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Meg is five years old the first time her father tells her not to go into the woods. She tilts her head at him, curious, and asks him why
“Because the woods are full of dangerous things,” Azazel warns her. Meg still doesn’t understand. She looks at Tom, questioning, and he shakes his head. Adults aren’t supposed to know that you go into the woods. They think there’s something scary lurking there, beyond the limits of their sleepy little town, when there is nothing there, not really.
But Meg loves her father, and she believes his every word. She promises not to go into the woods.
.
Tom is supposed to watch her, when their father’s working late. He takes her into the woods beyond their yard and forces her to promise to keep silent. She goes willingly. It’s a big thing to a child, to do something forbidden, to have a secret from her father.
The sky is gray, like it always is, and the woods are silent, like they always are. Meg holds her brother’s hand and lets him lead her into the bushes.
“Why aren’t we allowed in here?” she asks. “It’s nice.”
“Because people go missing here,” Tom explains. “People vanish, and no one remembers them.”
Meg grips his hand harder. “Then why don’t the adults do something about it?”
“They can’t. There’s a faerie king that lives deep in the woods, and he’s the one who makes children disappear. But he keeps the town thriving. One or two children aren’t so big a price to pay.”
Meg swings their hands and keeps silent. The woods grow impossibly greener the deeper they go, until the colors almost hurt her eyes. A ring of mushrooms spring up in front of her, seemly by magic, and when she walks through them the forest is full of sounds and life and her hand holds empty air. Without looking for her brother, Meg keeps walking down the path. There is a cottage at the end, and she walks toward it on unsteady legs, the long grass brushing against her stockings.
There are small bones hanging from the porch, bleached white by the sun, and she can hear children on the other side of the cottage. She turns to run toward the sounds, but a lake appears in front of her before she can, the water a crystal blue, so clear that she can see all the way to the bottom. A layer of bones stares back up at her, and when she stops at the edge of it, a child’s skull bobs to the surface. She stares into the empty eye sockets for a moment before she reaches to pluck it from the water. It feels slimy under her hand, but she clutches it to her chest and lets the moisture sink into the cotton of her dress.
“Hello.”
Meg turns at the voice but does not drop the skull. A man stands before her, taller than even her father, with impossibly blue eyes. Sky colored, she thinks. Or the color the sky is supposed to be, if books are to be believed. But even at five, she knows that they really aren’t.
The man lowers himself to her level, putting all his weight on the balls of his feet, and reaches a hand out toward her. Meg hugs the skull tighter to her chest and stands her ground. His black hair falls shaggy and long around his face, and his clothes are strange, tight pants that look as though they’re made of strange leather and a barely-there shirt stitched from leaves. There are twigs in his hair, and reddish stains on his exposed skin.
His fingers seem longer than any other human’s, and when he smiles his mouth is full of needles, but she is not afraid.
“You are far from home,” the man comments.
“Are you a faerie?” Meg asks him. He laughs at her question, and his laugh sounds like bones rattling. She takes a step back and feels water fill her shoes.
“Faeries are small, ugly things, aren’t they? Not tall and handsome like me.”
Meg shakes her head. “That’s not what my mother said.”
“If you listened to your mother, you wouldn’t have been walking in my woods,” he reminds her.
Meg remembers her manners and sticks her hand out, taking his larger fingers in her own and vigorously shaking his hand. “I’m Meg.”
“Castiel,” he says, and shakes her hand more gently. “I believe you have my skull. Be a good girl and give it here.”
She parts with it reluctantly. The front of her dress dries as soon as she does. “Are you magic?”
“Yes.”
“Do faeries really eat little girls?”
“I do,” he says, and stands. Meg squints up at him and tilts her head.
“Are you going to eat me?”
His hand comes down, arm elongating to reach her, and his fingers brush her dark hair behind her ear. “No, child. I am not going to eat you.”
“Why?”
He shakes his head. Somewhere behind the cottage, a child screams. It sounds like Tom.
“You are going to be my wife, some day.”
Meg wrinkles her nose. “How do you know that?”
He smiles at her. His teeth glint in the sunlight, and she can see bits of flesh between them.
“Because you did not run from me.”
Meg blinks, and finds herself in her yard. Her babysitter yells at her from the back porch. Meg is sure there was no babysitter before. She looks around for Tom, but does not find him. When she enters the house, there is no evidence of a brother.
Her babysitter tuts and brushes the grass from her stockings and says it is a shame she does not have a sibling to keep her out of trouble.
Everyone else forgets. Meg doesn’t. But she pretends to.
.
As she gets older, Meg learns to stop asking questions. She doesn’t ask why there’s never any sun, or why the sky is always gray, or why people seem to vanish without a trace. She doesn’t ask why, when the rain falls, it feels like fire on her skin and peels the paint from houses.
Children around her whisper words like faerie magic and cursed as if they are the authority on the subject. Meg ignores them. Soon the whispers stop. When they are children, they are afraid of the woods. When they are older, they are not. When they grow older still, they will be again.
When they are children they ask questions. When they are teenagers they do not. When they are adults, they simply accept things. That’s what her father tells her, anyway.
There are no televisions, or radios, and there is barely electricity. It comes and goes, necessitating candles. She never sees anyone leave town, and never sees anyone move in. The place is stagnant. She accepts that, too. Or pretends to. As they grow, the other children follow their parent’s examples and do not ask what the strange noises coming from the woods are, do not ask why the crows scream with human voices, and do not question why the town seems impossibly large and small all at once.
For her part, Meg doesn’t question why the graveyards seem to grow on their own. She never sees anyone die, never sees a funeral procession, but headstones sprout from the ground like mushrooms after a heavy rain, anyway.
She simply accepts that they are there.
.
When she is twelve she sees a ring of mushrooms on the lawn and ignores it. She knows better now. She should have known better at five. Tom should have known better at nine. He was the older one, and should have listened to their father. Then she remembers that there is no Tom. She has never had a brother. She is an only child.
She brushes out her long, dark hair and lets it fall down past her waist. Her father calls her from downstairs. She is not sure what he does all day for work, and is not sure what any of the other parents do. She is not sure what she will do.
She has long since stopped asking.
Azazel offers to walk her to school. He does not notice the faerie ring. She steps around it.
.
There is a new boy at school that day, the first one in memory. None of the teachers comment, and neither do any of the students.
He says his name is Clarence, and his family has moved there from Ohio. He wears a suit and trenchcoat. Meg ignores him.
He corners her after school, during her walk home. When he smiles, his teeth are thin and pointed. His blue eyes almost glow.
“I know what you are,” she says. “You can’t fool me.” The wind blows, whipping her skirt up. She does not try to push it back down, does not try to run, does not even try to move. The boy’s movements are slow and awkward, as if his limbs are too short for him, his skin too small. She knows it is.
“It’s almost time.”
“Not yet,” she says. “Not ever. Leave me alone.”
She walks away from him, leaving the faerie king standing on the sidewalk. When she looks back over her shoulder he is gone, and there is a pile of clothes on the sidewalk. She walks back and kicks them.
The next day, another child is missing. No one notices but her. She keeps her mouth shut and walks with her head down. When she returns home, the ring of mushrooms is gone. No one in school remembers a boy named Clarence.
She wishes she could forget him, too.
.
She remembers, but she does not.
Children go missing, and no one seems to notice. She is not sure if the adults pretend, or if they really know. She catches them whispering sometimes, when they think she cannot hear them. They fear they have made the thing in the forest angry. She knows that they have not. She knows that she’s the one who has.
Fog coats the town like a blanket, hissing when it makes contact with her skin. When she walks to school the cobblestones under her feet rumble. A snake slithers from a hole in the grass, three feet long and lemon yellow. She reaches down to pet it and continues on her way.
She cannot remember what she learns in school.
.
She turns fifteen and dreams of impossibly blue eyes and needle teeth and hands like snakes. They slither over her body, tugging at her nightgown while the monster’s pink tongue slides out from between his teeth to taste her skin. The sharp points pierce her flesh, drawing blood, but even in sleep she does not scream. Instead, she looks into the eyes of the faerie king and tilts her head back to bare her neck to him.
When she wakes her skin is clear and unblemished, but she can still feel hands on her flesh and needles in her neck. Her skin feels slimy where he licked it and she rubs at it. Outside a crow screams in a voice that sounds like a human child. Something knocks on the window.
Meg rolls over and goes back to bed.
When she wakes in the morning, there is a ring of mushrooms in her back yard. Castiel stands in the middle of it, watching her, and raises his fingers to beckon her toward him.
She raises her middle finger at him in response and closes the curtains.
.
The next day it rains frogs. She kicks one on the way to school. It glares at her, and bites her ankle in response, sharp teeth drawing blood. She stomps on it and continues on her way. The adults don’t seem to notice. The children do. Some of them are covered in bite marks as well. A girl in her fifth period class carries a frog around in her purse. The teacher ignores one when it falls through the open window and hops onto her desk.
Meg tries to concentrate on her math. When the frogs don’t let up, she grabs a flashlight and some granola bars and takes to the woods.
They are as silent as they were when she was five, and Meg feels half a child again and she walks over the worn dirt paths. The hazy leaves swallow her up, hiding the house from view, and the heavy canopy above her blocks out the weak sunlight filtering toward the ground. She clicks her flashlight on.
After about an hour she stops, perches herself on a large, purple mushroom, the cap as big as her father’s favorite chair, and waits.
“I know you’re there,” she calls. A catlike creature slithers out of the brush and presses against her legs, purring. She strokes the thing’s quilllike fur, mindful of its poison sac, and stares out into the trees. The bushes rustle and the thing barks once before departing.
Castiel steps out of the trees. Meg stands and the mushroom wilts under her. All at once color flows through the world, lighting up the faded leaves and parched dirt. She sees blood around his mouth and knows that he has been feeding.
“I dreamed of you,” she blurts.
“I know,” he says. “I expected you would.”
“Don’t do that again,” Meg warns. “Stay out of my head.”
He tilts his head at her, eyes narrowing curiously. Meg stands her ground and crosses her arms over her chest.
“You have the most enchanting brown eyes, you know,” he tells her. “And the palest skin. Like bones bleached by the sun.”
She raises an eyebrow. “Go. Away.”
He gives a raspy laugh. “I cannot. This is my place. You humans came and settled in it, and tied yourself to me. I cannot go, and I will not let any of you go. Your town belongs to me now.”
She thinks of snakes crawling out of the ground and fog and children vanishing. “You ate my brother.”
“I’ve eaten many children foolish enough to wander into my woods.”
“You didn’t eat me.”
“Of course not. You are to be my wife, someday soon. I knew it when I first saw you, and you were not afraid. You will make an excellent companion.”
“No,” she says. “I won’t.”
He shrugs and sits, another mushroom appearing under him, this one the color of gold. “It is only a matter of time. You already dream of me, and of your own violation. I have never placed myself inside of your mind.”
Meg snorts and walks away, leaving him in the woods.
.
Clarence appears at school again. The teachers act as though he never left. The other students do not comment on it, and Meg cannot tell if they remember or not.
For the first time in a long while, she thinks of Tom. She cannot see him clearly in her mind, cannot remember his voice or the way he smiled, but she remembers having him. She wonders if all the children with vanished siblings remember.
She reasons that they probably don’t, and that her contact with the faerie king is the only thing letting her keep her memories.
She dreams of him often that year. He is in her bed and she is with him in the forest and there are children all around them, laughing and playing. Some nights they scream and she watches him sink his teeth into their necks and drink their blood until their eyes go dull and glassy. Some nights she dreams of the two of them in the cottage in the woods, cleaning meat from bones and fashioning clothing out of leaves and skin.
She tries to forget the dreams like she forgets schoolwork. It does not work.
.
She sneaks into the woods more often, walking the paths that should be covered by plants but are not. Sometimes she can hear other teenagers running through the brush, but she avoids them, knowing that one or more of them will never leave the trees.
On one of those nights, she stumbles on a gathering.
She finds a clearing with a bonfire in the middle, the flames reaching up to lick the velvet sky. Naked men and women dance around it, the light glowing on their skin, and Meg finds herself creeping closer.
One of the dancers breaks from the circle and takes her hand. Meg lets the woman pull her into the clearing. The woman’s hair, as bright red as the fire, blazes around her head as she forces Meg to twirl. When the woman smiles, her teeth are pointed.
Meg ignores it as more of the women descend on her, tugging at her clothing. She lets them strip her, her sensible jeans and shirt falling to the forest floor. She steps out of her shoes and allows a dark haired woman in front of her to lead her into the circle. She moves around the fire with them, dancing to the drums beating through the clearing, and feels the heat of the fire wrap around her. Sweat blooms on her skin and streams down her body, rivers of it running between her breasts and down her belly as her hair grows damp and sticks to her neck.
Another woman takes her hand and leads her as a new beat starts and the dance changes. Her blue eyes almost glow as she stares at Meg, teeth glinting in the firelight, but Meg is not afraid. She moves step for step with the dark-haired faerie and lets the beat of the drums line up with the blood singing through her body as the moon shines down on her for the first time in her life and gives the world a silver glow.
Someone begins to sing, changing the dance. It becomes faster, and Meg’s feet slam into the hard-packed earth beneath her as she twirls. She breathes in the smoky air and lets the singing and the drumbeat lull her until it is all background noise and raises her hands to the starry sky. The second faerie comes up behind her and puts a crown of ivy on her head, identical to her own, and when Meg looks around the clearing she sees men and women alike sporting them as well.
She turns again, and Castiel is there.
Meg walks into his embrace willingly and lets him move her as the drums beat faster. He whirls her under his arm as the sun begins to rise, brighter than she ever thought it could be.
The others vanish with the light. The bonfire dies and they are left alone.
“I knew you’d come to me,” he says. Meg does not move away from him. His skin feels thick and slimy under her fingers. He raises his hand and a cake appears between his fingers. “Are you hungry?”
Suddenly, her mother’s voice flashes in her mind. A fairytale from her childhood, before her mother fell to illness.
“If you are with a faerie, you cannot eat their food,” her mother whispers. “It is a trick, to keep you in their realm forever. Just one bite, and you are lost.”
She steps back from him and shivers in the early morning air. Castiel frowns at her and disappears.
She finds her clothes are gone and treks back through the forest naked as the day she was born. Halfway down a path, she finds a shawl made of shimmery green material and ignores it. A few minutes later she finds a gold one, and a few more feet down the path she finds one that’s blue.
She ignores them all and rips the crown of ivy from her head once she reaches her backyard. When she slips into her room, all three of the shawls are on the bed. She shoves them onto the floor and settles down to sleep, the sheets cool against her skin.
.
Castiel remains in school. Meg continues to ignore him.
She goes to visit her mother’s grave, and finds flowers growing all around it, their petals a dull red. Birds twitter around her, and Meg finds herself remembering other things from childhood, other stories about faeries and their small town.
“Don’t go into the woods, my children. There is a faerie king that will eat you down to your bones.”
“We were all born here and we will all die here. That is the will of the thing in the forest.”
“If they offer you food or water, do not take it. You will be trapped with them forever. Lost.”
“The faerie in the woods will only take children. Once you are sixteen, he will not touch you. Once you turn sixteen, he cannot take you.”
Meg lies back on her mother’s grave and inhales the smell of dirt. She plucks a flower from the ground and holds it to her nose, smiling.
.
She turns sixteen and takes to wearing her mother’s clothes.
Lilith Masters had always favored girly things, no matter how old she’d gotten. Her dresses and skirts flare out when Meg spins and all her shirts are trimmed with lace. Azazel does not comment on her choices, but Castiel does.
“You look like you belong in a fairytale,” he says. Meg tries to ignore him, but finds herself nodding instead.
“Thank you. They were my mother’s.”
“She knew,” he says matter of factly. “About us. About the woods.”
“Yes.”
“She warned you, when you were a child. Before she died.”
“Yes.”
He smiles. His boyish face stretches to give her a glimpse of the faerie under it. “No wonder you didn’t take the food. Did you like the gifts I left you?”
“You shouldn’t have bothered.”
He frowns at her, and she walks away, skirt swishing with her movements.
.
She can tell he’s angry when it rains frogs again the next day.
.
“In fairytales, sixteen in the age where girls fall in love and marry,” Castiel informs her. Meg ignores him and pulls her sandwich from her bag, no longer trusting anything she hasn’t made herself.
“This isn’t a fairytale,” she says tartly. She takes a bite of her sandwich and winces. The ham tastes like ashes in her mouth. But everything does, these days.
“Aren’t you? You live in a world that makes no sense.”
She shrugs. “Life doesn’t.”
“It rained frogs yesterday.”
She takes another bite of her sandwich, ignoring the way it tastes. “So it did. But the adults wouldn’t tell you that. They don’t notice these things.”
Castiel waves his hand. “They’re useless to me, so why would I care? I cannot eat them. It does not matter, anyway. You and I will marry this year.”
Meg takes another bite of her sandwich and makes a face. She sips her juice instead, but it tastes rotten in her mouth.
“You could have some of mine, if you like. I’m sure it would taste much better.”
Meg looks over and sees that his lunch is identical to hers. But the bread of his sandwich looks better, more colorful, so different from the limp, graying thing in her own hands. His juice smells fresh, almost like real apples, and she finds herself reaching forward to take it without thinking.
He smiles as she takes a sip. Meg bolts for the bathroom and kneels in front of the toilet to purge it from her body and hopes that it is all out of her.
Once she flushes away the mess, a frog climbs from the toilet and croaks at her. She smiles.
.
He follows her home that day without speaking, and a new ring of mushrooms appears in her front yard. Meg steps around it, as she always does when she sees them.
“Aren’t you going to invite me in?” he asks her when they reach her front door.
“Do you need an invite?”
“No.”
“Then no,” she tells him, and steps inside. When he does not follow, Meg slams the door in his face. She makes her way up to her room and finds the shawls still on the floor. Without knowing why, she wraps the gold one around her body and presses the material to her nose and inhales. It smells like leaves and rain.
Outside, real rain begins to fall, and Meg knows that her father will grumble about having to repaint the house again this year. She stares out her window and watches as a crow falls to the ground, feathers smoking from the acid. The radio in the corner of the room issues a rain advisory. The electricity goes out.
Blue eyes glow in the darkness from the corner.
“I see you liked my gift after all.”
She stares back at the eyes and shrugs. “It’s cold.”
Castiel emerges from the darkness and sits next to her on the bed. Meg moves her gaze back to the window and watches as the glass fogs up.
“Do you make this happen, too?” she asks. “The rain, I mean? I’ve read that rain isn’t supposed to do this. Burn things.”
“This place is mystical all on its own. Me being here just makes it all come out. The veil between worlds is thin here, and has always been. It is the reason I can move between my place and yours,” he explains. Meg nods. Like always, she accepts it, just like everyone else does. She thinks about the other faeries, the night of the bonfire, and wonders if there are other places like this, places where magic lives, places where humans should never have set foot. She wonders if there are other sleepy towns with residents who move through their days like zombies, if there are other places where missing children are forgotten and the outside world is hidden by forests.
She does not ask.
“Why children?” she asks instead.
“They move between the veil. Adults do not. Or cannot. Even I am not sure why.”
“Ah.”
She turns to face him and closes her eyes, waiting. His lips are soft on hers, and cold. She does not kiss him back, but does not pull away. When he moves away from her, she opens her eyes and sees that the rain outside her window is unchanged. Someone screams outside, caught in the deadly water. She hopes it isn’t her father.
“I thought a kiss was supposed to break a spell,” she says.
Castiel smiles at her. “Not everything you read is true.”
Something thumps against her roof.
“My mother knew about you. She was like me,” Meg says slowly. “But you did not take her.”
“She was my brother’s. He died before he could claim her. But I will not die before we wed,” he promises. “She was more accepting of Lucifer’s attentions than you are to mine. She walked in the forest with him, waiting until she was of age to be taken. She visited him often.”
Meg shrugs and remembers her father, telling her the story of how he and Lilith met. He’d told them that it had been a Friday, and they were in the same club at school. Ancient languages.
“I looked at her, and I knew,” Azazel had said. “I looked at her and it was like I saw her for the first time. I knew she would be my wife.”
Lilith had just turned sixteen. Her faerie must have died recently at that point, or she would have been lost.
“You should have been a faerie child,” Castiel tells her. “Soon you will be. I will make you one of us.”
Castiel vanishes and the rain stops. Meg gets up and closes her curtains.
.
He sits next to her in classes where she learns nothing, eats lunch with her in the cafeteria where the food tastes rotten in her mouth, and walks her home daily. Meg tries to ignore him until he grabs her hand and tugs her into the woods.
It is six months until her next birthday, and the clock is ticking.
He does not speak to her and she does not speak to him. Instead, they stroll through the woods like any other teenage couple, fingers laced together. Castiel reaches down and plucks a flower from the bushes and puts it behind her ear. She watches as he picks another one and slowly eats the electric purple petals. She does not tell him that they are poisonous. The thorns on the stem scratch at the delicate skin behind her ear.
An hour later, she’s sure that she’s the first human in the world to watch a faerie vomit.
He rips the flower from her hair afterward and spends the rest of the day sucking on candy orange blossoms that he conjures out of thin air. When he offers her one, she does not trust it. He tucks it in her hair, anyway.
When she returns home, Meg places the flower on her dresser. In the days that follow, it does not wilt.
.
He brings her other gifts as well, presents them to her at school or in her bedroom or in her yard. His ring of mushrooms becomes a permanent fixture on the grass. They change color day by day, cycling through purples and oranges and blues, a stark contrast against the brittle, brown grass.
Day after day Castiel presents her with food she will not eat, flowers she refuses to touch, and colored stones, some smaller than her fingernails. She piles them on her dresser and tries to ignore them, tries to bury herself in homework that she knows she will not remember doing and friends she does not really know. The more time passes, the more their names slip from her head, until she finds herself forgetting even her father’s.
She writes them down to help her, but when she wakes in the morning her papers are blank, and as clean as if they’d never been written on.
Her father asks her if she’s feeling alright, or if she’s falling sick, but Meg can see the fear in his eyes. Even if he does not remember Tom, she knows that he knows about the thing in the woods, knows that Lilith told him everything.
“Resist,” he advises. “Resist, and stay with me.”
She tries to. At night she tries to sleep while the scent of faerie magic fills her nose. The forest begins to speak to her in whispers, its voice filling her head and keeping her awake until she cannot tell what is a dream and what is not. The voice creeps into her bedroom, seeping through the cracks in the house, and then slides into her as well.
She catches small minutes of rest in between classes and while doing her homework, but wakes more drained than before. She sees the sidewalk under her but when she blinks it is a forest path. When she blinks again the concrete is back. The sky melts away, replaced by a canopy of leaves, and the greenery stays in place until she shakes her head and there is only gray above her. She stops eating, fearful of consuming one of his offerings without her knowledge, and feels her body begin to waste away from hunger.
Castiel knows, and smiles at her.
The more she tries to sleep, the stronger the whispers become, until the forest is screaming in her head.
Come. Come. Come home to me, it says.
She takes her father’s sleeping pills to block out the voices. They quiet when the drugs take hold, and do not return.
It rains frogs once again, and she knows Castiel is angry.
This time, she squashes as many as she can, opens her window wide to let in the cool, stale air and throws his gifts into the dirt. The flowers trail slowly on the faint breeze, spinning to the ground in bundles. The rocks bounce against the ground like hailstones. The ripe fruit bursts open and stains the dirt and smells of rotting corpses. The shawls follow, dancing in the wind, trying to find their way back into her bedroom before they, too, join her pile of rejection.
.
Castiel doesn’t speak to her again. He only watches.
He wears his child body in class and his real body in her bedroom. He crouches on her dresser and stares at her without blinking, a smile on his face. The shawls reappear, shimmery and free of dirt. Meg drapes them across her headboard and does not touch them again.
She does not speak to him, either. Her father never seems to notice he is there when he comes in to say goodnight to her.
Meg ignores his presence as she goes about her day. In the morning, she slips her nightgown off and dresses casually. At night, she undresses without hesitating and pulls her nightgown back over her head. His smile does not widen, or fall, and his eyes never leave her face. She tells herself she does not care.
She prays for the release of seventeen.
.
She visits her mother’s grave again and an idea creeps into her head without warning. Something so simple she never would have tried it, if not for her memories of being read to as a child.
It takes her a long time to find the library. The streets change as she walks down them, rotating under her feet. At first she tries to fight it, doubling back to the main square of town and taking a different route. The others around her ignore the change, as they always do, and simply go about their day. The determined ones clutch their briefcases or shopping bags and wait for the streets to turn again until they’re where they need to be. After a while, Meg gives into the circular motion and lets the town take her wherever it wants her to be, too.
The road finally stops spinning and Meg steps off it.
The library stands taller than the other buildings around it, and grayer. One of the shutters crashes to the ground as Meg stares. She looks into the window and sees a woman with straw colored hair and wide, terrified eyes staring back at her. A crow flies by, screaming, and the face vanishes.
Inside it smells of rot and there is no one else. Meg did not expect there to be.
She wanders among the stacks, ignoring the spines that have no titles. When she accidentally touches one, the shelf shakes and growls. She takes her hand away when oily black liquid begins to leak from the book and carefully steps around the growing puddle. It hisses and bubbles, eating through the carpet, then vanishes as easily as it appeared.
She searches for what feels like hours, combing through the stacks. All of the books are a faded pink, and none of them betray their names. When she picks one up at random, it vibrates in her hands and falls to the floor unopened.
“You will not find what you seek here.”
She turns and sees Castiel, back in his guise of childhood, standing between two shelves. He touches them and they turn to dust, falling away onto the stained carpet. Meg narrows her eyes.
“My mother had books on faeries. She got them here.”
“That was a long time ago,” he says. “Stop fighting it. It will be easier if you do not fight it.”
“I don’t want to go with you,” Meg whispers. Castiel creeps closer. Meg steps away until she feels her back collide with one of the shelves. He leans closer still, his mask melting away until his teeth are pointed and he is standing taller than her. His tongue snakes out from between his needle teeth and strokes her cheek and throat. His breath smells of death and blood.
Meg finds herself leaning into his stare. He brings one of his hands to her face, his long fingers curling up the length of it until his claws are buried in her hair.
“You do,” he tells her, voice low and smooth. “You know you do. Everything will be much better there. There will be color, and food, and sunlight. All the books you could ever want to read, all the beautiful clothes you could ever wear, and you will live forever. You will be my queen. All the creatures of the forest will bow to you. All the other fairies will know that you are mine and will not question you.”
She finds herself moving closer to him, drawn in by his voice.
“Whatever you wish to happen will happen. This place will be your playground to build or destroy as you wish. Reality will bend to your will. For you there will be trees with leaves that sparkle like emeralds and a sky as blue as the sea. There will be animals, deer and birds and foxes and all the small creatures of the forest that should exist here, but don’t.”
His breath changes and becomes sweeter, reminding her of pomegranates. The library melts away around her, off-white bookshelves turning into trees. Grass sprouts through the stained carpet under her feet. The roof falls down in pieces around her, the scraps turning into mushrooms, bushes, rocks, and flowers as blue sky emerges above her.
Castiel wraps one arm around her waist and pulls her flush against his body as the birds sing. Meg goes into his embrace willingly and raises her hands to his shoulders.
“Come with me,” he requests.
Meg opens her mouth to accept when a crow screams with her brother’s voice. Startled, she jumps and turns and finds the forest gone. Breathing hard she goes to face her faerie and finds her hands clutching empty air. The library is empty, wallpaper peeling away to reveal the water stains underneath. There are holes in the carpet, exposing the concreate foundation. The smell of rot grows stronger.
She waits for the books to reappear. When they do not, she goes outside and waits for the street to turn back around again. The building vanishes behind her and she is not sure if it was ever there.
.
The trees begin to whisper to her again, speaking whenever she walks around town. This time she listens, and steps into their embrace. The voices direct her down small, worn paths that twist deep into the forest, until she finds a run-down cottage next to a dry lake. The branches and thorns on the paths dig into her leggings and the ruffled skirt of the short, white dress she wears, but do not tear the material away. She rubs her bare arms and shivers before walking toward it.
Castiel waits for her in the overgrown yard, seated on a tree stump. Meg carefully opens the rusted gate, steps through, and closes it again. It does not creak. Castiel simply smiles and holds his hand out toward her, waiting.
She takes his hand and lets him pull her into his lap. He winds his arms around her waist and she snakes hers around his neck, holding on. He smiles up at her, and she sees rows of bright white needles in his mouth, but is not afraid.
“Let me show you,” he offers. “Let me show you what it will be like, when you are mine.”
Meg feels her heart hammering against her ribcage. The forest quiets around her, and time seems to slow down. The broken down cottage and the forest melt away, until he is the only thing she is certain is real.
She gives a small nod. Castiel’s arms tighten around her waist.
“Close your eyes,” he whispers. Meg obeys and feels warmth flow through her body for a moment, followed by a burning cold. She tightens her grip on his neck and grits her teeth to keep from screaming.
She sits still in Castiel’s lap, clinging to his neck as the cold ebbs away and feels bright, real sunlight on her skin. His arms leave her waist and brush her hair behind her ears, his touch gentle.
“Open your eyes, Meg, and see all that will be yours.”
She opens her eyes and the world is changed.
The cottage stands new in front of her and crystal blue water moves lazily in the lake. The grass under her feet is green and smells invitingly of earth. The forest around them is full of life, and when Meg looks she sees small birds and rabbits moving in the trees. The rabbits all have soft, brown fur and bright eyes. Sweet songs flow from the birds around her, and she feels it in her bones that none of them have ever screamed a human scream.
Without hesitation she slides from his lap, slips out of her shoes, and twirls in place, skirt flaring out around her. The ground under her is soft and the sun shines down from high above, bringing warmth into her body. She feels dirt squish between her toes and laughs.
Castiel reaches out to wrap his hands around her waist, stopping her spinning, and stretches his arm out in front of her, fingers spread wide and palm facing the sky. He gives a long, low whistle, summoning a butterfly.
It lands on his long fingers and stays there as he draws the creature up in front of her face. Meg stares at the insect she’s only read about in books and resists the urge to touch it, fearful of scaring it away.
Castiel presses his lips close to her ear. “Put your hand out.”
She does, and the butterfly crawls across his fingers and onto hers, purple wings opening and closing lazily. They stand there in silence, Castiel’s weight solid against her back, until the butterfly flits lazily into the forest.
“They’re amazing,” Meg breathes. “This place is…it’s so alive.”
Castiel rubs his cheek against hers. “You haven’t seen all of it yet.” He releases his grip on her waist and slides his hand down to tangle his fingers with her own. She squeezes their fingers together.
“Show me.”
“Anything you want.”
.
He takes her through the fields behind the house where she heard children playing when she was young. The grass grows higher than her waist, hiding bugs and snakes and small animals from view, and Meg runs through it as the wind blows over them, arms out and a smile on her face. The wind parts the grass, revealing flowers, and she finds herself stooping down to pick them and swallowed up by the grass when the wind stills and the stalks snap back into place.
She stands and looks for Castiel, lost in an ocean of grass with flowers in her arms, and sees him hovering cross-legged above the stalks. His clothes have changed, his human disguise shed in favor of only loose, brown pants. She takes in the sight of his bare chest and shrinks back slightly, having never imagined that he could we well-muscled under his heavy layers of human clothes.
He reaches down to take her hands. She drops her flowers and reaches for him, too, laces their fingers together and laughs when he pulls her above the grass to stand on the air. She kicks her feet for a moment, disoriented, until they seem to rest on something solid.
“You can fly?” she asks dumbly. “You don’t have wings.”
“I have magic,” he replies.
She laughs and lets him spin her above the grass, intoxicated by the scents and sights around her. Her dreams about him feel far away despite happening only a year ago, and when he sets her back down on the grass and leads her toward the cottage, she follows.
A deer steps into their path before they reach the door and Meg freezes, terrified, but relaxes when she sees it is only an ordinary animal. The deer steps forward shyly, blinking at her with two eyes instead of the fifteen she is used to seeing, and Meg gently stretches her hand out, palm facing the animal. The deer sniffs her for a moment and steps forward, allowing Meg to pet it.
Castiel gives a sharp whistle and the deer bolts into the woods. The cottage door opens without prompting and he leads Meg inside.
The interior is cozy, the wooden floor covered in thin, patterned rugs made of different shades of blue. There are overstuffed chairs and couches piled with quilts and knitted blankets and a wooden table in the middle of the room, large enough to comfortably seat twelve people.
Above her there are bones hanging from the ceiling, swaying slightly in the breeze from the open window. She reaches out to touch the small things, fear growing in her belly, before Castiel takes her hand and draws it down, away from them.
“Don’t think about it yet,” he whispers. “Someday, in the far future, those will seem normal to you. I promise, Meg.”
She ignores the bones and turns to the left, stepping away from him when she sees another door. Castiel grabs her hand and pulls her back.
“Is that where you eat them?” she asks, suddenly curious. Castiel shakes his head.
“That is where I sleep,” he tells her. “In there is our marriage bed.”
She shrinks away from the door, but there is no place to go aside from back into his arms. “Take me home.”
“We haven’t even been in the woods yet,” he protests. “Would you like to learn to swim? There is nothing in the water here that will eat you.”
Meg hesitates and remembers the crystal clear lake outside, so different from the brownish sludge in the small lake just outside of town where teenagers and adults alike have been known to vanish, their broken bones washing up days later, teeth marks large and fresh on them. She imagines the feeling of being immersed completely in water, floating under the sun, and finds her resolve to leave weakening.
Castiel must feel it, too, because he leads her from the cottage and to the edge of the lake. Meg kicks off her shoes again and nervously sticks her toe into the water, drawing it back when something leaps out.
“It’s just a fish,” Castiel soothes from behind her. “They will not hurt you.”
She turns and sees him standing nude in the sunlight, his pants in a pile at his feet, and turns away quickly. He laughs behind her and walks fearlessly into the water until it’s lapping at his chest and opens his arms for her.
Meg hesitates and wades into her ankles, rolling her leggings up to her knees so they are hidden by the dress. Her feet sink into the sand and the water, warmed by the sunlight, rolls pleasantly over her skin. Still, she waits for a few moments before venturing deeper, fearful of things that could be lurking in the water. Castiel keeps his eyes locked on her as she wades out to her waist. The water soaks into her clothes, making them heavier, but she does not mind. Castiel splashes through the lake and takes her hands in his to draw her in deeper. His fingers are cold in hers, but she clings to him, anyway, presses her body against his and kicks her feet to stay afloat.
Castiel laughs and pulls away from her. “You will not drown. I will hold you.”
Oddly enough, she trusts that he will not let her die, and lets Castiel let go of her hands and show her how to move so she will not drown. She copies his movements until she can keep herself afloat and dive beneath the water. Small fish the color of jewels swim with her, lightly slapping her with their fins and nibbling at her toes. She turns underwater to face the sun, hair floating all around her face, and lets herself float upward on her back.
Castiel takes her in his arms and carries her back to shore, laying her on the grass. He stretches out beside her, propped up on his elbow, and gently traces the curve of her cheek with one long finger. “It could be like this, always, if you wished it. You and I, together, in the sunlight. There would be no more gray cloud above you or gray cement below you. Only greenery and warmth. Flowers and sunlight and anything you could ever want.”
Meg sighs. “Why couldn’t you have done this in the beginning, instead of stalking me like some creeper?”
His eyebrows draw together in confusion before he lowers his eyes for a moment, and Meg swears she can see the hint of a blush spreading over his cheeks. “I did not know how courting worked. My sisters had to correct some of my methods.”
“Sisters?”
“Anna and Hael,” he explains. “You met them at the bonfire. Anna has red hair, and Hael looks much like I do. We are twins, you see. You will meet them again.”
Meg closes her eyes and breathes deeply, drawing the warm, rich air into her lungs. “Will I have to eat children as well?”
“Yes,” Castiel tells her. “But you will not feel guilty, after a time. Without them, we would die, all us fair folk. Their life gives us life. When we eat their flesh, we gain every year that child might have lived.”
Meg rolls onto her side. The wind blows, ruffling the grass around her and drying the water on her skin. Castiel snuggles down beside her, his arm around her waist.
“You will not mind it so much, I promise. Not when it means an eternity in the sun,” he promises. “Sleep now.”
The birds begin to tweet a lullaby around her, lulling Meg into unconsciousness. She follows their songs, warm in the sunlight and comfortable on the soft grass.
When she wakes it is to muted colors and cold, stale air. She breathes it in and lets it settle, heavy, in her lungs. The grass under her is so pale it is nearly gray, and feels like slime under her fingers. She rolls over onto her back and stares at the dirty gray clouds for a moment before she pushes herself up on her elbows and sees the ring of beige mushrooms around her body.
She turns again and sees her father in the doorway of their kitchen. He stares at her for a long moment, eyes wide and sad, before he disappears inside. Meg follows him in, stepping gingerly around the mushrooms so as not to break the circle.
“Don’t go,” he says when she steps inside. “I don’t want to forget you.”
She hugs her father tightly and lets him pet her hair like he did when she was a child and promised to never go into the woods.
“I won’t,” she lies.
.
Castiel doesn’t return the next day.
Meg wraps herself in the gold shawl and walks toward the lake just outside of town. Mice skitter across her path, glaring at her. One of them hops onto her foot, its six eyes fixed on her face. She gently shakes it off and keeps walking, pausing for a moment at the iron gates that signal the entrance to town.
She’s never been farther than the lake, and she doesn’t think anyone else has, either. The moment she steps through the gate, a heavy feeling settles in her gut, like worms twisting around one another. Her skin hums with each step, limbs tingling as though they are asleep, but she presses onward, even as her feet grow heavy and hard to lift.
It takes an hour to reach the lake. The path to it is well worn, dirt flattened by thousands of pairs of feet, and hard under her thin shoes. She pulls her shawl around her tighter and seats herself at the edge of it, close enough that the murky brown water brushes her bare legs. The gray-brown scum that coats the lake dances as she gently runs her fingers through it, sending ripples through the water.
The creature from the lake emerges, parting the layer of scum and sending the lukewarm water up over her waist in a wave, soaking her dress. It towers above her, a dirty brown, snakelike mass with large, hard scales and five inch, yellowish teeth. She stares at the moss and plants clinging to its body and puts her hand out toward it, waiting.
The creature lowers itself to her level and sniffs her hand with a grapefruit-sized nostril before pressing its slimy nose into her open palm. She pets it for a moment, curious, and the creature settles its large head in her lap, pushing her further into the dirty sand, purring loudly. Meg scratches behind the thing’s horns, dislodging bits of plant matter from in between its scales, not stopping even when she hears another pair of footsteps.
“I see you’ve met my pet.”
Meg continues to stroke the creature as another person settles next to her in the sand. The sea monster lets out another rumbling purr at the smell of the other body. Meg turns to face the owner of the voice and nods politely.
“Hael, yes?” she asks. The other faerie nods back and begins running her fingers through the water, pushing aside clumps of peat and refuse. A femur bobs to the surface, and Meg watches Hael neatly snap the bone in half and suck the marrow out. “This is how you eat?”
Hael nods again. “Unlike Castiel, I have no reservations about spending time in the human realm, or in taking adults. You have to eat more of them to equal a child, of course, but in the end it does not matter. The only trouble is that they are remembered if they are eaten in this realm.”
Meg hums and returns to petting the monster. “Your pet is quite friendly.”
Hael clicks the two pieces of bone together. The monster slides from Meg’s lap and into its master’s, mouth opening. Meg watches Hael place the bones on its thick, gray tongue and smile down at it.
“Are you going to marry him or aren’t you?” Hael asks quietly.
Meg shrugs. “I haven’t decided yet.”
Hael waves her hand and the monster turns and slips back into the water, taking the tide with it. Meg brushes away the pond scum clinging to her legs as Hael stands.
“You should make your choice soon,” the faerie tells her. “There isn’t much time before you can’t move between the veil anymore.”
Meg stays silent. Hael walks into the water and vanishes beneath the layer of scum without leaving a ripple behind. The monster appears again, breeching for a moment to snatch a crow out of the air before slamming back into the water. Meg stays at the lake until the ripples from the creature fade and the lake is still again. Shivering, she clutches her shawl tighter.
A crow lands on her knee and tilts its head to the side. When it opens its mouth, it screams in her brother’s voice.
She reaches out and snaps its neck. The crow falls to the sand and she throws it into the lake for the monster. It floats on the layer of scum for a moment before sinking into the depths.
The sun falls and Meg heads for home, limbs heavy. Energy flows through her as soon as she steps through the ancient iron gate. She waits for the street to rotate toward her before she steps on it, heading for home. The buildings rise around her, gray and imposing, and she watches a world of washed-out colors flash by her as the street moves, the gold shawl around her body the only point of real, shining color.
Her father is not home when she steps off the street. All the lights in her home are off, as if he did not expect her to return, either. She wonders if he knows what she’s going to do, or if their electricity has simply gone out again. She lights a candle when she enters the house, not wanting to know the answer.
Castiel is in her bed, waiting for her. She blows the candle out and settles in next to him. Moonlight filters through her open curtains, giving the space a silver glow, illumining it enough that she can just barely see his body.
“Next week you turn seventeen,” he says. Meg nods a yes to him, and then remembers that he cannot see her.
“Yes.”
“You could stay here,” he muses. “In the gray. Get a job, just like your father, grow up and marry, have a child you warn to stay out of the woods. Once I leave you, and you are no longer able to move between the worlds, you will belong to this one completely. You will be mostly normal. A local boy will notice you, as Azazel noticed Lilith. Life will go on.”
“And you?”
He shrugs next to her. Meg feels his shoulders move as he does.
“I suppose I shall continue as I have been. Living in the faerie realm, venturing forth to consume children and cause general mischief. Perhaps your children will be one of the ones I eat. I may find a companion that will suit me in time. Or perhaps not. Even I do not know the future.”
Meg grunts softly and pulls her shawl around her tightly.
She closes her eyes and thinks of soft, green grass below her feet and the sight of rich blue skies above her and the feeling of being enveloped in clean, fresh water. She remembers animals with two eyes and normal proportions and a butterfly landing in her palm.
She rolls onto her side to face Castiel and feels certainty bubble in her, the same certainty that she’s sure he felt years ago, when she was a child clutching a skull to her breast, and knows what she will do.
“Yes,” she breathes. “I will marry you.”
He turns to face her, too, and she can almost feel his smile.
“Kiss me,” he requests. She does, softly pressing her lips to his. He shifts her onto her back and straddles her waist, face hovering inches from hers. Meg clutches her shawl tighter.
“How do I…?”
He shushes her and presses his wrist to her mouth. She feels something wet against her lips and instinctively parts them, pulling away to sink back into her pillow when she tastes blood. Castiel presses his wrist down harder, insistent.
“Drink, Meg,” he whispers. “Drink, and come with me, and live forever.”
Meg takes a deep breath and parts her lips. His blood flows into her mouth and down her throat. After a moment she seals her lips against the wound and drinks.
His blood tastes of fresh air and sunshine, of rich, spring grass and honeysuckle. It flows smoothly down her throat like a fine wine. Warmth pools in her belly and spreads outward, rushing through her veins until it reaches the very tips of her fingers. Her mouth follows his wrist when he removes it from her lips, desperate for more of his blood. Her skin begins to hum and his blue eyes glow above her. Castiel lowers his face to hers once more and grins, showing off his needle teeth.
“Kiss me,” she growls.
He does, bringing his mouth down roughly against hers. His sharp teeth dig into her lip, bringing her own blood bubbling to the surface. She moans when Castiel sucks on it, drawing her blood into his mouth, and feels the world begin to spin around her.
“Do you love me?” Castiel asks when he pulls away. Meg stares up at his smile and sees her blood painting his teeth. His eyes glow down at her, wide with hope. Static begins to crackle at the edge of her vision, the bleached colors of her room blurring together as it spins. Her chest begins to burn and her heart beats frantically against her ribcage.
His eyes look like the sky.
“Yes,” she breathes. His smile grows wider.
And then her world turns black.