rebellious bad luck isn’t still with me.
“Maybe we shouldn’t — ” I begin. “I don’t want her more pissed off.”
“Pussy,” Kingston says. He squeezes my hand, though, and pulls open the door, stepping inside and dragging me in behind him.
The door closes silently, and at first it’s as dark as Mab’s trailer. It smells of hay and barn wood and summer heat. Kingston snaps his fingers and a flame appears, balancing on the tip of his index finger.
The flame floats out of his hand and disperses to all corners of the room, lighting a couple dozen candles along the way. The room glows with warm light, its contents slowly coming into focus.
It’s about ten feet square — much larger than the trailer, which makes me think we’re not actually in the trailer at all — and the walls are wood. The floor is cobblestone with tufts of hay scattered across the smooth grey stones. The room is entirely bare except for a single structure in the middle of the room. It’s wood and round and clunky and covered in threads. A loom.
It’s so ordinary it’s a letdown — not that I’ve seen any looms in real life. I could easily imagine Rumpelstiltskin sitting on one side, turning a pile of straw into gold. But there’s no one there. Still, the giant wheel — easily my height — turns slowly on its own, pulling a myriad of strings into place, the shuttle sliding back and forth at a lazy pace. Kingston takes me around to one side, to where the completed pattern is working itself out and draping into a large wicker basket.
“This,” he says, “is what all the fuss is about.”
I stare at it.
The fabric the loom produces is beautiful, sure. It’s a rainbow piece of cloth covered in twisting patterns and colorful swirls, but it doesn’t look special. Probably not worth creating an entire circus for. Definitely not worth killing over. Sabina and Roman and Melody’s bodies flash through my mind. All that suffering and loss, all for a bit of pretty silk?
“That’s it?” I say. I can’t help but sound disappointed. I was picturing some beautiful golden Wheel of Fate or something encrusted with diamonds. Something more up Mab’s alley. This? This is just something out of a heritage museum. It’s borderline pathetic.
“I knew you’d say that,” Kingston says. “Which is precisely why I brought you here.”
A pair of tiny scissors appears in his hands. The blades glint in the candlelight. He reaches down into the basket and snips, pulling out a tiny square of cloth. It’s barely the size of a thumbnail.
“This,” he says, holding the square with the scissor blades like a tiny morsel, “would sell in the Night Market for a minor favor or a day’s worth of subjugation.” He holds it out. “But I’ll give you a taste for free.”
“It’s a scrap of fabric.”
“Just touch it,” he says. I reach out. He drops the tiny blue square of cloth in my palm.
Lights explode across my vision and suddenly I’m no longer in the trailer; I’m soaring through the clouds, light shining from the heavens. My arms are stretched out to the sides and I’m giddy, laughing, bubbling with happiness. I swoop down, break cloud cover and smile at the brilliant green fields that stretch all the way to the horizon. I bank right, coast into a beam of soft sunlight —
And I’m back. My arms are stretched out to the sides and there’s a giant grin on my face. I quickly drop my hands and try to force away the dopey smile. Definitely not quickly enough.
“Flying dream, eh?” he says. “Should have thought as much. Blues usually are.”
I look down at the fabric in my hand. The tiny bolt is now grey. The moment I move, it dissolves into ash.
“One use only, I’m afraid,” he says.
“What was that?”
“A dream,” he says. “Energy. Pure, creative, spontaneous energy. Mortals experience it as visions. For the fey, it’s like oxygen.”
I look at the loom.
“So this, what, converts dreams into fabric?”
Kingston shrugs. “Something like that. It solidifies energy, focuses it into something tangible. I’ve seen Mab store it in crystals and books and skulls, whatever takes her fancy. This is just easier to regulate. She can sell by the yard and make a killer profit.”
“You make her sound like some sort of drug lord,” I say.
“What’s the point of drugs if not to dream?” he says, and I can’t think of any way to counter that.
“Anyway, that’s the Trade. Mab converts all dreams in the tent into this, which she then sells or distributes to the other fey. Her own Court gets a discount, while Summer is taxed. But they need it, so they pay. Mortals don’t dream as much as they used to, and Summer’s still putting all their effort into the publishing industry…which wasn’t their best idea.”
I watch the loom weave its slow pattern, imagining it working double-speed when the tent is full and imaginations soaring.
“I still don’t see why it’s such a big deal,” I say.
“It’s sustenance for them,” Kingston says. He moves in a little closer. “Entire civilizations have been destroyed for less. Religion, ideology, love.” He looks at me, a wild glint in his eyes. “Love is usually the one everyone feels is worth dying over.”
“Have you ever been in love?” I ask. I don’t know where the words come from. I only know I want him to answer without words, the way I’d like to draw him close and breathe him in.
“Have you?”
I reach out, my hand only an inch from his arm.
And then there’s a knock at the door. Kingston jerks back and walks over to it.
“Should I hide?” I ask. Even as I say it, I know there’s nowhere to hide in the space.
He just looks at me and shakes his head with a smile that makes me feel idiotic. He opens the door. It’s Lilith. She barely gives me a second glance as she steps into the room.
“Saw you, saw you come here,” she says. “Important, important.” She goes up on tiptoes to whisper something in his ear, something that makes his eyes go wide. If he looked pale before, now he looks positively ghostly.
“Show me,” he says, and jumps out the door. Lilith goes right after him. Neither of them look back to see if I’m following, but I run over and hop out the door into the blinding sun. They’re already sprinting toward the chapiteau. I follow.
Lilith takes us around to the far side of the tent, the one facing the woods. Poe is sitting beside one of the support stakes, staring at the blue wall panel with a bristle to his fur. Lilith slows down when she gets there. It takes me a moment to figure out what caused Kingston to raise a hand to his mouth. Then I see it. There, in the seam between the blue and grey panels, is a rip. Not just a tiny tear, but a good eight-foot gash that starts just above arm’s reach and stops a few inches above the grass.
“No,” Kingston whispers over and over, like a terrible mantra. I look away from the rip and stare at him. Lilith is kneeling at his side, one hand out to pet Poe, the other reaching up to lace around Kingston’s fingers. He looks mortified.
After a moment of standing there, I ask the question digging at me.
“What’s the big deal?”
He looks at me like I’ve just spoken the worst of heresies.
“Get Mab,” he says through his fingertips. “Get her. Now.”
I know that look, ‘the sky is falling’ darkness, and I turn without question and run straight toward Mab’s trailer.
Mab’s door opens immediately after the first knock.
She stands before me in a leather vest and a black mesh undershirt that reaches her knee-high leather boots. Her leggings are black leather as well, and her waist is cinched with a belt of tiny silver skulls. Behind her, the trailer is swathed in shadows and candlelight and the scent of moss and pine. She leans out the door toward me. I step back, almost dropping into a curtsy.
“Mab,” I say. “Kingston…Kingston told me to get you. The tent — ”
