by gipsika
“Never mind. Something we don’t do. Let me -” and he jumped up.
“No, wait, stay!” begged Nadisda, but he had already left the room. Abandoning her to the deepest misery and disgust she’d felt in all the time she could remember.
“Tonight,” said Mike as he, Jen, Nancy and Ben put the system together, fuelled by a newly recharged car battery, “tonight we beat the crapp out of that Hero Hugo! Who’s with me?”
The other three gave him hi-fives. Ben ripped open a few packets of chips that Mike had looted at a fuel station miles away. Nancy went to the small, dirty kitchen and dipped four mugs into the vat of ginger beer they were home-brewing, with plenty of raisins drifting on the top of it. She brought the mugs back to them one by one. Mike was already deeply engrossed in something, hacking away at his cobbled-together laptop.
“What’re you up to, sunshine?” she asked, batting her fake eyelashes at him and handing him his mug of iffy brew.
“Taking this thing to a new level,” he said off-handedly, never pausing in his programming. “They will have such a surprise when they hit level thirty – if they ever do!”
“Why? What’re you putting in?”
“Let’s say,” Mike looked up with a grin, “her name is Elena. Don’t go there without me leading you guys, alright?”
The modem lit up.
“And we’re live!” announced Ben with glee.
A crunch on her moss.
Nadisda opened her eyes. She was on her own mossy bed in the depths of her cave; but she hadn’t dreamt the whole thing with Mike and the place he called the ‘real world’, this she knew by the way she felt. Miserable, sore and grim.
She arose from her mossy bed and came out to look. The Villain was there, as she had thought; but something was different about him. Somehow he wasn’t quite as evil as usual. She also thought if she looked very carefully, she could see the mischievous young face of Mike behind Valentine’s evil features. It had come as a surprise how young he was in that other world. Then again she had also come out there as a teenager, or fairy equivalent.
“Hey, fairy,” said Valentine. “Feeling better?”
But wait! Nadisda glanced about in confusion. “I’m home! You did it! You got us home!”
Valentine reached out to touch her arm. His hand went right through her.
“You’re transparent,” he said. “You’re not really here. Don’t let it worry you, fairy.”
The whole forest glade suddenly came up in white, ghostly flowers that glowed slightly in the half-dark.
“I’m really still in that house, right?” asked Nadisda, frightened. “And you really are still Mike?”
“That’s right,” smiled Mike, and his villain-age fell away from him, revealing the teenager underneath. “And you really still have all your magic.”
“So how can I get back, for real?” she asked.
“Don’t worry, Nadisda. I’m working on it. We’re all of us on a quest looking for the moonstone. I suspect you need that back.”
“It belongs to Faff,” said Nadisda. “I promised to return it. It’s twelve thousand years old.”
“This stuff is brilliant!” said young Mike with unconcealed glee. “Twelve thousand, hey?”
“Loaded full of Luna’s rays shining on an older Earth,” said Nadisda seriously.
“The stuff of poetry!” grinned Mike. “Hang tight, girl. Tomorrow we get you to a doctor – but we must be careful that you don’t lose your magic from Earth medication.” He listened up. “Whoa. Time for me to go, someone’s coming!” He slipped away between the trees.
Hooves clopped closer, and with a small fanfare, Hero Hugo appeared between the trees.
Nadisda took a good hard look at him. Was there an Earth teenager hiding behind this one, too? Or was he truly from the Magic Realms?
“Magic witch creature!” stated Hugo brassily. “Hast thou any ken of one villainous villain by name of Valentine? If he came through here, let it be known that I shall slay him, unto his utmost death!”
Nadisda shrugged. Antlers grew from Hugo’s horse’s head.
“What have you done, witch?” bellowed the hero. “Restore my steed without delay, or I shall visit woe unto thee!” He ripped out his sword and pointed it at her throat. Nadisda blinked. The sword turned into a pennywhistle and Hugo’s golden glimmering helm turned into a three-horned jester’s cap. And suddenly there was a question in Nadisda’s head that she had no idea where it had come from.
“What have you done with the knight errant?” she asked. “The Shadow Knight of the Princess?” There was this history, all of a sudden. The Hero had somehow done away with the Princess’s knight. But the moment Nadisda wondered where this new information had come from, she realized it wasn’t new. It had been there for a while – in fact since the knight errant had vanished.
“Oh, begone, foul witch,” snapped Hero Hugo. He bullied his mount into the forest, to follow where Valentine had left.
Nadisda rubbed her nose. The horse turned into a seal.
Hero Hugo found that the riding was a bit slower after that, especially since the seal was rather playful and wanted to take breaks to fetch and retrieve sticks. Also, riding it had turned into an interesting challenge.
The wood fairy retreated back into her cave and lay down on her moss bed again, feeling depleted. The whole place felt wrong. Something was pulling at her, to fall asleep again.
A curse for Hero Hugo, she thought. So he wishes he were dead. She understood the sentiment better now. And she also realized that she had picked entirely the wrong curse.
Jen sneaked into the darkened room to feel Nadisda’s fever. It was still pretty high, but there was also a sign of moisture coming through at her temples.
“You’ll make it, girl,” whispered Jen at the sleeping foundling teenager, whose pitch-black, long curls wreathed poetically across the blanket and pillow. “You’ll be fine. Stick with us.”
She got up again, making sure there was enough water for the sick vagabond to drink, and nearly stumbled over something. A potted rose in full bloom, with its sweet scent that was noticeably improving the air. She smiled to herself and whispered, “aw, Mike! You’re such a romantic!”
5: Immunity
A giant red eye opened and peered at Nadisda with the reptilian levelness that came from being millions of years old.
“Fairy. Have you come to bring back my moonstone?”
“Bright day, Faff,” greeted Nadisda, her bare, half-transparent feet burning from landing on the sweltering rocks in the mid-day sun. “I hope you are well. Something happened.”
“You didn’t lose the moonstone, did you?” asked Faff menacingly.
“It – disappeared, when I fell through to another world.”
Faff raised his huge head and blew an angry flame, bright as a welding light, against the dry blue sky.
“I’m sorry,” stammered Nadisda. “It was the spell! We’re searching for it, all of us.”
Faff lowered his head to her, fixating her with a slit pupil.
“That moonstone was given to me as a personal favour by another magic being,” he pointed out. “I should never have let you use it!”
“I’m sorry! I need to ask for your help again,” she said contritely. “That is so I can find the stone and return it.”
“You don’t think your foul spell destroyed it?” asked Faff. “Its echoes resounded all over the Realms, are you aware of that? Belladonna! You never add deadly nightshade into a dark love-bondage spell!”
“I’m sorry,” repeated Nadisda. “But I really need your help now. We suspect the stone is lost somewhere between the levels.”
“Levels?” Faff listened up. “What do you know about the levels? Level-bound creatures should only stay in their own.”
She shook her head. “Mike says they are searching in all levels for the stone. I suspect th
ey are like dimensions, right?”
Faff closed his eyes to think.
“Which world did you fall to?” he asked.
“Mike calls it the Real World,” said Nadisda. “Valentine, I mean.”
Faff snorted derisively. “That place doesn’t exist! A world without magic? Nonsense. It’s just a legend, fairy. One some silly youngster cooked up in his head.”
Nadisda eyed Faff, surprised. It dawned on her that he couldn’t help her.
“Go look for Valentine,” instructed the dragon. “You two must unravel what you have cooked up, to undo the evil that has been unleashed. I have no idea if you’ll find my moonstone.”
“I hope so,” said Nadisda and left.
Faff could not help her! Deflated, she returned to her cave, along the narrow mountain path running along Wrath Peak, then flying across the Torn Vale, a valley criss-crossed with jagged rocks and deep ravines and jigsawed with silvery streamlets at the bottom; crossing over the largest part of the Shady Forest and setting down lightly in her glade.
The Villain was waiting for her there, sitting comfortably on a fallen log on which all greenery had wilted away, with his as always insufferable grin. She could nearly forget that in another world, he was only a sweet teenage boy.
“Fairy!”
“Valentine,” she greeted him. “Faff says that you and I must undo what we have done, and that I should never have added Belladonna to the curse.”
“Details,” he said derisively. “It was the wrong curse. What were you trying – to get Hero Hugo to find his True Love? I wanted you to curse him, not reward him!”
“And I thought you were just being mindlessly evil,” she retorted. “You could have given me a bit more background.”
Valentine smiled. “You were not supposed to ask, Nadisda. But you’ve broken more rules than I can count. We have to solve this riddle on all levels.”
“I don’t understand,” said the wood fairy.
“Do me a favour,” said Valentine, getting up from the log. “Let me look at your wings.”
“Why?” asked Nadisda self-consciously, spreading her iridescent, pale-blue wings with the silver filigree veins running across them like fine lace.
Valentine walked all around her, admiring the large wings in detail.
“She’s brilliant,” he muttered. “What a work of art!”
Nadisda held still, her wings quivering a bit from being under such close inspection.
“You don’t have them in my world, do you?” asked Valentine pensively. “That’s probably a mistake. No idea how I can fix that. But there is something I can fix, something I must fix. Nadisda, you must do something for me now.”
“What is that?” she asked, still holding her breath from having her wings looked at.
“Go lie down in your cave, shield it off against everyone and go to sleep. There’s something I must do.”
“Surely you can do it while I’m awake?”
“Not this, fairy. Sorry.”
Nadisda folded her wings away and compliantly went into her cave.
“When will I see you?” she asked back at the Villain.
“Soon enough,” came the answer through the spell that she drew over the cave mouth. “Don’t worry, fairy.”
Somewhat reassured, she lay down on her bed of moss and went back to sleep.
*
“I don’t get it,” said Ben. “My questbook says I must find the forest fairy. I’m at her cave, it says here, ‘cave of the Forest Fairy’, but I click it and nothing happens.”
“Maybe she’s not in,” said Mike, hacking away at supersonic speeds at his laptop.
“What’re you writing now?” asked Ben.
“Overrides,” said Mike.
“Your forest fairy is a glitch,” complained Ben.
“You have no idea,” muttered Mike. “Hold on tight.” He hammered out a never-ending string of code, then sealed it with passwords and closed the black window. “I’m done, guys. Going to sleep.”
“We’ll carry on a bit longer,” said Jen. “Just in the middle of a mini-quest.” She glanced up and saw Mike studying her pensively.
“You’re a genius,” he said.
“You are,” replied Jen. “This thing is brilliant. It will go viral, and then we’re rich.”
“You’re the designer,” said Mike. “Without your gorgeous characters this game would be useless.”
She laughed and ruffled his hair.
“Anything for you, little brother!”
“Younger brother,” Mike pointed out with dignity.
*
Nadisda opened her eyes. It was early morning; pale light fell in through a slatted blind that covered the window.
She sat up. She was feeling better. In fact, she felt almost as well as she did usually, in her grove at home. Just a bit more – solid, heavier. She doubted she could fly, with this body. Was this what unmagical people always felt like?
She sat up and stretched, and glanced down in surprise at what she was wearing.
Her tattered and discoloured fairy gown was gone. Someone had dressed her in a maroon shirt that looked much like what Jen wore; and in a strange blue leg-dress, similar to what all the people in this house wore. It had a rip on the knee. But Nadisda’s fairy dress had also been torn, and probably this was all these people had.
“Feeling better?”
Only now did she become aware that she was being watched. Right! No wilted plants indicated that the Villain was in the room, in this world. On the contrary, to her surprise there were quite a few plants in pots arrayed around her mattress. She pointed at them, eyeing Mike quizzically.
“Yes, I wanted to ask you about those too,” he jumped ahead of her. “I came in this morning and they were there. You must have started recovering your powers while you were sleeping. So I guess you’ve started planting yourself a grove?” He grinned.
“I did this?” she asked back, surprised.
“Nobody else did, fairy. But what I want to know is, are you feeling better?”
“I’m feeling nearly well,” she replied. “What happened? Did you take me to one of those … doctors?”
Mike shook his head and smiled. “Nope. I thought I’d tackle it differently. Seems to have worked.”
“What did you do?”
“That’s for me to know,” he grinned. “Anyway, girl, are you ready to come out with me a bit?”
“Out of the house?”
“Yes.”
She gazed at the potted plants. They were standing in clay pots with their roots, in a bit of earth. Young tree saplings most of them; and one magical black Damask rose, like the ones in the palace garden. She touched its velvety black petals in wonder.
“Those don’t even exist in my world,” Mike pointed out. “I’m amazed how you got that right! Cool smell, too.”
The rose’s delicate perfume did indeed pervade the room like a mystery.
“We must plant these outside,” suggested Mike. “They will need sunlight. Potted plants always die.”
Nadisda got up and walked over to the slatted window covering, and lifted it a bit to peer into the overgrown garden. She waved a few weeds away with her hand, and with a nod she had transplanted her potted plants outside, shaping a little start-up grove.
“Awesome,” noted Mike. He got to his feet too and led the way, out of the room.
In the dysfunctional kitchen, Mike scrambled some eggs on a gas cooker and put them on bread for Nadisda. He brewed some coffee for them both and joined her with his own breakfast of scrambled egg on bread.
“Where are the others?” asked Nadisda.
“Still sleeping,” he grinned. “Knocked out from a too-late night, last night.”
“I don’t understand this world,” she said, feeling left out.
“Spend a little while, you will,” he replied. Nadisda peered at the strange boxes with tangl
es coming out of them like vines, except that she knew that they were not vines. They were no living things at all; the inside of those vines was copper, as her fairy sensitivities told her quite loudly. Nadisda didn’t get hurt by metals like some fairies did, but she was quite aware of them anyway.
Electricity like lightning lived in those boxes. She knew it, suddenly. Electricity was a life force of another kind. So these boxes were alive of sorts after all?
Mike finished up his food, drank down the rest of his coffee and jumped up, beckoning her to finish. She hastily swallowed down the rest and got up too. Mike took her plate and mug and opened a metal well-spring under which he rinsed them. It took a bit longer than Nadisda felt like waiting, so she waved her hand and the plates and cups were clean.
“Ah!” said Mike, surprised. “Thank you! Seems to me like you’ve got your magic under better control in this world?”
“I think so,” said Nadisda, equally surprised. “It does feel like it! And you said this world doesn’t even have magic?”
He pulled a face, leading the way out of the front door which closed with a final “click” behind them.
“Yeah, there’s magic, of a sort,” he hedged, leading her down the cobblestone path and out past the broken picket fence. “Not good magic though, and not very efficient.”
“Then where is it?” she demanded.
“In books,” he replied. “You’re going to help us find the moonstone. Fairy, I think the moonstone is your key to getting home.”
They walked down the road, past more broken, ramshackle old houses that were quite obviously empty. The gardens looked terrible; all weeds and not much else. Nadisda’s fingers itched to fix that, but she restrained herself. Still, from all the restraint little white wayside flowers sprang up out of the kerb wherever she passed by.
They walked for a good half-hour before the houses started changing, looking squarer, more inhabited and even dirtier.
“I need you to understand this world,” said Mike. “That over there is a corner café, for instance. One buys things there.”
“What kind of things?” asked the forest fairy.
“Check it out,” said Mike and led the way. He picked a basket at the entrance of the shop, and led the fairy through the isles with products.
