Sweepstakes Winners: Part 9

When I awoke I was in Stellan’s arms once more.

“What you do without me?” he asked with a smile.

For a moment I’d forgotten the gravity of the situation I was in. The fact that these people claimed Stellan was their leader, not once, but twice and after I tried to confirm they had the wrong name. The peaceful nature they had adopted in his presence said that this may actually be true.

“You up,” his familiar demanding tone came. “Brother, you help.” He gestured to the older man that reminded me of my father. “And you, Keiko.”

The tall blonde and the older man hoisted me up on their shoulders, more lifting than helping me down the wide hall. We headed the opposite way of where my sister had gone.

“Sibley,” was all I could muster.

“Where she?” Stellan asked, not stopping our progress through the hall.

“That way,” I pointed toward where she had run.

“Zelus, Arel, find,” he told the purple and pink men who promptly disappeared.

When we came to a door marked as an exit, Stellan turned and asked, “You trust?”

“Trust who? You?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said, making eye contact that was somehow comforting.

“Tell me first, how you escaped your mother,” I told him.

“Tell on way. Bag, Feifi,” he told the Chinese woman.

She covered my face and the older man hoisted me over his shoulder. He was stronger than he looked like my dad had been.

“It’s okay, Minya, we are just trying to get you somewhere safe and we can’t have someone recognizing you,” the older man explained.

Once we were outside, Stellan explained how he had escaped his mother.

💙💙💙

He opened the door and saw his mother there, so he did what he could to protect us: slam the door shut so she couldn’t get a visual of us.

“My son,” she greeted with wide open arms and he noticed his father strapped to a chair and gagged with a pink cloth. Tied next to him and guarded by a large man was Salman’s current wife, Stellan’s step mother, or as he called her his ‘also-mother’. The woman we had met when we arrived here and who had translated the story last night.

“You’re a smart woman, mother,” Stellan greeted in return, keeping his distance from her.

“Thank you, traitor,” she hissed back in acknowledgement of the fact that he had not returned her affectionate gesture of opening her arms.

“I am not a traitor,” he hissed because his task, his goal, his life, since finding the Peace Bringers had been about us. His life was devoted, first to finding us, now to protecting us, and next to helping us. He took this moment of pause to question his life and what it was supposed to be when we had completed our work, but quickly returned to his telling of his escape.

“So then what do you call abandoning the people who, when this man was drinking too much to know you existed, took you away and raised you?” she hissed back, violently gesturing to his father and her blue glow turning as dark as midnight.

He said this change to her color was not common and somehow reminded him of the way I glowed red when I was angry.

“I’m sorry, my son,” his father said through his gag.

Outside the door was Keiko’s voice, but mumbled, which barely drew his mother’s attention. It was my voice that had drawn her attention. Apparently my shenanigans, intended to keep us safe, had drawn the attention of a murderous fairy.

She bolted across the room, but she had him to go through. She hit him square in the chest, seeming to be trying to mow him down, but he wrapped her in his arms and held her tight. She is his mother, so he was afraid to hurt her.

At this moment, his also-mother broke free of her bonds, knocked the guard out and tackled Stellan’s mother who was struggling to get away from her son’s grip. Apparently his also-mother had put herself through school by, from what I gathered, the fairy version of MMA fighting, called ‘Steitgatai’. She was the title holder for several years, so neither the guard or his mother stood a chance.

His also-mother put his actual mother in a chokehold.

“Run, Stellan,” his also-mother told him as his mother fought losing consciousness.

He ducked out the door in time to see I was about to lose consciousness, yet again. Sibley had told him all the symptoms so it was easy for him to recognize.

💙💙💙

“Now we here,” Stellan finished with a shrug.

“And where are we headed?” I asked.

“Many father’s followers not ‘member what happen way back. He make it that way. Many mother’s followers think it not matter anymore. We meet. Have weekly meeting at secret place,” he explained.

“See, we told you Stellan was our leader. I’m Leander, his brother. Half brother. Mother had me before she met Stellan’s father,” the older man explained.

“Nice to meet you,” I said in a friendly voice. “You know I can walk, right?”

“Oh, then let me put you down. Grab me if you think you might faint again.”

I cringed as my feet hit the ground. I hated the word ‘faint’. Made me feel like a po’ South’rn woman with a weak constitution. When really I was just a hot head with no control.

Blood, I’m fine.

Death, I can handle.

My own anger? Not a chance.

“Will do,” I muttered, pulling the bag off my head and trying to keep my anger in check as I began to trudge through the grass and weeds, some of which grew taller than me.

They kept Stellan and me relatively centered in the group as we moved forward. Keiko took the lead, keeping her weapon trained ahead while the other two fell back.

“I don’t get why we have to walk,” Feifi asked, jerking her weapon toward a noise in the distance. “If she’s a fairy, can’t she fly?”

“She not learn,” Stellan said. “Yet.”

“I was raised as a human. I didn’t even know I could glow until yesterday,” I said, feeling irritated by the fact that I had been lied to my whole life.

“Show us,” Feifi said.

I took a deep breath, trying to conjure up those things that frustrate me.

“We’re putting a lot of faith in someone that faints when she gets frustrated. Maybe your mother was right about her,” Feifi continued, harshly, toward Stellan.

I stayed silent, trying to quell my anger, but my face was getting hot again.

“I’ve seen it,” Leander interjected. “Just a few minutes ago.”

“I still don’t get how we know she’s and her wimpy sister are supposed to be the Peace Bringers,” Feifi plowed ahead with her thoughts about me. “I mean, aren’t Peace Bringers supposed to be non-violent? How can you be violent and bring peace?”

“That’s a good question,” I said in my customer service voice, trying to put myself into Feifi’s shoes and understand where she was coming from.

Suddenly, I was questioning it myself. I would never claim to be nonviolent, but with all the rage inside me, the nonpeaceful anger that roiled near constantly, so near to the surface so much of the time, how could I ever bring peace?

There was silence in the group for a long time before Feifi announced, “Well, I was asking you, Minya.”

I looked down and noticed that my skin had a soft pink glow, almost like that of a pregnant woman, which seemed odd since this was the first time for me to glow without anger, but it was barely noticeable.

“Well, I don’t have an answer.”

“Then how do you justify us protecting you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then what are we doing?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is there anything you do know?”

“Yeah, a lot,” I snapped. “Where do you want me to start?”

“Why are you here?”

“I won a freakin’ sweepstakes trying to run away from my dad’s death,” I hissed. “Why are you here? Did your owner forget to lock the fence?”

“Oh, shut up,” Keiko finally interrupted with evident annoyance.

Feifi began to justify herself, “I’m just trying to — ”

“Shut it,” Kieko hissed with quiet fury.

Feifi opened her mouth to speak again and shut it before freezing and giving me her full attention. She glared at me, and I glared back until my whole body was racked with rage. The others stopped to watch the scene and see if they’d have to break up a fight.

As we stood, seemingly frozen in time, Feifi’s face turned and she began to laugh.

“You’re mouthy,” she chuckled. “You must be a fairy. At least you glow, I’ll give you that.”

I don’t know what came over me, but I decked her, knocking her onto her flat butt. I hit her so hard my hand hurt instantly, but I ignored it.

“Knock it off,” Leander said, grabbing Feifi before she could hit me.

Stellan had wrapped his arms around my waist and held me tight, whispering, “She’s not worth it.”

It struck me as strange because he’d been struggling with English and this was a decent sentence. Great compared to most of his others.

He locked his arms tighter at first, but he had no need to restrain me, I had gotten my punch in and was done, and he was realizing it.

At sometime during the kerfuffle, Zelus and Arel had arrived with my sister. When I noticed her, I broke free from Stellan and ran to her.

“Sibley, you’re alright!”

“Yes, Minya,” she said in an awkward hug.

I notice the man glowing pink has a black eye and the one glowing purple massaged his shoulder.

“We almost there, Arel. Then get ice,” the man glowing pink said, patting the purple glowing man on the back.

“You tough,” Arel said, knocking my sister on her shoulder with his good arm. “I like.”

Sibley chuckled. “I’m just glad you guys can forgive me.”

Feifi had finally calmed down and we all began to trudge through the greenery. Anytime I looked in Feifi’s direction, she seemed to be glaring back at me.

Just when I started to wonder how long it might take me to learn how to fly, we arrived at the base of a fence post.

Keiko spoke some gibberish and with that, we dropped into the earth as if we were on an elevator.