by Matt Phelan
“Come,” the puppet called.
The curtain fell.
The audience burst into applause and started to disperse. No one noticed the presence of the puppet play’s inspiration.
“It was pretty good up until the end,” said Bors. “I didn’t get the ending.”
“Let us go back to the inn,” said Magdalena.
And they did, Mel casting one last look at the puppet theater before joining the others.
They ate a simple dinner together at the inn. The long wooden table had been laid out with soup, bread, and a bit of cheese. Meager, but not terrible. The conversation was similarly meager.
“Those puppets got me thinking,” said Hector, sipping his soup.
“Those puppets didn’t know what they were talking about,” grumbled Bors.
“They didn’t talk at all,” said Magdalena. “They just squeaked at one another.”
“Yes, but the theme of the play led me to consider our past and present situations,” continued Hector. “When we battled the terrible lizards, it was in a land conjured by Merlin to teach us a lesson. Agreed?”
“Not sure about the lesson part, but yes,” said Erec, crunching on some crusty bread.
“And that Orkney business with the monsters—” Hector shuddered. That adventure had included his own time as a monster and was still a sour memory. “When did the monsters show up?”
“Every night,” said Bors. “Mist rolled in, and the monsters appeared.”
“Precisely right, old friend,” said Hector. “They came to us at a more or less regularly scheduled time. We knew they would come.”
“I see what you are saying,” said Erec. “Previously we did not have to do much to find trouble.”
“But now we can neither find Faerie nor know with any certainty when the attack will come,” finished Magdalena.
“Which is very, very annoying,” said Bors, slurping the last of his soup.
“Fine. That is what we are facing. So what do we do about it?” asked Erec.
“Maybe . . . maybe this time there is nothing we can do about it,” said Hector.
They all fell silent. The innkeeper approached the table.
“Anything else for you tonight?”
“No, I think not. Unless you know of a good, solid threat,” said Erec.
“I do indeed know of a threat, but it is not solid,” said the innkeeper.
Bors put his head on the table. “We’re in no mood for riddles, innkeeper.”
“Perhaps you have noticed that there’s no one else at the inn,” the innkeeper said.
The knights and Mel looked around the tavern, noticing for the first time the lack of customers.
“We have not had a single guest since the last day of October. That is when the hauntings became . . . enthusiastic.”
“Hauntings?” asked Mel.
“Yes, miss. You may wonder how I remember the exact date so clearly?”
“No. But why?” said Erec.
“Because, Sir Erec of the Round Table and leader of the Band of the Terrible Lizards, the following day, November the first, is when I petitioned you to help rid us of our ghost problem.”
“Petition? I don’t recall a petition,” said Erec.
“It was delivered to Camelot. I am sure you received it.”
“Doesn’t ring a bell.”
“It looked, if I may, exactly like this,” the innkeeper said, revealing a neatly written petition on fine parchment. “I copied and dated the petition before witnesses.”
“How very thorough,” said Erec, reading the petition. “I am sorry. We’ve been rather busy.”
“Hmm,” said the innkeeper. It was extraordinary how much rebuke he managed with such a small sound.
“Maybe that is why the villagers do not seem so keen on us,” said Hector.
“A distinct possibility, Sir Hector,” said the innkeeper icily.
“Well, we’re here now. I don’t see any ghosts,” said Erec.
“You will, Sir Erec. And so, if I can do no more for you, I shall retire for the evening. Next door,” added the innkeeper.
The band headed up the stairs to their rooms. Mel and Magdalena were in the small attic bedroom, and the others were together in the larger room on the second floor. All were very interested in experiencing a real haunting. But waiting for ghosts proved to be rather dull. Eventually they all laid down in their beds and rested while they waited. Mel was the first to fall into a deep sleep.
Chapter Nine
Night Wanderings
At first, Mel didn’t dream at all. She slipped deeper and deeper into a comfortable sleep. Drifting and drifting.
Until . . .
She was in the village square, standing before the puppet theater. There was no one else in the street. The small Mel-like puppet stared from the stage. It laughed.
And then . . .
Mel was on the puppet stage, standing next to the puppet that was now her exact size. Mel turned toward the back of the stage. Trees were painted very simply on the backdrop. A breeze blew, and the puppet had gone. The painted trees seemed more vibrant and almost lifelike.
Mel began to walk, and the painted backdrop was no longer a simple canvas. Had it ever been? She was in a real forest, but a very strange one. Tall, thin, gnarled, and twisted, the trees curled up and around her, creating a complicated canopy blocking a green-gray sky. Purple vines coiled around the trunks. The leaves were many shades of lush green, and yet the ground was covered with orange and red leaves as if it were autumn.
Small lights darted toward her. One flew very close, and Mel could see that the glowing creature had long spindly arms and legs, eyes set close together, and large, heavy jaws that seemed at odds with the delicacy of its wings.
It bit her.
“Ouch!” said Mel. She had felt the bite. Yet this was a dream. Nothing to worry about. Sometimes the mind tricked you in dreams, made you “feel” a sensation even if it was not true.
A second winged creature grabbed her hair and pulled. Mel swung for it but missed. She wished she had her bow but no, arrows were not allowed. Never any iron here. Of course not. That would be very, very wrong!
Mel kept walking through the woods, swatting at the flying creatures, until she realized she was swatting at nothing. They had gone.
But she was not alone.
“So nice of you to join us, Melancholy.” Ash stood a few yards away.
“This is just a dream,” said Mel.
“Yes. No. What does it matter? Will you walk with me?”
Mel could not think of a reason to refuse, so she joined the faerie king.
“I have been hearing so much about you,” said Ash. “Morgause and Mordred do not seem to like you, but that is not of any concern. I reach my own conclusions.”
Faeries of all shapes and sizes lurked at the edge of the shadows, but Mel did not feel threatened. She was intrigued by each new creature.
“I do believe you would be an excellent addition to my collection,” said Ash.
That snapped her out of it.
“Your collection?”
“Yes. It is quite delightful,” said Ash. “Some I steal, such as the baby; some I trick; and some, some come to Faerie willingly. Those are my favorites.”
“And what happens to them when they come to Faerie? What do you do with them?”
“Do? Nothing. I simply collect.”
“Are they happy?”
“Why should I care about their happiness?”
They entered a grand hall that was stunning in its strangeness. There were walls but no ceiling. The purple vines snaked across the floor and over tables that were laid with the most delicious-looking food Mel had ever seen. She was so hungry.
Night had fallen, and the hall was lit by a million sparkling dots of light that hovered and darted about the sky. At the far end was a great door, the only door Mel had seen in Faerie.
I should want to go through that door and escape, thought Mel. B
ut she did not want to just yet. She wanted to listen to the ethereal music that was playing softly. Perhaps Faerie was not so terrible. . . .
“Not so terrible at all,” said Ash.
Mel turned to Ash, alarmed.
“Do not worry,” said Ash with a chuckle. “This is only a dream, is it not, Melancholy?”
“Yes,” said Mel. “Only a dream.”
“You might as well enjoy it. Have a bite to eat.” Ash held out a luscious ripe fruit.
Mel reached for it but . . but . . .
“No!”
Mel fell out of her bed. At the inn.
Magdalena sat up in the bed next to Mel.
“I’m fine,” said Mel.
Magdalena lay back.
“Not that you asked,” added Mel in a whisper. She glanced down at her hand. A bracelet of purple vine was wrapped tightly around her wrist. Mel covered it with her sleeve.
The door burst open. Bors bounded in, fists held high, a feverish look on his face.
“Where is it?”
“Where is what?” asked Mel.
Magdalena pointed across the room. “There,” she said.
Hovering above the floorboards was the transparent figure of a sad-faced man.
“AHH!” roared Bors as he threw himself in an attempt to tackle the ghost. He sailed straight through and hit the wall.
“Ooh! Cold!” he grumbled. The ghost calmly floated back out the door.
“Oh no you don’t!” Bors took after the ghost.
Magdalena and Mel exchanged a look, then followed. The hallway of the inn was quite a scene. Hector was surrounded by ghosts, and he appeared to be trying to soothe them. Erec, on the other hand, was swinging his sword wildly on the stairs, dueling with another specter. Every time Erec’s sword slashed, it went right through the ghost’s sword.
“This . . . is . . . not . . . fair!” huffed Erec.
More ghosts were materializing out of the walls and floorboards, the cabinets and cupboards. They were men and women, old and young. They were completely silent and rather placid for the most part.
“Try to lead them downstairs,” called Magdalena.
The band slipped down the stairs. The ghosts watched, then drifted down behind them. They all ended up in the dining room of the inn, knights and Mel in one corner, several ghosts floating as a pack in the other.
Bors was in the center of the room, still fighting with a portly ghost who simply stared as Bors punched and punched.
Finally Bors, completely out of breath, slumped down on a bench by the others and scowled. Everyone else took a seat as well. The ghosts hovered.
The hours passed. The two sides remained exactly in place, no words spoken, no movement except for the gentle rising of the ghosts.
Dawn came, and as the first ray of sunlight slipped into the room, the ghosts simply faded away.
The innkeeper unlocked the front door and joined them.
Erec stood and clapped his hands. “Well! That takes care of that!” he said rather too loudly. “Your ghosts have been dealt with.”
“Dealt with?” the innkeeper asked.
“Yes,” said Erec.
“They won’t reappear tonight?”
“Er . . . no,” said Erec.
“Are you sure? They always vanish in the daylight.”
“This time it’s different.” Erec turned to the others and lowered his voice. “Time to move on.”
“What shall I do if the ghosts return?” asked the innkeeper.
“Good-bye!” Erec smiled.
The knights shuffled out the door sheepishly, not making eye contact with the innkeeper. No one spoke until they reached the stable.
“I don’t know how to fight a ghost,” said Erec finally. “I don’t know how to help that innkeeper.”
The others remained silent.
Erec lifted his saddle roughly. “Villagers are making puppet jokes about us. Galahad and Tristan and their ilk look down on us as has-beens.”
“So what do we do?” asked Mel.
Erec saddled his horse and paused.
“We stop this faerie king. He is flesh and bone. He can be beat. And that is exactly what we are going to do.”
Chapter Ten
Three Imps
“Where do we go now?” asked Bors.
They were standing in a circle of trees. At the base of each trunk, twigs, pine cones, and other natural debris had been arranged to resemble tiny dwellings or entranceways.
“Yes. It would seem that these are not in fact faerie houses, as we were told,” said Erec in a stony voice.
Hector, kneeling beside one, lifted a toadstool. “Whimsical, though,” he said.
“Whimsy is useless,” said Erec, kicking one of the dioramas.
They had searched for weeks, following leads and rumors of faerie activity. This adorable display of folk art was the closest they had come to success.
“It will be evening soon. We should camp here,” said Magdalena, unpacking supplies from her horse.
“I’ll start the fire,” said Mel, happy to have a simple, straightforward task to accomplish. She walked deeper into the woods to gather kindling.
“Ooh,” said Hector. “This one has a little balcony! Come see, Bors!”
Bors gave Hector a long look, then turned to his horse to remove the blankets.
Mel wandered to the bank of a stream. The water rushed intensely, pushing plates of melting ice against the rocks. She lifted her sleeve. The purple vine now covered most of her forearm. It was growing, slowly, steadily, imperceptibly.
A strange feeling came over her. Across the stream, high on a hill, stood Ash, the faerie king. He was watching her.
Mel froze. Should she call the others? No, a voice inside her head answered. But it was not her voice.
She hadn’t turned and couldn’t recall even blinking, yet Ash was no longer on the hill. Was it a trick of the light?
“No.”
This time the word was a whisper, right at her ear. Mel spun, and there was the faerie smiling broadly.
“Tonight, Melancholy,” said Ash.
Then, in a strong gust of wind and a whirl of snow, Ash was gone.
Mel calmed her breathing. She was not entirely sure she had actually seen Ash. That was extremely troubling in itself. Mel was confident in her powers of observation, her cool head, her . . . her Mel-ness.
She checked the ground where she stood. No tracks, but that was not surprising.
“You all right?” asked Erec when she returned to camp.
“Hmm?” said Mel.
“You seem a little—”
“I’m fine. Thinking is all.” She smiled at Erec, then arranged the wood by the firepit. She glanced at Magdalena, who was busy setting up a short distance from her. Mel closed her eyes, concentrated, and murmured a spell she had learned from Merlin, and the fire ignited at once.
Merlin. She could have told him what she had seen. But why not the others? Mel had no real answer. Somehow it seemed as though she needed to deal with this alone. She cast another look at Magdalena, who was still occupied with setting up the camp.
“Bors!” Hector called from the circle of trees.
“Hector, I do not care about your little stick dollhouses. I do not care if there is a balcony, drawbridge, moat, or even a teensy dungeon,” grumbled Bors.
“On the count of three, catch it,” said Hector.
“Catch what?”
“One, two, three!” Hector kicked the trunk of a tree, and something much too large for the decorative window flew out. It had long, gangly arms and legs with dragonfly wings. It zoomed toward the campsite.
Bors lunged and caught it. The creature sank razor-sharp teeth into his hand.
“Yow!”
It flew from his hands and hovered just out of reach.
“Do not touch Crumpet, you smelly man!” squeaked the creature.
Everyone stared at Crumpet.
“Have you never seen an imp before?” Crumpe
t demanded.
“No,” answered Mel for everyone. And yet it did seem familiar.
“Oh!” said Crumpet. “Now you will see three! Blister! Scab!”
Two more imps squeezed out of the faerie houses and flew over.
“Are they the ones?”
“I do believe so, Blister,” said Crumpet. “What think you, Scab?”
Scab flitted over to Erec. It bit him on the neck.
“Hey!” yelled Erec, swatting at the imp.
“Yes!” said Scab. “He tastes like I thought he would. Yum.”
“You are the humans who disrupted the faerie king’s banquet. That was unwise!” accused Blister.
“Why don’t you tell us how to return so we can apologize?” said Erec.
“An apology would be nice,” said Crumpet, “but useless!”
“Tell us how to get there anyway,” said Bors.
“No, no, no, no,” sang the three imps as they flew in circles around the knights.
Magdalena grabbed at one, but even she was too slow.
“How about a riddle of some sort?” interjected Hector. “We answer correctly and you show us the way. I believe you faeries enjoy that sort of thing.”
The imps paused in midair, considering the offer.
“No, no, no, no, no, no, no,” they cackled.
“Yum!” Scab added for good measure.
“We will not show you the way. Though perhaps you already know it?” Crumpet shot a look at Mel.
The imps soared around once more, pulling hair and taking quick bites at everyone before zipping into the woods, glowing like enormous fireflies.
No one spoke. Finally they had found a solid lead, and it had just flown away. Laughing at them.
Bors kicked a pine cone house away from a tree.
The band stayed put, hoping that the imps might return. They ate and spoke little. Failure hung over the camp. Failure and frustration and fatigue. Eventually they slept.
Mel woke soon after, but not at the campsite. She was once again in the grand hall in Faerie. Faeries of all sorts danced merrily to strange, hypnotic music. The air was warm, and all of the flowers were in full bloom. Mel walked slowly, not exactly afraid, but certainly cautious.