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“Uh oh,” mumbled Tammy.
“I already said that!” Maple pulled on her ear. “We must go fast!”
Tammy spun to face the large log-like root blocking their path about twenty feet ahead. In mere seconds, they’d be overrun. Having all her skin flayed off by a million thorns sounded like an incredibly torturous way to die. She’d prefer not to give them the chance.
“Can you shrink Allie?” Tammy looked at Maple.
“Say again?” asked Allison, raising her hands, seemingly preparing for a last stand magical fight.
“I got her.” Maple zipped over to Allison, hovering by her face.
“Wait. Got me how?”
“Someone grab my sneakers!” Tammy dove to the ground, shifting into the form of a large panther before her hands—now paws—made contact with dirt.
Allison gave a startled yell that rapidly went up in pitch as the queen worked her magic, shrinking the human witch. Before Tammy could peer back to see what happened,twotiny beings landed on her back.
“Go go go!” shouted Maple. “Hold on, Allison!”
“Trust me, I am!”
The panther made easy work of jumping the annoying roots. Most of them, she could clear in a single leap. If she encountered one too big around to sail straight over, she aimed as high as she could, then her claws let her climb the rest of the way.
Hounded by the endless snaps and crackles of the thorny monstrosities, Tammy pushed herself to run faster than she’d ever asked of her panther form before. All the time she’d spent running through the faerie realm as an animal had been playful and fun, even though she knew it was training for a scenario like this. Rather than chasing Maple or one of the other faeries in a bizarre version of tag, she’d become the quarry, running for her—and Allison’s—life.
During her training, Tammy learned she could tap into her magic even as a cat—or whatever other animal, though she couldn’t do everything while shapeshifted. For example, throwing bolts of natural energy didn’t quite work. Instead, her magic enhanced the aspects of whatever animal she invoked. As a panther, she could become fast, turn into a shadow, even teleport short distances in the woods. She tried as a fox once and managed to turn invisible. Though, invisibility didn’t fool faeries—light or dark.
Speed, however, always worked.
She concentrated on drawing energy from the world around her. Like a fur-covered cruise missile, Tammy sprinted and leapt away from the oncoming horde of murderous faerie. Maple could probably keep up with her, but remained clinging to the fur of her neck, no doubt to hold onto Allison—who she’d shrunk down to her size.
Faerie, even light ones, loved to play tricks on humans. Their favorite trick (when they weren’t angry) happened to be making people sleep, stealing all their clothes, and putting everything in a hard-to-reach place like up in trees. Their second favorite trick was to shrink people down to faerie size. This, of course, tended only to work on humans who’d somehow strayed into the faerie realm. Magic like that proved difficult to make work in the mortal world. Perhaps less so with the Red Rider now destroyed, but still.
Except, Maple did not take delight in watching Allison panic at being tiny and struggle to cope with a world too big for her. Smallness had a very practical application at the moment: it made Allison much lighter and easier to carry.
Several minutes into the run, Allison seemed to get a handle on what had happened, stopped screaming, and began firing lightning bolts at the brambles pursuing them. Tammy didn’t bother looking back, too focused on navigating the harsh terrain. From the sounds reaching her ears, she guessed Allison’s magic hadn’t lost any potency due to her size change. However, killing one dark faerie every five or six seconds didn’t help much when they had thousands chasing them.
Maple pelted Tammy with faerie dust, giving her energy to keep going.
Her determination to not be killed, her need to keep Allison safe, and her strong desire to get Annie the hell out of here propelled her at an unwaveringly fast pace. Occasionally, she invoked the panther spirit to ‘shadow-leap’ forward, covering hundreds of yards in an instantaneous teleport. Doing that too often would tire her out faster than Maple could give her ‘magic coffee,’ so she saved it for the rare moments when the evil forest afforded her a long-distance view.
Thankfully, the dark faeries didn’t taketoolong to realize their thorny monster bodies had no hopes of catching a semi-ghostly teleporting panther. They still had to climb over the huge log-like vines everywhere, and even though they moved with creepy-crawly, supernatural speed, it wasn’t enough.
Once the rattling, clattering, and crackling of the rolling fiends behind her ceased entirely, Tammy kept running for another two minutes, then trotted to a halt. She should have fallen over and fainted, but thanks to Maple’s help, she only came up mildly short of breath.
“Whoa. Holy crap,” whispered Tammy.
“I second that sentiment,” squeaked Allison.
“They gave up but are angrier now,” said Maple.
“Let them be angry.” Tammy frowned… well, as much as a panther face could.
“Oh, weird.” Allison pointed at Maple. “You don’t sound so... chirpy.”
The queen giggled. “It’s because you’re small now, too.”
“Oh, right.” Allison looked down at herself, still standing somewhere near the panther’s shoulder blade. “Appreciate the quick thinking, you two. Yanno, I’ve had people tell me I should see a shrink before, but I don’t think this is what they had in mind.”
