by Perrin Briar
“Where shall we go?” Jera said. “There’s nowhere we can hide!”
“This way,” a voice said.
The voice was soft, and yet somehow audible despite the roaring wind. It came from a glow made faint by the pollen cloud.
“Quickly!” the voice said, “or you will succumb to the powder’s power once more.”
“We can’t see you!” Jera said.
“Follow my voice.”
The voice hummed a song that was so sad and forlorn that it made Jera’s heart ache. The song led them into a circle of trees and bushes that kept the worst of the pollen at bay. Elian beat at his clothes, which had turned an earthy yellow. Jera laid Puca down on the ground, his little body gasping and struggling to breathe.
“Puca…” Jera said. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Let him rest,” the voice said. “He will be fine.”
The light that had helped guide them was bright, like a chunk of the sun had fallen to earth.
“Can you lower your lantern, please?” Jera said. “It’s very bright.”
Elian stared in fear.
“I don’t think that’s a lantern,” he said.
The light reduced, blinking lower and lower, until a small floating figure emerged. She had delicate features, a strong regal bearing, pointy ears, and hair that reached down to her toes.
“There,” she said in her soft voice. “Is that better?”
Elian’s eyes were wide as saucers.
“You’re a… You’re a…” he said.
Elian’s eyes rolled into the back of his head and he passed out. Jera kneeled down beside him. She slapped his face and shook him.
“Elian!” she said. “Wake up! Elian!”
“I can wake him,” the spirit said, extending a tiny finger.
“No!” Jera said. “Stay back.”
Her face was pale, her eyes wide with disbelief.
“We will not harm you,” the spirit said.
“W…We?”
Jera looked up to see dozens of glowing figures above her in the upper reaches of an oak tree. She would have thought it beautiful if she hadn’t been so scared.
“I am Queen Fae Ri,” the spirit before Jera said. “And I need your help.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Time’s port was a beautiful place at night. The buoy at the entrance to the port leaned left to right, the bell clanking a random soothing tone with the tide. Light from the oil lamps at the end of each quay blazed bright, and the docked boats, tethered to each quay like a baby in the womb, pulled against their harnesses, making them creak.
A Wythnos trading vessel was being loaded by burly thick armed men. On the dock, a young Maiden Voyage shipmate by the affectation Swabby, for his penchant for always carrying a mop with him wherever he went, joined Port Master Matthews, who stood observing the boat.
“They’re filling the Wythnos vessels up day and night,” Swabby said.
“Yes,” Port Master Matthews said. “It’s the biggest tribute I’ve ever seen.”
“Imagine all the food and medicine in those crates! I’ve always heard Arthur Ascar to be miserly, but he clearly isn’t when it involves his family. Imagine having all that money… If it were me, I wouldn’t give nobody nothing.”
“That’s why you work here and the Ascars work in the Capital. You’ve got to give to get.”
Matthews was born a rotund man. It gave him the appearance of someone soft and easy to succumb to temptation, but he was actually hard and honest, and believed in fairness and the rules at all times. He was not beyond stretching regulations to suit his needs, but he would not break them. His youth at the hands of his father had taught him that.
“I wish I knew what was inside those crates,” Swabby said. “But I suppose we’ll find out what’s inside in the reports.”
“What reports?”
“The inventory report.”
“There is no inventory report for tributes,” Matthews said. “Your captain should have told you that.”
“He might’ve done, but it’s hard to understand him sometimes what with his drink affliction.”
“Drink affliction?”
“Yeah, you know, punch drunk.”
“Yes, well, it’s considered a deep dishonour if a tribute gets searched like other merchandise.”
“Then I suppose we’ll never find out what’s inside, will we?”
“Not without sufficient cause,” Matthews said. “Without which nobody will know till they get it on their plates during the festivities.”
“That’s a shame. The other day some powder fell out of one of the crates. I was real tempted to open the top, I was. But the captain, he said it was more than my life was worth. Still, I would’ve liked to have taken a quick gander inside.”
Swabby turned and carried his mop away with him, leaning on it to conceal a faint limp.
“So would I,” Matthews said.
He turned and headed toward the low-ceilinged shed on the other side of the dock. He slid his key into the door and unlocked it. As he stepped inside, his foot caught on something and it slid across the floor. With the pale moonlight that poured through the small window, he saw it was a letter. He picked it up and tossed it on his desk along with his keys.
He lifted the matchbox and shook it. There was a lonely rattle inside. He smiled, opened the box and used the last match to light a candle. He shrugged off his coat and hat and hung them on the hat stand in the corner. His desk chair squeaked as it took his weight. He had a pile of paperwork on his desk thicker than a minister’s Bible. Unable to face it for the moment, he let out a sigh and turned away from it.
He picked up the letter. ‘To the port master’ was written on the front in a loopy font. He slid his finger into the gap at the end and tore the envelope open. He took out the letter and began to read. His eyes widened.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“We need the world to be rid of the compound you call Gap,” Queen Fae said. “It is poisoning the world and it is poisoning you. Until it is gone the world cannot live. There is a creature that resides in the forest to the north. It alone can feed on the Gap flower and suffer no ill effects. But now is the season when it slumbers. It must be awoken early and led to the field of Gap.”
The tiny little figure floated before them, so thin and delicate Jera dared not breathe too hard for fear she might blow her away like wisps of smoke on a strong breeze.
“What about the Gap that’s already out there?” Jera said. “Can they stop that too?”
“No,” Queen Fae said. “What is taken cannot be replaced.”
High above them, floating like plankton on a calm tide, a dozen glowing orbs drifted and bumped into one another. Elian could not look at the fairies directly, his gaze always turning away.
“How will getting rid of the Gap flower help you?” Jera said.
“It is removing an evil from the world,” Queen Fae said, “and when something evil goes, it leaves purity.”
“Why don’t you remove it yourself?” Jera said.
“Our power derives from the earth, from nature, from all the wonder around us. Once, we had the run of the entire forest. But each time the farmers come, they take a little more of the forest, a little more of our power to charm them. Eventually they will take everything and we will no longer be able to hide. We only had enough strength to convince them to spare us this small area of land, but even this is shrinking. Our job in this world, in any world, is to maintain order, to ensure a natural balance to the world, but these Gap flowers are a blot on the face of creation. They have created an imbalance, and since the men came to plant them, we have had no chance to restore that balance.”
“Why should we be the ones to do this?” Jera said.
“Jera!” Elian said, raising his eyes to Queen Fae’s neck. “Please accept our sincerest apologies. She meant no offence.”
“None taken,” Queen Fae said with a small smile. “You must do this because we can give you
the second replacement clock piece.”
Queen Fae flapped her translucent wings so they turned almost invisible, and put her hand to a large oak tree.
“You have come for the Wheel of Fortune. It is here, in the heart of this tree. But it can’t be found by cutting. It must be drawn out. We can do it, once Gap is gone and our power is restored.”
Elian and Jera shared a look. Elian’s mind was made up. Jera turned to the queen.
“If we get these creatures to do this,” she said, “you will give us the second clock replacement piece?”
“We will.”
“Then we’ll do it,” Jera said. “But what’ll we do with Puca? He’s not well.”
“We will watch over him while you are gone,” Queen Fae said. “I’m sure he will be better once you return.”
Jera stroked Puca’s fur. His mouth was open and his eyes were slits.
“It’s all right,” Jera said. “You’ll be okay, Puca. We’ll be back soon, and we can continue on with our journey.”
They walked toward the edge of the clearing. Jera stopped and turned.
“What exactly are these creatures we’re looking for called?” she said.
Queen Fae smiled.
“Dragornets,” she said.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Elian and Jera walked out of the protective ring of trees and hedges to the edge of the little grassy island. The strong wind had passed and the field was still. Elian and Jera covered their mouths with their tunics and began to cross the field.
“What exactly is a dragornet?” Elian said.
“It’s a four-inch long wasp with a dragon’s head and a sting in its tail capable of taking down a centaur.”
“Sorry I asked.”
“And we have to anger a whole hive of them.”
“Great.”
They crossed the field of Gap and entered the forest to the north. There was a large stagnant body of water with reeds and lily pads, a thick green goo on top.
“Fancy a swim?” Elian said.
Jera rolled her eyes.
“What the hell happened?” Elian said. “First we were out to save the world, the next we’re on pest control. What do you suppose this dragornet hive actually looks like? Have you ever seen one before?”
“Yes,” Jera said. “But only in pictures. It looks a little bit like that.”
She pointed to a huge grey construction that looked like it belonged on another planet. It hung from the overhang of a large tree. The hive was layered, a series of steps up to the wide middle and then narrow up to the top. A sticky membrane adhered the top of the hive to the cliff.
“How are we going to knock it down?” Jera said.
“The same way we used to knock them down when I was a kid.”
Elian picked up two long sticks and handed one to Jera. He scaled the trunk of the tree and kept an eye on the nest, and saw no movement. Jera stood underneath it with her stick held over her shoulder, her feet shoulder width apart, turned toward the purple field of Gap. It wasn’t far, but she was not used to swinging sticks around.
“This is such a bad idea,” Elian said.
He hesitated, lowering the stick before raising it again. He brought the stick to his right, and then swung it around and connected with the sticky membrane that affixed the nest to branch. It shuddered, and sent vibrations through the whole nest. There was a faint buzzing inside.
“You have to hit it harder!” Jera said.
“That’s easy for you to say!”
Elian brought the stick around and hit the sticky membrane again. The end of the stick got stuck. Elian had to tug on it to get it free.
“It’s not breaking!” Elian said.
A dragornet, as long as his thumb, and just as thick, climbed out of the hive, flexing its wings and making them vibrate. It moved its head left to right, its movements slow and dozy.
“Now that is a big bug,” Elian said, staring at the dragornet in horror.
Elian noticed the sticky substance caking the end of his stick. He had an idea. He released his knife from its sheath and pressed it into the sticky substance. He took careful aim and swung the stick.
The knife struck the membrane, severing it, and sent the nest plummeting down. Jera watched it fall, her insides twisting with apprehension. It fell at what she deemed the perfect height. She swung her stick. It swished through the air… and connected with nothing.
“Ah!” Jera said.
Jera had swung with such ferocity that her whole body turned around. The hive hit the ground, and ten thousand dragornets awoke from their slumber, sounding very, very angry.
Jera pulled her foot back and threw all her weight into kicking the hive into the field of Gap. But even as it flew through the air, dragornets escaped the hive and swung around in slow circles, orientating themselves. Elian slid down the tree, detached his knife from the end of his stick and ran.
“Come on!” he said. “Those dragornets are not going to be very happy with us!”
The dragornets swarmed out of their nest, a giant black fist. They flew around in a tight circle. The majority flew down to the purple flowers, but some turned toward the two guilty-looking fleeing figures. Their wings beat and made a roaring sound.
Elian and Jera hopped over fallen trees and ducked beneath wayward foliage. The dragornets’ loud buzzing filled their ears. They came to the stagnant pond.
“Get in the water!” Elian said. “Get in the water!”
Elian jumped in, followed by Jera a moment later. They submerged themselves. Elian beat at his clothes, dreading they might be on him. He looked up at the surface, the ripples from their immersion playing across the surface of the green-tinted water.
The dragornets hovered there, waiting for someone to come up. Clearly they had seen this tactic used before.
Elian turned and made out a series of reeds behind him. He pulled one free and snapped it in half. He put it to his lips, blew with the remaining air in his lungs to clear anything inside the reed and breathed in the air from the other end. He gave the other half of the reed to Jera, who copied what he’d done.
Elian opened his eyes and saw the dragornets were still there, though fewer than before. Then, after what felt like hours, the dragornets turned and flew away. Elian and Jera waited a few more minutes before surfacing. Elian wiped the water from his eyes and breathed in panted lungfuls of air.
“Are you all right?” he said.
“I’m fine,” Jera said. “That’s what they should be making fake traps of – dragornets, not spirits.”
They walked to a tree and picked the dry grass at its base. They used it to wipe the green gunk off their bodies. When they returned to the field of Gap, the sight took their breath away.
A large swathe of the purple flowers around them had already been wiped out in a concentric circle from the broken hive. When Elian drew close to the fields, he could see the dragornets hadn’t consumed the flowers, only snipped the heads off with their mandibles and consumed the petals.
Something crunched beneath Elian’s feet. He looked down to find the field was covered with small yellow husks. He knelt and picked one up. It was the outer shell of a dragornet. The inside was empty, like a snake that had shed its old skin.
A dragornet, its body bloated to a massive size, munched on the petals of a flower. It fell to the ground, rolled over, and lay there a moment. It dried up before their eyes, as if the sun had stolen all the moisture from its body. Its legs gave a final twitch and then, the body being so dry, cracked open. Three baby dragornets emerged. They shook out their wings and rubbed their mandibles with their front legs.
They flew to nearby flower petals that their mother hadn’t been able to finish off, and began munching on them. Once they were finished, they took off for more food. They joined an incredible swarm of dragornets which ate and ate and ate. They took flight all at once, and a great cloud of dragornets, black against the sky, blotted out the sun as they spread to another part of t
he field and began munching again.
“These things will only eat these purple Gap flowers, right?” Elian said. “Otherwise we might have just sentenced the world to a worse death than if the clocktower broke.”
As Elian and Jera crossed the field, they were approached by three soldier dragornets, their mandibles twice the size, poison oozing from their glistening stingers. Elian and Jera froze, putting their hands up as if they had been approached by constables of the Force. The dragornets buzzed about their faces, twitched their antennae and then moved on.
“They don’t seem to eat meat, at least,” Jera said.
Elian and Jera approached the small island where the fairies resided and entered the clearing surrounded by trees and bushes. There was a concentration of dragornets high up in the boughs. They were rebuilding their hive in the oak tree. It was already half the size of their previous home.
Queen Fae floated down to them. The light emanating from her skin twinkled with a million points of light. Her hair was black and shiny. Her eyes shone with a healthy glow. She pointed to a pile of honeycombs on the ground.
“The dragornets have provided you with honey for your journey,” she said. “Although they dislike what you did with their home, now they realise that you did it as a way to help them build a larger home. They are thankful to you, and all the while you are in the Gap fields they shall not attack you.”
“Can I get that in writing?” Jera said.
“The bees do not write,” Queen Fae said, stony faced.
“No, it was a joke.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t worry,” Elian said. “I don’t understand her jokes either.”
Jera cast about the clearing.
