by Trista Shaye
“Ugg,” he huffed. “I’m not.”
“That’s what you say. And right now I’m not totally sure I believe everything you say.”
“You’re believing what I have to say about fairy rings and magic.” He flattened his lips and looked out into the woods.
Diana sat on that for a moment. She was taking his word on those issues, trusting his information without any reservation to if he was lying about these things.
“Well, ok then,” she finally said. “I guess I’ll just have to gather information myself to see if what you’re saying really is true or not.”
“And what does that mean?” the mage wondered, flopping his head back to lean against the knoll.
“It means, sir,” she said, turning to face him, “we’re taking Andante home and I’m seeing this other fairy ring myself and I’m finding answers and a way to stop this destruction and needless devastation.”
“Weren’t you listening?” Kendel asked, exasperated. “I said you can’t keep it from spreading. There isn’t a way to stop it, Diana. Once it’s cast, the spell continues to the end of itself – it’s like a fungus on its own, a parasite.”
“So you want me to just assign myself to the inevitable? To sit back and wait for my world to end? Just let the dark magic eat up the place I love and destroy my home?”
“There isn’t much else to do, honestly,” Kendel said sheepishly with a tiny shrug.
“Well,” she harrumphed. “I won’t be doing that.” As she turned away, a sad look overcame her expression, which had been so set and stern. “I can’t.”
“I believe my legs are feeling a bit better,” Andante broke in. “I can fly us to my realm.”
“That would be the best option,” Diana said with a glance at her moth friend. “We don’t want him using his magic right now, not without knowing if we can trust him.”
“I can make it,” Andante said resolutely with a little bob of his head. “Though something in me is saying we can trust him.”
Diana didn’t reply to his last comment and instead went to raise Kendel to his feet so she could help him get onto Andante’s back.
“Aren’t you going to untie me?” the mage asked.
“Nope,” she replied tersely. “I still don’t trust you. I don’t need you pushing me off his back when we’re in the air.”
“B-but how will I hold on?” His words were turning to pleas and he looked quite concerned. “I don’t like heights. Remember, I get vertigo.”
“Yeah, I remember.” She helped him stand and he hopped forward a couple of steps to catch his balance. “But I can’t risk letting you be free just yet. You’ll have to trust me.”
“But you’re not trusting me,” Kendel declared. Though it sounded childish, he didn’t care. He wasn’t about to get on the back of a giant moth tied up as he was without fighting for his freedom.
“Yes well, I’m not the one who’s in question here about whether or not I’m about to destroy not one, but two realms and everything in them. I think I’m the more trustworthy at the moment.” She tried to help hold him steady by grabbing his arm and then began to put a pulling pressure on it to lead him toward Andante.
“Diana, Diana, don’t do this!” he cried out, sounding terrified and trying to reason with her in any way his frenzied mind could think of. He had to take a hop forward to keep his balance yet again. “I don’t want to go!”
“Too bad,” she grunted, pulling against his weight. “You don’t get a choice.”
“I love my choices, why don’t I get one!?” His breathing was starting to escalate.
“Because you didn’t ask if I wanted my home eaten up by a fungus plague magic, so I won’t ask if you want to help make it right. You’re just going to.”
“I didn’t do it, I didn’t do it!” he cried, having to take another hop forward to keep from falling flat on his nose. “Please don’t make me come on this …” he straightened as his words faded and he turned as best he could to look at her and gasped. “Oh! It’s an adventure!”
Diana shrugged and weighed the truth of it in her mind. “Sure, I suppose. A necessary one.”
“You know I don’t like adventures, they’re so uncomfortable and unpredictable and I don’t want to go! Diana,” he pleaded, his eyes wide and begging. “You said you wouldn’t make me go on an adventure! Ever!”
She looked unimpressed. “You never said you’d be poisoning my realm. Now, this adventure is unavoidable.”
“But you never asked me not to do it! I didn’t do it by the way,” he added quickly, “but in light of this argument, I did ask you not to expect me to go on any adventures. And I won’t! I won’t get on his back!”
Somehow she had managed to push him and pull him close enough for Andante to back up so his side was next to them. But Diana had no idea how she was going to get the struggling, practically bawling mage up onto the moth.
“Oh, must moths,” she muttered under her breath.
Ten
Diana was glad the moth had known a lullaby. He had sung it sweetly, the whole time she had had to plug her ears, and now they were soaring through the trees toward the border of The Magic Vale. Kendel was snoring up a storm while she tried her best to keep him from rolling over and falling off the moth’s soft back. Thankfully, Andante’s fur was so thick, they sank down into it a little ways and Diana felt fairly confident it would take a great deal for either of them to slip off.
She shook her head at the sleeping mage and turned, parting the fur in front of her to get a better view of the passing forest. It was a dark blur, most of it, as the night was easing on and the trees were all casting long shadows.
She laid down on her back and looked up, catching sight of the stars in the cloudless sky every now and again through the partial holes in the upper tree canopy.
She could feel a slight hum echoing through Andante and it rumbled up through him and into his passengers – he was pleased to be going home. She smiled, glad she could help him get there. But then she frowned. Would The Garden Glade still even be there? Kendel had said the two realms could be linked together by the evil magic, but they could just as easily not be. What if the wizard who did this had decided to destroy the gnome homeland already? What if there was no Garden Glade for Andante to fly back to?
Her mind was running a mile a minute and she tried her best to reason out the answers, but she couldn’t. She didn’t know enough about any of it to make sense of things. Slowly, though, Andante’s humming began to calm her and as he flew out of the trees, and the wide open sky shone down upon them, she couldn’t help but smile at its beauty and wonder at the oddity of the situation she was in – her and a mage, of all people, flying on the back of a giant moth, of all things, off to save the world.
She nodded internally. She would save her realm, she had to. Her eyelids dropped and she nodded off on the soft back of her giant friend.
“Wake up,” Andante’s gentle trilling voice whispered into her dreams and Diana opened her eyes, squinting.
“Did we make it?” she asked, sitting up and yawning and blinking a few times to get her eyes used to the bright light of the sun. They must have flown all night.
“Yes.” Andante bobbed his head and shook his large mothy wings. Some fine dust wafted off of them and settled on Diana’s nose. She sneezed.
The loud and sudden sound startled Kendel and he jerked awake. “What, who?” he exclaimed. He had been lying on his stomach with his face pressed into the moth’s thorax fur and now he had quite the pattern imprinted on his cheeks.
Diana giggled at how absurd he looked in that moment. His hair was all askew and he was still tied up so he was flopping around rather like a fish, trying to roll over.
He managed to roll to his back and let out a groan, squinting into the light. As it finally began to set in where he was, he stiffened and slowly sent hi
s eyes over to Diana.
“You didn’t,” he whispered, aghast.
She shrugged, looking guilty, but not feeling it too much. But maybe a little.
“Oh!” he cried. “Why me?” He closed his eyes quite tightly and made a horrible squashed up face.
“Sorry, but it couldn’t be helped.” Diana said, stretching a bit. “We’ve made it to The Garden Glade, though.” Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Andante bobbing his head in confirmation.
“Take me back!” cried the mage quite pitifully. “Take me back to where you kidnapped me from.”
“I didn’t kidnap you.” Diana rolled her eyes, frustrated.
“I didn’t come willingly,” he declared. “That’s kidnapping where I’m from.”
“You don’t want to go back there anyway. It’s much better to be here with us,” she said, standing and brushing off the few strands of moth fur that had attached themselves to her clothes while she slept.
“I do want to go back!” he exclaimed, shaking his head back and forth as if to wake himself from a terrible nightmare. “I do, I do, I do.”
“Well then,” Diana huffed, sliding off Andante’s back. “Go back! Feel free to walk there, it’s that direction.” She pointed stiffly over her shoulder in the opposite direction the moth was facing. “Oh, and do let the guards know you want back in that cell to wait for whatever it is they planned to do with you. Send us a postcard when you get there. I’m sure you can get a snail to deliver it for you.”
His whining stopped and Diana shook her head. Maybe he would realize it wasn’t just a torturous adventure he had been taken on, but also a step up from his former position in a cell that had incapacitated him.
“You’re welcome,” she mumbled and walked up to stand by Andante.
“Wow …” she whispered and stood in awe of the realm she had only heard about from her friend. It was breathtaking.
All around them, as far as she could see, were flowers of every kind and shape and color. Tall and towering sunflowers with huge yellow and black heads floated towards the sky, appearing as if they dreamed to grow tall enough to dance with the clouds on their thin green stalks. Roses of the deepest red, varying shades of pink, and resplendent orange, poked their heads up and through the thorny bushes that protected their delicate blossoms. Petunias, chrysanthemums, day lilies, peonies, and daisies all sat in neat rows among the finely trimmed shrubs that dotted the land and led toward a dirt path that was lined on either side by rocks of odd shapes and colors, and large, round marbles.
“Oh, Andante,” she said, lifting a hand to one of his arms. “It’s much more beautiful in person.”
He gave an approving chirp and shivered with happiness. “It is quite glorious by day. But by night, Miss Diana, that is when it really comes alive.” He seemed very eager for her to be able to see the beauty of his home and even more eager to get back to his gnome and let him know that he was alright.
Slowly, they began to walk. The moth’s legs were able to take a little weight now and he hobbled along, though Diana had brought his crutches with them and he used one of them still but with more ease.
“I would have flown us further in so we wouldn’t have to walk so far,” Andante explained. “But last night my upper leg was getting rather sore in the cold open air, so I landed just inside the borders of The Garden Glade and I thought perhaps you’d enjoy walking the paths. My gnome doesn’t live too far away, but it will take a bit as I’m still rather tired and my legs aren’t perfect just yet.”
“That’s fine,” Diana reassured. “I do love being able to see so much of your realm.” She breathed the air around them in deeply. “The smell is so fresh and sweet! In The Magic Vale you smell clean air, but you always smell the streams, or the decaying leaves, or shops. It’s not a bad smell, I do like it. But it’s not clear like this.”
“It is quite soothing and calming to walk along these paths and breathe in the delightful smells that change as you pass different flowers.” The moth bobbed his head in agreement.
“How long have you lived here?” Diana asked, watching a dragon fly zoom overhead.
“I was born here,” he replied. “All giant moths are. After we’re born we grow for a year or two, feeding off the leaves of certain plants and foliage. When we’re only a few days old we’re assigned to a gnome for life and they help us find the right things to eat and a good, safe place to spin our cocoons.”
“What’s a cocoon?” Diana asked curiously.
“It’s a temporary home, of sorts. It houses us and protects us from the elements as we change into moths. You see, when we’re born we’re not very much unlike your friend the inch worm, Trizet.”
“You were a worm when you were born?” The fairy girl sounded surprised.
“Yes, that’s how our life begins.” He made a funny humming sound. “I much prefer being a moth. You can see more this way, what with being able to fly.”
“I enjoy having wings, too.” Diana smiled. “I can’t imagine not having them! We fairies, we’re born with them. I can’t imagine being born without them, like you! What if you never got your wings?”
“Oh, we always do. It’s just something you know will happen. Like the growing of the flowers or the coming of the rain.”
“Or the changing of the seasons? Or the rising of the sun?” Diana offered.
“Like the sun, yes,” Andante replied. “But the season, changing? That is odd.”
“What? You don’t have fall, winter, or spring?” Diana’s eyebrows rose.
“Just summer. I’m not sure what those others are, but they don’t sound as appealing in my opinion. Can one enjoy a garden just as much in those times, as well?”
Diana thought a moment, then shook her head. “I suppose not. Though spring is when all the dead flowers come back to life again.”
“They die?” He gasped and gave her a strange look.
“Well, the little ones we have do. We don’t have very many, just wild flowers. Nothing like this garden.”
“Hmm, well. I think I still prefer summer, if that’s alright,” he said, shaking his fur.
Diana laughed. “Yes well, I prefer summer, too. But the other seasons are nice, just different.”
“Like all of us,” Andante declared. “Different, but in the difference unique and interesting.”
“Yes.” Diana nodded. “We’re all different. Even within our own races.”
They walked along for a time then had to stop so Andante could rest. Diana sat herself down on one of the stones lining the pathway. She was surprised she hadn’t heard anything more from Kendel, but at the same time it was rather nice not to have him complaining. She honestly wasn’t even sure he was still there and wondered for a moment if he hadn’t slipped away and gone off running. Though Andante surely would have said something, she was sure. So she didn’t mention his silence and instead just let herself sit and soak in the warm sun and breathe in the warm and lustrous smells.
“What’s your gnome’s name?” she spoke up finally, realizing that she didn’t know this, as Andante had only spoken of him as ‘his gnome’.
“Ah yes, his name is Farran. He is a quiet, peaceful fellow who loves his garden and growing his own food. He likes restful walks in the night beneath the fireflies and he is engaged to one Matilda Morning-glory O’Brien. But, let me tell you a secret. I’ve seen her at the markets in the morning and she is no glory, then.” His dark eyes got bigger on his wide face.
Diana giggled. “Not a morning person, is she?”
Andante shook his head. “Most emphatically not. She’s a little rough around the edges. Rather the opposite of my Farran. But he is quite taken by her, it would seem.”
“So will her moth come to live with you both then when they get married?” Diana asked, rubbing her ankle, a bit sore from the walking.
“She do
es not have a moth of her own,” Andante said, “Her moth died when it was young. It was a sad day, indeed. Unfortunately it happens on occasion.”
“Oh,” Diana whispered, seeing it was a sad topic.
“I will become the moth for them both,” he explained simply, then continued, “not every gnome gets a moth and some who don’t are ok with it but others are bitter and ill-mannered towards us. It is a strange thing, but you get over it, living in it every day. Those without have discovered they can ride lady bugs about just as easily so things are starting to look up for them. They aren’t as openly rude to us anymore, at least.”
“How mean!” Diana said, standing up and touching her toes to stretch her legs. “Just because you’re less fortunate doesn’t mean you mock those who have something you don’t. That’s no way to make friends.”
“Not a good way, indeed,” Andante agreed. “But not everyone is as wise as you, little Diana.”
“How much longer is it to your gnome’s home?” she asked, trying to pretend he hadn’t said that. She hadn’t always thought the way she did now, and she was painfully aware of that.
“Hmm, not too much further. Just over that little hill and then down the other side in a little dell surrounded by shrubs of all sizes and a beautiful rock bridge over a small stream.”
“It sounds like a lovely place to live.” Diana sighed in expectation.
“I do quite like it. It’s very peaceful.” His furry brow wrinkled a bit and he looked into the sky. “I can’t imagine life without it.”
Diana completely understood what he meant. She couldn’t imagine her life without The Magic Vale.
He stood and shook himself. “Tomorrow I’ll show you the place I got burnt, and our very own fairy ring.”
Eleven
As they came down the hill, Diana could see the bridge Andante had spoken of, and she couldn’t help but smile at how perfect it all looked. Nestled beyond amidst the shrubs and neatly trimmed flower bushes, sat a rock cottage that looked quaint and homey and warm. She imagined there being a fireplace inside and a chair with a warm blanket and on rainy days she thought one would curl up in the chair with a good book and a warm drink and listen to the raindrops on the roof and watch the fire in the hearth and read and feel safe and like you never wanted to go anywhere else in the entire world.
