She made up her mind in that instant. If they wanted her to leave, fine, she would leave. But she wasn’t waiting until the end of next week to leave; she was leaving right now. She was going home where she belonged.
She changed directions abruptly, breaking off her trek across campus to her English literature class, and instead turned toward her dorm. A few other students passed by on their way to class, casting furtive glances, but none of them spoke. She stalked on, tightening her determination even in the face of what she knew would be waiting for her when she got home. She could already hear her father. But what could he do about it? She was suspended and she had been told to go home and that was what she was doing. He would have to live with it.
There was no one in her dorm room when she opened the door. Her roommate, Becky, had gone home for the weekend. A tall, athletic girl with a scholarship in basketball, she was always running home to her family in New York. Which was fine. Mistaya liked Becky. She didn’t pretend to be anything she wasn’t, and she wasn’t afraid to let you know how she felt. Becky had been involved in every mishap Mistaya had organized since her arrival, a full accomplice in all her efforts. But Becky never got in trouble for it. She knew how to be a part of things without standing out. She knew how to blend in—something Mistaya knew she had yet to learn.
She sighed. Miss Appleton had pointed to Becky with pride as an example she would do well to emulate—a clear demonstration that the woman didn’t have a clue about Becky’s subversive side.
Mistaya began packing her clothes and her books and her personal effects, and then quit right in the middle of her efforts. Everything she cared about was back in Landover, not here. She left it all where it was and called a cab. While she was waiting, she wrote Becky a short note to the effect that this place wasn’t for her and she wouldn’t be back. Becky could have what she wanted of her stuff and throw out the rest.
Then she marched down the hallway to the front door to wait for her ride. She found herself smiling. She couldn’t help it. She was excited about going home. The reason didn’t even matter. It was enough that it was happening.
She rode the cab to the airport, caught a long flight to Dulles and then a short one to Waynesboro. Money wasn’t an issue when you were a Princess of Landover. She thought about her life as she traveled, measuring the length of the road gone past and estimating the distance of the one yet to be traveled. It wasn’t easy to do when you were half fairy. Her differentness from other girls was hard to overstate. Nothing about her life had proceeded in recognizable fashion. She had not grown up at a normal rate, not even by Landover’s standards, her progress from infancy to girlhood achieved in quantum leaps. Talking at two. Walking at three. Swimming at four. Months, not years. Then status quo for almost a year, one of her many dormant periods when nothing seemed to change. She was in one of those periods just now, her body in a kind of suspended animation. Physically, she was a fifteen-year-old with a twenty-two-year-old mind. But emotionally, she was off in the Twilight Zone. She couldn’t describe it exactly, couldn’t put a name to what she was feeling, only that she was feeling something. It was like an itch that kept working at her no matter how hard or often she scratched at it. She was restless and dissatisfied and hungry for something she didn’t have but couldn’t identify.
Maybe going home would help her figure out what it was. She certainly hadn’t been able to do so at Carrington. All of her adventures with trees and nature and Rhonda had just been things to keep her occupied. Her subjects were boring and easy. She was already thinking and working at college level, so there wasn’t much to be learned at a preparatory boarding school, despite what her father might think.
Mostly, she thought, she had learned to be rebellious and troublesome. Mostly, she had learned new and interesting ways to break the rules and drive the teachers and the administration crazy.
She smiled. If nothing else, it had certainly been a lot of fun.
On landing, she called a private car service and had a town car take her up into the Blue Ridge Mountains along Skyline Drive. The day was sunny and clear, but the temperature was way down in the thirties. The car drove with the heat on, and Mistaya shed her heavy coat for the duration of the ride, which ended twenty miles later at a wayside turnaround overlooking the George Washington National Forest, south of Waynesboro. A small green sign with the number 13 lettered in black, a weather shelter, and a telephone identified the location. She had the car pull over, slipped her winter coat back on, and climbed out. The driver gave her a dubious look when she told him he could leave, but she assured him she would be all right, that someone was meeting her, and so he shrugged and drove off.
She waited until he was out of sight, waited some more to be sure, and then walked across the highway to the trailhead and started along a winding path leading upslope into the trees. She breathed the sharp, cold air as she walked, feeling refreshed and alive. She might hate some things about her father’s world, but not the mountains. Ahead, an icy stream that had slowed almost to freezing trickled down out of the rocks, the sound faintly musical. She found herself thinking of the weather in Landover, which would be warm and sunny. There were storms, rain and wind and gray clouds, and sometimes there was even snow. But mostly there was sunshine and blue skies, and that was what she was expecting today. She wondered how long it would take her to reach the castle, if she would find anyone to take her there or if she would have to walk.
She wondered, quite suddenly and unexpectedly, if Haltwhistle would be waiting to greet her.
The possibility that he wouldn’t show up made her frown. She had been forced to leave him behind when she left for Carrington. Landover’s inhabitants, human and otherwise, could not pass through the mists as she could. Her father was the exception, but that was because he had the medallion of the Kings of Landover, and that allowed him to go anywhere.
She, on the other hand, could pass through because of how she was made—an amalgam of elements culled from the soils of three worlds.
Making her different from everyone else.
She grimaced. Maybe her father would take that into consideration when he heard about the suspension.
STRANGE CREATURES LIKE HERSELF
Mistaya continued to climb until the leafless winter trees hid all traces of the highway behind a screen of dark trunks and limbs and a thickening curtain of mist. The little falls had been left behind, and even the trickling sounds of its waters had faded. Ahead, the mist was growing more impenetrable, swirling and twisting like a living thing, climbing into the treetops and filling in the gaps that opened to the sky.
Had she not known what to expect, all this would have frightened her. But she had traveled between worlds before, and so she knew how it worked. The mists marked the entry into Landover, and once she passed through them, she would be on her way home. Others who found their way into these woods and encountered the mists would be turned around without realizing it and sent back the way they had come. Only she would be shown the way through.
Assuming she didn’t get careless and stray from the path, she reminded herself. If she did that, things could get complicated. Even for her.
She pulled the collar of her coat tighter, her breath clouding the air as she trudged ahead, still following the path that had taken her up. When at last the path ended, she kept going anyway, knowing instinctively where to go and how she must travel.