"Ohh, this one looks interesting," the young Shoyru said, grabbing yet another volume from the plentiful shelves of the Faerie Bookshop.

The faerie in charge of the shop shook her head in bemused annoyance. Every day that little Shoyru would come in, browsing through every book he could get his paws on, often leaving a stack of books for her to put away at the end of the day. Still, it was nice to see him taking such a strong interest in reading. She glanced around the corner of a bookshelf and saw him sitting on a rather large stack of books, poring over a manual that was nearly as large as he. His faerie wings fluttered slightly as he read something of interest. Smiling, she left him to his business and returned to the front counter. Maybe, someday, he would actually make a purchase.

The faerie Shoyru looked up from yet another book finished. He eyed a shelf high above his head. He squinted to read the gold lettering on the spine of one of the shelve's books, but couldn't quite make it out, which intrigued him even more. Standing up on the stack of books he'd been sitting on, he reached for it. His wings weren't much help in such an enclosed area. "Just a few... more... inches," he muttered to himself, while stretching his arm as far as he could. Seeing that he was still a bit short, he made a jump for it...

The shopkeeper gasped as she saw one of the shelves topple over. It crashed into the shelf opposite of it, which was (thankfully) against a wall. Panicked, she ran over to find the Shoyru, crawling out from under a pile of books that had fallen off the shelf, which was now slanted.

"Shane!" she screamed.

"It's okay, I'm not hurt," the Shoryu said, wiping the dust off himself. "See? Not even a paper cut!" he grinned.

The next thing Shane knew, he was being tossed (despite his protests) from the premises of the bookstore. The faerie even hurled a few books at him, to make it absolutely clear he was no longer welcome.

"Well, no need to be rude about it!" he shouted, shaking his fist at the building. "Hrrmph!" Brushing himself off, Shane went to investigate the books that had been thrown at him. He shouted for joy when he noticed that one of them was the very same book he'd been trying to reach in the first place! Running over to where it lay, Shane plopped down on the fluffy ground and opened the book.

Inside...

...were all kinds of bizarre letters and words that made no sense at all to the small Shoyru. He began to flip through the pages, looking to see if there was any normal writing in the book. It appeared, however, that Shane's luck had failed him, for the strange gold writing was the only kind of text inside the entire book. Just before Shane closed the book, a thin piece of paper floated out from within its pages and onto the ground beside him.

"Hello... what do we have here?" Shane asked as he delicately picked up the old parchment. Examining both the back and front sides of the page, Shane was surprised to find that it was blank. "That's odd," he mused, "I could have sworn that I saw writing on the page when it fell out of the book."

Not giving the matter any further thought, Shane picked himself up and, with both book and paper in hand, he began walking home.

"For goodness' sake! Where is that boy?!?"

"Hey mom!" Shane exclaimed as he walked through the door and into the kitchen. He could tell from his mother's angry face that she wasn't too happy.

"Now that you've finally decided to come home, you need to clean your room. It's a Snorkle-sty in there!"

"But, mom! Do I ha--"

"Now! March!"

Mumbling something to himself, Shane walked down the hallway and into his room. Clearing away enough clutter to find his desk, Shane placed the book and paper down. However, as he turned away to begin cleaning his room, Shane shot back around... there was now writing on the paper.

"Help me..."

...The toys Shane had been carrying clattered to the floor as he stared at the words scrawled on the old parchment. Leaping over a pile of discarded clothing with a hasty sort of excitement, Shane grabbed the paper in his hands.

"'Help me?' Who wrote it, I wonder?" He ran his fingers along the creased edges of the paper, thinking to himself. "Maybe the faerie at the bookstore knows..." Despite the allure of the idea, he couldn't help but remember his rather unceremonious exit from the store. Shane wrinkled his little nose in disgust, then sat down at his desk to glance inside the book once again.

The letters were still golden, and they still spelled words that he was unable to understand. He began to leaf through the pages, delighted by their crispness and rich, musty scent. Every so often, he would rest his eyes on the old parchment, as if to await another message from the invisible sender. To his disappointment, nothing happened.

After what felt like hours, Shane closed the book, picked himself up from the chair and, with a heavy sigh, resumed cleaning his bedroom.

After finishing his dinner, Shane returned to his room to discover that the book, which he'd left on his desk, was now open. He scratched his head as a puzzled look overcame his face. "I remember closing it before I left," he murmured, trotting to his desk.

The parchment beside the book immediately caught his attention. The phrase "Help me..." had been replaced with a newer message: "A story is told upon the turning of the first page..." Shane picked up the parchment eagerly; the smell of fresh black ink tickled his nose as possibilities ran through his mind. "What if I try turning the first page?" he wondered, dropping into his chair.

He turned the first page, yet the gold writing still teased him with its cryptic message. Flipping back and turning it again, he still noticed no difference in the text.

Shane gazed with longing at the pages, wishing with all his might that he would somehow be able to understand the story contained within. As his eyelids drooped and his breathing slowed, Shane never noticed that all the pages after the second one had gone blank.

The Shoyru was awakened by the sound of...

...a gavel banging. He stiffened and opened his eyes, trying to keep from crying out. He saw he was in Queen Fyora's palace, with a jury of angry faeries, and an unusually irate Faerie Queen banging a gavel. The book was opened, covering him up as he lay crumpled in a corner. A small, quivering, and obviously afraid air faerie was standing in the defendant's box, with a haggard looking Lupe as her lawyer.

"Would the defendants please rise?" said Fyora, her eyes beady.

The faerie slowly rose to her feet, tears shimmering in her enormous eyes.

"Has the jury reached a verdict for Baelia the air faerie?" aked Fyora.

Shane gasped. Baelia, the Grey Faerie!

A dark faerie rose to her feet. "We have. We, the jury, find the defendant guilty."

At this, Baelia let out a scream, fainting dead away. The Lupe hurriedly went to her side and fanned her face. She slowly came around, giving the crowd around her a hopeless glance. "Help me," she whispered, looking directly into Shane's eyes.

Fyora banged the gavel. "Baelia, I hereby sentence you to be banished forthwith from Faerieland. Luck save you, you wretched girl."

"No!" Baelia screamed as she was carried away, struggling. "I was framed! I didn't do anything wrong! Oh, please... help me, somebody!"...

...However, the faeries all turned their heads and looked away. Shane huddled into the corner, not sure what to do. Nobody seemed to notice him, except for Baelia, and it might have been a coincidence that she looked in his direction. He looked back at Fyora, who was gathering some papers and sighing.

"It's the worst case I've ever heard... and an air faerie, too... never thought I'd see the day," the Faerie Queen mumbled to herself.

After she'd entered a door that was behind her bench, Shane crept out from behind his book. Looking at the first page, he was surprised to see that words had suddenly appeared... right before his eyes! He squinted closer at the tiny letters, and realized they were in English! Hurriedly scanning the page, he read:

"The faeries sat there grimly, staring up at the shivering air faerie. They had once thought her beautiful, but now they only saw fear in her face. The judge, queen of all the faeries, looked down at her coldly, along with the Lupe lawyer who stood next to her.

'Baelia, you have been accused of murder,' Fyora, the judge, began.

'No, no! I didn't! I was framed! It was--' the faerie cried.

Fyora banged her gavel. 'Order in the court! Will the prosecution please call their first witness?'

A faerie of darkness stepped out from the shadows and glared coldly at the frightened air faerie.

'I am their first witness,' she whispered, her voice seeming to slither from her mouth.

A shudder went through the courtroom--it was as if a cold wind had blown through. The defendant looked down nervously.

'Jennumara, do you swear to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth?' Fyora asked, looking deep into the dark faerie's deep eyes.

'I do,' she said with an evil smirk."

The words ended there. Where was the rest of the story? Shane flipped through the rest of the pages, but they were blank. He suddenly heard a noise behind him, then quickly slammed the book shut. Turning around, he saw a face hurriedly darting away from an open window. Had someone been watching him?

Looking around the deserted courtroom, Shane saw a large door. Flapping his wings as fast as they would go, he flew towards it, then tried to open it. Wincing at its loud creaks, he pulled it open and walked out. His footsteps made loud, echoing noises as he walked down the passageways...

...As he reached the end of the hallway, Shane saw the retreating guards and their prisoner. As quickly as he could, Shane zoomed into the air and followed them as they emerged onto the streets. For a moment, he didn't notice the oddness of the Faerieland that he'd known and loved so well, until he began scanning the streets for any sign of Baelia and her captors. It was then that he nearly fell out of the sky in surprise.

Every street, as far as he could see, was filled to overflowing with the citizens of Faerieland. He had never seen so many faeries and Neopets in one place before. Somewhere in the crowd directly below him, he could just barely make out a ripple of movement. Swooping lower to take a closer look, he saw that, sure enough, the guards were forcing their way through the mob. Baelia was trembling and crying between them.

Shane felt a cold chill fill his body as he caught sight of the furious and unsympathetic expressions on the faces of those in the streets. What could the unfortunate faerie possibly have been charged with to warrant such ostracism and ill-treatment? He could hear voices murmuring below him, and when he flew lower still, Shane could make out some of what was being said as the prisoner was taken past.

"Serves her right."

"She ought to lose more than her wings, the filthy traitor."

He fluttered directly overhead, until the crowds below him began to thin and, finally, vanished. Suddenly, he became aware of the blue sky less than twenty feet ahead of them. They had reached the edge of Faerieland!

One of the guards pulled out an ancient scroll, which looked rather foreboding, and began to read.

"Baelia, Faerie of the Air," he intoned, "You have been sentenced to banishment from Faerieland, never again to set foot on these clouds, under penalty of eternal imprisonment. Under rule #159 of Faerieland Law, I hereby strip you of your wings."

Shane gasped, expecting something truly horrible. Instead, the guard simply muttered a few words from the scroll.

Baelia's wings vanished.

"NO!" she screamed, as though she had been physically wounded, but the guards paid her no heed. They took hold of her and dragged her to the cloud's edge.

Then, rather unceremoniously, they tossed her out into the sky beyond.

Shane let out a startled gasp, then...

...gripping the book between his knees, he flew down and caught the wingless grey faerie.

"Hey!" yelled one of the guards, "You can't help that prisoner! Get back here!"

"Thank you," Baelia said, quietly and thankfully. "I gather that you received my message?"

"What?" Shane asked. "Oh, the writing on the piece of paper. Can you tell me about that golden book?"

"Right after we get out of here," Baelia replied.

The Shoyru and faerie drifted their way to Neopia far below... and landed on a high summit. "So, what do we do now?" Shane asked.

Baelia replied, "First, you must go back to your time. There, you will find me hiding in a cave. Do you see that big chunk of rock? In your time, there is a hidden cave behind it. To get in there, find a Kyrii named Tavi. If you come here with him, I will let you in." She wrote a short letter. "Show this to the Kyrii. Then I'll be needing a new name, so I can get my wings back and become an air faerie again. To do this I will need Fyora's permission. However, Fyora believes that I have committed a crime. In the future, I will tell you how to convince Fyora of the truth. Rest assured that I will remember all of this, so go on... now!

The Shoyru had a very hard time taking in all of this information. "How do I go back?" he asked.

"Like this," Baelia said, taking the scrap of paper that Shane had originally seen her plea for help on, and ripping it in half...

Shane woke up with a start. For a moment, he thought he must have been dreaming, until he felt the note the grey faerie had given him, gripped in his paw. As he sat up, what Baelia had told him became clear, and he knew what he had to do.

"Well, here's where I hid her after I helped her escape that cage," Tavi explained, leading Shane to the cave. The Kyrii knocked on the rock. "I've brought him, just like the note said." Slowly, the rock door creaked open, and the grey faerie laid eyes on Shane once again...

...a smile spread across her pale, tired face as she motioned for Shane to come and sit down.

"Let me see the book," Baelia requested.

"I hope we can make Fyora see that you are innocent," he said, handing it over.

"Wewill," she said. The moment that the book touched her hands, a line of golden script appeared across the cover, revealing a title: The Book of Truth.

"This is an artifact used by faeries to determine the actual facts in any situation that is being disputed. I've no doubt that Jennumara hid it, as it went conveniently missing right before my trial. Fyora resorted to the verdict of a jury instead," the Grey Faerie said.

"But, if you were framed, then how were they so sure that you weren't innocent? How did they know?" the Shoyru asked.

"Let's just say a dark faerie of Jennumara's strength can be very... persuasive," Baelia said, raising her eyebrows at the Shoyru and flipping to the beginning of the book. "You remember how you found the entry about my trial in the center?"

Shane nodded.

"Read," the faerie instructed, setting the book down in front of him. The faerie Shoyru leaned forward to examine the text as it rapidly appeared:

It was a dark, yet calm night. Baelia the air faerie waited outside the house of her closest friend, Melaena the water faerie, while she finished up some work assisting a dark faerie with a spell. She'd never trusted Jennumara, but if her friend felt as though she would truly get some worthwhile item out of this, she supposed she had no right to deny her. In the end, her choices were her own.

The air faerie listened cautiously, hearing only Jennumara's voice as she spoke the words of some spell. That was followed by a horrible, ear-shattering scream.

Baelia ran inside, frantically turning through the corridors of the cloud house, until she found the main lounge. There, on the floor, were naught but bits of scales and clothing where Melaena had once been. Baelia grasped the scroll on the floor, frantically trying to decipher the text and find some remedy. This couldn't be happening! There had to be some way to bring her back! Jennumara would pay...

However, the guards found her first, with nothing to defend herself but the speculation of an open window. The remains, and spell in her hand, were enough to convict her.

"I... I'm sorry," Shane stuttered, not sure what else he could say. How could he possibly console her in the face of such a grave injustice? "You still have hope, though... right? After all, you air faeries are supposedly all about thoughts and hopes and dreams... or, at least, so I've heard."

"Yes, I have hope," Baelia smiled. "We have the book now, which will prove without a doubt that it was her, and finally make her pay for Melaena's destruction."

"Too bad you figured this out a moment too late..." A familiar, slimy voice said from behind Shane, and he slowly turned around...

...to find himself staring straight into the sneering face of Jennumara, her cruel hands reaching for the book. Shane stumbled backwards, clutching the book tight. He could see Baelia crouching in a corner, with her face in her hands, as he felt his wings brush the cold back wall.

"You're trapped now," the dark faerie hissed, "so give it up and be destroyed quickly, just like Melaena."

Shane stalled desperately. "Y-you must be a very powerful faerie, t-to have defeated Melaena and deceived Fyora herself... no wonder everyone's afraid of you."

A twisted smile flickered across her face. She buffed her purple nails on a wing and replied haughtily, "Why yes, I am rather powerful. When you're as clever as I am, it's not hard to trick goody-two-shoes like Fyora or Baelia around here."

A daring plan was forming in Shane's mind as he continued. "I guess you'll have no problem figuring out this book then, or even fooling Fyora again? How can you be so sure that you're that powerful? What if you make a mistake?"

"Mistake?" Jennumara scoffed. "I don't make mistakes. Why, I'll prove it to you-- first I'll show you how I fooled them, and then we'll come back here so I can get rid of you both!"

With Baelia watching in horror, the dark faerie grabbed the book from Shane and took hold of his wings. As Jennumara opened it to the page of the trial, all three vanished into the past.

"I am their first witness," she whispered, her voice seeming to slither from her mouth. This time, however, Jennumara turned to hiss at the faerie shoyru behind her, then pronounce, "I'll trick them again, you'll see!"

"Due to the Book of Truth's absence, please step up to the stand and swear to speak only the facts."

Jennumara swept up to the stand and raised her hand to swear. However, as she did so, a collective gasp reverberated throughout the crowd. It seems that, in her arrogance, Jennumara had forgotten that she still held the Book of Truth in her hand. Shane breathed a sigh of relief; she had made the very mistake he'd been hoping for!

Immediately, Queen Fyora stepped forward to confront Jennumara.

"I was tricked!" the dark faerie shrieked, turning angrily on Shane.

"Or rather, you tried to trick this jury, Jennumara. Why did you not come forward with the book?"

Fyora motioned to the guards behind Baelia and, snarling and spitting, Jennumara was dragged away. Carrying the book back to the stand, Fyora turned to face the trembling air faerie.

"Until I have consulted the book, this trial is adjourned. The accused will go free for the time being." Baelia slumped in relief, her wings relaxing. "And," the Queen added kindly, "I have little doubt that her name will be cleared after Jennumara's deception."

"Thank you, m'lady!" Baelia exclaimed, tears of relief on her cheeks.

"I think there is someone else who needs to be thanked..." Fyora said as she motioned towards Shane, who stepped in Baelia's direction...

...only to find himself back in the present, being embraced by a jubilant air faerie on the cold cave floor.

"I had no idea what you were trying to do, Shane... I thought you'd given up!" Baelia said, smiling radiantly. "But then I was restored to my former self, and I realized you were just setting things right from the beginning! How can I ever thank you?"

Shane grinned, his wings fluttering. "You already have-- by giving me the best story I've ever read! Of course, now that you have your faerie powers back..." he said shyly, "Do you think you could help me clean my room?"

The End