Through the Trapdoor

A Feyland Story

By

Marilyn Peake

http://www.marilynpeake.com

Through the Trapdoor

© Copyright, 2018, Marilyn Peake

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the author.

Through the Trapdoor is a novelette set within the world of Anthea Sharp’s best-selling Feyland series, and is published as a stand-alone story with her permission. It was originally available only in the Feyland Tales anthology organized and published by Anthea.

Anthea Sharp’s website:
https://antheasharp.com/

Book Cover Art by Cheri Lasota at Author’s Assembler:
https://www.authorsassembler.com

About the Author

USA TODAY and Wall Street Journal Bestselling Author Marilyn Peake writes Science Fiction and Fantasy. She’s one of the contributing authors in Book: The Sequel, published by The Perseus Books Group, with one of her entries included in serialization at The Daily Beast. In addition, Marilyn has served as Editor for a number of anthologies. Her short stories have been published in numerous anthologies and on the literary blog, Glass Cases.

AWARDS: Silver Award, two Honorable Mentions and eight Finalist placements in the ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Awards, two Winner and two Finalist placements in the EPPIE Awards, Winner of the Dream Realm Awards, Finalist placement in the 2015 National Indie Excellence Book Awards, and Winner of “Best Horror” in the eFestival of Words Best of the Independent eBook Awards.

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THROUGH THE TRAPDOOR

Marilyn Peake

A month after her sixteenth birthday, Zoe Nicholls started having debilitating nightmares. They seemed real. They didn’t always evaporate after she woke up. They remained floating in the air, visual hallucinations. At times, they had an auditory component.

One morning in early fall when the weather had just turned cold and the wind banged the shutters against the house, she awoke from an especially brutal nightmare, covered in sweat and shaking. She could still see the woman who had haunted her dreams. She had pale skin, violet eyes, and a dress that seemed to be made of the swirling trails of the aurora borealis. Standing across the room from Zoe’s bed, she leaned against her desk, cradling Zoe’s cat in her arms. Slowly, she dragged a dagger from her pocket and held it against Shadow’s throat.

Throwing off the covers, Zoe raced across the room, screaming. As she punched the woman’s face, it turned to mist. Shadow was nowhere to be found.

Zoe’s mother knocked on the bedroom door. “Are you okay, Zoe?”

Studying the mist swirling above her desk, Zoe said, “Sure.” She’d forgotten what she’d been asked.

Her mother rapped again on the door. “May I come in?” She sounded worried.

Zoe absentmindedly thought that perhaps her mother could help. Maybe she had the key, the missing clue. It was a random thought, something triggered by the vision of the woman wearing the dress of the Northern Lights.

Zoe opened the door. Shadow came running in, the soft fur of her tail brushing against Zoe’s bare ankles. The cat raced across the room and leapt onto the bed. Zoe sighed with relief that Shadow was okay.

“You don’t look good,” Zoe’s mother said, brushing loose strands of hair from her daughter’s face. “You’re very pale and you’re covered in sweat.” She placed a hand on Zoe’s forehead. “You don’t have a fever. How do you feel?”

Zoe looked down. Her thin flannel nightgown covered with tiny lilacs was also covered in sweat and plastered to her stomach. She felt dizzy, like she might faint. A wave of nausea passed through her.

As she turned to see if the mist was still there, her mother watched her, waiting for an answer. The mist had thickened, turned to smoke slithering across the desk. Zoe pointed over her shoulder with her thumb. “Do you see that?”

Her mother walked over to the desk. She picked up Zoe’s tablet. Before she had even looked at the desk, the smoke had turned to clear steam and evaporated, all in the blink of an eye.

Picking up the tablet and reading through a long list of homework assignments, Zoe’s mother looked concerned. “That’s an awful lot of homework! Way more than I ever had. You’re working too hard, Zoe. I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you stay home, rest up a bit, maybe watch some screenies? I’ve got to head off to work. You gonna be okay?”

Zoe wanted to tell her mother about the dreams and hallucinations, but she decided against it. Her mother had dark circles around her eyes. They were often bloodshot, and it seemed to Zoe that her mother’s hair had been progressing from black to a shade of salt-and-pepper way too quickly. She’d noticed a few silvery strands a year ago. Now, she wasn’t even sure any of it was black anymore. It was entirely possible that the black streaks were nothing more than pepper.

For as long as she could remember, her mother had worked as a housecleaner for rich people on the other side of town. When Zoe entered middle school, her mother had taken on extra houses, sometimes working both day and evening shifts. She often told Zoe, You’re smart. You should go to college. You don’t want to end up like me. Your job is to study. My job is to put a roof over your head and make enough money for you to go to college.

Zoe forced a smile. “I’ll be fine. I need to finish writing an English Lit paper on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and I have some algebra problems to solve.”

“That’s my girl.” Her mother gave her a hug. “But take some time off, too, Zoe. You need a break. You’ve been working too hard. Didn’t you mention a new screenie you were interested in checking out?”

Before going to sleep the previous night, Zoe had watched the first episode in the second season of Fey Girl, an anime series about a faerie girl lost in the human world.

Oh my God, that’s when the nightmares started. Zoe suddenly realized that she’d had the first of these horrifying nightmares after she’d binge-watched the first season. That was a month ago.

Smiling with genuine happiness, realizing once again that she was just too sensitive for her own good, Zoe told her mother, “You’re right. I’ll take some free time for myself. Maybe I’ll just read something for fun, something that isn’t homework.”

As her mother turned to leave, she called out over her shoulder, “That’s my girl. Have a good day.”

Beginning to recover from her nightmare, Zoe went over to the bed, petting Shadow and talking to her. Then she went downstairs to the kitchen. She grabbed two bowls off a rickety shelf, filled one with some weird cereal that had been on sale and past its expiration date and the other with Shadow’s dry cat food, and carried their breakfast up to her room.

While she and Shadow ate, Zoe worked through her algebra problems. She loved math. It was like solving puzzles, and Zoe had a knack for that.

As she solved a series of linear equations, the mist returned, slithering around the base of her desk lamp like a snake. Her heart pounded. Her body broke out in a sweat. Zoe reached out to touch the coiling fog. She expected it to be cold and wet or to break apart when touched. It felt as though nothing was there. But the shape remained, then filled with swirling rainbow colors.

Severe pain erupted in Zoe’s head, like the worst migraine she’d ever experienced. Then, as quick as flashes of lightning, snippets of flashbacks marched across her vision. There was a girl. A girl around her present age. And a woman much like the one leaning against her desk with a knife to Shadow’s throat. Except…the knife was against Zoe’s own throat. A piece of her personality, a sliver of her self, was removed. It floated through the air into a glass jar and illuminated it with foggy blue light. A small, fat man laughed.

Zoe pulled open her desk drawer. She grabbed the bottle of migraine medicine and shook two, the maximum dosage, into her hand. She swallowed the round blue pills and wondered if she’d need psychiatric meds. Something was wrong. She was losing it. Whatever she was experiencing went way beyond her typical migraines.

***

After an entire week of nightmares that persisted as visions after she woke up, and missing more days of school in a row than she could afford, Zoe’s fears ratcheted up. She started to worry that she had a chip in her brain. The VirtuMax kids all had chips embedded in their wrists with ID information that allowed them access to places the poorer Exe kids could never get into.

There were rumors that the government was placing chips in the heads of certain people in slums like the Exe, to monitor where they went, both on the net and in real life. She’d had an emergency appendectomy a few years ago. Maybe the chip had been put in then while she was knocked out with anesthesia, and only recently activated. She’d also passed out once in a local grocery store and come to in a back room, surrounded by a bunch of people, some of them not exactly the friendly type. She had no idea how long she’d been unconscious. Her head had been bloodied. She’d just assumed at the time that she’d bashed her head when she fell. She’d had a concussion and felt woozy for days. Maybe the symptoms were the result of adjusting to the chip, rather than from the concussion.

If there was a chip, it needed to come out.

But who to talk to about this?

The next day at school, migraine medicine tucked into a corner of her purse, Zoe sought out Colton, the kid most likely to become a cyborg one day. He had large gauges in his ears, tattoos on his neck, and arms tattooed to look like robot parts. He competed in robotics competitions and seemed more comfortable with the machines than his teammates. Zoe knew him from her Algebra 2/Trigonometry class. He was a freshman on an accelerated track. There were rumors that his IQ surpassed that of Einstein.

At lunchtime, Zoe walked up to him in the cafeteria. He was sitting alone eating a sandwich he’d brought with him in a paper bag. How do you ask someone if they think you have a chip in your head? How do you ask if they know about any organized groups who might do this, maybe to hack into your brain or something?

Zoe reminded herself it wasn’t far-fetched. The rich kids over in the View had implanted wrist chips to keep them safe and give them access to the VirtuMax compound. Maybe the higher-ups at VirtuMax wanted to control people in the Exe with brain chips. To keep them under control. To keep them from trying to break into their compound. It would be more effective than guns, and a whole lot less bloody.

Zoe sat down across from Colton. “Okay if I sit here?”

Colton looked annoyed. “Sure.”

She placed her tray down on the table and took a seat. As she ate the pasty rectangle the cafeteria chefs had labeled Lasagna, she tried to make small talk. Then she switched to asking about Colton’s tattoos, jokingly asking if he wanted to be a robot rather than a person.

Rage simmering in his pale blue eyes, Colton said, “Look, if you’re making fun of me…”

Zoe looked around, making sure no one could overhear her. She said as quietly as possible, “No… That’s not it. Look, I have a question I need to ask for a friend. Suppose someone thinks they have a chip in their brain because they’re hallucinating… Suppose they’re completely rational other than that.”

Colton squinted. The way he looked at her, Zoe felt like a bug under a microscope. His gaze was intense. “It depends…”

Zoe put her fork down. The noise in the cafeteria—the chatter, the racket of dirty dishes being placed on a conveyer belt and trays being stacked into uneven piles, random shrieks and outbursts of laughter, chairs scraping against the floor—all receded into the background and quieted to a hush. Zoe’s entire concentration was focused on Colton.

Colton analyzed the situation like a surgeon diagnosing a mysterious illness or a rocket scientist figuring out a new way to defy gravity. “Either your friend is psychotic. Or there’s truly a chip in their brain. But how likely is that? Seriously, how could that have happened? Maybe they’re one of the lucky few who played the new FullD sim game.”

Zoe felt dizzy. Suddenly, Colton was surrounded by a golden glow. She blinked several times, hard. It didn’t go away.

Colton squinted at her again, a defensive expression that conveyed both anger and mistrust. “What are you doing?”

“Oh, sorry,” she said. “I think I’m getting a migraine. I see these funny colors and then get slammed with the most painful headaches.”

Colton smiled. “Asking for a friend, huh?” He leaned forward, suddenly intensely interested in Zoe’s predicament. “Did you by any chance play the FullD sim?”

Zoe felt confused. She had that sensation of flashbacks cascading through her brain again. “No… I mean, I don’t think so.” The woman leaning against her desk. But not there. In a clearing surrounded by trees. Her own head in a helmet. Gloves. A pink bedroom with gauzy netting around the bed.

Zoe blinked far too many times.

Colton stared at her. “I think you’ve played the game. Do you know anyone else who’s played?”

Colton was positively shimmering. The golden glow had intensified. Zoe looked around. No one else seemed to notice. “No. I mean, I don’t know anything about that game. How would I? It’s not like I could ever afford simming equipment.” Or had she? Something nagged at the edge of her brain. “Tell me about it.”

“Better yet,” Colton said, “I’ll show you.” He studied Zoe, as though sizing her up before sharing more information. Lowering his voice, he said, “There have been people wrecked by that game. You haven’t heard about that?”

At a loss for words, feeling her hands start to tremble, Zoe remained silent.

“A number of people ended up in comas after playing. One guy died. A bunch of kids had symptoms like yours: headaches, hallucinations, weird stuff like that.” After chugging down the rest of his punch, leaving a red stain on his upper lip, Colton continued. “Meet me after school. Out front. Tomorrow. I know someone who might let us play. I mean, let you play. You’ll probably have to do a trade: game time for homework.”

The golden glow disappeared from around Colton. It was like someone had snapped their fingers and made it disappear. Just like that.

Zoe made it through the rest of the day. Four periods: Algebra 2/Trig, AP English Lit, Art, and Spanish. Then she hopped on the bus and headed home.

The house was empty. Her mom had messaged her to say that dinner was in the fridge; she’d be working late. Did she feel okay? Zoe messaged back: I feel fine. She kinda did. At lunch, her headache had vanished along with the golden glow around Colton. At home, the mist had vanished from her desk. Maybe the game held the answer to her problems. She wasn’t sure how. It sounded so dangerous. She was just going on intuition.

Something led Zoe to her closet. It felt as though her mind was being pulled along by puppet strings, trying to solve a puzzle. Zoe stood there, staring into her closet. She had a feeling of déjà vu. She’d done this before. Stood in front of her closet, staring into its depths. She thought of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, thought that stepping into the darkness would bring her to Narnia.

Zoe flipped on the light switch. A golden glow. Her skin prickled with fear, an intense sense of uneasiness. An anxiety attack. She was losing her mind.

A rumble came from the back of the small space. A lid flipped off a shoebox and knocked over a teetering pile of comic books. In a whirl of motion, something leapt out and landed on Zoe’s feet. She screamed before realizing that, of course, it was Shadow. Nothing more than Shadow. As her cat raced across the room and out the bedroom door, Zoe tried to calm herself. Nothing more than Shadow. Nothing more than Shadow. It’s your cat, not the lion. This isn’t Narnia. Get a grip.

Kneeling down to put the lid back on the shoebox, Zoe noticed something inside—a glove. A silver glove decorated with jewels: amethysts, rubies, emeralds. Those weren’t jewels, though. What were they? It was on the tip of her tongue.

As though in a trance, Zoe wandered over to her bed and sat down. She stared at the glove and rubbed it between her fingers. There was something she should know about this item. Something she needed to do.

***

That night, in the dream world, Zoe’s mind worked overtime to solve the puzzle of that glove.

When she woke, she knew she was in trouble. That glove had been part of a pair of gloves given to her a few weeks ago. By a girl who lived in a house her mother had cleaned. Not a house. More like a mansion. The girl was Ella Bradford. Ella was seventeen, one of the cool big kids. She had a simming game she didn’t know how to play. Feyland. It was Feyland. She had let Zoe play. More than that, actually. She’d asked Zoe to figure out how to play the game and teach her.

She’d given Zoe a stern warning. “You can’t tell anyone else about this game, okay? I have a cousin who’s a hacker. He got a hold of some bootleg copies of the game. He said it’s all hush-hush, top-secret stuff. The game’s being developed by VirtuMax. He and some friends figured out a way to hack into the system and take a peek at their brand-new FullD sim game. He told me he could get arrested if anyone found out he had a copy, and the same was true for me. Promise you won’t say anything?”

Zoe figured it wouldn’t hurt to just take a peek at the game to figure out how to play it and teach Ella. She didn’t plan to get a bootleg copy for herself or anything. She loved tech and puzzle challenges, and Ella, a cool upperclassman, wanted her help.

Ella’s cousin had left some basic instructions on her tablet about how to get into the game and get started. Ella accessed the information and handed the tablet to Zoe. “These are the only instructions I have. I tried to play the game, but I couldn’t figure it out. I think my cousin skipped some steps. He’s a hacker. I need step-by-step guidelines. Here…”

Zoe took the tablet. She’d never been in a sim rig before, but she’d built her own computer, knew her way around tech stuff and games, and felt confident she could figure it out.

Suddenly, the memories came flooding back. There had been two sim systems, right in Ella’s bedroom. She had an awesome room: pink walls, a ceiling white as clouds on a sunny day, a canopy bed with gauzy pink netting around it, a long white desk…and the sim systems. Ella said she’d gotten them for her last birthday, so she could play sim games with her friends.

Zoe sat down in one of the white leather sim chairs and pulled on the gaming gloves. A pair of the kind Shadow had uncovered in the shoebox: silver and decorated with what appeared to be jewels: amethysts, rubies, emeralds. They were actually LEDs. Ella handed her a shiny pink plasmetal helmet. Zoe put it on and followed the instructions she’d memorized.

On the visor screen, choose the F icon. The F icon glowed like flame.

After Zoe lifted her finger to choose the fiery icon, the menu faded away. It was replaced by the word Feyland and something else that had been pixelated out. The bootleg copy was obviously flawed, or someone had edited out some information on purpose.

The visor screen went dark. Music started playing, quiet and haunting, and then light gradually appeared in a design that reminded Zoe of spider webs or delicate veins. Then the following words appeared:

WELCOME TO FEYLAND

The message unfurled across the visor screen, changing from bright gold to crimson. Flames flickered along the edges, then the words turned to gray, giving the appearance of burning down to ash. Zoe was amazed by how vivid everything was, better than any electronic game she’d ever played.

She chatted away excitedly while concentrating on everything she was experiencing. “This is totally sparked, Ella. There are flames and ash that seem totally real. And I’m only in the intro part!”

The music changed, and the letters went flying away like leaves edged in darkness.

Next came the character-creator interface that RPG games always had. Zoe chose SPELLWEAVER. She liked the look and the cool spells. She lifted her index finger and highlighted her choice. Her character immediately appeared on the visor screen. She didn’t want to lose too much time fine-tuning the appearance, so she went with a flowing purple robe and long blond hair, and left everything else to the default settings.

When she was prompted for a character name, she decided on Moth, one of the faeries in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. She double-clicked her thumb and index finger to bring up the keyboard. That part of the interface was flawless.

She worked her way through to a single question popping onto her visor screen. It filled Zoe’s stomach with the sensation of fluttering butterflies:

MOTH – character complete. Enter game?

Zoe tipped her thumb up to say: Yes.

Trumpets blared as the visor screen turned golden. Suddenly, Zoe felt incredibly dizzy and nauseated. She figured it was the bootlegged copy, flawed in ways that threw off the inner ear and other senses that normally keep people grounded—kind of like getting nauseated when reading in a moving vehicle rather than looking outside at the horizon, but much worse.

Finally, the sick feeling stopped.

Zoe landed at the game’s starting point, a place that seemed incredibly real.

She stood in a clearing. She could feel wind rustling through her hair and against her face. “Ella, this is amazing! I’ve become my avatar. It’s like I’m actually here, inside a physical world!”

Zoe stood on bright green grass. When she took a couple of small steps to test it out, she could feel the soft natural surface under her feet. She was surrounded by trees with white bark, their leaves flashing silver as the wind rustled them. Looking up, she found a bright blue sky with birds flying across it. Looking down, she discovered that she was in a ring of pale mushrooms. She shared that with Ella. “I made it into the game. Your cousin’s information says that the starting point is a circle of mushrooms, which is a faerie ring. I’m there now.” Talking more to herself than to Ella in order to review the next steps and commit them to memory, she continued, “You have to step over the mushrooms without damaging them, then find a Brownie named Fynnod at a nearby cottage to get your first quest. If you think about items in your inventory, they’ll automatically appear in your hand. As you approach Fynnod, you’re supposed to think about a bowl of milk. When it appears, you’re supposed to offer it to him. Then he’ll give you your first quest. The instructions from your cousin stop there.”

Confident that she understood how to start the game, Zoe exited Feyland. Taking off the helmet and gloves, she turned to Ella. “There are bound to be battles in this game. Why don’t you join me in there before I go any further? I probably won’t survive too long by myself. And I don’t think I can teach you this game unless we’re actually in-game together. There’s too much stuff you have to experience firsthand.”

Ella’s eyes were bright with anticipation. It was obvious how much she’d wanted to see Feyland for herself.

She hopped into the other sim chair. Zoe walked her through the same instructions she’d followed earlier. Zoe had to explain everything, even the things she felt were completely intuitive. When she told Ella to choose the F icon, Ella did nothing. A few seconds later, she said, “I chose it, but nothing happened.”

Zoe figured it was a programming bug. “Really? You pointed at it and nothing happened?”

“No. I thought about it,” Ella replied, “like you told me to.”

Zoe had an impulse to smack her own forehead, but she realized she’d just be smacking her helmet and probably messing up something in-game. “No. That’s for calling up items in your inventory. To choose the F icon, you have to point at it.”

Sounding annoyed, Ella replied, “Why didn’t you say so?”

Because it’s perfectly intuitive? Zoe kept that thought to herself.

After that, Zoe explained everything in painstaking detail until they both landed inside the faerie ring. Ella arrived as an Archer, slight of build with a curved bow and a quiver of arrows on her back.

“I feel sick,” Ella said. “I think I’m going to throw up.”

Zoe told her to imagine something calming and see if it went away. She shared her thoughts that there were bugs in the interface that needed to be fixed while she fought back her own intense sensations of nausea.

Finally, Ella said, “Okay. I’m better. Let’s go.”

Together, they stepped over the mushrooms. Zoe led the way down a mossy path through the trees.

When they reached the end of the forest, they saw a rise of small green hills and a country cottage with white walls and a thatched roof. Trekking over to it, they found an incredibly ugly man with an enormous nose and flappy ears. His body was covered in dark hair; his only clothing was a piece of ragged cloth tied around his waist. He stank something horrible.

Zoe thought of milk. A clay bowl filled with milk appeared in her hands. Placing it in front of the creature, she said, “Greetings, Fynnod.”

The ugly man said, “Moth…”

Ella shrieked.

Fear shot through Zoe. Was there an enemy she couldn’t see?

Ella said, “Mom! Don’t sneak up on me like that! We’re simming. You could give me a heart attack, like for real, you know!”

Zoe’s mother had finished her work at the Bradford residence and it was time for them to go home.

Zoe experienced an emotional reaction she didn’t quite understand. She felt extremely upset, basically devastated, to have to leave the game so soon. She felt enraged that she hadn’t heard everything that Fynnod had said and they hadn’t yet received his quest. She exited the game and removed the helmet and gloves. She picked up her backpack in a huff.

When Ella’s mom went downstairs, Ella grabbed Zoe by the arm. “Remember you can’t tell anyone about this bootlegged copy. Not anyone. If your mother asks what we were playing, make up another game, one you’ve played before. Okay? My cousin was adamant that we could get in serious trouble. We could go to jail. VirtuMax would make sure of that, to set an example.”

Zoe’s answer was so unlike herself that it startled her. Normally, hearing that she could get arrested for something made her steer clear of it. It was as though Ella had told her the game was an illicit drug. She’d never take part in that. She knew how hard her mother worked just to keep them in a livable house at the edge of the Exe. It was so bad there that she couldn’t imagine ending up in the Exe or on the street or, even worse, taken away from her mother and placed in one of the Homes. Her mother was also putting away money to send Zoe to college. That was their ticket out of the rough sections of Crestview. There was no way Zoe was ever going to jeopardize that.

Except that Zoe found herself saying, “Sure. I won’t say a word about Feyland. No problem.” After getting a taste of the game, she wanted to play it more than anything else in the world. It had crawled into her brain like an earworm. She couldn’t shake it. Visions of the game lured her into wanting to get back inside as soon as possible.

The real world paled in comparison with the vividness of the in-game world of Feyland. Especially her section of the real world on the outskirts of the Exe. Ugh. It felt like she had important work to do inside the Realm of Feyland, more important than anything else she had to do elsewhere.

Thankfully, Ella had the same response to the game. Both girls felt they were about to be assigned an important mission. They had to discover what that was and complete it. They agreed to play the next day.

As Zoe walked out the front door of Ella’s house, she realized the game had a highly addictive component, much like the type of drugs she’d heard about, that got people hooked on the first try. She shrugged it off. That was ridiculous. It was just a game. But if it was like most games, it was bound to have a mission and puzzles to solve. It was simply her OCD, which usually worked in her favor. She never left puzzles unsolved, whether those were math problems or jigsaw puzzles with thousands of pieces.

Reluctantly, Zoe went home with her mother. She finished up her algebra problems. Then, to distract herself from thoughts of the game, she decided to work on one of the many puzzles her mom had given her over the years. They were secondhand, purchased at Goodwill or given to her for free by people whose houses she cleaned. There were always missing pieces and tattered edges. According to the picture on the box lid, this particular puzzle would be a photograph of polar bear cubs playing in the snow.

There was an awful lot of white, but Zoe was good at figuring out the shapes that needed to interlock. It was like looking at keys. The edges determined the locks they could open.

***

That evening, Ella hopped into the Feyland game alone. She concentrated on remembering everything that Zoe had taught her and everything her cousin had told her when he first gave her the game.

She was delighted when she managed to start the game, see the shimmering golden glow and get past the nausea. Once again, she became her Archer avatar. As she stepped from the ring of mushrooms, being careful not to brush against them and risk damaging them, a flock of birds passed overhead. She followed the mossy path that led into the trees. Hearing a rustling sound, she drew her bow. Her avatar looked so much like her real self that she experienced the muscle memory of taking archery lessons at summer camp. She was good with the bow and arrow, so she figured that would translate into in-game skill.

A woman about the size of a cat flew with fluttering rainbow-colored wings out of the undergrowth in the forest. Rather than pull an arrow from her quiver, Ella screamed. Damn. This wasn’t like summer camp. Things were going to come at you, not like the nice, big, round targets at camp that didn’t move.

Landing on the path in front of Ella, the faerie placed her tiny hands on her hips and, with an impish grin, said, “Well? Come on, then…follow me.”

Ella felt like she was being reprimanded. She said, “I didn’t know I was supposed to do that. You just showed up.”

“Well, you know now,” the tiny faerie replied. “You’re supposed to follow me.”

The path suddenly changed, looking very different from the original mossy path. Part of Ella was terrified. Her hands became sweaty inside her gaming gloves, and she could hear her pulse beating in her ears. She wasn’t good at games. She should have waited for Zoe.

The faerie waved her hand. A chain of white mist filled with rainbow-colored sparkles formed around her. Holding a section of it in her hands, she lifted the loop that trailed in front of her feet. “I’ll show you the way. Follow the sparkling path. Come on…” As the faerie moved forward, she gradually unspooled the thread of twinkling lights.

Curiosity winning out over fear, Ella followed her…

***

Later that night, Ella’s younger sister found her unresponsive in her simming chair. Ella still had her helmet and gloves on, but she was slumped over the armrest. Her sister tried shaking her and screaming at her. Not sure how to pull the helmet off, she went running to get her parents.

Ten minutes later, the siren wail and sweeping red-and-blue lights of an ambulance disturbed the usual quiet of the VirtuMax compound. A few neighbors stepped outside and walked over to the Bradford residence to ask what happened. To gape at the teenager with an oxygen mask over her face, her silky blond hair lying on the crisp white sheets. To ask if they could do anything.

Ella’s mother was frozen with panic, wanting to reach out and help her daughter, but knowing that she needed to stay out of the paramedics’ way. Her baby. What could possibly have happened to her? She’d been in the safety of her own room. Her husband put his arm around her and waited helplessly to find out if they could ride along in the ambulance. As soon as they got the okay, they hopped into the vehicle.

***

The next day, Zoe showed up to play Feyland. She had no idea what had happened the night before. Mrs. Bradford screamed at her.

Her face turning bright red and a thick vein popping out in the middle of her forehead, Mrs. Bradford said, “Stay away from here. I should have known better than to ever let Exe scum in my house! You gave my daughter drugs, didn’t you? What did you give her?”

Zoe was frightened. She started, “I didn’t give her anything. I never use drugs.” But when Mrs. Bradford started coming down the front steps of her house with fists raised and a murderous look in her eyes, Zoe turned and ran.

Later that night, it was Mr. Bradford who called their house and fired Zoe’s mom. Losing that job was devastating, yet her mom was incredibly patient and understanding.

As she sat with her daughter, sipping blackberry tea with honey, she said, “I know it wasn’t you. We get blamed for everything, those of us in the Exe. A VirtuMax employee loses a piece of jewelry, they blame it on their staff. Their kid gets addicted to drugs, they blame it on the bad influence of hooligans in their schools. Hooligan always means poor. Don’t dwell on it, Zoe. Just study. Do well in school. Get yourself out of here.”

***

Zoe had unfinished business. The day after talking with Colton, she did as he asked: waited for him outside their school building after the final bell rang.

She watched the rich kids getting picked up in grav-cars, the kids from the Exe heading off to walk back home. Finally, Colton showed up. A tall, muscular guy, he revealed large biceps as he shifted his backpack from one shoulder to the other. His red hair curled loosely around his face, and his blue eyes shone in the afternoon sunlight. Without smiling, he said, “Hey.”

Zoe replied, “Hey.” When Colton didn’t add anything else to the conversation, she asked, “So, where are we going?” as nonchalantly as she could.

Colton said, “You’ll see.”

Oh, great. That was comforting.

With Colton leading the way, Zoe rolled her eyes.

When she realized they were about to leave the outskirts of the Exe and head right into it, she stopped walking. Trying to keep her voice from shaking, she said, “Look. I need to know where we’re going.”

Colton laughed. “We’re almost there. Trust me, it will be worth your while.”

Feyland. Feyland. Zoe thought of the mushroom ring. She thought of the vibrancy of the green grass and blue sky. The feel of wind blowing through her hair and against her face. Birds flying overhead, moving shapes against a brilliant sky. The quest that Fynnod would provide. There was an emotional pull and tightening in her chest to move on, to venture forth, to explore and overcome obstacles, to battle enemies and set herself free. The Exe was simply a real-world obstacle to get to Feyland. She had to get back into Feyland.

Just as she had accepted the challenge, three rough-looking guys came around the corner of an abandoned building that was falling apart. A pile of bricks spilled across the cracked sidewalk, exposing a battered wall. Two of the guys revealed black and silver teeth as they smiled menacingly at Colton and Zoe.

Stroking his mangy beard, the taller one shouted, “Well, what do we have here?”

The entire group had crazed yellow eyes and stank to high heaven. Obviously hopped up on some kind of drug, the third guy sauntered over to Zoe. He was emaciated, with pockmarked skin. Placing a long, yellowed fingernail against her cheek, he said, “I like you. You think your boyfriend’s willing to pay a ransom for us not to kidnap you?”

Zoe thought, My boyfriend? Oh, right, he obviously meant Colton.

Before she could answer, the other two guys took out chains. Swinging them threateningly in their hands, they surrounded Colton.

The guy with the mangy beard growled, “Let’s see how tough you are, big guy!”

Suddenly, there was a blindingly bright flash of blue light. Putting her hand over her eyes, Zoe tried to figure out where it was coming from.

Trumpets played. Drums boomed loudly, with the rhythm of a steady heartbeat. Boom! Boom! Boom! It felt as though they were about to go into battle.

It turned out they were. But the two sides were sorely mismatched. To Zoe’s complete shock and amazement, it turned out her side had the advantage.

As stunned as Zoe felt, the bullies froze on the spot.

Colton also froze for a moment, looking confused. In his right hand, he held a mage’s staff. Dazzling blue light pulsed from a crystal ball at the top. As his survival instincts kicked in, he pointed the staff at one guy after the other, striking them all down with a quick succession of mage bolts to the stomach.

Within minutes, all three lay unconscious on the sidewalk.

Zoe felt shocked. Colton had taken out three people in quick succession. Her OCD kicked in. She counted them over and over again. One…two…three… One…two…three… One…two…three…

Her brain counted and re-counted in a continuous hypervigilant loop. Finally, she stopped counting and assessed the situation. Colton had knocked them all out. They seemed to be breathing and one guy was moaning, but Colton could have killed them.

Was he a monster…or a hero? He had saved her life, after all. If he hadn’t attacked those guys first, she was pretty sure they would have killed her or… She didn’t want to think about it.

In the blink of an eye, the staff disappeared from Colton’s hand. He said, “We gotta go. C’mon.” He acted like nothing extraordinary had happened. Obviously, trying to play the tough guy.

Zoe followed him in silence the rest of the way, climbing over piles of trash, stepping around mounds of poop, and trying not to gag at the stench or twist her ankles on broken slabs of sidewalk.

Finally, they arrived at an abandoned grocery store. The large plate-glass windows were smashed, every single one of them. All that remained were sharp triangular pieces on the top and bottom of the metal window frames, monster teeth ready to tear trespassers to shreds.

Colton said, “We’re here. Follow me.”

As he pushed open a rickety door squealing on its broken hinges, rats went fleeing into the shadows. Zoe thought she might faint.

“Don’t mind them,” Colton said. “They stay up here, scrounging for leftover food. When this place was ransacked after the company went bankrupt, a lot of stuff was spilled. Look over there.” He pointed at mounds of food on the floor: rice, corn flour, dried beans.

Zoe’s heart started racing. This was a completely empty grocery store. The shelves were bare, the cash registers gone, the conveyer belts ripped to shreds. The walls had been covered in graffiti—the colorful expression of the anger and passion of artists trapped inside the Exe. Now, Zoe was trapped here. Colton hadn’t brought her to any kind of gaming place. He was going to hurt her.

She started to speak, but her voice came out weak and shaky. Clearing her throat, she tried again. In a deeper, more controlled voice, she asked, “Where’s the gaming equipment?”

Putting a finger to his lips, Colton said, “Shh… There are always ears, enemies listening. We have a pretty sweet setup in a very secret location.”

Zoe felt she had no choice but to follow him. She’d never find her way back home without him. And Colton wasn’t acting too menacing.

She followed him across the store into the back storage room. At the far end of the space, Colton unlocked a heavy steel door. Down a long flight of concrete steps, there was a pool of golden light. There were also voices and the chirping, pinging sounds of sim rigs and people playing.

Relieved, Zoe followed Colton down the stairs.

The room at the bottom was filled with kids wearing silver helmets and silver gloves dotted with glowing LEDs. They were sitting in simming chairs, waving their arms.

Colton gestured toward the group. “Welcome to Hacking Central.”

Trying to make sense of the scene in front of her, Zoe replied, “Hacking Central? Okay, you have to explain.”

Leading her into a smaller room with a coffee pot and a box of chocolate-covered donuts, Colton offered her both.

“Thanks, but I feel too nervous to eat,” Zoe said. “I need an explanation first.”

Colton lifted a Styrofoam cup off the top of a stack and poured himself a cup of coffee. Dumping sugar and powdered cream into it, he asked, “Aren’t you sick of the people in the View?”

Zoe collapsed into a chair. Her leg started bouncing uncontrollably to let off pent-up nervous energy. “What? You seriously want to gossip about the kids in the View right now? Some of them are actually very nice.” She thought about Ella, what had happened to her. She wanted to cry.

“They get all the perks,” he said. “And they’re living their awesome lifestyle because their parents work for VirtuMax. Everyone in the other room is a hacker. We hacked into their latest top-secret game, Feyland, in order to get a piece of the action for ourselves that we’d never be able to afford when it’s released. A few of us went even further. We created mods that are frustrating the VirtuMax developers. They suspect there are hidden corners in the game now that they can’t get into. They think it’s corporate sabotage or a problem with their own design. They’ll never suspect a bunch of ne’er-do-wells in the Exe.”

Zoe said, “Yeah? So what does this have to do with me?”

“We saw you inside the game. You and one of those spoiled brats from the View. She wandered into one of our mods. And now your friend and a bunch of our friends can’t get out. In the real world, they’re in a coma. In-game, they’re trapped in the mod. No one can get out without a balanced team. We want your help. We could tell from your gameplay that you have some tweaked skills. You help us rescue our friends and you can join our hacker world if you want to. We need as many skilled players as possible to save our friends…and your friend. Money won’t buy her way out.”

“Give me a cup of coffee,” Zoe said. “Black. And a donut.”

Colton laughed and fulfilled her request. After she’d fortified herself with sugar and caffeine, she said, “Okay. Show me to my simming chair.”

In a normal situation, she’d be introduced to the team. In this case, though, everyone was inside a helmet and largely cut off from the real world. She’d meet them in-game.

The equipment was incredible. She mentioned that to Colton. He said, “Yeah. We’ve made a lot of money with our hacking skills.”

After placing the shiny silver helmet on her head, pulling down the visor, and pulling on the simming gloves, Zoe itched to get started.

She created a new Spellcaster character and double-clicked her thumb and index finger to bring up the keyboard. She named this character after another faerie in A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Mustardseed.

The words appeared: Enter game?

Colton said, “Okay. Let’s go.”

They tipped their thumbs up. A fanfare of trumpets blared. Golden light washed over their vision. Zoe fought against throwing up as she became consumed with nausea. Damn. She forgot. She should never have had the coffee and donut. What was she thinking?

Then everything calmed down. She was fine. Better than fine. She was inside Feyland! And she had a real mission to accomplish! She had to save Ella—for Ella’s sake and to wash away her own guilt.

Colton’s avatar looked like him. He was a Spellcaster with fiery red hair—so silky inside the game that the sunlight gave it an incredible sheen. He had on a long, flowing blue robe and brown leather boots. In his hand, he held a mage staff with a glowing blue crystal ball on top—the same weapon he’d used to fight the thugs in the real world! How was that even possible?

Zoe admired her avatar. It was eerie how much it looked like her: green eyes, dark hair, her same thin build. She had on the most beautiful emerald-green robe that made her eyes sparkle, and brown leather boots. In her right hand, she held a mage staff similar to Colton’s, except it had intricate carvings on the staff, and the glowing ball on top was green.

They both stood in the familiar circle of pale mushrooms. Zoe felt a thrill of excitement in her stomach when she stepped over the mushrooms onto the luxurious green grass. She took a moment to enjoy the feel of cool air against her skin, wind ruffling her hair and robe. “This is amazing! I love this place!”

Colton’s avatar smiled. “There’s a lot more to experience. Let’s go.”

Zoe followed Colton down the mossy path that led into the trees. There was a rustling in the underbrush, and out popped a faerie about the same size as Shadow, with rainbow-colored wings.

She planted her bare feet on the ground, looked at Zoe with intense blue eyes, placed her hands on her hips, and said, “You’re late. You’re supposed to follow me. Some friend you are.”

That stung. Did she mean friend of hers or friend of Ella’s? Zoe already felt tremendous guilt. The faerie didn’t need to make it worse.

“This character isn’t a regular part of the game,” Colton explained. “She appeared first in our mod and then went out into the rest of the game.”

The faerie turned on her heels to face Colton’s avatar, put a finger on her lips, and said, “Shh. Secrets we don’t tell within this silver-leafed forest.”

Colton replied, “Zoe needs to know, my dear, or we’ll spend all afternoon trying to carry water in a sieve.”

“What?” Zoe asked.

“Normally, that’s the first quest.” He pointed. “We meet a Brownie named Fynnod over there at the edge of the wood. We give him a bowl of milk. Brownies like that, so he gives us our first quest: filling a sieve with water from the river and carrying it back to him. Then he grants us passage to the next level. But we’re not going there. We’re going directly into our mod.”

So, that was the first quest. Spoiler alert. Normally, spoilers would bother Zoe. Now, there were much more important matters to attend to, like saving her friend who was apparently lost inside the game.

Zoe was about to ask how they got into the mod, when the faerie turned to her and said, “Silly girl. What leads to both prison and freedom?”

“Your riddles aren’t needed here, Nissa,” Colton said. “Just do it.”

Nissa stamped her tiny foot. Kicking up a thimble-sized cloud of moss, she muttered, “Hmmmpf.” Lifting a square patch of the forest floor and knocking the grass from a wooden door, she said, “The answer to my riddle is: trapdoor. You may enter.”

She glowered at them, then leapt into the hole in the ground.

Colton said, “You next.”

Zoe thought, How unfair. Nissa has wings. I do not. With her heart pounding against her chest, Zoe took—literally—a leap of faith.

The fall was weird in Feyland. Zoe definitely had the sensations of falling, of her hands touching a tunnel slick with mud, of hitting the walls of the chute, and yet there wasn’t any pain or butterflies-in-the-stomach sensation of free fall.

Suddenly, she landed. Moving out of the way so as not to be knocked over by Colton, she looked around. It was weird that she had landed perfectly on her feet, but was happy for not tumbling out onto the floor or smashing her head. She looked down at her robe. It should have been covered in mud; but it was still a brilliant green, not a spot of dirt on it.

She laughed at the irony. Colton’s mage staff could materialize in real life, but, like in a lot of games, her clothes would probably remain pristine no matter how many times she traveled through muddy places or how many battles she fought. At least she didn’t have to wear sexy battle armor with her midriff exposed.

Nissa sat cross-legged on the floor, her chin resting on the palm of her hand. She looked bored.

Zoe looked around. They were in a small space that reminded her of a dungeon carved out of the musty earth.

Colton came through the chute with a thud. His boots smacked down hard against the dirt floor.

The second he landed, a golden light bathed the entire area. Zoe felt only slightly nauseated. The entire dungeon spun around. The light swirled even faster.

When the motion came to a stop, the chute was gone. They were now in a huge cave. The walls were made of crystalline stone. Stalactites hung from the ceiling; stalagmites rose from the floor. Everything sparkled and glittered. Zoe couldn’t determine the location of the light source, but the cave was brilliantly illuminated. She wondered if the structure itself produced light.

A sparkly path formed on the floor. Colton said, “We should follow that.”

Nissa rolled her eyes. “Obviously.” Fluttering her wings until she lifted into the air, she flew alongside the gamers.

The cave turned out to be only the first in a series of caverns connected by long, dark tunnels. Each cave was illuminated, with the source of light a mystery. The crystal walls twinkled. Quite the opposite, the tunnels were dark and dank with walls that were wet and cold and slippery. The only illumination there was the twinkling path.

After they walked for what felt like hours, Colton said, “Turkey leg.” A turkey leg appeared in his right hand. He tore a chunk off with his teeth.

Having been hungry bordering on ravenous for the past half-hour or so, Zoe shouted, “Hey! How did you do that?”

“It’s a handy feature of the game, so we included it in the mod. If you think about anything in your inventory that you want—food, weapon, whatever—it will appear in your hand. You should eat, for stamina and health points.” After taking another huge bite of turkey, he said while chewing, “Whatever you do, though, don’t accept food from any character or creature in the game. That could end badly.”

“Oh, right. It’s the same way you access the inventory in the main game. How you get milk for Fynnod.” She shouted, “Cheese! Cheddar cheese!” and a brick of orange cheese appeared in her left hand. “Nice!”

“You don’t need to shout. Really, you don’t even need to say anything. You just need to think about the thing you want.”

They hiked through the cave while eating—Colton munching on the turkey leg, Zoe eating her fill of cheese and then biting off mouthfuls from a loaf of bread. After eating, they summoned frothy mugs of root beer. Feeling certain they must be at maximum health, they trudged on.

Eventually, they came to a place where the path changed. It led into yet another narrow, darkened tunnel. The way was lit only by the sparkles on the floor, but they had turned to neon green that reflected eerily off the slick walls.

Zoe hesitated.

Nissa flew past her into the tunnel.

Colton said, “C’mon. Let’s go.”

Music began to play, incredibly haunting and beautiful music. Zoe yearned to find its source. Blue and green light flickered from a room at the end of the path.

As they stepped into that room, they were confronted by the woman Zoe had seen in her bedroom. The hallucination. Skin as ghostly white as a porcelain doll, eyes a fathomless, gorgeous shade of violet. She wore the dress with the swirling aurora borealis. She lifted a staff made of something resembling ivory. Goblins and sprites surrounded her, and a knight with a silver sword stood at her side.

Waving her arm, she revealed something that had been hidden. A shelf carved into the cave wall held a collection of glass jars, each illuminated with brilliantly colored mist. Zoe searched the jars. There was one with the shade of blue in the flashback she’d experienced back home.

The woman walked over to Zoe. Lifting her right hand, she poked Zoe in the chest with a two-inch long fingernail strong as metal and as pointed as a needle. “Have you been feeling weak or tired, my dear?”

Zoe knew she had. Afraid of the menacing look in the woman’s eyes, she answered, “Yes.”

The woman cackled. Then tears ran down her face. “That was me. I did that. One of these jars, the one with the blue light, holds a bit of your life essence, your soul. I have to return it…” Grabbing the jar, she turned the lid and stuck the open jar under Zoe’s nose. “Inhale or you will die. I will see to it.”

Afraid it might be poison, but more afraid not to obey the woman who seemed both dangerous and on edge, Zoe took a sniff. As she did, the glowing blue light escaped the bottle, coiling around like a cobra coming out of a basket to the sound of the snake charmer’s flute. It floated across Zoe’s lips and flew up into her nose. Immediately, she felt energized.

The woman grimaced. “You have no idea how much the life essence of humans means to faeries. It keeps us alive. My Queen has kept the limited resources for herself until we open a more reliable gate to your world.” Poking Zoe in the chest with a metallic nail once again, she said, “Appreciate what I’m doing for you. My Queen demands that I return the bits of souls I’ve worked so hard to collect. Her jealousy and spite know no end.”

Nissa laughed. “Well, of course. The paltry amounts you collected aren’t worth the Queen’s time, Dulcina. But you did this without consulting her. Your punishment is just.”

As Zoe felt increasingly stronger, she acknowledged that the glowing blue light certainly seemed to be a missing part of her soul. She’d been weakened by the loss. Inside the other jars must be the souls of the kids languishing in comas in the real world.

Dulcina raised her staff. As she did so, the sleeve of her dress fell away, revealing pale white arms streaked with red veins. She was deathly ill. Blue light shot from the tip of her staff and knocked Nissa from the air. The tiny faerie plummeted to the floor of the cave with a horrifying splat sound.

Trumpets blared. Drumbeats bounced off the walls. Boom! Boom! Boom! A team ran into the room, and Colton shouted, “More of our game modders have arrived!”

Zoe studied the avatars. They now had a well-balanced team: a Kitsune, a Saboteur, a Healing Priest, two Knights (Zoe thought, Ha ha, faerie’s knight, you’re outnumbered!), and a Dryad, along with Colton and Zoe as Mages.

As Colton approached the team, the sickly faerie stepped back into the shadows. Opening a glass jar she’d hidden in a pocket of her dress, she took a sniff. The life essence imbued her cheeks with a bit of pink color.

She returned to the room, emboldened. “I’ll give a few of the jars to you. My Queen demanded that I return the jars of life essence to the humans. She didn’t specify how many. I gave you one. Here is another.”

She set a glass jar glowing with purple light on the floor. Colton snatched it up and placed it in a large pocket in his robe.

Dulcina laughed bitterly. “Be thankful for those that I returned. You must fight for all the others.”

A section of cave wall came tumbling down in a roar as loud as an avalanche. Two enormous trolls entered the space, growling and swinging hammers as large as boulders.

The female Kitsune charged into battle, throwing fireballs at the trolls, then confusing them with illusions. Not the brightest creatures, the monsters swung at illusory demons with their hammers, losing focus on their real enemies.

Unfortunately, as the Archer approached and unleashed his first arrow in the direction of a troll’s eye, the hammer made contact with his head and knocked him unconscious. Precious seconds of battle time were lost as the Priest healed his injuries.

Recovering from the attack by the other faerie, Nissa scrambled to the top of a stalagmite with a weird grin on her face. Zoe felt troubled, not knowing if Nissa was truly on the side of the humans or simply serving the mysterious Queen. She seemed awfully amused by the battle.

Turning her focus back to the fight, Zoe unleashed a stream of mage fire in the direction of the troll that had knocked out the Archer. A torrent of blue flame erupted from Zoe’s hands, burning the ankles and feet of the monster.

Colton shouted, “Steak!” As he gnawed at the protein-filled slab of meat that popped into his hand, color returned to his face. Revitalized, he aimed his staff at the eyes of the troll that had started hopping around on burned feet.

The troll roared with pain and dropped its hammer.

The Archer, completely healed, shot arrows into the troll’s armpit while it had its arms raised. Colton and Zoe worked together to shoot powerful streams of searing light at the monster.

With an enormous sound that shook the walls of the cave, the troll came crashing down. One of the Knights leapt on top and stabbed their sword into the troll’s neck to make sure it was dead.

In the meantime, the Dryad had begun attacking the other troll with Wasp Bite. As the troll flew into a rage over the biting stings, the second Knight charged in, slicing wounds into the troll’s legs with his elongated sword.

The team then worked together to bring the last troll down. There was an enormous battle. Arrows flying. Bolts of fire sizzling through the air. The Dryad morphing at times into an oak tree to protect itself from damage. Swords slashing through the stubborn hide of the monster.

Then, all was still.

The team had triumphed over the trolls.

Dulcina cackled. Striding out from the shadows, she said, “So, you have destroyed my pets. But you have not destroyed me.” Her eyes were sparkling; her cheeks held a pinkish blush. Sauntering over to the collection of glowing glass jars, she picked one up. The lighted mist was golden. Laughing with hauntingly bizarre merriment, she said, “Ella. This beautiful light once belonged to Ella.”

The Saboteur and the Dryad became transfixed; so did Colton. The faerie’s voice was hypnotic, alluring.

The rest of the team did not wait. The Knights charged in, stabbing their swords into the faerie’s stomach. A look of shock and horror crossing her face, the faerie dropped the jar shimmering with golden light. She clasped her hands against her stomach; they quickly became soaked with blood.

Zoe was ready. She caught the glass jar as it tumbled from the faerie’s hands. Then she shouted for the team to grab the remaining jars.

“Colton, how do we leave the mod area with the items?” They had to get out of the game without harm if they were to save the kids who had parts of their life essence trapped inside the jars.

Colton said, “Just exit the game, same as in the main game.”

Zoe felt a sense of desperation. Colton was clearly missing an important point. “How do we bring the jars back with us, though?”

Nissa sighed and slid down from her perch atop the stalagmite. Walking over to Zoe and Colton, she waggled her finger at them. “Follow me.”

Nissa led the way over to the shelf with the glowing jars. Pulling a tiny wand out from under her wings, she waved it over each and every jar, one at a time. Twinkling faerie dust emanated from the tip of the wand.

When she was done, Nissa turned to Zoe and Colton. “There. Now the items can be transported back into the human world.”

She gave them an impish grin, then walked over to Dulcina and waved faerie dust all over her. Looking back at Zoe and Colton, she said, “You and your friends better hurry up and get out of here before Dulcina wakes up. She’s not going to be in a great mood.” With her wand, she produced a huge, sparkly pink velvet bag. “Here …For the jars.”

Zoe said, “Thank you!”

Colton nudged her. “Don’t ever thank a faerie!”

Nissa appeared not to hear them.

Zoe, Colton, and the rest of their team started picking the jars up very carefully so as not to break them. Impatiently, Nissa scooped a few up in her arms and threw them into the bag. “I’ve protected them with magic. Hurry up! They won’t break.”

The team worked quickly after that, throwing all the jars into the bag.

When they were done, Nissa had one more trick up her sleeves, one that didn’t exactly make Colton and the others happy.

Nissa closed the sparkly bag by pulling on a drawstring made of pink satin ribbon. Then she placed the bag behind her. “You may have this only under one condition. I have orders from a helpful faerie named Puck that I am not free to disobey. Puck said that I can help you humans to retrieve your friends’ souls, but only if you agree to destroy the mods that allow humans a shortcut into the faerie realm. Take it or leave it. That’s the only bargain available to you.”

Colton tried to argue, but Nissa pulled the jar filled with golden light out of the bag. She waved it in front of Colton and Zoe. “Seriously, your mods mean more to you than the essence of Ella Bradford?” She gazed into the open bag. “Than the essences of all these other kids in Crestview?”

Zoe pulled on Colton’s sleeve. “C’mon, Colton. Accept the bargain.”

“Fine,” Colton said. “We’ll shut down the mods.”

Nissa refused to budge. “Not shut them down. Destroy them forever.”

With a pained expression on his face, Colton said, “Okay. We’ll destroy them.”

Nissa placed the jar of golden light back into the bag, pulled the satin drawstring closed, and handed the bag to Colton. “Hurry up! Get out of here, while you still can.”

Back in the mod room, everyone was speechless and out of breath as they removed their helmets and gloves.

When he’d recovered enough to speak, Colton said, “Congratulations, guys! We did it!”

Zoe said, “I don’t think we should celebrate yet.” She held up the sparkly pink bag. “Not until we take care of these and you destroy the mods.”

***

Ella was in a special rehabilitation facility. A couple of other kids that had fallen into comas were in there as well. They were all from the wealthy side of Crestview. The kids from the Exe and the outskirts of the Exe were at home, with their families trying to care for them the best they could.

Zoe and the hacker team decided to visit the homebound kids first, so they could figure out how to administer the glowing light trapped within the jars before they had to face the added challenge of gaining admission into a secure rehab facility as well.

Everything went smoothly. Each person’s name was etched onto their jar in gold lettering. Zoe or another member of the team placed the jar under the nose of the comatose person and unscrewed the lid. As the unconscious teen breathed in, the glowing essence entered their body through their nose. Within seconds, they were awake and asking what was going on. The team then placed the jar back in the bag and ran to tell a family member that their loved one had come out of their coma. They never explained why or how. No one thought to ask.

It was easier to see Ella than they had expected. They showed up during visiting hours and simply announced that they were there to see her. The staff seemed happy that their patient had visitors. Zoe realized that had Ella’s parents been there, it would have been a totally different story. Impossible, really. Ella’s parents had forbidden Zoe from ever returning to their house or seeing their daughter again.

As they approached the front desk, Zoe held on to the bag containing Ella’s jar of essence. She tensed, and her heart pounded against her chest like a caged animal when a nurse behind the desk said, “What’s in that pretty pink bag? Is that a gift for Ella?” The nurse was young and perky and just trying to be friendly, but Zoe felt incredibly threatened.

When Zoe didn’t answer, the nurse refused to give up. “Let’s see what you brought our sweet Ella, honey.”

Her brain frozen with fear, Zoe finally opened the bag. The nurse peeked inside. “Oh my word, it’s one of those glowy bottles like the ones they sell at the geek stores. I love those! It’ll look great on Ella’s nightstand.”

Zoe felt faint as she closed the bag.

Colton said, “I agree. They’re the coolest things.”

They quickly signed in, then followed the nurse’s directions to Ella’s room. Zoe’s hands were shaking so badly that she didn’t even recognize her signature. It looked like chicken scratch or someone else’s signature channeled through her body.

When they reached Ella’s room, Colton closed the door behind them. They worked quickly in order to accomplish their goal before anyone else came into the room.

Zoe removed Ella’s jar from the magical bag, then leaned over her. The hospital blankets felt soft and warm. Placing the jar illuminated with golden light under Ella’s nose, she unscrewed the lid. A glowing ribbon of light rose from the glass container and flowed into Ella’s nostrils.

When the golden mist had been completely consumed, Ella opened her eyes. Looking at the group around her bed, she looked puzzled.

Finally, pointing at Zoe, she said, “I know you!” Wrinkling her brow in concentration as though trying to retrieve memories, she finally said, “We were playing a game. Feyland…”

Zoe filled her in the best she could without giving away things that would sound too crazy. There would be time for that later, if Ella seemed receptive to it. For the moment, Zoe just said there were some serious flaws with the neural interface of the game.

After saying goodbye to Ella, Zoe told the nurse at the front desk that she had woken up. The nurse’s eyes went wide as saucers. While the nurse pushed an alert button and hospital staff went running off to Ella’s room, Zoe and her team slipped out the front door of the rehabilitation hospital.

***

That night, Zoe sat in her living room, watching the news. Wearing a warm, fuzzy bathrobe, sipping hot chocolate, she smiled with tremendous joy at the breaking news. All the kids who had fallen into mysterious comas had recovered.

The Crestview mayor spoke into a microphone. “We plan to launch a full investigation into our water supply. My firm belief is that it is not safe.”

Zoe shouted at the screen, “The water supply is not the part of Crestview’s infrastructure that has a major flaw!”

When it was time to go to bed, Zoe found herself wondering what to do with the pink bag and all the empty jars she’d placed back inside it. She had one idea that she thought was kind of weird, but decided to try it anyway. She placed the bag filled with jars under her pillow like little kids did with their lost teeth, wondering if there might be a real Tooth Faerie somewhere and if there was such a thing as a Jar Faerie. It was nearly impossible to sleep with all the jars forming hard lumps beneath her pillow, but eventually she drifted off.

In the middle of the night, Zoe woke. Half-asleep, in a kind of twilight state, she saw Nissa standing beside her bed. She was holding the pink bag in her tiny hands.

Nissa giggled, then disappeared with a rainbow-colored pop like a bubble bursting.

Zoe felt beneath her pillow for coins. There was nothing there but a bunch of leaves. She fell back asleep, dreaming of Feyland.

~*~

Dear Reader,

I hope you enjoyed this story. When choosing books, people often make decisions based on the recommendations of others. If you enjoyed Through the Trapdoor and would consider leaving a review on the site where you purchased it, I would deeply appreciate it.

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Marilyn Peake