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«Patricia!» A gentle voice rang out from the half-light. A pale fairy stood there in the clots of silvery mist. She seemed to be the one controlling the fog. Silver glitter scattered across the fairy’s skin like glowing moles. Bony wings that looked like fish gills protruded from her fragile back. The fairy’s ball gown was of the Opal’s style. It felt like the fairy had flown in from a ball held in Opal. But why are the skirts soiled in the ground? Could it be a grave fairy? But she’s wearing a white dress. Grave fairies usually wear mourning.
The fairy’s silver eyes stared fixedly at Patricia. Although the eyebrows and eyelashes on her eyelids had turned white, the stranger was recognizable.
«Beatrice!» Patricia forgot her caution and stepped toward her sister. «But you are dead!»
Lady Beatrice was found strangled by fairies in the royal garden three months ago. No one had seen with their own eyes how the fairies had lured her into the garden, whirled her around in their circle and killed her, but gossipers said that was what had happened. A wreath of forget-me-nots and roses was torn around Beatrice’s neck. Judging by the thorns on her throat, that’s what the girl was strangled with. Who else can strangle with a flower wreath, if not fairies. After all, flowers are their symbol.
Fairies are able to teach their chosen ones how to conjure with flowers and herbs, and use the magic of plants against unwanted people. Apparently, the fairies considered the beautiful Beatrice a dangerous rival. Or maybe there are more serious enemies and intrigues involved?
«How did you end up here?» Patricia stepped over the stumps of the invaders’ bodies, which no longer joined or stood up. Apparently Beatrice had diverted some of the magic onto herself. She’s the one who brought the mist. Had she become a sorceress after her death?
«I flew in,» she answered. Her voice sounded like a bell, but there was no echo.
«Are you a ghost?»
Beatrice laughed.
«What difference does it make? Come to me, sister!» She held out her skinny arms to Patricia, which also showed silver sparkles. The glowing moles reminded her of a map of constellations on her skin.
Patricia obediently stepped toward Beatrice. Her sister was definitely not a fairy. Then why does Beatrice have something like stiff patterned wings protruding from her back? Maybe it’s just making a masquerade costume, like the long white claws on her toes, like the white butterflies tangled in her hair. Only the fog could not be called part of the masquerade. The silvery mist came with Beatrice and hypnotized everyone: enemies and supporters alike. It was as if everyone who fought had fallen asleep. The ship became as quiet as a grave, and the fog shimmered and thickened.
«Are you Mistress of the Mists?» Patricia asked dazedly, approaching her sister. Beatrice’s face glowed like a true star fairy. She could easily be seen even in the fog.
«Are you the mistress of the ship?»
«It is a sort of.»
«Do you know why I hid your ship from the dragon?»
«Did you do that?» Patricia was genuinely surprised. Why did Beatrice dislike the dragon so much? It’s so beautiful!
«I know the risk your association with the dragon poses to all of Opal,» she whispered. Her bloodless lips were also filled with sparkling sparks like mist.
«How did you escape from Opal?»
«I escaped from the crypt, not Opal. The grave fairies got jealous of how beautiful I turned out to be.»
Patricia didn’t understand, but hugged her sister anyway. The saber hovering above her head hissed unhappily. Why did she dislike Beatrice so much?
Her sister’s curls had lightened to an almost grayish hue, but were softer than silk to the touch. But Beatrice’s skirts were indeed clumps of earth. Had she really been buried alive? How did she get out of the crypt? No one in Patricia’s family had ever fallen into a lethargic sleep. Was Beatrice a newcomer, or did the King of Opal deliberately bury her alive? But Beatrice wasn’t involved in any conspiracy. He probably decided to punish the whole family by destroying the youngest of the sisters. The parents always loved Beatrice more than Patricia. After all, Beatrice was sickly and very delicate. In the old days she would have been tortured with nausea even while boating on the pond, but now she felt fine even on the high seas.
«The King of Opal is not a villain,» Beatrice whispered in Patricia’s ear. «He loves you. Go back to him and he will forgive you.»
«What are you saying?» Patricia wanted to pull away, but Beatrice’s slender hands clutched her waist with a deadening grip.
Where had the soft, velvety skin gone? Her sister’s hands turned to bone. Patricia wanted to break free, but the bony fingers held her tightly. On one cheek Beatrice’s smooth bone was also exposed. Flesh and skin fell from her face like the face of Queen Esperanza rotting in a crypt. In contrast, the wings behind Beatrice’s back glistened and gained power. She soared above the deck and lifted Patricia with her. Though Beatrice’s body was thinner and more fragile than her older sister’s, a weight like Patricia’s did not seem heavy to her. After dying in the arms of the fairies, do even graceful ladies become strong willed?
«Forgive me, sister, but I must take you to Opal to see my master,» Beatrice smiled. The teeth beneath her bloodless lips were sharpened to resemble white needles.
«So you are a fairy after all!»
«It is not quite!» Beatrice laughed again. «You don’t know so much! You don’t even know what I’ve become!»
«Let go, traitor!»
«I’d rather carry you away than a dragon!»
Beatrice soared higher into the starry skies and came upon the very dragon that appeared to be hovering over the ship. The mist concealed it, but did not drive it away. Barely noticing the mist fairy, the dragon showed aggression.
Beatrice howled as the dragon’s claw touched her body. From the mere dragon’s touch, the pale fairy began to burn. She unclenched her bony hands and released her victim. Patricia would have fallen from the height and could have crashed or broken her bones, but the dragon did not let her fall. Its claw picked her up and gently planted her on the sentinel’s stall on the mast. Had the dragon really shown gallantry? Patricia was stunned, but she could no longer get a good look at the dragon and Beatrice in the fog.
A tangle of secrets
Along with Beatrice, the squad of night invaders disappeared from the deck. The crew had fought them all night and was exhausted. It turns out that even magical creatures can be exhausted. Patricia thought they were tireless.
Why did the dragon save her? Could it be a different dragon than the one that planted the fiery threatening letter on the deck? Are there not many dragons flying over the sea?
And why did she think the letter was from a dragon? A dragon could have been signed by some rogue wizard who created the flaming letter with enchantments, not dragon breath.
The golden dragon was magnificent! He was her savior! Patricia sent an air kiss to the heavens and belatedly remembered that as she was now, no one would consider her a sign of favor. Her clothes were torn, her breeches had replaced her aristocratic attire, and her old cloak was tied around her waist like a ragged skirt. Her hair was still beautiful. The dragon probably mistook them for flames, which is why he saved her. Dragons respect fire goddesses, after all.
Patricia has heard that fire goddesses live on the shores of Tioria. Because of them, all the waterfalls along the shores became fire falls, and they are now called fire falls.
Maybe the dragon ship came from Tioria and was ruled by a fire goddess? But no one had ever heard of fire ships, even in Tioria.
The night invaders were definitely sent by the King of Opal. Only he, who gathered magic and magical creatures around him, could conjure something like this. One could expect anything from a king, but Patricia did not expect treachery from her own sister.
The glowing footprint of the mist fairy was left on the deck. It was like the glow imprints of the moon fairies. Patricia wanted to touch it, but someone suddenly grabbed her arm.
«Nethopyrina! Let go!» Patricia struggled, but it was impossible to fight off the huge wings of the fairy bat.
«You’ll die if you touch it,» warned Netopyrina. «This is the mark of a dead fairy.»
«It’s the mark of my own sister!»
«She’s not your sister anymore.»
«You think I can’t recognize my own sister?» Patricia was indignant.
Sometimes Nethopyrina takes on too much. The Bat Fairy wrapped herself in her wings like a dark cloak and hissed, squinting at the glittering trail on the deck.
«These are dangerous creatures. They come with the fog, the storm, or the moonlight. They themselves come from the world of the dead and their purpose is to lead the living away. But the one on our ship is even more dangerous than they are. It’s unnatural, as if it was created artificially. Even magic can be untypical at times.»
«It doesn’t matter anymore,» Patricia said.
«So you’ve stopped believing that the dead fairy is your sister?»
«She is the mist fairy, not the dead fairy. She was brought to our ship by the fog.»
«It is more like magic.»
«You think some fairy from the Opal’s crypt could have taken the form of my dead sister?»
«That’s not what I mean!» Nethopyrina wrinkled her nose. «The dead body definitely belongs to some Opal noblewoman, quite possibly your sister, but the spirit inside it is an outsider.»
«So some evil spirit has taken over Beatrice’s body?»
«I’m not sure,» Nethopyrina hesitated. «I’m not familiar with this kind of magic.»
«If there is magic here, it’s only a quarter of it. Beatrice’s consciousness and speech are the same as they were when she was alive. Only her former honesty has been replaced by cunning.»
«Well, it happens to people without magic. Some people’s character can deteriorate with age or under the pressure of circumstances,» said Nethopyrina with the aplomb of a philosopher. «Humans are weak creatures.»
«Beatrice is a traitor!» Patricia still couldn’t digest that.
«She could have been influenced by a magician and she doesn’t know what she’s doing,» Zeligena comforted Patricia. «I’ve seen tomb guardians and cemetery fairies! They’re usually led by a dragon, or the Emperor of Magic.»
Zeligena was confused and incredibly embarrassed that her tongue was slurring. She too was probably too tired against the pointless battle with invulnerable warriors.
«You were lucky, Captain. The Grave Fairy could have killed you with just a kiss on the forehead,» Nethorypina remembered belatedly. «If she had kissed you on the cheek, your body would have begun to gray and decompose, black spots would have appeared.»
«Grave fairies usually use kisses as a weapon of destruction,» Zeligena nodded. «They kiss girls on the cheeks and guys on the lips when they wander into a graveyard at night, and the next morning they’re rotting relics.»
«You’ve been watching the graveyard from the swamp?» Patricia wondered.
«I didn’t sit in the swamp all the time. The swamp is my home, but sometimes people come out of the swamp for a walk. Besides, I knew a cemetery that became a swamp.»
«I’ve seen fairies who kiss girls on the lips, too,» said Nethopyrina, grinning. «You can put a grave worm in the lips and it will eat your brains out. A grave fairy named Amnesia taught this technique to everyone.»
«Didn’t the name of the disease of memory loss come from her?» Patricia wondered. It felt as if she already knew about this fairy from somewhere.
«That’s right,» Nethopyrina nodded.
Patricia picked up her saber, which, in the absence of a battle, lay quietly on the deck as if it were not magical. But when there was a whiff of blood somewhere, the saber would wake up and fly into battle. It’s convenient to have a magic weapon, but it’s even more convenient to have your own dragon. You can always just fly away on it, if you have nowhere to go from the enemy troops. A dragon can also shoot fire. If flying over the «Bloodsucker», he breathed down. He would burn the entire ship in the open sea.
Can a magical ship be burned by dragon fire? Patricia hadn’t thought about it somehow, but it was a topic worth discussing.
«Can a dragon burn a dead fairy with its breath?» she asked Nethopyrina and Zeligena. Both hesitated.
«It can burn a living one,» Zeligena replied. «He burns mermaids even in the water. If he breathes fire on the waves, all that remains is a charred skeleton. Would you like to ask him to burn the night guest?
How could I ask him? Patricia sighed sadly. Her fairy friends are such dreamers!
«Beatrice was only seventeen when she died,» Patricia recalled.
«How old are you?» Nethopyrina was keenly interested.
«I am nineteen.»
«That’s all. I’m nineteen centuries past my nineteenth birthday.»
«You don’t look so old!»
«Fairies don’t age! Didn’t you know that?»
«Of course I knew it, but when you get to know them closely, you’re still amazed.»
She looked like a girl of eighteen, except for the wings, webbing, and wide bat ears.
«How old are you?» Patricia asked Zeligena for the sake of politeness.
The swamp fairy was embarrassed, realizing that a large age was not welcome among humans.
«Well, I’m a couple of millennia old,» Zeligena twirled a green strand of her hair around her finger and lowered her eyes in embarrassment. The swamp fairy’s eyelashes and eyebrows were also green. How beautiful! But for some reason, such beauty scares people. Patricia had gotten used to the charms of fairies, having spent time with them on the same pirate ship.
Before, her company was just her sister and other court ladies. At first they had played fantasy games in the royal garden, but then the fairies had come to Opal and the games had gotten bloody.
It was a memory that came to mind. Beatrice is dead in the garden, and from her body stretches a thread of magic and mystery. Fairies wind the tangle of bloody flowers. They laugh and dance in the air around Beatrice’s corpse.
«She is so young, so unwise,» they hum. «She is so sweet! Her fate is beyond the graves.»
The fairies’ laughter was annoying. Patricia struggled to break free of the memories and went to her quarters. Beatrice’s night visit had been a complete surprise, but she couldn’t think about it all day. It was not enough that her dead brother came to her after Beatrice. Patricia imagined Cassian slipping through the cabin door holding his own severed head. Can dead heads speak? What if the head spoke in his hands? That would be a nightmare. Beatrice is still tolerable. She must admit that after her death she became even more beautiful than she was in life. Patricia always admired her sister. She wondered why the King of Opal would want Patricia back when he already has Beatrice. Did he loves Patricia? Such love was worse than hate.
Patricia was sharpening her saber.
«If you could fly, I’d send you into the King of Opal’s heart!» Patricia had heard of magic swords that could be sent flying and go straight to the heart of your enemy, even if he lived across the ocean. Where could she get a sword like that? True, if the sword fails to deal with the enemy, it will fly back and kill the one who sent it. A powerful wizard like the King of Opal could send back magic swords.
«Better send an arrow of cupid into his heart,» a female voice advised. Some mermaid peered through the porthole. A crown of pearls glistened in her green hair. It seemed to be the queen of the sea.
«Good morning!» Patricia thought of nothing more than a banal greeting.
«It’s not good morning! There was a dragon flying over the sea! It could have hurt us,» the mermaid complained. As if Patricia could do anything against the dragon!
«He’s not evil.»
«That depends on who he’s mean to. Did you make a deal with him?»
«It is nothing!» Patricia was honest.
«It’s a pity. I could have gotten some privileges from him,» the mermaid sighed.
«Do you mean the dragon or the King of Opal?»
«You could seduce the King of Opal, too, but he’d never be honest with you and might try to cast a spell.»
«And what is about the golden dragon?»
«That’s for you to decide. You know the dragon better than I do.»
