The Collaboration Files

A Little History Lesson

Hi! It's Birch. Imma not tell you about this chaptah, because that'd be spoilers, sweetie. Oh, ya, and before I forget,  I spell fairies faeries. 

Lizzy! Guess what the sprout is! Guess, guess!

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After my small chat with Artemis, I was escorted to another concrete room with a small bed in the corner. After I had been locked in, I curled up on the bed. There was a small patch of earth on the ground, with a tiny plant sprouting from it. Thank goodness I was allowed to keep my Mobil phone. I struck up Wattpad, and went to talk to Lizzy, but she wasn’t on. I began to ponder. What did Artemis mean by there was another? And what were these memories about?

As if on cue, a memory flashed in my head.

“Stella!” I reached my hand out to a figure shrouded in shadow. I was falling, wind whistling past my ears. Who was this? Stella?

“Birch! Press the button!” She screamed over the wind.

Reaching in my pocket, past the blade-thing, I felt a tiny button. Jamming my finger on it, I was raised in the air with a sudden jolt, and then began to float down to the ground.

Stella grinned a smile of relief, and then plummeted off the cliff edge. Just like me, a parachute bloomed above her.

The memory ended. But something else connected. The blade, or sword, reminded me of a weapon that hung on the wall in my room. It had a daintily curved blade with a leather strap on the handle, and looked a bit like a scythe. It hung on two pegs in my room, and for as long as I can remember it hung there. I never paid attention to it before now. I guess I sort of forgot about it as the years passed. But there is one thing that was odd I could never figure out about it.

Dust.

It was almost never dusty. Just something I noticed one day when I was so groggy I couldn’t think straight. I never told anyone, because I had just brushed it off at the time. After all, who believes a half-asleep lass who thinks the sword in her wall can never get dusty? That’s just insane. And another thing. Whenever I went to touch the sword, I was just… repelled. By feeling. It’s like a barrier of feeling and nausea.

A call interrupted my brainwaves. It was a voice bouncing around the cell. It was telling me to go to the door, and when I did, I was again escorted back to the White Room. There I met Artemis.

“Hello. How are you?” I calmly asked.

“Fine, thank you. Now, what can you tell us of the girl ‘Lizzy’?” Artemis steepled his fingers.

I gasped. “You know about Lizzy?”

Artemis chuckled mischievously. “You don’t think we wouldn’t monitor your phone, did you? We also censored some sites and lines where you could have contacted the police,” He told me, as I whipped out my phone to check for bugs and try the emergency site I was given for contacting the police.

“You’re right,” I tossed the phone on to the table. “So why did you bring me here?”

Artemis sighed. “Always quick to the point. All right, I’ll have Butler explain it to you.”

The manservant’s bulk shoved through the interrogation room’s door, and in a moment he was standing over me.

I looked up at him. “Well?”

“You see,” he paced around the room. “Everything you know is a lie. Faeries are real. They live underground, and they’re called the People. Now, long ago, in The Battle Of Taillte, led by Frond, Two faeries were captured by the humans, but were taken back by the People. But the humans had destroyed the faeries minds, making them go insane, so the People transferred their minds into human bodies, and put them in suspended animation, curing them over a vast time period. But something happened. Only a few decades or so ago, the two faeries in suspended animation had been, for some odd reason, kidnapped or they had escaped. Things were hushed up, and were soon forgotten about. But the curing of their minds was never fully complete, so they lost most of their memories. Doomed to be humans until their memories were triggered back to their heads, they joined families that believed they were their kids. Do you know who those humans were?”

“Us? Lizzy and I?” I squeaked.

“Yes. You were, or rather are, Birch Light. And you will help us to destroy this threat, a very real threat that we face this very instant.”

“For a price.”

“What?”

“My body. My real body. Not this fake human hide you call a body.”

Artemis grinned an impish smile. “Done.”

We shook on it.

“So now we get your ‘Lizzy’.”

“Um…I should probably warn her. I mean, you never gave me a chance, so I guess she should have one,” I reached for the phone. Artemis made no move to stop my actions; on the contrary, he pushed the device at me. I texted Lizzy one message. Just one.

Um, Liz? We have a tiny problem. The guys who got me, well, they're coming after you.