Seven
Feeding in
Night’s ceaseless paean
Becoming
Me
IN THE ENSUING CHAOS and confusion, it took a frustratingly long while to get through to the perfect chunks of rubble dropping out of the cages and, in several cases, slinking off beneath the cart, that these were friendly Felidragons with no desire to blunt their fangs upon rock. Real rock. To Allory’s bemusement, their change was no illusion.
So, why not simply change into ants and march out of captivity?
The companions gathered the green Faerie together in a tearing hurry. None must be left behind. The shape-changers spoke a completely unintelligible Faerie language, apart from one or two who offered choppy sentences in strong accents. Thankfully, they knew which were the real rocks and which were Fae. That left one cage which Ashueli burgled within twenty seconds of fiddling with the lock and one other, which had a damaged lock that resisted all attempts to open it.
Ashueli swore as she broke one of her picks with a frustrated wrench at the mechanism. “No! I’m out of options.”
“Where’s Zzuriel when you need her most?” Harzune groaned.
Ash agreed, “Aye, she’d have cracked this in seconds. Sabline, can you –”
The Dragoness yanked at the door with all her strength, but she could neither budge the lock nor bend the bars. Harzune’s hammer blows clanged off without effect. The green Faerie clustered about this cage, talking urgently in their fluid, lilting language. Good reason. The rising wind snapped fretfully at Allory’s hair as she gave it a thorough scratch, several yanks for good measure and then rapped herself on the side of the head. Fresh out of brilliant ideas. This last cage was far too heavy to fly out, unless one happened to be the size of an Obliteron, and the metal bars too strong to break or bend. This problem needed a blacksmith and a decent amount of time, which was fast running out. If nothing else, the full-throated howl of that whirlwind driving closer and closer offered plenty of impetus.
Thirteen Faerie inside.
One of them gripped Harzune’s arm. “You … leave. It alright. Leave it go.”
How strange to see Fae who stood even taller than her hero – but Harzune would never be out-muscled. Every time she thought she knew something about Fae … those left inside the damaged cage began to weep, clearly realising what must happen next. Hands reached through the gaps between the bars, clutching the fingers of loved ones. Sabline shook her muzzle furiously; the Chameleons all hovered about looking as miserable as miniature thunderclouds.
Someone tapped Allory on the arm. It was Shimuzay, the youngest and shyest member of Harzune’s warrior squad. Clearing her throat nervously, she said, “You parted a rope net, Allory Fae. Is metal impossible for you? Could you … bend them out?”
“I … I couldn’t say. But I must try. Excellent idea. Let me – like this – feel the mood …”
“Stand back there, frrr-hssst,” Yaarah put in. “My whiskers are tingling.”
Sabline regarded him fiercely. “Isn’t that the storm?”
“The smallest storm,” he replied.
Struck by his words, the Scintillant Fae came to herself as if from a faraway place to find cold metal scraping against her knees and lean stomach. She squeezed between the bars. Chills gripped her wings as she folded them down. Only a girlfae of her size or a Faeling could have fit.
“The idea isn’t to trap yourself, Allory Fae,” Harzune worried.
“She knows what she’s doing,” Yaarah said.
Right. Glad someone thought so – or, was that an indirect jibe at Harzune for earlier?
She moved as if in a dream up the tallest of the green Fae, a statuesque twenty-seven-inch female who gazed down upon her with that typical ‘you’re as cute as a blossom but what under Middlesun do you think you can do about this situation’ furrow between her brows.
Reaching out, Allory took the Fae’s hands in her own. She stilled. There was no wailing wind. No screams nearby. No crackle of flame, no inrush of breath from her companions, no cloying stench of sulphur upon the breeze. For the longest time, the fundamental inorganic nature of metal stymied her. She could not think, could not imagine how she might unravel it like rope or bend it like a jungle vine. Too different? Allory searched within herself, deeper than ever, remembering a melody from that moment in the boneyard when the harpist had hidden from the shadows.
The frolicsome play of notes evoked an unexpected image in her mind, that of a tiny sapphire butterfly. Some called them the not-Fae, or even the mute Fae, for the similarities in body composition and wings were more than evident. One tale she had learned from Xertiona the Scintillant Philosopher, was that Elven scholars had even tried to determine if butterflies were a primitive or precursor form of Fae life. Connection? Perhaps.
These thoughts rushed through her mind as she gripped the woman’s strong fingers, sensing the unique, beautiful pulse of her life, the form-changing possibilities of her magic.
To the green Fae inside the cage, she said, “Listen to me now. Let yourself feel this music. Give yourself over to it. I know it may feel strange –”
The storm’s hoarse thunder drowned her out. The noise as the tornado winds that struck the city walls was a terrible beast unleashed, a sonic battering. No way she could sing over this. Instead, she allowed the music free reign inside her being. It bubbled up like the gurgling laughter of a delighted child. The play of birds among trees. The song of a butterfly flitting above a flower, sipping elegantly at the purest nectar. She could not fathom it. A profound stillness pooled within even when all was chaos without.
Light spangled from the core of her being.
Her gleeful laughter unleashed novel magic upon the unsuspecting Faerie prisoners.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Then, a flight of striking green butterflies slipped between the bars, each raising their wings with perfect timing to flit through the gaps. Last of all came the smallest, the sapphire butterfly she remembered … from those early dreams of the Faroon?
No trouble.
After all, she merely remembered what she had not yet done before … ahem. Now was not the hour to try to make sense of that.
Allory flitted about their heads as the light green Fae snapped back into their ordinary forms outside of the bars, wondering how they did it. How had she changed in the first instance and why could she not return now? The ebullient celebrations around her were cut by different voices – Yaarah exclaiming about true Shapeshifter Faerie, Sabline spitting fire at a Marakusian who dared to enter her line of sight, Ashueli checking the carts one more time for any more Faerie, cries of alarm and concern as Faerie tended the wounded, and Harzune’s gruff orders as he fairly much singlehandedly tried to wrestle everyone on board the Felidragons in order to flee at top speed.
At the instant Allory darted up to deposit a random kiss upon Yaarah’s cheek, a lone injured Fire Raptor came hurtling over the city, flapping poorly as his flight slewed from side to side. A tremendous backdraught picked her up like a leaf and tossed the sapphire butterfly high into the air.
At some level in her insectoid brain, this girlfae understood that she had lost control of her unfamiliar wings. This mishap could have been corrected with a chance to practice – a chance she did not enjoy, for the whirling dark wall of wind and debris was now only several hundred feet away. It raged as if all the thunder in Spheris had chosen to smash together for a long-overdue family reunion and endless rounds of attendant merrymaking. An eerie maw framed by jagged teeth of blue lightning opened up in the storm face – real or magical, she did not know – and sucked her away with shocking force.
She vanished inside like a stone plopping into a pond.
Forces both physical and magical pounded at her, flailing and pummelling her higher and higher into the atmosphere. All the fight she succeeded in was to keep her azure-sparking wings attached to her body. They fluttered like leaves caught in a gale. Allory had no clue anymore what up or down meant, nor which way she faced. The shrieking winds bore her aloft for the longest time, perhaps for hours, yet the unreasoning anger of the storm was unable to crush her. Too light. Too transient. Protected by the scintillance that lived in her flesh, blazing brighter than ever before, she was like a drop of sunlight dancing among the almighty thunderheads that roiled and boiled at this altitude.
At long last, she popped out of the top with a squeak of amazement.
Azure-tinted clouds carpeted her world. This helped to orient her desperately unsteady flight. Allory flipped over and glanced back at her gorgeous sapphire butterfly wings. She gave them a flip and a flutter for effect. Definitely hers.
I’ll just change back to normal-me …
Or not.
A dawn of rose-azure magnificence slowly unfolded upon this boundless vista. Muted colours burst into vibrant glory as if Middlesun herself infused them with life. An unknowable distance toward the horizon, four clusters of pink Sentinel Trees opened themselves to that vital sustenance. Could that be the start of the Suylas Deepwoods? The splash of deeper emerald colours out there suggested so. Turning slowly about in order to breathe in the full magnificence of the dawn, liberally splashed across the greatest vault of Centresky she had ever beheld, Allory’s gaze swept across fragmented clouds to the mountains they must have crossed, the Gates of Saradoom reduced to a dull rust-red slash at the very edge of her vision, contrasting strongly with the light grey mountain shoulders that abutted it. Using that location as her anchor, she traced her way to the city, a grey-green dot from which a thin plume of ash-coloured smoke rose, surrounded by endless fields of mushroom-spotted green. Where might her friends be? Were they safe?
Please be safe. Had the city been attacked? Destroyed?
Butterfly emotions struck her as fleeting, as lightweight as her body as she drifted on a breeze, her memory fading by degrees as if viewed from afar, becoming remote and no longer interesting, the trappings of a different time and place. She struggled to hold on to all that was Allory.
As her gaze roamed beyond the city to the deep grey, eddying circle of the storm – did she remember fleeing from that – she caught her breath and her wings twitched involuntarily, sending her into a complex fluttering somersault. Butterfly instincts steadied her again. Panting hard. The storm’s eye was partially clear, obscured by a few bands of wispy white cloud similar to steam. She gazed down upon it from an angle, able to see only the tip of what lay inside – a structure like a set of dozens of jagged obsidian Dragons’ talons pointing diagonally outward and upward in all directions. In its centre, a dome of light pulsed an otherworldly colour, a kind of iridescent green unfamiliar to her experience. It shimmered with a powerful, fey enchantment that streamed off it like the corona of Middlesun pouring over the Shyraiama Dragons, undulating filaments of green fire.
The butterfly scrunched up her legs in puzzlement.
I’ve seen that before, haven’t I? Where …
An unnatural stillness slipped through her consciousness, smoothing away the wrinkles of remembrance. Nothing unusual. Merely mountains amidst a storm.
But I know … the place of obsidian … where I guard –
A wild yell split the preternatural calm above the tornado. “Dusterous oh so fusterous, pronto capturous delicaterous!”
A net comprised of fragile strands of dust whisked her from zero to over three hundred miles an hour in less than a second. Adroit and non-harmful as the catch was, the brutal acceleration momentarily drained the blood from her head.
She came to in the hand of a Pixie. Blink.
A familiar face peered down at her. “Oh, confounded dust of my soul, it’s not Allory Fae after all.”
“No, it’s a large sapphire butterfly that just happens to look and sparkle exactly like her, Garobixi,” said the female Pixie, peering curiously over his shoulder. She ventured a tentative smile. “Well, you look … pretty, little creature. Aren’t you just delightful?”
“Shiver my dust, another failure,” moaned the other, meantime.
“Let it go, o shimmering cloud-lining of my heart,” said she, nabbing his left ear from behind as she deposited a long and highly inappropriate kiss on the side of his neck. “Mmm, I dust-love you in every particle!”
The butterfly quivered in shock. ‘Garobixi! Chenixipi!’ she wanted to yell.
Only, butterflies did not have vocal cords. Nor hands to gesture with. One confused Fae! She tried clapping her wings together in delight. How did butterflies show happiness anyways? At least the curly tongue in her mouth felt familiar. What a surprise! She beamed at the pair.
“It is acting awfully friendly, wouldn’t you say, Chenixipi?” he suggested nervously, eyeing her as if he expected the butterfly to attack him any second now. “I’m not scared at all.”
“Cute as our Allory – aren’t you, dear butterfly?”
“Sparkles like her.”
“Most certainly quite the apposite colouration – by my dust!” Garobixi spluttered as Allory, attempting to kiss his cheek, ended up bouncing off it. “Shoo! Shoo, naughty creature.” He waved his podgy hands in anything but the right manner to actually swat her. She moved in again. Smooch! “Oh, I say – I do say! It really does fancy me.”
A trio of successful butterfly kisses!
“I say! Could it … be?” Despite his flaming blushes, Garobixi appeared to be getting the idea.
With a merry laugh, Chenixipi held out her hand. “Come here, little one. Garobixi, I do believe you’ve made the catch of the century. You are Allory Fae, aren’t you? If I’m right, nod your head.”
She nodded dutifully.
“And shake if I say something false. You can’t possibly be Allory. No dust-fusting way!”
She shook her head solemnly and almost fell off the Pixie’s hand.
“Spin my pixels, it is our Allory!”
Both Pixies raised hoots of celebration, changed their hairstyles in a blur of different forms and indulged in a celebratory canoodle that made even a butterfly’s bug-eyes pop. Crazy Pixies! Even their underlying pixels appeared to be doing unsociable things together. Really? That, as the saying went, was probably what Dadfae did with Momfae to fill the cocoon with Faelings.
Henzaroseflash chose this moment to pop her head back over her shoulder and offer a mighty bugle of greeting, scaring the living sparkle out of her.
Hyperdragons! So … hyper.
This would be how the Pixies had passed safely over the realm of Marakusia, of course. Still, even the mighty pink Dragoness could not scare her back into her Fae self. Allory tried to scratch her chin and ended up rubbing it on her knee. Maybe this butterfly business could end up giving her the blues?
The blues? A sapphire Scintillant had nothing but the blues …