"No fuckin' way!" Josh
yelled excitedly. "Y'mean it?"
"Watch your language!"
Thom snapped.
"Don't get all Daina-big-sister
on me, man, I'm feeling good!" Josh said.
"Josh, don't get all
four-year-old on me; this is a big
deal," Christine said seriously. "You and Stevie have to watch Daina
and Jerry's bodies so that nothing
happens to them. If you can't handle it..."
"No, no, I can...I mean, we
can, I promise!" Josh said, trying to control his elated fidgets.
At that same moment, Stevie and Alan
were having the same conversation:
"The word 'nothing' also
includes things that he wouldn't want you doing with his body," Alan
reminded Stevie.
"Yeah, yeah, I know," said
Stevie, with a cursory wave. "I can handle it."
"You better be able to handle
it, 'cause if I come back and have to hang out in a bruised body, I'm gonna
punt your little ass all around this brain," said Alan, grabbing Stevie up
by the front of his shirt off the ground.
"Way to go, Super Dad!" said Stevie, with a grin. "Positive
reinforcement all the way!"
"Squash that Oprah shit, man,
this is between me, you and your ass, not me and my future son."
"Daughter," Stevie
corrected.
"What?"
"Put me down already and I
might tell you!" said Stevie. He knew magically he could take Alan, but
the fear of physical abuse was entirely not lost on him. Alan set him down out
of surprise.
"You know already?" said Alan.
"Nope," shrugged Stevie.
"but I couldn't breathe." He laughed and
Alan lunged for the second child that had played him for a sucker that day just
as Stevie dissipated. He was about to go searching for him when his beeper went
off. He almost disregarded it until he remembered that he'd suggested it to
Naomi for those moments when he wasn't around that she really needed something.
He looked at the number with a frown. "2229669," he said aloud.
"Oh, shit! That's the baby
code!" Without a second thought, he flew out of Jerry's subconscious to
Daina's.
Stevie reformed himself, smile first
like a Cheshire cat. "Always works," he grinned. "Now I gotta
hook up wit' m'boy-eee...!"
...and then everything around me was replaced by glass. It formed the floor, the ceiling, the wall and the passage I was lying in. My whole body suddenly felt strange, like it had been numb and had just come back to feeling sensations again.
Well, Daina, I thought to myself, you're definitely not in
My whole world was geometric shapes now. Everything was some type of quadrilateral wall or barrier. It all seemed to be connected, too, like some gigantic glass maze. Glass maze?, I thought to myself, slowly realizing my dilemma. Ahh, great! One lousy sarcastic comment and I get thrown into a rat maze for it. Terrific.
I was pretty sure of two things: one, that Queen Kareen had put me here and two, I had no idea where "here" was. Being considerably smarter than the average sprite, however, I knew the only way for me to get out of here was to start trying to find the end of the maze. With a duty laden sigh, I began to walk. Maybe if I were lucky, Jerry'd show up and we could blow this pop stand.
"So then I told him, 'Uh-uh,
honey, I don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' no babies!" Queen Kareen was saying
to Jerry. "And he told me..."
He sighed heavily. Somehow, he'd
hoped that his last minutes on Earth would have been more...interesting. Not
that he wanted to die at all, it was just that given the choice of ways to die,
having a drag queen (no, the ultimate
drag queen) bore him to death with the story of her life would not have been on his top ten list. He
also had other things to worry about, such as how to get Daina out of Queen
Kareen's crystal and then how to get them both away from this sorceress.
He'd already established that this
woman was the evil sorceress of Daina's "what if", which meant that
both their lives were in real danger. He also knew that technically, Queen
Kareen was just a figment of Daina's overactive imagination and that she could
be uncreated...with Daina's help. Of course, getting to Daina was going to be
easier thought than done.
He was suddenly blinded by a bright
light and a sharp pain. He gave a yelp and stared at Queen Kareen, who was
pointing her staff at him indignantly. The crystal on its tip was fading back
to its original clarity, as if it had been illuminated briefly.
"You listenin' to me,
boy?" she snapped. ""Cause I will grab
your attention one way or another; now, don't make me use up all this magic
'fore I have to!"
"Okay, okay, damn!" he
retorted sourly. She continued her story as he thought, Man, if that hurt me
that bad and she used that crystal, I wonder how Daina's doing...?
I knelt on the floor with one hand clutching my abdomen, gasping heavily. I had been walking along fairly calmly when the entire maze had lit up around me and a horrible, all encompassing pain had grabbed me like a monster's grip, causing me to fall down. It had passed and the maze had returned to normal, but I still felt a little shaky. I stood up again slowly and continued my journey.
Walking felt strange to me, I decided after about ten minutes. I felt like I was walking on the moon. My steps were light and springy, as if I was walking on air. I felt the ground just to check, but it seemed solid enough, so I peered at my reflection in one of the walls. Maybe something was wrong with me.
I looked fine as far as I could tell, but I hadn't realized that I looked extremely spritely at present. For the first time, I noticed that my wings were present. I also noticed that I was butt naked, which was semi-embarrassing in itself. There was no chance of making myself human sized in this place, so I decided to stay the same size and work around my wings. I didn't have Naomi's talent for creating magical material that let wings stick out without having to put holes in it, so I decided to make do with a tanktop and jeans.
That problem solved, I went back to examining myself in the glass. I didn't realize how gingerly I was treating this whole maze. I had been leaning forward to see, but I had unconsciously been avoiding touching the walls, as if trying not to smudge them. As I lost my balance, I realized I didn't have a choice. I threw my hands forward to save myself...and to my great surprise, fell straight through the wall itself. I staggered to my knees, then looked around and found myself in a completely different hallway. It was the same in terms of the way it was made, but the wall opposite me seemed to be made of green glass instead.
"Weird!" I breathed aloud, reaching over to touch it. My hands passed right through it as well and I smiled. Finding my way out of here was going to be easy if I could continue doing this. Suddenly, I stopped in shock. Had I suddenly become a ghost or was I just insubstantial now?
Whatever I was, I hoped that it wasn't permanent. I began walking hurriedly, spurred by this thought to find the end of this maze.
"Where are we?" Thom
asked, staring around the field he stood in.
"Trailing Daina's magic aura,"
replied Christine, gazing around with him. "I'm not sure where we are, but
they're both here somewhere, if they're still together." She closed her
eyes and began to walk in a small circle.
Thom followed her. "Okay, this
saving them deal...what exactly am I supposed to do? I mean, how am I gonna do
this?"
"Just defeat Queen Kareen and
get Daina and Jerry back in one piece. Easy."
"For you to say," Thom
added wryly. "I've read Daina's stories. These people have magic powers
and shit and I don't have that stuff."
Christine stopped and opened her
eyes. She peered up at Thom intently, so much so that he frowned nervously at
her. "Well, you've got something,"
she said at last, "or you wouldn't be here."
"Reassuring as that
is...not," Thom groaned. "Oh, I should definitely be bleeding
now...very profusely and from every pore of my body. In fact, I'd really prefer
that as an alternative."
"Don't worry about it,"
Chris said. "You'll do fine." She began walking with her eyes closed
again, adding, "You might be hurt a little, but you'll be fine."
"See, that's what I mean! This
hurting thing is not...." Chris held up a hand to silence him and he
sighed. She completely paced a full circle, then
opened her eyes. "That way," she said, pointing decisively east.
"Good, then we go that
way," said Thom pointing decisively west.
"Thom, you're not this big a baby," Chris
sighed.
"Speak for yourself!"
he said, snapping his fingers once. "I'm actually bigger!" Chris
folded her arms and gazed condescendingly at him until he groaned. "Fine,
let's go save them," he sighed, trudging off in an easterly direction.
"I told you you had
something," Chris said, following him proudly.
"Yeah, yeah..." he
muttered. "I got plenty of something. Most of it
bruises easily, too..."
I wasn't expecting to trip over someone, which is probably why I did. The girl lying at the base of the wall I walked through went sprawling as I fell through over her. I was immediately up and apologetic, but she barely moved, let alone spoke.
"I'm really sorry, I...hey are you okay?" I asked.
"Do I look okay?" she mumbled, still face down on the floor. I turned her over and gasped. She felt cold and slick, as if she were made of china and her face was ashen and tired.
"My God!" I gasped. "What happened to you?"
"Queen Kareen happened to us both. You're a sprite, aren't you?"
"Yeah, sorta," I agreed. "You're one, too?"
"Fairy," she corrected.
"But where's your second set of wings?" I asked.
"Broke 'em," said the fairy harshly. "I fell during Queen Kareen last zap."
"Last zap?" I echoed.
"The last time she used me," said the fairy. "I'm almost completely drained and I was the last one. You're next."
I was totally confused. "What are you talking about, I don't even know where I am!"
The fairy looked pityingly at me. "How soon they forget. Perhaps you have been here too long."
"Where is here?" I asked.
"A Valorian crystal, I forget whose," the fairy said. A shudder ran through my body at the mention of Valorians. It was a term from a past with a friend I no longer had, but still just as frightening.
"Valorians, like the ones who enslave sprites and fairies for their powers?" I gulped.
"So you've noticed," said the fairy. "I'm nearly crystallized myself."
"You're so..." I began.
"Calm? Of course. I've been suffering through it long enough to have accepted it. I'm sorry to tell you that this slave spell we're under is a slow death. The Queen uses her powers sparingly, a little at a time."
"Jeez..." I croaked, realizing I was really in a bind, especially if I didn't find my way out of here.
If that's possible...I thought, just as the next pain from the Queen's crystal hit me and the fairy I was talking to...