Another Dreadful Fairy Book

by Jon Etter

  “And local school,” called out one of the cow-eared fairies.

  “And he lends out his books to anyone wants readin’,” the gnome added.

  “Aye, good bloke.” The gilled fairy took a thoughtful puff from her pipe. “Rum ’un, but a good bloke.”

  “You couldn’t . . . oh, I don’t know . . . tell us what he looks like? Maybe where we could find him?” Shade asked, trying to play it cool. To be honest, she was a little disappointed—just as I am, and I’m sure you are—that it had been so easy to find her fairy, having expected something more exciting like in adventure stories she had read, and part of her hoped that the bartender would suddenly look nervous and maybe clam up or insist on speaking to her in private.

  But she (and I and you, dear Reader) once again had her hopes dashed when the bartender loudly and plainly replied, “Oh, aye. He’s a cowlug like that lot playin’ cards. Old as the hills and right pudgy, he is, with long gray hair except on top where he’s bald as a shaved egg.”

  “Don’t forget that balmy hat o’ his,” one cowlug added.

  “Right, probably wearin’ that beaver-skin hat of his. Just head up road a spell and look for his signs,” the bartender said.

  “This time o’ day, thou’ll be wantin’ that barn he mucks about in and not the house,” the gnome suggested.

  “Aye, the barn,” the bartender agreed knowingly. “And don’t mind any loud noises thou might hear—that’s just Poor Richard blowing summat up. Perfectly safe . . . least that’s what he says.”

  Shade found all that they said quite strange but it all made a good deal of sense a little while later when she, Ginch, and the Professor came across a pair of signs, one pointing north to a sagging, gray, two-story house that looked on the verge of collapse and the other pointing south to a dirt path that led through a small copse of trees. The north-pointing sign, an elegant one with carved letters and polished wood, read:

  Domus Doctrina

  Home of Richard Freeholder

  Fairy of Letters, Inventor,

  Firefighter, Librarian, Educator,

  Philanthropist,

  & Secret Society Member

  The other sign, a much less grandiose affair, was a simple, rough-hewn board on a pole reading: “Laboratory: Proceed with caution. Fireproof clothing encouraged but not required.”

  “The fairies at the bar said he’d be in a barn,” Shade said. “Do you think that could be the lab?”

  As if in answer to her question, something boomed loudly beyond the trees.

  “Come on!” Shade headed down the path.

  Ginch made no show to move. “I’ll-a stay here and keep the watch. My clothes, they’re-a no the fireproof and too nice to risk.”

  “Professor?”

  The Professor scratched his head. He took out a match, lit it, and held it to one of his coat sleeves. When the sleeve caught fire, he frantically waved it, blew on it, and finally swatted it out with his other hand. After that, he shrugged and headed off into the trees with Shade close behind.

  After a minute’s jog, Shade and the Professor found a grassy pasture in the middle of which stood a barn, its paint faded and peeling, its sides and roof covered in ivy and moss. In front of the barn was a scorched patch of grass with a tangle of melted wires and shards of broken glass at its center. A few feet away from the burnt grass lying spread-eagled with his face turned up to the bright afternoon sun was a bald, wrinkled old fairy, the long gray hair that grew from the sides and back of his head fanned out to either side underneath his black-and-white spotted cow ears. On his chest sat a ferret that, upon seeing the Professor, leapt into his arms. The Professor hugged the ferret, kissed his head, then stuffed him back into his pants.

  “Oh my gosh!” Shade rushed over to the fairy. Wisps of smoke curled up from his simple brown homespun jacket and trousers. “Are you all right?”

  The jowly face of the fairy grinned. “Oh, quite all right! Quite all right, indeed!” he chuckled.

  “Do you need any help?”

  The fairy squinted his blue eyes up at Shade and the Professor. “Need? No, don’t believe I need help, but I will most gratefully accept it. If one of you would be kind enough to help me to my feet and the other find my glasses and hat, I would be much obliged.”

  Shade strained to help Poor Richard to his feet, then he stood and leaned heavily on a walking stick. The Professor plopped a round fur hat (now rather singed) on the cowlug’s head, slid a pair of round wire-rimmed glasses onto his nose, and gave the chubby old fairy a thumbs-up. Poor Richard’s eyes lit up and he grasped the Professor’s hand.

  “Why, it’s Professor Pinky, the foremost authority on intra- and extra-spatial studies! I’m not sure if you remember, but we met once when I was presenting a paper on practical galvanism at the University of Streüseldorff many years ago. And who is it that you have with you?” Poor Richard turned to Shade. His eyes widened in pleasant surprise. “My goodness, it’s been an awfully long time, but I have seen those eyes before. Tell me, child, are you Moonshadow’s granddaughter or great-granddaughter?”

  “Wait, you knew my great-grandfather?” Shade was stunned. “Then you’re . . . ”

  “One of the librarians of the Great Library? I am indeed.” As Shade gawped, Poor Richard winked at her. “Or were you going to say very, very old? If so, guilty as charged.”

  “But how—”

  “How have I lived to be so old? There’s no great trick to it, my dear—you just have to keep not dying and there you are. But I believe we may have more pressing concerns. If you are here, I assume that you are gathering together G.L.U.G., are you not?”

  “Glug?”

  “Yes, the Great Library’s Unseen Guardians. I know, it’s a terrible acronym but we were in a bit of a hurry at the time—as we may be now. You didn’t happen to try to break into my house before coming to the lab, did you?”

  “No! We would never do that,” Shade replied. The Professor gave a whistle and pointed to his own chest. “Okay, he would, but he didn’t.”

  “Yes, the Professor’s personal peccadilloes are well-known in academic circles. Well, if it wasn’t the two of you—”

  “How do you know someone broke in?”

  The cow-eared fairy pointed to a red flag attached to a hinge on the side of the barn. “One of my little inventions. The flag goes up if someone tries to break in through any of the doors or windows of my house, which it did a little while ago. I would have gone to investigate, but I was in the middle of my experiment and thought it could wait.”

  The Professor pointed to the scorched patch and melted and broken equipment and cocked an eyebrow.

  “The experiment? I was capturing lightning in a jar.”

  Shade frowned. “Doesn’t look like you did.”

  “My dear, failure is always a necessary pit stop on the road to success.”

  Shade pointed her thumb back toward the road. “Shouldn’t we—”

  Before she could finish her question, Ginch came charging through the trees. “’Ey, everybody! The house is on fire! And there’s-a the Sluagh red cap goons a-standing around watching!”

  “They must not have appreciated my various anti-theft devices. Oh well, come with me,” Poor Richard said, hobbling over to the barn and sliding its doors open to reveal a sizable cart filled with books and scientific instruments and a pair of ponies in stalls. “If you’ll help me with my ponies, we’ll ride posthaste to safety.”

  While Shade and the Professor hitched up the fairy ponies, Poor Richard climbed up onto the driver’s seat of the cart and fiddled with a variety of knobs and levers, and Ginch poked through the various odds and ends in the back. “’Ey, why you got alla the junk in the trunk here? You always stay ready to make-a the break for it?”

  “Only for the past month or so,” the old fairy answered. “When Whippitie’s grandson came by and said that he was finding all of us G.L.U.G.ers and getting ready to go after th
e hidden books, I thought I should prepare—”

  “Hold on,” Shade said. “Another member of the secret society found you?”

  “Oh, yes, but then I haven’t made myself terribly hard to find, have I? But I’m not sure that now is the time to get into all of that, for there is a time for discussion and a time for action, and the wise know the difference. I don’t claim to be terribly wise, but I believe having Sluagh hooligans burning down one’s house would be a call to action, especially since the fire will eventually reach my chemical and gunpowder stockpile.”

  An explosion ripped through the springtime quiet.

  “The fire has apparently reached my chemical and gunpowder stockpile,” Poor Richard said matter-of-factly. “Right, everybody in.”

  Ginch and Shade scrambled up to sit beside Poor Richard on the driver’s bench, and the Professor hopped into the back and settled in amongst the junk. With a flick of the reins, they rattled off through the meadow and the trees and back to the main road, from which they could see green flames rapidly consuming Domus Doctrina while goblins in red caps, a lean, blue-haired elf in bronze armor, and an immense, hairy ogre stood gathered around it. They could also see, much to their horror, the armored fairy turn their way and point as if to say, “Get them!”

  In which there is a wagon ride

  much more exciting than the one

  you took on that school visit to the

  apple orchard . . .

  “I’m-a something of the expert on skeedeedling,” Ginch informed Poor Richard as he looked with dismay toward the fairy gang. “And right now, we really gotta skeedeedle!”

  “I’m much of your opinion, my good fellow,” Poor Richard agreed. “One of the most important keys to success in life is knowing when to leave.”

  “We’re not going to have a dingle-dangle life to succeed in if we don’t leave a little faster!” Shade pointed behind them. “That ogre is almost on us!”

  Now good Reader, I know that you are quite the expert on fairies and fairy lore and know that ogres are fierce creatures covered in coats of short coarse hair except for the long, shaggy manes that flow down from their immense heads and the long, bushy beards that hang from their chins, that they usually stand around seven feet tall, and that they eat nothing but meat—preferably fresh fairy or human meat—so I won’t bother going through all that. I will note, however, that this was a particularly large, vicious, and filthy ogre, its blood-red fur green in places from the algae growing in it and its rotten brown teeth on full display as it roared, charging down the hill and onto the road after them.

  “An ogre, eh?” Poor Richard flicked the reins to spur the ponies to go faster but otherwise seemed unconcerned that a gigantic enraged cannibal was hot on their heels. He considered the levers and buttons in front of him. “I believe some tribuli should do the trick.”

  He pulled down a lever and a panel on the back of the cart opened, spilling little metal jacks, much like the ones your brother often plays with and fails to pick up. Unlike those jacks, however, these were sharpened into wicked points. The ogre stepped square onto them with one of its bare feet. It grabbed its foot, hopped around on the other, howled in pain, then, in a bizarre attempt to ease the pain, stuffed its injured foot in its mouth to suck on it. How effective such treatment could be, however, we will sadly never know for as it did so, its other foot landed on another jack, causing the ogre to fall onto its back and almost choke to death on its own foot.

  “Do all of those levers and buttons do stuff like that?” Shade asked.

  “Oh, I should say they do,” Poor Richard laughed. “This is an all-purpose, ready-for-anything escape cart.”

  “Why would you build something like this?”

  “Why, to escape, of course! Ever since Whippitie’s grandson got in touch with me, I knew that trouble might—”

  A whistle from the Professor interrupted him. Far behind, goblins and the armored fairy galloped after them.

  “I think we gotta the bigger problems than who’s a-talkin’ to who,” Ginch said, as the cart clattered onto the streets of Cottinghamtownshireborough.

  “No worries, my good fellow. Just push that button in front of you.”

  Ginch did so and oil sprayed out of nozzles on the bottom of the cart, covering the cobblestone street behind them. When the first goblin war ponies hit the oil, they began to slip and slide until they fell on their sides and dumped their goblin riders painfully to the ground.

  “Careful out here! It’s slippery!” Poor Richard shouted as they passed the Three Jolly Herdsmen. “Soap and water should fix things right up!”

  As the cobblestone street gave way once more to dirt road, Shade thought they were in the clear, but then more goblins and the armored fairy came galloping onto the road behind them. “What do we have to do to get away from these stupid termite-lickers?”

  Poor Richard chuckled. “Sounds like someone inherited Moonshadow’s temper. Might I suggest pulling that lever here?”

  Shade pulled and clouds of gray, foul-smelling smoke billowed out of pipes on both sides of the cart. Their pursuers disappeared from view, although they could be heard coughing and gagging. The smoke continued to spew out until Poor Richard pushed the lever up. “That should do the trick.”

  It did not, however, for the armored elf emerged from the smoke cloud behind them, a long spear in her hand. “’Ey, cowboy, you got any other tricks in this jaloopy!” Ginch cried.

  “Tenacious one, isn’t she?” Poor Richard said. “Well, I think it’s time I show her what happens when you attack an inventor!”

  Poor Richard pushed a button just as the armored fairy flung her spear. A panel running on the back of the cart unhooked and was about to swing down when the spear pinned it in place.

  “Hey, Richard, what did that button do?” Shade asked.

  “It began the ignition sequence for the assault fireworks I have set to launch from the back of the cart.”

  “And what happens if the panel in the back doesn’t open?”

  “Oh, my dear, that would never happen. I have it spring-loaded to open and—”

  “Just answer the question!”

  “Well, I suppose the whole cart would explode.”

  “Puckernuts!”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Because that’s exactly what’s about to happen!” Shade’s mind raced, trying desperately to come up with a way to survive both Poor Richard’s mad inventions and the even madder villain pursuing them. “Ginch, Professor—get yourselves and Richard on those ponies and cut loose the cart!”

  “’Ey, wait a minote!” Ginch objected. “What about you? We gotta—”

  “Just do what I say!” Shade said, grabbing a long bronze rod from the equipment piled in the cart. “I’ll be fine!”

  Ginch nodded. “’Ey, Professor! Give us the hand here!”

  The Professor pulled a wooden hand out of his coat pocket and tossed it to Ginch, who slapped it away. “We no gotta the time for the jokes, partner! C’mon!”

  The Professor climbed over the clutter, grabbed Poor Richard around his squishy belly, and sprang onto one of the ponies. Ginch leaped onto the other one. The Professor pulled out a long cavalry sword and sliced through the traces connecting the ponies to the cart, pulled out a bugle, and blew a call to charge on it as the ponies galloped furiously away from the cart.

  Meanwhile, Shade opened her wings, soared high, then looped around and down, coming up fast behind the armored fairy. She swung the bronze rod with all her might at the fairy’s head. Had Shade been a more active and sporty fairy, like the majority of the residents of Pleasant Hollow, she no doubt would have struck their pursuer a devastating blow, thus ending the chase and saving the day. But Shade wasn’t—she would always rather curl up with a book than go outside and toss around an acorn, play grubstick, and such—so it should come as no surprise that she didn’t even come close to hitting the fairy. All she succeeded in was
accidentally and painfully banging her toes on the rider’s bronze-clad shoulder as she glided past.

  In a flash, the rider drew her sword. “Come back here and fight, Little Owlet!” the fairy shouted. That phrase, “Little Owlet,” sent a shock through Shade, but just then she didn’t have the time to worry about it.

  “Get donkled, snotbucket!” Shade called back as the rider came up fast on the back of the cart, which was slowing more and more now that it had been cut loose from its ponies. “And you might want to look where you’re going!”

  Shade’s fairy foe turned just in time for her pony to slam into the back of the cart and send her sailing over the pony’s head. The pony shook itself and ran off into the grass as sparks shot out the edges of the cart’s speared back panel. As Shade flew away from the cart, it exploded in a massive blooming of multicolored sparks and flames. The armored fairy shot through the air in a long arc, landing a hundred yards away with a loud crash and clatter.

  By the time Shade caught up with the others, they had left the road and were well on their way back to the Grand Library. “’Ey, little Sprootshade! You make it! We never had-a the doubt!” Ginch cried.

  The Professor whistled and pointed to the palm of his hand. Ginch frowned and tossed him a gold coin. “Okay, maybe I have-a the one doubt, but I’m-a still glad to see you. We hear the big, big boom and we worry a little.”

  “Yes, minor design flaw that,” Poor Richard muttered, stroking his chin. “Should be easy enough to—”

  “That can wait,” Shade said. “We need to go back now and find your codebook, Richard. The protection spell on it is strong enough to survive that fire, right?”

  “No need to go back. I always say that a good book should be kept close to your heart. In the case of my codebook . . . ” Richard reached inside his jacket and pulled out a book: Uncommon Nonsense by Thomas Ache. “ . . . I mean that in a very literal sense, and I encourage you to do the same with yours. Now let us make our way to a safe and quiet place as soon as possible, for we have much to discuss.”