Chapter 4

After endless dizzying turns down the spiral staircase, Jesse, Riley, and Sherri stepped into a large underground stone chamber, their hearts pounding with apprehension. The space looked like a pit cave with many crevices in the rough-hewn stone walls from which light flickered casting shadows across the chamber floor. There was also a tunnel leading from the chamber to a bright source of light. Jesse pressed onward, his senses on high alert, as he led Riley and Sherri through the tunnel, ducking to avoid hitting their heads. Finally, they came to a larger chamber, where the walls reflected light stemming from a four-foot-tall icicle-shaped crystal embedded in the center of the floor.

“Hello!” A voice from behind startled them. They turned and saw a three-foot-tall pixie with reddish wings entering the chamber from the tunnel. It had the form of a human boy with pointy ears, red hair, freckles, and green eyes. He was barefoot and bare-chested and wore tights made of green leaves. “You must be Jesse,” the boy pixie said.

“Yes,” Jesse gulped, “and these are my friends Riley and Sherri. Who are you and why did you bring us down here?”

“Before I introduce myself, I have the honor to present to you our Queen Kerrina who can explain everything,” the boy pixie stepped away from the tunnel, bowing his head to a beautiful pixie appearing at the entrance. She had butterfly-shaped wings that refracted the light and shimmered in every imaginable color. Her oval face radiated warmth, her sapphire eyes twinkled, and the smile on her Cupid bow lips exuded a friendly greeting. She wore a long shimmering pearl gown and, on her head, a ruby red dingleberry flower for a crown.

Riley and Sherri curtsied and bowed their heads. Jesse stood starstruck, and Riley had to elbow him to remind him of his manners to bow his head to Her Majesty.

“Welcome, my dears, to the Realm of Kerr,” Queen Kerrina said with a wave of her crystal wand sprinkling the three visitors with pixie dust. “We are the inhabitants of the Blue Forest and brought you down here where we can transform ourselves into human-looking pixies and be able to speak with you.”

With her wand, the queen motioned for the boy pixie, who looked like a human boy of fifteen, to move forward and said, “This is Yesse, my son and faithful servant, who has wandered the planet for the last 2500 earth years searching for a human boy to save our Realm. He traveled to Mesopotamia, the Cradle of Civilization. He spent hundreds of earth years in Egypt among the Pharaohs, the Romans, the Knights of the Round Table, and other peoples until he found the Vikings and lured them to the New World before Columbus, but to no avail. When people from the Old World started to arrive and settle in this land you call America, our hopes grew that Yesse would find the perfect specimen. You, my dear Jesse, are the human for whom we have been waiting and who possesses all the right attributes.”

“Why?” Jesse freaked out. “What did I do?”

“You, Jesse,” Queen Kerrina tapped his shoulder with her wand sprinkling more pixie dust over him, “you were born to an Irish mother who lived in the Realm of Kiar of our ancestors and who believed in our kind. Most important of all, you are similar to Yesse in age, looks, and bravery.”

Sherri struggled to suppress a giggle but couldn’t help herself from commenting, “But he doesn’t have wings or pointy ears!”

“My dear,” the Queen twirled her wand, spreading more pixie dust, “if Jesse had wings and pointy ears, he would not be human, and we need a human to save my kind from a horrible trick perpetrated by Torix, a blue peskie.”

Queen Kerrina recounted the horrors the blue peskie had inflicted upon them, and the three listened, their faces aghast but attentive.

“Torix was banished from our Realm for his evil doings, especially for terrorizing all living creatures in the forest. He returned and took revenge by luring all the male pixies – young and old - into an impenetrable hollow, and then rolled an iron-rich stone over the entrance, sealing it and imprisoning them for eternity.”

Riley raised her hand to get the Queen’s attention. “Your Majesty, why doesn’t Yesse or anyone of your kind remove the stone?”

“If I may,” Yesse stepped forward to explain and defend his honor. “We are extremely sensitive to iron and have an intense physical reaction when we touch it. Long-term exposure to iron can be fatal for us. It is for this reason that we cannot live in cities. The extensive metals present in cities have a weakening effect on us and ultimately drain our magic, our lifeforce.”

“But I don’t understand one thing,” Riley persisted. “How come you didn’t get caught and imprisoned by this evil blue peskie?”

Queen Kerrina again used her wand but this time pointed it at Yesse in a scolding manner. “Fortunately - one might say - Yesse disobeyed my wishes on that fateful day to stay in the glen and do his homework, practicing his shapeshifting abilities. Instead, he snuck away and took Aisee to a faraway lake to show her his dragonfly abilities to surf the ripples on the water.”

“Mother,” Yesse said in a hushed voice, “You are embarrassing Aisee. She is right behind you.”

Queen Kerrina gracefully turned and stepped aside, unveiling a girl pixie who blushed and her wings jittered nervously with the sudden attention. She had a fair to olive complexion depending on the angle of the light shining on her face, complete with blue eyes, a freckled stubby nose, and the soft blush of roses in her cheeks. Her strawberry blonde hair was brushed back and tied in a long flowing ponytail, revealing pointy ears, and she wore a pink-purple dress and a rainbow-colored choker with a glowing pendant attached to the front.

“Ah, yes, this is Aisee, my apprentice,” the Queen introduced the girl pixie. “She is 2000 years old, or fourteen in human terms, very smart and perceptive. Without her abilities, you and Jesse would not be here. You see, although Yesse found the one human boy he deemed worthy to wield courage and strength to help us, he could not open Jesse’s mind to hear our whispers, our calls of distress.”

“Yep, that’s Jesse!” Riley and Sherri said in unison, nodding their heads. “Too much Minecraft distracting his mind,” Sherri added with an apologetic grin.

The Queen continued, describing how Aisee used her magic abilities to help Yesse, and three summers ago coaxed Riley, Sherri, and Jesse to become inseparable friends, as thick as thieves. While Riley and Sherri were asleep at night, Aisee would whisper in their ears, putting subliminal suggestions in their minds and stimulating their dreams to bring Jesse to Sunny Brook Camp, and eventually to her Realm.