Wood Sprites(175)
“We’ll talk to him!” Jillian cried. “The enemy of my enemy…”
“Is a circus freak,” Louise muttered darkly.
“Well, yes. But if he’s intelligent, then he’ll probably see the benefit of cooperating with us. He’s bigger than us; we could use some added muscle. Besides, you dropped the spell light and you’ll need it to find our way out of here.”
Louise hadn’t even realized that she’d dropped it; she’d run through the darkness without noticing it. She might be able to continue safely, but she didn’t like the idea of blindly trusting some vague spider-sense instead of just seeing where they were going. “Okay, we’ll get it.”
As they neared the light, Louise realized that Joy was perched on Jillian’s shoulders. The baby dragon was smacking Jillian on the head, muttering “Other way! Other way, stupid!” as they crept back to the cage.
The creature fell silent as they neared. He had shifted so he was crouched on all fours. He bowed, touching forehead to the cage’s floor. His wings half-unfurled, showing the bone and muscle structure of his back needed for flight.
“I’m sorry.” He remained bowed low. “I thought you were one of them. I’m sorry I scared you.”
“Okay, we get it.” Jillian obviously didn’t like him begging any more than Louise did.
The boy kept his head bowed to the floor of the cage. “You are her Chosen?”
“Yup! All mine!” Joy hugged Jillian’s face.
“Mmm!” Jillian struggled to pry the baby dragon off her face even as Joy stuck out her tongue at the boy.
“What’s a Chosen?” Louise studied the giant birdcage. If he wasn’t dangerous, how were they going to get him free? Where was the lock? “Is that like being an elf? Are you—were you an elf?”
Jillian managed to pry Joy free. “I don’t think he’s an elf.”
“He’s a tengu,” Joy stated. “Stupid poopy face.” She muttered other things that sounded like curses that the tengu seemed to understand. Hurt and dismay showed on his face.
“He said he was sorry.” Jillian held Joy in her arms so the baby dragon couldn’t plaster herself to Jillian’s face again.
“Who are you?” The boy sat up, moving slowly so he wouldn’t scare them. The circular metal cage didn’t allow for him to stand. “What are you doing here?”
“We’re trying to escape from Yves,” Louise said.
“Yves?”
“Crown Prince Kiss Butt. The son of the exiled emperor of the elves. Yves Desmarais. Husepavua. Whatever his real name is.”
“Ah, Okami Shiroikage,” he whispered. “The Unmaker. I thought he was just a legend made up to frighten our people. I was wrong.”
“He locked us up in a magical cage so he could study us,” Louise said.
“But we broke free,” Jillian added. “What did he do to you?”
“Nothing yet,” the winged boy said.
“Nothing?” the twins both cried. “But you have wings!”
Despite everything, he grinned. “Yes, I have wings. I was given them on my sixth hatching day. It was like having Christmas and New Years and Halloween all at once. My people are part human, part crow. Not that you can usually tell when we’re on Earth.”
Louise completed a full circle around the spherical cage without seeing anything that looked like a door. Maybe if they raised the orb. She panned the light up the chain and across to the winch controls. To her dismay, there was an arc-welding machine sitting on the floor. One of the elves sealed the orb shut after they put the tengu into it. The finality of it shocked her. Yves didn’t intend for the crow boy to come out of the orb alive.
Jillian was right. They couldn’t leave him here. It would haunt them the rest of their lives.
But how did they free him? Even if they could figure out the welding machine, they didn’t have time. They had to save the babies. They couldn’t use the force strike spell; a blow hard enough to break the orb open would probably kill the crow boy.
She scanned the room, quickly considering what she had to work with.
“Oh, be nice!” Jillian cried as Joy wiggled her butt at the boy.
They had called the baby dragon down to the caves to phase them out of their cage. “Joy, can you get him out of that?”
The baby dragon turned up her nose like an offended princess. “No.”
“No?” Louise echoed in dismay.
“Tengu belong to Providence,” Joy explained.
“Who is Providence?” Jillian asked.
“He’s the guardian spirit of the tengu,” Crow Boy said.