Chapter 6
The fat fairy folded her beefy arms across her truly impressive bosom and glared up at me. “We will not betray Our Lady Titania’s confidences, no matter how much you torture us. We would rather die than betray Her Royal Majesty.”
Literally none of the other kitchen fairies behind her looked like they agreed with her, but since she still had an honest-to-god rolling pin disappearing in one fist, they didn’t seem inclined to argue.
Mostly, they just hid behind the matriarchal woman, who looked like she was ready to take all of us on in defense of her liege lady and, more importantly, her kitchen.
I held out both hands, showing they were empty and hopefully looking a little less threatening. “I don’t want anyone to betray anyone,” I said. “Except maybe Oberon. He’s kind of a douche.”
One of the kitchen faeries giggled, and even Mama Bear Faerie relaxed a little, so I went on.
“We’re literally just passing through. I need to get to the Winter Court.
Mab has stolen something very important from me, and I came all the way here to get it back.
But the only portal we could find dumped us in Titania’s castle, and since Oberon is kinda pissed at all of humanity, well…
that didn’t end well for us. So if you don’t want to tell us where Titania is, that’s fine.
I’ll be just as happy not to run into her again, on account of me being a reminder of Oberon’s previous marriage, and blended families are hard enough when everyone is the same species and lives in the same dimension, much less when there are human-faerie relationships involved. ”
Now I was on a roll, and Mama Bear Faerie was looking totally confused by my rambling, so I just kept the train heading down its ridiculous tracks, hoping we could maybe get the hell out of here without punching anyone.
Else. Although I didn’t really punch Corporal Douchenozzle as much as I beat his head in with architecture, but it probably still counts.
But the giggly faerie had other ideas that didn’t involve us making a clean getaway.
“Mayhap he and his friends can cure Her Majesty, Vonn,” the young-looking girl said.
“Titania’s sick?” Geri asked.
“Who’s Titania?” Jarvis asked, getting a slap from Ash.
“The Queen of Summer, moron,” they said. “Haven’t you been paying attention?”
“Not really,” Jarvis admitted. “I’m like super-hungry.”
At that, Mama Bear’s maternal instinct to feed everyone in the world kicked in and she relaxed her arms. “You hunger?” she asked, making her the first faerie I’d ever encountered with a German accent.
Or maybe Russian. I don’t know from European accents.
The only time I ever leave the South is when I travel to other dimensions.
I don’t get much international travel on account of not being able to carry my guns on planes.
I mean, I get it, and it’s smart, but I still think it sucks.
“Ma’am, I’m hungry enough to eat Bubba’s cooking, and that’s saying something,” Jarvis replied.
“Hey!” I protested. “I can cook!” As long as you call putting a Hungry Man dinner in the microwave and mostly following the directions on the box “cooking,” at least.
“No, you can’t,” Geri said. “And frankly, I could go for a sandwich myself.” She gave me a look that said “go with it,” so I did.
And all this talk about food was making my tummy rumbly, too.
I got the idea, though. We were trying to get Mama Bear’s feed or fight reflex to flip over to something that didn’t require me to shoot anybody in the kitchen, so it made way more sense to try to appease her. And it got me fed.
Not three minutes later, we were all seated around a butcher block table groaning with meat, bread, wine, and juices.
And as the wine flowed, so did the palace gossip.
Turns out, faeries had been falling ill for months, all the way back to last winter.
The season, not the other faerie court. Calendars get confusing in this dimension.
There is a summer in Winter, and a winter in Summer, but they’re mild.
The lands of Winter usually live in a perpetual kind of chill, verging on well digger’s butt level of cold, but for about four or five months, it warms up into a decent autumn.
Summer is the same way, only reversed. They’re usually balmy short-sleeve weather but get a few months of crisp October-type air.
It’s kinda hell on planting in the Winter lands, but apparently, they’ve got magical fairy crops that grow in snow or something.
I’m not a farmer, so I kinda tuned out when Mama Bear started talking about grain and harvests.
But about middle of the last fall (or I guess spring in the Winter court), faeries started getting sick.
Not like puking and falling down, but a general wasting sickness, where they would get more and more fatigued until they could barely get out of bed.
It spread like wildfire over both Courts until dozens, if not hundreds, of faeries were bedridden. Then they started just not waking up.
“Is it a physical fatigue, or emotional?” Jarvis asked, his eyes sharper than I’d seen them in our brief acquaintance. “Were there muscle aches involved, joint pain, or was it just a generalized malaise?”
“Huh?” I asked.
He waved me off. “I went to nursing school for a couple years,” he said. “I remember a little.”
Mama Bear looked impressed at what I previously assumed was my completely shiftless, ambition-free soon-to-be brother-in-law.
Now I guess I had to change that to my mostly shiftless, ambition-free soon-to-be brother-in-law.
“It is physical,” Mama Bear replied. “Their minds are sharp and quick, but their bodies become unable to lift them from the bed. There are no pains at first. Eventually bedsores and muscle…what is word? When muscle die?” Her pseudo-Russian accent got heavier the faster she spoke.
“Atrophy,” Jarvis replied. “How long do people stay bedridden before they experience atrophy?”
“Weeks,” Mama Bear said. “They start off tired, but able to work. Then they are tired and cannot work. Then tired and cannot stand. Then they do not leave bed. Then after about six weeks, they die.”
Jarvis paled a little. “That’s…really fast. Most wasting diseases like that take months, if not years, to advance, and muscles typically don’t begin to atrophy until they’ve been unused for many months. If this is killing people this fast, it’s something I’ve never seen before.”
I had a more pressing concern. “How long has Titania been sick?” I asked.
By the collective gasp of the kitchen faeries, I could tell I’d hit on something I wasn’t supposed to know about.
“She is sick, isn’t she? That’s why she didn’t have us summoned to the throne room where she could make a spectacle of either how gracious she was to Mab’s grandson by letting me leave intact, or how powerful she was that she was willing to imprison Mab’s grandson without any chance of escape.
” I’d met my grandmother Mab once, and it hadn’t gone well, but my impression was that hardly any meetings with the psychotic faerie queen went well, so my money would be on Titania tossing me in the dungeon, this time with a competent guard, and throwing away the key.
“Her Majesty is not sick with the wasting disease,” Mama Bear claimed, her eyes not meeting mine. “She is merely indisposed at the moment.”
“Bullshit,” I replied, holding her gaze when she glared at me.
“You and I both know that she’s laid up in her royal bedchambers, unable to lift her head under her own power.
But you know how long she’s been sick, and I don’t.
So if we’ve got any chance of me figuring out what the hell is going on and maybe stopping it, you need to tell me how long she’s been sick, and then you need to take me to her. Right now.”
Mama Bear looked into my eyes for a long breath, then nodded.
“I remember last time you were here. You are big, brash, and perhaps stupid. But you fought a dragon, crossed all three Realms of Faerie to get to your goal, and survived. If anyone can help Her Majesty, you may be the one.” She gestured to a timid-looking faerie.
“This is Honeysuckle. She is one of Titania’s personal maids.
She will tell you all she knows, then escort you to the royal chambers.
You may speak with Her Majesty, if she will see you. ”
I nodded and looked at Honeysuckle. She was a tiny little blond faerie, maybe the diameter of my right thigh, with a sweet face and cute little pointy ears.
She reminded me of Tinkerbelle from the old animated movie, but I managed to keep that to myself.
I didn’t know if fairies got offended when you told them they looked like cartoon characters or not.
“Her Majesty’s energy has been waning for nearly two weeks, but the pace of the malaise has increased in the past few days.
Yesterday she was able to hold court for two hours, but that was the only time she left her chambers.
To my knowledge, she has not left her bed today.
She has been taking all her meals in her rooms for several days, but today she has not even rung for breakfast.”
“Well, let’s take her a nice fruit tray,” Ash said, clapping their hands together.
“I know whenever I’m sick, some Vitamin C perks me right up.
” They looked around the kitchen at the fairies just standing there.
“Go on, let’s move it! Get me a tray of fruit and juices fit for a queen!
” The kitchen staff snapped into motion, and seconds later, we had a heaping tray full of freshly cut melons and diced fruit, with two large carafes of juices.
“Okay, gang,” I said, grabbing a carafe as Honeysuckle hefted the tray. “Let’s go see a sick Faerie Queen and try to stop an entire dimension’s worth of fae from a wasting plague.”