Fierce Creatures (Away From Whipplethorn Book Two)

by A W Hartoin

  “Whatever. We’re not trusting some stranger over our Matilda.” Marie gave Sarah the beady eye. “Do you agree?”

  “I do. Matilda knows what she’s doing, but I don’t want her near those spriggans ever again.”

  Tess stuck her finger out between the two front seats and I flitted onto it. “Matilda has a plan.” She gave me the emerald earring and I stood with it like a lance.

  “What’s with the earring?” asked Marie.

  “I’m trading it for the kaki persimmon root Miss Penrose needs,” I said.

  “Didn’t your mother give you those earrings?” asked Sarah.

  “It’s okay,” said Tess. “I already lost the other one.”

  Marie laughed. “They didn’t last long.”

  “Your mother won’t be happy,” said Sarah.

  “She’ll get over it,” said Tess.

  “You sound like me when I boarded the Royal Britannia on my way to England.” Marie grinned.

  “Did your mother get over it?” asked Tess.

  “She did. Eventually.”

  Marie floored it and jerked into the left lane. Gerald tumbled head over heels until he ran into the side of the cupholder. Iris got him upright, but he barfed over the side.

  “Now I have to get the Bugatti,” said Marie. “Once a fairy barfs in a car, it’s over.”

  “You’re trying to kill me,” said Gerald.

  Marie grinned at him. “If I wanted to kill you, I’d have a flyswatter.”

  “That’s not funny!”

  “On second thought, I’d have you fumigated.”

  Gerald started to say something, but fell over instead.

  “Marie,” said Sarah, pointing. “You’re going to pass the turn.”

  Marie yanked the steering wheel to the right and squealed across three lanes of traffic, cutting off a tractor trailer and an ice cream truck. They honked and made rude gestures, but we were already on the exit ramp. We drove through a maze of backstreets, startling pedestrians and narrowly missing several squirrels.

  “There it is,” I said as Javis Hornbuckle’s Antique Emporium came into view. It was a large white warehouse with an odd log porch stuck on the front and a rusty collection of shopping carts scattered around. A Japanese restaurant and a sporting goods store were on either side of the antique mall. They both had busy parking lots, but the emporium’s lot was empty.

  Marie drove into the lot at full speed and skidded to a stop at the porch. Through the glass front doors, I could see the antique mall was dark.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  Sarah squinted at a large sign in the window. “Closed for repairs due to water leak. Please come again.”

  “Oh, no.” I flew to Sarah’s window and pressed my hand to the glass.

  “What’ll we do?” asked Iris. “We have to get Miss Penrose that root.”

  Gerald struggled to say something and then barfed over the side of the cupholder again.

  Marie tapped her red-lipsticked lips. “I’ll get ahold of that Hornbuckle and get us in.”

  “How long will that take?” I asked.

  “Maybe a day or two. Money talks, Matilda. We’ll get in there.”

  “A day or two might be too late. We need to get in now,” I said.

  “I’ve done many a thing in my life, but breaking and entering is not one of them. Even a woman like me has to draw the line somewhere. I’ll get my lawyers on it.” Marie pulled out her phone.

  Gerald straightened up with the help of Iris and managed to fly up to the dashboard. “Even if it’s not too late for Miss Penrose, it’ll be too late for us. Once we go home, it’s over. Our parents will never let us out of their sight again. Especially me. My mom’ll probably start sleeping in my room and watching me in the bath.” Gerald’s lip trembled. He, much more than Iris and me, would pay a price for this mission. I’m ashamed to say I didn’t think of it before. I thought only of helping Miss Penrose. Having a little adventure might’ve crossed my mind, although I would always deny it.

  I flew back to face them all. “It has to be today.”

  “I wish it could be. It’s too bad. Lawyers take time,” said Sarah. “Perhaps tomorrow.”

  “We can get in,” I said. “There’s plenty of places for a fairy to slip through.”

  Marie shook her head, surprising me. “Out of the question. I was willing to go against your parents as long as we could be with you.”

  “We can take care of ourselves,” Gerald said while still green and bent over, grasping his knees.

  “The spriggans are no joke,” said Marie. “But we’ll get in, if I have to buy the place.”

  I looked at Judd and Tess. They would understand. They loved Miss Penrose. She read to them, checked their homework, and slept beside them when they were ill. Miss Penrose wasn’t just a teacher. She was special even among those who were considered special.

  “She’ll die,” I said. “She will.”

  Judd pushed back his hair and winked at me. He and Tess exchanged a look, the kind of look only close siblings that share a secret like the existence of fairies can. Tess nodded, gave me a sharp nod, and reached around the side of Sarah’s seat. Her little hand searched for the window-down button. I zipped over and grabbed Iris’s hand and tugged her toward the window. There was no need to indicate anything to Gerald. He probably knew what Tess was going to do before she did.

  Tess’s finger found the right button and pressed it. The window went down. I dragged Iris out the second there was space. Gerald flew right beside us, his face draining of the green tinge.

  “What are you doing?” yelled Sarah.

  We hovered outside Sarah’s window. “We’re saving Miss Penrose. Tell our parents we’re okay,” I said.

  Judd and Tess waved. “Good luck! Kick some spriggan butt!”

  Sarah’s mouth was open wide in horror, but Marie smiled, just as a girl who ditched her governess in New York City ought to.

  “Keep an eye on that Lucrece!” yelled Gerald.

  “We love you!” shouted Iris, and with that, we flew down low to a ventilation duct behind the shopping carts, passed through the grate, and were bathed in darkness.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I LANDED HARD inside the duct and almost dropped the earring. I lit my free palm so suddenly I almost singed Iris’s wing.

  “Watch out!” she yelled.

  “Sorry,” I said. “How are you doing, Gerald?”

  Gerald crossed his arms. “I’m fine. Why are you asking?”

  “Because you were just barfing your head off.”

  “That’s nothing. I just ate too much breakfast. Let’s go.”

  Gerald flitted off into the darkness, but returned immediately, looking grumpier.

  “Problem?” asked Iris.

  “No,” he said.

  “Maybe you need Matilda?”

  He shrugged. “Stop talking. We need to go. I’ll lead.”

  “With what, a seeing-eye fly?”

  “I’m not blind!”

  “You are in here. Stop trying to be in charge all the time,” said Iris, who’d never wanted to be in charge of anything in her whole life.

  “I’m not.” He stomped his foot.

  “Are too.”

  I ignored them and flew slowly down the shaft, sending soft sparks out ahead to light our way. Iris came up beside me. “Sorry. I promise we won’t fight anymore.”

  “I don’t believe it. You and Gerald without fighting is like me without fire. It’s unnatural.”

  Gerald flew in front, forcing us to land. “That’s not true. We don’t fight very often anymore. Tell her, Iris.”

  “You tell her,” Iris said.

  “I told you to tell her.”

  “Tell yourself.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” he said.

  Iris sneered at him. “It does too. You think you know everything. You’re an egocentric personality.”

  “I am not, and you don’t even know what that
means,” said Gerald, turning his nose up.

  “I read it in Rebecca’s psychology book. So there.”

  “You probably misunderstood it. I’ll explain it to you when we get home.”

  “And I’ll explain to you the meaning of the word pompous.”

  I flew past them again, glad of my hearing deficit that cut them out as soon as they were behind me. The duct branched off and I chose the left, but it didn’t really matter much. The antique mall was huge and in our short time there after we’d been taken from Whipplethorn Manor, I’d gotten little feel for the layout. All I knew for sure was that the spriggan stronghold was near the front doors in the cash register area and I wanted to enter as far from there as possible. I planned on checking in with Soren Maple immediately. He’d be able to help me with the spriggans. Soren had inherited his position in the antique mall from his father. He had a lot of power for someone so young and headed the council that governed the many species, except for the spriggans. They held a section of the mall, separate from everyone else. He had the phalanx troops at his command and they could be a great help if they weren’t too busy eating flies or looking for battles. I could probably persuade the commander of the phalanx to help if I mentioned the words “attack or battle”. They always got his attention as I’d discovered on my last trip to the mall. Plus, he liked me, something that didn’t happen every day. Friends like the commander were in short supply.

  I made another left when there was a tug on my foot. I glanced back at Gerald, who looked like he’d been yelling at me. I don’t know why he bothered. He knew he had to be loud and close to my ears if he wanted me to hear him. That or he had to be where I could read his lips.

  I landed and he dropped beside me looking a little green again. “What’s wrong?”

  “You’re going the wrong way,” he said. “I should lead.”

  “Don’t let Iris hear you say that.”

  He snorted.

  “Which way?” I asked.

  “Back and to the right, if you want to get to Soren.”

  We waited for Iris to catch up. The weight she’d put on in the humans’ house wasn’t doing her any favors. She hadn’t taken to eating meat, but Rebecca loved to bake and Iris felt it was her duty to taste everything that came out of the oven.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ll do better.”

  “I told you that lemon curd would hurt your wing capacity,” said Gerald, but he didn’t call her fat, which was an improvement, although Iris didn’t seem to think so. She scowled and smoothed her pretty blue dress over her lumpy midriff.

  “Never mind,” I said, stepping between them. “Gerald says Soren is this way.”

  I threw out more sparks and let Gerald lead the way. He flew with more assurance than I had, bringing us through several forks to a grate.

  “Soren’s area,” he said.

  I looked through the grate and grabbed Gerald by the sleeve. “Look.”

  Gerald held onto the grey slats and peered through at a group of spriggans gathered around a formation of phalanx. They were just as I remembered them, midnight black, half my size with shells on their back. Their mouths were closed in grim lines or I would’ve been able to see their brilliant white teeth that matched the whites of their eyes. Each phalanx was a copy of the next, complete with oversized knees and elbows.

  The spriggans weren’t identical, but they were all disgusting in their oily paper bag suits. Even at a distance, I could smell their foul stench, like dozens of dead frogs festering in the sun. They were vomit green with lumpy heads and only slightly bigger than the phalanx. They walked around the phalanx in their odd hopping gate, getting up close and tasting the air with long, slithery tongues.

  “What are they doing in Soren’s territory?” whispered Gerald.

  I shook my head and turned back to see what was going on. Behind the spriggans and phalanx was Soren’s home, a beautiful canopy bed made of maple. I’d been in Soren’s mother’s house once. It was built right on the bed’s leg and painted so perfectly no one would notice it, unless they knew what to look for. Neither Soren nor any of his people were visible, but beyond the bed I could make out a large sideboard, twice as big as the china cabinet in Tess and Judd’s house. There were several groups of fairies in front of it. I’d never seen them before. A larger species dressed in long ornate vests guarded the center carved area of the cabinet. It could be the entrance to the council chamber where Soren ruled. I knew it was in his territory, but I’d never been there. The fairies certainly looked fierce about whatever they were doing. They had long black hair that was formed into rolls that hung down their backs. Large swords of an unusual shape hung on their belts, and worse, several of them had long leads attached to red ants. The ants strained at their leashes and the fairies held them back with some difficulty.

  Iris pulled me away from the grate. “There’s a big meeting going on in that sideboard.”

  “You can hear what’s going on inside?” asked Gerald.

  “Not clearly. Kind of sounds like a negotiation.”

  “What kind of negotiation?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, but Soren doesn’t sound happy.”

  “He’s not in a powerful position, I’m guessing,” said Gerald with a nod to the grate. “Those spriggans are talking a lot of trash to the phalanx about surrender.”

  “Soren would never surrender to the spriggans. He’s stronger than they are,” I said.

  “He was,” said Gerald. “We haven’t been here in a long time and the news hasn’t been good.”

  “What news?” I asked.

  “Soren sent a message, but we weren’t allowed to tell you,” said Iris. “Mom said you’d get upset and want to help. The spriggans have been taking over more territory from Soren.”

  “That’s not possible.”

  “It is,” nodded Iris, sadly.

  I looked back through the grate. “We have to get into the council chamber to talk to Soren.”

  “We should wait until the meeting’s over,” said Gerald.

  “We can’t afford to wait. The negotiations could go on for days.”

  “We’ll never get past them,” said Iris, pointing at the spriggans blocking our path to the cabinet.

  No, we wouldn’t. New spriggans had joined the first group and they were more aggressive. They got in the phalanx’s faces, shouting slurs until one phalanx popped off his shell and shoved the spriggans back with it like a shield. The spriggans drew their swords, short wicked things with a barbed tip.

  “Finally ready to fight, are you?” asked a small one, more aggressive than the rest. “Not ready to surrender quite yet?”

  Phalanx responded by putting all their shells into shield position.

  “So you’re not ready to fight. Too afraid?” sneered the spriggan.

  The phalanx didn’t speak. They were too well-trained. If they took a defensive position, it was because they’d been ordered to. I’d seen them in action. They could flip those shells around to their honed edge and slash their opponents to bits.

  The spriggans struck several shells with their swords and smiled their hideous gaping grins. I wanted the phalanx to strike back, orders or no orders, but they didn’t. They retreated and my right palm began to crackle. I felt my fire grow into a ball and, without looking, I knew it soon would be my most dangerous weapon, a ball of wicked blue fire, a thousand lightning strikes compressed.

  “Stop it,” said Gerald. “I thought you could control yourself.”

  “I am controlling myself.”

  My fire grew and some of the phalanx froze. Their faces slowly turned to the grate that concealed us. I leaned forward and raised my right hand, but Gerald dragged me back against the opposite wall of the duct. “Stop. They’ll hear you.”

  “I don’t care. I’m not going to let them humiliate the commander’s troops like that.”

  Gerald pulled me to face him, strong for such a spindly kid. “They’ll never give you the root if you attack
them again.”

  I closed my fist and extinguished the flame in an instant.

  Iris blew out her breath and then said, “The spriggans are getting more aggressive.”

  We crept back to the grate. The phalanx were pushing back a little more, but remained defensive.

  “Iris, how many guards are there around the council chambers?” I asked.

  Iris cocked her head toward the cabinet. “Three entrances. Fifteen guards in all, but only three at the side entrance.” I started to speak, but she held up her finger. “Someone’s coming. I can’t tell who.”

  The three of us looked through the grate and a group of three fairies appeared around the edge of a decorative glass case. They were three times my height and decorated in gold from head to foot. Their robes stuck out stiff from their bodies and concealed their feet so that they looked like they were floating. The two males were slightly larger than the female, but they all had long blond hair held back from their faces with jewel-encrusted coronets.

  “Oh,” said Iris. “They’re so beautiful.”

  “But they feel terrible,” I said.

  “I know, but they look beautiful.”

  Mom would say looks don’t matter. Wood fairies could sense intentions. Every sense in my body said they were dangerous, but I could barely tear my eyes off them.

  “What are they?” I asked Gerald.

  He shook his head. “Maybe some kind of wight.”

  The spriggans stopped their assault and stepped back as the golden fairies approached. The phalanx didn’t react. The golden fairies stopped at the edge of the group and stared down at the spriggans with arched eyebrows. There was something odd about their eyes, but I couldn’t figure out exactly what it was.

  “Is this all you’ve accomplished?” said the largest, a male with particularly fine features.

  The small spriggan raised his eyebrow lumps and the golden fairy gave a tiny nod. The spriggan wheeled around and went at the nearest phalanx with his sword. The phalanx met the blow with his shield and the strike skittered off without making a mark. The spriggan struck again and again. The golden fairies looked on, strange smiles lighting their lovely features. The leader nodded again and the rest of the spriggans joined in to drive the phalanx back. Beyond the melee, the guards at the cabinet watched with their ants straining at their leashes.