Fairy Thief (18 page)

The horse stopped jumping and turned his head to stare back at her. His golden eyes glowed hotly in the dark plumes of agitated water. He sniffed, bubbles rose from his nostrils. The fear she was bursting with a moment ago was gone. The fear of human death — that he relished above all things — was no longer here. Confused, he pawed restlessly at the breaking bones, satisfyingly brittle beneath his hoofs.

Suddenly, Saffron realized something. She wished her hands weren’t bound so she could slap herself in her head. It was physically impossible for her to die — because her body wasn’t physically there.
Now what?
She stared back at the horse and shrugged. The copper sting in her nose and the metallic flavor of it just — vanished. The pressure in her chest left just as swiftly.

The horse hoof-bashed a couple more skulls and threw his head up and down. He brought his big nose around and stared at her with his yellow eyes.

She stared back. There were a few beats of stillness as they considered each other. Ghostly bits of debris rained past them and settled on the broken bones. Saffron could now hear the water-muffled shouts coming from above. The horse looked away from her and hung his head.

The hairs began to untangle themselves from her wrists and from around her fingers. The horse bucked her off his back. Saffron remained in a sitting position and floated gently to the floor of the river. The horse turned to face her. In a haze of liquid and moonlight, he loomed over her, staring down. Suddenly, he morphed, and turned back into a hairy man.

He had rat-small eyes, and wrinkled skin that was humped and bumped with warts. He took hold of Saffron by her bicep, his massive fingers encircling her arm completely.

Her fear returned, and caused her to hyperventilate large bubbles of water that floated delicately to the surface. She pulled away from him and with impossible slowness, began to swim away — fearing every second that he would reach out and snatch her back.

She felt his hands grip both her ankles. She screamed. She knew she shouldn’t be afraid — it wasn’t rational to be afraid — still, she hollered and swam frantically, as he held firm to her legs.
Now is a good time to NOT to be solid!
But she couldn’t change. Under the stress of the moment, she could not concentrate, could not bring the change about, and remained a solid thing for him to entrap.

His hair and fur floated about his body like dark seaweed. He pulled her back towards him, and held her in front of himself like a rag doll. He looked her in the eye, his own eyes glowing. He put his hands around her throat and began to throttle her. Saffron’s hands flew up in response as she tried to pry his fat fingers free with her own nail-bitten, slim fingers. She clawed at his wrists as he choked her. Then, she realized again — quicker this time — that he couldn’t choke her. With every last bit of nerve, she forced herself to calm down. She went limp and stared at his jaundiced eyes as he strained even harder to kill her. He gave her two more good throttles, then
his
eyes filled with fear. In an instant, he changed back into the horse and galloped away through the murk of the water, silently crushing the path of bones beneath his hooves.

Once again, Saffron found herself drifting to the bottom of the river. She didn’t want to move. She sat on the pile of bones thinking about what had just happened —what actually just happened to her, Saffron Keller, agoraphobic of the Earthrealm.

She sensed movement above her, looked up, and saw Tai.

He was sitting like Buddha with wings, his arms and legs crossed, as he drifted down through the water. He landed with a slow-motion POOF beside her. He gave her a look that asked, “Are we there yet?” and waited for her to respond.

She frowned, her eyes grew wide. Then, she barked at him like a harpy — the noise warbling and blurbling in the water. She slammed one of the skulls with her fist and pushed off from the bottom. When she broke the water’s surface, she whipped her head around to look for the other two. She found Wo and Orji sitting on the opposite bank. Fireflies had clustered on Wo’s wings and were blinking on and off as he slowly fanned them.

Why were they just sitting there?!
Her fury lit up like a neon-red haze around her. “What the hell are you doing? It was trying to
kill
me!”

“
Stop with the bleeding heart, Saffron; we’re exhausted from carrying Mr. None-Too-Light, over here. Give us a break.”

Saffron continued to tread the black water. She stared at them as moonlight glittered the water around her. She couldn’t believe this was happening. “What the hell…” she whined. She slapped the water. “It was painful! It
felt
like I was
drowning
! It really, really hurt!”

Tai broke the surface just next to her. He rose up out of the water with a splashing of wings and a shower of drops. Before he could speak, Wo chucked a handful of gravel at them. “Yeah, and whose fault is that?” he spat and hung his head.

“
What is your problem? Why are you sitting there like a rag? You big baby!”

“
Saffron,” Wo spoke quietly now, “we aren’t like you. We aren’t out of our bodies. We’re
fairies.
Different rules apply to us. We needed to solidify to carry Orji, and the carrying was hard. It drained us of our energy. At home, we could manipulate energies to strengthen ourselves — but here,” he glanced around nervously, “I’m afraid we’ve already attracted too much attention. I can’t go waking up everything that slithers and crawls in this forest with our magic. We need to
get out of here.
” He enunciated this last, but whispered it, so it took a few seconds for the words to float across the river to Saffron.

“
And, yoo-hoo,” Tai smirked and waved at her, “There are other
things
in that river, do get out, will you?”

The skin on Saffron’s face tightened. She drew her feet up underneath her and kicked them out again to propel herself forward. She put her arms out in front of her and pushed her way through pink and green lily pads to get at the shore. All the while, she waited to be grabbed by the ankle, wrist or hair, and yanked back down into oblivion. As soon as she was close enough, Orji hauled her out across the slimy bank.

“
So, Fireball, what happened down there?” Orji liked the way her shoulder-length hair darkened and smoothed around her face when it was wet.

Saffron shrugged. “It tried to kill me. It like, tied me up with its mane that was alive and then it turned into a man and tried to choke me.”

“
Ahhh.” Orji nodded and opened his eyes wide — like people do when they’re placating inmates.

“
Then it was weird; I….I think it got scared of
me.”
Saffron swiped her hair back from her forehead and wiped the water from her nose with the back of her hand.

“
It was scared of you. It assumed you were a ghost, one of the dead.” Wo stood up and offered Saffron a hand.

“
But I thought you said she wasn’t a gh….”

Tai flew off the ground and clapped his hand to Orji’s mouth. He hissed low in Orji’s ear.

“
Now, now, now — don’t go giving away all of our secrets to our neighbors…. Why do you think you’re not dead yet?” Tai looked around, jaw clenched, to see if any of their lurking onlookers understood what Orji almost spilled. He waited for a change in the air. He knew they were everywhere, in every last shadow. It was good that the creepy-crawlies thought Saffron was a ghost — it was their best protection against further attack. From most things, anyway. Nobody liked ghosts. Nobody liked such a vivid, in-your-face-reminder of death. Not any race, species or creature.

Orji closed his mouth and Tai removed his hand. Orji looked over his shoulder at a suspicious-looking clump of brush. “Let’s get out of here and find that portal.”

“
Yup,” chimed Wo, “I don’t think so.” He pointed across the river where there were dark, black shadows moving. The shadows didn’t go very far or very fast, but seemed to be milling around the edge of the river.

“
What’s that noise?” Saffron whispered, her voice straining. It was a low keening mixed with a guttural rumbling. It droned louder and terrified her.

“
They’re moaning….” Wo craned his neck to see better. “They’re communicating with each other and aahh, here they come now.”

Saffron saw how the mass of shadows broke apart and formed hundreds of beings. They left the river bank and started to cross the water.

Wo clapped his hands. “Okay, let’s run.”

“
What are they? What do they want?” Saffron shrieked as she spun around to run for the trees.

“
Just run!” Tai yelled.

The twins rose in the air. Orji grabbed Saffron’s hand and half-dragged her as she sprinted over fallen, moss-laden logs and around large rocks. They ran blindly as they left the weak light behind, and the forest thickened around them. Saffron ran quicker than she could ever remember running in her life, her heels kicking up at her rear-end, spurring her faster. Soon enough, Orji’s breathing became heavy and he grunted as he pulled her over the spongy earth and sodden branches.

On cue, she suddenly became short of breath, too. She heard moaning. They were running impossibly fast, yet still, the moaning was closing in on them. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She tried to think if this was a dream. Could she wake up? Her mind was so muddled with fear, she couldn’t even remember why she was here, how she got here.

Suddenly, Orji yanked her to a halt. She looked up at him in confusion. He pointed straight ahead, in the direction in which they had been heading. She strained hard to look into the darkness. All at once, she saw them — more shadows, blacker than the forest pitch, moving in on them from that direction.

She started to make little yelping noises deep in her throat.

The shadows moved closer still.

Tai, Wo, Orji and Saffron were back to back, facing outward, watching as the shadows enclosed them.

On unspoken cue, Tai and Wo raised their arms. They didn’t know what kind of defense to use against these things, but they were going to try. The noise the shadows made grew stronger, more manic, as if they were drugged cultists moving in for the kill, moaning for blood.

Saffron gave out three high-pitched, blood-curdling screams — and that’s when it happened. At first, she didn’t know what happened. All she knew was that suddenly, Orji disappeared from her side — his shoe hit her in the temple as he disappeared. Then she felt Wo leave her back — his wings bopped her head forward — then, he was with her no more. Suddenly, she felt pressure in her armpits. It hurt, like that time when she was five and she lost her footing on the jungle gym. She fell down through the middle of it and her legs got caught up by the bars. She was saved from a crash, but was reeling with pain. She winced; something just as hard as those bars was under her arms. It yanked her up, up, up, hauled her at the speed of the wind. Suddenly, the pressure left her arms, and she was flying through the sky, a cart-wheeling projection across the canvas of stars. Then the bars clamped around her biceps and thighs. The pinching hurt for only an instant. Soon enough, she was flung again into open air, then caught once more by the pinching grip. As she flew up towards the moon for the fourth time, then did a free fall back towards the leafy
top of the trees,
she understood — it was the trees.

The trees had bent over, and with their branches acting like arms and hands, managed to pluck her, Orji, Tai, and Wo from the ground, away from the shadows, and now were tossing them like rag dolls through the air from one tree to another.

Saffron saw Orji, several yards away, just tossed again, up over the canopy. He spent an eerie hang-time in the circle of the full moon before he dropped like dead weight down, down, down. She saw Wo, then Tai — arms, legs, and wings spinning head-over-heels. They were screaming, and looked like turtles who were trying to right themselves so they could fly. But they never got the chance — the trees were always grabbing too soon.

They must have traveled for miles, tossed by the trees. Saffron grunted and screamed like an animal. She felt like she was going to lose her mind.

Finally, the throwing stopped. She crashed to the forest floor. Orji, Tai, and Wo lay sprawled around her. She looked up and screamed again as the biggest tree of all loomed in front of her like a New York City skyscraper. Crashing and groaning it leaned forward and reached for her. With many small twiggy fingers, it grabbed her up and brought her to a big hole in its center that looked just like a gaping, black mouth.

She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t scream, and couldn’t blink, as she was moved towards the mouth. There was only fear and a wish for death to save her.