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Stand Your Ground: Legend of the Monster – and the Firebird that Never Returned

Chapter 7

Questions

Vidia crouched next to a rock, tenderly feeling the back of her head.

She glanced up at the salamander, who was examining the strands of black hair that he'd snagged on his claw. Vidia's hairtie was lying in pieces far away. She pushed her hair out of her face and crawled to another boulder so the Salamander wouldn't see her.

He shook the hair off his foot and reached toward where he'd last seen Vidia. He rolled a boulder out of the way so he could look around better, and Vidia pulled herself tighter against the rock.

"Vidia!" Scruffy called. "Are you okay?"

"Don't worry, Scruffy." Tinkerbell assured him. "I saw her move – I don't think she's hurt.'

"Oh, thank goodness!" Scruffy sighed in relief.

"These are Firebird feathers!" Fawn exclaimed, examining their cage. "The monster! He plucked the Firebird's feathers!"

"You're giving me horrid ideas about what he'll do to us." Rosetta spoke up after a moment.

Scruffy frowned, puzzled. "But you haven't got feathers -"

Iridess stepped in front of him, slowly opening and shutting her wings.

"I get it." Scruffy nodded. "I'll get us out of here." he started chewing on the smaller end of one of the feathers' rachis.

The salamander circled the stones where Vidia had vanished. He now stood father from the sharp rock that she'd seen earlier. She leaped to her feet and sprinted toward the rock, keeping her head down.

The salamander spotted her in less than a second, but he was several steps away. He took those steps quickly and reached out for her, but she jumped up onto a boulder as he smashed his hand down on where she had been.

She jumped from boulder to boulder until he got close again. She then jumped down as he started getting angry and smashed a nearby boulder. She flinched as rubble flew everywhere.

"Vidia!" she could hear Silvermist and Iridessa most clearly. "Get out! Run!"

She reached the sharp rock and jumped up onto the top. It was slippery, and she had to hold onto depressions in the wall to keep from falling. The salamander reached for her. She suddenly lay down flat against the rock and hoped that the salamander would follow her plan. He used the tips of his claws to scrape the rock, trying to get her to fall off. She snatched up a rock and brought it down, hard, on his claw, breaking it off.

He roared in pain and rage, and pulled back his hand, intending to slam it into her, crushing her into the wall, but as he swung, Vidia jumped off, letting him crash his hand into the sharp edge of the rock.

The salamander let out a howl so loud that all the fairies covered their ears. A few rocks tumbled down from the ceiling. Vidia held her hands over her ears as she stumbled across the floor to where her friends were being held.

She tugged on the rock, then circled around and pushed on it as hard as she could.

The howl stopped.

"How do I get you out?" Vidia demanded, pulling at one of the many knots holding the feather bag together.

"Run, Vidia! You can't get us out!" Rosetta urged her. "Go get help!"

"There has to be something." Vidia insisted. "Tinkerbell – a lever! What do I do?"

"There isn't anything here that would work that you could lift." Tinkerbell shook her head. "Grab the pixie dust if you can and make a boat to sail back to pixie hollow. Get Queen Clarion to send help."

Vidia shook her head and pushed at the boulder again. It didn't budge.

"There isn't anything you can do!" Fawn joined in. "Vidia – he's coming over."

"No!" Vidia didn't stop pushing at the boulder in vain.

"Please, Vidia!" Iridessa reached through the net and touched her shoulder. Vidia shook her off and redoubled her efforts.

"Vidia!" Scruffy cried. "Look out!"

Vidia dived to one side and rolled to safety as the salamander tried to crush her.

"Please, Vidia! Run!" Tinkerbell begged.

Vidia looked at her friends for a moment. Her eyes lingered on Scruffy.

"I'm not leaving you there!" she called, promising. "I'll be back."

"Only when you've got help, honey." Rosetta said, warningly. "Or you'll be eaten right after us."

The salamander spotted Vidia and swung at her, but Vidia jumped down and hid behind another boulder.

Tinkerbell turned to her friends. "Dessa, can you make a light?"

"Not a bright one."

"Good enough. Sil, can you pull some water from the ground?"

"Not a lot."

"That's good enough. Dessa, shine your light through Sil's water and make it reflect everywhere. Light seems to disorient Kemalth a bit. We'll distract him so that Vidia can get away." Tinkerbell organized them. "Scruffy, Fawn, Rosetta – grab rocks and toss them across the floor so that they'll make noise – don't toss them where Vidia will run, though. Try to make him turn away from her."

"Right." Fawn saluted, dutifully, and started reaching through the feather net to grasp small stones.

"Can we throw them at Kemalth?" Rosetta asked, eagerly.

"That's your choice." Tinkerbell grinned.

"My choice is made. If he's going to eat me he's going to pay for it first." Rosetta fluffed her hair and grabbed a rock.
"Dessa, Sil, go!" Tinkerbell ordered.

Vidia stumbled as lights shone everywhere. She could hear the other fairies yelling loudly and rocks landing all around. She got up and sprinted toward the doorway. The salamander was batting away rocks that were pelting toward him, but was still scanning the cavern for where she was hiding. Vidia smiled, grimly. That must have been Tink's plan.

She turned back and saw the others working determinedly. They don't think I can be any help in a life threatening situation. She thought, discouraged. And why would I think otherwise?

She continued down the tunnel.

Vidia walked until she got to the boiling river. After she discovered that the river encircled the cave entrance like a moat she started to figure out how to build a bridge without wood.

It very soon became dark, and she camped. She listened intently, not wanting to ear sounds of the salamander eating her friends, but unable to stop listening. The only sounds she heard were of the animals and insects chirping and buzzing that it was evening, and that they were all on their way to their nests.

Vidia pulled her leaf blanked from her backpack and laid it out on the ground. She lay down but couldn't close her eyes. Everything that had happened was replaying itself in her mind. She heard a slight sound and rolled to her feet, grabbing a stick off the ground and holding it at the ready.

She saw bright eyes in the dark. She imagined bats, wolves, foxes or weasels. She took a quick look all around, then looked back at where she'd seen the eyes, but they had left. Completely unnerved, Vidia quickly built a fire to scare away animals.

She lay down again, now and again casting quick glances around in the dark. She didn't see any more eyes, and started to wonder if they'd been her imagination.

She pulled the book out and opened it up to the description of the island.

It was described as being full of jungles, with many rivers. The whole island was supposed to be cool and wet – a perfect exile for a creature that loves fire. It was supposed to be extremely hard to light a fire on the island, besides for the one dormant volcano.

"So how did the island change?" Vidia spoke aloud. "Unless the entire tome is wrong, this island has completely changed in the last few centuries. I wonder if the Firebird had anything to do with it." She rolled onto her stomach, propping her chin up on her fists, her elbows resting on the warm, moist ground.

"The myth of the monster is a lie." she recalled. "Why would he tell someone that? The myth of the monster. Not the 'legend', but the 'myth'. Something that everyone knows, but isn't true. No one knows what kind of monster it is . . . but we know it ate fairies. Maybe it didn't actually – no Kemalth admitted it."

Vidia tossed a stick in the fire and took a cautious look into the darkness.

"But maybe they knew it was a Salamander back then. So the characteristics are fireproof and waterproof. Maybe one of those is the lie? But when I met Scruffy he thought it breathed fire. Perhaps hundreds of years ago everyone thought that, and the Firebird figured out that it was a myth. That doesn't help at all."

In the middle of muttering about the clues the Firebird had left, Vidia finally dropped off to sleep.

Stand Your Ground – 15thday

The sky was turning gray when Vidia jerked awake. Her fire was starting to go out, and it was still dark enough that ferocious creatures might still be hunting. Vidia looked around. There was no more tinder in the light, and she had learned her lesson in caution in the last fourteen days.

Vidia paused. It struck her suddenly that it would only be hours until she would never fly alone again. She swallowed and held back tears.

Going back to the present, she dumped out the contents of her backpack to see if she had anything flammable.

"From a trickle to a roar." she muttered, worrying about the salamander and his captives. "Roar. Did he mean that sentence in the usual way? Blue dust to yellow pixie dust?" She pulled a leaf bag from the pile of stuff and examined it to see if there was a little dust left inside, but there were only the very tiniest little bits clinging to the fabric. "Trickle to the roar of a lion? What else roars?" she wondered, frowned. She sighed. "No pixie dust. I'll never find out." she tossed the bag into the flames and watched it catch fire.

The fire exploded upward more than twice her height.

"AH!" she screamed and jumped backwards. The fire spread outwards, and the edge of the 'Legend of the Monster' caught on fire. Vidia snatched the corner of the book and scrambled away from the majestic flame. She quickly used wet dirt to douse the flame on the book, but it wouldn't have mattered if it had burned.

"I understand." Vidia said, aloud. "I understand." she stood up. The heat from the fire was intense, but she didn't really notice. She smiled.

"I don't know what went wrong last time, Kemalth, that time when the Firebird came for justice, and to protect the fairies of Neverland." she shouted to the air, enraged, knowing that he wasn't listening. "But this time nothing will go wrong. I know the myth of the monster – and you're going to pay for the lives you've ended."