by Nina Smith
“She wrote Ishtar.”
“That’s the clan name of everyone you see here and a good many more besides.”
Flower thought about this. “Could she be a Bloody Fairy? Have any of your clan ever gone to Dream?”
Ishtar’s voice hardened. “My sister Hippy was the only one of us ever to go to Dream, and she came back and was murdered for her efforts. No self-respecting Bloody Fairy would live in that place. Or have pink hair.”
Flower sighed, deflated. “I suppose.”
“Got you rattled, this human.” Ishtar shoved at a log on the fire with her dagger, sending red sparks sputtering toward the roof.
Flower shrugged. She wasn’t about to confide in Ishtar that the girl had almost opened a door into Shadow. Only the king could advise her on this, which made the search for him all the more desperate.
“What were you doing near that mine?” Ishtar asked. “That place is crawling with Moon Troopers and fetches.”
“Eight hundred Freakin Fairies are missing from the village.”
Ishtar nodded. Apparently, that was not news to her.
“I believe they’re being held in the mine. Maybe the Moon Troopers are forcing them to work it.”
“So?” The word was so casual as to be callous. “Serves the Freakin Fairies right for being so obsessed with quicksilver.”
“So what’s the Guild thinking?” Flower wished she could slap even a shred of sympathy into the woman, show her what was at stake, but it was no good getting angry at a fairy unless you wanted to be driven to a nervous breakdown. “What do they need that much quicksilver for, and who ordered the fairies to be enslaved?”
“My money’s on your king,” Ishtar said. “He set up the Guild, he’s calling the shots.”
“No!” Flower slashed her hand across the flames, a movement that caused Ishtar to half-rise, then slowly sit down again.
“You’re very certain.” Ishtar slowly resumed cleaning her nails.
“There has not been a direct order from the king in months. Maybe years. Somebody else has taken over. He may be imprisoned or even hurt.”
“Let’s be positive about this,” Ishtar said. “He could be dead.”
“If he was dead we wouldn’t be here. Nothing would be.” Flower pushed tendrils of hair from her face. She had to convince the fairy. She had to convince someone, so that she wasn’t the only person in Shadow who knew what was going on. “Ishtar, those Freakin Fairies are being held against their will. Nikifor and I are going to get them out of there, and if you and your warriors were to help-”
“You’d be less likely to die trying?” Ishtar turned her attention to sharpening the dagger on a stone. “True. But I’m not wasting any Bloody Fairy lives on a pointless mission like that. Our objective is to kill your king, nothing more, nothing less.”
“Why is it pointless?”
“Because they’re Freakin Fairies,” Ishtar said. “Stupid creatures. They’ll just go and get themselves kidnapped again. Besides, I’d never live it down.”
Flower gritted her teeth. She could have had the fairy arrested on the strength of all this years ago, if she’d thought for a moment she was a serious threat. “And how long have you been trying to kill the king now?”
“Twenty-five years.” Ishtar sounded quite proud of the fact. “Last I heard we’re number two on the Guild’s most wanted list.”
“Well I wouldn’t know, that was never my department.” Curiosity overtook her. “Who’s number one?”
“Right now?” Ishtar chuckled. “You are. Why do you think I let you both live? Having you two running around will keep the Moon Troopers off my back for a while.”
Flower lay sleepless on the cold stone cave floor for the rest of the night. She didn’t want to think about being number one on the Guild’s most wanted list, so she thought about fairies instead, and how irritating they could be.
If only they’d try to get along with each other. Really, if the clans would just cooperate, they had so much to gain. The Bloody Fairies for example, instead of losing their homes and villages because they spent so much time picking fights and going to war, could protect the other clans. They could have been defending the Freakin Fairy villages while the Freakin Fairies went about making them all shiny things from quicksilver. And the Bloomin Fairies, who loved to grow food and farm, could feed the lot of them while the others saw to their protection and provided them with resources. The Blasted Fairies she wasn’t so sure about. Nobody’d even seen one in decades, if indeed they were anything more than an urban legend.
She sighed. It would never happen. They’d all continue on their own obstinate path and either starve or get killed clan by clan. If she’d known it was going to be like this, she’d never have agreed to make fairy welfare her life’s work. It was a thankless job at best.
She barely noticed when dawn came, but the fairies all rose, packed up and headed out, silent and busy as ants.
Ishtar hoisted a pack over her shoulder and eyed Flower. “Goodbye, Muse.”
“You’re leaving us here?” Flower stretched her aching muscles and dusted cave sand from her tunic.
“We’re certainly not letting a pair of oversized Freakin Fairies tag along,” Ishtar said. “Besides, your friend over there is too much of a liability. He could break out and start attacking us anytime.” She followed her band toward the cave mouth.
“You’re really leaving us to rescue the Freakin Fairies on our own?” Flower called after her.
Ishtar turned back. “Look,” she said. “We can’t help you with that. But I know who would.”
“Who?”
“He’s a forest person. His name’s Fitz Falls.”
“Where do we find him?” Flower began to feel more positive. A lead. Something solid to follow up, she was good at that kind of thing.
“We saw him about two days ago, heading into Bloomin Fairy country. Crazy fool’s probably got cauliflowers growing out of his ears by now.”
“Thank you.” Flower went back to wake Nikifor.
“Just one thing.” Ishtar came back to her. “You’re pretty hopelessly loyal to that king of yours, and you know I’m going to kill him. Are you going to do anything stupid like try and stop me?”
Flower looked into the hardened, battle-scarred face and gave her a tired smile. “If you tried to kill my king and I was there, I would stand between you and die for him. But I don’t think you’re going to find him before I do. Not after twenty-five years of searching.”
Ishtar scowled. “Good luck with Curse-Boy.” She left the cave.
CHAPTER NINE
“I’d like to know just exactly how we got to be at the top of the Guild’s most wanted list,” Flower said.
The reply tumbled from his mouth at high volume with dauntless abandon. “By foul treachery!”
She gave him a look. “You’re not helping.”
Nikifor cringed inwardly and wished for the ten thousandth time he could just disappear, or at the very least control what he said out loud. “What I meant to say,” he said in a more subdued tone, “is that if thousands of muses are missing, and we are now wanted by the Guild, then the whole thing stinks of a treacherous plot against us.”
Flower kicked aside a rock lying in her path. “It seems like that, but who would dare? And who would have anything against us? The muses have done nothing but work for the good of Shadow!”
Nikifor walked with his head down, a half-step behind her. She’d been snappish all morning. The pace she’d set on leaving the cave had already brought them out of the forest and into rolling, deserted farm country. The white gravel road they followed wound first toward paddocks drowning in dense green beanstalks, and then back toward the brooding edge of Quicksilver forest, never seeming to make up its mind where it was going. Three ravens clung to the treetops, carrying on a sardonic cawing commentary on their progress. It had rained overnight, leaving everything wet, but the sunshine today was warm and the air heavy with early spring pollen.
Far in the distance, he could just see the shadow of the Great Western Peak of Impossible Doom. Somewhere in the other direction, the ocean hissed and crashed over his key. “It seems the Guild bears us some grudge,” he finally replied.
Flower snorted. “The Guild is no longer taking direction from the king, that much is obvious. And if that’s the case, then any power they have is invalid. I’ve a good mind to go straight back to Shadow City and shut the whole thing down.”
“You’ll disappear.”
She gave him a sharp look. “You seem remarkably lucid today.”
She was right. Nikifor felt clear and rested. His body no longer craved the madness, even if the urge still lay brooding deep down in places he didn’t like to go. “I think it was the Bloody Fairies,” he said, thinking about the young fairy girl who haunted his visions, the way the silver axe had kept him company in his dreams, the Tormentor hovering behind Ishtar and marking her.
“Don’t worry, they’d drive anybody mad.”
“I’m not crazy!” The words burst from him so loudly the ravens paused in their screeching. Echoes bounced from the trees and came back to taunt him with his curse and Flower’s careless cruelty together.
Flower stopped walking and turned to face him with a look of concern. “Nikifor-”
“I swear to you I’m not,” he whispered, to try and make up for the shouting. She had to understand, and she wouldn’t listen if he kept losing control like that. “Somebody–something–follows me. He was strong in the presence of the Bloody Fairies. He marked them. He marked Ishtar Ishtar with blood. You must believe me, he’s real, he’s dangerous!”
“Nikifor.” Flower cupped his face in her hands. “Of course you’re not crazy, but you must learn to distinguish between reality and fantasy. These are just hallucinations brought on by the vibe.”
“But the vibe is out of my system!” His voice broke on an anguished note, because he could see from the pity in her eyes she didn’t believe him. “The Freakin Fairies did cure me, Flower, they saved my life. And if the man I see is a hallucination, how does he mark me?” He moved her hand to the bruise on his temple where the Tormentor had hit him on the first night with the Freakin Fairies.
Flower touched the faded bruise with gentle fingers. A frown marred her brow. “I thought the Freakin Fairies gave you this.”
“How would they reach?” Nikifor looked Flower full in the eyes for the first time in years and willed her to listen.
Her eyes were brown, serious, full of doubt. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
She’d never listen. He knew that. He said it anyway. “I swear to you I am not crazy.”
She regarded him a moment longer. “The king will know. He’ll help you.” She turned on her heel and walked brusquely down the path, just as though she knew exactly where she was going and it was very important she not be late getting there.
Nikifor stayed where he was, staring after her. A cold, sick feeling settled in his stomach. He could still hear the words of the little Bloody Fairy with the long hair, this Hippy Ishtar whom he had helped but could barely remember.
Your destiny is to kill the muse king.
“I fear I am not fit to seek out the king with you, my friend,” he said under his breath.
They walked all day. The sun was past its peak when the white gravel path finally veered away from Quicksilver forest to cut through a paddock where swollen, heavy yellow buds threatened to burst into flower at any moment. Nikifor trailed his fingers over the greenery, concentrating on the sensation of furry leaves and tough stems, trying to remember whether this was a crop of peas or some underground tuber. It helped to focus on everything that was around him. He wanted to be present, lucid, to feel normal again and hang onto that sensation for dear life.
The hills crept closer. The afternoon wore into evening, and the mountain became less of a shadow and more of a smudge on the horizon. They camped overnight in the shelter of a lone tree, shivering around a tiny fire they lit in a damp hole in the ground. Nobody came near in all that time. They might have been the only people in all Shadow.
The next morning was sunny again, but the cold had not yet eased by the time they came upon a crooked wooden sign planted in soft dirt by the path. On it was a roughly carved picture of a flower and a circle with three arrowheads pointing in different directions. The whole thing was shaped like a lightning bolt topped with an arrow that pointed straight at the sky.
Nikifor tipped his head back and considered the clear blue expanse, but there was nothing up there.
“We’re close.” Flower continued up the path.
“Are you sure? Can you read the sign?”
“Of course I can. It says `this way.’”
Well, she was the fairy expert. Nikifor had never been in Bloomin Fairy country before. He’d never even met a Bloomin Fairy, and wasn’t sure he wanted to after being cursed by Freakin Fairies and hit over the head by Bloody Fairies.
The white gravel became brighter white. A stand of tall, slim, white-trunked trees growing along the roadside obscured the paddocks. The path went around a bend. Nikifor, lost in wondering if it would be such a bad thing to never find the king, almost ran straight into Flower when she halted. The two of them stared at the structure blocking the way much like a pair of frightened rabbits caught out after dark.
A wall of industrial grade quicksilver barred the road from tree to tree, with no way past. The wall was patterned with thousands of tiny geometric lines that made Nikifor feel mildly ill. The brightness of the reflected sunlight off it didn’t help either. Dead in the centre of the structure was the outline of a door.
“I don’t like this,” he said.
“Neither do I.” Flower spoke through clenched teeth. “It was clearly stated in the third article of the Bloomin Fairy land treaty, which I brokered, that no major routes in or out of the territory are to be barred in any way that would impinge on the cultural practices or free movements of the inhabitants. I did not spend fifty years negotiating that document to stand by and see it flouted!”
“Flower wait!” Nikifor tried to grab her sleeve, but was left with a handful of thin air.
She marched right up to the wall and hammered on it with her fist. “Hey you! Open up!”
Nikifor put his face in his hands and groaned. This couldn’t possibly end well.
A small window shot open high up in the wall and a pale face appeared in it. “No entry without paperwork!” The window slammed shut.
“Flower your courage is magnificent but we are fugitives!” Nikifor boomed. He clapped a hand over his mouth before the echoes had even died away and cursed his curse.
Flower shot him a furious look. “Just you wait till we find the king, things’ll change pretty quickly. This is so illegal!” She hammered on the wall again and yelled at the top of her voice. “You come out here right now and explain yourself, whoever you are!”
Silence. Nikifor reached for his axe, quite sure they were about to be set upon by Moon Troopers.
A long, narrow doorway swung inward and a young woman peered out. Dirty blonde hair fell across curiously blank, glassy green eyes and a mouth that settled in a permanent sulky pout. She folded her arms over a long, grey coat. Her pants were slashed and fraying. She scowled at them. “What do you want?”
Flower scowled right back. “I want to know why you’re illegally blocking this road.”
Her look turned sly. “`Cos you’re not allowed in without documentation.”
“Why not?”
The girl made her words deliberately slow and clear. “`Cos nobody is. Duh.”
The girl was too tall for a fairy, but a shade too short to be a muse. She had proper feet, so she couldn’t be a forest person. She was nothing like a Pixie or even a Fire Elf. He couldn’t for the life of him think what other minor tribe she might belong to.
Flower wasn’t about to give any ground. “Who are you? What tribe are you from?”
The girl took a menacing s
tep closer. “I’m a muse.”
Flower’s voice poured so much scorn on the idea even Nikifor flinched. “If you’re a muse, then I’m a giant Freakin Fairy. I demand to know the meaning of this travesty.” She pointed at the wall.
The girl slunk closer, her eyes on the key around Flower’s neck. “I’m a new muse,” she said. “A new, improved, better muse. And you two can consider yourself ex-muses.” She reached out for the key.
Flower slapped her hand away. “You little-”
The new, improved, better muse put two fingers in her mouth and gave a loud whistle. There was a rush of wind from the top of the wall and then a leathery, winged shape the size of a very big rat launched itself at their heads.
“Fetch!” Nikifor seized the double-headed axe from the makeshift harness he’d made across his back. Flower ducked. He swung wildly, twice, and sliced the creature in two. It exploded into foul-smelling smoke.
“Hey!” the new muse yelled. “That’s not fair!” She gave a second piercing whistle.
Flower grabbed the axe from Nikifor’s hand and leaped at the girl. The blade curved around, flashed wickedly and sliced into her neck.
The girl disappeared in a puff of stale smoke.
Nikifor and Flower stared at the empty space, stunned.
“You were magnificent!” Nikifor whispered in awe. “But where did she go?”
“I don’t know.” Flower handed him the axe, looking all around them. “But I think we should move. Come on.”
They peered through the door; it led through a very short passage and straight back onto the road. Nikifor followed Flower through the cold space and out into the sunlight. The trail was deserted and silent. A single white butterfly sailed amongst the flowers that rambled alongside the road. Nothing else moved.
“I don’t like this.” Flower picked up her pace.
Nikifor didn’t either. He followed, the axe ready in his hands. When they left the arrogant little wall behind, the tension eased. The sun shone. Birds sang in the trees. Bees zoomed through the flowers. The landscape widened from trees back to paddocks, these ones planted with swaying green knee high radish bushes. A purple and blue butterfly danced in lazy circles around Flower’s head. She swatted it.