Mariah had a headache like she’d never known. Her heart was pounding from relentless nightmares. It was really unfair to feel hung over without having had the fun last night. Work was going to be absolute hell. On its best day, a shift at the assisted living facility wasn’t a walk in the park. She wondered how much hell her boss would give her if she called in sick.
The room was oddly cold. Mariah pried her gummy eyes open. A cathedral of glass greeted her. She was being hauled in a cart through the most gorgeous and alien building she’d ever seen. There was a guy cosplaying as some weird fantasy character in green hunter’s gear to her left. A bird made of frost fluttered just under the intricate stained glass of the ceiling.
She was still dreaming. At least this one wasn’t a nightmare. Except for the headache anyway. The shifting light from all the glass really drove home the pain in Mariah’s head. It was kind of a weak-ass nightmare. She couldn’t remember the previous ones, but they’d been a lot scarier than a hangover in a bright fantasy room.
Since I know it’s a dream, I must be about to wake up. Mariah reasoned. She lay on the padded cart and waited to see where this funky dream would go.
The cart was weird. Mariah rolled onto her side, swaddled in a huge bundle of lace. The cart itself was made out of some kind of pale white stone. There was a literal goblin dragging the thing by a rope made of gold.
Her imagination was really going all out today! Or maybe this was all detail she wouldn’t remember later. It was a lot of detail though. There were beast-people in intricate dresses talking to tree-people in more medieval stuff. Music was playing somewhere nearby. It sounded like an orchestra of harps.
There were smells too! Mariah didn’t remember ever smelling in a dream before. Flowers were the dominant scent, but there were spices in the air too. She could almost taste whatever delicious thing was being cooked. Her mouth watered and her stomach rumbled.
Mariah sat up, or tried to. She was barely propped on her elbows when the green-dressed guy reached out to push her down. He was fast, like a kung-fu movie star. It hurt to be gripped by his hand. Mariah stared in horror to see a living, flexing eagle talon holding her shoulder. This talon had five fingers, all decorated with jeweled rings.
With a dry mouth and a pounding heart, Mariah wondered what would happen if she screamed. Would any of these bizarre creatures help her? Getting stabbed by sharp eagle claws seemed a very real outcome.
It was a horrible nightmare after all. Mariah felt giddy hysteria rise up in her chest. That’s all it was, a freaky, fantasy themed nightmare with way too much detail. When she woke up, she was going to find out what she’d eaten for dinner, and never ever have it again.
The cart came to a stop. There was a raised area in the direction they’d been walking. An unruly pile of glass and gemstones. The more that Mariah looked ahead, the more she was mesmerized by the beauty.
A riot of colors and sharp shapes came together into a three dimensional mosaic effect that seemed infinitely complex. Every place her eyes went she saw something new. Each new pattern was as breathtaking as the last spot. It was too much, it hurt from the sheer amount of complex perfection.
Part of the mosaic moved. It was a person. A person on a throne. A thing made of glass and gold. The person was female coded, maybe. She or it had hair of actual strands of gold. Her eyes were blazing sapphires that pierced the heart. Mariah had to look away from them immediately, clutching her chest.
In the midst of all the sharp colors, the woman-thing was curved and flowing. Mariah ached for the beauty of the creature. Her cheeks were soaked with tears. At first the glass woman seemed to be wearing a white dress with black flecks. As she or it stepped to the edge of her dais, Mariah saw that it was the Milky Way in all its glory, stars so bright you could barely see the black between them.
“Lord Ehadenther, you return to us. Is your task completed at long last?” It was a woman’s voice that came out of the glass thing, but not a human one. She spoke with the cracking of lake ice, with the scream of storm wind. Her tones were full of elemental sounds of fire and water, of wind and breaking stone.
Mariah cowered in the pile of lace. Whatever that thing was, it was worse than a nightmare. It was like someone had shrunk a mountain full of gemstones down and given it a haughty voice. The words were in English, but there was no trace of humanity in them.
“It is done, Your Majesty.” It was the green dressed eagle guy that spoke.
His voice was wolf growls and lion roars. His high notes screamed like the eagles his hands were modeled after. Every animal aspect that his voice pitched into was a predator. The hair on the back of Mariah’s neck stood straight up. An ancient part of her brain was screaming at her to run, to get into a tree or down a hole.
“I have doubts.” Said the Queen. That mere statement crushed the room. Beast people, living mannequins, and flower maidens flinched back and slouched in fear.
“This is the human you requested.” Said the predator lord. “The locket your smiths crafted lead me directly to it.”
“I see. If this is not the right human, then it is my smiths to blame, and not my Master of Hunts?” The queen said, her icy scorn actually frosting the glass around her. “Look at it! It is far too large to be a child. I sent you for the infant of the woman who scored my daughter, not some randomly chosen mortal!”
“Your own magic lead me to this one as well.” Said the eagle-handed man.
What was his name? His was the only name Mariah had to hold on to. Erd something. Mariah was impressed with how well he was holding his ground against the terrifying glass queen. Unfortunately, that he could stand up to her mad him even scarier.
“My daughter will decide.” The Queen said. “If she does not recognize the blood that wronged her, then you will join your Horn Master.”
Another figure rose from the throne. She was snow and moonlight wrapped in a thin shroud of deep blue water. Every part of her was perfect, shaped like the secret dream of all ancient Greek sculptors. Where there should have been eyes she had nothing at all; colorless orbs or voids that left spots in Mariah’s vision as if she’d looked at the sun.
“I can smell it from here.” Said the – princess? Her voice was unearthly, something echoing and vast. Mariah was getting numb to the strangeness, her brain refused to process the complexities of yet another special effects voice.
“You’re sure?” The Queen asked. “It’s enormous. I think it more likely that Ehadenther stole away an ogre’s child.”
“This is the blood that scorned me.” Said the princess. “I will not look upon it any longer.”
“Then your task is done, Lord Ehadenther.” The queen said.
The green dressed man cried out in joy, clutching at his neck. He immediately took three steps away from the cart.
“I’m pleased to be of service.” Ehadenther said. “I will prepare for your next hunt, by your leave.”
“Begone.” The Queen said. Her words knocked Ehadenther back a body length. He fled the court.
“Goblin.” The Queen said. “Take the human to the garden. Let it be raised as faerie. Upon its twentieth year, it will rejoin its family, changed beyond their recognition.”
The goblin did not respond to the queen except to grovel. Once an acceptable amount of groveling had been done, it dragged the cart with surprising speed away from the throne. Despite the sudden speed, the cart was perfectly balanced, the wheels smooth on the glass floor.
Mariah tried to slow her pounding heart with some deep breaths. This dream was beyond bizarre. What was that about her twentieth birthday? That had been last week. Maybe the dream was some massive anxiety attack about not being a teenager anymore. Whatever it was, it could go ahead and end now.
Through an archway of glass filigreed like lace there was a garden out of Mariah’s most longing dreams. The flowers were the size of her head, bursting with color and fragrance. Trees to shame the Redwoods stretched into the air. Golden winged fish leapt out of a crystal clear pool.
A big curvy woman loomed up in Mariah’s vision. She was built like an ancient goddess statue. Sure, her eyes were violet orbs with no pupil or white, and her hair was a huge shock of actual wheat, but she was the most comforting thing Mariah had seen so far. There was humanity to be found in her bark-brown skin and blessedly normal hands.
“This is the child?” The woman asked. Her voice wasn’t overwhelming at all. It was gentle like a babbling brook.
“Yes. Yours now, until the anniversary of its twentieth year.” The goblin said. Her voice was vile, she burbled like a Jabberwok. It was like she’d drowned one of her lungs and filled her throat with the mother of all loogies at the same time.
“I’ve never had a human child before. I’ve heard they soil themselves like animals.” The wheat-woman said. “You go often to the human world, don’t you, Wunk? How long before a human can control itself?”
Mariah blinked. Now the dream was getting weird.
“It can take as long as two or three years.” Wunk said, wetly. “I’m not an expert though. You should seek the counsel of someone who knows, Lualdina.”
“I will have the Hunt fetch me a pair of humans to ask.” Lualdina said. “Until then, I wont have my garden dirtied. Bring cloth to swaddle it with as well as cleansing ointments. Whatever is in the storage from the last human.”
“Why should I?” Wunt asked, coughing horribly in her throat without discharging anything.
“I know you long for the fruits of this garden. You will be rewarded.”
“Then you’ll have your things soon. Use the cloth it’s wearing until then. It looks nice, but it stinks like the human.”
“A good suggestion, gentle goblin.”
“Don’t slander me.” Wunt stumped away, leaving Mariah with Lualdina.
It was time to wake up. It was time to wake up right now. This dream was turning into some kind of weird need to pee dream. Mariah knew the rules of those. You had to wake up before you went in the dream, or things got gross. Desperately, she closed her eyes and willed herself to wake up.
“I wonder what your name was, little human.” Lualdina said. “Perhaps the humans we gather for council will know.”
Mariah felt a tug on her nightshirt. She opened her eyes and squawked as Lualdina tore her shirt open. She struggled briefly, trying to cover up, before two more tears got the shirt off her entirely.
“Okay that’s enough!” Mariah screamed, crossing her arms across her chest. “I’m done with this dream.”
“Oh, you can speak!” Lualdina said, grinning broadly. “Then you can tell me your name!”
“It’s Mariah, and I’m waking up now.” She rolled off the edge of the cart and hoisted herself to her feet.
“Have you visited faerie in dreams before?” Lualdina asked, apparently unconcerned by Mariah’s departure from the cart. “This time you are here in the flesh. Let me have that leg garment. It doesn’t look absorbent enough to keep my garden clean.”
“I’m not giving you my pajama pants!” Mariah said, backing up slowly.
The moment she was two-arms-lengths away from Lualdina, she sprinted away. Wake up! Wake up, wake up, wake up! She begged.
A flower exploded into beautiful lavender smoke in front of Mariah. With no warning, she had her head in the cloud and a lungful of it before she could react. Two more steps took her out of the cloud, but they were wobbly. Her muscles felt like noodles. Any sense of balance was shifting back and forth like she was on a boat.
Mariah tumbled to the soft moss of the garden, limp as a wet towel. None of her muscles would obey her. She could still feel, even cause a tiny twitch, but there was no strength. To her horror, she felt wetness flood across her crotch and legs.
“Ahh, I knew it. Now I’ll have to replant that moss.” Lualdina said. “These thin trousers are soiled now too. I hope Wunk returns soon.”
The faerie woman scooped Mariah up and set her back on the cart. She was more worried about getting pee on the moss than she was the lace, apparently. Helpless to stop it, Mariah watched as her pajama pants were stripped off. Her torn nightshirt was ripped yet again, into broad strips of cloth. Lualdina wrapped them around Mariah’s rear and waist and pinned the ends with little thorns.
It was a diaper. She was sitting in a faerie cart, on magical lace, wearing her nightshirt as a diaper. She had to congratulate the nightmare. It was by far the weirdest one she’d ever had. Bravo to her brain, in all its twisted imagination.
There was just one problem. The dream refused to end. Unable to move, unwilling to provoke the faerie while she was helpless, Mariah lay in her diaper on the cart and listened to the fish splash in the pool. The sun was prickling her skin. It didn’t seem hot enough to burn, but it was another not-dream detail.
“I have your stuff.” Wunk was back, grossly wet-spoken as before.
“Thank you Wunk. These will be very useful, I’m sure.” Lualdina said.
The tiny bit that Mariah could move her neck let her see that the goblin had a big box, a chest really, in her hands. She was scary strong. All these creatures were. There were some cloth diapers in there, incongruously packed with beautiful crystal decanters. Something was glowing in the back.
“What are these?” Lualdina asked, holding an orange-glowing bubble of what looked like sea-glass in her hand. “I didn’t ask you to bring any dreams.”
“Lord Ehadenther hated going on that hunt. None of the Huntsmen want to remind him of it by getting another human. I brought you the dreams of some mortals with children instead. They aren’t much sought-after, I got a good deal on them.”
“You must really want that fruit.” Lualdina said, smirking. “Very well, most generous of goblins, you may have ANY fruit in the garden that you wish. But only the one.”
“I told you not to slander me.” Wunk burbled. “But… thank you.”
While the goblin scampered away, Lualdina gazed deep into the glass bubbles. Mariah tested her limbs while the faerie was distracted. She could wiggle her fingers! If Lualdina stayed focused on the dreams for a bit longer, an escape might be possible.
Bitter disappointment soured Mariah’s mouth when Lualdina put the dream bubbles down. The most she’d been able to manage was moving her arms at the elbows and wiggling her toes. Her hands couldn’t even grip.
“Oh dear, these things we have from the last human child are very much out of date.” Lualdina said. “No wonder you’re so upset, Mariah. We haven’t attired or cared for you properly at all. Don’t worry, our artisans are quick and clever.”
Mariah swallowed. Maybe this would be her chance? If Lualdina left her alone to go get baby stuff, Mariah might have time to get the rest of her strength back. She stayed silent and still, wanting to seem as helpless as possible.
“Lady Podra my dear, I need you.” Lualdina said.
The most human-looking faerie yet came scurrying out from behind a huge rosebush. She was green as the bush, and her hair was the red of the roses. It was real hair! Her eyes were real eyes too, with a pupil and brown irises. She didn’t even have thorns for fingernails, though there were thorns at the tips of her ears.
Podra held out her big yellow skirt, which seemed to be normal cloth, and curtseyed to Lualdina. “Yes Mistress?”
“Study these dreams.” Lualdina said, handing the pair of globes to Podra. “Pay special attention to the garments and artifacts that the humans i use to care for their infants. Then go to the dwarves and have them make me a quantity of those things.”
“For this one?” Podra asked, smiling kindly at Mariah.
“Yes, she is larger than the ones in the dreams, so please mark that detail. She is a Mariah, or possibly that is her name. Since she is very young, she doesn’t speak much, yet.”
Mariah’s face burned. Not having much to say to her inhuman kidnappers didn’t make her a baby, or mute. There was still a tiny chance that Lualdina would leave her alone after sending Podra on her errand. All she had to do was keep playing the helpless, harmless human. Lualdina was clearly some kind of gardener. There had to be lots of – garden stuff – to do in such a huge place.
“Right away, Mistress.” Podra said. “May I play with her when I return?”
“If you wish, dear.” Lualdina said. “Until then, I will watch her closely. The Queen will not be pleased if her prize comes to harm in our garden.”
Podra shuddered, her green skin turning ashen, like a plant that hadn’t been watered. “I will be very careful with her, I promise.”
“I know that you will. Go now.” Lualdina turned to Mariah and leaned over her, inspecting and sniffing.
Her last hope dashed, Mariah burst into tears. She couldn’t even pretend that she was dreaming anymore. The court had been so strange and disjointed that the illusion had held, but here in the garden things were normal by comparison. She could barely ball her fists up, hardly kick her feet, but she did both. It felt good to move something, to make a bigger outlet for her fear and upset than mere sobs could do on their own.
“Oh, just like the dreams!” Lualdina said happily. “Yes, I know what to do with you like this.”
With surprising gentleness, the fae woman lifted Mariah off the cart and into her arms. Lualdina rocked Mariah back and forth slowly, singing to her softly. The song was – in Spanish? It was a lullaby her mother had used to sing. Or was it? Was she just hearing what her brain expected to hear? It seemed madness that all of these weird creatures were speaking modern American English.
Everything here was madness. Maybe that’s what had happened. Something had gotten broken in Mariah’s brain and made her padded-room crazy. Between actual abduction by faeries and a genuine mental break, Mariah didn’t know which would be worse.
She sobbed some more. It felt insane, but she turned toward Lualdina for comfort, clinging weakly to the faerie’s warm skin. Lualdina smelled like dirt after the rain.