Leo rounded his eyes and blinked at all the stares in his direction. “Uh… I’d teleport for you. Willingly.”
We all laughed, knowing what that meant. Offering up something like that was the equivalent of donating a kidney in Leo’s book.
“I’m hungry,” I declared, suddenly famished. “Let’s get some food and figure out our next move. We have legends to recruit.”
All but Bryan froze and lost all expression. Clay spoke up. “Uh, come again?”
“The legends, they’re real.” I nodded for them to follow. Someone was barbequing, and I wanted to partake. The smell of glorious burgers filled the air.
“And you know this…how?”
“Cressida told us,” Bryan explained. “I got to meet her, like in person meet her. She manifested in front of me. It was pretty cool. A bit weird to have the original prophecy from hundreds of years ago suddenly appear, but I handled it.”
Was that what he called handling it? He’d freaked out and hid in the shadows until she told him to come out. Even then, he’d been reluctant to approach. Yep, that was handling it great. “According to Cressida, every element has a legend attached to it. Air pixies, snow ghosts, lava snakes, and something about an earth yeti I’m not quite sure I understood.”
“It’s the legend of Bigfoot,” Bryan explained. “Everyone knows it. There’s supposedly a sasquatch living in the Pacific Northwest that can turn into earth itself. That’s why no one has ever been able to catch it. A Nelem could be right on top of it and never see it.”
“If you believe in legends.” Leo made a face. “Snow ghosts? Really?”
“They’re not snakes,” Rob corrected. “They’re dragons. Well, a form of them anyway.”
“Wait.” I paused, my hand up. “Dragons are real?”
“Not in the way you see them on TV, giant winged lizards flying around terrorizing small villages and sacrificing virgins. Lava snakes have wings, but they’re too small to carry them. They have feet too but don’t really need them since they travel through small pockets underground.”
“How do you know so much about them?”
“My brother Frank had one as a pet growing up. We found it while turning over rocks looking for scorpions.”
“You purposely went looking for scorpions?”
He looked at me. “It was just something you did growing up in Arizona. Anyway, when we came across this sickly-looking snake, we brought it home. That’s when our dad explained what it was. We had no idea what it was doing so far away from lava and knew if we released him back into the desert, it’d kill him. It wasn’t warm enough. Frank built it a makeshift lava bed of sorts, and we all took turns keeping the rock in liquid form so Lenny could burrow down. That’s what we named him: Lenny the lava snake. He created all these tunnels, like you’d see in an ant farm. He was super cool.”
“How long did you guys have him?”
“We brought him with us when we moved here. One day when I went into Frank’s room to do my turn heating the rocks, Lenny was gone. We don’t know what happened to him.”
“Interesting.” I turned to Clay. “Did you own an air pixie growing up, by chance?”
“I didn’t even own an air fryer growing up. My parents were all about research and diseases. They said having a pet was too much responsibility and turned me down flat whenever I asked to get one.”
“It’s like they knew you or something,” Bryan teased.
Clay flipped him off. “They rarely came out of their lab, so it wasn’t like they’d notice if I did have one. But, to answer your question, no. I didn’t have an air pixie growing up. I’d love to think they’re real, but I’ve never seen one.”
“They live in the rain forest.” I repeated what Cressida had told us. “Yetis in the woods, air pixies in the rain forest, snow ghosts in the mountains, and lava snakes near a volcano. Since Rob has experience with a lava snake, I say we start there.”
We joined the crowd already forming around the outdoor cafeteria we’d set up to feed the masses. Once we had our food and found a place to sit in the shade of a tree, we continued our conversation.
“It seems like starting with the deadliest of the legends isn’t that great of an idea.” Bryan took a bite and swallowed before adding, “Why not start with the one element we have in common?”
Made sense. “After lunch, we travel to the rain forest to recruit our first of the legends to join Sentry.” We lifted our burgers to toast to our victory.
“To Sentry!”
16
It took us three days to find the air pixies, but find them we did.
With the help of a locator spell, of course.
Since I couldn’t picture a place I’d never been, we didn’t use the crystal to get us to the rain forest. And since Clay had the uncanny ability to teleport to places he’d never been, we teleported to the Olympic Peninsula and stuck the landing, courtesy of our air elemental. We wound up in the middle of a forest of huge, huge trees covered in moss. Foliage draped down from the branches, sheltering us in a curtain of green. Thick underbrush buried us up to our knees. Although we heard the rain, the dense flora and fauna growing up the sides of the trees and weaving together above us acted as an umbrella. The smell of wet wood and the fresh outdoors filled the air. I took a deep breath, relishing the fragrance.
“I’ve never been in a rain forest before.” I glanced around, brushing my fingers along soft moss on the side of a tree. It responded by reaching for me. “Cool.”
Clay stepped over to another tree and rested his hand on the trunk as he craned his neck. “Cressida said they travel through the trees by bouncing
