The House of Cards

Queen of Air and Darkness

Queen of Air and Darkness

There is a brief sensation of falling, of wind brushing through my hair and past my face. The feeling of Jack behind me vanishes as I brace for impact with the water. But it never comes. Instead, gravity seems to increase, pressure on my growing, swelling, dragging me down, down, down.

And there is silence.

My eyes drift open, and for a moment, I believe they are still shut tight. The darkness around me is endless, unyielding, yet for some reason, warm and comforting. As if I have buried myself in a pile of blankets, or returned to my mother's womb.

And then the voices begin.

Laughing, crying, talking. I hear a woman wailing for her child, and a man screaming at his wife. Voices run out with laughter, and tell snippets of jokes. I hear a blood curdling wail, as though someone is being murdered, and the softest of whispers, saying things I can barely hear. There are voices murmuring in other languages, some I know and some I do not. And underneath it all is music. Beautiful, but nostalgic; familiar, but lonely. A sad and haunting melody.

And then suddenly everything is quiet again. The pressure lifts from my body and there is a light. I find myself sitting in a shallow pool, drenched in water, blinking at the sudden light, dazed. I lick my lips and taste salt.

A small hand grips my wrist and tugs, and I find Gwin staring down at me, pulling me to my feet.

"Come on, Lady," she says. "It is always disorienting, World jumping for the first time. But you need to move. Speaking from experience, it will not feel good when the next person to come through lands on top of you."

I quickly grasp her hand and she hauls me out of the water. Almost as soon as I climb out, Jack comes hurtling out of the water, landing right in spot where I had been sitting moments before. He immediately scrambles out of the way, as Daniel and Solomon come flying up moments after.

Solomon makes a face, shaking out his slightly damp journal. "Bleh. Now I remember why I hate coming here. Water is disgusting."

Jack curses under his breath and climbs out of the pool, wringing out the hem of his t shirt, the scoop neck gaping and stretching further. Behind him, Daniel wipes down his knives on a drier section of his clothing, while Solomon reclaims his cat from Gwin. "You couldn't have dropped up anywhere else?" he demands, swatting Solomon over the back of the head.

"Ow!" Solomon yelps, rubbing the back of his head. "That hurt, jackass! It wasn't my choice, where we landed. The magic picks; it has a mind of its own."

The two of them continue to bicker for a moment, while I take the time to truly examine our surroundings. We are in a forest, but it is not like any forest I have ever been in. All the plants are massive, as if we have been shrunk down in size. The pool we had landed in is a beautiful aqua color. Large, semiprecious stones litter the ground, their colors much brighter than the ones back at home. The same goes for the plant life. The reds are too red, the pinks seem to glow. The blues are too vibrant, and the greens hurt my eyes. And everything is the wrong color. The sky is cotton candy pink, and the grass is lavender purple.

But when I look across the pool, I notice that, about halfway across, all the colors dim, and then fade into shades of grey and black, with hints of dark reds and orange. Everything seems more sinister on that side of the pool.

"What is that?" I ask, pointing a finger.

Daniel takes a moment out of his argument with Solomon to explain. "That is where we are going," he says, "Right now we are in the Seelie Lands. That is the Unseelie edge of the World."