This announcement silenced Verona. She looked at me deadpan for a couple of seconds then exploded with hysterical laughter, tears streaming down her face.
“Good grief, Miriam, why did you show him your bag in the first place?” She lost it again. Her efforts to stop reduced her to noisy nose breathing snickers.
“So dumb,” she said in between snickers.
“Seemed like a good idea at the time,” I mumbled.
“I take it all back. You can’t be making this stuff up.” She reached out and ruffled my hair hard enough to loosen my ponytail. Not comfortable.
Since that was the most affectionate she had ever been to me, I didn’t complain.
“Actually”, I said. “It gets worse.”
Verona didn’t say a word while I described my two encounters with the Hazmats. Teenagers are hard to read. I think she believed me.
“Anyway, I wanted you to know how awful the Hazmats are because of what Zazkal said after he tried to drown me.”
“What! Now I know you’ve been making stuff up.”
“No, really. He got me to switch to legs and told me to put my magic scale where I couldn’t reach it. Then he pushed me overboard and held me under the water so I couldn’t breathe.”
“What happened?”
“I switched back to tail on my own. Zazkal said that I was a shapeshifter like the Hazmats and that it was just a matter of time before I became nasty, stupid, and greedy like them.”
“Yeah, that makes sense. You’ll probably be just like them in a few years.”
“Verona. That is so not what I needed to hear. If that’s really what I am, then I know what shape I want to be. I’m going to shape shift into a giant squid so I can have you for dinner.”
“Don’t be silly. Nobody eats fairies”
“Not according to the giant squid I met on my way to Metsoola.” There’s a lot of really strange stuff down there.”
“Ooo. It’s so not fair that you got to go to Metsoola instead of me.”
“Don’t change the subject. According to Zazkal, I’m not anything anymore. He said that I’m not an outsea person anymore and that I’m not a fairy either. He said that I’m a halfandhalf and I don’t belong anywhere.”
“Well, that’s just unfair. You can belong to more than one place. You scored a lot of points when you apprenticed to Zazkal and being part of the delegation to Metsoola made you even more official.
“If anybody doesn’t belong anywhere, it’s Zazkal. He’s lucky we’re so nice to him.”
“Yeah, but I have all this other stuff like my bag and my wings. Doesn’t that make me way different from everyone else?”
“I don’t know what it’s like outsea, but here, everyone is different. No biggie.”
I was pleased to hear from my grandparents that Zazkal was gone. He had gone to see a friend and would be back in the morning to take me back to the Coral Reef.
“Zazkal has friends?”
“Well, I think it’s more of a colleague.” Grandpa said. “Someone he likes talking shop with. He said to be sure to tell you to be ready to leave in the morning.”
I suspected that Zazkal had taken himself discreetly out of the way until it was time to go. I could only imagine what it was like when he told Grandma and Grandpa what happened.
They probably blamed him for my getting caught by the Hazmats again. Good grief, anyone who could eliminate their enemies by eating them was a pretty dangerous foe. In any case, it seemed safer not to ask.
“Grandpa, what will happen to the Hazmats?”
“We’ve already contacted the dolphins. They’re using the dolphin alarm to reach bubble people who are large enough to make the trip down to all the abyssmal kingdoms
“I imagine that within a very few days all the abyssmal kingdoms will know what’s happening and will have blocked off any entrances to Fairyland. They’ll be the ones who figure out a way to capture the Hazmats.”
“I’m sure that when you come back next summer, they will have been captured and dealt with. We’re very proud of you, Miriam, but please don’t do it again.”
Seeing that they had heard everything there was to hear and weren’t angry at me, I took a breath and asked what I really wanted to know.
“So it turns out that I don’t need Grandma’s magic scale anymore. I can change back and forth on my own.”
“That’s wonderful, Miriam. You’ve really learned a lot.”
“Well, Zazkal and Verona say that that makes me a shapeshifter and that it’s only a matter of time before I turn into a Hazmat.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. That’s impossible.”
“Why?”
“You couldn’t ever be like that. It’s silly.”
“I see … sort of. I think.” The conversation turned to other subjects, but it stayed in my mind. I kept turning it around in my head.
CHAPTER 40
GOODBYE...
Early the next morning, I was ready and waiting for Zazkal.
“Give me the bag and let’s go. I’ve been away from my workshop for too long. There’s a lot to do.”
“Zazkal. I’m not coming with you. I want to spend the last week with my grandparents.”
“Don’t be silly. There’s too much work to do and only a week to do it in.”
I tried hard not to sound whining or pleading, and said as firmly as I could,
“I’m sorry, but I’m not coming. I’ve been thinking a lot about what you told me about being a halfandhalf.”
“Oh, that. Well, I don’t plan on picking on you anymore over it. You can’t help what you are.”
I didn’t argue with him, but kept going, “Like I said, I’ve been thinking about it.”
“What of it?”
“Well, I don’t think you’re right. I became a halfandhalf when the dragonfly fairies gave me my wings. They did it so that I could become part of Ardu. And I became a shapeshifter so that I could belong to Casalot.
“Being halfandhalf lets me belong to more places, not less. After all, seahorses are halfandhalf and look what nice people most of them are.”
“Just how nice they are is a matter of opinion. But they are not shapeshifters. That’s what will do you in the end.”
“You are so full of it. My mother hasn’t needed the scale for years and years. She’s normal…well, normal for a parent.
“I think that what I am now is pretty much what I’ll always be. If I want to be different, it will be because I’ve decided to, but it will never be very far from what I am now.
“Like I said, I’ve been thinking a lot about all of my gifts the last few days. It seems to me that each one in some way or another makes some kind of problem. I mean, look at all the trouble my sampo caused in Metsoola, or with you, for that matter,” I said, reminding him of the times he tried to steal it.
“Shapeshifting has its own problems. What I decided is to be very careful about how I use it until I understand it better.”
He surprised me by actually nodding in approval.
“Anyway, I want to spend some time at Casalot before I go back to school. I don’t want to spend my last week arguing with you. I want to be with people who care about me.” I thought I saw him wince, but assumed I had been mistaken.
“Here, take the bag, I’ll stay up as late as I can tonight so that you have the whole day to use it.”
Zazkal didn’t argue with me. He didn’t say anything. He give me a dirty look to end all dirty looks, took the bag and started to swim up to the surface to make a bubble for the trip back.
Turning back for a moment, he squished up his face like a little kid who is having trouble finding the right words. Even before the words were all out, he was already starting to swim away again. I almost missed it.
“Goodbye, Miriam,” he said. “I’ll miss you.”
CHAPTER 41
...AND FAREWELL
“Wait, Zazkal. Come back.” He swam slowly back the squishy expression already back to dirty loo
k.
“Give me back my bag for a minute.” He did and I took out a waterproof cell phone.
“Here. This is a long distance underwater cell phone. It has a saltwater-charged battery so it will always work. I will be in The Kingdom of the Cats this winter.
“I might...no, you know me, I will probably get into trouble. If you have this I can call you….I might need a friend.”
EPILOGUE
Zazkal did not return to his workshop. He went instead to Metsoola to consult with the king and his magicians.
The next time the Hazmats tried to visit Metsoola via the salt lake, the entry was no longer blocked, but covered by a soft permeable film. They passed through easily only to find themselves trapped inside of one of Zazkal’s traveling bubbles. It didn’t matter what shape the Hazmats turned into, as long as they were alive, they couldn’t get out.
It was the decision of King Mundiflure and his advisors, that the Hazmats be banished from the ocean. Their ability to shapeshift was magically frozen and they were allowed to choose any outsea form they wanted for their permanent shape.
At first the Hazmats decided that if they could only have one shape, it would be land people, but quickly realized that if they couldn’t shapeshift, they would make very poor thieves. In the end, they decided to become gulls so that they could stay close to their old haunts.
From Metsoola, Zazkal traveled to Japan to study with Turritopsis Dohrnii, the immortal jellyfish. It is not known what he learned there, but when he left Metsoola, he was wearing a belt with an attached pocket where he kept the cell phone that Miriam had given him.
Dear Reader,
I hope you enjoyed this book. If you did, please tell your friends about it. I don’t have a website yet, but I can be reached at
[email protected] I enjoy hearing from readers.
The Invasion of the Hazmats is the third book of the series called The Fairy Gifts. There will be two more books in the series, a prologue to the series called Pisu’s Revenge. Pisu’s Revenge will be Tefnut’s story, explaining why she decided to leave The Kingdom of the Cats in Ardu and how she came to live with Miriam and her family. It is a story of betrayal and humiliation.
The final book in the series will take place about four months after this book (Invasion of the Hazmats) and will be about what happens to Miriam when she finally visits The Kingdom of the Cats. I don’t have a title yet and am open to suggestions.
I know that in my letters at the end of the first two books I promised you that all of the characters in the last two books (Book Four and the Prologue) would be cats, but it turns out that there is a small village of halfandhalf humans called The Village of the Darned very close to The Kingdom of the Cats. You will meet Shadow, a super sensitive cat and the best tracker in Ardu and her friend Maggie Mag, a human/magpie shapeshifter from the Village of the Darned. I can’t wait to tell you about them.
Sincerely yours,
Susha.G
APPENDIX
(The Boring Stuff)
1. SEAHORSES AND GEOGRAPHY
The names of the seahorses in the story are not their true names. Likewise, the geographical references are intentionally vague in order to protect the location of the Sky cities.
2. THE LAND OF LITTLE LAKES
Not long after the Hazmats had been banished, Edward, encouraged by Glori and Specter proposed to King Mundiflure to build a canal, linking the two salt lakes. When it was finished, for the first time a deep sea-fairy kingdom was no longer isolated from other sea-fairy communities.
The long trip from Metsoola to the surface, and from there to the nearest of the upper kingdoms, was no longer used, except by the bubble people on cin rani, and the occasional sea-fairy hitchhiker who wished to accompany them.
Within a generation, all the lower kingdoms had built canals through the Land of Little Lakes that linked them with the upper kingdoms. The remote, unpopulated part of Fairyland known as The Land of Little Lakes that was dotted with salty lakes gradually became crisscrossed by more and more canals, and became busy with underwater traffic.
The effect on the deep sea-fairy kingdoms was more profound. They became a little less self-sufficient than they had been. But the isolation from other fairy communities that had created the need for self-sufficiency had also produced a certain formality and rigidity to their societies.
With regular traffic back and forth between deep and surface kingdoms, the fairies of the lower kingdoms began to relax their attitudes and unstructure their hierarchies. It took a long time, but it happened.
The construction of the canals also made it easier for friends like Miriam and Edward to visit each other.
3. VERONA CHOOSES
About the same time that Miriam visited the Kingdom of the Cats, Verona traveled to Metsoola to study the sculpting of free-flowing lava. She eventually developed and began to teach spells and techniques for working with lava that allowed her to create very small and very detailed forms.
When the first canal was finished people carried her work to Casalot and eventually to all the kingdoms of the Seven Seas. She was legendary.
4. THE DOLPHINS BECOME SCRIBES TO THE BUBBLE PEOPLE
Ollie did learn to write fluently and though it gave him the basic skill he needed to learn magic, he was more interested in the writing itself. In fact all the dolphins in his pod wanted to learn to write and did. Other dolphins hearing about Stan and Ollie’s pod’s new skills, also became interested.
Eventually, the dolphins became scribes to the largest of the bubble people, the whales many of whom traveled the world collecting and exchanging songs and stories. A few dolphins, including Ollie, began collecting and writing their own stories. Much of the material for the book you just read came directly from Ollie’s journals.
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