Free The Solstice Cup by Rachel Muller

led outside to the courtyard. They passed a few other faeries and a number of hooded servants on their way, but the courtyard itself was vacant. In the gray light of morning, it looked abandoned. Where there had been tables and chairs just a few hours before, there were only crumbling boulders scattered across a mossy stone floor.
    Mackenzie turned to Nuala, her eyes wide.
    The faery waved her hand, dismissing the scene in front of them. “This isn’t what I brought you to see. Come, over here.”
    She took Mackenzie’s elbow and steered her toward a flat boulder at the center of the courtyard. It was the only thing Mackenzie recognized from the banquet the night before: the flat stone that had held the solstice cup. Mackenzie hesitated at the sight of a shallow depression on top of the waist-high stone. It was filled with a pearly white liquid.
    Nuala pulled her forward. “You’re not afraid, are you?” she asked slyly. “After all, you drank from this pool last night.”
    Mackenzie’s face flamed. “I-I—”
    â€œDon’t worry,” the faery laughed. “I’m not going to force you to drink anything. Even though I know you were faking it last night, you naughty girl! Calm down,” she said when Mackenzie began to tremble. “I’m not going to hurt you. I just wanted to show you something.”
    Nuala reached across the stone and stirred the small pool with her finger. “Solstice fire has many properties: light in the winter sky, liquid when we call it down. And it can reveal things. Are you curious?”
    The shimmering liquid had become more transparent as the faery stirred it, until it was almost like water. “I guess so,” Mackenzie said uncertainly.
    â€œThen look closely,” Nuala said as she withdrew her hand. “Do you see anyone you recognize?”
    Mackenzie bent over the stone. A scene flickered into focus just beneath the surface of the small pool. Two pale shapes moved against a dark background. As she watched, the shapes resolved themselves into girls, and then the girls into younger versions of Mackenzie and Breanne.
    â€œThat’s me, that’s us,” Mackenzie said, looking up at Nuala in surprise. She looked down again quickly. “I think—I think that’s the night…” Her voice dropped away.
    â€œIt seems you’ve been at the threshold of our world once before,” said the faery.
    Mackenzie watched the two small girls climb the hill behind their aunt and uncle’s farmhouse. It was as if someone had taken her memory of that evening five years before and projected it into the pool. The young Breanne was first up to the three ancient stones that formed a child-sized arch against the sky. She was always first back then, before her leg was injured. The young Mackenzie caught up with her sister a few seconds later. Breanne tagged her, and the two girls chased each other around the squat stones, first one way and then the other.
    The sun was low in the sky as they finished their game and collapsed in the grass. Breanne turned her head toward the stones and scrambled suddenly to her feet. She’d seen something in the shadows, something that made her crouch next to the stones. When she stood up again, her fingers were curled around something shiny.
    The young Mackenzie wanted to see the treasure Breanne had found, but Breanne turned away. Mackenzie pleaded and craned her neck to see over her sister’s shoulder. Finally Breanne turned. There on her outstretched palm was a gold ring with a large purple stone. It was beautiful, more beautiful than anything Mackenzie had ever seen in their mother’s jewelry box. She reached out to touch it, but Breanne drew her hand back quickly.
    Then the young Mackenzie saw something move behind her sister in the shadow of the stones. It was an arm, long and thin, reaching out from the dark space beneath the arch. Mackenzie froze as a hand