“No, his wife doesn’t even know where he is, poor thing,” Ria replied.
“It wouldn’t be the first time he travels outside of Soubrey,” John said.
“Yes, but surely not without telling his wife.”
“You’re right, that is worrying,” Nema said as she sliced a piece of meat which she then put on Pinly’s plate.
“Until we solve the matter of finding Jups, we need to get these boys back into school. They do nothing but play games all day,” Kwassy said.
“That is true, but there is no one to replace him at the moment,” John said.
Pinly understood the grown-ups’ concerns. It was weird for any fairy to disappear just like that, without a word, a note, or a trace. As Pinly listened to his father and worked his way through a piece of meat that was far too big for his mouth, he noticed his brother grinning, but not at him. Lion and Voly were giving each other looks. He knew they did that whenever they were up to no good but didn’t want anyone else to know. They eyed a few others from their gang—a boy called Sun Bud, and naturally Miki and Lofo, but not Pinly. How unfair was that? He had jumped off the cliff, after all. What else did he need to do to be considered worthy?
He wasn’t sure, but whatever they were up to, he would be a part of it whether they wanted him or not.
Chapter 2
The Spell of Life
T he night had completely settled upon Soubrey, and from his bed Pinly could hear the endless hooting of nocturnal birds. He waited patiently, listening for any movement coming from his brother’s bedroom. His father’s snores echoed around the house, so loud the neighbours probably heard it too. Suddenly, for a fraction of a second, the thump of boots hitting the floor resonated over Kwassy’s snoring. Pinly rushed to put his head out the window and saw his brother, already mid-air, descending toward a group of dark figures. Voly and the rest of the gang, without a doubt.
Pinly waited for Lion and the others to be out of sight before hopping out of his window and discretely flying down after them. It was easier for the boys to escape by the back of the tree. Their tree was situated in a corner. Where others’ back windows would give straight into the main part of the village, whereas theirs gave into the back, where no one could see them escape. As Pinly came down, most lights were off, apart from the last one, near the bottom, where Miss Poli lived. Pinly’s heart almost jumped out of his chest as he saw the old fairy’s figure standing behind her curtains. She was holding something in her hand. It looked like a watch on a chain, just like Professor Jups had. Pinly was sure those weren’t common objects around Soubrey, only where the humans lived, but the closest human city was very far.
Forgetting he needed to slow down, Pinly lost control and fell to the ground. Not hard enough to injure himself, but hard enough to leave a few bruises. He tried not to moan too loudly with pain as he hurried to stand up and go after Lion.
The light in Miss Poli’s house went out, and Pinly was plunged into total darkness. He began to regret leaving his bed, but now that he was up, he went ahead with it. The harmless noises that he heard from the comfort of his blankets seemed louder and threatening out in the cold. More hooting and what sounded like hissing came from behind bushes. Everything he stepped on felt dangerous, but Pinly hated flying around in total darkness— it usually resulted in him bumping his head too many times— so he kept walking and felt the way with his hands.
Pinly suddenly stopped moving and had to struggle to keep himself from screaming. In the distance, two glowing green eyes observed as he began to tremble uncontrollably. Pinly made a run for it, but his foot caught a tree root and he fell. He turned on his back and began crawling on his elbows, darting his head left and right as he searched for the green-eyed creature. Nothing. Pinly took a deep breath. It could have been anything, he tried to reassure himself; after all, he wasn’t used to going out at night. Could it have been some sort of nocturnal bird?
Then they appeared again, and this time they weren’t alone. Glowing green eyes were everywhere, up in the trees and all around. A flame began to grow farther down, but before the flame could shed some light on who or what was circling Pinly, they vanished. Whether they’d belonged to birds or something else, the green eyes were terrifying. Pinly ran in the direction of the flame. He could finally see the other boys’ shapes and shadows moving about. They were giggling, unaware of any potential danger.
“Guys!” He rushed to them, almost extinguishing the meagre flame of their fire.
“Pinly! What are you doing here? I don’t even want to know. Go back home!”
“Shut up!” Pinly put a hand over his brother’s mouth. The other boys kept quiet too, eager to know what had scared Pinly like that.
“What’s wrong?” Voly finally broke the silence.
“I saw something…” Pinly stammered. “There were eyes… I think they were eyes, they had the shape of it.”
Lion took his brother’s hand off his face. “What are you blabbering about? That’s exactly why I never bring you out here. It was probably just a bunch of birds.”
“Oh really, Lion? Birds with green eyes? Stupidity reaches new heights with you.”
“Do what you want, but go be weird somewhere else,” Lion said.
Pinly spun around. He didn’t know where to look. Was there really nothing to fear? What had he just seen? Maybe Lion was right. It could have been anything or nothing, just his imagination…
“So who’s going first?” Voly said as Lion and the others sat around the fire.
“Not me, I went first last time,” Lion replied, to Pinly’s surprise. So they had been going out at night before. He let out a gasp of outrage.
“What?” Lion hissed.
“Lion, why do you lie so much?” Pinly asked.
Lion frowned. He seemed confused. “What are you talking about?”
“You said if I jumped off the cliff, you’d let me hang out with you guys. I jumped!” Pinly crossed his arms expectantly.
“When?”
Pinly’s arms and mouth dropped at the lie.
“We don’t have all night, guys,” Voly said.
“Shut up, Voly! Just shut it up!” Pinly shouted.
“Sshhhh!” the other boys hissed.
“Pinly, you’re going to get us caught,” Sun Bud said, but Pinly ignored him.
“You’re such a liar!” he said before jumping on Lion, ready to fight him. The other boys held him back.
“Just let him stay; he’s here now,” Voly said to everyone’s surprise, including Pinly’s. Voly made a space for him around the fire. It was the first time he was included in anything by them. Sure, he had to force his way in, but being part of the group felt amazing. “So the rules of the game are simple,” Voly began explaining. “You have to tell a story, and we have to guess if it’s true or not. Whoever guesses wrong has to execute a dare by the one who told the story, and if everyone guesses right, then we move on.”
Pinly nodded.
“I’ll go first,” Lofo said in a spooky voice. All the other boys leaned closer to the tiny fire, their eyes fixed on him. “Right here in our village lives a witch that feeds on the souls of young fairies and humans. No one can tell she does it until the fairy dies. She prefers them very young so she can eat them quickly once they succumb from the curse. Why do you think Professor Jups has disappeared for a week now? She’s had him.” Lofo straightened up. “So? What do you think?”
“Okay, this is obviously not true, and Professor Jups is very old. If she likes them young, she would vomit at the sight of him,” Pinly said. The other boys agreed, booing and telling Lofo to sit down.
“This would have been good if we were telling scary stories,” Voly said.
“Who’s the witch in your story?” Pinly asked.
“She lives in your tree…” Lofo continued with his spooky voice. “Miss Poli.”
“Rubbish,” Lion said. “Just sit down, Lofo.”
“It might not be exactly true, but a lot of people say
that she isn’t really a fairy,” Lofo said as he sat down.
“There’s no way Miss Poli is a witch. We’ve been staying over at her house for years. Our parents wouldn’t just leave us with a witch. Be serious, now,” Pinly said.
“I stand by what I said, except maybe for the soul-eating part and maybe Professor Jups, although that wouldn’t be the worst thing,” Lofo said. The boys giggled and nodded. “But it wasn’t so long ago that the witches were chasing fairies, enslaving them and…”
“What are you boys doing here?” a voice pierced through the darkness behind them. The boys flew up in the trees. Hanging clumsily on branches, they screamed with fright. “Get down here!” the voice said before Miss Poli walked into view. “I don’t think your parents would be very happy to know that you are out here so late.” The young fairies flew down from the tree. “Good thing I recognised Pinly flying down the tree.” Pinly wished she had kept that part to herself. The other boys glowered at him. “Anything could happen to you this late at night!”
“But Miss Poli, we’re not far from home,” Pinly said.
“Off to bed!” She pointed an angry finger toward the village. The boys murmured their frustration at Pinly as they passed by him. He was sure they would make him pay next time they got together.
Miss Poli accompanied Pinly and Lion up to their house. She did not wake their parents up, but she wrote a note on parchment and slid it under their door.
The next morning, as the sun was just rising in orange flames above the forest, most of the village remained asleep except for a few very early risers. Pinly and Lion’s father was one of those early risers. Kwassy’s deep voice resonated through the house. “Wake up, wake up!”
“Papa, come on!” Pinly heard his brother protest as he himself struggled to open his eyes. Between their little escapade at night, his father’s snoring, and now his father’s shouting, Pinly felt like he hadn’t slept at all, but he couldn’t complain about any of it.
“Don’t Papa me. You boys are working at the library with me today. If there is no Professor Jups, I don’t want you just playing all day and night, learning nothing,” Kwassy said. He had obviously read the note. He barged into Pinly’s room, and with two snaps of his fingers, Pinly’s sheets flew off him and the bedroom windows swung wide open, letting in the coldest breeze.
“Alright, I’m up.” Shivering, Pinly stood up and ran to his bathroom to escape the cold. A scraping noise moved around Lion’s room. Pinly giggled as he recognised the sound his brother made when he was too tired to either walk or fly, so he did both, flying himself around with his feet dragging on the floor. Pinly knew that would drive their father crazy. He waited for the reaction, and it arrived soon enough.
“Pick yourself up!” Kwassy shouted from the living room.
“Papa, why are we even going to the library? What have we done wrong?” Lion yawned.
“You don’t need to have done anything wrong. Reading is good for you,”
“Can you all stop talking through the walls! Some of us are trying to sleep here,” Nema shouted from her room.
“Some of us are lucky,” Lion said just loud enough that only Pinly could hear from his adjacent bathroom. They both giggled.
After they finished taking their baths, they headed to the living room. Their father was sipping from a cup and reading a book at the small round table. The boys sat down.
“You want to try to make us some eggs, P?” Lion smirked.
“Haha, you’re so funny.” Pinly snapped his fingers and two plates appeared. He pushed them in front of Lion.
“Don’t worry, I got this!” Laughing, Lion snapped his fingers a few times and served them both eggs, bacon, and milk. Lion snapped his fingers one more time and changed Pinly’s bacon to lettuce. Pinly pinched the lettuce between his fingers in disgust.
“Pa!” he complained. Kwassy looked at Pinly’s plate and changed the lettuce back into bacon.
“If you knew how to do basic magic like that, you wouldn’t have this problem,” he said sharply before getting back to his reading.
“I know. It’s not my fault,” Pinly muttered. Soon they finished their breakfasts, Kwassy put his book in his large pocket, and they flew out of the house on their way to the library. Their father shook his head as the boys played around. Pinly was riding on Lion’s back, pretending he rode some kind of flying horse. They flew through Soubrey, passing different villages until they reached Soubrey Square. Although it was very quiet, the square was the busiest part of Soubrey, the kind of place where Pinly’s mother would meet all of her acquaintances and stop to speak to them forever. Like the name suggested, it was shaped in a square; the trees that formed the square had shops built on their sides, selling all kinds of things when open. In the middle of it all stood a massive sphere of glass covered with thick tree roots: the library. From outside, Pinly could already see the floating aisles, endless rows and shelves of dusty old books, and the equally old fairies who worked in there.
“Alright, boys, you remember the rules?” Kwassy asked.
Pinly got off his brother’s back. “No shouting or unnecessary flying,” they recited in harmony. They landed on the ground and walked through the massive wooden doors. Pinly shivered as they entered the sphere; it seemed to be colder inside than out. His skin prickled with goosebumps, and for once he wished he was wearing a robe like his father’s. It looked warm and comfortable.
“Lion, I want you to help your brother master the basics of magic today. There’s a whole row of books on that. Aisle three hundred.” Kwassy pointed at the back of the library. “Go get a book and study quietly, understood?”
Pinly gave a loud sigh that earned him an angry stare from his father. He quickly put his hand in front of his mouth, pretending he was yawning.
“Okay, Pa,” Lion replied as he pulled Pinly away. The boys flew close to the ground as they went through the infinite number of aisles. There were immense bookshelves on the ground, and others, slightly smaller, floating around the library. Most fairies here were dressed like their father; the robes only differed in shades of grey. “298, 299, and 300, finally,” Lion said. Pinly watched his brother flying up and down as he searched for an appropriate book.
“Don’t get anything too hard,” he said.
“What’s not hard to you, I wonder?” Lion replied without taking his eyes from the books, thus missing the offensive gesture from Pinly. “Ha!” He picked up a book from the top shelf. He blew on the dusty book, creating a brown cloud, and then flew down to his brother.
“What’s that?” Pinly grabbed the book. “Basic Magic: Conjuring Eggs,” he read.
“That should be easy enough for you to master,” Lion said. The boys found a hidden table in a corner of the library. They sat down and opened the book to find even more dust inside. Pinly sneezed. “First recite the rules of magic.”
“Why?” Pinly protested.
“You know Dad will ask you to recite them, so just do it.”
“He asked you to help me, not boss me around.”
“Just recite them, Pinly.”
“Alright…” Pinly thought hard. “Fairy magic manifests through the imagination and aura… While imagination and aura alone are not enough, anything can be achieved with proper training. Although most things are possible, not everything is allowed. Fairy magic should not be used to hurt any beings or alter the actions and feelings of others… Therefore, the power of possession is punishable by death…”
“Okay, I asked you the basics, not the whole book of rules… Give me that.” Lion snatched the book. He flicked through the pages, disregarding a good part of the book. “There you go,” he said as he turned the book around and pointed at an image. It showed drawings, starting with one of empty hands and some writing under it. Pinly muttered as he read the instructions. The following text was accompanied by further illustrations; the last one showed the hands holding an egg.
“So I put my hands like this.” Pinly mimicked the drawing.
“Don’t say it, just do it,” Lion said. Pinly closed his eyes and focused. He first felt the weight of it before an egg materialised in his hands.
“I’ve done it!” He rejoiced until the egg dropped on the table and broke, the yolk running off the edge.
“It’s supposed to be cooked. Try again and focus really hard this time,” Lion said. Pinly put his hands together again and stared at it. His forehead wrinkled as he tried his hardest. This time, as soon as the egg appeared, it exploded. Yolk dripped off their hair and faces. They laughed at each other with their hands over their mouths, trying to be as quiet as possible.
That was followed by many failed attempts. Soon the table was full of egg yolk, Pinly’s white shirt had turned yellow, and his skin was sticky. But finally, after three hours, Pinly held a warm egg in his hand. He shook it and couldn’t feel the insides sloshing around inside. The boys marvelled at it.
“I’ve done it!” Pinly raised the egg up high in triumph.
“Finally.” Lion looked unimpressed, but Pinly wasn’t going to let him ruin this success for him.
“Let’s show Dad!” Pinly said, but was held back by Lion’s tight grip on his shirt.
“Not before we clean the table,” Lion said.
“Can’t you just make it all disappear?” Pinly asked.
“No, I can’t. It’s one thing to make stuff appear and another to make it disappear.” Lion snapped his fingers a few times, summoning a bucket of water with two cloths. They started cleaning the table despite Pinly’s moaning. As soon as they were done, they flew to their father, who frowned when he saw them approach. The boys, too excited, had forgotten about the flying restrictions in the library and were zooming toward him.
“Pa, look!” Pinly said excitedly, handing the egg to Kwassy.
“Shh,” he said as he grabbed the egg. He inspected the egg and nodded in agreement. “Well done.”
“Yes!” Pinly clenched a fist of victory.
“It only took him three hours,” Lion commented, raising his eyebrows.
Made of Magic and True Grit Page 3