was feeling something.
“Yes,” said Aiden. His voice was faint. “This is what happens in places where there are too many doors in too small an area. Her magic leaks out.”
“Even though the doors have long been closed in the Old Country,” Zee added, “there are places that people avoid because the spill of magic lingers. And others that they visit in hopes of miracles.”
There were still fae in Europe, I knew, but most of them had come to the New World fleeing the spread of cold iron. Iron had followed them here, too, but they seemed to have come to some sort of terms with it. Tolkien’s elves had traveled to the West, and there were scholars who argued that Tolkien had known some of the fae left behind who spoke with longing of their kinsfolk who had traveled to the New World.
The horses stopped in front of what had once been a municipal building of some sort—the sign in front of it was hacked into indecipherable splinters, the bits of wood left where they lay, though the lawns were mowed and tidy.
As soon as the riders began to dismount, Adam turned the SUV off and got out. I scooted out behind Jesse because I wanted to make sure she wasn’t standing alone in the reservation for long. Of the six of us, she was the most vulnerable—which was why Adam had tried to leave her at home. Standing here, among our enemies—or at least our unpredictable and dangerous acquaintances—I wished he’d succeeded.