Chapter Two
As Silanis slept, the box lying off to the side of her as though it were forgotten, what seemed like a small, lilac-haired child with large purple wings made her way into the room through the window. Looking about the room, she wondered where she could hide for the morning, where Silanis would not see her. Wings aflutter in the darkness, and her eyes fell on first the ferret in its cage, followed by the large accumulation of stuffed toys given to Silanis over the years. The faerie sighed, seeing no place else but beneath the bed, and slid underneath it. This girl would see through any of my spells, I think, thought the faerie, because my magic is not much stronger than that of the inscription. It was only a hope she had, that she would not betray her own location in her excitement come morning.
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When the young woman awoke in the morning, she blearily made her way to her closet, choosing from the pile of messily folded clothing what was, for her, a normal outfit. It consisted of a knee-length white cotton skirt, a pair of blue-and-white striped stockings, and a dark green blouse with a light blue bodice over it, and a dark green jacket to top it all off. Stretching, she tried to better rouse herself, so that she could tackle the riddle that had defeated her once before.
From the darkness under the bed, the faerie lay asleep, having been unable to wait until morning to see Silanis awaken. The ferret scratched about in her cage, waiting impatiently for her breakfast, and Silanis looked over with a smile.
“Come now, little Libra.” Silanis said. “Give it a moment, and I’ll go get your food, aye?”
Libra kicked up a bit of a fuss when she left the room, making no small amount of noise in the process. The faerie awoke while Silanis was getting food for the ferret, and looked about from her shelter, forgetting for a moment where she was, and why. When she saw Silanis reenter the room, she remembered. This girl had found the little box, and she was here to see if it would be opened or not.
Silanis walked back over to the bed, after giving Libra more food, and picked the little metal contraption up off the bed, careful not to hit any buttons. Smiling to herself, she reread the riddle inscribed upon the bottom.
“For a moment there I thought I had been dreaming.” The brunette mused aloud, thinking over the sentence that presented so much trouble. “The blade is not sharp, but can grow very long… Meh… Weapons.”
The child-like creature under the bed left out a soft sigh, knowing that Silanis was thinking entirely the wrong thing for the answer; at this rate she would never get it right. Another lost cause, it seemed, who would never open the box, and eventually lose it. The little faerie-girl felt a little sad, she had thought this time someone would open the box for sure.
Silanis stood there with one hand on her hip, looking at the small box in her hand. What could the inscription be talking about this time? There were no blades that corresponded with the colors of the buttons, or any color those colors would make. Red and yellow made orange, blue and yellow made green, and red and blue made purple. As far as she knew, there were no orange or purple blades, and the only ‘blades’ that were green were…
”Of course!” Silanis exclaimed, all but kicking herself and laughing. “Grass blades get long, but they won’t cut you.”
Why she had not thought of that before was a mystery, but she had the answer now. All she could do was hope that pushing two buttons at once would not reset the box. Carefully, she pushed the blue and yellow buttons at the same time, holding her breath while she waited to see what would happen. There was a moment of disappointment, when nothing did happen, but she also felt a little grateful; for fear, she may have had a heart attack if something had.
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Turning the box back over, she once more read the inscription, and it went on like this for some time before she finally came to a little bit of a stumper. Vampire, Bat, Rat, Vermin. It wasn’t even in the form of a question, or an actual sentence; just four words that seemed to have nothing to do with each other besides a little bit of a rhyme-like quality. What on Erve could it be? In a huff, she slumped down to the floor, staring at her feet in disdain. It was then that she heard the hushed breathing of an excited child, and tensed.
“Who is there?” A stupid question, but all she could think of. “Who’s in my room?” Her head whipped in the direction of the bed and window, but she looked past the two indigo eyes beneath the low bed. So the faeries magic hid her well enough, it seemed.
“I don’t think you could comprehend my existence,” said the faerie, plainly, “for you could barely comprehend the magic of the box.” This only upset Silanis.
“What the hell are you talking about?” was the first thing to leave her lips, and it made the faerie want to laugh. “Who are you, what the hell are you doing in my room?” Then, as an afterthought, “where in the hell are you?”
“A faerie.” Said the small creature, not dancing around the answers. “Called Wolfe, by those who know me.”
“Wolfe?” Silanis asked. “Faerie?” What was going on? What was she plunged into with little warning, to be left dazed and confused by a small box and a voice that claimed to be a faerie? This insanity could not be real, there had to be some kind of joke to it all. It was here the faerie took an opportunity of Silanis’ eyes being closed to crawl from beneath the bed, her wings once more aflutter, so that she hovered above the ground seemingly effortlessly.
When the young brunette opened her eyes to dispute the existence of faeries, they were met with the most amazing sight she had ever imagined. There, in her room, not more than an arms-length away, was a real faerie, wings, and all. Everything that Silanis had known to be true as a child came back to her in a rush that nearly knocked her over, and she became momentarily dizzy as it all sorted itself out.
“Are you alright?” Wolfe asked, dropping to the floor and allowing her wings to fold; all ten small, lilac appendages folding neatly behind her. Resting a hand on her shoulder, there was a genuine look of concern on her face.
”I… You’re real?” Not even a word on her own state, just the question could be articulated. “You’re real. That can’t be.” Silanis was in a state of shock beyond anything she’d been through before, and it was hard for her to take this lightly. “I was told it was all silly stories. Was I lied to?”
“Yes, but not deliberately.” A smile graced the faeries lips as she replied. “We’re in hiding, no one is supposed to know we exist.”
”But then…” Her mind cleared a bit with each passing moment. “Elves, half-breeds, sylphs, Gods… They’re real, too?” It was stunning to think all those wonderful things from the stories of her childhood actually existed.
”Yes. Everything you heard tell of, within a certain amount of reason, is real.” There was a pause as Wolfe thought of the best way to explain this simply. “Basically, everything good you heard of is real, but so is everything bad. This is because its all a matter of opinion on what good and bad really are in the world of the preternatural, the supernatural, and the inhuman.”
“If no one is supposed to know you’re real, why are there stories?” It was more than a valid question, she felt. “And why are you here?”
The faerie must have felt it was a valid question as well, for she paused at great length to think it over. For a moment, Silanis didn’t think she would get an answer. Then; “Because you have found something of great importance to me.” Wolfe leaned over to pick the box out of her hand, and looked at it curiously. “It’s been many years since I have seen this.”
”I’m sorry.” Silanis said, not really understanding what Wolfe was getting at. “You can have it back, if it’s yours…” She felt a little bit bad, now, for taking something that hadn’t been hers to take. “Oh, but!”
Wolfe looked at her, puzzled, and shrugged her shoulders in question. “I don’t want the box, no. Its yours to keep, if you can open it.”
”Then, that means… It was you I saw darting out of sight last night, then. Wasn’t it?”
Wolfe looked at Silanis for a moment, and then shook her head. “I didn’t think you would be able to see me.” With a shrug she took a seat on the bed, and blinked. “Your own magic is stronger than I’d anticipated. You should try to train it, it may be useful.”
“I don’t have magic.” The brunette said, hastily. “I’m only human, I have no magic.”
“Silanis, Silanis.” Wolfe said, looking around the room. “Listen, everyone has magic. It’s a matter of figuring out how to use it. In the old days, all humans knew magic, and everything was good, and happy, and we could roam freely…” The faerie trailed off.
“What happened, then? What changed?”
Her tone changed then, low and dark. “Zaçic.”
The name Silanis knew and had been taught to love. Zaçic was the man everyone believed lived as the Son of the One True God, who spread love and peace through the lands over three hundred yeas before she was born. What the hell was going on?
“Surely you can’t mean the Zaçic?”
“Ah, but I do.” Motioning for Silanis to sit next to her, Wolfe got ready for an explanation. The girl deserved the truth. “He showed up, and suddenly associating with fae-folk and Elves was against their Religion, and you would end up in Hell for using magic.
“The old Gods were shunned, pushed aside, and called demons. Maenads were arrested and labeled witches and burned, Dryads were cut down for fear they were forrest witches…Elves were shot on sight, simply because their ears were marked a sign of witches mating with the Devil.
“Halflings were about the only ones not completely destroyed, because they were basically smaller humans, and simply labeled vertically challenged. And only because some human women had given birth to human children who’s bodies never really grew up. Dwarves had it easy too, only forced to work in the mines they loved anyways, because they were too rowdy for the surface. Zaçic is a powerful wizard.” Wolfe paused and rested her head on her left hand for a moment, remembering the things that man had done over the years. “He’s been in control of politics for centuries, behind the scenes, in the shadows, just out of arms reach. He holds a powerful spell over the world, even to this day, weaving webs of deceit and power through the decades, sometimes more involved, other times hiding and working his glamour. He doesn’t die, but he can be killed. I’m not even sure he’s human, to be honest. I think he’s the demon.”
Silanis gaped at the faerie, everything she’d been taught from childhood smashed to pieces, and wasn’t sure if she believed it or not. In the end, she knew in her heart to be true that everything she had believed in, in her childhood, was the truth; not what her parents had told her about such things, about Zaçic.
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