Andrew Vidasche did not belong in the bluffs of Lilydale.
What he would really like to be doing is sipping tea and watching documentaries in sweatpants while he cuddled his cat. Nerds like him who owned computer repair shops shouldn’t be preparing to meet faeries in the woods. But at this point, he didn’t feel like he had a choice.
As Andrew understood it, the Brickyard trail near the park was the easiest way for humans to get off the Path and into Lilydale where the Folk supposedly lived. Lilydale had been an uninhabited, dangerous scrap of land on the steep eastern banks of the Mississippi at least since Andrew had moved to Minnesota. Kids used to take hikes up there, but after several died in a mudslide, the bluffs shut down for human activities. He read online last week that people settled in the floodplains beneath the bluffs, but were washed away by the river. It almost seemed like nature was keeping humans out of Lilydale on purpose.
Andrew was still uncertain whether he expected otherworldly beings like faeries to really exist. His mum had raised him like magic was real, at least; his childhood was steeped in whimsical language, small rituals, and reverence for the natural world.
But when he met Kate and Zoe downtown Saint Paul, they painted a picture of ambivalent, dangerous faeries they called Folk. The Folk in Lilydale were given a reputation of wanting humans to go astray, to go mad for bespelled foods and inhuman, unattainable beauty. Based on how he’d left his mum, it felt possible to him that it was Lilydale that made her disappear, too.
He hadn’t seen his mum for almost ten years, so the chance was admittedly slim. But sleep had become more and more difficult for him since he moved into his apartment over his computer shop. Too many things in this neighborhood reminded him of his mum. Worrying about her whereabouts was a constant distraction.
In Andrew’s teens, his mum’s struggles with addiction had begun with pills and culminated in Fae-spelled foods, which were worse tenfold than any human drugs she’d tried before. The bespelled foods were unassuming: apple chunks in plastic baggies or heels of dark rye bread, once a little vial of golden liquid. But a single bite would leave her out of touch for days, hallucinating that she was being strangled by vines, or seeing faces through the window panes of third story buildings, or – on the better days – believing she was a magical princess. She’d be covered in sweat with a hummingbird heartbeat and blue skin around her lips.
Ten years later, Andrew finally wanted to know where she’d gotten such powerful and wicked drugs. If his mum had stuck to pills, maybe he wouldn’t have walked out when he turned eighteen. To figure out where people in the cities were getting Fae-spelled foods, he found his way back to his mum’s old friends downtown, and the two women had sent him here.
Late afternoon in October was Andrew’s favorite time in Minnesota. As he marched toward the Brickyard trail that would let him into the bluffs, he tried to savor the faint chill in the air and the explosion of sunset-colored leaves. They littered the black asphalt under his boots and clung stubbornly to branches, quivering in the breeze that made loose auburn hair from Andrew’s ponytail tickle his cheeks. He zipped his fleece pullover higher as he stepped into cooler shadows. Packed wood chips scraped loose under his boots. He imagined himself tripping and twisting an ankle before he’d even done any actual hiking.
On the steep hatchback Brickyard path, Andrew jumped at every snap and rustle of leaves, unsure even what his danger would look like. Tinkerbell? Legolas? He wouldn’t mind Legolas, if he were being honest…
Andrew shook his head clear and peered southward through the trees, where he’d been told the Folk lived. Carefully, thighs shaking and his breathing shallow, Andrew climbed off the marked path and into the underbrush. In the autumn in his heavy Doc Martens, it was impossible for him not to sound like a noisy stampede. He tried to duck under branches, weave around thistles, gently bend stalks of tall feathery grasses out of his path. How many of the wildflowers coloring the scraggly hillside could kill him? He imagined some tall monstrous person shoving poisonous flowers down his throat, and he snorted.
Maybe there wasn’t even anything out here except turkeys and deer.
Andrew grimaced, glancing to his right. West of him, far below, the Mississippi ran dark and relentless toward the south. There wasn’t much that would protect him from tumbling headfirst into the river; the bluffs were jagged and dropped sharply into limestone cliffs with seemingly no warning.
If he fell, Andrew wasn’t sure how quickly he would be missed.
“I think it’s time to hire a shop assistant,” he muttered.
Wiping away hair stuck to the sweat on his brow, he bit back a flash of panic. It was going to be just as much work to get back to the park. What if exhaustion made his knees buckle?
He was a runner – it was how he’d already heard about the Brickyard trail, since it was famous for conditioning – but this kind of hiking was demanding in a different way, and he wasn’t sure on his feet. Maybe he’d get impaled on a branch before he hit the river.
Andrew paused at a fallen tree obscured beneath scaly moss, leaning his palm against the flaky bark of an oak. He scanned the way forward again, but nothing looked like it would house mythical little faeries. Was it worth the risk to keep going? Even if his mum was somewhere out there. It’s not like she’d tried contacting him, either.
But he was stubborn, and more than a little curious. This was the moment he could have just gone home. Climbing onto the decaying log, he chose a path from which there was no turning back.
He froze, hands flat against the crisp moss, and stared near his foot as his jaw fell slack. He’d come very close to stepping on a body.
Slowly, slowly, slowly, Andrew pulled his foot back and lowered it into the dirt. Heart in his throat, he mouthed a profanity.
Pillowed in silky grasses and a halo of tiny white wildflowers was a woman so stunning she could hardly be real. Her complexion was snow-white with arched brows, long lashes, and deep red lips. She had shining burgundy curls falling back from her brow. With long, elegant fingers, she was clutching a clay pitcher in the crook of her elbow, which sloshed softly with her every breath.
As Andrew tried to figure out what to do, her eyes snapped open. They were blood-red.
Andrew yelped, tripped, and fell on his ass.
The woman moved with alarming speed, and her beauty was replaced with a silent snarl and fire in her eyes. She was above him before he even thumped into the grass. As she lunged at him, Andrew fumbled for his pocket knife, flipped up the blade, and thrust his arm out.
The woman’s weight bore down on the knife. The pitcher shattered against the log, and the woman yelled and flinched away.
Andrew gasped, “Oh my god! I’m sorry!” Scrambling back to his feet, he pulled out a folded canvas first aid kit from his back pocket. Extending it to her, he said, “Here, please! That looks…smokey? Why are you smoking?”
Blood oozed from a cut on her sternum, smoke rising as if from an incense stick. She wiped at the blood and hissed, looking down, baring bright white teeth.
He dropped the kit onto the log between them. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. You scared me,” Andrew went on, closing his blade and pocketing it before holding his hands up, palms out. “I…I’m looking for someone, and I…”
The woman’s head flicked to the side. Her sharp profile caught a streak of afternoon sun, silver-bright. She swayed slightly as she clenched her fists and panted.
“Wow. You can’t be human,” he breathed. “I must be near Lilydale. You…you must be a faerie.”
“Go away,” the woman growled, still not looking at him.
Remembering his purpose, he went on quickly, “People in the cities are losing their lives because of you guys. How can you let them die over your magic?”
Her eyes narrowed.
“Do you keep humans prisoner?” Andrew pressed.
“No!” the woman exclaimed. She swallowed visibly, shook herself like a dog, and then turned toward him and said with more vigor, “You foolish man. I can’t be bothered with humans one way or another. If they find us, they find us. That’s it. If someone you know is missing, it doesn’t concern me.”
“It should!” Andrew said. “People are talking about the…the faeries –”
“The Folk,” she said.
“Down in the city. Lilydale is a…a whisper on the wind. People are curious. If I came looking for it, who else has, or will?” said Andrew. What was he even saying? To speak so boldly to a stranger who could kill him. But maybe that was it. If he was going to die, it was going to be after he’d said his piece. “If you keep poisoning humans, we won’t leave you alone. We won’t forget it.”
She wiped the fresh blood off her chest as her matching eyes slid back to Andrew. She reached a red hand toward him as Andrew stiffened and stepped back.
The woman smudged her thumb over Andrew’s forehead and said softly, “I won’t forget you’ve wronged me. You will regret drawing my blood.”
Then she vanished.
