The Fairy Portal Second Edition

Chapter Four

While their mom had been willing to let them out for a 'talk' with their grandma, the grounding still stood, and the next day was beautiful and sunny and crisp and they were stuck inside. With enough pestering, she finally agreed to let Blake and Emily into the backyard, under the condition that they rake the leaves and clean the gutters.

"Switching yard time for manual labor," Emily muttered, but she was smiling. She was just glad to be in the sun, too. Ever since the Fair Folk had followed them home, they'd both been itchy indoors, twitchy and jumpy, like static electricity wouldn't stop cracking underneath their skin. With Tassie's help, it had been a little easier for Blake last night, but Emily was still struggling, and she was everywhere once they went outside: on the roof cleaning one gutter, running into the garage to get trash bags, raking a small patch of grass and then abandoning it to clean the next gutter. Blake knocked at the lower hanging branches of the backyard trees with a stick to knock off any excess leaves as Emily ran around. Tassie was still with them, flitting around in the falling leaves, dancing off the streaks of sunshine filtering through. Her singing was lilting and beautiful, much like the Merrow's, but without the eerie quality that had drawn Blake to him in the first place.

Blake knocked the last of the branches and picked up the abandoned rake.

"So, Tassie, do you live near where... where we were last week?"

Tassie stilled momentarily, then lowered herself to a low-hanging twig. It bounced in the breeze. She glared at Emily. "You mean where your sister desecrated our portal?" she barked. Emily flinched and looked back to the gutter she was cleaning.

"Yes," Tassie continued. "I live just on the other side. I like to come into the human realm, though. I like your mushrooms. And you're lucky I do, because if I hadn't been there that day the rest of them probably would have killed you."

Blake looked up at Emily from the leaves. The Fair Folk that had approached her yesterday seemed to have stayed behind at Dix and Clementine's house, So far, Tassie was the only one who had made her appearance known here. Thank goodness. The last thing they needed was a horde of angry Fae at their mom's house when she didn't even believe in them to begin with.

Emily didn't look up, focused on the leaves in the gutter. But her shoulders were tenser, now, and her movements had gone jerky.

"We want to set it right," Blake said. "That's why we cast the enchantment on our glasses. So we could find out what you wanted us to do."

"Right now we don't need anything," Tassie said. "But you could always owe us a favor."

"What does that mean?"

"Sometime in the future, we'll need you to do something for us, and we'll call it in."

"So I wouldn't know what I'm agreeing to?" Blake scooped up a pile of leaves and dumped them in the trash can, then went back to raking. "I don't think so."

Tassie squinted at him and frowned.

"Well, you're lucky they sent me to take care of this. Other Fae might eat you for that."

Blake snorted and scooped up another pile of wet, brown leaves. He didn't reply, but he kept his gaze half on Tassie for the rest of the afternoon.

***

Sunday came and went, and when Monday finally arrived, their mother hesitantly agreed to allow them to go back to the forest preserve again, under the condition that they be careful this time, for the love of god, she couldn't afford to keep replacing cell phones and IDs like this.

Both Blake and Emily had worn their boots to school in preparation, and they tromped through the fallen leaves covering the path as they tried to get back to the fairy ring where all this had started. Tassie was around, trailing behind or sprinting ahead, sometimes in full view and sometimes just a glint in the dappled sunlight, never in the same place but always there, watching with her big, black eyes.