Birdie's Book - Andrea Burden [35]
“I am not whining!” I said. “This is the ugliest place I’ve ever seen in my life. I don’t know what I’m doing here. We’re supposed to be in a dream, not a nightmare!” There, I thought. That should shut her up.
Kerka turned back, her blue eyes looking calmly and directly into my green ones. “You are Birdie Cramer Bright, future fairy godmother. You are the last hope of the Arbor Lineage. You have a mission. You need to fulfill it.”
I turned away, seething. If she thought she was helping, she wasn’t. How dared she tell me who I was? She’d known me for … what? A day? Two at the most?
“You want to go running back to the fairies? You want to go back to your perfect Califa? Nothing’s stopping you,” she said, her tone cold as ice. “You have free will. You can quit anytime you want. Just wake yourself up and go back to your sad real life.”
“Well, maybe I will quit!” I spit. “Maybe I’m just too sensitive to my environment to put up with this … this … graveyard! And you!”
“Fine,” Kerka shot back. “That lets me off the hook.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have come along,” I muttered. I stomped my foot, and dust flew.
“Maybe you’re right!” snarled Kerka. “And maybe you should grow up!”
I was battling with myself about just how offended I should feel when I saw that Kerka’s eyes were filled with angry tears. When she saw me notice them, she lowered her head and dashed them away with her hand.
Seeing Kerka like that helped me let go of my own anger. As it drained away, I couldn’t imagine where it had all come from. “Sorry for being a jerk,” I said quietly.
“I’m sorry, too,” she said. “I’m sorry I didn’t answer when you called. I was just nervous and needed to keep moving.”
“I don’t know what came over me, either,” I said. “And I guess I am used to complaining. It was good for you to stop me. I clearly need you on this adventure.”
“You weren’t that bad,” Kerka said. “It obviously really upsets you when there’s nothing growing around you. And that makes sense with your family.”
“Friends?” I asked, putting my hand out and smiling.
We shook.
“Do we need some food?” she asked.
“That’s a great idea,” I said. “And it’ll remind us of the fairies.”
Kerka put her Kalis stick on the rocky ground. Then she shook her backpack off her shoulders and pulled out the box lunch the fairies had packed. The box was painted with lilacs that had silver and gold leaves. It made me calm and happy. We sat in our beautiful fairy clothes on the dusty trail, unwrapping delicacies.
There were cucumber toast-point sandwiches, rosemary biscuits, and rose-cut radishes. There were grapes and herbed cheeses. There were gooseberry nectar and spiced mango chutney for dipping. For dessert, the fairies had packed lemon zest tarts. It was the best picnic I’d ever had, in the worst surroundings.
“I know we have to go to the jungle to get to the Shadow Tree, but do you think there’s a better way?” asked Kerka, licking the last of the lemon tart from her fingertips.
“The map!” I said as I popped the last rose-cut radish into my mouth.
Kerka got out Zally’s map and threw the fairy wrappings into her pack. I reached over to help unroll the map on the rocky ground. The map went through its ritual of showing us Zally (she waved at us this time, which was heartening) then it filled itself in. Zally is like a Dodecatheon, the shooting-star flower.
“It looks like Mo’s garden! But I wonder where we are on the map,” I said, remembering that we were drawn in last time. Maybe Zally couldn’t do that here in the shadows.
I could make out the maze with the tree in the middle, then the path to the waterfall past the valley, all surrounded by a jungly mass, which, thankfully, didn’t look like it was that big. It made sense that in this world the Shadow Tree would have started in a garden like Mo’s. Maybe Mo even created or tended it before the Singing Stone was broken!
Just then, a shower of red sparks silently emerged.
Kerka and I drew back, waiting to see what happened. Then words—or letters—formed:
HO WHAT PEAT SH GA
Kerka and I exchanged