by Nina Smith
Then a patch of sky darkened.
“They’re coming!” Flower looked around for cover, but there was no time for that.
Nikifor had no qualms about killing fetches. He braced himself. “Get down!”
Flower seized a stout branch off the ground and stood back to back with him. “Sorry Nikifor, but I’m really in the mood to hurt something.”
There was no time to argue with her. The swarm descended in an arrow-shaped cloud of angry, glowing, sharp-taloned, hook-beaked monsters.
Nikifor had no idea what Flower did while he laid about with the axe in every direction, moving so fast the weapon seemed like a blur even to him. Exploding fetches filled the air with such rank potency he could barely breathe. The movements came easily, the low stance, the spin, the axe covering every possible angle. His body knew what to do. Once, a long time ago, he’d been a librarian, before the destiny of Muse Champion was foisted on him. To fight, to protect, to be a warrior was a matter of instinct, but how his mind rebelled...
There were no more fetches.
The axe dropped from his fingers. Nikifor bent over to catch his breath. “Flower?”
Flower said a very, very bad word. She swayed like a tree about to fall. Blood poured from a gash on her arm and her skin was pale and clammy.
Her eyes rolled back in her head and she collapsed against him like a rag doll. Nikifor almost didn’t catch her in time. The pallor of her skin sent a dart of fear through him. Was fetch poison fatal? He didn’t even know. He couldn’t lose her. She’d saved his life, and she was his friend, not to mention the brains of this mad quest into confusion.
“Whoa,” said a voice.
A man little more than four foot tall stared up at him with eyes so wide the whites showed all around them. He had a snub nose and thick, matted hair bleached sandy by the sun. His coat and pants had been tacked together from at least three hundred different red and orange cotton patches, and his straw hat had seen better days.
“Whoa,” the little man said again. “Whoa man, that was soooo amazing. I mean, is this even real?”
“Please help us.” Nikifor’s tired arms burned under Flower’s weight. He didn’t know if the plea would do any good, but there was nobody else to ask and Flower was too unconscious to tell him what to do.
The little man’s eyes got even wider. “This is huge,” he said. “I can’t believe I just saw two giant Freakin Fairies kill a whole swarm of fetches, my Gourd, it’s totally like that time when my friend Carrots was walking on top of the hill at night on his own looking for mushrooms and suddenly this big round thing just came out of the sky and Bam! Landed right in front him, and these creatures like totally came out and told him to plant these purple seeds under the full moon, but he lost them, except, like, this is totally bigger than that because I wasn’t even looking for mushrooms!”
Nikifor stared in utter confusion. “Purple mushrooms?” he echoed.
The little man’s jaw dropped. “Whoa man, you actually know the password! I totally knew something wild was going to happen to me today. Come on, I’ll take you to the Lord of the Gourd.” He ambled off the path and straight into the thick of the lush, leafy stalks growing in the field.
Nikifor was left with little choice but to pick Flower up and follow.
CHAPTER TEN
Flower landed in Dream rather harder than usual. Red bricks radiated heat under her boots. The air shimmered. A merciless sun beat down on a wide lane lined with shops so big and glassy and full of silly things like shoes with enormous heels they made her head spin. There were people everywhere, but they moved sluggishly. Sweat beaded their foreheads. Hair and clothes clung to their skin.
The heat made Flower nauseous after the cold and damp of the past two weeks, not to mention the rapid passage between the worlds. The steel bench seat she clutched for support burned her fingers. She closed her eyes and took a few deep, calming breaths. Being this present in Dream only happened when she was unconscious in Shadow, leaving her psyche freer to roam than usual. It was dangerous; she could get stuck here if nobody woke her. Once, she’d got knocked out by a chunk of armour plating flying at high velocity during a battle with vampires at the Bitter Tower. She’d inspired a whole bestselling crime thriller before she came to almost four days later, lying under a spindly brindleberry bush half dead from thirst and with a lump the size of an egg on her forehead.
She shook herself. What an odd memory to have right now. Unconscious she might be, but it was an opportunity too good to be missed. She got control of the nausea with a few more deep breaths, then opened her eyes. She watched carefully. Nobody even looked at her. Naturally, they couldn’t see her, but she had to make sure. After all, she could touch things right now.
Bright pink hair flashed past. There, she always landed right where she was supposed to. Flower dodged around a mother with a stroller and a man juggling three bright red hoops. She wrinkled her nose and coughed when she walked right through a cloud of cigarette smoke. Foul habit. These humans were as bad as fairies.
The girl who’d been plaguing her walked with a man who stood a good head shorter than herself, and who wore a lot of black for a human. Around his wrists were matching thick silver cuffs.
Flower dodged around them so she could walk backwards and study the hard lines carved into the man’s face, whether by time or trauma she didn’t know. One deep scar above his eyebrow told stories of old battles. He was dark and weathered, with silver-flecked black eyes just like - no. No, it was impossible.
The man chose that moment to take his wide-brimmed hat off and wipe sweat from his forehead. He had a head full of dreadlocks, all neatly tied back into a ponytail.
Flower’s eyes widened. It wasn’t impossible at all. She looked at the girl. “What are you doing with a Freakin Fairy?”
But the girl couldn’t hear her. She walked on, head down, swinging that ever-present hockey stick at her side, a frown of concentration marring her brow. The pair of them walked right through Flower.
Flower felt just like somebody had kicked her in the gut. Images tumbled through her mind. She almost fell out of Dream and onto a battlefield scarred with fairy corpses where a distant, blood-curdling roar shattered the night. She bent double, gasping for breath. The vision made her mind reel, not because it was so vivid and frightening, but because she’d seen it. She’d seen it and forgotten it. Right now she couldn’t even try to figure out where and when this terrible battle was. There were no fairies at the Bitter Tower, where she’d lived and fought for ninety years until the death of the Champion, Nikifor’s father...
The girl and the Freakin Fairy halted and turned back, both looking puzzled. Flower froze, terrified they could see her.
“You felt that, right?” the girl hooked the stick over her shoulder. “Please tell me you felt that.”
“I don’t know what I felt,” the Freakin Fairy said.
“I swear I’m being haunted.”
The Freakin Fairy gave the general area where Flower stood a frankly suspicious look, then shrugged and turned away. “Come on, love. We’ve got a present to find.”
The girl chuckled. “How many times am I going to have to help you get out of trouble with Mum anyway? You’d better be prepared to shell out for something really shiny this time, Dad.”
“Dad?” Flower forgot her fright and hurried to catch up with them again, her questions bursting out like water from the fountain in the plaza in Shadow City before the Moon Troopers desecrated it. “That Freakin Fairy is your father? How is that even possible? You don’t look a thing like a fairy! Well-” she considered that. She certainly had some very fairylike violent tendencies. “But who’s your mother then? A human?” She shifted her attention to the Freakin Fairy. “And why are you here? Why aren’t you at home in Shadow mining silver? This is highly unusual.”
They kept talking, just as though she wasn’t there.
“So what’d you do this time?” the girl asked. “You’ve hardly even been bac
k a week.”
The Freakin Fairy looked rueful. “You know, the usual stuff. It doesn’t take much to set her off.”
“Dad-” the girl hesitated. “Is she okay? I mean, I know she’s always a bit different, but she’s getting worse, isn’t she? We ran into Luke the other night–you know, the tall guy from the markets? She freaked out, called him a vampire and kicked him in the shins. I had to hold her back and do some very fast talking to calm him down.”
“What’d you say?”
“I told him she was off her medication. I don’t like saying things like that.”
The Freakin Fairy’s mouth turned down, making his whole face look grim. “You have to understand there are some very dark things in her past she’s never quite got over, Krysta.”
“Krysta,” Flower murmured, still walking alongside. “So that’s your name.”
Krysta made an impatient gesture. “You’ve been saying that for years, but you never really explain. What could possibly be so bad?”
His reply was sharp. “It’s been explained, if you’d only care to listen.”
“Oh, the stories? Don’t give me that, they’re freaking fairy tales! Even you’ve said that!”
The Freakin Fairy began to laugh. “Yes I did, didn’t I? And that’s exactly what they are.”
Krysta scowled. “Well if you don’t want to tell me what really happened to her, fine. I’ll find out for myself.”
“I very much fear you will.”
They walked in silence until they reached a shop window where shining silver necklaces inlaid with chunky blue and purple stones were displayed alongside cut crystal figurines of unicorns and cats.
Flower watched father and daughter gaze into the window in mesmerised silence. “You’re a fairy through and through!” The words were sharp. If she was solid she would have demanded an explanation.
Krysta shook herself. “Did you say something?”
“No. Come on, let’s get this done.”
The pair made their way inside and past glass display cabinets with infuriating slowness. The Freakin Fairy picked up a chunky silver ring here, a glass snake there, a necklace with rainbow-coloured stones and then a sparkling crystal dangling from a chain. They discussed the pros and cons of each one in great depth. Apparently buying a present for the mother was a serious business.
They finally chose a cut crystal figurine of a spider that was at least as big as Krysta’s hand, with eight little red crystals for eyes and red-tipped fangs. Flower went closer to look at it. Something stirred in the back of her mind. A spider. A fairy and a spider. “Why that?”
“She’ll love it,” Krysta said, while the sales assistant wrapped it in purple paper.
“Why that?” Flower yelled at the backs of their heads, unable to explain her rising panic.
The pair left the counter. The hockey stick swung straight through Flower when they passed her.
For the second time a vision hit her so hard she almost lost her grip on Dream and tumbled into another time and place. Daylight. A forest. A young Bloody Fairy with big dark eyes and long, long hair crouched on the ground - no, not crouched, she’d fallen. In her outstretched hand rested a brown, furry spider so big its legs curled all the way around her fingers.
Flower gasped for breath. The image was so vivid. She’d been there. This was a memory, but she didn’t understand how it could be so disconnected, how she could not place it with any other memory, or say who the girl was, or when she’d met her. She stared at the empty shop door, then ran to catch up with Krysta and her father.
They’d only gone a short way up the street, but they’d picked up their pace, shopping now done with. Flower ran around in front of them. “Who are you?” she demanded. “How are you making me remember these things?”
“I’ve been thinking about writing down the stories,” Krysta said.
The Freakin Fairy didn’t look terribly pleased at this statement. “What do you mean?”
“You know, all those freaking fairy tales you and Mum and Poppy always told us as kids. I’m thinking about using them as the basis for a novel.”
“Finally!” Flower burst out. “If you’d just stop thinking about it and write, maybe we could get somewhere!”
But the Freakin Fairy scowled. “Why?”
“Because they’re good stories. And I feel like I need to.”
“The stories were for you and Drew. They’re too dangerous to write down.”
Krysta scoffed. “How can a story be dangerous?”
The Freakin Fairy shook his head. “You never respected the stories. I’m surprised you even listened to them. Write something else, Krysta. You don’t know what you could bring down on yourself. There are really seriously bad things out there.”
“Don’t listen to him,” Flower said. “Write what you want to write.”
Krysta folded her arms and stopped walking. “I’ll freaking well write what I want to write!”
“Yes! Finally!” Flower did a little jump of joy, but her jubilation was short-lived. She felt a tug on her presence, and then an excruciatingly painful yank.
She said the very baddest word she knew.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
An ocean of trembling leaves stretched from horizon to horizon, green, dense, healthy and as high as Nikifor’s waist. His boots were soaked from the mud. His back ached from the dead weight of the unconscious muse in his arms. Sweat trickled down his face, even though the air was icy cold.
But physical discomfort was nothing compared with the effort of keeping up with the Bloomin Fairy, whose labyrinthine progress could only be tracked by a slight shifting of leaves and a tuft of knotted hair sticking out above them. The fairy tracked first left, then right, then traced a big curve before making twelve sharp turns. Nikifor spotted two more wooden signposts under the leaves, both of them pointing vaguely at the sky, but apart from that he was utterly mystified as to how his guide knew where he was going.
Then the tuft of hair disappeared completely.
Nikifor yelled in fright and broke into a run, made even more awkward when Flower’s head fell back and he almost dropped her. The colour drained from her face and her lips developed a blue tinge. “Come back!” he called. “Please don’t leave me here Fairy, you will doom my friend to an agonising death and then I will be forced to go completely mad!”
The fairy tapped him on the kneecap. “Don’t be weird, man.” He held up two big, purple bunches of carrots. “I had to get these. Come on, we’re almost in Pumpkin.”
“Pumpkin?” Nikifor followed the other man, this time keeping right on his heels until the crop came to an abrupt end and they walked into a giant vegetable garden.
He halted in astonishment, right in front of a pumpkin at least the size of four Freakin Fairy huts, with a door, windows and a chimney all built into it. Smoke trailed merrily from the chimneys of many smaller giant pumpkins. Little gardens bursting with bright-coloured vegetables and strangled with choko vines climbed and trailed and crept everywhere.
The Bloomin Fairy cupped his hands around his mouth and hollered. “Hey everyone! I found two giant Freakin Fairies and one of them’s still alive!”
Nikifor winced at the piercing pitch of the little man’s voice. His nerves were already wound so tight he was sure something idiotic would explode from his mouth any second. He clamped his lips together. He mustn’t frighten them.
Two hundred Bloomin Fairies swarmed out of the giant pumpkin houses. They tugged on Nikifor’s clothes, pulled at Flower’s hair, stared and chattered and yelled all at the same time. Nikifor froze, terrified. There were so many voices he couldn’t make out a single word. He took a backward step, intending to flee back into the relative safety of the purple carrot fields.
“Come on! Come on!” His guide tugged on his elbow and pulled him toward the giant central pumpkin. The others quickly got the idea and hustled him along, almost lifting Flower out of his arms in their efforts to help support her.
Nikifor ben
t almost double to get through the door, but once inside he was able to stand up straight with his head just scraping a ceiling made of dried mud daubed over pumpkin shell. The fairies streamed in after him.
They gathered in around the centre of the floor, where fresh leaves and flowers were strewn around a table made entirely of pumpkin seeds. On the table, resting in a bed of fresh purple carrot leaves in a wooden stand, was a shrivelled, dried brown gourd. A big bundle of faded red cloth shivered in an alarming fashion on a deep wooden chair with a high back and sides. Even above all the noise, the sound of snoring could be heard.
The fairies’ chattering reached a pitch. The guide pushed his way to the front of the crowd, leaned over and poked the cloth. “Lord of the Gourd!”
The cloth yelled, moved and shivered. Then it sat up to reveal itself as a shrivelled old woman with bright white hair matted into one big knot at the top of her head. A rounded and unusually large nose dominated a face covered in deep wrinkles. “What?!” she yelled. “What do you lot want now?”
The guide pointed. “I found two giant Freakin Fairies!”
The Lord of the Gourd looked Nikifor and Flower up and down. “What’d you bring them here for?”
The guide puffed his chest up. “I was like totally just out looking for new seeds when I saw these two bashing a giant cloud of stinkies!” He swooped his arms out and jumped, miming the fetches. “There must have been a million of them! But the giant Freakin Fairies were not afraid! They slashed-” He flung an arm out and caught another fairy on the head–and they bashed-” he brought two fists down, and the fairies around him jumped out of the way– “and they turned every stinking one of them to stinking smoke! It was the most amazing thing I ever seen!”
The Lord of the Gourd gave an irritable grunt. “Yes, but why’d you bring them here?”