Beyond the Wide Wall

by Ploof, Michael James

  Ruby and the companions all rushed to catch one as well, and the clearing erupted with streaking multi-colored light as the pixies tried to fly away. Pixies zipped by, and Willow watched helplessly as many of them were caught in the dippies’ long nets. Beside her, Gibrig caught one and danced around jubilantly.

  “Good job, now put it in the sack and get another!” said Ruby merrily.

  The glade was chaos, with dippies running around in circles, swinging their nets, and hitting each other with them more often than catching a pixie. But dozens of pixies were caught all the same, and soon the round up spilled out into the woods as the multi-colored fae tried to get away. Willow noticed, however, that even when they did get far enough away to be safe, they still circled back to get at the sugar.

  She followed the others into the woods and noticed an elf carrying a big glowing sack that looked to be nearly full of fairies. Willow ground her teeth and charged the elf, swinging her net as she did and laughing like the others. She ran into the elf at full speed, knocking the dippy into a tree and causing the sack to fly from his shoulder. It hit the ground and opened, and Willow watched as dozens of fairies spilled out.

  “Fly away, you are free, go, go!” she urged them as they flew around her.

  To her dismay, they just went right back into the glade after the sugar.

  “What did you do that for?” said the elf, getting to his feet weakly.

  “Sorry,” said Willow, helping him up. “It was an accident. Come on, let’s get ‘em!”

  The dippies hunted down and caught over a hundred fairies before the sugar was gone and the lucky ones had disappeared into the forest. They returned to the city, laughing and singing and dancing, and telling stories of how they had caught the tiny fae.

  Sir Eldrick boasted catching five, while Brannon said that he had gotten two with one swipe. Gibrig was also proud of his catch, and tied Murland with four pixies.

  “How many did you get?” the dwarf asked Willow.

  “Uh, four, I think. Yeah, four.”

  “Ye all be naturals,’ said Ruby, grinning at them. “Ye’re goin’ to get a lot o’ extra treats!”

  The companions glanced at each other excitedly.

  Willow wanted to know where the pixies were being brought, and so she positioned herself behind the group and left them unnoticed to follow those dippies who carried the glowing sacks. Six of them broke from the main group and headed north, away from the main road and toward a part of the city that Willow had never ventured. She stuck to the shadows, not wanting to be spotted, and followed at a safe pace, moving from the corner of one abandoned building to another.

  The carriers went into a tall tower that looked to have had some repairs done to it lately. Willow followed, edging around the tower after the door had closed. She checked that no one was watching her, and feeling quite exposed in the bright moonlight, rushed to the door and slipped inside with as much grace as a seven-hundred-pound ogre could muster.

  She closed the door behind her as quietly as she could and found herself in an antechamber. To the right, a staircase wound up to the next level, and to the left, another one went down. No sound or light came from above, but from the open left stairwell came a glow and the sound of footsteps.

  Willow crept to the stairs leading down and stopped at the top, reconsidering her actions. If she were caught, she didn’t know what might happen. But she just had to know what was happening to the poor pixies.

  She quietly made her way down the stairs, which went deep into the earth at least two stories before opening to another chamber. The footsteps she was following continued down a tunnel to the left, and darkness filled another tunnel to the right.

  Willow went right, following the glow of the fairy sacks, and stopped when she heard the creak of what could have only been a big metal door. The glow grew faint, and Willow continued down the long tunnel. She soon came to the end and found the door through which the carriers had gone. Peeking in, she gasped when she saw the size of the chamber beyond, and she realized sickly that it was a dungeon.

  Catwalks lined the circular chamber, and cells with fine mesh screen covering the bars glowed with the many colors of the fae. The cells each glowed a single color, which told Willow that the pixies had been sorted. She could see the poor little creatures crowded in the cells, clinging to the mesh desperately.

  “Back, back!” a voice rang out, and Willow moved back behind the threshold to spy a gruff-looking dwarf, who looked more like a pirate than a dippy, smacking the bars with a metal rod as he made his rounds. “Hurry up and sort them pixies!” he called down to someone below, on the level beneath the catwalk.

  He walked by the door and Willow moved out into the hall, waiting for him to pass. When she dared a peek back in the dungeon, she found him far to the right with his back to her, yelling at the crowding pixies and banging on bars. She hurried into the chamber and rushed down the stairs leading off the catwalk.

  The dippies were at the center of the room, pulling pixies out of their sacks and stuffing them in other sacks that sat on a long table, each marked with a single color. The floor of this level was covered with sparkling fairy dust. It floated around in the air, twinkling in the torchlight.

  Small barrels were stacked all about the chamber beside wide bays that were positioned beneath the cells. Willow ducked behind a stack of barrels and looked into one of the bays. Its ceiling appeared to be only mesh, and inside the cell above, hundreds of blue fairies were buzzing around angrily. Dozens of fairies lay upon the mesh, and Willow knew in her heart that they were dead.

  The blue dust of the imprisoned pixies slowly floated down into a large pile. The other bays held similar piles of red, green, yellow, purple, orange, and pink dust, and the barrels beside them glowed the same colors as well.

  Willow had learned enough about the underground fairy dust trade from Dingleberry to know that she was looking at a huge operation. The sale of the dust was prohibited by the fae, and the many kingdoms of Fallacetine upheld their wishes, but that only meant that pirates and criminals had a chance to get rich on the stuff.

  Dingleberry had been banished from Faeland for that very reason when she was caught selling her own dust to pirates in exchange for sugar. But this harvesting of the dust from the poor fairies was another thing altogether. Willow couldn’t imagine how rich Captain Ripps was, but she knew that he was not the spiritual peasant he claimed to be.

  “Hey!” came the voice of the dwarven guard. Willow straightened and pressed herself to the wall. “Ye morons be done down there or what?”

  She breathed a sigh of relief when she realized that he was talking to the dippies. Glancing at them from around the stack of barrels, Willow noticed how slow they were moving. The dust in the air must have gotten to them, because they were giggling so hard that they couldn’t answer him.

  “How many times I gotta tell ye to keep yer blasted mouths and noses covered. Bah, ye bunch o’ fools!”

  The dippies managed to sort the rest of the fairies, but as a human man was stuffing the last fairy away, it slipped from his grip and flew up into the air, frantic to get away.

  “Oh no!” The man laughed and slapped his friend on the back.

  “Look at it go!” laughed another.

  “We got a loose one, Danbrig,” another of the sorters yelled out, and a gruff “Bah!” issued from above.

  Willow saw a chance to escape when she spotted an empty fairy sack by the table. She hurried out from her hiding place and grabbed the sack. One of the dippies saw her and cocked his head like a curious dog. Willow joined him and the others and began laughing like an idiot as well. “I think I heard that pixie fart!” she said to the dippy, and he burst into a fit of giggles that left him on the floor.

  “Go on, ye useless junkies, get the hells out o’ here!” said Danbrig as he came stomping down the stairs.

  Willow fell in line with the dippies, who tried to drag themselves up the stairs. The dwarf Danbrig seemed not
to notice that Willow had suddenly slipped in with the group, intent as he was with the runaway pixie that was flying circles around the sorting chamber. Willow herded the laughing dippies up the stairs and toward the door, picking them up off the ground and giving them a shove when they fell giggling. One of them was laughing like a maniac and had stopped to snort a line of fairy dust off the back of his hand. Willow slapped his hand away and gave him a shove, but he just laughed, rubbing a finger on his gums and making stupid, cross-eyed faces at her.

  “Go on, ye hippy dippy.”

  “Back here, ye blasted pixie!” Danbrig yelled from below.

  Willow turned at the door to see the scared little green pixie fly up onto her level, searching frantically for a way out.

  “Come, come, I help-help,” said Willow in the pixie dialect.

  She held out her big hand, and the pixie looked at it suspiciously. Willow smiled, trying to look friendly despite her big pointy tusks pressed against her fat cheeks.

  The pixie glanced at the stairwell where Danbrig was storming up, and back to Willow. She finally made up her mind, and flew into Willow’s hands.

  “I’ll take care of you, just lie low,” Willow whispered into her cupped hand before stashing the two-inch pixie in her pocket.

  As Danbrig came trudging up the stairs swearing, Willow grabbed a giggling dippy and pushed him down the stairs into the guard. She turned and ran out the door, up the stairs, and out of the tower as fast as she could.

  She kept to the shadows cast by the bright silver moon and made her way back toward the center of the city. When she heard no pursuing voices, she slipped into an abandoned building and looked through the broken windows back the way she had come. She sat against the wall, listening.

  Nothing.

  With a slow sigh of relief, Willow took the fairy out of her pocket, careful to cup her hands around it and not let out too much of its glowing light.

  “Thanks, thanks, got to go-go,” said the little pixie, smiling up at her. She pushed on Willow’s big hands like they were walls.

  “Wait, what is your name? I want to help the others.”

  The pixie stood up straight and crossed her arms before giving a bow. “I am Dayday. I am a sprite. I must go-go. Bye-bye!”

  “I’m Willow. I have a friend named Dingleberry. She is a pixie as well. Ever heard of her?”

  “Only Dingleberry that Dayday knows hangs around the butt of the old oak-oak.”

  “Hmm, probably not the same one. Anyway, listen. You should fly to Faeland and tell the queen what is going on here. She will help free the others.”

  “Dayday never been to Faeland. Never seen the queen.”

  “Do you know how to get there?”

  “Every fae-fae knows how to get there.”

  “Good. Then you must fly there as fast as you can and get help. I cannot free your friends by myself, and my friends are turning into useless dippies.”

  “That is bad-bad. Dippies get sold to pirates on the coast-coast.”

  “What?”

  “Captain Ripp-Ripps is a bad-bad man. Uses dippies to catch pixies, then sells dust and dippies to pirates on coast-coast.”

  “If you all know about this, why don’t you do something?”

  “Oh, we try-try,” said Dayday, looking sad. “But Captain Ripp-Ripps has such good sugar!” She said it with an exasperated gesture, clutching her chest and falling against Willow’s fingers.

  “He’s got you all addicted to sugar, and he’s got all the people addicted to fust,” said Willow, wanting to crack the captain’s skull. But she knew that she needed to be careful. She couldn’t act rash. For she was outnumbered, and not even her friends could help. Not in their present state at least.

  “Who are the dippies? I mean, who did they used to be?” she asked Dayday.

  “They are from all over the wide, wide world. Travelers, explorers, even armies I have seen the captain trick into being a dippy-dippy.”

  “That is why people rarely ever return from the Forest of the Dead,” Willow realized.

  “Yup-yup. And sugar is why pixies never return from Forest of the Dead-Dead. Old fairy mothers tell us stay away-way, but the SUGAR!”

  “Shh,” Willow hissed, and glanced over the ledge of a window from her spot against the wall. When she was sure no one was coming, she turned back to Dayday. “Why don’t the fairies do something about the captain?”

  “What can we do-do? Dippies are big and they are many. We are small, and we don’t like to fight-fight.”

  “Well, it is about time that the captain’s reign comes to an end. Will you help me?”

  “Does it mean no more sugar yum-yum?” Dayday asked, looking skeptical.

  “Yes,” said Willow carefully. “But it also means no more getting caught in nets and imprisoned for your dust. It means no more pixies dying down there in that dark place.”

  “Yeah, alright, that sounds better than sugar yum-yum.”

  “Okay,” said Willow, glancing out the window again. “Here’s what I need you to do.”

  Chapter 7

  Dazed and Confused

  Murland waved the wand and tried to recite the words in the spell book correctly, but his voice was too slurred, and the tip of the new wand just fizzled and sparked. He shook his head, weakly shaking the wand.

  “You know why you can’t do any magic?” asked Willow, who had awoken to the morning light coming in through the open flap. “It is because of all those treats you been eating, and the pipe weed you been smoking, and all the fust you been snorting.”

  “What?” said Murland, acting as though the notion were absurd. “Nah, I just need to smoke some more wizard leaf.” He looked around his bedding and scratched his head. “What was I looking for?”

  “Your wizard leaf, but you forgot that you traded it all for fust.”

  “You got any?”

  “No.”

  “That’s too bad,” he said, looking at her blankly.

  She wondered if he could even see her given the way he seemed to look past her.

  “Do you remember what I just said?” she asked him patiently.

  “Huh?” he said, blinking.

  “Never mind,” she said, throwing back the blankets and getting out of bed. She walked out into the cool morning air and looked to the cloudless sky, wondering where Dayday was. It had been a week since she’d sent her to Faeland to get help from the queen, and Willow was getting nervous. Had Dayday been captured, eaten by a bird of prey or a flying fish, or simply been distracted from her quest? She had no way to know.

  “Oh, Kazimir, where are you when we need you?” she asked the sky.

  “Why do you need the wizard?”

  Willow whirled around to find Captain Ripps standing right behind her, leaning on his cane. She quickly took on a tired, stony demeanor, letting her eyes droop as she grinned.

  He smiled brightly at her.

  “I…don’t know what I was saying,” she said, giggling stupidly.

  “I thought that you were speaking to Kazimir the Most High Wizard. But you have been abandoned by Kazimir, you have been abandoned by your people. I have taken you in. Haven’t we been good to you? Shown you a good life?”

  You have turned my friends into imbeciles and kept us from our quest! She wanted to say the words, but she held her tongue.

  “You are very good to us,” she said. “Got any fust? I can’t seem to find mine.”

  “Are you ready for tomorrow? Are you ready to take the vow to become one of us?” Captain Ripps asked.

  Willow gulped. The “vow,” she had discovered, meant allowing the dippies to chop off half of your right ring finger.

  “I am ready,” she said with as much sincerity as she could muster. Then, like a dippy might, she looked to him, confused. “What did you ask me?”

  He smiled and handed her a small vial of fairy dust. “Share it with your friends.”

  Willow watched him go, wanting to crack his skull with her club. She
tossed the vial into the grass and looked to the sky, wondering if Dayday would ever show up. Either way, Willow knew that she had to somehow stop the captain from going through with his ritual. She guessed that the missing finger was some sort of brand, and told the slavers that you were of Captain Ripps’s stock.

  She went back into the tent, intent on trying to get through to her friends one last time. She gathered them all around on the oversized, bean-stuffed pillows and blankets, and spoke very slowly so that they would understand.

  “Listen, everyone. We have had a good time here, but we have to set out again for Bad Mountain.”

  “Ugh, Bad Mountain,” said Brannon, accepting a grape from a petite male elf that he had been going about with for a few days now.

  “I’m serious,” said Willow, looking to Sir Eldrick for support.

  “Much too serious,” Sir Eldrick agreed. “You need to learn how to relax, Willow. Have you tried a chakra massage yet? It’s amazing!”

  “What about the quest?” Willow asked desperately.

  “Quest, shmest. I’ll take a big perky breast, haha!” said the knight, and then passed the pipe to Brannon.

  Murland giggled.

  “We have to leave,” Willow told them. “We are all in grave danger.”

  “Every living thing is in danger of the grave,” said Brannon, taking a deep breath. “All that we have to do is breathe, eat, love, and drink from the teat of the good earth. That is all one must do to continue living.”

  “Yeah,” said Gibrig. “The wide world’ll always have problems. Don’t mean they be ours.”

  “If we do not stop Drak’Noir, she will burn the entire country, including this village of hippy dippy fust heads!”

  “Now, I have been wondering about that,” said Murland, sitting up and waggling a finger. He blinked his puffy lids heavily. “How in the bloody hells can one dragon light the entire continent on fire? And if there were such a grand beast, how in the hells would we be able to ‘scare’ her away in the first place?”