The Fairy Tale

by Talia Haze

  I spun again, facing a young man, about seventeen. The king wore an old, dirty red tunic with brownish-yellow stripes going the long way down the sleeves. Holes riddled his tunic, dark rims encircled his eyes and a long, bright red mark on the lump of his throat continued down his neck.

  King? How did I know he was a king? I knew him, but how? Stony shook me violently, but the king’s cold stare didn’t relent.

  The castle where we played Hide the Flag! It was his castle. I saw him in the room with the dolls. He hadn’t startled me then…so why did he look so dreadful now?

  “Let him rest!” The young king stood so close to me. Even though his eyes were sunken and red, they were soft; they pleaded. “You must leave the Xri alone! I only stand before you as an act of friendship and service to all lands. I am true to you, be true to me.” He held up his hand. Shaking and trembling, I held my hand up too and reached towards his.

  Father spun me around. “Gab!”

  I looked over my shoulder. The king had disappeared, but the other bygones had gotten closer, tightly surrounding us. Their intentions were a lot more menacing than that of the young king’s. They realized I could see them and pressed in close. I cried out again as one leaned into my face and bared his teeth.

  “Gab, Gab!” Father held my face in his hands and bent so he was level with me. “Look at me, Gab! Whatever you are seeing isn’t real.”

  I could barely hear him. The bygones were so close, all gathered around Father and staring hard into my face. One leaned next to Father. His eyes were gone, and his rotted teeth were cracked and jagged. His mangled clothes blew into my face and his wheezing breath was louder than my father’s voice. He leaned closer to me, blocking my view from Father.

  “Let him rest,” he snarled. He opened his mouth, far wider than it should, so wide he could easily have swallowed my head. I screamed and fell back, remembering nothing more.

  Chapter Seven

  The Xri

  The pop of the fire woke me. I sat up, finding myself alone in a room atop a dusty sofa.

  Almost alone. Stony sat quietly in the armchair near the window. “How do you feel, Gabriella?”

  I rubbed my arms. “Like I was trapped in a nightmare. You said they couldn’t see me, Stony.”

  Stony sighed and stood, sitting next to me. “Something disturbs them. As Renard said, only when they are extremely troubled will they be able to see you. I cannot imagine what is happening for so many to be so agitated at once. I apologize; very little is known about this ability. Even as old as I am, I have only seen it once displayed.”

  Laughter echoed from far off inside the house, causing both of us to look up.

  “They said to leave the Xri alone,” I after a pause. Stony diverted his eyes, his face strained with thought. “They have been saying it all along. Why do they care so much?”

  “I am not certain, Gabriella. We never had even the intention of searching for that lost jewel.” He left me alone briefly, returning with a brown, tattered book. “Here it is.” He turned the book around so I could see it. The sketch was of a tiny, golden crescent with a red ruby in the center. “So little is known about the jewel. It dates back long before the histories were even written. What is known is that it is a source of power…so powerful in fact that in order to even touch it, one must wear special gloves...unless, of course you are the Gemini. The Xri’s power is great, and I agree that it that must be left alone.” Stony trailed off, eyes focused on some unseen object past me. “I am troubled that you are seeing so many and that they all have the same message. Why do they appear to you? Why now?”

  I took a deep breath. It felt so helpless. If Stony didn’t know, how could I? I scanned my memory for any other clues to the mystery. I had stood on the lines between this world and the next. That in itself was troubling, but why did they choose me? Simply because I could see them? They sure seemed surprised that I could.

  I had to have had this ability before I met with Father and Stony, so how come I never saw anything before? Why in the fairy route? Why now? What were we doing to make them so upset? The only difference was reuniting with my family. Did they hide something from me?

  Father entered the room and smiled at me. Seeing our troubled faces, he sat across from Stony without saying a word. He spread open the map and studied it in silence as Stony and I sat, lost in our thoughts.

  We awoke early the next morning to make our way through the woods. Angel didn’t leave my side, but I was fine. The bygones had finished with me, and I heard no further whispers. Just silence. That was almost worse, being trapped in my own thoughts.

  The tales were all connected; I was sure of it. But how? The Grip of Gold must have been connected to that lost jewel, the Xri. For certain, it was a host. The Mage must have been connected to those many people and the old kingdom in the forest. Stony did say after he destroyed his “first” kingdom. That certainly implied that were more. But how did those two things connect with each other?

  “Hey, wait.”

  I looked up at Father’s voice. We had made it through the woods, and stood in a rocky terrain. Small mountains and hills stretched as far as the eye could see. Father kicked a clearing in the rocky dirt, and spread out the map.

  “We should be right at the sands.” Father looked up and to the distance, confusion on his face. Rebecca nodded and leapt into the air, the gust from her monstrous wings blowing back our hair.

  “Nothing!” she called from high above. “Nothing but mountains for miles.”

  “I don’t understand it,” Father murmured, running his finger on the map. Rebecca changed from a height and dropped behind him, looking over his shoulder. “We are supposed to be right on the Sands.”

  “What is this here?” Sean asked, pointing from Father’s other shoulder. “It doesn’t have a description on it; perhaps you skipped over it.”

  Father pulled the map closer to his face. “It’s a picture of a stone man with his hand held up and the other pointing.”

  “The mywal,” Stony spoke. “The mywal shows the way.”

  “But where is he?”

  “Look around!”

  We split up, scanning the forest. How hard could it be to find a stone statue in the woods? Very, apparently. Nothing stood anywhere; perhaps it was destroyed like the town. We looked for broken debris, moss-covered stone, pulled up large shrubs and dug in the dirt. Perhaps it was destroyed completely.

  “Over here!” Sean called at last. He knelt at a patch of dirt in a small clearing. He held his hand over a perfectly round hole, just a little smaller than his fist. “There’s a waft of air coming from here!”

  “Dig!” Stony demanded, beginning to dig with his foot.

  “No,” Kyle replied, holding out his hand and blasting the spot. A low rumbling thudded in my chest and the ground unexpectedly dropped. We quickly ran back as the hole grew larger in a wave that spread out in a circle, widening from the center. It spread nearly to our feet before the rumble stopped.

  “Wow!” Kyle exclaimed, looking down proudly. The ancient, underground civilization of stone buildings and columns stretched far beneath Kyle’s opening and continued underground. Close to us and on the right, a simple, pointed temple entrance led further under the ground that Kyle had not uncovered. To our left, a large flat roof, and several houses all around. Stony waved his hand and a wide stairway appeared, descending below the surface of the ground and into the forgotten kingdom.

  Gold! Many of the brick walkways, streets and old houses were made of gold! The gold was tarnished and dusty, but it was still gold! I walked slowly in wonder. The buildings were marked in a different language, but I could still guess what many of them were. Shops, bakeries, inns…I felt like I did in Lavenora and could have spent hours there just exploring.

  I ran my hand over a vendor cart made of gold. It had to be the kingdom of Midas. His golden palace sat atop the small hill, deeper in the cavern, and just out of reach of the sunlight. White piles of sand lay everywhe
re, along with coins and random gold objects. Kyle kept busy by stuffing his pockets and waving his hands over larger golden objects and shrinking them.

  “Here is the mywal,” Stony announced, as he stood before a stone statue of a monk that pointed to a random building.

  “So, perhaps it is inside,” Kyle suggested.

  “No.” Stony bent to look at the ground. “This statue has been moved. The sand is swirled and leads to where it is now. You probably displaced it in your recklessness. And look at this spot right here. It has no dust or sand on it, like the rest of the place does. This is where the statue was once before.”

  “Very well. Come, Sean, help me move this.” Father and Sean leaned against the heavy stone statue. Kyle shrugged and continued to fill his bags. I flashed Ryan a look, who rolled his eyes.

  “Take caution!” Stony demanded as the two grunted. “Just an inch of a wrong move and we might miss it completely!”

  After a few more grunts, Father and Sean moved the mywal back into position. The statue pointed across the civilization, to a wide set of stone steps that led to a wall with a black hole in it.

  “Perhaps we are to dig through.”

  “There is a sign there,” Stony answered. We followed him across the city and stood before the wall. Stony looked over his shoulder. “It is in Alanicate. Would you be so kind, Princess?”

  “Do not fear or distress, the light will open the way.”

  “Look around,” Father ordered. We split up and walked around the old city. What exactly did I look for? I didn’t wander too far. If I began looking at all the houses, I wouldn’t want to leave. I shuffled some dust with my feet.

  A face.

  He said they can’t harm me. They can’t harm me…

  It was only my reflection, staring back at me under the dust of the sand. Just a small piece of mirror. I bent and wiped it off. Over there! Another mirror…several, in fact. They stood on many tiny stands across the city. At the top of the large flat house, a larger mirror stood, leaning precariously on the edge.

  “Father!” I called. The others turned to me. “The light will open the way. Look! The sun is supposed to hit that mirror, which will reflect to the others! Lift me up, Sean!”

  Sean and Ryan clasped their hands, and carefully lifted me to the top of the doorway and I strode across the golden tiles towards the large mirror, shifting it until the light bounced from it and to another mirror.

  Kyle dropped to the ground so he wouldn’t block the beam. It zipped around the city, until just about everyone crouched on the floor. Finally, the beam landed on the tiny hole on the wall and with a loud creak, the wall trembled and opened.

  “Wow!” Kyle ran to the wall to be the first to see out. A massive white desert spanned as far as the eye could see…below a dark blue sky. I spun around in confusion. From where we were, the sun’s bright beams shone through the city, but past the wall and above the desert, it was night. “This is so odd! Have you ever seen anything like this, Zairae?”

  Stony shook his head. “Never.”

  We followed him silently into the desert under the brightly shining full moon and glimmering blue stars. The white sands made the desert so calm and peaceful, and a cool wind maintained a comfortable temperature. Small oases with ponds dotted the landscape, and strange leafy trees that I had never seen before danced in the wind.

  “Connie, give me the ring,” Stony demanded, suddenly. Connie reached into her bag and presented the ring that had given us so much trouble. Stony opened his own bag and pulled out several small sticks and a box of incense. “Get ready, Renard.”

  Father waved his hand, making a huge ball of twine appear. He then made a thick bar with a hole through it. It looked like a giant needle. Father drove the giant needle into the ground, slipped the twine through the eye as Rebecca changed into her massive dragon form. Father then tightly tied the twine around her leg.

  Stony lit the sticks on fire and covered the flames with the incense, whispering strange incantations while waving his hands over the flames. In an instant, the ring chimed and dashed away. Rebecca flew hastily after it. The twine ball rolled on the other side of the bar.

  “We wait until the twine stops moving,” explained Father. “She is following the ring to the place where the grip is.” After a minute, the ball stopped. Father picked up the twine and ran his fingers along it, following the direction it went. “Let’s go.”

  It took nearly an hour to reach Rebecca. She reclined on a sand dune, quietly watching the stars. I collapsed at her feet. Now where? There was nothing around, not even an oasis. Father and Stony didn’t seem troubled. They walked to where the ring lay. They wiped the sand around the ring with their hands, revealing that it had attached itself to a stone slab, buried in the sand.

  “Just in case, who do you suppose the purest would be?” Father leaned back on his heels.

  “Sean,” Ryan and I answered at the same time. Sean blushed, but stood before Father.

  “Well, Sean, lift this up.”

  Sean paused before lifting the heavy slab. He gave a strong pull, finding that the stone lifted with ease and he set it aside, revealing a dark staircase. Stony put several more bowls of lit incense around the opening before turning to us.

  “Remember the tale, and do not touch the cisterns,” he ordered, gravely. “If one were to break, our deaths will be imminent. They are exceedingly fragile; do not even let your clothes brush against them.” He flashed Kyle a look. “Never mind the gold and silver, Kyle.”

  “I’m no fool, Zairae,” Kyle snapped back. “What is the purpose of taking the gold if I cannot live to enjoy it?”

  Stony gave him another look before leading us down the small flight of stairs. I had never heard the tale to remember it. Perhaps Stony would recite it later. I wanted to study all the more.

  The stairs led to an open room. On each side of the room were long halls, stretching far from the reaches of our torchlight, and lined with tall, red pillars with bases edged in gold. Ahead, an ornate double door stood between the posts of a tall wooden gate, and decorated in gold images of lions. The gate top was lined with two long, serpent-like dragons rippling away from each other, and the red double door underneath was studded with gold. A square sign was affixed to the gate above the studded door, written in an odd, vertical language that even Connie didn’t recognize.

  On each side of the door’s gate, two pedestals stood, each holding massive white jars, painted with bright blue dragons and more of those strange, square letters. Each jar held silver and gold coins.

  Stony pushed open the two doors and we followed him down a narrow wooden hall, each panel to our left or right decoratively carved in intricate designs. Soon, after several silent minutes, we reached another entryway, identical to the first. Stony again pushed open the double doors and we followed him down another wooden passage.

  The third entryway was different. The gate ahead of us lay in ruins. It lay crumped beneath the ceiling above, and the wooden door was charred and smashed. The hall that it led to was forever lost. One of the jars on the right side of the gate had fallen off the pedestal, and lay in fractured shards on the floor, but the gold and silver it used to contain were nowhere in sight. Clearly, we were not the first to seek the grip of gold. Stony bent to inspect the shards, clutching his cloak tightly to his sides, while Kyle sighed loudly.

  “I suppose past that broken gate is where the fruit tree is, isn’t it?”

  Stony only barely looked over his shoulder. Kyle groaned even louder at his response and sulked.

  “We are about to have the grip of gold in our possession, and you trouble yourself over gems?” Father asked. Kyle shrugged.

  “Gems are pretty,” he responded. Father laughed aloud. Stony finished his quiet inspection, and led us down the hall to the right, amid the tall, red pillars with bases lined in gold. A dim light shone through them, and as we went closer, they ended, revealing a massive enclosed courtyard.

  Terror seized my
stomach. My whole body trembled. The beams of light from the full moon peeked through the thick fog. The long, sharp-angled roofs glistened with dew, and the red wooden pillars stood wrapped lightly with vines. Several large black stones lay in heaps all around, and the whispers grew so loud that they echoed in my ears.

  Stony suddenly trembled back, falling into Father. His face was blank, and terror shone in his eyes.

  Father struggled to hold him to his feet. “Zairae…?”

  “He is here!”

  Near the other end of the courtyard stood a massive black stone. The mage! My heart beat in my chest, and I leaned on one of the smaller rocks to catch my balance. The rock suddenly felt odd under my hands. A face. A man! All of the stones were men! Frozen in various stances, hundreds surrounded the mage.

  At the mage’s feet lay a shimmer of gold, nearly completely covered in moss. His right arm crossed over his chest and he clutched something in his left hand. I took another step. Angel reached for me, but I shook free of her grasp. What was that in his hand? Some kind of small gem? I couldn’t tell. It appeared to be glowing. The stone twitched.

  “Gabby…”

  I took another step. “The Xri!” I exclaimed. I turned back. Stony stood where he was. Father made his way towards me. “He’s got the Xri!”

  It all made sense now. The mage must’ve been after the grip of gold as well. He came close, but someone had been careless and accidently knocked into the broken jar we saw as we entered. The mage hadn’t just vanished. He and his army had been frozen all this time. The old kingdom in the elves’ forest. The wisps in the cave. The people in the field. All of them. The mage must’ve…

  But what was there to fear now? Stony said if we were to break the jar, death would be imminent. The Xri glowed faintly and the mage blinked.

  Did he?

  I stared at him. He was all one solid piece. Surely, I just fancied it.