Chapter 15

Now that Christopher knows he can't stop all the soldiers, he does as much damage as he can to the initial twenty. He wants them so mad that they'll follow him instead of the wagon. Christopher heads due west. The remaining fifteen follows him without pause. The bigger troop force probably never even sees the wagon, so they take off after him also.

Christopher hadn't realized it at the time, but he has taken a very serious wound. It must have been a sword swipe across his right. From the dark blood coming from it, he figures it has hit the liver. Just as he makes the tree line of the forest he loses all consciousness and falls to the ground.

Christopher has no sense of time, but when he wakes Shadow is standing just above his head. Enemy soldiers, who are looking for them, surround them.

"That's weird, one just looked right at me and kept going." Just when Christopher is about to talk to himself out loud again, and ask what the abyss, Katarina puts her hand on his lips. Now that the grogginess is wearing off Christopher can tell she is standing on his chest. She put hers finger to her lips and motions for him to be silent.

"So fairies do have magic."

When Christopher wakes up the second time it is still dark and Katarina is curled up sleeping on his chest. He can hear Shadow grazing just outside of the forest, eating the grass of the rolling hills. Christopher gently taps Katarina on the head to wake her, and he gets an electrical shock for his efforts.

His exclamation wakes her up, and after she apologizes she explains to him, "Forgive, but my kind has invented this new self-protection because it is in our sleep that we are taken prisoners." Apparently fairies are not just hard to catch once they are up and moving, but their magical powers has the ability for them to blend in with the very woods that give them their powers.

"So that was how a hundred enemy soldiers could be standing all around us and yet not see us?"

Katarina is exhausted because she had to put all the energy she could muster into making the cloak big enough to hide Shadow, as well as heal Christopher's wound. A wound, no doubt, that would have killed him if not for Katarina. It at least explains how the unicorn healed so quickly back at the enemy capital.

Even though Christopher still feels weak, and he can tell his beautiful new fairy friend with the pink sparkly see-through wings needs more rest, he thinks it best to travel under the cover of darkness from now on. The fact that these woods are Katarina and her kin's home is going to make things a little easier.

She tells Christopher in her sweet musical voice, "Head south, Christopher."

He isn't really sure what his next move should be, and he doesn't know what lay south, but to Christopher it seems like going away from the fight.

Katarina explains, "The enemy is now on full deployment, and even with my magical abilities we will not go unnoticed for long." She continues to explain. "If we go south and then turn west back towards your homeland it will be safer."

"First of all safer had never really been my concern since sweet little Sarah had died, and I wasn't even sure if I wanted to go back home. I had sent many innocents north, and that prospect gave me great moments of curiosity to see where they had gotten to, but it also seemed like running from the fight.

"Then I got a strange smile on my face, as for some reason I pictured the looks on the faces of the last four girls I rescued and picked up and put into the wagon, where they were met by dozens of fairies, a red fox, another sweet teenage girl and a minotaur driving the wagon. I could just see the little girls smiling, and nothing puts a smile on my face faster than that."

After the smile fades, more than anything Christopher wants to go back east and kill the enemy king, but now that his own bazaar has been burned down with lots of his allies dead, Christopher knows he'll never get within a league of his city, much less within killing distance to him.

"It dawned on me that if it was the dark kingdom even further to the east that was pulling all the strings, then maybe I should pay that country a visit and repay some of the misery they had spread throughout the world, or at least this continent. I wasn't sure how far the darkness had spread."

When Christopher tells Katarina of that idea she emphatically insists that he doesn't.

The more Christopher thinks about it the more Karma starts humming a poetic justice song. Oh how sweet it is sounding to his ears. For now he will take Katarina's advice and head south, but when it comes time to turn west he will inform her that he is going east.

"I'm sure she won't like it, and will plead with me with those beautiful piercing green eyes of hers, but it just feels right." Christopher mumbles to himself.

Before sunrise another storm blows in. It isn't anywhere near as fierce as the last one, but it makes things miserable enough. With the winds howling through the trees, those very same trees whipping about making forward progress an exercise in pain and futility, as the world batters him with its natural force. The rain is a nuisance until a strong gust of wind makes it feel like stings from bees. Christopher is now shivering from within his brown riding leathers. Christopher has Katarina safely tucked away in his shirt pocket.

As his annoyance grows it is almost their undoing, for they ride right by an enemy encampment of at least fifty strong, but most of them seem to be hiding out in their little pup tents. Bastards. The on-duty guards either aren't paying attention, or Katarina does a little of her hocus-pocus as she pokes her head up out of his pocket, for they slip on by without incidence.

Christopher, Katarina and Shadow travel for about an hour after sun up, and Christopher starts noticing a subtle, but significant difference in the forest. This part of the forest isn't just old, it is ancient. The forest becomes so thick with undergrowth and has so many different types of plants and bushes, many more than Christopher has ever seen before, that he has to dismount Shadow and walk. Many of the tree limbs seem to have a moss-like substance hanging eerily from them.

"Out of nowhere a gray rocky crevice that was surrounded by green, red and brown bushes, with green vines with red flowers going down into it, opened up like a scar into the very ground itself, and if it weren't for Katarina leading the way I would have never found the trail that led down into it.

"Even as we were passing through it the trail disappeared behind us. I could actually see the vines moving to cover our tracks. To look at it from the outside it appeared that the walls were vertical and impassable. I'm sorry, I will not speak on the specifics any further, because I do not want this story to harm Katarina and her people's safety in any way."

They wind their way in and out of the trail that meanders its way through the crevice, which at times is barely big enough to allow Christopher through. Shadow is taking scrapes on his flanks and he is becoming quite irritated. At last they come to a wall of vines that are as thick as Christopher's arms, and cover much of the eastern side of this part of the crevice that ends in a huge hill rock outcropping. Man, Christopher hopes Katarina does not want him to climb. He is still tired, and he doubts his ability to do it right now. Besides that, Shadow will have to wait here alone.

Katarina waves her hand in a delicate ballet of motion and speaks some very lovely words, even if Christopher can't understand them. The vines part to show a hidden cave. The opening is plenty big for Shadow to fit through.

"As we walked into the cave I got the most wonderful smell of flowers and something else I could not describe, but it was very soothing."

Katarina tells them, "Wait here." and then she flies off.

Not five minutes later hundreds of fairies come flying towards them. Their movement in the air is poetic, and the hum from their wings sings a song of old. A dozen fairies of all shapes and sizes, they certainly love their colorful dresses, which usually match the color of their sparkling wings, grab hold of Christopher's sleeves and start pulling him deeper into the cave. Shadow doesn't even seem to mind that about forty of them land on him.

They go downhill at an easy pace until they come around a bend and a huge cavern opens up, with tens of thousands of fairies going about their daily lives. At first Christopher wonders how they can get flowers to grow inside without sunlight, until he realizes it is bright as day in here.

"I looked around in awe, and I physically felt some weight being lifted off my darkened soul. There were numerous openings high at the top of the cavern, and the light filtered in to hit crystals that were growing singularly and in bunches all over the cavern. The effect was one of a rainbow myriad of colors that when they met at the flower gardens it came as white light."

Off to the right there are massive crystals hanging from the ceiling, and from a couple of them drips water into pools of crystal clear water. There, many of the children are playing. There is also a huge pool of crystal clear water almost exactly in the center of the cavern. It is fed from an underground spring, and then leaves the pool in a little stream that goes a dozen paces before disappearing into the rocky ground again. The fairies have set up a pulley system that allows them to get fresh water to their gardens. The ropes are made from vines and the containers are made from flowers, and it is wonderful.