Chapter 45
Trewoofe
By the time Trewoofe stomped into Tall-led, he was ready to rip something apart. His crest flared red, and his eyes blazed as he made for them like an arrow shot from a bow.
The crystal-encrusted tunnel that led to the entryway of their territory loomed ahead.
The ancient stone archway was carved with all manner of forest animals: engraved rabbits being chased by foxes, and the foxes being chased by hounds – the hounds were horned and two-tailed; artistic renderings of the Wild Hunts the Tall Ones used to conduct and how they had fallen from being the ruling Faerie of the land above – the once beautiful and dangerous beings had diminished into shadows of their former selves, twisted by hatred and grief.
His mood was not improved when a pair of Tall Ones – the Queen’s guards – crossed their spears in front of him, denying his entry into her throne room.
A savage snarl ripped from him. “How dare you!”
The two guards quaked at his fury. Their battered leather armour creaked, and spear points rattled as they trembled before him.
“Queen Morgana has forbidden your entrance,” one of them piped up, his face half hidden by a helm.
Trewoofe did not have the time nor patience for this.
Quick as a striking snake, he lashed out, biting the head from the shoulders of the guard who spoke.
The Knucker pulverised his skull with a brutal crunch and his body fell with a thud.
The dark blue blood contaminated the earth.
The foul taste stained Trewoofe’s tongue, and he spat the head out at the boots of the second guard who shrieked and dropped his weapon with a clatter.
He fled from the terrible fury of the Well King, leaving a trail of rotten fear in his wake.
Trewoofe huffed and marched over the threshold into the Faerie Queen’s domain, talons cracking the ancient flagstones beneath him.
She sat at the opposite end of the small cavern, on top of a towering throne made of human skulls, next to a giant green geode.
The orbitals of each skull were stuffed with singing crystals, in some sick mockery of eyes.
They seemed to wink at Trewoofe as he marched across the chamber.
A half dozen courtiers draped in fanciful rags that hung from their skeletal frames, split like the tide, trying to avoid his wrath.
Trewoofe hissed and snapped at a Tall One who did not get out of the way quick enough, ripping his tattered tunic from his torso. The courtier shrieked and covered his bony trunk with his thorn-tipped fingers, moving into the shadows of a column.
“MORGANA!” Trewoofe roared, his face level with the Queen upon her throne.
She dipped her head with the barest acknowledgement of the furious Knucker before her.
Like all her flock, once, she would have been beautiful enough to have any male, Faerie or human, crawl to her on his knees.
Now? She was emaciated with sunken starshine eyes that no longer glowed.
Her cascading red hair was the colour of dried human blood and matted with knots.
On the top of her head, she wore a crown made of a man’s mandible, teeth and all, embossed with tiny crystal chips.
“Well King,” she hissed through her needle-like teeth. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Where is your Prince Consort?” he snarled.
She lowered her head, finally deferring to his authority. “I would not know. He has been banished from Tall-led after I found out he tried to tryst with a woman who entered the Underneath.”
Trewoofe tensed at her description of the assault on Avice. “Tryst? Did you say tryst?”
She met his eye; her face pinched in defiance. “What else would you call it?”
Trewoofe smashed his paw into the throne, a hairbreadth away from the Queen’s lap.
He raked down, his talons effortlessly swiping through bone.
Morgana shrieked as she fell and landed at the base of the skulls, a tangle of limbs and raggedy skirts.
She tried to skuttle away, but he lashed out, caging her beneath his talons.
“HELP ME!” she screamed to her courtiers.
His ears twitched, her high-pitched shriek needling them. He tightened his grip on her, and glanced over his shoulder, ensuring that no Tall One would sneak up on him from behind. None had moved. All of them lurked in the shadows, their eyeshine the only sign they were still in the cavern.
“No one is helping you. Now, tell me, where is he?”
Morgana bucked against him, even sinking her teeth into the pad of a toe. He hissed and tightened his grip. She let out a whelp as he pressed down, forcing her still.
“Nature help me, Morgana. I will kill you if you do not tell me!”
“I banished Orfeo after I found out he tried to lay with the human woman! Last I heard, he was headed for the tunnels at the coast.”
“Now, that was not so hard, was it?” Trewoofe huffed, lifting his paw. “To be clear, there was no tryst. He attacked Avice. The woman I am courting.”
Morgana stood and smoothed her skirts. “To think you have lowered yourself so.” She curled her lip. “If you wanted someone with two legs to rut…” She tossed her thorned hand to where some of her courtiers hid behind a stalactite. “You could take your pick from the females and males of my court.”
He hissed again. “Do not insult her or me,” he warned. “Be glad I am not seeking retribution against your whole clan, instead, only your Prince Consort.”
“I am forever grateful, Lord,” she simpered, curtseying with exaggerated flair.
He puffed. His hot breath blew the grim crown from her head. It shattered as it crashed to the ground.
“As you should be. From the time that my father took you in, you have caused nothing but grief. You are lucky I have not cast you out ten times over,” he growled, before sweeping his gaze to the courtiers and back to the Queen.
“Avice is under my protection in my Kingdom. If anyone touches her, you will go the same way as that guard out there, and Orfeo when I find him.”
Morgana swept down and scrabbled with the pieces of her shattered crown, chittering as she tried to piece it back together. “You did not have to do that,” she whimpered.
“Be happy it was not your neck.”
He paused just before he swept from the cavern. His mind turned as he remembered the Tall Ones were old – far older than him – reaching back to the ancient days when his father ruled the Underneath.
“What do you know of the Greenfolk?” he asked.
Morgana let out a short, sharp laugh. “The peasant’s name for them.”
“Be it a ‘peasant’ name or not, what do you know of them?” he snarled.
She baulked. “They are called Spriggan. That is their old name, their true name,” she replied, still fiddling with the broken pieces of her crown.
“Spriggan from the Green.” She managed to affix the jagged edges together, a dull spark connecting them.
“They are Folk from the Green, so they are ‘Greenfolk’. At least that is what the peasants…” She wrinkled her nose as she referred to his other subjects. “… call them.”
He bristled at her insult to his Faeries but ignored it as he sought more information. “And the Green is?”
“An Otherworld, like the Underneath,” she concluded, sticking another broken piece to her crown with sputtering magic.
“Understood.”
With that, Trewoofe swept from the throne room, lashing his tail from side to side. He deliberately whacked the crystalline columns as he exited, making the courtiers squeal indignantly.
“No Tall One is to enter my nesting cavern again. I will not hesitate to return and rip you all apart if I smell you there in the future,” he snarled over his shoulder as he exited through the carved archway.
The hunt was on.
Trewoofe flicked his tongue as each tunnel split like veins under the earth, trying to track where Orfeo had fled. Clearly, the Tall Ones had been running rampant in his absence, every tunnel reeked of them, and smaller singing crystals had been gouged from the walls.
Frustration boiled over as he attempted to single out the Prince Consort’s particular scent.
He whacked an abandoned geode in his path, ricocheting it into the healing waters where it sunk with a dulcet plop.
He flexed his talons, fracturing the compacted earth beneath his paws.
He raked them repeatedly, trying to work out the tension along his spine so he could concentrate on tracking.
He blinked in surprise as flowers popped into existence.
They were beautiful, with wild curling petals and honeyed scents, reminding him of his lovely Avice.
While it happened above, flowers had never grown from his presence in the Underneath before, and he did not have the time to try and understand it.
The hunt continued.
Eventually, the Tall Ones’ overwhelming scents reduced, and lingered to a singular trail that plunged into a tunnel.
The passageway was stained with the taste of salt.
He slipped into the water, head above the surface, tongue brushing in and out of his mouth like a panting beast. He was determined not to lose Orfeo’s scent amongst the slowly building smell of the sea.
Trewoofe rode the current down another split in the passageways.
He exited the water and shoved himself through another tunnel.
The space was barely wide enough to fit his massive body.
He squeezed his legs to his sides, wriggling forward on his belly, the scent of the Prince Consort strengthening with every lurch forward.
He saw the reflection of a pair of mismatched eyes – blue and green – in the gloom of the cavern ahead. He let out a hiss, clicking his fangs together in anticipation of when they would slice Orfeo’s head from his neck.
“My King, can you hear me?”