Martin expected to come face to face with a tribunal of hoary, wizened and stern looking faeries, all lined up at an enormous table, or perhaps arranged in a circle of throne-like chairs. He did not expect what he did come face to face with when he entered the elders’ nest. There was no tribunal, no panel, not even a circle, and the only tables in the room were low coffee-table-like pieces. The whole place looked very much like the common room of a posh college dormitory except with that springy moss floor and a lot more flowers. The elders (Martin assumed they were the elders, anyhow) were scattered about the room on very comfortable looking chairs in groups of two or three, chatting and drinking from simple wooden cups. Although most of them did have hair in various shades of gray, they were neither wizened nor stern-looking; there were twenty-one of them.
Martin softly stepped a few paces into the room (an easy feat on the mossy floor) and quietly cleared his throat. His cough drew a glance from the nearest faerie elder, a woman dressed in a pale green linen garment cut just as simply as Thrushsong’s clothes had been. She excused herself from her little group of three and stepped gracefully toward Martin, her rice-paper wings waving lazily with each footfall. Her hair was short and colored a dark shade of gray, shot through with streaks of lighter gray. It was arranged in a feathered up sort of do, which gave the impression that she’d frozen a roaring fire solid on her head and it had turned gray. Her face gave Martin no clue as to her age. She might have been forty, or four-hundred, though Martin suspected it was more toward the latter. Her deep, chestnut eyes betrayed her centuries of acquired wisdom, and along with it, a deep sadness, though her face was bright and smiling.
“Greetings to you, Martin Bentbrook.” Her voice was clear and musical. She took Martin’s arm and wrapped her own around it before he could offer his hand to shake. “I am called Willowbreeze. Welcome to the Underland, and to our village, Ciltandoor.”
Martin found he was being led to a small sofa, built for two. Willowbreeze sat him down and then seated herself beside him. She held up a hand showing two fingers, and Martin saw a younger faerie (Ha! That could mean he’s only three-hundred, for all I know) emerge from a shadow near the wall and dart out of the room. There was something different about him, but Martin couldn’t place it. He let the thought leave his mind. “Thank-you, Willowbreeze. It’s an honor to be received with such … familiarity by the elder council of a faerie village.”
Willowbreeze laughed, a sound like little silver balls tumbling across a xylophone. “I hope you are not offended. We do not stand on pomp and ceremony here in Ciltandoor.”
“Oh no, I’m not offended at all, in fact, I was terrified that I was going to have to face some sort of faerie tribunal!”
“Well, in a way, you will face a tribunal. I will be your host and guide you among the several groups of elders. You will tell your story. You will tell how you came here and why, and the elders will ask their questions of you. You will have to repeat your story several times, but I’m sure you’ll find this preferable to addressing twenty-one utterly foreign beings all at once, mmm?”
“Most likely,” Martin admitted, though he saw through the scheme. Each repetition would bring different details to light, especially if the faeries were asking tricky questions. Willowbreeze would hear it all, and though she had mentioned no judgment, he was sure there was to be one, and he was doubly sure it rested primarily with her. He smiled at her, a knowing smile, the kind an easy-going and rich gambler gives the dealer when he knows the house has rigged the game. Martin was worried about what they might discover, worried that his story would land him in the faerie version of prison or worse, in the faerie army or something equally as deadly, but he wasn’t about to let anybody see that he was worried.
At that moment, the young faerie appeared before them and offered them each a wooden cup. Martin took his and so did Willowbreeze. “It is a mixture of nectar from various fruit blossoms,” she explained.
Martin looked at their server closely but still could not find anything specific that was odd about him other than darker hair and paler skin than he’d seen on any faerie. But then again, he hadn’t see very many faeries at all. The problem stuck with him this time, and nagged away at the back of his mind for the duration of the meeting. Willowbreeze, true to her word, never left his side as he was paraded around to each little knot of elders. She did everything she could to make him comfortable and easy, she smoothed conversation where it became confusing, broke ice wherever it formed, and introduced him cheerfully to each faerie that he met. He remembered only one of their names, however, Oaknut. Oaknut was the only elder that was not attached to a group. He was alone, sipping his nectar, with a slightly sour look on his face. “He is called Oaknut,” Willowbreeze had explained as they approached him, “because he is hard, like and acorn, and, also like an acorn, bitter inside.”
The sour look had only increased its intensity when Martin and Willowbreeze approached. At first Martin had left the banshee and her prophecy out of his story, saying only that he’d gone down to try to get rid of the druids and had been accidentally drawn into the ball of light they had created. It was Oaknut who had asked him what could have possibly provoked him to rush into the middle of a group of druids, was he really that stupid? Martin objected, foolishly, to Oaknut’s choice of words and before too long the sour faerie had extracted the greater portion of the truth from him. From that point on, Willowbreeze had been a little less friendly, and Martin just told everyone the whole story, including the bits Oaknut had missed. This made Willowbreeze a bit happier.
Finally, Martin had spoken with the last of the elders, and Willowbreeze took him back to their original seat. It took Martin’s last bit of energy to avoid collapsing heavily onto the sofa. When he did ease himself into the seat, he felt every muscle melt into jelly and he sighed.
“It was a trying ordeal, was it not?” said Willowbreeze. “Every tribunal should be. I am glad you told the truth. Things do not go well for those who lie to the elder council of Ciltandoor.”
Martin smiled weakly, aware that she had just been mocking him. He was also aware that everyone in the room was talking about him in whisper soft voices.
“Do you have any questions of me?” Willowbreeze said.
“I have a lot of questions. But I’m too tired to ask all of them. What’s going to happen to me now?”
“You will go back the Thrushsong’s dwelling and stay there with him for the night. We will decide what is to become of you and you will be summoned here again in the morning. Is there anything else?”
“Yes, actually, is it possible for me to have another cup of nectar? I think I might need it to get me safely to Thrushsong’s nest.”
“Nest? Ah, you have given our dwellings a name. It is a good name, fitting.” Willowbreeze raised her hand and raised her index finger. The pale faerie emerged from a shadow and went to fetch Martin his drink.
Martin shook his head, trying to clear the tired fuzziness from it. He wanted to get a very good look at the pale faerie this time. The drink was brought, and Martin’s eyes never left the server. This time, he watched as the faerie bowed and walked away.
“He’s got no wings!” Martin blurted out. The server glanced back and shot Martin a scowl. All the conversations in the room ceased abruptly, then started up again, the whispers even quieter and more intense than before. Only Oaknut, still alone at the edge of the room, peered at Martin with a new, amused interest.
