Keys and Curses (Shadow Book 2) (11 page)

“What’d you say?”

“I told him she was off her medication. I don’t like saying things like that.”

The Freakin Fairy’s mouth turned down, making his whole face look grim. “You have to understand there are some very dark things in her past she’s never quite got over, Krysta.”

“Krysta,” Flower murmured, still walking alongside. “So that’s your name.”

Krysta made an impatient gesture. “You’ve been saying that for years, but you never really explain. What could possibly be so bad?”

His reply was sharp. “It’s been explained, if you’d only care to listen.”

“Oh, the stories? Don’t give me that, they’re freaking fairy tales! Even you’ve said that!”

The Freakin Fairy began to laugh. “Yes I did, didn’t I? And that’s exactly what they are.”

Krysta scowled. “Well if you don’t want to tell me what really happened to her, fine. I’ll find out for myself.”

“I very much fear you will.”

They walked in silence until they reached a shop window where shining silver necklaces inlaid with chunky blue and purple stones were displayed alongside cut crystal figurines of unicorns and cats.

Flower watched father and daughter gaze into the window in mesmerised silence. “You’re a fairy through and through!” The words were sharp. If she was solid she would have demanded an explanation.

Krysta shook herself. “Did you say something?”

“No. Come on, let’s get this done.”

The pair made their way inside and past glass display cabinets with infuriating slowness. The Freakin Fairy picked up a chunky silver ring here, a glass snake there, a necklace with rainbow-coloured stones and then a sparkling crystal dangling from a chain. They discussed the pros and cons of each one in great depth. Apparently buying a present for the mother was a serious business.

They finally chose a cut crystal figurine of a spider that was at least as big as Krysta’s hand, with eight little red crystals for eyes and red-tipped fangs. Flower went closer to look at it. Something stirred in the back of her mind. A spider. A fairy and a spider. “Why that?”

“She’ll love it,” Krysta said, while the sales assistant wrapped it in purple paper.

“Why that?” Flower yelled at the backs of their heads, unable to explain her rising panic.

The pair left the counter. The hockey stick swung straight through Flower when they passed her.

For the second time a vision hit her so hard she almost lost her grip on Dream and tumbled into another time and place. Daylight. A forest. A young Bloody Fairy with big dark eyes and long, long hair crouched on the ground - no, not crouched, she’d fallen. In her outstretched hand rested a brown, furry spider so big its legs curled all the way around her fingers.

Flower gasped for breath. The image was so vivid. She’d been there. This was a memory, but she didn’t understand how it could be so disconnected, how she could not place it with any other memory, or say who the girl was, or when she’d met her. She stared at the empty shop door, then ran to catch up with Krysta and her father.

They’d only gone a short way up the street, but they’d picked up their pace, shopping now done with. Flower ran around in front of them. “Who are you?” she demanded. “How are you making me remember these things?”

“I’ve been thinking about writing down the stories,” Krysta said.

The Freakin Fairy didn’t look terribly pleased at this statement. “What do you mean?”

“You know, all those freaking fairy tales you and Mum and Poppy always told us as kids. I’m thinking about using them as the basis for a novel.”

“Finally!” Flower burst out. “If you’d just stop thinking about it and write, maybe we could get somewhere!”

But the Freakin Fairy scowled. “Why?”

“Because they’re good stories. And I feel like I need to.”

“The stories were for you and Drew. They’re too dangerous to write down.”

Krysta scoffed. “How can a story be dangerous?”

The Freakin Fairy shook his head. “You never respected the stories. I’m surprised you even listened to them. Write something else, Krysta. You don’t know what you could bring down on yourself. There are really seriously bad things out there.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Flower said. “Write what you want to write.”

Krysta folded her arms and stopped walking. “I’ll freaking well write what I want to write!”

“Yes! Finally!” Flower did a little jump of joy, but her jubilation was short-lived. She felt a tug on her presence, and then an excruciatingly painful yank.

She said the very baddest word she knew.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

An ocean of trembling leaves stretched from horizon to horizon, green, dense, healthy and as high as Nikifor’s waist. His boots were soaked from the mud. His back ached from the dead weight of the unconscious muse in his arms. Sweat trickled down his face, even though the air was icy cold.

But physical discomfort was nothing compared with the effort of keeping up with the Bloomin Fairy, whose labyrinthine progress could only be tracked by a slight shifting of leaves and a tuft of knotted hair sticking out above them. The fairy tracked first left, then right, then traced a big curve before making twelve sharp turns. Nikifor spotted two more wooden signposts under the leaves, both of them pointing vaguely at the sky, but apart from that he was utterly mystified as to how his guide knew where he was going.

Then the tuft of hair disappeared completely.

Nikifor yelled in fright and broke into a run, made even more awkward when Flower’s head fell back and he almost dropped her. The colour drained from her face and her lips developed a blue tinge. “Come back!” he called. “Please don’t leave me here Fairy, you will doom my friend to an agonising death and then I will be forced to go completely mad!”

The fairy tapped him on the kneecap. “Don’t be weird, man.” He held up two big, purple bunches of carrots. “I had to get these. Come on, we’re almost in Pumpkin.”

“Pumpkin?” Nikifor followed the other man, this time keeping right on his heels until the crop came to an abrupt end and they walked into a giant vegetable garden.

He halted in astonishment, right in front of a pumpkin at least the size of four Freakin Fairy huts, with a door, windows and a chimney all built into it. Smoke trailed merrily from the chimneys of many smaller giant pumpkins. Little gardens bursting with bright-coloured vegetables and strangled with choko vines climbed and trailed and crept everywhere.

The Bloomin Fairy cupped his hands around his mouth and hollered. “Hey everyone! I found two giant Freakin Fairies and one of them’s still alive!”

Nikifor winced at the piercing pitch of the little man’s voice. His nerves were already wound so tight he was sure something idiotic would explode from his mouth any second. He clamped his lips together. He mustn’t frighten them.

Two hundred Bloomin Fairies swarmed out of the giant pumpkin houses. They tugged on Nikifor’s clothes, pulled at Flower’s hair, stared and chattered and yelled all at the same time. Nikifor froze, terrified. There were so many voices he couldn’t make out a single word. He took a backward step, intending to flee back into the relative safety of the purple carrot fields.

“Come on! Come on!” His guide tugged on his elbow and pulled him toward the giant central pumpkin. The others quickly got the idea and hustled him along, almost lifting Flower out of his arms in their efforts to help support her.

Nikifor bent almost double to get through the door, but once inside he was able to stand up straight with his head just scraping a ceiling made of dried mud daubed over pumpkin shell. The fairies streamed in after him.

They gathered in around the centre of the floor, where fresh leaves and flowers were strewn around a table made entirely of pumpkin seeds. On the table, resting in a bed of fresh purple carrot leaves in a wooden stand, was a shrivelled, dried brown gourd. A big bundle of faded red cloth shivered in an alarming fashion on a deep wooden chair with a high back and sides. Even above all the noise, the sound of snoring could be heard.

The fairies’ chattering reached a pitch. The guide pushed his way to the front of the crowd, leaned over and poked the cloth. “Lord of the Gourd!”

The cloth yelled, moved and shivered. Then it sat up to reveal itself as a shrivelled old woman with bright white hair matted into one big knot at the top of her head. A rounded and unusually large nose dominated a face covered in deep wrinkles. “What?!” she yelled. “What do you lot want now?”

The guide pointed. “I found two giant Freakin Fairies!”

The Lord of the Gourd looked Nikifor and Flower up and down. “What’d you bring them here for?”

The guide puffed his chest up. “I was like totally just out looking for new seeds when I saw these two bashing a giant cloud of stinkies!” He swooped his arms out and jumped, miming the fetches. “There must have been a million of them! But the giant Freakin Fairies were not afraid! They slashed-” He flung an arm out and caught another fairy on the head–and they bashed-” he brought two fists down, and the fairies around him jumped out of the way– “and they turned every stinking one of them to stinking smoke! It was the most amazing thing I ever seen!”

The Lord of the Gourd gave an irritable grunt. “Yes, but why’d you bring them here?”

“Cos that one’s dead and the other one wanted us to help.”

The Lord of the Gourd glared at Nikifor. “Come here.”

Nikifor approached; the fairies moved aside to let him through. He knelt down to be on eye level with them all, then gently laid Flower on the ground and eased his aching muscles. “She’s not dead.”

The Lord of the Gourd scoffed. “Any fool can see that. Except maybe Pumpkinhead here.” She cuffed the guide on the back of the head.

Pumpkinhead shrugged, unperturbed.

“Who are you?” The Lord of the Gourd demanded. “I never heard of a giant Freakin Fairy.”

“I am Nikifor, and this is Flower.” Nikifor hesitated. Flower was much better at this kind of thing. “We’re muses.”

The fairies broke into excited whispering. The Lord of the Gourd narrowed her eyes at him. “You’d be better off as giant Freakin Fairies.”

“But why?” Sweat broke out on Nikifor’s forehead again. He wiped it off and tried not to panic or say anything stupid.

“Because we’re not leaving our village. Nothing will make us.”

“Of course not. Why would you? You have magnificent pumpkins!”

The boom of his voice died away in the room. Fifty sets of fairy eyes stared at him.

“He’s being weird again,” Pumpkinhead said in a loud whisper.

Nikifor buried his head in his hands and took several deep breaths, but instead of calming him, they only made him dizzy. “Look,” he said, “We don’t mean you any harm, I swear it. I need help for my friend, she’s been bitten by a fetch. If you will only help her, we’ll be on our way.”

The Lord of the Gourd glared at the crowd. “Who knows how to cure the giant freakin dead muse?”

Noise burst out again as everyone yelled and jumped up and down at once.

The Lord of the Gourd raised a hand. Silence fell. She pointed to a red-headed fairy. “You, Carrots. What’s your cure?”

“Mash up the seeds of a mushroom under the full moon and feed them to her with a worm paste!” he yelled.

“Don’t be bloomin stupid. You, Ivyface, what’s yours?”

Ivyface straightened up to her full height of three foot eight. “Make a hot broth from caterpillar tongues and broccoli flowers and rub it in her ears!”

“Go eat a snail, you ridiculous girl. You, Cauliflowerhead, what do you think?”

Cauliflowerhead stared blankly. “I didn’t have my hand up. I was pointing at the roof.”

The Lord of the Gourd grunted. “Anyone got a suggestion that’s not plain stupid?”

“Ask the Great Clip Clop!” someone yelled from the back.

The rest of the fairies took to this suggestion straight away and yelled their agreement for a full three minutes.

The Lord of the Gourd rose from the chair to an imposing height of three feet. She leaned over, rolled the shrivelled gourd under her hands for a minute or two, then made an imperious gesture. “Fetch the Great Clip Clop here. The Gourd has decreed he will help.”

The fairies all rushed out at once, leaving Nikifor and Flower alone with the Lord of the Gourd. Nikifor was unsure whether to be relieved or more afraid. Whatever the Great Clip Clop was, the name wasn’t the least bit reassuring. He knelt over Flower and checked her pulse. It was faint, but regular. Her skin was still too white. Terror gripped him afresh. Flower must not die. She’d saved his life, kept him–so far–from sliding back into madness, and besides, she was the only one who really knew what they were doing and where they were going. Without her he was just a madman prey to dangerous memories. His head dropped. Exhaustion, his shadow and companion for days, followed terror like a great weight. It was all he could do not to fall to the ground right there.

“There there.”

Nikifor looked up and blinked rapidly to hide the tears pricking at his eyes. The Lord of the Gourd stood over him and patted him on the shoulder.