Very quickly, it became clear to me that Solaris was not a runner. He might be lean and tall, but he was totally out of shape. I’d bet my backpack that he’d always flown whenever he’d needed to get somewhere fast.
“Where are we going?” I kept pace with him because I couldn’t just abandon him.
“Away,” he said between panted breaths.
Maybe he didn’t have any idea where we were after all. Part of his bitchiness was probably because I had given him a really crappy day, but maybe he was just as lost as I was.
Before I could bring that up, though, I recognized the sound of horse hooves pounding the ground. Looking back, I saw four guys on horseback racing toward us.
I could also see the fire darkening the sky a lot more than the clouds were.
“Sol! What’s happened to your wing?”
Each of these riders was, quite literally, his own color. The one who’d spoken was pink. Everything he wore was one shade of pink or another from vest and shirt to knee-high socks andpointy-toed shoes. Blue, red, and purple were the other three guys’ colors. Solaris was green.
Were they some kind of merry band of fairies? Er, fae?
I also realized Solaris was the only one with wings and, hey, his friends did call him Sol.
“I fell on him,” I said to all of them. “Came through a fairy ring—that I’ve since learned isn’t supposed to exist because of the curse—and crashed right into him in midair. I’ve done what I can to stabilize his wing, but if you have a better way of doing it or some medication for pain, please help him out.”
After a lot of blinking, which I understood completely, Pink offered, “The village is just a few more miles that way. I’m sure they’ll have an apothecary.”
An old-timey pharmacy instead of a doctor? Well, it wasn’t my world.
I touched Sol’s elbow. “Who do you want to ride with? I’ll help get you up so you don’t move too much.”
For a second, I thought he wanted to punch me. Maybe he did. Instead, he got up behind Pink in a way that looked like they’d done it plenty of times. And then he might as well have punched me.
“Let’s go,” he said, and damn if the other colors didn’t ride away.
Without me.
A fire at my back, a village still at least a couple miles away, and that cranky little shit up and left me standing there. Not one of them even looked back at me.
“Fuck you, Sol!” I screamed. “I hope your goddamned wing healscrooked!I hope you spend the rest of your life flying incircles!”
As much as I wanted to keep hurling insults at him, I was starting to smell smoke. I could run a few miles. Not at a horsefleeing a fire speeds, but I could move. I put my backpack on and got going.
Rage was a great motivator because what the hell was wrong with that fucking guy? Sure, I’d fallen on him, but it hadn’t been my choice to do that. And though I’d helped him out of guilt and a hope that he’d help me back, was that really so bad? He’d needed me, and I’d needed him.
If I caught up to his scrawny little ass in the village, I’d see what else I could break. On all of them. Fuck him and his colorful band of idiots.
When I could finally see the village, I slowed down to a jog. A wide path of bare dirt stretched in opposite directions, and I realized that might be a natural fire barrier. There were also mounds of dirt at least waist high every now and then, like those, too, might help cut off a brushfire.
At the last mound before walking into the village, I stopped to watch a guy standing on some kind of wide plow as two horses pulled it forward. He was renewing the dirt path, the fire literally fizzling out at the edge of the dirt as he drove past. No alarm from the man. Not even a flick of an ear from the horses. So, yeah, folks around here were used to this happening and prepared for it.
All of a sudden, the clouds that had started all this belched out a rainstorm that lasted just long enough to wet the shoulders of my t-shirt before it was over. I tried not to bitch even in my thoughts since that might’ve helped put the fire out, but ugh, I hated wet clothes.
Taking the last swig of water from my water bottle, I glanced around at the nearby shops. The ones lining the dirt road I was on all looked like wherever in Ireland they had filmedWaking Ned Devine, one of my favorite movies. Some of the stone-built thatched buildings were whitewashed and others were bare gray limestone.
The odd thing was that most of the buildings had tarps on their roofs, as if their thatching was damaged and— No, wait. The tarps were angled down to barrels. Were they collecting rainwater? Damn, the drought around here must be serious.
There was a pub up ahead. Though the sign wasn’t in a language I could read, the toasting beer mugs were a universal symbol. And I supposed that was as good a place as any to get information—bartenders knew their stuff.
On the way there, I nodded at the people who stared. Men and women were going about their day in old-timey clothes that were patched but clean, like they were struggling but still had their pride. It was clear they didn’t get a lot of visitors, though, especially human ones wearing hiking shorts because I was pretty sure my bare knees were causing a stir. Given that all the women wore skirts, I was starting to feel like I’d gone back in time in addition to elsewhere in the universe.
And then I realized that everyone had pointy ears, but no one had wings. Could they be hiding them? Solaris had been actively using his and then hurt one, so maybe he’d left them out for that reason. I refused to believe he was so special only he had wings.
