by Nina Smith
Hippy swung the axe in a wide arc. It sliced into his shoulder like butter. Blood spurted in a fountain so big it sprayed the nearest trees, the grass, the path they’d fought their way onto.
The vamp king fell to his knees. He tried to say something, then slumped onto his face.
Hippy put her hands into the blood fountain. She painted two streaks of blood from the corner of her eyes to her mouth. She yanked the axe from his back.
Somewhere in the distance were voices and the sound of running footsteps. Only fairies ran like that, in a convoy, fast. Ishtar. Ishtar was coming.
From the other direction a lone figure strode across the grass. He was pretty fast too. Hippy blinked. Her head spun. Had she fought too hard? Had Badora bit her without her realising it? She put a hand to her head. Dizzier and dizzier. No, she recognised this feeling. But it couldn’t be. It was just the merest scratch.
She looked at her heel and found it was bleeding.
Pierus stopped in front of her and looked down at Rustam Badora’s body. His voice echoed. “You killed him.”
“Not such a child now, am I?” She couldn’t move. The sound of the fairies footsteps was like thunder.
Pierus’s lips stretched into a thin, cold smile. “No matter. Obviously the roses got you. You won’t last a day. With any luck the fairies will bury you alive.”
“Hippy!” Ishtar’s voice deafened her.
Hippy staggered and turned to face her sister.
Ishtar raced toward her, Clockwork only seconds behind.
“Ishtar.” Hippy smiled. The axe fell from her fingers.
“Is that a vamp out in daylight? Did you kill him?”
“Rustam Badora.” The words came from numb lips. “I killed Rustam Badora.”
Ishtar’s voice rose. “Clear off Muse King!” she yelled. “We’re taking her home!”
Pierus grasped Badora by the shoulder, turned his back and dragged him away.
Hippy reached out for Clockwork’s hand, but before their fingers touched, her knees gave way beneath her. She collapsed on the road at her sister’s feet. Her muscles would no longer work. She couldn’t even blink.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
All the fairies thought she was dead. Hippy could tell from the way they carried her on a hastily constructed stretcher, from the way they were so silent. The sky passed overhead for hours. Sometimes she saw leaves. Once, the stretcher dipped and she saw the forest people lining the road. They said nothing to the fairies.
Clockwork was always at her head, carrying one corner of the stretcher while three of her brothers carried the others. The sight of his stony face made her want to die for real.
All she saw of Ishtar, walking just ahead of the stretcher, was her dreadlocks.
The day wore on and the sky grew dark, but the procession kept going. When the darkness was broken by firelight she knew they were home.
Ruined fortifications loomed over her head. She was carried through the burned walls; all the familiar voices reached her ears like thunder. She wished once more for the silence of the forest.
They laid the stretcher in the centre of the camp. Light from the bonfire flickered and threw shadows across her vision.
Her father bent over her, his face lined and grim. His eyes shone with tears he would never allow himself to shed. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. Then he disappeared.
Willow’s face appeared. She too was grim and dry-eyed. She glanced over her shoulder. “Hey!” she yelled. “Are you sure she’s dead? I could swear she’s staring at me!”
Ishtar joined her. They both stared down into her face for a long time.
“No,” Ishtar said, at length. “She’s dead. Dead a hero of the fairies. She killed Rustam Badora.” She reached out and closed Hippy’s eyes.
With nothing to look at, Hippy listened harder. She heard Ishtar climb up on something and yell so all the fairies could hear.
“You hear that, Bloody Fairies? My sister killed Rustam Badora!”
The cheering hurt her ears.
Later, the stretcher was moved inside. Low voices murmured in the other room, then Ishtar and her mother came in. They stripped off the ragged dress and cleaned the blood and mud from her skin.
“What’s she wearing this raggedy thing for?” Willow said.
“It’s white,” Ishtar said. “The Freakin Fairy said the muse king was talking about marrying her, remember? This must be the wedding dress.”
“No daughter of mine would ever agree to marry a muse.” Willow sounded furious.
There was a moment’s silence, as though they were considering that.
“No.” Ishtar’s voice was firm. “Not even Hippy. The Freakin Fairy said she was a prisoner, remember?”
“We’ll never know what really happened now. Look at all this blood here. My poor girl.”
Water dripped over her heel.
Ishtar’s whisper came from close to her head. “I think the Freakin Fairy’s in love with her, Mum.”
Willow snorted. “Don’t be ridiculous. That’s worse than her running off with a muse! No daughter of mine would fall in love with a Freakin Fairy.”
Her heart hardened like a rock in her chest. Exhausted, Hippy let sleep overtake her.
She had no idea how long she slept. She expected to be dead when she woke up.
Hippy sat up. A sheet slid off her face. It was completely dark. She patted down her face and arms. They were warm and clean. She wore the leather tunic and pants her mother and Ishtar had dressed her in.
Wait, she was moving.
She pinched herself. That hurt, so she must be alive.
She patted down the bed she was lying on and found it was a piece of coarse canvas stretched over stone. She swung her legs over the side. She must have slept a long time, because she was in the mound where all the fairy dead were buried, a cavernous underground chamber filled with different rooms. She was probably in the same room her dead brothers had been buried in.
Hippy put her hands out and walked through the darkness until she encountered a wall. She felt her way along it until she came to a flimsy wooden door set into the stone. A hard push and she was out. She knew the way well; fairies died all the time. She hurried through three stone passages, up a flight of stairs and then out of an entrance sheltered by a curtain of tangled, overgrown vines.
A full moon bathed the nearby forest in silver light. She stared up at the moon for a long time, thinking about what it meant to be alive. Her hand rested on her belly, on the child she had to keep safe now.
The fairy camp slumbered not far away. Ishtar and her mother and father would be asleep in their beds. She imagined their faces when she woke them up and told them she was alive.
But no child of theirs would fall in love with a Freakin Fairy. And if she stayed, if word spread she were alive, Pierus would come back and try to kill her again. He’d never leave her alone.
A long sigh escaped her lips. So there it was. She couldn’t go home, not for a very long time. Not until her daughter was old enough to kill the man who had fathered her.
When she looked away from the moon, a shape moved toward her in the night. His walk was hesitant, his voice unsteady. “Are you a ghost?”
Hippy smiled and reached a hand toward Clockwork. “No.”
He ran to her, but stopped just short. He touched her face very, very gently. “Are you sure? I watched them bury you today.”
“Apparently all you need to do is wash the poison out when a killer rose bites,” she said. “My mum did that. She didn’t even know.”
Clockwork threw his arms around her and squeezed her so hard her ribs almost cracked. “I knew it! I knew you weren’t dead, I just felt it, and then I had a dream and I came out and here you are!”
“Shh.” She rested her head on his shoulder. “Nobody else can know.”
“Why not?”
“Because Pierus will come back.” Hippy took his face between her hands. “Clockwork, I’m going to hide in Dream with
my daughter until she’s old enough to know who she is.”
“Good. I’m coming too.”
“Really?” She felt a whole lot lighter.
“Try and stop me.”
“Do you have the Apple of Chaos piece?”
He nodded. “Fitz and Ana are waiting for me.”
“We’d better go find them then,” Hippy said.
Hippy and Clockwork walked hand in hand into the forest.
It wasn’t easy. Every instinct screamed for her to run home to the fairy camp, meld back into her family and lose herself in day to day life again.
But she couldn’t and she wouldn’t. There was no going back.
“Do you know where you’re going?” she whispered.
“Of course,” Clockwork said.
A Thump Owl screeched overhead, exploded out of its nest, swooped them twice and settled back with an angry hoot.
“I think,” he added.
Hippy giggled and squeezed his hand. “Don’t worry, with this amount of noise they’ll probably find us first.”
“It’s just through here.” Clockwork lifted aside a branch hanging over the trail they followed. “They’re not as far in as the forest people.”
They followed the path around several bends and under some more low-hanging branches before it ended at a clearing where a campfire burned brightly. Fitz and Ana sat over the flames talking.
Clockwork and Hippy walked into the clearing together. Clockwork cleared his throat.
Ana dived for her spear.
“Just us.” Clockwork’s cheery voice stopped her.
“Us?” Fitz looked up sharply. He stared at Hippy. “Hippy Ishtar! I thought you were dead!”
Ana returned to her seat by the fire and looked the two of them up and down. “Oh good.” Her voice was flat. “Another fairy.”
Fitz came around to them and seized Hippy in her second bone-cracking hug of the night. “It’s good to see you.”
Hippy hugged him back. “You too, Fitz.”
They all sat around the fire. She reached her hands to the warmth.
“So what happened?” Ana said. “Why aren’t you dead?”
Hippy shrugged. “Didn’t really feel like dying today.”
Clockwork told them the story. Hippy let the words float over and around her; she was too hungry to pay attention.
“So what now?” Fitz finally asked.
Hippy and Clockwork glanced at each other.
“You’d better tell them about the-” Clockwork glanced pointedly at her belly.
“Oh, right.” Hippy picked up a stick and poked at the fire. “I’m pregnant.”
Silence.
“To the muse king.”
“Ew,” Ana said.
“Don’t remind me. The thing is, the Apple told him the child is destined to kill him. So I’m going to be hiding in Dream for a long time.” She glanced around the circle, but there were no arguments. “What happened to Nikifor?”
“Some of our tribe took the muse to Shadow City,” Fitz said. “They left him in the care of another muse named Flower. He may or may not survive.”
“They were pretty upset about the skeleton,” Clockwork said in a low voice. “They didn’t know the pretender had it. They would have attacked the castle straight away, but I convinced them about the roses. Then I ran all the way to the Bloody Fairy camp and got your sister. I thought she wouldn’t believe me, but the minute I mentioned your name, she and your brothers started moving.” His voice trailed off. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry why?” Fitz said.
“Because they all think I’m dead still,” Hippy said. “And it has to stay that way.”
“Well that’s that then,” Ana said. “I suggest we go.”
“Now?” Hippy sat up straighter. Excitement burgeoned inside. Sure it was mixed with some dread and a lot of regret, but she really liked the idea of going back to Dream for good. “How do we do it?”
Fitz smiled. “Easily, my friend. Anyone who has made the crossing once can make it again.”
“Are you serious?” Clockwork sounded outraged. “We could have stepped back anytime? How come nobody told me?”
“You can ask your father that. Come along.” Fitz stood up and beckoned them all together. Ana stamped the fire out. Then the four of them gathered into a tight group.
Fitz closed his eyes and raised his hands. The air in front of them distorted. On the other side, as if in a mirror covered with water, could be seen a fire-lit room. He stepped through and disappeared. Ana followed.
Clockwork and Hippy joined hands. Hippy took one last breath of the mossy forest and the cold night air of home. Then they stepped out of Shadow.
The End
Would you like to know more about Shadow? Then visit The Shadow Project to keep up with all the latest news, and to look out for book two in the Shadow series, Curses.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nina Smith has been writing stories since she first held a crayon.
Now she's grown up, she uses a word processor. She writes thrillers on subjects ranging from political dystopias to small town murders, and fantasies where bloodthirsty fairy folk take nothing seriously against the backdrop of a violent and oppressive dictatorship.
She leads a secret double life as a journalist, theatrical and gothic bellydancer and designer of steampunk and bellydance costumes, all while looking after a family obsessed with all things medieval, a cat obsessed with milk and thirty grouchy chickens.
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Twitter: @Kilili13
Website: http://ninasmithauthor.weebly.com/shadow.html