But not all wounds. As I walked out of Main Hall, I felt a tug in my chest. It was as if I’d wrapped the magic thread around my own heart and pulled until I cut off the flow of blood, leaving a lifeless stone in my chest instead of a living, pumping organ. That weight grew heavier as I saw the devastation wrought by the battle. The trows, spurred by the death of their comrade, had rushed headlong into battle and suffered the worst casualties. The survivors stood around their fallen comrades, singing haunting dirges. Brownies and witches, gnomes and Fairwick students sang with them. Scott Wilder stood arm in arm with two trows, swaying as they sang. I searched the crowds for the rest of my students: I spotted Nicky and Flonia administering first aid to a wounded gnome, and Ruby Day and two other girls I recognized from the fairy-tales class were helping Ann and Jessica Chase set up a triage center. I felt a lightening of the weight in my chest when I saw that all my students had survived, and I began to look for my friends. I spotted Frank, Soheila, and Diana crouching on the ground beneath the four red maples that marked the center of the quad. As I approached, I saw that Liz was there, too, as well as Brock, Dory, Phoenix, and Jen. I put my hand over my heart and told myself that all these people were alive because William had sacrificed himself. I was lucky, I told myself, but then Soheila lifted her head and met my gaze and I felt a sirocco of grief pour off her. I hurried toward the four maples, scared to see who was at the center of the circle.
It was my grandmother. She lay on the ground on a blanket of red, which at first I thought were the leaves of the Japanese maples but then realized was her blood. Her head was cradled in Jen Davies’s lap. Liz, Diana, and Dory had spread their arms over her, forming a triangle of Aelvesgold that poured over the wound in her chest, but the color of Adelaide’s face told me that the Aelvesgold wasn’t penetrating her skin. As I knelt beside her, Adelaide’s pale-gray eyes fastened on mine, and her hand fluttered weakly in the air. I took it, alarmed at how cold she was.
“What happened?” I cried.
“A gargoyle was headed straight for Nicky Ballard,” Frank answered. “Adelaide threw a repulsion spell at him, but it wasn’t strong enough. She took the blow that would have killed Nicky.”
A garbled sound came from Adelaide’s lips. I leaned closer to hear her better.
“… make up … curse …” she gasped.
“You were making up for the curse you put on the Ballards?” I asked.
She nodded and I squeezed her hand. “Thank you,” I said, and then, turning to Diana, “Can’t you help her?”
Diana lifted her doe eyes to me and shook her head. “She isn’t absorbing the Aelvesgold. It sometimes happens when a witch has used too much Aelvesgold in her lifetime.”
Adelaide squeezed my hand and made a sound. I leaned my ear down to her lips again and heard her say, “It’s my time. I’m so glad you’re here and all … right.” Her eyes scanned the faces surrounding her—all my friends who had rushed to Adelaide’s aid, even though she had once been their enemy, because she was my grandmother. She mouthed two more words, and then her eyes fluttered closed and her hand went slack in mine. I held on to her hand while my friends, one by one, got up, touching my back and murmuring soft words of condolence, then leaving me alone with Adelaide under the red maples. I sat, looking at her face, red leaves falling over her broken body like a gentle blanket. My grandmother had shown me little kindness in the years when I had needed it the most, but she had taken me in, and I was glad that we had patched up our differences before she died. Still, I wished I could feel more. Her last words, I thought, had been meant as a consolation for leaving me.
Good neighbors, she had said, meaning the family I’d found in Fairwick.
She had also meant to say, I was sure, that she had put away the anger she’d felt when my mother fell in love with one of the fey. Looking at her face, I watched the years of anger and resentment falling away, leaving her far more peaceful and younger than I’d ever known her. Most powerfully, more than I’d ever known, she resembled my mother. For a moment the likeness was so strong that I thought my mother was here with me. I felt her presence as strongly as I had the time I went on a spirit quest and met her inside the spiral labyrinth. My mother’s features were momentarily laid over Adelaide’s, like a thin, gauzy cloth. Like a benediction. I felt tears well in my eyes and cried for both of them. Together now.
In the coming weeks, as autumn turned toward winter, I saw what good neighbors the townspeople of Fairwick—human and fey—truly were. Although Honeysuckle House had been spared from the fire, others were not so lucky. The Lindisfarnes’ house was badly damaged, and the Goodnoughs’ animal clinic had burned to the ground. Luckily, Nicky Ballard’s mother had noticed the fire in the animal clinic as she was coming home from an A.A. meeting. She’d run back to the church, where half a dozen participants were still chatting over coffee and donuts, and organized them into a rescue team and saved all the animals. The Goodnoughs were so grateful that they gave her a job at the clinic, and she had enrolled in the vet tech program at the community college. In the weeks following the fire, I heard a lot of stories that reconfirmed my faith in the resilience of the community. Newly returned from Faerie, the Esta family reopened their pizzeria and organized a Meals On Wheels for people who had lost their homes. While Shady Pines was being rebuilt, families volunteered to take in residents. I heard that Mrs. Goldstein was staying with the Chases and that she and Jessica played cards every afternoon.
I was most heartened by how active my students were in helping the town. I’d been worried that the sudden revelation that their college was inhabited by witches and fairies would be too much for them, but they seemed to adjust almost effortlessly. Scott Wilder and Ruby Day started a student–fey liaison club called Students for a More United and Reintegrated Fairwick—SMURF—and asked me to be the faculty sponsor. At the first meeting, they invited Dean Book and lobbied for classes on magic and fairy history. The dean informed them she’d long been thinking of doing just that.
“Mightn’t that be dangerous?” I asked Liz after the meeting.
“We’ll have to go slow and make sure that only students who are responsible enough learn the higher levels of magic. We’ll get Soheila to vet students for emotional stability. But I think it’s a good idea. I’ve often thought that Fairwick could have a wider mission in this world. We’ve focused so long on mere survival, hiding out here in our secluded valley, but look at where that got us. The evils of this world sought us out. There are real evils in the world—fey and human—and real suffering. We should be doing more to train our students to relieve suffering and uproot evil. It’s a troubled world out there. Fairwick can be a beacon of hope. I hope you’ll be involved, Callie.”
I told her I would be. Besides, I needed a mission—something on which to focus my attention. It wasn’t that my classes weren’t going well. In fact, they were going so well they practically taught themselves. My students eagerly prepared oral reports and group presentations on the assigned readings and engaged in animated discussions that filled up the entire class period. Having learned that fairies and monsters were real, they read the fairy tales with a new urgency. They debated and argued about them as though Little Red Riding Hood and Beauty and the Beast contained the secrets of the universe—and perhaps they did. Appearances are deceiving. Trust in yourself. Be kind to the old and the weak. Follow your heart. As valid a set of precepts for leading a good life as you would find anywhere. But what if you did all that and you defeated the evil monster, but at the end Prince Charming was dead and the evil queen had pulled your heart out of your chest? Those were the questions that I itched to scrawl across my students’ papers.