My Peculiar Family

by Les Rosenthal

  “Gaia’s teeth! No!” He snorted. “Elf ears are much too short and not nearly as handsome.”

  “Faerie.”

  His face soured. “Please. Would I call you a monkey? Oh, some would, but not I. It’s Fae, if you please. Fae.”

  Robin Godfell was a Fae. Robin Godfell….Didn’t Shakespeare write about a character with a similar name? Wasn’t there a faerie by the name of Goodfellow? If these shadows have offended, think but this and all is mended…

  “The Puck.”

  “Why does everyone say my name like that? Why is it always “the Puck”? I swear, that Bard, talentless hack.” He recovered himself, “Yes, Puck, or Lord Puck if it pleases you. I prefer Puck.” Then his face morphed again to insult, “Called me Goodfellow… little did I know… Just buttering me up for a piece of drivel he called a play… even if it was one of his better ones.”

  “I, what…?”

  “Terribly sorry, I’ll get back to the point. This,” he held up the amethyst, “Is a Bennu Bird egg. Close kin to the phoenix. A Bennu Bird is said to transport a soul to the mortal plane to begin life. An infertile egg, like this, will transport the living to the realm of the dead or,” the landscape shifted just under the surface of the egg, “can transport them to their own personal place in hell. You created something that would save lives!”

  The landscape was no longer on the surface. Her painting lurked within, alive. Emaciated trees huddled against the crumbling building, fearful of the purple and black storm spitting lighting on the horizon. The jagged tongues gnawed the mountains and plains to ragged bits. Mountains became fractured bones raking the sky. Isabelle shivered.

  “I created that? A trap?”

  “Yes! Echidna’s one way ticket to Hades! I couldn’t create this. Even my squiggles look in need of a healer. It had to be someone with both the power and artistic talent you possess.”

  “WHY DIDN’T YOU SAY SOMETHNG?” A tsunami of frustration drowned her fear, obliterated disbelief.

  Mischief melted in Puck’s eyes. When he spoke it was so quiet and heartfelt, it made the sad little chapel appear to wither.

  “Would you have believed?”

  No. She would have dismissed him as another eccentric, rich man. With the politeness of her upbringing she would have smiled, done his commission and sent him on his way.

  “No one ever does.” Puck said quietly.

  It was real. Elves were real. Fae were real. Magic was real. And she, Isabelle, had created a trap for a monster. If the fae could be believed, it would save people.

  “And she couldn’t see it because?”

  “Because I didn’t want her to. Hiding an item in plain sight is easiest way to keep someone from noticing.”

  An unholy bawl rent the atmosphere.

  “That would be the chili oil,” Puck chortled to himself.

  Echidna was coming! The monster that nearly killed her over a magic talisman would be here soon. She needed a gun, a blade. There had to be something to defend herself with!

  “Wait! This place, it’s holy ground.”

  Puck was now absently gazing over the chapel walls. His eyes wandered listlessly. What Puck was looking for was beyond Isabelle. What did he hope to find? Was he searching for a place to hide?

  “No, unfortunately. The priest who blessed this place, well, let’s say he wasn’t a man of true faith.”

  “Then what are we doing here?”

  “Stalling of course.” His arms stretched out to encompass the room. Walls wavered as though under a heat wave. When the spell was cast, he turned to her. Isabelle didn’t see him move. One minute he was in the middle of the chapel, then in front of her. Puck knelt.

  “Isabelle.”

  “This isn’t fair.”

  “I know, but we don’t have time to focus on that right now,” Puck apologized. “I will not let her hurt you. On my word, Gaia as my witness, I will protect you,” he said fiercely.

  Protection wasn’t what she was looking for. An explanation would be preferable, a weapon would be better. Wrapping herself in all her dignity, Isabelle stood. She looked down. Her skirt was a rag mop version of its former prim fashion, and the blouse, once starched, hung like a limp bed sheet. Gingerly, she touched her face. She explored her hair. It fell all round her in tangled waves, debris clinging like desperate sailors of a wrecked ship.

  Puck still looked perfectly coifed.

  I’m a mess. But I will persevere.

  “That’s the ticket. All hell-fired and ready to go!”

  “I want a weapon. Do you have a pistol, a knife?” Isabelle watched him lift the egg, “Not that. I don’t want that.”

  A wild grin answered her.

  “Love a woman with a backbone. The hair suits you. Here,” he produced a long, silver knife, glinting blue in the candle light, “It’s an Arkansas toothpick, but it’s a fae Arkansas toothpick.”

  It was light, a sliver of starlight with a deadly edge. Isabelle turned it. Her face stared back, pale, dirty, bleeding from a cut on her forehead. She was different. An indefinable change crouched behind the eyes of someone stronger, a steal to match the weapon Puck gifted her with.

  “This dress will never do,” She sighed. Men had all the luck of a wardrobe offering more practicality. In a fight the torn up skirt was bound to make her trip again. “Turn around, Mr. Godfell,” she ordered.

  “Hardly the time for modesty, don’t you think?” Puck smirked.

  Puck obliged, however. While his back was turned Isabelle ripped and tied strips of cloth until her new outfit was complete. What was left of her skirt was ripped in half and strapped about her legs in makeshift pants. Her pantaloons brushed her ankles. The impractical bulk of her petticoat and bustle were tossed aside over a pew.

  “There,” she said, “a bit more fit for battle.”

  Puck cocked a royal blue brow at her over his shoulder. “Who says you will be in the battle?” Before she could speak he continued, “Isabelle, Echidna is old and dangerous. Her powers rival my own. I have already risked your life more than is necessary.”

  “After all this, you want me to run?” Isabelle demanded. A furtive movement beneath the drunken slouch of the pews caught her eye. “What are those?”

  Tiny hedgehog like creatures with long, pointed noses inched out of the void. The spikes on their backs bristled.

  “Oh, well, those are echidna,” Puck said clinically.

  “But…Echidna….?”

  “Yes.”

  “And these…”

  “Are also called echidna.”

  Isabelle rewarded Puck with a flat stare.

  “Don’t look at me like that! It wasn’t my idea! You lot made that decision, she just ran with it. Uh…duck.”

  Puck shoved her down to the floor. She smelled dust, moldering tile, felt the coarseness of dirt left behind by boots grind against her cheek. The sound of several things pattering like hailstones on the side of a building echoed above her. Beneath the pew Isabelle saw one of the creatures. It was adorable. Little snout, big, dark eyes, slim spines bristled like a porcupine. Its fat little body shook, quivering as though cold from a chill breeze. Green fluid dribbled down the spines.

  “Uh-oh,”

  Puck blew on the creature like it was a birthday candle. Poof! The ball of spines swelled into a mound of vibrant flowers, its feet grew roots that seeped into the decayed floor. It hissed. Needle teeth gnashed. High pitched squeaks pelted their ears.

  “One down, but it has friends,” Puck said. “Go out the back.”

  “You put a spell on this place.” She remembered the walls rippling like a disturbed pond. “Wasn’t that to protect us? If we go outside we’ll be exposed!”

  The corners of his mouth stretched from ear to ear. A wink was her only answer. “Trust me”, it said.

  Up they popped. Before them were spiny horrors trundling across the floor, chattering like angry bats. The pew Isabelle and Puck hid behind was loaded with green quills. Small, blackening hol
es started to form. Had they not hid, they’d be pincushions. Puck shoved her along, behind the altar and into a back room. Isabelle expected him to follow. Instead he waved at the back door, insistent and hurried.

  “Run,” He hissed.

  The door shut.

  Isabelle stared stupidly at the door. Run. It was sound advice. After all that passed tonight, running, once again, was a practical thing to do. Let the mythical creatures handle their own battle. She had the knife, more than enough to protect her as she fled to the police.

  And told them what?

  “ Hello officer. I painted a magic bird egg for a rich man that is actually Puck, as in from Shakespeare. He has the egg, but now I’m running from a monster with snakes for tales. And there are these adorable little hedgehogs that shoot poison out of their quills. Oh, but don’t worry. I’m right as rain. I have a magic Arkansas toothpick to keep me safe. Just shoot the snake tailed thing and we’ll call it a day.”

  “Bollocks,” She swore. “No one will believe me.”

  Running was sound advice.

  And she should have done it sooner.

  The shadows writhed thick and dark as boiling pitch. An army of hedgehog, echidna beasts marched on short legs. They tumbled over each other. A haphazard stampede of green, ichor tipped spikes, coal eyes, clicking teeth and catlike growling. There was hardly anywhere to dodge. The back door stood like a perverse tease behind the creatures’ growing mass. At her back were the sounds of monstrous roars, chanting, things crashing and impish sniggers.

  The echidna’s bristled. Poison sailed the distance towards Isabelle, death in a liquid cloud. Instinct threw her hands and knife up before her. Her skin crawled. A wall of pale light spread between her and the echidna, as warm as a patch of growing sunlight. A spattering hiss whispered over the magic wall. Several dull thumps followed. The echidnas were throwing themselves at Isabelle’s new shield.

  A hysterical titter escaped her. This was all too much. What was she going to do now? There was no way out, blocked off by monsters, she was trapped. And then it got worse.

  Echidnas vibrated en mass, bulging in places, cracking and oozing dark red in others. Several liquefied. Red, green and brown puddles rolled over the floor towards each other, merging in a mercurial lump. On the way it collected other echidnas. Like mounds of clay they mashed one into another at incongruous angles, giving the lump odd protrusions of snouts and quills. They wriggled, growled and combined.

  “Bollocks,” Isabelle swore.

  If she didn’t stop this, she was going to be creature food.

  Survival spurred her action, launched Isabelle’s body forward through her shield at the ameba writhing on the floor. She slashed down. The long knife gleamed in wicked glee. A silver streak cut through the blob, leaving a glowing gash and burbling cries of pain from dozens of little voices. In panic Isabelle stabbed again and again. Quills thrust up at her. Toothy maws grabbed at her clothes in an attempt to bite. Wild with fear Isabelle cut and hacked. She jumped whenever it lashed at her, more out of startled fright than from any skill in fighting.

  There was screaming and Isabelle couldn’t tell if it was her, the monster or both.

  It bulged on the far end. A bubble from a tar pit smelling of fetid rot swelled, and then rolled in a tidal wave across the monster’s collective body. She tried to jump back. Isabelle pin wheeled away, attempting to ward off the wave with a shard of blue light. She may as well have tried to poke an elephant with a sewing needle. A blow that felt like a giant pillow filled with bricks hit her. Isabelle’s back crashed into an object that cracked like a tree being felled. For a moment she floated in a void. She hit something hard and unyielding. Pain consumed her.

  Every nerve ending throbbed. For several frightening heartbeats, Isabelle couldn’t move. Muscles seemed to have solidified. Useless limbs twitched but remained glued to the floor. Her own body betrayed her. Even her vision blurred, causing duplicates of everything.

  One of those duplicates was a terror looming over her, dark and lethal. Through a haze Isabelle watched it take form. Vomiting upward, the cancerous blob grew, oozing forward at first, but gaining speed all too quickly. Faster and faster it came. She raised the knife, knowing full well there was no way to defend herself.

  Puck materialized all beautiful rage and torn finery. He gripped the top of the monsters gelatinous head; the egg radiating with a palpable power. Lavender energy spooled around the combatants. The tar fiend gave a thousand screams, cracking like a window to the infinite void, black on black with purple webbing. Flakes of broken creature gravitated towards it. As Isabelle watched, the Bennu bird egg sucked the thing into itself, a black hole swallowing a hideous planet.

  From behind her, grief and outrage crushed the terrible moment. The world crashed down from its slow, lurid plod, to a surreal, preternatural speed. As the last granules of the beast disappeared into the egg, a snake entwined around Puck and dragged him backwards. It fell. Their salvation rolled away, but Isabelle couldn’t see where. Echidna’s dual serpent tails constricted around Puck.

  “MY CHILDREN!” Echidna wailed, “Always my children die at the whim of apes! And now YOU!” Her voice dropped to a deathly hiss, “Now the Seelie Court is minus one less faerie!”

  The egg. The egg would stop Echidna, but Isabelle had to find it. She had to get it to Puck.

  Isabelle scrambled on her hands and knees. It couldn’t have gone far.

  She looked up in time to see a net of watery threads peel itself off the walls to hug Echidna. Puck grimaced. Echidna snarled, fouling the air with otherworldly profanities. Echidna was trapped, but so was Puck.

  Where is that damn egg!

  Expletives in alien languages, guttural versus musical, were tossed back and forth. Isabelle searched. Lightning whip cracked overhead. Wood projectiles from blasted pews spewed into Isabelle’s peripheral. She was at the altar boy chairs. No egg. Isabelle crawled to where the priest sat and groped the shadows. There was nothing but dust bunnies.

  Puck’s voice reverberated off cracked plaster. Boom! Crack! Snap! Wind roared down through the chapel, a beast intent on devouring everything in its wake. The floor trembled. Isabelle stayed rooted to her spot, fearful of the floor opening up to drop her to her demise. She looked right.

  There it was, rocking in place under the altar. The floor heaved. Isabelle trotted precariously on all fours, and then slid the last few feet into the altar as the earth below her hiccupped. Her shoulder suffered a bruising blow. Rolling away again was the egg emitting a leaden, purple glow. Isabelle leapt at it.

  She slammed down hard onto the floor, bashing her ribs. Everything hurt. Ribs ached, arms bruised, her legs and back throbbed. Her fingers were assaulted by invisible pins and needles. But in them the glassy curves of an amethyst shell quivered.

  I have it! I have it!

  In her excitement Isabelle hopped up and rapped her head sharply against the bottom of the altar. Pain trickled down her skull.

  A new injury didn’t help her situation. Isabelle crawled out from the altar on a sore belly. She stood on shaking legs, beholding the most uncanny sight she’d ever seen, even considering this night.

  Two snake-headed tails were wrapped around Puck. One was decked in fluffs of cotton; the second had gone thin as a knitter’s skein of yarn. The thin snake wrapped around Puck’s waist like a living belt. The fluffy snake engulfed his head, twined round and around, coil upon soft coil. Echidna heaved and gulped for air. What remained of her corset was strapped to torso cracking tightness, her waist and chest so thin it appeared a cartoonist’s rendering. The corset’s ties stretched taught in midair for Puck’s outstretched hand. The magic net Puck called from the chapel’s walls still restrained Echidna’s arms, hips and head.

  Puck, his head swathed in a soft, hissing puff ball. Echidna desperately squirmed against net and overly tight corset.

  Isabelle’s mind was having a hard enough time adjusting to supernatural surprises. She hit another snapp
ing point.

  An insane giggle escaped her.

  I’m losing my mind! It’s the asylum for me.

  “Blame it all,” Isabelle panted, “To go all wrathy at the start and end up like this.” Another giggle hit her in the chest.

  The tingling in her fingers rolled up her arms. It claimed her shoulders. An invisible magnet drew Isabelle’s eyes to her creation.

  Speak the name of the traveler, a voice intoned in her head, solemn as a church bell.

  She looked up at Puck. He needed to use this thing. Fluffy death pressed his face and he descended to his knees.

  “Mmmmmph!” Puck uttered.

  What name do you give?

  The tingling spread to her torso, down her legs.

  Puck’s net failed. He landed heavily on his side. Echidna wrenched at the corset.

  What name?

  This isn’t supposed to be me! HE’S supposed to, hang it all! HE’S the one that has to cast the spell! Not me!

  The gift is yours. What name do you give?

  Echidna flexed her massive arms. The shredding sound of fabric rippled through the chapel.

  “No! Not me! I can’t….I’m not supposed to!”

  The prickling feeling of ants walking under her skin raced down her legs, buzzed in her ears like a million gnats.

  A monster from the nether of myth and legend opened a fanged mouth and hissed hellfire. Isabelle was running again. Not away this time, but straight into the teeth of mortal danger. She latched onto the cloud puff tail.

  “ECHIDNA!”

  The world inverted on itself. Dry conifer needles brushed Isabelle’s skin, trembled in dread against her. Aging walls dusted with the sandy evidence of their decay. Streams babbled their fear beneath the shredding tongues of lighting and bullets of shattered mountain rock. The sky boiled in purples, reds, oranges.

  Black on black with purple webbing, like a crumbling statue Echidna was pulled into hell.

  An impossibly high pitched wail erupted from Echidna.

  “What crime?” She howled, “What crime?”

  A calm voice reached Isabelle.

  “You broke the rules. You fed too deeply on mortal kind, undermined their free will. Those rules are there for a reason.”