by A W Hartoin
“You’re not flying. Lucien said at least a week before you’ll have enough strength to fly. We’ll take the stairs.”
“You’re getting bossy.”
“Lucien says I’m supposed to keep you in check.”
“Lucien talks too much.”
Iris grinned. “That’s what Mom says, but she let him tell us so many stories about Grandma.”
“Maybe he’ll tell me, too.”
“I don’t think you could stop him. He likes to talk.”
I hobbled toward the stairs, but paused in front of Miss Penrose’s door. She was lying in bed, propped up with a dozen pillows covered in Mom’s best embroidery. She had good color in her cheeks and her lips were pink without a trace of blue in them.
Lucrece sat next to her with a steaming bowl of soup. Miss Penrose saw me and smiled. Lucrece turned and paled. I just waved and went on. She had nothing to fear from me.
“The root worked,” said Iris. “It was all worth it.”
“Does she know it’s not a cure?” I asked.
“Not yet. Lucien said we should keep it quiet until the time is right.”
“I wonder when that will be?”
“I’m sure he’ll tell us,” said Iris with a laugh.
She opened the door to the stairs and helped me up, one at a time. My ankle was better, but it was stiff and wouldn’t bend properly.
“Are you too tired?” asked Iris. “We can go back.”
“No. I can do it.”
When we made it to the top of the stairs I was breathless and weak. Iris put my arm over her shoulder and half-carried me onto the mantel shelf. I blinked hard at the light after the dark of the stairs and caught a glimpse of Dad dashing behind one of Rebecca’s candles.
“Check it out,” said Iris, pointing into the room.
Tess and Judd were in the middle of the living room with wire masks over their faces and weird white pads covering their chests.
“En garde,” said Tess as she swished her thin sword up to her face and back down. She bent her legs and charged forward in a sideways crab walk toward Judd, who did his best to poke her with his sword.
“What’s that about?” I asked.
“Bentha’s giving them fencing lessons. They’re getting a lot better. No broken lamps today.”
Then I spotted Bentha on the arm of one of the leather chairs, demonstrating a move for Tess. She imitated him and did it wrong, so she had to repeat until she got it right. Beyond the kids in the kitchen, Rebecca chopped lettuce with a raised eyebrow and pursed lips. She obviously saw her daughter looking at a chair for guidance, but she didn’t stop chopping.
“Rebecca’s going to think they’re nuts,” I said.
“She thinks they have an imaginary friend.” Iris giggled.
“The same one?”
“She called a psychologist and he told her imaginary friends aren’t that unusual.”
“Did she tell him that Judd is fourteen?” I asked.
“Probably not.”
We weaved around the candles until we found Dad grinning like crazy and Mom with her hands on her hips.
“Girls, there you are. Come see what I’ve done,” he said.
Behind the last candle was a cage woven out of narrow strips of wood and suspended from a potted orchid. Inside was D, wearing his blue overalls and a placid expression. Being captured by Dad wasn’t worrying him in the least.
“What do you think?” asked Dad. “I lured him over with a tale of bad wiring and presto. Don’t tell me I don’t know how to build things.” He sneered at D, who took no notice and wasn’t even trying to escape.
“That’s just perfect,” said Mom. “You’ve captured our neighbor. That’s a fine thing to do. What kind of impression are we making?”
“We’re making the impression that they can get out and stay out,” said Dad.
Mom looked at the ceiling and sighed. “What are you going to do with him now that you’ve got him?”
“I’m going to throw him out of the house.” Dad put his hands on his hips and thrust his chest out. He looked like a hero in one of Judd’s comics.
“You think he can’t get back in? He fixed the humidifier that flummoxed three plumbers. He can get in a house,” said Mom, spreading her wings.
“Where are you going? You have to help me carry this cage.”
Mom fluttered up. “I’m not helping you do anything. You are a crazy person.” She zipped over the edge of the shelf.
Dad eyed me. “I don’t suppose you’re strong enough to carry this?”
“Dad,” said Iris. “Matilda can barely walk.”
“Right. Right.” He stroked his chin. “I’ll get Lrag to help me.”
“Mom’s right. He’s going to get back in,” I said.
Dad glared at me.
“Um...what I meant to say was you should let them stay instead of throwing them out.”
Dad growled.
“You could do what Lucien did. He got them to put electricity in all the galen houses and fix everything he needs fixed. They could be like your janitorial staff.”
When Dad looked away, still stroking his chin, I mouthed “Sorry” to D. If he cared that I was calling him a janitor instead of an engineer, I couldn’t tell.
“I see what you’re saying,” said Dad. “They’ll be like my staff. I’ll be their supervisor, the head of the corporation.”
Iris and I exchanged a look.
“Sure, Dad. You can supervise the heck out of them,” I said.
Dad slapped a fist into his palm. “I’ll do it. Look here, D, in exchange for your freedom, you’re going to follow my orders. Understand?”
“Whatever,” said D.
“I’m going to make up a contract with the specifics.”
“Fine.”
Iris bit her lip and helped me away before we burst out laughing. We sat on the edge of the shelf, swinging out feet and watching Tess and Judd trying to stab each other. The sun tucked behind the mountains and the walls in the red room changed to an orange that reminded me of my fire bubbling away inside me just as it should be.
I yawned and put my head on Iris’s shoulder. I filled my lungs with her good, clean scent when a breeze wrapped my hair around my face. I struggled to get the tangled strands out of my way as Evan charged into the room from the garage. He tossed his briefcase onto the sofa and blew past Tess and Judd. They lifted their wire masks and followed him. Evan had his back to me and threw his arms around in grand punctuation. Rebecca’s mouth dropped and her knife froze above a red bell pepper.
“What is it? What happened?” I asked, cursing my ears once again.
“He got a call from Esperer International,” said Iris.
“What does that mean?”
Lucien stuck his head between ours, his long grey hair wrapped around our necks and caressed our faces. “It means your future is at hand. Brace yourselves, Girls. In Paris anything can happen.”
The End
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HERE IS AN excerpt from A Monster’s Paradise by A.W. Hartoin, the third in the thrilling Away From Whipplethorn Series.
Chapter One
Swords weigh heavy, even when they’re made to be light. I’d never held a ponderosa sword before a month ago. I never wanted to. I didn’t see the need. Fire was my weapon. What else could a fairy possibly need? Unfortunately, no one saw it my way. A common occurrence in my life.
Bentha definitely didn’t see it my way. He shoved my sword’s green point down into the plush fabric of the airline seat where it stuck quivering from the ferocity of the strike. His long pant leg, painted to resemble his tree, the ponderosa pine, was planted next to the sword. I didn’t have to look at his long, thin face to know it wore an expression of extreme vexation. Bentha was a swordmaster. The best sword of the mall, as he was fond of telling me and everyone else who would listen. He couldn’t understand why I
avoided my lessons and him, in general.
I looked down at my palms, cupped together in my lap. Pale yellow flames flowed in a pool with no snapping energy or crackling ferocity at all. My fire was weak and all my denials hadn’t changed it. Rufus the fire lizard slinked into my lap and curled up under my hands. For a second my fire grew and looked like its old self. Then it went right back to being sad. Rufus purred away, vibrating my legs, but not helping. The lizards had helped restore my fire, but only Rufus had come with us to Paris. Mom said he was my pet. As if sleeping on my face made him a pet.
Bentha danced around in my peripheral vision, trying to get my attention. Instead of responding, I looked at the row of bodies lying next to me. The Home Depot fairies had elected to come with us to Paris because they heard France needed help. I guess they planned on fixing all the French dishwashers. At least I hoped they stuck to dishwashers. The minute the plane got to cruising altitude, the Home Depot fairies marched into the cockpit, saying they would fix it. Mom and Dad nearly fainted, but we didn’t crash or anything. D and his crew came back five hours later, informed us that they fixed everything in the cockpit, lay down in their beloved row, and went to sleep. They’d been asleep ever since.
Beyond them were rows of seats polka-dotted with lights from the ceiling and filled with sleeping humans. I liked the peacefulness in that quiet cold plane, but it made me dread landing. Nothing would be peaceful in Paris, if the rumors were true.
A giant human head turned around and the blue eyes fixed on me. “Matilda,” said Tess. “Bentha wants you.”
“I know. I’m hearing impaired, not blind,” I said, more sharply than I had intended.
Tess blinked and her brow wrinkled, not in sadness at my sharp retort, but with anger. For such a young human, nine to be exact, she was rather testy. The rare ability to see fairies hadn’t made her anything but more sure of herself. “You have to learn to use a sword. Your fire stinks.”
“Hey!” I climbed to my feet slowly like a rickety old man. It was the best I could do. I’d been injured by a horen fairy, possibly the most dangerous fairy in the world, and my ankle had yet to heal from the catlike claws he’d sunk deep into my flesh, releasing his venom. I shouldn’t have survived. My fire saved me and as a result I almost lost the ability to make it. That would’ve been the ultimate nightmare, to stop being a kindler, to stop being me. The ankle was nothing.
“Do you need help?” Tess set aside the French language book she’d been studying.
I wavered on my feet. “No, I don’t, and my fire doesn’t stink.”
Tess’s eyes shifted to my grotesquely swollen ankle; the angry red spots where the claws went in were still evident. It usually looked much better. It must’ve been the altitude or plane air that was aggravating it.
“Yes, it does. You couldn’t light a candle right now. How are you going to fight?”
“I’m not supposed to fight. Remember?”
Tess blew out a hot breath and my long black hair fluttered back in the wind. “You’re not supposed to use your fire. But you might still have to defend yourself. There’s a war going on.”
“It’s a revolution.”
“Same thing.”
“Not exactly.” That’s what I said, but I wasn’t sure I knew the difference myself. We were going to Paris, a place where royalists and revolutionaries had been fighting for control for over two hundred years. It started with the human French Revolution, but the French fairies never got over it. We’d never have gone, if we didn’t have to, but we definitely had to.
My eyes found my teacher, Miss Penrose Whipplethorn, swathed in blankets on the ledge in the oval window. I could barely make out her form, although she was reasonably tall for a wood fairy, nearly three-fourths a centimeter. My adopted brother, Horc, and his hideous grandmother, Lucrece, sat beside Miss Penrose. Horc and Lucrece weren’t wood fairies like the rest of us. They were spriggans. A foul race of child-stealers that tended to look and smell like dead toads. But Horc wasn’t like that at all. Quite the opposite, in fact. Lucrece I wasn’t so sure about. She showed up a month ago disguised as a wood fairy healer in an attempt to save Horc’s life by feeding him meat. Baby spriggans had to have meat or their bones didn’t form correctly and they died. I was grateful to Lucrece for that, but, still, she was a spriggan.
Lucrece held a cup of kaki persimmon root tea to Miss Penrose’s lips and she took a sip. Not much of one by the look of it. Miss Penrose had congestive heart failure with two months to live and we were going to Paris to save her. I wished she’d drink more of that tea. I’d gone to a lot of trouble to get it for her. The quest to get the kaki persimmon root had taken me, my sister, Iris, and our friend, Gerald, to the antique mall where the spriggans had it. The trip cost me my normal ankle and the friendship of many in the mall, but we got the root only to find out it wasn’t the cure. It merely treated the symptoms. The cure was in Paris, a spell only done by the vermillion clan.
The three of them sat as close as possible to the human head propped up beneath them on the wall. The heat coming off the tousled brown hair was nearly visible in the chill of the plane. Judd’s hair covered his face and each snore sucked the tips into his gaping mouth. He was Tess’s brother and the second human to see me. Convincing humans to believe in fairies is almost as hard as convincing my mom that hideous danger isn’t lurking around every corner. That’s especially hard for me because when it comes to me it generally is. At fourteen, I’d gotten into more scrapes than every other living Whipplethorn fairy combined. Maybe that’s why Judd and I got along so well. He wasn’t one to shy away from anything. He even loved fencing and was Bentha’s best pupil. If he’d been awake, Bentha would’ve had him practicing in the narrow aisle, which would’ve been good for me. Judd distracted Bentha from his mission of teaching the unwilling (me) fencing.
Since Judd wasn’t awake, being his distracting self, I could feel Bentha’s eyes on me. Darn that ponderosa. He never gave up. I turned and glared at him. “Fine!”
Bentha’s thin painted face curved into a smile. He hopped around, slashing his sword, and attacking enemies. He was speaking, but he was moving so much I couldn’t read his lips. I’d lost most of my hearing to a snail pox infection when I was two. I got by with reading lips.
“I’ll move you over,” said Tess.
No need to read her lips. Humans were so loud, even my feeble ears could hear them. She held out her hand, I stepped on, and she put me on Bentha’s seat back.
“Are you ready, my lady?” he asked.
“Not hardly,” I said.
“That answer is incorrect. A warrior is always ready. I know. I am the best sword of the mall.” Bentha pulled my accursed blade out of the fabric and laid it across his forearm, hilt toward me. “Take thy blade and be enlightened.”
“I really don’t need it,” I said, taking the hilt anyway. “My fire is getting better.”
“It is. Slowly. But you must learn fencing. A warrior never relies on only one skill.”
“It’s not a skill. I’m a kindler. It’s who I am.”
“And now you must learn to be more than that. I, Bentha, will train you.”
I looked over to my parents, who were sitting on the seat back next to us, watching quietly. Their faces were so red, they were nearly purple from their own fencing lessons. Both my parents had taken up the sword and it wasn’t going well. They made me look good. After the horen got me, my parents decided they had to learn to fight. I mean, we’re talking gardener and woodworker material here. Their magical gifts were decidedly unwarriorlike.
Mom watched me. She was always watching me. It started when I got the snail pox and I’d gone and made it worse by being a kindler and running off to the antique mall to get involved in a war.
“Do I have to?” I called out to them.
Neither one said anything. They wouldn’t answer, unless it was to say no and be angry. I didn’t know what they thought exactly, but my leg changed everything. Mom waited for
my limp to go away. I told her it wouldn’t. She didn’t believe me because she always hoped for the best. I didn’t deserve the best. I didn’t follow orders and plenty of fairies paid for it. My limp was nothing. I got off light.
“En garde,” said Bentha.
I assumed the first position and we got on with it. Even though my gifts were decidedly warrior-like, I stumbled, missed parries, and made a fool of myself. Bentha showed me a correct position for the hundredth time and I said, “I just want to use fire.”
“Fire is not for Paris. You must remain unremarkable, my lady.”
I stabbed my sword into the fabric. My fire was remarkable and in being so it made me conspicuous. Everyone agreed (everyone but me) that I would never use fire in Paris for any reason. The horen fairies didn’t know where I was and we had to keep it that way. We’d fly to Paris, get the spell, and save Miss Penrose. I had to keep my head down. Something I was terrible at.
“Pick up your weapon, you scurvy Whipplethorn,” said Bentha with a grin. “I am the great horen ready to skewer you.”
I grinned back in spite of myself. Bentha was as tall as a horen, but that’s all they had in common. Bentha resembled a tree more than anything else with his bark-painted skin and the ponderosa needles sticking up from his head in green spikes. The horen were golden fairies that looked like Nordic gods with cat’s claws and eyes.
I drew my sword out of the fabric and the grin dropped off my face, killing a horen was something I could get on board with. Bentha assumed the en garde position and I launched myself at him. Our swords clashed and he feinted to the right, neatly entangling my weapon with his, and twisted so that I was knocked to my knees. I saw Mom stand up and wave her arms. She was probably saying it was too much for her little girl. Instead of stopping, I rammed Bentha’s ankle with my elbow. He dropped beside me, his sword ready to strike. I tried to get my weapon up to defend, but I was too slow (I nearly always was) and Bentha’s point was at my throat. Before I could surrender (something I was getting good at) someone grabbed me by the collar and lifted me to my feet.
