Early the next morning, in the quiet before his alarm went off, Lewis mused about the rest of the previous evening.
Lisa had grumbled about having to lie down again. "Can't I just lay here with my eyes closed?" she begged. "Under the cloth, no one would know!"
Lewis frowned. "And what if he takes the cloth off to display you again?" he challenged. "With all those humans milling around, talking about you, do you think you'd still be able to keep your eyes closed through all that?"
A small smile teased at the corners of her mouth. "Can I help it if I'm curious?" she mused.
Lewis dug into his pockets for the handfuls of wire. "Just lie still," he said. "I'll find the Gyth, and then I'll do whatever I can to help rescue all of you."
"And we'll be there to help you!" Queen Evalia had confirmed, hovering just beyond the mattress as Lewis fastened Lisa's eyelids shut again. He finished, and fished his way out from under the thick cover just in time to see a group of fairies dump a load of dust and debris from the floor into his trash cart. They'd done his job for him yet again.
"Let's start with this castle thing, huh?" Lewis had mused as the Queen and Ashwyn landed on the handle of his trash cart. "What do you know about where else Krasimir Schlimme keeps the Phantasmians he's captured, before he puts them into displays?"
The Fairy Queen described a large building, with many doors and wide open spaces, made of stone, and guarded by Underworlders in the guise of humans, or given armored clothing to conceal their nonhuman features. "Many of them have been painted over by the Captor, just like he paints us to look like tiny humans for his displays."
"Okay, but where is it?" Lewis persisted. "Lisa called it a castle, but it's not his home, is it?"
Queen Evalia bobbed slowly in midair, then rose quickly as she flew toward the door. "Come with me," she said. "I will show you."
Lewis rolled onto his side as he recalled packing up and walking outside (after confirming with the security guard that he'd finished) and following the fairies' dim light down the moonlit avenues of Browning Academy's campus. They reached the edge of where students were commonly allowed to go, and Queen Evalia returned to hover over Lewis' shoulder.
"There is the Captor's castle," she said.
Lewis squinted through the darkness to see a huge warehouse sitting on a gated property. He guessed that the lit area on the far side of the region was the gated, secure entrance. He'd have to get past them if he wanted to go inside to look for the Gyth.
And after that... what? The more he thought about it on the long walk back to the dorms, the more anxiety just swelled in his gut and climbed up his throat. By the time he arrived back in his room, Lewis could not think of a single rational idea that would get him anywhere near the warehouse, much less an excuse to get inside it.
"It's okay if you can't think of something right away," Ashwyn tried to reassure him as the fairykind settled down for the night. "As long as the Chain is safely out of the Captor's possession, we can take our time making the plan."
That was the problem, though, Lewis thought to himself as he rolled over and listened to the high-pitched chatter issuing from the closet. He didn't want to run a fairy refugee camp indefinitely!
He got ready for his day of classes, received reassurances of their best behavior from Queen Evalia and Ashwyn, and tried his best to forget the most stressful part of his life just now. The chain jangled in the small pocket at the top of his backpack, but Lewis could just ignore the fact that it was there. Students were abuzz with the new installment at the museum--even those who hadn't previously taken an interest in art were curious about the size and scope of Krasimir Schlimme's displays. At lunch, Quinn couldn't stop gushing about it, wondering who the artist had modeled the giant sculpture after, and why she'd been posed with her eyes closed, looking so serene, instead of open and looking off into the distance for a more dynamic effect.
At last, it was time for his shift at Moulton House.
He barely even heard the flutter of wings before a brilliant light flashed across his vision and a tiny voice asked, "So, are you going to wake any more fairies today?"
Lewis stopped so Ashwyn could land on his arm and he didn't have to squint to see her. "No," he answered. "Go back to the dorms; I'm not waking anyone else up until I have a plan for getting into the warehouse. I'm running out of closet space, as it is!"
"Please?" She begged, grabbing handfuls of his sleeve. "Just a few more friends! I could show you exactly the fairies I know. We won't be any trouble to you!"
"You're already too much trouble," Lewis grumbled. "And, if I'm being perfectly honest, I'm actually glad to have a few days where I honestly do get to do the job that's expected of me, rather than all this hiding and secret-keeping I've had to do!"
Ashwyn stood, keeping her wings low. "All right, if you insist." She lifted off of his arm.
Lewis tried to give her a smile and a wave, so she would see there was no hard feelings. "I'll see you when I finish," he said.
"See you then, Lewis," the fairy twinkled back.
By the following week, Lewis had slipped into a rather comfortable rhythm. Of course, it also happened to be the same time that Krasimir Schlimme had his team of outfitted Warehouse 31 contractors to rearrange the exhibit hall yet again, adding the disturbing and strange creatures from the storage room below the museum. In a single weekend, the room transformed from a light and colorful fairyland into a dark and shadowy labyrinth. Strange, witchy creatures with long limbs and squat bodies done up in long hair and patchy robes; hefty bats strung upside down with gleaming eyes and prominent fangs; at the back wall, behind a pair of walls done up like crumbling stone towers, a leather-skinned creature almost eight feet tall loomed, casting its shadow and absolutely terrifying Lewis every time he had to go back there to sweep and clean.
"I have the chain," he would mutter to himself. "I have the power, I am the Guardian." He pushed the broom head as far as he dared into the space at the troll's huge feet, and scurried back out again. "It can't hurt me, I have the chain..."
With all these changes, a few parts still remained the same: Lisa, curled up on her mattress (but draped in cobwebs and a funeral shroud, for thematic effect), the display case with Gathlen and the gryphon (except that Lewis noticed a lot more painted blood around the gryphon's claws, and if he hadn't actually met the unicorn, he might have concluded that Krasimir had somehow made the brilliant-red horn seem more vicious than ever.) A few display walls of fairykind in their frames and glass panes remained as well, so long as the theme of the artwork fit the dark and spooky aesthetic of the exhibit hall.
If anything, Lewis felt that as long as the new exhibit was up, that particular hall received more curious and thrill-seeking guests, who in turn left more messes, which made more work for him every day when he reported for his shift. Having only a few hours in the afternoon hardly felt sufficient for keeping the exhibit hall as spotless as it had been at the beginning, but the whole time, Mr. Schlimme had no complaints for Mr. Gilroy, and the curator seemed pleased enough with Lewis' efforts.
All too soon (but at the same time, not soon enough!) the notorious End of Semester approached, and in the midst of final exams and essays and plans for visits to family over the brief semester break, Lewis received notice that new job assignments were coming up, and if he wanted to try a different job for the next semester, he could submit an application to that effect.
A sense of elation welled inside him. No more Moulton House? Did he dare leave that to some other poor soul who would have no clue what awaited them through those grand double-doors? His eyes breezed over the list of job opportunities, until he found one that stood out: "Warehouse technician."
Flipping through the pamphlet of job descriptions for the appropriate page, Lewis read.
"WAREHOUSE TECHNICIAN--Students can receive on-the-job training at Browning Academy's affiliate storage facility, Warehouse 31. As a Warehouse Technician, student interns will be expected to: load and unload trucks; catalogue and sort supplies and resources for establishments all around the campus, assist in retrieval and deliveries, accurately read and fulfill manifests, track any damages to supplies and resources, and other jobs associated with standard warehouse operations."
A plan began forming in Lewis' mind as he read. So engrossed was he, that he didn't even notice Ashwyn's approach as she came to sit on his wrist.
"What's that?" she asked him.
Lewis could hardly contain his excitement. "It's a job description for a technician at Warehouse 31."
"Warehouse?" Queen Evalia caught his comment and fluttered over to perch on his other hand. "But won't that mean you can't be the janitor at the museum anymore?"
Lewis nodded to both fairies, doing his best to hold very still. "Well, yeah, I can't have multiple jobs--but this is Warehouse 31! The Captor's Castle, remember? You wanted me to find the Gyth, didn't you?"
"But..." Ashwyn's shoulders slumped, and even her wings sagged. "What about the other fairies?"
"They're safe as long as Krasimir still has them paralyzed, aren't they?" Lewis tried to reason. "I mean, as long as he has no reason to expect them to do anything out of the ordinary or expose him, he'll think he still has all the power. He still doesn't know where the Chain is."
"Or that you have it," Queen Evalia added gravely, giving a tiny glimmer with her wings.
"It's the perfect chance to search for the Gyth," Lewis assured them. "I won't have to make up an excuse to be in the warehouse--they'll be expecting me to be there!" He grinned. "What they won't expect is that I actually know more about this whole Phantasmian situation than anyone realizes, and once I know where the Gyth is, I can make a plan for getting it out of there, and if it works, we'll have the whole thing safe from him!"
"And you can give it back to Lord Gathlen, who will be able to open the portal to send us all home!" Ashwyn jingled, her wings lighting up suddenly as she lifted into the air.
Queen Evalia sighed with the icy clamor of batted wind chimes. "Very well, I see your point, Lewis. When will you begin this new job?"
Lewis shrugged. "Not till next semester; we're almost done with our last assignments, and then there's a break over the holidays, till the new term starts in January--which reminds me..." He frowned and stroked his chin, looking around the room at the inquisitive fairykind snooping into all sorts of corners and poring through his textbooks. His eyes returned to the fairy Queen. "I'm going back home to my family for a few weeks during the break, and I'll have to completely move out of this room, or at least enough so that if they do end up switching us around, the stuff I'm not taking home with me should be able to move fairly quickly. What are you all going to do if that happens?"
"Do not fear for us, Lewis," the Queen responded. "We will have no need to come with you to the place of your family, where it would be hard to hide us from those who would know all your secrets. Those of us that you have revived will stay upon the roof of the large building where we were once captives, and upon your return, you will need only to call for us, and we will once again be at your side."
Lewis nodded.
Four weeks back at home passed by in a blur of siblings and parents, extended family, holiday activities, and food. On the one hand, Lewis found that so much had changed about himself during the two semesters at Browning Academy--particularly over the course of this last semester--but on the other, going back to the "normal" things and not having to worry about any of his family discovering the new secrets he had to carry made it so much easier to just pretend that none of the past month ever happened. No one snooped through the pockets of his backpack, no one asked about the puzzle box he stowed in his empty suitcase under the bed. His parents were a little less than pleased that he'd ended up a janitor for a whole semester, and that the next job he was planning to take was a mere "warehouse grunt", as his father expressed it, but by the end of the vacation, as he was preparing to return to the Academy, they were at least understanding that these menial jobs were, in fact, excellent training for skills he could then use in a more "respectable" workplace.
He returned to Browning Academy, and found his fairy friends exactly where Queen Evalia had said they would be. Moulton House assignments had been given to other students, so Lewis welcomed the fairykind back into his dorm room where they could remake their personalized spaces, and their peculiar rhythms and habits could resume. A new year had begun, and Lewis was ready to face whatever came his way.
Still, the nerves overtook him as he finished the last of his new classes, and prepared to report to Warehouse 31 for his orientation.
He slipped his notebook back into the pack and zipped it shut. Stepping outside the building, he whispered, "Ashwyn!"
The young fairy buzzed toward him, diving into his pocket before anyone noticed the brilliant flash of light in Lewis' vicinity.
"Ready!" she chimed from the cloth depths.
Lewis followed the campus map over to the Warehouse, and gave his name to the guard at the gate, who had a roster of all the students who had signed up for that semester.
"Grant? Ok, you're here. Head on in to Building A, Room 16 for your orientation." He slid a badge with a clip across the small metal windowsill. "Keep this on you at all times; it lets people know you're authorized to be in your assigned areas. If you lose or damage this badge, we'll need to issue you a new one in order for you to be permitted on these premises."
Lewis nodded and clipped the badge to his pocket. "LEWIS G, WAREHOUSE FLOOR TECH", it read.
Inside the building, he found a knot of people his own age wearing Browning Academy uniforms, carrying badges similar to his. He followed them down the maze of hallways to Room 16, where they sat in rows of chairs while a warehouse foreman gave them instructions on the procedures, rules, and expectations for them while they were working their shifts at the warehouse.
Finally, when they were allowed on the warehouse floor--Buildings B through D, as it happened--to work through the various tasks on the lists they were given, Lewis waited until his group went around a corner, while he hung back and pulled on his pocket.
"Go find the Gyth," he whispered under his breath, moving his lips as little as possible and letting his eyes wander. "If it's not in my assigned section, I may have to swap with somebody to get assigned to whatever section Schlimme uses for his storage."
"Sure thing!" Ashwyn's bell-like voice twinkled, and Lewis could hear the flutter of her wings fading into the distance. He bent down as if checking his shoelaces, and then jogged to catch up with his group.
Each team of five interns was assigned a specific zone, where they would be in charge of keeping track of how many items were there, any orders that came for items stored in their zone, and unloading crates of deliveries that pertained to their zone. In all of the shelves and racks of crates and pallets stacked with bins of packages and boxes of things, Lewis could easily imagine how Krasimir Schlimme could stockpile a whole collection of fantasy creatures, provided they were packed in crates and remaining invisible and anonymous to the people who worked there.
He performed his duties faithfully, touring and memorizing key points of his section, stacking and lifting, maintaining order on the shelves and a clean workspace, and he was just counting down the last hour of his shift when a sharp chime clanged against his ear.
"It's here! I saw it! The Gyth is here!"
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