Maguire

  Growing up in the North Pole gave me a unique perspective when it comes to right and wrong, good and evil. I know when it comes to people, it is rarely so clear cut as the black and white philosophical debates that so many like to engage in. People are messy. People are complicated.

  And sometimes, it can be hard to tell when they are lying, especially when they have had a lot of practice doing it. It took a few hours of watching my new friends as they made their preparations to breach the gateway that I realized there were more than two trouble makers in the bunch.

  There were liars in our midst, and I couldn’t quite figure out who was lying about what.

  That left me with little choice but to play along until the opportunity presented itself to do something. I had played a similar game among my own people with very different stakes, though the interdepartmental spats got quite dramatic depending on who was involved.

  “The gate guard is going to be changing soon,” Nichole whispered, barely containing her excitement. “We should get in place so we can cross over before the springies catch us.”

  “What do you think we will find on the other side?” I followed her lead, gesturing for the others to do the same.

  The group in the tent had broken up into smaller cliques, each with its own goal. I had no idea what the others would be up to, but given the situation I chose to go with a group going through the gate. Sure, I didn’t know what I was getting into, but I knew Claudia was probably going to stay on this side.

  Personally, I was hoping there was a way to stop a bunch of people from crossing into another world that was already standing in a precarious balance with our own. Everything I read told me that’d be bad.

  The guards standing before the gateway started to shift from one foot to another, glancing at the glowing mushrooms that dotted the path. Something in the shifting swirls of color helped them keep track of time and, like most people near the end of an uneventful shift, these two were ready to leave.

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  I tried nonchalantly to make eye contact with one of them, but neither could be bothered to look my way. My companions tried to contain their excitement as the guards began gathering their things as they prepared to move onto the next post. Their replacements would be doing the same from a different point around the Jubilee, giving us a short window of time to cross over.

  The second the guards were out of sight, the feeling in the air shifted sharply as something changed about the gate, and everyone started rushing forward. An alarm rang out through the air, followed by ripples of color and sound and a taste of something indescribable.

  My gut told me to run. To get away. That what we were looking at was far beyond anything we should be messing with.

  Mom always told me to not go hopping into other worlds. She also taught me what to do if I had no other choice. And right now, with all of these young fools leaping into the unknown of the fae world, I didn’t really have one.

  Not that I’d have a chance to change my mind. As soon as a dozen of us were within a few yards of the gateway, the magic it had sent out started to return, forcing us to go with it. The people next to me started to panic, so I tried to reach out and grab hold of one of them. I succeeded, and they calmed.

  The last thing I saw before I hit the gateway was the surprised look on Claudia’s face. I tried to signal to her that I was going to be okay, then my new friend and I passed through the veil between worlds, and things started to get weird.

  It reminded me of looking through one of those kaleidoscopes we made for kids, except the effect was everywhere. Things dancing and shifting and changing at a rate that only made my head hurt when I tried to think about it.

  The magic slithered between all of us, smooth as silk and just as slippery, wrapping around some of the people and changing parts of them in color and texture and shape. The longer the seconds stretched, the stranger things got and the more I started to lose my grip on reality.

  “What is happening?” the young man asked as he started to panic once more. I pulled him closer through the…whatever we were floating in at the moment.

  “It's going to be okay,” I said. “Remember to breathe. None of this is real. It's just an illusion until we get to the other side. It’s going to be okay.”

  He nodded, though he didn’t look entirely convinced. I wasn’t either, but if I pretended hard enough, maybe some of this would start to make sense. Or, at least, it would make enough sense for me to not lose my mind.