Midsummer - A Bubba the Monster Hunter Novella

by Hartness,John G.

  “No, I don’t think I should attempt to break anything over Titania’s anything. If she didn’t strike me dead on the spot, Oberon would squash me like a bug.”

  “So you’re screwed. But I still have to get this girl home. Now, how do I find her?”

  “You don’t. I sent her to the queen. She’s at the capitol and has likely already been drafted into service as a kitchen drudge or scullion.”

  “I don’t know what those are, but it doesn’t sound like very much fun. So I’m gonna have to go get her.” I struggled to my feet. “Which way to this queen?” I looked around, but we were in a clearing in the middle of a forest, without any apparent trails or roads leading out.

  “You can’t possibly hope to sneak into the capitol, much less the castle, and smuggle out one human girl. Besides, how will you even know which one to take?”

  I stopped looking around the clearing and turned back to Puck, very slowly. When I spoke, my voice was very slow and controlled. Because if I didn’t keep my shit together, I was pretty sure I was going to turn him into a smear of fairy juice on the nearest tree.

  “What do you mean, which one? How many human girls have you brought over here with this damned video game?”

  “Not many. I think the one you came looking for was the sixth. Maybe seventh. I lose track after a while, and you humans really do all look alike.”

  “The only reason I haven’t gone back to the plan of beating you into a bloody smear of fairy-juice is that I think I need you to get back home, you know that, right?” I didn’t wait for an answer. “You mean to tell me that you’ve brought half a dozen human children over into Fairyland, sold them to the queen, and you don’t have any idea what happened to any of them?”

  “No, not at all. That’s nothing like what actually happened.”

  “Then what happened?” I was genuinely confused now. I have a pretty good grasp of basic English, and he didn’t use any fancy words, so I was pretty sure I knew what was going on.

  “I could never sell human children to the queen. They were intended as gifts. I gave them to her.”

  I just sat down on the ground, in front of the smart-ass fairy kidnapper, put my head in my hands, and bemoaned my choices in life.

  Chapter 5

  I only took a moment to think about every bad decision I ever made; then I sucked it up and got back to the task at hand. Besides, there’s nothing illegal about sleeping with your high school girlfriend’s mom, especially if you were already eighteen at the time. It probably wasn’t my most morally sound choice, but I was pretty sure I was on solid legal footing. And her sister was totally over eighteen. The mom’s sister, not my girlfriend’s sister. Well, she was, too. So I was covered on all fronts.

  I stood up, took a deep breath, and squared my shoulders. “Nothing has changed, Puck. I just have to rescue a lot more human children now. So I need you to point me the way to the castle so I can get on with this rescue operation. And any intel you can give me about the place would be helpful, too.”

  “Intel? I’m sorry, my friend, but I can no more grant you intelligence than I can make you more attractive. Hmmm, now that I think about it, making you more intelligent could be a far simpler matter.”

  “Kiss my ass. If I want to take shit from a skinny fairy, I’ll go home and talk to Skeeter.”

  “What is a Skeeter?”

  “Never mind. Where’s the castle?”

  “Tisa’ron, the capitol city, is three days’ ride south of here. Just walk east unto you find a wide road through the woods. Follow that south until you get to the city. I’m not sure how you expect to talk your way through the gates since humans are usually only brought into Fairy as slaves or breeding stock, and you aren’t exactly what Fae women look for in a mate. No offense.”

  “Have you ever noticed that those two words usually either precede of immediately follow the most offensive thing the speaker can possibly come up with?”

  Puck smiled at me, all innocence, sunshine, and rainbows. “Why no, I’ve never realized that, human. You are truly an intellectual giant among your people.”

  “Whatever,” I said. I turned and started walking in the direction he indicated.

  “Wait!” he called from behind me. I turned around to him, arms folded across my chest.

  “What?”

  “Are you convinced that this is the only possible course of action?” he asked.

  “I don’t see anybody else jumping in line to bring that little girl home, so yeah, I reckon it’s the only thing I can do.”

  “Then perhaps we can be of use to each other.” I didn’t trust the glint in his black eyes, or the tiny grin playing around his lips, but I also felt pretty short on options, so I walked over to another stump nearby and sat down.

  “Talk,” I said. “What did you have in mind?”

  “I might have mentioned that Her Majesty Titania, may she rule forever in her unwavering beauty and grace, has my beloved imprisoned in her castle. The same castle that you are determined to storm.”

  “I wouldn’t say storm so much as walk into and ask nicely, but go ahead.”

  “If you are determined to continue down this foolish path, then perhaps I may lend some assistance. In exchange, of course, for your help with a little problem of my own.”

  “You want me to reduce your maid when I grab the human girls and bring her back here so y’all can run away together, or whatever fairies do when they elope. That pretty much it?”

  He hemmed and hawed for a few seconds, then said, “Yes, as much as I loathe anything that straightforward, that is an accurate assessment of the situation.”

  “You coulda stopped at ‘yes,’” I pointed out.

  “No, I really couldn’t.” He shook his head. “But yes, if you agree to rescue my Blossom, I will give you information that will make it much easier to get in and out of the castle. And if you return here with her, I will return you and all the other human children I have captured with my game to the same location you crossed over from.”

  “That sounds fair. Now what can you tell me about the castle?” I leaned forward as the little love-struck fairy started talking.

  An hour or so later, my head full to bursting with information on the castle, its defenses, the gate guards, the best escape routes, which girls at which taverns have particularly loose morals and a fascination with “creatures from other realms,” and all sort of other stuff that may or may not be useful in a rescue op, like how many guards patrol the city and which ones can be bribed. I also had a small coin purse (not the kind your great-aunt carried when you were a little kid—think more like a leather dice bag) with a few gems and gold and silver coins to help grease a few palms and maybe put a little food in my belly.

  I stood up, ready to get going, and Puck stopped me. “Your weapons are useless here. Take this, it’s dangerous to go alone.” He unbuckled his sword belt and held it out for me.

  That phrase sounded familiar somehow, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Filing that away for later, I took the belt and strapped it on. Somehow the same belt that went around a hundred-twenty-pound fairy also managed to fit around my waist, which probably weighs a hundred-twenty-pounds by itself. I hate magic, I thought, then held out my hand to Puck.

  “Good luck, human. You’ll need it.”

  “If you’re so sure you think I’m gonna die, why did you give me your sword?”

  “I can call the blade back to me if need be. If you haven’t returned in a week or more, I’ll activate the belt’s magic, and it will return to me instantly.”

  I still hate magic. But that’s pretty cool. “Neat trick,” I said. We shook hands, and I headed into the woods, hoping I’d be home ever, much less before dark. The second I passed the tree line, I got a creeping sensation between my shoulders, a feeling of being watched, but whenever I looked around, I saw nothing.

  “Well, Bubba, you didn’t think you were gonna be able to just traipse around through Fairyland without anybody notic
ing, did you?” I said out loud, then chuckled a little at me thinking out loud just to break the silence. I gave one last look around, then went back to walking.

  And walking.

  And walking.

  And walking.

  I swear I would have thought that I was walking in circles if I didn’t grow up in the woods and mountains of North Georgia and had some rudimentary woodcraft drilled into me before I learned to drive. I used my pocketknife to leave small marks on the trunks of trees as I passed, and since I never passed those marks again, I was at least twenty percent convinced I wasn’t walking around in circles. I walked for a couple hours through pretty dense forest, mostly oak, maple, and other hardwoods, but the occasional patch of pine and even a little spruce scattered here and there.

  The walk was even pretty pleasant, all things considered. The trees above wove together to make a thick canopy of leaves and branches, and the light that filtered down dappled the ground in beautiful patterns. It wasn’t too hot, or too cold, and no matter how long I walked, it didn’t get any hotter or colder. I remembered what Puck said about it never turning to winter in this part of Fairyland and thought that I could do worse than living somewhere perpetually seventy-five degrees. I’m Southern, and I’m a big dude, which means that six months out of the year, I travel with an extra shirt and a couple sweat rags behind the seat of my truck. It’s hell getting people to let you in the front door of super-secret government facilities with acronyms like DEMON if you look and smell like a college locker room.

  After what felt like three or four hours, not that I could tell anything about my travel outside the slight change in the trees around me, I stepped out of the woods and onto a well-maintained road. It was a straight swath of hard-packed dirt running as far as the eye could see in either direction.

  I sat down on a small hillock of grass and took inventory. In my world, it was moving toward sunrise, if time moved the same there as it did here. But here it was just moving into evening, with the trees casting long shadows across the road and making the forest look and feel a lot less inviting than it had just a few hours before.

  I checked my pockets and did a quick inventory. I hadn’t exactly planned on crossing between dimensions when I got dressed this morning, so I wasn’t what anyone in their right mind would call prepared. I had Bertha, of course, but we saw how useful the standard rounds were against Puck. The impact of a fifty-caliber round was nothing to sneeze at, but that’s all it was going to give me—impact. I checked the magazine and found five rounds left. I popped that mag and set it aside for a moment, ejecting the round from the chamber and slipping it in atop the other five.

  I pulled the two spare magazines from my shoulder holster and checked the loads, gratified to find that I remembered everything right for once. One magazine held ten silver rounds, but the other one was the winner in my book. It had five white phosphorous rounds—not tracers but literal balls of fire. Those Dragon rounds alternated with what I hoped would be my ace in the hole in Fairyland—five cold iron rounds. I ejected the Dragon loads and the cold iron bullets, as well as the regular lead bullets from the other magazine, and reloaded my weapon. I put the five cold iron rounds into one magazine and topped it with a regular load. Then I set up the other magazine with three regular rounds, four alternating regular/Dragon loads, then three white phosphorous bullets to finish off anything that needed more fire.

  I didn’t know if you could catch fairies on fire or not, but I’ve never known any monster that appreciated being hit with a flaming ball of lead, so I figured worst case they’d get me in close enough to finish the job with either my knife or my fists. My knife was just a regular Kershaw Blackout spring-assisted folder, clipped to the inside of my front pants pocket, but it was sharp, and it was steel. I wasn’t sure if steel counted as cold iron, but I also figured if anything got close enough for me to cut it with my pocketknife, I had bigger things to worry about. My little Pelican LED flashlight clicked on, so apparently Duracell batteries are good for inter-dimensional travel. That’s always good to know.

  But as far as gear, that’s all I had. My cell phone wouldn’t even turn on, much less make a call, and my comm was useless as well. Apparently other planes of existence are out of range of even black-ops government issue communications devices. Nothing in my wallet was going to be useful, unless I suddenly needed to slice someone to death with a Vatican-issue black Amex, and the small plastic vial of holy water I carried for emergencies wasn’t looking too useful, either.

  I did have a Clif bar in one of the cargo pockets of my pants, and a Werther’s Original caramel candy in another pocket. I was pretty hungry, but not terribly so, and trying to eat a chocolate and peanut butter Clif Builder Bar without anything to wash it down is a less than optimal meal, so I unwrapped the Werther’s and sucked on a caramel as I started down the road, heading south toward the capitol of Fairyland and my date with Titania.

  Sometimes my life even sounds weird to me, and I’m the one living it.

  Chapter 6

  The sound of creaking wood and jingling metal roused me from sleep. I jerked awake, trying my best to leap to my feet and deal with the threat, but my back was so damn stiff from sleeping on the ground propped up against an ancient tree that my leaping was more like a geriatric crawl and clamber. My old knee injury from college let me know in no uncertain terms that it did not approve of sleeping outdoors anymore, and my neck wouldn’t quite let me turn my head all the way to my left. So I staggered to my feet like a roadie on the tail end of a two-week bender, which is to say any roadie on any given day, and held myself upright with my left hand on a tree trunk and my right hand clutching Bertha.

  “Well, that’s not exactly the good morning I get from most fellow travelers, there sonny.” The voice came from my left, and a good eight feet off the ground. Thanks to my jacked-up neck, I had to turn my whole body to see the speaker and was relieved out of all proportion to see a rotund fairy man sitting atop a two-horse cart.

  Oh good, not a giant was my first coherent thought. It says a lot about how I feel in the morning that I could wake up beside a road in the woods and hear someone talking from ten feet in the air and immediately expect to have to fight a giant before coffee, instead of assuming that the voice belonged to someone sitting on top of a wagon. I holstered Bertha and looked up at the driver.

  He was an older fairy, looking to be about seventy in human years. For all I know, he might have been two thousand years old—I don’t know how long fairies live. But this one was obviously living well. His beard and mustache flowed down to his chest, and the bright red vest he wore over a plain white shirt didn’t meet in the middle, and didn’t look like it ever had any aspirations of doing so. He looked like any merchant, harmless and pleasant, but his clothes were clean, and his wagon looked to be in good repair, and the sword on his belt looked like it had seen some use, judging just by the hilt. The two horses pulling the wagon were brushed and healthy-looking, and the cart behind him was piled his with casks and kegs.

  Praise be to Shakespeare, I had just been discovered by the Fairy Beer Guy. This whole case was starting to look up.

  I holstered Bertha and held up both hands. “Sorry about that. You surprised me, and I’m not the most pleasant guy when I first wake up.”

  The portly fairy laughed, and his everything shook like the proverbial bowl full of jelly. “Me neither, lad. Me neither. But what are ye doing sleeping by the road? Are ye daft? Or just too poor to afford an inn?”

  I looked at him again, then decided on an unusual course of action for me—honesty. “I’ll tell you straight, friend. I was brought here by a mischievous fairy, set upon a quest that’s probably completely hopeless, and turned out onto the road without a map, any food, a bedroll, or any money except what I brought with me from my world. I’m trying to get to the capitol, and Puck told me this was the road, so I slept where I could. And that’s the God’s honest truth.”

  “Which one?”

  �
�Which what?”

  “Which god, lad, are ye daft? Some of those ruttin’ bastards don’t have any more truth in ‘em than me pecker, and that damn thing’ll as soon lie to you as look at you, and it’s only got the one eye!” He laughed, slapped his knee, and almost fell off the wagon in his glee.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Not much of a pantheon where I’m from these days.”

  “Well, be careful who ye be swearing to, boyo. Ye never know who might be ridin’ up on ye.”

  “Are you telling me you’re a god?” I raised an eyebrow. I’ll admit to a little cultural bias, but in the movie in my head, I never pictured a god with a beer gut. I guess there’s always Bacchus, but this fairy sounded Irish, so that was probably out. And was this guy’s accent getting heavier with every sentence?

  The little round man laughed again, wiped his eyes, and looked down at me. “No, son, I’m no kind of god. I’m just a beer merchant, toting me cargo to the city to sell to the taverns and inns. Now I might be of mind to offer ye a ride to the capitol in exchange for some service that might need to be rendered at a moment’s notice.”

  “What’s that?” Usually when someone offered me a gig right after meeting me, it either has something to do with moving a piano, changing a lightbulb without a ladder, or beating the shit out of something. I didn’t see a piano on his cart and there was no electricity, so that narrowed the field a little.

  “There’s been reports of bandits along the road to Tisa’ron. They shouldn’t be a problem for a big, strapping young lad like yourself, but they could destroy my whole livelihood with one attack.”

  I thought about it for about a second and a half, then held my hand up to the man. “You take me to the capitol; I’ll make sure bandits don’t steal all the beer.”

  He grinned and motioned for me to climb up into the cart, so I took the seat next to him, taking a minute to arrange Bertha and Puck’s sword so they were in easy reach.