Guardian: Protectors of Light

by Melanie Houtman

  *

  It was about sunrise when they reached the entrance of the Fairy Forest. The trees were really high and seemed to be very ancient; once again, the leaves were silver-coloured.

  James couldn’t exactly tell what kind of trees it were, and when he looked aside he saw even Samira, who knew nearly every tree since she was seven years old, throwing confused looks at the trees.

  The kind of tree they looked the most similar like were oak trees, so James told himself it were oak trees.

  A solution any adult would consider childish, but it was the way James used to think when he was younger.

  When it looks like it, it is most likely to be so!

  More investigation followed quickly afterwards, but this time, he wouldn’t have too much time to get his utensils out and properly examine the trees, so he left them with a simple and plain “oak tree”-stamp in his mind.

  It didn’t really matter anyway, so why even bother?

  As they entered the forest itself, James felt the bad presences wrap around them, and from the corner of his eye, he could see Thomas shudder.

  The powers of the Spirits were very strong here, because of the huge numbers they were hiding in here. Thomas could feel a connection with Spirits through his sceptre; it was a strange, yet magical sensation.

  But now he knew that Rikki didn’t tell everything about their Guardian’s Totems. Some of the magical artefacts, mainly the ones that were supposed to help them personally, also came with some unpleasant side effects.

  Thomas could clearly feel the evil that surrounded them, the Shadow Creatures lurking in the dark. But the problem was; it didn’t help him locate them or their attacks.

  It didn’t solve anything at all, because the Spirits were resistant against Magic.

  Most Magic didn’t work on them. You had to be a really powerful warlock to be able to begin something against them.

  Take the pixies, for example; they would have to unite with hundreds at once to be able to take on just one Shadow Creatures.

  And then again, in this forest, the Shadow Creatures were the ones that were with hundreds.

  And they were with five. And about fifty pixies, at the most.

  We’re no match for the Spirits, Thomas thought. If they attack us while we’re unprepared, we’ll be blown away within a second. The only luck we have at our side is that their powers are slightly drained by the minimum amount of sunlight that is peeping through the leaves of these massive trees.

  As they slowed down a bit because they had to follow a pretty narrow path going through the Forest, Thomas glided with one of his hands across the trunk of one of the trees. He still hadn’t figured out what kind of trees it were, and he wondered if it bothered anyone else what kind of trees it were.

  Perhaps it bothered James, but Thomas thought it wasn’t the right moment to ask.

  As they travelled farther through the Forest, the attempts of the sun rays to make their way through the roof of leaves that became more tighter meter by meter seemed to end in vain more and more.

  The Warlock Spirits and black fog kept circling around them, but the shield of pixies kept protecting them in a circle around them and most of the time a couple of trees as well.

  James found himself getting distracted by the area and sounds that seemed to be voices whispering his name with a tense of violence and threatening, but he knew he shouldn’t listen to them, because they were trying to lure him to a trap.

  But by his surprise, every time he heard them, it were female voices.

  The fairies were whispering at him!

  James...

  James... Come with us...

  We can get you home... Come with us...

  But what James couldn’t possibly have known, was that all of his friends heard the same voices.

  The fairies were trying to get them away from the group, bringing each teenager a different offer.

  We can protect your friends...

  Join us...

  Come...

  Let us help you...

  But the shield of pixies protected the Magic from reaching their mind, so it wouldn’t be anything more than idle whispers to their ears.

  But Thomas knew that once the pixies had to leave them, it would be hard to block the voices out of their minds.

  As he realised this, he started to hope that the pixies could stick with him until they got out of the Forest almost immediately.

  He wished they could stay with them even longer; he wished they could bring them to the Land of Void.

  But Thomas knew that in these lands, no creature had ever left their own specific Realm, so he didn’t know what kind of effect the other Realms would have on the little pixies once they would leave the Silver Valley.

  Perhaps they couldn’t even leave; that was another possibility that was left. After all, except the things he had learned from the book – which happened to be about the First Generation, he had no knowledge about the subject-specific abilities of the creatures that lived all over Lunaria.

  There was one thing that Thomas had learned in the past month; everything he thought to know and had learned from watching fantasy movies and reading countless numbers of books; it didn’t matter here. Everything was different in Lunaria.

  Every single thing.

  For example: Fixies, what are those? He thought. He had never heard of that species of fairy-pixie before. Never, anywhere. And yet, somehow it still existed here.

  What more was there to discover about Magic that he didn’t know? He never understood it completely, after all, even though James always had tried his best to explain it.

  They’d always had those days they’d spend all day role-playing; when they were kids, they would usually play out scenes from the stories James had written. They were fun to play, and – for their parents, at least – fun to watch.

  Thomas looked up at the sky and returned to the present. He wondered why he had been drifting off into old memories so much lately.

  “It’s because I’m worried about what will happen once we reach the Castle,” Thomas whispered to himself.

  “In my dream, we reached the Castle, but something terrible happened there.”

  Thomas swallowed for a second at that thought. How was he going to tell Samira? Or James? Or – any of his friends, really?

  He’d lied to them. He told them he didn’t remember what he’d dreamt of the first time. So... perhaps it was too late to tell them anyway.

  Was it?

  “Hey, Thom? What are you mumbling to yourself?” he suddenly heard James’s voice calling from a distance. He looked at the redhead, who was grinning broadly. “Keep yourself together! We’re almost there!” He had gone so deep into his thoughts, he’d stopped walking. He was surrounded by a small bunch of pixies forming a shield around him, impatiently tapping their feet on the air with their arms crossed over their chests.

  Thomas blinked, and the nineteen-year-old’s face turned bright red. He mumbled some quick apologies to the pixies for having to wait for him so long and ran after his friends.

  The Queen will see you now

  “Hey, Thomas, are you all right? It seems as if something’s bothering you.” Thomas had to continuously brush off his friends’ concerns.

  He kept trying to assure them that he was fine, that nothing was bothering him, but his friends knew him too well to believe that.

  James would then remain silent for about a minute or two, but then he would ask the same question all over again.

  “Are you sure, Thomas?” the red-haired sixteen-year-old asked, while walking slowly next to each other. “Thomas, you know that the five of us promised each other that if anything was bothering us we would tell and talk about it to one another.”

  Thomas couldn’t stand seeing anyone getting concerned over him. He was just so used to his family – save his siblings, luckily – not care about him, he just wasn’t used to this kind of contact. And though Thomas always tried his best to act as neutral
as he could, which seemed to fool most people, James always seemed to have this kind of “brotherly instinct” that told him whenever Thomas was troubling about something.

  James’s words slipped onto his mind slowly, and he remembered the promise he and his friends had made to each other when they were younger.

  Always together, best friends forever, nerds of a feather...

  ...Stick together.

  “You’re right, James.” Thomas smiled. “I- I just need some time to figure things out, and as you know, I prefer to do things like that in my own way; in silence.”

  James smiled back. “Phew,” he replied. “I thought you were feeling bad about something.”

  “I- James, don’t get me wrong, but actually the things I feel bad about are the things I need to figure out.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t want to trouble your mind with that. You need to stay focused on our mission.”

  “You know I can’t possibly do that,” James joked.

  Thomas hid a grin that seemed to shoot trough his heart right to his mouth underneath his hand. James was right; the kid had the attention span of a rodent; unless there was something going on where he genuinely felt interest in.

  But it also kept his mind clear, somehow. Thomas never understood how James had been able to stay so calm and focused all the time. Like now, when everything that could possibly have gone wrong so far, actually had gone wrong, James still remained pretty cool about it – at least toward his friends.

  Thomas decided that he had to put his worries about James aside and just focus until they would have a more clear view of the situation.

  ...Which perhaps wouldn’t be until the very end. But the last thing that Thomas wanted was to lose all grip on the entire happening that they had because he was someplace else inside his head all the time, so he had to put his concerns aside.

  For now.

  It was about midday, the sun shining high and bright in the sky, when Violina suddenly stopped floating ahead of the teenagers.

  “Stop,” she ordered, and the teenagers obeyed – but of course they did.

  “Violina?” Samira asked. “Is this the place where your sister lives?”

  “Practically, yes,” Violina said. She “The open place in the heart of the Fairy Forest. And trust me, despite of it being officially a part of the Twilight Forest, the Fairy Forest is a lot bigger than you’ve seen just yet.”

  She turned back around and swallowed, as if there was something she didn’t want the teenagers to know.

  “Why aren’t we going any further?” Samira asked. “She’s your sister, and we’re the Bond of Light; I’m pretty sure that she won’t kick us out if we enter.”

  “That’s not the problem, Samira,” Violina replied with a tight, whispering voice. “This is the first time in five hundred years that we’re seeing each other again.”

  “But that means that you’re-!” Antonio mumbled, completely stunned.

  “I am twenty thousand years old, Antonio, in case you were interested,” Violina said. “You can compare one thousand fairy or pixie years with one human year. But yet, we do still have to live through five hundred years... I just can’t believe we’re seeing each other again.”

  “Five hundred years... Seesh... Seems like forever,” Antonio mumbled.

  “It actually is, really long.” Violina sighed. “Five hundred years still remains five centuries. No matter how fast – or slow – you age.”

  “Then you must be really eager to meet her,” Samira said. Violina nodded without looking at her; the way she nodded didn’t seem to be too confident.

  “I am,” she said, “I really am. But I’m also quite scared. Things have changed so much...” She turned back around, facing the teenagers again, and sighed deep. “I’m responsible for the failure of one Generation. It was my fault that I couldn’t prevent the Warlock Spirits to cast the spell over our flowers... I’m the one who let them in back then because I wasn’t careful enough.

  And if James hadn’t been so smart to figure a way to get out of that ambush last night, your Generation would have been in danger as well. The Last Hope! If I would’ve let our last hope slip through our fingers right into the claws of the Master...” Violina stopped talking and shuddered.

  “But Violina, none of this was your fault! Neither was it that other time! It’s the fault of the Shadow Creatures and their Master!” James exclaimed. ”No one blames you!”

  “That’s really gentle of you to say, young Guardian,” Violina said. “But as Keeper of the Fairy Valley, I’m supposed to protect you while you are here. And if I fail, I am the one to blame. That’s the way it is, I can’t change it.”

  “But we’re the Guardians of Light, the ones you need to protect, and if we say that you’re not the one to blame, then it is so,” James stated.

  A tiny smirk escaped onto the fixie’s face. “You’re a smart little guy for your age, James. And I appreciate all you’re doing for us and our world. But rules are rules.”

  “What rules?” James responded, flinging his arms in the air. “Were we supposed to get a manual at the beginning that we were supposed to read? Like a leaflet or something? Come on! No one told us there were rules to this... this... quest!”

  “There are very little rules for you to follow, James, that’s why no one told you,” Violina replied on a rather neutral tone, like she wasn’t affected by James’s outburst. “You will learn all you need to know as your journey progresses.” Violina turned around again and started to fly forward. “We’ve got no time to waste; you need to speak to the Queen.”

  “But-!” James protested, but Thomas interrupted him by giving him a tap on the back of his head with two fingers. “Shut up, redhead,” he whispered. “Before she changes her mind. We’re still surrounded by Shadow Creatures, so anything could happen, remember?”

  James nodded and the teenagers followed Violina toward the open place at the heart of the forest.