Free Wayfarer by R.J. Anderson

them, have they ever…”
    â€œOf course they know,” said Linden. “The woman you call Peri—she used to be a faery herself.”
    That was it, he was going insane. Timothy pushed his chips away. “I have to go.”
    Linden caught his arm. “It’s the truth, I swear. She started out as our Hunter, back when she was just a little older than me, and we called her Knife…well, we still call her that, actually, even though she’s a human now and goes by her true name of Perianth instead. But anyway, she met Paul and they fell in love, and in the end Queen Amaryllis made her human so she could stay with him, but she had to promise to go on hunting food for us and protecting us from the crows as her part of the bargain. That’s why she looked sad when you were talking about Uganda. She knows she can never travel, never even leave the Oakenwyld for more than an hour or two, so long as the rest of us need her.”
    So she’d overheard their conversation at the dinner table as well? “How long have you been spying on me?” Timothy demanded.
    A flush crept into Linden’s cheeks. “Since you came to the House, off and on. I know I shouldn’t have, but you were young like me, and I saw the way you looked at the Oak, and…” She played with her straw. “I wanted to find out more about you. What things you liked or needed, if there was anything that I might be able to offer you as a bargain…I had to know if there was any chance you might take me away with you when you left.”
    Oh. He understood now—or thought he did. “The Oak is where you live?” he said. “You and your Queen and…the rest of you?”
    She nodded.
    That explained a lot, thought Timothy. He went on, “Okay, so you wanted to see some more of the world. I get that. But what about your parents? Aren’t they going to be upset that you just took off with me?”
    â€œParents.” She ran the word around her tongue as though it were unfamiliar. “I don’t have any parents.”
    Whoops. He should have guessed she was an orphan, with those worn-looking clothes and tangled hair. That must be why Paul and Peri had been concerned about her. “Sorry,” he said.
    â€œWhy should you be?” Now she looked confused. “No one in the Oak has parents, because there aren’t any male faeries. Knife is my foster mother—well, one of them, anyway. She looked after me when I first hatched.”
    Hatched? thought Timothy in disbelief, but Linden wasstill talking: “But that’s not the point. I didn’t come with you because I wanted to see the world. I came with you to try and find more faeries. Because my people have lost their magic, and we need to get it back.”
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    Over the next few minutes Linden did her best to make Timothy understand about Jasmine and the spell she had cast on the Oakenfolk, and how vital it was that their people’s magic be restored. “There are only a few of us left now,” she said, “and if it weren’t for Knife and the Queen there’d be even fewer. We’re so afraid of being eaten by crows and foxes that most of us won’t set foot outside the Oak unless we have to. But now there’s even more for us to worry about, because the Queen is dying—and though she gave me a half share of her power, I can’t cast the glamours that protect the Oak nearly as well as she used to. We’ll never be safe, or free, until all of us have our magic back.”
    â€œSo why don’t you find this Jasmine and get her to undo the spell, then?” said Timothy around another mouthful of chips. Linden had tried one but didn’t like it, so he was finishing off the box by himself—though how he could eat so much and still be so thin, she couldn’t imagine.
    â€œBecause we can’t,” Linden replied. “It’s been nearly two hundred