Yet Another Dreadful Fairy Book

by Jon Etter

  “Good. We’ll free the other prisoners then we’ll kill him.”

  Shade’s eyes opened at this. She let go and leaned back to see that her mother’s face had hardened. “We don’t have to do that. We’ve stopped him.”

  “For now. Eventually, he’ll be free again. Then what? More fairies get eaten. More fairies get locked up and kept as pets. That has to end.” Shade looked at her mother, confused and a little frightened by the cold, pitiless look on her mother’s face. Her mother looked Shade in the eyes, and her face softened. “Let’s worry about that later. We have prisoners to set free.”

  Shade’s mother took her by the hand and they opened cell after cell. Fairy after fairy stepped hesitantly from their prisons, as if unsure whether their freedom was real or merely a dream. “All this time, the one thing that has kept me alive, kept me fighting, has been the possibility that one day I’d see you again, Shade. I’ve hoped and prayed and dreamt, and now … I’m so, so happy!”

  Shade blushed. “I’ve dreamed of this too, Mom. Even though they told me that you couldn’t have survived, I always hoped that somehow … And now here you are!”

  “How long have I been imprisoned? Every season looks like every other season here,” Shade’s mother asked as she opened Thespis’s door. The actor actually looked a little disappointed.

  “It’s been over forty seasons, Mom,” Shade told her.

  “Forty seasons,” her mother said bitterly. “Forty seasons stolen from me. Stolen by Old Nuck. Stolen by Perchta.”

  “What did Perchta have to do with this?”

  A haunted look came into her mother’s eyes. “We were losing the battle. The Sluagh had overwhelmed us. My friends had all fallen and Perchta and her troops had me surrounded. I slashed her across the face and tried to fly for it, but they grabbed me and held me there. I thought Perchta was going to kill me, but instead she took her sword and … my wings … she …”

  Her mother looked down, and for the first time since their reunion Shade noticed her mother’s wings. Or at least what was left of them: shreds and tatters that hung limp down her back. Even though she had been freed from the nuckelavee’s collection, she would never fly again.

  “When the nuckelavee showed up, she stabbed me in the thigh so I couldn’t run and she bolted, but first she told me that she would destroy everything I cared about, everything I—wait. You know Perchta?” Her mother grabbed Shade by the arms. “How do you know Perchta?”

  “Well, she’s kind of tried to kill me a couple times,” Shade admitted. “And she—”

  “She’s tried to kill you?” Her mother’s eyes flashed. Her grip tightened. “This is why I tried to keep you and your father and Pleasant Hollow a secret all those years: so that my enemies couldn’t—And now that maniac Perchta knows and has tried to—”

  “Ow! Mom, you’re hurting me.”

  It took a moment for Shade’s words to register. When they did, her mother let go and looked down at her shaking hands. “I’m sorry, Little Acorn, I’m sorry. I-I just—Ever since you were born, all I’ve wanted to do is to protect you. That’s why we chose to live in your father’s village and that’s why, when it looked like the last war might spill over into the Merry Forest, I went off to fight in it. And now that I know that Perchta is still out there and knows who you are—”

  “It’s okay, Mom. I can take care of myself.”

  “Not against Perchta, you can’t. You may have gotten lucky before—”

  “No, I got smart. And if she tries to do anything to me again, I’ll—”

  “You’ll do nothing, young lady! You hear me? If you see Perchta coming, you run. You get away as fast as you can.”

  “Mom, I’m a grown sprite. I can take care of myself.”

  “Not when Perchta’s involved. There’s only one way to make sure that Perchta never hurts you. Only one way to make sure you stay safe.” Again, Shade’s mother’s face became steely and cold. “And I’ll do it first chance I get.”

  Shade stared in disbelief. In that moment, her mother, the sprite who she remembered as being all smiles and hugs, was unrecognizable to her. She didn’t know what to say, what to do just then, but her struggle was abruptly ended by the happy cry of “Nightshriek Glitterdemalion! The Great Owl! My dearest Nia! You live! Ha ha! St. Figgymigg be praised!”

  “Justinian, you old war dog!” Shade’s mother laughed as he swept her up in his arms and spun her around. “Put me down, you oaf, or I’ll get an axe and chop you down to size!”

  “No doubt, dear Nia, no doubt.” Justinian put her down and gazed at her adoringly. “I should have known an army of Sluagh wouldn’t be enough to take you down. My good Lady Shade, your mother truly is too fierce to defeat, too stubborn to die and—”

  “This is all great, but we’ve got business to attend to,” Shade interrupted, choosing to focus on tasks at hand rather than deal with her conflicted feelings about her mother. “Is the nuckelavee taken care of?”

  “Yeah, we tied him up. You know how sweaty that thing is? I’ll need at least three baths to ever feel clean again,” Grouse groused.

  “Did Ginch win yet? Is the Professor back in his body?”

  “Good Signore Ginch has yet to return,” Justinian replied.

  “The way he cheats, he should have won by now,” Shade fretted. “I’m going to go check on the Professor. Mom, Sir Justinian, Grouse, could you get the prince and princess out of the pen? And make sure you capture that guard and the two nobles in there with them. If we can get them to talk, that will give us further proof of Perchta and the king’s advisors’ plot.”

  “Aye, good Lady Shade. Come, Nia, I’ll explain as we attend to things,” Justinian said in answer to Nia’s quizzical look.

  “Okay, I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Shade said. She turned to go, but her mother pulled her back and embraced her again, holding on as if she feared to let go.

  “As soon as you can,” her mother whispered. “Promise.”

  “I promise, Mom,” Shade murmured. Reluctantly, her mother released her and looked at Shade with the kind eyes Shade remembered from long ago. Shade gave a little nod then fluttered off to check on the Professor.

  She found him standing next to his body rummaging around through the pockets of his ghostly trench coat. When he saw Shade, he looked up and smiled. “It’s utterly fascinating! Everything in my actual pockets has a ghostly duplicate. Take a look.” He pulled out a teddy bear, a flute, a ball of string, a jar of honey, a fake snake, a real snake that looked very dismayed, and a piece of bacon, which he proceeded to eat. “The metaphysical implications of this are stunning. Just stunning! And mmm, ghost bacon …”

  “Where’s Ginch?” Shade demanded. “He should be back by now. It’s been … I don’t know—”

  “Over half an hour,” the Professor informed her as he consulted one of the many watches hanging inside his ghost coat. “Yes, that is troubling. Perhaps death isn’t as easy to cheat as the marks Ginch usually fleeces. You don’t think—?”

  “Well, I did have a terribly good time, but I’m afraid I’m going to be in quite a bit of hot water over this,” the Jolly Reaper fretted as he and Ginch, who had his hand on the reaper’s back, stepped out of the mists.

  “Well, you play the good, good game. I just play the better one, Julie.” Ginch looked at his friends and held his arms wide. “Guess who win his partner’s life back, eh? C’mon, Professor—back inna the body with you!”

  The ghost of the Professor leaped up, did a triple flip, then dove into the mouth of his body. His spirit flowed in like a breath being inhaled—except his feet, which stuck out of his mouth and wiggled too and fro. The Jolly Reaper poked at the feet with the end of his scythe until they were stuffed down the Professor’s throat. The pixie gave a great gasp and sat up.

  “Are you okay, Professor?” Shade asked.

  The Professor gave her a thumbs-up, sprang nimbly to his feet, danced a little jig, and struck a ta-da pose. Then he turned to Ginch
, opened his jacket, and tapped on one of his watches.

  “You wanna know why I take the long time, eh? Well, it’s-a like this. I have the lucky hand right away, so I win you life back lickety-the-split, but Julie here was so eager and he’s got-a the natural talent at the cards—” The Jolly Reaper chuckled at this and waved a skeletal hand dismissively at the compliment as Ginch winked at his friends. “So we go again, the double or the nothing for the Professor’s life, and then we go again and again and, of course, you no wanna stop when you get onna the winning streak, so we keep going until Julie finally get the cold feet and wanna stop and I get alla these.”

  Ginch reached into his jacket and pulled out a handful of little black slips of paper. He handed one to Shade. Written in blood-red letters on each slip was “I.O.U. One life.” Shade looked at Ginch, baffled and annoyed. “Okay, let me get this straight: you won the Professor’s life back and then you continued to risk it so you could keep gambling?”

  The Professor opened his mouth in outrage and shoved Ginch. “Hey, you woulda done the same, partner. Besides, you put up the stake with you life, so you get the cut of the winnings.” Ginch tucked the handful of slips in one of the Professor’s pockets.

  The Professor smiled and pulled one out. He walked over to the unconscious nuckelavee and jumped on his chest again, again taking a blast of deadly breath in the face. The Jolly Reaper stepped forward and held out his hand, into which the Professor placed the I.O.U. with a flourish. The Professor took out another one and bent his legs for another leap but Shade grabbed him and yanked him down. “Would you stop that! Just because you have a ‘Get Out of Death Free’ card doesn’t mean you should use it!”

  “Now remember,” the Jolly Reaper explained. “If you face a mortal injury or illness, just give this to whichever reaper happens to show up and they’ll leave you alone. And if you want to use it to take someone else’s life, just hold one up, say, ‘I call for the life of’ and the person’s name, and one of us will fetch them right to you. If you want them kept alive, just hand us the slip. If you want them dead, tear it in half and we’ll do the rest. The body, however, will be your problem, and trust me, it will be a problem. You just read a little of Puzo di Corleone’s The Fairy Godfather and—”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa! They can use those to take people’s lives?” Shade cried in dismay.

  “Yes,” the Jolly Reaper affirmed.

  Ginch folded his arms, looking quite pleased with himself. The Professor put his elbow on Ginch’s shoulder, stuck his other hand in his pants pocket, and waggled his eyebrows. “Can you think of the better fairies to get to decide who live and who die, little Sprootshade?”

  “Yes. All of them. All the fairies.” Shade looked beseechingly up to the skies.

  “Well, it’s been fun, but duty calls. Toodles!” The Jolly Reaper gave a wave and then went streaking off into the clouds.

  “Speaking of duty, we’ve got to get the prince and princess back to their homes so we can stop a war that could kill about a hundred times as many fairies as you have I.O.U.s to save,” Shade said grimly. “Let’s get going.”

  In which tempers flare …

  With the nuckelavee’s prisoners all freed and the nuckelavee himself bound and gagged but, contrary to Shade’s mother’s advice, alive, the discussion turned to how to get two royal children back home as quickly and safely as possible to stop a war while also delivering traitorous nobles and guards to the proper authorities and, to top it all off, help a bunch of recently imprisoned fairies make their way back to civilization with only four ponies and two horses amongst them.

  In the end, it was decided that the prince and princess should each take a pony and hurry to Ande-Dubnos and Dinas Ffaraon to reveal the plot and try to talk the queen and king down from the declaration of war each one no doubt made upon getting word of the abduction of their beloved son/niece. Further, each royal child was to be accompanied by a skilled warrior to help safeguard them on their journey home.

  With that in mind, Grouse was given one of the horses to accompany Prince Beow, since he was the only one of the three warriors not known as an enemy of the Sluagh and therefore least likely to be killed on sight. Similarly, a pony was allotted to Shade’ mother, Nia, so that she could serve as guard to not only Princess Viola but also Shade, who insisted on coming with her, and Ginch and the Professor, sharing the second horse and chosen largely because of the handiness of the contents of the Professor’s pockets and the security of Ginch’s death vouchers. Finally, over his vociferous objections and petulant pouting, it fell to Justinian, the individual “most likely to be gut-shot with an arrow or worse on sight by anybody and everybody,” as Shade observed, to escort all prisoners, both recently freed and recently detained, through Stormfield on foot to Dinas Ffaraon, where explanations would have been made to ensure his safety.

  “Don’t do anything stupid,” Viola told Beow as they hugged before departing.

  “Why stop now?” Beow grinned.

  “Remember—as soon as you talk to your mother, try to get to the library tree. We’ll do the same so that we can all see if we’ve prevented another war,” Shade said.

  Beow nodded. “Will do, but don’t worry. My mom’s not dumb enough to go to war for no good reason.”

  “Wish I could say the same. My uncle is dumb enough. But he usually listens to me when I tell him what he needs to do. I’m sure it’ll be all right,” Viola said, not sounding quite as sure of herself as Shade would have liked.

  So they all rode, spurring their steeds on through the gray land of Stormfield. Shade and her party rode in silence at her mother’s command. “Best not to call too much attention to ourselves,” she had explained. “The guardsmen who escaped old Nuck’s attack might still be out here somewhere, plus who knows what other horrible creatures might have decided to make Stormfield their home.”

  After several hours of hard riding, they stopped next to a stream to allow the ponies and horse a chance to drink and rest. Shade’s mother busied herself checking saddles and supplies as the rest settled in around a campfire. Shade kept glancing her mother’s way, waiting for her to come join them. At last, the Professor jabbed her with a sharp elbow and jerked his head toward Nia. Then he gave a whistle and pulled out a deck of cards and began to shuffle it showily.

  Ginch gave the Professor a nod. “So Principessa, you know how to play the cards?”

  “Of course I know how to play cards,” Viola replied.

  “Yeah, well, you no know how to play the cards like we play the cards.” Ginch winked at her. “Here, we show you some ways to play so you always win.”

  “So you’re going to teach me how to cheat.”

  “We like to call it the finesse.”

  The Professor passed the cards to Ginch, giving Shade a light kick in the direction of her mother as he did so. Shade walked hesitantly over to her mother and placed a hand on her shoulder. “Hey, Mom.”

  Nia looked over her shoulder. She gave Shade a brief smile, then turned back to the saddle. “Hey, Little Acorn. Just checking all the belts and buckles and whatnot to make sure we don’t have any easily avoidable problems as we ride.”

  “Good. That’s … good. So … want any help with that?”

  “Nope. I’ve got it. You can just go play cards or whatever.”

  “Oh. Okay.” Shade stood there, making no move to rejoin her friends. “I thought, you know, maybe we could … talk.”

  “What about?” her mother asked without looking at her.

  “I don’t know. We’ve just, well, I haven’t seen you for most of my life—”

  “No, you haven’t,” her mother cut in abruptly. “Because Perchta and the Sluagh took that away from me. They took away my freedom, they took away the skies—” Shade involuntarily looked to the tattered wings that hung from her shoulders, wings that would never fly again. “—and, worst of all, they took away my chance to be your mother for all those years.”

  “But we’re together again
. Now you can—”

  “Yes, we’re finally together and what are we doing? Rushing to stop a war so that those monsters can continue to terrorize good fairies and scheme and plot and get ready to murder—”

  “Mom, they’re not all like that,” Shade objected.

  “Aren’t they?” Nia demanded. “Can you honestly tell me that no Sluagh has ever attacked you or threatened you or menaced you in any way?”

  “Come on! You know perfectly well that Perchta—”

  “Yeah, I do. And I’m sure she’s not the only one.”

  “Okay, true, but there are good Sluagh too.”

  “You’re fooling yourself if you think that, Little Acorn.”

  “Stop calling me ‘Little Acorn.’ I’m a grown sprite, Mom. And there are good Sluagh. Queen Modthryth and Prince Beow—”

  “Are the wife and child of a cruel tyrant who tried to take over Elfame.”

  “But they’re not him. And there are others, ones I’ve gotten to know at the library and—”

  “You can’t trust a single one of them. The Horde are nothing but a pack of dangerous savages.”

  “And you think the Seelie are better, eh?” Shade turned to find Ginch standing behind her, hands in his pockets.

  Shade’s mother stood up straight. Her eyes narrowed. “I know they are.”

  “In one of the wars—I no can say which one because the Seelie and the Sluagh, they love their wars so much I no can keep track of them—a group of soldiers, they come and they raid the supplies from the human family I live with. They steal everything they can carry and then they burn the house to the ground and burn the crops in the fields so the enemy, they no can get any of what get left behind. The human family that live there—my family—they no see and no know what goes on. They just know that they no have the home no more.”

  “Exactly my point,” Nia replied. “If we don’t stop them, the Sluagh—”

  “It was no the Sluagh. It was-a the Seelie that done it.”

  “That’s … that’s not how Seelie soldiers are supposed to behave,” Nia asserted.