LITMIR.BIZ

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to free herself,» said the bog lady.

      «Is there really a fairy in the bag?»

      «Apparently, there was no cage on the Opal’s ships, so they put her in the sack.»

      «Can’t we throw her overboard?»

      «It won’t sink.»

      «Then what are we going to do with her?» Patricia was as frightened of the fairy as death itself. She knew what fairies were capable of when they served to the King of Opal. If we don’t get rid of the sack, the fairy will enslave the entire crew. She must have a talent for mass hypnosis and could mesmerize the whole crew for a while, fly up behind the wheel of the ship and drive it straight to her employer – the king. And thus all the dashing pirates will be captured by the magician. They could be collected from the deck while still sleepy and taken to the dungeons.

      «Interrogate her,» advised Netopyrina. The crew was also waiting for orders.

      Patricia did not want to talk to the cunning fairy from Opal, but there was nowhere to go.

      A fairy hostage

      There was no worse trophy than a fairy. She sang and summoned spells. She had to gag her. The dunghill weaved a cage of gray charms. They’re stronger than iron bars.

      Patricia knew that the fairy was an agent of the King of Opal and could contact him from a distance, but Netopyrina blocked her. How useful it is to have a fairy bat of your own!

      The captive fairy, on the other hand, was a massive inconvenience. Everything shook and rang near her, and objects flew in the air.

      «Stop it! You won’t get free,» Patricia shouted at her.

      The fairy gave her a sinister smile that made her blood run cold. The dagger, forgotten by someone, flew into the air and swooped down on Patricia like a bird of steel.

      While Patricia fought back, the fairy managed to summon a storm. The ship rocked from side to side.

      There was no end to the captive fairy’s mischief. The sharp objects began to attack, the ropes twisted into loops and tried to kill the whole crew, and compasses, maps, and telescopes were dancing in the air. This continued until Zeligena and Netopyrina conspired and began to block the fairy together.

      That’s when the captive beauty felt a severe headache. Her iridescent eyes blurred. The large spotted wings that made her look like a butterfly sagged.

      «Take her into the hold with the cage and lock her in there,» Netopyrina ordered.

      Patricia ignored the fact that the assistant had taken over as captain. To save herself from the fairy’s antics, she could give the ship’s command to the devil for a while.

      «Wouldn’t it be better to throw her overboard?» Patricia asked hesitantly.

      «She could start a mutiny in the Underwater Kingdom. That would be undiplomatic. The mermaids would remember such evil.»

      «Is it evil to give someone a captured fairy?»

      «It depends on what kind of fairy is she,» Netopyrina watched carefully as the goblins brought the prisoner into the hold. «A fairy is a valuable hostage if you want to blackmail the King of Opal.»

      «The loss of one fairy won’t make him too angry. He has dozens of them.»

      «Isn’t he violating the rights of the magic emperor?» Zeligena intervened. «It seems that only the lord of the Magic Empire has the right to command fairies.»

      «I’ve never heard of such a thing,» Patricia admitted.

      Both Zeligena and Netopyrina looked at her strangely.

      «Well, I wouldn’t dare denounce him anyway,» Zeligena grumbled, «the swamp fairies don’t have a good relationship with him. He’s become very bitter in the last centuries. In confidence, his wife left him. Wives are always leaving him.»

      «Did he have many?»

      «How do you say?» Zeligena flapped her green eyelashes nervously.

      «And the King of Opal killed his wife himself – sacrificed her during a sorcery ritual. I saw it, so I refused to become his next wife.»

      Oops! Patricia faltered when she realized she had spoken. She had sworn to several black fairy vampires guarding the royal crypt that she would not tell anyone about Queen Esperanza’s skeleton that sometimes moved in the niche. The skeleton is wearing a royal dress and jewelry. Underneath the skeleton’s skull, there is still a lingering intelligence.

      Now the grave fairies will punish her by taking her life. They are capable of taking lives from a distance. Patricia waited for a minute. Her throat didn’t constrict, her breath didn’t cut off. Her heart didn’t stop beating. Did the grave fairies have no power over her? Could it be the magic ship? The crypt fairies can’t affect someone in a vacuum of alien magic?

      «The fairy is a valuable hostage,» Netopyrina repeated. «If you manage to get her on your side, she will reveal to you your enemy’s weaknesses.»

      «It’s impossible to get these creatures on your side!»

      «But the King of Opal somehow did. They served another ruler before him.»

      Patricia had no idea, though the court fairies themselves sometimes hinted at it. The fairies in Opal’s court always spoke in riddles. They surrounded the courtiers, hovering over their heads and tormenting them with eerie conversations. There was no escape from the fairies in Opal, for there were more fairies than people.

      Patricia wondered if she should abandon her plans for revenge. The sight of the Opal fairy was so unpleasant that she wanted to forget about Opal.

      «In a couple of hours, the ship’s magic will disarm the hostage and you can go down to the hold to question her,» Netopyrina advised.

      Patricia tried to delay the unpleasant meeting with the fairy for three to four hours. She really didn’t want to talk to the winged pest. Fairies can hypnotize. One look into her eyes and you’re gone. If the crew on the ship did not consist of magical creatures, the fairy long ago would have charmed everyone and would have taken command of the crew of lunatics, subject to her will.

      «It’s about time!» Netopyrina urged. She didn’t even need a watch to tell the time. As night approached, she felt a surge of strength, but during the day she grew weaker. Apparently, her mouse nature had its own clockwork mechanism.

      «Come on, let’s wait a little longer. Let her calm down,» Patricia paced the deck and played with her saber. Swinging a saber was a familiar and simple matter, but dealing with the fairies of Opal was complicated politics. Politics gave Patricia a headache. She didn’t know how to negotiate. The last time the King of Opal had negotiated with her, it had turned into a massacre and tragedy. Now Patricia was ashamed to even remember how she had run away from her native shores on a small boat ruled by a dwarf.

      «It was a pity that one could not live by physical strength alone, one needed magic and politics. Otherwise the art of swordsmanship would be enough for me…» Patricia did not find support from the two fairies. They respected magic more than martial arts.

      Well, to hell with them. Fairies have their own mentality. It was time to interrogate the hostage. Zeligena, Netopyrina, and a few goblins descended into the hold with Patricia.

      Instead of a lantern, there was a perch with a sleeping firebird at the entrance to the hold. Zeligena had found a real glass lantern somewhere, with a firefly inside instead of a candle.

      «We must ask the firebird not to fly close to the barrels of fire wine, or the whole ship will explode,» Patricia thought.

      «It won’t explode, but the firebird will get drunk,» objected the more experienced Zeligena.

      Well, if so…

      «Where I am?» Patricia

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