Chapter Twenty-Seven #2
She quailed as she and Dozy stared at each other across the rain-dusted grass, her brain whirring at the strangeness of it. At the impossibility of this coincidence. It had to mean something, and yet – how on earth was she going to find the Jewel, if Dozy was going to be her minder?
Lucky, who must have fallen asleep, suddenly emitted a loud snore.
‘Fine, but he is coming with me,’ she said, crossing her arms furiously over her chest.
The oak-supreme simply looked at her and uttered one irrefutable word. ‘No.’
Frida lurched forwards, but the oak-supreme just raised a gnarled hand. ‘He is one of us, and we will look after him.’
Like hell you will! She was quite ready to see how easily an oak-fairy’s neck might snap, when someone said softly, from near her right leg,
‘Do not worry.’
She glanced down, startling.
It was one of the sprites. There was a painting of a sprite in the Watering Hole, done by some long-ago zookeeper with a penchant for whimsy.
They hadn’t, in fact, gotten it too wrong, even though no one of her generation had actually seen a sprite.
Green and squat, roughly the size of a traffic cone.
A seedpod-shaped head, hooved goatish legs and muscular arms long enough to touch the ground and/or cause significant bodily harm.
This one was a male, for he had two horns rather than five, and they looked so heavy she was surprised he didn’t topple over.
His eyes (three of them, with goatish pupils) were the colour of burned cabbages, and they seemed impossibly gentle.
Which went against all the data, for it was said that sprites – like fairies, she thought with a gut-twist – had been vicious to the core.
‘Do not worry,’ he repeated, moving his needle fingers so fast it was a blur. Click, click, click. He had no mouth (not on his face anyway), so she wondered if the words came from his fingers. The sound in her brain was like apples dropping in an orchard. ‘Your friend will be safe with us.’
She wanted to cry, tears welling up unstoppably.
She didn’t want to question this sprite’s babysitting credentials, especially since this was the first person since they’d arrived in this hellish fairy-mist to actually be nice to her, but Lucky could eat him in one gulp.
She was about to resist, when a flash of copper burst out from behind the sprite’s flanks.
‘Papa Ru!’ the flash yipped. ‘Papa Ru, did she say yes?’
It was a baby sprite. Round and fuzzy as a peach, with five short stumpy horns the speckled colour of blackberries and cream.
‘Oh!’ Lucky exclaimed, his eyes flying open at the sound of the sprite’s giggles. He wagged his tail, almost taking out a disgruntled wolf in his excitement. ‘Hello!’
The young sprite squealed, moving her hands so fast, the movements fell into Frida’s brain, plop, plop, plop. ‘Papa Ru! He’s awake. And he’s really BIG!’
The older sprite sighed with long suffering despair. ‘Magie, calm down please.’
Magie caught Papa Ru’s furry green fingers. She darted looks at Frida, before whizzing through Frida’s legs, almost toppling her before beginning to tug on the edge of Lucky’s spade-like wing. Papa Ru paled beneath his fur, but Lucky only giggled.
‘Are you one of my new friends?’ he chirruped.
At this Magie became so excited, Frida worried she might forget how to breathe. ‘He speaks!’ Magie crowed. ‘Papa Ru, he’s speaking to me!’ She jumped up and down. ‘Hello!’ she cried. ‘I’m Magie.’ Her fur, all around her eyes, was trembling rapidly.
Papa Ru gave Frida a resigned look – Do you see what I have to deal with? I think a baby dragon will be a piece of cake, don’t you? – and Frida couldn’t help but smile back.
‘All the adults are always busy doing important things,’ Maggie was intoning seriously, now sitting between Lucky’s paws.
‘It’s so dull, but Papa Ru says that you can stay here and play with me.
’ She shot Papa Ru an accusing look. ‘He wanted to leave me behind, but imagine if I’d let him?
Who would you have been able to play with then?
’ She puffed out her chest, a universal gesture seen in playgrounds across the world.
‘I’m the best at organising the games, you know. Everyone says it.’
Frida looked down when Papa Ru brushed his furry fingers against her hand.
‘He will be safe,’ Papa Ru said again, then glancing over his shoulder towards the fairies. ‘They will never let you take him to that place, so it is best you do not fight them.’
Frida digested this. So, they did think she was planning on selling Lucky to the Beauforts.
‘Ok,’ she whispered. ‘Thank you.’
Papa Ru blinked at her in acknowledgement as Lucky gave a squeal.
‘Do not worry, little stink!’ he chirped. ‘Everything is as it is meant to be. We will find each other again when we are meant to.’ He gave her one last nuzzle, shoving his sulphurous snout into her face, before setting off at a thundering sprint after Magie.
‘Be careful!’ Frida shouted, but Lucky was already disappearing, hot on Magie’s tail, the creak of the boughs eerily quiet as they lifted to let him though. Papa Ru and a stream of other sprites hurried after them, hooves flailing.
When she’d collected herself, she turned back reluctantly to find Dozy’s hooded gaze upon her.
The tips of the fairy’s ears flushed that off-plum colour as they locked eyes.
Dozy’s eyebrows jerked downwards, and they emitted a low growl.
The next second, they’d flung the mist aside and crossed the distance between them.
They were suddenly, somehow, very close to her, their presence sending her heart ratcheting.
They weren’t nearly as tall as the oak-supreme, but they still towered over her.
She was used to tall people though and drew up her full five foot five inches with all the indomitable strength she possessed.
‘Come on,’ they bit out through clenched teeth. ‘Let’s go.’
Their voice flooded her brain like deep leaves, hauntingly similar to what she remembered and yet – different.
Back at the LEZ, their words had sounded like the crunch of dried end-of-season foliage.
The memory of their scent of crumbling wood and fetid loam washed over her.
But here it was green, oh so green. The wet of growing things and the lush afterglow of summer rain.
Fairy, but something special too. Something unique to them. Like the sweet, spicy taste of almonds.
She couldn’t help but shiver.
Without ceremony, they shot out their hand towards her, an invitation for her to take it.
The eyes of the others burned into her and Dozy let out a snarl of impatience.
Presumably, she was meant to take their hand so they could – what?
Drown her? Drag her into another earthen grave?
And yet she couldn’t help but notice how shapely their hand was.
They had elegantly tapered fingers, six of them on each hand, each moving with the graceful precision of a piano player.
Their palm was mottled like ancient tree bark, swirling with the deep colours of a hawthorn in full bloom.
Not the pale Coffin-bound thing from the LEZ, but a true force of the woods, streaked with dappled fawn, bistre, brown and silver, fading in places to a twilit blue.
The delicate spidery lace trailed over the strong line of their wrist, and up the softly rounded curve of their arm.
They began tapping their foot – a quick staccato rhythm on the grass.
Frida felt somewhat needled.
Just give her a moment!
‘Ok,’ she managed. Keep your cobwebs on.
With a poise that would have made her friends applaud, she reached for Dozy’s hand.
The instant her fingers closed around theirs though, she saw the fairy recoil.
Just for a heartbeat, before they steeled themselves, schooling their face to rigid blankness.
Then they tugged her half a step towards the trees.
Only this was no ordinary hand she was holding, and half a step was never going to be just half a step. A flash of heat coursed up her arm, followed by a wash of misty raindrops, and the next thing she knew, she was gripping Dozy’s hand for dear life, emerging into steaming, stinking darkness.