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“Alright, so are we just walking home?” Tyranny asked with a yawn, but Wicander was barely listening.
Around them, the cavern sung with life. Someone had lit a fire and fairies were beginning to dance about it. The firelight bounced off the crystals and shone on the fairies’ wings, sending multicolored motes and shadows flitting about, like the cave itself was dancing. The members of Wicander’s own little crew were saying their goodbyes or settling in for the night. Thaisha and Occtis were hugging, Azune and Bolaire were having a secretive political conversation, and Julien had found a corner to sulk in. Wick knew his cue: this is where he and Tyranny made their way back to the Villa Aurora, to his grandmother's ever-tightening embrace, and the marble halls he had spent his whole life in, that now seemed flimsier than straw.
Despite himself, he envied the travelers. At least, away from the city, no one expected much of him: he could cry and fail and bumble about, and yes, there was always the threat of being ambushed in a ditch where no one would find him, but he was beginning to think that a friendlier fate then what he might find here.
He kept thinking of the woman at the manor. What had Primus called her? Had he even said her name? Her face was already fading from his memory, but what rang in his mind, clear as day, was the cracking of her bones as he left, and Primus’s barking, “back to work!”
It had been so easy. He had half-expected it would be a test, that she would disappear in a puff of smoke, and Primus would laugh, and his grandmother would appear and say that he passed the test. But the knife had cut true. He had barely flicked his wrist, and her throat had spilled like it was a slice of cake, sending red berry-filling down her cream-white neck.
Except it didn't smell like cake.
“Wick!” Tyranny pulled his hair. “Dude, what is your problem?”
“I’m sorry, I'm sorry. Did you say something?”
She was looking at him with genuine concern. “Yeah, like twelve things. We have to get home, but if you're this spacy, maybe we just cut our losses and run away again.”
“No, no, I'm fine.” He cleared his throat. “Thank you, Tyranny.”
On the other side of the cavern, Thimble was talking animatedly to that antlered fey woman– Tremolo, or something– surrounded by twinkling green sparkles.
She took his arm with a little more force than was necessary and started leading him out, “okay, well Thaisha exploded your carriage, so I guess we're just walking? And are we just going to say you ran off to the Tachonis house and I went looking for you, or–”
“Actually, Tyranny, you go back by yourself.”
She stopped walking. “What?”
“Or you can stay here. I just– I think I need to talk to Thimble, for a moment.” He swallowed, and looked at her. “If that's alright.”
“Uhh, yeah. Sure, okay,” she said, but didn't move for a second longer. “I'll… go bother Julien, I guess.”
“I'll be right back. It'll just be a minute!” Wick called after her. He turned his attention back to Thimble, waiting for an opening in the conversation, but by that point, two other fairies had flown over to join. He sighed and walked over.
Thimble was laughing at something Tremolo had said in another language, and she didn't notice when Wick cleared his throat.
“Excuse me,” he said with a little more force than he had intended. The fairies stopped chattering and looked at him.
“Thimble, could I speak to you for a moment?”
“Sure,” she cocked her head at him, but then waved to the fairies and flew up to his height. “What’s going on?”
“Oh, it's nothing, it's just…” he looked at her, four inches tall again, but so completely sure of herself. He thought of the woman again, of Primus Tachonis. He remembered how it felt to stand a foot from that man, to feel the power radiating from him, in his own house. To bargain for his life with a man who could kill him with a finger.
“What is it, man?” She looked at him expectantly.
“I, um. I was wondering if you could teach me how to fly.”
Thimble stared for a moment, and then burst into laughter.
Wick felt his face warming, even though he had expected that. “Forget it, it was stupid to ask. Never mind. I'll go.”
She giggled, “no, no, it's okay. It's just– what do you mean, teach you?”
Wick took a breath. “Remember, in the forest, when I had… wings?”
Thimble looked at him like he was stupid. “Yuh-huh.”
“Well, I hadn't really tried to… do it. It just happened. But then, as soon as I realized what was happening, I fell.”
“Well, mine don't go away just by thinking about them.” Thimble said matter-of-factly.
“No, I know. I uh… I made them go away. I saw what was happening, and I got scared, so I wished they weren't there anymore, and then I think that's why it stopped.
Thimble sniffed. “Mmkay, then just wish for them to keep being there.”
“Well, yes. It's more… while they're there, that I'm not sure what to do.”
Thimble looked at him for a moment, and then she smiled. “Okay. I can help. Or try to.”
Wick was tired, and scared, and embarrassed, but he tried to offer her the most earnest smile he could muster. “Thank you.”
“Well, let’s not do it here,” she said, glancing around, “you could impale yourself and leak your weird angel blood everywhere.”
“Impale mys– I-I wouldn't be going that fast, right?”
She looked at him with that wicked twinkle in her eye. “Sure.”
Wick wondered distantly if this was a bad idea. He followed her out of the cavern and to the freshly-planted cherry tree. They weren't immediately in the city, but still, the open air had him looking over his shoulder.
“I, uh… I think I glowed a bit, when it happened, last time. Do you think it'll attract attention?”
Thimble smirked. “I glow all the time, and it’s been fine. Besides, we’re on the Miller’s Road, I think, technically. You're protected.” She whispered the last word and stretched it out for dramatic effect. Wick would have questioned her theatrics, but she, of all people, had earned her aplomb, and then some.
“All right, then.”
“Okay.” She rubbed her hands together. “If you can make them go away, you know how to make them come, right?”
“Right,” Wick lied.
Thimble raised her eyebrows. “Well, that would be step one.”
“Right.”
Wick took a deep breath. He thought back to the night in the forest: he hadn't willed his wings to appear then, they had came to him in a time of need. Did he need to simulate danger for them to save him? He imagined it, that he was right on the edge of a cliff, and he needed to save someone… Tyranny, maybe, was hanging off a cliff, and she was holding on, but his hand was slipping, so his wings came out again. Just like that.
He opened one eye. His feet were fixed to the ground like tree trunks. All he had succeeded in was clenching his entire body.
“You look like you're taking a shit.” Thimble said.
“Well how do you do it?” He retorted instinctively, before realizing how stupid that question was.
“I told you, they're just there.” She flipped upside down mid-air, as if to demonstrate. “It's like a limb.”
He sighed, and then remembered how she had carried Teor and Cyd. She’d lost her wings when she turned big, obviously. It had been a long day.
“Well, they weren't, earlier, right?”
“Huh?”
“They weren't there, earlier, when you turned normal-sized?”
She flipped back upwards, quickly, and clenched her little jaw. “Normal-sized? You were doing so good.”
“That’s not– I just– I’m sorry. Please don’t throw rocks at me again.”
She squinted, “well, now that you mention it…”
“I said I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it like that.”
She stayed hovering an inch away from his nose for a moment longer, and then backed away. “Yeah, I’m just screwing with you. But you’re right, I guess I can turn them on and off.”
Thimble seemed to think for a minute longer, and then Wick blinked, and where she had been flying, she stood, just a few inches shorter than him. He hadn’t gotten a good look at her, earlier, but now he could see all of the details of her face and clothes: her freckles, the embroidery on her clothes, the winking light of her eyes. She radiated power, just like Primus, but in an almost opposite way. Primus had seemed like a force of destruction, like he was holding life in his hands, and he could simply drop it, if he felt like it. Standing alive, his presence, felt like a privilege. Thimble felt like a force of that life. He could tell she had once been immortal, maybe she still was: he couldn’t imagine her ever dying. Primus had made him feel small and fragile, but Thimble made him feel strong and full of energy and alive. He felt like sprinting through the fields and swimming the river and shouting from the highest mountain.
But more than anything, he wanted a piece of that power. If he was going to face Primus again, he wanted to do it with Thimble’s kind of power.
“Let’s do it together,” she said. “Should we count to three?”
“Wait, do what?” He blinked.
“Make our wings, idiot.”
Our wings.
“How? Just like–”
“Just do it. You’ve done it before, you can do it again. It’s like me: I know they’re there. Just bring them back.”
He looked at her glowing green eyes. “All right.”
“Three, two, one–”
Casting spells required books and components and incantations, but there was always a moment of release, when the energy bubbling had no where to go but out. Wick tried to cling to the Thimble’s energy, to release that. He pictured the light from her eyes, the sparkles around her earlier, the life of the fairy cavern, and he tried to direct it into himself. But it slipped away from him, like he was trying to catch a shadow. It wasn’t his energy to channel.
“Yeah, I didn’t really think that would work,” Thimble said, fluttering back at eye-level, her usual size, with her arms crossed. Wick remained wingless. If anything, he felt heavier than before.
“Hey, I thought you believed in me!”
She giggled, “I never said that.”
“Then why did you come out here with me?”
She shrugged her stupid little fairy shoulders. “I don’t know, you asked. Why did you ask in the first place?”
“Because…” He blanched. “Because you’re leaving, and Teor’s… gone, and I’m scared. I don’t really know what my place will be, here in the city, and… I don’t know, I just wanted to be sure of myself, like you two. I think I’m going to need all the tools at my disposal, so if I can’t even access my own… power, then…”
Thimble hovered lower, so he was looking down at her, and flew closer, so he could see her in full. “Okay. That’s smart, Wick.”
“Thank you,” he said, incredulous at the compliment.
“Okay, I do have a Plan C.”
“What is it?”
“We’re gonna push you off a cliff.”
“I don’t like that plan.”
“Too bad. Come on.” She buzzed off down the Miller’s Road.
“Hey, wait a minute!” He called, tripping as he followed.
She didn’t answer. She wasn’t glowing anymore, and the farther they got from the glistening river, the more the night swallowed her. He could only track a flash of movement here, or there, and soon he was running to keep up. He called her name, and she didn’t answer.
So he stopped. He didn’t have to follow her, especially when he was fairly sure she was trying to bait him into running off a cliff. He huffed, and summoned a globule of light.
It spilled over the scene around him, scaring a small rodent, which he whispered an apology to. Thimble had led him, sure enough, to the top of a hill, with a rock on the edge that led to a steep drop-off. He found her, sitting in a branch of a small tree, dangling her feet over the edge.
“That was not nice.” Wick said firmly.
She leapt off the branch, fell for a second, and then swooped up like a bird. “Just like that. Do it just like that.”
He continued glaring at her. She cocked her head, still smirking, and flew down to the rock.
Tentatively, he walked forward. The light in his hand made everything outside it’s range see even darker, so the landing beyond the cliff was in completely darkness. He had no idea how far it was. He saw Thimble, not flying but standing next to him on the stone, her winged tucked behind her back.
Wicander jumped off into the dark.
He was still clinging to his little handful of light, and as his feet left the rock, he felt it thrum, like the life of the fairy cave, like Thimble’s energy, earlier, but also different. This time, it felt like it was his. It was the same energy he pulled his spells from, his energy, except he hadn’t brought it up by an incantation or anything. It was just there.
He could feel them against the wind. It was like they had always been there, like limbs that had been numb, and he was suddenly regaining control of. When he looked over his shoulder, he saw them: great white eagle’s wings, shining against the night with the same light that was in his hand.
Testingly, he tried moving them a little, and he ended up flapping them with so much force he hurled himself six feet backwards.
Behind him, he heard a shout, and there was Thimble, swooping alongside him, whooping with glee.
“You’re doing it!” She yelled against the night. “You’re flying!”
Wick thought if he opened his mouth he would vomit. Now that he was more vertical, he wasn’t catching the wind anymore, and realized quickly that he was falling.
“Flap your wings!” She screamed. “Push the air away, like you’re swimming!”
He dove his head forward, trying desperately to avoid spiraling backwards, and tried to flap them again. This time, he watched the world shrink a little bit before him, as his pushed himself straight upwards.
Thimble whooped again.
Wick tried to buck himself upwards, just slightly, so he could go up and forwards at the same time, but he in flaring his wings, he caught a gust of wind that sent him hurting diagonally towards the ground.
“UP! UP! SWOOP UP!” Thimble yelled distantly, but it was too late. Wick was heading for a tree, and in trying to veer away, ended up spinning over himself and crashing gracelessly into the ground.
When his vision blinked back, Thimble was standing on his chest, looking up at his face, and he could feel the pain swallowing towards him. His left wing had taken the brunt of the force, and he was now left to compartmentalize pain from an appendage he wasn’t used to feeling at all. It felt like the muscle at the top of his wing was on fire from the inside out.
“That was so good!” Thimble yelled, an inch from his ear. He swatted weakly at her.
And then, as soon as the pain had came, it dissipated, as Wick felt his wings fold back into himself, and his shoulders fell a few inches to the ground.
“Aaauughh,” he said eloquently.
Thimble giggled, “get up, you big loaf. Heal yourself or whatever.”
Wick gathered the energy to mend a wound, but found there wasn't one to mend. The pain had subsided to a sort of stasis, like he had just hit his head and was waiting for the sensation to travel.
As he sat up on his elbows, the stasis-feeling seemed to grow somehow stronger. It wasn't pain, but something else, bubbling below the surface. His energy, or his magic, or his something, was waking up. It was eager.
Wick took a deep breath and clambered to his feet. He started to brush the dirt off himself absentmindedly, and his hand caught a speck of the woman’s blood, dried and encrusted onto his robes.
His first thought was what his grandmother would say when he stumbled back to the Villa, without a carriage, covered in dirt and blood.
His second thought was that that was a horrible first thought to have.
Wick sniffed, “well, uh. I suppose I'll go get Tyranny, and we'll be on our way. Thank you, Thimble.”
“Mhm,” said the pixie. “Good luck out there.”
“Thank you. I’d wish you some in return, but I don't think you need it.”
He expected her to laugh, or say something about fairies have their ways, but instead she just looked sad. For the first time, it dawned on him that for all her confidence and bravado, she had probably been scared too, lately.
She just hadn't cared.
“Hey,” she called.
“Yes?”
He wished that it wasn't so dark, and she wasn't so small, and he could see her face better and guess what she was thinking.
“Your wings came out before you jumped,” she said.