Page 97 of The Innocent Sleep

We needed to help each other. And I needed to find Ginevra, as soon as reasonably possible.

We resumed our trek through the knowe, Simon leading the way. Everyone was still slow and unsteady, the mixture Simon had made blunting some of the worst effects of the iron exposure without actually removing the iron from our systems. Only the Luidaeg seemed to be genuinely shaking off the effects of her time in the cell, although her hands had yet to return to what I thought of as her normal. It was a bit unsettling, with the rest of her looking so mortal, to have her walking among us with the hands of some taloned sea-beast.

As we walked, we began to find ourselves confronted with places where the knowe simply ceased to exist, an ordinary hall turning a corner and becoming an expanse of emptiness. I felt for the shadow roads when we reached those spans, and while I could find them, they were distant, insecure. I didn’t try to access them. Losing myself in an endless void when I was this close to going home seemed like foolishness.

Every time this happened, Simon would make a sound of displeasure, turn around, and take us via another route, resulting in an increasingly circuitous journey. We had been walking for what felt like well over an hour when October leaned closer to the Luidaeg and asked, in a low voice, “Is this going to work?”

“Titania isn’t creating new spaces, which means she’s working with whatever collapsed and wasn’t somehow reclassified as ‘lost,’” she said. “I don’t understand how that magic works. I don’t think anyone does.” She turned to look at me as she spoke, clearly waiting for me to tell her that no, no, the Cait Sidhe understood perfectly, and always had.

Sadly, I couldn’t do that. Instead, I said, “The magic that takes the lost things to our Court is very old. It may be older than the Cait Sidhe ourselves. I don’t even know if Oberon actually put it in place; it may have simply arisen from the void, a necessary part of Faerie maintaining its own structural integrity. Or maybe it’s a spell so ancient and complex that we no longer understand it, and so we dismiss it as the way things have always worked. The knowing of the difference is beyond me.”

“So no one knows,” said October, frustration evident. “Swell. Is there a reason Titania’s not making new spaces?”

“She’s always been more about refinement than creation,” said the Luidaeg. “Mom did most of the intentional creation, back when it was the going thing. And what Mom didn’t make, Dad had a tendency to cobble together, to make sure everything kept working properly.”

October frowned. “If Titania didn’t create, what did she add to Faerie?”

“She bore many of the First, and her children were by and large successful, if only because they were so good at killing off the competition,” said the Luidaeg, tone going flat. “And they shaped Faerie in her image. Mom could build a bench. Titania would decorate it, turn it into something people would fight and die to protect. Creation isn’t the only worthwhile pursuit, and right now, we should be glad of that, because if she were more inclined to make her own things instead of repurposing what belongs to others, we’d be in even more trouble than we already are.”

Simon had moved to the head of our group as we walked, and was now approaching a plain wooden door, simpler than most of those that lined the halls. A somewhat ominous pattern of repeating briars and thorns was carved along the doorframe. He paused and turned back to the rest of us.

“If she was able to recover anything of the grounds, they should be here,” he said. “If not . . .”

“The grounds were in the Summerlands, and even as the knowe collapsed, they should have been stable enough to remain,” said the Luidaeg, clearly trying to sound reassuring, and doing a frankly terrible job of it. “Go ahead.”

Taking a deep breath, Simon turned again, and opened the door to reveal the grounds of the royal knowe.

It was a wide stretch of green, apparently modeled off the hunting fields behind a European country estate. It was beautiful and dated at the same time, both wild and absolutely cultivated, with not a single strand of grass out of place. Fog swirled thick around the edges of the scene, framing it in gray. The sky was blocked out by more fog, or possibly clouds in the same color, making it difficult to tell the time of day; there was neither sun nor moon, but there was light, bright enough that I would have guessed at early afternoon if I’d been pressed to name an hour. Simon sighed relief and stepped outside. The ground didn’t collapse out from beneath him or vanish to leave him standing in the void, and so the rest of us followed, trailing out into the open air, which was sweet and tasted slightly of loam.

After going from the iron-laced dungeon to the lifeless, empty halls, being outside and in good air again was a huge relief, and I watched it spread through our party, everyone relaxing and untensing just a little as they realized we had made it out.

“This way,” said Simon, and set out across the green, already moving better now that we were out in the fresh air.

“Has this always been here?” asked October, hurrying to match his pace.

I matched hers with less trouble, but then, I hadn’t spent the last four months locked in a tower, comparatively inactive.

“For as long as I’ve known the knowe,” said Simon. “I’m a bit surprised you’re not familiar, given the story of how you found this place.”

“I found it, I didn’t claim it,” said October, somewhat sourly. “And it’s not like I was exactly welcome to wander around and explore after I surrendered it to the Queen.”

I swallowed the urge to laugh. She sounded so genuinely annoyed that the Queen, who had famously never liked her, hadn’t thought to invite her over to explore the grounds. Sometimes my little fish was even more of a delight than I expected her to be. Here we were, walking toward what might well be a confrontation with the Summer Queen, and she was still mad at someone she’d never liked in the first place for treating her inconsiderately.

That woman can hold a grudge like a cat, and I have very few higher compliments that I can give.

My amusement didn’t last. The fog was getting thicker, reducing visibility in all directions to perhaps twenty feet, and swallowing up the crumbling shape of the false Queen’s knowe as we moved further into the green. If there was a standing stable, it had yet to make an appearance; we could just be wandering away into the wilds to lose ourselves forever. I reached again for the Shadow Roads, and was relieved when I found them strong, present, and close. If I needed to grab October and run, I could.

Maybe that was a cowardly way to think, but I was well past concern for cowardice. What I cared about at this point was survival, and the survival of my wife and child. If that meant we ran, then we ran. I was only waiting because she’d never forgive me if I moved too soon. Sometimes, balancing my natural desire to keep my family out of danger with the reality of loving October is a quest in and of itself.

October frowned as we walked, clearly pondering the situation. Finally, she looked to the Luidaeg, and asked the one question that was prying at us all, to one degree or another: “Who could she be using as a sacrifice?”

“Can’t be a child of Oberon, which means May’s safe,” said the Luidaeg. “The night-haunts came from a daughter of his and Mom’s. May’s been around long enough at this point that she has some Titania-descendant memories mixed up with everything else in that nightmare she calls a head, but while that gives Titania a claim, it doesn’t change who she belongs to. Jazz is protected for the same reason.”

That caused me to think of something I didn’t care for in the least. “Raj is of Erda’s line,” I said. “Are the children of Titania so protected?”

“No,” said the Luidaeg, glancing in my direction before looking firmly back at October. “He could be a candidate. So could Quentin. She wants this one to hurt you, Toby, and that means she’s going to be looking at the people you actually care about.”

“So Mom’s in the clear,” said October bitterly, as August winced and Simon grimaced.