Chapter 2

"I grabbed one," Holly said animatedly, feeling well enough to sit up in her sick bed, "and slapped my hands together to kill it!" Alana and Haley, along with Elaine, Tabatha and several others, listened intently.

"I had little specks of fiery dust all over my hands, like it exploded or something when I crushed it," Holly explained, describing her ordeal in great detail as demanded by the queen. "Then it ... kind of ... all came together, in an instant, and it was whole again."

"What did it look like?" Alana demanded, her eyes wide with avid curiosity as though she was comparing Holly's experience with something she remembered.

"It looked like ... a tiny, glowing ... girl," Holly whispered, her own eyes wide with wonder. "A tiny, glowing, girl – with wings."

"A fairy," Haley suggested, having already shared Alana's memory.

"Yes! Exactly!" Holly exclaimed. "It was a friggin, flying fairy! Just like in a fairy tale!"

"What happened then?" Tabatha asked. "What did it ... what did she do?"

"She got really pissy," Holly explained. "And she started stinging me, over and over with little sparks of fire and my skin shriveled wherever those damned little fireballs hit. I couldn't get away, and then there was dozens of them, all over me, stinging me..." her voice rose to a wail as she described what had happened. 'Setting me on fire!'

"It's okay, it's okay," Haley whimpered, grabbing onto and holding her twin as she sobbed in remembered terror. "They're gone now. You survived."

"Her skin died where the fairy fireballs struck her," Elaine spoke for the first time, her mind furiously working out what could bring a powerful Phoenix like Holly down so swiftly. "And each fireball was bigger than the previous one, right?"

Holly nodded, not understanding why Elaine would ask, but for the first time, she remembered that each fireball was worse than the one before.

"The fairies weren't shooting fireballs at her, or stinging her with them," Elaine suggested. "They were taking her Phoenix fire – right out of her living cells – and attacking her with it. That's why it's taking her so long to recuperate, and why she doesn't have any energy. The fairies stole it from her."

"But..." Tabatha asked, unable to comprehend, "where did they come from? And why did they attack us?"

"They wanted the girls?" Alana guessed. "The attack stopped when they accomplished their objective, you said – the six mutant girls."

"That still doesn't explain where they came from," Elaine replied, "Or where they went in that magical vortex they created."

"They took the girls to their fairy home," Alana explained quietly, "in Avalon." Everyone stared at Alana, even Elaine.

"What? I've seen them before," Alana replied defensively. "They used to come and steal little girls from their cribs back in, well, it wasn't called Ireland, then, but that's where they would come. I even tried to go with them once, but they rejected me. They swarmed me, but I didn't get stung..."

"Because you didn't have any Phoenix fire for them to use against you," Haley suggested.

"So, are these creatures – these 'fairies' – are they evil, or good?" Tabatha wanted to know.

"They had Neanderthals and wild animals in their thrall," Haley replied. "Somehow, the people of that time period, and the animals as well, knew them. Maybe the Neanderthals even worshipped them. They seemed to work with them well enough."

"The stories were told of a land beyond time, in a magical kingdom where wizards lived and witches ruled," Alana intoned. "And out of those legends came the imaginative tales of King Arthur and Merlin and Megan le Fey."

"Morgan," Tabatha corrected her queen, "Morgan le Fey – Morgan, the fairy. The tainted one. According to legends, she had a son who ended up destroying Camelot, and Avalon was taken beyond the reaches of time. Some say it was destroyed by its own magic."

"Morgan was the name of one of the girls they took!" Holly exclaimed.

"What does that mean? 'Beyond the reaches of time'?" Haley asked.

"Avalon was taken to a place of safety," Tabatha stated, matter of factly. "The portals were removed so that humans could no longer enter, to protect them from us. More likely, it was to protect us from them. Morgan did a lot of damage."

"But the little girl Morgan isn't a fairy," Holly said.

"Not yet she isn't, or rather wasn't, since this all happened thirty-five thousand years ago," Tabatha informed them.

"You sound like an expert," Elaine accused Tabatha in a friendly manner.

"I am, I suppose," Tabatha admitted. "I've always been fascinated by tales of Camelot, the Lady of the Lake, Arthur's magic sword Excalibur and stuff like that. I've studied them enough to know there is some truth behind the stories – some small truth in each of the stories; enough to keep the stories alive from generation to generation until somebody finally wrote them down."

"You know, fairies wielding Phoenix fire could explain a lot of that," Haley suggested thoughtfully. "Arthur's magic sword could have been welded into a stone with Phoenix fire, then released when the right man came along..."

"That's just a story," Alana interrupted. "I was there, and there was no Arthur, no Camelot. Definitely no Excalibur, and we could've used one when the Romans came..."

"But there were fairies," Tabatha added, smiling smugly.

"Yes. There were fairies," Alana admitted. "Not all the legends are lies."

"Well, there's only one decision to make," Tabatha suggested.

"What's that?" Elaine asked.

"As soon as Holly is able to travel, we all go to Mesopotamia, find the damned fairies and demand they return our girls."

Alana and Holly remained silent as the rest of the group cheered the idea. Both had dealt with these 'fairies' and privately, neither wanted any more to do with them.

Holly definitely did not want to go back to Mesopotamia – ever! She had seen something that she hadn't shared with the others – something she was sure that, if she dared mention it, would drive her beyond rationality – something that would cause the others present to question her sanity. Only she had seen it, but the evil creature that had led that devastating attack wasn't something she had ever seen before, and she dreaded seeing that hateful, impossible beast ever again...

A fire-breathing dragon dove out of the sky and laid a trench of liquid fire right down the middle of the village, separating most of the defenders from the mutant girls. On its second pass, it had glared right at her, its eyes full of hate as though it knew her. Then it belched a ball of fire right at her. Holly was lucky that she was already teleporting across the fiery trench to protect the girls, or she would have been roasted on the spot.

"You okay?" Haley asked, concerned at the stark terror showing on Holly's face. She tried to merge with Holly's mind, but her twin was locked down tight. Not getting a response, she shook Holly's arm.

Holly seemed to come out of her trance, blinking several times before staring at her twin. In a shaky voice, she whimpered, "I don't want to go back there. I'll die if I do. It will kill me next time."

"Next time?"

"What will kill you?"

"It's okay," Alana said, trying to sooth Holly. "You don't have to go. I'm not willing to lose any more of you girls, not after losing Murielle and Miranda, so if you feel that way, you can stay behind."

"I can't stay behind," Holly replied, her voice taut with the hate of having to say those words, hating that she knew where her duty lie. "You don't know what's there – waiting for you. You'll need me to distract it."

"Distract what, Holly?" Haley asked, anxiety ruling her face. "What's waiting for us? We know about the fairies. Tabatha can shield us from them. We'll try to talk to them; find them and try and get the girls back. What do you think you need to do?"

Holly drew away from her twin's grip on her arm and turned away, her eyes downcast as she shook her head in denial. She lay back on her side, her legs drawn up to her stomach, her arms tucked in to protect her breasts, and stared sightlessly at the curtained wall, refusing to acknowledge the presence of the others.