by Jon Etter
“I protect zis building,” François declared indignantly. “I just do it from ze inside. Just because I ’ave a touch of ze agoraphobia—”
“And he’s afraid of heights,” Dewey added.
“And why don’t you go, zen?” François snapped at Dewey.
“I can’t—this children’s section is going to mean a massive reorganization.” He rubbed his hands in anticipation.
Shade turned to the lady of stone. “Émilie?”
Émilie shook her head sadly. “Today I have spoken to representatives of the Seelie and the Sluagh and fear that Grand Scrutinizer Drabbury will be as big of a problem as he would have us believe. François and I simply cannot leave as long as he is a threat.”
“Johannes? Caxton?” Shade asked.
“It is the spring, ja? I’m sorry, but I cannot be going,” Johannes sighed. “I have the seasonal allergies.”
“But you live in a tree,” Shade pointed out.
“It is a library tree. That is different.”
Shade frowned. “And you, Caxton?”
“Sorry, love. Can’t go.”
“And why not?”
“Oi don’t wanna.”
“Fine!” Shade huffed. “I’ll just go on my own. I’ll leave tomorrow.”
“Mais non, Mademoiselle Shade,” Émilie said. “It could be dangerous. Let us wait for things to settle down, then we can find someone to accompany you.”
“Nope. I’m going tomorrow and there’s not a dingle-dangle thing you can do to stop me. I can take care of myself. Besides, I’m just going to a tiny town to find a secret bookworm. How dangerous could that be?”
As I’m sure you are aware, good Reader, declaring “How could that be?” all but guarantees that whatever “that” is will, of course, end up being . In fact, the more confident the speaker is that “that” won’t be , the er it tends to be, possibly even the est.
Suddenly, the sound of a door slamming made everyone jump. Then there was a loud scraping sound, as if someone were dragging something heavy over a wooden floor. The fairies hurried to the railing. Way down at the bottom of the library tree, a brownie in a too-tight brown suit and little hat and a thin pixie clad in a baggy green suit, overcoat, and top hat tossed chairs on top of two massive study tables that had been shoved against the door labeled “Jeroboam.”
“Ginch? Professor?” Shade called down.
Both fairies stopped mid-chair-fling and looked up. “’Ey, little Sprootshade!” the brownie, Rigoletto Ginch, shouted back. He nudged the pixie with his elbow. “Look, Professor! It’s-a the Sprootshade!”
The two bounded up the ramp and leaped into Shade’s arms, sending all three tumbling into the office. “Get off me, you dingle-dangle doofuses!” Shade shoved herself free, smiling in spite of herself. “What are you two doing here?”
Ginch dusted himself off. “Why, me and the Professor, we were a-talking—well, I was a-talking and he was a-listening because he no talk—and so I say to the Professor, ‘You know who we no see in the long time? The little Sprootshade! We gotta go see the little Sprootshade and see how she do.’”
The Professor’s stomach gave a loud growl. He put his hand to his belly and then, spying a tray full of acorns on Émilie’s desk, leaped across the room on his grasshopper-like legs and stuffed an acorn in each cheek, making him look like a chipmunk. He was about to stuff in a third when Émilie said, “Please do not eat those—they are the acorns from which we grow the library trees.”
The Professor stopped, gave her a thumbs-up, and instead shoved the acorn into a pants pocket. He then opened his other pants pocket and spat the two acorns in his cheeks into it and then finished by picking up a letter opener from the desk and tucking it up his coat sleeve.
“You just came to visit me, eh?” Shade said. “So what was that business downstairs with the tables and chairs?”
“Oh, that?” Ginch waved a hand dismissively. “That was just the simple misunderstanding.”
“So you got caught stealing and now somebody wants to kill you,” Shade said.
“Pretty much.” The Professor whistled and mimed dealing cards. “Oh, and we do a little of the cardsharping too.”
“How did you get in?” Johannes asked. “I vatched Fraulein Shade lock the doors.”
The Professor stuck his hands in his pockets and pulled out a massive ring of keys with one hand and an equally massive ring of lockpicks with the other. Ginch shrugged. “I no know. She must have forgotten to lock that one.”
Shade sighed and shook her head. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but how would you two knuckleheads like to go with me to find some lost books?”
Ginch and the Professor looked at each other and raised their eyebrows. “Does it involve going any place that’s-a no Jeroboam?” Ginch asked.
“Yes.”
Ginch and the Professor nodded. “It’s-a the deal!” Ginch declared. He and the Professor spat into their hands and offered to shake with Shade.
“Um, ew, no,” Shade said, making a face. “I’m not shaking your spitty hands.”
Ginch and the Professor shrugged. “Okay, fine, little Sissy White Gloves,” Ginch said. “We clean them then shake.” The two licked their palms then held out their hands again.
Shade stood impassive as the two grinned expectantly at her. “Fine,” Shade groaned, shaking each hand and then wiping hers on her shirt. “Why do I have the feeling this is a profoundly bad idea?”
The Professor held up his index finger, plunged a hand in a coat pocket, then pulled out a book: The Lessons of History by The Reverend Zinn.
“Oh yeah,” Shade said with a weary nod. “That’s why.”
In which a walk is taken, sights
are seen, and a ferret is pulled from
someone’s trousers . . .
The next morning, Shade, clad in her brown and green leather traveling attire, strode out the door marked “Meadowbrook” with Ginch and the Professor in tow. The morning sun peeked out from between fluffy clouds like a cheerful toddler trying to hide amongst a flock of sheep. Dew glistened on the grass. As they walked, Shade excitedly told the two tales about working at the library. Ginch, for his part, gave an animated (and largely embellished and self-aggrandizing) account of everything that he and the Professor had done since helping Shade find her way to the Grand Library, which more or less consisted of the two cheating at cards or stealing things and then having to run away to avoid arrest, imprisonment, or having their arms ripped off and being beaten to death with them.
“Have either of you ever thought about getting an honest job again?” Shade asked after one of Ginch’s more harrowing accounts of escape. “You know, one that wouldn’t almost get you killed on a regular basis?”
The two made faces similar to the one you made after trying your Aunt Tatiana’s candied Brussels sprouts in blue cheese sauce. “Oh, no!” Ginch declared resolutely. “We no can-a be tied down like that. The thrill of adventure, it run through our veins. The road, she’s-a the part of us.”
The Professor pounded his chest and then lifted his shirt to show an elaborate map drawn on his torso.
“’Ey, look! We’re just two freckles and a mole away from where we go.” Ginch poked the Professor’s stomach. The Professor clutched his belly and silently laughed.
Shade closed her eyes and shook her head to rid herself of the sight of the Professor’s pale belly. “Okay, sapheads, save the tickle fight for later. We’ve got plenty of walking ahead of us.”
And walk they did, for miles along a winding dirt road through lush green meadows and past freshly plowed fields where fairies sowed seeds. Some would have passed for elves except for their big furry cow ears, and others were clearly dwarves but unlike any Shade had ever seen before—dark-skinned, clean-shaven, either bald or with short-cropped hair.
Eventually they passed a lake, its placid blue surface glittering like a giant sapphire. On its banks, a group of f
emale fairies in peasant dresses—dwarves with long braided hair, wrinkled gnomes in blue conical hats, and more cow-eared fairies—sat around a large flat stone on which they pounded wet mounds of cloth in time to a chanted song in a language Shade didn’t recognize. She found it mesmerizing.
The lake, however, eventually tore Shade’s attention away from the waulking song. Or rather, what came out of the lake. A little way from the shore, small waves formed and lapped upon the banks. Then something slowly rose from the depths. Shade elbowed Ginch. “What’s that?”
From the water emerged something round, about the size of a bowling ball, and covered in short, white, curly fur, with two round red circles on either side. Drawing nearer to the shore, it rose further until, at last, there it was: the head of a cow. Shade could see what looked like gills on its neck just beneath its jaw. The cow opened its mouth, gave what sounded like a cross between a moo and a frog’s croak, and trudged up the bank, shaking water from its white hide.
Ginch nodded toward it. “That’s-a the cow.”
“Gee, thanks. Couldn’t have figured that out on my own.”
“’Ey, I no know whatta you know and whatta you don’t.”
While the two bickered, a whole herd of aquatic cattle rose from the lake, moo-croaking off to munch on prairie grasses in the fields beyond, followed by two tall fairies. They would have looked just like humans if humans had webbed fingers and toes, gills, and completely black eyeballs, which humans don’t. Except for your Uncle Arthur, of course, but I think we can both agree that he’s a bit atypical to say the least.
As Shade, Ginch, and the Professor strolled down the road, away from the herd of fairy cattle and past several small farms, Shade—while quite eager to begin the great task she had inherited from her father—couldn’t help but enjoy the rustic charms of farm country. “You know, this really reminds me of scenes in Ingalls the Wilder’s book, The Tiny Hut on the Grasslands. Isn’t it something?”
“Yeah, I no like it either,” Ginch said. “I mean, if we gots to skeedeedle, I no see the place to hide.”
The Professor nodded and then pulled his coat around him and up over his head.
“That’s-a no good. I can still see the hat.”
The hat swiftly disappeared into the collar of the Professor’s overcoat.
“That’s-a better.”
Shade sighed and walked faster. Ginch followed, pulling the Professor, still hiding inside his coat, along by the sleeve. Eventually they spied a sign that read “Cottinghamtownshireborough,” beyond which lay a sleepy hamlet consisting of quaint little houses, a few storefronts, a blacksmith’s forge, a cooper’s workshop, and an inn whose sign depicted a clean-shaven dwarf, a cow-eared fairy, and a fairy with gills and webbed hands dancing arm-in-arm-in-arm underneath the words “The Three Jolly Herdsmen.” Aside from some fairy ponies tied to hitching posts, the road was empty.
“Okay, so last night I read some books on spies and secret societies—Sir Ian of Flemyng, Benedict Trenton, Handler the Unfortunate, and some others,” Shade told Ginch and the Professor. “Keep your eyes and ears peeled for anything out of the ordinary. The fairy we’re looking for could be anyone, and if they’re as secretive as members of secret societies are supposed to be, it could take days, maybe even weeks, to ferret them out.”
The Professor reached into his pants and pulled out a wriggling brown ferret. He stroked its fur a few times, kissed it on the head, and set it on the ground.
“Go find-a the secret book guy, little Reeki-Teeki-Teevee!” Ginch called as the ferret raced down the road and out of town.
Shade slapped her forehead. “Not that kind of ferret. I mean, we have to search around, quietly and discreetly, and figure out who the fairy is. But where do we start?”
Ginch pointed decisively at the inn. “That’s-a where we start.”
Shade was impressed. “You know, you’re right. Pubs and taverns are the exact sorts of places where secrets get whispered, people who know people who know people congregate, information can be bartered for . . . Nice work, Ginch.”
Ginch tucked his fingers in his vest and looked pleased with himself. “I no mean to be smart—I just wanna the drink. But since I’m-a the smart on accident, I think that means I’m even smarter than if I do it on purpose.”
“Whatever. Let’s go.” But just before Ginch and the Professor could march into the inn, Shade grabbed them by the backs of their jackets and pulled them back. “Remember—we need to be subtle. This person is living in secret.”
The Professor held up his index finger. He pulled three eye patches out of his pocket and slipped the first on.
“Ha-ha! That’s-a the good idea!” Ginch laughed as the Professor put one on him. “We go in the disguise.”
“What the dingle-dangle are you doing?” Shade slapped the Professor’s hand away as he tried to fix an eye patch on her. “I’m not wearing that stupid thing. Remember: We’re supposed to be subtle.”
“Don’t you worry. We’ll be so subtle everybody gonna look at us and say, ‘’Ey, look at those three! Those are the most subtle fairies we ever see!’”
The Professor nodded vigorously, put on the eye patch that Shade had refused so that both his eyes were covered, turned, and slammed right into the side of the building.
Ginch took the Professor by the shoulders and guided him through the doorway. “C’mon! This way, partner.”
“Yeah, subtlest fairies ever,” Shade muttered as she followed them inside. “This won’t end well.”
In which things do not end well . . .
Now if this were a proper story involving hidden tomes and secret societies, at this point I would get to describe a dark, dingy bar filled with criminals, ne’er-do-wells, spies, counterspies, counter-counterspies, secret agents (which, I’ll have you know, are actually quite different from spies), and mercenaries, at least one of whom would be charming in a gruff sort of manner and who would no doubt by the end of the tale see the error of their ways, reform, and join the good fight. What’s more, there would be a good deal of whispered conversations, coded messages, secret signals, and all manner of thrilling skullduggery. At this point, however, I would hope that you would know better than to expect anything of the sort from this terribly improper tale.
The Three Jolly Herdsmen was a cheerful place with sunlight streaming in through its many windows. Its clean wooden tables and benches were mostly empty, save for a quartet of cow-eared fairies playing cards near a large stone fireplace and a gnome playing checkers with a pipe-smoking fairy who exhaled smoke from the gills in her neck. Behind the immaculate bar stood a tan, clean-shaven dwarf whistling merrily as he polished it.
“I no like-a the looks of this place,” Ginch muttered. “You no can-a trust any pub this clean.”
“Now remember, play it cool,” Shade whispered. “Be subtle.”
The Professor saluted and then, still wearing patches over both eyes, promptly strode toward the bar, banged loudly into a table, then tripped and fell over a bench, knocking it over. Shade groaned as every eye in the place turned toward them.
“Arternoon to thee, friends!” the bartender called. “What kin I get thee?”
The Professor whistled and held up three fingers before springing to the bar, lifting up an eye patch so that he could see the way. “My partner says three meads,” Ginch explained.
“No thanks,” Shade said. “I don’t want a drink.”
“Who said any of those were for you?” Ginch asked as the Professor took the first mug the bartender filled and put it in a pants pocket, tucked the second in his jacket, and thirstily guzzled the third. “I’ll take one myself, paisan.”
As the bartender filled another mug and slid it to Ginch, the Professor pointed to a jar of pickled eggs.
“Help thyself,” the bartender said. The Professor stuffed three into his mouth before loading his pockets with the rest. “What brings thee to Cottinghamtownshireborough, friends?”
Having done her reading on spycraft and secret societies, Shade knew it was important to have a cover story, preferably one that made you seem as innocent and harmless as possible. Because of that, she was ready for the very question the bartender asked. What she was not prepared for, however, was for Ginch to give a little belch and say, “We’re-a lookin’ for somebody in the secret society of book guys. You know him?”
“Ginch!” Shade punched him hard in the arm. “What’re you dingle-dangle doing?”
“’Ey! Whatta you do, fatcha-coota-matchca, sproot!” Ginch objected, rubbing his shoulder. “Do we look for the secret book society spy guy or do we no look for the secret book society spy guy?”
“Yes, we do, but we were supposed to be subtle!”
“I was-a the subtle!”
“You think that was subtle?” Shade put her hands on her hips and glared.
Ginch stared back at her. He blinked a couple of times and then cleared his throat. “Okay, maybe I’m-a no sure what ‘subtle’ means.”
Shade groaned and thumped her head down on the bar.
“Thou’re lookin’ for a member of a secret society or summat?” the bartender asked.
“Yeah,” she replied wearily.
“Thou’ll be wantin’ Poor Richard then.”
Shade’s head shot up. “Wait—you know you have a member of a secret society here and you know who he is?”
“Oh, aye. Every fairy in Cottinghamtownshireborough do. Ahoy the bar!” the bartender sang out. “Who do we know what’s in a secret society, then?”
“Poor Richard,” all the other fairies replied, not looking up from their games.
“How do all of you know this?” Shade asked, quite bewildered.
“Poor Richard. He tells everyone who’ll listen he’s part of a secret society. Truth be told, we all stopped payin’ it any mind ages ago. He’s a rum ’un, but a good bloke. Organized the local fire brigade, he did.”