It was a strange sensation, this being in two places at one time: the middle of a forest on a mountain top with a cluster of men circling me while actually sitting onboard an airplane descending into a Floridian city I’d never heard of. In fact, as I blinked, I felt transported to another spot, a royal chamber: a great hall with spectacular male peacocks in full array painted on the walls and the same Queen I’d met earlier sitting atop her throne. She was watching some people dancing, the women clothed in ballroom style gowns, while the men were wearing Indian-style Sherwani with Nehru collars and exotic embroidery designs on their colorful silk tunics.
I spent a moment studying the dancers as they wove about, their hands raised in the air, the women’s dresses swirling about with the women’s movements. But then the eyes of the queen turned to regard me. I wasn’t there. How could she see me? But I could feel her interest. I felt her eyes staring into mine.
She took note of Timothy swathing my neck with his tongue and then Daniel, the Thunderbird, mouthing his chants as his hand cooled my brow.
“Enough,” the Queen ordered.
Daniel must have heard her because he took two steps backwards, and Ben shot up from his seat across the aisle from us. Had Ben’s faery Queen spoken to him? Had she commanded him to do something we hadn’t heard?
Strangely, he, too, suddenly had no seat belt securing him to his place in the airplane’s lake-water blue seats. He was simply there beside me almost immediately replacing Daniel.
“In trouble,” I said, loosing half my sentence. “I’d meant to scold them for getting up. At least, I think that’s what I meant to do, but even that seemed more than my poor brain could deal with, and my voice came out a harsh echo in the void of a hall once full of dancers but now empty of all but the Queen.
“You will not reject the Pooka. You will grow stronger for it,” the Queen commanded, and I knew that demand was for me. But what control did I have over this hollowness inside me, this ricocheting from mountain realm to Queen’s Court that I suspected must be inside the Faery World?
Timothy stopped attacking my neck to look up. Was he seeing the Queen, too?