the door slamming behind her in rebuke. I looked at Pierce, doubt rising. I wanted this, Ivy wanted this, but more important, Matalina had wanted this.
"After you, madam pixy," Pierce said, and Jih darted off, gone in an instant.
"Jih!" Ivy shouted, and Pierce and I cowered. "Sorry," she whispered as Jih returned.
"I wasn't going to leave them," she said, hands on her hips as she hovered over us. "I was just making sure it was safe for ground travel."
"Where's Rex?" I asked, fear stabbing through me.
"Inside." Jih moved forward and then back. "This way. Mind the glass."
Glass? I thought, cold, miserable, and worried about Jenks.
Ivy sat at the table beside the fairies, clearly going to stay out here when I was in the wilds. Giving her a wave she couldn't see, I followed Jih. Pierce had one of the fairy swords on his hip, and as the grass closed in, I asked him, "You know how to use that?"
"Absolutely not," he said, "but isn't it a caution? Dash-it-all fine Arkansas toothpick."
My eyebrows rose. "Oka-a-a-ay."
We soon found the glass - the remnants of my potion vial, I guess - and we wove through the thick shards carefully, following Jih's gold-dusted path. Every birdcall made my heart race. Every gust of wind in the leaves brought my eyes up, scanning. The grass we walked through had been cut, but it came up to my waist, growing in clumps. A skittering jerked me to a stop.
"Holy crap!" I exclaimed, and Pierce brandished his sword at a hard-plated bug the comparative size of an armadillo. Its antenna waved at us, and I froze, wondering if I could kick it or if it would chew my foot off.
Jih, who was flying a nice safe four inches off the ground, looked down. "It's a roly-poly bug," she explained, her tone saying I was a baby.
"I've never seen one the size of my head before," I muttered.
She dropped lower to give it a kick and it vanished. "It's safer when you can fly," she said lightly. "I was grounded an entire month when I snapped the main vein in my right lower wing. I hated it. Never went outside the entire time."
No wonder nothing fazed Jenks. Just walking around took guts.
Jih stopped short, her face pale as her wings dusted a melancholy blue. I pushed past her, halting when I found we were at Jenks's stump. The grass ended, giving way to a flat sheet of earth that I remember spanning only a foot or so, but now looked enormous. It was littered with the remnants of battle. The fire where the fairies' weapons had been burned was almost out. The air was clean, but memory put the scent of blood and burnt hair drifting through the clearing. It was quiet. Empty.
Pierce edged even with me, and together we looked at the understated entrance to Jenks's home. It was almost invisible, cut to look like a part of the stump itself. "It's round," he said softly. "I've not seen a round door before."
"Maybe it's for the wings?" I guessed, glancing up at Jih. "Thank you, Jih. Do you want to come in with us?"
Jih's feet touched the earth beside me, head bowed to hide her tears. "I'll not go any farther," she said, her voice a whisper. "My husband thinks it was wrong for me to have even joined the battle, seeing as it's not truly my garden anymore. But I didn't see any harm if I Visited' my sisters while he was at home making sure no one took our own land."
"You are your father's daughter as much as your mother's," I said, touching her arm and making her look up. "Always bending the rules."
She smiled forlornly, causing her to look beautiful, dashed the glitter from her face, and looked at her first home with a faint smile. "I think I'd like my papa back if he was happy."
I nodded, feeling for the first time that I might be doing some good. "I'll try."
She rose up with a soft hum, shifting a dust of sparkles over us. Pierce sneezed, and I held my breath. "Now youTl smell right," she said, and with no more, she flew away. The sound of her wings faded remarkably fast.
Pierce smacked his clothes to get the dust off. "Don't you want to smell right?" I asked him, and he raised his eyebrows.
"It's a right smart amount she put down," he said. "Why do we have to smell anyway?"