Rani laid in the debris, floating face down. A flying piece of stone from the fountain had bent a sparrow man named Terence's wings, and gashed his arm. Water had soaked a large number of faeries, and the table with pumpkin soup had been split in half.
All that was left of the fountain was a damp puddle on the grass where the corpse of Rani laid. Her blue dress was torn, and covered in the excess amount of blue blood that poured from a water faerie's body. Feathers from Brother Dove formed an X over her head.
The music played on, in rhythm with the beat of Brother Dove's wings as he landed beside her.
Tink was the first to go up, and poke Rani. Her eyes were open. She was alive, tears flowing down her face. Vidia sped to her side.
"Darling!" her dark red lips curled. "Look what you've done to the fountain. Do you want the gremlins to realize-" she quieted, glancing around, and tucked the red jewel behind her back.
"If you're going to do things like this because you can't fly, are you sure you should really be endangering the other faeries?" she asked instead.
"It was an accident," Rani said, as a piece of the fountain which had been stuck on a branch of the sycamore hurtled to the ground. Vidia dropped her jewel and sack of eggshells. The fountain piece smashed the jewel, the eggshells and the golden pot Tink had been working on all day.
Tink's tiny fists balled in rage.
Only the jewel wasn't crushed, and it had deep scratches. Vidia twisted her lips. "I think, perhaps, a faerie without wings ought to be killed before something worse happens."
Tink nodded furiously. Fira turned her eyes away, nodding her head as well.
Rani crawled backwards, eyes wide. "Please, I didn't mean to!"
"Sweetie," Vidia said to Rani, "You really have to accept that you're useless." She took the hammer from Tink's belt, and raised it over Rani's head.
Rani pulled herself up, and started running.
"Then for the good of the other faeries don't come back!" Fira shouted after her. "We can't have another war with the gremlins, because of a wingless faerie's stupidity!"
Rani didn't stop running until she found a willow tree to hide under, and started weeping. A puddle rose around her, until she used up all the water in her body. Then the dark woods were silent.
Rani got up, and walked into a part of the forest she didn't know. "I can't go back to the Home Tree if they want me dead," she thought. The sound of her footsteps disappeared into the blackness of the night.
Rani came to a trickling branch of Havendish Stream. She walked to the edge of the stream, and stepped in. The cool water ran over her bloody feet. With a kick, Rani splashed a frog that was sitting by the side of the stream. He croaked and flopped into the water.
Rani splashed around, then made her way back to shore. She stepped out of the stream when she saw a faerie-sized birch-bark canoe. Water faeries used them to go exploring. This one had either been swept downstream because a careless faerie didn't tie it up properly, or else it had been stolen and abandoned by a goblin or gremlin.
Rani moved her hand over a puddle at the bottom of the canoe. The water formed a ball. She tossed it into the river, where it dissolved. Rani ran her hands over the rest of the boat, making sure it was watertight, and hopped in.
Moonlight lit the water as Rani paddled downstream. A waterfall whispered from afar. Rani didn't know where she was going.
Peeking over the edge of the canoe, Rani looked down at her reflection in the water. She twisted into an uncomfortable position that allowed her to see her back. The wounds where her wings used to be dripped with blood from her fall. She reached a hand backwards to touch them. A drop of blood fell into the water.
Rani's canoe passed under a moss-covered log, and she heard a soft splash. She sat up straight. There was a whiplike motion in the dark water behind, a water snake following the scent of blood.
Rani strained with all her might. Snakes were as dangerous to faeries as hawks. She beat the water with the paddle, but it felt thick and heavy, seeming to go slower than it should. The canoe turned as she desperately tried to go forward. She shouted as she caught on a stick, and wished she had two oars.
Finally she freed herself, and hit a current. The canoe sped forward. Rani heard a soft hissing sound. Forcing herself to glance over her shoulder, she saw the snake was several canoe lengths away. The hissing was water racing over rocks.
The snake neared the boat as Rani navigated the choppy path. "Get back!" Rani shouted. She raised her paddle, and threw it at the snake's head.
The snake swerved to catch it, perhaps, thinking it was food. Rani saw the paddle slip through its mouth. The snake thrashed as it tried to devour the paddle, but its long stick shape got stuck in the snake's throat. The snake drifted back, as it worked on swallowing it, and Rani's boat floated ahead.
The current was roaring now, and the water turned white. The boat was ripped apart in the rapids, and Rani's body was thrust against a rock. The water swallowed her. Somebody laughed.
"Not all faeries have wands, you know."
"They should have wings though. Looks like this one's got ripped out."
"Hahaha!"
A fist squeezed Rani, and she gagged. The world came into light, and she was farther away from the shore than she'd thought. She was cold, and the arm which had been dislocated didn't work at all anymore. Rani couldn't sit up, and even with predators above her, thought she might fall asleep. Some mermaids had placed her next to them on a rock.
"It's dead." One of them said. She had green eyes, green hair, and skin made of scales.
A second mermaid with blue eyes and blue hair ran her finger over Rani's long hair. "No, she's not."
The mermaids leaned over Rani, their tails in the water.
"Maybe it wants to know where it is," the blue-eyed mermaid said, then whispered, "Ask it if it has a wand."
"Fairies can't talk," the green-eyed mermaid snapped. She looked down at Rani.
Rani looked up at her for a long time, before making herself say, "Actually, yes, we can."
"Did you hear that?" the green-eyed mermaid looked at her friend. They laughed, and the blue-eyed mermaid scooped her up.
"Are you a faerie?" she asked.
Rani coughed. "Yes." She stared into the mermaid's blue eyes. "Aren't you—Soop?"
The mermaid's eyebrows raised. Soop's name wasn't really Soop, but only mermaids could pronounce her real name. "I'm not Soop," she said. "Unintelligent creatures who don't know better think we look alike. I'm Oola. Who are you, and how do you know Soop?"
"I'm the faerie who came to Mermaid Lagoon-"
"If you're a faerie," the other mermaid interrupted, "where are your wings?"
"Shut up, Mara," said Oola. Oola called Mara her nickname, for the benefit of Rani who wouldn't be able to pronounce Mara's real name either. "She obviously cut them off so she could swim with the mermaids."
Mara smiled. "Swimming is better than flying," she said.
"Well…" Rani had cut off her wings because she'd needed to ask the mermaids for one of their combs to save Mother Dove's egg. "…I suppose that's why."
Mara looked Rani over. Rani pulled her blond hair out of her eyes, and straightened her dirty blue dress, which was in rags. "So," Mara said, "what are you doing—"
"—here?" Rani shook her head. "Hiding for my life."
The mermaids gasped. "Why? Who wants to kill you?" Oola laughed.
"You should never leave the Mermaid Lagoon, in that case," Mara told her.
"Well, perhaps I won't. I was just running away," she explained. "And then I got chased by a snake…It looked like this..." Rani scooped up a handful of water. Cupping it in her palms, she turned it into a ball, and stretched it so that it had a long tail and forked tongue. She breathed on it, and the water snake's tail flickered.
"How did you do that?" Oola asked.
"I'm a water fairy," Rani explained.
Oola touched the water snake. It melted, and fell into the stream. Oola laughed. She whispered in Mara's ear. Mara whispered something back.
"Come and live with us," Oola said.
"You seem happy in water," Mara pointed out.
Rani's smile faded. "I can't breathe underwater," she said. "Unless… Perhaps if I make a few bubbles and wear them as a necklace, when I want to breathe, I could pop them into my mouth—"
"You'll be like a tiny mermaid," Oola violently grabbed Rani from Mara.
THE MERMAIDS TOOK Rani through the mermaid lagoon.
Rani saw clouds of blue fish, and three more mermaids sitting on a rock. A merman was picking seaweed—he was the palace chef gathering it for salad. Two merboys slapped each other as they played a game in the coral.
Rani put a bubble in her mouth, gulping the air. She knew the mermaids had a wind room in their castle, which she could use as well. The wind room was a room full of air that the mermaids used when their gills got tired.
The outline of a castle appeared as they swam farther. It was made of mother-of-pearl, and reached from the floor of the lagoon halfway to the surface.
"I'll show you my room in the palace," Oola told Rani.
Talking underwater wasn't hard if you knew the trick—it was in the listening. Rani listened carefully to each bubble that came out of Oola's mouth. It gave her voice an accent that made you think of things that were squishy and round.