Alias Hook by Lisa Jensen

her skin with a blackberry thorn. In the surrounding shadows, pale, languid bodies, too close together to tell which limbs are whose, sprawl in the grass beneath a drooping poppy blossom, passing the dripping end of its style from mouth to mouth. A pair of young bucks frisk by, arm in arm, while other tangled bodies in confounding combinations fornicate merrily wherever they fall. Harsh, bubbling mirth, husky moans and raucous cries chime in counterpoint to the manic fiddling, a crescendo of abandon.
    My legs wobble beneath me, the urge to dance overpowering, as is the urge to tear off my clothes and wallow like a beast in mud and moonlight and fairy glamor, the urge to plunge my sex into any warm, yielding thing, the urge to throw myself off a cliff, all are one: wholesale madness without limits, a frenzy of nameless desire.
    A tawny minx spangled in gold like tattered cobwebs flutters by me in the close dark, brushing my cheek suggestively with her downy wing. I’m ripping the lace from my throat, eager for more of her caress, when I spy ahead a singular shadow against the dazzling palace of light the glowing sphere has become. Another human, not a creature of gossamer and moondust, but an unmistakably earthy figure approaches the palace steps unobstructed. She’s going into the fairy palace, the citadel of power in the Neverland, the very heart of enemy country. I grasp hold of my few remaining wits, shove past the lusty fairy, glimpse a flash of indignant golden eyes, and blunder toward the light, caring not where I tread, nor whom nor what I interrupt. But by the time I maneuver round the ring of flailing dancers, elude a pair of chattery young females in heat and the tumescent intentions of a predatory male, I’ve lost sight of the Parrish woman. Yet the fairy palace suddenly shudders up into being before me. The palace steps shimmer and shift like a false vision of water in the desert, yet they support my weight, and I mount them.
    I scarcely climb at all, finding myself suddenly inside, or at least surrounded on all sides by a brilliance of light with no visible source. There are no torches, no lanterns, not so much as a firefly, yet all is aglow with a light of staggering volatility. The damp, dark, shadow world of the forest seems very far away. Never have I beheld such light before; there are layers of light like shadows, gold, silver, green, violet, concealing gauzy depths within, and I flounder about dazed, certain of nothing but solid ground, slick and shiny as marble beneath my feet. When I glimpse a movement of something more solid than light, I follow it. Parrish. She must know the way.
    Yet around a fold of purplish mist, a different figure emerges, a graceful young woman, small and willowy, golden hair dressed in pearls, one long roll of it hanging down her back. Recognition stabs me to the core. No. It’s not possible. Not Caroline. Not here.
    She halts, grasps up her ice blue skirts in both her little hands, whirls about. Her eyes, as pale and unclouded as the fabric of her gown, peer out beneath her smooth, white forehead. Her face and bosom and arms are powdered moonlight white, deadening the effect of her dewy youth, in the fashion of the day. My day. My Caroline. Rooted to the spot, I’m unable to speak, nor do I believe my worthless eyes. She looks back at me intently, yet her gaze passes over me, as if I were a phantom, and her features droop in anxiety.
    “Where have you gone, Jamie?” she cries.
    A ragged breath catches in my throat; I scarcely remember to breathe at all. “Caroline,” I gurgle, “I’m right here.”
    “They say such horrid things about you,” she goes on. “How can it be true? We are in love, I tell them. He would never, he could not ever—”
    I choke on my next attempt at speech, cannot force the words out. Had she truly been in love, how could she betray me so completely? How could she be so easily persuaded? How could she believe it of me? And familiar anger