Chapter 5: New Faery
[back to top]
The fog felt thicker than Reggie had expected. Wet and solid, it clung like a soggy blanket to his clothes and face. As though the mist were alive, he felt hands plucking at him with little pinches, and heard whispers calling to him.
“He’s back. He’s back,” the words echoed in murmurs from all around him. He closed his eyes and willed the sounds to go away, all the while moving forward.
He bumped into something and opened his eyes to see Ryssa standing there, staring wide-eyed into the fog. Reggie grabbed her arm, breaking the enchantment that seemed to hold her in place. She turned to him, an expression of serious distress etched into her features.
“Make them stop, Regg. Tell them it isn’t true—” Suddenly he heard the roar of wind, like before. He didn’t have to turn to know that the ball of fire had followed them into the mists.
“Run!” his voice held the same urgency Mary’s had when she gave the same command. He headed away from the oncoming flames, dragging Ryssa with him. He tugged at his sister’s arm, pulling her along, stopping her from falling when she stumbled.
A flash of light up ahead caught his eye. He hesitated, worried that another ball of fire was coming toward them from the opposite direction. The fingers in the fog plucked at him again, urging him toward the light.
“This way, this way,” the voices propelled him forward. “The way out, the way out.”
Reggie moved on faith and a lack of alternatives. He ran toward the light. It solidified in front of him, just out of reach, a bright white light obscured by a layer of mist. He could hear the roar of the fireball all around them now, and didn’t need to feel the heat to know it was almost on top of them.
When they reached the light at the edge of the fog, Reggie both smelled and felt the hair at the back of his head singeing from the heat. Without warning, he threw himself at the light, pulling Ryssa to the ground with him. He covered her with his body and waited for the fire to strike. When it didn’t, he risked a look over his shoulder. The huge flames hovered above them. He rolled off of Ryssa and onto his back. The ball of flames was encased in a larger sphere of water and there appeared to be a struggle going on for dominance.
Dazed and confused, he tore his eyes from the sight and saw others standing around them. The one who drew his attention was a tall, slender man in a dark cloak. With his feet spread shoulder-width and planted firmly on the ground, the man stood with a wand in his hand, the tip of it glowing a bright blue. Sweat beaded the forehead of his older, yet ageless face. A mane of white hair fell to his waist.
From his look of concentration, Reggie guessed that he was in control of the water sphere, or at least trying to control it. Reggie looked above him again to the fireball. The water sphere shrank in size, closing in to tame the fire. The fire sphere condensed, forced into a ball of smaller proportions as it tried to avoid the water. Small wisps of steam hissed and floated away as it fought, trying to surge toward the twins without success. In a sudden rush, the water collapsed onto the flames. Reggie heard a cry of outrage as the entire sphere imploded, then dropped in a mass of water upon them.
A solid object hit his chest and he looked down to see a small, almost humanoid creature eyeing him with a mutinous glare. Fingers reached over his head and plucked the creature from his chest. He glanced at Ryssa, as wet as he was. They turned over and scrambled to their feet as the man in the cloak held the fire creature in a firm grasp, staring at it with a frown.
“Darkwind. Finally, we catch up with you. I suppose it will do no good to ask you why, or by whose direction this has been done?”
The little creature looked at him and hissed. It ceased its struggles and crossed its arms, tipping its head up and away in a blatant refusal to speak.
“I thought not. Very well, you know the price.” He took out a crystal prism from a pocket beneath his cloak and placed it directly behind the little being in his hand.
It struggled again, furiously trying to get away, but the man held tight. He touched the crystal to the creature’s head and it stopped, the look on its face glazing over. The man opened his fingers, releasing his hold on the being. With a gentle breath, he blew on the small body, melting it into the crystal.
Reggie thought he could see its face, stretched and warped like a face in a funhouse mirror, inside the prism. It was the same face he had seen peering at him from the ball of flame. The man tucked the crystal prism into the folds of his cloak and straightened his clothing.
“Reginald and Maryssa?” The man turned toward them at last. They nodded, but neither spoke. He looked at their drenched state and shook his head. “I’m sorry for the reception you received. It’s not quite the way we had planned to welcome you back home.”
“What just happened?” Reggie was the first to get over his shock.
“And what was that creature?” Ryssa asked right behind him.
“Yes, well.” The man looked uncomfortable. He glanced at the other three individuals in the clearing, drawing the twins’ attention in that direction.
“Hammie?” Ryssa said with astonishment. It was the boy from school, the one who stared at her as much as he did now. Hammie dropped his gaze to the ground.
Reggie looked at the two others standing to the right of the older man. Tall and slender, the boy and girl looked even more like each other than Reggie and Ryssa did. Their long hair hung past their waists in rows upon rows of tiny braids, cascading down their backs. The dark caramel color of their skin was a perfect match for the ebony night shade of their hair and the darkness of their matching clothes.
The girl smiled, a perfect set of white teeth set in the delicate beauty of her face. “I’m Moira—this is my brother, Jet.”
“Twins?” Ryssa asked.
“You bet.” Jet smiled as well. His deep, chocolate-colored eyes held a twinkle.
Reggie guessed them to be about seventeen or eighteen years old, around Terry’s age. He looked back to the older man, who watched them intently, seeking signs of—what? Reggie wondered. The man glanced away, as though embarrassed to have been caught staring.
“I’m guessing you must be Aurelius.” Reggie drew the man’s gaze back to him. Staring into his forest green eyes, Reggie finally understood what people meant when they said they got “lost” in the endlessness of his own blue ones.
“The uncle-guy?” Ryssa examined the man carefully.
“Yes.” Aurelius turned his attention toward her. “I am your uncle. Welcome home, children.”
“Some welcome.” Reggie cocked his head. “You still haven’t explained what happened.”
“All in good time—”
“This seems like a good time to me.” Reggie set his chin stubbornly.
Ryssa heard the anger in her twin’s voice, crossed her arms and moved closer to him, her chin tipping upward to mirror his.
“And me.”
Aurelius looked surprised for a brief moment, then his brow furrowed in annoyance.
“There’s no time for this. We are due back at New Faery City—”
“Then you’d better give us the Cliff Notes,” Reggie interrupted. At the look of confusion on his uncle’s face, he explained, “The short version. We’ve spent the last thirteen years, perfectly happy without any interference, because an uncle who didn’t want us around in the first place—”
“That’s not true!”
“—turns us over to strangers. We get lucky and actually find a home where we were loved, and happy, and safe.
“From out of nowhere, with no warning, we’re told that now we have to spend our free time every summer with relatives who didn’t see fit to raise us in the first place. We’re taken from our home, brought to some bizarre place where little creatures puff up into big balls of fire that chase us down and try to kill us.” He paused to take an angry breath. “Right after, I’d like to point out, we’re told it was some ball of fire that killed our parents—”
“It was the same one.??
?
“The same what?”
“The same creature. We were never able to capture her after the destruction of the throne room. Darkwind is the same Sprite who killed your parents and countless others.”
“Oh.” Reggie’s anger deflated in the light of that piece of information only to be replaced with confusion. “But why us? What was it trying to do?”
“Most likely, Darkwind was trying to finish what she started.” Aurelius shrugged. “My guess is that she was trying to kill off the last survivors of the first explosion.”
“So she knew we were coming and hid out, waiting for us?” Ryssa asked.
“No. No one in all of New Faery even knows you’re alive.” He looked at them thoughtfully. His gaze fell on their crystals and his eyes lit with understanding. “Ah, your heartstones. When you put them on, they were reactivated. They must have sent some sort of latent signal to the creature.”
“Then maybe someone else knows they’re alive,” Moira said softly, “and doesn’t want them to be.”
Aurelius looked as though he had been struck.
“Yes, of course.” He shook the paralysis from his body, and looked to the children around him. “We must get going. You’re obviously not safe here.”
“How far do we have to go?” Ryssa glanced around. There was no sign of transportation and hated the idea of a long walk.
“It’s a ways.” Jet nodded toward Aurelius, who had his wand out and was waving it in slow circles through the air. “But Aurelius is calling a cab.” His smile turned mysterious.
A faint, almost musical humming filled the air, growing louder. Soon, from over the tops of the trees surrounding them, the heads of four dragonflies appeared—large—no, make that gigantic—dragonflies. Reggie watched them with apprehension, wondering if another attack was coming. His tension eased a little when no one else seemed concerned.
The dragonflies flew over the clearing, interweaving the patterns of their flight in an aerobatic dance. Aurelius smiled, as his eyes followed their play. The four insects landed in the clearing, the iridescence of their wings reflecting rainbows of light. Aurelius nodded and climbed onto one of the dragonflies, straddling it as though he were mounting a horse. He turned toward the children.
“Come now. We’ve no time to lose.” He further shifted to settle himself on top of the dragonfly.
Reggie watched in awe as the creature grew to accommodate the man’s size. Hammie went up to another dragonfly. He smiled and scrambled onto the creature’s back. Ryssa clapped delightedly, excitement in her eyes as she bounded up to another of the creatures and repeated what the two before her had done.
“Come on, Regg!”
Reggie looked skeptical, but shrugged it off and copied the others. From his elevated seat, he looked down at Moira and Jet.
“Does one of you want to share with me?”
“Naw, watch this.” Jet stepped toward the dragonfly. The dragonfly didn’t even hesitate before it began shaking its head back and forth vigorously in a negative response. Jet laughed and stepped away.
“They’d never consent to carry our kind.” Moira smiled.
Not understanding, his confusion turned to surprise when the dragonfly beneath him launched unexpectedly into the air. He grabbed tight to the short fur at the back of its neck, not knowing where else to hold. The hair was soft under his fingers. He turned his head to look back at Moira and Jet, who were waving them off. He went to give a tentative wave in return, letting free one of his hands, but stopped.
Down below, he watched the twins face each other and start to shimmer. The blackness of their clothing and hair melted and then expanded into two larger forms. Reggie blinked in disbelief. Standing below him where the twins had been, were two beautiful black horses with long, shaggy fur covering their legs. He shook his head in amazement as they started to run from the clearing on all four of their well-muscled, equine legs.
The dragonfly moved past the edge of the circle of trees surrounding the clearing where he and Ryssa had first entered this strange new world. Reggie felt as though his world had been turned upside down. How much stranger could it get? He was afraid that they were about to find out.