Twelve Dancing Witnesses

  Twelve Dancing Witnesses

  A Middle-Aged Fairy Godmother Book 3

  Elizabeth A Reeves

  Twelve Dancing Witnesses Copyright © 2020 by Elizabeth A. Reeves All Rights Reserved.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  Cover designed by Elizabeth A. Reeves

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book is Katie Farrell’s fault.

  Thank you for planting a tiny seed that blew up a universe.

  Chapter One

  I awoke in a dripping, damp darkness. Water from someplace unknown fell against my face, bringing me to an unsteady consciousness.

  I opened and closed my eyes a few times before I realized that both choices were equally dark. There was no light source anywhere near.

  My head pounded ominously. My heartbeat was echoing in my ears. The further into consciousness I trod, the more I was aware of my physical misery. I hurt. Everywhere.

  “Where am I?” I muttered, trying to pull myself up off what felt like the ground. At least the flattish surface beneath me felt like slime and mud on top of hard stone. My hands skidded in the slick muck. I slipped and fell back on my side. My ribs howled in protest.

  “Where am I?” I repeated.

  No answer was forthcoming. There was no sound at all but the constant drip-drip of water. Wherever I was, I was alone.

  As I couldn’t see, I had to rely on my other senses. I could hear the dripping of water. I could feel the damp, as well as smell the musty, faintly acrid scent I associated with caves and underground spaces.

  That fit with the darkness.

  My mouth tasted of dirt and old blood. My lips felt as if they had split. My entire body hurt. My head throbbed in an agony that was only eclipsed by the searing pain in my side and one of my wrists. I whimpered softly, which only made my ribs hurt more.

  What had happened to me? How had I ended up here?

  How would I ever be able to get out?

  After several more efforts, I was able to drag myself a little space from where I lay. I was able to rise as far as my knees, before my forehead hit a low section of the roof, or cave ceiling, and sent me sprawling again, this time onto my stomach.

  It took me a long moment to reorient myself. That had hurt. The tunnel or cave I was in was much too small for me to attempt to stand again. I tried to decide if I felt any dizzier, but I had been so dizzy to begin with I couldn’t tell the difference.

  My stomach moaned. I wondered how long it had been since I’d last eaten. I wondered how long I had been down here.

  None of those thoughts offered any useful information. All I knew was that I was hurt, cold, and damp in the dark somewhere alone.

  I wrapped my arms around myself as much as I could and shivered.

  In the far distance, I heard something.

  It was faint.

  I raised my head and turned it back and forth, trying to distinguish which direction the sound was coming from. Had I imagined it?

  There it was again.

  It sounded like…

  Violins?

  I must have struck my head harder than I’d thought.

  I lay in the darkness for a long while.

  Then… laughter?

  It sounded like the over-bright laughter that surrounded the table at one of my parents’ dinner parties.

  Dinner parties.

  There had been a party, hadn’t there? I seemed to remember something about a dinner, and beautiful dresses, and disapproving scowls.

  A family party, then. No one scowled at me quite like my own kin.

  It could have been any family gathering. Did it have anything to do with why I was here? Was that even a memory?

  A sour taste filled my mind at the memory. Had it been right before I ended up here? Had I been drugged? Poisoned?

  No, I didn’t think so.

  I couldn’t remember what happened to me, but poison and drugging did not sound right. Trusting, of course, that I would know what was right when I heard it.

  Possibly an optimistic thought.

  Dallan was always accusing me of being optimistic. He said it in a loving way. He smiled fondly when he said that I was innocent and naïve, despite me being solidly into my middle years. I didn’t feel innocent or trusting. I felt appropriately worn and wearied by life for a fairy of my years.

  Dallan, of course, would find most fairies young, if he compared them with his number of centuries. Or millennia.

  If I looked naïve compared to him, maybe that was no bad thing. If I felt his age… dire, that.

  “Godmother?” a soft voice whispered.

  I turned my head sharply at the sound and winced as pain shot through me.

  “Yes?” I whispered back, hoping that I was not committing a serious mistake in answering that voice. Was it optimistic to hope for a friendly voice in the dark? What if this was the creature who had put me in this fix?

  A breath of relief puffed in the same direction as the voice. “We were so frightened for you,” the voice whispered again. “We brought you food and water.”

  “Can you help me out of here?” I asked.

  There was a long pause. It was so long that I was afraid they had left me alone again.

  “We can’t,” a different voice answered. “Don’t you remember?”

  “I’m afraid not,” I said. “I can’t seem to remember how I got here or why.”

  The pause was shorter this time.

  “That’s… not good. We don’t have time to explain, not now. We will bring you more supplies later. When we can. We will be missed if we stay too long.”

  A soft bag or bundle of some sort bumped against me in the darkness. From the way it landed, it must have been heavy. I found that I could see a little—the outline of the bag looked slightly less dark than the darkness around it. Maybe my visitors had some sort of dim light.

  Then the light was gone again. Maybe I had imagined it in the first place.

  I whispered my thanks but was greeted with silence.

  My visitors, whoever they had been, were gone.

  I tried to call up Magic, first as a whisper, and then with a twist of my hand, but my wrist throbbed with pain and nothing else happened. It was as if Magic couldn’t hear me.

  That, more than any other part of my circumstances, frightened me. I reached out with all my senses, but I couldn’t feel the touch of Magic anywhere around me.

  How could that be?

  I had never not been able to feel Magic.

  Where, exactly, was I?

  I reached down for the sack by my feet and crawled up into a half-prone position so I could dig through it. Inside I found quite a lot of bread, good, crusty bread. There were strange fuzzy shapes that I thought might be dried fruit in a pouch. A sniff at them verified that thought. Dried apples and apricots, I thought.

  The bag also held several small chunks of cheese—some fresh, soft and faintly smelling of goat, other aged and hearty. It was good cheese, I discovered when I nibbled at it. Surprisingly good quality to be wasted on a prisoner if that’s what I was.

  Two skins of water were also in the bag, as well as a thick blanket That blanket was what had muffled everything when it was thrown to me. The thickness of it nearly made me weep in gratitude. And a tiny sack in th
e very bottom of the bag proved to be salt.

  Salt.

  There were some funny laws that all fairies had to follow. If I had been given wine instead of water, I would have suspected that those laws were being manipulated to make me owe someone something—what it might be I couldn’t imagine.

  Instead, my guess was that someone was attempting to make me feel like a guest, not a prisoner.

  What sort of prisoner was given the best bread and the very best cheese?

  But what kind of guest was left injured in the dark?

  I took a long drink from the water sack. That led to my having to find a space in the darkness to relieve myself. That was not a pleasant experience, not when I couldn’t stand fully straight.

  I made my way carefully back to the bag and my treasures. I nibbled at the bread, but my stomach had other ideas. I was hungry, but I was also nauseated. I chewed slowly on a hard piece of crust, hoping that it would keep me from vomiting. My stomach did seem to settle somewhat as I nibbled.

  I took inventory of my injuries. There were many. So many. Had I fallen down a mine shaft? Had I been beaten up by some sort of gang of bandits? Dwarves in a mine, maybe?

  Why couldn’t I remember anything?

  I lumped the blanket they’d given me under my head and curled up on my side—the one that didn’t hurt. My head pounded. I wondered if my vision would have been blurry if there had been enough light for me to see at all. I was pretty sure I was suffering the aftereffects of a fairly bad head injury.

  I felt myself drifting off and clung to panic for an instant, wondering if falling asleep now meant I would never wake again.

  In the end, I had no choice.

  Sleep overtook me.

  I slept.

  And I dreamed.

  I was in a bright room. It was stifling hot, so hot that I could feel the sweat sliding down my spine and gathering around my scalp. Bright colored gowns danced in and out of my sight—silks in every color ever known, some bright and bold, others more demure in shade. Skirts belled all around me as the dancers who wore them spun around and leapt from my view.

  I stumbled through them.

  There seemed to be no end to gowns, no end to dancers.

  High-pitched laughter filled my ears as I lurched around, trying to find my way. The dancers paid me no mind. It was if I did not exist to them.

  Diamonds and jewels flashed around me, from the necks and arms of every lovely lady, from lapels and waistcoats of every handsome man. Even the trees appeared to be adorned in treasure. Sharp silver branches were hung with gems. I stumbled against one and broke a stem off in my hand, to look down at it.

  The branch was formed from perfect silver, with leaves of the purest emerald and one single pink blossom carved from an array of amethysts and rubies.

  I tucked it into my waistband.

  Music filled the air. It should have been sweet, but it felt wrong somehow. I clapped my hands over my ears and tried to stop the sound from reaching me.

  The violins shrieked against every nerve ending. The cellos wailed, filling my heart with dread. The cacophony pushed and pulled me, threatening to tear me to particles.

  “Stop!” I shrieked, clenching my eyes shut. “Stop all the dancing! Stop the music! Stop!”

  But they would not stop.

  The beautiful dancers swirled and bowed, their slippers shredding on their feet until they were barefoot and bloody, but still they danced on. They laughed and smiled as if they could not feel the pain. They bowed and curtsied so gracefully. The instruments rang out, and off they spun again, arms swinging gracefully, lips curved with joy.

  Eyes screaming in horror.

  I raised my arms and screamed for Magic to come to me, to help break this terrible curse, but Magic did not respond. The only Magic here was in the dancers, in the instruments, in the sparkling jewels.

  It should have been a paradise. I was surrounded by beauty and grace and high-pitched laughter.

  In the middle of the floor, a beautiful woman posed. Her dress was made of gold and silver. Her hair echoed those shades, as did the manufactured wings on her back. She smiled at her partner and the whole room bowed to her.

  “Gloriana!” I shouted.

  I knew she would be able to make the music stop.

  But my cousin did not hear me. She curtsied to her partner and joined the dance. She threw back her head and laughed merrily, as she danced the slippers right off her feet. Then, with her feet leaving bloody footprints across the glistening floor, she kept dancing, as if she could feel no pain.

  I awoke with my heart pounding in my chest. My arms flailed around me. My hurt wrist screamed out in warning that it could not safely move that way.

  The tumult of images from my dream stayed with me. I felt my forehead, but it was icy to my touch. I had no way of determining if my injuries, a fever, or some other factor played in the vividness of my dreams.

  Gloriana was gone, I reminded myself. She was safely in the human world. Strange that I would ever consider the human world a safe alternative to anything. Right now I was grateful that there was no way she could be here, dancing her feet bloody in that horror of a ballroom in my dreams.

  I calmed myself and started to settle back into my blanket. Something crackled underneath me. I dug into my blanket and found something hard between the layers of fabric. I fumbled through the blanket to find it. My fingers ran along a long stick with glass-like pieces attached to it.

  I remembered the branch I had pulled off the tree in my dream and froze, my fingers resting on the flower-shape I remembered.

  How could that be?

  What had I seen in that horrible dream?

  And why was the tree branch I had plucked in that dream here with me in the darkness of a cave where I was either a disdained guest or a treasured prisoner?

  Despite myself, I wept in terror. I could not remember ever being so frightened. I wanted to wish myself out of here, to call on Magic, but it wouldn’t listen to me.

  More than anything, I wanted Dallan to find me.

  “Find me,” I whispered in the damp darkness. “Please, find me.”

  There was no sign that anything heard me.

  Chapter Two

  *Days Earlier*

  I was deep inside reading a book in my library when Dallan walked in and cleared his throat. By the expression on his face when I looked up, it hadn’t been the first attempt he’d made to catch my attention. It could be that way for me sometimes, when I was reading something captivating.

  I glanced at the giant clock across the room and grimaced. With such a large timepiece, how was it that I always lost track of time?

  “What day is it again?” I asked, only half joking.

  Dallan smiled slightly. “It’s the day that you promised to have lunch with your parents.”

  I cringed. I wanted to deny that I had ever stooped to making plans with them, but I was a fairy, so I couldn’t lie.

  “Why did I ever agree to meeting with them?” I groaned, rubbing my temples. I didn’t have a headache yet, but I was pretty sure I would have one momentarily. Anyway, it felt good to do something with my hands. “They’re going to fuss at me over the Ferdie situation again. I’m not in the mood to deal with them right now.”

  Immediately after the words left my mouth, I realized just how whiny I sounded. I wrinkled my nose. “I’m sorry. I annoyed even myself that time.”

  Dallan snorted softly. “You don’t annoy me. Your uncle annoys me.”

  I rolled my eyes. “That’s because you are too good to be true.” I pointed at my mouth and raised my eyebrows. “See? I said it and I can’t lie. That means it’s true!”

  “That means you believe it to be true,” Dallan corrected. “Belief in something doesn’t make it truth. But it is nice that you think that about me.”

  Well, he had me there.

  But that didn’t keep me from having fun with him. “You can lie,” I reminded him.

  This time he
actually laughed. “You’re not the sort of fairy to manipulate the truth into a deceptive muddle,” he said gently. “Please don’t try to shape yourself in the image of the fairies that do. I like you the way you are.”

  “I’m too straightforward for a fairy,” I said. I tucked my bookmark into the book in front of me and closed it carefully. It was an older volume that needed a little care in its handling.

  “Yes, you are,” Dallan agreed.

  I narrowed my eyes at him. I was getting better at reading him, but I still didn’t know what he meant half the time. He was inscrutable. It was both irritating and compelling.

  Half the excitement of a gift was unwrapping it. And I was still unwrapping him, little by little.

  “Maybe your parents won’t want to discuss Ferdie’s disgrace,” Dallan suggested as I walked up to him.

  I sighed wistfully. “That would be ideal, but if we’re making wishes, we might as well wish that our meeting was cancelled. The fact that my parents wanted to see me means that they want to argue about Ferdie again.”

  Dallan’s lips brushed my forehead. It was such a simple gesture, and yet it made me break out in goosebumps. I’d only known him for about six months now, but I was nearly convinced that he might be the love of my life.

  Not that I would declare such things to him. Not in as many words, at least.

  Not yet.

  Dallan glanced around the room before we left. “No Flit today?”

  I shook my head. “He’s been a little scarce the past few days.” I didn’t tell him that all the dragons had been keeping their distance lately.

  I wasn’t sure just how much Dallan knew about the dragons I shared my home with. I couldn’t tell him, I had made an unbreakable promise, and he wasn’t telling me what he knew. It created a strange sort of impasse. It felt awkward to keep a secret of such magnitude from Dallan, but it was not my secret to share.

  When the Fairy Godmother Brunhild had died and left me her house and all her possessions, she had also left me with a legacy of secrets to protect. The dragons were just one aspect of the responsibilities she had left for me. They were a big facet, but still just one part of a much larger whole I was still discovering.