Spelled

16: Who Needs Fairy Dust to Fly?

"Rule of Heroics: If you want to be remembered as a heroic ruler, face danger head on. If you wanted to be remembered as a wise ruler who lived a long life, face danger from a very safe distance."

—Thomason's Tips for Ruthless Ruling
16

Who Needs Fairy Dust to Fly?

"Run!" Kato roared over the shrill creaking of the gigan.
Like I really needed that little piece of advice. I was already down the hall. "What the spell is that?" I shouted behind me.
"My guess would be the Tinman."
We ran out the front door and headlong into a different giant monster.
We were trapped. And I was out of ideas. "Glam it all. Isn't this a tad bit of overkill?"
"You wanted to know the plan, well, this is the plan," Kato sniped at me, then yelled up to the huge creature. "Bobbledandrophous, can you carry both of us on your back?"
The beast looked down in surprise. He was easily the size of the house, and now that I looked past the huge legs and really sharp talons, I could see that he bore a striking resemblance to Kato: lion head, ram horns, dragon tail, and ginormous wings. Oh, fairy fudge. Had I turned Kato's entire family into chimeras?
His voice boomed. "My Lord? How did—"
"Later. Escape now."
The beast lowered himself and allowed us to climb onto his back. "Yes, my lord. Is that little human yours as well?" The big chimera nodded to the side.
The little human was Rexi, tied to the laundry line with hot-pink panty hose. Her eyes were closed, but she stirred a little, so at least she was alive. Of course, if she opened her eyes and saw a massive chimera and a metal giant about to step on her, she might have a heart attack.
Tinman's creaking was ear-shattering, worse than fingernails running down a cauldron. It made a great early warning system though. Bigger-version-of-Kato flapped his enormous black, feathery wings and took to the sky as the Tinman swung his ax in an attempt to bring us down.
"No!" I shouted. "We have to get Rexi." She wasn't much, but with Verte gone, she was the only tie I had left to Emerald.
A scream sounded from the ground below. Rexi was awake.
"What would you have me do, Highness?" asked our ride.
I started to reprimand the chimera when I realized that I was not the Highness the he was referring to.
"We don't have time for this, but leaving her here would give the Gray Witch the upper hand. Bank left and use the gigan's higher center of gravity to knock him over. Then fly swiftly and snatch up the line." Kato spoke with confidence and grace, giving directions with ease.
I'd had my doubts about Kato's claim to royalty—understandable given his earlier appearance, then kittenish nature after the change. That playfulness disappeared the more he grew, and there was no mistaking the air of authority he now wielded. Furry or not, he was a prince and not my pet.
The larger chimera did exactly as he was told, swooping low and using his tail to swat the Tinman.
That saying, the bigger they are, the harder they fall? Totally true. The Tinman flew back and landed right on the house, squishing it flat. He looked like a silver turtle stuck on its back, unable to flip itself over.
We took advantage of our fallen foe and flew back over to the clothesline. The chimera gingerly gathered the poles in his mouth, letting the line—and Rexi—hang down. If screaming and cursing were any indication, Rexi was not happy with her mode of rescue.
The Tinman creaked and groaned as he rolled off to the side, readying himself to stand.
"Fly, Bobbledandrophous! Take us home," Kato ordered.
Bobblewhatshisbucket curved sharply and flew away, hitting and denting the tin gigan with his barbed tail.
The chimera flew quickly, and I watched Crow's house and the Tinman grow rapidly smaller. Soon, I no longer heard his scraping sound, just Rexi's shrill shrieks as she kicked and flailed helplessly in midair.
"Shouldn't we get her up now?" I said.
Kato looked sheepish—and on a lion's face, that is something to see. "Do we have to? It might do her some good, you know."
"It might, but she'll also scream herself hoarse."
"I'm not hearing a downside."
I smacked his furry side. "Do I have to try and do it myself?"
Kato's cool blue eyes stared into mine.
"What?" I squirmed, suddenly feeling very self-conscious in my extremely expensive dress/now rag.
"I don't understand you. If you wanted, you could have that girl executed for treason for striking you. You lost an opportunity to get help from the wizard because you were too soft. Even Crow manage to garner your concern. You think personal accountability is something to do with your pocketbook, yet for some reason you still keep attempting to help people that don't deserve it."
"Thanks, I think."
He shook his head. "It's not a compliment, Dot."
My chest felt like it was being shredded by the shards of glass that still littered the big chimera's fur. Dot. That was the nickname Verte had given me as a child.
Kato huffed in his growing mane. "At best it's slightly noble. At worse it's dangerous and puts everyone around you at risk. You mean well, but that won't keep us alive." He turned away, carefully padding his way up to speak to his friend and figure out a way to better secure Rexi.
I felt anything but secure. Sitting alone, I had nothing left to distract me from...me. Or what Kato said. Was he right? From playing with a lost child in the garden, to giving Crow information for food, my best intentions had brought nothing but ruins.
Soaring high in the clouds, my thoughts weighed me down like lead balloons. Everything was...wrong. This wasn't the way my life should be written. The Storymakers had made a misstep somewhere. Verte couldn't really, truly be gone. She had to be missing, just like my parents.
But she had been my one hope to setting the whole mess right-side up again. And now I had no idea what to do or where to go—or if I should go anywhere. Maybe with the curse, the world would be safer if I was dropped in a deep fireproof pit somewhere.
Kato and our beast pilot must have argued during their talk because as the enchanted prince made his way back down the larger chimera's back, his face looked like he'd sucked down a gallon of rotten curds and whey. I did my best to push all thoughts of the curse out of my head before he reached me. Denial, thy new princess is Dorthea.
Kato approached and shrugged his wings. "The best Bobbledandrophous can do is lower her down into his paws. It would be too risky to try and bring her up here midflight. She'll be fine...probably." He tilted his head and narrowed his eyes before plopping down in a big heap. On my lap.
"Ahh!" I tried to use his horns to pick his head up, but even that part of him weighed a ton. "What are you doing? Did you just die?"
"No," he growled and turned his face up, pursing his lips in total seriousness. "I've recently been advised that you might find the cute and fuzzy approach much less threatening. Supposedly it's also more endearing."
"I hate to tell you, but that Jolly Roger has sailed, sunk, and been eaten by ticking crocodiles." I tried to stifle a laugh, but it was too large to contain. Kato really had zero skill at manipulation, but at least he was honest.
"I told him it was a stupid idea," he grumbled and rolled off me.
"What gives? You've gone more than five minutes without finding some new way to call me incompetent."
Shaking his head, he swiped a paw across his face to hide what looked like a smile. "I can't decide if the Storymakers are brilliant or mad as hares for bringing us together as partners."
"Partner is an awfully strong word. Let's go with associates for a brief duration until the ever-after part."
He sighed. "Well, I suppose that's an improvement over disgusting beast." Finally he looked me in the eye. His glacial stare was serious but neutral and without disapproval—an improvement of its own. "We need to talk."
"Good, I'll go first." I sucked in the biggest breath possible to blurt out all the questions on my mind before Kato had a chance to change the subject. "The way I figure it, you seem to know a lot about me while I know next to nothing about you. Why is that? Were you friends with my parents? And what's this big threat thing to both our kingdoms? And where is your kingdom anyway? I've never ever heard of a chimera or seen pictures. Bob here looks like something out of a nightmare, especially the big pointy fangs."
"Bob?" Kato's muzzle quirked up in amusement. "He's not so scary, and he'd do anything to keep me from harm. And now you too."
"Avoiding the more important part of that rant."
Kato huffed and sat on his haunches across from me. His eyebrows drew together while he unfurled his right wing out wide. "That's where I'm from." He gestured to the mountain we were rapidly approaching. "Even though I lived a day's flight away, you could see the tall, glittering green towers to the South. I'd never been there or met your parents before Muse Day though. In fact, I rarely needed to venture away from my domain."
Instinctively, I scanned the skyline for the towers of Emerald City. They weren't there anymore.
He continued. "My home is nothing like yours. And I'll give you bit of warning now that you would be wise not to make a fuss about..." His face scrunched up as he searched until he found the term he was looking for. "The decor."
I stiffened in defense at the insinuation, but I really didn't have room to talk. When we first met, I had thought I was better than him because my clothes were designer and he had dirt smudges on his.
His tail poked my back in what I think was supposed to be a reassuring pat. "But don't feel too bad about not being in the know about chimeras. My people are a well-kept secret." He craned his neck and looked at the horizon. "You'll see soon enough though. We're almost there." He rose to all fours and turned away. "I'll be right back."
"Wait. Almost where?" I yelled and leaned forward as far as I dared. Before I could get any answers, he'd already kind of hopped, skipped, and flew back up to the top. I still didn't understand why he pushed for the alliance. (A much better word than engagement.) And what exactly did he mean, his "people"? What kind of kingdom was Kato prince to?
"Hang on, my lady," Bob bellowed. That's all the warning I got before he arched into a steep swan dive on a crash course with the mountain.
I did the only thing I could—took a death grip on his fur and joined Rexi in screaming my head off. As the mountain got closer and we hadn't slowed, I closed my eyes. I didn't need to know which jagged edge was going to rupture my spleen.
My first clue that we didn't hit the mountain was the lack of a bone-crunching splat. The second was a little more subtle—our screams echoed back at me. I'd missed it because my eyes were shut, but we must have flown into a cavern or tunnel or something.
No, that wasn't right either. I think we were somehow inside the mountain.
Everything was pitch-black; the only light came from my flaming hair. The sinking in the pit of my stomach told me that we were headed down. I saw a warm, red glow bouncing off the walls ahead. The closer we got, the hotter the temperature.
Please, Grimm, don't let us be traveling to the pits of hell.
The rocky chute ended abruptly, dumping us into a surreal new world. My first thought was, There is no way all of this could fit inside of a mountain. My second was, Of course it has to be made up almost completely of fire.