by Jon Etter
“What the donkle was that?” Shade shouted.
“The Grim Reaper,” Justinian replied. “As I told you, Stormfield is her dominion and here she never hides. And now she flies to the Ruins. Ride fast, my friends, and pray ’tis not the princess’s soul she goes to harvest! Yah!”
“Or the prince’s!” Shade shouted as she spurred her horse to follow the galloping knight. “It would be just as bad for him to die too!”
In which squirt guns are readied for battle …
Hard they rode through the withered land of Stormfield without pause until by the feeble light that filtered through the ever-present clouds and the intermittent flashes of lighting that forked down from them they spied the craggy remnants of the long-dead past that were the Ruins. Justinian led them to the edge of the pond, its waters black and still. On the far shore lay the jagged wreckage of the wall that marked the southern border of the place where the capital of the commonwealth once stood.
“Nay, do not drink, good Professor,” Justinian said as the pixie jumped to its edge and raised a handful to his mouth. “The water in the Lake of Tears is not fresh but brine. They say ’tis the tears shed for all the lives lost upon these darkling plains.”
“Okay, first, it’s really more of a pond than a lake,” Shade opined. “Second, there’s no way that—” She stopped as the rest frowned and shook their heads. “Fine! Apparently, I’m the only one who cares about scientific and linguistic accuracy. So what do we do now?”
“We charge in, vanquish the dread beast, and save the royal children, of course!” Justinian declared, his eyes gazing in admiration at the ruins.
“Um, are you sure you’re up for that?” Shade asked gently.
“The answer is no, he’s not,” Grouse jumped in before Justinian could answer. “You are way too injured to go charging in and doing something stupid like you usually do.”
“Yeah, you really kick you own butt good back there, paisan,” Ginch agreed.
“I think we need to find wherever the beast took Beow and Viola, and if they’re not … ” Shade trailed off, not wanting to say out loud what they all feared to be true. “We find where they are, free them, and sneak away without whatever this creature is even noticing us, if we can.”
The Professor pointed at Shade, nodding enthusiastically. “’Ey, we like-a the sound of that,” Ginch said. “We get really good at the sneak over the years.”
“’Tis not the most noble of—ow!” Justinian grabbed the bruised ribs Grouse had just given a hard poke. “All right, your point is made, Sir Grouse, and rather rudely I must say. Fine, we shall make our way through the Ruins—”
“And risk getting ambushed,” Grouse groaned. He closed his eyes and massaged his temples with his fingertips. “I mean, there must be around a half mile’s worth of crumbling buildings that your giant body-snatcher could be lurking in.”
“If only we could figure out where they were before we went in,” Shade muttered. She stared out at the rubble, searching for some sign of life to guide them. She saw and heard none. But she did hear Grouse clear his throat. She turned to find all the others looking at her. “What?”
The Professor nudged Ginch and made a “go on” gesture with his hand. “Okay. Everybody here who gotta the wings and can a-flit and a-floot over the ruins, raise you hand.”
Everyone stared expectantly at Shade. Her eyes narrowed. The Professor reached over and raised one of her arms over her head. The Professor then shook her other hand while Ginch bowed low. “And we thank you in advance for you service.”
“You seriously want me to fly over the ruins?”
“I would go myself had I the wings,” Justinian said.
“I wouldn’t,” Grouse snorted.
Thunder boomed nearby. “What about the lighting?” Shade asked.
The Professor hopped and dodged around. “We recommend you try to no get hit,” Ginch offered.
Shade pointed her finger in Ginch’s and the Professor’s faces. “I hate you.”
The Professor batted his eyes sweetly and kissed the tip of her finger. Then his eyes widened. He patted Shade on the shoulder and pointed behind her. An immense creature appeared on the other side of the salty pond. Standing close to fifteen feet tall, its lower half was the body of a horse, but hairless and with long finlike flaps of skin hanging from the backs of its legs. The creature’s upper half was even more gruesome. A flash of lightning showed its skin to be so sweaty and red and covered all over with black veins that it looked almost as if it had no skin. Above its protruding potbelly and sunken chest sat its head, round like a pumpkin with a broad, frog-like mouth stretching from one side to the other, black horizontal slits where a nose should be, and gigantic blood-red eye taking up almost the entire top half of its head.
As Shade and the others hid, the creature clopped to the edge of the pond, one grotesquely long arm dragging along the ground as it went and the other held at waist height, a barrel clutched like a drinking cup in its long claws. The creature dipped the barrel in the pond then noisily gulped down the brine and let loose a mighty belch of steam. “Ooo, tha’ hit the spot!” the creature sighed, patting his distended belly appreciatively and scooping up more water. “Ye forget how rich dwarf be when ye no have it fer a while. Well, time tae go decide what be collectible and what be meat.”
“What the donkle is that?” Grouse hissed as the creature vanished back into the ruins.
“It’s a nuckelavee!” Shade gasped. The others looked at her questioningly. “I remember reading the entry on it in Katerina de Briggs’s Encyclopedia Mythica. This cluricaune named Tammie claimed to have been held captive by it and escaped, but everybody just thought he’d drunk some bad mead. Looks like he was telling the truth, because he said it looked just like that thing and that it ate fairies, drank salt water, breathed clouds of poison, and was obsessed with collecting things.”
“Did it mention any weaknesses that might help us fell the dread beast?” Justinian asked.
Shade scratched her chin. “Well, I assume iron, the same as any other fairy. Oh! Water. Fresh water. He said it burns it like boiling oil.”
The Professor gave a whistle and took out a trio of little plastic squirt guns. They were just like the one your wicked Uncle Jonathan bought you on the way to your cousin Cherrita’s wedding rehearsal that led to the wedding being called off, you getting grounded for an entire summer, and a caterer being briefly imprisoned. The Professor filled them with a waterskin, handed one to Shade, one to Ginch, and squirted the third into his own mouth.
Justinian patted her on the shoulder. “There! Thus armed, I’m sure you’ll feel much safer as you boldly seek the prince and princess.”
“Wait. You still want me to—?”
“And now you have an even better idea where to fly. Just follow where big, ugly, and deadly went,” Grouse observed. “Lucky you.”
“Now that we get-a the look at the nookle-the-bee, I think if you no wanna get grabbed by the long, long arms you gotta fly about—” A flash of lightning and loud thunderclap interrupted Ginch. “—oh, I’d say about thirty feet above where that lightning just stop. Good luck, and if you no make it back, I call alla the good stuff you own.”
The Professor saluted Shade, then took a lollipop out of a pocket. He pointed at it then at Shade and was about to pop it in his mouth when she slapped it from his hands and ground it under the heel of her boot. “Yeah, I know I’m a sucker, but I’ll be dingled, dangled, and donkled if I’ll let you enjoy it, you pack of toad-lickers!”
And so with an insult, a scowl, and a flapping of wings, Shade flew from her friends in search of the prince and princess, not realizing that an even more surprising discovery awaited her in the shadows of the ruins.
In which a surprising discovery is made …
“Why do I ever step outside of the library?” Shade muttered as she flew across the Lake of Tears. “I’ve never been knocked out and thrown in a dungeon in the library. Nobody has ever trie
d to eat me in the library. And—” Lightning crackled just a little ways to her right, and thunder boomed. “Gah! And I’ve never been struck by lightning in the library! Puckernuts to everything outside the library and puckernuts to everybody responsible for me not being there right dingle-dangle now!”
Flying as high as she dared, Shade soared over the crumbling border wall the nuckelavee had disappeared behind. Below she saw the war-blasted and weather-worn wreckage of once elegant buildings. Granite columns, most broken, some intact, stood in front of ancient entrances. Three-quarters of a dome still sloped precariously over a large assembly room. Exposed wooden beams sagged, nearly rotted through, over a now completely roofless chamber.
This must have been a beautiful place once—more beautiful than Dinas Ffaraon or Ande-Dubnos could ever hope to be, Shade thought bitterly.
As she wheeled about over the ruins, Shade spied the light of a fire amongst the rubble. A bonfire burned in what was left of a three-story building, its roof long gone and only one side still intact. Must have been a prison or something, Shade concluded, seeing two stories of barred cells rising above the fire. It was dark and Shade was high up, but she could tell that the cells weren’t empty. There were fairies inside.
Standing with his back to the cells was the nuckelavee. His humanoid upper torso leaned over the top of a crude wooden pen nestled against the remains of the building’s north wall. Shade flew closer and could see fairies at the bottom of the pen. Five of them—including Prince Beow and Princess Viola! Viola lay on the ground, rubbing a scarlet patch on her cheek as Beow knelt next to her.
“I told ye tae stay put and tae nae try tae escape!” the nuckelavee bellowed. “And now look at ye! Ye nae be in mint condition nae more. If ye nae be careful, ye might nae be collectible at all.”
“Collect this, you monster!” Beow shouted as he grabbed a rock from the ground and hurled it at the creature, striking him in the chin. The blow, however, seemed to have no effect whatsoever other than to make the nuckelavee squint in annoyance.
The nuckelavee picked up his bucket of salt water and doused the prince and princess. “Enough! Look, like I told ye, ye either go intae me collection or intae me belly. The dwarf went intae me belly because I already got a better dwarf over there in me collection. Now, I broke me hobgoblin months ago, so ye down there be goin’ in the collection even though ye look a bit dodgy.”
“Um … thanks?” a bat-headed hobgoblin noblewoman replied.
“So that leaves ye four elves. I nae need four elves in me collection, now do I, and I already got one,” the nuckelavee explained, pointing toward the cells.
“You sure do, boss!” a pale elf in tattered and soiled purple clothes that glittered with sequins called from the door of one of the cells. “And one who can sing and dance and perform dramatic monologues!”
“That ye can,” the nuckelavee agreed, a touch of weariness in his voice. “Now, I got a couple open cells, so maybe I can keep two elves, one dark and one light, until I catch something I nae have yet. Maybe. I’m going tae go get the key so I can take Thespis out and give him a thorough inspection tae see if one of you pale ones is more collectible than what he is—”
“To best demonstrate my collectibleness I shall prepare to deliver the famous ‘Should I do it or should I not or should I just dither about for four hours’ speech from William Shudderpike’s tragedy Baconlet followed by a few sooooooongs!” the sequined elf trilled.
“That actually helps yer odds,” the nuckelavee whispered. “Now don’t try tae escape again or I might decide tae make ye meat no matter how collectible ye be.”
The nuckelavee trotted off. When he was far enough away, Shade fluttered down and alighted on the stone wall above the top of the pen. “Beow! Viola!”
The elves looked up. “Shade!”
“Don’t worry, we’ll get you out of here. Help is on the way.” Shade looked over to see grim fairy faces—a dwarf, a kobold, a poltercat, a pech, and many others—peering out at her from between the bars of the cells. “You too. We’ll get all of you out of here.”
The fairies all looked at her in disbelief. “Doubt it,” a wolverine-headed goblin scoffed.
“There’s no escaping here,” a grizzled old gnome groaned. “No escape. No escape … ”
“It’s actually not that bad.” Thespis did a little pirouette. “It’s kind of nice to have a regular gig in front of an appreciative audience in spite of the whole unjust imprisonment thing.”
“Enough of this dingle-dangle moaning and bellyaching and vain preening—and yes that’s aimed specifically at you, Thespis, you second-rate songbird!” a voice shouted from the cell farthest from the fire. “I’ve come close to getting us out before, but now that we’ve got help on the outside, its actually going to happen! We’re getting the donkle out of here!”
A small figure, barely taller than Shade, emerged from the shadows of her cell. Her leather armor was cracked with age and torn in places from long-ago battles. Unruly black hair framed a gaunt, haggard brown face whose eyes burned with fierce determination. But those eyes widened in surprise and softened when they fell upon her would-be rescuer. “Shade? Is … is that you?”
Shade nearly fell from her perch. “Mom?”
In which a fearsome foe is faced and death comes a-calling …
Shade soared to the bars of her mother’s cell. “Mom! You’re alive.”
“So are you!” Shade’s mother reached through the bars and clasped Shade’s hands as if to prove to herself they were real. “Oh, my Little Acorn, you’ve grown into such a beautiful, beautiful sprite—although I’d hoped you wouldn’t become a warrior like me.”
Shade was confused then looked down at the pieces of armor she still wore. “Oh, no, Mom. This is just … I’m actually a librarian.”
Her mother smiled and placed a hand on Shade’s cheek. “Your father must be so proud.”
“Dad’s … Dad’s gone,” Shade said quietly.
Her mother’s face darkened at the news. “Was it the Sluagh? Was it Perchta? She swore—”
“No, Mom, no. He got sick and …”
“Oh.” Her mother fell silent and just looked at Shade. Shade had a million things she wanted to tell her mother but had no idea where to start, and she could see that her mother felt exactly the same. Then her mother looked past her, her eyes sharp and wary. “Are there others with you? Tell me that there are reinforcements.”
Shade nodded. “I’ve got friends with me.”
“Where?”
“Outside of the ruins. I was scouting ahead and—”
“Get out of here. Now. Before Old Nuck gets back.”
“I can’t leave you here, Mom. Not after I just found you. There’s got to be a way to get you out of—”
“There isn’t. I’ve been trying to escape for I don’t even know how long. I think the cells have some sort of ancient enchantment on them—you can’t pick the locks, saw the bars, chip through the walls. The only way out is to unlock them with Nuck’s key. What you need to do is go back to your friends and—”
“I told you, I’m not leaving you behind!”
“And I’m telling you, you have to go! By St. Whitman’s beard, you are just as stubborn as you were when—”
“I’m stubborn! You were always the stubborn one. When I was a kid, you—”
There was a loud gasp from behind Shade. She looked over her shoulder to see the giant with his long-taloned hands clasped together over his heart, a black key dangling from a chain around one of his wrists. “A mint-condition sprite! I never thought I’d see one and now one just shows up here, practically begging tae be part of me collection!”
“Shade! Fly! Get out of here!” her mother screamed.
Fly Shade did, over the nuckelavee’s head and out of the ruined prison. Behind her she could hear the clattering of hooves. Daring a glance backward, she saw the nuckelavee in hot pursuit. She rose high and veered right and left as the hideous cross between a cyc
lops and a centaur swiped at her with his grotesquely long arms.
“Git ye down here, sprite!” the nuckelavee bellowed. “I want ye in mint condition for me collection!”
“You can collect my dingle-dangle behind, you big, ugly dungball!” Shade shouted back.
“What, ye want me tae collect behinds?” The nuckelavee stuck out a steaming black tongue in disgust. “Bleh! Sounds disgusting! Who would want tae look at—”
“No, you fathead, I wasn’t seriously suggesting that you—”
The air crackled and grew hot as blinding light blazed in front of her, followed by a deafening thunderclap, the force of which slammed into her like a battering ram. Her head ringing, Shade tumbled down, the air whistling past, but she was too stunned and disoriented to flap her wings. Got to save myself, her mind screamed as she fell, so I can save Mom!
Before she could act, however, something slimy and reeking like an especially smelly pair of your brother Norbert’s sweat socks grabbed her.
“Gotcha, me bonny,” Shade heard the nuckelavee coo. She squinted and blinked to try to get her eyesight back and struggled to free herself, but her arms and legs were pinned to her sides. She felt a pinch then a tugging at one of her wings and then the other. The nuckelavee finally swam into focus, his massive red eye admiring her wings. “Ooo, would ye look at that! Perfect—no creases or tears or marks. Looks like I can get rid of me raggedy old one now.”
Shade again tried to free herself, but it was no use—the giant’s grip was too strong. I can’t overpower this slug-sucker, but maybe I can outsmart him, Shade reasoned. “Okay, you got me. But I’m traveling with even better-looking sprites than me, and if you let me go, I can—”
The nuckelavee shook his head. “Nay, I’ll nae believe that. Wulver got me with that trick over sixty season ago. Almost got away and got so damaged when I caught him that he were nae collectible at all, so I just ate him.”