The woman shrugged. “Too late.”
Trix’s previous experience with visions had revealed his birthmother to him. She’d visited him multiple times, compelling him to poison his family and run away from home, all while she’d lain ensorcelled by a sleeping spell. He hadn’t seen her since visiting her body at Rose Abbey.
“This is ridiculous,” Trix said angrily. “A person should at least have control over his own mind.”
“I agree,” the woman answered. “One day, you and I will have a chat with the gods about such things. But this is not that day. Something terrible has happened.”
Trix considered all that he’d been through since running away from the towerhouse, culminating with his being trapped by a vision in a tree surrounded by furious magic. “Something terrible is always happening.”
He half expected the powerful woman to scold him for the flippant remark, as Mama would have, but instead she gave him the finest of smiles. She possessed incredible beauty—his eldest sister being the most beautiful woman in the world made Trix a more than adequate judge of such things. It was difficult to look away. Her eyes were a shocking violet that seemed to change with the light, flashing with either blue or red. Her brows arched dramatically above them like the sweep of a butterfly’s wing, lending her countenance a sense of both the wicked and the wonderful. Both her brows and her hair were black as the night and scattered with stars that seemed to twinkle—as her eyes did—whenever she moved. She wore a dress of flowers and fog and spidersilk and shadow.
The moment Trix put all the pieces together, he was too shocked to reply. What in the world did the Faerie Queen want with him? If this even was the world…on this grassy mound, surrounded by a ring of mushrooms. Even the mushrooms bowed, bonnets to the queen.
“Once upon a time,” the Faerie Queen began, much in the same way Papa always did, “there were dragons in this world. But that was a very long time ago.”
“So I’ve heard,” said Trix.
“Along with them, high in the White Mountains, lived a race of people. They dedicated themselves to the beasts. In turn, the dragons allowed them the use of their magic.”
“I assume these people died off along with the dragons.”
“As did we all,” said the Faerie Queen. “But a dragon has awoken, and all fey magic beneath the Hill has been bound. I cannot think that these two things are unrelated.”
“My Aunt Joy is in Faerie! My sister Wednesday is her apprentice. They are the most powerful fey I know. Why can’t you ask them for help?”
“They have been magically bound as well.”
Trix squinted at the vision. “If your magic is bound too, how can we be having this conversation?”
“At full strength, I could have transported you straight here with but a thought. This is the last of my power.” The Faerie Queen indicated their surroundings.
“Why me?”
“You are the Boy Who Talks to Animals,” she said. “And with the fey magic bound, anyone under the Hill with animal magic has been turned into a beast. They cannot talk to us, nor can they talk to each other. Soon there will be nothing but chaos, and such an imbalance can tear this world apart.” The Faerie Queen clasped her hands together as she made her plea. “I want to make you my Emissary, Trix Woodcutter. You must speak for the animals. Save Faerie. And save the world.”
The longer the Faerie Queen spoke to him, the more dire he began to realize the situation was. Trix was supposed to be searching for his birthfather, but the King of Eagles would need to remain a stranger for a little while longer. The fate of the world hung in the balance! It’s not like there was another Boy Who Talked to Animals that could take his place…
“I accept,” he said eagerly.
“You must come immediately,” said the queen.
The urgent need to spring into action overwhelmed the instinctive tingling he’d felt in the animal parts of himself. They were so far away from Faerie! He had to leave now. “I have a companion, but I’m sure she won’t mind.”
“Gods bless you, child. Now, you will need to arm yourselves.”
“Lizinia’s covered in gold, so she doesn’t need a weapon,” he said. “I have a dagger. But I have never needed anything more than my wits in the company of animals.”
“Even with your skills, it is not safe here. These are more than animals, my dear. They are fey men gone mad, trapped in bodies they cannot escape.”
Unlike some of his sisters, Trix had very little knowledge of weapons. Thursday had given him a bow…but even if he’d had it with him, it would have been too small for his new man-sized body. “I do know some archery,” he said, “But I do not have a bow, or the arrows to shoot from it.”
The Faerie Queen read his mind before he could make so much as a suggestion. “Anything shot from a mundane bow will not help you here. These beasts are too powerful.” The Faerie Queen looked to the sky, as if checking the position of the sun to see how much time had passed, only there was no sun in these strange azure heavens. “Look for an island. You will find a woman who can provide you with what you need.”
“Thank you.” He hated that this side quest would delay their arrival in Faerie, but he appreciated the queen’s straightforwardness. Visions had a tendency to be poetic and cryptic. “But I have to ask—”
“I know you still have many questions, but my magic is fading, so I have brought you someone who might be able to answer them.” The Faerie Queen, her dress, and the Hill itself began to sparkle around the edges. “Save us, Trix Woodcutter. Save us all.”
“—WHO WOKE THE DRAGON?” Trix called after her, but she was already gone. The sound of his own cry woke him out of his vision-state. He wobbled on the tree branch; Lizinia caught him before he could fall.
Trix blinked once, twice. Shook his head, trying to clear the cobwebs from his magic-addled brain. The rush of the magic had stopped; there was nothing below them now but forest, as far as the eye could see. In his hands was a small, ginger-furred rodent. It nosed about, sniffed his hands and shirt, and then looked up at Trix with cloudy, blind eyes.
“Yes, yes,” said the brownie, “Judging by your smell, your sister. Yes, yes. Your sister woke the dragon.”
2
The Brownie that Fell from the Sky
“My sister?” Trix asked the brownie.
“Your sister?” Lizinia asked Trix. “Which sister?”
Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, Sunday…even Friday…all of Trix’s sisters were capable of doing a thing like waking a dragon, but he knew which would be first on his list.
“Bad-tempered giant in a skirt,” said the brownie. His two overly-large, pointed teeth gave him somewhat of a lisp. “Yes, yes. Strong. Growly. Bad-tempered. Ears like mine.”
“Saturday,” said Trix, his guess confirmed. Mostly. Saturday normally wouldn’t be caught dead in a skirt. And what was the bit about ears? Brownies’ ears were wide set and came to a point, unlike rats. This brownie had a distinct notch in one of his ears—well-healed over, definitely not a new wound. This brownie must have been quite the scrapper in his tribe. Saturday was a fighter, too.
“What does he say?” asked Lizinia. “What did Saturday do?”
“Woke a dragon, apparently,” answered Trix.
“Yes, yes. And broke the world, and killed the witch, yes. Fell off the mountain and fought the dragon. Fell from the sky we did, yes, yes. And then she remade the world again before we landed.” The brownie’s nose stretched over the edge of Trix’s lap. He sniffed and shuddered, his hindquarters trying to hide a tail that wasn’t there. There was no way the blind animal could have seen how high up in the tree they were—he must have sensed their location some other way. “Remade. Yes, yes. Whole and hale down here. Not up there, no. Not all rescued. But we few, yes. We few, we flew.”
Very little of this made any sense to Trix, and he hadn’t the first clue how to translate any of it for Lizinia. But one of the brownie’s rambling comments stood out among the
rest. “Saturday broke the world? She’s the one who called the ocean?”
“Don’t know about an ocean, no, no,” said the brownie. “Time itself does not reach the Top of the World, no, but the shaking did. Time itself could not destroy the Great Mountain, no, but she did. Broken, now. Broken. Yes, yes.”
Trix was even more confused. “Time is broken?”
“No, no. The mountain,” the brownie clarified, as if Trix were daft. Trix was beginning to feel as if he were.
“From the look on your face, I should be glad I don’t understand animal-speak,” said Lizinia.
Trix squeezed the bridge of his nose. He ran a hand through his hair and tugged on a few strands, not completely convinced that he wasn’t still trapped in the vision. “I’m not entirely sure I understand it either.”
“Take your time,” she said. “I can wait to hear the story.”
“I expect it will be a long one,” said Trix.
“Then we should get out of this tree,” said the golden girl. “I think it’s safe to descend now.”
“Good idea. This might go more smoothly on solid ground.”
“Yes, yes,” said the brownie. “Born at the Top of the World, yes. A lover of heights, no. No, no. Not a lover.”
Gingerly, Trix lifted the brownie and placed him inside the traveling pack he’d acquired at Rose Abbey. The pack that had been lovingly and smartly prepared by none other than the legendary (and exceptionally not-dead) Jack Woodcutter himself.
“Make yourself comfortable,” he said to the brownie. “We’ll be out of this tree shortly.”
Lizinia made better time out of the tree than Trix did, as she fell most of the way. Thankfully, her gilded skin protected her like an armor. She got to her feet at the bottom, brushed off her knees where they’d muddied themselves in the landing, and waited for Trix to join her.
“So,” she said when his feet hit the ground. “Somewhere in all that noise was a dragon?” She waved to indicate the forest around them. The trees were solid and steady now, and there were many more of them. They were each thick with old growth, and their bark bore no scars from colorful lightning. The only muddled rainbow left was that of the autumn leaves rustling as nonchalantly as if they’d been on branches there all along. The soft breeze carried with it the scent of chill and loam. Apart from the notable absence of wildlife, and seawater, everything about this tranquil woodland setting was magicless and positively…normal.
“It…well…hmm.” Trix really wasn’t sure where to begin.
“Okay, forget the dragon. What exactly happened to you up there? You went all stiff and wouldn’t answer me, and I was worried you’d fall out of the tree. And where did…I’m sorry, I’m not familiar with that breed of animal. It looks a bit like a rat, but no rat I’ve ever seen. A mole, perhaps?”
“Brownie,” said Trix, thankful for the ability to answer at least one of her questions with complete certainty.
“Thank you. Where did the brownie come from?”
Trix looked to the sky. “Let’s make camp,” he decided. “It’s already late, and we have quite a journey ahead of us in the morning.”
Lizinia put her hands on her hips. “I get the feeling we are no longer seeking the King of the Eagles.”
“That feeling would be correct,” said Trix.
“May I ask where we’ll be heading?”
“Faerie,” he said. “The queen needs our help.”
Lizinia tilted her head at him, in that way Lizinia always did, and Trix braced himself.
“I’ll search for firewood,” she said. “With luck, some of these magical trees will have shed a few magically fire-starting branches in their race to magically appear.”
Trix caught her hand before she could walk away. His sisters would have scolded him for evading questions and changing their direction mid-course. Lizinia, he thanked the stars again, was not one of his sisters. “I just told you we’re heading to Faerie. Which, if you’ve ever seen a map at all, you would know is about a million miles in the opposite direction from the way we were headed.”
Lizinia sighed. “It was too much to hope that we were just around the corner.”
“Wait. You’re not mad?”
Lizinia fixed him with those amber irises. “Are you not Trix Woodcutter, Prince of Arilland, Prince of Eagles, and Boy Who Talks to Animals?”
It was an impressive list of titles when she put it all together like that. “I am,” he said humbly.
“Then I’m right where I’m supposed to be,” she said. “You told me the risks of adventuring with you at Rose Abbey. I accepted that risk with the full knowledge of what I was getting myself into. Your path is my path. What care I where the road leads so long as it’s interesting?”
Trix pulled her closer and kissed her cool, golden cheek. “I have not stopped being glad that you chose to accompany me, Goldilocks.”
“I hope you never do,” she said proudly as she tromped off into the forest.
Trix set his pack gingerly on the ground and opened the flap. A great burp greeted him. It seemed the brownie had found the food and helped himself.
“I eat when I get nervous,” said the brownie. “Yes, yes.”
Trix would have to take that into account on their journey. He lifted the brownie out of the pack. “Forgive me for not introducing myself before, friend. I’m Trix Woodcutter.”
“Yes, yes. The Boy Who Talks to Animals.” There was a time when Trix would have been surprised that his personal prophecy extended all the way to the Top of the World, but that time was long since past. “I am Trebald.”
Trix did not know much about the White Mountains and the Top of the World, but he knew enough about brownies to know that they always belonged to a clan. “And which is your clan?”
“Clan, no, no,” said Trebald, and then he thought some more. “Wait. Bor Alis. Yes, yes. Bor Alis clan.”
“Forgive me,” said Trix. “I’m not familiar with that clan.”
“They may call us something else down here,” said Trebald. “As we were the only clan at the Top of the World, we never used the title. No, no.”
Bringing the brownie down to earth seemed to have worked figuratively as well as literally. Calmer now, and sated by the food from Trix’s pack, Trebald was far less agitated and much more coherent. He was also a great deal sleepier. Trix would have been sleepy too, if he’d had to journey from the Top of the World.
“So you’ve met my sister? She’s all right?”
The brownie opened his mouth wide in a great yawn. “Yes, yes. And no, no.” His cloudy eyes bore into Trix, seeing but not seeing. “Not all right. I’m sorry.”
Trix thought about calling to Lizinia, but he was frozen in place. He didn’t like being alone when he heard bad news. Any bad news. Especially this sort of bad news. He took in a deep breath and held it as the brownie spoke again.
“I bit her. Yes, yes. Scared, ungrateful Trebald. Bit to blood, I did. Yes, yes. So very sorry.”
Trix exhaled. “You…bit her.”
“Yes, yes.”
“How many times?” He tried not to laugh as he spoke; he didn’t want the brownie to think Trix’s amusement was at his expense.
“Once. Yes, yes, just the once.”
Trix pressed his lips together tightly. He’d bitten Saturday himself a time or two in younger days, and she had absolutely deserved it. But she had never been in danger of dying from it. Indeed, Saturday wouldn’t have been in danger from far worse a wound—she had a destiny, and until she fulfilled it, Fate had rendered her invincible.
“So she was alive when you left her.”
“Yes, yes.” The brownie bedded down in a drift of multicolored leaves. “Angry and alive. The human and the horse were alive too, but not angry at all. No, no.” The brownie yawned again and his words drifted away as he succumbed to sleep. “I didn’t bite them.”
Trix patted the fur of his new companion and leaned back against the trunk of the great tree. Lizinia returned b
efore too long, her arms filled with enough sticks for a small fire. Trix pulled the flint from his pack, and they made short work of it—in no time, they were huddled close around the small blaze.
“We’re getting good at this,” said Lizinia.
“Just gives us more time to get good at other things,” Trix said automatically. It was a favorite expression of Mama’s.
“Poor thing,” Lizinia cooed over Trebald’s sleeping body. “Did you ever sort out his story?”
“It sounds like Saturday created the ocean and somehow ended up in the White Mountains at the Top of the World. Then she killed a witch, woke a dragon, and destroyed the mountain. In that order.”
“My goodness. How did they escape?”
“I’m a little fuzzy on those details,” said Trix. “But it seems that Trebald and Saturday were not the only ones to survive.”
“There was someone else?”
Trix shrugged. “And a horse, apparently.”
“But no other brownies.” The firelight flickered against Lizinia’s golden skin, sparkling and casting dark shadows at the same time. “How very sad.”
Now it was Trix’s turn to feel ungrateful. Of course if Trebald had been the only one to escape, then he’d lost his entire clan in the destruction of the Great Mountain. Trix couldn’t imagine such a terrible thing. “A terrible thing,” Trix murmured aloud. “Something terrible is always happening.” As he spoke the words he felt the urge to douse the fire and run for Faerie as fast as his legs could carry him. What if the world ended while they were sleeping?
“Now, Trix, depressing yourself about the situation won’t help Trebald. We must stay positive, for his sake.”
Trix forced himself to remain calm. Mama always said it was better to face troubles after a good night’s sleep, and that’s exactly what he must do. “Those are the words I said to the Faerie Queen in the vision, when she made me her Emissary. Oh, Lizinia, the world is in danger, and it’s up to me to save it.”
“Saving the world. Goodness, that’s an awful lot to ask of one young man.”
Trix & the Faerie Queen Page 2