Daniel, without a word, returned to his seat, and I heard his seatbelt buckle click a moment later. Ben continued to hover, while Timothy moved me back to my seat and strapped me in.
The forest scene on top the mountain with the braves all in breechclouts which covered their privates, but gapped open a bit if I cared to look — they were gone. Their soft singsong voices were silent. Their exquisite face paintings were only a memory. I supposed they had departed with Daniel’s departure.
The Queen’s court was still solidly planted on my right. A slow blink could recall the colorful dancers who’d been parading about in their costumes, like sparkling jewels ripe to admire. And the Queen still floated behind Ben, one of her ringed hands, stroking his shoulder. She was robed in Queenly attire, a golden gown that glittered even in the absence of any light inside the plane.
The Queen’s eyes were studying me again, but the sharpness of a moment before, seen in her eyes and heard in her voice had quieted. I think she sympathized with my illness, but then there were no lines on her face to give me such meaning, so I have no idea why that thought had filtered in through my dizziness and nausea.
The plane was nose diving, preparing to land, I hoped. The engine sounds had changed in preparation. Or maybe that was the wings doing their fluttering reverse, reducing our speed so the impossibly huge metal plane could land on what seemed a smallish landing strip.
I reached out to grab at my water bottle, suddenly thirsty. I don’t know where my airplane bag had gone. Did Timothy have it? The bag was still empty, but it had become my security blanket. I missed it.
“You, Penelope, wife of my Pooka, you are recovering now. Your human body was frail, but you are no longer that weak capsule of humanity. You are now one of the Enlightened ones.”
For a moment, I felt that the Queen might be right, but then the same desperation hit me, and I knew that despite the Queen’s words and her magic, I was about to erupt.
“What is this?” the Queen roared when I grabbed the bag from Timothy and thrust my nose back inside.
It was Ben who ventured a response that might have brought the Queen’s wrath with it, except the plane’s wheels were suddenly touching down, and she must have known that this stasis period would have to end. She turned to face him and asked him to repeat the words and so he did.
“It is not the rejection of the Pooka, that is causing this, but the necklace you secured to Penelope’s neck. Her body cannot endure its magic at this time.”