Yet Another Dreadful Fairy Book

by Jon Etter

  “Probably because it’s the creepiest place in the creepiest area of Elfame,” the goblin replied. “I don’t know. It was Perchta’s idea to take them there—”

  “So Perchta and the vile Sluagh court truly are the ones behind this dastardly plot,” Justinian growled.

  “Not all of them—Modthryth has no clue. And it’s not just them. Seelie Court nobles are in on it too. In fact, I think the whole plan to kidnap the prince and princess to start another war came from whoever’s running the Seelie side of this scheme.”

  “And I am made to look like a traitor to the Seelie Court in all this?” Justinian’s hand tightened around the pommel of the bronze sword that now rested in his scabbard.

  The goblin glanced at the sword nervously. “Not my idea. It was Perchta who decided we should stash the kids in the Ruins and that you should be framed. She knew some guy who knew some guy who knew a skilled evil magician—”

  “Who could make an evil copy of Justinian with the ear that Perchta cut off him in the last war,” Shade finished.

  “Exactly! See, she’s the bad guy. She’s the one you should be choking to death with stinky socks and underwear. And who keeps an ear collection? That’s so gross! They get all shriveled and nasty. Personally, I’m a toe guy. You pickle them in jars and—”

  “Look, we don’t care about anybody’s stupid collection,” Shade snapped. The Professor tapped her on the shoulder and fanned out a bunch of Superfairy and Captain Elfame comic books. “No, not yours either. Why are you doing any of this, Scuttling? The truce may not be perfect, but it’s better than war!”

  The Viscount of Scuttling snorted. “Not for us noblefairies. Our money comes from land. The only way to get more is to take somebody else’s, which is a lot harder to do when nobody’s fighting. And not for the people who make and sell weapons. They’ve got more money than most of us nobles these days, and they are sick and tired of losing money because of the peace. Honestly, peace isn’t good for anyone.”

  Shade could feel her face getting hot. “What about the common folk? The farmers and the blacksmiths and the carpenters? The bakers and the tailors and the shopkeepers? What about all the fairies working hard each day just to get by?”

  The goblin rolled his eyes. “So some farmer loses his grubby little shack and a batch of grain that probably wouldn’t pay for half a bottle of my L’Air de Panache cologne. Big deal.”

  Shade wanted to slap the goblin’s smug face, but before she could, Ginch stepped up close to the Sluagh aristocrat. She’d never seen the usual happy-go-lucky brownie look so furious.

  “What about the poor humans that live around us and no can even see us?” Ginch asked, fists balled up at his sides. The Professor put a hand on Ginch’s shoulder to comfort him, but the brownie shrugged it off. “What about the ones that no know there’s-a the war being fought around them? What about the ones whose homes burn because you Seelie and Sluagh want more, like the home of the humans I used to live with and take care of?”

  “Like I said, peace isn’t good for anyone who matters.” The goblin smirked at Ginch, who snorted and spat on the Sluagh noble’s boots. “Hey! Those boots are made of jabberwocky leather handcrafted by Dodgson of—mmf!”

  The Professor shoved a sock back in his mouth. “Thanks,” Shade said. “I probably would have strangled him if I had to listen to another dingle-dangle word out of his big, stupid rat mouth. I think we know everything we need to know—except which way to the Ruins.”

  “I fought in its shadow in the final battle of the last war. I know the way.” Justinian said darkly. Then he grabbed the goblin by the tabard and lifted him so that they were face to face. He took hold of the sock with his other hand. “Before I remove this from thy treachous mouth, vermin, consider thy words carefully before thou speaks and answer direct and true on pain of death. Once thou has thy war, what is to become of Her Majesty, Princess Viola?”

  “I don’t know! I swear they never told me! Please don’t kill me!” the goblin pleaded. “And whatever they had planned doesn’t matter anyway. When we got there, this—this thing hiding in the ruins attacked us. I didn’t get a good look, but it was big, horribly big, and smelled worse than that sock, if you can believe it. Most of us ran—I grabbed onto the fake you and promised him half my lands if he got me out of there safe—but I saw it grab the prince and princess and some of the others.”

  The knight dropped the goblin and turned to the others. “We must ride and ride now. I only pray it’s not too late to save the princess.”

  “And prince,” Shade added.

  “Hey, what about me?” the goblin squealed as he tried unsuccessfully to get to his feet. “I told you what you wanted, now let me go!”

  The Professor signaled to the others to let him take care of things. Without untying his hands, the Professor hoisted the goblin onto the saddle of the slowest and most temperamental of their ponies then took a long stick and stuck it in the headpiece of the pony’s bridle and tied a carrot to the end. He was about to give the pony a slap on the rump but stopped. Instead he walked up to the goblin, filthy sock again in hand, and pointed to the goblin’s mouth. The goblin glared at him a moment and then, with a sigh of resignation, opened his mouth for the return of the filthy piece of hosiery.

  Thus, the Viscount of Scuttlings was ignobly sent on his way in the direction of Ande-Dubnos, while Shade, Ginch, the Professor, Justinian, and Grouse streaked off toward the Ruins to face whatever terrors might lurk amidst the rubble.

  In which bruised egos are comforted and weapons are named …

  “I saw the beast once,” Justinian stated grimly as their ponies trotted along under the bleak skies of Stormfield. “The other soldiers would not believe me—they said it was merely mist and shadow shaped by fever and the pain of my injuries—but I saw it. Or some of it anyway. ’Twas twice the size of a man with arms that hung grotesquely to the ground. It snatched the bodies of the near dead from the battlefield before vanishing from sight.”

  Ginch tugged nervously at his collar and turned to the Professor to find him baring his teeth and holding his arms stretched out at Ginch, his hands curled into faux claws. Ginch swatted the Professor’s hands away. “’Ey, whatta you do? Fatcha-coota-matchca, pixie!”

  “I should have taken fake Justinian up on his offer to be a chef when I had the chance,” Grouse grumbled.

  Shade turned to Justinian, expecting the words of encouragement and boundless enthusiasm that always came when danger loomed before him. But none came. The knight merely scanned the horizon and plodded on. Shade looked to the others. They looked just as uneasy as she felt. “Um … Sir Justinian? Is everything all right?”

  “Of course it’s not,” Justinian grumbled. “The princess, whom I’ve sworn to protect, has been captured by a savage beast, and if I do not save her and the prince—there, you need not correct me—there will be a war.”

  “But … stuff like this usually gets you all excited,” Shade pointed out.

  “Yeah,” agreed Grouse grumpily. “You’re never happier than when you have a chance to maybe get yourself killed. It might be your most obnoxious trait, and that’s saying something, because you have a lot of obnoxious traits.”

  “Personally, I was expecting the pep talk. Who else think we’d get-a the pep talk?” Ginch looked around. Everyone raised their hands. “See? We all expect the pep talk after we hear about the giant grabby monster guy.”

  Justinian reined his horse to a stop and turned to glower at them all. “Well, there is none. Let us just go and try to save the princess.”

  “Try?” Shade frowned. “That really doesn’t sound like you. What’s going on?”

  “’Tis nothing. Nothing is going on. I just … have nothing to say at the moment.”

  “That’s-a the bluff,” Ginch said, pointing at the knight. “I’m-a the master of the bluff and that’s-a the bluff.”

  “You always have something to say,” Grouse asserted.

  The Professor
nodded and made yap, yap, yap signs with his hands, then pointed at Justinian.

  “Look, we’re about to face peril, which you usually love, and if something is bothering you that might distract you when we go do … whatever it is we’ll have to do, the rest of us need to know.” Shade leaned on the horn of her saddle. “Are you too injured to go on?”

  “’Tis but a few scrapes and scratches,” Justinian said dismissively.

  “Are you still woozy after being drugged for over a week straight?” Shade asked.

  “I am of sound mind and body,” he replied.

  “Well, body maybe,” Grouse muttered. “The mind—that’s never sound, if you ask me.”

  Shade studied Justinian. He had never looked more weary or old to her than he did just then. A thought took root in her mind. She mulled it over a little and then tentatively asked, “Is it … because your double was … kind of … beating you?”

  “Of course it’s because my double was beating me!” Justinian exploded. “If the Professor hadn’t distracted him with his little slingshot—” The Professor held up the slingshot and gave a thumbs-up. “—and Grouse hadn’t shown up with his saucepan—”

  “It’s a skillet,” Grouse sighed. “How many times do I have to tell you a saucepan—”

  “It doesn’t matter if it was a skillet or a saucepan or a soupspoon—he beat me! I lost!” Justinian cried.

  “You’ve been beaten before,” Grouse observed. “You were captured by Perchta that time when she cut off your ear, you fell in the Battle of Stormfield in the last war, and we’ve been captured a couple times since we met Shade and these guys.”

  “Yes, but I’ve always fallen to greater numbers. When it’s ten to one, there’s no shame in defeat as long as you go down fighting. But I’ve never lost in single combat before. And now I have.” Justinian slumped in his saddle. “If I can’t defeat one single human foe … ”

  “Actually, it was more of a fairy magic construct using your human ear as the—” Shade stopped as the Professor shook his head and pointed at one of the watches hanging from the inside of his coat. “Sorry. Not the time. Go on.”

  “If I can’t win a fair fight, what good will I do against some lurking horror that can whisk away groups of fairies with the snatching of a single savage paw?”

  “Well … it was no the fair fight though, was it?” Ginch offered. “I mean, he was about the forty seasons younger than you. Plus he cheat. He throw the dirt in you face and he gotta the big good sword, but all you get is the rusty old piece of the junk. Look, I cheat at cards all the time and let me tell you, you no can win against the good, good cheat. Right, partner?”

  The Professor nodded and fanned out cards in both hands, all of them the Ace of Spades.

  Justinian looked at the ground and shook his head. “Neither of these should be insurmountable obstacles for a skilled warrior.”

  “But everyone has to lose sometimes,” Shade reasoned.

  “But I never have. And now … what good am I?” Justinian looked into the distance as if searching for an answer he knew was not there.

  The others exchanged uneasy glances and sat in uncomfortable silence for a time.

  “You know, technically, you still haven’t lost in single combat,” Shade eventually suggested. She looked to the others. “Right, everybody?”

  “Yeah,” Grouse jumped in, nodding to Shade. “You did deliver the killing blow. Killing blow? Vanishing blow? Sorry, I’m just not exactly sure what to do with turning a guy into an ear and—”

  “That doesn’t count. Had you not rushed in to save me, I’d be dead now,” Justinian grumbled. “Dead by the hand of my own ear.”

  “That’s actually what I was getting at … sort of,” Shade said. “Perchta’s magician made a copy of you from your own ear, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, there you go. Maybe you lost in single combat—maybe, although I’d argue that you didn’t—but who did you lose to? You.”

  “’Ey, the little Sprootshade’s right!” Ginch held out his arms. “Sure, you lose but you lose to you, so you win, eh?”

  Shade pointed to Ginch. “Exactly. And the you that you lost to was over forty seasons younger, armed with something a lot better than an old piece of crud taken from a dead guy, and didn’t just escape from the deepest dungeon in Ande-Dubnos after being drugged for days. And, when you did beat ear-copy you, who showed up at the last minute to help?”

  “That would be me. Sure would be nice if people paid attention when I actually did take part in all this dingle-dangle knighting nonsense,” Grouse grumbled.

  “I know it was you. That was a rhetorical question, Sir Whinypants of Grumpytown, and that was the point I was trying to make. Sir Whinypants helped you win, and who trained Sir Whinypants?”

  Justinian brow furrowed. “I trained Sir Whinypants.”

  “I’m really not liking this new nickname,” Grouse objected.

  “Think about it,” Shade persisted. “Who’s the only person who can beat you? You! And even then, you need to be helped by someone you trained.”

  “So when you just beat you and then you beat you with him, it’s like you win double! Ha ha!” Ginch slapped his hands together. “It’s-a so simple I no know why we no see it before.”

  Grouse grimaced. “I don’t know that that makes any—”

  “By the giggles of St. Figgymigg, it makes perfect sense!” Justinian straightened up and puffed out his chest. “Thank you, my friends, for leading me out of the dark forest of doubt and once more to the sunny prairie of hope!”

  “And onto the windy cliffs of blabber,” Grouse muttered, although Shade caught a flicker of a smile as he said it.

  “Come, my boon companions, we must away to save a princess and prince, foil an evil scheme, and vanquish perhaps the most dangerous creature in all the land! Is it not a glorious day?”

  “It’s not,” Grouse muttered.

  “But before we depart, there is something I must do.” Justinian leaped from his horse. “Good Grouse, dismount and join me.”

  Grouse squinted at him. “What are you doing?”

  “That which is right. Dismount, my squire. That is an order.” Justinian drew the bronze sword recently carried by his double and pointed to the ground in front of him.

  “Okay, okay.” Grouse slowly climbed down. “No need to get all stabby about it.”

  “Now kneel before me, my squire,” Justinian commanded.

  “Kneel?” Grouse frowned at the ground. “Really? It’s kind of damp here and I’m wearing my good—”

  “Kneel,” Justinian repeated. Grouse rolled his eyes and did as he was told. “Good Grouse of Grumpytown—”

  “Is that an actual place?” Shade whispered to Ginch. “I thought I was just making it up.”

  The Professor nodded and handed her a brochure that read, “Visit scenic Grumpytown! Or don’t. Like we care.”

  “You have been a good, dedicated, and faithful squire,” Justinian continued.

  Grouse snorted as Shade and the others exchanged skeptical looks. “And today you have proven your skill and your mettle. No longer shall you be my squire.”

  “Oh, thank St. Eeyore!” Grouse sighed with relief.

  “From this day hence, you shall be my brother-in-arms.” Justinian took his sword and tapped Grouse on each shoulder. “Arise, Sir Grouse of Grumpytown.”

  Everyone other than Justinian exchanged confused looks. Then the Professor started to clap. Shade and Ginch joined him, despite the glare that Grouse shot their way. Grouse turned back to Justinian and opened his mouth, looking ready to fire off an especially sarcastic barb, but then he closed his mouth. His eyes softened. “Thanks,” he said quietly. “This actually means a lot.”

  Justinian smiled and nodded then held out the bronze sword to Grouse. “Here, my squi—my former squire. Now that you are a knight, you will need a proper weapon. May this blade strike true and—”

  “Pass.” Grouse took the iron
skillet from his saddle bag and held it up. “I’ve got my weapon right here.”

  “But ‘tis merely a … a cooking … thing,” Justinian objected. “’Tis not a weapon.”

  Grouse gave it a couple swings then pointed it at Justinian’s face. “It is the way I use it.”

  “He did save-a you bacon with it,” Ginch said. “And then he fry it up for us afterward.”

  The Professor nodded as he took a strip of bacon out of his pocket to munch on.

  Justinian cocked his head to his side as he regarded Grouse. “’Tis unorthodox but ’tis also your style and your preference. Very good, my friend. Now name it.”

  “What?” Grouse asked.

  “Name thy weapon.”

  “I’m not going to name my skillet. That’s dumb.”

  “’Tis tradition for a knight to name their weapon. Your weapon may be untraditional, but it must be named. And if you think you will have a moment’s peace from me until—”

  “Fine!” Grouse looked at the skillet then at Justinian then back at the skillet. “I dub it … Skilly McSkillet.”

  “That is a name, I grant you,” Justinian said delicately. “But perhaps you’d like to try again? Maybe something more likely to strike fear into your enemies, like ‘Foe-Hammer’ or ‘Death-Iron’?”

  “Nope.”

  “Stormbringer?”

  “Skilly.”

  “Even something simple like ‘Sting’ would be—”

  “It’s Skilly McSkillet. Deal with it.”

  “But—”

  Shade cleared her throat. “Hey, instead of hanging around arguing about what we should call our cookware, shouldn’t we get going and maybe, I don’t know, stop a war or something?”

  “True, good sprite, true!” Justinian bounded onto the back of his horse. “Come, friends, we ride to save Elfame!”

  As he said that, a black form streaked toward them, an ice-cold wind blasting them as it passed. Out from swirling, tattered black cloth a skull leered and bony hands clutched the handle of a long, silver scythe.