Lillya

Lillya slept poorly. Physical and mental exhaustion were no match for the discomfort caused by sleeping in a branch and moss-packed nest. Plus, she was plagued with worry over her friends. Every moment her mother did not come for her, she was sure something had happened at home. She pulled Papa’s book from her pack and hugged the tightly bound paper to herself. Was all this what Arlana the Seer had been warning her about? If so, it had been a terrible warning. Truly awful. The mysterious message told her nothing, she was lost, her friends were poisoned by swamp bugs, and Aunt Issabeth was…was…something.

Tears sprang to Lillya’s eyes. Great, now she was crying.

Rocks skittered, and Lillya briefly pondered what she had left to use as a weapon before the nose and eyes of a blinking pegasus foal popped out above the lip of the nest. The spindly gray horse with downy wings scrambled over the high branches of the nest on spindly legs. It nuzzled the teardrops escaping down her cheeks. She reached out a hand to stroke the foal’s dull gray neck.

“I want to go home, little guy,” Lillya whispered so she wouldn’t wake her friends. Granted, they were all sleeping off malevolent insect poison, but the whisper felt appropriate to the inky darkness.

The foal was all sympathy.

“Why didn’t she tell me what was going to happen? She could have warned Mama or Aunt Issabeth instead.”

The foal sniffed through his tiny nose, clearly agreeing the situation was frustrating.

“All she said was to take this note to Grandmama, which I can’t do,” Lillya continued on, annoyed. “Plus, she said to check again. Check where? Here?” She could not see much of anything on the top of a mountain in the dark. Besides, she had not done any checking in order to check again. “Do you have something here that might help me?”

The little pegasus nestled beside Lillya.

“Aw, that does help.” She stroked his soft neck and sighed. “Maybe it was a ‘check what’ and not a ‘check where,’” she reasoned. “But what is there to check? We lost half our supplies down—” She stopped. She still had her aunt’s empty pack.

Lillya patted down the rough leather pack, sticking her hand in each pocket again, feeling around for anything she might have missed. Encountering another shard of mirror glass did not help her situation, but did give her a nasty cut across her finger.

“If there’s something in here,” she complained to her new friend between sucking on her finger, “it’s too dark to see it.”

The foal adjusted himself to a position of maximum comfort, tickly hot breath pouring from his delicate nose onto her arm. Lillya did not want to wake the little thing, so she leaned back on the moss-lined branches around her, still clutching the bag. She dozed until dawn that way, half asleep and half awake, popping awake from dreams about being safe at home and dreams about being attacked by clouds of smoke with fire red eyes. At the first hint of the sun, she was done trying to sleep, and the occupants of nearby nests began to stir.

Jadelynn groaned from a nest directly next to Lillya’s. “Where are we?”

Lillya extricated herself from her nest, careful not to wake her equine friend. She tiptoed over to a groggy Jadelynn, who had moss protruding comically from her white blond hair. “Would you like the good news or the bad news?”

“There’s good news?” grumbled Jadelynn.

Seeing Jadelynn awake at all was good news. Granted, she was covered from head to toe in red welts where she had been bitten by those insects, but the effects of the bites seemed to be wearing off. Lillya tried to explain where they were, but Jadelynn’s confusion coupled with the constant interruptions of three more confused girls and Ruby waking up and joining the conversation led to a huge mess. Lillya was unsure what was conveyed by the end.

“We are on top of the Ascleons right now?” asked Iris, itching at her arm.

“Don’t itch, Iris,” mothered Ivyliss.

“The bag!” Lillya exclaimed. She flew back to her nest, starling her little friend. “Sorry, sorry,” she muttered, trying to repair the damage done with a calming pat. Too excited for systematic searching, Lillya turned Issabeth’s pack inside out. Nothing but dirt and fluff tumbled out, but she saw the tiny pocket right away. With trembling fingers and an audience, she unbuttoned the pocket and drew out a little metal circle. She stared at it, afraid to hope again.

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“Cedric?”

Nothing.

She shook it back and forth like it was a heavy sleeper. “C—Cedric?” she tried again.

Nothing.

“It—it’s not working,” she told those five pairs of hopeful eyes. “Or maybe I don’t know how to work it.”

She had seen Issabeth talk to Cedric on this thing before. Issabeth talked. It talked back. Lillya had never seen Issabeth do anything else.

The girls gathered around again. They tried changing locations, blowing on the metal circle, warming it up, and yelling. They gained an entourage of curious pegasus along the way, but they were no help either.

“Maybe Sorceress Issabeth is the only one who can use it,” suggested Jadelynn.

Lillya was not willing to give up that easily. She had seen Papa talking to Cedric with this before. It would work. It had to work.

A sharp whinny broke her concentration. The sleepy atmosphere shifted to tension like a rolling wave of anxiety had crashed on the mountaintop. Foals took shelter underneath protective parents, and a large pegasus advanced on the disturbance, stamping his hooves and unfurling his wings, preparing to battle what was coming. If they had been found, Lillya doubted these sweet pegasus could stand long against what was coming.

“Cedric,” she hollered desperately at the metal circle clasped in her fingers. “Now would be good!”

Black mist rolled over the edge of the mountain, tendrils stretching onto the rocky peak, searching.

“There’s a button,” yelped Pippa. “A button in the middle.”

“Try pressing it,” clamored five girls at once.

Lillya clamped down. “Cedric?” she screeched.

“Whoa,” was the immediate response of a startled, sleepy voice. “Yelling is not appreciated at this hour. Really any hour. No yelling. Who is this?”

Lillya almost cried tears of relief, but she was out of tears.

“Cedric! It’s me, Lillya.”

“Lillya? Rin’s Lillya? Why do you—?”

“They’re coming again. I know it’s them. And we’re stuck and lost.” Lillya was having trouble forming thoughts. It didn’t help that the more she spoke, the bigger the lump in her throat got. “And she’s gone.” Hot tears rolled down her cheeks.

“Calm down!” he exclaimed in less-than-calming bark. “I can locate you.”

“Lil,” squeaked Ruby, pointing. The black mist billowed higher.

“Found you. I think? How did you get there of all places?” asked Cedric’s voice.

Six voices launched into a messy explanation.

“I’m sorry I asked,” he interrupted. “You’re in a protected area, so it’s going to be hard for me to do anything, but—”

“It’s not going to be protected for long,” snapped Jadelynn.

“Not if those things come back,” agreed Pippa.

“What if they attack?” panicked Ruby. “There aren’t even any trees. They’ll rip us to pieces!”

“Wait, the pegasus are in danger?” asked Cedric.

“We’re all in danger,” screeched Ivyliss.

“I can work with that,” answered Cedric. “Stay right there.”

“Where would we go?” Jadelynn howled.

“It’s getting closer,” yelped Iris.

They could all see the black mist advancing. It had already poured in as far as the most distant pegasus nests. A few pegasus launched into the air, spiraling to get an aerial view of the disturbance. Most circled back to corral the anxious foals who squealed and stamped their tiny hooves. Lillya’s stubby-winged friend was already trembling under the legs of his mother. She would have done the same if her mother was nearby.

The girls stumbled into a huddle, grasping arms. They were a sorry sight: soot-smudged from smoke, covered in red welts, scraped and bruised. At least they were together, but to have come so far just to die helpless on a mountaintop was a terrible fate. Lillya should have forced the girls to leave when she had a chance.

A rumbling growl sounded from the creeping mist. A flash of yellow eyes shone from deep inside the billowing blackness. Something scrambled its way over the rocky lip of the mountainside. The huge pegasus was ready to buffet the intruder with his massive wings, but two more creatures crept in while he was occupied with the first. Pegasus in the sky shrieked in warning and dove to attack, knocking the big cats off the mountain.

“They’ll just keep coming,” Lillya realized.

With a crackle, something changed. Everything seemed muffled, and somehow a dome of glass capped the mountaintop. A dark cat flung itself at this barrier, but it was stopped short, paws trying to grab for stability and sliding off instead.

“That will hold for a minute, but this problem is going to require a magical solution,” said the metal disc. Lillya nearly shrieked and flung it away when it started speaking to her, but she managed to keep hold of it. “Hang tight,” it said.

They did not have much of a choice.

Huge black cat bodies scrambled up the dome until they were right on top of the girls. They snarled and scratched, angered at being so close to their prey and unable to reach them. The girls crept closer to each other and locked arms, forced to wait.

A rock appeared before their eyes and dropped to the ground. It had a shiny blue-green coating and a rough tree carved on the face.

“What is that?” said Iris, reaching for the stone.

“Iris, no!” screamed at least three girls at once. The other two were about to tackle her.

“It’s a transport stone,” Lillya managed to choke out. “We need to touch it at the same time.”

“How can we leave while they’re being attacked?” wailed Ruby.

“If we leave, they won’t be attacked,” Jadelynn argued.

The merits of both sides of the argument were hard to weigh through the panic, and nobody moved for the rock.

A sparkling band of white light swirled around the huddle of girls and pegasus. It spun faster and faster, growing brighter and larger with each revolution, until Lillya had to shield her eyes. The circle of dizzying light shot out from them, scattering the mist, evaporating the dome, and blasting back the cats, sending them tumbling down the side of the mountain. The pegasus erupted in a frenzy of equine panic, but they were going to be fine. Lillya would recognize her mama’s magic anywhere.

“Hold hands,” Lillya cried. “We have to touch the stone together.”

They grabbed hands in a circle and dropped to their knees.

“On three,” ordered Lillya, holding out a trembling pointer finger. “One…two…”