Fairy Lies (25 page)

Not long after that, Tamisin almost tripped over a low
rock wall, but Jak caught her and pulled her back in time. They walked around the wall only to discover that they were in the midst of ruins from long ago, a sign that someone other than fairies had once lived there. Jak would have loved to explore the ruins, and Malcolm seemed just as interested, but no one tried to dawdle as they made their way between rows of stones and out the other side.

A short distance beyond the ruins they came across a creek where moonlight showed them the uneven remains of stone pillars that had once supported an ancient bridge. Jak hesitated at the water’s edge, remembering the river at the bottom of the Great Ditch, but Narlayna strode to the bank and stepped off. When she was halfway across, she turned and waved to her friends. “It’s waist deep on me and the current is strong. Stay there and I’ll carry you across.”

A series of loud booms made Irinia and Malcolm cover their ears. When the lights descended only a few hundred feet away, Narlayna turned to slog back through the water. Tamisin and Irinia were standing side by side, so the ogress grabbed them both, tucking one under each of her massive arms. She had just deposited them on the other side when Jak saw a sapling wave wildly behind Tamisin.

“What’s that?” he asked Malcolm.

The brownie glanced across the creek, but the movement had already stopped. “I don’t see any—”

The sapling broke with a loud crack, and a two-headed troll stumbled out of the underbrush. “Narlayna, go back!” Jak shouted. “Go help Tamisin!”

Another two-headed troll tromped a shrub flat as it joined the first. Branches waved and twigs cracked like gunshots as another troll drew closer. Cupping his hands around his mouth, Malcolm yelled one word: “Trolls!”

Narlayna spun around and lunged toward the shore she had just left. Jak reached into his pocket and pulled out his comb. His eyes darted from the river to the shore, until they fell on the stone pillars. He had already transmogrified the comb into a sword when he leaped onto the first stone column. Wielding the sword in front of him, he jumped from one pillar to the next, finally landing on the far side of the creek.

Another troll had already emerged from the trees, twirling a tree trunk as thick as his upper arm over his three heads. Seeing Tamisin and Irinia, the troll bellowed and ran toward them. Narlayna was already wrestling with one of the other trolls when Jak ran up and swung his sword at the troll carrying the tree trunk.

Jak had learned from his experience with the griffin; this sword was strong, but light. He lunged at the troll. The creature parried the blow easily. However, Jak noticed that when he swung the sword, it created a whistling sound that seemed to bother the troll, making him shake his three heads and scowl. Swinging his sword to make the sound, Jak beat the troll back. And then Malcolm, who had swum across, climbed out of the water and grabbed a sturdy branch. Although the brownie was small, he was strong, and the whack he gave the troll across the knees was hard
enough to make the troll howl, drop the tree trunk he was carrying, and bend over.

While Malcolm kept whacking the troll, Jak stepped back and looked for Tamisin. He finally spotted her darting around an ancient, thick-trunked tree while a two-headed troll ran after her, his arms stretched in front of him as he tried to grab her. Irinia was throwing rocks at the troll, but he seemed to be interested only in catching Tamisin.

As Jak drew closer, he could hear the troll talking to himself.

“. . . fairy girl!” said one head.

“We eat . . . ,” said the other.

“. . . her now!”

“Raw!” they shouted in unison.

Jak looked up when two twinkling lights descended from the night sky. They hovered for a moment, and then suddenly Ragweed and Mugwort were there, aiming their reeds at the troll chasing Tamisin.

“Get back, Your Highness!” shouted Mugwort. Raising his reed, he aimed it at the troll and fired a stream of pale purple fairy dust that coated both snarling faces. The troll bellowed with rage and tripped over his toes, which had grown another eight inches.

Mugwort tapped the reed against the palm of his other hand. “This still isn’t working right. It was supposed to make his feet grow as long as his arms.”

The troll was trying to get up when another boom shook the forest, making everyone stagger.

“Don’t worry, Your Highness,” said Ragweed. “I’ll turn
him to stone with one blast of my . . . Uh, never mind. Something is wrong with this reed, too.”

When the fairy dust hit the troll, his skin began to crackle, but instead of turning to stone, it sprouted the soft, yellow down of a duckling. The troll began to scratch his faces and necks with such ferocity that he ripped the down from his skin, leaving angry red furrows.

Jak shook his head. Obviously these fairies weren’t going to be much help, but watching Tamisin run around the tree had given him an idea. After turning the sword back into a comb, he tucked it in his pocket and bent down to remove his shoelaces. Picturing a strong, heavy metal cable, he transmogrified first one shoelace, then the other. Leaving one chain on the ground, he hefted the other and called out to Narlayna, “Here! Take the end.”

The ogress looked up as Jak swung the end of the cable through the air. Although she looked puzzled, she heaved the troll she’d been fighting to the side, caught the cable with one hand, and watched while Jak used gestures to tell her what to do. It didn’t take long for her to understand, and when she did, her lips spread in a wicked grin. Choosing the thickest trunk around, she wrestled the troll in that direction and slammed him against the tree. The troll looked up when Jak and the ogress began to run around him in opposite directions, wrapping him in the cable and securing him to the trunk. With the cable wrapped around him from shoulders to ankles, the troll could do little more than squirm and howl in anguish.

When they were finished securing the troll to the tree,
they turned to the troll that was now fuzzy and yellow. The fairies watched as Jak and Narlayna chained the second troll to the tree behind him, but neither Ragweed nor Mugwort offered to help. They did clap Jak on the back when he was finished, however.

“You know, when I first saw you, I didn’t think you were much to look at,” said Mugwort, “but you’re all right, for a goblin.”

“I felt sorry for you,” Ragweed told him. “There you were, a common goblin, in love with our princess. I didn’t think you stood a chance with her.”

“Is that true, Jak?” Tamisin said, brushing her hair from her eyes as she sidestepped the tree holding the troll that had been chasing her. “Did you really tell him that you love me?”

Ragweed answered as if Tamisin were talking to him. “He said it under the influence of truth nectar, so it had to be true.”

“Rot and mold!” cursed Malcolm. “That blasted troll got away! I was so busy watching you wrap his friends up that I stopped walloping him for a minute. Wouldn’t you know he’d run off when my back was turned?”

“I’ll take care of the troll,” said Narlayna. “For all we know he might have gone to get more of his friends. At least that’s what I’d do if I were him.”

“If there are trolls in the woods, we’re going to need reinforcements,” Ragweed said to Mugwort. “One of us should go with the ogress while the other reports to the colonel.”

“I’ll go find the colonel,” said Mugwort.

“Good, and get us some reeds that work,” Ragweed shouted after him as his friend shrank and flew away. He turned around, but Narlayna was already gone. “Hey, wait for me!” he called and took off after her.

Irinia stepped out from the underbrush and glanced at Tamisin. “Was that the same troll who dragged you into his cave? I thought Narlayna had told the fairies about him. They were supposed to send him back to ogre territory.”

“The troll did what?” Jak asked, horrified.

“He didn’t hurt me,” Tamisin reassured him. “Although he did want to eat me. And yes, it was him.”

“Then he must have come back with his friends,” said Irinia. “I have to say, running into those trolls was the most dreadful thing that has ever happened to me.”

“Are you kidding? I haven’t had an adventure like this since Oberon brought me here!” Malcolm exclaimed. “I think I’m going to keep this branch and call it my whopping stick,” he said, gazing lovingly at the piece of wood he was carrying.

“Did you know it’s covered with ants?” asked Irinia.

Malcolm tossed the branch aside and brushed his hands together. “Ugh!” he said. “I can always find another one.”

Chapter 23

Without Narlayna as their guide, Tamisin wasn’t sure which way to go. They could go straight ahead, but she thought they had gotten turned around a bit when they walked through the ruins. “I need to see where we are,” she said, spreading her wings behind her. “I’m not sure which way to go from here.”

“I still don’t like the thought of you going anywhere by yourself,” Jak said, looking worried.

Tamisin shrugged. “We don’t have a choice. I should have reached my mother long before this. Have you noticed that the sound has changed?”

The booming was louder and coming closer together. Unlike the simple spells that had made noses grow and vines twine around ankles, trolls were involved now and there were patches of forest that were dead. The war was changing, and it was only getting worse.

Tamisin’s eyes met those of her two friends before she turned to Jak. “If I’m gone longer than ten minutes, Irinia
and Malcolm should take you to the beach. I’ll meet you there later.” It had already occurred to her that if she was going to fly, she might as well fly all the way to her mother. When Jak began to scowl, Tamisin rose into the air before he could try to stop her.

“Wait!” he cried.

“I can’t,” she called to him. “I should have done this sooner.”

Leaving her friends behind was hard, not only because she felt safer when she was with them but because she worried about what might happen to them when they were on their own. Leaving Jak behind was even harder; it felt as if she’d only just found him again.

As she climbed into the night sky, Tamisin began to look around. The higher she flew, the farther she could see, so she rose until the trees lost their individuality and formed a mass below her before she turned northeast. Aside from the fuzzy patches where the dust had spread, the air was clear, with a cool breeze that made her shiver.

Birds flew by now and then, most of them just above the treetops. They seemed to be fleeing from the northeast corner. Tamisin was watching them when she noticed that a loud
thunk
preceded each boom. After the boom, lights arced above the trees, but still not as high as Tamisin was flying. She would have thought the lights exploding below her were pretty if she hadn’t known that they were weapons.

Tamisin was eager to see her mother now. She thought of Titania laughing at something she’d said, or looking proud when she saw how well Tamisin could dance on the
night all the fairies danced in the moonlit glade. It had meant a lot to her that she was able to do something that made her mother proud. They would never have the relationship that they might have had if Titania hadn’t sent her away, but they had begun to create their own special bond. At the thought of the fairy queen fighting for her, Tamisin beat her wings even harder.

When she first started looking for Titania, the night had been silent except for the whisper of her wings and the regular booming. Now Tamisin began to hear a distant rumble; as it grew louder, she realized that it was the sound of falling water. A few minutes later she could see the moonlight reflecting off something shiny. When the next boom sounded, she traced the arc of the lights back to the top of a waterfall. Angling her wings, Tamisin headed in that direction. If her mother wasn’t there, she had to be somewhere close by.

As Tamisin began her descent, she finally saw what was making all the noise. In a clearing near the waterfall, fairies were using oversized slingshots to launch large seedpods into the air. When they reached a certain height, the pods exploded, releasing razor-edged seeds that spread out until they hurtled toward the ground in a blaze of light, shredding leaves and cutting through everything below.

Tamisin was wondering how she could reach her mother without flying into the rain of seeds when, out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of something moving. Turning her head, she saw a shape that had wings but couldn’t possibly be a bird. Its body was too long, and
it had four legs and a long, thin tail. Tamisin knew when she saw its human face that it was a sphinx. She had never seen one except in mythology books, and even then she hadn’t realized just how frightening they could be. As the beast drew closer, Tamisin tried to think of what to do, but her mind was made up for her when the sphinx opened her mouth and roared.

Tamisin dipped her wing, turned, and fled back the way she had come. The wings of the sphinx made a
whump
,
whump
sound that grew louder the closer she flew. “Come back!” the sphinx screamed in a woman’s voice, but it was a harsh, ugly noise that made Tamisin beat her wings faster.