Mirta Story by Cupcakedoll. Characters belong to Mr. Straffi, Rainbow, Nickelodeon, and whoever else.
Part 9
Mirta landed in front of the tent, and sagged as her knees threatened to give way. Electricity sparked off the hems of her clothes and the beads in her hair. And over the top edges of her wings, which hurt.
"Are you all right?" Selene asked. She reached, then paused, afraid of getting zapped. She glanced at the sky and decided to risk it, hauling Mirta into the tent just as the black sky opened up.
Rain pounded on the tent roof.
"Did it work?" Lolina asked. "The whole big dangerous make a deal with a major elemental and free the soul of Miss F's friend and..."
Mirta put her hands on the floor and sighed, the electricity running off her into the ground as she shifted back into her regular clothes. Two of her hair beads had shattered. She looked up and smiled. "It worked. Miss Starria and Orion should wake up in the hospital anytime now. And..." She held out her arm and concentrated. Her new jewelry felt like a swirl of icy wind and looked like a matte silver strip spiraling over her arm.
"No way!" Lolina squeaked. Kimmy and Priscilla crowded up behind her, staring. "It's a real gloomix?"
"Mmhm." Mirta released it. "I never thought I'd have one. I'm not sure what I'll have to do to pay for it... but for now it's all right. Is there any food?"
Priscilla conjured hot dinner, using a suitcase for a table.
Lolina checked her phone, but the storm had cut off all communication. Selene sat in the tent doorway, plate in her lap. Rain poured down a few inches from her feet, but the tent's magic stopped water getting in.
Mirta decided she'd done enough heroics for the day, and gave all her attention to the food, which was very good. Hopefully Priscilla hadn't grabbed it off someone's dinner table! Soon, maybe tomorrow, their hosts would be awake and alive, and probably on the way to camp. Probably with backup from whatever the local version of police was. And she'd probably get to meet Orion in person.
As Lolina had mentioned, he was cute. Actually she was mentioning it again, right now, and Priscilla was starting a lecture about one-track minds.
"Selene? Why are you sitting there, there's plenty of room."
"Keeping watch just in case." Selene said.
"In case of what?" Mirta asked, honestly confused. An entire summer's worth of storms seemed to be happening all at once outside.
"In case of whatever shot down the balloon. Do you know what it was, from when you were... talking to the sky?"
Mirta hadn't known and then suddenly, with a disturbing mental jolt, she did. "S-something on the ground shot it. Not with a spell, with a... solid shot? Is there even such a thing?"
"A solid shot weapon? I saw a picture of one once, but magic's so much more efficient..." She stopped. "Um."
Mirta looked behind her. The others were sitting wide-eyed. Kimmy said, "Oh no."
"What?" Lolina asked, a step behind the conversation.
Priscilla rolled her green eyes. "You said it, remember, the balloons are spelled against lightning so something shot it down. And this planet has crazy stuff, weapons that survived from the war. Maybe one of them woke up."
"Oooooh, nonono! Not while we're stuck out here by ourselves!"
"I don't think anything's going to be doing anything until the storm stops." Kimmy said sensibly. "But maybe we should think about flying back in the morning."
"Not me. Not without Lucy."
"If something did wake up I want to see it!"
"We are here to help dig up old stuff..."
"Talk about it in the morning?"
The possible presence of an ancient magical weapon did not stop them from eventually getting to sleep. The rain helped; nothing with any sense would be moving in it.
Mirta woke up about dawn. The sky was blue and everything was dripping. Velka had looked so dull and gray yesterday; today it gleamed silver.
She changed into fresh clothes and found a granola bar for breakfast. The others were grumbling and getting up. Selene also dug a granola bar from her suitcase; Priscilla conjured a box of donuts.
"Wow... it's warm!" Lolina bounced out into the sunlight.
Kimmy followed her out. She summoned a brush and started brushing out her long blonde hair.
"Your hair's pretty. Why do you always wear it up?" Lolina chirped.
Kimmy ducked her head, "I like to... it stays out of my face. Um, so what are we going to do today?"
"I'm going to look for Lucy."
"You really think she ran away and came here?"
"Magic flower says she did!" Priscilla plucked it and held it under Lolina's nose.
Lolina blinked at it. "I guess she did. Wonder how; we needed our passports and an invitation. Maybe she stowed away in a ship. Ok, we can rescue your friend!"
Mirta held out her hand. "Um, can I have my magic flower please?" Fairies could be so... fairyish. Or maybe it was just Lolina.
Selene rolled her eyes. She had a comb and was tying her hair into its usual pigtails. "Be serious you guys. There might be something dangerous out there. The good news is some grownups will probably be arriving to check on us soon, maybe even Miss Starria and her son, if they're all right."
"They are..." Mirta said.
"Are you? I mean, you got that power last night but you have to pay for it, right?"
Mirta nodded. "I'm all right. It just... it's a spirit, it doesn't know about people or anything about being alive and thinking with a brain. Right now it just wants to watch me think."
Pause. "That's pretty creepy, you know."
"Yeah I guess. But at least it's not someone like Darkar! And hey... I can do this now." Mirta opened her wings and summoned wind, lifting herself off the ground. She transformed her clothes in midair and called down, "I'm going to look for Lucy. See you later."
Selene called something in reply, but Mirta was too high up to understand it. She angled towards the rising sun and let a breeze carry her along. Flying was so much easier now. She knew where the winds were, just knew, as if the whole sky was mapped out.
The fairies weren't in a hurry to follow her. Mirta didn't really blame them. Lucy was her friend, who didn't want to hang out with Alfea girls and had hardly even met them.
The magic flower—and part of Mirta's brain cringed at the words, because no witch would be caught dead with a magic flower except deadly nightshade—pointed back towards the balloon crash site, and past it, over uncharted forest. Wet gray-green trees flowed past underneath her.
She spent a little time experimenting with her new power, calling the wind to curl under her wings and carry her along. It took a lot of the exertion out of flying. She could get used to this!
The flower now had three red petals, and as Mirta watched the color spread to another two. She must be getting close. She paused and hovered, looking around. Trees, drying from last night's rain, some gray stones. There was no sign of civilization visible through the canopy. If Lucy was here, she didn't have a tent.
Mirta tried, "Lucy? Hey, Lucyyyyyy!"
Nothing.
She called on her gloomix and asked the air to amplify her voice. "LUCY COME OUT RIGHT NOW!"
Echoes bounced off the distant mountains. Startled birds took off. Mirta jumped about a foot, in midair. She hadn't meant it to be that loud!
Something zipped past the edge of her wing. Mirta jerked away. Whatever it was, it was too small to see. The below her, Mirta saw a flash of color. She flew down.
Lucy was standing in a little clearing. Her hair was tangled and her clothes were wrinkled. And she started yelling before Mirta even landed. "Mirta? What are you doing here?"
This was not the reaction Mirta had been expecting. It was so far from what she'd been expecting that it banished sensible thought for a minute. "What am I doing here? What are you doing here! You disappeared! Everybody's worried, your parents call Miss Griffin every day! We thought you were in trouble!"
"So they sent you?"
"Well... Miss Faragonda sort of..."
"Whatever. I'm not in trouble, and I was coming home today anyway so you can just go back to whatever you were doing with your fairy friends."
Mirta almost did. That was how stunned she felt. Brain still trying to catch up, she said, "Um, something shot down a balloon near here. It's dangerous. You should come back with us."
Lucy sighed loudly. "Mirta. There's nothing on this stupid planet that's dangerous to me right now." And she held up the jewel. It was red, clouded with brown mist.
Mirta's jaw dropped. "No way."
"The ones in the store wouldn't work for me, but this one works just fine!" She held it up and said, "Go!"
Mirta jumped back.
The jewel unfolded itself, manifesting long waving sheets of metal. Lucy held out her arms and the magic wrapped around her, solidifying into red metal around her arms and growing over her head. The armor decorated itself with ribbons pulled out of nowhere and jewels that rippled into being. A helmet wrapped around Lucy's head and a glass visor dropped over her eyes.
It was amazing. Lucy looked amazing. She struck a pose and grinned.
And it was all wrong. The armor had a long black scar across the middle of the chest piece, and it just felt... wrong.
"Well? How cool is this?"
"...it's dangerous." Mirta whispered. Then louder, "It's great, but are you sure it's all right? It's not broken?"
"It worked didn't it?"
"Yeah, but..." Mirta's magical senses were shouting alarm. Lucy should have been getting the same warning feeling, but either she wasn't, or she was ignoring it. "It's a weapon, Luce. It looks cool but it's actually for hurting people. What are you going to do with it?"
Lucy paused, like maybe she hadn't thought of it quite that way. She opened her mouth to say something.
From over the trees Priscilla called, "Mirta? You here?"
Lucy's head snapped up. "Ohno." She squeaked.
"Lucy?"
"Fairies!" Lucy yelled, "It really doesn't like..." And her armor lit up. Each piece glowed. Magic circles sprang into being under her feet and she flew into the air.
Mirta took off after her. "Lucy, wait!"
"It's not me!"
Above the trees, wind whipped at them. The fairies had stopped a hundred yards away, startled by Lucy's new armor. Kimmy flew forward hesitantly.
Mirta was close enough to see when part of the armor broke itself off, curled into a tube and started shooting.
The fairies screamed and scattered.
Mirta grabbed for the weapon. It spun around and smacked her in the back. Wings suddenly numb, Mirta fell. She hit what felt like an explosion of leaves, then a solid branch that she managed to grab onto. "Ow..."
She got back up, not really injured. "Lucy! Turn it off!"
"I can't!" Came faintly back.
Mirta groaned and launched herself into the air. She dodged a barrage of spinning rings and the grasping vine of some plant Priscilla had awakened. Her friends were fighting back. "Guys! Stop it!"
Selene dropped down next to Mirta to yell back, "She attacked us!"
"Lucy doesn't want to, it's the weapon!"
Something pinged the ground next to them. Selene said, "Sure it is."
"It doesn't like fairies! You guys have to get away, maybe then Lucy can get it off!" Bursts of magic were going off all around them. Someone was going to get hurt any minute now and nobody else was close enough to hear, even if they were listening. Mirta's only idea was to blow her friends far enough away that the weapon would forget about them. And hope later her friends would forget about being blown around!
Lucy waved a gauntleted hand and a wave of force slapped Priscilla into the trees. The red-haired fairy didn't sink far, the trees politely holding her up, but she put her hand to her head and didn't get up.
"Priscilla!" Several fairies rushed to help, Mirta rushed to help, but she could see they were going to be too late.
Lucy lowered her weapon to point at the stunned fairy. And... froze.
Priscilla managed to roll out of the way and climb down through the branches. Lucy didn't move, still aiming at the empty leaves.
"Lucy?" Mirta called, and risked drifting closer. Lucy's armor rippled, the plates moving slightly and glowing. Mirta added, "Thanks for not shooting Priscilla. Are you all right?"
Another long minute passed, then the armor opened and Lucy fell out.
It was so sudden that Mirta grabbed for her, automatically, from way too far away. Lolina was quicker, and got a tower of rings under Lucy, breaking her fall.
The armor whipped around, shooting. A sudden breeze swept Mirta and the fairies out of the way.
Selene shouted, "Kimmy, can you slow it down?"
"Ok!" Kimmy's charmix lit up and an opalescent bubble glowed between her hands.
The armor took aim at her and Mirta blasted it with what should have been a curse of dancing, but didn't appear to work. It occurred to her that maybe a rust curse would work. If she could invent one. Really fast.
Kimmy threw the bubble, which expanded to the size of a house in midair. Inside it the armor's whip-fast movements slowed to a crawl.
With a wordless battle cry, Selene dived into the bubble from above.
Everyone froze. Mirta's half-thought spell evaporated from her mind as she watched Selene fall in slow motion. She grabbed the armor and...
"She's wrestling it." Kimmy said in bland disbelief.
Except that Selene was winning. The armor was already shrinking, folding into nothing the way it had appeared from nothing before. After a minute of struggle only the long tube-weapon was left. Selene had it between her hands—one hand was over the dangerous end—and was pushing with all her strength. Kimmy's spell collapsed and Selene barely got her wings open in time. She landed, still focusing on crushing the device. Through gritted teeth she said, "You, shut down! You're... just... a... thing! A weapon is just a thing!"
It gave up the fight. Selene held up the jewel and finished in satisfaction, "...and I'm a warrior." Just to make things perfect, a new charmix bloomed on her chest.
Kimmy ran to Selene, cheering, and Priscilla appeared from the forest, dusting herself off and limping but not badly hurt.
Off to one side Lolina was sitting next to Lucy. The witch lay very still on the ground.
"Lucy! Loli, is she all right?"
"I thought so!" Lolina's voice quavered. "She didn't hit the ground that hard, and I did a healing spell, but she won't wake up!"
Mirta drew on her gloomix and cast her favorite healing charm. It flowed off Lucy like water spilled on a rock; as far as the magic could tell, Lucy wasn't injured. She was just asleep.
"It's this." Selene called. She came over, walking slowly in exhaustion. "The... device still has a contract with Lucy, so she could control it if she were awake, and it doesn't want her to because it wants to attack all fairies and Lucy wouldn't let it."
Mirta tried to make that make sense. "Is Lucy all right? Don't let that thing hurt her!"
"I told it not to. I think it's just un-contracting itself and then Lucy will wake up." Selene sat down heavily. Priscilla made soft grass grow under all of them, especially under the sleeping Lucy.
Kimmy raised her hand and sent up a magical firework. "It'd be really nice if the grownups came soon and we didn't have to walk back. Selene, are you sure you can control that thing? It's not going to take you over is it?"
"I'm fine. It's just a matter of willpower."
"Don't get an ego." Priscilla said without any particular anger.
And then a whole fleet of balloons appeared over the horizon.
The grownups arrived, with the local police and an ambulance. Mirta stood by being worried while healers loaded Lucy into the ambulance, but the professionals also seemed to think she was fine.
Then a boy with pale hair stepped down from a balloon gondola and Lolina Grabbed Mirta's arm, "Hey, it's him! The ghost! Ohmigod, he's even cuter in the flesh!"
Mirta had to agree with that one. Her first impulse was to step back and let Lolina say hello first. But... instead, she stepped forward. "Hi!"
"Hi, um..."
"I'm Mirta. That's Lolina, Priscilla, Kimmy, and Selene over there."
"Orion. Nice to meet you. Mom's... uh..." He looked around, then pointed at a khaki-clad woman who'd cornered Selene into conversation and was now dragging her over to join the other fairies.
Orion looked pained. "This is going to take forever."
"What is?"
"The interrogation!"Orion whispered spookily.
Before anyone could say anything else, Starria reached them. She pulled a notebook and pen out of nowhere and said, "You saw an ancient device in combat? Tell me everything!"
It did take forever. Or at least a few hours, and the conversation was still going on inside the tent where dinner was, theoretically anyway, being prepared.
Lucy had of course been rushed back to the hospital in Magix, but the authorities had decided that the fairies might as well stay for the rest of their planned time. Miss Faragonda had agreed, so here they were back at camp.
Mirta had escaped the general victory chatter and come outside. She climbed up on a rock and sat there trying to think and not getting very far.
Someone else ducked out of the tent and stretched in the cool evening air. Orion looked around and saw Mirta. "Hey. Want some company?"
Mirta scooted over, making room on the rock, and Orion climbed up.
"In case I forgot to say it before, thanks for the whole saving my life thing."
"You're welcome." Mirta smiled. "What was it like being a ghost?"
"Weird. Very weird. Everything was sort of far away even things that were right there. Even just a bush that's two feet away, I could walk all day and only get an inch closer to it. And we didn't know if whatever shot us down was coming back, and we didn't know why we were stuck there. At the hospital they said a... greater elemental grabbed us?"
Mirta nodded. "It didn't mean any harm. It just didn't know it had to catch spirit and body to actually rescue you guys."
"Ugh. Well, at least it'll make a good story later."
Mirta laughed. "That's a good way to think of it I guess."
"Penny for your thoughts? Didn't look like you were having cheerful ones."
Mirta sighed and tugged on the beaded tail in her hair. "I didn't do very well in that fight. We were in a fight before with some bully witches and I was great, but this time I didn't know what to do."
Orion rested his chin on his hands and thought about that. "Well from what I heard, this time you were trying to protect both sides. That's a pretty crazy situation. Is your friend ok, the one who found the device?"
"Yeah, Miss Griffin called. Lucy's fine. She just doesn't remember anything since she got in a contract with the jewel. Is that normal?"
"It makes sense. If your friend- Lucy?- if she remembered, she'd still be able to control it, and it couldn't make a new contract with someone else."
"Stupid thing." Mirta muttered. Orion didn't comment. "I just—Lucy came all this way looking for something to make her cool, and she actually found something and it didn't think she was cool enough either! It isn't fair. And I didn't even get a chance to do anything."
"Doesn't sound like there's much you could do."
"I wish Lucy could believe..." and Mirta realized where that was going, and realized she hadn't actually admitted it yet. And once she admitted it Orion would definitely not want to sit out here and talk any more. "Um. I'm a witch."
"I know you're a witch."
That was not what she'd expected. "What? You do?"
"Sure. You smell like a witch." Orion grinned.
Mirta guessed what he meant, but grumbled anyway. "Hey! Don't say how people smell."
"Not that. I can smell magic. Fairies smell like flowers, witches smell more dusty and herby. Sorcerers smell like incense. You smell like a witch."
It wasn't weird to smell magic; plenty of people could do that. What was weird was a normal guy talking to a witch like it didn't matter. It always mattered. Nice guys didn't hang out with witches. Well, maybe guys who lived a million realms away from anywhere would talk to a witch who saved their life. That was probably it. "I'm not a normal witch. I can transform wings like a fairy. I know Lucy could do it too, if she just believed she could. Then maybe she'd think she was good enough without always trying to impress people."
There was a pause. Orion must have heard about her before, since he didn't ask about the witch-with-wings thing. After a while he said, "Maybe she just can't. Sometimes people can't believe things, even if the evidence is right there. Whole civilizations make the same mistakes over and over because they can't believe the obvious things will happen. So... Hey, you want to see what we're doing here? Private tour."
That shook Mirta out of her gloomy thoughts. "Sure!"
They hopped off the rock and Orion led the way behind camp, between some boring looking trees and big rocks the fairies hadn't investigated before. A round hatch poked out of the ground.
"Down here. I think this was a secret entrance to... something. Escape tunnels maybe." Orion opened the door with a spell and he and Mirta conjured lights. Inside, steps led downwards. Eventually the floor leveled out and they were in a round room with tunnels leading off in three directions.
"Where do they go?" Mirta asked.
"Two are caved in, the other one connects to another room like this about five miles away. Nobody's had time to explore further. But here's the really interesting thing."
The walls were colored. From the floor to higher than Mirta's head, with a mass of little pictures. They looked like... well, actually like the doodles in the margins of Lolina's notebooks. "Doodling?"
"Mom's official hypothesis is that someone was posted on guard here and got bored."
There were little stick figures, animal shapes, buildings and drawings of an intelligent device weapon. Across the middle of the wall four feet wide was a symbol that was probably the local version of a flag. The artist had filled it with proudly marching and flying warriors and their winged horses, winged cats, and dragons. "Dragons?"
"Here's the really great thing, look down here. Five eggs. But he only draws four dragons."
"I guess they were called Cloud Knights because they rode flying animals. Hang on, if someone was stuck on guard duty maybe there was a guard from the other side too, maybe it was his weapon Lucy found! Were they witches or fairies? Because that weapon really didn't like the fairies but it didn't mind me."
"That's a good idea! It'd be great if we can figure out where your friend got that weapon. We've been here months and never found one that worked. As for witches-or-fairies, that's the big question. Both sides had armor for wings, so we assumed fairies. Or maybe they were your kind of witch."
It was cold underground and Mirta and Orion headed back up the steps. Outside the night was warm. "Have you ever found anything about my kind of witch?"
"Once or twice there've been ancient pictures of people with wings and pointy hats but who knows. The stuff we find doesn't always make a lot of sense. Like the poor idiot down there, he might've been drawing his own comic book."
Mirta laughed. "So you always just... do this? Live in the middle of nowhere and dig stuff up with your mom?"
"Yep. My Dad's not around anymore, he caught a curse back when I was a baby. Mom keeps trying to send me to school in Magix but I'd rather dig stuff up. Maybe we'll find the first inhabited world, or figure out what started the feud between fairies and witches. Did you know temples to the great dragon go back more than a million years?"
"Really? Until when? Bloom never caught anyone trying to worship her."
"Whoa, you know Princess Bloom?"
They stared at each other for a second, Mirta still thinking about the weirdness of temples to... ok, the great dragon as the force that spread magic throughout the universe that made sense to make temples about, but the dragonfire as in Bloom, who sometimes came to breakfast in her bathrobe without her hair combed... "Sure, we have classes together. She's really nice."
"You're not scared of her?" Orion asked in surprise.
"Scared? Why?"
Realizing he'd said something weird Orion hurried to explain, "The whole dragonfire thing. I mean, she could burn up Alfea if she got mad. Sorry, I just..."
"I guess she could. But Bloom's not like that, she wouldn't go bad on us. Hey, come to Magix and you can meet Bloom yourself. I'm not superbest friends with the famous fairies but we could all get pizza or something."
"You've got a deal! Next time we're in Magix."
Mirta laughed, though the gloomy part of her mind insisted on thinking Orion wouldn't want to hang out with her after meeting the most beautiful fairies in Magix. At least the most famous ones all had boyfriends—that was a good thought!
"You get to visit civilization sometimes then?" She asked.
"Oh, sure. Mum's a pretty popular speaker at conferences. I just try to see all the movies while I can, or the dragon wrangling at Red Fountain. If I ever do go there I'm majoring in dragons!"
Mirta found herself grinning. Silly, to get this happy just because a boy was talking to her. "Dragons are amazing. We snuck in once, at the beginning of the year-"
"Seriously? Fairies?"
"No, at Cloud Tower. Some seniors stole our books and wouldn't return them unless we snuck into the dragon stable. So we did, Lucy and Alicia and me. We actually got inside, the dragons were all asleep in a pile like kittens. They were blue and smooth, like snakes. But then they woke up and started flaming and we got back to school with soot on our clothes."
"That's a great story. Did the seniors give your books back?"
"Mmhm."
They'd reached the tent and there was Priscilla, trying to grow strawberries outside. "Hi you guys. Food's on."
"You're using magic? Aren't you too tired?"
"Maybe that's why I can't grow anything." Priscilla shrugged and stood up. "Let's eat. Hey Orion, maybe you can get your mom to stop talking about weapons long enough to tell us what we're going to be doing here for the next few weeks."
