by Luca Tarenzi
"No," hissed Verdigris. "There is no way it will happen. Even if I believed what you are saying - and I don't - the whole idea is completely out of this world..."
Needleye silenced her with a gesture and pointed to the fire.
A moth with wings the color of wet cardboard was fluttering around the flames.
Both of them sat quietly, without moving, knowing that Glamour didn't hide them very well from most insects as fairy magic had evolved to protect its own kind from a completely different sensory system.
Needleye quietly took her dagger by the blade and waited until the moth wasn't quite above the fire before throwing it with a flick of her wrist.
The blade hit the target perfectly behind the eye, knocking it to the ground.
Needleye jumped up to get it, collected her knife and cut off the wings and legs, throwing them to the side with the other moth offcuts from the rest of their dinner earlier.
The insect's body was as long as her forearm, filled with a rather tasteless and unappetizing pulp. It was insipid, but a vital source of protein for the three of them. Needleye handed it to Verdigris because it was her turn to eat and because it meant her friend's mouth would be full, leaving only her eyes to protest with.
"First, we need to work out where we are and then get to Boggart turf. It'll be no simple task to get by the guards, especially if they have the same Gramarye as the Boggart warriors when we went for the battery. Of course, we have an advantage they won't expect. We have a Sluagh's eyes."
Verdigris muttered something incomprehensible with her full mouth.
"Once we can see their encampment, we'll need to try and work out what is happening down there, what Waspider is doing to prepare for war. Then, we find the battery and we sabotage it."
"You're out of your mind." Verdigris wiped her mouth with a hand and looked straight into her eyes. She'd eaten the moth with such speed even Needleye was a little taken aback. "You do realize this is a suicide mission? It is filled with 'ifs' and unknowns. There it too much scope for things to go wrong." Her cloud had grown stronger after she'd eaten and it sizzled electrically against Needleye's skin. "It is going to be tough to get in, but to get out, well, it'll make getting in look like child's play. Our fate will almost definitely be a spear through the abdomen." She was silent for a moment. "If we are lucky that is. Otherwise, we'll be taken alive."
Needleye felt the anger rising inside her, especially because she knew she didn't have proper answers to these objections. "Well, tell us your plan then. Let's hear it. We head off and simply look after ourselves. We just let things happen. We pretend the Boggarts and impending war have nothing to do with us? Is that what you have in mind?"
Verdigris stared back at her, her Glamour now touched by an icy note. "I was merely noting that even if your madness succeeds, there will still be nothing afterwards," she said in a low voice.
Needleye closed her mouth.
"What were you hoping to do afterwards?" Verdigris spoke without stopping staring. "Were you planning to return to Albedo and say 'we sabotaged the battery so now everything is fine! They will still attack, but without the acid. Haven't we done well?' And then what, the king will give us a pat on the back and forget everything? Have you considered what might happen, by any chance? If you have, then you aren't mad, you are totally gone."
Needleye pursed her lips tightly. "I am trying to set things right..."
"Nothing can be done to set things right." Verdigris' voice went up a notch and her cloud began to resemble wood grating against wood, a sound filled with desperation. "Stylus is dead and nothing can change that. Thaw will be killed if your brother finds him and nothing can change that. You and I will spend the rest of our lives in prison, and nothing can change that."
"Only if they capture us..." hissed Needleye.
"A Moryan alone in the Landfill is like a dead man walking. You know that better than I do."
Needleye gripped her knife tightly. "I'm the daughter of the king, for god's sake! I have my duty to the tribe! I don't care about what Albedo wants or if they come after me. The Boggarts are the enemy and I won't let them..."
"Shut up, both of you."
Needleye fell silent and looked at Thaw, who got up and moved towards the fire to get a better look at the objects he was holding. Somehow he'd managed to remove some teeth from two of the cogs in the clock and now he was holding them, one in each hand, like two bizarre, jagged and rounded daggers. In the firelight, the tips of the cogs glittered.
Thaw stood up, silhouetted against the red glow of the fire. "What happened, happened. It's finished and there's no going back. We are all responsible. Me. Both of you. Albedo. Everyone." Needleye opened her mouth, but before she could speak, Thaw went on. "Stylus might be alive today if I hadn't taken things into my own hands. Perhaps, he wouldn't be dead if Verdigris had defended him. Or if you hadn't taken us there that day. Or if Albedo had monitored the borders better and found the battery before the Boggarts. Perhaps he wouldn't be dead now if he'd been able to look after himself better." He was silent for a moment. "Perhaps he'd be dead anyway even if we'd done none of these things. I don't know, and neither do you. But he was my friend, a good friend and I'm not going to let him die for nothing. Right now, what I do know is that Waspider's putrid garbage has something it shouldn't and we're going to whisk it away from under his nose." As he spoke, he raised his weird daggers. "Tomorrow we can deal with Albedo."
In the deafening silence that followed, Needleye swallowed hard and glanced at Verdigris out of the corner of her eye. She was surprised to see her looking hard up the mound of trash, over her shoulder.
"What's wrong?"
Verdigris remained silent.
"Did you see something?"
She looked at the ridge again, then shook her head. "No. I don't know. Perhaps it was nothing."
Needleye gestured to Thaw. "Go and check anyway."
He nodded and disappeared into the shadows.
Needleye breathed in deeply, then indicated the fire with a nod of her head. "Help me collect the clothes. I'll take the first watch. You sleep as long as you can."
Livid hid behind a colored cube that had once been a toy. He waited long enough to see that Thaw had moved away and then, in perfect silence, he moved down the opposite side of the mound to find a better hiding place.
Distance and a light breeze had prevented him from hearing all the conversation between the three down in the valley, but he'd been able to pick up enough to understand they were planning to move into Boggart territory.
That was a problem.
He would never be able to get back to Goblin territory, get together a group of soldiers and get back in time to capture them before dawn. The distance was just too great. It would also not be possible to follow them onto enemy turf with a patrol armed to the hilt.
He would have to capture them alone.
The problem was, there were three of them and he was alone. Plus, he had to take the girls alive. He realized there was only one option.
Take them one by one.
13
The Moryan in charge had locked him in a cage.
He had them take him to the room with the roof that opens and then closed him in.
The metal bars were narrow and hard. If you rested on them for too long, they left horrible marks on the skin.
The Moryan was gone now, along with the other one, the large, strong one. He was alone for the first time since he'd been captured.
The cage was so small he couldn't stretch his arms and legs, but he was so exhausted that he slept anyway, in fits and starts, when the Moryans left him alone.
The Moryan in charge never seemed to sleep. He was always doing something, perhaps pacing up and down the room or studying strange objects. Once, he'd even walked across to the cage with a knife and cut off a small piece of his flesh. He'd then spent ages looking at it, moving it over and over in his hands.
He also spoke, a lot.
He spoke to h
imself and to any Moryan that came into the room and even though he didn't understand a word of what they were saying. It didn't seem to bother the Moryan much.
That morning, before leaving, he'd spoken to the giant Moryan about something called a "Book". It must be something important because he was more agitated than usual. Then, the giant Moryan had raised a large, flat object up onto his shoulders - the item was as big as him, but wider - and they'd left together.
Now, he wanted to sleep again, but he couldn't. The White Darkness entered the room through every little gap and made his eyes burn.
He wanted to sleep and dream about the caves where the White Darkness never reached and nobody hurt anybody else, where Stamen and the others were waiting for him. He'd heard them, the day before. He'd heard them moving together to come and get him, to take him home and, for an instant, he believed this was the end. He believed he was safe.
Then, the Moryans got him again and put him in the cage, a place where he couldn't even sleep and dream about being safe.
Waspider motioned to Vanadium to stop a bit before the hole in the rubbish. The giant Boggart stopped, out of breath, and lowered the harness on his back that was holding the cell phone battery, a contraption so big even he struggled to haul it around. Waspider wouldn't trust anybody else to move such a precious item that would be so hard to replace if damaged.
Waspider was under no illusion that, sooner or later, the battery would run flat. Things would be much harder then. Still, experience had taught the king of the Boggarts that every problem had a solution.
He moved to the edge of the hole and pulled out a large bit of biscuit from the bag he carried over his shoulder. It had been found by the tribe's foragers that morning. "Cerberus. Come! Come on. Good boy. I've got something for you!"
A deep rumbling sound like distant thunder welled up from the bottom of the hole and then the massive frame of Cerberus filled the opening and emerged into the light.
Waspider knew as soon as he saw him as a youngster that he'd become a giant rat, the biggest of a brood the tribe had discovered in a nest. The other rats had obviously been eaten, but Waspider had demanded they save this one, claiming it for himself. In those days, his father was still king and he'd seen Waspider's request as whimsical, but the young Waspider was already very persuasive and he'd got his way. Under his guidance, the rat had grown large, fed with plenty of meat, leftovers, blood and Glamour that Waspider distilled just for him, with infinite patience, week after week.
The rat had grown beyond normal size and had already lived unnaturally long. But, the effect of the Glamour had deformed his body horribly, although it had also made him stronger and sturdier. Now, he was a mass of muscles, stretching eight inches, covered with brown fur and, where the fur had now fallen out, patches of pitch-black skin.
Cerberus raised his nose to sniff the air, then lowered his misshapen head to look at his master with one eye, which was the color of a boiled egg.
The king ruffled the fur on the animal's neck and placed the biscuit in front of him. "Here, have some breakfast."
The rat opened his mouth bristling with fangs that protruded at unholy angles, bit off a piece and munched it noisily as Waspider stepped back a few paces. The neuro-toxic poison in the rat's saliva was his creation originally, but over time it had mutated of its own accord and now even the king was not wholly immune.
He also knew the creature was immensely loyal to him and would never attack him. The same could more or less be said for Vanadium, who had slowly, because the king so desired, gained the confidence of this beast - a process that had left its own deep scars - so that he could ride it. Of course, the rest of the Boggarts did not enjoy such loyalty and they knew well where they stood. As such, Waspider had left Cerberus to make his nest in a remote edge of the encampment, a space the others studiously avoided. This naturally gave Waspider another excellent reason to use the burrow as a hiding place for those items that he really wanted to keep safe.
He motioned for Vanadium to follow him, moved around the massive rat, and descended into the hole. A few moments later they emerged, with the giant Boggart dragging a small cell phone wrapped in a see-through plastic packet.
Together, they pulled it out and, with great care, rolled it over just as they'd done many times before. Waspider knew the item wasn't that delicate, but there was no reason to take any chances. It was an old, beat up phone, but it worked and it was the only one the Boggarts had ever managed to lay their hands on. Such objects rarely found their way into the Landfill and it was almost unheard of for them to still be intact.
He could have consulted the Book even without the phone, but it made things so much easier.
Now, all they needed to do was attach the battery - an item Waspider always kept in his tent, away from the phone, as an extra safety precaution.
Vanadium gesticulated that he could sort things out alone. The king agreed, left him to get on with it and moved over to Cerberus, who'd finished the biscuit and was smoothing his whiskers with his knobbly toes. He stroked him on his neck again, then pulled out a claw and made a small cut on the inner part of the forearm. He collected a few drops of blood in a bottle top that was lying around and breathed out a mouthful of Glamour so that it dripped into the blood.
"Some medicine for you."
Cerberus recognized the smell, dipped his head and licked the top clean.
Waspider nodded in satisfaction, stroked the animal a few more times and then moved back to Vanadium. "Ready?"
The giant Boggart nodded.
Waspider turned the phone on by pressing down with both hands on a button, which vibrated and lit up with colored light. The king sat cross-legged beside the device and breathed in deeply. Slowly, he built up his Glamour cloud until it engulfed him and the phone. Then, he closed his eyes and concentrated hard. When he was ready, he signalled to Vanadium who pressed the first speed dial button.
He felt the call begin like an explosion of heat beside him, a column of electromagnetic fire that shot skywards. He gathered all his strength and dived mentally into the call, allowing himself to be dragged up and up, in weightless flight, to invisible regions.
It made no difference who was being called or even if that person replied. Still, Vanadium was required to turn the phone off after it rang a couple of times, to save the battery. The king merely needed the wave to leave the phone, so he could ride it up to where the Book was found.
The Book was his masterpiece, a fact Waspider was well aware of. It was an act of Gramarye that nobody in Moryan memory had managed.
The Book had obviously existed before him. His father had originally had the idea, but he lacked his son's talent for magic. The old king had been very astute, though, with human communication and, right up to his dying day, he'd possessed that same irresistible sense of curiosity that characterized his son. The former king had spent much time examining and listening to the airwaves, writing down bits of information that caught his attention on any bit of paper the Boggarts managed to find. After a few years, he'd taught others how to do it and in the end their efforts had produced an enormous, eclectic text that had been bound to look like a human book and was consulted in the same way.
It was an exceptionally valuable item, but incredibly hard to keep secret and its fame had spread all too quickly. The Sylphs had been the first to try to take it, but the old king had defended his treasure with his own life.
So, when Waspider took the throne, he decided the Book had to be destroyed. The physical item, but not the knowledge it contained. The Book was too vulnerable and too exposed, just like any physical item.
Waspider had it burned on a bewitched fire, reducing it to ashes, but the magic flames had dispersed all the information it contained into the electromagnetic field above the Landfill.
This was where his psyche was now, immersed in the endless pulsating hum of the airwaves. There he could page through the intangible pages until he found - if he had enough patience and luck - th
e information he sought.
Unfortunately, the Book had never been indexed, so Waspider jumped from one block of information to another. In his mind's eye, the pages were partially transparent and enormous, much larger than he was. They looked almost like giant sails covered in writing and images, moving around him, then slipping away to be replaced by another one, all controlled by his mind.
It took him awhile to find the parts he was looking for, a section of the Book that was far smaller than he would've liked. His father had always been more interested in the human world, so much of the information was about them. Waspider was notably more interested in Moryans.
Nothing in human communication related to them, simply because humans didn't even know they existed. Things had to remain as such. Ancient men had once known fairy creatures, the distant ancestors of Moryans who were neither tiny nor forced into hiding to survive. Indeed, as far as Waspider had worked out, in the far-off past, they had been revered and feared by the human race across the Earth.
Stories and legends abounded about them and some fragments - drawings, images, patches of websites, and bits of radio broadcasts - had even made their way into the writings of Waspider's father and his seers. They were just crumbs, but they were still a great treasure for someone like Waspider, who'd have given his right arm to learn the secrets behind the existence of his race.
The pages rolled around him, dozens at first, then hundreds. Waspider too spun around, arms outstretched. He moved some pages and pushed others away with his hands, the intangible projections of his thoughts.
Minute after minute passed. Eventually, after an unquantifiable amount of time for the king, his concentration began to wane. The effort to remain up in the airwaves was significant and he could only stay there a little longer...
He was about to throw in the towel when an image flashed before his eyes, almost slipping by unseen. Waspider caught it with his intangible hand and drew it back to look at it more carefully. It was a small black and white drawing in the corner of a page, perhaps something from a website. It showed an anthropomorphic creature with a frightened look, squatting on the ground with leaves and long strands of grass sprouting from its back.
