and ran to join a circle of dancers stomping and clapping and throwing handfuls of powder into the air. When the dust hit the bonfires, the flames changed color and spat out twirling, whistling sparks.
Ink stepped closer. Joy felt him on her skin.
“Is she okay?” Joy asked.
“Do not worry about Inq,” Ink said, undoing the top buttons of his shirt. “Everyone grieves differently.”
“Uh, yeah.” Joy gaped at the spectacle. “This is...?”
“Enrique’s funeral,” Ink said. “The way the Folk celebrate it.”
Joy shook her head in wonder. “Wow. It’s...”
“Bacchanalian?” Ink said.
“No. It’s beautiful,” Joy said. There wasn’t a sad face in the crowd. It was bold and boisterous, lively and wild—just like Enrique. “It’s perfect.”
“The Folk do not ritualize death as humans do,” he said, leading her down the incline at a much safer stroll. Joy removed her heels, and Ink carried her shoes. “Being immortal means that death is possible but not inevitable. So we celebrate a life well lived. Enrique certainly did.” Ink gestured to the revel. “Now those who knew him gather together to honor that and remember. We grieve the body, but honor the spirit.”
Joy smiled. It felt a lot better than tears. “So, what do we do now?”
Ink lifted two glasses from a table and handed one to her. “We eat, we drink, we dance, we talk, we tell stories, we reminisce.” He stepped toward her and looked up at the swirls of crystal colors and light. The spots of brilliance reflected bright sparkles in his eyes. “We remember.” He smiled at her. “We celebrate life.”
“To Enrique!” someone shouted from deep in the hall.
“To Enrique!” the gathered crowds screamed as many whooped and drank.
“To Enrique!” Inq shouted giddily. “And the Imminent Return!”
“To the Imminent Return!”
Joy lifted her glass along with the rest. “What’s the Imminent Return?” she asked.
“It is an old toast,” Ink said. “To friends long forgotten but still in our hearts.”
Joy clinked her glass against Ink’s. The liquid inside swirled. She paused.
“Can I drink this?” she asked.
Ink considered the wine. “Why not?”
She twirled the stem, watching the liquid hug the sides of the glass. “I’ve read stories where if a human eats or drinks something from Fairyland, then they can never go back.” The deep purple liquid smelled of cherries, oak and fire. “Or maybe it was the underworld? Something with pomegranates? I forget.”
Ink cocked his head. “This isn’t Faeland,” he said. “And you are not human.”
“Good point,” Joy said and sipped her drink. It barely had a taste, more like a vapor of old forests and honey that filled her head and slid down her spine. She hadn’t realized she’d swallowed, it was so smooth. It burned, slow and sensuous, inside her. Joy put the glass down carefully. “Aaaaaand that’s enough for me.”
Ink placed his glass next to hers and curled his arms around her middle, his chest pressed against her back, his chin resting on her shoulder.
“What would you like to do?” he asked. “Dance? Sing? Sculpt?”
“Sculpt?” Joy asked, and Ink pointed. Like a weird reception line, there were Folk picking soft, translucent balls out of a tall basket, which glowed like a kiln. Each person molded whatever was in their hands, fashioning the clay with fingers and claws, small tools or stones spread out on the floor, crafting shapes lovingly, delicately, or banging them hard against the wall. As the Folk worked, the stuff began to glow from within, growing brighter the more they tinkered with it until the shapes became too bright to see, illuminating faces like miniature suns, hardening into crystal.
“What are they?” she asked.
“Memories,” Ink said. “Emotions. Wishes. Watch.”
Joy hushed as a thin man with dragonfly wings lifted the glowing crystal over his head and opened his hand slowly, letting it go. Joy followed his gaze as his creation floated gently upward while a small, shaggy thing with flaring nostrils snuffled around his ankles and whipped its finished crystal angrily at the sky. Both lights eventually slowed as they rose the great distance to the high ceiling and slid into place among the other luminous shapes that hovered in midair. That was when Joy realized that the chandelier was actually a mass of memories—the collective thoughts about Enrique by those who knew him best. It made her heart swell.
“The memory crystal holds on to those thoughts, those memories, like dreams under glass,” Ink said. “We can visit them anytime to free our thoughts and remember so that our loved ones will never be forgotten.”
“That’s beautiful,” she murmured.
“That is immortality.”
She turned and faced him. A powerful heat sparked between them, trickling up the soles of her feet, wrapping around her knees and thrumming in her teeth. She tapped her fingers on the drum of his chest as her body swayed in Ink’s arms. The music and magic were a warm glow in her veins.
“I want to dance,” she said.
It was ridiculous, but it was true. When she felt so much more than her body could hold, she wanted to move—to run and trick and flip and kick. She was kinetic, kinesthetic. It was as necessary to her as breathing, like living, like flying. The shiver up her legs was an urge, a push. The energy in the room was stronger than the wine. She wanted to leave everything that had happened at the dreary human funeral behind. Ink looked at her, eyes sparkling, as if he understood perfectly.
“Come,” Ink said, taking her hand and leading her across the room, weaving expertly between Folk who unconsciously moved out of his way. He could always part a crowd with ease. Joy followed, feeling the heat of bodies and bonfires burning all around her. The music hummed in her rib cage, an anticipating crackle under her toes. She wanted to dive into this like Inq into the crowd, swim above it, through it; she wanted to feel that freedom Enrique had loved during all of his adventures all over the world.
He’d said that she was an ordinary girl who’d been given an extraordinary life. She’d known that, intellectually, but this was where she felt it for the first time—what it meant to be part of this world, paired with someone who loved her.
Blackmail and jealousy and damp tissues could wait. This was about Enrique, and they were going to dance!
Joy squeezed Ink’s hand as they wove between circles and dodged couples shouting over the music. Someone bumped into her, smearing her black dress in blue paint.
“Perdóneme,” the figure said and then stopped dead. “Joy?”
“Luiz?” Joy almost laughed. She would never have recognized the young lehman. He was painted in bright colors from his wavy hair to his
