Beneath a starry Hawaiian sky, Simona drove her Honda down Komo Mai Drive under the speed limit to the point at which the road ended. She parked and took a deep breath.

"I'm sure we'll be fine," tiny Chris reassured her.

Simona was more terrified than everyone else combined, it seemed, and she had been on the run for less than a day, not a full week as Chris and Joe had been. She was still acclimating to her new reality, and poorly at that. "How do you know you'll be fine? If everything's okay, why do I feel like this?"

"If you're nervous, you can stay in the car. We can walk the extra distance," Joe said.

"Out in the open like that? No way!"

Chris glanced at the clock on her dashboard. 1:04. Then he looked up at her, eyebrows raised. His hand went to the hair at the back of his neck. "Let us know when you feel ready."

Simona took one last shaky breath. "All right. I'm ready."

"Good," Chris replied quickly. "We can do this. And Simona. . ."

"Yes, Chris?"

"Thanks for all your help, and for watching Ryan and Morgan."

"No problem. It's what Alana would have wanted." She checked her mirrors and saw only parked cars and dark houses.

"I'll be back to get them as soon as we get things situated," Chris added.

"Take your time."

"Thanks, and please . . . be careful."

She nodded. "Same to you."

Simona placed Chris, Joe, and Cassie in her purse and stepped out of the car. She tried to walk casually, but every noise frightened her. When she could feel danger all the way to her bones, her pace quickened into a run.

She reached the Ewa Forest gate and checked over both shoulders. The street was still. The chirps and hums of the rainforest reassured her that everything was in its proper place there, too. On the other hand, she realized how artificial her sense of security might be. Nature's symphony could easily drown out all sound of approaching evil.

Simona squatted in front of the gate and reached into her purse. She moved items out of the way as quietly as she could and lifted Chris, Joe, and Cassie into her hands. While doing so, her weight shifted into the gate. It made a short metallic grunt. Everything else remained motionless except for their wary eyes.

Nature's hum continued, uninterrupted. 

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With their traveling sacks over their shoulders, the three wingless fairies stood side by side and looked upon the towering rainforest. Five thousand paces seemed like an incredibly long distance in the dark and at their size.

Enemies or predators could be lurking anywhere—behind rocks, beneath plants, or in the muggy airspace. And though Chris had spent the better part of the evening making a miniature spear for himself out of a chip of volcanic glass, they were otherwise without weapons.

Simona was gone, Chris noticed over his shoulder, and there was no turning back. So he aligned himself with the center of the gate and started his paces.

They walked on a well-worn dirt path for the first hundred steps. The path soon veered to the left, though, and "due east" led them into long grass and then thick jungle foliage.

Chris grabbed Cassie's hand, and Cassie took Joe's. The ground was soft and slick from a recent downpour. When Chris tripped, they all seemed to stumble.

While he also struggled to see in the dark of night, he had to worry about what he could hear as well. It was hard to ignore the buzzing above them. But with so many other sounds coming and going, fading or lingering, he knew nothing for certain.

"What number are you on?" Joe whispered to Chris when they stopped to assess how to get around a rock.

"Two thousand eight hundred seventy-two."

"I'm on two thousand eight hundred ninety-three," Joe countered.

"And I'm on two thousand nine hundred eight," Cassie added.

"We obviously have different pace sizes," Joe said. "How will we ever know where to stop?"

"Maybe we'll just know," Chris stated, wanting to finalize the discussion. Kimo did say no talking.

"And we were supposed to walk in a straight line. I doubt that has happened, hence Mount Kilauea in our path."

He'd call it a "boulder," but at human size, it would be a small one. "It's not that bad. I say we go over it."

"Not that bad? It may not be that tall, but it's steep and smooth. How on earth are we. . . ?"

Chris tossed his brother a tendril from a plant growing along the rock wall. He gave it a tug higher up. It would be just as good as a sturdy rope. "Stop yapping for once. Let's go."

Using the leaves as ladder rungs, they inched their way up the boulder. It came to a narrow peak and once they all squeezed on, Chris took the first step down. The other side was much more step-like. They climbed down with relative ease.

On the ground, Chris initiated the hand-latching again. After several hundred more paces, the walk seemed less daunting. The cloud cover dissipated. The moon was bright. And the step count in Chris's head was climbing quickly. The ground was flatter, grassier, and not as rocky or muddy, but they were also more exposed. And just when he became aware of how exposed they were, Cassie became a deadweight.

Chris whirled around, but he couldn't figure out why she had stopped. He tried to walk on, pulling her by the hand, but still, she wouldn't move.

He remembered Cassie acting like this back when they were escaping from Pyxis, right before Andromeda made her dramatic entrance into the dungeon.

Coincidence? Maybe. . .

But then he thought of the SWAT team incident at Gretchen's house in Connecticut. Cassie, a palm-sized fairy in an alien environment, had managed to warn everyone in time to get out of sight.

Chris also recalled the question he'd asked her when they first arrived at the Aurora Borealis in Pyxis—How did you know I wouldn't kill you? And she had replied, Because I didn't feel afraid. It was a strange answer, he'd thought then, but now. . .

For a phenomenon so unnatural, it was all starting to make some sense. All things considered, her current behavior did not bode well.

Chris had enough nerve to whisper into her ear. "What's wrong?"

Joe edged in, and the twig he stepped on let out a snap. "Sorry, that was me. What's going on?"

"They're here," Cassie murmured almost inaudibly.

The three of them pressed their backs into a triangle and waited for the jungle to tell them something. The buzzing came from all directions, neither strengthening nor weakening. The drone was constant.

They waited. No change. They waited some more.

Chris gave Cassie's hand another squeeze and tried to press onward. She didn't budge. Just as his balance recovered from his ineffective tug, he heard a bzzzz right above his head.

They crouched down and, as one, ran. They followed along a fallen log and dodged leaves and branches.

They ran long and hard.

Chris came to an abrupt stop when his feet splashed into rushing water. Joe and Cassie plowed into him. He waded a few steps into the stream. The current was stronger than he was. He put his hand up, urging Joe and Cassie to remain on the bank.

To get across, he would have to Modify, and that would be too risky if any enemies were nearby. Plus, Kimo had told them to stay in fairy form.

"What now?" Joe said, checking over his shoulder.

"Maybe this is where we're supposed to stop."

"Do you think we're that lucky? We lost the step count and the exact direction."

Chris's eyes swept from left to right. "Even if we're slightly off, it looks like we would have run into this stream anyway."

He led the way to a crevice between two rocks. It was shielded by a fern. Chris was the last to enter the hideout. He sat closest to the opening and kept watch through the fronds.

"Okay, Princess, what was that about back there?" Joe whispered.

"You heard the buzzing," she replied, ever so softly.

"You obviously heard it before we did!"

She didn't answer.

"Well?" Joe demanded.

No response.

Joe let out a loud sigh. "Your silence is so mind-boggling sometimes."

"Silence, under these circumstances, cannot be overvalued," Cassie stated without falter. "You might want to attempt it and see if it takes. It may not be a weapon, but you can't deny that it is a powerful shield when used sensibly."

Chris muffled a laugh. He enjoyed the princess version of "shut the hell up." Joe had met his intellectual match and, in Chris's opinion, he could barely hold his own. And maybe it was just a flare-up of sibling rivalry, but Chris preferred it that way.

He then watched Cassie's dark silhouette shoot straight up. If he could see her eyes, he was sure they would be as wide as globes. "Someone's coming," she whispered.

"Is this princess intuition again or a real threat?" Joe asked.

A shadow was cast over the entrance to their hideout.

"Quickly, join me," they were instructed with a harsh whisper.

They climbed out, one at a time, as Kimo Jokura flew to the top of a boulder jutting into the water a short distance upstream. He turned in two full circles. The first time, his eyes scanned the ground and the water. By the second turn, he was checking the tree branches. Then he closed his eyes and whispered, "Two, one, nineteen, fifty-four."

"Isn't that. . . ?" Joe whispered to Chris.

"Yup, Mom's birthday. Very original, Dad."

Kimo fluttered to the water's edge as the earth began to rumble. When he moved aside, there was a hole in the ground just before the stream. Without a word of greeting—without any reaction whatsoever to their punctual and successful arrival at a less-than-obvious location—Kimo signaled for them to enter.

Chris crawled into the hole first. He pushed through the tight space in absolute darkness. He could tell the hole had widened into a tunnel when he could no longer feel his body scraping along the walls.

He rose to a crouch, and within a few waddled steps, he could stand with a slight hunch. He moved forward until he was sure everyone else had enough room to enter.

Then he felt a warmth emanating from the ground, and slowly, waves of light—purple, blue, and green—swirled up both sides of the tunnel. The two sides of light met at a domed encasement overhead, and it remained fluid.

When Chris moved his arm, the colors flowed along with the slight air current he created. And when he touched the wall with one finger, it was as if he'd thrown a stone. The colors rippled away from the impact. It was an odd texture, too. He pressed into it. The wall wasn't firm, but he felt an increasing suction and pressure, enough to worry that his hand might get stuck, so he pulled it back out.

"I think we can safely add this to our list of new experiences," Joe said from behind, stroking his fingertips along the wall with a little more finesse. His results were even more captivating.

Kimo brought everyone back to reality with terse instructions. "Walk to the end of the tunnel. It should take about six hours. I will meet you on the other side."

"You're not coming with us?" Chris asked.

"No, and you shouldn't worry. The path is direct and invisible to outsiders."

Without a good-bye or good luck, Kimo turned and left. A few moments later, the opening to the hole closed over with a thwop.

Forward was their only option. So Chris started walking. Cassie was close on his heel.

From the rear, Joe said, "Let the psychedelic journey to fairyland commence!"

Chris let himself laugh aloud this time, and it felt good. 

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Canis Major joined his soldiers and demanded an immediate briefing. "If they were here, why are they not in our possession?"

"They vanished, Your Excellency, right underneath the water," replied the nearest Crown Champion. "Then we saw a fairy native emerge from the ground. He headed north."

Canis squatted and splashed the water from side to side with his hand, attempting to reveal the secret. There was no hole, no dent, not even a ripple in the silt.

He presumed magic of some kind had enabled their escape, but he considered other possibilities as well. "Lead a group downstream. They may have found something to float on. And you. . ." He pointed to another able-bodied Crown Champion who seemed sharp and ambitious. "Lead a group north. See if you can catch up with the native."

Other fairies flew or marched in to catch the tail end of Canis's orders. This included Crux Chevalier and his battalion of Gray Coats, fairy size for the sake of discretion, wingless to his constant dismay, and infuriatingly slow.

"The rest of you are to establish camp well out of plain view," Canis Major ordered. "This exact location is to be discreetly monitored—day and night, rain or shine. Is that understood? They may emerge at any moment, and we will not let them evade our grasp again."

As his fairy army dispersed, Canis continued to analyze the area where the Unworthy had vanished. Creating a disappearing, reappearing tunnel would require magic beyond his or his army's capabilities. Invading or dismantling one wouldn't be any easier.

He suddenly felt the urge to fly to the boulder beside the stream. With his hands up and eyes closed, he hoped to dissect from the wind any magic words still lingering.   

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