by Nina Smith
Pierus’s hold tightened. “There’s nothing wrong with her,” he said. “Nothing I cannot fix. Let us pass.”
“There’s plenty wrong,” Leaf said. “First she got dropped on her head as a kid, then she went off with you. There’s so many levels of wrong there I can’t even count them.”
“We just saved your entire miserable tribe.” Pierus’s voice was low and venomous. “You’d all be dead now if she hadn’t agreed to help me.”
“And that’s possibly the only reason we don’t dispatch you right now,” Leaf said. “Ishtar, Rain, take her home.”
Relief. Relief washed through her whole body. Hippy glimpsed the circle of spears surrounding Pierus, the savagery in the dear, familiar faces. Then her sister and brother took her from the muse and put her arms around each of their shoulders. She slumped forward. Even her brain felt heavy.
“Hippy,” Pierus said behind her. “Hippy don’t go.”
“Get me away from him,” she whispered.
Ishtar and Rain moved fast. Her feet barely hit the ground. The fairies moved from their circle and fell into a phalanx around her.
“I’ll come for you,” Pierus said.
“Over my dead body,” Ishtar hissed in her ear.
Hippy closed her eyes. Only now could she give herself up to blissful sleep.
Now she was safe.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“Why’s she all covered in blood? She hates blood.”
“I don’t know, Mum. I think it’s her own. Look, she cut her hand.”
“So she did. Pack some spider webs into that, would you?”
“Alright. Have we got any fresh ones? Wait, what’s that?”
A silence.
“She got bit,” Willow said.
Ishtar said a lot of bad words.
“Ishtar Ishtar, don’t you use language like that!”
“Mum she never got bit in her life! How’d she let something like that happen?”
“Just clean it out and make sure there’s no poison in there. You never know where those vamps have been. I’m going to use that muse king’s head for a soup bowl if I catch him back here again.”
“I don’t understand what’s wrong with her. Why’s she blue like that? Why won’t she wake up?”
A series of light slaps stung her wrists.
“Stop it, Ishtar. She’s just exhausted is all. Who knows what that muse did to her?”
“If you’re going to use his head for a soup bowl, does that mean we can’t stick it on a spike on the gate?”
Willow chuckled. “You’re right. It’d be better if he had two heads.”
Hippy sighed and drifted deeper into sleep. The conversation made her feel safe. Her fingers and toes were still cold, but the rest of her body was pleasantly warm.
Pictures formed behind her eyes, images so vivid she wondered if this were real and her sister and mother the dream.
She stood under a tree with Nikifor and a fairy that looked like her, except taller and with green hair. She carried an odd sort of weapon, a wooden stick that was curved at one end. There was blood on her face. Nikifor wiped away the stain with a gentle touch and she looked at him like he was the only man in Shadow.
Something disturbed Hippy about this fairy. Something about the eyes. She was fairy all over, but she had Pierus’s eyes.
The fairy looked at her. “I’m coming, Mum.”
Hippy sat bolt upright, big-eyed and sweating. Her breath came short and fast. The room was dark and close. “No,” she whispered. “No no no no no no no. Anything but that.”
“Hippy?” Ishtar’s voice was sleepy. She got up off a pallet on the floor and lit a gas lamp.
Hippy stared at her for a full minute before her brain would work. The walls were black and the room smelled of old smoke. A hole in the roof, hastily thatched, let a cold breeze in. She shivered. “Ishtar?”
“Yeah. It’s me.” Ishtar’s voice had an edge. “Lie down. Mum said you had to sleep.”
“I can’t.” Hippy grabbed her sister’s hands and dragged her towards the raised pallet she lay on. “No. I’m never going to sleep again. It was horrible.”
“What was horrible?”
The words spilled out before she could stop them. “I just had the dream.”
“The dream? What dream?”
Hippy gave Ishtar a look.
Ishtar’s eyes widened. “The dream? The baby dream?”
Hippy nodded.
Ishtar said an extremely bad word, stormed over to the wall and punched it. Burned wood crumbled under her fist, leaving a jagged hole. She stormed back to Hippy. “I can’t believe you!” she hissed. “What are you thinking? What were you thinking? It was him, wasn’t it? The muse king?”
Hippy gave a single miserable nod.
“You’re going to be in so much trouble.”
“Going to be? I already am!” Hippy buried her face in her hands.
Ishtar sat on the bed beside her. “What happened? And when?”
“It was only earlier today.” The words sounded as miserable as she felt. “I was fighting Rustam Badora and he got the better of me. Pierus pulled him away and then we went into this room and he said–he said–” she sniffed. “He said I had to prove I was with him only, or something, and that I hadn’t betrayed him with Clockwork-”
“Who’s Clockwork?”
“Nobody.” Hippy looked sidelong at her sister. “It just happened. What am I going to do? What’s he going to say?”
“Say? I don’t give a bearfly’s backside what he says.” Ishtar strode up and down the room, fists clenched. “Of all the stupid things you could have done! I told you this would happen, didn’t I? I warned you! You could have stayed here and fought vamps and been safe, but instead you go off and get yourself pregnant to the muse king!” She whirled back to Hippy. “He manipulated you into this. I hope you see that. I hope you’re over your little crush now, even if the damage is already done.”
“Crush?” Hippy shuddered. She wrapped the blanket around herself. “I don’t ever want to see him again. Even though I have to.”
“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. I’ll kill him. I swear I’ll kill him. He’d look good impaled on the gates of the camp. When we rebuild them.”
Hippy watched Ishtar’s furious movements. She blinked back the urge to bawl her eyes out, because Ishtar would tease her mercilessly about it for days, no matter how mad she was right now. “It’s not going to be that easy.”
Ishtar gave her a sharp look. “What do you mean by that?”
“I mean there’s more to this than just you or me. There were these Freakin Fairies-”
Ishtar snatched up a spear from the floor. “Freakin fairies? Where?”
Hippy sighed. “In Dream.”
“There are Freakin Fairies in Dream? Did you fight them? You’d better have fought them.”
Hippy groaned, buried her face in the pillow and pulled the blanket over her head. “How did I make things such a mess?”
Ishtar dropped the spear, approached the bed and patted her awkwardly on the shoulder. “Look, it was bound to happen, what with you being dropped on your head and all. Just go to sleep. I’m sure when we tell Dad in the morning, he’ll understand.”
The lines on Leaf Ishtar’s face were so deep his face looked cracked in the early morning light. “I don’t understand,” he said.
Hippy took a deep breath to compose herself. She’d woken up feeling much better, but having to face the elders first thing in the morning wasn’t much fun. She was appalled so many of them were missing. “I’m pregnant,” she repeated.
The fairies closest to her inched away.
Hippy scowled. “It’s only been a day, you don’t have to duck and cover yet.”
“A day, you say?” Leaf looked over at Willow and rubbed his forehead. “Is it just me or is that a little too much information from our youngest daughter?”
Willow folded her arms and glared in the gener
al direction of the muse camp, which could be clearly seen, since there were no walls left around the fairy camp. She was apparently too furious to say anything at all.
“Are you sure?” There was a hint of desperation in Leaf’s voice.
“Of course she’s sure,” Willow snapped. “She had the dream. Ishtar told me. Every fairy has the dream the first night.”
“I know, I know.” Leaf sat heavily on the nearest stump. The other elders shifted and avoided both his and Hippy’s eyes. “What were you thinking?”
Hippy shrugged and studied her feet with great intensity. She really hadn’t thought this through. She couldn’t tell her father she intended to go with Pierus on the orders of a Freakin Fairy to prevent him from turning Shadow into some kind of nightmare nobody had yet explained to her. She couldn’t tell him how much the thought terrified her. She couldn’t even tell him how much she wanted to stay, bury herself here and try to figure out what it meant to be carrying a child who would be neither muse nor fairy, but something of both.
As though reading her thoughts, one of the elders spoke up. “What of the child? It can’t stay here. It’s not really a Bloody Fairy.”
Hippy clenched her fists. “She is too a Bloody Fairy, and she will go wherever I say she goes!”
Leaf shook his head. “I’m sorry Hippy, but it’s true. We have never had the child of a muse and a fairy here. As for a fairy who wilfully ran off with a muse and allowed him to get her with child–how can we allow you to stay?”
He might as well have slapped her in the face. Hippy swallowed hard to keep herself from bursting into tears. “Dad? What are you saying?”
Ishtar, who had been sitting at the edge of the gathering, leaped to her feet. “No.” Her voice was low and angry, but it rose with each word. “This isn’t right, you know it isn’t. It’s not her fault. He tricked her. You know she’s got the brains of a box of bearfly droppings, she was easy pickings for him! He was up to something, he had to be, and he used her!”
“If that is true, perhaps there is a way,” Leaf said.
Another elder cleared his throat. “If your daughter was to repudiate any and all loyalty to the muse king and agree to give the child up to the muses once it was born, she might clear this mark on your family name. Otherwise she must leave and make her way on her own.”
A vein throbbed on Leaf’s forehead, but there was no other sign of emotion. He looked at Hippy. “Well?”
Hippy looked back at him, desolate. It would be so easy to repudiate Pierus. So easy. But give the child to the muses? Never. And the elders had just given her a way to go and carry out Mr Silver’s orders, even though it hurt more than anything she’d ever done.
“Hippy tell them,” Ishtar said. “Tell them what you told me. You don’t care about him! You told us to get you away from him yesterday! For Shadow’s sake, say something!”
Hippy glanced across to the muse camp. Three tall figures made their way across the divide. Even from this distance she recognised Pierus at their centre. Her heart was a stone and her stomach like lead. Her voice came out just as cold and heavy as the rest of her. “I will not repudiate my loyalty to the muse king. And I will not allow my child to be brought up by muses. She is a Bloody Fairy, whether you like it or not.”
The silence was so taut it should have snapped and broken like a spring stretched too far. Every face turned away from her, except for Ishtar’s, which burned with outrage.
“You’ve chosen your path,” Leaf said. “You must walk it, girl. Get your things and go.”
Hippy swallowed hard. She turned on her heel and went back to the battered hut she’d slept in every night since she was born, until the day she left for Dream.
“You can’t do this!” Ishtar yelled behind her. “This is wrong, Dad! Can’t you see she’s hiding something? Why are you banishing her when she most needs our help? There are Freakin Fairies involved in this, she said so last night!”
Ishtar’s voice faded when Hippy went into the hut. She went to her pallet, tied on her belt and made sure Fluffy Ducky was in there safe and sound. She put a comb into an empty pouch, but left everything else that was hers. She didn’t know if she could bear to take any reminders of home to wherever Pierus intended they should go. She had to leave her childhood behind. Start a new and probably unpleasant life with the muse king. Not think about Clockwork, ever.
A tear trickled from one eye.
Ishtar burst into the hut. “Hippy, please,” she said. “Think about what you’re doing!”
Hippy grabbed her around the neck and hugged her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But I have to. I hope you’ll understand one day.”
Ishtar pushed her away. “Make me understand now.”
“I can’t.” Hippy raked her hair out of her face and pinned it back.
“But he’s going to kill you! You were half dead already last night!”
Hippy shook her head. “Don’t worry about me. I know what I’m doing.”
Ishtar stalked across the hut and opened a chest. “No you don’t. You’ve no more sense than a bearfly in winter, Hippy Ishtar, and you’re going to get yourself killed. But if you insist on going, take these.” She piled several bags into a rucksack and thrust it into Hippy’s hands. “Fairy dust, you’ll need that. White kelsite, green skink juice, meteorite powder, bearfly whiskers, a vial of choking syrup, be careful with that. You can put it in his breakfast when he makes you cross.”
Hippy strapped the rucksack across her back. She didn’t know what to say. She sniffed. “You’re giving me your choking syrup?”
“I can’t exactly use it on anyone around here.” Ishtar shuffled her feet. “If things get too much, find a way to send me word. I’ll be there faster than you can make a vamp sparkle.”
“I’ll miss you.” Hippy gave her sister one more fierce hug. Then she hurried from the hut before she changed her mind and stayed.
Outside she slowed. The elders stood and parted into two groups. They bore silent witness when she walked through them, head high, eyes fixed on the three muses waiting for her outside the camp.
Willow planted herself in Hippy’s path and embraced her. “Look after yourself, daughter,” she whispered in her ear. Then she let her go and rejoined the elders.
Hippy looked around for her father, but he turned his face away.
“If it’s any consolation,” Willow said to nobody in particular, “That muse king’s going to get the worst of it, going off Shadow knows where with a pregnant fairy.”
The elders started to snicker.
The sound followed Hippy from the camp.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Hippy didn’t look over her shoulder, because she didn’t want getting thrown out to be her last memory of her family. She fixed her gaze on Pierus instead. Fury coiled in her stomach. She clenched her jaw.
Flower put on a big welcoming smile, but it seemed forced. There was a new scar on Nikifor’s cheekbone and a tremor in his fingers. Pierus looked fresh and groomed, as though he’d spent the last week resting instead of fighting, except for one little detail. Hippy stared. A whole lock of his hair had turned so white it seemed a streak of light rippled from his temple to his shoulders.
He smiled like a man welcoming a long lost love home and reached out his hands. “Hippy,” he said. “I was afraid they would keep you.”
“Keep me?” Hippy marched up to him, balled her right fist and punched him in the stomach. “I just got banished because of you!”
Pierus doubled over from the unexpected blow. “What?”
She shoved him. “Don’t even talk to me right now!” She turned her back on him and headed for the muse camp.
Flower ran to catch up with her. “Hippy? What’s going on?”
Hippy gave her a sidelong glance. She sighed. She couldn’t be mad at Flower just for being a muse. “I’m glad you didn’t get killed.”
“So am I.” Flower put an arm around her shoulder and matched her pace. They left Pierus and Ni
kifor behind. “I probably would have if it wasn’t for Nikifor. None of us would even be here. You should have seen it, Hippy. The night you and Pierus left he held back the entire attack almost single-handed. I’ve never seen anyone kill so many vampires in one night. It was like his father had returned to defend us all again.”
Hippy tried to remember that night. It was a relief to think about something other than her own problems. “Really? I thought he was afraid.”
Flower shrugged. “He got over it. The vampires swarmed on us every night and every night we held them back, but only just, because of him. I think last night we would have been overwhelmed, but then you and Pierus came back with that light. I was so proud of you.”
“Proud of me?” Hippy couldn’t help her words sounding bitter.
“Of course. It must have taken a great deal of courage to go to Dream and aid Pierus in his quest.”
Hippy looked away.
Flower continued, her voice calm. “Your sister was afraid for you. I wasn’t able to speak to your parents, the elders wouldn’t allow any muses near the camp after you left. They were furious.”
“They were right to be furious,” Hippy said. “They were right about everything.” She grasped Flower’s hand and dragged her into an empty, raggedy tent when they reached the border of the muse camp, so they could speak privately. The words tumbled out. “Flower I’m pregnant. I don’t know how to tell him. What’s he going to say?”
Flower blinked. “Pregnant? Who to, Hippy?”
Hippy let out an explosive breath. “To Pierus of course!”
Flower let go of her hand and moved a step back. “What?”
Hippy stomped her foot. “You heard me!”
“I know, I heard you, I just-” Flower made a helpless gesture. “I don’t get it. What happened? He’s a muse, you’re a fairy-”
“Well yes, I did notice that, as I was getting banished from my tribe. This is useless. I’m sorry I brought it up.” She turned to go.
“No wait!” Flower grabbed her hand and pulled her back. “I’m the one who should be sorry, Hippy. I’m just a little shocked. At him, not you. I thought better of his intentions.” A line marred her forehead. “Is that why you hit him?”
