by E. G. Foley
Sad, Dani thought. That harpy should be glad she even had a mother. After all, not everybody did.
She eyed Jake over her shoulder. He was frowning at the ground, hands in pockets, brooding again.
“What the heck is wrong with you today?”
“Huh? Oh, nothing.”
“Pfft,” Dani said.
“Well.” He let out a huge sigh. “A lot of stuff.” He hesitated. “Actually…I’ve been meaning to say I’m sorry for barking at you at the school the other day.”
She turned to him in shock.
“And also to tell you it was actually kind of a lovely thing you did, cheering up those kids by showing them the Illuminium.”
Dani was astonished. “I thought you were mad at me for that.”
“I was.” He shrugged. “But then I realized it’s really no big thing.”
“It’s not?”
“No. I overreacted. I should’ve trusted your judgment. It was nice, like I said.”
“But I broke the rules—about keeping magic secret.”
“Eh, rules. I was never really big on those. Don’t worry. I took care of it.”
Dani frowned. “The forgetfulness spell?”
“Nah, I didn’t have the heart. Lied to ’em.”
“Well, sorry you had to lie,” she said awkwardly, quite astonished at how civilized he was acting.
Maybe Archie had been a good influence on him these past few months.
Jake kicked a clod of dirt in the path. “I’m sorry I was mean.”
“It’s all right.” Dani gazed up in thought at the scarlet lattice of leaves above her. “I give you a lot of leeway, Jake, because I know you’ve had a hard time.”
“Yes, but how much longer can I really use that as an excuse?” He stared at her. “I’m luckier than most, when you come down to it.” He dropped his gaze again, looking a little embarrassed by this heartfelt conversation. “Mainly I just wanted you to know that nobody’s ever sending you back to the rookery. Not me, not ever. I give you my word.”
She absorbed this news like a thirsty houseplant soaking up some water. “You mean it?”
“Aye, no matter what,” he said.
She believed him.
She hadn’t realized until that very moment that, deep down, she had still feared being sent back to the harsh, dirty, dangerous neighborhood that she came from. “Thanks, Jake.”
He nodded.
Feeling awkward, she turned around and continued her treasure hunt for the pretend pirate’s candy gold, but her search was halfhearted now with the weight of all the things Jake had not yet told her.
She could feel them pressing down on him like a dark, invisible weight.
“So, the wedding’s off between you and Petunia, eh?” she teased.
“Ugh, that girl’s worse than me.” He plucked a long piece of grass beside the path and stuck it in his teeth like a farmer as he sauntered along after her. “I wish she’d leave me alone. I don’t have time for her nonsense. There’s work to be done.”
“What kind of work?” she asked in surprise, for Jake had never been fond of chores.
“Lightrider stuff.”
“Ohhh.” Dani spotted a glint of gold tucked in a woodpecker hole on the trunk of a dead tree nearby. She walked up the angle of a fallen log to reach it.
Jake frowned and took his hands out of his pockets, as though ready to catch her by telekinesis if she fell.
“Don’t tell Miss Helena I’m climbing trees. It isn’t ladylike.”
“Just don’t break your neck.”
“Got it!” She seized her prize and held it up with a grin. “You can have this one.” She tossed the coin down to Jake.
He caught it out of the air. “Are you sure you can get down from there?”
“Of course. I’m not some dimwit debutante.” She jumped down, dusting off her hands as she landed back on the path. “So, are you going to tell me what happened at the séance last night? You haven’t uttered one word about it to anyone.”
He paused in unwrapping the candy and sent her a wary glance. “I met Garnock. At least, I’m pretty sure it was him.”
“What? Garnock the Sorcerer? From the story Emrys told us?”
Jake nodded grimly. “If I’m right, then he’s the black fog. And he’s horrible. Way worse than I thought.”
Dani sat down on the log she had just climbed while Jake propped his foot up on it and told her the whole, harrowing story of what had happened at the séance.
She could not fathom how the dark spirit could “kill” ghosts, who were already dead to begin with.
But she soon learned that what really had Jake so shaken up was the vision Garnock had implanted in his mind, of himself as the future leader of the Dark Druids.
It took her a long moment to find her voice again after he described it.
She swallowed hard. “Anything else that happened?” she asked, trying to sound calm.
He shook his head, staring at her with dread in his blue eyes. “Afterwards, I got out of there as fast as possible. Madam Sylvia wanted to talk to me, but I couldn’t. I just left.”
Dani clenched her fists by her sides. “One of us should have gone with you. Derek or Miss Helena or me—”
“He would have only fed on you, too, if you had. Besides, it wouldn’t have made a difference. There was nothing anyone else could’ve done.” He paused. “I just wish I knew if that vision was a picture of my fate, or if it was just him trying to torment me.”
“Obviously the latter.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Jake, you’d never join the Dark Druids.”
“What if they trick me somehow? Maybe by using dark magic?”
“Hold on, now. Slow down. What makes you think this was Garnock in the first place?”
“Who else would know how to use magic to paralyze people, using nothing but raw fear, mere pictures in their minds? This is the master of the original Dark Druids we’re dealing with. I wouldn’t put anything past him.”
“But how could he bring himself back to life?”
Jake shrugged. “I wouldn’t call him entirely ‘alive’ quite yet. I think that’s why he’s going around sucking the life out of people. It seems to be what makes him stronger.”
“Well, what are we going to do?”
“I’ll have to ask Aunt Ramona. She hasn’t even answered my first message yet. But to be honest, my bigger worry at the moment is myself. I mean, after a vision like that, how can I even trust myself to try to stand against him? Maybe I’m the wrong person to try to deal with this. You saw how rotten I was in the vault. Selfish, spoiled. Even worse than Petunia.”
“Oh, Jake.”
“Honestly, Dani. I’m worse than you know.” He looked lost as he gazed at her in dismay. “What if the evil thing the unicorns were sensing out in the woods that night…was me?”
“Now you’re talking crazy.”
“Am I?”
“Yes, and that’s enough of that,” she said firmly.
He fell silent for a moment. “Dani, I want you to make me a promise.”
He knew she’d do just about anything for him, but she didn’t like the sound of this at all. “What sort of promise?”
“Like I said, I trust your judgment. You know me better than anyone. So, I want you to promise me that if you ever see me turning evil, you’ll buy some rat poison from an apothecary and slip it in my tea.”
“What?”
He stared at her, somber and unblinking as an owl.
“You want me to kill you? Murder you?” She jumped to her feet in exasperation. “I’m not doing that, you bloomin’ lunatic.”
“You have to! Dani, I don’t know if what I saw was my own worst fears or a vision of my future! I’d rather be dead than turned into a supernatural monster of a man.”
“You’re out of your head! What a horrible, horrible thing to ask of a friend.”
“Dani, you know what I can do. You know how much
damage I could do to the world and other people. If the Dark Druids ever manage to turn me somehow, you know very well I’ll have to be stopped.”
“Then ask Isabelle to do it, not me. She’s your kin. If it’s a matter of good and evil, she’s the one who’ll be able to sense it—”
“She’s too tender-hearted. She always believes the best of people. She’d make excuses, probably cover up for me. She’d never be able to do it.”
“And you think I could? Jake, the answer’s no. I am not going to kill you.”
“Well then, promise me you’ll tell Derek Stone, if it ever comes down to it. He’ll know what to do.”
“You’re daft if you think Derek would ever agree to hurt you, either. He’s sworn to protect you, and he loves you like you’re his own little brother or something.”
“He’s also a warrior and a true knight of the Order. My parents were his best friends. He’d never let me betray their memory. If I ever need to be killed, he’s the one to do it. But you’re the one who’s got to make that call, Dani. Will you at least agree to that much?”
“Not me, ask Isabelle!” she pleaded. “She can sense what’s in a person’s heart, and she’s as close to pure good as anyone I’ve ever seen. I’m just a regular person.”
“You’re the one the angel came to rescue, remember?” Jake pointed out. “Please? I’m counting on you, Dani. Promise me!”
“Fine. I’ll say it if it makes you feel better, but I don’t mean it.” She held up her crossed fingers to show him she was lying. “I promise I’ll tell Derek to kill you if you ever turn evil. Happy now?”
“Yes. Thank you. It helps more than you know,” he muttered.
She shook her head at him. “You really are an absolute loon-bat.”
At that moment, a chestnut fell out of the tree above them and bounced off Jake’s head, hitting Dani in the nose before falling to the leafy ground.
“Hey!” they cried in unison.
With Jake holding his head, and Dani cupping her nose, they both looked up indignantly at the oak tree, only to gasp in astonishment.
The slender branch above them was covered with a row of tiny people—spying on them!
They could not be fairies. They had no wings, nor sparkle-trails, but carried tiny spears or bows and arrows. They wore bits of brown leather sewn with twine and colored autumn leaves for their finery.
They shrieked as soon as they were spotted and immediately scattered, fleeing higher up the trunk, somersaulting into the canopy of the leaves, or pole-vaulting on their twig-spears onto other branches to escape.
“Come back here!” Jake ordered, only to be ignored.
“What are they?” Dani cried.
“Not sure yet, but they certainly seem to fit what Emrys said about the pixies. Believe me, I intend to find out when I catch one, little spies!”
“How are you going to do that?” She chased after him.
Jake was already following the tiny woodland folk from along the ground, his angry strides crunching over the fallen leaves as he abandoned the forest path. “Good question,” he conceded. Then he pulled off his jacket as he walked and tossed it to her. “I’ll knock ’em down with my telekinesis. Use this for a net to catch whoever falls.”
“Don’t hurt them, Jake!”
“I won’t. But just because they’re small, that doesn’t mean they’re harmless. They seemed awfully curious about my Garnock story. They could be working with him, for all we know.”
“They could?” she asked, scrambling after him.
“Why else would they be spying on us? Keep up, Dani. Come back here, you lot!” he yelled up into the trees. “Why are you eavesdropping on us? I want answers! You’re only making it worse for yourself!”
Spotting one of the wee folk running away among the leaves, Jake brought up his hands and shot an invisible lightning-bolt of energy from his fingertips at the slender branch that was their getaway route.
Dani heard a small shriek from above and brought Jake’s coat up like a net, racing to catch the mouse-sized fellow as he plummeted past the branches toward the ground.
Miniature, high-pitched voices screamed from the branches above: “Whorty!”
Dani dove for him. “Got you!”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Pixie Mischief
Jake spun around and saw Dani swiftly close his coat up like a sack.
Then he laughed aloud at the sudden panic on her face as their tiny captive started thrashing around inside the makeshift bag.
She glanced at him in desperation. “Jake!”
“Coming! Don’t drop him! He’ll get away.”
As he ran toward her, Dani grimaced and held the makeshift bag out at arm’s length, waiting for him to take it.
All the while, the mouse-sized man inside it was moving around furiously. They could hear his muffled protests. “Let me out!”
“Hang on, Whorty! We’ll save you!” With a voice only as loud as a cricket’s chirp—but much angrier—one of the tiny men in the tree shouted at his fleeing brethren. “Come back here, you cowards! We need to rescue Whortleberry! Quickly, get into formation!”
A tiny horn blew from somewhere up in the tree, then came a tapping of little running footsteps along the branch. Before Jake could take the sack out of Dani’s hands to deal with their prisoner, the wee forest folk rallied and charged.
“Attack!”
Suddenly, Jake and Dani were under siege as the pixies rained down acorns like cannonballs and started shooting their bows at them with splinter-sized arrows.
“Ow! Ow!” Jake and Dani said.
“Release Whortleberry! Put him down, you oversized oafs!”
More pixies were joining the fray with every second that passed. At their size, they must have known full well that their only hope was overwhelming their enemies with sheer numbers.
It was like walking into a cloud of mosquitoes. The pixie archers and acorn artillery on the branches above them continued to fire, but now the tiny shock troops swung down off bits of twine and landed on their heads and shoulders, where they proceeded to beat them and pull their hair.
“Get off o’ me!” Jake yelled to no avail as now the infantry rushed over the leafy ground and stormed the beaches of their feet, and immediately set about climbing up the bluffs of their knees.
Dani shrieked as the pixies swarmed up them, clutching miniscule handfuls of fabric to pull themselves up; they scaled Jake’s tan trousers and the puffy skirts of Dani’s party dress as easily as squirrels running up a tree.
She kept trying to brush them off, but they’d merely catch themselves on the green satin ribbons of her sash, swing from it, and scamper up once more.
Tenacious as she was, however, the carrot-head held onto the sack containing their prisoner.
Jake was losing patience with the pixies’ battle. Their punches felt like harmless finger taps, but the pinpricks from their spears kind of stung. “Stop that!”
“Let Whortleberry go, you ugly giant!” their leader shouted in his ear from his perch on Jake’s shoulder.
“Why were you spying on us?” he demanded.
They wouldn’t answer, too intent on beating Jake and Dani into submission.
Plagued from all directions by angry pixies, neither of them realized that all the poking and prodding from the tiny fighters’ spears was herding them deliberately toward a particular spot on the forest floor.
They were so distracted by the attack, they had not noticed the fat little pony grazing contentedly among the tall shrubberies several yards away; nor did they see a distant team of pixies slide the halter over the pony’s head and slap it on the rump.
But the pony suddenly vaulted to attention and broke into a spooked gallop, and until that very moment, Jake and Dani had no idea that they were standing on a trap concealed beneath the autumn leaves.
“Retreat!” the tiny leader hollered to his troops.
Instantly, the pixies dove off them all at once, leaving the
m standing there, still dazed by the attack and baffled as to why it had suddenly stopped.
But even at that moment, the pony yards away leaped into motion; the ropes went taut, racing through pulleys far above in the tree, and suddenly, the two of them were scooped off their feet, clunking their heads together as they fell into the pixies’ snare.
The rope netting instantly lifted them high, higher, into the tree as the spooked pony ran.
Smushed together in the trap, they gripped the ropes of the net that now held them, and neither stopped screaming until they reached the top of the giant oak tree.
Dangling many, many feet above the ground, at least they had an admirable view of the lovely Welsh landscape.
They were terrified but could see for miles around: the town, the coalmine, even the distant school and cemetery.
Jake’s heart was pounding and he could hear Dani practically hyperventilating beside him.
“Jake?” she squeaked. “What just happened?”
“You’re good and caught, that’s what,” a small but authoritative voice said. “They don’t look like tree goblins to me. Captain Coltsfoot? Explain.”
“They kidnapped Whortleberry, sire.”
“Is that so?”
As the trap spun slowly on its main rope, rotating to face the tree trunk, Jake and Dani gasped in amazement to find the pixies’ base camp right before their eyes.
At an intersection of two main branches, a horde of pixies stood on a ledge-shaped tree fungus, inspecting them with obvious hostility. They were about five inches tall, with pointy ears and pointy noses, rosy cheeks, and outdoorsy complexions. More of them kept hopping out of their papery, round shelter—an abandoned hornets’ nest—to see what was going on.
The tiny, robed king with an intricately carved walnut shell for a crown turned to his Captain of the Guard, awaiting an explanation.
“Your Majesty,” Coltsfoot started, stepping forward.
Jake furrowed his brow when he saw him. Coltsfoot turned out to be the same tiny fellow who had stood on his shoulder seconds ago. How did he get up here so fast?
Dani couldn’t contain herself. “Who are you?” she burst out.
Captain Coltsfoot started to protest, but the king looked pleased by the question. “I am King Furze—oh, and here is my wife, Queen Meadowfoil. Hullo, my little sweet sedge.” King Furze took his wife’s hand and kissed her knuckles as the tiny queen stepped out of the hornets’ nest and joined them.
