Page 24 of The Endless Dance

Turns out Blake served some pretty amazing cocktails, too. And I had tried every single one of them. Minus the one containing faerie fruit. Blake had quickly shut me down when I had hysterically requested that one. I’m sure I will be grateful for it in the morning, but it sure sucked being told no. It sucked even more when she refused to serve me another drink altogether.

“’Bout time we cut yer off, I think,” she had said, eyeing me seriously. When I had complained, she’d thrown her apron onto the counter and asked one of the other bartenders to cover for her for a minute. “Gotta get the High Lord’s woman back to him in one piece now, don’t we?” She had sighed to no one in particular. I had giggled at the comment because it just sounded too damn funny. The High Lord’s woman.

I snort and laugh at the memory. Blake gives me a sideways look but doesn’t say anything.

It is barely an hour or two after sunset, but I suppose the pixie and I had hit the liquor pretty early. Speaking of Pixel, it turns out the Barrier Reef has pixie cupboards, or that’s what I called them when I saw them. I had laughed so hard when Blake had pulled one of the shoe-box-like drawers open and deposited a completely limp but content Pixel onto a teeny tiny bed inside of it. Blake told me firmly, though with a humoured smile on her lips, that they were the pixie rooms and not to let any of the tiny creatures hear me call them otherwise. I remembered Pixel’s sharp, little, needle-like teeth and had to agree.

Rita and Laska were waiting for us by the gate.

“Rita! Laska! Two of my favourite people in the world!” I giggle, remembering I could, in fact, say that, considering we weren’t on Earth anymore. “And Frieda, of course. And Blake, now, too. And Akari. Anya. Jabira. And poor, innocent Jasmin. Not Platinum. I don’t like her. I don’t know her. Maybe I would like her if only I tried? What is her name?” I trail off, deeply concerned that I still didn’t know the fierce blonde’s true name.

“Alright, Delta,” Rita says, wrapping her arm around my waist as Blake lets me go. “Let’s get you to bed, shall we?”

Laska winds her long arm around my other side, and we head past the gates.

“Bye Blake! See you next time!” I call without looking back. I don’t register her response, but it sounded something like: yerwelcomebackanytime.

My head lolls to the side, and I catch the eye of a snarling female.

“Hello!” I say to her happily.

She scowls and turns away. Ok then.

Rita and Laska whisk me up to my room so quickly I don’t even register the steps, or perhaps that was the liquor’s doing.

“Where is Frieda?” I ask as the woman and female deposit me onto my bed. I blink when I spy Rita’s wince.

“She is with her male,” she says quickly, then turns and heads for my wardrobe.

My face screws up in distaste, but my mind is too slow to grasp at the threads of thought that the comment produced.

Rita returns quickly with a pair of pyjamas, long and white and dotted with yellow daisies. Laska pulls me to my feet and makes quick work of removing my clothes and putting on the fresh set, buttoning up the top and all.

I pull the waistband out after she has stepped back and look down, not remembering her helping me into a clean set of knickers. I grin. “Going commando? Look out.”

Laska rolls her eyes and retreats again. Rita helps me into my cloud, I mean bed, and Laska returns with a large glass of water, which she sets on my bedside table.

“You are going to be incorrigible tomorrow, I just know it,” Laska says by way of goodbye.

Rita brushes my hair away from my face as she pulls my duvet all the way up to my chin, as only a doting mother would do.

“Goodnight, Delta,” she says simply before she too retreats.

I toss and turn for what feels like hours before I decide to get up. My head was spinning, and my body too full of jittery fireflies to be lying so still.

I stumble quickly to the loo, giggling when I spy my frizzled hair in the mirror.

“I am so glad I don’t have to brush that nightmare anymore,” I sigh, then quickly do my business before I accidentally wet myself.

Stumbling back into my room, I wobble in place for a moment, pondering what exactly I wanted to do.

Barely a second floats by, and with it, an idea.

I skip to the door and exit my room, and then the sitting room as well, not bothering to close the doors behind me. No one was getting past those guards in the hallway. Not that they were here for me. Oh well, I’d take the protection where I could get it.

Grinning like a fool, I walk straight across the hallway and into the unusual garden that ate the castle in front of me. A soft, thick carpet of grass tickles my bare toes as the sandstone hallway gives out. I pause and flex my toes, enjoying the feel of the life beneath my feet. Then I take off.

I jog, unsteadily at first, then more precisely as I regain my feet, into the vast orchard surrounding me. I pass flowerbeds and trees, cacti and shrubs, all of which coo as I pass. I don’t know how far I run, but the garden never seems to end. I recall Rita’s words from the other day. An enchantment. Perhaps it never ended. Could I run and run and not come to its end?