Banished To Earth Book Two (8)

Chapter 5

 

27  

 

     While Silhouette showered, the others caught Trudy and Beth up on everything that had just transpired. A video game had snared Nikki’s attention. Alone in the living room while the grown-ups sat around the dining room table, talking, her little ears were perfectly muffled against the adults’ deep secrets.

 

     Darkness settled over the farm, a soft, soothing narcotic presence, inching across the fields and woods like a rising tide of ink. The surrounding woods lit up with animal eye lights and fireflies.

 

    Deep within the night-shrouded boughs of the alien oak, a cocoon jerked ever so slightly. A spindly twig, far tougher than it looked, suspended the black pod high above a writhing network of pulsating roots.

 

   Buried deep within the great oaks’ ancient heart lay a hollow, formed by several large branches. Within it, another cocoon lay on a nest of feathers and rabbit fur. Soon it too began to quiver and jerk until a paper-thin sliver of what could easily have been golden sunlight streaked out and sliced open the darkness.

 

     Tiny luminous fingers wriggled through the crack and pushed against its sides until it popped open. An onyx locket unclasped. A tiny feminine figure with flowing yellow hair, clothed in golden light, leaned out, bending down until two sheer silver wings unfurled.

 

    A slight flutter of her rippling translucent wings lifted her exquisite grasshopper-sized body into the air.

 

     Whipping through the branches, not unlike a tiny drone, she curved up, spiralled through the green maze until she sidled up to the suspended cocoon. “Thorn.” Her voice, a whispering breeze that resonated against the cocoon until it too began to quiver and crack. ‘Sunlight’ streamed from a ragged fissure. Growing brighter and larger as another fluttering puff of light emerged.

 

   “Eloween! The others?” Thorn enquired, his voice heavy with hopeful concern.

 

  She shook her head. “The curse still holds. There is only tinkling but no voices. No song.”

 

   Thorn fluttered around her, then hovered. “The air is different.”

 

   “Yes, I had hoped you would not smell it.”

 

   “How could I not smell the stench of giants!” Said the handsome, dark-haired fairy.

 

28

 

  They shot down, panic-stricken, desperate to see what lay below.

 

   Hovering behind a great limb that arced just ten feet from the ground, they peeked down. Both dimmed in relief. Their natural luminance was now barely bright enough to hide their nakedness.

 

  “No giants.” Eloween sighed.

 

  “Look there.” Thorn pointed at a patch of rectangular lights floating in the darkness.

 

  “Corners,” Eloween moaned. “Giants make corners.”

 

   “Their castle is near, much too near.”

 

   Thorn flew down, emboldened by needful curiosity. After flying several times around the oak, each time taking him further out, he finally emerged from the tree's massive shadow. Finding himself bathed in the dull milk light of a full moon, a moon, he had never seen.

 

    “Eloween! You must see this.”

 

   She slid up beside him a moment later.

 

  “Look!”

 

  Eloween grasped Thorn’s hand and held it tight. “This is not Lah rah’. This cannot be!”

 

  “Witchery!”

 

  “Thorn, we are already cursed, our sisters and brothers are still entombed.”

 

   He glared at her. “Yes, your rage, your vengeance, did that.”

 

   “The villagers possess no power such as this. They strike fire. They cannot cast spells. They have no witch, no pellar. Would that we had a pellar to break this curse.

 

  “Their crops failed. This curse is yours. You drove all their bees away. They starved.”

 

  “They killed Arrabella. What was I to do!”

 

 “A stupid boy captured a firefly.”

 

  “Arrabella, he caught Arrabella! Then crushed her in his evil little hands.”

 

  “Ignorance, surprise and fear, but no intent!” Thorn stared up at the moon, rather than at her.  

 

29

 

    “Then kill me and break the curse.” Eloween snapped.

 

   “I cannot kill the one I love.”

 

   “Then what are we to do?”

     

   “There are animals.” Thorn spun toward the wood. “We ride their little minds, just like on Lor’rah . Spy and learn. And wait for the sun. It may reveal truths that the darkness hides. Truths on how we came to be here, could well be truths on how we free our kindred. Certainly, there is much power here. Power is what we need.”

 

   “And you know this world has a sun.”

 

    “Have you never heard every moon has a sun?”

 

  “And every spell can be broken.”

 

  “Fire is not a spell, Eloween.”

 

   “Yes, but that was all the magic they needed. Just as forfeiture of my life is all the magic that is needed to free our family.”

 

   He spun back toward her, his handsome features a roiling storm of mixed emotions, “Then they will remain entombed…”