A Fairy Story, James Gerard [a court of thorns and roses ebook free txt] 📗

Better than a circus acrobat somersaulting flawlessly through the air she quickly gained control, dove down to catch Solange, and rocketed to a distant tree.

 A fresh wave of sadness suddenly swamped the thoughts as she remembered the look on her fairy friend’s face.

 Leena clearly recalled that when she set Solange down and looked into her green eyes, sheer terror stared back.  In an instant a flood of tears flowed from her eyes of brown.  Although she tried to stop the tears, she could not as Solange trembled with fear and whimpered and wept.

 Leena wanted so much to hug and comfort her friend terrified by the madness happening nearby, but she heard the screams of other fairies.

 Leena remembered that she chose to swallow her tears, took a deep breath, then took to the air and re-entered the madness.

 That is when the vision of looking down and spotting Loxie came into her mind.  She meekly  moaned as the thought about Loxie.   Her tinker friend, known for his ability to tinker with anything in the world, was tinkering furiously with any sharp edged pebble, stone, or rock he could get his arms around to cut the strings of the net and release as many fairy friends as he could.

 Then she clearly saw a human stomping towards Loxie.  Just before the human’s humongous heel was about to squash him, Leena came swooping in and grabbed him.

 Thinking of Solange she rocketed up in the sky with Loxie in hand.  Quickly spotting the mighty oak tree she had left Solange in, Leena glided to the tree and dropped him off right in front of her.  And while she wanted to stay, to gather with her friends to console one another, there were more screams.  Again she found herself flying furiously towards the confusion.

 The visions of that day turned even bleaker.  Leena remembered as she hovered high in the air a host of hawks out of nowhere came diving down from the sky high above.  As fast as she could, faster than the fastest wind she had ever created, Leena went screaming through the air and did not stop until she reached a cliff far, far away.

 Feeling the terror of that day Leena suddenly gasped and looked around.  But just like that horrible, horrible day they were nowhere to be seen: For she figured she must have flown thousands and thousands of miles to escape the hovering hawks.

 But she realized she did not just escape the hawks, but she flew far, far away from her fairy friends and their happy home.

 Time and time again Leena found herself longing to leave the aerie cell, but the pixie dust was no more. She knew her wings were as useless as the wings of the little yellow baby chicks that her friend Cambria, the animal fairy whose scream was the scream that caught her attention that horrible day, used to tend to in the freshness of silly spring days.

 Many a time she was tempted to launch off from the crag in the cliff and glide down to the forest floor below, but she knew her wings would fail and she would go tumbling down and crash upon the forest floor where she suspected there were many a creature there to harm her.

 Leena always thought it odd that she never encountered any violent creatures while imprisoned in her aerie cell.  Then again, she figured she was so high up in the sky that only the very strongest and silent of soaring birds could reach such heights—they would not go to such heights for just a tiny morsel of fairy food.  She also believed there was not an insect or furry animal capable of reaching such high places as her craggy home.  Nevertheless, she suspected such violent creatures now existed.

 It was the smelly smell of the air that once was pure and pristine that brought up suspicions.

 Leena noticed how the foul air had made her weak.   And if not for the nature of her fairy heart and soul she believed she too would have become very mad and mean.

 Besides, Leena knew that even if she were to make it to the forest floor and somehow stay away from attacks by birds such as silly sparrows and insects such as bright butterflies and animals such as goofy gophers and sneaky snakes that sought her very life, she had no clue as to how to make it back home.

 Worse, she wondered if there was a home to go back to.

 After witnessing the very events of that horrible, horrible day, she had doubts that any of her friends—even Solange and Loxie—were still alive.

 Then Leena knew she had to consider the humans.  After witnessing what she had witnessed that horrible, horrible day she was very afraid.  No doubt, she believed, that if she did find her way back home the humans would be waiting to capture and take her life.

 She could not be sure but she figured the humans were the ones that had created the smelly air, and it was the air that quite possibly made them do the very horrible things they did that day.  But why would they have created such air in the first place, she had not a clue.

 In the meantime all Leena could do was to make it through the loneliness and misery of her existence one day at a time.

 And with a light speck of hope buried deep in a crack of her broken heart, Leena just barely held on to the thought that one day she would be rescued from such a miserable existence and once again know happiness with her fairy friends.

Loxie's Lost World

Loxie walked along the branches of the pixie tree checking the rotting red apples filled with pungent pest perfume.  The smell was horrendous, but the taste of it was even worse.   But what made the concoction most effective were the gas vapors from the putrid perfume.  The gases flooded the air just above to keep the land of the fairy kingdom safe.

 After the inspection, Loxie stood atop the pixie tree and looked up to the dreary gray sky.  He could spot no bees buzzing, butterflies fluttering, pesky gnats, or messy mosquitoes.

 Looking over the ground below he knew there to be no mice or bunnies or squirrels.  Their absence meant that hungry hawks and ravenous ravens had to seek food over the wild meadows of the land the humans once lived.

 All of a sudden Loxie felt angry.  But it was not the thought of the humans alone that made him mad, but something that happened on that very, very horrible day.

 On that very, very horrible day, the day in which the humans destroyed all that was in the kingdom of the fairies and took them away, something else went wrong. Loxie remembered how he could have saved a lot of his fairy friends.

 Just a few more seconds, he remembered, a few more seconds and he would have cut through the last of the fibers that made up part of the net where Cambria and hundreds of other fairy friends were trapped.  But unexpectedly he felt something grab his arm and in an instant was crying out to let go.

 Then, having looked up, he saw his friend Leena.  He recalled pleading with her, begging her to take him back.  To his confusion she ignored all pleas and dropped him off at a mighty oak tree instead.

 Before he could scold Leena for taking him away from rescuing their friends, Loxie watched helplessly as she took off and left him fuming in a hole in the oak tree

 Just before he was set to spring back to the frenzy, he caught something odd out of the corner of his eye.

 The memory of what he saw melted his heart.  There stood Solange crying and trembling with fear.

 Loxie’s eyes filled with tears as he remembered walking over to Solange to give her a warm and protective hug.  Solange just wept bitterly, as if she did not know he was there: For Loxie realized just how scared she was.  But the impulse to go was strong.

 The cries for help from his fairy friends could not be ignored.  But not wanting to leave Solange without protection from the chaos that was happening nearby, he looked around and quickly thought of a way.

 An abandoned sparrow’s nest was in the very back of the hole.

 With the mind of a master tinker Loxie picked out, assembled, and secured a barrier by which no human could see past.

 Solange was safe but still trembled and cried.  Although it troubled his humble heart terribly, Loxie flew off toward his screaming fairy friends.

 He remembered soaring back to the spot where he had been cutting the net with a sharp edged stone, but then suddenly stopped.  Hovering, he looked down and saw that it was too late.  The humans had gathered up all their nets along with his fairy friends.

 Landing softly on the ground, Loxie hid in the fallen petals of a purple petunia.  There, he watched as the new human king screamed and shouted at King Midir and Queen Findabhair.  Confused, he believed it best to stay hidden.

 Loxie’s heart beat faster as the visions of his garden fairy friends came into the mind.  He was simply shocked as he watched the garden fairies directing his fellow tinker fairies to strap together roots and trunks and branches and stems of different vegetable plants and fruit trees.  Then, directing the air fairies to hover over the unnatural pairings and sprinkle the yellow pixie dust he watched in disbelief as the air fairies blew the specks all about the unnatural creations.

 Loxie could remember how mad he was as new vegetables and fruits began to grow before his very eyes.  To his disgust, he just stared at what had grown.

 The new vegetables and fruits looked so strange.  And not only did they look not right, Loxie noticed a smell, a very bad smell.

 The smell was not of freshness and newness but of something he had never smelled before.  It was sickening.  The smell turned his stomach.  But that was not the only bad change Loxie noticed.

 The cool crisp water and rich brown soil was also instantaneously tainted.  Both had a bad smell too.

 Loxie was just about to reveal his hiding spot and confront the new human king when the king’s voice roared.  Commands to his human army to uproot the pixie tree, to take all the yellow pixie dust and blue pixie crystals, and to leave the land of the fairies was heard.

 Loxie froze.  Now with fear weighing heavily on his mind all he could do was watch as the new human king and his army and his lords trampled through the good fairy land.  Fields of flowers and plants and groves of trees were flattened.  His and the homes of his fellow friends were smashed into pieces—everything that he had known was destroyed by the humans.

 Loxie screamed out in anger as he looked at the meadows in the distance.  Again, as he had done thousands of times before, he looked for the oak tree where he believed Solange still existed.  But he could not be sure if she was still there: For the stalks of the red and yellow and blue and purple wildflowers had grown very tall.