Child Of Darkness. Jennifer Armintrout

the map.

      “I can walk you back to the Strip, friend,” he said, tucking the folded paper into the pocket of his shirt. “But you cannot become lost in our land again.”

      “I must speak with her.” Though Cedric tried to keep his voice even, he heard the desperation in his words. “She has told me that you are leaving soon. That this will all be gone. I cannot chance not seeing her…I have made a terrible mistake.”

      The mortal’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know of our leaving?”

      “Because Dika told me. She told me. I can’t give you proof, but please, I must find her.” Cedric could say no more, only look to the man with what must have been pleading on his face, and wait for his decision.

      Finally, the man sighed the heavy sigh of something giving way. “You are an outsider. You will have to take your case to the Dya.”

      “Dya,” he repeated the word, rolled the unfamiliar shape of it around his mouth. “Dika did not mention this.”

      “If you wish to see Dika, you will have to obey our rules, friend,” the mortal said, his smile not so kind.

      There was little else Cedric could do but agree and follow the man through the maze of the mortal city. They passed the rough dwellings, came to cleaner, neater homes—as clean and neat as anything in the Underground could be—made from the same mortal materials, but with a certain air of pride about them. The children running the winding paths here were not as dirty, and the garments hanging to dry were much finer.

      The people stared at Cedric as they passed. Mortals were roughly shaped, as if each was cut from a spare scrap of cloth, rather than crafted from the finest bolt. Of course, his appearance would stand out to them. Could they tell he was not mortal? He was built larger than most Faeries, but he stood only as tall as an average Human woman. The Gypsies were small people, though, wiry and compact, and Dika had not known him to be Fae, when they’d first met. He’d thought then that it was something of an insult, to look mortal. He still did, when other Fae muttered it about him. But now, now it might serve him to appear Human.

      The mortal man led him to the center of the city. Only here did the plan of the settlement make sense. All of the winding streets led to the center hub, where a huge, communal fire blazed. Groups of singing, dancing, feasting Humans clustered around the wide pit of flames, mortal bodies writhing like salamander shadows in the firelight. Cedric’s guide skirted these groups, smiling or calling out to wave at someone, but he never veered from his path.

      It was only after they had rounded the fire pit and started down a wide avenue that Cedric noticed people following them. On the other streets they’d taken, he’d assumed the traffic behind them had been the normal progression of bodies moving to their intended destinations. But this street was empty of dwellings, lit only by the flickering light from the communal fire, and the trailing mortals were evident. Cedric looked over his shoulder once, saw the eagerness and anticipation in their eyes, and did not care to see them anymore.

      At the end of the path loomed the ancient, gnarled roots of a tree, the top of which would stretch into the Upworld sky, but the trunk and branches were not visible here, beneath the ground. The looping tentacles lay like the sleeping form of a Leviathan, those underwater creatures that mortal men no longer feared, though they should. It caused a shiver to crawl between Cedric’s wings; Faeries, too, feared the horrors of the deep.

      A Gypsy wagon, like the ones Cedric had spied tramping through the forests of the mortal realm centuries ago, sat beneath the cascading roots, dwarfed by the coils that unfurled around it like embracing arms. This was where the mortal led him, and the people behind them stopped, either from respect or fear.

      A small fire crackled beneath a smoke-blackened cauldron, and a female knelt beside it, the flames gilding her glossy black curls. Cedric stopped, though the Human continued on without him. “Dika?”

      She turned, seeming to see the other Gypsy man first, then himself, and then the crowd at the edge of the camp. Her smooth face creased with confusion. “Cedric? You’ve come here?”

      The answer was obvious, as he stood before her, but he did not say so. “You are the leader here?”

      She came forward slowly, shaking her head. “No. No. I stay here with her…to help her.”

      The mortal who had led him there drew himself up to his full height. “This stranger has come to this camp uninvited, and he must face your grandmother’s judgment.”

      “He was not uninvited. I gave him a map to find us. I invited him here.” She squared her shoulders and glared at him, unblinking. It seemed neither of them would ever look away from the other, then the door of the wagon opened, and their attention shifted.

      A lamp of many-colored glass hung beside the wagon door, and it swung wildly, sending a rainbow of shadows across the figure that emerged. At first glance, the figure seemed not even Human; a hunchbacked thing, like a rune stone jutting up from the ground, with a head covered by a leather cap with dangling flaps that obscured her face. She shuffled, and with each step the shells and trinkets wound on cords around her neck and arms clanked and jingled. The Humans waited with speechless patience as the woman made her way forward with a maddeningly slow gait.

      When she was close enough to be heard, she pushed the flaps of the cap away from her face, revealing a countenance so marred by age that it resembled to Cedric some kind of rotted fruit shrinking in on itself. Two shrewd black eyes peered out from beneath eyebrows grown thick and white with age, and her seemingly toothless mouth worked from side to side as she regarded the mortals. “Dika, go and stir the stew pot.”

      Dika left. In her obedience, she did not say a word for Cedric’s defense, as though she was not concerned about leaving him to this crone’s devices.

      Then the old woman looked past the mortal who had led him there and declared with delight, “Why, Milosh! You’ve brought me a Faery!”

      This was obviously a surprise to Milosh, as well as to the audience clustered behind them. But to the Dya, this development seemed as natural as if she’d found a coin in the street. “I think,” she pronounced with gravity, “I shall call him Tom.”

      This, finally, moved Cedric to speak. “I am Cedric, lady. Of the Court of Queene Ayla of the Lightworld.”

      “Yes, yes, and before that the Court of Queene Mabb, far beyond the Veil.” She turned to Milosh. “Go. And take them with you. I don’t suppose this one Faery is going to invade our camp. And if he is, well, I shall have to take him hostage.”

      Milosh, his chest swelling with anger, would not be dismissed. “Your granddaughter gave him our location. She led him here and told him of our migration plan.”

      “She’s told him more than that, I’ll wager.” The Dya raised her voice so that it would be heard by not only Milosh and Cedric, but Dika as well. “I’m sure she’s told him a great many interesting things.”

      Dika’s head and shoulders sagged as she stirred the cauldron.

      “Come, Tom.” The Dya no longer spoke to Milosh, as though he’d obeyed her and already left. “We shall talk about this transgression you’ve committed.”

      She shuffled toward the side of the wagon away from the fire, where a small iron table and chairs sat rusting in the shadows. “You aren’t really allergic to iron, are you?” she asked with a wink, already knowing the answer.

      “It is true, we can touch it. We are not fond of it,” Cedric said through gritted teeth as he sat down on the unforgiving metal. “Why do you keep calling me Tom?”

      “I saw a Faery once, when I was a girl.” The Dya’s expression took on a faraway look. “I strayed from my family’s camp, lured by the sound of Faery music. And I saw the sweetest Faery you’ve ever seen. She had golden hair, and wings made of light. And a fiddle! She had a Human fiddle, and she plucked it with her fingers. She didn’t know what to do with it. But the music was so beautiful. I will never forget that sound.”

      Cedric