Through the Fairy Ring

Chapter Twenty-Six

"Are you sure you're okay?" I asked Arden. He waited beside the plane, arms crossed, muscles tensed like he was ready to go into a battle. We'd taken the time to stop off at the nearest department store to buy him some clothes so he wouldn't stand out in modern-day Northern Colorado. Dressed in jeans and a dark purple pullover, he still received stares, but only because he was gorgeous—no matter what realm he was in.

He gave me a wry smile. "I'll be fine. It's good to try new things. I'll get to see first-hand what the birds are always talking about."

"June said we'll only be in the air for a couple of hours. We can enter the Realm through the portal at Devil's Tower, if you want, so we don't have to fly again."

Frederick sat at my feet, his attention on the movement of June and David, her husband and our pilot. They were giving the plane a thorough going over, which made me happy. Less chance for bad things to happen.

"Let's wait and see how I do. It would take more time to get back to the house than if we fly back here and return through the Boulder portal. We wouldn't have any Suntaria to ride, either."

June walked around the front of the plane with a clipboard in one hand, a pen in the other. A cute bobbed haircut and body to die for totally belied her true age, which was in the early forties. She scrawled something on the page, and then looked from Arden to me. "What portal? Like a ship portal?"

"No, it's a..." I stopped, as "a doorway to another world" would obviously sound crazy. "Hey, which airport are we going to fly into?"

When in doubt, always try to change the subject. The technique had saved me more than once.

June cocked her head, but let the portal conversation slide. "There's a private landing strip on a ranch we're allowed to use. The owners will give us a ride to the monastery, which is about ten miles away."

"That's nice of them."

"They're old friends. You'll like them."

"Will they be okay with a cat coming along?" I asked.

June shrugged. "I think so. They have pets."

David opened the passenger side door from the inside and slipped onto the tarmac. He adjusted a forest green Cabela's baseball cap so it sat farther back on his head. Dark brown hair curled around the cap and matched the thick moustache spanning his upper lip. "If you're done with the preflight checklist, I think we're ready to go."

June nodded and handed him the clipboard. "Everything looked great. Let's load up. Anyone need the bathroom? No facilities on the plane, you know."

The joke pulled a chuckle from Arden, and June patted his arm. "That's better," she said. "Once we're in the air, you'll be amazed at how easily you adjust."

We climbed into the plane, June, Frederick and I in the back and David and Arden up front, because there was better leg room. Cramped didn't even begin to describe the back seats. I buckled the seat belt and hunched over my legs. Even though the trip was only a little over two hours, it was going to be a long ride.

Flying was something I did only when I had to, and with Dramamine readily available. My firm position on flying was that bouncing around in a metal machine thousands of feet in the air was not a natural state for humans.

David turned the key, the engine whined to life, and he taxied the plane into takeoff position. I sat in the seat diagonal from Arden's, which allowed me to see his expression as we waited for clearance. His eyes were closed, and his breath was rapid and shallow. I leaned forward and placed my hand on his shoulder. He jumped, and his eyelids flew open.