Persie Merlin and the Door to Nowhere by Bella Forrest Page 0,99
later, they devoured a strawberry between them like piranhas gnawing a whole duck down to the bone.
“Excuse me?” I sank to my knees and tried to get their attention. “Would you be willing to talk now? We need your help with something, and it’s urgent.”
I might as well have been talking to myself.
Over the cup of milk, a fight broke out. A trio of pixies squawking and squabbling, trying to pull the cup toward them in a three-way tug of war. Meanwhile, a fourth pixie still swished and swam about in the milk, happy as a clam. Pixies battled for the prime spot atop the milk carton, shoving each other out of the way to get to it. A she-pixie slapped another so hard across the face that he fell to the ground for a moment before shaking his head and getting back up. He tackled her from the top of the carton, and the two of them wound up in the strawberry basket, where they seemed intent on making jam out of what was left.
“This is useless! They don’t care!” I hissed to Nathan. We were running out of time to save my best friend, and these punks were too busy fighting over milk and strawberries. I wanted to grab them and knock their heads together.
Instead, I sat back on my haunches and let the frustration wash over me. Bitter tears welled in my eyes, trickling down my cheeks and onto the floor. One of the little ingrates even dared to dip a finger into the small puddle and taste my tears. I would’ve flicked him away, but it wouldn’t help. We’d let them out, and they didn’t give a crap what we wanted.
Why should they? No one in the Institute cared about what they wanted. They were just returning the favor.
I was so absorbed in my misery that I didn’t notice the she-pixie I’d first caught finally emerge from her orb, as though she’d been observing the situation. For a moment, she was just a flutter in the corner of my eye. Then, she shot upward to meet with the puzzle-box pixie, who was chomping contentedly on a strawberry. He dropped it the moment he saw the she-pixie, and the two of them hovered there for a moment. Their loud chatter and the falling strawberry drew my attention away from my tears. They jabbed bony fingers at me, babbling animatedly, and performed some less-than-flattering charades. Finally, it seemed they’d made some kind of decision. Both creatures nodded to one another and hurtled to the ground.
The she-pixie landed by the milk, while the other one landed by the strawberries. There, in a display of pure rage that I could only have described as jaw-dropping, the two pixies set about terrorizing the others into obedience. Slaps, bites, irate shrieks and yelps, and a lot of angry gesturing and shoving. Every so often, the two additions pointed up toward me, their chatter becoming even more incensed, as if they were reprimanding the others for not listening to me.
Nathan knelt beside me, observing the telling-off of a lifetime. “They have a hierarchy. Fascinating.”
“What do you mean?” I whispered, not wanting to disturb them. The she-pixie and the one from my bedroom were in the middle of corralling the rest into the center of the floor, right in front of Nathan and me. I didn’t dare laugh, but the others looked so put out, their wings drooping and their heads bowed as they shuffled forward, ashamed and humbled. It was made funnier by the fact that most of them were doused in milk or smothered with strawberries.
Nathan gestured to the two he’d freed last. “They operate as a group, socially connected to one another. These two are clearly fond of you, and they’re getting the rest to accept you.”
“They are?” I smiled down at the tiny beasts.
“It looks like it.”
Just then, the fearsome she-pixie tiptoed forward and tugged the bottom of Nathan’s tweed jacket. She sniffed it, then beckoned for the others to do the same. He froze, evidently less confident about the pixies’ intentions than he’d been a moment ago. After all twenty-one had done their smell test, the she-pixie patted her chest frantically. Immediately, the whole flock “oohed,” as if they understood something that Nathan and I didn’t. She then pointed to me and chattered loudly, wrapping her arms around herself and grinning manically. The male pixie who’d come out of the puzzle box nodded and copied her movements, getting them