Tala Phoenix and the Dragon's Lair

by Gabby Fawkes

  "Maybe,” I said doubtfully, covering my face with my hands. If only I could cover up today and do it over again, too. “I was the one who convinced everyone to give this plan a chance. The one dumb enough to trust Walario.” I sighed. “If I could’ve just remembered about the treasure earlier, maybe they would’ve given us a chance."

  "Or lied so they could get their hands on it,” Axel said grimly. “Don't lose hope now. This may turn out fine yet."

  I twisted my head to look at him incredulously. "How? We’re on the run and trapped in Mathusalem. I can’t shift. Now, we don't just have the DSA after us, we have every witch in this city chasing us too."

  "Not every," Axel pointed out.

  I sighed. "I guess at least the witch sisters helped us escape in the end, for as much good as it did us."

  "All witches are wary, but not all are as corrupt and in-pocket as the Seven Sisters," Axel said.

  "Yet the witch society trusts them? Is there anywhere where the government isn’t corrupt?"

  "The Seven Sisters used to be reliable,” Axel admitted grudgingly. “Apparently. Artemis says the problem came when they outsourced their judge to that fat owl you saw. Before, they had such an effective and fair system, that those upholding it got lazy. Began to take it for granted that whatever happened in Mathusalem’s courts would be for the best."

  "We can see how well that turned out," I said quietly.

  Axel squeezed my hand, and I felt a burst of electricity go through me. Damn it, should I just out and say I was sorry for how I’d acted when he’d told me about his past?

  Something rustled outside. Axel leapt to his feet, taking out his sword. But when the garbage can nuzzled in, Axel sighed.

  “That’s witches for you,” he said to me.

  “What do you mean?” I said, eyeing the chrome garbage can carefully.

  It seemed to be waiting… expecting something? Hopefully it wasn’t bugged with a camera or anything, although Axel seemed unworried.

  “Witches love enchanting even pointless things for any task,” Axel explained, picking up a Coke can I hadn’t noticed before and tossing it in.

  Just like that, the garbage can zipped off.

  “That’s actually pretty handy, though,” I admitted.

  Axel shook his head. “No. What would really be handy is if the garbage cans tracked garbage and picked it up. Instead, the witches use these as a sort of anti-litter guilt device. I’ve heard there’s so many of these, it’s virtually impossible to throw your garbage on the ground or even stand by litter without having one of these zip by and hover around until you do something about it.”

  “Again,” I said. “Discouraging littering sounds pretty decent to me.”

  Axel shrugged. “I prefer freedom – even if it is to do the wrong thing.”

  A shiver went through me. That was the whole problem, wasn’t it? Axel had had that freedom, and look what horrors he’d inflicted with it…

  We heard the scrape of nearby footsteps.

  But when we peered out, it wasn’t our friends we saw. It was Linnie, her straight red hair flattened on either side of her face, her eyes bulging.

  “We don’t have much time,” she said. She hiked the strap of her teal alligator-skin bag higher up on her shoulder. "Come with me."

  "Here to finish what the Council began?" Axel asked coolly.

  Her cheeks reddened. "No, for your information. My sisters and I never intended… Point is, we’ve disagreed and they’ve left me to do this on my own, but – I have to do this."

  "This being?" I said, not budging.

  "I know a place you can go," she said, beckoning, looking over her shoulder. "A place you will be safe."

  "How do we know we can trust you?" I said. "The whole Council thing-"

  "Was an utter farce." Her eyes flashed. "I hadn't been to a justice proceeding in some time. I had no inkling of the travesty they have become, I swear to you."

  At a farther-off commotion, she looked over her shoulder again nervously, then back at us, her green eyes insistent. "Hurry, we don't have much time. The warlockfficers are combing the city."

  "Warlockfficers?" I said. The word was a mouthful and a half.

  "I can explain everything shortly. You just have to follow me."

  "Not without my friends," I said, getting up and out. "They should be here any minute-"

  "Tal? That you?" Kian called.

  I waved her over. She was with the others, and her hair was tangled as well as her Joy Division T-shirt ripped, but she looked otherwise unharmed. Artemis and Demi had their arms around Apollo, who was helping them along.

  "What is she doing here?" Apollo asked us.

  "Apparently helping us," Axel replied.

  "Please," Linnie said. "You have to trust me."

  I studied her for a minute before turning to my friends. "What do you guys think?"

  Demi’s weary nod was enough for me. We couldn't keep running like this, with two of them injured and no time for Apollo to help heal them.

  "Alrighty then," Linnie said.

  She picked up her teal bag and gave it a wiggle. Frowning, she thrust in her arm and began fishing around.

  From the bag came: croak, clang, swoosh.

  Finally, she pulled out a full-size door which she lay on the ground beside us.

  "This some kind of joke?" Kian demanded, while Demi only murmured, in a dozily pleased way, “Mary Poppins.”

  "I forgot how little you know," Linnie said, crouching down to grab the door handle and open the door. Although the ground underneath it had been dirty pavement seconds before, now it was a cement staircase going down.

  "You can come along," she said, already descending several steps, "Or stay up there. Up to you."

  She was down a few more steps when she said, "Last one through, remember to take the door with you."

  "Yeah, that makes perfect sense," I grumbled.

  Although I tentatively stepped in and onto the first step, then the next.

  Pausing, I gave my friends a shrug. “Let’s go?”

  Axel was right behind me, and the others followed along.

  Kian was last. By the sounds of her cursing, weary victory cry and crashing of something into the walls, she really had taken the door with her. Wonders would never cease.

  At the bottom, there was another door that was closed, with a small, wrought iron point-tipped lantern that Linnie smacked.

  Clang, clang, clang, it went.

  “Of course the lantern is a cow bell too,” Kian muttered grumpily.

  Clearly, we were all out of sorts. For good reason. We’d just had one of our closest shaves yet – almost being caught by the DSA, as well as having been exposed to the bogus institution that was Mathusalem’s ‘justice system’.

  For a few seconds, nothing happened. Then the wooden door creaked open.

  "Listen, Linnie," a plump tower of a woman gaped at us. Her mouth opened and closed, ending with a definitive head shake. Finally, she turned away as if to un-see what she had seen. "Linnie - no."

  "Ma, I had to.” Linnie wrung her bony hands together. “Winnie, Minnie and I were there at the trial. It was madness. Ius has been compromised, the Seven Sisters corrupted. I had no choice."

  "But bringing them here?" the big woman continued, avoiding looking at us head on as she scraped a gray-black tangle out of her eyes.

  Talk about a cold welcome. At this point, I wasn’t sure what I disliked more – the DSA’s reception of us or the witches’.

  "They've got nowhere else. Ma, the DSA is looking for them."

  Finally, her dark, careful, close-set eyes settled on me. Her several chins wobbled as her gaze did the rounds of us. "You brought Olympians. A witch. And a Phoenix Dragon?"

  It didn’t escape me that most of the horror in her voice was reserved for me.

  "They aren’t dangerous," Linnie said quickly. "At least not to us."

  At least not as long as our powers are cruelly out of our grasp, PV add
ed, which I chose wisely not to voice aloud.

  Ma wiped her red-stained hands on her red and green cornucopia-printed apron. With a jerky nod, she turned on her heel. "There’ll be a ruckus about this, as sure as syrup, there’ll be."

  Her leaving was apparently our cue to follow, since Linnie passed through the door after her.

  “You can leave the door,” she said over her shoulder, which Kian was all too happy to ditch in the staircase.

  Inside, the house had walls crammed with different sized and odd-framed paintings. Their subjects were old, young, human, un-human indeterminate creatures – and they all peered at us, openly horrified, and exclaimed to each other as we passed by. Even the recently beheaded head of a man turned to ogle us, blood oozing out of his agape mouth.

  We’re star attractions, all right.

  I was so distracted by the loud and animated portraits, that, as we entered the kitchen, at first I didn’t notice the actual people in it.

  "Linn, get back!" a small girl hollered, her countless black pigtails shaking as she bolted for Linnie.

  "Who are they?" a taller, bolder boy with shaggy hair wondered, peering up at us.

  "They’re from the TV broadcast! The DSA are looking for them,” another older girl declared, brandishing a frying pan like a sword.

  Ma sauntered over to a pot of what looked to be nicely burnt spaghetti sauce and, throwing up her hands, flung it into the sink. "It's ruined!"

  Through it all, Linnie had her hands up, and was saying in a strained voice, "They’re friends. They mean us no harm."

  “We just want to get out of Mathusalem,” Apollo said.

  Pretty sure. While I obviously wanted to get back to Speranță most, right now, I’d settle for just about anywhere that wasn’t Mathusalem.

  “Do you know a way out of here?” Artemis asked weakly, her head slumped on Apollo’s shoulder. She and Demi didn’t look good. Not near-death bad, but still – they needed his help healing sooner rather than later.

  “There is no ‘way out’,” Ma said. “Except for the main way. All witches have to go to the border and go through customs. There’s no way around that, except”– she shook her head, as if to dislodge a thought – “there is no way around that.”

  I almost wanted to ask about what she almost said, but there was too much going on right now. And it already looked like we were on the brink of being thrown on the street as it was. The pictures were all arguing with each other about Artemis’ question, as well as the fact that Olympians were in the house. By the sounds of it, they all agreed that crossing out of Mathusalem undetected was impossible, although some thought we shouldn’t be told that (“Let ‘em get ‘emselves caught!” a particularly gangly fox shrilled in an Irish brogue, waving what looked like its bonneted head. “We no traiters ‘ere!”)

  "Linnie, Linnie, Linnie," a low voice rattled from further away.

  All at once, all the pictures and real-life people shut up. There was a great rattling and groaning of something mechanical as another figure moved into view. He was in a wheelchair, had an eye patch, and a cane that looked like four wands poorly fused together. His wheelchair moved by itself.

  “Gramp," Linnie said, wearily already, "I know what you think about outsiders."

  "What I think about outsiders?" he said with a hacking laugh to a nearby painting.

  Its Medieval-dressed ladies cowered while the men stood their ground, nodding their helmeted heads fervently in agreement.

  "It’s not what I think,” he rasped, turning his glasses-covered rheumy-eyed glare full-blast on Linnie. “It’s what I've experienced firsthand. The loss of one eye, use of all my limbs- all at the hands of… outsiders."

  He spat the last word, same as you’d say a swear word or call someone a murderer, or something.

  "Injuries you refuse to heal as an act of protest," Linnie muttered under her breath.

  "But, Gramp," said the little girl, fiddling with one of her pigtails, "if they were truly killers, would they not have slain us immediately?"

  “We would’ve,” Axel confirmed pleasantly.

  Another bone-rattling laugh, in which the old man threw his head up so hard, his oversize glasses flew off his face.

  Ma stopped them midair with her broom and, at her lead, they hovered back to him.

  "That is not the fashion of the outsiders,” the old man continued once the glasses had settled snugly back on his bulbous prune of a nose. “No, theirs is to worm their way in and, when they're in the gooey center of you, they hollow you out and devour you whole."

  "That's a lovely description," Kian said deadpan. "But as I witch, I can vouch for my friends. We're just trying to find somewhere safe. Somewhere away from the DSA."

  “Can you help us or not?” Axel asked, in a voice that was clearly losing its patience.

  I squeezed his arm. Blowing up on the only witches who were actually considering helping us was not a winning plan.

  "You were the ones who destroyed their base," Ma said, fastening her apron tighter as she folded her hands in front of her ample bosom.

  "That wasn’t my friends," I admitted, stepping forward, "That was me. Out of anger. When I saw the horrible experiments, and the creatures they'd made out of my classmates, I lost control. I didn't mean to hurt anyone."

  "She didn't hurt anyone," Axel argued. "Her friends and I were there, we saw. There was no one hurt in the wreckage. Since then, the only people any of us have hurt are DSA agents who were trying to take us down."

  “Have you not noticed how many of the higher-up members simply ‘disappeared’ when the base was destroyed?” Apollo continued curtly. “The last ones who were known to be trustworthy. Isn’t that convenient?”

  The old man waggled his wand-cane furiously, causing bits of red and white farm-scene China and wooden furniture to hover and clatter together in the air. "Even considering believing the words of such-"

  "Shut up, Dad," Ma said, shaking her broom.

  Everything fell back down with a resounding thunk. She turned to face us.

  "What is that?" she said sharply, staring at Demi next to me.

  Demi held her palm to her chest. "Nothing."

  "It's not nothing," Kian said, lifting Demi's hand to show her. "This is the extent of Demi's dangerous, horrible powers."

  A murmur of appreciation went through the room.

  "Demeter?" the young girl said, drawing toward the flower.

  “Should we mention that we’re extremely famous and awesome gods too?” Artemis asked Apollo in a weary undertone.

  "Don't touch it, Mimi," Ma said sharply.

  She turned to us, then strode out of the room, seemingly talking to Linnie.

  “Don't think I’ll be making food for them. Or talking to them. Or having anything to do with them. And if the DSA comes knocking on this door, I'm not risking nothing for no one."

  "Understood," Linnie said quietly. "Thank you."

  "Don't thank me," Ma said, her head appearing in the doorway. "You can thank old Gramp over there. If there's anything that puts me in my place, it's that sanctimonious old bastard. I know if he's dead set against something, then it must have merit."

  "You'll see," the old man declared shrilly, cane hoisted up like a flag. "When the world burns and the chair looks for where it could have been stopped, I shall not shiver in my chair, no."

  "Yeah, yeah, Gramp, tell us about it," said the shaggy-haired boy, already pushing the old man’s chair out of the room, even as the wheels squealed against him.

  Linnie turned to us with a bloodless smile. "There. Now that that's done, I can show you where you’ll stay."

  She reached over and pressed a painting of a small kitchen.

  “Quick,” she said, pulling us out of the kitchen and into the hallway.

  Just in time, too. Behind us, at the mighty creeeeeeaaaakkk, I turned around to see the entire black and white tiled floor of the actual kitchen folding up into the wall, disappearing it, its counters, table and ever
y last pot and pan.

  "It's for Ma’s sake more than mine," Linnie explained, as I gaped at the now empty black and white tiles. "The kids keep sneaking down to raid the fridge, so she's at her wits end."

  "Of course," I said, as if fold-up kitchens were completely normal. Honestly, I couldn’t remember what normal was anymore.

  Already, Linnie was continuing down a hallway and up a circling staircase. As we followed, we saw more odd sights on the different levels. There was a piano playing some mournful Beethoven by itself, at least twelve top hats with tiny hands engaging in what looked like war, and a little family of tea cozy-wearing mice wobbling around with brooms.

  "If you do get caught, please don't mention that," Linnie said, indicating the mouse. "Strictly speaking, mouse maids are illegal. Mouse rights and all that jazz. But we're poor, and we feed them good cheese. Plus they’re actually quite thorough.”

  Pausing, she passed a finger over a dusty step with a shake of her head. "At least they used to be… I really need to visit more."

  "Don't worry," Kian said seriously. "While we're getting tortured, experimented on and perhaps dismembered, we’ll make sure to hold back the part about your illegal mouse maids."

  By now, we’d reached the top of the winding staircase, which literally went out onto the roof.

  "You're joking," I said, looking along at the other roofs.

  Hopefully no one was sunbathing or DSA-fugitive searching on their roofs at the moment.

  Although, in the distance, I was pretty sure I could hear that same genderless voice declaring “INTRUDERS. INTRUDERS.”

  "You’ll see," Linnie said, continuing along.

  We followed her, carefully making our way along the shingles until we came to a trap door. Linnie opened it to reveal a small dusty room, with a ladder down into it and one small quilt-covered bed in the corner.

  "In case you haven't noticed, we have about eight people," Kian said.

  "This isn’t the Hilton," I said, shooting her a ‘shut up’ look.

  If it came down to it, I'd sleep on cockroach-infested dirt if it meant I didn't have to get captured and experimented on by the DSA. Or dismembered. Now Kian had mentioned the idea, I was feeling a little queasy at the prospect.