"Flower your courage is magnificent but we are fugitives!" Nikifor boomed. He clapped a hand over his mouth before the echoes had even died away and cursed his curse.

Flower shot him a furious look. "Just you wait till we find the king, things'll change pretty quickly. This is so illegal!" She hammered on the wall again and yelled at the top of her voice. "You come out here right now and explain yourself, whoever you are!"

Silence. Nikifor reached for his axe, quite sure they were about to be set upon by Moon Troopers.

A long, narrow doorway swung inward and a young woman peered out. Dirty blonde hair fell across curiously blank, glassy green eyes and a mouth that settled in a permanent sulky pout. She folded her arms over a long, grey coat. Her pants were slashed and fraying. She scowled at them. "What do you want?"

Flower scowled right back. "I want to know why you're illegally blocking this road."

Her look turned sly. "`Cos you're not allowed in without documentation."

"Why not?"

The girl made her words deliberately slow and clear. "`Cos nobody is. Duh."

The girl was too tall for a fairy, but a shade too short to be a muse. She had proper feet, so she couldn't be a forest person. She was nothing like a Pixie or even a Fire Elf. He couldn't for the life of him think what other minor tribe she might belong to.

Flower wasn't about to give any ground. "Who are you? What tribe are you from?"

The girl took a menacing step closer. "I'm a muse."

Flower's voice poured so much scorn on the idea even Nikifor flinched. "If you're a muse, then I'm a giant Freakin Fairy. I demand to know the meaning of this travesty." She pointed at the wall.

The girl slunk closer, her eyes on the key around Flower's neck. "I'm a new muse," she said. "A new, improved, better muse. And you two can consider yourself ex-muses." She reached out for the key.

Flower slapped her hand away. "You little-"

The new, improved, better muse put two fingers in her mouth and gave a loud whistle. There was a rush of wind from the top of the wall and then a leathery, winged shape the size of a very big rat launched itself at their heads.

"Fetch!" Nikifor seized the double-headed axe from the makeshift harness he'd made across his back. Flower ducked. He swung wildly, twice, and sliced the creature in two. It exploded into foul-smelling smoke.

"Hey!" the new muse yelled. "That's not fair!" She gave a second piercing whistle.

Flower grabbed the axe from Nikifor's hand and leaped at the girl. The blade curved around, flashed wickedly and sliced into her neck.

The girl disappeared in a puff of stale smoke.

Nikifor and Flower stared at the empty space, stunned.

"You were magnificent!" Nikifor whispered in awe. "But where did she go?"

"I don't know." Flower handed him the axe, looking all around them. "But I think we should move. Come on."

They peered through the door; it led through a very short passage and straight back onto the road. Nikifor followed Flower through the cold space and out into the sunlight. The trail was deserted and silent. A single white butterfly sailed amongst the flowers that rambled alongside the road. Nothing else moved.

"I don't like this." Flower picked up her pace.

Nikifor didn't either. He followed, the axe ready in his hands. When they left the arrogant little wall behind, the tension eased. The sun shone. Birds sang in the trees. Bees zoomed through the flowers. The landscape widened from trees back to paddocks, these ones planted with swaying green knee high radish bushes. A purple and blue butterfly danced in lazy circles around Flower's head. She swatted it.

Then a patch of sky darkened.

"They're coming!" Flower looked around for cover, but there was no time for that.

Nikifor had no qualms about killing fetches. He braced himself. "Get down!"

Flower seized a stout branch off the ground and stood back to back with him. "Sorry Nikifor, but I'm really in the mood to hurt something."

There was no time to argue with her. The swarm descended in an arrow-shaped cloud of angry, glowing, sharp-taloned, hook-beaked monsters.

Nikifor had no idea what Flower did while he laid about with the axe in every direction, moving so fast the weapon seemed like a blur even to him. Exploding fetches filled the air with such rank potency he could barely breathe. The movements came easily, the low stance, the spin, the axe covering every possible angle. His body knew what to do. Once, a long time ago, he'd been a librarian, before the destiny of Muse Champion was foisted on him. To fight, to protect, to be a warrior was a matter of instinct, but how his mind rebelled...

There were no more fetches.

The axe dropped from his fingers. Nikifor bent over to catch his breath. "Flower?"

Flower said a very, very bad word. She swayed like a tree about to fall. Blood poured from a gash on her arm and her skin was pale and clammy.

Her eyes rolled back in her head and she collapsed against him like a rag doll. Nikifor almost didn't catch her in time. The pallor of her skin sent a dart of fear through him. Was fetch poison fatal? He didn't even know. He couldn't lose her. She'd saved his life, and she was his friend, not to mention the brains of this mad quest into confusion.

"Whoa," said a voice.

A man little more than four foot tall stared up at him with eyes so wide the whites showed all around them. He had a snub nose and thick, matted hair bleached sandy by the sun. His coat and pants had been tacked together from at least three hundred different red and orange cotton patches, and his straw hat had seen better days.

"Whoa," the little man said again. "Whoa man, that was soooo amazing. I mean, is this even real?"

"Please help us." Nikifor's tired arms burned under Flower's weight. He didn't know if the plea would do any good, but there was nobody else to ask and Flower was too unconscious to tell him what to do.

The little man's eyes got even wider. "This is huge," he said. "I can't believe I just saw two giant Freakin Fairies kill a whole swarm of fetches, my Gourd, it's totally like that time when my friend Carrots was walking on top of the hill at night on his own looking for mushrooms and suddenly this big round thing just came out of the sky and Bam! Landed right in front him, and these creatures like totally came out and told him to plant these purple seeds under the full moon, but he lost them, except, like, this is totally bigger than that because I wasn't even looking for mushrooms!"

Nikifor stared in utter confusion. "Purple mushrooms?" he echoed.

The little man's jaw dropped. "Whoa man, you actually know the password! I totally knew something wild was going to happen to me today. Come on, I'll take you to the Lord of the Gourd." He ambled off the path and straight into the thick of the lush, leafy stalks growing in the field.

Nikifor was left with little choice but to pick Flower up and follow.

CHAPTER TEN.

Flower landed in Dream rather harder than usual. Red bricks radiated heat under her boots. The air shimmered. A merciless sun beat down on a wide lane lined with shops so big and glassy and full of silly things like shoes with enormous heels they made her head spin. There were people everywhere, but they moved sluggishly. Sweat beaded their foreheads. Hair and clothes clung to their skin.

The heat made Flower nauseous after the cold and damp of the past two weeks, not to mention the rapid passage between the worlds. The steel bench seat she clutched for support burned her fingers. She closed her eyes and took a few deep, calming breaths. Being this present in Dream only happened when she was unconscious in Shadow, leaving her psyche freer to roam than usual. It was dangerous; she could get stuck here if nobody woke her. Once, she'd got knocked out by a chunk of armour plating flying at high velocity during a battle with vampires at the Bitter Tower. She'd inspired a whole bestselling crime thriller before she came to almost four days later, lying under a spindly brindleberry bush half dead from thirst and with a lump the size of an egg on her forehead.

She shook herself. What an odd memory to have right now. Unconscious she might be, but it was an opportunity too good to be missed. She got control of the nausea with a few more deep breaths, then opened her eyes. She watched carefully. Nobody even looked at her. Naturally, they couldn't see her, but she had to make sure. After all, she could touch things right now.

Bright pink hair flashed past. There, she always landed right where she was supposed to. Flower dodged around a mother with a stroller and a man juggling three bright red hoops. She wrinkled her nose and coughed when she walked right through a cloud of cigarette smoke. Foul habit. These humans were as bad as fairies.

The girl who'd been plaguing her walked with a man who stood a good head shorter than herself, and who wore a lot of black for a human. Around his wrists were matching thick silver cuffs.

Flower dodged around them so she could walk backwards and study the hard lines carved into the man's face, whether by time or trauma she didn't know. One deep scar above his eyebrow told stories of old battles. He was dark and weathered, with silver-flecked black eyes just like - no. No, it was impossible.

The man chose that moment to take his wide-brimmed hat off and wipe sweat from his forehead. He had a head full of dreadlocks, all neatly tied back into a ponytail.

Flower's eyes widened. It wasn't impossible at all. She looked at the girl. "What are you doing with a Freakin Fairy?"

But the girl couldn't hear her. She walked on, head down, swinging that ever-present hockey stick at her side, a frown of concentration marring her brow. The pair of them walked right through Flower.

Flower felt just like somebody had kicked her in the gut. Images tumbled through her mind. She almost fell out of Dream and onto a battlefield scarred with fairy corpses where a distant, blood-curdling roar shattered the night. She bent double, gasping for breath. The vision made her mind reel, not because it was so vivid and frightening, but because she'd seen it. She'd seen it and forgotten it. Right now she couldn't even try to figure out where and when this terrible battle was. There were no fairies at the Bitter Tower, where she'd lived and fought for ninety years until the death of the Champion, Nikifor's father...

The girl and the Freakin Fairy halted and turned back, both looking puzzled. Flower froze, terrified they could see her.

"You felt that, right?" the girl hooked the stick over her shoulder. "Please tell me you felt that."

"I don't know what I felt," the Freakin Fairy said.

"I swear I'm being haunted."

The Freakin Fairy gave the general area where Flower stood a frankly suspicious look, then shrugged and turned away. "Come on, love. We've got a present to find."

The girl chuckled. "How many times am I going to have to help you get out of trouble with Mum anyway? You'd better be prepared to shell out for something really shiny this time, Dad."

"Dad?" Flower forgot her fright and hurried to catch up with them again, her questions bursting out like water from the fountain in the plaza in Shadow City before the Moon Troopers desecrated it. "That Freakin Fairy is your father? How is that even possible? You don't look a thing like a fairy! Well-" she considered that. She certainly had some very fairylike violent tendencies. "But who's your mother then? A human?" She shifted her attention to the Freakin Fairy. "And why are you here? Why aren't you at home in Shadow mining silver? This is highly unusual."

They kept talking, just as though she wasn't there.

"So what'd you do this time?" the girl asked. "You've hardly even been back a week."

The Freakin Fairy looked rueful. "You know, the usual stuff. It doesn't take much to set her off."

"Dad-" the girl hesitated. "Is she okay? I mean, I know she's always a bit different, but she's getting worse, isn't she? We ran into Luke the other nightyou know, the tall guy from the markets? She freaked out, called him a vampire and kicked him in the shins. I had to hold her back and do some very fast talking to calm him down."

"What'd you say?"

"I told him she was off her medication. I don't like saying things like that."

The Freakin Fairy's mouth turned down, making his whole face look grim. "You have to understand there are some very dark things in her past she's never quite got over, Krysta."

"Krysta," Flower murmured, still walking alongside. "So that's your name."

Krysta made an impatient gesture. "You've been saying that for years, but you never really explain. What could possibly be so bad?"

His reply was sharp. "It's been explained, if you'd only care to listen."

"Oh, the stories? Don't give me that, they're freaking fairy tales! Even you've said that!"

The Freakin Fairy began to laugh. "Yes I did, didn't I? And that's exactly what they are."

Krysta scowled. "Well if you don't want to tell me what really happened to her, fine. I'll find out for myself."

"I very much fear you will."

They walked in silence until they reached a shop window where shining silver necklaces inlaid with chunky blue and purple stones were displayed alongside cut crystal figurines of unicorns and cats.

Flower watched father and daughter gaze into the window in mesmerised silence. "You're a fairy through and through!" The words were sharp. If she was solid she would have demanded an explanation.

Krysta shook herself. "Did you say something?"

"No. Come on, let's get this done."

The pair made their way inside and past glass display cabinets with infuriating slowness. The Freakin Fairy picked up a chunky silver ring here, a glass snake there, a necklace with rainbow-coloured stones and then a sparkling crystal dangling from a chain. They discussed the pros and cons of each one in great depth. Apparently buying a present for the mother was a serious business.

They finally chose a cut crystal figurine of a spider that was at least as big as Krysta's hand, with eight little red crystals for eyes and red-tipped fangs. Flower went closer to look at it. Something stirred in the back of her mind. A spider. A fairy and a spider. "Why that?"

"She'll love it," Krysta said, while the sales assistant wrapped it in purple paper.

"Why that?" Flower yelled at the backs of their heads, unable to explain her rising panic.

The pair left the counter. The hockey stick swung straight through Flower when they passed her.

For the second time a vision hit her so hard she almost lost her grip on Dream and tumbled into another time and place. Daylight. A forest. A young Bloody Fairy with big dark eyes and long, long hair crouched on the ground - no, not crouched, she'd fallen. In her outstretched hand rested a brown, furry spider so big its legs curled all the way around her fingers.

Flower gasped for breath. The image was so vivid. She'd been there. This was a memory, but she didn't understand how it could be so disconnected, how she could not place it with any other memory, or say who the girl was, or when she'd met her. She stared at the empty shop door, then ran to catch up with Krysta and her father.

They'd only gone a short way up the street, but they'd picked up their pace, shopping now done with. Flower ran around in front of them. "Who are you?" she demanded. "How are you making me remember these things?"

"I've been thinking about writing down the stories," Krysta said.

The Freakin Fairy didn't look terribly pleased at this statement. "What do you mean?"

"You know, all those freaking fairy tales you and Mum and Poppy always told us as kids. I'm thinking about using them as the basis for a novel."

"Finally!" Flower burst out. "If you'd just stop thinking about it and write, maybe we could get somewhere!"

But the Freakin Fairy scowled. "Why?"

"Because they're good stories. And I feel like I need to."

"The stories were for you and Drew. They're too dangerous to write down."

Krysta scoffed. "How can a story be dangerous?"

The Freakin Fairy shook his head. "You never respected the stories. I'm surprised you even listened to them. Write something else, Krysta. You don't know what you could bring down on yourself. There are really seriously bad things out there."

"Don't listen to him," Flower said. "Write what you want to write."