Wondrous Strange Read Online Free PDF Page B

only a handful of Janus to guard it. There’s a lot of Folk—mostly the nastier ones—who are willing to take that risk.”
    Sonny grimaced. He didn’t understand why any of the Fair Folk would want to live in this world. He certainly didn’t. The noise alone was almost enough to drive him mad.
    “Do you ever get used to it, Maddox?” Sonny asked, a bit hesitantly. “This place, I mean.”
    “I’m the wrong lad to ask,” Maddox grunted. “For one thing, I don’t think I’ve been here long enough. Even just the concept of electricity still gives me the willies.”
    “After three years?” Sonny asked, surprised.
    “Aye, well. We may have both been, you know… taken …when gaslight was still in vogue, Sonn, but I was old enough when I was—when it happened that I actually remember that world. That time. I just try not to think about it now.”
    Sonny thought about that for a moment. He had been a baby when he’d been taken. The only life he’d ever known had been the one that the Fair Folk had given him. It must have been difficult for those like Maddox…to have known right from the start that the shining, glorious people who raised you were not your own. That you weren’t one of theirs. And worse, knowing that your own world was nolonger—could never again be—yours…Sonny felt uncomfortable. It wasn’t something he had ever liked giving deep thought to, though he couldn’t have explained why.
    They stopped near the park’s Bow Bridge, which spanned the Lake just west of Bethesda Terrace, linking the relative wilderness of the Ramble to the more formal, manicured gardens of Cherry Hill. The bridge struck Sonny as an apt metaphor for the Gate itself. They stood silently, gazing out over the water for a long moment.
    “And after all”—Maddox shrugged off the suddenly somber mood and waved a hand at the beauty before them—“this place does have its charms.” He clapped Sonny on the back. “Come on, then. We don’t want to be late for the opening.”
     
    All around Sonny and Maddox, the air thrummed with tense anticipation as they reached the summit of the Great Hill and were welcomed into a loose circle of their Janus brethren. There were thirteen of them, changelings all.
    There was the Fennrys Wolf, legendary for his berserker-like rages and sullen temperament. According to Maddox, the cradle Fenn had been stolen from sometime in the ninth century had been that of a Viking prince. War craft was in his blood—or so he declared almost every time Sonny saw him.
    Camina and Bellamy were twins, sister and brother. Slender, graceful, and quiet, they’d been Janus Guards since almost the beginning and were notoriously efficient.
    There was Godwyn, genial, handsome…ruthless.
    Bryan and Beni—one light, one dark, different as night and day. Insanely competitive, and utterly inseparable, “the lads” could usually be found engaged in some sort of contest, be it darts or pool or just punching each other in the arm to see who could take it the longest.
    There was Ghost. Thin and silent, with dark eyes in a pale face—more haunted than haunting, Sonny had always thought. He didn’t know Ghost’s real name, or even what part of the world he’d been taken from. An odd young man, but then…he’d been taken by Queen Mabh.
    Beside Ghost stood Aaneel—the oldest, who had ages since left his home in India and was one of only a handful of changelings to have lived long enough in the Otherworld to have aged well into adulthood. His black hair had begun to silver at the temples, contrasting with his deep coppery complexion.
    Next to Aaneel was Perry—Percival—the youngest, save for Sonny. Perry had been taken in 1719 from a tiny hamlet in the north of France that had suffered failed crops year after year. In exchange for Perry, Titania had granted the place mild weather and fertile soil, and so a town that had almost died didn’t.
    Finally, Selene, pale and pretty, with fox-brown hair and a