by Nina Smith
Krysta swung her hockey stick back and forth, back and forth, while she stared off at nothing.
The affection faded. Flower frowned and moved closer. She placed her invisible hand on Krysta’s wrist as though she could stop the motion. “Please be careful,” she said.
Krysta stopped swinging. A shudder ran over her.
“What’s the matter?”
Flower glanced up at the interruption. She hadn’t seen the boyfriend standing in the doorway, also watching Krysta.
“Drew, when did you get here?” Krysta rested the hockey stick on her shoulder.
“Just now. We were supposed to go to lunch, or did you forget?”
“I forgot.” She shrugged.
Drew came out into the garden, pushing his glasses up on his nose. “Off with the fairies again?”
“Get off my back.” She threw him a scowl. “It was a weird night, alright? I had this stupid dream and I swear I woke up in different pyjamas and couldn’t find the ones I went to bed in, and then this morning there was some friend of my mum’s here who was kind of intense.” She paused, sighed. “And Dad’s gone away again. Mum’s taken it really hard this time. I can tell she’s really, really worried about him, but she won’t tell me why. Freaking hell, I’m twenty-five years old, if he’s doing something dangerous on all these business trips, don’t they think I’m old enough to know?”
Drew put his arm around her shoulder and squeezed. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “Whatever he’s up to, your dad can look after himself, right? Anyway, it could be worse. Just look what my mother used to get up to.”
Krysta chuckled and laid her head on his shoulder. “That sweet little old lady?”
For some reason this comment amused them both profoundly, and they laughed together like conspirators.
The rhythmic crunch of heavy, marching feet yanked Flower out of the garden. She opened her eyes, raised her head and silently watched the road below.
Cold blue lights bobbed through the darkness. At first that was all she could see, until the light flashed here and there off the silver of masks. There were no voices, no conversation; just the military tramp of more Moon Troopers than she could count, all marching down the road in the direction she and Mudface had come.
Flower lay still, heart pounding, and hoped fervently that Nikifor, Fitz and Clockwork had left Ishtar Village far behind them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“You’re not seriously suggesting I take my people with you on a suicide mission into Quicksilver Forest and help you rescue a pack of Freakin Fairies? No offence Clockwork.”
“None taken.”
“That’s exactly what I’m suggesting. And it wouldn’t be a suicide mission if you helped us.”
“Why d’you need us? You’ve got Curse Boy. I’ve seen him fight off a thousand vamps at a time.”
Nikifor watched the three-way conversation from between his fingers. He’d had his head buried in his hands ever since they returned to camp and started this circular conversation. He didn’t join it. He was too busy fighting down a wave of fear that tasted like acid and resisting the urge to go after Flower before she got herself killed. He owed her. She’d dragged him out of the gutter and saved his life. Any other muse would have left him there for vibe-addicted trash.
He forced himself back to the conversation. It was more important they free the Freakin Fairies first. If he repeated it enough times, he might even start believing it.
“We need you because you’re the most fierce and deadly fighters in all Shadow.” Fitz’s calm diplomacy brought the discussion back to the point.
“You’re asking us to leave the village unprotected,” Ishtar pointed out.
“Rubbish,” interjected one of the elders, who were sitting in a tight group around them, playing close attention to everything said. Around the elders were ranged the rest of the village, who watched the argument with rapt interest.
“It’s not rubbish, Dad,” Ishtar snapped. “The Moon Troopers are pushing harder and harder since this little band of geniuses started stirring things up. Look how many Moon Troopers went past just last night! They might not have been interested in us, but somewhere’s being reinforced.”
“A village of Bloody Fairies is never unprotected,” the old fairy said. “Just because you lot want to go off and fight every vamp you can find doesn’t mean the rest of us sit here scratching our backsides all day.”
“I fight for the memory of your daughter!” Ishtar’s voice rose and her fist clenched on her spear. “Her death at the hands of the muse king must not go unavenged!”
Nikifor shifted uncomfortably.
“From what Fitz and Nikifor tell me, the pretender king has some kind of machine powered by quicksilver that he’s using to entrap everyone who disappears.” Clockwork pushed his dreadlocks out of his face and leaned toward Ishtar when she gave him her attention. “Seems to me if you were to capture the quicksilver supplies you’d be kicking him right where it hurts.”
Ishtar scowled. “But-”
“And you could coat all your weapons in silver and make them shiny.”
Ishtar’s eyes lit up. Her band of warriors, who were gathered close by, snapped to attention. “Shiny?” she said, then made a fierce grimace. “We’ll think about it.” She marched away.
“That, my friends is how you handle a Bloody Fairy,” Clockwork muttered just loud enough for Fitz and Nikifor to hear.
Fitz looked suitably impressed. Nikifor had to admit he was pretty impressed himself, but he couldn’t help wondering what kind of conviction it took to lie to Hippy Ishtar’s family and not bat an eyelid.
Ishtar was back before any further conversation could take place. “We’ll do it,” she said. “But we want all our weapons coated in silver. All of them, you hear?”
Bloody Fairies were not in the habit of wasting time: within half an hour, Ishtar’s band were on the road. Clockwork walked at the head of the fairies, deep in conversation with her. Nikifor and Fitz walked at the rear.
Nikifor could hardly tear his eyes from the forest. He’d walked this path with the king. The violent clarity of returning memories made his head spin. He only had to glance down the road that meandered away from them through the forest, and he was lying on the back of a slow-moving cart driven by the king, sick and afraid, while a bored Bloody Fairy threw things at him. Two sets of footprints, one big, one tiny, marked this as the place Flower and Mudface had gone their own way. He stared down that road until Fitz came back and tapped him on the shoulder.
“Nothing down that way but trouble, mate.”
“I know.” Nikifor tore himself away and hurried to catch up with the fairies. Ishtar’s band travelled at a swift pace. Their steady jog was a brusque, easy stride for him. Every step away from that road of certain doom made him feel lighter and freer. The clip-clop of Fitz’s hooves made a rhythmic sound on the white gravel road. The late afternoon sun was warm and pleasant. A cold, crisp breeze carried the earthy fragrance of spring over the paddocks, and with it the sleepy chirp of early crickets.
Fitz smoothed a hand over his grey beard and cleared his throat a couple of times. He hesitated for another full minute before finally broaching what was on his mind. “You no longer share Flower’s convictions about your king,” he finally said.
“You mean am I still a blind and ignorant madman?!” Nikifor clapped his hand over his mouth when the last two words came out as a yell. “Sorry,” he whispered.
Fitz sighed. “Perhaps the Freakin Fairies will lift the curse soon. What I mean to say is, you’ve become aware of the true nature of the muse king.”
“I have.” Nikifor watched the fairies ahead of them and wondered how many of their kind were missing. Excuses tumbled from his lips, even though he knew there was no need for them, not with Fitz. “I tried to be loyal. It is a muse’s place to be undyingly loyal to his king, but how can you be loyal to someone who is trying to kill you?”
“I know why he’s doing
this to you.”
Nikifor’s gut clenched. “You do?”
Fitz watched the path ahead of them, deep in thought. “Pierus has had his share of fairy curses, my friend. The first of these was a vision of his own death. Hippy told me about it once. He saw himself die at the hands of you and a woman with green hair. Later, when Hippy discovered she was pregnant, she dreamed of that same woman–her daughter–and you.”
“I don’t understand.” Nikifor pushed a strand of hair out of his eyes. “Her daughter? Her hair is pink. And magnificent.” He coughed to cover up the last word, but it had already tumbled out.
Fitz gave him a lazy smile. “Don’t let Clockwork hear you talk like that. And don’t worry about her hair colour, she is the woman from the vision. That’s why Hippy has taken her into such deep hiding. The two of you have a destiny to fulfil. You are to kill the king and bring an end to Shadow’s suffering.”
“But we cannot kill the king. When he dies, Shadow dies.”
“Only according to the king,” Fitz said. “You’ve abandoned him, friend, now you must begin to question everything he ever taught you, because he is a liar.”
Nikifor clenched a fist. It was a convulsive movement, an ingrained reaction that felt empty. He wondered when he had been taught to be loyal to a monster. How generations of muses had worshipped blindly in the king’s shadow? The silence stretched out. Ants scurried past his feet. Ravens chuckled and groaned from the tree tops. The evening sun deepened to gold on the grassy fields.
“I must ask you something,” Fitz said.
“Of course.”
“I’m old.” The words were so blunt and abrupt they seemed awkward coming from him. “I’m not as fast or as strong as I used to be. This may well be my last mission. I’d like to return to my clan in the forest and spend time getting to know my nephew, Pan, before I die. He just got married you know, and I wasn’t there. But I need to be sure somebody will carry on the work of the Invisible Army. We are a very, very few standing between the Guild and those they oppress.”
“How few?”
“Well, there’s me. And there’s Clockwork.”
A pause stretched into silence. When it was quite obvious Fitz wasn’t going to go on, Nikifor frowned. “That’s it?”
“I’m hoping we may be able to count one more among our number.” Fitz looked him in the eyes for the first time that day and Nikifor was startled to see how deep the lines in the older man’s face were. “You are one muse, one man, Nikifor, but you could make a difference. Far more of a difference than I ever did. When this coming battle is over I will be either dead or retired. If I retire, I want you to carry on my work. If I die, I want you to find my nephew and carry on my work together if he wishes to join you.”
For a little while Nikifor didn’t speak. The muse he’d been just a few weeks ago, weak, insane but undyingly loyal to the king, seemed a stranger. But to join the Invisible Army–to be the Invisible Army–there would be no coming back from that. No admitting he was wrong and returning to the fold. No going home, ever.
“Your most important task would be to protect Krysta Ishtar from harm should she face it,” Fitz said, his words quiet. “She cannot be kept a secret forever. One day she will need you.”
The words hit him like a lightning bolt. “I will protect her with my life!” He sighed. “Sorry. I mean, I would be honoured. To do all of it.”
Fitz’s smile was wide and genuine. “I’m very happy to hear it, friend.”
They spent the night concealed in a dense copse of trees within sight of Quicksilver Forest.
Nikifor, Fitz, Clockwork and Ishtar sat around the sunken campfire until late while the rest of the fairies settled down to sleep on the dirt, huddling together for warmth.
Clockwork scratched a map in the dirt near the fire with a stick. “We can reach the village by tomorrow afternoon, if we take the most direct route.”
“You mean the one that takes us over open paddocks? Perhaps you should count in the time we’ll waste fighting fetch attacks and false muses,” Ishtar snapped.
“Only if they spot us.”
Ishtar took the stick off him and traced a longer line over the map. “I’d prefer some concealment. It’ll only take a few extra hours and we won’t stink of dead fetch when we get there.”
“No doubt we’ll stink of it when we leave,” Clockwork said.
The two fairies chuckled.
Nikifor watched their easy camaraderie and kept his silence. Ishtar was going to beat Clockwork black and blue if she ever discovered he was concealing her sister from her, no matter how noble his motivation.
After a while Ishtar went off to sleep, leaving the three men alone around the fire, each brooding into the flames before succumbing to exhaustion.
“Nikifor has agreed to replace me when I retire,” Fitz said into the silence.
Clockwork glowered at Nikifor under his heavy eyebrows. “You want me to trust a muse with the safety of Shadow and my daughter?”
Nikifor dared to meet the fairy’s eyes. They were angry, black as coal, with only the tiniest silver flecks. The memories of a flight through a garden of killer roses with a boy who’d looked at him the same way were hard to grasp, harder to hold down. Clockwork had been angry with him then and he was angrier now. Nikifor caught hold of a spark of his own anger. Anger at himself, for wasting so much time as a madman. He might have come to this years ago and spent his time making a difference. After all, it was his destiny. He spoke, in a low, firm voice, words he hadn’t dared utter in years for the shame he felt.
“To every generation of my people there is born a Muse Champion. One muse who is destined from birth to protect the Muse Nation. One muse with the strength of an army, to stand before the Darkness and decimate the enemies of Shadow.”
Clockwork’s forehead screwed up into deeper wrinkles. “What rot are you speaking now?”
“I believe that is muse lore,” Fitz said. “Passed down from the beginning of time in Shadow as the word of the Muse Goddess, Mnemosyne. All of the Champions have been descendants of the muse Calliope, sister to the king, eldest daughter of Mnemsoyne. Some say she was a greater sorceress than even Pierus, you know.”
Nikifor shuddered at the name of the Goddess. He had never been religious like the king. As a very young man at Muse College he’d been beaten more than once for missing a devotional led by the king himself. He grimaced at the unbidden memory.
“So what about this Muse Champion then?” Clockwork poked at the fire, stoking the flames higher against the creeping cold. “He going to come and join the Invisible Army too?”
“Yes.” Hypnotised by the flames, Nikifor spoke with a conviction he hadn’t felt in a long time. “I will fight by your side for as long as I live, and as long as the king remains an enemy of Shadow.” He lifted his eyes to Clockwork’s, and this time felt the other man flinch back. “I have abandoned my path for too long. I am the Muse Champion, like my father before me. If I must fight my king to protect the Muse Nation, and all of Shadow, then I will.”
Clockwork stared at him so hard Nikifor thought he must lay his soul bare.
“You’ll do, I suppose,” the fairy finally said. “But don’t let me catch you touching any more of that vibe.” He sent up a shower of sparks with his stick. “Rebellions don’t take place on the back of junk like that, sonny.”
“I will never go back.” It felt like an oath. “Never.” He turned his back to hide the burning anger in his chest. Clockwork was not to blame. Nikifor was the one who’d wasted all those years. He deserved the carry this mark of shame, but not alone. One day the king would pay dearly for those lost years.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Flower woke up with her cheek stuck to rough bark and her foot wedged at an awkward angle. Morning sunlight spilled over Mudface, who was squashed between a branch and the tree trunk, rubbing her knuckles in her eyes and emitting the odd sob. Shazza awkwardly patted her shoulder from her perch on the next branch up.
“What’s the matter?” Flower gripped her branch firmly to be sure she didn’t fall and break her neck.
Shazza glanced at her. “Pink,” she mouthed.
Mudface lowered her hands and uncurled herself, revealing a shock of pink hair straggling around her shoulders. Not only that, but her fingernails and toenails had turned pearly pink and her ragged black dress had pink threads running through it. When she straightened still more, her sleeves and pant legs came to only two thirds of where they had yesterday. There was an audible rip across her back.
The fairy burst into fresh tears.
That was one powerful curse. Flower thanked her stars she hadn’t upset the Lord of the Gourd. “It’s not so bad,” she said. “It looks kind of pretty.”
“I don’t want to be pretty!” Mudface wailed. “I hate pink!”
Shazza scowled at Flower. “You’re not helping. Can’t you see she’s upset?”
“You-” Flower cut her own tirade off before she started. Much as she would have liked to slap the false muse silly, she was right, it wasn’t helping Mudface. “Well why don’t you do something to help then? She obviously needs some new clothes.”
Shazza looked like she was about to argue. Then she tilted her head, considered, and vanished in a puff of smoke.
Mudface gave Flower a disconsolate look. “Even my topknot’s gone. Lord of the Gourd won’t let me be a Bloomin Fairy anymore.” Amidst a fresh flood of tears, she slid from the branch and plummeted, arms over her face, to the ground far below.
Flower watched her land on both feet, sighed and wished she could do that too. She started the long, awkward climb to the ground.
By the time she got there, Mudface had hunkered down over a pool of water surrounded by white rocks to stare moodily at her reflection.
Flower knelt beside her and put a hand on her shoulder. She had absolutely no idea what to say, so she didn’t say anything. A breeze rippled the surface of the water and marred Mudface’s reflection.