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WISH I WERE DREAMING

Rachel

W hen we were young, Darina used to struggle separating her imagination from reality. Maybe that's why I never had that issue, firmly anchored in the real world, so that I could just tell her if something was real or not. Most kids have imaginary friends. Not me. And yet, now, at twenty-four, I wish I could make myself believe I was making up this whole thing. That it was all a dream.

Never mind that I usually dream of fresh linens, neat spreadsheets, and discount aisles full of cheese.

Ben's not really dead. My sister isn't really missing. There isn't a blond fairy prince in a red and gold doublet trying to convince me to drive my car off the Golden Gate Bridge.

"I can't do that. I can't ," I repeat. "There's railing there for a very good reason. So people don't fall seven hundred feet and die after a splash."

He waves lazily towards the side of the road, and to my utter shock, the railing just vanishes.

That's…impossible.

I blink.

So many impossible things have happened in the last hour, my head's spinning. For one, we're parked here and no one seems to see us.

"I'd do it myself," the man drawls, "But I never learned to drive your iron carts. You're the one who wanted to be taken to your sister. If you'd rather I lead you to safety as originally planned, by all means, please let me know."

I narrow my eyes suspiciously. Is he manipulating me? Making me do this, so I opt for the safer option myself? It sounds like something Darina would do.

"Is this the only way to get to my sister?"

"We could take the pathfinders ways, but they're easily tracked—not to mention, far more unpleasant than a personal portal." The man sighs. "One would think you'd be flattered. Do you realize few people can create doorways between worlds at all? Indeed, I'd say on your whole little planet, there's likely no more than three?—"

Oh, for god's sake, am I going to have to listen to this guy singing his own praises now? I hit the accelerator, shutting my eyes.

And then I scream.

Because we're falling.

Oh my god, we're falling . What have I done? I'm going to die. I'm going to die at twenty-four, a month before my wedding, which couldn't have happened anyway because my groom is dead and my sister is mostly dead and I'm going to?—

The sense of free-floating ends as we crash so hard my teeth bite into my lip, leaving me with the coppery taste of blood.

When my eyes open, I'm in the middle of a field too green, under a sky too colorful, and there's no buildings, no structures for miles any which way I look. It's beautiful here, but wrong, somehow. I can't quite make sense of a place like this existing .

"Welcome to Ilvaris, my lady."

"Ilvaris," I repeat.

My car is a sore spot in this landscape. So am I, in my jeans and sage green polyester, silk-feel blouse.

Somehow, I'm the one out of place now, when moments before, it was the fairy prince in red and gold who seemed thoroughly ridiculous.

"We're in the Hollow, the island of the high queen. Your sister."

Right. The queen thing. I didn't even get to address it; my priority was getting to Darina.

"How is my sister queen ? That makes no sense. And what's your name, by the way? I can't keep thinking of you as the fairy prince. I bet you're not even a prince, if Darina sent you like an errand boy."

"I am, in fact. How does one get out of this contraption?" he asks, glaring down at the seatbelt I insisted he put on.

I didn't want to get arrested in San Francisco traffic and try to explain this guy's deal to the police. I had to click the belt into place; I undo it now.

"You're what?" I ask, freeing him from the belt, and then opening his door.

We both leave the car, and my god, the air smells so sweet, and fresh, and clear. My family's big on hiking, so we've been away from immediate signs of civilization on a regular basis, but this is different.

Pure.

"A prince. Though I'd gladly be an errand boy if the queen so wishes." He shrugs. "And you may call me Valdred."

Right; the fairy called him Dread, earlier. He said he didn't like it; and that must be true given the fact that he murdered her shortly thereafter.

"As for your sister, she came by it as most rulers do: by right of blood."

He sets off in the direction of the mountains rather than the plains, so he must know where he's going.

As we walk, me half running to catch up with his quick, long steps, he tells me…well, a fairy tale. There's a queen, and a war, and a sleeping princess frozen in a curse. Except that princess is my sister, and the humans who awoke her are my parents. It's our family history, mixed with his world's myth and legends. I don't want to believe a word of it. There's still a faint hope I'm imagining it all.

But I'm the boring Thorn. I don't have the creativity to imagine anything half so wild.

When he gets to the part where Darina stabbed her own heart for a stranger he calls her brother, her blood, my chest constricts in horror…and something else.

Something a little nastier, darker, meaner.

Because in truth? I don't think she'd do that for me. Me, who she's called family for twenty-four years.

The Darina I know may love me in her own way, but not like that. Never like that. Fiercely. More than herself.

"Is that all?"

Valdred sighs. "All? Do you need the entire history of every event which occurred in Ilvaris?" I suppose that wasn’t a good question to ask someone who can't lie.

"I meant, is that all about the stuff I should know about. My sister’s history."

His jaw tightens, and I know I have him. He's hiding something.

"It's all you should hear from me." Before I can push, he strides forward. "Come. I see a circle. It should transport us to the keep."

The circle, it turns out, is a trail of little mushrooms, white, except for dark blue pustules running along their heads and steams, arranged in a perfect circle in the patch of grass.

"Wait, so fairy circles are real?"

"Of course." He shrugs. "Why wouldn't they be?"

"Though I don't recommend you try one unaccompanied. They can be rather mischievous, unless you know their secrets."

The prince offers me his hand.

I already drove off a bridge with him. What's a little patch of mushrooms?