Chapter One

 

Swords weigh heavy, even when they’re made to be light. I’d never held a ponderosa sword before a month ago. I never wanted to. I didn’t see the need. Fire was my weapon. What else could a fairy possibly need? Unfortunately, no one saw it my way. A common occurrence in my life.

Bentha definitely didn’t see it my way. He shoved my sword’s green point down into the plush fabric of the airline seat where it stuck quivering from the ferocity of the strike. His long pant leg, painted to resemble his tree, the ponderosa pine, was planted next to the sword. I didn’t have to look at his long, thin face to know it wore an expression of extreme vexation. Bentha was a swordmaster. The best sword of the mall, as he was fond of telling me and everyone else who would listen. He couldn’t understand why I avoided my lessons and him, in general.

I looked down at my palms, cupped together in my lap. Pale yellow flames flowed in a pool with no snapping energy or crackling ferocity at all. My fire was weak and all my denials hadn’t changed it. Rufus the fire lizard slinked into my lap and curled up under my hands. For a second my fire grew and looked like its old self. Then it went right back to being sad. Rufus purred away, vibrating my legs, but not helping. The lizards had helped restore my fire, but only Rufus had come with us to Paris. Mom said he was my pet. As if sleeping on my face made him a pet.

Bentha danced around in my peripheral vision, trying to get my attention. Instead of responding, I looked at the row of bodies lying next to me. The Home Depot fairies had elected to come with us to Paris because they heard France needed help. I guess they planned on fixing all the French dishwashers. At least I hoped they stuck to dishwashers. The minute the plane got to cruising altitude, the Home Depot fairies marched into the cockpit, saying they would fix it. Mom and Dad nearly fainted, but we didn’t crash or anything. D and his crew came back five hours later, informed us that they fixed everything in the cockpit, lay down in their beloved row, and went to sleep. They’d been asleep ever since.

Beyond them were rows of seats polka-dotted with lights from the ceiling and filled with sleeping humans. I liked the peacefulness in that quiet cold plane, but it made me dread landing. Nothing would be peaceful in Paris, if the rumors were true.

A giant human head turned around and the blue eyes fixed on me. “Matilda,” said Tess. “Bentha wants you.”

“I know. I’m hearing impaired, not blind,” I said, more sharply than I had intended.

Tess blinked and her brow wrinkled, not in sadness at my sharp retort, but with anger. For such a young human, nine to be exact, she was rather testy. The rare ability to see fairies hadn’t made her anything but more sure of herself. “You have to learn to use a sword. Your fire stinks.”

“Hey!” I climbed to my feet slowly like a rickety old man. It was the best I could do. I’d been injured by a horen fairy, possibly the most dangerous fairy in the world, and my ankle had yet to heal from the catlike claws he’d sunk deep into my flesh, releasing his venom. I shouldn’t have survived. My fire saved me and as a result I almost lost the ability to make it. That would’ve been the ultimate nightmare, to stop being a kindler, to stop being me. The ankle was nothing.

“Do you need help?” Tess set aside the French language book she’d been studying.

I wavered on my feet. “No, I don’t, and my fire doesn’t stink.”

Tess’s eyes shifted to my grotesquely swollen ankle; the angry red spots where the claws went in were still evident. It usually looked much better. It must’ve been the altitude or plane air that was aggravating it.

“Yes, it does. You couldn’t light a candle right now. How are you going to fight?”

“I’m not supposed to fight. Remember?”

Tess blew out a hot breath and my long black hair fluttered back in the wind. “You’re not supposed to use your fire. But you might still have to defend yourself. There’s a war going on.”

“It’s a revolution.”

“Same thing.”

“Not exactly.” That’s what I said, but I wasn’t sure I knew the difference myself. We were going to Paris, a place where royalists and revolutionaries had been fighting for control for over two hundred years. It started with the human French Revolution, but the French fairies never got over it. We’d never have gone, if we didn’t have to, but we definitely had to.

My eyes found my teacher, Miss Penrose Whipplethorn, swathed in blankets on the ledge in the oval window. I could barely make out her form, although she was reasonably tall for a wood fairy, nearly three-fourths a centimeter. My adopted brother, Horc, and his hideous grandmother, Lucrece, sat beside Miss Penrose. Horc and Lucrece weren’t wood fairies like the rest of us. They were spriggans. A foul race of child-stealers that tended to look and smell like dead toads. But Horc wasn’t like that at all. Quite the opposite, in fact. Lucrece I wasn’t so sure about. She showed up a month ago disguised as a wood fairy healer in an attempt to save Horc’s life by feeding him meat. Baby spriggans had to have meat or their bones didn’t form correctly and they died. I was grateful to Lucrece for that, but, still, she was a spriggan.

Lucrece held a cup of kaki persimmon root tea to Miss Penrose’s lips and she took a sip. Not much of one by the look of it. Miss Penrose had congestive heart failure with two months to live and we were going to Paris to save her. I wished she’d drink more of that tea. I’d gone to a lot of trouble to get it for her. The quest to get the kaki persimmon root had taken me, my sister, Iris, and our friend, Gerald, to the antique mall where the spriggans had it. The trip cost me my normal ankle and the friendship of many in the mall, but we got the root only to find out it wasn’t the cure. It merely treated the symptoms. The cure was in Paris, a spell only done by the vermillion clan.

The three of them sat as close as possible to the human head propped up beneath them on the wall. The heat coming off the tousled brown hair was nearly visible in the chill of the plane. Judd’s hair covered his face and each snore sucked the tips into his gaping mouth. He was Tess’s brother and the second human to see me. Convincing humans to believe in fairies is almost as hard as convincing my mom that hideous danger isn’t lurking around every corner. That’s especially hard for me because when it comes to me it generally is. At fourteen, I’d gotten into more scrapes than every other living Whipplethorn fairy combined. Maybe that’s why Judd and I got along so well. He wasn’t one to shy away from anything. He even loved fencing and was Bentha’s best pupil. If he’d been awake, Bentha would’ve had him practicing in the narrow aisle, which would’ve been good for me. Judd distracted Bentha from his mission of teaching the unwilling (me) fencing.

Since Judd wasn’t awake, being his distracting self, I could feel Bentha’s eyes on me. Darn that ponderosa. He never gave up. I turned and glared at him. “Fine!”

Bentha’s thin painted face curved into a smile. He hopped around, slashing his sword, and attacking enemies. He was speaking, but he was moving so much I couldn’t read his lips. I’d lost most of my hearing to a snail pox infection when I was two. I got by with reading lips.

“I’ll move you over,” said Tess.

No need to read her lips. Humans were so loud, even my feeble ears could hear them. She held out her hand, I stepped on, and she put me on Bentha’s seat back.

“Are you ready, my lady?” he asked.

“Not hardly,” I said.

“That answer is incorrect. A warrior is always ready. I know. I am the best sword of the mall.” Bentha pulled my accursed blade out of the fabric and laid it across his forearm, hilt toward me. “Take thy blade and be enlightened.”

“I really don’t need it,” I said, taking the hilt anyway. “My fire is getting better.”

“It is. Slowly. But you must learn fencing. A warrior never relies on only one skill.”

“It’s not a skill. I’m a kindler. It’s who I am.”

“And now you must learn to be more than that. I, Bentha, will train you.”

I looked over to my parents, who were sitting on the seat back next to us, watching quietly. Their faces were so red, they were nearly purple from their own fencing lessons. Both my parents had taken up the sword and it wasn’t going well. They made me look good. After the horen got me, my parents decided they had to learn to fight. I mean, we’re talking gardener and woodworker material here. Their magical gifts were decidedly unwarriorlike.

Mom watched me. She was always watching me. It started when I got the snail pox and I’d gone and made it worse by being a kindler and running off to the antique mall to get involved in a war.

“Do I have to?” I called out to them.

Neither one said anything. They wouldn’t answer, unless it was to say no and be angry. I didn’t know what they thought exactly, but my leg changed everything. Mom waited for my limp to go away. I told her it wouldn’t. She didn’t believe me because she always hoped for the best. I didn’t deserve the best. I didn’t follow orders and plenty of fairies paid for it. My limp was nothing. I got off light.

“En garde,” said Bentha.

I assumed the first position and we got on with it. Even though my gifts were decidedly warrior-like, I stumbled, missed parries, and made a fool of myself. Bentha showed me a correct position for the hundredth time and I said, “I just want to use fire.”

“Fire is not for Paris. You must remain unremarkable, my lady.”

I stabbed my sword into the fabric. My fire was remarkable and in being so it made me conspicuous. Everyone agreed (everyone but me) that I would never use fire in Paris for any reason. The horen fairies didn’t know where I was and we had to keep it that way. We’d fly to Paris, get the spell, and save Miss Penrose. I had to keep my head down. Something I was terrible at.

“Pick up your weapon, you scurvy Whipplethorn,” said Bentha with a grin. “I am the great horen ready to skewer you.”

I grinned back in spite of myself. Bentha was as tall as a horen, but that’s all they had in common. Bentha resembled a tree more than anything else with his bark-painted skin and the ponderosa needles sticking up from his head in green spikes. The horen were golden fairies that looked like Nordic gods with cat’s claws and eyes.

I drew my sword out of the fabric and the grin dropped off my face, killing a horen was something I could get on board with. Bentha assumed the en garde position and I launched myself at him. Our swords clashed and he feinted to the right, neatly entangling my weapon with his, and twisted so that I was knocked to my knees. I saw Mom stand up and wave her arms. She was probably saying it was too much for her little girl. Instead of stopping, I rammed Bentha’s ankle with my elbow. He dropped beside me, his sword ready to strike. I tried to get my weapon up to defend, but I was too slow (I nearly always was) and Bentha’s point was at my throat. Before I could surrender (something I was getting good at) someone grabbed me by the collar and lifted me to my feet.

I rotated in the air to come nose-to-nose with Lrag, a red teufel with curving horns and diamond-patterned skin.

“Elbows are not part of fencing,” he said.

“Well,” I said, still dangling. “You keep telling me I have to use weapons other than fire.”

Lrag laughed, a deep rumbling I could feel through his arm. He set me down gently and I was nose-to-chest. He turned to Bentha. “Didn’t you hear the announcement?”

“No announcement can stop warriors in training,” said Bentha, jumping to his feet and brandishing his sword.

“It can this time. The pilot says we’re landing. Get yourself to a safe position.”

“Safety is my middle name.” Bentha ran to the edge of the seat back and hurled himself off, somersaulted in the air, and disappeared.

Lrag bent low and said in my ear so that I would be sure to hear. “I think his middle name is spastic.”

“I was thinking hyperactive.”

“Good one. Why don’t you flap over to Iris?”

I looked down at my little sister sitting in the seat beside Tess, clutching the commander’s egg to her chest. She murmured to the phalanx egg and caressed the shiny black surface. The commander had entrusted me with his only egg because of the civil war going on in the antique mall where he lived. I entrusted the egg to Iris. Disaster didn’t follow her the way it did me.

“She looks like she’s lost her best friend,” said Lrag.

“She has.”

I spread my purple and green wings wide and their luminescent colors put patterns of light on the dull fabric. I lifted off and floated down to land beside Iris. Her eyes were swollen and the blond curls around her round face damp.

“How are you doing?” I asked.

“I can’t learn it all.” Iris flipped a page in the oversized book lying in her lap. “It’s too big.”

I tucked my wings and sat down. “Gerald didn’t give it to you as a homework assignment. It’s supposed to be helpful, not a job.”

“But he’s not here and he knows everything.”

I put my arm around her and let her snuffle into my shoulder, getting it all moist. We could’ve used Gerald. There was no doubt about that. For a nine-year-old wood fairy, he was exceptionally knowledgeable, but our trip to get the root for Miss Penrose had caused Gerald’s mother to cut off ties with us. They stayed home with baby Easy’s family because I was a bad influence. I wanted to tell Eunice she was wrong (my influence wasn’t bad; it just looked that way to the casual observer) but I couldn’t. I was a bad influence. Gerald ran away to the mall where he got into battles and learned to use swords because of me. Eunice considered anything that might give Gerald a paper cut to be exceptionally bad. She made my mom look positively calm in comparison.

“I’ll help you learn everything in the book,” I said.

Iris looked up and closed the book. Speciesapedia, A Practical Guide to all Species in the Fae was printed on the thick vellum hide. I didn’t know what was so practical about it. The thing was huge and detailed every fairy species in the known world. And Gerald knew them all, but he was in Tess and Judd’s house back in the United States. His parents decided he would never have anything to do with me again, so Iris had to go to Paris without her best friend.

“We can’t learn it all in time,” said Iris. “We’re almost there.”

“We don’t need to know every single species. We’ll get the cure and get out. Three months and it’ll all be over.”

“You heard what everyone said. Paris is dangerous.”

“We also heard that the royal family has returned to power. They’re taking control. Everything will be fine.” I smiled so that my sweet little sister might believe that I believed it. The royal family was back, but they’d been driven out before, multiple times. And Paris had the most dense fairy population in the world. The most volatile, too.

Iris shivered as if she felt my doubt, but this wasn’t a showy mission. We were undercover. We weren’t going to be Whipplethorns in Paris. We were going to use Tess and Judd’s last name, Elliot. Nobody would care about us. No one would know the Whipplethorns were ever there.

 

Read the rest in A Monster’s Paradise.

Available now.