by Jon Etter
In which our series finally features a castle, as it should have done two books ago if it were in any way a proper fantasy series …
“Are you almost done?” Shade grumbled the next day as Chauncey fussed over her hair in a private meeting room in the Grand Library. “You’ve been at it for almost an hour.”
“To rush elegance is the best way to ensure that it will not be attained, now sit still for just … a few … moments … longer … and voilà!” Chauncey walked around her, inspecting his work. “My dear, I do not mean to boast, but I think it’s safe to say that you have never looked lovelier! If only I had a mirror—”
The Professor pulled a pair of hand mirrors out of his pockets and held one in front of Shade, while Ginch held the other behind her so she could see the back. Elaborate braids with little white flowers woven into them hung halfway down her back with another wrapped around the front like a crown just above her forehead. That, combined with her red gown, made Shade feel like a fairy queen who had walked off a page of Le Warte d’Arty or out of the poems of Sir Spenser of Smithfield. In that moment, despite a childhood filled with her fellow sprites telling her otherwise, Shade knew she was beautiful.
“Mia bella Sprootshade!” Ginch declared as the Professor clasped his hands to his heart. “You’re-a gonna knock ’em dead in the Seelie Court! ’Ey Professor, now aren’t you glad we fancy it up before we go with her?”
“Wait, what? You’re going with—Okay, first off, you are wearing the exact same clothes you always wear.”
“What can I say? We’re naturally fancy.” Ginch held the lapels of his threadbare, too-tight brown suit coat and puffed up his chest. “But we did polish the shoes.”
The Professor nodded and pointed down to his shoe, which looked slightly less scuffed and dirty than usual. As Shade watched, the end of one shoe lifted free from its sole and the Professor stuck out and wiggled his toes up at her.
“Gross. Second, you’re not on the invitation, so—”
Ginch waved his hand dismissively. “Oh, that’s-a the nothing. We gotta the invitations.”
The Professor pulled out a sheet of paper and handed it to Shade. On it was written:
Ginch and the Professor are hereby invited to attend the big to-do and do whatever they want.
Sincerely,
The for real King Juicylus
Shade handed it back. “That’s going to get you arrested. It’s the worst forgery I’ve ever seen.”
“It’s-a no forgery. It’s-a the fake.”
Shade sighed and shook her head as the library staff came in.
“Très belle, ma fille! Très élégante!” François exclaimed.
Émilie clasped her hands together against her chest. “You look radiant, Shade. Simply radiant.”
“Beautiful,” said Dewey, the brownie head of collections. Then he snapped his fingers. “New organization idea! We organize the books by beauty of the cover!”
Dewey dashed past Johannes, the little black poltercat head of circulation, who took off his spectacles to polish them on his vest. “Fraulein Shade, you look like a queen.”
“Yeah, ya clean up pretty good, your ’ighness,” Caxton, the dog-headed dogsbody of the library, snorted. He gave an exaggerated bow. “Now if ’Er Majesty will permit, oi’ll go back to work since apparently oi’m the only one ’round ’ere what still does ’is job.”
Shade rolled her eyes and groaned but was secretly pleased as Chauncey and the librarians continued to compliment her, just like your older sister Jameela reacted when everyone in your family oohed and ahhed over her when she put on her pink gown covered in red and green polka dots for her first appearance as the newly crowned Pimento Loaf Queen at your town’s annual Luncheon Meat Festival. And so, after a few more words of advice and encouragement from Chauncey, Shade strode through the Grand Library with all eyes embarrassingly on her until she walked through the door labeled “Dinas Ffaraon,” the home of the Seelie Court.
•
Shade stepped out of the library tree onto a sunny green lawn beyond which stood an enormous castle surrounded by a moat. Now, good Reader, I’d like you to imagine the most castley castle you can, with great ramparts and turrets and spires and flags flying high above it all. Dinas Ffaraon was exactly 63 percent more castley than that and made from gleaming pink marble to boot. Shade stopped in her tracks and stood in silent awe of this great sight that put every description and every illustration of any castle in any book she had ever read to shame.
“’Ey, that’s-a kinda pretty.” Shade turned to see Ginch and the Professor standing behind her.
“You’re not seriously going to try to come with me, are you? That fake invitation wouldn’t fool a child.”
“We no try to fool the little kid. We fool the grown-up guards. Why you think we wanna fool the little kid?”
“That’s not—” Shade began, but was interrupted by a great clanking as an enormous drawbridge supported by golden chains lowered. A pair of elves, one male and one female, in shiny bronze armor wearing green tabards with the Seelie Court white rose on the chest and armed with long spears, marched across it, long white feathers sticking out from the tops of their helmets bobbing as they came. When they reached the end of the drawbridge, they halted.
“Approach and state your business,” commanded the female elf.
Shade hiked up the train of her dress with one hand and clutched her invitation in the other. She scurried up and handed the letter to the guard who hadn’t spoken. “I’ve been invited to meet with King Julius.”
The silent guard glanced at the parchment and nodded. “Very good, ma’am,” said the female guard. “And the other two?”
The Professor hiked up his pantlegs and skipped forward as Ginch trailed behind, one hand on the lapel of his jacket, the other waving about their forged invitation, which he delivered to the silent guard with a flourish. “Juicylus, he wanna see us too.”
The silent guard’s eyebrow arched quizzically as he perused the letter. He looked up at Ginch, who rocked back and forth on his feet while holding his hands behind his back and whistling nonchalantly, and the Professor, who gave the guard a toothy grin and double thumbs-up. The guard shrugged than gave a nod.
“Very good, gentlemen. If you would all follow us, please.” Both guards turned abruptly on their heels and marched back across the bridge. Shade and the others briskly followed. The Professor bobbed his head up and down in time to the bouncing of the silent guard’s plume until he pulled out a pair of scissors and cut it off.
“Hey, does you partner ever do the talk?” Ginch asked the guard in front of him.
“No, sir.”
“That must be annoying. I no know how you put up with that.”
The Professor nodded in agreement then reached out the feather to tickle the armpit of the male guard. Shade snatched the feather from him. “Knock it off! We’re supposed to act like genteel gentlemen and ladies, you saphead.”
The guards led Shade, Ginch, and the Professor past the towering pink walls, across a courtyard paved with white marble, through gigantic golden doors opened by servants wearing powdered wigs and green silk uniforms, and down a long hallway hung with ornate tapestries depicting Seelie nobles winning battles, holding feasts, and frolicking in the countryside. About halfway down the hall, they stopped in front of a door. “Please wait in here until you are summoned, lady and gentlemen,” the guard said, gesturing for them to enter and shutting it behind them once they were inside.
Shade looked around at the walls covered in decorous white and blue panels, the black and white checkerboard floor, and elegantly carved wooden chairs with white and blue floral-patterned cushions. “Wow! This is really nice.” Shade turned to face Ginch and the Professor with her hands on her hips. “Okay, remember, according to Seelie manners, when we enter whatever room the king is in, we’re expected to stand in the back of the opposite end from him, remain quiet, and—Professor! Are you paying attention?”
; The Professor shook his head no, and then took out a rubber ball and began bouncing it against the nearest wall.
“Knock that off!” Shade rushed across the room, grabbed the ball away from him, and threw it away. “What the dangle are you trying to—ow!”
Shade put a hand to the back of her head where the ball had struck her after bouncing off the wall behind her. The Professor pointed and opened his mouth in a silent laugh. Ginch shook his head. “That’s-a fifteen-love. If you wanna compete with the Professor, you’re-a gonna have to step up you game, little Sprootshade.”
“Step this up, brownie-butt!” Shade gave Ginch a shove that made him stumble into a wall panel. The panel immediately swung to the side, and Ginch plunged into the darkness behind it. The Professor gave a whistle, took a lit lantern from his pocket, and bounded into the hidden passageway.
“Ginch! Professor! Come back or … oh, why do I even bother,” Shade sighed as she followed them into the dark.
In which the nature of fishiness is discussed …
By the light of the Professor’s lantern, Shade could see that they were in a long, narrow corridor. As she followed the other two, dust wafted and spiderwebs shone in the golden lamplight. “What’s that?” Shade asked.
The Professor’s lantern revealed a small set of steps up the side of the wall. Above the top step was a small, hinged panel and what appeared to be a funnel set in the wall next to it. Ginch stepped up and opened the panel. Light streamed into the gloom through two round holes in the wall. Ginch leaned in and peeked through. “’Ey, there’s-a the room full of the books on the other side of this wall.”
Shade stepped up and pushed Ginch to the side. Sure enough, through the holes Shade could see a book-filled study with a cluttered desk sitting in its center. “I’ve read about stuff like this in adventure stories,” Shade exclaimed. She looked at the inside of the moving panel and a pair of painted eyes looked back at her. “Yeah, we must be looking through the eyes of someone in a painting so we can spy on people in the room. This is so cool!”
The Professor nodded, then traced a square on the wall at hip level and then turned and stuck out his bottom at it. “Ha ha! That’s-a the good one!” Ginch clapped and laughed. “The Professor wishes they had-a the picture where you could stick your—”
“Yeah, I get it,” Shade interrupted.
“And then you could—”
“I get it! I get it!”
“And make it sound like someone else—”
“Stop!” Shade looked at the funnel. “I wonder what the deal is with this.”
The Professor shrugged and went a little further down the passage until he came to another set of steps leading up to a panel and funnel. He turned his head, put his ear down to the funnel, then whistled and waved Shade over. When she joined him, he pointed at it. Shade gave him a questioning look then stood on her tiptoes to listen.
“—and to think it was all because of a banana! A frozen banana! Ha ha!” someone on the other side of the wall chortled.
“It must connect to the ear of the painting or something,” Shade whispered back to the others.
“What does that story have to do with anything we’re talking about?” a gruff voice growled.
“Nothing,” a peevish voice snapped. “He’s always blabbing on and on and on and never knows when to keep his yap shut.”
“Harumph!” the first voice huffed. “Sir, your churlish behavior reminds one of the time the eighteenth Earl of Winkleton dared to bring a semi-trained ocelot to Lady Whingingham’s cup-and-ball tourney and—”
“Gentlemen, now is not the time,” a suave voice entreated. “For the sake of business, can we agree to get along?”
“Fine,” Mr. Peevish said. “But only if that windbag cuts the blabbing.”
“Now see here!” Mr. Huff objected. “If one is subjected to such insult, then how can one not, much like the proverbial Duke Picklefeather—”
“How about this?” Mr. Suave offered. “We will be both brief in our comments and polite in our manners for the sake of business. Is this mutually agreeable, which it should be?”
Shade heard grunts of assent just before Mr. Gruff spoke up. “I must be insane to trust the three of you with this when you can’t even get along with each other for five minutes.”
“That was at least six minutes since the last fight,” Mr. Peevish muttered.
“Well, as I’ve assured you, it’s not just us,” Mr. Suave said. “I’ve spent seasons getting all necessary parties together on this and clearing away opposition in the court—”
“Not all of it,” Mr. Gruff cut in. “And not the biggest opposition.”
“Be fair—that is a very delicate situation, but one that will soon be taken care of.”
“It had better. The other weapons merchants and I have lost a fortune because of this rotten truce! Peace is very bad for our business, sir. Very bad. And if we don’t see a major return on the investment we’ve made in this scheme—”
“Ray—may I call you Ray? Because I feel we’ve grown very close over these past few seasons. Ray, have faith. Any truce between the Seelie and Sluagh is doomed to fail eventually. And now? Well, Ray, eventually is almost here.”
Shade heard knocking, then a new voice said, “Gentlemen, it’s time to gather in the throne room, if you please.”
Shade heard the scraping of chairs being pushed back. Quickly, she took her ear off the funnel and threw open the panel. “Whatta you do, little Sprootshade?” Ginch asked.
“Something fishy is going on—”
“You mean fishy like the halibut-eating competition or fishy like the mermaid beauty contest?”
“Not that kind of fishy. Some sort of plot to start a war or something,” Shade explained as she peered through the holes in the wall to see who had been talking. Sadly, she was too late—all she saw was the backs of two guards falling in behind a tall blonde elf and a squat, pig-headed hobgoblin wearing a crimson cape.
“Did you see the fishguys?” Ginch asked.
“Again, they weren’t fish people, and no. Now let’s move. We need to get back to our waiting room—I think they’ll be coming for us soon.”
The three dashed back through the passageway and closed its hidden door just as a servant entered. “His Excellency will be addressing the court soon and everyone must take their places,” she explained. “If you will be so good as to follow me to the throne room.”
Shade cast a nervous look back at Ginch and the Professor, then followed. “Please don’t do anything stupid,” she said quietly. “Please don’t do anything embarrassing. Please, please, please don’t screw this up.”
Shade felt a pat on her back. “You no need to worry, little Sprootshade. We won’t do the nothing.”
“Thanks, but I was talking to myself,” she sighed, and plunged ahead to her high-society debut.
In which plans for pajama parties are suggested and then, sadly, abandoned …
As stunning as Shade had found every aspect of Dinas Ffaraon to be, it all paled in comparison to the throne room. High above a green-and-white checkerboard floor, great crystal chandeliers hung from a ceiling covered in a mural depicting fairies frolicking. Sunlight streamed through floor-to-ceiling stained glass windows on one side, each depicting a famous Seelie ruler. The opposite wall was covered with mirrored panels, making the vast space feel even vaster. At the far end atop a raised platform sat a pair of golden thrones surrounded by white roses and green Seelie Court flags. A shimmery green curtain covered the wall behind them.
And the people! Never before had Shade seen that many fairies all gathered together, and all in such finery! Merfolk in clothes made of verdant river grasses and phosphorescent algae whispered to each other next to a cluster of dwarven noblemen, their leather attire simple so as not to steal attention from the craftsmanship of the golden necklaces, rings, armbands, bracelets, and earrings they were bedecked with. A copse of bark-skinned dryads in dresses made of lush green leaves and
flower petals swayed gently as if being blown about in a gentle breeze caused by the rustling and impatient flaps of the wings of a nearby group of sprites, their skin, wings, and clothes a riot of color.
But of all the varieties of fairy in attendance, none were more numerous than the elves. There they stood in their places of prominence nearest the throne: young and old, tall and short, skin as pale as the moon or as dark as the shadows of night, hair of every length and color, and all in the finest of attire and with the most dignified of bearings, exuding an air of superiority.
Their attendant led Shade, Ginch, and the Professor to a corner far in the back, then departed moments before two elves wearing big fluffy white hats that made them look rather like Q-tips and white jackets with golden epaulets on the shoulders positioned themselves on either side of the entrance, long golden trumpets in their hands. As if by clockwork, two lines of Seelie guards marched in, drew long sabers, and crossed them to form a long, pointy tunnel. A group of musicians played a jaunty tune on flutes, lutes, mandolins, and harps as sylphs in flowing white gowns danced the full length of the carpet, scattering white rose petals from wicker baskets as they capered and twirled.
Once the sylphs had completed their dance, the musicians ceased their playing. The Q-tip attendants raised their trumpets and blew a loud fanfare. “Her Majesty, our beloved Princess Viola!” one announced.
The musicians played a slow, elegant air as Viola stepped into the doorway. The young elf that stood there looked so different from the little bookworm that Shade had chatted with over the past several months that she had trouble believing it was the same fairy. Instead of hanging loose, Viola’s purple-streaked silver hair was done up in an elegant bun. Purple curls framed her delicate face, and it was all topped with a silver tiara set with glittering emeralds. Similarly, the worn green hooded cloak and simple dresses she usually wore were replaced by a dress of white silk covered in green ribbons, which ballooned out at the waist, making her look rather like a bell. The princess marched slowly to the end of the room and up the steps. Shade couldn’t help but notice that Viola had the same look on her face of slight boredom and annoyance that she often had when reading what she felt were excessively long descriptive passages in otherwise fast-paced and entertaining books.