Elephant Escape

 

Bebe dared not look at the Fae warrior who touched her arm. From behind Drindl pushed her forward to the bottom of the stairs, growling his displeasure at her lack of attention to the line. Bebe turned her head to look back over her left shoulder and away from the Fae warrior. She growled back in a low voice that she hoped sounded masculine enough to confuse the Fae warrior and think she was a male. Squeezing her fist to make as large an arm muscle as she could, she struck back at Drindl. The Fae warrior yelled something, then grabbed her from behind and pushed her forward. Bebe stepped up on the first step, her legs wide, her shoulders swaggering as she imagined a miner might look. Alpen reached back to swat at her and she brushed away his hand with an abrupt motion of her arm.

At the top of the stairs, a Fae warrior let Alpen through the opening into the clinic. Bebe waited, eyes down, sometimes scratching her leg like an animal. She hoped that the Fae warrior would not notice her youth. Suddenly she heard a tik-tik bird from inside the clinic, a call to action from Alpen. She sensed that Drindl was moving forward and struck out with her leg at the Fae warrior, who went off balance and fell over the handrail to the ground below.

Bebe moved from the outside light, her eyes adjusting quickly to the dim interior of the clinic. A Fae warrior lay crumpled on the clinic floor as Alpen turned to the other guard near the window opening of the clinic. The Fae guard had wrapped her arm around the neck of a miner, holding the compliant body to her as a shield. Alpen cried out “Mellen!” as he brushed past another miner.

The Fae warrior on the floor reached out toward Alpen’s foot as he moved away from her. Her grasp missed her mark, but her knees gathered under her, ready to assist her fellow guard. Bebe stepped forward, then launched a kick at the cheek of the Fae warrior. She felt her nails tear into the cheek flesh as she rolled sideways in the air and landed in a crouch, ready to defend against the Fae warrior’s attack. The warrior struck out with her right arm toward Bebe, but fell forward onto the floor, her neck at a curious angle. There was a brief spasm from the warrior then she slumped lifeless.

Drindl sprang from the stairway leading to the main floor of the clinic, glancing at Bebe to make sure she was uninjured. He reached for a long stir stick on the clinic table, then joined Alpen who struggled with the Fae warrior. Drindl let out a battle cry as he came forward, and Alpen stepped to the side, pulling Mellen to the floor. Drindl drove the stirring stick through the eye of the Fae warrior, who stumbled back and collapsed.

Seeing the elephant waiting outside the window, Drindl motioned to Bebe, then helped Alpen load his drugged brother into the tent atop the elephant’s back. Bebe glanced down the stairs leading up to the clinic, alert to another Fae warrior responding to the commotion. Several miners had turned and were trying to get away from the violence. As Bebe prepared to step out of the window opening into the tent, the elephant moved forward, guided by his Fae handler away from the clinic building.

“No, you don’t,” Bebe said to no one and leapt onto the tent frame base, the claws of her right foot sinking into the fabric of the tent wall. The Fae warrior looked back at her in panic as Bebe jumped onto the Fae’s right arm. The warrior screamed as Bebe’s foot claw ripped through the skin. Bebe pushed the Fae off her perch from behind the elephant, whose long thick trunk curled up in alarm.

Bebe had seen one of the human soldiers talk into the ear of an elephant and tried the same tactic, trying to keep her voice calm and manly despite the sound of her own heart crashing in her ears. As she sat astride the elephant’s neck, she fought the urge to dig her foot claws into the sides of the elephant to secure herself. She closed her eyes, pretending that she was once again talking her dead babies to sleep, despite the sounds of alarm and commotion from the clinic.

The Fae warriors controlled an elephant’s movements directly with their minds through their finger tendrils. Without that ability, how was Bebe to control this monstrous animal? She used the same technique she had used as a mother, pinching the right ear of the elephant. Like a child, the elephant turned away from the pinch and Bebe’s heart leapt with relief. This animal had also grown up with a mother who used the same steering technique, bothering the child on the opposite side of where the mother wanted the child to go.

Hunched over the giant skull bone of the elephant’s head, Bebe looked back at the clinic, worried that the remaining Fae warriors would give chase. Instead, she was relieved to see the miners attacking the Fae warriors, probably out of desperation for their medicine. Bebe turned back to the tent behind her and made the cooing sounds of a burble bird. She smiled when she heard Alpen’s answering coo, and scratched the elephant behind the large ears, urging the animal forward toward the crest of the hill at the edge of the mine.