“We should have fair weather.” Zinnia suggested.

“But sometimes in June we get a brief storm or two.” Mistletoe guessed.

“Yes, but this does not look like a brief storm to me.” Mrs. Aster pointed, and the girls finally looked to see a massive dark gray cloud on the horizon, coming on fast. Beth thought she saw a bit of lightning. But before they could respond again, before Beth could ask what they might do to avoid the storm, Holly came rushing up, followed by the other two girls.

“Carrion eaters!” Holly shrieked and zipped back to Beth’s shoulder to hide in Beth’s hair. Beth looked, and there were indeed, a bunch of black spots coming rapidly toward them from the opposite direction. The carrion eaters looked something like vultures and something like people, and they were between them and their objective; or at least in the direction they were headed.

“Geese!” Hyacinth said sharply. She pointed toward the storm, and indeed, it looked like a whole gaggle fleeing from the weather. “Swans!” The fairies cheered, and Beth wondered until Mrs. Aster explained.

“The swan people have not given into the demon-goddess, and they despise the carrion eaters.”

All the same, it looked like they would be in the middle of the fray when those two opposing forces met. Beth became suddenly frightened, until she got distracted from above. Three new fairies descended upon them.

“Dogwood!” Mistletoe shouted at the one dressed all in white, and she zoomed ahead which let Beth know just how much they had actually slowed down to accommodate her much slower air speed.

“The others are Pinoak and Cherry.” Holly whispered in Beth’s ear even as Beth realized that these were men, or perhaps young men. Holly still hid in her hair. Zinnia joined her on Beth’s other shoulder, as the young ones seemed shy in front of the men.

“Straight up! This way!” Pinoak shouted and Mrs. Aster agreed. Of course, fairies never fly in a straight line, but in this case, they tried as that line of darkness started coming on much too fast, and the closer it came, the more frightening it looked.

They started up, but soon realized that Beth was going too slow.

“We aren’t going to make it!” Dogwood yelled over the growing din of the storm as he came back to grab Beth’s hand, or her finger. Cherry grabbed her other hand, and they began to drag her up.

“Hurry!” Holly shouted as the black clouds were almost on them. She and Zinnia followed Mistletoe to where they began to push from below. Beth could hardly register a complaint, though, before the girls shrieked and zoomed past her. Dogwood and Cherry also had to let go at the last as the blackness enveloped Beth.

Beth held her breath and felt more like she was underwater than in a cloud. She was instantly soaked, and almost had to swim to the surface more than fly. When her head broke free, she heard Mrs. Aster and the girls. “Beth! Beth!” Beth did not stop at the surface of the wet, but broke free and continued upward only to be enveloped almost immediately with real, black storm clouds. The rain started to pour with very little preliminaries, and once again Beth could hardly see, though at least she could breathe.

“Beth.” She heard Mrs. Aster again and saw a bright light beside her. The others came to that light, surrounded her, and began to generate their own fairy lights. They glowed like little angels in the darkness. Beth did her best to add her glow to the mix, but it seemed a pitiful thing next to the fairies.

“We have to get above the storm,” Dogwood insisted. Again, Mrs. Aster agreed, and so they still went up and up. They had to stop, though, when a great stroke of lightning flashed through the darkness not a hundred yards above their heads. The thunder sounded deafening.

“Tornado!” Daffodil spotted the terror barreling down on their position as if it had a mind to find and destroy them. The fairies bravely rushed between Beth and the monstrous whirlwind, as if somehow to protect her. Beth turned and saw Fluffy and Flitter close by; or at least she thought it was them, with about ten more and they were holding hands, or cloudy mittens and dancing in a circle. They began to chant.

“Nimbus, Nimbus, come and save us,

Hear our cry through wind and rain.

Nimbus, Nimbus, Kairos’ daughter

Come before we call again.”

Of course, they repeated the chant over and over until Beth saw a blackness darker than the storm clouds; dark enough to rival the black water below. Beth gasped, but the blackness first passed over them and seemed to strike the tornado to send it spinning away in another direction. Then the blackness turned, and Beth felt sure this thing had something to direct it. In a breath of time, it had swallowed them all.

Inside the blackness, Beth and the fairies found a chamber of sorts, completely cloud free. The first thing Beth noticed, however, was the silence, as the fury of the storm became suddenly cut off from their perception.

“My thanks, Lord Nimbus.” Mrs. Aster breathed heavily. “I am getting too old for this.” The other fairies, men and women, said nothing. They hovered quiet and appeared respectful.

“We all are,” Beth said.

Beth jumped when she heard the voice she expected, though not the way she expected it. The voice itself rumbled, more softly, but like the very thunder which moments ago had frightened her half to death. Then she saw a face form on one of the walls of the chamber. It appeared a full bearded face that looked stern, though not unkind. “Kairos’ daughter. Let me look at you,” the face said. Beth found herself unable to move until Holly and Zinnia gave her a little push from behind. “Yes. Turn around.” Beth hardly had a choice as the wind caught her and turned her twice. “I see,” Lord Nimbus said. “She has been given gifts. Flight ought to be a natural thing, but the beauty I don’t understand.” Beth turned once more. “But now the sight? You fee have eyes of eagles, better than eagles; but I would have guessed this was beyond your magic. She has eyes to scan the surface of the sun.”

Mrs. Aster shook her head. “We did not do this,” she said. “It was the glorious one.”

“Eh?”

“The Servant of the Source,” Mrs. Aster said quietly, and she was going to say no more.

Lord Nimbus paused. “I see.” He spoke with utmost seriousness before he brightened. “Still, with all that, she is hardly in a position to defend herself if that should prove necessary.” Without asking, a bolt of lightning shot from the eyes of the face on the wall, struck Beth in the solar plexus and knocked her back against the far wall, which fortunately stayed cloud soft. Beth felt dazed, but fine as the fairies all gathered around her with worried looks. As Beth stood, she began to glow with a glow as strong as the fairies.

“There,” Lord Nimbus said. “Now she can make her own light, I should think, though I suppose it will not likely make a difference in the castle. She should have a little left over as well.”

“Like this.” Mrs. Aster tried to get Beth’s attention. She stripped the glow from herself and held a glowing ball in her hands, like holding a lit light bulb.

“This?” Beth shook her head to clear her thoughts. She held out her hands and tried to concentrate, but that started to give her a headache, so she just let it happen, and shortly, she had a much larger glowing ball in her own hands.

“Now let it go,” Mrs. Aster said, and she let her ball float free.

Beth also let go and watched her ball float up toward the center of the room to give light to all.

“Now enough.” Mrs. Aster said, and she clapped her hands and her ball of light dissipated. Beth also clapped her hands, but her light sparkled first before the electricity went off.

“Very good,” Mrs. Aster said; but by then the words of Lord Nimbus caught up to Beth’s mind.

“What do you mean a little left over?” she asked, but the face had gone, and in a moment the whole crew got ejected onto a field of grass. The sky still rained, and the wind felt horrendous, but they seemed to have been deposited on solid ground, and there did not seem to be any more tornados about.

“Ash,” Mrs. Aster identified something that looked to have turned the grass gray. Beth thought it was just the lighting under the storm, but Mistletoe agreed, and the fairies went to the edge of the field. They saw a dull orange light far off down below. Holly named it.

“Volcano.”

It looked to Beth like one of the mountaintops down below cracked open, and then she thought to step back from the edge, even if she could fly.

In truth, she found a castle in the sky, and one not made out of clouds. The grass out front and in the court looked just as lush, and the hills out back looked just as forested, and with real trees, and while the number of spires and towers on this castle could hardly be counted, it seemed curious because some of the tops of towers appeared to come up through the clouds from some other castle down below.