The Pearl Fox

The Fairies of Stone

The dark of night made the graveyard appear eerie, as it often does, and the same darkness of night magnified the strangeness before them.

All around was silence. Not even an owl hooted. No crickets in the grass made their music sounds. Bullfrogs were quiet, and what little noises of nature happened ceased that night completely. The silence was weird.

At first, they saw a man with a shovel, made of stone, that Vandox assumed was a quaint touch of the village Southernville 12 to have a statue of a gravedigger in its cemetery. Flora found another statue beside a hedge, that resembled a gardener holding up sheers as though he were ready to cut the leaves. Among the crystal graves was a seated statue of a woman coering her eyes and with her mouth open in a scream. The paleness of the statues glowed under the lanterns and the three partial moons of their first quarter phases, nicknamed "white apples" throughout Diaphry. They came to another statue that resembled a young man with a look of fear on his face. Vandox and Flora thought these statues were uncanny and odd. A cold shiver passed through them both. They left the cemetery and walked through an overgrown street, where weeds fringed the paving slabs and plants entwined along the foundation of houses, cracking the wood and mortar. They came to an alleyway that contained a number of stone children in mid play, as well as stone cats crawling along the rooftops and seated on all over. One stone cat alooked terrified with its arched body. They soon passed a small house with a door that was open inwards. Standing in that doorway was a statue of a weeping woman.  

"This place gives me the creepy" Flora had never been this quiet for so long before.

"We have to go," Vandox said, and he didn't like the village at all. "Let the police come out here in the morning and look around." On their horses, they rode away from the silent village of statues. They noticed many more statues as they were leaving the village, but now they were stone animals. Statues of roosters, geese, pigs, cows, sheep, goats, llamas, and also dogs, horses, even hundreds of wild birds. There were also stone statues of tiny insects, butterflies, snakes, lizards, frogs, scattered throughout the fields. Statues of two fighting dogs, a cat with a dead mouse, coiling snakes around branches of trees, and even a family of stone boards hiding in the woods. There were also statues of bats hung from trees in the upside-down position of sleeping bats! Vandox and Flora were astonished. Flora saw a statue of a cat with a tiny winged fairylike being perched on its nose. It became evident that something was dreadfully wrong with the village of Southernville 12.

Dew drops in South Diaphry often meant sunshine for the following day ahead. According to the tales of farmers, priests, healers and witches, night time dew signified a lot of about the health of soil and good weather. After the break of dawn, the weather was fair and the sky was lavender with areas of haze and swirling fog throughout the woods and forests, across valleys, between hills, over fields and pastures. By late morning, post Breakfast, the fog lifted to reveal sparkling fresh water droplets over plants, stones and everything. The sky turned a glaucous colour, and the muted blurry yellow sun turned at fortyfive degrees then vanished behind approaching clouds. By afternoon, the sky turned darker and the stars showed themselves. It was when Vandox and Flora arrived on horseback to their station. Vandox wrote about his latest patrol at Southernville 12 in his leather bound report book.

The desk duty officer liased with both police and night patrollers, and he wore green chainmail and a black leather belt with green studs. This was the issued uniform of clerk officers. "Vandox! You and Radish are needed in Sergeant Willow's office."

Vandox and Flora went up the spiral stairs to the fourth floor, and reached the office door of Sergeant Willow. Inside was a room that was made small by the amount of clutter. The shelves were filled with old books and folders, all undusted and covered in cobwebs. The recent folders were put in drawers and inside wooden cases. Sat behind a desk full of jumbled scrolls and books was a large man with thick grey hair covering his dark green eyes. His giant moustache covered his mouth. He stood and towered a foot above Vandox.

"Vandox. Flora" he said and then he sat. "I'm sure you've both done for now and want to go home but I won't keep you. A shame that you, Vandox never joined the police."

Vandox had been over this with him before. He functioned better at night and wouldn't fit in with the regimented way of life. The night patrol needed people such as himself, and he was psychic and had strong intuition. The police wasn't for him.

"You're a deep thinker, Vandox," said Willow. "And you see things. How do you find the latest recruit that was partnered to you, our miss Radish?"

Flora's eyes widened but she looked straight at Willow or the painting of horses behind him. "At first I thought she was a bit too young and inexperienced but she surprised me in the last few patrols. She showed some skills of bravery and sixth sense."

Willow was a little quiet and then he spoke, as if to prepare for bad news. "Then this is good. Flora, you're being sent to patrol Belldark for the time being. We'll find you a team and you can start tomorrow evening. Transport will be supplied. You'll be there until we find replacements for the two missing patrollers, Hinor and Brent".

Vandox had briefly heard that a week earlier, two of those Belldark night patrollers rode camels along the Black Coast while off duty. Then the camels vanished over the edge of a cliff while the men were on their backs riding them. They were never found.  It was widely blieved that they drowned as the tide was in and the waves lashed against the rocks. No one could have ever survived it.

"Sergeant Willow glanced at Vandox. "You'll be assigned to patrol Southernville 2."

Vandox felt so confused. "Southernville 2 has been empty for two centuries," he pointed out to the sergreant. Vandox remembered the villages that were abandoned and ruins. This was one of them. He wondered on what form of logic was Willow doing by sending Vandox to another ghost town. He often thought of Willow as a ram, with thick grey wool and moustache horns.

Willow dismissed Flora from the room. After she left, Sergeant Willow got up and lifted a thick book with a green cover from a pile of books. He put the book down on the desk in front of Vandox and opened a few pages. He pointed at something in the Diaphric small text that Vandox found made his eyes cross over if he tried reading it. Willow put his large fat index finger on the page. "Persim is only fifteen, but he can lift assailants into the air using his will power. Ganjur, using his mind alone to find missing objects. He can also make himself invisible. Rej is fifteen, with the nose of a dog and the eyesight of a hawk. Torli is only twelve but he can use his mind to extinguish fires."

"This is interesting," Vandox said. "Why am I being sent to a ghost town?"

"Your duty is to guard the streets, and find out if anyone lives there," then he pointed a finger at Vandox. "A tax inspector vanished from there just a few days ago. You are more than qualified to investigate it, night patroller."