Serial Saturday: "Fairies Under Glass" Part 12

Part 12

"An Audience With The Queen"

Lewis didn't hesitate as he marched right past the long buildings full of classrooms and lecture halls.
"If anybody asks," he muttered under his breath, "I spent a long time cleaning after the arrival of the new installation, and that's the reason I missed my afternoon classes today."

Ashwyn, meanwhile, was beside herself as she flew in crazy, glittering patterns all around his head.
"I can't believe it! We've actually done it! We're going to save them all, I just know it! The Queen--she'll be so proud of me! And once she can tell us where the Phantasmagyth is, we'll get it back, open the portal... I'll get to see my home again!"

Lewis felt the keen sting of self-consciousness wash over him, stopping him in his tracks.
"Ashwyn!" he hissed, pulling aside the edge of his vest. "Get in here before somebody sees you!"

The little fairy obediently zipped into his pocket, and Lewis crossed the final intersection to reach the student accommodations.

Finally, in the privacy of his own room, he plopped the backpack on his bed and sank into his desk chair with a sigh of relief. Eyeing the black, lumpy bag beside him, Lewis mustered up just enough willpower to open the zipper.

A tiny hand presented itself, stiff and lifeless, except for the fact that the covering held it shape better than clay, and carried more texture than minute amounts of silicone. Lewis tugged that out, revealing one of the wingless figurines he'd seen before.

"An elf," he reminded himself, setting that one aside and bringing out another. One by one, he laid them out on his desk. Ashwyn noticed what he was doing almost at once and flew out to watch, from the roof of her little house on the nightstand. Among the numbers of "fairykind", as Ashwyn called them, Lewis found the canvas-wrapped Queen, and put her at the front of the desk, to free her first out of all of them.
A thrill raced through him as he picked up a pair of scissors and went to work on the back of the canvas, gently breaking the small threads without cutting the fabric itself. So intense was his focus that he nearly jumped out of his skin when something fluttered against his palm.

Lewis immediately dropped the bundle, and the canvas fell away from the grand, gleaming figure that emerged and rose into the air.

She floated over the still-trapped figurines, her ire rising by the minute. "Oh, my poor kin! Ruthless, heartless--how dare he! Look at what he's done!"

Lewis opened his mouth to speak, but at the slightest noise, the Queen whirled upon him and shone her brightest light in his face as she hovered angrily.

"You!" She seethed. "Are you in league with him? How many of our kind does he hold captive? You think I will consent to be used as bait for my own subjects? Ha!" She veered off as Lewis could only sit frozen in shocked silence. When the Queen returned, she'd fashioned one of the staples from a trapped fairy into a makeshift sword. She boldly slashed him across the nose with it. "I will be your worst nightmare, human! I will exact my revenge on you and your terrible master--"

"Your Majesty!" Ashwyn's familiar wind-chimey voice cut in. A second ball of light joined the Queen, and Lewis nearly went crosseyed as Ashwyn went so far as to insert herself between the Queen and the front of his nose. "He is not to blame! He saved us--he's going to save us all!"

The Queen's wings fluttered as she hovered, and landed on top of Lewis' desk lamp. Even so tiny, he could feel the fury on her face as Ashwyn dropped to the desk and curtseyed.

"You're one of the common fairies," the Queen identified Ashwyn coldly. "A Fielder, if I'm not mistaken. And you vouch for this human?"

Ashwyn kept her head ducked as she stood. "He saved me, and he has promised to find the Phantasmagyth and use it to send us back home."

"The Phantasmagyth is gone!" The Queen snapped bitterly. "The Hunter has claimed the red-horned unicorn, and Phantasm is vulnerable." She switched her gaze up to Lewis' face. "How do I know you have my people's best interest at heart? Perhaps you are only interested in fairykind who are of some use to you." She alighted from the lamp and flew over the various fairies and elves laid out so stiffly on the desk. "Free them, by whatever powers you possess to overcome that which the Captor used to enchant us, and then we will talk."

Lewis nodded, and under the watchful eye of the Queen, he commenced wiping away the thick paint coating and pulling the staples from each little figure. Even Ashwyn flew around to help slip the staples out of their holes. It took them the better part of an hour, but when they were done, six fairies zoomed around the room, and eight little elves crawled into every nook and cranny.

"Oooh, look! He has books!" Squealed a fairy. "Such big ones, too! I'm sure they hold lots of information about this world!"

"Hey, what's back here?" called an elf, as he and two others pushed their way through a crack in the baseboards. "Whoa, it's like a spooky cave!"

Lewis did his best to not let his aggravation show, as he turned to the Queen and asked, "Is that enough for you?"

The Queen's voice barely exceeded the noise level of the chattering fairykind. "I see that you have good intentions, but I am still unconvinced that you have the clout to be able to strategize well enough to be our savior."

An elf shouted from the bathroom. "Check it out! He's got his own private lake in here!"

A trio of fairies excitedly flew in, and Lewis could hear the tap running in the bathtub. "Well, I--"

Knock-knock-knock. "Lewis?"

Alarm radiated through Lewis' body as he recognized Quincy's voice just outside.

"Ashwyn!" he hissed under his breath. "Get everybody hidden!"

"Okay!" The little fairy snapped a salute, and began zipping all over the room, herding elves and fairies into the small closet. "This is just temporary," she told them. "Everybody get comfortable, and stay quiet. We cannot let other humans discover us!"

Lewis, meanwhile, tossed all the staples and canvas scraps into the trash, and did his best to make it look like he was just in his room alone. Once the coast was clear and the closet firmly closed, he threw open the door.

"Hi, guys!" he said, as Quincy and Jesse stared at him from the hallway.

Jesse snorted. "Where were you today, man?" he asked. "Quincy didn't see you at Math today, and you missed the first few Environmental Sciences presentations--we're on for next Monday, remember? Hope you don't forget that one and leave me in the lurch!"

Lewis bobbed his head. "Oh, yeah, I just--I had a lot to do at Moulton House today, I got special dispensation because they're setting up a new exhibit."

Quincy grinned and toyed with her dark braid. "Ooh, what is it this time?" she asked. "Did he make a dragon?"

I suppose there could be worse things than a giant girl, Lewis thought to himself, and responded, "No, it's a macro sculpture of a sleeping girl. You guys should go see it sometime."

"Macro, huh?" Jesse mused.

Lewis nodded. "They had to take out a portion of the wall to get it in, that's how big it is."

Quincy eyed the boy standing next to her. "Have you been to Moulton House yet?"

Jesse shrugged. "Never really been my thing--but I'd be interested to see how good the artist's attention to detail is. From what Quincy says, the artwork looks pretty realistic on a miniature scale."

"Oh, it totally is!" Quincy inserted. "Anyway, Lew," she turned back to the young man. "We just wanted to check on you because we didn't see you today, and..." she craned her neck, squinting to examine the room behind him. "Why did it sound like a ton of jingle-bells just before you got to the door?"

"Oh, is that what that sound was?" Jesse cut in. "I thought somebody was watching a bell-choir rehearsal or something."

Lewis noticed Quincy's foot inching forward, and he backed up a step. "Oh, yeah, I was... Watching some of the performances from the Academy's bell choir," he waved nebulously toward the room, as if he had a computer of some sort in an out-of-the-way spot. "Just looking over my job options for next semester."

Quincy stopped and stepped back, tilting her eyebrow at him in dubious amusement. "Bell choir, Lewis?"

He couldn't say anything, but nodded. "Like I said, just exploring my options."

Jesse snorted. "Whatever, dude. See you in class tomorrow?"

Lewis nodded quickly. "Yeah, I should be there." Unless Mr. Schlimme misses a whole bunch of fairy displays and gets suspicious! he added inside his head.

"Okay, well," Quincy seemed reluctant to leave, for whatever reason. "Goodnight, Lewis."

Lewis closed the door and only then did he let out a sigh of relief.

The flutter of multiple wings and a chorus of shushing sounds issued from the closet. Two orbs of light emerged from the slightly-open door: the Queen and Ashwyn.

Her Majesty declined her head graciously as she alighted on Lewis' outstretched hand. "Ashwyn has informed me of all that you have done, including your efforts to truly understand and communicate with us through the use of fairy dust," she said. "I will tell you as much as I know."

The three of them gathered at Lewis' desk, and the Queen relayed the tale of how things began going wrong when the first human arrived on Phantasm.

"Before then, there had been no outside presence in our world," she said. "We had not so much as seen a human, for they are not native to our world. I know not by what magic he was able to cross the dimensions, and at first, we kept ourselves hidden, because we did not know his purpose. But the longer he traversed through our lands, only taking small samples of the flowers and grasses, perhaps a rock or two as a souvenir, the more we relaxed our guard and ceased to view him as a threat--and that was the hour of our downfall." She shuddered.

"Ashwyn mentioned that he used some sort of gas to paralyze all the fairykind," Lewis said. "But what sort of chemical would work so effectively?"

The Queen sighed, clasping her hands in her lap. "It is a species of poisonous flower native to Phantasm--all creatures avoid it, and we teach our offspring never to touch it."

"Why not destroy it?" Lewis blurted. "If it's so dangerous, why not just eradicate all traces of it?"

The Queen stared up at him. "We may be fairies," she said, "but we have no more control over which plants grow and flourish and which do not than we can control the very sun in the sky. We do not know how this plant, the flowering bush we call venim," she pronounced the word with emphasis on the second syllable, "came to be, but the more we try to destroy it, the more it comes back--so we just avoid it wherever it is found." She sighed and wagged her head. "That being said, the unscrupulous Hunter found it to be a very effective paralytic, once he distilled it into a gas, and so he would disperse it over entire areas and wait for it to freeze us in our tracks. He..." She shuddered, sending a flicker of light through her wings. "He came to the Fairy Glen one day, sitting so peacefully. He looked so innocent and docile, just exploring and curious. I came to him and began speaking, and although he didn't understand me, nor I, him, he could guess my meaning, and I could just listen and investigate this new creature. He showed me a jar that seemed to have a few fairies sleeping inside, and I grew worried as I saw them, and flew into the jar to wake them up--"

Lewis pictured the scene, guessing Mr. Schlimme's next move. "And that's when he released the gas in there and froze you in place."

The Queen nodded. "I didn't notice at first, I was too busy trying to wake my kin, but as it turned out, they were only shapes made of clay, they had never been alive at all--but by the time I realized that, the venim-gas had already taken effect, and I couldn't move or speak. From there, I was the bait to lure other faithful fairies into his grasp. He even hid in a field and sprayed the venim-gas into the air as the red-horned unicorn was galloping by. The poor thing! I watched him struggle, bucking and kicking and rearing his magnificent head... but in vain."

Lewis recalled the way that Schlimme had the unicorn "posed"--perhaps the gryphon as well, had been in the act of trying to strike at him when it was paralyzed, not some attacking enemy, and certainly not the Guardian of all Phantasm!

"What about the Phantasmagyth?" Ashwyn asked. "The Hunter didn't get that, did he?"

The Queen leaned back, running her fingers over the grain of the wood beneath her. "I cannot be sure. One moment, I saw the unicorn fighting against his captors as the sunlight glinted off the chain around his neck--and by the time it was over, his neck was bare."

"So... maybe it fell off?" Lewis asked, scratching his head. How did they expect him to retrieve something they'd inadvertently left behind?

The Queen drew herself up with an indignant air. "The Phantasmagyth is definitely here, or we would not be speaking right now--but it is in two parts, otherwise we would all be beholden to whoever bears the Phantasmagyth."

Lewis considered the options. "Okay, that just confirms that Krasimir Schlimme--the man you know as the Hunter--doesn't have it, otherwise he wouldn't have to keep you all paralyzed with this venim-gas stuff. So... Where could it be?" Maybe it was somewhere in the storage room with all the creepy creatures Krasimir was saving.

"I believe the Hunter at least has one part, and it's got to be the Gyth," the Queen answered. "That is the gemstone part of the complete Phantasmagyth. I heard him speaking one day to his henchman about a magical crystal and the fact that he couldn't get it to work."

"That won't stop him from trying, though," Ashwyn said with a shudder. "So he's got the crystal--but what about the Chain?"

"Only one creature knows where the chain is," the Queen said. "And that is the red-horned unicorn himself. We must ask him what was done, if we stand any chance of rescue and a return home."

Lewis raised a finger. "Okay, but here's the problem with that: Schlimme has him on display inside a case made of solid glass. There's no way I can break into that without, you know, breaking it."

Ashwyn jumped to her feet in a flounce of purple gauze, and began pacing. "I remember seeing it," she said. "But it looked like the whole thing just rested in some grooves on the wooden base, it wasn't fastened down or anything."

The young janitor snorted. "Yeah, because that thing is heavy--it would take a motorized winch with the power of five men just to lift it!"

Ashwyn stopped pacing and looked at him. "Say that again!" she challenged.

Lewis frowned and repeated himself. "I said, it would take a motorized winch just to lift it--"

"No, no," she waved her hand and ran over to him. "The part about the five men. You say it would take five humans to lift it... but what about a giant?"

Lewis felt his heart skip, and his face went cold at the idea. "You mean... No! Oh no, absolutely not!"
In the midst of his objections, Ashwyn explained to the Queen how they had just confirmed that Schlimme had captured a female giant in much the same way he had gotten every other fantasy creature.

"That will certainly work!" the Queen voiced her approval. "Waken the giant just like you awakened us, and she will help you access the unicorn."

Lewis shook his head. "I can't! It's too risky!"

"But it's our only chance!" Ashwyn pointed out. "We can't access the unicorn without her help, and we need the unicorn to secure the Phantasmagyth."

"Then it's settled!" The Queen clapped her hands. "Human," she pointed at Lewis, "you must awaken the giant at the next available opportunity."

Lewis sat back and folded his arms. "Don't call me Human," he grumbled. "My name is Lewis. And you're not in charge of me."

"Please, Lewis," Ashwyn begged, coming up to cling on his arm. "I know you're scared--I would be too, if I had to revive a human and I didn't know what they were. But at least can you assure us that you'll try?"

Lewis huffed and fidgeted with his hands. He didn't even know if he could find a way to revive the giant--it wasn't like she was stapled to a massive canvas--and what if she was too big for the room and broke something? There was no way he could cover up a mess that big!

"I'll... I'll try," he muttered under his breath.

"Thank you, Lewis," said the Queen. "We will withdraw." She signaled to Ashwyn, who scurried over to lead the way to the little house on the nightstand.

When Lewis opened the closet to retrieve his pajamas, he noticed the beginnings of several more little houses like the one Ashwyn had mysteriously "made"--but where did the fairies get the materials for these things? None of his own belongings seemed mislaid or missing, so he simply shrugged it off and went to bed. He had bigger things to worry about than fairies living in his closet.

Bigger, as in how to feasibly wake a giant without destroying a building.

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