by gipsika
“Why?”
He shook his head with an evil grin. “I’m from here.”
Nadisda gaped at him. “You were born here?” Suddenly, all the anger she had felt towards the Villain evaporated. What a horrible place to grow up in!
“Not down here, of course,” he laughed. “But up there is not exactly a picnic, either. Come!” He extended a hand. “Feel good enough to get up?”
Nadisda took his hand and allowed him to help her up. Instantly her head started spinning and her legs gave way under her again. The darkness crept in around the corners.
“Whoa there, slow down!” she heard his voice and wished that he should just keep talking so that she could have that anchor point. She didn’t want to get lost in her own head again.
Valentine did keep talking to her.
“Wow, girl, you really must have banged your head hard! You’re still feeling sick?”
Nadisda groaned, wishing she could wake up in her comfortable bed of moss. But that fairy wish was not granted. Instead, as the spinning stopped and the world steadied, she found herself once again looking up into that too-young villain face. She tried taking a deep breath.
“You’re apparently not going anywhere in a hurry,” muttered Valentine and lowered her back down to the hard, cold floor.
“Careful, my wings...” she started objecting, then realized they were missing. “Where are my wings?” she whispered in horror.
“Wait!” He took off his slightly smelly jersey and rolled it up, and lifted her head again and stuffed the woolly thing underneath as a cushion. “I’m going to organize you some blankets.” And he turned away and started scrambling up rungs that led to what seemed like the outside.
“Don’t go!” Nadisda whimpered after him, despairing.
Time passed. Nadisda listened to the loud rushing that ebbed and flowed around her, like water yet not like water. Sometimes something roared like a wounded beast; sometimes something groaned and ached along, sighing loudly, before she could hear it disappear again. All this was coming from overhead.
Down here, there was movement too. The roaches and bugs were the first to come crawling to investigate her. Next, a few grey shapes flitted furtively along the shadows. Nadisda realized with mounting terror that they were rats.
Mice and rats in the forest context, she had no problem with. But here, the rats seemed evil, their red eyes glinting in the semi-dark. And there were too many, now that she paid attention. They seemed to be listening to her.
Valentine, where are you? Her desperation was beginning to climb. Faff? Can’t you get me out of here?
There was no answer from Faff, and of course none from Valentine either, as the Villain had not a single magical cell in his body. Where was that forsaken scoundrel? What took him so long?
One of the rats came a bit too close. Nadisda panicked and flung a reflexive spell at the rodent. A blast of lightning lit up the tunnel and hit the ground right next to the rat which squeaked in fright and fled. Where it had been, a fern pushed out of the barren ground.
So her magic was back. Nadisda tried getting up, to find her way out of the tunnels; but her body betrayed her once more and collapsed out under her again. It felt heavy and unwieldy, as though it were made of mud. She swore heartily and looked around for something to use as a wand. There was absolutely nothing.
With another curse she pointed her finger, abusing it for a wand. She didn’t like doing this as the focus was never quite the same as a real wand. There was no telling what would run off the rails. But it was all she had now. She drew a circle around herself, and dense sword ferns arose from the cold floor, growing so tightly together that not even roaches would find their way. And rats could forget it! And then, for her own comfort, she sat up with immense effort and patted the hard floor, and lush, deep moss grew up, providing a soft covering. She lay back down on it with a thankful sigh and allowed herself to slip away into troubled, noise-riddled dreams, trying to ignore the too-close-for-comfort young villain smell rising out of the jersey, mingling unfortunately with the dank odours of the cavern.
When Nadisda next opened her eyes, it was because someone was shaking her.
“C’mon, fairy! C’mon, up, we’ve got to get you out of here!”
She glanced up at Valentine.
“You’re burning up with fever,” he pointed out. “C’mon, got to go, get you back to where I stay. If I leave you here, you’ll die!”
“Die?” she croaked, horrified.
“Yes! C’mon!”
Nadisda let him help her sit up; then he put his arm around her back and helped her stand. He pulled her right arm across his shoulders and supported her with his left, making her lean on him as he half-dragged her away from her mossy bed.
“What’s wrong with me?” she asked crossly. It was his fault, for making her work that spell, and then distracting her at the wrong moment!
“A virus,” said Valentine. “That’s what you’ve got, from being in the real world!” He panted a bit from the effort of heaving her along. “Girl, did you eat rocks while I was gone? I’m sure you weren’t this heavy in the Realms.”
Nadisda snorted in disgust.
“Well, I’m sure you weigh as much as a mountain wherever you happen to be,” she shot back, annoyed. “A mountain range!” She had no idea what a virus was. They didn’t exist in the Magic Realms. She was feeling miserable. It was all his fault!
Valentine laughed. She recognised that little snigger, laced with his inherent evil.
“Just come along,” he instructed and kept on dragging her through the grey tunnels that smelled so bad.
It seemed to be an eternity until they finally came out into the open air, and it was into a glorious sunset over a ruined town. The wood fairy gasped.
“It’s so – beautiful! And then again not!”
Valentine laughed. There was that cutting edge on that laugh, again! “That’s exactly how many of us feel about it.” He rolled his eyes and nudged her onwards. “Come, fairy, it’s far to go!”
“We got to get to Faff,” she muttered as they together started down the pebbly, rubble-strewn slope. “He can take us home.”
“I am home,” said Valentine, pausing with her at the bottom of the slope. “As for you – I have no idea! Who’s that Faff?”
She gaped at him. “You don’t know Faff? The Ancient One? The dragon?”
“Oh,” said Valentine. “That one.” He grinned. “Forgot about him. Got to work on him a little, there’s an idea... Hey! How is it that you and Faff know each other?”
“You forgot about Faff? He’s my mentor in magic and in life wisdom!” said Nadisda, taken aback. “He’s the single most powerful creature in the Realms.”
“That’s a fallacy,” said Valentine, urging her to carry on. “C’mon, fairy. It will be dark soon!”
“But where are we going?” she asked.
“My place,” he replied. And he stopped her again, and looked at her critically. “We’ve got to find a good name for you.”
“A name? What’s wrong with Nadisda?” she challenged.
“It’s so... otherworldy. I’ve got it. You’re Fae. That should keep reminding you what you are, too.”
Nadisda laughed. “Oh, no chance of forgetting that!”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” said Valentine, pointing at her. “Fae. Yes. I like it.”
“But Valentine -”
“Ah. That’s another thing.” He grinned at her in the fast-deepening dusk. “Here in this world, I’m not Valentine. I’m Mike. Just Mike. Please, don’t call me Valentine where people can hear you.”
“But I like the name Valentine!” objected Nadisda.
Valentine laughed. “So do I. That’s why I picked it. Pretty cool name for a dreadful villain, don’t you think? Wimpy and evil, yet with options.”
/> “You picked it? Didn’t your mother give it to you?”
“You’ll understand in due course,” said Valentine. “Fae.”
She shook herself free from his supporting arm. To her surprise she found that her anger made her stronger. She could stand on her own without collapsing.
“No, dammit. I’ll call you Mike if I must, Valentine. But I am Nadisda and you’ll keep on calling me that or – or I simply will not answer!”
Valentine stared at her in surprise.
“Sure, whatever,” he said. “I also picked your name, incidentally.”
“You did not! I’ve always had it!”
“Nadisda,” said Valentine with that infuriatingly know-it-all grin again, “who were your parents?”
She shook her head. “I was born of pure magic. A star fell from the skies and turned into me.”
“So how did you know what your name was?” he asked triumphantly, as though it proved something.
“It just always was that,” she replied. “What silly villainous game are you playing now, Valentine?”
He shook his head with a secretive grin and beckoned her on.
A good while later they arrived at a ramshackle building, a house with a patchy roof and an overgrown garden and a broken-down picket fence. There was light inside, and interesting smells wafted through the evening air. It was properly dark out here by now.
Valentine led Nadisda up the half-broken cobblestone pathway, and up a few steps to a front door that was overlooking a veranda. The door had a pane of rippled glass set into it, with a crack running diagonally through it, and Valentine rapped on that. There was some movement inside, and then the door opened. Another teenager, this one in an even scruffier torn shirt, peered at Nadisda with curiosity.
“Hey, Mike! You were out late!”
“Yup. I brought someone, guys,” announced Valentine. “She’s in need of help.”
A girl of roughly the same age, with honey-blonde locks that hung care-free to shoulder-length, came to the door to have a look.
“Oh my gosh, bring her in! She looks all torn up, like she’s fallen through a thorny hedge!”
“Been dragged backwards through it, more like,” commented the other teen drily.
“And what on Earth is she wearing?” came a gasped question from another angle.
“Get a life, Nancy! She’s probably got nothing else,” snapped the honey-blonde. “Rather go get her some proper clothes!”
Nadisda peered down at her perfectly good fairy gown – granted, it was a bit tattered from the fall through dimensions, and its lovely moss-green had faded into some dirty grey.
“Come, girl,” said the honey-blonde resolutely. “Let’s get you into something warmer!” She took Nadisda’s hand and led her into the room.
Not two steps into the messy-but-homey front room, Nadisda’s legs folded out under her, and her senses left her again.
4: Commune
When Nadisda surfaced next, the first sensation she had was of being somewhere warm, safe and comfortable. Thank the Stars! Because her body felt as though someone had taken a heavy hammer and beaten every part of her into splintered pulp. All except her head, which was under water – but at least not as badly as it had been.
There was a girl sitting next to her on the floor. She herself was lying on something soft. A bed of sorts, perhaps of moss. It was dry and warm though, so probably not moss after all.
“I’m Jen,” the girl introduced herself. “Mike says you’re Nadisda. What an unusual name!”
The forest fairy nodded. “So is Jen.”
“You must try and drink this,” said Jen and held out a cup for Nadisda. The fairy looked at it. Did she really have to sit up and drink something now?
“It will make you better,” urged Jen.
Nadisda sat up and took hold of the cup, but screamed and let it go again. It was lucky that Jen had not yet released it. A bit of the piping hot liquid spilt over the blanket.
“Steady on,” said Jen. “Sorry. Mike warned us that you had a bad fall, and you cracked your head, so you’ll react to weird stuff.”
Nadisda scowled and shook her head. What on Earth had Valentine meant with that?
“It’s hot medication,” insisted Jen. “You’ve got a serious case of sewer-flu.”
“What’s that?” asked Nadisda, though her body reminded her what it was.
“We should get you to a doctor,” added Jen. “We’re checking if we have the funds.”
“A doctor?” echoed Nadisda, wondering what that was.
“Yes. It’s that bad. C’mon now, drink up!”
Nadisda carefully took the hot cup again, this time prepared. She sipped the steaming liquid very slowly. It tasted strange, bitter and sweet at the same time.
“Where’s Val – where’s Mike?” she asked between sips. “Can I speak to him?”
“He’s out hunter-gathering,” said Jen factually. “But I’ll tell him when he comes in.”
Nadisda drank up the beverage which made her feel strangely better. Maybe it was just the heat that penetrated all the way into her bones. She handed the cup back and lay back on her cushion. A soft, purple cushion. The bed was purple too; and the blanket was fluffy and blue. She wondered. The Princess had such commodities – blankets filled with feathers or lamb’s wool. Was everyone in this world a princess?
“So, where are you from?” asked Jen.
Nadisda smiled. “The Magical Realms. Where I come from, I live deep in the forest,” she said nostalgically. “My cave is cosy and warm, and adorned with flowers and moss. It’s very beautiful. And of course the trees are always kind to me.”
Jen nodded and regarded her with pity.
“Don’t worry, girl, we’ll get you fixed up! You really did hit your head hard, didn’t you?”
Mike came in a little later that evening. He unpacked his backpack, for all to see and share.
“There you go, Ben, that video card.”
Ben, tall, gangly and with wild long hair of an indeterminable colour, let out a whoop of delight.
Mike took cans of food, bread, milk, sugar and some fruit out of his pack, for Jen to pack away in the semi-functional kitchen. There was no fridge as the electrics had been cut long ago; they lit the place with candles. So their food had to be accordingly.
Mike let the others loot the rest of his backpack, and shot a glance in the direction of the door to the short passage.
“How is she?”
“Still confused,” said Jen. “She asked that you go talk to her when you come in.”
“Will do.” In the door, he turned and studied the evening’s loot pensively. “Guys, this is not forever. Sooner or later our program will go viral, and then we’ve got it sorted. We’ll never have to steal again.”
“So say all of us!” said Nancy, grabbing a cucumber and saluting with it.
Valentine entered the room where Nadisda was lying on a mattress on the floor. He crouched down to her and felt her forehead.
“Still a nasty fever,” he muttered. “Seems like it’s getting worse.”
“Jen came in and gave me something to drink,” mentioned Nadisda feebly. “It did make me feel better.”
“Hotmeds,” he surmised. “Supposed to fix a fever in a blink. It does, but only for the common flu, not for sewer-flu.”
“What is sewer-flu?”
“If you’ve been in the sewers, and you’ve been exposed to the bad air in there, and the rats and bugs,” he said. “Especially if you haven’t ever been down there before. But I think in your case there’s something else.”
“There’s more?” How much worse could it get?
“Two things,” said Valentine, sitting down comfortably on the floor next to her mattress-bed. “Firstly you’ve never been to my world before. You don’t have much of an immune system. Every virus going around is going to make a meal of you.”
“What is a virus?” She just couldn’t seem to get an answer to that question.
“Never mind,” said Valentine. “It doesn’t matter, because I have another theory. I think what’s hitting you much harder than the viruses is the fact that in this world you have no magic.”
Nadisda rolled her eyes, waved her hand, and the whole ceiling became a creeping tangle of wallflowers. Painted ones.
“You were saying?” she prompted.
Valentine smiled so broadly, she thought she saw tears in his eyes.
“The others won’t believe this,” he whispered. “No. We won’t tell them. This is our secret. We did it! We brought genuine magic into this place! I thought we’d failed, back in the canals. I thought you’d lost your magic when you transitioned into my world.”
“Didn’t you see the ferns and moss I conjured for myself as a bed, back in – what did you call it – the sewers?” she asked quizzically.
“Ferns and moss? There was nothing, girl! You were imagining.”
She sighed and idly painted the walls with her fingertips, too. It didn’t help the pain in her head. And she paused and stared at the young man.
“Wait a minute – are you saying you brought me here deliberately?”
Mike shook his head. “Pure accident, I promise!” She couldn’t tell whether he was lying.
“So maybe it’s not that,” said Valentine. “Maybe it’s really just the sewer fever. We should get you to a doctor.”
“Yes, that’s what I wanted to ask: What the heck is a doctor?”
“Something this world needs, as you see,” said Valentine. “Someone to make you well again.”
“And what is a virus?” she pushed, irritated that once again, her question had been dodged. Her wrath expressed itself in a very small bouquet of plaster-of-Paris roses sprouting out of the doorknobs of the cupboard.
“You won’t like it,” warned Valentine.
“I already don’t. Tell me!” A small sketch sprang up on the ceiling, of a villain being strangled by vines.
“It’s an invader, a very small creature that gets into your blood and multiplies thousands of times and makes you sick from inside.”
Nadisda went deathly pale.
“You look like you want to puke,” observed Valentine.
“What’s that?” she groaned.
