I dropped to one knee. The clawing, prying fingers fell away from my skin. I spoke in as steady a voice as I could manage under the circumstances. Somehow, it turned into a scream. “I am Bountiful Julietta Esmereldina Fenetre, daughter of Lord Nanneke of the Hobgoblins! I belong here.”
The trees crashed together and a figure climbed out from under them. He was small and gnarled, with nut-brown skin. As he shambled along, he trailed wispy ropes of hair and braided grass behind him. He wore a ragged robe of berry beads and oozing weeds. His face was peaceful and ugly. His eyes were sharp and beautiful.
“Well,” he grumbled. “Why did you not say so in the first place?”
–§–§–§–§–§–
Mocklore Survival Guide #6: The OtherRealm.
Also known as the unknown orchard, the moonlight dimension, the land of the fey. The beginning of the end and the end of the beginning. Scary stuff. Scary, beautiful stuff. I can’t describe what it’s like there, not with any degree of accuracy. Sorry. If you survive it too, good luck to you. If you don’t—nothing I could possibly say would have helped you.
A feeling of deep green peace overtook me as the OtherRealm drew me in. It settled in my stomach and grounded me. It was nothing like that, not really, because I have no words to describe it. I can’t explain how soft the trailing vines were as they brushed my face, or how the grass felt cold and clear and perfect under my feet.
Let me just say, as an example of why this world was paradise, that the first thing that the gnarled, nut-brown chieftain did was take me shopping.
Oh, yes.
–§–§–§–§–§–
They call it the Sparkle Market. This is where the faeries and the goblins and the aelves and the other magical, unreal folk bring their magical wares. Occasionally, when I’m walking through the mortal world, I’ll hear their bells and scramble off to find them because I’m dying for a cup of acorn coffee and a chance to browse the second-hand wings stall. Their visits to the mortal world are rare, and they always seem a little more subdued than they do at home. Here in the OtherRealm, the Sparkle Market is always and forever and colour and light, and they never ever ever run out of acorn coffee.
That first visit was extraordinary. I wandered past stalls and banners and winged, multi-coloured people, feeling at home for the first time in my life. It was only then that I acknowledged to myself how out-of-place I had always felt, in the village, at Ma Fortuna’s place, in the big bad world. This was my home.
There were frocks everywhere, as far as the eye could see. Sunset frocks, glass frocks, frocks made of forgotten promises and good intentions and grass and leaves and tomorrows and fairy tales. “Pick one,” said the nut-brown chieftain, stomping along beside me.
I couldn’t possibly choose from that wealth of beauty. “Are you sure?”
He ran his dark eyes over the torn remains of my fish-stained white lace dancer disguise. “You’re one of us, lass. Should you not dress the part?”
I stopped to admire a delicate rose bodice and bluebell skirt. “I can’t choose.” It all seemed far better than I deserved.
“You should,” he muttered ominously. I knew without him having to tell me that this was far more important than a costume change. It was about accepting these people, this world, their bounty as my heritage.
I scanned the stalls, ignoring the dancing creatures and happy music. I let my eyes roam up and down the rows of colour and beauty and natural magic. Something caught my gaze. I moved towards it, and the rest of the Sparkle Market melted away. There was just the one stall and the gleaming two-piece hanging on display.
It was chainmail, finer and more elegantly linked than any of those pieces I drooled over at the village blacksmith’s. Silver-steel chainmail, forming a short bodice and low-slung hip skirt. It was armour and seduction all in one, and I loved it instantly. I pointed, and several flower faeries leaped forward to unpeel my ragged white garments. They bathed my skin with dock leaves and soft mountain grasses, then fitted the chainmail to my body.
It fit like a glove—like a silken lingerie glove with full underwire support. The magical chainmail draped over my breasts and hips, baring my midriff, glittering and shimmering. The flower maidens cooed and chattered, braiding my hair with clover and forget-me-nots.
No one would ever take me seriously in an outfit like this. It was perfect.
“Fine,” agreed the nut-brown chieftain. “Granfiddich,” he grunted, pointing at himself. “Grandfather,” he added.
I hesitated. “Does that translate as Grandfather of the People?”
“Granfiddich translates as ruler of the goblins,” he said in a low growl. “Grandfather means I’m your actual grandfather.” He turned on his heel and stomped away.
I glanced at the flower faeries. “Do I need to pay?” The last thing I wanted was to offend anyone else in the OtherRealm. Offending their ruler and my grandfather all in one go was probably enough for one day.
“Negotiate payment with the Granfiddich,” giggled the faeries.
Brilliant. I ran after him. The Sparkle Market was back with a vengeance, all bright colours and streaming banners. I could barely keep my eye on the Granfiddich in the crowd. Finally I burst out of the edge of the clump of stalls, coughing on herbal smoke and cinnamon dust. The Granfiddich was waiting for me, sitting on a large rock shaped like a four-leaf clover.
I dropped to my knees. “Granfiddich—grandfather, I’m sorry. I did not mean to say anything out of turn.”
“Six months,” he grunted.
I frowned. “Sorry?”
“It is fine craftsmanship, the best our people have made in a hundred years.”
He was negotiating for the chainmail. “Oh. What does six months mean?”
“Six months here, in the True Realm,” he growled, staring at me like he expected me to refuse. “Learning about your past, your heritage. Six months.”
“Okay.”
He blinked. “You will not haggle?”
“No, six months sounds fair. I want to stay here and learn all those things, grandfather. Any less than six months would be too little.”
He nodded, seeming pleased. “Then the gift is yours. Come. Let me show you our world.”
Again, I find it difficult to describe. I can only remember fragments—as if thoughts of that place don’t belong to the mortal world. The sky was constantly swirling with a hundred different colours, with silver and gold and other metals I’d never seen before or since. Their world went on forever. We broke into fruits that tasted of honey and ice-cold jam. We slept in trees and leaf-green boats. We drank water from grass goblets, then tore them apart and replanted the stalks in the ground. It was like your ultimate health farm, but with fun and fashion parades and three-headed monsters. The land was peaceful, full of music, dance and magic. Magic most of all.
In mortal Mocklore, magic crashes and smashes through the landscape, exploding with abrasive sounds and colours. In the OtherRealm, magic is a pattern, and a vein. You breathe it in and out, you eat it for breakfast, and it consumes you right back.
I spent three days making daisy chains with the flower faeries, a week swimming in the pearl rivers with a gang of macho fish goblins and a fortnight learning elegance, poise and seductive walking skills from Mistress Hazelswitch, an aelf matron who was once concubine to the Faerie Prinse himself. I lost count of the weeks, but it can’t have been more than six or seven before I found myself in the cave of the seeing pool. It was the favourite place of the flower faeries. “We love to watch the mortals playing,” they giggled. Fair enough. Why not check out how the mortal world was getting along without me? An hour later, I was still gazing fixedly into the seeing pool. How could I tear my eyes away from Luc?
He was a real hero now. Rescuing damsels, slaying the really dangerous monsters, righting wrongs. He was rocking the fairy tale hero aesthetic, but his long curly hair was dyed black instead of tucked under a wig. He had found a sword somewhere and demonstrated a surprising
expertise with the blade. I stared in wonder at my boy, my not-quite-brother, my best friend all grown up. “How long have I been gone?”
“Mortal weeks or faerie weeks?” asked Harebell.
I blinked at her. “There’s a difference?”
“Of course,” laughed Rosehip. “Back when the Faerie Quene ruled, she kept strict control on that sort of thing. She loved to lure mortals here for a day and send them back a hundred years later. The difference isn’t so dramatic these days, but the Granfiddich and the other chieftains have been known to play with the hours.”
I was stunned. Luc was looking grown up, more than I would have expected after a month or two. How long had I actually been here?
“I hope they don’t kill him,” said Foxglove. “He’s such a nice hero.”
I pushed her aside to get the best view of the seeing pool. “Who are going to kill him?” I could see them now, the threat. Goddesses. Three of them. My boy was in big trouble. “Is there sound on this thing?”
“Put your head in the water,” suggested Harebell.
I had grown used to trusting these girls. I thrust my head underwater. Voices filled my ears.
“It’s a simple choice,” said Amorata, sultry brunette goddess of lovelorn lust and unresolved sexual tension.
“Which of us is most beautiful?” asked green-haired, swirling Destiny.
“No harm will come to you,” purred the elegant blonde Lady Luck, the most dangerous of the three. “Which is the fairest of us all?”
“Why me?” choked Luc. He was sweating, his Corpse White No. 4 face powder coming off in flakes. “What makes you think I’m qualified?”
“You’re a man,” shrugged Amorata.
“The most famous and popular hero in the land,” said Destiny.
“Choose,” snarled Lady Luck. “Give the golden apple to the fairest. One of us. NOW.”
Luc held a glowing golden ball. He tossed it back and forth nervously. Faced with an impossible choice, and the almost certain retribution of two goddesses if he chose a third as his favourite, he did the most sensible thing he could possibly have done. He threw the golden apple in a soaring arc in one direction, and ran as hard as he could in the other.
I came gasping out of the water, yanked out by the hair. “You nearly drowned,” scolded Harebell.
“You still have to breathe,” said Foxglove. “You’re half mortal, remember.”
“I need to find the Granfiddich,” I spluttered. “Now.”
“He won’t like it,” warned Rosehip.
“He doesn’t have to like it,” I insisted. “He just has to let me go.”
–§–§–§–§–§–
The Granfiddich stood on a cairn of pebbles, his voice grouching down at me. “You pledged six months, Bountiful Julietta Esmereldina Fenetre.” I knew I shouldn’t have told anyone my real name.
“How many mortal months have I been here?” I yelled back. “Six, twelve, twenty? I’ve served my time and more. You’re the one who messed with the time streams, without warning me. I’d happily stay here longer, but not while Mocklore is spinning faster than I am. I have obligations to the mortal world.”
“To a man?” he said skeptically.
“To a friend,” I shot back.
“Do you promise to return?” asked the Granfiddich.
“Do you promise I won’t lose an unreasonable amount of mortal time if I do, grandfather?”
A flicker of a smile crossed his grumpy face. “I make no promises. Do you promise to return?” He made a gesture with his gnarled hand and the Sparkle Market appeared around us, warm and inviting. “If you make the promise, you may choose anything you like from the stalls.”
I wasn’t going to do it. I was going to stand up to him, tell him it was my choice whether I came back or not, and I didn’t have to make any stupid promises. But I wasn’t ready to burn my bridges with the fair folk yet. Plus I saw something I kind of wanted on a nearby stall. So much for the moral high ground.
“I promise to return.”
–§–§–§–§–§–
I had been gone three years. Three years. Do you have any idea how much can change in three years? Mocklore had certainly changed. For a start, my homeland was ravaged by a massive magical explosion which multiplied the insanity of the Skullcap Mountains and turned a lot of things purple. Plus our hundreds of gods had been decimalised by our mad Emperor, and there were only ten left!
Lia was pregnant.
Ma Fortuna’s eldest girl, who had been fourteen and in pigtails when Luc and I left to Seek Our Fortune, had married a Guardsman and got herself knocked up. I stood on the wooden verandah of Ma Fortuna’s house, my silver chainmail hidden under a village-appropriate linen dress, and stared at the rounded belly of the girl I had always thought of as my own baby sister. “Gods.”
“Bounty!” Lia threw her arms around me, hugging me awkwardly but with genuine affection. “It’s been so long. Ma will be delighted to see you. Luco’s here, too.”
“I thought he might be.”
It was worse than I had realised. There were two babies squalling in Ma’s kitchen, and an unfamiliar young woman trying to calm them both.
“Bounty.” Ma Fortuna emerged from the pantry, immaculate and bustling as ever. She, at least, had not aged a day. She kissed me several times. “You finally came to visit. Meet Diona, Franc’s wife.”
Franciscus, the brattiest teenage brother of them all, had a wife? Diona smiled shyly at me over the heads of her two enormous babies.
I needed air. “Is Luco around, Ma?”
“Outside with the children,” Ma announced, placing a plate of cold chicken sandwiches and chocolate biscuits in my hands and propelling me towards the back door. “Go on with you.”
I wasn’t prepared to see more babies, but as it turned out, the children Ma referred to were her own—baby Alessandro now at least ten years old by my calculations, young Giuno about to descend into adolescence, tomboy Nina on the edge of womanhood and ignoring that fact to the best of her ability. They tore around the orchard like mad things, kicking a football with their big brother. Tia, the middle sister who had to be going on sixteen now, sat to one side and pretended she was too grown up for such games.
I sat next to her and ate a chicken sandwich, watching Luc. He had washed out the black dye for the home visit, scraped his face clean of Corpse White No. 4, left the white ruffled shirt and the black leather trousers elsewhere. Racing around the garden with the kids, dressed in his old scruffy clothes with his light curly hair wild around his face, he looked like my boy again.
“Bounty!” shrieked Nina, the first to notice me. She tore across the grass, throwing herself into my arms.
I hugged her happily. “When did you turn into such a babe?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Don’t call me that. Tia’s the fashion plate.”
“Am not,” snapped Tia. “I naturally look this good. It takes no effort whatsoever.”
Giuno came forward, all awkward arms and legs, and let me kiss him on the cheek. Alessandro shot me a cheeky smile and squeezed the breath out of me with his hug. “You’re my favourite sister,” he said solemnly.
“Beast!” shrieked Nina and chased him into the house. The others went howling after them, lured no doubt by the tempting scents coming from Ma’s kitchen. Finally, only Luc and I were left.
“So,” I said. “You didn’t bring the hero home to meet mother?”
“Can you see me walking into Ma’s kitchen in leather and face powder?” he said wryly. “They don’t need to know about all that. They all think I’m training as a merchant in Zibria.”
Yeah, right. Like Ma didn’t have a scrapbook somewhere detailing the heroic exploits of Luco the Magnificent? Ma Fortuna’s kids always underestimated the way she knew everything about them. I suppose it was the only way they could stay sane.
“What’s happening with the goddesses?” I asked him.
He ignored me. “Anyway, I’m not the only o
ne who dressed respectably for Ma. I bet you don’t wear that frock when you’re running around having adventures.”
“I’m not dressed that respectably,” I snapped at him. “Under this, I’m wearing metal faerie underwear. What about those goddesses, Luc?”
“How did you know about that?” he demanded. “You weren’t there.”
“I wish I had been,” I said, feeling guilty.
He looked furious. “Why? What could you have done? This is my mess, Bounty. I’m the one who ran around building up a hero reputation, getting so bloody popular. I made myself too noticeable, that’s all. Now I’m paying the price.”
“How did you get away from them?” I couldn’t help asking.
Luc’s face was red now, furious, but not just with me. “I ran,” he said bitterly. “They’ve turned up every other month since it happened. I know that if I choose one as the fairest, the other two will kill me or curse me or make things ten times worse. I don’t know why they always let me run away, but they do—must be in their rules. That damn golden apple turns up everywhere—in my soup, in my bedroll. There’s nothing I can do but run away every single time.”
“We can figure it out,” I said earnestly. “All we need is a plan. I can help.”
Luc gave me one of those cold icy looks he had got so good at since leaving home for the first time. “I don’t need you to rescue me, Bounty.”
I swallowed the instant hurt of his rejection, determined to make my point. “What are you going to do, run away for the rest of your life?”
“I’ll think of something,” he spat. “When I need your help, I’ll ask for it. Until then, keep your nose out of my business.” He slammed his way back into the house.
Mocklore Box Set (Mocklore Chronicles) Page 92