FaerieTales

Welcome to FaerieTales

2020-03-25T23:14:00.000-07:00

FaerieTales is an online serial novel about Holly, a young orphaned girl living on a rundown space colony who wants more out of her life. Despite the science fiction beginning, FaerieTales is primarily a fantasy story, and is very character driven. The main protagonist is a strong female character whose sexuality is deliberately rather ambiguous, mostly because she isn't really old enough to have decided on what she wants yet, but there will definitely be several same-sex pairings sharing the spotlight with her. So if that sort of thing bothers you, this might not be the story for you.

Since I draw a lot, and I have a ton of illustrations related to the story, my plan is to eventually work out some sort of bonus system for donations. Most likely, there will be a wallpaper download or something web-based when donations reach a certain amount, and possibly something for those individuals who donate over a certain amount at a time, probably a custom poster of one of the characters. Just give me a little time to work out all the details. My time, unfortunately, is limited at the moment, so let me settle into the routine of writing three times a week before I figure out how I'll make time for other things.

It would be amazingly wonderful if my donations and ad revenue ever reached the point where I could cut down to a part time job; I could update five times a week and shower my lovely readers with bonus material, and maybe even start doing FaerieTales as it was originally intended, as a manga-style comic. That is a shameless call for donations, in case it wasn't blatant enough for you. At the moment, however, I update three times a week, and I will likely put up a few pieces of bonus material just so you guys know what you'd be getting for your money. I'd like to be able to say that I update on Monday, Wednesday and Friday...but the truth is, I work fifty or more hours a week on a varied schedule, so it doesn't always happen that way. The good news is, sometimes I'm likely to forget that I've already posted three chapters for the week, and post an extra one once in a while.

So now that you know what to expect, both from the story and the author, on to Chapter 1!

Chapter 29

2009-07-10T16:00:00.001-07:00

(Author's note: What? Two chapters in one day?? Yeah. I'm trying really hard to make up for, at least a little, my long absence. At least before real life work creeps back in again to keep me from writing.)

My head was spinning, even as Milo and Tallana ushered me down to the kitchen. I don’t think Biv really shared my misgivings about the message on Puck’s computer, from the looks he kept shooting me over the table, but he didn’t say anything. I think I loved him a little for it. If I was wrong, I was the biggest idiot ever. If I was right, pretty much everything I’d ever thought about human nature applied to Puck and whoever his people were, too. It was a horrifying thought.

Milo was blissfully unaware of it, though. Once Tallana begged off babysitting duty…and I knew that was what it was, I wasn’t stupid….on the grounds of having to go back to work, he cheerfully volunteered to make us something to eat. Mind you, I wasn’t hungry at all, but when someone eight feet tall demands that you sit down and eat something, it probably isn’t wise to argue. So I found myself at the table with Biv, while Milo nattered away at us and made us grilled turkey sandwiches…apparently there is no such thing as a cold sandwich in his world…..and soup that I didn’t quite have the nerve to ask what it contained. He fended off Biv’s insistence on helping, which left Biv disappointed, but the food was very good. Better than I’d expected. I knew Biv could cook, but I guess it only stood to reason that Milo could as well; after all, why open a restaurant/bar if you couldn’t cook worth a damn, right?

Long after the food was gone, we were still sitting there. Biv left frequently (almost every hour on the hour, I watched the clock) to check on Kiasis, but he always returned, looking satisfied that she was alright. I decided to finally stop obsessing over the meaning of the message I’d seen and at least try to show some manners by actually talking back to Milo, for a change. I was pretty sure his voice had to be getting a little hoarse by now, although with its natural raspiness, I never would have been able to prove it.

“So…” I ventured, a little hesitantly. “You’re….from the same place as Puck, right?”

Milo snorted a bit in response. “If you mean Earth, yes. If you ask my age, though, I’ll just lie about it.” He grinned, and I was a little unnerved to realize that his beak actually contained two neat rows of razor sharp teeth. “Let’s just say I’m a few years his elder, and leave it at that.”

“Did your people migrate to Faerie too, then?”

“Who, us? No, child. Never. You won’t see more than one or two gryphons on Faerie at all, if even that.” He paused, a metal mixing bowl in his hand, to stare thoughtfully at the ceiling. “You know, I used to know exactly how many of us did join the migration….five, six maybe? But I’m just not sure anymore. Most of us stayed with the humans.”

I frowned a little. “So…..you’re the last of your kind, then?” Because I was pretty sure I’d have heard of a race of gigantic bird-lion-dragon people at some point during my life.

“Whatever makes you say that…?” He looked genuinely perplexed for a moment. “No, I don’t know how many of us are left, but there’s a good deal more than just me. I haven’t had contact with any of them in….oh, wow. Must be close to fifty years, by now. But they’re still around. You wouldn’t think it to look at us, but we’re very good at blending in.” He shot me a wink, the little crest of feathers on his head twitching a little. “We’re around.”

I couldn’t help but look a little disbelieving at that, but I didn’t comment. “Why didn’t you go? I mean….from the way Puck talked, the humans treated you all….pretty badly.” I propped my chin on my hand, still frowning. I was still trying to grasp that yes, there were eight foot tall bird-lion-dragon people wandering around, apparently invisible, in our midst. “Why stick around…?”

He snorted again at that, pulling the eggs out of the refrigerator. “Look at me. Frankly, my folks fared a lot better than most of the other races did. Humans were scared to come near us. We had a mission, and we were determined to stick to it.” He grinned again at my questioning look, and again, I had to struggle not to flinch. It was more than a little creepy. “We’re the guardians of Mother Earth. We couldn’t just up and leave her. Hell, if not for our kind, the humans probably would have used her all up a good two or three centuries ago.”

“You….protect the Earth. …..From way out here.” Yeah, that seemed plausible. It was only a few parsecs away. Right.

“Well…….sure. Close enough.” He grinned again, as if I’d gotten it all wrong but he wasn’t about to correct me. “You know, Puck’s mellowed a bit since I knew him last. I’m almost gonna be sad to see him go, this time.”

“You knew Puck before, then?”

“Oh, sure. I remember him and your grandfather both quite well. I served as Oberon’s Captain of the Guard for something like….three or four centuries, up until a century or so before the migration.”

“What happened?” Surreal as the experience was, I enjoyed hearing Milo talk.

“Ah, well…once the wedding was all over and done with, Oberon and Titania merged their armies. I stuck around for a good while after that, mind you, but having Karu as my second in command was just a bit…..uncomfortable.” He shrugged one furry shoulder, and I could see the crest of feathers on his head was standing on end a bit. “I got along with the lad well enough, mind you, but still….that brother of his….” He shuddered, an impressive sight on someone as massive….and as fuzzy….as he was. “Anyway, I figured I was due for a nice retirement, after the service I’d put in. So Oberon let me go with his blessing. I puttered around for a bit…even worked as a mercenary for a while, but eventually I decided I’d just had enough of killing things for my paycheck, and I opened the inn. This very one, actually. Had it imported from Earth, stone by stone, and put ‘er all back together again.”

“Wow…!” I looked around at the tall ceilings and intricate woodwork that surrounded us, even there in the kitchen. “That must’ve been—“

“One hell of a project, yes. Took me about three years to get everything just the way it was, and then I added on a bit….even imported the rocks from the same quarry the originals came from.” He chuckled a bit, not bothering with a measuring cup as he dumped flour and sugar into the mixing bowl. “I’m at an age where I just don’t handle change all that well, I’m afraid. Didn’t take Puck too long to track me down, once he got here, either. I guess some crazy old coot importing an entire building all the way from Earth tends to stand out in peoples’ memories.”

The rest of the afternoon passed by much in the same vein. Milo had had an interesting life, to say the very least; every story he told us led into another one, and another. I wasn’t too sure how long Biv had lived there, but every once in a while Milo would tell us something that would even surprise him. Pretty soon, I’d forgotten all about Puck’s computer, and his appointment, and the entire day had passed by, filled with surprisingly pleasant conversation and very good chocolate chip cookies. Whatever Puck was up to upstairs, I figured it must have been working out well, because none of us heard a peep from him at all….not until Milo declared it time to start on dinner and the clock was striking five o’clock, Earth time.

Milo had been in the middle of a fascinating story about Leonardo DaVinci that he made me promise never to repeat when Puck finally came bounding down the stairs, a light jacket in his hands.

“Sorry, guys, I won’t be home for dinner. Got an appointment I almost forgot about! I’ll grab something when I get back.” He paused by my chair to give me a peck on the forehead. “Princess, no more sneaking off to rescue strange men. ….oh, and save me some cookies!”

He was there and gone in such a whirlwind that Biv and I were left there just sort of staring at each other.

“Biv,” I said slowly. “Do you know where the park is…?”

“Well…yes…” He seemed a little hesitant to admit to the fact. “But—“

“Great! C’mon!” I all but dragged the poor guy from his chair, herding him towards the door.

Milo turned towards us with a frown, but before he could protest, we were out the door. It was almost half a block before I realized we were running…or at least, I was running and dragging Biv along behind me, and he was already gasping for breath and turning a concerning shade of red. I slowed down to a walk, frowning. “Not a big runner, huh?”

“Can’t……as….asthma.” Came the wheezing reply. Fumbling around in his pocket for a few seconds, he finally pulled out a little white contraption and squeezed it into his mouth, breathing in deeply, but he still seemed pretty out of breath as he spoke. “Sorry…!”

I stopped, waiting for him to catch his breath. Sure, I felt bad for him, but I had no idea where the park was without him. “It’s okay. I don’t think Milo’s following us anyway. Is it far from here to the park? I mean, it’s just a little after five now. If it’s close, we can afford to sit down for a minute.”

Biv shook his head. “Just over the hill. We can keep going, though.” He still sounded a little winded, but he wasn’t on the verge of gasping for air anymore, at least, so when he started walking again I didn’t protest. “You don’t really think Puck’s going to meet up with…him, do you?”

I just shrugged. “I hope not. But we won’t know until we see who he is meeting.”

“Couldn’t you just….trust him…?” Biv looked up at me…it felt weird to have someone have to look up at me….hopefully. “It’s probably just one of his lady friends, anyway. There are a few of them…Katherine, Katrina…..um…..K…Kandie, I think….”

“No.” I said flatly, not even waiting for him to finish. “I can’t. If he’s not doing anything wrong, he doesn’t have anything to hide.”

We were at the crest of the hill, now. I could see the park ahead. It was as dingy and crowded as the rest of the world that I’d seen so far, and coming from someone who grew up on a mining colony, that was saying something. Biv wrung his hand once, nervously, and I thought there might have been a faint tremor in his voice. “You know…..sometimes, Puck’s concept of wrong…..it can be a little……flexible.”

“Yeah,” I said sourly. “Isn’t everybody’s.” I could see that one side of the park had been sectioned off into what looked like a street fair, or something. It was packed with people so tightly that it looked like one big, shifting mass in places. The other side was more sparsely populated, with a few kids of varying sizes playing on dilapidated equipment that even I didn’t think looked safe…..except that they seemed to be playing with it less than they were throwing the junk at it that littered the ground……and what seemed to be one adult making at least a pretense of watching them. Whatever was going on on that side, it did not include Puck.

“Okay,” I decided, shrugging my shoulders. “I guess he must be on that side, if he’s anywhere. It shouldn’t be too hard to find him.”

Fifteen minutes later, I was ready to concede defeat. We could barely walk in the crowd, much less look for anyone…..or at least, I couldn’t. Biv seemed to be making his way through the thick bustle of people with practiced ease, forcing me to hold his hand just to keep from being torn away from him. Finally, I tugged him to a halt. “Shit, Biv, we might as well give up! We’re never going to find him in this….this mess!”

He just shot me a faint smile, tugging at my hand and speaking louder than I would’ve thought he was capable to be heard over the noise, the sound cutting through the myriad voices, strains of music, and what I assumed to be the sizzling of the unidentifiable meat that I could smell cooking somewhere. “Don’t give up yet…!”

Being from a colony, I thought I was used to crowded conditions, but I felt like a child as I hurried a little to keep up with Biv. When he finally came to a halt in front of a food cart, I frowned. I might’ve spoken, but the smoke and the steam and the burning meat smell nearly choked off my air supply.

Biv didn’t seem bothered by it at all. He reached up and tapped on the cart’s plastic window to get the attention of the broad figure inside. The window was opened by a thick hand, and Biv stretched up to his tiptoes a bit to be heard. “Hi Sam! Have you seen Puck anywhere around…?”

I would’ve been hard pressed to say whether Sam was male or female….the possession of both a five o’clock shadow and two pendulous breasts was throwing me for a loop…..but whatever the gender, s/he nodded, answering back in a raspy voice. “Just passed by here a little while ago. Said he was gonna go grab a drink at the beer tent, just up the aisle.”

“Thanks!” Biv shot me a triumphant grin as he tugged me along again. I could’ve kissed him at that very moment, if I weren’t too busy trying not to fall behind.

Finally the crowd thinned enough for us to at least walk side by side, and to be heard without screaming at each other. But as soon as I fell into step beside him, he disappeared from my line of view as he just…..stopped walking. “Holly…!”

I followed the line of his arm to his pointing finger, all the way to the figure ahead…..too far ahead, I hoped, to get a good look at us, through all the other people around.

The thick cloak he wore did little to hide the way he moved, far too graceful to be human and too precisely to be anything but a trained soldier. It would’ve given him away even without the telltale wisps of white hair that peeked out from beneath the cloak’s hood as he looked around, obviously looking for someone in particular.

For once, I was positive it wasn’t me. I guess I was right about what the K had stood for after all.

Chapter 28

2009-07-10T15:41:00.000-07:00

(Author's note: This chapter is from Puck's point of view. A lot of the story will be told with POV changes like this. Holly's voice is the main one in this first storyline, obviously, but once in a while things are just better told from the POV of someone who actually knows what's going on ^_~.)

I was unhappy as I made my way to the boy's room, to say the least.

I've never had much of a temper. In fact, I've had people tell me just the opposite; that happens, after a few decades of schooling yourself not to get angry over the stupid things that often come out of the mouths of others. You tend to forget that it's okay to get angry when something's well and truly wrong. I'm good at what I do. I work out the problems between people, and help them come to a harmonious conclusion. I've used it to stop wars, I've used it to negotiate the release of prisoners, I've even negotiated marriages, and I don't think I've lost more than a hand or two of poker in the last century, and all because I've learned to control my emotions. Or at least my body's reactions to them. I've had people tell me, though, that I'm just being a doormat. Of course, it was usually Kiasis or one of her esteemed family, so I tend to take it with a grain of salt.

As I pushed open the door, I was damned good and angry. And I was okay with it. As the Sch'silians themselves say, anger directed with a purpose is a powerful tool.

He seemed to be recovering quite well, sitting on the edge of the bed next to Tallana and wiping his face with a tissue. At least he'd quit crying. That was a relief, actually. Watching people cry just tends to suck all the fury right out of me, and I wasn't quite ready to watch all this nice, useful anger go right down the drain.

"Tallana. Milo." The big gryphon swiveled his head on his neck like an owl to look at me when I came in. I hated it when he did that. Creepy as hell. I smiled anyway, though, and nobody would have ever thought it wasn't the kind, concerned smile it was supposed to be. Another perk of the job. "Would you guys do me a favor and take Holly downstairs? I'd really like for you to take a look at her cheek." I targeted Milo with my worried gaze. "I'm kind of afraid she might have a broken jaw, but you know I'm awful with that home diagnostic equipment…." Not that I wasn't genuinely worried about the kid…? But if Milo went, Tallana would go, and I wanted to get rid of both of them as quickly as possible so I could have a talk alone with Victor. And nothing drove Milo quite as fast as someone who might need fussing over.

He looked at me a little strangely, but in the end he got up and headed out the door, Tallana following close behind. I forget sometimes that Milo's known me for an extremely long time. There are times he can read me pretty well, I think, but for that moment I was just happy to see them go, and I closed the door behind them. For a minute or two, we just looked at each other appraisingly.

“I really don’t wanna hear any more bullshit about how life goes on,” he said finally, looking up at me with cool green eyes. I felt another pang of pity for him. Just like Holly at times, those were not the eyes of a child. It never ceased to amaze me how different the human culture was. Sure, physically, our kids grow at pretty much the same rate. But I’d never seen someone so young, on my world, with such old eyes. Yeah, of course, there are tragedies. But while humans tend to say clichéd things like “children are our most valuable treasure,” my folk actually practice it. “My parents are dead, my sister’s dead…there’s really nothing left for me. I don’t know why the fuck you people couldn’t just leave me the hell alone and let me join them.”

I shrugged, shaking off my thoughts. “Hey, I got nothin’ over here. If I’d found you, I wouldn’t have bothered. Suicide is a reasonably viable alternative to an unpleasant life, where I come from. Personally, I don’t much care for it. I feel like it’s a smack in the face of whatever greater being decided we were worth the trouble of creating. But, free will and all that. It’s your life.”

“Great.” He pushed himself to his feet, heading towards the bathroom. “So you won’t mind if I just go finish up in the bathroom, then. I’m sure there’s a razorblade or something useful in there.”

“Sure, I guess.” I barely glanced at him as he walked. “If you really want to just spit in the face of your parents, and your sister, and those people under this roof who risked their asses to make sure you stayed alive. Who’m I to judge?”

I didn’t have to be watching to know he’d stopped. I let him sit there and stew for a minute or two before speaking again.

“I mean, if you really think none of those people would be disappointed that you threw your life away, just go for it. Try not to leave a mess, though, huh? Somebody’s got to clean this place. Have a little consideration.” I sat down on the bed, still carefully not looking at him.

He was thinking, now. I could hear the gears turning.

See, people don’t tend to go through with suicide attempts unless they’re sure. Granted, most of the time they’re an emotional mess, and not really in the proper mental state to really be sure, but they think they are. Long enough to get the deed done, anyway. Plant a little doubt in their mind, and the ones who aren’t actually sure tend to crumble like the six-year-old corn chips hidden in my passenger seat. He wasn’t the first person I’ve known who was all gung-ho to end all the misery they felt life had become. Sadly, I doubt he’ll be the last. I’d say it’s only human nature, but humans aren’t the only ones affected by tunnel vision.

Again I was silent for a few minutes, letting the doubt brew up in his mind. “Of course, you could always just stick around here for a while. Maybe make something useful out of a life that at least one person’s died to keep going.” I turned around to look at him finally. “Up to you, though.”

He was watching me suspiciously, just like I knew he would be. Perfect. “Yeah? Like what?”

My shoulder lifted in an unconcerned shrug. “I’ve got suggestions. But only if you seriously wanna hear them. I don’t like wasting my breath.” I made my across the room to stand in between him and the bathroom door, fixing him with a serious look. “But first, one thing.” I crossed my arms, leaning against the doorjamb. “I’m a pacifist, in general. I don’t like killing, I don’t like fighting….Hell, I don’t even like to yell at people. But if you ever lay another hand on any of the people under this roof…..from the little guy down the hall to the big feathery one downstairs….I’ll end your life myself, without a second thought.” My eyes narrowed a little bit. I couldn’t quite help it; I was still angry. I’m a pacifist, but I’m not a saint, y’know. Just looking like I can turn my emotions on and off like a switch is hard enough, actually doing it is impossible. “Especially the skinny little girl who could’ve had a death way worse than your sister’s was, rescuing your ass. Got it?”

He glared at me a little…I didn’t blame him, but some things needed to be straightened out right from the get-go. ….but he nodded mutely.

“Great!” I clapped a friendly hand on his shoulder, steering him back toward the bed. “Now….about those suggestions….”

Chapter 27

2009-02-09T21:51:00.000-08:00

I’d heard of people being too scared to make a sound before, but I’d never experienced it until that moment. As I stood there, watching his body twitch and swing at the end of his makeshift rope of bed linens, my mouth worked silently, trying to make some noise, any noise escape to bring help….but there was nothing, not so much as a squeak.

But I could move. There was a chair tipped onto its side beneath his feet that he’d obviously used to climb up and fix the rope to the ceiling. I righted it clumsily, climbing up onto the back and stretching as high as I could. It was no good; he was a good bit taller than me, and the spot where the sheets were wound around the light fixture was far out of reach. There was only one thing to do, and it only gave me one real shot: I jumped for the rope as hard as I could, managing to latch onto it desperately with one hand. Our combined weight brought the fixture crashing down on top of us as we fell to the floor.

I scrambled to my hands and knees, scurrying to shove both my hands between his throat and the loop of fabric constricted around it. I could feel my nails gouging into his flesh as I grabbed hold and pulled as hard as I could, but the knot slipped, letting loose its death grip on his neck. He might already be dead, the pessimist in me warned. His neck could be broken, hell, it could’ve broken in the fall. He could have been in his death throes already when I showed up, I’d read that people who hung themselves often twitched long after they were dead. His windpipe could have been crushed, or hell, I might just not have been fast enough, and he’d already gone too long without air—

A raspy, shuddering breath interrupted my train of thought, and I just stared at him in shock for a second that he was actually alive. I stretched the noose even wider, sliding it up and over his head. “Victor! Hey! Can you hear me? Open your eyes!” I was afraid to actually move him, but I patted his cheek lightly with my hand. It felt hot beneath my palm….hot and sweaty and kind of gross, actually, as awful as I know that sounds. I never was big on touching other people. But it was worth it, because his eyes blinked open, struggling to focus for a second or two before resting on me, obviously trying to process what had just happened.

Then his fist connected with my jaw, and my vision was taken over by a shower of stars as I flew back on my ass.

I’m sure it was a pretty awkward punch, him just having escaped death and woken back up to the land of the living and all, but it hurt. In fact, it had been years since I had been punched solid right in the face like that, and it hurt a lot more than I remembered.

“Fuck!” That’s what I was trying to say, anyway. It came out more of an incoherent, garbled screech. “What the fuck!” Articulate, I know, but it was t he best I could do while writhing on the floor in agony.

“You bitch! You fucking stupid bitch!” Victor’s screaming wasn’t much more coherent than mine; his voice was raspy and practically nonexistent, not that it stopped him. “Why the fuck did you do that? Why did you fuck it up?”

I was up on my knees by this time, my hand pressed over my nose and mouth because I really didn’t want to know just yet where the steady flow of blood was coming from. “You were dying!”

“You fucking idiot! You moron! You really don’t get it, do you? My sister is gone. She’s fucking dead! Without her, I’ve got nothing!”

I wondered dimly just what the hell t he walls of this building were insulated with, that no one had heard all the noise we were making. I also wondered just where my invisible protector was now. Maybe he just didn’t want Tengu to kill me, because Victor was coming at me again—at this point, I probably would have let him hang himself cheerfully, if only he’d asked—and I threw my hands up over my head to protect myself. Not the most brilliant evasive maneuver, sure, but it beat getting socked in the jaw again.

The blows never landed. When I finally lifted my head to see what had happened, he was pinned to the wall, stuck some three or four feet above the floor as if by invisible shackles.

I let my breath out in a long sigh of relief. About fucking time, I thought silently in the hopes whatever was looking out for me could read minds.

It must have been his loud demands that I put him down (like if I could’ve done that to him, I would have waited until after he punched me) that finally brought Biv to investigate. Frozen in the doorway, he just stared for a long moment before turning and fleeing down the hall. He returned a moment later with a very sleepy-eyed Puck, whose half awake commentary might have made me laugh; as it was, it just made me snort blood into the back of my throat and start coughing.

“Well, what the hell. Can’t take my eyes off you people for a second, can I?”

Biv was the one who finally helped me to my feet, since he wasn’t absorbed in dreaming up witty observations. “Oh, Holly!” His eyes got even wider, if that was possible, when he got a good look at my face and all the blood dribbling out from under my fingers. “Your face…!”

That did make me laugh, and I instantly regretted it. My cheek and lips felt like they’d been inflated with a tire pump. I could only imagine what I looked like. By that time, Tallana and Milo had arrived as well, and Victor had at some point slid down from the wall and curled up into a sobbing ball on the floor.

“You okay, princess?” Puck leaned over to try and peel my hand away from my mouth, and I considered seriously jabbing him in the eye. “Come on.” Sliding an arm around my waist, he gently tried to pry me away from Biv. “It’s alright, Bivvy. I’ll go get her taken care of. You’ve already got one patient, and she’s hard enough to handle, right?”

Biv glanced involuntarily towards his room. It was pretty clear he didn’t like leaving Kiasis alone, but he seemed hesitant to leave me, either.

“It’s okay.” I started to smile, and then remembered that that would probably not only hurt, it’d probably be pretty damn ghastly as well, what with all the blood in my mouth. “It’s just a bump.” A bump that left me talking like I had a whole bag of marshmallows in my mouth. Marshmallows with razorblades inside. But I supposed I’d live.

He still hesitated, but in the end he squeezed my arm, flashed me a sympathetic look, and headed back to his own room—with barely a glance at Victor as he p assed him by, I noticed with a certain amount of vicious smugness.

Myself, I wanted to walk over there and kick him where he lay, but Puck insisted on herding me gently out into the hall and towards his room instead. He’d left the door open in his rush to come to my aid, and I stopped walking for a second when I got my first good look at the room’s interior. If I’d ever pictured what Puck’s room would look like on the inside, it wouldn’t have been this. It looked like a computer and a library had had some kind of obscene orgy, and left the space littered with forgotten children. Books and papers and mechanical parts threatened to tumble down on my head as he guided me to the bed, the one clear space in the room, and sat me down on the mattress’s edge. On the far side of the room, a computer terminal whined and clicked for its master’s attention, but Puck was too busy rummaging through a half-open drawer to pay it any mind.

“I know I’ve got one here somewh—ha!” He finally surfaced with an instant cold pack in his hand, bending it sharply to activate it. “Here, put this on your cheek.” A moment later, he had a damp cloth in his hand as well, and was using it to gingerly wipe the rapidly crusting blood away from my face. “Y’know, if this is what happens when I tell you to go clean up, by all means, next time feel free to stay dirty…!”

His teasing didn’t even make my lips twitch. “He tried to hang himself!” I blurted out from behind the cold pack (which felt like heaven, by the way). “Then, when I got him down, he punched me!”

“Well, thanks for sharing that,” He replied absently as he finished mopping the blood off my chin. “Since I’m betting all Milo and Tallana are going to get out of him any time soon are a variety of different ways to say ‘Oh, poor me, I’m all alone in the world.’”

I frowned a little bit. Sure, I didn’t like the guy too much right now, but that seemed just a little harsh. “Well…..I guess he kind of is.”

“And what were you, before we met? What was I, for that matter, when I came here? I don’t know about you, but I’ve never tried to play cat’s cradle in the rafters because of it. Everybody finds themselves alone, one time or another. Call me a crazy pacifist, but I don’t think that gives them the right to go around smashing the noses of people half their size, especially when they’re just trying to help. And as soon as he’s out of the fetal position, I intend to go explain that to him. Now…let’s find you a new shirt.” He pushed himself away from the bed and crossed the room to his closet. “I think that one’s seen better days, and I don’t see me making it out of here to go shopping for you any time soon.”

I didn’t answer, but I looked down at myself, and I had to agree. I was lucky that particular shirt hadn’t just fallen off me in shreds by now. I felt a little guilty, because it wasn't even mine, it was Biv's, but there wasn't much I could do about it now. Waiting patiently for him to find something suitable, my eyes fell to a stack of books at my feet, and I reached down to take a quick look at their titles. The first was in Spanish. The second one was in a different language; I thought it was German, but I couldn’t be sure. The next had a title made out in symbols that my eyes didn’t even immediately register as letters; Japanese, maybe? Finally, my eyes lit on an English title--Expansion of Moments for Solving Time Dependent Neutron Transport in Semi-Infinite Medium.

…………

…..What? I’d read the title and still didn’t know what it was about. “You read all this stuff?”

“Oh, sure!” Grinning, Puck tossed a clean shirt across my knees. “I’ve been stuck here a long time, you know. It’s only natural I puck up a language or ten along the way, and I knew a few of them before I came. Besides, it was the best way to get all the information I needed. A lot of the best schools don’t teach in English, and I don’t care what anybody says, there’s always something lost in translation.”

I turned the book over, repeating aloud the one phrase I nearly understood. “Theoretical physics…?”

“Well, that’s what I started out to learn, anyway. I ended up dabbling in a lot of other stuff along the way, though. It seemed like every world that I came to when I was searching for you, they had different ideas, different theories that I wanted to see if I could incorporate into my own work, and it was just so different learning it hands-on than it was reading about it….then I started getting asked to lecture, and they started giving me grants….can you imagine, getting free money just to learn things and prove you’re right about them? For about the first ten years, I was in heaven, let me tell you!” He seemed to be on a bit of a roll, but he sobered suddenly, his hands dropping to his sides. “But I’m afraid it might have slowed me down in my search for you. I’m sorry for that, I really am. Kiasis kept telling me not to get sucked into it. But!” He brightened again like somebody had turned on a light bulb behind his eyes. “It was for the best, in the long run…!”

Apparently, I was supposed to get the point of that statement. I didn’t, and I’m sure my blank stare told him as much.

“Well, we’ve got to get home somehow, don’t we? Here, look!” Dropping down to his knees, he reached beneath the bed and pulled out a long metal case, flipping the lid open proudly.

I’d never seen him look so excited and animated about anything, at least not since finding me. It almost made me feel bad that the only way I could describe his proud creation was an unidentifiable jumble of computer chips, wires and metal.

“It looks like a jumble of computer chips, wires and metal.”

He looked at me like I’d just insulted his firstborn child. “This is not a jumble of anything….! This drive would revolutionize the way our ships travel through space. It’ll completely rework the rate at which fuel is consumed, and the speed at which ships can move. It could send our military exploration teams in search of new universes to explore, instead of just planets!” Sighing, he let the lid drop and pushed the case back beneath the bed again. “That is, if they ever saw it.”

“Why wouldn’t they?” I took the cold pack away from my face and lifted the t-shirt to examine it. Besides looking like it was barely my size, let alone Puck’s, it was pale pink, and there were a pair of long-tailed songbirds on the front. Beneath the birds, in flowing script, was the word “Swallows.” Nice. “Why would you even make the thing, if you weren’t ever going to let anybody see it…?” I took another look at the shirt…maybe I could turn it inside out. “Um…are you sure this is yours…?”

Puck turned, eyes grazing over the front of the shirt before I found it snatched out of my hands. “Don’t know where that one came from.” He returned to the closet, pulling out a box labeled “Lost and Found” in hastily scrawled black ink. It was spilling over with a variety of items, many of them pastel and lacy.

I arched an eyebrow. “You have a lost and found in your closet….?”

He at least had the decency to seem a little uncomfortable. “Hey, all work and no play, right? Anyway,” He finally tugged another shirt out of the tangle of fabrics and tossed it to me, this one pale blue and blissfully plain. “You remember how I mentioned that I was a sprite? Sprites are just not like the other races on Faerie.” He tossed me the shirt, raising a fingertip to tap his temple. “There’s a lot going on up here, but magic just isn’t on the list. Oberon’s magic got me here, just like it did Titania, but if I want to get home, until someone runs communication lines all the way to Faerie, I’ve got to make my own ticket.”

“So….he just….stranded you here….?” I looked at him skeptically. “Some great friend.”

“That friend is your family, remember; be nice. And he wasn’t thinking straight. What’s a decade or two between friends, anyway, at least when you live to be our age? Anyway, I’ve already used it on short test runs. It’ll take all of about six hours for me to plug it into the engine of my ship, and we’ll make it home in less than a month.”

My eyes bulged a bit. “A month?”

“Hey, compared to the century the trip would take without it, we’re getting an express ticket, okay? The trick is, getting back to my ship and getting the thing in without your fan club coming along to snatch you and the drive right up.”

“Why would they want to steal the drive?” That didn’t make any sense to me. “They got here by magic, didn’t they? Why would Tengu and Karu need it…?”

“They don’t need it to get home. But Titania does. The terms of the spell Oberon used to exile her state that she ‘may not return home by means of her own magicks, nor by any others’.’ So Tengu can’t ferry her back home the same way he will his brother…”

“….but they could use that thing,” I pointed under the bed, where the drive lay out of sight. “And take her home again?”

“And leave you and me stranded or dead in the process, yeah. So until I figure out how to do it safely, it stays right here with me and you. Now, I’m going to go see if your boxing partner is still planning on dangling himself from the lighting fixtures anytime soon if left to his own devices. You go ahead and change shirts, and just open the door up when you’re done, okay?” He hovered by the doorway until he saw me nod, then he pulled the door shut behind him.

It was less than a couple of minutes before there was a knock at the door again. Impatient, I thought as I went to answer it, but it wasn’t Puck. It was Biv.

“I brought you a glass of water,” he said quietly. “Your face looks…..better.”

“I haven’t had the guts to look at it yet.” I smiled a little. “I bet I look like I got caught on the wrong side of a six-car pile up, huh?”

That made Biv smile a little, at least. “It’s not that bad….”

“Riiiight.” I wasn’t all that worried about it, to be honest. I doubted it was anything that was going to leave a scar, and it wasn’t like I really planned on winning any beauty contests soon. I took the glass of water, taking a small drink, and a sudden, persistent chiming noise drew my attention. “What’s that…?” It was annoying, whatever it was.

“Oh,” Biv just shrugged. “It’s the message alert on Puck’s computer. It’ll keep making that sound until he clicks on the message.”

“Oh. One of those. I hate those things.” Frowning at the source of the irritating racket, I walked over to click on the screen’s message box. The message would pop up, unless it was radically different from every other mail system in creation, I could tell Puck about it when he came back, and my ears wouldn’t be assaulted by the horrid sound until then.

When the box popped up, I really didn’t intend to read it, but it was so short I couldn’t really help but see the single line of text:

Must move our meeting to later. Six o’clock, in the main square. –K.

I stared at it, blinking, before I turned away. There had to be a million people on Acomia alone who could sign a note with the initial K. Surely Puck was meeting one of them, and not the K. who sprang into my overworked mind.

Of course. I was exhausted, and being overly paranoid and suspicious, I told myself. Daring rescue attempts and near-broken jaws and the like aside, things were just going too well for me. Maybe I was looking for something wrong, something that could mess things up, and seeing things that weren't really there...?

That had to be it, of course. There was no way Puck was sneaking around, having private meetings with someone who seemed pretty devoted to helping his brother murder me.

....Right....?

Chapter 26

2009-02-05T23:35:00.000-08:00

Karu woke to the feel of something cold and hard at his back. The soldier in him automatically tried to place it, running through familiar possibilities so he could get his bearings—too hard for wood, too smooth for quarried stone, not smooth enough for marble—but came up with nothing.

It wasn’t until he had regained enough of his senses to remember that he was no longer at home that he realized he lay atop the fake stone-stuff that the humans called concrete. What had happened…? Oh….yes. The fight. With the alien woman. He had seen her before, heard her voice many times over the years, but never fought with her. She fought like a demon; were he from one of the more superstitious faerie kinds, that was exactly what he would have assumed her to be. He should be dead right now, by all rights—

And yet he wasn’t. With horror, he realized that could only mean that Tengu had sacrificed their chance to complete their mission to heal him.

Shoving himself raggedly to his feet, he stumbled up the ramp to the interior of their stolen ship. It was dark; he could barely make out his brother’s form, dimly illuminated by the lights of the control panel in front of him, into which he stared like stone. When his presence brought no response, Karu ventured to speak cautiously. “…Brother…?”

“A second time.” The answer was tight, overwound with tension that Karu was helpless to ease. “A second time she was within arm’s reach, and yet she slipped away from me..!” With a sudden flare of temper that made Karu shrink back, the healer slammed his fist into the control panel, the occasional spark mixing with the small droplets of blood that splattered onto the lighted display before the small hurts closed over again, and Tengu fell silent, eyes closing resignedly.

“Tengu…” There were no words, really. They had failed, miserably and utterly. Karu had been on the wrong end of the queen’s wrath before, and he did not relish the thought of being so again; but more, Tengu had failed in what he had set out to do, and Karu knew very well how that would eat at him.

His reflections were interrupted by his brother’s voice, harsh and rather distant. “She would speak with me. I will go in the morning; you will stay here.”

“I’ll go with—“

“It will be far easier if I don’t have to defend the both of us from her anger, don’t you think…?”

Karu winced at that. Swords, arrows, cannons….those he could deal with. But the magicks that ruled his brother’s world he was a liability against, and that ate at him. “Very well.”

“Good. Go rest; you aren’t done healing.”

“What about you…?” It was seldom that he’d seen his brother looking so haggard and worn. It was wearing at him, being in this strange place, among strange people, with what seemed to be an impossible task in front of them. He could almost hate Puck and the human girl for that reason alone.

“Soon.”

Karu knew when argument was pointless. Sighing softly, he made his way to the back of the ship and sprawled out on one of the bunks, but he did not sleep; his mind was working too furiously, behind his closed eyes.

I went to Biv’s room first, as per my instructions. Really, I just didn’t want to see a stranger with red, puffy eyes and a nose that was still slightly runny. He answered the door almost at the first knock, either because he was anxious for my arrival or he was trying to keep the noise down for Kiasis’ sake, and he smiled and threw his arms around me in a tight hug, his voice as soft as ever. “I’m so glad you’re alright…!”

I wasn’t really used to that much physical contact all in the same day, but I hugged him back anyway. It was kind of hard to resist. “I’m sorry I worried everybody.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he started to say, but I cut him off.

“I didn’t think. I mean….I don’t know if it would have kept me from going, but…I’m sorry anyway.” I was stumbling all over the words, and I knew it, but at least it was an apology.

He blushed, suddenly looking like he didn’t quite know what to do; I got the impression he wasn’t all that used to people apologizing to him, so I changed the subject, my eyes settling on Kiasis’ sleeping form in the bed on the other side of the room. “Is it really alright for somebody with a head wound to be asleep like that…?”

“For her, I guess it is.” Biv cast a rather worried glance in her direction. “Milo said so, anyway. I guess she’s different than humans.”

“She looks like she’s breathing okay, anyway.” At least, the rise and fall of her chest was regular and unlabored; I had no idea how fast or slow Sch’silians were supposed to breathe. “Maybe we ought to go outside in the hallway, so we don’t wake her up.”

Biv nodded, and we walked outside, closing the door quietly behind us. I noticed, when we stepped out into the brighter light of the hallway, that Biv wasn’t looking all that great himself; he had dark circles under his eyes, and his clothes were a little wrinkled, as if he’d slept in them. “Are you okay…? You look…tired.”

“I’m fine,” he said absently. “I didn’t sleep all that well last night.”

I felt a pang of guilt. Sure, I’m sure I wasn’t the only one he was worrying over, but I was the only one I had any control over. “Sorry.”

“No, it wasn’t that, it was—“ He stopped suddenly, waving me off, and changed the subject. “What happened last night, anyway?” I recognized it for what it was, but I figured if he wanted to keep whatever was bothering him to himself, he was entitled. “Milo didn’t say very much when he brought her upstairs. Just that you guys snuck out, and she got hurt, and Puck was pretty angry. I could hear him yelling all the way up here.” Biv sounded faintly scandalized; from his widened eyes, I guessed that Puck didn’t do a whole lot of yelling.

“Yeah….I guess he was pretty pissed off. But we didn’t really sneak out. I snuck out. And then I think Tallana snuck out after Kiasis.” I had a bit of a hard time picturing Kiasis sneaking anywhere. She didn’t much seem to give a damn what people thought of her actions. Suddenly feeling the lack of sleep, I sighed and slid down the wall to sit on the floor. Biv followed me, pulling his knees up to his chest, and I quietly told him every detail of what happened.

By the time I was done, Biv was frowning. “It’s a shame about his….what’s his name? Victor? …..his sister. But I think you’re lucky you’re all alive.”

“Yeah,” I nodded, rubbing at my face. “It was worth it, though. At least he’s still alive.”

“Are you going to go check on him?”

I nodded. I wasn’t particularly looking forward to it. I could understand why he wasn’t the most pleasant person in the world right now, but I felt bad enough that his sister didn’t make it. I wasn’t sure I was eager to have him pile a little more guilt onto the load. But like Puck had said, it was my responsibility to look in on him. “I just wanted to stop in and see you first.” Taking a deep breath, I pushed myself to my feet. “I guess I ought to go, though.”

Biv nodded his agreement as he rose as well. “If he’s hungry, I can go downstairs and make him something to eat.”

“That’s a relief. My cooking couldn’t do anything but make him feel worse.” I grinned weakly.

Stepping forward, Biv’s arms closed around me in another brief hug. “Just let me know. Tallana took him to the room at the end of the hall.”

Steeling myself for an unpleasant experience, I said my goodbyes to Biv and headed down the hallway. He wasn’t exactly going to be happy to see me, I was sure. Taking another deep breath, I lifted my fist and knocked on the door. When a few minutes went by and nothing happened, I knocked again. No response.

Carefully, I cracked the door open, expecting to find him asleep on the bed. The bed, however, was empty and unmade, and I frowned, opening the door up further to look around the room.

Turned out all I had to do was look up, because he was dangling by his neck from the lighting fixture in the center of the ceiling.

Chapter 25

2009-02-03T17:10:00.000-08:00

Granted, it was still very early as we made our way home, but it still spoke volumes about Acomia’s Marketplace that three people half dragging, half leading a Sch’silian woman with a freely bleeding head wound didn’t even arouse very many second glances.

The Inn still appeared to be dark. That was a very good thing; I hadn’t been looking forward to the possibility of having to explain to Puck what we’d been doing. Granted, he was going to find out eventually, what with the new person in our midst and Kiasis’ head wound, but I was desperate enough to hope that it would go better if he didn’t catch us sneaking in like a bunch of thieves.

It was no easy task getting Kiasis in the door quietly. I held the door, while Tallana and Victor mostly carried her inside, her boots making a scraping sound across the tile that sounded like thunder to my ears. I let the door slowly swing shut and froze, half expecting the overhead lighting to flicker on like a spotlight announcing our arrival, but nothing happened. I think we were all a little uncertain of what to do now that we’d actually made it back without getting caught, because we all three stopped moving, turning to stare at each others’ shadowy forms in the weak dawn’s sunlight.

The sharp voice cut through our moment of relief like an electric shock, and one of us let out a little squeak of shock. It might have been me. “Well? Are you all just going to stand there while Kiasis bleeds on the damned floor, or are you going to tell Milo and me just what the fuck you thought you were doing…?”

All three of us turned to stare at Puck mutely. I don’t know about the others, but the towering gryphon frowning at us from behind him didn’t do much to set my mind at ease.

Finally, it was Kiasis who answered, her voice quiet and faintly slurred, but otherwise perfectly deadpan, and I wondered suddenly if Sch’silians were as humorless as everyone said. “If my bleeding on the floor displeases you, there is a bucket on the other side of the bar.”

His attention suddenly focused on her, he stalked across the bar in a few quick steps, and I was suddenly reminded as I rarely had been that I was watching something wholly inhuman by the grace and speed with which he moved. Puck was more than irritated, more than angry; he was livid, and I had to wonder just how smart it was of Kiasis to draw his attention. I know in her place, I sure as hell wouldn’t have. “You,” he hissed, wide eyes narrowing to amber slits. “I know this was your idea. Tallana would never have thought of it, and Holly would have gotten lost before she made it halfway there.” I felt blood creeping into my cheeks. Did he really think I was that inept that I couldn’t find my way to somewhere I’d just come from a few hours before? “Well? What the hell do you have to say for yourself? That was stupid, even for you. Bad enough you risked your own life, without risking the life of a child in the process.”

Kiasis just stared back at him levelly. I’m sure it was just a trick of the light and shadows, but she almost looked like she was wearing a faint smirk. She said something, then, in a harsh, rather stilted language that I supposed must be her own native tongue……then her eyes rolled back in her head.

For a second, Puck looked like he was seriously considering punching her. I knew, because I’d considered it more than once myself. Then he focused his anger, briefly, on Tallana, speaking through tightly gritted teeth. “Take her upstairs. And take your little friend with you, I don’t even want to think about what we’re going to do with him just yet.”

If Milo had had any scathing words to say to us on his own, he swallowed them back in the face of Puck’s tirade. Instead, his voice was steady and calm as he moved to tug Kiasis easily out of Tallana and Victor’s grasp. “Tallana, go get some ice from the kitchen. We’ll take her to Biv’s room, he wanted to know when you got back.” Without another word, he carried Kiasis’ unconscious form toward the stairs with one arm, ushering Victor along in front of him.

That left me alone to face the rest of Puck’s wrath. Great.

Surprisingly enough (at least, it surprised me ), I didn’t flinch when he turned his glare on me. His cheeks were flushed a brighter red than his hair, his nostrils were flaring with every breath, and I was pretty sure I could see a tiny vein bulging near his hairline.

I wondered, briefly, if fairytale creatures like him could suffer from mundane things like heart attacks or high blood pressure.

His voice, oddly, was quite measured and calm when he finally spoke again. “Would you like to explain just why you felt it necessary to do something so fucking stupid as sneak out in the middle of the night to meet up with the one person who could probably provide you with the most painful, lingering death you could possibly imagine…?”

I was pretty sure there was no correct answer to that, so I stayed quiet.

“I have jumped through hoops, risked my ass and other peoples’, and generally devoted my entire being for the last few days to making sure you stayed alive and whole. Do you really have such a death wish? Should I just face the fact that I’m wasting my time, and you really do want to end up an unidentifiable pile of goo in some alley somewhere? Because that’s what Titania will do to you, even if Tengu doesn’t finish you off. Hell, if you’re in that big a hurry to kick the bucket, maybe I should just help you out, and shoot you out the airlock the next time we go into space!”

Again I was silent. His voice was steadily rising into the yell I’d expected in the first place, and I could feel my cheeks starting to burn. Yeah, sure, I had known it was a stupid thing to do when I’d done it. But there’d been another person’s life at stake; I really found it hard to believe that he didn’t see another living being’s life as being worth risking mine over. Was that what it was like, where he came from? Screw the other guy, keep your own ass safe?

And that was when it hit me. I mean, I’d heard the words before, when he’d said as much. Twice, actually; once, back on the ship, even though he wasn’t yelling nearly as loud when he’d said it. He had risked his life for someone else’s, and repeatedly: mine. Whether it was because of my mother, or my grandfather, or whatever the reason, I really mattered enough to at least one other person in the universe that they were willing to risk dying for my sake, just to keep me safe and whole, and the sudden realization made my throat close up, despite the fact that he was still yelling at me angrily.

“—I mean, of all the idiotic things you could have done, that had to be one of the—Aw….shit.” He stopped yelling suddenly to lean over and peer closely at my face. “You’re not gonna cry, are you…?” He sounded both worried and just a little horrified.

I started to open my mouth to tell him that of course I wasn’t. No sound came out, though, and the next thing I knew I had my face pressed into the silk of his shirt.

“Awww…..! Hush, honey, it’s okay, really..!” Under other circumstances, I probably would have laughed at how fast he switched gears from telling me what a stupid thing I’d done and what a moron I was, to telling me that it was all okay. As it was, I just sniffled, dimly aware that I was grinding my teeth so hard in an effort not to sob that I couldn’t open my mouth to respond. “I wasn’t even really mad, so much.” I could feel him patting my hair a bit awkwardly. “I was just worried, you know? I just found you, I don’t want to lose you already…!”

That was when the tears broke loose. Maybe it was the sincerity in his voice, despite the fact that he was trying surreptitiously to work a few bar napkins between my snotty face and his fine silk shirt, or maybe I was just that desperate to believe that someone honestly, truly cared about me and whether I lived or died, but suddenly I believed every word he’d ever said to me. About my parents, about this whole other world that I’d had a really hard time believing even existed, about everything.

It was a good ten or fifteen minutes before I finally peeled my face away from his shirt. Real life tears are nothing like tears in the movies or on the vids. They’re snotty, sticky, leave you hiccupping and crusty-eyed, and also vaguely embarrassed when you realize that you’ve sunk down into a man’s lap at some point when he stepped backwards and sat down, and there’s currently a string of drool linking his silk clad shoulder to your lips.

But Puck just smiled as he took another handful of napkins and dabbed at my face. “All done…?”

I nodded, scrubbing my eyes on the back of my sleeve.

“Good. Go upstairs and get yourself cleaned up, and then stop by Biv’s room, because I wasn’t the only one worried sick.” I looked down, slightly ashamed of myself. Really, I’d never stopped to think about anything other than my own willingness to risk my life. I’d never given a thought to the people I left behind, and whether or not they would even care that I was gone. “And then you can go look in on the stray you brought home and make sure he’s getting settled in.”

I looked at him rather curiously. “Me….?” Not that I minded, but…well….I was hardly the caretaker type. Besides, I barely knew where anything was myself. Didn’t I get a break for being the new kid…?

“You brought ‘im home, he’s all yours.” Puck’s grin told me that no, no I did not get a break as he gently pushed me off his lap and stood up himself. “Besides, I’ve got to go change my shirt and take a nap. I was up all night, you know…?” If anything, my withering glare as he headed for the staircase just made him grin wider.

Official News

2008-11-04T23:20:00.000-08:00

Okay. I hate to do this, but it's something I should have given in and done a good month or so ago at least. For the whole two people left checking this story regularly, it is now on a n official hiatus until after Christmas. Between work and family and other things, I know there is no way I will be able to return to regular updates until then. I may be able to post some things on occasion, but nothing even close to regular. I feel bad, and it sucks just as much for me as for anybody else, but that's just the way things go sometimes; I'd rather return after Christmas and actually be able to devote a decent amount of attention to this project than to half-ass it and end up neglecting it most of the time.

On the bright side, as a consolation, I leave you (temporarily) with two pictures: one of a character you're familiar with, and one that you haven't met yet (and probably won't until early spring lol).

Chapter 24

2008-08-05T23:39:00.000-07:00

“Wait! Stop!” Heads snapped around as I stepped out of our hiding place. “Can’t you see she’s not even armed? You can’t draw your sword!” Sure, I’ll admit that at first it was just a thoughtless action spurred on by the unfairness of the impending fight, but as I kept speaking, there was a nebulous idea forming in my mind. I was betting on either one of two things: either Karu did have an honorable streak hiding somewhere beneath all that arrogance, and wouldn’t really fight an unarmed opponent, or he was at least proud enough that he wouldn’t want to be seen as a coward who’d fight someone unarmed, even in front of enemies.

Or, I was completely off the mark, and we were all just screwed.

I breathed an internal sigh of relief as his arm froze with the sword still only halfway out of its sheath. “You obviously sought out this confrontation,” he said almost warily. “Your presence here is no accident. Am I really to blame that you came unarmed and unprepared?” He leveled a stare at me, which I almost didn’t even notice under the weight of the death glare Kiasis was giving me, and for an awful second I thought he expected an answer. I didn’t have on; I was fresh out of witty dialogue. After an interminable silence, he finally spoke again. “Fine.” The sword slid quietly back into its resting place, and, to my relief, he slid the belt from his waist and dropped it to the ground. “Is that more acceptable, your highness?” There was a surprising lack of derision in the title, but before I could respond, his attention was focuses back on Kiasis.

“Well?” He eyed her expectantly. “If this combat is to be unarmed, hadn’t we better get it started? Personally, I would like to get this over with so that my brother and I can fulfill our obligation to take the princess here to meet her eager step-grandmother, and we can finally go home.”

Kiasis’ answer, after a brief pause to give me another glare that did not bode well for our future relations, was to launch herself at the elf, planting her foot squarely in his stomach. He rolled to his feet, looking a bit winded but none the worse for wear……and then he grinned.

The two of them erupted into a flurry of punches and kicks that my eyes could barely even follow, despite the fact that I was rooted to the ground trying, wincing every time I saw a splattering of blood fly out from one of them to hit the floor or the wall. I might have stayed right there until the fight was over one way or another if not for a sharp elbow to my ribs.

“The boy, stupid!” Tallana reminded me sharply, jerking her head at the figure on the other side of the meelee, huddled against the side of the ship and staring in shock much as I’d been. “Now, while he’s distracted!”

We tried to make it around the fighting pair without notice, but our only path was visible enough to make that a lost cause. Luckily, when Karu’s eyes locked on us, Kiasis landed a punch to his jaw that made his eyes briefly roll back into his head, and he could no longer afford to spare us any more attention.

Our quarry, however, proved less than cooperative once we reached his side. “Little late for a fucking rescue, isn’t it?” He snapped as Tallana moved to free his bound wrists. “My sister’s already fucking dead.”

“Yeah, well, you’re still alive,” Tallana pointed out, taking his elbow in one hand and tugging him towards safety. “At least for the time being, unless you insist on being a stubborn little fuck! Tengu’s bound to notice all the noise out here eventually, you know!”

“Fuck him! Let ‘im come!”

“Oh, sure, then we can all be dead, I’m sure that’s just what your sister would want……what’s your name, child?”

“Victor. My name’s Victor. And I’m not a fucking child, and I don’t need you to fucking rescue me! I’d rather stick around here and finish off those murdering fucks as soon as I get a chance!”

“Oh, and I’m so sure they’d let you have that chance!” Tallana snapped. “Do you really think your poor sister would have wanted you to throw your life away? Because that’s just what you’re going to do. She’ll have died for nothing, protecting you, if you throw away your chance at getting out of here in one piece, you stupid child.”

It was probably a more caustic attempt at persuasion than I would have used, but it seemed to work, because Victor reluctantly allowed us to lead him back towards our hiding place with no further argument. Still, once we were back in the shadows, he fidgeted uncomfortably as we watched the fight rage on in front of us. “Why don’t we just go out there and end it now?” He demanded angrily. “Kill the worthless piece of shit, grab your idiot friend and get the fuck out of here?”

Tallana snorted. “Yeah, and she’d likely show her appreciation for your interfering with a broken jaw. It’ll be over soon enough, it’s never smart to step into a fair fight and try to make it unfair. Especially with that one.”

That would’ve been my first guess myself, but I had to wonder how much longer the fight could go on without attracting unwanted attention from the ship’s other occupant. There were loud crashes and the occasional yelp as one or the other of the combatants slammed the other into the ground, or the wall, or a nearby vessel. The floor was spotted with blood, and I couldn’t imagine that it would be long before Tengu himself would hear the tumult outside, even through the thick walls of the ship, and come out to investigate.

I was right. Preoccupied as they were, neither Kiasis or Karu heard the ship’s door slide open, but I did, and my eyes flew immediately to the emerging figure at the top of the ramp.

He looked terrible, even I could see that from as far away as I was. His face was pale as snow, there were bags beneath his eyes, and he held firmly onto the guard rail for support. Whatever Tengu h ad been up to since our last encounter, it had taken a definite toll on him. I couldn’t bring myself to muster any sympathy, though, and I had a definite feeling that it would have been misplaced if I had—the cold gaze that locked onto the scene before him had lost none of its strength, and neither had his voice when he spoke sharply. “What the hell is going on here?”

I was sure, for an instant, that Kiasis was going to be in the horrifying position of having to deal with both brothers, a prospect that really didn’t leave much hope in my mind for her survival. Before the ramifications of that possibility could even form in my mind, though, I was shoved roughly out of the way as Victor yanked out of Tallana’s grip and pushed past us. “Murdering bastard! About time you showed your fucking face!”

He was brought up short as Tallana latched all four arms onto him and dragged him to a halt, but Tengu barely spared the boy a glance before his gaze locked onto a new and far more unsettling target: me. Pale and exhausted though he might have been, that gaze still froze my soul, and his voice was just an added layer icy derision as he hissed at me through bared teeth. “…. You…!”

I had no real doubt that if he really set his mind to it, there would be at least one of us who wouldn’t be making it out of here alive. Now, I was still pretty far out of his reach, and Tallana had managed to drag Victor back even further into the shadows. But Kiasis was a mere few steps away, and her attention was still pretty well occupied…Hell, from the blood smearing both their faces, I doubted either she or Karu had even noticed Tengu’s sudden appearance at all. The rest of us had a pretty good shot at escape, but there was no way Kiasis would be able to fend off both of them on her own; I still remembered the incident on the ship pretty vividly, and I could recall the power I’d felt before flowing through Tengu’s touch.

I couldn’t leave her to that.

I took a few steps forward, and I was forced to stop and clear my throat before my voice would even work. “Let my friends go.” I hated the quiver in my voice, but there was nothing I could do to stop it. “If you let them go, I’ll come along with you.”

I heard a sharp denial from behind me, probably from Tallana, but I wasn’t paying too much attention; I was watching Tengu. His eyes narrowed sharply. He probably thought it was a trick. I couldn’t blame him there, I probably would have too, in his shoes. I couldn’t see any other way out though, not for everybody. Everybody but me, anyway, and I got the distinct impression that Tengu wanted to present me to his mistress alive and kicking.

Finally, he smiled faintly and nodded his head.

“Call off your brother,” I demanded, my voice gaining a little more strength as I forced my feet to move me closer. “My friends all get out of here safe, or no deal.”

“Very well.” His smile widened, and the sheer malice in his eyes was so totally incongruous with the expression that I felt my stomach churn. “I promise, no harm will come to your--“

“Tengu!” Kiasis’ bellow cut sharply through his words, and I could see his eyes widen in an expression of horror even as he turned to face her.

Still some distance away from us, the fight had come to an unnoticed halt. Karu leaned against the hull of the ship at an odd angle, a strange, shocked expression on his face as Kiasis held him there, pinned to the metal by the long sword protruding from his gut.

“I don’t like the terms of your deal,” Kiasis said calmly. “I’d like to propose a new one.” She lifted the sword, slowly slicing through flesh, and Karu let out a strangled scream. “Watch your brother die an agonizing death, or spend your energies on him and let us all go.”

I don’t think there was any real choice to be made in Tengu’s mind. With an outraged scream he launched himself down from the ramp, and I would have won any bets I might have made about him managing to find energy from somewhere if he really needed it, because Kiasis went flying away from Karu’s bleeding body without him ever laying a hand on her. She hit the far wall with a sickening crack and slid to the floor, as did Karu, the hilt of the sword hitting the floor with an almost musical clink.

There wasn’t time to check her over to see how badly she was hurt. As soon as we scrambled over to her, Tallana and Victor each grabbed one side and we half dragged her out of there as fast as we could before Tengu could turn his attention toward us again. From the look of fury on the healer’s face, I wasn’t too sure any of us would have survived if we hadn’t.

Chapter 23

2008-06-30T19:39:00.000-07:00

I didn’t even attempt a play for the pilot’s seat; I parked myself in the co-pilot’s chair and strapped myself in with a sense of relief that I didn’t have to go at this alone, even if Kiasis and I weren’t exactly the best of friends. “Your ship can take theirs, can’t it?” I asked, excitement finally starting to outweigh my fear, if only by a slim margin. “I mean, it did before.”

She didn’t reply. Even if she had intended to, she would have been interrupted by the sudden, furious banging on the ship’s hull that made me jump.

“Open the door.” I thought I detected a note of resignation in her voice, although I couldn’t be sure.

“About time!” Tallana all but shoved me out of her way as she barged onto the ship without so much as a greeting. “I thought for a moment you were just going to take off with me still hanging from the door handle!” She sat right down in the co-pilot’s seat—my seat—as if she owned it.

“Hey!” I protested. “I was sitting there!”

“I’m sorry, my dear, but it makes more sense for me to sit here.”

“What? How do you figure that? I was there first!”

“But I know how to operate a ship’s weapons control systems.”

“Yeah….well….I’ve done it plenty of times on simulations!” Okay, that argument sounded lame even as it left my lips. And it was a gross exaggeration, besides; my main interest in simulation games was being the pilot, not the gunner.

Tallana snorted. “Sims! I suppose you think that’s no different than real life, then. Kiasis, would you please tell the young lady to sit her royal behind down somewhere so we can take off…?”

“No.”

Tallana’s head whipped around at the calm reply, totally unruffled by our bickering. I struggled not to look smug. “You’re kidding me, of course. What is she, thirteen? Surely you don’t mean to—“

“Hey! I’m six—“

“There’s no need. They’ve already arrived.”

As I looked out the front of the ship, I could tell as I hadn’t been able before that Tengu’s ship was a good deal bigger than ours. I wasn’t sure if I was more relieved or disappointed that our confrontation would happen on the ground rather than in space this time; after all, we’d already escaped them successfully once in space.

Then again, confrontation and self defense were two different things.

Unlike Tallana and myself, Kiasis wasn’t held back by petty things like hesitation or fear. She rose from her seat and stepped out of the sip, heading straight for enemy territory. Without her robes, the black flightsuit she wore made it painfully obvious that she wasn’t carrying any kind of weapons.

“Is she out of her mind?”

“Oh, you don’t know the half of it,” Tallana sighed. “Come on, we can’t just leave her to get killed all by herself.” Sliding from her own seat, she stepped out of the craft and left me with two choices: hide in the ship like a coward, or follow them and do what I’d come to do.

Even as I climbed out of the ship, hiding was sounding better and better.

I was half expecting to be attacked as we approached, but all seemed quiet. That in itself made me uneasy; after all, why land your ship if you weren’t going to get out of it? Then the distinctive clicking of a door lock brought us all up short. Tallana let out a little “oof” as I ran into her from behind.

“Ouch! Bony thing, aren’t you? Doesn’t Puck feed you?”

“Sorry!”

“Quiet!” We both fell silent at Kiasis’ hissed command, but we needn’t have bothered. Nobody on that ship was paying us any attention; they seemed too wrapped up in their own problems.

The first to show himself was the young pilot, hands bound behind his back as he half stumbled down the ship’s ramp. He turned as he landed on solid ground to shoot a murderous glare at the elf who followed behind him.

“So…what now?” He demanded, his voice thick and shaking with emotion. “Did you bring me all the way out here to kill me? Don’t wanna leave a mess all over your nice pretty fucking ship?”

“What happened to your sister was regrettable.” It took a minute to identify the speaker as Karu. His voice was smoother than his brother’s, his stance more relaxed and laid back as he smoothed imaginary wrinkles from one sleeve. “But, sadly, she brought it on herself. Her attack on my brother was foolish; she could just as easily have been standing here with you, right now.”

My heart sank. So we were too late, then, for the poor girl whose face I’d never even seen.

“Lying bastard!” The boy screamed hoarsely, launching himself at his captor. Karu sidestepped the clumsy advance easily, and the youth went sprawling onto the ground face first.

“Coward!” He spat as Karu hauled him back to his feet. “Untie me so I can wring your neck, you frilly fucking pussy! I’ll break you in half!”

“If I were to untie you and leave you free to attack me at will,” Karu said with perfect calm, “it would be your death warrant I signed, I assure you.”

“Then perhaps you prefer an opponent whose skill is a little more evenly matched.”

My head whipped around at the voice. Somehow, as Tallana and I had watched the grim tableau that played out in front of us, Kiasis had managed to step out into the open, not ten feet from Karu and his captive. I’d taken two steps to follow her without even realizing it before Tallana’

Karu watched her in silence briefly, eyebrows arching in surprise…then his lips twitched wryly. “I’m not entirely sure the word ‘prefer’ is accurate,” He turned to face Kiasis, and by default us, in our hiding place in the shadows. There was no more fear or hesitation in his voice than there had been in Kiasis’. “But I certainly won’t turn it down.”

My breath caught in my chest as I realized he was moving his arm to draw the thin saber belted at his waist.

Chapter 22

2008-06-16T22:39:00.000-07:00

I was beginning to believe I was coming down with a kind of sudden onset insomnia. It wasn’t as if I wasn’t tired, God knew I hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep since leaving Voltaire. But every time I closed my eyes, I couldn’t help wondering what had ever happened to Tengu’s human captives, and I’d find myself instantly wide awake.

I’d just eaten a full, hot meal. Were they hungry? I knew what it was like to be hungry; we’d been rationed at the home after almost every pirate attack. I was warm and safe, lying on an amazingly comfortable bed where I knew people were looking out for my safety. The few times I’d worked up the nerve to run away from the home, I’d slept in an alley, barely dozing all night and half afraid of who might creep up on me in the darkness. How were the young pilot and his sister feeling right now? Not warm and safe, like me, almost certainly. All because Puck didn’t want to endanger my life by attempting a rescue.

Hell, if not for me, they probably wouldn’t have been kidnapped in the first place.

That thought did nothing to make sleep seem more attainable.

I mean…why me? Aside from the apparently extraordinary circumstances of my birth, there was nothing remarkable about me at all. I wasn’t stupid, but I wasn’t any kind of genius, either. I wasn’t some important politician who might one day bring about universal peace, or a scientist who might make some breakthrough discovery. I was just a skinny orphan kid with a minor interest in learning to fly. Puck had mentioned that my father was a pilot, and admittedly that gave me some small hope that the talent might run in the family or something, but it certainly didn’t make my life worth more than anybody else’s.

Actually, nothing made my life worth more than anybody else’s.

I threw off the blankets and swung my legs over the side of the bed. There was enough light from the tall window that I was able to find and don my clothes with a minimum of groping around. That was good; not only did I not want to wake anyone up, I was a little afraid that thinking my plan over in a fully lit room would make me decide it was even more harebrained than it seemed in the darkness. I’d seen where Kiasis had hung her ship’s touch-key when Puck gave it back to her earlier. It had gone on a small row of hooks, in a little lockbox on the wall behind the bar.

I was fairly certain she hadn’t locked it back. If she had, my plan was over.

When I got to the box and opened it right up, I was almost disappointed. I guess whoever our mysterious guardian spirit was, he was taking the night off. Either that, or his contract didn’t extend to protecting me from my own stupid ideas. Sticking the key in my pocket, I crept towards the door. I hadn’t noticed earlier how creaky the wooden floorboards were; it made for slow going, but eventually I had one of the tall double doors opened and had slipped out into the cool night air.

Did I say cool? I meant freezing. Goosebumps had erupted instantly along my arms, and I checked to see if I could see my breath in front of me. I was a little surprised that I couldn’t. How the hell was I going to rescue somebody if I couldn’t stop shivering long enough to even walk?

Holy shit. How the hell was I going to rescue anybody period?

I pushed that thought out of my head and started moving. Just because I was scared was no reason to turn tail and run back to the safety of my nice, warm bed and let two innocent people die. Nobody else was going to rescue them. God help them, I was pretty much their only hope.

Backtracking my way to the landing port was easy enough. I could see the grayish light of dawn on the horizon, and it was hard to tell if things were dying down on the streets from the night before, or gearing up for the next day’s business, but either way there wasn’t as much activity as there’d been when we arrived. The port itself was automated; all I had to do was present Kiasis’ key at the door, and it slid open easily.

Finding the shop in the darkness was a little more complicated. There were several crafts of a similar style and design. Finally, though, I spotted a familiar sight: that stupid dog in the weird little red airplane on the side of Puck’s ship. Having been towed in behind us, all I had to do was follow a straight line with my eyes and there, right before me, was Kiasis’ ship in all its sleek, black glory.

I was just about to touch the key to the door’s lockpad when I heard footsteps approaching.

I froze for a moment, then ducked around to the back of the ship. Surely it was just someone passing through on the way to their own vehicle. They’d be gone in a moment, and I could go on with my plan.

Not that it was much of a plan, mind you. I really hadn’t gotten any further than this point in my head. I sort of figured (or was at least hoping) I could work my way through it, but truth be told, outside of sim games and tech manuals, I’d never touched a ship’s flight controls.

The footsteps had disappeared, I realized, and I was wasting time. Stepping out of my hiding place, I fumbled to get the key back in my hand…

…and came nose to nose….or actually, nose to breast, as she was a good head taller than me….with Kiasis.

My look of shock was mirrored, for an instant, on her features as well before they settled into an annoyed frown. “What are you doing here?”

“What’re you doing here?” Oh, brilliant, Holly. Like it wasn’t her damn ship. “I…I mean, how did you get in?” I held up the key in my hand by way of explanation; she shouldn’t have been allowed into the port without it.

She calmly held up an identical key, dangling from her fingers. Figured she’d have a spare set.

I closed my eyes and braced myself for a scathingly sarcastic lecture on just how stupid I was. Instead, all I heard was “Get in.”

My eyes shot open, and I was sure I’d heard her wrong. “What…?”

Kiasis arched an eyebrow at my stupidity. “You do speak Standard English, do you not?”

I fumbled the door open and scrambled inside without any further question.

Chapter 21

2008-06-14T20:00:00.000-07:00

The Inn was just as dark and gloomy on the inside as the exterior suggested. Dark, polished wood and plush, highbacked club chairs around each round table made it seem less like walking into a pub and more like entering some time warp to Earth’s medieval period. The centerpiece of the room was the intricately carved bar, standing in front of a wall that showcased what must’ve been hundreds of bottles of various liquors, all settled on mirrored shelves that reflected the dim light through the glass bottles.
“Come and have a seat, and I’ll grab a few plates of the casserole Biv left me for tonight’s special,” Milo made his way behind the bar and pulled down several glasses, all resting easily in his large hands. He filled one with what I supposed was some kind of pale beer, sliding it down to Puck. A second glass was filled with water and placed in front of Biv before he turned to me. “How about you, your highness? A soda?”
“Um,” I felt a little silly not being able to make a snap decision on something as simple as what to drink, but it was my experience that I took what was offered, or it was plain water for me. “Sure, that’s fine.” I smiled a little. “I’m not picky.”
A tall glass of a dark brown, bubbling liquid soon slid to a stop in front of me. From the foam covering the top, I thought for a brief, horrified moment that it was some kind of ale…but as I lifted it to my lips, I was relieved to discover it was only root beer. “Best draught root beer in town,” Milo unashamedly bragged.
“Milo has a microbrewery in the cellar below us,” Puck explained helpfully. “He’s very proud of it.”
“As well I should be!” The gryphon sniffed, waving a taloned hand at a wall across the bar. It was covered in ribbons and trophies and plaques, most of them involving the phrases “best draught beer” or “best ale”. “Now. Chicken and noodle casserole good for everyone?” No one protested; frankly, I doubted anyone protested anything he suggested very often. When your chef is at least eight feet tall and could eat your arm in one bite, you take what he gives you. “Good.” Giving an approving nod, he disappeared through the swinging door behind the bar.
Almost as soon as he disappeared, the bells on the door jingled cheerily as it opened up, announcing the new arrival. Kiasis strode in wordlessly, picked up the shot that Milo had so thoughtfully left on the bar for her, and downed it neatly as she sat.
“Tallana coming along?” Kiasis just shrugged in reply to Puck’s question, reaching behind the bar to refill her glass. “We have a sort of….agreement…with Tallana,” Puck explained in answer to the look I must’ve been giving him. “We help her create a sort of…scene….every once in a while. Helps her drum up business; we create a little trouble, maybe break an orb or two. People feel sorry for her, go over to see if she’s okay, and end up looking at her crap. In return, if anybody’s snooping around after one of us, she lets us know about it.”
Almost on cue, the topic of conversation strolled in. She made a beeline for me, reaching out with one hand to tilt my head up like a horse being examined for sale. I resisted the urge to show her my teeth. “Pfft,” she snorted as she let me go, her accent having faded with amazing speed. “You look fine. I don’t think it even attached to you, Kiasis and Puck are both paranoid.”
“I hear you’re making a pest out of yourself,” Milo chided as he reappeared, bearing four plates easily in his arms. They came to rest quickly in front of Biv, Puck, Kiasis and myself, and my stomach rumbled at the buttery, slightly peppery scent of the casserole.
“Yes, yes, sorry!” Tallana leaned over the bar, and Milo obligingly bent down to let her kiss him on the cheek. “I didn’t mean to let it make contact with her, but then she started flailing around like she was being attacked, and you know what those things are like when they sense magic anyway…”
“You up for some dinner?” Milo offered, pouring her a glass of the same stuff Puck was drinking.
“No, thanks, love, I’m all done in for the night.” She smiled, lifting the glass to her lips and drinking thirstily. “I just thought I’d poke my head in and make sure I hadn’t done any lasting damage before I retired.” Her voice was much more pleasant, warm even, now that she’d stopped playing up her accent and wasn’t screeching in outrage.
“She’s fine, I think. No damage done that wasn’t there before.” Puck shot me a teasing grin, and I felt obligated to make a face at him.
“In that case, I think I’ll just head for bed, then.” Downing the rest of her drink, she rose and stretched lazily. I winced a little at the sound of her back cracking. “Now, don’t you stay up working all night, either, you hear?” She gave Milo a decidedly disapproving stare.
“I’m headed up just as soon as I get this lot of vagrants settled in, don’t worry.” Milo replied affectionately.
Tallana nodded her approval. “Good night, then. I imagine I’ll see you all at breakfast in the morning.” Smiling, she wriggled her fingers in a little parting wave as she headed toward the staircase across the room. “It was nice meeting you, girlie.” She patted me on the head as she passed in a way that I almost found condescending, but I decided I’d let it pass, mostly because I was thinking. So she lived here, too. Just how many rooms were in this place?
Relative silence reigned as the rest of us ate. Well, as Puck and I ate, anyway. Kiasis seemed content to give the wall in front of her a glower that I was slightly shocked didn’t crack the glass, and Biv seemed intent on doing nothing but push his food around on his plate. Puck and I both ate enthusiastically, though….partly because I was starving, but mostly because it was just good. Possibly the best chicken and noodles I’d ever had in my entire life.
“Biv, you made this? It’s wonderful!” I didn’t just want to wolf the food down and seem ungrateful for the trouble it must’ve been to prepare. Biv, on the other hand, just blushed and ducked his head a little further. Sometimes I got the distinct feeling that Biv would prefer that no one ever even acknowledged his existence.
“Bivvy’s an amazing cook,” Puck answered for him…at least, that’s what I’m pretty sure he said. It was hard to tell with his mouth overloaded with food.
“An amazing cook who almost never eats,” Milo scolded him lightly, turning an accusing eye towards Biv’s full plate.
“I’m just not very hungry,” he replied so quietly I barely heard him.
Milo rustled his wings sharply, and I got the feeling he wanted to scold him more, but a sharp look from Kiasis made him clack his beak shut. “Well,” he said finally, “I’ve got our resident royalty here set up in the room beside you, Puck. It’s supposed to be a little chilly tonight, by human standards, so I put extra blankets out on everybody’s beds.” He looked at me apologetically. “It’s an old building. The environmental controls don’t always do their job the way they should.”
“Milo had the whole place brought over from Earth, stone by stone. It used to be an alehouse in northern England. It was built in…what was it? Sixteen ninety one?”
“Sixteen ninety four,” Three voices corrected him in perfect unison.
“Right. Whatever. It’s old, and sometimes modern environmentals just don’t know what to do with it, what with all the little drafts and air ducts.” Scraping the last of the noodles from his plate, he stood up and carried his dirty dishes behind the bar. “Princess, soon as you’re done I’ll show you to your room.”
My plate was nearly empty, so I grabbed it and followed. Milo was kind enough to feed me, I didn’t want to leave my mess for him to clean as well, so I gathered up my glass and my fork just as Puck had done. “I’m ready.” I followed him through the swinging door cautiously; I’d never been behind the counter of a restaurant before, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was doing something wrong, silly as it was.
If the rest of the building seemed archaic, the kitchen was the pinnacle of modern technology. Stainless steel shone on every side of me, with walls full of gadgets and buttons whose functions I couldn’t have even guessed at. Puck slid his dishware into what I guessed was a dishwasher…at least, I assumed it was a dishwasher, it looked like a slot on the wall to me…..and I followed suit.
“Shh,” He whispered with alarming seriousness as he crept to the other side of the kitchen. Reaching for a large tin, he popped the lid off soundlessly, watching the door behind us every moment as he slipped his hand inside.
“Puck! Don’t you DARE touch those cookies on the counter!” Milo’s bellow made me jump, and I had to stifle a squeak. “They’re for a catering order tomorrow!”
Puck swore under his breath….then he yanked his hand out of the tin, a handful of cookies in his fist, and grabbed me by the arm, dragging me towards the stairwell.
This staircase appeared to be identical to the one Tallana had used earlier. Steep and narrow, it curved around continuously until I was sure it’d gone in a full circle.
The upstairs was decorated much the same way as the lower level. I considered asking if Milo had brought the original furnishings with him from England as well, because it certainly seemed plausible. The doorways were tall, tall enough that even Milo must have had no trouble fitting through them, and each door was carved in a unique but equally intricate design.
We only passed four or five of the doors before Puck came to a halt. “This is your room. I’m in that one right there,” He gestured to the one on our left. “Kiasis is right across the hall from you, and Biv is right across from me. And Tallana, in the event of a dire emergency, is on Biv’s other side.” Reaching out to push the heavy door open, it gave a creak of protest that belied its age, but I barely noticed.
The room was huge. Well, to be fair, it was no bigger than the room I’d had at the home….the room I’d shared with at least three other girls at any given time. This room was obviously meant for no more than one, possibly two if they were extremely cozy. A bed with posters taller than I was dominated the space, with an armoire in one corner that could have held enough clothing for four people. There was a vid set mounted on one wall, directly across from the bed, a plush chair by the window that looked soft enough to sleep in itself, and the scent of flowers filled the room from a vase settled in the deep windowsill. I wondered if maybe I could just stay in my room and never ever come out.
“The control for the vid’s in the nightstand drawer,” Puck instructed as I ventured into the room. “If you need anything, you can just knock on my door. There’s a bathroom at the end of the hall, if you feel like a shower, but I figured after being cooped up in that flying sardine can so long you’d be ready for a real bed.”
I barely heard him. My shoes were already off, and I was reclining on the bed with what had to be the world’s goofiest grin on my face. It was just as soft as it looked.
Puck grinned. “Towels are in the hall closet. Just yell if you need anything, otherwise I’ll come wake you for breakfast. Sweet dreams,” He added on his way out the door.
I barely had the presence of mind to call out a belated “Good night!” as it closed behind him.

Chapter 20

2008-06-06T22:32:00.000-07:00

“You want to try memory orb?” The voice repeated insistently in heavily accented English as I swatted blindly at the light filling my eyes.

“She’s not interested, Tallana,” I heard puck exclaim, sounding exasperated as the light suddenly disappeared, leaving me in the dark for a moment as my eyes adjusted.

“Every young girl likes the orbs!” The woman, Tallana apparently, insisted, gesticulating emphatically with one set of hands as the other planted itself squarely on her hips. “Young girls need someplace to keep their secrets. Especially someplace pretty.”

“I don’t even like pink,” I protested weakly as the orb, which was that particular nauseating color of neon pink I reserved a special hate for, made another dive at my head. I yelped and ducked as a little tendril of light snaked out towards my temple. “What’s it doing?!”

“Looking for your secrets, silly girl. Memory orbs made for that.”

I expected Puck to come to my rescue, but he seemed a little distracted by the fact that every time she saved her hands, she nearly spilled out of her bikini top. Help came, unexpectedly, from a different direction as Kiasis plucked the small orb out of the air and matter-of-factly dashed it against the sidewalk.

“How clumsy of me,” she said mildly, not sounding at all apologetic.

Tallana screeched as she dived after the pieces of her orb, now scattered all over the ground. “You stupid! Stupid, stupid Sch’silian! You know what the orbs cost?”

“My apologies. Of course, I’ll be more than willing to reimburse you for the cost. If you’ll show me the way to your booth…?”

The booth, of course, was well within sight of all of us. But as Kiasis followed a slightly mollified Tallana away, we were left blissfully free to continue on our way. Right at that moment, I could have forgiven her for being a cold hearted cunt; I’d had enough of things trying to hack into my brain to last me a lifetime.

“What were those things?” I demanded, turning over my shoulder to make sure Biv was keeping up with us. “It looked like it was going to electrocute me, or suck my brain dry.”

“They’re just cheap trinkets, nothing to be worried about,” Puck assured me. “I wouldn’t let one into my head, I know that much….c’mon, Bivvy, you can walk on my other side, okay? Kiasis would castrate me if I lost track of you.” Grinning, he looped his free arm with Biv’s as he had with mine. The fact that onlookers now probably assumed that he had two young women draped on either arm as we made our way down the walkway, and were giving us all slightly scandalized looks that made poor Biv’s cheeks turn beet red seemed to amuse him greatly. “Anyway, they’re kind of like an automatic diary. They follow you around and automatically record your memories all day long. It’s just a cheap gimmick, of course; they last for a few days, then they quit working, if they don’t end up leaving some kind of hole in your memory or scarring your brain or something nasty like that. They’re not even designed for human use anyway—Ah! Here we are..! Home sweet home!” We came to a sudden halt outside the one and only building in sight that wasn’t lit up from top to bottom. Made of thick gray stone, it seemed strangely out of place among the shiny modern structures around it, and even among the older buildings. It most definitely wasn’t in the traditional style of Acomia, I could see that from the few older buildings scattered around us. With its tall, arching windows and thick, wooden double doors, it looked like something straight out of an Earth history book. An old, faded sign hung out over the sidewalk that read “The Dragon and The Lamb”, with a weatherworn picture beneath the ornate letters of what I presumed to be exactly that, although the emerald green creature intertwined with the fluffy white lamb looked more like a snake to me. Outside the door, as I looked to my side, was what could only have been the work of a taxidermist who was well on his way to losing his mind.

Stuffed creatures weren’t uncommon, as more and more new species of animal were discovered by exploration. Illegal, yes, but not uncommon. But this was unlike any animal I had ever heard of, or ever wanted to hear of again. It was fascinating in a horrendous way, crouched by the door in a frozen lunge, like a lion getting ready to strike. A layer of golden fur covered the sinewy, catlike body, gradually giving way to fringe of pale feathers on the neck, and an armor of green scales covering the massive tail coiled around its feet. Bright, shiny gold eyes that reminded me with a chill of Tengu’s glared out above what would have been a truly ferocious snarl, had the creature been alive. Its mouth looked like what I can only describe as an eagle’s beak with rows of razor sharp teeth that gleamed ominously in the light. In fact, the whole head was rather birdlike, as I took it in as a whole.

“Hey!” I exclaimed, pleased with my deduction as I leaned closer to examine the features. “Is this supposed to be a gryphon?”

The fearsome jaws snapped shut with an audible CRACK! as the creature lunged at my outstretched hand.

Yeah, I screamed. I couldn’t help it. You’d scream too, if a gryphon tried to eat your arm. I was lucky I didn’t do anything more embarrassing….run away, or possibly wet myself.

As I stared in frozen terror at the suddenly living monstrosity that I was pretty certain was getting ready to eat me, it slowly dawned on me that the rusty, throaty sound it was making really wasn’t the vicious snarl of a carnivore about to dine on human flesh..

It was laughter.

It was laughing at me.

“Milo,” Puck scolded, although it really seemed to me that he was trying not to laugh himself. “Aren’t you a little old for that joke? You really ought to be ashamed of yourself. What if she’d had a heart attack? You’d be the one explaining that one to Oberon.”

“I can’t help it!” The creature managed between chuckles. “That never gets old, I don’t care how many times I do it. Never.”

Unwinding from his crouch, he rose to stand at his full height on his hind legs, and I suddenly rethought my urge to kick him in the shin. He towered over me….he towered over Puck….hell, he seemed like he would have towered over both of us put together.

“Milo, meet Holly, newly discovered princess. Holly, meet Milo….one of the last remaining gryphons in existence.”

“I can’t imagine why they might be an endangered species,” I muttered, mostly to myself.

Luckily, Milo either didn’t hear me or he was more concerned with Puck’s phrasing. “Don’t say it like that, son, you make me sound old as dirt.”

“Aren’t you?”

Milo ignored that. “Holly, my dear, it’s nice to meet you. Why don’t the lot of you come inside; we’ll get you some food and you can let me know how your trip went, hm? Biv, I hope you don’t mind eating your own cooking, you left me with enough food in my freezer to feed an army.”

Biv’s quiet reply was lost among the chatter. “You know, Tallana’s making a real nuisance of herself again, she almost got one of those stupid orbs of hers to stick itself onto poor Holly’s head on our way here…”

“I’ll have a word with her. I know she can be a little on the….persistent….side.” Milo held the door open for the three of us obligingly, swinging it open as if it were nothing. Either it wasn’t as heavy as it looked, or he was as strong as he looked. I couldn’t help keeping a wary eye on him as I crept past; I was still resisting the urge to count my fingers and make sure they were all there.

That was probably why Biv’s voice suddenly coming from my other side made me jump almost out of my skin.

“Don’t worry,” he grinned a little, his voice as soft as ever but definitely amused. “He got me, too, my first time here.”

I had thought I was prepared to meet a gryphon. I wasn’t at all sure I was prepared for a gryphon with a sense of humor.

Chapter 19

2008-06-05T00:21:00.001-07:00

“But that’s stupid!” I protested. “Tengu’s not even close!”

“You don’t know that. And if he does catch up to us, he’d be able to pluck our destination right out of your head,” Puck reminded me, not for the first time. “Besides, we’re almost there.”

“How long?”

He smiled patiently. “Not much more than a couple of hours.”

I sighed. Lacking anything else to occupy my time, my mind had turned to wondering about our destination. Before, I hadn’t given it much of a second thought; I was just happy to be away from Voltaire. Now I was fixated on it. While I supposed Puck’s reasoning made a certain kind of sense…I didn’t want Tengu rooting around in my brain at all, but I certainly didn’t want him plucking anything out of it… the curiosity was killing me.

It was a tense, quiet two hour ride, much like the hours that had filled it before. Biv was awake, apparently all slept out for the time being. I was honestly hoping he hadn’t heard any of the back and forth between Kiasis and me earlier….I was pretty sure he’d been sleeping, but we hadn’t exactly been soft spoken in our disagreement (maybe disagreement wasn’t quite the right word. At the very least, we’d pretty well agreed on the fact we disliked each other). Kiasis had immersed herself almost immediately back into meditation…to see if she could sense anything from either of the hostages, she claimed, but I suspected it was mostly just to avoid any further contact with the rest of us. The only occasional conversation came from myself and Puck, and consisted mostly of me trying to wheedle information out of him and failing miserably. All my attempts were met with patient amusement until I finally gave up.

I had almost forgotten my impatience when Puck’s voice pulled me back out of my thoughts. “Alright, princess. Wait’s over, we’re here.”

I perked up almost immediately. “Where’s here?”

“Acomia.”

That was the last thing I’d expected to hear. In all the known universe, there was only one thing associated with that particular name. “You mean we’re going to the Marketplace?”

The Acomian Interstellar Marketplace was totally unique in the universe. It was a curiosity, a rarity in interplanetary trade that had been often imitated, but never reproduced. It was like a mall, a bazaar, and a city, all rolled into one, with peddlers, traders, shopkeepers, and some even said smugglers and pirates seeking to sell their wares. You could walk down any given street, so they said, and either buy your wildest dreams or at least rent them for a few hours. The fact that even I had heard of it on my little backwater colony was a testament to its fame.

I wasn’t sure if I was excited or afraid. Whatever I felt, I was fidgety. When we landed, it was late at night, and I was a little disappointed. I’d hoped to see the Marketplace in all its glory, but nearly everything was sure to be shut down. According to Puck, it was well past the middle of the night by their schedule, even though I couldn’t see much of anything from the enclosed landing strip we navigated into.

As we stepped out of the ship and prepared to leave the landing pad, Puck linked his arm with mine in an unexpectedly gallant (and irritatingly archaic) gesture. “Stick close, princess,” he warned. “Don’t let yourself get separated, okay?”
I rolled my eyes, but I nodded. “I’ll try.” I was privately pretty sure I could at least manage to walk without messing anything up.

Once the doors slid open, I probably would have been left behind right then and there if I hadn’t been holding on to him.

Even as late as it was, the streets were lit up almost as bright as day by all the signs…I’d realize later that there’d been no streetlights. There was no need for them, the surrounding businesses provided more than enough light. Crowds of people filled the walkways in both directions, air transports darted and zipped past overhead walkways as ground cars puttered along the streets. Anything Puck might have said was utterly lost in the din that assaulted my ears.

“It’s a little much at first.” I would never have heard Biv’s soft voice if he hadn’t been leaning right next to my ear. “But you get used to it.”

I stared mutely at the teeming mass of activity in front of me until Puck tugged me along impatiently.

By the time we’d gone only a few blocks, I was a little dizzy from trying to turn in every direction at once to see what was going on around me. Across the road, there was a tentacled being waving its multitude of arms around attract attention to the gaudy jewelry displayed on each limb. A little way in front of us was a woman with four arms and very little clothing who was hawking some sort of glowing, floating orbs that hovered and spun around her in an array of colors, lighting her pale skin in a fascinating, shifting rainbow. A few yards down from the tentacled creature, a very human looking man was trying to sell what appeared to be an equally human woman to a handful of what appeared to be soldiers, although I couldn’t tell what branch of the military they were from. To my relief, I finally saw that the “girl” was an android when the salesman popped a panel in the back of her head to allow one of the soldiers to peer inside. I was still mildly disgusted by the leers they were giving her, though.

“Young girl want to try a memory orb?”

The heavily accented voice caused my head to whip back around suddenly, and my world was filled with a blinding pink light.

Chapter 18

2008-06-03T14:14:00.000-07:00

Biv was dreaming.

He dreamt a lot, especially here lately. The dreams were seldom pleasant, even though they weren’t usually enough to wake him up completely……even when sometimes he wished they would. This dream seemed out of the ordinary just by virtue of its lack of activity. As far as he was aware, he was in his old room at home, sleeping. Or dreaming that he was sleeping, which was kind of strange, because he really shouldn’t be able to identify the water stains on his ceiling, the closet door with the hole in it, or the cracked pane of glass in the room’s single, small window if he were truly asleep.

That was just further proof it was a dream, he supposed. Especially because now it seemed more like his room at the inn; a tall wardrobe in one corner, a thick comforter laying at the foot of the bed, a round table beside the bed that held a lamp and a vase of flowers.

Either way, it should have seemed peaceful, especially in comparison to his usual dreaming. But it didn’t.

Someone else was there. Even in his dream-sleep, it made him shiver.

He couldn’t say just how he knew. He just knew. It almost seemed as if he could see t hem, standing in shadow in the corner of the room by the wardrobe. He could almost hear them, breathing quietly in and out in the darkness (was he still asleep in his dream? He wasn’t quite sure).

He could almost…..almost…think that he felt a shadow pass over him, that he felt a soft touch on his cheek…

He was sitting up now, and there was no one there. He was completely alone, and despite the initial strangeness he’d felt at the invisible presence, he wanted it back. But it was gone, he was alone, and when he looked around the dark room, he could see that it was actually, aside from the bed he lay on, completely empty. Bare.

He woke up with tears on his cheeks.

My nap was not to be. I was too angry to be able to really relax; all I seemed able to do was shift and turn in the uncomfortable seat. Eventually the noise roused Puck….if he’d ever really been asleep in the first place. He raised his seat upright, raising a hand to his mouth to cover a yawn.

“S’matter, princess?” He said sleepily. “Got a pea stuck in your mattress?”

I just grunted in reply. Granted, Puck hadn’t done anything to fuel my foul mood, but it was there nonetheless. I was hardly in the mood for his teasing.

“She doesn’t mean to piss people off,” He continued lightly. “It just comes naturally.”

I didn’t answer that right away. “You heard, huh?”

“Didn’t have to. I know what talking with Kiasis is like. Don’t let her piss you off too bad. She’s just……lacking in social graces.”

“Yeah. If by social graces you mean things like compassion and humanity.”

“Ah, well. She’s not human, now, is she? Wait’ll you meet a few more Sch’silians before you make any definite conclusions. They’re not exactly the most compassionate people.”

I sank lower in my seat. I was sulking, I was well aware of it. I just couldn’t bring myself to stop, childish thought it might be. “Like you’re such a wellspring of empathy yourself. You didn’t give a damn about those hostages back there. The only reason you’re even looking out for me is because I’m your ticket home.”

His silence at that was beginning to make me feel guilty for lashing out at him when he finally answered. “You know, princess, just for the record, I’d almost be satisfied to just live out the rest of my days right where I’m at. I like it here. The food’s great, the technology’s fun, and I happen to like the little niche I’ve carved out for myself. But I’m taking you home because I want to. I want to repay my friend Oberon….my friend, not my king…for not keeping his daughter safe in the first place. I want you to have a chance at a decent life that doesn’t involve working your skinny fingers to the bone in some mine shaft. Sure, I get something out of the deal, but I think you think I’m getting a lot more than I actually am. And if I were, so what? It’s not like you’re not reaping any rewards yourself. Maybe you ought to stop worrying about other peoples’ motives and just worry about living and what life’s going to throw at us next. You’ll avoid a lot of unnecessary bitterness that way.” His voice softened a little, and I relaxed. “And just so you know, I would have gone back for that poor kid and his sister. But keeping you safe is top priority right now. You can’t always save everybody, even when you want to.”

I probably would have had an acerbic answer to that if I didn’t suddenly feel so damn guilty. Puck was one of very few people who’d ever tried to help me out in life; I didn’t really have a lot of room to go questioning his motives.

And besides, I could most definitely feel a pair of eyes boring into my back.

Well, Puck’s back, actually, because when I turned, it was him that Kiasis was frowning at.

“I was unaware that there were hostages on that vessel.” Her voice was sharp, and I wondered how much of our conversation she’d overheard.

Puck nodded simply. “That’s because I didn’t tell you. Or were you prepared to risk both Holly and Biv’s lives by going back and fighting with Tengu?”

The look she gave him would have withered grass; I might not have cared for her much, but I found myself quite happy it wasn’t directed at me. For an instant, she looked like she was going to knock him across the cabin the way she had me, but she didn’t. She just turned and stalked back to her corner.

Chapter 17

2008-05-19T23:40:00.000-07:00

(Author's note: I had the headache from hell while typing this one, so there are a few bits that I might end up going back to revise, soon as I can see straight again. No real changes in the details of the chapter, mind you...just rewording of some things that are bothering me a little right now, but I can't quite put my finger on them.)

“A very little while” turned into somewhere around eight hours or so. That wasn’t my plan, mind you…but having a private discussion on board a ship that was built for one or two people to travel comfortably, that was currently carrying four, was a bit on the tricky side. But eventually Biv dozed off, and Puck had to admit exhaustion himself, put the ship on autopilot, and recline the seat. It wasn’t long after that I could hear soft snoring coming from his general direction.

I was ready to drop. The few hours I’d gotten earlier had been drained out of me by our trip to crazyland afterwards, but sheer determination and burning curiosity kept me awake; there was no way I was going to fall asleep now and miss the chance to get my answers from Kiasis. Marching over to where she still sat, cross-legged, in perfect silence…and had for at least the last three hours now…I plopped down in front of her and waited.

Eventually, she noticed me staring at her and opened her eyes to stare at me, one eyebrow quirking briefly.

“Alright,” I said quietly. “Nobody else is listening. Spill it. What the hell happened to us earlier, there at the end?”

That gave her eyebrow another little twitch, but then her eyes slid closed again as if it was no particular cause for concern. “You were there as well as I. Obviously, something intervened with Tengu’s attack.”

“Yeah, I got that much, thanks. But what? And don’t even try to bullshit me that you have no clue.”

She was silent, and I just knew she was considering blowing me off. She probably felt me glaring daggers at her, because she opened her eyes again, looking faintly resigned. “Something or someone more powerful than myself. At least as powerful as Tengu himself, and with some unknown motivation to protect our passage.”

That made no sense to me at all though. “Who would want to protect us, though?” Not that I was complaining. I was just confused...one would have thought I’d be used to that feeling by now, but I was finding, actually, that I liked it less and less.

Kiasis shook her head. “Any answer I give would be pure conjecture….although I can say for certain that whomever it was, the power I sensed was not human, nor any other species that I am familiar with. Since I have begun sensing its presence—“
I found myself interrupting. I didn’t really mean to be rude…but I’ll be the first to admit that my mouth is sometimes a few steps ahead of my brain. “You’ve felt it before?”

“I have sensed it hovering around Biv on several occasions, yes.” She went on with a patience that I found rather surprising.

It took a few seconds for my brain to really process what I was supposed to conclude from that. “Are you trying to tell me Biv has some kind of….guardian angel or something?” Looking over at the still, small form on the bunk, I really couldn’t help thinking that he kind of seemed to need one.

“If I understand the basis of human theology correctly,” Kiasis’ eyes slid closed again, and I couldn’t help wondering what she was doing when she withdrew into herself like that. It was like a curtain was being lowered that blocked her off from all us bothersome humans. “Angels are not supposed to be capable of the level of hatred and anger I sensed directed at Tengu earlier.”

When I thought about it, she was right; I had felt it as well, a general sense of fury and hathred that had shocked me as Tengu was driven back. “So…what….was it, then?”

Kiasis shook her head. “There is not enough information to form a full conclusion. But I think it is safe to assume that it is a spirit of some some sort, with some sort of personal reason to despise Tengu enough to actively seek to stop him, and who has taken, for whatever reason, an interest in the safety of both Biv and yourself.”

“Me?” I was starting to feel awfully stupid, because every answer I got just seemed to lead to my asking another question.

“It’s….rather, he, because I did get a definite sense of something masculine…hovers alternately between Biv and you. While he protected the entire ship, I believe it is the two of you that draws him here.”

“But….me? Why me…?”

She only shrugged. “I cannot say for certain.”

My brain latched onto that phrase. “For certain? That implies that you have a guess, at least.”

My demands were answered with a vaguely annoyed frown. “It would be pointless to make a…guess….with such limited facts.” I got the feeling that Kiasis didn’t put a lot of stock in anything less than the full, unadulterated facts of the situation. I also got the feeling that whatever her guess was, she didn’t really want to share it with me.

“So do it anyway.” I demanded. “I’m getting sick of always being in the dark. A guess is better than nothing at all.”

She stared at me for so long that I really didn’t think she was even going to answer. “I believe the being may be someone who, when still alive, was familiar with both Tengu and Puck.”

“What makes you say that?”

“In the last few months, I have felt a similar depth of emotion directed at Puck as I felt toward Tengu during the…struggle.”

“Similar….” My eyes widened a little. “You mean he hates Puck just as much as he does Tengu?” Despite Puck’s occasional high level of annoying, I found it hard to believe someone could really hate him, especially with the same kind of passion I remembered being focused on Tengu. “Why would anybody….Wait. It’s….he’s….been around for a few months?” My eyes narrowed suspiciously. “How long, exactly?”

Kiasis probably looked as close to uncomfortable as I had seen her yet. “I first sensed his presence during the…accident that killed Biv’s parents. My suspicions were confirmed when I visited his hospital room and sensed the presence there, as well.”

“But…” I really didn’t care for the conclusion my mind was starting to form. I hadn’t known either one of them all that long, but I liked Biv…moreover, I felt for him, and I wanted to believe that he was happy and cared for. He seemed to need it so badly. “That’s not the only reason you took him in, was it?” Even without hearing her answer, she seemed, suddenly, a lot less human to me in that moment. Like Biv, no doubt, I’d assumed she’d taken him in out of kindness. Part of me was trying to remind myself sternly that she wasn’t human; she was from a different people, a different culture, with an entirely different way of thinking.

Most of me was just thinking, what a heartless bitch!

I didn’t want Biv to wake up and hear, though, so I dropped my voice to an angry whisper, instead of letting it rise as I could feel it trying to do. “You took him in just out of curiosity? Because you wanted to keep tabs on the fucking….whatever it is that was hovering around him?”

Her eyes bored into me for a moment, snapping with anger. “Do not presume to know my motives, child,” She hissed in a sudden flare of irritation. “My reasons are my own.”

If I’d felt any kind of tenuous familiarity developing with the woman sitting in front of me, it was rapidly dissolving. All I saw before me now was an alien, and a heartless one at that. Stereotypes had always bothered me, but in this particular case, I was starting to think of the general human view of Sch’silians as a hard-hearted, uncaring people applied remarkably well. “Your endless questions are distracting me from my task. If you desire further answers, you will have to find them elsewhere.” Lashes lowered over the angry dark eyes again, and this time I had no doubt I was effectively dismissed from her thoughts.

Right at that moment, I was perfectly fine with the thought that Kiasis didn’t care for me very much, because I was feeling exactly the same way. Glaring at her briefly, I shoved myself to my feet and stalked towards the cockpit, eager to park myself in the co-pilot’s seat in an effort to put more distance between the two of us. There were some people, I decided, that I would be just fine with being disliked by.

Chapter 16

2008-05-16T14:27:00.000-07:00

(Author's note: Putting up the new comment system in a few minutes, so if you try to comment and have problems, that's probably why. Sorry! I am also considering starting a separate blog just for author commentary...probably won't be until tomorrow though, at the earliest.)

Biv and I sat in silence for a very long while after that. As the night…day? I’d lost all track of time…we could begin to tell as Tengu’s attacks waxed and waned. Kiasis never made a sound; but she would frown, her face would occasionally pale even further than it already was, making her look vaguely corpse-like, or her hand would flex, clenching into a fist as if she wanted to reach across the light-years and punch Tengu physically (I, by the way, would have been all in favor of that if it had been physically possible). Puck’s good humor was gradually lapsing into worry as the attacks grew steadily stronger—although he did grin as he assured us that Tengu would never be able to get close enough to launch another ship-to-ship attack. He was, as he put it, keeping the pedal to the metal, whatever that meant. I wondered, though, how much good that would do us if Tengu’s attackes proved to be successful and he took over control of Kiasis’ body the way he had mine. I was pretty sure, from the looks Biv and I shared, that he wondered the same thing. Being what she was, I doubted even the three of us together, two gangly teenagers and one sprite who was hardly on the beefy side himself, could take her physically.

I was imagining it, I was sure, but eventually I had half convinced myself that even I was starting to feel something—a general feeling of heaviness, a dread that I half contributed to some kind of psychic feedback from the invisible battle. It grew steadily stronger, and the rational part of my mind, the part that still wanted very much not to believe in things it couldn’t see, dismissed it as my own fear of what might happen.

Kiasis’ breathing grew quick and labored, as if she were exerting herself. Mine did too, to a lesser degree. Panic attack, my mind supplied, just like the ones Amber used to have back at the home, when she didn’t take her meds.

I’d never had a panic attack before in my life.

She broke out into a sweat. I found I was sweating as well, and my heart was racing, and I couldn’t deny anymore that I was feeling something. It was almost like a physical pressure, threatening to crush me from all around. It was like being squeezed in an invisible vise.

Kiasis’ nose began, abruptly, to bleed, a thin rivulet of dark blue blood trickling down her upper lip. Then it began to pour, and I fought the irrational urge to scream. I’d never witnessed a seizure before, but I knew that the sudden, jerking movements from the alien woman couldn’t be anything else as she fell backwards onto the mat. Biv moved to help her with a short, horrified cry, but she flung him away easily. He landed a few feet away, not as impressive as my earlier flight across the ship, but I was pretty sure it was no more enjoyable.

I wanted to help, I treally did, but I couldn’t move. My body refused to respond to my mind’s commands; I was rooted where I sat, a horrible burning starting up at the back of my skull, and it was obvious that Kiasis was losing ground. I could suddenly feel Tengu’s elation at knowing he was going to win, and the desperation and frustrated anger that had to belong to Kiasis, her confidence quickly eroding into the horrified certainty that the battle was almost over. I was pretty sure I liked things better when I didn’t think she had any feelings at all.

And then, suddenly, it was all swept away.

As I say that, I realize it sounds as if it was all just suddenly over, and there was peace. It was, sort of, I suppose, but in that split second I felt more, all at once, than my mind can comprehend, even now, that there was time to feel. A sudden wave of fury all but ripped Tengu away from us, halting his attack and sending hurtling back towards his own body. It wasn’t Kiasis, and it sure as hell wasn’t me….but the concept that it could possibly be someone else altogether was too foreign for me to even think of as awareness of the physical world flooded back into me. I realized I was flat on my back on the floor, nauseous and dizzy as if someone had thrown me in a centrifuge. From the brief, quiet retching noises nearby, I realized I wasn’t the only one.

Groaning, I pushed myself slowly to a sitting position as I swallowed back the contents of my stomach. Biv was looking between the two of us fearfully, but I just couldn’t find the voice to tell him it was okay. I wasn’t even sure yet that it was.

Kiasis’ voice was weak, but it was still more than I could’ve managed. “It’s done.”

Biv looked over at me, as if for some kind of confirmation. Showed what he knew, if he thought I knew jack shit about what happened, but I nodded just to make him feel better. I was pretty sure Kiasis knew what she was talking about, even if I was clueless. “Are you okay?” I wasn’t sure if he was asking her or me, but I nodded again just in case. No sense worrying him any more than he already was.

“I am recovered, thank you.” And Kiasis certainly seemed recovered, from the returned strength in her voice. “The human, however, would probably benefit from something to eat and drink to restore her blood sugar and electrolytes to their proper levels.”

Oh, way to move the focus off herself, I thought sourly as Biv hurried over to the wall to synthesize me a plate of cookies and some juice. She wasn’t fooling me, though. I could see how slowly she moved as she rose to roll up the soiled meditation mat, disposing of it beforeretreating to the bathroom under the guise of cleaning up.

Glancing to the side, I saw that Puck had been watching her as well, but he just smiled helplessly and shrugged as he turned his chair back around to get back to the business of piloting, so I kept silent. Still, the next time someone tried to tell me how fearless and practically indestructible Sch’silians were, I’d have to call bullshit.

For now, though, she could keep her secret. I was more concerned with getting her to explain to me what the hell happened.

When Kiasis reemerged a short while later, she looked as if nothing had ever happened, settling back down in the now bare spot where the mat had been. Biv frowned at her, and I smothered a smile at the mother hen in his voice. “Maybe you should lie down for a little while. You must be tired.”

I might have imagined it, but I thought I could detect a trace of long-suffering humor in her voice. “That isn’t necessary. I don’t believe Tengu will give up easily, it would be unwise for me to fall asleep and let my guard down.”

Biv frowned even deeper at that, clearly disapproving, but Kiasis had apparently had some practice at distracting him in the last few months they’d been together. “I find that I am a little hungry, though…”

Biv was hurrying back to the food synthesizer before she could even finish speaking.

The amusement left her expression when she realized I was staring at her. I wanted to know what had just happened to us, damn it all, and I wanted to know now. I was tired of not knowing what the hell was going on, and I was tired of the feeling that there was this whole world of things out there that I didn’t understand that were affecting the outcome of my life. But the look she gave me cut my words off before they could leave my mouth, my jaw clamping shut tightly. Later, the look in her eyes demanded. She plainly didn’t want to talk where the others could hear her.

I glowered at her sullenly as I went back to nibbling my cookies and juice, not even bothering to hide my displeasure. I wasn’t so sure I liked this newfound understanding that I had of someone who I knew actively disliked me, but for all I knew, she had a good reason for wanting to keep things quiet, so I supposed it wouldn’t hurt to wait a little while before I started demanding my answers.

A very little while.

Chapter 15

2008-05-14T00:29:00.001-07:00

Biv plainly took the prediction seriously, because when I turned back around, he was gone, returning a few seconds later with a very sleepy and befuddled Puck, who was still dragging his blanket along with him in what would have been a comical sight if I weren’t suddenly afraid that we were about to be blown to bits. “Whass wrong?” He demanded, scrubbing at his eyes petulantly.

“Tengu is attempting to attack.”

Puck stared into the dimly lit cockpit before frowning. “So? Let ‘im. You already proved your ship can kick his ship’s ass.”

“He is not attempting a physical attack,” Kiasis’ voice was still perfectly calm and controlled, her movements slow and unhurried as she worked the controls of the ship. “He is attempting to attack magically.”

“What? How can he do that?” I turned to Puck, horrified. “I thought you said he had to touch people to hurt them!”

“He has to touch to use his healing magic.” Kiasis swiveled her seat around to face us, and I thought she looked paler than she had the last time I had gotten a good look at her face. Aside from that small difference, she seemed exactly the same…not nervous, not flustered, not even the slightest bit worried. “Tengu is a strong telepath. He need not touch to use other abilities, if he wishes, to attack those who are sensitive enough.”

“Sensitive…?” Biv asked tentatively. I was glad to see I wasn’t the only one with no real clue what was going on.

“Other telepaths,” Puck answered grimly in lieu of Kiasis. “The more sensitive the telepath, the more vulnerable to attack.”

Biv’s eyes widened, and I was suddenly the only one in the dark again. I didn’t much like it. When he saw that I plainly didn’t grasp what Puck’s statement meant, he clarified for me. “Sch’silians are very strong telepaths.”

“My mental defenses are also much stronger than anyone else’s on the ship.” Kiasis didn’t much seem to care for the implication that she might be vulnerable to anything. “However, it would be…impractical at the very least for me to continue piloting the ship, as it is theoretically possible for Tengu take control of my mind.”

“Yeah.” Puck moved into the cockpit. I didn’t like how worried he sounded. I hadn’t heard Puck sound worried yet, up to this point. “I’ll take over. I never thought I’d be so happy to be as mentally sensitive as a rock.” He turned as Kiasis vacated her seat, flashing me a quick grin. “I’m what they call mind-blind. No telepathic sensitivity worth mentioning, not even as much as most humans. My people consider it a handicap; got me picked on as a kid.” Sliding into the empty seat, he turned it around to take the controls as Kiasis made her way past Biv and me, heading for the mediation mat Biv had been napping on.

She sat down, crossing her legs, her back as straight as a board as her eyes fell closed. “Biv. You and the girl should move closer. The nearer you are to me, the better I will be able to protect the both of you. Tengu’s ship will soon be close enough that he may try to attack either one of you.”

Biv moved to comply right away, but I was too confused to do the same. Following directions without question had never been one of my strongest skills. “Wait a minute. Humans aren’t telepaths. How is he going to attack us?”

Puck’s ready answer drifted out of the cockpit brightly. Dim though things might seem, he was always happy to give a lecture on some subject or another; even the brief acquaintance I’d had with him had taught me that. “Most humans have at least some low level telepathic ability. Over seventy-five percent of them, actually. Of course, it’s not as strong as it usually is in other races, but it’s there, and it’s usually enough for them to at least receive, if not send. Besides, princess, you forget you aren’t exactly human.”

I glared in the direction of his voice. “Yeah, well, I’m not a telepath either!”

And that was when it hit me.

It was only for a few seconds, or so I was told later. All I remember is the searing, white-hot pain in my head as my world dissolved into pure hell. It wasn’t so much like physical pain, although I couldn’t have distinguished that at the time…it was more like every fear I’d ever had was taking over my brain, like every bad experience I’d ever been through was reoccurring all at once, until everything else faded and there was fire and the scent of smoke, choking the life out of me and making it impossible to breathe, and my skin was burning and blistering and peeling away from my flesh.

Then I was on the mat, leaning over Kiasis with a knife to her throat.

And then I was flying through the air and slamming hard against the bathroom door. Apparently it wasn’t just a rumor that Sch’silians had roughly twice human strength. Ow.

“Holly!” Biv hurried over to offer me a hand up. “Are you alright?”

I grunted, but I didn’t move from the little heap I’d fallen into on the floor. “Wh…I…” I was having a little trouble articulating my general feeling of “What the FUCK?”, what with the wind having been knocked out of my lungs and all.

“You are,” Kiasis provided with a hint of dry humor. “Apparently more telepathically sensitive than you believed.” She was sitting upright again, tucking her knife back into the sheath on her boot. “Tengu seemed to invade your mind with relative ease.”

I looked first at Puck, in the pilot’s seat, then at Biv, for some kind of clarification.

“It was…kind of scary,” Biv said finally, still staring at me with a kind of horrified awe in his eyes. “One second you were just sitting there with us…the next, you just jumped at Kiasis and grabbed her knife!”

I rubbed gingerly at the knot forming on the back of my head. The idea that someone had just…hacked into my brain was surreal and more than a little scary. T hat he had made me do things against my will, things I wasn’t really even physically capable of doing…I wasn’t sure yet if that scared me, or made me angry.

I was leaning towards a little of both.

Kiasis’ voice interrupted my thoughts, and my head jerked up with a sudden movement that I regretted instantly. “You must return to the mat and stay here. Both of you. The closer you are, the better able I am to defend you from further attack.”

I pushed myself to my feet and followed Biv to the mat. Considering her success so far, I was less than confident in her ability to protect anyone…but I knew she had to at least be better at it than I would be. Still sore from my involuntary flight across the room, I lowered myself to the mat again carefully. “I don’t understand why he picked me,” I complained. That wasn’t quite true; I understood, theoretically, why he’d attacked me out of everyone on the ship. I just didn’t like the explanation.

I liked it even less when Kiasis confirmed my conclusion. “Because you are the most powerful untrained…and therefore defenseless…telepath on the ship. In order for him to attack you from so great a distance, your abilities must be quite considerable, probably due to your mixed parentage. However, if you are not silent so I can concentrate, you will be two very dead humans.”

I fell silent, giving her a glare that I wasn’t sure I’d have been brave enough to give her if her eyes hadn’t already been closed already. I thought for a second that it would make me feel better to know that she wasn’t totally unaffected by the situation….but it didn’t.

Chapter 14

2008-05-14T00:28:00.000-07:00

I must have dozed off, because I opened my eyes to the sound of someone digging through one of the storage units. Craning my neck to look, I saw that it was Biv. Her eyes widened as she noticed me staring at her. “Oh, I’m sorry!” She exclaimed in a whisper. “I was just looking for something else to read.”

“S’ok,” I rubbed my eyes and sat up, not feeling at all rested. “I should probably get up and let somebody else have a turn at sleeping up here, anyway.”

“Oh, you don’t have to. Puck’s asleep in the bathtub with the spare blanket and pillow, I already slept, and Kiasis doesn’t sleep when she’s flying. Sometimes for days at a time.”

I blinked. Surely in my half asleep state I’d heard wrong. “Days…?”

“Days. And by the end of the fourth day, she’s pretty unpleasant. We’re on day three now,” she warned.

I resolved not to throw any questions at Kiasis until after she’d had some sleep. The alien woman already didn’t seem to like me too well. “How’d you end up with her, anyway? It just seems kind of…..different,” I finished lamely, aware that I’d been about to say “weird”. But it was weird; humans and Sch’silians just didn’t often have personal associations. Professional, sure, but that was obviously not the case here.

Biv hesitated, and the instant sadness that came over her face made me feel immediately guilty for asking. “She took me in when my parents were killed a few months ago. The commuter shuttle we were on got caught in the crossfire between her and another ship. When I woke up, Kiasis was standing there. She told me she’d make sure my little sister was provided for for life, if I’d come with her. It’s been a pretty good deal so far.”

“Oh,” I didn’t quite know what to say to that. Personally, I felt a lot worse for her than I did for somebody like myself. It had to be a lot harder to lose someone you’d known and loved your whole life than it was to never know those people in the first place. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she smiled a little, but I could tell it was forced. “Well, it’s not. But it’s a little easier now.”

“But why did Kiasis take you with her?” I was just full of questions that were none of my business, and I half expected Biv to tell me to butt out. She didn’t, but her silent shrug was just as good, and I decided to change the subject. “So I guess you already knew Puck, too.”

She nodded. “I stay with him, sometimes, when Kiasis is away.”

I digested this briefly. “So….did he tell you…about himself?”

That made her grin just a little, and I relaxed slightly. “About what? What he is? Yeah. I thought he was crazy at first, until I asked Kiasis and she told me the same thing.”

“How do you know they’re not both nuts?”

“Sch’silians don’t lie. They don’t bother. I guess they have a saying that lies are all born out of fear or greed…so those that don’t have fear or avarice don’t need to bother lying. I think it rhymes in the original language.”

“Yeah…I’ve heard that they don’t lie. I guess I just have a hard time believing it.”

“I don’t. I don’t think Kiasis is afraid of anything…if she is, she never shows it. She isn’t even afraid to die.” A wistful note crept into her voice, and she dropped her eyes. “I wish I could be more like that sometimes.”

“I don’t know.” I stretched, scooting over in the bunk so Biv would have room to sit down if she wanted. “I think a little bit of fear is a good thing. It keeps us from doing stupid things.”

“I guess.” Biv sat down cautiously on the edge of the bunk, like she was afraid I was going to bite her. I got the definite feeling she didn’t agree.

“I was scared to death to leave the colony with some crazy guy I didn’t know. And you’ve got to admit…I got lucky. It could have turned out a lot worse, he could have been some psycho killer, or something.”

“So why did you…?”

It took me a few seconds to come up with the answer to that one. I don’t think I was really expecting Biv to start asking questions in return. “I guess….maybe I was more afraid of what would happen if I stayed.”

There was nothing really left to say to that, I guess, because we both fell silent for a while. I was surprised that Biv was the one to break the silence. “Puck said he’s going to take you out to one of the malls when we land so he can get you some new things, since you had to leave all yours behind.”

I snorted softly. “I didn’t really have any stuff. All I had was some….oh. Shit…!” I realized with a start what date it was, and just what was going to happen in the next day or two, if the vague cramping in my abdomen was any sign. “Biv….” I could tell my cheeks were heating up a little, but there was nothing really to be done about it. “I guess there was some stuff I kind of needed. Do you have any….um…..tampons or anything?”

Biv just stared at me for a good ten seconds before vibrant color began to flood her cheeks. “I’m not a girl.”

She might have just said she was a refrigerator or a seagull, for all the sense those words made to me. “What…do you mean, you’re not a girl?”

Biv just sighed. “I’m not a girl. I’m a boy. I’m just….kind of….small, I guess.”

What? Kind of small, and kind of pretty, and kind of girly, he must have meant. I felt like an idiot. “Oh. Shit. I’m sorry!”

Her….his weary tone would have told me that I wasn’t the first person to make that mistake, even if his words hadn’t. “It’s okay. People do it all the time. I used to think I’d hit puberty and grow a little and look more…..well….” He trailed off before flashing me a rueful smile. “That hasn’t happened yet.”

“Um….” I thought about trying to lie and make him feel better…but I didn’t see the sense in it, when I knew neither one of us would believe it. “No, it doesn’t look like it. But maybe it still will.”

The look he gave me said that he didn’t believe me any more than I did, but before I could wedge my foot any more firmly in my mouth, a voice interrupted the conversation that had suddenly turned horribly awkward.

“Biv,” Kiasis said sharply. “Go wake Puck. We are about to be under attack.”

Chapter 13

2008-05-09T20:02:00.001-07:00

Sighing, I looked down at the third….no, it was the fourth….suit of clothing Puck had pulled from one of the in-wall storage units and forced me to try on. The problem was that, reasonably, the clothing all belonged to Kiasis. As a result, everything was, to be generous, not suited to me.

“Com on, just roll the legs up one more time,” Puck cajoled. “It’ll work. They aren’t that long.”

“Puck,” I stared at him, making no move to comply with his request. “They’re still past my feet.” I did, however, tug the shirt back up onto my shoulder from where it had fallen, threatening to expose the exact reason why none of Kiasis’ shirts had fit me. I wasn’t too self conscious about my lack of development; after all, I was only fifteen, not quite sixteen yet....but trying on all these outfits was threatening to be a blow to my self esteem. “They just aren’t going to fit. What’s wrong with my—“
“It makes you look like a down-on-her-luck prostitute.” He interrupted before I could even finish the sentence. “The skirt’s at least two sizes too short for you, there are threads hanging off of the hem and a hole in the waistband, and two of the buttons are missing on the shirt…don’t think I didn’t notice those safety pins. The shirt is all torn from where you fell, and, if nothing else, it reminds me of the fact that I almost screwed one of your classmates thinking that she was a hooker.”

“If it helps, she was…sort of. You’re awfully blunt; I thought you said you were some kind of ambassador or diplomat or something back in fairytale land.”

“There are some things there’s just no point in beating around the bush about, princess. And the fact that that uniform needs to hit the trash heap is one of them.” Rummaging through the clothing once again, he pulled out what appeared to be a set of coveralls, meant for working on ships, or machinery, or something of the sort. They were, if you asked me, twice as ugly as my school uniform. “Maybe if we cut the legs off a few inches—“

“No.” I was surprised to hear my refusal come out in stereo as Kiasis voiced her own disapproval from the cockpit. Apparently having her wardrobe mutilated was the breaking point of her silence.

“Okay, okay. Shit, Ki, don’t you have anything with short sleeves? …Ooh, hey, robes…!”

“I might have something.” The soft, totally unexpected voice was close enough to make me jump. And by jump, I mean leap a good few inches straight into the air, half turn on my way back down to see who had snuck up behind me, and stumble with an embarrassing but unfortunately perfectly characteristic lack of grace right into Puck, knocking the poor guy….sprite….whatever he was…..into the wall.

“Shit..!” Puck peeled himself off the wall and straightened his shirt….probably pretty difficult since I seemed to have my hand fisted in a good portion of it. Sheepishly, I withdrew it. “Biv! I didn’t know you even came along.”

The girl in front of me blushed faintly. “I’m sorry. I was…right up front. I guess I dozed off.” It was easy to see why we hadn’t noticed anyone else sitting up there, behind the high back of the co-pilot’s seat. She was small, even smaller than me, in both height and frame; her dark violet hair and blue eyes were the biggest thing about her. Dressed all in black as she was, with long sleeves almost covering her small, pale hands, her fingertips and her face were the only things about her that didn’t blend into the dim lighting on board the ship.

Puck turned a disapproving frown towards the cockpit. “Jesus, Ki. Do you really think it was smart, bringing Biv along when you knew Tengu was probably going to be gunning for us?”

“Humans coddle their young. At Biv’s age, most children on my world would have already been enrolled in active military duty for at least one term.”

“Besides,” Biv interjected weakly, “It’s the weekend. I really didn’t want to stay behind at the inn and deal with all the drunks.”

Puck sighed. “Alright. Where do you have your stuff hiding, Bivvy? Do you think you have anything that’ll fit?”

Biv nodded. I was a little doubtful; she was a good two inches shorter than me—which, by the way, made her really short, especially for sixteen—but judging from her current state of dress, she liked her clothing long and baggy and covering every possible bit of bare skin that she could manage, so there was at least hope. Besides, I thought as Biv moved past Puck to search through a second storage unit, her clothes certainly couldn’t be any worse.

Biv eventually came out of the storage unit with a pair of wide legged black pants and a long sleeved shirt that were, at first glance, nearly identical to what she was wearing. Only the slightest glimmer of silver on the pants pocket clued me in that they were at least slightly different. A silver button. Woo. Those must have been her clubbing clothes. “Here. These are a little long on me, they’ll probably fit you the best.” She smiled shyly at me as I took the proffered clothing, and I felt an immediate stab of guilt for my snide comment, even if it had only been in my head. She seemed so nice.

“Thanks.” I couldn’t help but smile back when someone was that nice to me, taking the small stack of clothing and retreating to the bathroom once again to change, hopefully for the last time.

Which was easier said than done. If there was anything on that ship that was allotted extra space, it sure as hell wasn’t the bathroom. I winced as I cracked my knee on the toilet….again. I’d done it every time I’d been in there to change so far; I guess fate figured there was no sense breaking the tradition.

The experiment, however, was a success; the pants fit my waist surprisingly well, although they were cut a little funny, and the legs only brushed the floor a little bit. Biv must really swim in these, I thought as I stood back to try and get a look at myself. All black wasn’t really my style…but considering my other choices, I was quite happy just to have something that wasn’t falling off me, so I deemed myself presentable and limped my way back out of the bathroom.

My reappearance was met with a loud cheer from Puck and a quiet smile from Biv. “Finally! Take that uniform to the incinerator and burn it..!”

Biv just smiled a bit wider at Puck’s enthusiastic reaction. “They look nice on you.”

“Thanks,” I felt a little silly wearing someone else’s clothing. I knew it was just a loan, until I could somehow manage to get something of my own, but for some reason it made me uncomfortable nonetheless. Biv seemed nice enough, and it was very kind of her to volunteer her wardrobe…but anything that smacked even remotely of charity just left a bad taste in my mouth. “I’ll take good care of them….better than I took of my own stuff, I promise.” I smiled a bit sheepishly. I’d been a little shocked once I took my uniform off and saw all the little rips and tears and stains I’d managed to accrue in it, mostly over the last twenty-four hours.

“Oh, it’s okay.” Biv pushed herself up to her feet from where she’d been sitting, leaning against the wall. “I have plenty more.”

“Soon as we land and get settled in, we’ll take you out and do some clothes shopping.” Puck looked decidedly more excited about the prospect than I was. The idea of spending hours playing the mannequin to Puck’s sense of fashion held no appeal for me at all…but I looked down at the last remnants of my old clothing, a pair of worn black shoes with a hole developing on one side and the shine long since worn off of them, and I reflected that it would be nice to have something new for a change. Something I wouldn’t be slightly embarrassed to be seen wearing in public.

Even if it was kind of hard to believe someone was just going to give it to me.

“First stop: the shoe store.” Puck’s nose wrinkled in what I was pretty sure was an involuntary gesture as his eyes followed my gaze downward. I felt my cheeks heat up, but I didn’t comment. I’d have to find a job, or something, and relatively soon; the feeling of being beholden to someone else, whether it was out of the kindness of their hearts or what, was setting off a sort of burning feeling in my stomach already.

After the general celebration at having found something to fit me besides my uniform had faded, everything settled into silence again. Biv had pulled a book out of her storage unit, stretched out on the mat to read, and promptly dozed off. Puck pulled down the bunk, advised me to lie down and get some rest, and retreated to the co-pilot’s seat himself. I could hear occasional bits of low conversation between him and Kiasis…or rather, I could hear Puck’s low nattering, and Kiasis’ occasional short, one word replies. For my part, I stretched out on the bunk and stared at the ceiling, despite the fact that I wasn’t the least bit sleepy, and let my mind wander.

I found myself with stupid, pointless questions spinning through my head. Why did Kiasis not seem to like me very well? How did she know I looked like my mother? Had they met? How did she know Puck? Did she know what he was? What was a human girl doing traveling with a Sch’silian? What was the inn that Biv had mentioned? Why was she so shy? Did she know what Puck was? Did she believe him? Did she think he was as insane as I did? Did I still think he was insane?

Fuck me. Was I really starting to believe all this shit?

Well, no way I was just going to swallow it all without at least getting some corroboration for Puck’s outlandish story. At the earliest opportunity, when everyone else on the ship didn’t seem to be sleeping or wish I was dead. Closing my eyes, I did my very best to stop thinking altogether for a little while.

Chapter 12

2008-05-06T10:49:00.000-07:00

Our method of transport from Puck’s ship to Kiasis’ did not fill me with a feeling of security. Even though I knew it was a standard practice for boarding between ships, it seemed to me that there should have been a more secure procedure.

Puck’s ship moved into docking position, with the circular boarding hatch lined up with the other ship’s. the other ship then deployed what they called a transition tunnel. In reality, it was a tiny length of plastic tubing. Not even hard plastic, either; when I heard Puck step out into it, there was a distinct crinkling noise. Once he was t hrough he turned to look at me expectantly. “You coming…?”

Instead of answering, I just stared down at the floor of the plastic death trap that awaited me. I wondered vaguely if I could possibly take a running jump and just dive through without putting my weight onto what appeared, at least to me, to have no more substance than a plastic baggie.

“Come on, kid, we can’t hold this position all day. We eventually have to keep moving.”

Taking a deep breath, I gingerly put one foot out into the tunnel. I felt it sag, and it was all I could do to force the other foot to follow. The surface dipped nauseatingly under my feet, and I looked down before I realized what an extraordinarily bad idea that would be.

I could see the infinity of space looming beneath me, just waiting to suck me out into the void at the slightest tear in the flimsy construct. I froze.

“Come on, princess.” Puck leaned over, stretching halfway into the tunnel to offer me his hand. “it’s only a few steps, you can make it. People do it all the time.”

I closed my eyes. Scared as I was, I ignored the offered hand. I wasn’t going to have someone hold my hand like a baby for an activity that other people completed regularly without batting an eye, the way Puck had. I took first one slow, hesitant step. Then another. The tunnel dipped and swayed beneath me, although in retrospect it probably seemed much worse in my mind because I was so sure the whole thing was going to collapse under my weight. Another blind step…and then another….and another….

…and then I was tripping over the edge and stumbling into something soft and smelling vaguely of some sort of scented soap.

“You can probably open your eyes now, princess.” Even without seeing his face, I could tell he was grinning, and I briefly considered kicking him in the shin when my stomach stopped churning. Feeling a little foolish, I opened my eyes and took my first look around the new ship.

It was narrower than Puck’s had been. Puck’s ship had evidently been built for long distance travel, equipped with two full sized, plush bunks, a food preparation area, and just about every other creature comfort one could think of. This ship, hwoever, was all but bare compared to Puck’s luxurious accommodations. Logically, the interior of the ship was narrower, proportionate to the outside. There was a very small food synthesizer, the cheap kind that made everything taste faintly of egg, built into one wall near a wall mounted bunk that was currently folded up into its storage position. On the other side of the cabin, there was what I supposed was a small meditation mat, although it looked less like a comfortable mat and more like a thick rug to me. Aside from that, there were various control panels lit up on the walls, but nothing else that could even remotely be called furnishings.

Puck must have noticed how underwhelmed I seemed. “Yeah. This is pretty much….it, I’m afraid.”

“This ship was engineered for speed and strength of offensive movements,” a terse voice came to the quick defense of the asceticism of her ship. It was possibly the most words I’d ever heard her string together at a time. “I fail to understand why humans are so frequently surprised by the practicality of its design.” She was taller than me, now that I saw her standing, possibly even a bit taller than Puck. That was about the extent of of what I could discern about her appearance, though, since that cowl that had hidden her face almost completely since I’d first seen her was attached to a cloak that did much the same for the rest of her body. It hung in thick folds around her frame, falling all the way to the floor to cover even her feet from view.

Puck grinned. “It’s nice to see you too. Kiasis, this is Holly. Princess—“

“I wish you’d stop calling me that!”

“—this is Kiasis. Ki, why don’t you take that cloak off? It’s starting to creep me out a little, not being able to see your face.”

With that cloak hiding pretty much all of her, I had half come to believe there must be some reason she was hiding herself behind it. A horrible disfigurement, perhaps, or at the very least a healthy dose of just plain ugly. Once the cloak was off, though, I had to consider the possibility that she wore it just to keep people from staring at her the way I was staring right now. She wasn’t so much pretty as she was striking, pale skin standing out against her black flightsuit. Deep brown hair fell in irregular layers around a face with features so sharp they could have cut glass, and dark, almond shaped eyes that seemed to see right through me simply because I most likely wasn’t good enough to be actually seen.

When her eyes focused on me, I felt myself shiver. Her voice was flat and slightly disdainful. “You look like your mother.” With that proclamation, she turned back towards the cockpit of the shuttle, retaking her seat and dismissing me from her notice completely.

Puck glanced down at me with a wry smirk. “She likes you, I can tell. C’mon, kid, let’s see if we can find you something else to wear besides that ugly uniform.” Grabbing me by the elbow, he tugged me towards the rear of the ship.

Just Because

2008-05-04T18:02:00.000-07:00

New pictures up in The Annex. No particular reason...just because they're already pics I had done, and I had them posted elsewhere, so I figured I'd share. :)

Bonus Story!

2008-05-02T08:37:00.001-07:00

Dodge. Block. Parry. Strike.

It was a blessedly mindless routine that left Karu with little opportunity to let his mind wander. The bamboo sword his master held, identical to his own, was hardly lethal during normal practice…but, wearing no padding as they were, the thought of being struck with it was still quite unpleasant.

He wondered, not for the first time that day, how his brother was doing. It had been nearly a year since he’d left Tengu behind in Ireland to come to the East, and not a single day had gone by that his thoughts hadn’t drifted in this manner. Ireland was hardly home to him, but his thoughts were still there.

Because, childish as it might seem at his age, home was still wherever his big brother was.

That was when the bamboo sword struck him in the side.

“You do no good for your brother by letting your mind drift away, rather than learn the discipline for which he sent you here.” His master was a good head shorter than he was, with sparkling dark eyes set in ageless golden features. The truly old of the fey species were often like that. Their faces were unlined, their postures unbent, but they were invariably thin, frail looking, but intensely present, as if time had burned away everything from them but the essentials of their being.

“He did not send me, master. I asked to come.” He replied without thinking in flawless Japanese, head respectfully tilted down, and received another sharp blow to the shin from the bamboo stick for his troubles.

“Impertinent. Even still. If your mind must wander, then let us see if it can wander at the practice board.”

“I am sorry, master.” He removed his soft gloves and turned to make his way to the tall wooden post in one corner of the practice yard.

“Apologies do not change actions. Go.”

Oh, how Karu hated the practice board.

It seemed to loom over him whether he liked the fact or not, jutting imposingly out of the ground as it awaited his arrival, still stained with nearly a year’s worth of his bloody knuckles and who knew how many more years’ worth before him, deep rusty patches in the otherwise gray, weathered wood. But he knelt obediently, less than an arm’s length away, and took a deep breath, letting out a short, loud cry as he sent his knuckles flying forward to connect with the wood. There was no sense holding back in the hopes of sparing himself a little discomfort. With his master hovering behind him, giving the exercise anything less than his full enthusiasm would only draw the torment out for hours. He’d learned that the hard way in his first month’s arrival. Besides, it would be defeating his purpose here if he gave it any less than his best. The pain in his hand would soon fade, eroded by the endorphins clouding his brain, and all that would be left was the comforting rhythm of first one fist, then the other, connecting with their targets.

With a little luck, it would be enough to block the thoughts that spun around in his mind constantly.

Karu hadn’t at all liked the idea of coming here alone. He’d wanted Tengu to come with him, away from the influence of Queen Titania. He didn’t like the Irish queen, he didn’t like her in the least, and he trusted her even less. His twin brother had always been focused, driven, with a streak of blatant opportunism that Karu alternately admired and hated. Since they’d been very young, Tengu had been the one to take care of the two of them, he had made it his sole mission in life to make a better life for them both…to be fair, when Tengu said that, he mostly meant a better life for his younger brother, working to send him to private tutors and military instructors to further Karu’s wish to be a soldier. Lately, however, his secondary goal had become finding a way to reduce or eliminate the threat of humans to their kind….or, Karu sometimes thought, simply to punish the humans for daring to threaten them.

And Titania used that brilliantly to get Tengu to do her will.

This time, she had managed to get Karu out of the picture for an entire year. How different would Tengu be, he wondered, when Karu finally made it home? Privately, he felt that every time Tengu completed one of the queen’s “requests”, it sucked his elder brother just a little further into the shadows with her. There were means, Karu felt, that couldn’t be justified by the end, even if it were for so noble a reason as expanding Titania’s kingdom to protect their kind from the human encroachment. If Tengu would only listen to—

The bamboo sword rapped him sharply on the back of his head, knocking the thoughts right out of it. Willing himself to ignore the ringing in his ears, he plunged his fist forward into the board with renewed determination.

Tengu did not like Ireland.

It reminded him of Britain, with its constant, wearying drizzle of rain. And the Wild Hunt did no more to endear the land to him. They loved the land, that was for certain. They considered themselves the guardians of the land itself, rather than simply the protectors of the kingdom and the Queen. They were difficult, stubborn, and overtly hostile to the Queen’s servants, which included himself. In fact, it was almost exclusively himself, since no one else at court would even deal with them. The Queen’s messengers tended to disappear in the Wild Hunt’s woods and were never heard from again.

Dealing with them was wearying and invariably resulted in violence, even when delivering a simple request. Really, Tengu felt, the Queen was well within her rights to command an audience with the sullen Hunt chieftain if she felt it necessary; the chieftain himself, however, had been in complete disagreement in the matter.

Tengu refused to cajole one of the Queen’s subjects to obey a royal command.

He was glad to see the Queen’s fortress appearing on the horizon, finally, with the promise of his own chambers, lit by a roaring fire and blissfully dry. But his first task was to ascend the winding flight of stairs that led to the Queen’s suite of rooms to deliver the news of the chieftain’s impending arrival. He passed no one on the way up, of course; even the servants were only permitted to enter at certain times of the day to clean. He was the only member of court permitted to come and go as he pleased.

Or so he had thought. The low conversation that reached his ears as he lifted his hand to knock suggested otherwise.

Foregoing the knock, he opened the door unannounced, customary manners falling to the wayside in his curiosity. He was Titania’s favorite, that couldn’t be contested. But his brother’s position in court when he returned was not nearly so stable, and besides, caution was the rule always when dealing with monarchs. Tengu wasn’t fool enough to trust anyone.

He frowned to see a familiar figure, tall and muscular, with long red hair tied back at the nape of his neck, in the queen’s antechamber. Niall, that was his name; he was a well known mercenary from a neighboring county. A soldier and mercenary and sometimes assassin. The tall sidhe’s eyes narrowed as he looked up from what was apparently a deep conversation with the queen herself, glaring openly at the interruption. Titania, on the other hand, just smiled her most gracious smile.

“Tengu,” she greeted him smoothly. “I trust your audience with the Wild Hunt went well…?”

Tengu pretended, as Niall murmured a quiet farewell to the queen and brushed past him on the way out the door, that the man was beneath his notice. He was, of course, but Tengu noticed him anyway. Niall had been rumored to have set his sights on leading the Queen’s armies….a position that Tengu had already decided his brother would have, upon his return. Not only would it provide a perfect opportunity for Karu to earn a reputation as the brilliant tactician and warrior Tengu knew him to be…Tengu was loathe to have anyone that he couldn’t trust implicitly in charge of the entire army. That could bode very unwell for his own position at court, and he had no intention of sleeping with one eye open. Unfortunately, Titania and Karu held no love for each other at all, and he disliked the scene he had just stumbled upon intensely.

His expression, however, bore no trace of fear or hesitation as he greeted the Queen with customary deference, bowing down to one knee respectfully before rising and launching into an account of his meeting with the Hunt. His mind had already formulated a course of action, and fear was not a part of it.

It was deep into the night hours when Tengu ascended the stairs again, his step far brighter than it had been some hours earlier. It had taken him most of the day to catch up to Niall, but their meeting had been quite short. Tengu clutched the object of his quest easily beneath one arm, leaving his other hand free to fling the Queen’s door open once again without warning.

Swinging the severed head of the foreign mercenary by its distinctive, now blood-matted red hair, he lobbed it directly into the Queen’s lap.

Her eyes, now open, widened briefly, then narrowed in annoyance as she sat up in her bed. “Tengu,” she began in a warning tone, “You should know that there are limits to the behavior I will tolerate. Even from you.”

“And you should be aware, your highness,” His voice was calm, even conversational. “I am an extremely valuable…and loyal….ally. There is only one thing I value over the pledge of loyalty that I gave to you, and indeed, I value it over my life. ….or anyone else’s.”

Titania smiled faintly. She didn’t fear Tengu, nor any threats he could make. She feared no one, as a matter of sheer principle. But it was good to know what his limits were. “I will keep that in mind.” She looked down at the grisly prize in her lap. The face that stared up at Titania was covered in oozing boils, mouth frozen in a silent scream. Niall’s death had not been pleasant.

“There is little magic in this world that can stand up to a healer’s power over living flesh.” Tengu spoke as calmly, as coolly as if he really weren’t covered in globs of blood and gore, and they were merely having a polite debate the way they had so many evenings in the dining hall. “Merely a bit of useful information for your highness. As loyal a servant as I can be…I can be just as loyal an enemy.” His boots squished slightly as he turned towards the door again. “Good night, your majesty. May the rest of your sleep be…peaceful.” With that he was gone, his footsteps echoing slightly as he retired to his own room.

Chapter 11

2008-05-01T20:27:00.000-07:00

I didn’t really know if Puck’s story left me less inclined to think that he was a amdman, immersed in his own private delusions, or more. To say it seemed outlandish was the understatement of the century, but he didn’t seem inclined to elaborate any further on his tale, falling silent and staring out at the stars ahead of us. If I wanted more answers, I was going to have to dig for them.

“So that human that Ivy ran away with…”

“Was your father, yes.”

“You never mentioned his name.”

There was a long silence. I got the distinct impression that this was a part of his story that he really didn’t want to discuss in any further detail, but he did answer me. “His name was Nahuel Chase.” For a moment, I thought that was the only answer I was going to get. “You really don’t look much like him, really. He was dark haired, dark eyed….I gathered he was of Native American descent. Your expressions, though, now those remind me of him. Like right now,” he rolled his eyes briefly. “The way you’re looking at me like I’ve gone off the deep end.”

That was probably true. I probably was looking at him like that. God knows I was thinking it. “If he was a human, how did he manage to find his way to your world? I thought you said the….whatever they’re called….fairies…”

“Fairies,” Puck corrected.

“That’s what I said.”

“No, you said fairies,” He was just teasing me now, I was sure, a thought that made my jaw clench. “It’s a subtle difference in—“

“I don’t care.” I snapped. “You said they closed up the portal behind them.”

“Yeah, well…” He hesitated. “Look, I really shouldn’t be telling you this. It’s sort of a big secret….as in my head could get chopped off if anybody were to find out I told you. But there’s still a portal from Faerie to Earth.”

“You don’t say.” I didn’t bother to try and erase the sarcasm from my tone. I had to wonder what kind of crazy explanation he was going to try and pass off on me to cover that little flaw in his story.

“Don’t get smart, kid. It looked like the portal closed behind us; for all I know, it just moved. It isn’t like there are tons of faeries around anymore for me to track down and ask, you know? But I think the faeries were a little reluctant to cut that last tie to Earth completely. You know what a wormhole is, don’t you?”

“Yeah…” Nobody could want to be a pilot without knowing what kind of dangers lurked in the unexplored reaches of space. “It’s like a portal between two points in the universe.”

“Or other universes,” Puck finished for me. “Although Faerie isn’t quite that far away. Anyway, there’s a wormhole directly over the Forbidden Mountains. If you keep going in a perfectly straight course when you come out the other side, it’ll take you directly to Earth. To be more accurate, if you land on Earth from that course at exactly midnight, Belfast time, you’ll land right in the very same spot that the faeries opened the portal up the first time. Of course, it’s not exactly the heart of Ireland’s woods anymore. It’s the parking lot of a grocery store called Shop-N-Save.”

I stared at him for a good minute before I just turned my head to look out at the stars again. I wasn’t even going to tell him what I thought of that story. Not that I would have had the chance anyway, because my thoughts were almost immediately interrupted by the chirping of an incoming communication.

“What’s up, beautiful?”

Kiasis didn’t seem to return Puck’s easy familiarity. Then again, Puck seemed pretty familiar with just about everyone he met. “We are being followed,” she said shortly.

“What? My instruments aren’t showing anything at all. Are you sure?”

Even without being able to see her eyes, I could tell she was looking at him the way I did most of the time. “I would not have contacted you if I was in doubt.”

“Fine, fine…how do you know? Are my instruments off? Do I need to go all the way back to Voltaire colony and get a refund on all that work they just did?”

“Whoever is pursuing us, they are out of range of electronic detection. I can sense them. They are tracking us by means of magic.”

Puck frowned. “Well, aren’t you just the creepy little Jedi. So what do we do now…?”

One corner of her mouth turned down in a frown that I assumed was directed at the analogy. “I would recommend that the two of you board this ship, where it is safer, and leave yours in tow, in case there is….conflict.”

“But…” Puck looked faintly scandalized at that suggestion. “Leave my ship?”

“Your ship is not equipped to handle such conflict….as was proven earlier, mine is. I suppose you will have to choose between looking after your ship, and looking after your new charge.”

So she did realize I was there. I just apparently wasn’t worth speaking to.

Puck sighed. “Okay, fine, I guess. Moving into position now. I’ll signal you when we’re ready to board.” Kiasis didn’t respond verbally; she just nodded curtly and cut the transmission.

“Alright, princess,” Puck cautioned me, although I was too busy wincing at the new nickname to really listen too closely. “You’re going to feel a bit of a jerk.” He wasn’t kidding about that. A moment later the ship lurched so hard that I would have fallen right out of my seat without my safety harness on. “I swear, those two are like cockroaches. It’s hell getting rid of them.”

“Tengu and his brother…?”

“Who else?” He grumbled, tucking a bit of hair behind one pointed ear. “If they don’t quit dogging our tracks, we’re never going to get where we’re going.”

I frowned slightly. “Puck….where….are….we going?”

“Oh,” Puck grinned a bit as that stubborn lock of hair fell right back into his eyes. “I thought you wanted proof that my story was real.”

I frowned even further. I was really growing to hate his habit of never just answering a straight question. “Of course I do.”

“Well, princess, that’s why we’re going to take you to meet a gryphon.”

Introducing the Annex!

2008-04-29T10:13:00.000-07:00

The Annex is where I plan to post all artwork and bonus stories. I was wondering how I was going to do it, and the idea kind of hit me last night when I was typing out Puck's long winded monologue ;)

So here's the first post. Just artwork right now, no bonus story yet...sorry, my morning got away with me while I was setting this up.

Chapter 10

2008-04-26T18:44:00.000-07:00

(Author's note: This chapter ran on a LOT longer than I was figuring it would. Puck is long winded, he obviously had a lot to say. It's hastily proofread, but generally the grammar mistakes you'll see are just due to Puck's speech patterns. Sorry it was so late going up, either the next chapter or a bonus story will be forthcoming within a few hours!)

Nobody really knows where the faeries came from. They don’t age and die like humans, so that could explain why there’s no fossil record of them on Earth. Then again, for all I know, they really just sprang up out of the innate magic of the Earth, like the legends say. But however they came about, they were the furst of us. The general consensus is that the elves came next, most likely through the natural process of evolution. Then came us sprites, although whether through evolution or magical tinkering, I really couldn’t say. It was pretty common for the faeries to use magic for genetic experimentation; they made a hobby out of testing the bounds of their magical abilities (how could you think the platypus was anything but a genetic experiment?). It’s pretty certain there was some such experimentation involved in the creation of the sidhe, but all the faeries I ever met in my lifetime were either too young to remember those early days, or so old that they’d forgotten them. I do know that they passed along their penchant for fiddling with other species’ natural development down to the rest of us, because the elves have been known to do the same sorts of things, and the sprites as well, although most of the time we have to rely on more scientific methods. Between us three of the oldest feykinds, the elves got the lion’s share of the magic, and it wasn’t too long after their creation that things like trolls and unicorns and pixies were running around as well. The sidhe, on the other hand, were never too big on messing with the natural order of things. Not that I blame them, really, but that’s another story altogether.

For more centuries than I’m old enough to recall, the fey creatures lived in relative peace with humanity. To some of them, we were gods and goddesses, especially in the beginning. To others we were just “spirits”, sometimes good, sometimes evil, and to a very rare few, we were just people, living alongside them. There were the odd cases where some nut would go off and do something rotten, of course, like enslave an entire human village or the like, but overall we had a nice mutual respect thing going on.

Unfortunately, as humanity started to grow and spread, they started thinking of the Earth as their domain, and they were less and less intent on sharing. We didn’t help matters much, either, because there was an overall tendency to keep to ourselves, and “leave the humans to their own business”. I guess we thought of ourselves as above them, somehow, and that definitely didn’t pan out to our benefit; the humans were spreading out, and we were drawing back, but overall things were still generally peaceful.

And then Christianity came along.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with Christianity itself. As religions go, it’s one of the nicer ones, full of good ideas. Love thy neighbor, thou shall not commit murder…those are all good things. And there were Christians long before the problems started arising; a lot of people claim that the shit started to hit the fan when Christianity started to spread, like your healer buddy Tengu, and wanted to band together to wipe it out. But from what I saw…and I’m pretty observant…it seems to me that the real trouble with Christianity started when the government got ahold of it.

Well, our folk, unlike the humans, never really had any kind of central leadership. I guess because we tended to stick to smaller, individual settlements that invariably developed their own ideas on what leadership should mean. I was living in Wales at the time things started to go sour, making a merry hell out of the farmers’ lives and bringing a smile to the faces of their wives and daughters….I didn’t have it so bad, really, compared to some…when I ran into a young man traveling through named Oberon.

He was a nice enough young man, good looking, in a blond haired, Germanic sort of way. He was well spoken, and polite, and obviously well educated, but when he told me about the outrageous mission he’d set down for himself, I laughed until I cried: he wanted to unite all of the feykinds under one rule, and make himself our High King over everything.

Now, that might not seem like such a crazy idea to you, but once you get to know just how diverse our folk are, and how resistant some of them are to outside rule, or change of any kind, you’ll understand why I was laughing for the rest of the night. I thought he was crazy. But it got me to thinking….why not? Even though we might all resist a central rule to our dying breath, there was no denying that it was a big part of what made the humans so powerful a force. They weren’t all under the same rule, granted, but their kingdoms were getting bigger and bigger, with one kingdom often encompassing several continents. The humans had safety and power in numbers, and the Pope was none too kindly disposed towards our kind. We were a threat to his power, a threat to the scope of Christianity. The Inquisitions hadn’t started up in earnest yet, but we had gone from spirits and deities to demons and shades in the blink of an eye from the time of the appointment of the first Pope, and I figured that maybe if we could stick together, we could make it too much trouble to be worth it for the Church to keep hunting us down.

So I packed up my stuff and hurried to catch up to Oberon, and the rest is history. Literally, you can read it in our history books. I might have one stashed under my bed, I’ll look around for you when we land.

Now, Oberon wasn’t stupid, for being a young brat and all. He was passionate about his mission, and he believed wholeheartedly in what he’d set out to do, and he’d already found himself a pretty good base of support in the common folk. But bless him, he didn’t have a politic bone in his body; that was where I came in. With me providing the occasional insightful suggestion, it didn’t take long before he’d gained control of of all of Britain, and Wales was shaping up to go the same route pretty nicely. His army was big enough, by that time, that those few that didn’t go along willingly didn’t really put up much resistance. It might sound a little barbaric in this day and age, but that was how the world ran in those days. Soon, though, it came to be obvious that we were going to have to move along to the rest of Europe if we wanted to keep our momentum going…so I did something that I’ve been kicking myself for ever since.

I suggested that Oberon get married.

See, the only real threat to our plan was, ironically, the person who’d originally given Oberon his inspiration. Her name was Danu, although in Britain she’d somehow gotten to be known as Titania, and no leader among our kind yet, up until now, had rivaled her scope of power. No one really knew where she came from, but she’d risen to power in Ireland some centuries beforehand; she ruled Ireland, Scotland, a good chunk of Spain, and that last, niggling bit of Wales that had been giving us trouble. They said her second in command was a psychotic madman who made a hobby out of butchering the inhabitants of monasteries and nunneries, and hated Christianity with a fanatical passion; her army could sweep through a country in a matter of days and have it under her thumb, if she so chose, and they claimed that her personal army, a clan of sidhe called the Wild Hunt, were a band of unnatural berserkers who could fight for three days on no food or sleep. Just the idea of going up against them sent some of our more seasoned soldiers into a panic.

That was a tough act to follow. So I took a trip to Ireland to meet with her second in command in person, and talk to him about an alliance.

I didn’t like Tengu from the first moment I met him. I didn’t like much about Ireland in general, honestly, and it damned sure didn’t like me right back…no, princess, I don’t think I’ll be sharing that tale. Let’s just say my first meeting with the Wild Hunt really didn’t go too well, and they’ve never quite forgotten it. And I found Tengu to be a stubborn, arrogant bastard, with some pretty extreme ideas on what constituted right and wrong (not much different than he is today, actually). But he was reluctantly in favor of an alliance….he didn’t like the idea of sharing his queen’s attentions, I don’t think, but he was hungry to get his hands on our military power….so he went off to convince Titania that it was a good idea (she was apparently a little wary of the idea of sharing the reins with someone else herself. I don’t blame her there), and I hopped the first boat back to Britain to drag Oberon across the sea. Tengu and I figured that as long as the two of them didn’t hate each other on first sight, it’d be a better match than most of the royal marriages either one of us had seen, but it took some doing to convince Oberon that it was the right thing to do. Idealist that he was, he had a pretty hard time with the idea of a marriage that wasn’t based on true love and all that romantic rot, but like I told him then, we needed Titania’s support badly, and sometimes, frankly, you just have to take one for the team.

Wouldn’t you know the two of them were crazy about each other from the first time they met?

Not that I blame Oberon. Titania was a looker, all masses of red curls and curves, and she was no fairytale royalty. She was a war-queen, what the Gaels called a ban-rion. She didn’t rise to power for nothing, that was for sure. She had presence, but in a different way than Oberon did; she could be a real politician when the occasion arose, but she wasn’t afraid to saddle up and lead her troops into battle, either. I’m not saying that I liked the woman, but I respected her, at least back in those days, and I was satisfied that it was a good match. The wedding went off without a hitch, and between the two of them, it was a matter of less than a century before they achieved what Oberon had set out to do all those years ago. Their rule reached every continent of the Earth; there were a few pockets of resistance, there always are, but they were generally acknowledged to be the High King and Queen of….well….everything that didn’t involve humanity. Every major leader from every fey species swore allegiance to them, and for a while that was good enough. For the most part, once we put up a little resistance, we were left alone; we’d send in a few troops, kill a few human soldiers, and it’d all be done with.

And then the Inquisitions started.

Those were dark days for anything with pointed ears, let me tell you. If you saw a monk or a priest, you ran. Our numbers were decimated in a matter of decades, and the Inquisitioners weren’t even content with that. They slaughtered every human who had the slightest connection with our people, to boot, accusing them of witchcraft and heresy. To be honest, I think they were tougher on the humans. We tended to get killed quick and easy if we got caught, because the Inquisitioners were afraid of whatever magic we might muster up against them. The humans, they weren’t so lucky; it amazes me sometimes the atrocities that humans can commit in the name of a religion that’s supposed to be rooted in peace.

Something obviously had to be done, or we were going to be wiped out. Tengu wanted to take our armies and slaughter or enslave every last human on the planet….and Titania was all for it, really. She always put way too much stock in his opinion for my comfort. But Oberon wasn’t big on mass murder if there was another alternative, so he searched and searched, and finally he came up with one: if the humans wanted this world so badly, we’d just make our own.

Now, he didn’t come to that conclusion all by himself. He met with the most ancient and eldest of all our species, particularly the faeries. I’m pretty sure it was one of the elder faeries who came up with it, really, because it sounds like the kind of outrageous thing one of the old ones would cook up, but he never let on that it wasn’t his idea. I guess he learned a little about politics in all his years with me. But the faeries claimed that if they all pooled their magics, they could do it with relatively little effort; there was a huge outcry at this, especially from Tengu and his supporters, and from the Wild Hunt and the other sidhe (they always were more rooted to the land than the rest of us). But Oberon was the High King, and Titania was the Queen. Once they’d made their decision, it was pretty much law, and it didn’t take more than a few days for Oberon to convince his wife that this was the right course of action.

I can’t speak for just how the world was created. I’m not gifted with any sort of magic myself, all I could really do was watch from the sidelines. I do know it barely took a week, and looking back I think the faeries timed that on purpose, sort of thumbing their noses to the Christians….and then, on the seventh day, they all died.

I guess I shouldn’t say died. Their bodies expired and turned to dust, and what we were left with was a portal to a ready made world that was as close to Earth, I think, as they could make it.

What followed was sort of like Noah’s ark, but in epic proportions. Hundreds of thousands of creatures of all different races, shapes, and sizes, gathered deep in the heart of Ireland’s woods to cross the portal to the new world, carrying everything they owned in whatever manner they could. We rescued as many of the magically born animals that we could; the dragons were pretty hard to smuggle over, that was a hell of a sight. They fought tooth and nail. The unicorns, the kobolds….and there was plenty of “normal” flora and fauna being brought over as well; we had a whole world to populate, after all. Rumor has it that a few humans made their way over as well, but if that’s true, they were wise enough to lay low, even to this very day. Humans are particularly persona non grata in most parts of our world; no offense, but I guess you can see why. There are a lot of bad memories wrapped up there.

Anyway, Oberon decided unilaterally that the world should be named Faerie, in honor of those who gave up their physical existence to create it. Not the most original of names, but not a single person spoke up against it. Well, the portal closed up behind us, and we were left with a new world that we didn’t quite know what to do with…so we spread out. People tended to keep to their own, even without the humans to influence us; for instance, those elves and sprites and sidhe who’d been living in, say, Scandinavia, tended to head for the snow, and settle there, while those who were from the equatorial settlements tended to gravitate towards the warmer, tropical places. But Oberon and Titania were still the undisputed rulers, and everything was more or less good, aside from the occasional petty war over territory and such.

Call me a pessimist, but I knew it wasn’t going to last.

The idea of turning tail and running from a war with humanity had never quite set right with Titania, I could tell. She was progressively more and more restless, and the two of them just weren’t as close as they were before the Great Migration (that’s what they call it in the history books; a pretty lofty title, huh? Capital letters and everything). More and more, I think, she started to feel that her idea had been the right one, and Tengu sure as hell didn’t do anything to change her mind. He was all for the idea of finding a way back to Earth and taking it over, and he made no secret of the fact. I was always shocked that Oberon let him spout his opinions in court the way he did, but I think he respected the fact that Tengu wasn’t at all afraid of him. If you want my two cents, Oberon was always a little too attached to the idea of freedom of thought and speech. He’d even let Titania appoint Tengu’s brother Karu as head of their army. Granted, he’d been her general and chief tactician before she and Oberon had gotten married, but I always thought that his own general would have made a much more trustworthy choice. What’s done is done, though, I guess, and I really have to say that aside from his willingness to do whatever his brother tells him is the right thing to do, I’ve never had too much trouble out of Karu on his own. Of course, I imagine you’ll get to know the both of them a hell of a lot better than you really want to when we finally make it back to Faerie, so you can make up your mind all by yourself which one you hate more.

Every marriage has its ups and downs, I know, but when you rule an entire world, the choices that you make have higher stakes than most. It wasn’t too long before Oberon did what I would have thought unthinkable just a century or so before: he strayed from his wife’s bed. And the union produced a child, which the mother laid on the doorstep, so to speak, almost right after she was born; I never even learned her if she was an elf, or one of the last remaining faeries, or what she was, or even her name. All I knew was that Oberon was suddenly a father, I was one shocked as hell godfather, and….well, I guess that put Titania automatically into the role of pissed off, wicked stepmother.

You haven’t seen a temper tantrum until you’ve seen it thrown with magic, lemme tell you; there were parts of the castle that had to be rebuilt entirely. But Oberon was determined: he was sorry, he’d wronged her, and he would do anything she wanted to amend it. But he was keeping his daughter, and she would be the heir to the throne, because it was pretty obvious by this point that Titania was barren.

Life went on, and it was pretty damned tense in the castle for a while, but Titania seemed to have accepted things as they were, and she was never actively cruel to the baby. Just….distanced, I guess that shouldn’t really be surprising. And then….I don’t know all the details, because even Oberon won’t tell me….but Titania up and disappeared for almost a year. Where she went, I have no idea; I’m sure Oberon and Tengu both know, but nobody’s sharing any details with poor Puck. When she came back…well, things just weren’t pretty. She hated poor little Ivy, and it was obvious, and she was none too well disposed towards Oberon, either. Oberon, on the other hand, felt guilty as hell, and the crown was really starting to weigh heavily on him. He was starting to age, and not gracefully, the way Titania was. He just looked….tired. I think the effort of putting his kingdom before his heart really took something away from him that he never managed to get back. Sometimes I’m kind of sorry I ever helped him with his mad scheme all those years ago. He might have been better off if I’d just written him off as insane and doomed to fail, and went on my merry way.

But Ivy was still the light of his life….the light of the whole court, honestly. She was beautiful, and smart, and kind….well, I might be a little biased, since I was the one who babysat her while Daddy was holding court and all. She would have made one hell of a Queen, though, if she hadn’t gone and done the unthinkable.

She fell in love with a human.

He was a frontier scout. Of course, I didn’t know that then. Nobody knew, or cared, what he was; just that he had landed in his scoutcraft and Ivy had fished him out, half dead, from the wreckage and demanded that Tengu heal him. Everybody was shocked as hell when he did; that was either a testimony to how well Ivy was liked, or to Tengu’s talent for seeing the future. For all I know, he knew just how much trouble it was going to cause, and he did it on purpose. I don’t put much past him. It took him days to get the job done, though; I don’t think he’d ever healed a human before, and the guy was still weak as water when he was done. Ivy tended to him herself, despite her father’s very vocal protests, and brought him food and water every day, and sat with him to read him books and teach him about our history. The poor guy probably thought he was going over the deep end at first, but he spent weeks at court, and pretty soon he knew damn near every bit of our history as well as any historian, thanks to Ivy. Titania was furious at this; she demanded that the human be killed, before he could go back to his own people and guide them back to Faerie. She wasn’t the only one; there were threats and even a few minor riots and attempts on his life. Finally, Oberon didn’t really have any choice but to order the man to do what he could to fix his craft…I got the dubious honor of helping him, because unfortunately Oberon learned early on that I have a gift for the mechanical…and leave Faerie for his own safety, and for Ivy’s, because she wouldn’t leave his side for a moment. It took some work, but we finally got his ship up and running again (I learned a lot about human technology when I was working on that ship, and I was amazed at the advances they’d made)….but the night before he was supposed to depart, he disappeared….and so did his ship and Princess Ivy.

Oberon was heartbroken. I was just plain pissed off; I knew he wouldn’t have taken her against her will. Nobody could make Ivy do anything against her will, she was stubborn as a goat. She went with him because she was infatuated with him, and I really should have seen it coming. Oberon was beside himself, and not thinking straight, and that was the day that I lost all the respect that I ever had for Queen Titania, because she chose that time to try and stage a coup and take over the throne as the sole ruler of Faerie. Smart, I guess….but cold and heartless as hell.

It didn’t work. Oberon was too popular and well loved. He should have had her put to death; I know that was what I advised him to do, and to get that weasel Tengu as well while he was at it, even though there was no evidence whatsoever to implicate him in the attempt. I knew better than that, of course, but he was a slippery bastard. So Titania was permanently exiled, and Oberon’s grief gave him a burst of creativity: since she was so attached to her former life on Earth, he told her, she was to be exiled back to the human world for all eternity. It took a good bit of powerful magic to force her away against her will, but it was finally accomplished. And then Oberon turned to me.

I’ve never seen him look that cold in my entire life, especially not towards me. It sent a shiver down my spine, not to mention….well, it just plain hurt my feelings, but now that I’ve had a decade or so to reflect, I know he was just taking his grief and anger out on me, for lack of anyone else to focus on. He said that since I was the one who let Ivy slip away, and I failed so miserably in taking care of her, I could damn well go and find her….and I wasn’t to come home until I did.

So I was exiled as well, although I freely admit I didn’t put up nearly the fight that Titania did. I was still in shock, and I guess I sort of felt that I was responsible as well….and a very, very little part of me wanted to get a good look at this new world the humans had created, with spaceships and supercomputers and travel between the stars. I never really planned to get this good of a look, going on sixteen years now, but I haven’t let the time go to waste. I’ve studied damn near every branch of science you people have managed to come up with, I’ve learned a good chunk of the new languages, and in general I’ve become a lot more well known than I really meant to when I got here. I’ve had a few run-ins with Titania, but she never quite manages to catch me, and if I ever get the chance, I’ll do what should have been done when she stabbed poor Oberon in the back like that: I’ll put a bullet right between her eyes, so I can make sure she never finds her way back to Faerie again, or has the chance to raise an army against Earth. But I’ll be just as happy to take you home to your grandfather, just so I can see his face light up when he finds out who you are. Even if he gives me the noose right after that, it’ll be worth it just to know that I did something to right the wrong I let happen all those years ago.

Chapter 9

2008-04-23T00:37:00.000-07:00

“So…..what are we going to do?” I was still leaning forward in my seat excitedly as I watched Tengu and his brother t urn tail and r un. “They’re getting away!”

Puck stared at me blankly. “I think you’re missing one of the vital highlights of this situation,” he said slowly. “In case you weren’t really paying attention to the events of the last twenty minutes or so, we’re the ones getting away, here. We got rescued. Now we’re escaping. That’s how it works.” Smiling indulgently, he reached over to pat me on the head. “You’re new at this. You’ll get it eventually.”

“But…..they kidnapped somebody. Two somebodies, unless I really missed something. We’re just going to let them go….?”

“Uh….yes. Yes, we are, Holly, because…..once again, in case you missed it….they almost blew us up.” Setting a few controls, Puck leaned back in his seat again and let the ship pilot itself. “We can’t take them. So we’re running away now. If we get the chance in the future to help that boy and his sister, we’ll take it, but right now we’d just be wasting all the effort that our lovely rescuer just expended to save our asses, and you don’t want to do that, believe me.”

My reply was cut off as a piercing whistle leapt from the console, making me jump. Puck winced. “Oh. That would be said rescuer right now.” He sighed as he opened the channel with obvious reluctance, but by the time the screen flickered to life he was smiling his most charming smile. “Hello, beautiful! Have I mentioned yet today how hot women who can shoot the power supply out of a shielding unit from three lightyears away are?”

“Puck.” The figure on the screen was hooded, keeping her facial features from view. “Karu was not incorrect in his assessment of your intelligence.”

Puck turned to me with a wry grin. “She has an open channel to all the communications on this ship. That’s her way of saying that she thinks I’m an idiot, too. Holly, this is Kiasis. Lucky for us, she was orbiting the colony while she waited for me to get my ship taken care of. She doesn’t think I ought to be allowed to travel between solar systems without a chaperone, you see.”

“A theory based on the long years of our acquaintance that I have yet to see disproven. I assume that your ship will function until we reach our destination?” The voice was sharp, the words terse and slightly accented, as if English was not the speaker’s native language. I was curious about what was behind the hood; did everyone outside the colony keep their faces covered?

“Well, it hasn’t given me any trouble yet, aside from the shields, so I’m assuming that too.”

“I will keep the lines of communication clear, in case you find reason to conclude otherwise.” The communication was cut without warning, with no closing or warning of any kind.

“Charming,” I said dryly. “Is she from your world too?”

“Nope,” he said calmly, as if it were an everyday occurrence. “She’s from Sch’sil’ya.”

That was not an everyday occurrence. “You’re kidding.” All I knew about Sch’sil’ya I’d heard in Universal Studies classes. It was a humid, jungle covered planet, crawling with huge carnivores that could snap up a human sized being in a single bite. The Sch’cil’ians were a recently civilized race compared to humans, but they’d achieved space travel some one hundred or so years earlier; once they managed to travel outside their solar system, they’d become the bullies on the block, conquering all their neighbors and stealing the technology from them to extend their reach even further. Then they’d undergone some kind of political reformation, and become a semi-democratic society, something like twenty or so years before they encountered humans. They were the most influential race in interstellar politics outside the humans, but they were supposedly pretty secretive and still more than a little warlike. The rumor was that they didn’t make friends at all, nor did they really form any kind of attachments to anyone, outside of immediate family. I’d really never pictured one of them being friends with someone from Earth.

Wait. When, exactly, had I started thinking of Puck as being from Earth? Was I really starting to believe all this shit?

I stared out the window (Somehow, after being shot at and convincing myself that I was going to end up in little bits scattered all over the orbit of the colony, watching the stars zoom by didn’t bother me nearly so much.), lost in my own thoughts. I wanted to believe Puck. I was a little iffy on the whole fantasy-world-become-reality part of things…mythology and fantasy stories had never really been my cup of tea; but I really, really wanted to believe that I was going somewhere where I was going to be happy, and safe, and taken care of, childish as that might have sounded. It may have been a little selfish, because I was sure there were kids out there who had it worse than I did, but I wanted a home, and a family, and a childhood. I wanted them so badly, in fact, that I began to consider the possibility that maybe Puck wasn’t nuts. Maybe he was telling the truth. Maybe….

“Awfully quiet over there,” Puck interrupted my thoughts, and I turned to frown at him. “I can practically hear the gears turning.”

Word started tumbling out of my mouth before I could really stop them. I couldn’t help it; that had always been a failing of mine. My mouth sometimes just started working of its own volition, and I couldn’t quite figure out how to make it stop until, usually, it was too late. “You want me to believe that you’re from some weird world where dragons and unicorns and shit like that are real. You really want me to believe I’m some kind of princess or something, and you’re just going to take me away and everything’s going to be just great. Just because you say so. Is that it?”

Puck eyed me warily before nodding, probably a little taken aback by my outburst. I guess, to anybody not privy to the dialogue going on in my head, it might have seemed pretty random. “Yeah, I guess that about sums it up. Why?”

“So convince me…! Tell me something, anything, that might make me think you’re really telling me the truth. You knew my parents? What were they like? You were born on Earth? Why are you living on a planet somewhere out in bum-fucked Egypt that nobody’s ever heard of? Shit, tell me something…!”

It was another second or two before Puck turned away from me, eyes fixing on the glass in front of him as he frowned. “I’ll tell you something. Hell, I’ll tell you everything I can. But I don’t know if it’s going to do anything more to convince you that I’m telling the truth, or if it’ll just convince you that I’m even more nuts than you probably already think I am.”

I nodded. “I’m listening.”

Chapter 8

2008-04-21T00:51:00.001-07:00

I couldn’t help letting out a little squeal as the first blast rocked the ship, jolting me forward in my seat. Puck cursed and redoubled his efforts to make the ship obey his will, fingers flying over the controls in an effort to get up some sort of defensive shielding.
“It’s no use. This ship wasn’t built for battles. The shields it does have are shot already, and t hat was just a warning shot.” Falling silent in what was apparently a moment of heated internal debate, he finally reached to open a line on the communication board. “Tengu, you treacherous bastard. You surprise me; I never would have thought you’d stoop to learning something so human as piloting a spacecraft.”

“On the contrary, ambassador.” Came the reply, slightly tinny as it was channeled through the reaches of space. As the visual faded into view, I could see that the face was the same, but there was something undeniably different about it. The hair was a little more unkempt, in an artful sort of way. The man who addressed us now was less animated, more reserved. His presence was less commanding, and the golden gaze wasn’t nearly as piercing as the man whom Puck had shot a mere few hours before. “My brother is…entertaining at the present, but neither of us has had to bother learning such a skill. Unlike yourself, we found ourselves rather short on time.”

“Lord Karu. How nice, you’ve made a family vacation out of it.” Puck grumbled. “Where the hell did the two of you manage to find yourselves a pilot….?”

Karu reached out, his arm disappearing off the screen, and a youthful face not much older than my own was suddenly yanked down into our view. “As you can see, our new friend was quite happy to assist us.”

“Fuck you, man. I’m not your fucking friend.” Jerking away from Karu’s grip, he disappeared from view again.

“Luckily,” Karu went on, completely unruffled. “What he lacks in manners he makes up for in skill. I’m sure his sister is being far more cooperative.” He shot a pointed look in the young man’s direction. It clearly said, At least, she’d better be.

I didn’t need Puck’s frown and narrowed eyes to interpret the situation for me. At least we knew where Tengu was now, and how he and his twin got their pilot. “Yeah, I’m sure she is. Your foray into kidnapping seems to be turning into quite the habit, huh?” Karu just shrugged noncommittally. “Well, tell your pilot he’s a damn good shot, for a kid. Just enough juice to leave us unprotected, but not enough to blow us to bits and ruin your prize.”

“Ah,” Karu smiled faintly, a brief, self-satisfied quirk of his lips. “You misunderstand, I’m afraid he can’t claim credit for that. You know I’ve always been a quick study when it comes to weaponry; there are some things that one finds one just doesn’t want to delegate.”

“Oh. Yeah, of course.” Puck frowned thoughtfully. “I suppose you’re ready to give us your terms for surrender, then?”

My eyes widened incredulously, but before any sound could even come out of my mouth Puck casually reached out and clamped a hand over it.

“If you surrender now, you have my word that you’ll both be presented to the Queen alive and unharmed. I am relatively certain that she intends to use the girl to bargain with; considering your long association with His Majesty, I would presume that she would find your presence of some use, as well.”

Puck snorted, shooting me a sidelong glance. “That means I might get to live, if I don’t piss off the Queen too badly,” he interpreted. Karu inclined his head ever so slightly, apparently approving of Puck’s interpretation. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to give me a few minutes to confer with my…co-pilot, here, would you? After all, it is her fate we’re deciding on. Say….half an hour?”
“You have fifteen minutes before we open fire on your vessel.” With that, the screen abruptly went blank, the channel cut.

Puck carefully made sure the channel was closed on our end, as well, before turning towards me. “Well, what do you think? Do you wanna take your chances with the psycho twins? Or would you rather ditch those two and go out for a double café mocha with extra whipped cream…?”

“Um….” I couldn’t help staring at him for a second or two as my brain tried to process his sudden shift in attitude. “I dunno. Aren’t they going to kind of…..blow us up before we make it to the nearest coffee shop….?”

Puck leaned back in his seat with an enigmatic smile. “Nope. Doubt it, anyway.”

I frowned at him. I was so not in the mood to play twenty questions. “Well?”

“Well what?”
“Well, what are you going to do?”

He grinned. “We have right around twelve minutes left. I’m going to wait.” I think he must have sensed that I was getting ready to burst a blood vessel, because he lost some of his teasing tone. “Look….if it was the kid doing the shooting, I could evade, no problem. At the risk of sounding immodest, I’m a hell of a pilot. But Karu is the commander of the biggest army on our whole planet. Whole books have been dedicated to his military prowess. If he’s doing the shooting, it’s because he’s already mastered the weapons system on that ship just like he’s mastered every other weapon he’s ever touched, and there’s no way I could play tag with him for more than a couple of minutes before we went up in smoke.” He settled back in his seat again. “So I’m waiting.”

“So….” I was a little numb, and pretty sure I must not be hearing quite right. “You’re….just waiting for him to shoot us down…?”

“Oh, no,” Puck stretched in his seat, looking far more comfortable than he had any right to. “I’m just waiting. ….Oops!” He peered at the chronometer. “Thirteen minutes! Time’s up!”

“Thirteen? I thought he said fifteAGHK!” My head crashed into the back of my seat as the ship jetted back into motion, veering off sharply to the left. A shot whizzed harmlessly, although entirely too close for my comfort, over top of us. Puck’s fingers danced over the controls as if he were playing an instrument, and the ship lurched first to one side, then to the other, and he grinned excitedly as he reached to flip open the communication channel again. “Better luck next time, General!” He called out brightly into the speaker.

“Puck! You’re mad!” Karu sounded more than a little irritated. At the moment, I was none too happy myself. “You can’t evade forever, and you have no shields. You’re throwing both of your lives away, you fool!”

“Oh, but I’m not, General.” The ship rocked again as we darted out of the way of our enemy’s shots. “Look off to your port side. That’s to the left, for the landlocked among us.”

My eyes followed the direction of Puck’s gaze. Darting out from its cover behind the colony’s virtual sea of orbiting satellites, there was another ship approaching us. Long, black, and lean, it cut through the distance with a speed I didn’t think was possible even at interstellar speeds, and there was a faint, white glow around its guns as they powered up, a split second before raining a barrage of shots towards our attackers.

Puck smiled as our ship’s course settled into something resembling a normal path again. “That was worth waiting for.”

Leaning forward for a better view, I could see the new arrival was still pelting the other ship with blast after blast, the entire scene lighting up our little section of space like one of those massive budget special effects shootouts you saw on the vids. Finally, unable to evade the smaller, faster ship, or take its abuse for much longer without losing their already wavering shields, Karu….or someone….apparently gave the order to retreat. The ship wheeled about and sped off back towards the colony.

I watched it disappearing rapidly into the distance before reaching over and punching Puck in the arm as hard as I could. It probably felt something like a mosquito bite to him, seeing as I’m not exactly built, but it’s the thought that counts. “You could’ve just told me!”

“Now where’s the fun in that…?” He grinned widely. I found myself wishing I had a nice, heavy book to use to wipe the smile off his face.

Chapter 7

2008-04-18T22:08:00.000-07:00

“You’re full of shit. There isn’t any such place,” I declared, glaring at him. “Or you really are some kind of crazy.”

“Well, nobody’s ever accused me of being overly sane,” Puck laughed, not sounding a bit put off by my disbelief. I suppose if I’d fed somebody a story like that, I wouldn’t have been shocked if they thought I was off my rocker, myself. “But that doesn’t change the fact that Faerie is a real place. It’s just not on any map you’ve ever seen.”

“Oh? Is this the part where you start telling me about some magical, fairytale land with gardens full of candy flowers and a castle made out of gingerbread?” I demanded.

“No, why, is your belief in the infallibility of the human race so damn strong that you’re convinced they’ve discovered every planet in existence in a universe that’s practically infinite?” He shot right back, a surprisingly sharp tone in his voice. “No? Good, because there are new planets being discovered almost every day. Some of them are capable of sustaining life, some aren’t. Some are inhabited, and some aren’t. The one I’m talking about just happens to be so far away, you people probably aren’t even going to come close to discovering it on your own for at least a century.”

“Fine. If it’s so far away…how did you get here?”

“Well, I already knew the way,” he grinned, his normal good humor dropping back down over him like a cloak. “Being from Earth myself, and all.”

That earned him a few more seconds of silent skepticism. “Yeah. You look like you’re from Earth.”

“I do, actually. You’re just not familiar enough with my species to know the differences. How much do you know about Earth’s mythology?”

“What….gods and goddesses? Dragons and unicorns and fairies? That kind of stuff?” I shrugged, still frowning, because I was starting to get an indication of where this conversation was going, and I didn’t much like it. “About as much as anybody does. Enough to know that it’s all crap.”

“Careful, there. One person’s myth is another person’s religion. There are plenty of people who would argue that Jesus Christ was just another important figure in human mythology.” I snorted softly. I wasn’t particularly religious, but I certainly didn’t think Christianity belonged lumped in with all that other make-believe bullshit. “My point is, myths, no matter what they are, are usually based on at least some small grain of truth. Some more than others, granted, but as far as dragons and unicorns and elves and the like….don’t you think something must have existed to plant the seed for all those stories?”

I turned to stare out the viewport. Ugh. No. Watching all those stars rushing past was still not doing wonders for my stomach, so I settled my gaze onto the floorboard instead. “Maybe. ….I guess.” I was right. I didn’t like where this conversation was going. I liked Puck. He was nice. He got me off of Voltaire, and I really, really wanted to think that he just wanted to help me. I didn’t want further proof that he was completely bonkers.

“So why is it so hard to admit that at some point in time on Earth, creatures like dragons…..or……oh, I don’t know…..sprites…..really were present?”

I frowned, still not looking at him. “What’s a sprite?”

I could see his grin out of the corner of my eye, whether I wanted to or not. “In mythology, or reality?”

My eyes rolled briefly. “Either. Both.”

“Well, in human myth, a sprite is generally a mischievous, winged creature who enjoys plaing pranks—generally harmless pranks, I might add, although the humans involved almost never saw it that way—on what were usually dull-witted humans.”

“And what’s a sprite in…. ‘reality’?” I swung my eyes over to look at him again.

His grin only widened. “I am!”

“Right.” My eyes traveled over him with pointed slowness. “I must be missing the wings. Maybe they’re invisible?”

He cast me a withering look. “No, I don’t have wings anymore. I guess you could say that one of the hazards of being my generally carefree, fun-loving self is that people occasionally decide that they hate my living guts and feel compelled to rip things off of my body.”

“Wow,” I said dryly, “I can’t possibly imagine why.” Leaning my head back, I sighed and rubbed at my eyes. At least one of us on this ship was crazy. “So…unicorns and elves and sprites are real, you’re a sprite but you just happen not to have any wings, and I’m supposed to believe that you’re telling me the truth just because my so-called King Grandpa sent you here to hunt me down, finally, after fifteen years.”

“Well, all that, and there’s the fact that you’ve actually met a healer from my world. How’re all the little bumps and bruises there, kid? Do you feel like half a building came crashing down on you…?”

“Nnnnno,” I admitted grudgingly. “But there could be some explanation—“

“Like what? Human medicine is based on technology. Did he give you a pill? Spray something on you? Give you a shot? Put you in a regeneration tank?”

“So what’s Tengu, then? I guess you’re going to tell me he’s some kind of healing fairy gone bad, that magic is real, and to get back to your world—“

“Our world.”

I ignored him. “—that all I have to do is click my heels together three times?”

“No, Tengu is an elf. He just happens to have been born with the healing gift—“

“Of course,” I couldn’t help rolling my eyes again.

Now it was my turn to be ignored. “Not that he uses it to any good purpose. And when you really sit down and analyze it, it’s more of a natural ability, really, than it is magic. If I had access to a lab, I could show you the exact differences between my brain and a human’s. I could even point out the center of the brain where the healing abilities come from….although I haven’t quite figured out yet why it shows up in some people, and not others, or why humans don’t have it when we’re pretty much genetically identical. Of course, until we get where we’re going, I’m afraid my say-so is pretty much the only explanation you’re going to get. You’ll just have to suspend your disbelief a little longer, I’m afraid.”

“Yeah,” I grumbled. “I’ll give that a shot.”

“You’re awfully cynical for a kid.” Puck frowned, looking faintly hurt. “So much for the innocence and trust of childhood.”

“I’m not a kid,” I snapped, finally succumbing to full blown irritation. “I’m fifteen years old. Which is just a little too old to believe in some stupid fairytale coming from some crazy ass nut who—“

“Holly,” Puck’s voice cut me off sharply. When I looked over at him, there was a rainbow of lights flashing on that console that hadn’t been there before. “Shut up.” Flipping a switch, he activated the rear viewscreen. It took me a minute to pick it out from among the stars, but finally I saw it: a sleek, silver ship approaching us quickly. “Strap yourself in tighter, kid.” He frowned, hands already working quickly over the controls. “We have company.”

Chapter 6

2008-04-16T22:59:00.000-07:00

I had never been inside a space-faring shuttle before; all the shuttles on Voltaire were strictly inter-atmospheric transport, so I was caught unawares by the sudden shift from atmospheric speeds to lightspeed travel.

“I think I’m gonna be..”

There was a wastebasket in front of me before I could even finish voicing that thought. “Don’t you dare puke on my brand new floormats. We’re stuck in here for the next eight hours at least on recycled air.” Finally satisfied that his upholstery was safe, Puck turned back to flipping and turning and adjusting controls on the dimly lit panel with quick, practiced movements of his fingers. “So…how’s it feel to finally be off that misbegotten chunk of rock…?”

I waited until I was sure that the only thing coming out of my mouth would be words before I ventured to speak. “Be great if…you know…we hadn’t left my stomach back in the inner atmosphere.” I took a deep breath, willing the contents of my stomach back down once and for all, and trying very hard not to look out the viewport at the sudden rush of stars speeding towards us. It was like looking into infinity, and it was just a little too much for my colony-bred mind to handle. “Oh, yeah, and if I was really sure you weren’t some loon who’s going to kill me and jettison my body out the trash chute.”

“I don’t have a trash chute. I have a high-temp incinerator. Lots cleaner, and it recycles the leftover carbon into emergency fuel.” Reaching down to adjust the position of his seat, he set a few final controls and then sat back, the craft shifting a bit as it settled into what I assumed was an auto-pilot mode. “Besides, I’ve got no reason to want to hurt you, trust me. Aside from t he fact that, like I already said, I’m the closest thing to family you have around these parts….you’re also my ticket home. If I had the guts to go home empty handed, your grandfather would have my liver roasted and served on a platter.”

I stared at him for a moment. Mother…father….grandparents….for my entire life up until that point, those had been terms used in relation to other people, never to me. Despite the little part of me that still thought he was probably insane….I wanted it to be true. “My grandfather, huh…?”

“Uh-huh. Look, I know you’ve probably got so many questions you’re about to burst,” I didn’t, really. Or, rather, I did, but there were so many I couldn’t have even managed to formulate one verbally, my brain just wasn’t up to it just yet. “But I’ve only got a couple, so I’m going to go first, okay?” I nodded, shifting the strap on my safety restraint a little so it would stop cutting into my shoulder. “Stop fidgeting.” I frowned at him. I wasn’t fidgeting. I didn’t fidget. “First, can you tell me how you were found?”

That was easy enough. “It was a shuttle crash. Nobody knows why it crashed, but they told me at the home that it looked like the pilot entered in bad command coordinates. No survivors. They found me hidden in one of the storage compartments.” I stared at the lights on the control panel for a few seconds, remembering the story the staff at the children’s home had told me. “There were two other bodies on board, but they didn’t have time to get them out before the shuttle exploded….and after, there wasn’t enough left over for them to even identify a species.” I watched Puck quietly for a moment. “My parents, huh…?”

“Yeah,” Puck agreed softly. I wasn’t too surprised or disappointed. I mean, that’s just who I’d always assumed it had been. “I was her godfather, y’know. Your mother’s, I mean. She was…..well. She was like my own. ….Anyway.” He continued with a sudden smile that was just a little too bright to be believed. “Next question!” He gave a little pause for dramatic effect. “What the hell’s your name? I can’t very well go introducing you to your grandfather as ‘that kid’.”

“Oh,” I realized sheepishly that I hadn’t told him my name. To be fair, though, I had only learned his because Tengu had been shouting it. “They dug me out of the wreck on Christmas Eve, so the lady from the children’s home named me Holly.”

Puck just stared at me in silence for a good minute, as if he thought I was making it up. Sure, it was kind of a corny way to get my name, but when he started to laugh, I thought he was blowing it a little out of proportion.

“What?” I frowned. “It’s not like it’s a weird name, or anything.”

“That’s not it,” he chuckled. “I knew Fate had a sense of humor, but this just proves it.” He grinned over at me. “Your mother’s name was Ivy.”

I showed my appreciation by rolling my eyes. “Sure it was.”

“It was. Honest. Your grandfather named her because he said her eyes were the same color as the ivy that grew up the castle wall, right where her nursery was. Come on, kid. I couldn’t make something that lame up.”

I groaned. That was awful. “Are you sure? I’ve heard some of your jokes bef—hey.” I sat straight up in my seat, eyeing him suspiciously. “…Castle?”

“Oh. Right. I forgot to mention that part.” He smiles serenely, sitting back in his seat as if he was getting some kind of perverse amusement out of me. “You didn’t think all these people would be out hunting just any old orphan, did you…? As of this moment, you are the heir apparent to the High Throne of the world of Faerie.”

Chapter 5

2008-04-14T12:04:00.000-07:00

I was getting sick and tired of running.

Puck dragged me along anyway, probably mostly because I didn't have the breath to voice my protests. Looking back, I think I may have been in shock, because the only thing I could focus on was how stupid this all was, how it really had to be a big mistake, they had the wrong girl.

I planted my feet against the pavement and came to a dead halt. Puck, who'd been holding onto my wrist like I was some kind of wayward toddler, nearly flew off his feet.

"What the hell, kid?" He whirled around to look at me as if I were the lunatic here. "Come on! We've got to keep moving!"

"Let me GO!" Giving it all my strength, I wrenched my arm out of his grip angrily. "You're an idiot! You and that other guy are fighting over who gets to kidnap me, and you've both got the wrong damn person!" I was aware that my voice was steadily rising, but I couldn't bring myself to care. It wasn't like anybody was around anyway, they'd most likely be hiding from the pirates for the rest of the day. "Who does this?" I cried out indignantly. "What kind of kidnapper goes out and can't even find the right person?"

He probably thought I was hysterical or something, because he just stared at me for a good few seconds in silence.

Then he smiled at me.

Let me explain something about Puck. When he smiles at you, he makes you feel as if, at that exact moment, you are the center of his very universe. It's all a part of his insidious charm: you forget all about all of his past social gaffes, you forget that ten minutes before that, a physics equation or some random girl with a nice rack was far more able to hold his attention than you were, and you forget that he often doesn't seem to realize that socks are both supposed to match. I've since become pretty resistant to his charms, but just then, it was all pretty new to me, and I was lost.

"But I'm not kidnapping you, honey. Tengu, he was kidnapping you. I'm here to take you home. And besides," He reached his hand back out to me, this time offering me the choice whether to take it or not. "I'm not the one who tried to use you as a human shield. Do you really want to hang around and debate the issue with him when he catches up?"

Oh. Now that he said that last bit out loud, there was some logic in it. I took his hand, and this time took off running with him by my own volition.

"It's going to be locked." Puck tried the door anyway, cursing softly when it wouldn't open up for him. "Everybody ducked for cover when the pirates started shooting. Doubt they'll open up again until tomorrow. How're we going to fly your shuttle out of here if it's broken down, anyway?"

Puck fished something long and thin out of his pocket, sounding rather absentminded as he drove it into the locking mechanism on the door. "It was just some minor stuff, she'll run just fine. Guy said it should've been done hours ago, anyway....it's probably finished. There!" He grinned triumphantly as the doors slid open before us. The interior of the shop was abandoned, but the lights were at least still on, and Puck zeroed in on his target with ease, leaving me to follow behind.

"This....is your ship?" I didn't mean to sound quite so incredulous, but the monstrosity before us looked more like it belonged in a recycle tank than in the air. There were so many patches and scrapes in the finish that I had to wonder if anything left on the hull was actually paint at all. "And it......runs....?"

"Hey!" Puck protested, looking wounded as he ran a hand over the battered metal. "So she's seen better days on the outside. I've neglected a little bodywork. You'll change your tune once you're inside and you see her fly, though. The stuff this ship has under the hood'll put any one of those brand new, top of the line crafts to shame."

"Is that.......a dog?" I peered at the one bit of definitely identifiable paint left on the craft. "With goggles.....? What's a Sopwith Camel?"

"Your education leaves a hell of a lot to be desired. Here, get in." I hesitated; there was some last, lingering bit of common sense that warned me that once I got in, I was stuck. There'd be no getting away from him then, what was I going to do? Jump out the window and freefall back to the colony? "Oh. I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking...it must be hard to leave all this." He gestured around us vaguely. "Or were you waiting to say your goodbyes to Tengu?"

Taking a deep breath, I climbed through the door he held open for me and closed my eyes when I heard it slam shut. There was no going back now.

Chapter 4

2008-04-06T18:45:00.000-07:00

He was, without a doubt, beautiful. Not in a delicate, feminine sort of way, not at all; more like a sleek tiger, or maybe a wolf. Long, softly waving white hair framed his face, which looked like someone had set out to carve their idea of perfection: high cheekbones, full lips beneath the shadow of a severely straight nose, and a pair of hawk-like golden eyes that seemed to pin me in place where I stood.

I realized belatedly that he was holding a hand out to me, and I retreated back a few steps. “Don’t touch me!” Yeah, it was rude. But after the day I’d had so far, natural caution won out over manners, hands down.

He just laughed. There was something about him that reminded me of the crazy guy with the copper eyes. Not human, and therefore not to be trusted right away….but his laugh was so soft and warm that I couldn’t help being put a little at ease by it, my suspicion melting a little despite my best efforts.

“You’re frightened of me.” He smiled, dropping down to his knees so I wouldn’t have to crane my neck to look up at him anymore. “I can’t say that I blame you. Unless I’m mistaken, you’ve already had one madman chasing after you today, haven’t you? But you don't have anything to fear from me. I'm here to make certain your lunatic friend doesn't have the chance to get his hands on you. What's your name?"

"Holly." I hated how quickly I answered him, and how calm and friendly my voice sounded to my own ears. Somewhere in the far reaches of my mind, I'd already started trusting this stranger, despite what the rational part of my brain was telling me to do.

"Holly. My name's Tengu. Now that our introductions are out of the way, why don't you let me do something about your injuries, so you'll stop bleeding all over my brand new boots?" He still sounded amused, as if this entire encounter tickled whatever strange sense of humor he had. I hesitated, a tentative trust based solely on his voice and a nice laugh would really only so far to allay my suspicions. "Come on," he cajoled, holding a hand out towards me. "It'll only take a moment, and you'll only have to move a little closer. I'll have to put my hands on you, but I promise not to grab you. If I do, I suspect you could kick me in the shin hard enough to give me pause." His smile widened into a grin, briefly, before the expression faded a little. "You have some bad cuts. They must be starting to hurt a little."

That much was true enough. I was starting to feel like the building really had crashed down on me, and somehow I found myself nodding a little and moving a few hesitant steps closer. Warm hands settled lightly on my upper arms, and almost immediately, my body was flooded with this…the only way I could really think to describe it was a warmth. A pleasant, humming warmth that flooded through my limbs and washed the pain away as if it had never existed, leaving me relaxed and content, and after a few seconds I realized with some vague, lazy surprise that I felt better than I had in hours….hell, I felt better than I’d felt all day long. When I opened my eyes….when had I closed them in the first place?....I could see a faint, golden glow that retreated back into Tengu’s hands as he withdrew, and I realized that I wasn’t bleeding anymore. When I looked down at myself, all my cuts and bruises had faded away completely, and I was left staring at Tengu in amazement.

"I'm a healer." He said calmly in answer to the silent question. "I'm assuming, of course, that you've already gathered that I and your....friend....are from parts quite unknown to you. Considering that our time is somewhat limited, it might be a good idea if I save the long, drawn out explanations until later. For the moment, perhaps you'll simply accept that I'm here to help you, and come with me...?"

Again, I hesitated. It was one thing not to run away screaming from the man. It was another to contemplate going off somewhere with him. But he seemed so nice....he was definitely making a better impression than....whoever-he-was. By a long shot.

I had my mouth open to agree with him....but my voice was drowned out by the sound of hurried footsteps and a sudden yell. "KID! HEY KID!!" Turning to look over my shoulder, I saw a dreaded flash of copper hair and I knew, instantly, who it had to be. What the hell was he, part bloodhound? "SHIT, kid, get away from him!"

I wanted to scream at him to go away, but Tengu beat me to the punch. His voice was no longer warm and calm; now, it was sharp and sarcastic, the amusement in it cold, and I suddenly felt a pair of impossibly strong hands grab my arms and jerk me backwards. "You're too late, sprite." The word meant nothing to me, but Tengu said it with such scorn and derision it could have easily been a curse. "Your own fault, really, Puck. You never have made a very good first impression. You might want to work a bit on your people skills."

Of course, I thought to myself. Logic one, instinct zero.

"Let her go, Tengu."

"Or what?" Grinning, Tengu took a few steps backwards, dragging me right along with him. "You'll lecture me until my ears bleed?"

Holly struggled, pulling against the grip on her arms until her shoulders felt like they'd tear out of their sockets, but it was useless. He was too much bigger than she was, and her mind was still reeling from the surrealness of the entire situation. What the hell could they want with her? She was nobody! For God's sake, nobody at the home even really wanted her there.

I struggled, pulling against Tengu’s grip until I was sure my shoulders would pop right out of their sockets, but it was useless. He was too much bigger than he was…Tengu had at least a good four inches on the other guy, and he towered over me. Besides, my mind was still reeling from the surrealness of this whole thing. What the hell could they possibly want with me? Nobody at the home even really wanted me. And they were going to fight over who got to drag me off to kill me or do whatever to me?

"No," I focused my attention on the sound of the voice in front of me again, and I realized with a start that there was a gun in the other guy’s…Puck's….hand, and his voice no longer sounded panicked; it sounded very, very serious. "I'll blow your fucking head off."

Tengu just threw back his head and laughed. "A gun? How very human of you, Puck! You're going to shoot a healer? Just how much good do you think that will do, hm? I'll have the wound healed before the bullet even exits. My little shield, however," He leaned down to purr the words into my ear, and I felt my skin crawl. "She won't be so lucky."

Those were the last words I could hear before the gun went off.

Panicking, I dived for the ground, and saw Tengu's body fly backwards, the thundering reports of the weapon blending together in my ears to make one long, horrendous sound that seemed to vibrate through my entire head. He fell to the ground and lay still.

"Come on, kid! That's not going to stop him for long!" It wasn’t? It sure as hell looked like it would have stopped just about anybody. Pretty permanently, too. But I didn't have time to voice that opinion before Puck had grabbed me by the arm and dragged me off at a dead run.

******************************************************************************

The pair were gone far too fast to see Tengu stir, his entire body slowly enveloped by the same golden glow that had left Holly staring in wonder. Nor did they see the figure that approached him, descending from the rooftops to kneel beside his brother's glowing body, a mirror image of the man laying on the ground. He remained there in silence until the magic had done its work, and he was reassured that Tengu was breathing normally and beginning to stir.

"That did not seem to go as planned." The quiet statement earned him a murderous glare as Tengu pushed himself up onto his elbows, and Karu stood, offering his brother a hand to his feet. "I'm starting to think that this plan has certain....fatal flaws."

"Come on." Ignoring his twin's objections, Tengu straightened what had once been a very expensive silk shirt. "I do not look forward to reporting this to the Queen. Better if we can ensure that they don't make it out of this solar system alive."

Chapter 3

2008-03-28T10:00:00.000-07:00

Puck grinned to himself as he carefully made his way down the dark stairwell. His eyes were better suited to the darkness than human vision was, but not so much that he didn't have to take care. "There has to be an inch of dust on that floor up there, with your petite little footprints all over it. The only thing that might have made you easier to track was a big neon sign flashing over your head."

The girl didn't respond. She was hidden from view in the darkness, in the alcove behind the stairwell; silently, she watched the shadow pass overhead as her pursuer descended the stairs. Stifling a small chuckle, Puck turned towards her hiding place nonetheless. Her breathing marked her position with relative ease. It also told him a lot about her state of distress. "I know you think I'm some kind of a headcase. You're really going to think I'm bugfuck nuts when I tell you why I'm chasing after you, but it's a damn good reason, trust me." He took a step towards her, and heard her breath catch as she realized he knew exactly where she was. Now that he was a little closer, he could make her shadowy form out in the darkness. "Look, kid, unless I'm really mistaken...which I almost never am....I'm the closest thing to family you've got around here."

"I don't have any family."

"Ah, see, but that's where you're wrong." He smiled his most reassuring smile. There was no doubt she couldn't see him, but he knew enough about people to know that the expression would show through in his voice. "I just need to take you with me, so I can run a few blood tests...but there's really no doubt in my mind who you are. I've been looking for you for a long time." He grinned a bit, making his way slowly closer to her hiding place. He was positive he'd blown his cover, chasing after her like that, but if he could just get her out of this basement soon, they could make it back to his ship and make a run for it. "You have no idea how long; the last time I saw you, you were a lot shorter. Bald and wrinkly, too. And kind of red, I'm glad to see you outgrew that." He was almost close enough to grab her, now; better to scare the shit out of her now, and both of them come out alive, than waste too much more time trying to cajole her into trusting him.

Still, he kept up the one-sided conversation, partly because he couldn't afford to give her too much time to consider escape, and partly because he found that he really couldn't quite escape the urge to explain himself. It probably wasn't going to help anything, she was still going to think he was completely insane, but it made him feel less like a lunatic to at least try. "I knew your parents, y'know. Well....I met your father. But I knew your mother, almost from the time she was born. I knew whose child you had to be the second I saw you." He paused, honesty weighing against his natural propensity towards the dramatic. "Well, okay, it took me a few seconds. It'd been a while, you'll have to pardon me not recognizing you right off....but really, there's nobody else's child you could be." And as far as Puck was concerned, that was true. He knew, now, why her bright blue eyes and the stubborn set to her jaw, the way she held herself and that ridiculously thick mop of blond hair had stricken him so deeply; in Puck's eyes, there were no other two parents in the universe who could have passed those exact traits on to their baby girl. Any tests he could run were nothing but a formality. After fifteen years of searching, Fate had definitely smiled on him, and the last thing he was going to do was let the opportunity get away....even if he could currently feel said opportunity glowering at him out of the darkness as if he were a flesh-eating ogre.

That was the last thing he remembered thinking before a ten pound dictionary struck him, first with a solid blow to the side of his head, then with a second, far more horrifyingly painful strike between his legs that sucked all the breath out of his lungs and left him a whimpering mess on the dusty floor.

Dropping the book, the girl barely gave him a glance as she stepped over his prone body; he tried to say something to stop her flight, he really did, but all that came out was a slightly strangled gurgling noise. "You were right about one thing," Holly called out as she bounded up the stairs two at a time. "I do think you're bugfuck nuts!"

******************************************************************************

I was sure I had never run so fast in my entire life. My legs burned, my lungs ached for air, and I propelled myself along so frantically that several times I nearly stumbled and fell. The pirate attack was waning now, at least, the explosions coming fewer and generally farther away, sounding a little like distant thunder as the pirates focused their attentions on the mines outside of town; I fled blindly through alleys almost without even seeing where I was headed, now that I no longer feared that the walls of the alley would suddenly come crashing down on top of me.

Ironically, that was almost exactly what happened.

The explosive charge struck the corner of one of the buildings, sending debris raining down around me like concrete hail. Smoke filled up my lungs and my eyes, blinding me. I couldn’t see, I couldn’t breathe, and I felt myself stumble, heard the sound of the rest of the brick wall crumbling, preparing to bury me completely—

--and almost in the same instant I was flung forward, almost like somebody had thrown me, and I found myself skidding an impossible distance down the length of the alley. My eyes were watering so much that I still couldn’t see, but I could breathe, and I wasn’t crushed…

When my vision finally cleared enough for me to raise my head, I looked over my shoulder and felt my stomach lurch. The place where I should have been was buried under a mound of brick and concrete, the entire mouth of the alley clogged with what used to be the wall of the local pawn shop. If I’d stayed there just a second or two longer…

I pushed myself up onto my knees carefully, rubbing gingerly at the ruins of my clothing and the scrapes that were dripping blood onto the ground. I could already feel some of the worst bruises starting to swell, and there was something warm and wet trickling down my cheek. But I was alive, when I really shouldn’t have been, or at least I should have been in a lot worse shape than I was. I told myself that it must have been the concussion from the blast that threw me out of harm’s way. I thought I remembered hearing about other people being saved that way, a seemingly miraculous rescue explained into the realm of plausibility by the laws of physics.

I didn’t even manage to convince myself.

I had more practical problems at the moment, though. Like the fact that there was, as far as I knew, still some lunatic chasing after me. I could hear somebody yelling in the distance; for all I really knew, it was one of the other people from town, calling out for a friend or loved one separated from them in the attack. But I knew, with my luck, I should probably assume it was said lunatic, so I took off again….albeit at a considerably slower pace.

That was the only reason why, when I rounded the corner and bounced off something soft and covered in fabric (and smelling faintly of something sweet), I managed not to fall on my ass.

"You seem to be bleeding all over my shoes, child." The man's voice was deep and richly amused, gloved hands automatically smoothing the wrinkles out of his clothing where I’d run into him. "Perhaps you'll let me help you with that...?"

Chapter 2

2008-03-27T06:25:00.000-07:00

It was barely an hour later when Puck found himself sitting outside a small bar and grill that tried to make a pretense of fashionability by providing an outdoor seating area. He had abandoned his thoughts of getting something to eat after witnessing the food on the other diners’ plates, and resigned himself to drinking his lunch. The glasses didn’t look any cleaner than the food….in fact, the bartender had given him a dirty look when he’d used one of the napkins to wipe off the rim of his first shot, but the brownish streaks left behind on the white paper made Puck feel perfectly justified in his actions…..but at least he was relatively certain that whatever he was drinking was more than strong enough to kill any surviving germs.

The place had been empty when he’d arrived, but it was late afternoon now, and people were starting to drift in, leaving their work day behind. He’d been nursing his third shot for half an hour now, maybe more; alcohol affected him just as it would any of his fellow diners, and it wouldn’t do to become intoxicated. He could already feel a subtle flush in his cheeks that probably, legally anyway, should have prevented him from piloting a craft, and he definitely couldn’t afford to spend more time here than necessary.

Puck had never been a big drinker. Granted, he enjoyed a good time—what was life if you didn’t live it, after all?—but that good time didn’t always have to involve clouding his mind with booze. He watched a pair of the local prostitutes crossing the street, laughing and giggling with each other as they tried to catch the attention of a group of miners on the other side. There are plenty of other fun vices, after all, he thought to himself with a faint twitch of his lips.

The only problem would be finding one of those vices that wasn’t pock marked, weatherbeaten and worn like those two. It had quickly become obvious that there were two classifications of prostitute here on this colony: the experienced (read: unattractive, to be kind. The scientist in him told him that they were probably in the lifestyle to procure money to feed a drug habit, judging by their general appearance), and the far too young, many of whom seemed to be wearing some kind of government issued uniform, if he was seeing the symbols on their sleeves correctly. There were a few colonies where prostitution was legal; did they require uniforms? Seemed strange, but he knew one thing. If he had to choose between older and unappealing and far too young and at least a little appealing, even if the fact made him feel like a dirty old man, he was going for youth. He still had over two hours to kill, after all.

******************************************************************************

I was more than halfway through town when I spotted Amber. She was standing in the alley between the liquor shop and the bank, with some guy in a cloak murmuring something in her ear. Her eyes lit on me, and whatever he said, it sent her into a fit of giggles that left me rolling my eyes and deciding to just pass on by without acknowledging her at all. And I would have done just that, if not for the fact that I was just tall enough to get a decent look at him as I passed by.

He wasn’t human.

I couldn’t help it, I stared as I passed by. I’d never seen a nonhuman in the flesh before; Voltaire was an all human colony. I didn’t dislike offworlders….not like most of the people who lived here, anyway….it was just a shock, something I wasn’t prepared for, to see an alien whispering into my roommate’s ear.

He caught my gaze as I walked by, odd looking copper eyes locking with mine for a long moment. His eyes widened, like something had surprised him, too, but there was nothing strange about me. If anything, I was horribly ordinary looking. Even beneath the hood of his cloak, I could tell that compared to the citizens of this world, he was almost……beautiful. Maybe beautiful wasn’t quite the right word for it, but compared to the people I saw every day, there was an unnatural perfection about him that probably would have stood out like a sore thumb, were he not trying to conceal himself in the shadows. I’d never seen a human with eyes that color before, that was for sure, and even the similar coppery color of the few locks of hair the peeked out of his hood were….

Oh, shit. He was walking towards me. I turned around and started walking again.

I could hear Amber’s voice from behind me, demanding indignantly to know where the hell he was going, I wasn’t even into… I didn't hear the rest of what she said; I started walking a little faster. Okay, a lot faster. He was following me! What was I supposed to do now? Plenty of guys had come up to me and said…stuff….but none of them had ever chased me before! Could I outrun him? What was he going to do if he caught me? Should I go inside one of the bars?

I felt a hand close over my arm, and I was turned around sharply. He was just….staring at me, with those same wide eyes and dumbstruck expression, and he breathed in sharply after a second or two. “Oh….my God.”

I thought my heart was going to stop. I was scared, sure, but I was confused as hell, and suddenly, out of the blue, I was angry. Not even just angry; I was pissed off, and I could feel heat rising in my cheeks. I didn’t even realize that my books had all fallen to the ground when he stopped me; it didn't matter who he was, or even what he was, or what he wanted from me. He was suddenly the embodiment of every guy who'd ever leered at me as I was walking home, every miner who'd whistled at me as I passed by the bar, every drunk bastard who'd ever stumbled up to me on the sidewalk to ask me if I wanted to go have a little fun. “What the hell do you want?” I nearly yelled, shoving at him with both hands. I think the momentum pushed me away from him, rather than the other way around, but either way it had the desired effect. “Didn’t you hear her? I’m not interested! Stay the fuck away from me!” He was still just staring at me, his hand still outstretched as if he wanted to reach for me again, and his mouth was open like he was going to say something to me, but nothing came out. I took my opportunity; I turned around and ran as fast as I could.

I didn’t even make it to the end of the street before the raid began.

The small, individually piloted crafts darted down from the colony's engineered atmosphere, raining down small, explosive shots that knocked away pieces of building, gouged holes in the sidewalks, turned the air around them into smoke. They didn't want to destroy the colony, after all. They only wanted to steal what the miners had worked so hard to glean from the asteroid's rocky bowels, so they could sell it at a ridiculously inflated price on the black market. So their strategy was simple, but effective: attack the town, attack the mines. Terrify the populace into running for shelter, after they saw a few of their friends and neighbors killed off by ricocheting shots or crushed under collapsing buildings, and then send down their huge mother ship to pick up the abandoned ore from the mines. Pirate attacks seldom lasted more than fifteen or twenty minutes, but they were frighteningly effective; the entire city scrambled for hiding, the few shelters quickly filling up and leaving people fighting to get inside, to get anywhere before being crushed by falling debris or picked off by a random explosive.

I knew better than to try to make it to a shelter. There was no point in it; by the time I got to the nearest one, nearly half a mile away, it would be packed full, with everyone else in the vicinity beating each other bloody to try and get inside. There was an abandoned storefront on the corner, not the safest place....but it had an underground floor, I used to go down there all the time when it had been a bookstore, and the shopkeeper had kept all his used and discount books down there (Yeah. As you might imagine, a bookshop didn’t really rake in the money on Voltaire.). I ducked inside, where the side doors used to be…it had been damaged pretty bad in the last attack….and made a dash for the stairwell. It was dark, and I had to pick my way down the stairs carefully, but finally I felt solid ground under my feet, and I breathed a sigh of relief. There was no way that stupid alien sleazeball was going to find me down here.

Almost right away I felt guilty for the thought. I wasn’t prejudiced….at least, I tried very hard not to be. The nonhuman races enjoyed full citizenship status just as much as any human, and from what I knew, it was just backwater colonies like mine where prejudice ran rampant. I’d never met anybody from a nonhuman race before today, but I didn’t really think that they were different from anybody else.

Then again, he was making out with one high school girl in an alley, and then chasing after another. That pretty much constituted a sleazeball in my book, so I recanted my guilt about that particular thought.

When my eyes finally adjusted to the darkness….at least as well as they were going to, it was very close to pitch black down there…I made my way to behind the stairwell, where the oversize books used to be housed. There were still a few scattered books on the shelf that was still there in all its dusty familiarity, and I smiled a little, very briefly forgetting about the thundering explosions and screams above my head. I missed the bookstore, it had been familiar and comfortable, and the shopowner had let me come in there and spend hours just sitting and reading the books. But after his first pirate raid, he’d closed up shop almost overnight and headed off for parts unknown. I couldn’t blame him. If I’d had a choice in the matter, I’d have done the same thing.

Footsteps from overhead jerked my attention back to reality. I froze, in the hopes that it was just someone else looking for shelter.

“Hey.” I almost didn’t recognize the voice, laced with amusement as it was (amusement that, by the way, irritated me to no end without my really knowing why). “You’re not too good at hiding, you know that…?”

Chapter 1

2008-03-25T19:36:00.000-07:00

It was windy outside, and the artificial sunshine generated by the colony’s power supply was glaring off the pages of my book, making it almost impossible to make out the words. There was a dome over the colony, holding in our artificial atmosphere and providing some semblance of normal weather, including artificial sunshine that was supposed to give us the vitamin D and all that other stuff humans have to get to stay healthy. But that didn’t make it very conducive to reading.

I knew I’d catch hell if I got caught skipping school, but I didn’t care. My grades were good, and it wasn’t like I thought the staff at the children’s home really gave a shit if I got a real education. As far as they were concerned, as soon as I got old enough to graduate, I was going to move out and get some dead end job, either as a miner (it was a mining colony, after all) or as the “entertainment” staff in town that kept the miners happy and drudging away in the mines every day. It was only another six months before I turned sixteen, and then I was going to have to get a job either way, because at sixteen I’d have to start paying back the home for all the food and shelter they’d provided me with over the course of my life. Nice, huh? About half the sophomore girls that the home had in every class ended up turning tricks to make their payments every month. It was quick, it was easy (once you got over the whole disgusting aspect of letting some strange guy maul you, I guess), and usually even the not so pretty ones made damn good money at it. Most of them never stopped, though, and they ended up strung out on some kind of drugs and looking like they were fifty when they were about thirty.

I had no intentions on taking that road. That was why I kept my grades decent; there was no way some dusty, smelly miner was going to stick his hands or anything else up my skirt. The only problem was, I couldn’t bring myself to sit through class on most days. Unpleasant wasn’t the word for it; the boys had it kind of rough, sure. They got made fun of because their school uniforms were usually secondhand, or cheap, and their computers were refurbished and usually at least five years behind everybody else’s. Most of them ended up stealing or selling illegal drugs to make their payments to the home every month. They were singled out for being poor, having to pack their lunches because they couldn’t afford the catered ones everybody else got, they got called trash, and stupid, and dirty, and every other adjective the teenaged mind can think of.

The girls got all that and more. Everybody knew what they did to make their money. As far as our classmates were concerned, we might as well all have been prostitutes.

Well, I wasn’t a thief, there was no way I could bring myself to sell someone something that might kill them, and like I mentioned, I’d live in a crate in an alley before I’d do what most of the other girls did. The problem was, I wasn’t too crazy about people assuming I did do those things. So I skipped school as often as I could get away with it, I took my library books and my textbooks to the park, and I just read. All the public schools really wanted to do was educate me on how to be of service to the colony. I was going to be of service to myself; I didn’t care what I had to do, but I was getting the hell out of there, well before my sixteenth birthday.

It was starting to get late, though, and my eyes were burning from sitting outside to read for so long. I’d had all my classwork done since morning, and it was late afternoon now. Some of my classmates had already passed me by on their way home, and that was usually my signal to take off. I’d go home, finish the chores that were beside my name on the house list (usually washing the dinner dishes…God, how I hated washing dishes, and I was pretty sure the administrators all knew it), clean my side of the room that I shared with two other girls, Amber and Leigh (both older than me…I was pretty sure Amber was already turning tricks to make ends meet, even if she denied it), and maybe pick up my reading again. I’d have to find a hiding place, though, because Amber always made fun of me for being a bookworm, and Leigh seemed to have made it her mission in life to drag me out for her idea of “fun”, which usually included coming home around three in the morning and feeling like shit at school the next day. Neither idea was really appealing to me. The book I was currently immersed in was a manual of tips and tricks that would help me get into pilot school; pilots made a decent salary by any planet or colony standard, they worked by contracts so they had plenty of job security, and besides….there was something about the freedom associated with being a pilot, with flying off for parts unknown just about every day, that really appealed to me. Even if I turned out to hate it…I couldn’t possibly hate it as much as I hated life on the colony.

Voltaire colony wasn’t so much a colony as it was a dirty, smelly, overcrowded town stuck on the side of an asteroid, with an atmospheric bubble keeping it from floating away into space. Because the ore coming out of the mines was in high demand on the black market for spacecraft fuel, it was prone to pirate attacks. Because we were a privately owned colony, out on the outskirts of civilization, nobody really did a damn thing about it. The buildings were old, the people were poor, and it had the highest crime rate this side of the known universe.

That was why I hated walking home. Especially when I was wearing my school uniform, and everybody knew what I was. Or what they thought I was, anyway. I was stuck walking through the bar and restaurant district (hell, most of town was a bar and restaurant district, but the Mirror district, named for the main road that ran through it, was worse than most). The miners saw my uniform and automatically catcalled me, thinking I was out looking for business (with my schoolbooks under my arm. I never claimed miners were smart.). Sometimes they even came out and tried to proposition me, which really made me want to gouge their eyes out with a rusty nail. And of course, since the Mirror district was always the most crowded, when there was a pirate attack, guess where they hit first?

But it was the only way for me to take home without taking a ton of alleys and side streets, and experience had taught me that I didn’t want to be too far out of the public view. So I sighed, tugged the too-short skirt on my uniform down to an almost decent level…I’d outgrown this one last year, but I couldn’t afford a new one just yet…and started off through town at a quick walk. I’d have to move my ass a little faster than usual and stick to my usual M.O. of ignoring anyone who spoke to me; there hadn’t been a raid in over two weeks now, and it would be just my luck to get caught in one.

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If Puck had had his choice of layovers, this colony would not have been anywhere in his top ten. Colony 550266-F, as it showed on his navigation console, or Voltaire Colony as it was known under the common trend of naming colonies after famous authors, was a dusty, dirty, grimy rock, with the only habitable area at the pole of the asteroid it was situated on. He’d had a devil of a time getting clearance to land, but he had run low on fuel without realizing it, thanks to a glitch in his fuel reader, and this was the closest landing area he could make it to. With his luck, if he’d tried to make it any farther to one of the fueling stations orbiting the nearest planet, he’d have wound up dead in space, waiting for someone to come along and find him.

Puck, at the moment, didn’t want to be found.

He’d lived among humans for fifteen years now, and he found it easy to blend in among them. Long red hair covered up slender, delicately pointed ears, a thick coat gave bulk to a small frame. Humans tended not to notice what they couldn’t see, and he used these devices to keep their thoughts from wandering to his origins. He was a little too fine-boned, a little too ethereal, to blend in completely, but humans were so used to seeing non-human races these days that if he kept his differences minimized, they tended not to ask too many questions. That was good for him. Puck could remember when the differences in his looks would have had him hanging from a stake over a raging inferno, and when he’d returned to human society, he’d found all the changes quite pleasant. He could move around with relative freedom now, even work among them, without too much questioning; it had been some work, getting himself an identification and all the trappings he’d needed to move in this current society, but anything could still be accomplished with the right words and a few well placed bits of currency.

Right now, though, he wanted to move unnoticed. That was a little more complicated. Backwater colonies like these tended to be a little more suspicious of non-humans; there were rumors of lynchings, and burnings, and they had little to no law enforcement. The colonists tended to enforce their own laws, at least the ones they chose to follow.

Pulling a thick cloak over his light jacket, he tugged the cowl-like hood up over his head and stepped out of his craft. He gave the service attendant at the fueling station his identification, which would automatically bill his funding account for the minor repairs and fuel, passing it to him quickly so the man wouldn’t linger too long on his features. It was a delicate art; don’t look away so long that you look suspicious, but long enough that the man’s vision didn’t get a clear picture of your features. Turn your back and pretend to inspect one of the propulsion nacelles on the ship, giving a bit of a frustrated sigh. Nod your head and mumble a thanks when the attendant reassures you they’ll have everything taken care of within four hours, just enough time to get a bite to eat and maybe browse some of the city shops. Puck grinned as he headed out the fueling station’s exit; humans were still so easy.