Excerpt: "Not Without My Boggart"

Chapter One

All of the long-timers in Acheron prison said that the last day of your sentence was the worst. They weren't kidding, though Giardina hadn't been sure how the last day could be much worse than the whole last 13 years. But sitting on her bunk, her precisely-made, immaculately clean bunk, she could see what they were talking about. The morning couldn't pass fast enough.
“See you later, Giardina,” whispered another prisoner form the hallway. The guards usually enforce a strict “no talking” policy among the prisoners when they were walking anywhere in the prison, though they could be a little lax when it came to the day that someone was finally leaving. Or at least their hearing took a definite hit.
“No offense, Miri, but I hope I don't. Not for a few years, at least.”
Miri laughed, and Giardina could picture that painfully seductive hair-toss that she did, still did even after nine years in Acheron. That was what had got her into so much trouble in the first place. Giardina still wasn't exactly sure what she had done to land a thirteen-year sentence (the second hardest that the courts gave out), but for a Naiad, a creature seemingly created to seduce humans into whatever it was that the Faerie world needed, to be convicted of “impropriety and loss of decorum amongst the Human race,” it had to be pretty serious.
Truth be told, she had always been a little afraid to ask.
She looked at her watch, a present from Ebwitch, given to her just before she'd been caught, and one of the few possessions they had allowed her to keep in her cell. Made with super-thin amethyst crystal, it not only told the time in the Faerie realm and in the Human realm, it was fairly beautiful to look at as well. Except for at a time like this, when she was pretty sure that it was purposely slowing down just so it could upset her. It had been telling her that it was just a little after ten o'clock for what had to have been an hour. Still, she wasn't going to complain, or ask a guard, or do absolutely anything that would draw attention to her. She had been given the maximum sentence (well, the maximum sentence that left her alive at the end of it) of thirteen years, thirteen days, and thirteen hours, and she was going to wait that out down to the second. There was no way in Heaven, Hell, or Faerie that she was going to sit here even a moment longer, or have a day (or a year) tacked on for the simple offense of annoying someone with the power to do so.
Even a split-second more of not seeing her daughter Erlina would be absolute Hell of the most painful and excruciating kind.
That had been the only thing keeping her going, the only thing that gave her a handle on her sanity. In fact, the only reason she had cried (okay, screamed, yelled, thrown a fit, and threatened to pitch the bailiff down a well) when the Courts had handed down her sentence was the prospect of never seeing Erlina again. And from the second day of her imprisonment, it was only the thought of finally, finally getting her daughter back that kept her alive, let alone sane.
That wasn't just hyperbolic thinking, either. Acheron claimed more Faerie lives by suicide (of sorts) in their first year of imprisonment that any ever executed in its upper wings. Maybe even more than ever executed put together, though, judging by the stories still told about the Erlkönig, that probably wasn't true. But it was easy to imagine. The nothingness that made up the cells and rooms and passageways of Acheron was designed to do just that. Except for her bunk, a small cubicle of toiletries and necessities, and a shelf upon which she was allowed to keep one, and only one, carefully approved book at a time, there was nothing for the prisoners to look at. No windows. No light sources, besides a gentle ambient glow that started in the morning, and imperceptibly faded away at dusk. Nothing in the corridors. Little conversation with the other inmates, and even less with the guards. From midnight to midnight, the Faerie prisoners were surrounded by nothing, an insidiuos nothing that got inside everything, devoured everything, made everything worthless and meaningless.
It was not uncommon (some even said it was typical) for a prisoner to just let him- or herself waste away completely, a slow death (and an agonizing one for the others to watch) that never failed to seem pathetic and pointless and always seemed to add to the nothingness that infested them all. Actual purposeful suicides were a bit more rare, but still happened, and the sounds and shouts of the guards madly racing up and down the corridors in an urgent, but usually pointless, attempt to revive whomever had finally given in, hit them at least monthly, and sometimes more.
Those who survived had to find something to cling to, something to focus the will on, something to think about during the sixteen hours per day of enforced wakefulness. For most, it was home, or Home, depending on just how important it was to them, and true enough, thoughts of the woodlands were often enough to sustain her. From birth, creation, or parthenogenesis, Faerie were surrounded and infused with the wilderness. Nature, their parent, God, and source of all, knows of no way to waste space or misuse a line or shape. From their first visions of leaves in moonlight, to learning to walk amongst the beds of fern and bracken, to running naked with the fox, wolf, and deer, bathed and caressed by moonlight and night air, there never was, in the sight or hearing of a Faerie, a blank, wasted space. The Fey folk who lived in the woods had the trees and grass and bushes memorized by name (general and personal) by the time they had passed five springtimes. The desert folk knew every rock, every cactus, yucca, and joshua tree, every coyote and falcon. Likewise the spirits of the Yukon and the Arctic and the stark South Island of New Zealand, where they flew with the Kea and nested with the Penguin. To one born amongst the creatures of light and darkness, the children of water and fire, there was no such thing as a dull landscape. To one who could read the book of the trees, and entire saga spread itself out in their branches, tales of war, famine, bounty, happiness, drought, and the growth of mankind. To one who knew the waves, and even older story crested and splashed on the sand and rocks, stories of lost cities, fallen empires, civilizations and species long dead before the first spirit crawled out of a tree, and the first life to ever emerge from a lifeless planet still swam in the ponds and rivers, unaware of what it had started or what it had caused. The air was never blank, the shiftless sands told volumes, and even a single cloud drifting across the heavens tells the weather on the distant side of the planet to one who knows how to speak with it. The Fey folk must learn early on how to filter through the vastness of information, for to them, nothing is meaningless.
And for those serving time in Acheron, there is nothing. Painfully obvious nothing.