Serial Saturday: "Fairies Under Glass" Part 18

Part 18

"Things Go Sideways"

The truck shuddered to a stop, and the jump-suited workers disembarked.

"All right!" barked the man who'd invited Lewis along for the ride. He held a clipboard in his hand. "Let's get these crates out and unloaded in the correct exhibit halls. Half of it's going to Hall B, and the rest is going down into storage for Hall G."

"Oh, hello! Can I help you?" stammered a familiar voice, one that made Lewis cringe and turn toward the wall. Mr. Gilroy!

The delivery handler gave the clipboard to the old curator. "Here's the manifest, sir. We've got some sculptures and paintings for display."

"Hmm, yes," Gilroy skimmed the papers and nodded. "All right, everything seems to be in order. I'll just check things off as you unload."

The man nodded as the others loaded the crates onto flats and dollies. "You know more about where this stuff is going than I do."

Gilroy straightened the lapel of his jacket. "Yes I do--Oh! Young man?" He bustled over to two guys with a crate marked with Krasimir Schlimme's stamp. "Young man," said Gilroy, "this crate is going straight to storage. Take the short way around." He nodded toward a second entrance farther down the back wall of Moulton House.

Lewis saw his chance. He couldn't be sure which crate from Krasimir's warehouse section he'd slipped the Gyth into, but he figured he had enough time to search through them once they were in storage. He flipped up his collar as high as it would go, and pulled his hat down to mostly conceal his face. Seizing the handle on a flat bearing a second crate of Krasimir's "stash", he followed his coworker down to the entrance Gilroy indicated.

"Hey!" the handler barked. "New guy!"

Lewis froze in his tracks and turned to face him. The man pointed to another crate. "Take this one over to Hall B and start unloading," he said.

Someone else stepped in to take the crate from him, and Lewis had no choice but to leave all that behind. He trundled the crate up the utility entrance and started going through the motions of blindly unloading the paintings meant for display, while museum staff set the frames in their predetermined spots.

After the crate was empty, Lewis found himself inside the museum with nothing immediately to do. As much as he felt the urge to stop by Hall G and revisit his friends, he suppressed it, instead heading over to the stairwell down to the storage area. He walked with intentionality, and yet kept his head bent to obscure as much of his face as possible. He arrived in that back room just in time to hear Gilroy becoming very worried.

"Oh, dear, I wonder what this could mean..."

Lewis squinted through the doorway, full of curiosity. Gilroy stood at the table with the delivery foreman. A crate stood open between them, and on the table amid other trinkets and "fairy sculptures", lay the immense Gyth!

Gilroy was examining the manifest very closely. "Hmm, no... I don't see anything about this on there. Where did you say you got this?"

The handler huffed. "I'm not saying anything! If it's in the crate, it had to have come from the warehouse, and if it's from the warehouse, it belongs to this Schlimme guy, so what's the big deal? He must have left it off the request when they entered the manifest to be filled."

"Well," Gilroy hefted the large gem in his hand. "I suppose I'll just have to take it to him and ask what he intends to do with such a display. It's certainly nothing like anything else he has made!"

The curator headed for the door while Lewis was lost in thought, and there wasn't much time to think of an excuse for being down there before the door swung open and almost knocked him over.

"Oh! Sorry, young man!" Gilroy gasped, as the collision knocked the glasses off his nose. The Gyth slipped from his grasp as the old man fumbled, and Lewis barely caught it.

"No harm done, sir," Lewis said, keeping his face pointed away from the curator's sight. "Shall I take this to Mr. Schlimme's office, myself?"

"Eh?" Gilroy grunted, still fidgeting with his glasses and trying to get them on right. "Oh, of course; I'm a very busy man, and I don't much like to pry--but I suppose if you're working at the warehouse, then it would be your business if an item is left off the manifest!"

Lewis pivoted and had his back to Gilroy by the time the old man had his glasses on straight. Take it straight to Krasimir, he thought to himself, Yeah right!

Walking back into the hallway, he studied the Gyth back and front as he mulled over what to do with it. A fain set of grooves along the gold setting at the back caught his attention. The way they were shaped, they almost looked like--

"Links in a chain," Lewis muttered under his breath. Not just any links, though. He stopped in the hallway just outside Hall G and slid his backpack off his shoulder. Opening the small pocket at the very front, he pulled out the Chain. The links there had the same shape and pattern!

A faint fluttering sound overhead made him think of his fairy friends. He imagined actually being able to ask them about it, once they could converse in private. "Hmm, is this how they're supposed to go--"
While he mused, Lewis held the Chain in one hand and the Gyth in the other, and brought his hands closer. He felt the pull of attraction between the two metal surfaces, like a magnet, and as soon as he said the word, "together?" the two pieces connected with a satisfying snap.

The ground began to shake and rumble under his feet, and Lewis heard crashing and banging happening within Exhibit Hall G. He dropped the Phantasmagyth around his neck and slung his backpack over his shoulders as Warehouse 31 techs and museum staff came running.

Lewis went straight for the doors of the exhibit hall, and when he flung them open, a scene of pure chaos erupted before him.

Fairies flew in all directions, while elves climbed up the walls and loosened displays from their shelves and frames. Glass panes shattered, and walls crashed as Lisa the giant stretched out her legs and boomed, "What's going on?"

Lewis located Gathlen in the midst of all the confusion and made straight for the unicorn.

"Lewis!" whinnied the former Guardian. "Have you come to release us all?"

A spinning cloud of fairies zoomed out of the room chiming "FREEDOM!!" and sounding like a drunken bell choir.

"Help me!" Lewis gasped. "All I did was put the Phantasmagyth back together. What's going on?"
Gathlen danced around to avoid stomping on the elves underfoot. "You mean," he blustered, "you don't know?"

"What is that supposed to mean?" Lewis retorted. "If Krasimir Schlimme finds everybody out of their displays, he's going to--"

"What is the meaning of this?" Thundered a savage voice, and Adolf charged into the exhibit hall, followed by a gang of burly, flat-faced thugs. The thugs all spread out with bags and began rounding up the fairies, while Adolf pointed straight at Lewis. "You!" he roared, and he lunged toward the young man.

The bodyguard never got the chance. As Lewis cringed and braced himself for the impact, a high screech split the air, and Lewis looked up in time to see a fearsome lion with claws outstretched, swooping down on massive eagle wings.

"Oh snap!" Lewis yelped, turning and taking off across the exhibit hall floor. Another rumble knocked him off-balance, and a portion of the ceiling crumbled, jarred by Lisa's shoulder.

Lewis kept running, dodging falling pieces of rubble and doing his best not to trip over the fairyfolk and random goblins and ogres rushing around the area.

Something struck his shin and knocked his feet out from under him. Lewis rolled onto his back just in time for the gryphon to sink its claws into his shoulders.

"Augh!" Lewis groaned. "I'm a friend! I swear!"

The talons dug in deeper, and the gryphon began beating its wings. Lewis felt the ground drop away behind him, as the gryphon carried him higher and higher above the milling crowd.

"No!" He reached up and grabbed the talons, his entire body weight now dependent on the creature's grip. "Please, no!"

The gryphon hovered in the air, almost level with the ceiling. It leaned in close, opened its beak, and shrieked right in Lewis' face. Then, as his entire head rang with the deafening noise, it let go.

"AAAAAUUUGGGGHHH!!" Lewis screamed all the way down.

Halfway to the floor, his back connected with something soft, and he saw fingers curl over him.

"Caught you," Lisa murmured, lowering him gently to the floor.

The fairies and goblins were already pouring out of the gaps in the wall of the museum, and the screams of the unsuspecting public were increasing with each passing moment. It was Lewis' worst nightmare, unfolding before his eyes.

Gathlen galloped up to him. "Lewis! You've got to get that thing out of here!" he dipped his nose to indicate the Phantasmagyth still hanging around the young man's neck. "Come with me!"

Lewis moved automatically, swinging onto Gathlen's back as the unicorn charged through a gap in the wall. A net hissed over their heads, draping around Lisa and trapping her arms at her sides.

There were already so many people gathered on the far side of the street with their phones and cameras out, taking pictures of the destroyed museum and the glittering clouds pouring from it, not to mention the gigantic dark-haired woman wriggling frantically against her bonds.

Gathlen kept running till he reached the quadrangle on the far side of Browning Academy campus. There was a small forest there, thick with trees and highly adequate for hiding.

"How do I fix this?" Lewis demanded desperately. "I'm pretty sure every single Phantasmian in the area just woke up, and the Underworlders have rounded up most of the fairykind--but there's the gryphon who got loose, and who knows what they're going to do to Lisa..."

Gathlen bucked his head. "Take the Gyth off the Chain!"

Lewis lifted the gem, but the chain and the back of the Gyth seemed to have fused into one piece. "How, though?" he wailed. "It's stuck! I can't--"

A menacing roar cut off his words, and Lewis dodged just in time to avoid the dark shape that hurtled out of the bushes toward him. A wolf! But not just any wolf.

Lewis saw the way the beast glared at him, the way it snarled and slunk toward him.

"Adolf!" Gathlen whispered.

"Give... me... the... Phantasmagyth, boy!" Adolf's deep, hollow voice issued from the wolf's mouth.

"Take it off!" Gathlen repeated from his hiding spot, as Adolf's confident steps closed the distance between him and Lewis.

"I'm telling you, I--" Lewis felt his fingers close around the edges of the gem, and in the same moment, the Chain fell away, and Adolf launched himself at the defenseless boy.

Lewis caught the full weight of a man slumping against him, and there was little he could do as Adolf's human head connected with a tree behind him, knocking the bodyguard out cold. Lewis worked his way to his feet.

"Gathlen," he whispered, "it worked!" He heard no answer, so he wandered toward the last place he'd seen the unicorn. "Gathlen?"

Inside a thicket nearby, he found the unicorn, cold and stiff, with his hooves poised in the air, just the way he'd been paralyzed. Lewis felt a twinge of disappointment, but he backed away and left Adolf and Gathlen behind. Krasimir's agents would find him eventually.

On his way back to the dorms, Lewis glanced toward the section of campus where Moulton House stood. The jagged edge of the ruined wall still jutted against the sky under the setting sun, and there were still plenty of people and emergency services personnel on the scene.

His shoulders ached where the gryphon had clawed him, and Lewis' whole body felt like it was made of jelly.

Within moments, a cloud of glittering, shimmering lights surrounded him, as all the fairies freed from their displays who managed to escape the goblins now gathered around the one responsible for their freedom.

"Thank you, noble human!" chimed a fairy. "We have been dispatched by our Queen to carry you back to your place of rest."

Lewis couldn't even concentrate enough to respond, but he felt the tug of dozens of tiny hands on his clothes, and his feet no longer touched the ground. Instead, he floated, borne on a cloud of light, all the way to the dorms.

The fairies didn't use the door, but the window to his room slid open on their approach, and the fairies carefully slid the backpack off his back before they deposited him safely on his bed. Sleep finally claimed him, and Lewis spent the rest of the night dreaming of hopping goblins, clattering fairies, angry gryphons clawing at him, and vicious werewolves chasing him through an endless labyrinthine museum that continuously crumbled around him as he ran and ran.

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