Piper of Dreams

Part III


"Wishes for blessings… press interviews… Shantra, is there any real mail amongst all this?"

The Faerie Queen sighed, placing the latest batch of letters on the marble table beside her throne. It was the sort of day when her life was more administration than glamour; letters to answer, pets to bless, Times reporters to put off, council meetings to chair. Sometimes, she wished—ironically—for a little bit of magic to liven up her ordinary days.

"I'll read the rest of it for you, Your Majesty. Is there anything you would like me to fetch you?"

"Just a glass of Tchea juice," Fyora nodded, grateful for Shantra's help. The young Dark Faerie was an invaluable servant at the Faerieland court.

"Okay. I'll fetch that right now." Shantra put down the mail and headed for the door. "I won't be a minute, Your Majesty."

Fyora watched as her sprite-in-waiting disappeared down the stairs. Of course, she could have summoned the glass and poured the drink by magic if she'd wished, but the risk of spilling it in a moment of distraction was one she'd rather not take. Neopia's supreme ruler, not using magic. She wondered with a kind of amusement what the average Neopet would think of that idea.

Suddenly, Shantra appeared again, seemingly out of breath and without her familiar tray. "Fyora!"

"What is it?" Fyora asked kindly, ignoring the maid's impolite use of her first name. "Are the kitchens out of Tchea juice? I'll be happy to have melon instead."

"No, it's not that." Shantra looked alight with excitement. "I met a messenger on his way up. The Council think they've spotted an elementless Faerie… a kid with enormous magical talent. You know what that means, Your Majesty!"

Fyora knew it indeed. One of the traditional tasks of a Faerie Queen had always been to train a successor, a young Faerie who would take on the royal responsibilities if the present Queen were to retire. However, until now, there had been no suitable candidate. As Fyora considered the implications of the finding, a shiver of excitement ran down her spine.

"Forget the Tchea juice," she told Shantra. "Take me to see this elementless girl. Now."

000

"Miss Rosie? Dr. Death? Is anybody here but me?"

The plaintive voice outside his door woke Ricky from his sleep. Opening his eyes slowly, he whimpered softly at the sight of the barred door that still kept him prisoner. He looked for the source of the voice, but saw only rows upon rows of closed rooms, just like the one he had been given. To his right, he saw an Elephante through the wire window; to his left, a Kau. Every room held a pet, most of them staring intently at the door.

With a cold shudder, Ricky realised where he must be. Though he'd never experienced this life himself, he'd heard other pets' tales. The Wocky must have mistaken him for a pet without an owner, and brought him to be adopted.

"Excuse me? I think there must be some…" He tried to make his own voice heard, but no-one seemed to be listening.

Suddenly, there was a sharp click from the room to the right. The door opened, releasing the Elephante into the corridor. A moment later, the Kau achieved a similar result. Locks began clicking all around him, opening one by one.

Ricky began to examine his own lock, but there seemed no obvious way of opening it from the inside. He sensed that the pets in the corridor would be in no hurry to help him.

As he watched, the escapees filed quietly along the passageway and towards a large open window, where they began to climb to safety, still forming an orderly line. Ricky could only stare as the last pet clambered calmly through the window.

The next moment, the Wocky he had seen before came dashing into the room. "What's going on? What… oh, no…They've gone again!"

"I'm sorry." Ricky looked out at her. "They all seemed to figure out some way of opening the locks on the doors."

"Yep. Again." The Wocky adjusted her enormous goggles, and glanced at him in surprise. "Wait, you're not one of the staff. You're a resident! Why didn't you leave like the rest?"

"I'm not a resident." Ricky sighed. "I was looking for my sister when I got caught in that net of yours."

"Eek! I'm sorry!" The Wocky clapped her forepaw to her mouth, horrified at her mistake. "Here, I'll let you out. I really didn't mean for anything like that to happen."

Over a mug of coffee at the front desk, the Wocky explained the situation. "I'm just a part-timer here. Normally all we'd have to deal with is maybe one breakout attempt a week." She took a swig from her mug and continued. "But today, for some reason, every pet in the Adoption Centre is trying to escape. And not in the normal berserk kind of way, either. They're all so…"

"Determined?" Ricky recalled the faces of the pets that had almost trampled him. "Serene?"

"Yep. And what puts the icing on the cake, all the other staff have picked today to go AWOL. All at once! Can you believe that?"

"My sister's missing too," Ricky muttered, his good mood vanishing again.

"Oh well." She gave him a bright smile. "Since there doesn't seem much chance of getting the pound pets to stay put today, I guess I can come and help you look. How does that sound?"

"Best thing I've heard all day." The Gelert managed a grin. "I'm Rickaira Fortune, by the way. Everyone calls me Ricky, though."

"Chelska Darling," she replied. "Don't laugh. It really is my name."

"I wasn't about to."

He left the cup of bitter coffee on the desk, thinking wistfully of his sister's hot chocolate as they departed from the empty Pound.

000

"Sweetie? You doing all right in there?"

The little Kougra looked up from her homework. Lori's head was poking through from the other room, a concerned expression on her face.

"She oughta be home by now," was all she said.

"Honey, you know she'll be home soon. She probably went over to see a friend, or perhaps she was kept late after school. Your sister can take care of herself. She is sixteen, you know."

"Mmmm." One golden paw scratched out the latest wrong answer, and the Kougra threw back her head in a wail of frustration. "Oh, I can't do this, Lori!"

"Well, you just keep trying and I'll fix some iced lemint tea." Her owner disappeared into the backroom again.

Suddenly, there was a noise of wings outside. The next minute, the door was flung open. "Come here!" the Faerie Cybunny outside gasped. "Quick!"

"What is it?" Bounding up the stairs, the Kougra nearly knocked into her sister. The Cybunny pulled away just in time.

"My schoolfriend, Jenise, she's flying to Neopia Central tonight. She wanted to know if you would come! She says there's snow there at the moment!"

"Snow?" The word provoked only puzzlement from a lifelong Sakhmetian. "What's that?"

"It's like rain, only colder, Jenise says. And the prettiest thing she's ever seen."

Now the little girl was excited. "Hang on! I'll just tell Lori where I'm going."

"No time for that!" The Cybunny stood neatly between her and the door. "Jenise is going right now. It's OK, I'll tell Lori after I've seen you off."

In the little room beneath the Sakhmetian streets, a human girl paused in confusion, wondering where her Neopet had gone. Shrugging, she set the ice-cold glass on the table next to the unfinished maths homework, and waited.

000

"I suppose you didn't bring any mittens?" Chelska yelled as the latest flurry of snow blew into her face. Ricky waved his scarf at her, but she shook her head in refusal.

After almost an hour of wandering around a phantom Neopia Central, the pair had finally found an Eyrie that was willing to take them to Faerieland. In a few moments, they would take off from one of Neopia's tallest buildings, the National Bank.

"Are you sure you don't need any payment for this?" Ricky asked the Eyrie's owner in concern. The boy grinned, shaking his head.

"Anyone who agrees to flying anywhere with me and Helly deserves to be paid themselves, as far as I'm concerned. Now hold on tight."

Ricky and Chelska didn't have time to ponder the meaning of this ominous advice. With a flapping of wings and a determined squawk, Helly launched herself off the roof and out into the swirling winds.

"Helly, watch it! We've got passengers, please remember."

"What's wrong?" The Eyrie gave a lopsided smile. "I haven't even hit anything yet."

Clinging tightly to Helly's wings, Ricky and Chelska rose into the snowstorm.

000

In a little office just outside the Neopian government headquarters, a young woman was working, reading manuscript after manuscript as they arrived on her desk. Hundreds of aspiring writers had contacted her this week, and it was her job to ascertain whether any of them was good enough for the Neopian Times.

With a sigh, she crumpled the latest submission—a Kacheek's long and tedious poem about a picnic taken in the park. "It was never like this for the last editor," she complained aloud. "Where have all the talented writers gone?"

She turned, resignedly, to the next sheet and began to read.

Within moments, her bad mood had evaporated, to be replaced with a kind of wondering amazement. What was before her was, quite simply, the best story she had ever had to edit: a tale of space invaders, talented pets, loyalty, love, and a beautiful girl destined to save the world, written with such style and elegance that it gripped her from the very start.

A few minutes ago she'd been waiting to go home. Time seemed irrelevant, now. As she read the final page, after almost two dozen chapters of mystery and wonder, tears came to her eyes. This story was perfect.

Carefully lifting the manuscript, she turned to put it into the Times "in-tray" that stood beside her. Suddenly, she noticed one small detail.

There was no name on the manuscript.

"I can't publish this without knowing who wrote it!" the editor near-sobbed, collapsing into her chair.

"That one? Oh, I know who wrote that." A young Lenny stood in the doorway. "Don't know her name, but she's my neighbour. Saw her posting it yesterday."

"Take me there!" Jumping up, the Times editor ran to him. "Show me where she lives. I'll ask her name for the next edition."

The door slammed behind her as she hurried away.

000

"That way, you stupid Eyrie! That way!"

The landscape was a cloudscape.

Pink and blue wisps surrounded everything, like a confusion of dreams. Above them, a tower loomed in the distance, shining as though it was made from rose-coloured glass.

"Faerieland," Jordan announced dizzily, practically diving off Helly's back into the nearest cloud. "Please keep your arms and legs on the psychotic Eyrie until landing."

Contrary to Ricky's expectations, the air was clearer up here, though still bitingly cold. The realm of the Faeries was so high that only a few flurries of snow were breaking through the clouds.

"Stick around for us," Chelska told the pair. "We're going to find Fyora."

Although neither pet had been to Faerieland before, they had imagined that it would be filled with pets and faeries, joyfully swooping among the clouds and playing games. Instead, the silence was eerie. Not a single wingbeat broke the quiet of the cloudplain as the Gelert and Wocky walked towards Faerie City.

"So silent." Ricky stared around. "Where d'you reckon everyone is? I wouldn't have thought the cold would bother them, up here."

Even the shining walls of Faerie City held nothing but empty streets and the occasional fluttering Petpet. Chelska bounded over to the Rainbow Fountain, a mischievous grin on her face. "Here, if we can figure out how to work this thing I could get a free paint job. Faerie doesn't seem to be around."

Ricky sighed, and carried on walking towards Fyora's castle. "They say she's often to be found in the invisible tower attached to the building," he reflected. "How are we supposed to find that?"

"Run very fast and see if we bump into anything?"

"Chelska!"

Instead, the two pets respectfully pushed open the door leading to that part of the castle they could see. The lilac-coloured walls seemed to glow with reflected light as they crossed the enormous hall to the staircase.

Chelska adjusted her huge goggles to squint at the doors. "One of these must lead to Fyora. Shouldn't there be guards and things, anyhow? I may have Blurry Vision, but I should be able to see the usual kind of staff people keep around."

She was right, Ricky had to admit. Even his own house in Neopia Central had a security lamp fixed to the wall outside, waiting to shine on any intruders. This castle, for all its riches, had no security at all. The doors were unlocked, the stairs deserted.

"I don't like this." Chelska's former cheeriness had given way to a strange nervousness as her voice echoed in the empty corridor.

"Nor me. But Fyora must be in here somewhere."

Opening a heavy frosted-glass door, he gasped for a moment as he looked out into empty air. At first, he thought he'd run across a turret under repair; then, as he noticed the warmth still spilling through the doorway and the absence of swirling snow, he realised. What he was seeing was a transparishield corridor.

"Chelska, this way," he called, padding softly across the clear floor. "It's got to be."

"Oops…" Chelska clung to the doorway, not wanting to follow. "Don't look down, Ricks…"

Ignoring the frightened Wocky, Ricky ran the last few steps to the door. On the other side, as he'd expected, was a transparishield room filled with clear glass shelves. Everlasting apples, plushies of Jeran, and battledome weapons seemed at first sight to be suspended in mid-air.

"Well, this is it, all right," he said aloud. "Fyora? Queen Fyora?"

There was no reply. Looking around, Ricky saw a deserted throne, with a stack of unopened letters still lying next to it.

The sound of pawsteps outside made him look up, but it was only Chelska, edging her way along the corridor with her goggles hanging around her neck. "I don't get so scared if I can't see," she explained, turning to face him. "Anyhow, I've just been down to the kitchens looking for a drink of water. Not a single servant in sight. And someone had even left the tap running."

"Fyora's gone too."

The two of them regarded each other for a moment, trying to find a way out of their unhappy confusion. Then Chelska shrugged.

"Well, they must've gone somewhere. People don't just disappear, and I doubt there's that many Invisible Paintbrushes in the world."

"You're right." Ricky managed a smile. "So all we have to do is find them."

"Oh, no." Chelska pulled a face. "Tell me I don't have to walk across that corridor again."

"I'll hold your goggles."

000

"Wheeeee!"

Jordan ducked, wincing, as the blur of yellow fur and feathers shot overhead in the umpteenth skewed loop-the-loop. "Helly. HELLY! For goodness' sake make yourself useful and go buy me something to eat. And walk, please. I don't want to pay for the damages."

Helly flapped enthusiastically into the distance, and her owner collapsed against a fluffy cloud. "Sheesh. Why, oh why did she have to have wings?"

A small flurry of snow showered down on his head, making him scowl up at the sky. "And you can't even escape the weather above the clouds. Oh well." Pulling the hood of his jacket over his head, Jordan looked around for an open door.

Inside the narrow, cylindrical building he wandered into, a single, crumpled white flyer stood out from the painted wall.

----Flight Lessons! Flight Lessons! Flight Lessons!---

Plummeting Pteri? Lopsided Lenny? Dizzy Draik?

We can solve all your Neopet's flying problems!

Remedial lessons held once a week in Faerieland's pleasant surroundings. Charges are low and infrequent.

See downstairs for further details.

Downstairs? Jordan glanced to his right. There was, indeed, a staircase, leading downward in a spiral. Those crazy Faeries must have built a basement beneath the clouds.

He took a quick look down the stairs, but was unable to see the bottom. Shrugging, he began to descend anyhow, his footsteps fading until they could no longer be heard.