Pearlie the Park Fairy
Saphira's New Assignment – Chapter 2
Ludwig kept himself amused by cleaning Azula and Karo's tree-house. He had sorted all of the magazines and stored them neatly away in boxes in closets. He could not imagine some of the things he witnessed in the cleaning. Issues of Wand and Wing and The Morning Myth from ten years ago mixed in with magazines with Cyrillic Letters on their covers. Someone (possibly Azula) had translated the operating procedures manual for the Chernobyl type reactor from Russian into Fairy. He could read the Fairy version but that proved of little use for a bat who had failed high school physics. He had plenty of time as Saphira and Karo had gone out to see some squirrel named Trotsky and Azula the Park Fairy had gone out to run errands, told him nothing about them but warned the little bat in no uncertain terms not to leave or risk becoming part of the food chain. He didn't mind since he enjoyed cleaning and cooking and making people happy.
Azula bumbled through the front door and slammed it shut.
"A good compromise leaves everyone body pissed off." She held the door shut. "Two clans of wild bees wanted the same field of dandelions and wildflowers but one of them insisted they had the stronger claim. They asked me to settle the dispute and so I suggested that they split the field in half with one hive taking the south side and one hive taking the north half. They agreed to sting me to death for making such a stupid and idiotic suggestion!"
She heard loud thumps at the doors as the angry bees stung the door in an attempt to get inside.
"Did I stumble into the wrong bloody place!" Azula said with a higher degree of concern. She fluttered her wings quickly which Ludwig didn't know was her way of showing anger.
Ludwig landed at Azula's feet. "I did some cleaning?" He spoke politely and apologetically. "You are pleased, yes?"
"I'm pleased, no?"Azula had not enjoyed her day and picked Ludwig off the ground by his collar. "This will mean three months of no one actually being able to find anything. Our house relies on a delicate balance of filth, squalor and entropy." She put Ludwig abruptly down on the ground and looked at the living room. "Holy crap! How did you accomplish so much cleaning in such a short time? I can see the floor! Did you clean the kitchen as well! If this place gets any cleaner, it'll start looking like the set for a Chekhov play."
"I did want to help Ma'am?" Something in Azula's mannerisms suggested to Ludwig that a more military form of address would help him speak with her. He expected physical abuse, cutting insults and yet despite the yelling, Azula didn't conduct unfair character attacks on his intelligence or competence. "With you and Karo and Mistress trying to solve these awful murders..."
"I admire your desire to do something helpful." Azula said coldly but in a half complimentary manner. "Once you leave we won't find anything seems beside the point. Shouldn't you spend your time flying around, eating mosquitoes and doing what makes bats happy rather than work as a lacky for that idiot of a goth barbie doll fairy? This would keep our house nicely unkempt and might offer you a chance to do what bats do for self exploration."
"I enjoy serving my Mistress." Ludwig answered quietly as he stood at Azula's feet.
Azula hated sycophants. "I have no idea if you could do so much more. Bats fall out of my area of expertise." She looked around the clean couch and chairs and at the dust free tables and clean floor. What happened to the copy of Crime and Punishment sitting on the coffee table?"
Oh? That big black book?" Ludwig fluttered around Azula's head. "I put it away?"
Azula nodded.
"I put all the big books in Karo's closet." Ludwig stood on the coffee table and stared up at Azula waiting for approval.
"I had plans on reading that," Azula shrugged. "I heard it was about some Russians."
Saphira ran through the front door and hid behind Azula with a swiftness born out of self preservation. Karo and Gobsmack walked in quickly through the front door like they were evading gunfire.
"The bees have a bee in their bonnet," Karo shut the door quickly. "Gobsmack tried to reason with them which only proved he's an idiot. For one thing, they're Russian bees so shouting at them in Fairy will do nothing but make them angry. For the other thing, they usually settle their own affairs – one queen bee kills the other and both hives come to an agreement to join and take on the other hive three fields over." Karo turned to Gobsmack and poked him in the chest with the point of his wand – a simple green stick with a green sphere, "you owe me big."
"The bees didn't like you shooting electric bolts at them?" Azula asked calmly.
"They scattered and took off to fight other battles."
"Tell Azula what we found!" Gobsmack tapped his foot.
"Trotsky's dead," Karo told Azula. "Someone buried an ax in his back. He wrote – and I quote: 'This is necessary for the Revolution.' No sign of a struggle and he couldn't have killed himself given the angle of the ax in his back. We have no idea how Beria died but he had notes that looked like he had a public speech planned. Trotsky had an ax in his back and I couldn't find any signs of a struggle in either case. We could have a mass murderer who cleans up after himself; it wouldn't be our first but something tells me something else."
"You two incompetents!" Gobsmack scolded. "You need the help of a professional, competent park fairy who can truly get to the bottom of things!"
Azula pushed Saphira out from behind her. "You sent us Saphira. She's been about as much help as a first aid kit in a funeral home." Azula decided to school Gobsmack on some simple facts of life in the Zone. "The freaking squirrels have begun another one of their purges and if we let it run its course then no one else will get hurt. If we interfere, they might not like it and then – well they have a gift for gruesome punishments. Exhibit A – a dead squirrel at the base of our tree. Exhibit B - one with an ax in his spine."
"None the less!" Gobsmack wagged his finger to scold Azula. "I will make arrangements to have Pearlie come here and straighten your park out."
Gobsmack harrumphed and then left by the front door. "I want this mystery solved!" He cried out. A soft pop followed this complaint as Gobsmack left.
"Saphira?" Azula asked quietly. "Do you think Pearlie could survive being thrown into a concrete mixer? The squirrels have been known to do that to meddlers."
"La La La Do Di Do."
Azula hid behind the tall red and white steam chimney of the old reactor complex as persons in radiation protection gear walked out along the ridge of the dark, rusting roof of the sarcophagus. Persons came from time to time and took samples, inspected the Sarcophagus, placed instruments and left. Today they took advantage of the Ukrainian summer sun to take careful measurements of the background radiation in case it had increased. Azula heard the singing and cursed the fact that her frame would not permit her to use an AK 47.
"Hello." A daintier fairy than Saphira with long overly blonde hair waved kindly at Azula. "What are those persons doing?" She asked Azula as she hovered next to her.
"Measuring the amount of plutonium in the dust." Azula looked at the fairy hovering next to her. She wore a pink shirt, blue jeans and high healed boots. The string of perfect pearls in her hair gave her identity away. "Pearlie the Park Fairy, I presume?" Azula said coldly. "Welcome to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Have you a Last Will and Testament? Gobsmack must have briefed you on this place and the recent trouble we've had."
"He told me ghastly things." Pearlie said in a scared voice. "Oh! The awful things persons have done to this place. He told me all about the terrible squirrel murders."
"Dead squirrels," Azula stated in a matter of fact way. "Had he not kept meddling, I really wouldn't have cared. The squirrels can poison, knife and ax each other in the back in the name of Purifying the Revolution and I couldn't care less. Not as if we lost a fortune."
Pearlie had the same look on her face as a shell – shocked soldier. Her wings continued to flutter but her freckled face looked very pale.
"It only took you two days to get here." Azula had hoped Gobsmack would not have a sense of urgency about the two squirrel murders but given the quick arrival of Pearlie, Gobsmack intended to get to the bottom of these matters. "Gobsmack tell you that you had to come here urgently?"
"Yes." Pearlie said sadly.
"Thing is," Azula motioned for Pearlie to follow her as she steered a careful course away from the chimney carefully plotted to avoid having the persons take notice of her, "thing is he has put all of us in danger. Some mysteries are best left unexplored. I've spent long enough here to know that most of our creatures prefer that we fairies stay out of their way."
When Azula and Pearlie returned, she found him sitting outside of the tree-house and tapping his feet. Azula had warned him that his red velvet robe and flamboyant clothing did make him a target for cats but Gobsmack had not heeded her advise nor did he realize that the Zone did have a different set of rules. Azula had not expected to see Gobsmack so soon and didn't hide her frustration.
"What now!" She shouted in frustration as she landed with Pearlie on the branch. "Ludwig turn up in one of the abandoned blocks of flats burned to a crisp?"
"He won't open the door when I knock!" Gobsmack made it sound like everything that happened in the Zone was Azula's fault.
"He thinks you are offering religious literature - no?"
"Can you reason with him Pearlie?"
"Ludwig?" Pearlie said sweetly. "You can open the door! It's me Pearlie, Azula and Gobsmack."
Karo opened the door cautiously while rubbing his head. Ludwig poked his head from behind Karo and looked very scared. "Your knocking brought me out of unconsciousness."
"What happened!" Pearlie put her arm around Karo.
Karo pointed up at Pearlie. "Who's this?" He asked with a hint of impatience.
"I'm Pearlie. Fairy HQ asked me to help you solve this horrible mystery." Pearlie patted Karo on the shoulder. "What happened to you?"
"We have three fairies and a bat sharing one bathroom and so it takes me some time to get ready for the day I was having my shower – with cold water I might add." Karo began slowly. "Azula left first to work on some unfinished park business and meet the new Queen Bee. Once she left, a gang of six squirrels kicked open the door and Saphira hid somewhere. They said nothing and beat Ludwig and me over the head with a hard cover copy of Das Kapital by a C. Marx."
"Oh you poor thing." Pearlie helped Karo inside the house.
Azula stared at the mess left behind by the thugs. Ludwig looked badly shaken but unhurt which could not be said for the house which had been sacked.
"Saphira?" Pearlie shouted. "Cousin?"
Saphira uncurled from fetal position from her hiding place in Azula's closet behind a pile of boxes and a large persons pistol.
Clang!
"Pearlie!" Saphira brushed herself off. "We have to leave! I can't stay here. Gobsmack! Have you got a prison to keep me?"
Pearlie and Gobsmack rushed to the sound of her voice.
Azula followed calmly behind them leaving Karo and Ludwig in the living room.
Karo felt the large bump on the back of his head as he looked at the bat. "Nice example for all the kids out there!"
"What could I do?" Ludwig spoke in a shaking voice.
"Not in the face! Not in the face!" Karo flopped down onto the couch. "Six squirrels beat me over the head with copies of Das Kapital while you screamed. Thanks pal! What about teaching courage and bravery when you see the park fairy getting the crap beaten out of him by a six pack of squirrels with heavy books? Nature abhors courage."
"What could I have done!"
"Get in their hair? Bite them!"
Pearlie helped Saphira remain standing as they walked into the living room.
"She can't handle it here," Azula told Gobsmack as he followed her out. She didn't say this out of compassion but because she knew that weakness was a liability and she had no desire to die because Saphira lost her nerve. "Fairies who can't handle the Zone shouldn't be here. Nothing wrong with that but this place makes demands on your spirit only some can handle."
"People!" Gobsmack held up his hand.
Karo held his head. "I have someone trying to hammer a nail into the back of my head – tone it down you red caped fashion victim."
"Fairy HQ sent her here," Gobsmack's voice lost its commanding tone, "and she will have to stay for now."
"Cousin?" Saphira asked while she straightened out her blue cobweb themed skirt. "These two fairies are an insult to fairies everywhere."
"People!" Gobsmack raised his hand. "Fairy HQ wants this mystery solved and wants all of you to bring peace and security to this park."
Azula made an obscene gesture with her finger. "You want to know what I think of Fairy HQ! I've had it with your pompous attitude." Gobsmack began to retreat out the door.
"Guys!" Pearlie pleaded and grabbed Azula by the waist because Azula as even Pearlie knew, was not beyond punching people in the face if she felt they deserved it. "We have a job to do! If we work together we can do this."
"Would you really have hit Gobsmack in the face if I didn't stop you?" Pearlie asked Azula as they flew together over the pine forests of the Zone.
"I had every intent to punch him in the head."
"I only want what's best for you."
"If you wanted the best for me, you'd have let me bash Gobsmack in the face."
"I want the best for this park and everyone living here." Pearlie smiled in her soothing manner.
"A twenty megaton nuclear test would do the trick."
"Alexander lives in that small group of fir trees." Azula pointed ahead. He fled here to escape the oppressive Communist Party and he doesn't like strangers." Azula grabbed Pearlie's arm and dove for the ground.
"What?" Pearlie tried to tear herself free but Azula had a strong grip.
"He has crows for guards." Azula leveled out just above the rough fresh smelling grass beneath the canopy of trees. She came to a stop and stood still. "Alexander!" Azula called out. "Azula the Park Fairy here to -uh – try her best not to look like a meddling trespasser?"
"We have some – uh - daisy counting." Pearlie tore her arm free from Azula's grip. She could hear the crows in the trees cackling at their expense.
"We came to warn you of another purge?" Azula shouted out. "Daisy counting? When we do get killed do you want them to actually find our corpses? I admire the fact you've gotten into the spirit of this place by lying but please leave the professional lying to me." She whispered to Pearlie in grave annoyance. "Alexander knows me and would never buy into that."
"Another purge – hardly comes as a shock." A deep but old sounding voice seemed to come out of all directions as if the trees has some kind of home theater system. "Oh? Azula and another fairy? What did the fairy with the green eyes and pearls do to find herself in this place? Murder a rat? You know all the animals fear Azula because she drowned many a rat in her stint as a city park fairy. I know her cousin Karo helped her carry out those crimes so I'm eager to find out what you did."
"I came to solve the murder of two squirrels." Pearlie said confidently. "Fairy HQ sent me to help bring justice to the murderer."
A pause followed. "Do you speak Russian? My Fairy is a bit weak."
"My Russian is even weaker." Pearlie held close to Azula. "How do you know that's Alexander?" Pearlie whispered to Azula.
Azula smirked. "I know that voice."
"When I spoke out about the grave crimes of the Communist Party in this park, Azula the Park Fairy did nothing to help us! I had to flee here before the secret police captured me and made me vanish." The voice boomed as if the amplifier had gone up one or two notches. "Why does Azula the Park Fairy care about the death of two squirrels? She prefers to let them fight among each other, squabbling over five year plans, over interpretations of Marxism and visions of political purity. Azula the Park Fairy encourages the squirrels to fight, squabble and kill each other. Ask her what she did during the last purge when the secret police drowned thirty of our kind in the Pripyat river?"
"I smuggled your writings out to other parks where they were published. I protected your anonymity" Azula shouted back up into the trees.
The voice remained unnervingly silent.
As Pealie watched Azula talking to the disembodied voice of Alexander, she had memories of her from her days at Fairy School. Even as a young fairy, Azula had shown a tendency toward free thinking, independence and had a distinctly anti social nature. Pearlie didn't believe Azula ever harbored true evil but she was had a darker side to her than other fairies. Saphira schemed and manipulated those around out of a deep sense of inferiority and jealousy. Pearlie could understand this and had forgiven her cousin many times for her misdeeds. As for Azula, her darkness came out of a lack of emotion which made her hard to relate to. Azula had tortured rats to achieve order in her park. She had not chosen to banish miscreants as other fairies did, but had coldly punished them. The fairies had sentenced her to spend untold years in this place until she reformed but Azula never admitted remorse or backed down from her belief she had done the right thing. Pearlie sensed Azula's inner strength. She was a beautiful fairy and she took pride in her appearances but not the same pride Pearlie or Opal did, Azula looked like a neat and severe military commander who wore her uniform with pride and perfect order.
Pearlie listened to the silence of the forest. "What do we do if his crows attack us?"
We fly like hell."
"Crows fly faster than fairies." Pearlie whispered back.
"I can fly faster than you."
"Ah Azula, some of the party have fallen out of favor. I knew of this squirrel who attended last years Party Congress. Beria gave a speech of some length and at the end the audience leaped to its feet and applauded. He grew tired after a quarter of an hour of applause and so he quietly stopped clapping. Someone in the secret police noted this. The next morning this squirrel vanished. Do you know the lesson you should take from this?" The deep voice asked the two small fairies. "When you attend the Party Congress speaches, don't be the first one to stop clapping."
"Beria died and got eaten by a fox." Azula yelled up at the canopy of the fir trees. "We have no idea how he died. He had no obvious wounds."
"Uh huh," Alexander snickered, "and Trotsky had a very bad accident with an ax. As a reward for loyalty, old party warhorses like Trotsky typically fall into prison - a reward for long service. The Party doesn't murder the old guard: you have the sequence of events wrong. Trotsky killed the ambitious upstart Beria to make room for himself as head of the secret police – a title given some dignity with the title Minister of Public Safety. Someone killed Trotsky for such betrayal perhaps under instructions from Tupolev. What fox ate Beria?"
"Krasny?" Azula shouted out. "I never met him myself but Zdanov knows him. Why? Foxes are family loving folk and have nothing to do with squirrels. He only wanted a square meal." Azula liked the foxes for they did have a tight but peaceful community that caused little trouble. Foxes liked their families, liked their clans and enjoyed hunting in the forests of the exclusion zone. She found them friendly and had no trouble keeping on good terms with them.
A silence returned and Pearlie shivered in spite of the high early afternoon sun.
"He's dead." The voice boomed. "Trotsky poisoned Beria in hopes no one would notice. Trotsky killed his opponents with poisons – he disliked the hard work of choking or strangling them. The Zone has some of the best poisons a rabid Communist could ever want and Trotsky was an avid poisoner. Beria dies of some kind of poison, the fox brings the squirrel home for his family, and they die when they dine."
"This does change things," Azula said.
"Indeed – the squirrels have taken innocent lives." Alexander sounded dour and unhappy. "How will you two deal with this now?"
Pearlie pulled at Azula's shoulder. "Can we leave now."
"I bid you farewell Alexander." Azula spoke in an oddly respectful tone. "Thank you."
"Farewell young fairies." The voice cut out and the sounds of frogs and birds in the forest returned. The crows flew off as if given silent instructions and gave both fairies a chance to leave safely.
Karo had the television set to a Russian game show and jacked the volume to full hoping to silence Saphira. They had the help of Zdanov the Cat to acquire a small LCD TV and satellite television receiver but the set up took up half the living room wall and partly blocked the entrance to the kitchen. As magical beings, Karo and Azula had managed to squeeze the thing into the house but it dominated the room.
"Perfect pretty Pearlie had to come to save your sorry hides," Saphira spoke sarcastically and made grand gesticulations to illustrate her point.
Karo found an even louder American Talk Show on the dial. This didn't silence Saphira but blotted out Ludwig's cheerful singing as he cleaned out the toilet.
"Are you ignoring me?" Saphira said.
Karo put his head in his hands. "Is it that obvious?" He muted the sound.
"Why didn't they take us along?" Saphira sat down on the recliner she had claimed as hers.
"I have a bruise the size of the large print version of Das Kapital; and you are pretty much useless. Ludvig – er – wig is a house bat and can't cope with the grave hazards of this place but he had done one heck of a job cleaning this place." Karo placed the remote next to him. "I haven't been able to find stuff in the kitchen since he cleaned out all our Soviet space food."
Saphira tapped her wand against the palm of her hand. "I can hold my own! I can help! Why should my cousin always get all the glory?"
"Alexander doesn't like strangers," Karo stood up to fetch coffee. "No one will get glory for any of this. Do you want coffee?"
"No thanks. I have no way of telling what I'm drinking." She moaned.
"Part of the excitement." Karo sneered. "Coffee or Cadmium? Both begin with the Russian letter K."
A knock came at the door and Karo placed the tray on the coffee table as if to invite or encourage Saphira to help herself. He opened the front door a crack.
"Zdanov!" Karo stood back waving his wand in front of him. "How did you get up here? Oh wait, you can climb trees." Karo caught a glimpse of Saphira hiding behind the recliner.
"Krasny the Fox and his entire family is dead," Zdanov said without any emotion. "He ate a bad squirrel."
"That implies good ones exist." Karo sounded distant and sad. Karo tried to wrap his mind around that. Foxes had a decent nature and loved their family and Karo had often help them find comfortable homes for the winter. He hadn't met Krasny – foxes often moved into the Exclusion Zone to flee persons activity in their native homelands but he got on well with the other foxes that lived there.
"You remember Beria?" Zdanov asked.
"Not at all fondly."
"Someone poisoned him."
"How do you know that?"
"I'm a cat," Zdanov growled. "I know poisoning when I see it. Krasny took our friend Beria home for a feast with his family and they all died. Some of the other animals seem to think you park fairies can't do anything about the squirrels. Some have even suggested you fairies side with the squirrels."
"I'll take a look." Karo said with resignation. "Where did this family live?"
Zdanov pointed his paw. "At the bottom of the field on the edge of town that used to belong to the horse ranch. They lived in a den hidden under the remains of the old horse barn." Zdanov spoke with his characteristic sternness and his ginger eyes burned with indignation and anger. Murder was bad for business. Zdanov turned his back and jumped down the tree as Karo watched him run off in the tall grass. For a fat cat, Zdanov could move.
"Come on Saphira!" Karo straightened out his collar. "We have work to do."
Azula kept checking behind her for crows as she flew the long distance back to home.
Pearlie flew beside her and looked at the countryside below her. She had expected the countryside to have been blighted much more severely than it looked from above. The dark green pine trees mixed with healthy stands of the leafy lighter green oak and elm trees. As she flew over the countryside, she saw abandoned Russian farmhouses falling into disrepair with their abandoned fields overgrown with tall rye grass and flowering weeds, sunflowers and wild mustard. Quail ran in quiet little ranks among the clearings while birds called out as they did in Jubilee Park. The blighted country had a beauty to it although the hands of persons had not only blighted it in the disaster but in thousands or millions of little ways. Roads decayed in the summer heat followed by their rows of drunken looking wooden power poles. Marigolds and petunias had escaped family gardens and gone wild. Tomato plants had escaped the garden and made a living among other weeds.
Azula turned to Pearlie. "Can you handle this?"
"I don't know," Pearlie wore a look of sadness, "a family has died."
"You don't have to do this." Azula turned in a gentle curve when she caught site of the old red and white steam stack of the old reactor building.
"You have no problem dealing with death."
Azula thought for a moment. "I have a problem dealing with death but I accept it because I can't do anything about it. I don't have to like it."
"Can Karo handle it?"
Azula had not expected this question.
"I had heard many things about you from other fairies but neither of you are what I expected."
"Karo probably has a better grip on reality than I do," Azula admitted. "He's half elf so he can see the bigger picture – life and death and all that. I don't know. He descended from a long line of Japanese fairies – they even have a temple to his family on Kyushu – that doesn't at all imply he can make a good car. Fairies avoid this place because of the disaster and elves avoid this place because it's a poisoned realm. Karo has accepted his sentence here."
"Where will you and Karo go once Fairy HQ sets you free?"
"Ha!" Azula laughed. "I have to stay here until those dunderheads at Fairy HQ decide I'm reformed. They think what I did besmirched the reputation of Fairyland so I may have to stay here for quite some time."
"What about Karo?"
"He has done much good work but while Fairy HQ may one day let him leave; his family won't have anything to do with him."
"Why not?" Pearlie began to feel she had begun to pry into the private lives of these two park fairies but her curiosity won out.
"We're coming to the den that belonged to Krasny," Azula began to pull into a slow glide.
Pearlie flew over a vast field of wild grass and watched a group of wild horses – dozens of brown, black, white and gray – rushing along the field as if they had decided to follow them. The Exclusion Zone had a lesson for Pearlie – life endures.
The horse ranch once bred fine riding horses in demand by horsemen all around the Ukraine. The ranch dated back to the nineteenth century and the Mennonite family that ran it had lived on that land for six generations before the central planners in Moscow had decided to built their power plant and the city of Pripyat. When the accident occurred, the persons working the ranch had to leave but had so little time they didn't have any time to place their horses in trailers and take them to safety. The horses had survived and now wandered the fields of the Exclusion Zone as wild horses. The old buildings of the ranch fell victim to lack of maintenance and the weather and the large horse barn had partly collapsed into a pile of soggy, rough lumber. Karo found this sadder than the decay that had taken the city of Pripyat. The large logs of the barn and the houses showed signs of skilled craftsmanship from persons who loved what they did. After six generations as ranchers, they left in a few hours to evade the horrid poisons of the radioactive cloud that covered the land.
"Can I go now?" Saphira complained as she flew over the field.
Karo hovered over the field and its wild grasses. "I want to do the same thing."
Saphira and Karo landed on a dirt path near the barn and kept their ears open for any sign of trouble. Pearlie tapped Karo on the back as she landed with Azula.
"Ahh!" Karo screamed and flew up into the air.
"Sorry Karo." Pearlie blushed.
"When persons space walk, they have to wear a Maximum Absorbency Garment." Karo fluttered back down. "I need one now. Zdanov told us the fox family living here had all died of squirrel poisoning."
"We got the same news from Alexander." Azula walked toward the barn. "I hate my life."
"Don't you consider my sentence here cruel and unusual punishment?" Saphira told Pearlie as Pearlie approached to give her a hug in greeting. "Please no hugs."
Azula found the entrance to the den under a large plank of wood. "We're park fairies." She vanished into the dark hole. "Every time I say that I find it hard to sound encouraging. Pearlie and Saphira can keep an eye out for danger while Karo and I will examine the crime scene."
Azula grabbed Karo's arm and crawled into the dark, damp den. Foxes found these kinds of homes appealing but Karo found the den dark and damp which ended its list of virtues. Azula held up her wand in the den and it gave off a red, rose colored light. It illuminated a scene that even Azula found disturbing. Whatever poison had killed Beria, it made for a painful death. Krasny and his wife had tortured looks on their face while his two cubs had bled from their mouth because they had bitten their tongues as they convulsed. She pushed Karo back toward the entrance although Karo needed no prompting to leave as quickly as possible. "I had hoped to find something more encouraging. A family of four foxes – dead."
"I have a solution to this problem," Azula pushed Karo ahead of her and into the sun of the afternoon. "The first thing we do is kill all the squirrels."
Azula waved her wand gently in the air. She buried the poor foxes in their home and then with a wave of her wand; she covered the entrance as best she could. She did this with a degree of respect and solemnity Karo found out of character for her. When she felt certain the entrance would remain undisturbed she turned to the group. "Life is misery."
Gobsmack sat on the branch of the oak tree and was waiting for the fairies when they arrived home from their tour of the fox den. He looked every bit like a man with a chip on his shoulder and Azula landed on the branch and given the kind of day she had experienced, decided to take his abuse.
"I have many questions and you will answer them!" Gobsmack declared. "Can you explain all these deaths. Six – yes six people have died this week."
Azula opened the door. "Sadly I know this. Why have you suddenly taken such an interest in this place? In the last few days, you have badgered me about the death of squirrels and sent in Pearlie. I have no answers."
"Fairy HQ has taken an interest in this place in recent times." Gobsmack followed Pearlie inside Azula's little tree house. Ludwig had done some cleaning and he emerged from the kitchen with a tray of snacks and coffee. Of all her guests, Ludwig was the only one who had proven useful and Azula wondered what the Russian minimum wage amounted to.
"What on Earth for?" Azula plopped down on the couch. "Someone in the board of elders decide they need a Gulag for the really rancorous fairies? Hoping to keep the pension plan solvent by reducing fairy folk lifespans?"
"Azula?" Gobsmack said angrily. "Fairyland depends on order. This blighted land needs your help to heal and become whole again and only then will you have your freedom. Fairy HQ needs to know you're on top of things and doing your job."
"A grand speech," Azula clapped sarcastically. "If you came to ask me what I know; I can tell you the squirrels have started to act up and kill each other. A squirrel called Beria died of acute poisoning of some sort. You met his corpse."
"Who killed him?" Gobsmack demanded.
Azula shrugged. "Now don't get ahead of me on this. If I knew who killed Beria, I would have something to tell you. Beria died of poisoning and then a fox named Krasny took him home for dinner which proved fatal for him and his family. A second squirrel named Trotsky died of an ax in the back. Trotsky didn't struggle or put up a fight which, yes, is very odd."
"Pearlie!" Gobsmack had his notebook open and wrote these details down. "Anything to add?"
"No sir." Pearlie said quietly. "We asked a few questions of a few scary people. Azula told you everything she knows."
Karo lay on the couch listening to Ludwig snoring as the bat hung on the old student lamp. Karo needed to go to the washroom and he tightened up his robe to make one of his five nightly trips to the washroom. He sat up on the couch, stared off in the darkness, cursed his existence and someone hit him on the head with a heavy rock.
Karo woke up face down on the floor. As his vision came into focus, he noticed a piece of Lego and a splitting kind of headache that taught him that his skull didn't take well to impacts. Morning had come and he could see a large rock and the boots of Azula and Pearlie. Azula helped him to his feet and Pearlie examined him.
"Oh my poor Mistress has been kidnapped!" Ludwig fluttered around the room in hysterics. Karo felt his head explode in pain.
"What happened to you?" Pearlie asked Karo.
"Either a freak meteor from Mars or someone hit me over the head with a freaking rock!" Karo held his head. "I'll have enough concussions for a career in hockey if this keeps up."
"Someone kidnapped Saphira." Pearlie helped poor Karo sit down on the couch.
"Give them time," Karo held his head between his knees as he sat down. "They'll give her back once they come to know her."
"Why?" Ludwig finally perched on Pearlie's left shoulder. "Who would be so evil as to kidnap Mistress Saphira?"
"Lay down and rest." Azula told Karo.
"How awful," Ludwig complained. "I have to go find her! I will come and save my Saphira."
Azula paced the room and opened the door. "We have a note." She came back. "For the Glory of the Revolution!"
"What do they want?" Ludwig flew over to Azula.
Azula read the roughly written Cyrillic characters and translated them for everyone else. She spoke with a stern seriousness. "The squirrels want all of the fairies to leave the Exclusion Zone. If we don't, then we won't see Saphira again."
"Win, win!" Karo mumbled as he pulled the blankets over his head to blot out the morning light.
"Alright!" Azula slammed her fists together and made for the coffee table. "Saphira isn't dead. I don't have that kind of luck." That Azula actually meant what she said, she left to the imagination.
Ludwig's bat ears drooped.
"Never mind." Azula said because Ludwig looked so crestfallen. She knew that the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant was a vast concrete abomination. Only Reactor Four had exploded but the plant continued generate power using the other three reactors until only a few years ago. "The squirrels had their top secret internment camps and secret interrogation camps in the maze of concrete tunnels underneath the plant. She had read Alexander's writings which detailed these nuclear gulags rather well and her own explorations had given her a clear idea of what the squirrels had going on below where persons never went.
Azula and Pearlie flew over the old concrete kilns thrown up after the nuclear accident. It looked as solid and functional as the day when persons had constructed it in order to make the concrete needed for the Sarcophagus. Persons simply walked away from the place as soon as they had completed the job. As Pearlie flew over the Sarcophagus that contained the dead reactor, she found it shocking when she saw how little damage the accident had caused. She had somehow expected such a disaster would have leveled the place, not punched a hole in the roof and left the rest of the place in good shape. The morning sun gave her a good view of the entire site but it took a trained eye to find signs of damage. A field in the distance had once contained a forest but the radiation had contaminated the trees and it died. The persons bulldozed it and buried the trees hoping nature would take over and heal the site. The field never recovered. Tough grasses grew but the field remained a gravel covered field which any living thing avoided.
"Lovely sunny day?" Pearlie suggested.
"Look what it lets us see." Azula replied. "Lovely place this." Azula made a slow spiraling descent toward a large building. Azula landed on the tar and gravel roof of Reactor Unit 2. Pearlie landed next to her and looked around carefully.
The scale of the facility overwhelmed fairy folk and Pearlie had never seen a single building as large and sprawling as this complex. Azula remained closed to Azula hoping that she knew the place. Pearlie looked down at a piece of black stuff that looked every bit like coal.
"Graphite. Don't touch it." Azula walked away from Pearlie. "You'll find lots of bits of stuff like that scattered all over this site. When the reactor blew up, it threw up tons of that kind of stuff. You win a prize if you find a piece of a nuclear fuel rod."
"Are we safe here?"
"Pearlie, this place has more ways to kill you than are dreamed of in your philosophy," Azula pointed her wand at a small grate in the roof. A troop of squirrels in olive green clothes poured out of the roof grate and tackled Azula before she could wave her wand.
"Azula?" Pearlie rushed to Azula's side. "Are you okay!"
No!" Azula grabbed a uniformed squirrel and tossed him to one side but two others took her wand and rushed away with it. The squirrels grew quiet as a squirrel, with the gray muzzle of age came up from the vent in the roof and looked sternly at Azula. He carried a dark gray box with a large red button on it.
"Glory on the day of the Great Revolution," He spoke Fairy with a Russian accent that could only be considered menacing. A group of squirrels now numbering twelve held Azula down on the gravel and tar roof of the building. "Tell your friend to back off!"
Pearlie had her wand out as the imposing, great, gray and very evil looking squirrel pointed at her.
"Who are you?" Pearlie asked quietly.
"Tupolev!" The squirrel had a strong, deep voice and grasped the dark gray box. "Leader and purifier of the Communist Paradise known as the Exclusion Zone."
Azula asked as twelve fat squirrels sat on her. "What have you done to Saphira?"
"No harm will come to her if you fairy folk leave the Zone." Tupolev pushed open a clear cover and his little squirrel hand hovered over the red button. "If you don't leave, I will unleash a new disaster on all of you. We rigged Yelena with explosives and I have the control in my hand." Tupolev raised the control over his head.
"You'd kill Yelena?" Pearlie backed up and looked to Tupolev with horror.
Azula grew cold in spite of having a dozen squirrels sitting on her. "Pay attention Pearlie. Yelena isn't a person."
Tupolev stamped his foot impatiently.
"A fairy?" Pearlie asked.
"A two thousand tone reactor lid." Azula spat out. "When Reactor Four exploded, it threw the huge metal lid out of the reactor and the lid landed back inside balanced on broken steam pipes. Some Russian scientist with a sick sense of humor named it after his wife. If Yelena the reactor lid flops over or falls all the way into the reactor then it could unleash a massive spill of radioactive dust. If you move and he presses that button, we all die."
Pearlie pondered this.
Azula didn't know why but she didn't trust Tupolev. "If you bring us Saphira we'll go away and leave the Zone. I'm sure Gobsmack can find a nice hell hole for me to run."
"I have no choice!" Tupolev smiled as a swarm of squirrels spilled onto the roof in a precision that Pearlie found frighteningly viscous and precise. They lacked strength but made up for that in sheer numbers and bloody minded dedication to the cause. They swarmed Pearlie, took her wand and she screamed.
Karo looked at Ludwig. "This is it! We're all going to die." A dim sodium light bathed Karo, Ludwig and Saphira in a pale pink, orange hue that drowned out all color. The room had the same damp, moldy smell all the rooms in the building had. Persons had abandoned it to the elements. Karo struggled against the twelve gauge electrical wire the squirrels had used to tie his arms to an old cold water pipe.
"You don't think Pearlie and Azula will come to rescue us?" Saphira's voice shook. "I'll die in the middle of Russia chained to pipes with my bat Ludwig and you?" Saphira looked around the small concrete room. Sticky white paint had turned a ghastly yellow and peeled off the concrete and the walls had cracks and holes all over it. A layer of dust covered everything and Saphira wondered if she was going to die in Russia without a memorial. She looked up at a large metal pipe with vents coming off of it which had asbestos paper falling off of it and wondered how death could be worse.
"Where are we?" Ludwig asked. "Those awful squirrels stuffed me in a bag and I found myself tied up here."
"Reactor Unit Four," Karo looked around at the bare walls. "A staff coffee room I think."
"And the squirrels intend to kill us?" Saphira asked quietly.
Karo wanted to scratch his sore head. "The mean one named Yuribasov that kept biting me hinted at some kind of explosion to purify the Zone and prepare it for the coming revolution." The flashing sodium light did nothing to make thinking easy as the thing had seen better days and was burning out. It made Karo's brain want to jump out and flee for a better place to live when he looked at it. Karo wondered if Hell's waiting room looked something like this dingy place. "If we survive I may need shots since Yuribasov didn't look at all clean."
"This place smells like dirt." Saphira complained as she struggled against the ropes.
Karo considered this. "We'll have a word with the cleaning crew if we survive." Karo could hear the dull hum of electrical current in the wires and it hurt his head. He had underestimated the power of the unruly mob: the squirrels had kicked down the door and simply beat him into submission. He imagined they had other plans for Pearlie and Azula and lured them out with the ransom note. Even if he could escape the squirrels had taken both his and Saphira's wand. He knew the dark rooms of the Sarcophagus but a wrong turn in the winding maze of contaminated passages could kill in moments.
"I could fly for help?" Ludwig offered. "Maybe I can chew my way free?"
"You don't know this place." Karo told the poor bat. "You might stumble into a zone of high radiation and you'd die. That wouldn't do us much good."
Twelve uniformed squirrels shoved Azula into the room and another twelve shoved Pearlie into the room. Both fairies were tied up in old red twelve gauge electrical wire.
"Hi." Azula said morbidly. "This is it. We're all going to die."
"The squirrels hinted at a huge bomb." Karo wanted to scratch his head. "Could the little Commies have built The Bomb?"
"Get real." Azula sat next to Karo. "They rigged Yelena with a bomb so Tupolev – the ugly old Commie squirrel – can blow it up and the reactor lid will topple over, the Sarcophagus falls in and the radioactive dust will kill us all."
Even as a cute squirrel, Tupolev left little to like for those who found squirrels 'cute'. He scowled and looked angry and as Azula listened to him walking down the hall, she heard him yelling loudly and very rudely at one of his underlings about Communist and Socialist theory. He entered the room trailed by two uniformed squirrels. He still clung to the dark gray box and he scowled in a kind of condescending way.
"We claim this victory in the glorious cause of the revolution." He held up the box. "We have all the fairy wands and we have all the fairies."
"Can't we talk?" Pearlie asked quietly.
"No!" Tupolev shouted. "I wanted you all to know the totality of our victory. Soon we'll go into hiding in our shelters, locked away from the hideous fate that awaits you. In an hour, our bombs will go off and you will all die." Pearlie heard her first really evil laugh in her entire life. "We leave now! Yuribasov, Arzanov! Follow me. We will abandon these Bourgeoisie enemies to their fate. The dust cloud will deal with rest of our foes in the Zone. Celebrate Comrades for victory is ours!" The trio turned around and stomped away. A band of squirrels came out of the hall and lined up in formation. They slammed the heavy rust covered metal door to the room which locked with a sinister click.