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"They move," the Dark Queen said, ignoring my existence, her eyes seeing something impossibly far away. "They move forward. They create. "
"I want to create," the other faerie answered, and I recognized the moonbeam voice from the darkness, aching with desire and longing. The Light Queen.
"What is the joy in eternity if we cannot change?"
"Dear sister," the Light Queen said, "if I cannot create, I want to perish instead. "
"But we were not given dominion there. We were gifted our land; who can tell what will happen if we leave it?"
"I no longer care. "
The Dark Queen narrowed her eyes. "Then I shall make a way for you to go there. "
"It is too wicked. " The Light Queen raised her head, crystal tears frozen on her cheeks. "We cannot. "
The Dark Queen smiled her razor smile. "If I am too wicked for heaven, I am certainly wicked enough to do this. "
The scene broke apart in scattered beams of light, re-forming over a shining pink body of water. The Dark Queen and the Light Queen stood together, one hand raised on either side, their contrasting hands clasped in between them. An entire congregation of faeries waited behind them, all standing tall but some with more confidence than others. I gasped as I recognized Reth, looking older and younger at the same time.
"You cannot do this thing," a voice like a waterfall said, and I saw Cresseda rise out of the water, far more solid and corporeal than she ever was on Earth. "You will destroy yourselves. "
"We will not destroy," the Dark Queen said, and every faerie leaned almost imperceptibly toward the gravity of her voice. "We will create. We will be more. "
"Leave then, and be done with it. " Cresseda's voice poured down like a wave of judgment on them. "But we will have no part of this. "
I saw then that the water was swirling with life, with souls, and my perspective shifted to encompass all of it-it was an ocean, a home to every water spirit. Behind the faeries was a forest of trees, each with leaves of flame. The trees nodded their agreement, bending away from the Dark Queen. Even the ground itself pushed back, forming a crater around the faeries.
"We have all spoken," voices said in unison, voices that sounded like the rumbling of stones, the rustling of leaves, the crackle of flame, the rushing of water. "We accept what we have been given and reject you. "
The Dark Queen raised her chin in defiance, a smile twisting her violet lips. "Not all have spoken. "
A breeze started, and part of the souls in me recognized it. The sylph, in its true form as shapeless air. It spun, faster and faster, until it was howling, surrounding everything. "We want to fly," it said in a voice almost unhearable through the violence of wind. "We want to be free. We want to see new places, taste new things, fly unbound and boundless. "
Cresseda shouted something but the noise was swallowed by the wind, now a hurricane force with the faerie-filled crater at the very center. I watched in fascination and horror as the glowing souls of the trees, fire, water, and earth were torn from their places and caught up in the screaming wind until the faeries were surrounded by a swirling vortex of light.
"We will be reborn," the Light Queen said, her voice reverent.
"We will give birth," the Dark Queen said, and together they raised their arms, hands out, all the faeries around them doing the same thing. The lights of the souls spun faster and faster until they were a solid wall and then a soundless, horrible rip shuddered through the land, like the very air was being sucked from my lungs, so wrong and so unnatural I wanted to scream, but I couldn't do anything except see.
The Light Queen's face fell. "What have we done?" she whispered.
"What we must. "
"We cannot do this. "
The Dark Queen's eyes flashed in anger. "I do this for you. And there is only one way for you to stop me. Will you break our bond? Will you utter my true name and betray me, the other half of your heart?"
"I will never," the Light Queen whispered. The Dark Queen took her hand, and as one the faeries ran forward, breaking through the wall of light and disappearing.
I thought it was over, that it was the end, but the lights didn't stop, the souls of the other paranormals weren't flung free of the sylph's wind. The faeries had left a gaping wound in their wake, a tremendous black void that the lights were pulled toward; and now under the howl of the hurricane I could hear the voices of all the other creatures, screaming as one in terror and agony as they were dragged away-the water, the earth, everything that had made up this world. When the last light, that of the wind itself, was sucked through and disappeared, the darkness collapsed inward and left the landscape so empty and devoid of spark and wrong I wanted to scream, I wanted to die, I couldn't be there anymore, I had to-
"Wake up, child. "
I opened my eyes, my heart pounding, and sat up. "Where are we?" I couldn't get my heart to stop racing, my body still in panic mode, as I looked around. Reth stood next to me; we were no longer in the pitch-black. Now we were in a cave, brilliant light reflected and refracted by the thousands of stalagmites and stalactites that looked like they were made of pale pink spun sugar. The entire thing seemed impossibly fragile, like a shout would bring it shattering down around us, but that only made it more beautiful.
I looked to my right, and there was the Light Queen, exactly as I'd seen her in my dream. Only. . . somehow less. I couldn't quite put my
finger on it, because she was just as beautiful and perfect, but it felt like she was shorter, or thinner-diminished in a way I couldn't describe. The lines of her body, instead of blurring to take part in everything around her, trapped her, contained her soul, cut her off.
