Part 14
Idrettsutøver flung himself back in an impressive gymnastic bend, dodging Robbie's claws aimed where his head had been. Idrettsutøver stayed just beyond the fae's attack, waiting for a wide slash that bought him enough space for his own kick, catching Robbie's head. The fae went flailing back, disappearing in the snow.
"That's what you get, you little pest!" Idrettsutøver raged, hitting the snow drifts to try to find him.
Iþrottaalfurinn yelled something that died in the wind. The storm was rising, throwing snow across the town in drifts that began to pile high against his legs, and the sky wasn't simply overcast with thick clouds—the morning had been blotted out, leaving Lazytown in a gloomy twilight.
This wasn't an ordinary blizzard, Iþrottaalfurinn thought. It had come on so fast and so brutally that it had to be the work of magic, and Iþrottaalfurinn began to despair of just how many monsters lay in wait. This blizzard was the appetite of a host of dark sluagh. Two elves and two fairies in the open made for a tasty meal, one worth expending some magic to hide dark footsteps.
He called out to Sportacus, to Hopper, but the snow swallowed up his warnings. Even if he could have yelled loud enough, he didn't think they would have heard him. Robbie, usually so eager to avoid a fight, now threw himself into slashing attacks, leaping past Idrettsutøver and raking his claws down the elf's back and plunging into the blood-stained snow. Idrettsutøver couldn't keep up, turning and turning as Robbie came up briefly, his wing tip jabbing into the elf's side.
"That's it!"
Bleeding from multiple wounds, Idrettsutøver gathered his hands together and fired a blast of elfshot, a burst of white lights that stabbed out like hot knives. Snow melted away from the tree and the broken bench, revealing the hint of a black wing as Robbie skedaddled around the tree and behind the wall.
Idrettsutøver yelled in frustration—once again the fairy was running circles around him, then vanishing through magic. Decades more of punishment duty loomed over him, and he shook his head, wiping snow from his face.
He hadn't spent all of his years behind that damned monitor desk. Clenching his right hand into a fist, he punched his other hand, building up power from sheer will. He risked closing his eyes to concentrate, and after several seconds, he bent and punched his hand into the ground.
Lights shot through the earth, spreading out like the fractal points of lightning, and ignited across the playground walls, across houses, up over the school and city hall. The power burned bright for a long moment, then sharpened into edges and curves of strange symbols written over the entire city.
"Ha!" Idrettsutøver pumped his fist once in the air. "You see this, you lousy replacement? Your little fairy friend has covered this whole town in his magic and you let him!"
Iþrottaalfurinn and Sportacus stared in awe at the sheer amount of lettering spread across the town. A few houses were untouched—very few. The rest had marks on their doors and windows, letters that looked like scratches in the air over every surface. Even the tree...
Sportacus paused. The tree and the bench were practically luminescent, covered in symbols that wavered like smoke. In completely different symbols in completely different handwriting.
He didn't know what it meant, but he did know it matched Robbie's poor penmanship. However much territory the sluagh had claimed, Robbie still held the tree and the bench beneath it, for whatever reason—and the fairy was hiding behind the broken bench, scrunching his overly long body behind the cracked slats.
"That's not my handwriting, you idiot!" Robbie yelled, wrapping his wings around himself as the enormity of what Hopper had just done washed over him. "That's sluagh—and you just made sure they know we're here!"
"You're not fooling me with this sluagh lie!" Iþrottaalfurinn sent another blast after Robbie, leaving scorch marks on the stone. "If there are any other monsters, then they're taking marching orders from you—!"
Idrettsutøver went sprawling forward as Sportacus tackled him from behind. Idrettsutøver immediately caught himself on his hands, about to spring up again, when Sportacus sat on top of him, pinning him to the ground.
"You are not going to set anything in this town on fire!" Sportacus snapped. "Not again!"
"You little—" Idrettsutøver tried to reach back and grab Sportacus, only managing to grab air. "Get off and fight fair!"
"'Fair'?" Sportacus scoffed. "Fancy hearing that from you!"
"You have no room to talk," Idrettsutøver roared, putting his hands flat and pushing himself slowly up, inch by trembling inch. "You're friends with villains!"
Teeth bared, Idrettsutøver strained against Sportacus, whose eyes widened as he found himself being lifted off the ground. The taller elf was built powerfully, and he felt the muscles shifting underneath Idrettsutøver's shirt. Sportacus considered punching the back of Idrettsutøver's head, but not only did that feel dishonorable—he wasn't sure that would actually knock him out.
A shadow spread over them both. Sportacus looked up at Robbie who crouched on top of the wall, his wings outstretched wide. The dark membrane of his wings framed the inhuman otherness of his limbs, too long, too pointed, far too thin, and the slimmer face focused on Sportacus before Robbie lunged.
At first Sportacus thought Robbie would try to pounce on Idrettsutøver. Instead Robbie caught Sportacus around his waist and carried him backward, flapping his wings to keep them going across the snow until they plowed into a high drift.
Sputtering, spitting out snow, Sportacus sat up with Robbie all askew in his lap, trying desperately to gather his long legs under himself. It was the panic in the narrowed eyes that made Sportacus look up.
Sluagh, cresting over the wall, spilling down like black water.
In such a mass, they looked like a swarm of claws and fangs and red eyes that focused on Sportacus, on Idrettsutøver. They crawled, dragging themselves across the wall, comfortable under the thick clouds blotting out the sun, swallowing the bloodied bits of snow.
"Don't just sit there looking!"
Iþrottaalfurinn grabbed Sportacus and hauled him up to his feet, bringing Robbie up in Sportacus' arms. As Iþrottaalfurinn put the ladder in his brother's hands, he was already commanding the ship to haul the ladder up. This time there was no complaint that the modern ship was too much of a luxury spoiling his brother.
"Wait," Sportacus said. "Idrettsutøver—"
"Can take care of himself," Iþrottaalfurinn said, nodding at the other elf who was already scrambling backward, then turning and sprinting back to his ship. "I won't waste time worrying about that overgrown fool when he's the one who put us all in danger."
As they came up, Sportacus pushed Robbie in first, following after. The blast of warm air reminded him just how frozen the weather was, and he began stripping off his soaked outer shirt.
"Iþrottaalfurinn!" he called out, looking over the side. "What are you doing? Get in here!"
"Not before I make sure we have no uninvited guests." Iþrottaalfurinn waited until the ship had retracted most of the ladder, stepping up and watching to see that nothing had clung to the rungs. "I refuse to watch you go spilling out the door again."
"So lock the door," Robbie hissed, crawling up onto one of the beds and perching there. His wings curled around him and trembled to shake off the snow. "So that muscle-bound idiot gets no ideas about boarding us."
"You, hush," Iþrottaalfurinn said, shaking his finger at him once. "And quit acting so feral. It's not helping, especially now that Hopper's not here. Change back already."
Robbie grit his pointed teeth. "You think I can?"
Iþrottaalfurinn blinked. "What?"
"I'm stuck," Robbie said. "Nothing, no more, zilch, nada. I can't cast a single glamour, let alone hide everything. I'm out!"
"...not even one of those flower lights?" Iþrottaalfurinn asked, already knowing the answer.
"Especially not those." Robbie dipped his head, glaring at nothing. "Hope this thing has plenty of fuel. I'm gonna be here for awhile. Town radie's out of business."
Iþrottaalfurinn didn't reply. He couldn't think of anything to say. The cold still bit at him, and he finally felt himself shivering. With a heavy sigh, he went behind the other curtain, changing into a robe so his uniform could dry. His brother plopped down in the captain's chair, first finding Hopper's ship, then scanning the town.
In the silence that followed, Stephanie peeked up from the spare bed. She was pretty sure they'd forgotten about her, if however briefly, but she didn't feel slighted. Not when she had a real live fairy in front of her.
True, the wings were bat, not butterfly, and the body was more spider than princess, but in a world of trolls and magic, this was what she thought a fairy would look like. That he had Robbie's voice and vague features and colors made a lot of things make more sense to her, in retrospect.
"What's a radie?" she whispered.
The face turned toward her—slit eyes, small mouth full of fangs—and the fairy froze in surprise, suddenly remembering that she existed. Then his long arm reached out and yanked the blanket up, hiding himself. Which would have been more successful if blanket had covered his wings. The black leather and tips poked out from beneath the edge.
Stephanie lost a little of the awe of seeing a fairy.
"What's a radie?" she asked, a little louder.
"Nothing," Robbie muttered from under the blanket. "Be a good little girl and go away."
She rolled her eyes. Adults were clearly adults, whether they were fairies or humans.
"I can't go away," she said. "We're hundreds of feet in the air."
Even through the blanket, the fairy shivered visibly.
"Don't tell me how high we are," Robbie muttered. "We're not that high, we're not that high, we're not that high..."
Stephanie leaned on the bed, watching the lump under the blanket like she might watch a pillbug rolled up in tight sphere.
"Are you scared of heights?" she asked. "But you have wings."
The fairy's head lifted slightly, just enough to glare at her from the darkness.
"And you can walk—do you want to be stuck in the desert?" Robbie huffed. "With a limp, too."
She blinked. "Are you hurt? Can't you use magic?"
Robbie stiffened, realizing he'd slipped.
"Sportacus has lots of stuff that can help," Stephanie said. "Like first aid."
Robbie didn't reply.
"You said you were out," Stephanie tried again. "Are you out of magic?"
When she didn't receive an answer, she leaned backward and craned her neck to see Sportacus in his captain's chair. Maybe he would be able to tell her more. But instead she found him speaking in low tones to his brother, brow furrowed, clearly worried and having a very serious, grown-up talk. Then Sportacus got up, leading his brother to the side of the ship where he stored his sports equipment.
They looked like they would be busy for a long time, so she went back to the captain's chair and sat down. There were lots of buttons and controls, but she'd had little else to do but study them while she was left alone. She pressed one that said telephone and it flipped around to reveal a number keypad. She was pretty sure she remembered Pixel's phone number.
On the other side of the ship, Sportacus considered the rows of sports equipment before him. The headache was growing worse, and he put a hand on the wall to steady himself. He didn't want to think of the baseball bat and racket and hockey stick as weapons—but this Hopper was in a league of his own when it came to physical strength and magic. Sportacus avoided magic, but he didn't think he could match him punch for punch, either. But this situation...
"This is ridiculous," he murmured. "Completely out of control."
Iþrottaalfurinn put his back against the wall, arms crossed, letting his head fall forward.
"I will admit, the situation is not ideal."
"'Not ideal'?" Sportacus gaped, staring at him wide-eyed. "My town is overrun, there's a maniac in a balloon flying around us and my backup includes two of the most infamous villains in the world. I think we're a league past 'not ideal'."
"Well..." Iþrottaalfurinn sighed, reached into his pocket and pulled out a damp, crumpled piece of paper. "At least you don't have to worry about making excuses to the council."
Sportacus took the offered scrap, gently unfolding it so the wet edges didn't tear. He grimaced.
"He kept the letter," Sportacus groaned. He let the paper airplane, Iþrottaalfurinn's note from when they first discovered the traps, fall to the ground. "Great. There will be no backup."
"I'll write another one right now," Iþrottaalfurinn said. "When I can feel my hands again."
"So the council can what?" Sportacus said. "Clean up what's left in the morning? Lazytown is doomed..."
Iþrottaalfurinn watched his brother sink to the floor, head in his hands, and he knelt beside Sportacus, glancing up once only to see if Stephanie was listening. Which she wasn't.
"Hey hey, none of that talk!" Iþrottaalfurinn said. "Emotional youngster—there's plenty we can do."
"I should have called for help earlier," Sportacus sighed. "I should have summoned the council. I should have done something the moment this stupid crystal didn't work—"
"You did do something," Iþrottaalfurinn said. "You called me. And you called Robbie—which, okay, now I am willing to say that he had nothing to do with any of this sluagh business. Sorry about that."
Sportacus snorted. "Wow...things are worse than I thought."
"The point is," Iþrottaalfurinn said, "you have another elf and two fairies on your side. That's not a small amount of power. Even if Robbie has no more magic and Glanni is exhausted, we just need to rest up a bit, get a plan together, and then go back down there."
"In the snow and the wind and the dark?" Sportacus said. "We couldn't even fight for five minutes."
"Glanni can help with that," Iþrottaalfurinn said. "And so can I. And then you and me and Robbie, and probably Hopper when he sees all the monsters to punch, will start cleaning out this nest."
Sportacus dragged his look up at his brother despite himself.
"You really think so?"
"Of course." Iþrottaalfurinn grinned. "You've never saw Glanni cast spells. He can, when he feels like it. But he needs to rest. We all do. And those things down there can't get into any more houses while there's fairy poison all over the town. So we have a little time to rest, figure out what to do, and then do it. And first thing's first."
Iþrottaalfurinn took off his hat and shook it out. A moment later, the dragonfly tumbled out and the fairy landed nimbly on his feet, glaring at Iþrottaalfurinn over his shoulder.
"A rude awakening," Glanni muttered. "And I suppose that's all the nap time I'm going to get?"
"For now," Iþrottaalfurinn said. "We need to lay the groundwork for getting rid of this blizzard."
"Oh, is that all?" Glanni said. "Stop the magical effort of an entire swarm of sluagh with just one fairy."
"And two elves," Iþrottaalfurinn said. "It's just a matter of time and careful sigil work."
"That you can start drawing without me, dear."
Glanni stomped across the ship, accidentally triggering two floor switches and sending a tennis ball and and bottled water arcing through the air. Then he flung himself backwards across one of the beds and draped his long limbs over the sides. They didn't think he was actually asleep, but he clearly meant to let them do the drawing.
"...he has a point." Iþrottaalfurinn glanced at his brother. "Got any chalk?"
"On this floor?" Sportacus gathered a marker from the pile of sport score books. "You're better off with ink for that."
Iþrottaalfurinn nodded his thanks, sparing a moment to write a quick S.O.S. and send the note along in a paper air plane. Then he chose a clear section of the floor and began to draw.
The phone took several minutes to connect. The wind, snow and ice made any kind of wireless communication so shaky that Stephanie thought the only reason she got through was that this was a hero airship. Even so, the line crackled with static as Pixel came on.
"Steph! Where have you been? I've been trying to message you and you didn't pick up, and we were all so worried 'cause our parents won't let us go check on you—"
"I'm okay," she said. "I'm on Sportacus' ship with his brother and Robbie and—yes, Sportacus has a brother. No, I never knew. Yes, he's nice—Pixel, can I ask you a question. Have you ever heard of a radie?"
"'Radie'?" Pixel echoed. "You mean radio!"
"No, I mean radie. I can't get online from here. Either the machine's busted or—"
"The snow's scattering your signal," Pixel said. "But I have a good groundline. Let me go ahead and look."
Several more minutes passed as he scrolled through search results, audibly listing them as he went so that she could hear. He had to convince the search engine that he didn't want anything to do with radios, then had to filter out results not in his language, then had to go back and auto-translate the more promising ones.
As she waited, Stephanie glanced behind the captain chair again. Robbie was still huddled under the blanket, shivering even though the ship was warm, and Iþrottaalfurinn was drawing something on the floor. As she watched, Sportacus huffed and came to sit beside his brother, beginning to draw under Iþrottaalfurinn's direction.
"—may have found something," Pixel said, bringing her attention back. "I think...yeah, this is what you're looking for, probably. It's a site about local legends and folklore."
"What's it say?"
"A radie is a spirit that's become bound to one location, to protect everything around it. But it's not just a spirit. It's like a god."
"A god?" She looked over at Robbie again. "Um...Pixel, I don't think that site is accurate."
"No no, I think I get it. It's not like god with a capital G. It's a little spirit that has a shrine and gets offerings like money and clothes and food, and in return, it takes care of the town."
Stephanie frowned as she thought. That did not sound like Robbie in the slightest. But then again, she'd never have thought that Robbie had wings or such a strange face.
"What kind of offerings?" she asked. "Are they special?"
"It doesn't really say," Pixel said, scrolling through the page. "And there are no pictures. It just says 'there are offerings like money, clothes and food'. That's it."
"Hm."
"Stephanie..." Pixel mused. "Do you think Lazytown has a radie? Is that why all this is happening?"
"I...don't know," Stephanie said. "I'm really confused right now. But...okay, does it say how to leave an offering? Or where?"
"It's place of power," Pixel said. "That's it. Seriously, these sites are not very specific. And...oh wow, this site was updated in 1993. I would not trust any of this."
"Since it's about old folklore, I don't think that matters too much." Stephanie thought hard, but she kept running into the same solution. It wasn't a good one, but it was all she had.
"Pixel...I need you to do something."
"Sure, Steph, what?"
"I need you to get all the cookies in your house." She considered what she'd seen Robbie eat and expanded her list. "Get anything made of sugar. And put it on a plate and..."
"And?"
Stephanie hesitated. She had no idea what to do with offerings. She needed more information. Glancing at the adults to make sure they were busy, she stood up and went to the window, looking out.
Her jaw dropped. The city practically glowed with burning symbols, but from here, they looked like a bunch of string lights in a dark room. And the tree outside the park was like a lamp in the middle.
"The tree outside the park," she whispered.
Where Robbie slept all the time, or tried to sleep.
Of course.
She ran back to the phone. "Pixel, listen to me closely. This is going to be dangerous, but I need you to call the others and then...wait. And be ready for a signal."
"Ready for what? Tell the others what? And what signal?" he asked.
"Tell them to round up all their cookies and candy, even Ziggy. And the signal..." She bit her lip. "I'm not sure, but I don't think it's gonna be hard to tell."
On his knees, Sportacus sat straight and looked at his work. Iþrottaalfurinn had declared it good enough, but his lines and shapes looked shaky and broken next to his brother's neat work. He began to tense up, thinking of how a misspelled sigil could ruin the whole work, and how his lack of spell practice would end up dooming his whole town.
"Relax," Iþrottaalfurinn said, squeezing his shoulder. "Magic is an art, not a science. Put all your will into it and it will work."
"If you say so," Sportacus sighed. "What else do we do?"
"Us? Nothing. Now this is the job of one lazy, good for nothing villain."
From his bed, Glanni growled and didn't stir.
"Such sweet words," he huffed. "I'm still exhausted, I'll have you know. Some of us don't recharge with honey."
"It's a big sigil," Iþrottaalfurinn said, coming to his feet. "Our focused wills. Now you just need to give it a jump."
"Oh, is that all?" Glanni rose up on his elbows. "Mixing fairy and elf magic—never a good idea. Does Santa's Little Helper number two know what could happen?"
"A explosion that could send the magic out in all directions doing who knows what," Sportacus said. "I know what could happen. It's why I never tried to learn magic...too afraid of what a mistake could do."
"And now that lack of learning is biting you in the ass," Glanni said, dramatically using his legs to leverage off the bed, coming up in one smooth motion that brought him to the edge of the circle. "Beautiful penmanship—I can actually read some of it."
Sportacus winced, but Iþrottaalfurinn was up on his feet, hands on his hips, trying to loom over Glanni and only managing to glare up at him.
"Stop being such a little monster," he said. "You don't have to take it out on him."
"And what am I taking out on him?" Glanni said. "Being summoned like an errand boy? Insulted and worked like a menial? I'm here because Robbie called, not you, dear, not you, and I am not going to stand by while you take my efforts here for granted, and another thing—"
Iþrottaalfurinn put his arm around Glanni's waist, braced his foot behind Glanni's boot, and dipped the taller fairy backward in a dramatic kiss.
Sportacus' jaw dropped. Then he remembered Stephanie was on board and saw with relief that she was absorbed in talking to someone on the wireless.
Glanni's arm wrapped around Iþrottaalfurinn's shoulder for support, but his other hand slowly sank and hung limp in the air. His other foot slid until the boot barely touched the floor. His eyes shut in clear satisfaction.
When Iþrottaalfurinn finally brought him back up, Glanni all but twirled into the circle, hands clasped to his chest.
"Oh, baby, you know what I like!"
The last word ended on a flash that rose up from his core, a light that Glanni gathered in his hands above his head, then shoved down into the sigil as if the glow between his fingertips weighed a hundred pounds.
The sigil lit, and Sportacus crept back despite himself.
The ship shuddered and shook, and then
everything
went
white.
In the emptiness that followed, Sportacus heard a thin, unrecognizable voice telling someone to go now, now, now.
When Sportacus could see again, the sky was clear—gray and cold, but without any snow. When he looked more closely, he saw that the clouds lay in a broad ring around Lazytown, pushed just to the edge of the town's limits. The blizzard continued in the outer fields, but the snow over Lazytown had stopped.
And beneath them, a half dozen black shapes lay in the park. Sluagh, too slow to escape the spell, either dead or stunned in the light.
"It worked?" Sportacus asked.
"Yes," Iþrottaalfurinn said, already opening the door. "Come on, we have no time to lose. We have to strike now."
Sportacus was not sure what he meant, but he dutifully followed...until he saw Glanni passed out in the circle. He stooped, about to touch him, when Iþrottaalfurinn grabbed him and pulled him back.
"Don't step into that," Iþrottaalfurinn said. "Breaking a circle is bad."
"But he's hurt—"
"He's keeping that circle going." Iþrottaalfurinn took him to the door, kicking it open and sending the ladder down. "And he's sleeping like he wanted, the lazy thing. Now let's go, and be ready to fight. Don't be afraid to change like you did before. Your claws and fangs will serve well in this."
Sportacus watched Iþrottaalfurinn start down the ladder, sliding along the sides. Two elves against a whole swarm of sluagh. The odds were not good.
But at least everything was clear now. He knew who his enemies were, he knew where they were, and he knew how to fight them.
He was a hero. Slightly above average, but a hero.
He followed without hesitation.
Stephanie watched them go without saying anything. Without being told, she understood what they were doing. There were fairies, there were apparently elves, there were monsters. And heroes always slew monsters.
But heroes didn't often look like they were heading to an impossible battle.
Movement caught her eye.
Robbie slowly pushed off his blanket, creeping across the bed and down to the floor. He moved like a bat trying to walk, with his arms almost as long as his legs, awkwardly stiff. He went to the very edge of the ship, clinging to the floor and the ladder as he peered out into the air.
The blizzard was in a brief lacuna, paused at the edge of its fury.
Two heroes made their way to the park, to the prone sluagh.
And four small children were sprinting out of their homes as fast they could go, shying away from the beasts on the ground, each of them taking something to the tree.
Robbie tilted his head in wonder. He looked at Stephanie, confused as to what he was seeing.
"It's not much," she said, not sure what to say. "There were Christmas cookies. Ziggy said he had hot chocolate. Um..."
Robbie looked back down at the tableau before him, at the kids hurriedly placing things on the roots and the broken bench. Someone was shaking out a piggy bank—he could hear the coins as clearly as if he was standing beside them.
"What do you expect me to do?" Robbie whispered.
The room...changed. Stephanie wasn't sure what was different, but the air felt heavier. Tense. This question was important in a way that she simply couldn't understand, not as a child. Not as someone who only lived a few decades.
But she knew her fairy tales, and she knew about heroes, and she knew about monsters and promises.
"Take care of Lazytown," she said softly. "Like before."
Robbie's smile was not reassuring. It was the cold, bureaucratic grin of a lawyer.
"Deal," he said, and vanished over the side.
Left in the airship with the wind swirling around the cabin and the door banging against its hinges, Stephanie wondered if she'd done the right thing. She felt that she understood at last why Robbie dressed like a very eccentric businessman on the cusp of signing an important contract.
To Be Concluded...