Feyland: The Bright Court

Chapter Nineteen

The Bug came running up to Tam, where he stood waiting in the school yard after last bell. His brother’s eyes were bright under the shapeless knit hat he insisted on wearing every day. At least the thing was colorful—a garish mismatch of rainbow stripes.

“Tam! What’re we doing?”

“Give me your backpack. I’m taking you to the park.”

“Prime! Can we get ice cream?”

“Yeah.” Good thing he’d brought some money. He smiled and slung his brother’s pack up on one shoulder. “Though why you’d want ice cream on a day like today…”

“’Cause if we have something cold, then it will snow,” the Bug said, with the perfect logic of an eight-year-old.

The Bug tilted his face up to the sky, giving the dirty, low-hanging clouds careful consideration. His hat started slipping, and he clutched it to the back of his head.

“Maybe,” Tam said. “But if it snows, our quest will be harder.”

“Quest?” His brother gave him a wary look. “Do we have to go camp out in the Exe again?”

“No.” Hopefully, never again. “We’re on a special mission to find a magical plant.”

“A magic plant? Will Puck help us?”

Tam’s breath hissed out between his teeth. “Uh, you haven’t mentioned Puck to anyone else, have you?”

The last thing they needed was his brother in psych eval for believing in faeries. Even if they were real. He’d given up trying to talk the Bug into thinking his glimpse of Puck had just been a dream.

“Course not,” the Bug said. “Who’d believe me?”

The kid was pretty insightful. Or cynical. For a fleeting moment, Tam wished his brother didn’t have to grow up this way.

A flash of muddy orange caught his eye—the drab color Crestview had chosen for its public transportation. Probably the paint had been on sale.

“There’s the downtown bus,” he said. “Race you!”

The Bug took off, laughing, and they made it to the stop right on time. During the long ride down to the park, Tam listened to his brother prattle on about school with half his attention. The other half picked at the tangles in his life—Jennet, faerie ointment, Lassiter, Marny’s infatuation. The possibility that Mom wasn’t fixed, after all.

The one good thing was that he was feeling better, at least physically. The lingering effects of being in a coma seemed pretty much gone. Had going back in-game helped with that? It made sense, in a weird, backwards kind of way.

“Can I pull it, Tam?” his brother asked.

Tam looked up, to see the silhouette of bare branches outside. They were at the park.

“Sure,” he said, and the Bug knelt up on the seat and yanked the wire, signaling their stop.

As soon as they were out on the mostly-brown grass, his little brother started dancing around. Damn, the kid had too much energy.

“What does it look like, the magic plant?” the Bug asked. “Is it bright purple? Will it shock me when I touch it? Where is it?”

“Over this way—but its magic is a secret. You have to look closely in order to see it.”

“Oh.” The Bug frowned. “I thought it would be, like, magical. Floating in the air or all lit up.”

Time for a bribe. “We’ll look for a little while, then get an ice cream, ok?”