Wishes and Wings by Kathleen Duey

Chapter
1
    I t was a chilly morning.
    The faeries were lining up, getting ready to leave. Everyone was busy. Gavin was helping carry crates of food.
    Alida was scared and excited all at once. It was wonderful to be back with her family after all the years she had spent alone, locked away in Lord Dunraven’s castle.
    It had eased her heart to finally tell her parents about the silent little room in the stone tower and about her friendship with Gavin. She told them how he had risked his life to help her escape—and that she had freed him from Lord Dunraven’s prison.
    Her father said he was proud of her. Her mother hugged her and told her she was brave.
    But Alida didn’t feel brave.
    Not now.
    Her mother had decided it was time for them to return to the meadow near the human town of Ash Grove—which meant they would be breaking old Lord Dunraven’s law.
    Sooner or later his great-grandson would find out. Alida was so afraid he would send his guards to find her.
    The thought of even
seeing
the guards again scared her breathless. The idea of being taken back to Dunraven’s castle terrified her.
    Alida glanced at her mother.
    She was walking fast, checking things, making sure the faeries were lining up, getting ready to begin the journey home.
    Alida was glad her mother would be leading the way. She had planned everything.
    She had insisted that all the faeries wear clothing the color of oak leaves and grass and evening sky—so they would be harder to see in the forest shadows. She had even asked the weavers to make a brown shirt for Gavin.
    It was still easy to spot him near the end of the line, though surrounded by her aunts and uncles. Eleven-year-old human boys were taller than faeries, even the grown-ups.
    Alida looked into the faces around her. Almost everyone was smiling.
    They had hated living so far from their home, and they all had long lists of things that they missed. Her aunt Lily wasn’t sure they should defy Dunraven’s law by going home. But she agreed the berries here weren’t as sweet as the ones in the woods near Ash Grove.
    â€œAlmost everyone seems happy to be going back,” Alida said when her mother came to stand beside her. “Except Aunt Lily.”
    Her mother smiled. “My sister is opinionated, and she isn’t the only one who thinks this might be dangerous. But it’s time to go home. If we do, maybe one day the dragons and the unicorns will decide to go back too.”
    â€œI hope so,” Alida said. “I saw unicorns from Lord Dunraven’s tower once. They were beautiful.”
    Her mother smiled again. “It makes me very glad to know that. I was afraid they were all gone from the forests forever.”
    â€œI wonder where the dragons are,” Alida said.
    â€œDon’t worry,” her mother told her. “They’re hiding somewhere, too. They have to be.”
    Alida watched her mother walk back down the line, stopping to answer questions, bending low when a little blue-winged boy tugged at her sleeve. She wasn’t dressed in a fancy gown this morning; she didn’t look like a faerie queen. She looked like someone on her way to work in a garden.
    Alida spotted her father at the end of the long line.
    He had helped the weavers make magically strong harnesses for their goats. The wheelwrights had made stout little carts for them to pull.
    Those carts were all lined up now, loaded with everything the faeries would need. Two of them were stacked with cheese and all the food from their root cellars. They had taken apart all their graceful wooden tables and packed them with care too.
    Everyone’s clothing—made of almost weightless faerie silk—had fit in easily.
    Their big wooden plates and cups were heavy, though, so they were in strong willow baskets tied to the sides of the carts.
    They had packed their precious glass jam jars too.
    Alida remembered them from when she was little.
    They had only