“I think they’re all up there,” I said, pointing to shafts opening up about two pixy lengths over my head. Pierce sighed, and I looked around for something to stand on. There was an arrangement of cushions and chairs in a lowered pit, which was no help. But between it and the now-cheerful fire was a long table made of popsicle sticks, stained red and dovetailed together to make it longer. Maybe we could prop it up against the wall, like a ramp.

I was just about to suggest it when a scuffing from the ceiling jerked our attention upward. Wasps? I thought in fear.

“Jenks?” Pierce called out, and I tensed when a harsh clatter of wings came and went.

“Who’s here? Jax, is that you?” said a slurred voice from the high patch of sun. “‘Bout time you showed up. I gotta tell you about the water rights with the clan next t-t-to ours.”

“It’s me, Jenks!” I called out, thinking it was one of the dumbest things I’d said in a while, but I was so relieved to know he was alive I didn’t care.

“Rache?” The shadow between us and the light staggered, then fell backward. There was a crash followed by a weak “Ow.”

I looked at Pierce, then the upper patch of light. “There’s a room up there,” I said. Another brilliant observation. “How are we going to get up there?”

“Stairs,” Pierce said, pointing, and I realized that there was indeed a thin excuse for a stair, without so much as a hint of a banister, snaking upward in a wide spiral running along the outside wall of the main room.

“Who, by Tink’s little red thong, put the floor up here?” drifted down.

Oh God. He was drunk. I gathered up my skirts and dropped Pierce’s light into them, anxious about what I might find. The higher I went, the brighter it got. The air, too, felt different. Moister. I wondered why there were stairs at all, seeing that pixies could fly.

Finally I reached the top, blinking in the strong sun. Jenks was flat on his back beside a fallen wire-and-cushion chair. Dropping my skirts and Pierce’s light, I went to him.

Pierce came up behind me in a soft padding of bare feet. “I swan, this is the most beautiful room I’ve ever seen,” he said as I knelt beside Jenks.