Chapter 23 #2
“Oh? Really? Are you suddenly allergic to apologies?”
Aven sniffed. “Only insincere ones.”
I pulled my horse to a stop. “What? Insincere? What are you even talking about?”
Mouse paused next to me, bringing Aven and me eye to eye. “The fact that you lied.”
I froze. Uh-oh. Which lie were they referring to? Because there were many of varying degrees of severity. “I have no idea what you mean.”
“Uh… Ellinore? Aven?” Rylan asked, voice soft.
“No idea what I’m referencing, huh?”
“Yeah, no idea.”
“Of course.”
“Now, what does that mean?”
Zig cleared his throat. “Hey, Ellinore?”
“Never mind. It must not be important enough for you to remember.”
I threw up my hands. “Aven, I don’t know what part of my apology was insincere, but I apologize for that, too.”
“Oh, nice. Insincerity on top of insincerity.”
“Can you just speak plainly?”
“Guys!” Farrah yelled.
“What?” Aven and I yelled back in unison.
She pointed at the sky. “What’s that?”
I snapped my head around. A large, dark cloud undulated in waves several lengths in front of us.
I squinted and leaned forward in my saddle.
Upon closer inspection it appeared to be a flock of birds, flying on an updraft, then diving back down, moving in agitated unison.
But they were small for most local fowl, about the size of insects, and the sound of their wings buzzed over the landscape.
My eyes tracked to where they hovered above a large grove of flowering bushes and plants, the bright crimson of buds stark in the distance and… oh no.
“Are they… coming toward us?” Zig asked.
“Turn your mounts,” I yelled. “Follow me.”
I made certain that Farrah and Zig had heard me before I took off, knowing Aven would be right next to me, but it was too late. We’d galloped only a length before the cloud descended upon us, and we were enveloped in a swarm of pixies.
They were tiny creatures, about the size of butterflies, and they usually weren’t aggressive unless disturbed.
The mass swooped down, the number so dense, they blocked out the sun.
Hundreds of them zipped like hummingbirds over us and around us, bumping into one another as they crowded the sky and the ground.
Their little blue and purple bodies smacked into our mounts and our saddlebags, moving so quickly, they were streaks of indigo and silver.
Our horses whinnied and huffed, stomping in circles, rearing and shaking their heads.
I yanked Bluebell to a halt so she wouldn’t bump into any of the others as the mounts panicked in the chaos.
The low visibility made it difficult to discern the surrounding area, increasing the likelihood of a misstep.
The hum of the pixies’ wings filled the air with white noise, vibrating in our eardrums, disorienting as it drowned out all other sounds.
The pixies crawled over everything—my brother, my friends, our mounts, the ground.
Farrah yelped as they pulled her hair, plucking out the ornate pins, burrowing into the thick strands.
They ripped the feathers from Aven’s arrows, tugged on their golden earrings, climbed into their quiver and under the hem of their tunic.
They strummed Rylan’s lute, ducking into the sound hole, wooden thumps emanating from inside.
They pulled cards from Zig’s sleeves, pushing their way up his arms, deeper into the fabric.
They hovered over me, but even the most curious only came within a few inches before darting away to join the others.
“Get off me!” Farrah shrieked, her voice cutting through the interminable buzz. She batted them with her staff, knocking a few away, but as soon as she did, others took their place. “Ow! One bit me!”
“If we’re aggressive toward them, they’ll be aggressive in return!” I yelled.
“More aggressive than they’re already acting?” Aven shot back.
Mouse reared, and Aven held on by the skin of their teeth, the pixies agitating Mouse’s mane and tail. Aven covered their head with their arms, trying to prevent even more from crawling into their hair and tunic.
“What do we do?” Zig asked, swatting at them, knocking several away. “If we can’t fight them—ow, ancients, their teeth are sharp!—are we supposed to let them crawl all over us?”
“I’m thinking!”
Rylan pulled off his lute and shook it, several pixies falling out, hitting the strings with their wings, causing discordant sounds amid all the humming. Then he started taking swings with the instrument to keep them away, with little result, only succeeding in almost braining Zig several times.
“Rylan! You almost hit me!”
“Ow! Ow! Ow!” Farrah shrieked.
Aven tugged on Mouse’s reins. “Can we outrun them?”
We could if we were careful. But there had to be a reason why they were swarming like this. Pixies were normally docile creatures that minded their own business, tending flowers and fostering growth of bushes and trees. They even cared for animals—small rodents, birds, insects, and lizards.
“We don’t need to fight or run. They’re agitated,” I shouted.
“Really?” Zig asked. “I hadn’t noticed.”
“But they’re not usually dangerous.”
Starlight bumped into Carrot, and the mule kicked back with both legs, grazing Starlight’s side. Farrah yelped and gripped the pommel to stay saddled.
“Is this one of those not-hacking-our-way-through situations?” she asked.
“Yes! Exactly! Lord Ethan’s trail cuts through that grove,” I said, swiping my hand out to point toward the flowering bushes cresting the small hill a few minutes’ gallop away. “Which means his entourage probably disturbed their nest.”
“Is that why they’re trying to burrow into my hair?” Farrah asked. She screeched suddenly and grabbed one from the collar of her blouse.
“We need to find the queen and put her back in their hive, and the rest will follow.”
Aven maneuvered closer to my side, clinging to their horse’s neck, wincing when a pixie yanked on their shining hoops. “How will we even do that?”
“Rylan,” I shouted, “play a tune. Any tune.”
He didn’t answer but swung his lute around and started strumming a ballad I recognized.
Thankfully, he didn’t sing. But the music did what I thought it might.
It cut through the noise, and the swarm calmed, the frenzy gradually slowing into a sway.
The pixies didn’t disperse, but they gave us a little distance and were no longer bumping into everyone and everything.
“Farrah.”
She pulled another pixie from her hair. “Yes?”
“See those pink bushes? Ride over and look for a hole in the ground or a burrow in a tree. Somewhere that might be their original home.”
“Oh. Okay. Got it.” She knocked her heels against Starlight’s sides and galloped off, a small portion of the swarm breaking off to follow her.
“Aven, you’re used to finding small targets,” I said, gesturing toward the pixie cloud. “Find the queen. She’ll be wearing a crown.”
“How do you even know about pixies? We never had a pixie quest!”
“Just do it! We can argue later!”
Aven sighed in disbelief, but they straightened to their full height in their saddle and shielded their eyes as they searched the pacified swarm. It took several minutes of peering into the group until they spotted her.
“Ha! I found her. There!”
I followed their line of sight. And there was the queen, flying in a daze. Her figure was slightly larger than the other pixies, her hair a stunning silver, her skin a deep purple. Her golden crown twinkled in the light. But one of her legs dangled at an awkward angle.
“Worst quester ever,” I muttered. Lord Ethan should have known not to lead his group through what was obviously a pixie grove.
He had hurt their queen, which had led to the whole frenetic horde.
If we had been any other travelers, the pixies might have been hurt worse, or might even have hurt others.
“Zig. You have the quickest hands. Can you catch her?”
He rifled in his saddlebag and yanked out a tunic. He tied off the sleeves, fashioning it into a crude sack with a wide mouth. He slipped off the back of Carrot and positioned himself in the middle of the circling mass.
“Rylan,” he whispered, gaze locked on the queen, “stop playing.”
As soon as the last note faded, the vibrating energy of the swarm increased again, the buzz rising to a deafening level.
The pixies swirled once more, diving toward us and the ground.
The queen, though hovering in the middle of it all, bobbed downward in the chaos, close enough for Zig to catch her.
It took Zig three tries, especially since pixies tried to climb up his sleeves again, but he captured her, as well as a few others, in the makeshift bag.
“I got her!”
“Hand her here,” I said. He carefully offered me the bag with the queen, and I spurred Bluebell toward the grove.
The entire swarm followed, but once again they didn’t dare fly too close to me, deterred by the magic of an ancient that radiated from the bracelet around my wrist.
Farrah stood in the grove, waving her hands above her head. “It’s here! I found it here!”
As I’d thought, the pixies’ hive was partially underground. The hooves of the horses and mules had collapsed the soil, forcing the pixies to fly out or be crushed. I jumped down from Bluebell, not wanting to add to the mess.
Farrah pointed toward the base of a small tree. “There,” she said. “I think one of the entrances is in that hollow.”
“Be careful, she’s hurt,” I said, holding the queen in my hand after extracting her from the tunic, the other trapped pixies flying off. She seemed to know she was safe, her purple body stretched the length of my fingers, her short wings fluttering, but not in an attempt to fly away.
Farrah’s eyes widened in awe. “She’s beautiful.”
“She is,” I agreed.
The scent of crushed flowers and disturbed earth was overwhelming as I knelt by the tree.
We placed her inside the hollow, and as soon as we did, some of the pixies burrowed into the soil, creating new tunnels and pathways to rebuild their underground kingdom. The others hovered around my shoulders and above my head, waiting.
“Go ahead and join the others,” I said to Farrah. “I’m going to stay with her for a minute. Just to make sure she’s okay.”
Farrah led Starlight away, and once she was out of earshot, I pulled out the chain around my neck and shook the vial of healing potion. The queen would need little, so I offered the end of the wet cork to her.
“Here. This will help. It’s from a dragon.”
She propped herself on her elbows and took a sip from a drop pooling on the edge. Instantly, a small flash of magic burst from her body, and her broken leg straightened and healed.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “For my fellow humans. They should’ve known better than to cut through your grove.”
She flew up from the hollow, floating in front of my face. She darted close, kissed my cheek with a tinny giggle, then hovered in front of me. This close, I could see her tiny smile. Then she flew away, the remainder of the swarm following her into the tree.