Page 3 of Be the Serpent

One nice thing about packing the car with teenagers: the chaos of going to formal Court pales before the chaos of shepherding two teen boys, a Fetch with the metabolism of a hummingbird, a centuries-old King of Cats, and myself through a McDonald’s drive-through. May and Tybalt are the co-presidents of the “make Toby eat something already” fan club, and Quentin is vying for officership in their next election.

May being May, it wasn’t impossible that the elections might become reality someday, if they weren’t already. Her sense of humor is . . . let’s go with “unpredictable.” She’s earned it. As my Fetch, May has all my memories up until the moment of her creation as a distinct entity, and fragments of all the people whose memories she consumed while she was still a night-haunt. The biology of Faerie is exciting and about as reasonable as May’s idea of what is or is not funny.

Fortunately, McDonald’s was already serving lunch by the time we swung through, and we found ourselves bound for Muir Woods with several sacks of cheeseburgers and fries, boxes of chicken nuggets, and filet-of-fish sandwiches. The ice cream machine was even working, meaning we had milkshakes to keep us occupied during the drive.

Raj, having finished his own milkshake, was leaning into the front seat trying to snatch Tybalt’s out of his hand. Both of them were laughing. I was inclined to let them have their fun: with Raj so focused on his training these days, he didn’t get many opportunities to play, and while he had made it clear that he wasn’t going to follow the classic Cait Sidhe system and exile his uncle when he took the throne, he and Tybalt weren’t going to be able to spend time together after that. Not the way that they were used to.

At the same time, I was trying to navigate a full car through midmorning traffic, with a don’t-look-here spell on the vehicle to keep anyone from noticing that we were apparently on our way to some sort of science fiction convention. It was working; none of the other drivers seemed to see us. That meant I needed to pay even more attention to the road. Don’t-look-heres reduce collisions, since people instinctively realize there’s something they need to steer around—it’s handy—but if I had to hit the brakes suddenly, the delay the spell caused could get us rear-ended.

Then Raj hit my arm, nearly dousing me in my own milkshake, and I scowled at both of them.

“Boys!” I said, more sharply than I meant to. “Can we please get to Court alive?”

“You and May would survive,” said Quentin helpfully. “You’re both basically indestructible.”

“Yes, but I would be very sad and very cranky and your parents would dedicate the rest of their lives to figuring out a way to kill me after all,” I said, and caught Quentin’s sour expression in the rearview mirror.

He’d been cranky and lashing out since we got back from Toronto. Fortunately, I knew it wasn’t about me marrying Tybalt; it was about the fact that he hates being reminded that he’s not really my son. One day he’ll have to go back to his real parents and take up his duties as Crown Prince of the Westlands. I shrugged, mouthing “sorry” to the mirror, and he sighed and looked away. Even if he hated it, it was reality, and he couldn’t glare it out of existence.

If glaring at things made them go away, the world would be a very different place.

Raj stopped trying to take Tybalt’s cup and sank back into his seat, lower lip shoved out in a pronounced pout. “You said we’re supposed to share,” he said, petulantly.

“I am sharing,” said Tybalt. “This is my share. You had your share. It’s been consumed.”

“Everyone just eat your fries before they get cold and turn evil,” I said.

“Are we there yet?” asked Raj.

“I will sit on you,” said May. “Jazz had to work, which means there’s no one here to tell me to behave myself. So don’t make me sit on you.”

He snorted and stole some of her fries.

The merry chatter continued all the way to Muir Woods, where the parking lot was open and almost entirely full of ordinary, visible cars. I pulled into one of the few available slots, and as we got out of the car, May cast another don’t-look-here over it, to keep us from being noticed if we were here after the sun went down. I shot her a grateful look. She smiled at me.

“I got you,” she said. “I always got you. You know that.”

“I do,” I said, and meant it.

That was what really made this day different from the day six years ago when I’d woken up alone, afraid, and abandoned in the Japanese Tea Gardens: these people, all these people, had my back. No matter how bad things got, they had my back, and I knew it, and they wouldn’t let me forget it. I had a family. This wasn’t even all of it.

It was still a strange and heady thing, feeling like I belonged somewhere, and it buoyed me through the park gates and along the trails that led to Arden’s knowe. Knowes—better known in the human world as “hollow hills”—are built in places where the nearest realm of Faerie, the Summerlands, and the human world intersect. They exist almost entirely in the Summerlands, paying very little attention to silly things like “physics” and “geography,” but their roots are sunk in mortal soil, letting them serve as points of passage between the two worlds.

If we had come at night, the trees would have been alight with pixies. They were sleeping now, waiting until it got late enough that the humans went away and it was safer for them to go about their business. Not that humans could see them under most circumstances, but a windshield will take out a pixie as surely as it will a butterfly. Not worth the risk.

We followed the pre-set trail into the shadow of the redwoods and through the carefully curated and manicured recreation of the wilderness that dominated this place before the arrival of first the fae and later the European settlers. The humans were doing their best to preserve what natural beauty they had left, and we weren’t here to interfere with it.

We went around a bend and found ourselves alone on a stretch of trail, safely sheltered from view by the topography of the terrain around us. Conveniently, a nearby tree’s roots had grown in a ladderlike series of tiers, providing a reasonable passage up the rise.

Park rules tell us to stay on the trails. This was a trail of sorts, just a more private one, protected by something stronger than a few rules. Humans who passed this point wouldn’t see the easy way up, and would need to scramble through briars and patches of poison oak if they wanted to climb the seemingly hostile hillside. We began our climb easily, single-file, and as we went higher, the air softened and brightened around us, signaling the point where we weren’t quite in the Summerlands, but weren’t quite in the human world anymore, either.

At the top of the hill, we stepped into a wide clearing in the redwoods, at the center of which grew a truly massive tree with double doors standing open in its trunk. Figures stood to either side of the entryway, dressed in the royal livery of the Mists. Neither of them was particularly familiar, which was unusual; usually Lowri, the captain of the Queen’s guard, could be found in one of the sentry positions. I guess everyone gets a few hours off.

The guards nodded to us as we passed by, but didn’t ask us to stop or present our credentials. At this point, basically everyone in the Kingdom knows who we are, and they don’t want to attract more of our collective attention than strictly necessary. I’d be offended, if it weren’t so damn convenient.

The air changed again when we stepped over the threshold into the impossibly extended interior of the tree, marking our final transition to the Summerlands. The dizziness that followed the transition only lasted a few seconds, more like vertigo than anything else. I may never get used to how much easier it is to travel between the worlds now that I’m not as human as I used to be. It’s not fair. Changelings already suffer on so many levels; they don’t need an extra layer of difficulty in getting to what ought to be a sanctuary.

But then again, when has Faerie ever been “fair”? The closest we come is the name, and honestly, the name’s pretty misleading. Tybalt looked to me, trying to measure my disorientation. I smiled, shook my head, and kept walking.