by James Fahy
“What are they, I mean we, talking about?” he asked, looking back to the far more human-looking girl through the gate bars. Her eyes were not as black as space. They were a soft violet, and there were patches of red on her pale cheeks from the cold air. Penny shook her head. “Beats me.” She sounded unconcerned. “But it’s probably bad news. Maybe something to do with him.” She flicked a thumb over her shoulder in a casual gesture. Behind her, half buried in a hedgerow on the opposite side of the country lane outside Erlking, Robin could make out the crumpled figure of a man, lying in the leaves and long grass. He looked to be bloodied and hurt. Robin couldn’t make out much more than his general shape. There were several bees darting around near him. Wasn’t it a little late in the year for so many bees?
“Is … is he dead?” he whispered.
“Nearly, but not quite,” Penny told him, quite unconcerned. “Don’t worry about him though, he won’t be here for a while yet. But he’s on his way.” She didn’t seem very pleased about this. Suddenly she looked at him curiously. “You’ve gotten taller, blondie, you’re what, two inches shorter than me now? You were such a shrimp last time I saw you.”
Robin stared over at the other versions of them, the Puck and Peryl, both looking powerful and otherworldly and both still deep in serious discussion. He really didn’t remember coming down the avenue, or anything else about getting here.
“This isn’t real, is it?” he said, with slowly dawning realisation. “None of this … is real.”
“That’s a tricky word, if you ask me,” she said thoughtfully, after a moment's careful consideration.
He stared at the pale girl through the bars separating Erlking from the outside. Her eyes were merry and playful, just this side of wicked. The drone of unseasonal bees surrounded them. The leaves rasped against the stones in the breeze.
“What are you?” he asked in earnest. “Really, I mean?” It felt a moment of tremendous importance, in a way he couldn’t really describe, so much so that without meaning to, the words had come out in a whisper.
She smiled at him, and her fingers brushed his gloved hand ever so slightly across the bars. “You’re such a numbskull, Robin Fellows,” she said. “It’s like the sisters said. I’m your peppercorn, right?”
Robin woke up with a start, sitting up in bed with a gasp. His room was dark around him. The images of the dream still scattered around like startled birds in the darkness, fragmenting in a disorienting manner as he shook himself awake, still sure he could hear the low drone of bees.
It hadn’t been real, any of it. Just a dream, he thought to himself. His heart was pounding. A deeply odd dream. Robin stared around the silent bedroom in the darkness, groggy and sleepy. For a moment he thought he saw a dark shape, a small moth, flitter in the grate before disappearing up the chimney, but it was gone too soon for him to tell for sure if it had been real, or a lingering fragment of dream playing tricks on his mind.
It must have been late, Robin reasoned. That still and motionless time of night, long after midnight and far from dawn. The great house was utterly silent around him. Nothing but the soft lull of the wind outside his dark window, and the distant rhythmic noise that was half snore-half purr from the small blue figure of Woad, who Robin saw was curled up and asleep in front of the fireplace in his usual spot. Woad was wearing a pair of Robin's socks.
Robin lay awake for quite some time, unable to shake the odd dream, or the curious feeling of importance it had carried, in that unexplainable way dreams do. He lay thoughtfully under the warm blankets, listening to the wind occasionally rattle the glass in the window pane and rustle down the chimney. A few errant leaves battered the glass now and then, but despite Woad’s imaginings, none of them appeared to have faces. Robin thought of the injured man in his dream, and how the Puck had looked so odd to him from the outside, as alien and strange as the Grimm herself.
He couldn’t remember a time, since he first arrived here, when Erlking had been filled with so many people, but even so, and despite the soft and sleepy noises of Woad nearby, he felt strangely like the only person living. Alone in the great dark mystery of Erlking.
FFOULKES SHEDS A LITTLE LIGHT
“You are not concentrating, Robin Fellows.”
Madam Calypso’s voice was calm and melodic as always, although it was quite muffled in Robin's ears, which were full of water. It was hard enough to concentrate on lessons at the moment, but even harder after a broken night’s sleep. Woad had been snoring incessantly again. It was the last day of September and after a few weeks of sharing a bedroom, Robin was beginning to understand why some people said being an only child was better than having brothers and sisters.
He picked himself up grumpily from the tiles of the pool room, where he had just been hit full force with the watery equivalent of a fireball. His drenched clothes spattered on the floor, echoing softly into the vaulted ceiling. “I wasn’t ready,” he half snarled, his bad mood slightly doused by the fact that he had to stifle a yawn. Across the pool, his tutor crossed her arms, her willowy form caught in a slanted sunbeam from the tall windows.
“Nor will you be when you are duelling in real life,” she said. “Do you expect your opponents in the wild to give you a ten second head start before they attack you?”
Robin pushed his wet mop of hair back from his forehead, still staggering slightly. “Well, no,” he conceded. “All I meant to say was–”
Without warning he stopped mid-sentence and dropped swiftly to one knee, both arms thrust expertly before him. A hail of needle sharp ice-darts erupted from his palms, dozens of shimmering missiles whistling across the water towards the nymph. He saw her eyes widen and she twirled aside at the last moment with expert balletic grace. The icy shard-storm thudded into the wall noisily behind her, frozen porcupine quills hammering the plasterwork.
“Oh, very good,” she said, a tiny smile appearing at the corners of her mouth. “That was practically wicked.”
Robin grinned at her approval, getting to his feet. “Thanks,” he dusted his hands together.
“Don’t get too over-confident though,” the nymph flicked a hand, and with a whoosh the tiles beneath his feet were suddenly a sheeny mirror of ice, causing him to slip and fall back to the ground in a graceless lump.
“Just because you’ve had brief communion with the Shard of Water, doesn’t make you king of the oceans,” his tutor smirked.
“It’s too early in the morning for duelling lessons,” he wheezed, thinking of his most inventive curse words. His repertoire had been greatly expanded over the summer by the discovery of a wishing well in the herb garden which echoed back your words, only littered with expletives. Henry had taken to carrying around a notepad. Before he could demonstrate his newly expanded vocabulary, however, the doors to the pool room opened with a dramatic boom, and in walked Karya, followed closely by the red-headed figure of Silas Ffoulkes. This was most unprecedented. Everyone knew that Robin’s lessons, whether practical casting, Mana-management or physical manoeuvres, were private. In all the time Ffoulkes and the sinister sisters had been at Erlking, none of them had ever interrupted a lesson before. Robin secretly thought Calypso was gratefully of this fact. It was her one haven from the rather annoying man, who was still insistent on attempting to charm her at every opportunity.
“What is it?” Calypso asked. “The Scion is in a lesson right now. We should not be interrupted.” Robin looked questioningly at Karya, who rolled her eyes at him a little.
“Apologies,” the girl said. “We’ve not come to observe. Though it is always entertaining to see the Scion get thrown around a bit.” She smiled slightly. “Lady Irene asked me to deliver a message to Robin, and our … guest here.” Her smile was a little tight. “Positively insisted on coming along.”
“So this is where you spar?” Ffoulkes said, following the young girl into the room and looking around with greedy, sparkling eyes. “What a wondrous place! Honestly, I’ve been here at Erlking for weeks now, and yet ev
ery time I turn a corner, I see something new and dazzling. Truly marvellous.”
“Every time I turn a corner, sir,” Calypso said, hands clasped politely before here. “I seem to run into you. You certainly do get everywhere, don’t you?” She didn’t give him time to finish. “I’m afraid the Scion’s tutelage is a private matter, not a spectator sport. I’ll have to ask you to leave.”
The man ignored her, looking around the newly refurbished room with bright eyes. They really had done a wonderful job of restoring the place since the discovery and removal of Inky the kraken. The mosaic tiled walls shone, the large pool was deep and green and clear. A separate area had been cleared for sparring, the tiles marked with various concentric sparring circles, where Robin was still getting damply to his feet.
“What a treasure Erlking is,” the man said. “Every corner just bursting with secrets waiting to be discovered. Wonders untold.”
“And as I say,” Calypso replied coolly. “I do keep finding you in said corners.”
Robin had noticed this too. While the sisters were reclusive, Ffoulkes was everywhere. Robin could barely enter a room without tripping over the man, peeking in cupboards, inspecting suits of armour, looking discreetly behind portraits. He was a constant bother. “He’s like dust that one,” Mr Drover had muttered mutinously one afternoon. “All over everything. ‘Cept of course there no dust in Erlking where Hestia can reach.”
“Whatever is it you think you are looking for, I wonder?” Calypso shook her head. She looked past him to Karya, clearly not interested in any answer. “What was the message you were meant to deliver?”
Karya opened her mouth to speak, but the man cut in again.
“Seems a bit silly though, really, all this dabbling around in water, don’t you think? A-ha-ha,” he said with a smile. They all looked at him.
“Well, you know, with what the sisters predicted.” He glanced at Robin warmly. “About you shortly being … underground. Earth magic. That’s the ticket now, isn’t it? Best prepared and all that, surely.”
“I do not teach the Tower of Earth,” Calypso folded her arms. “Obviously.”
“Well, no, nor I, of course.” The man clicked his fingers, causing a flurry of small fiery sparks to leap and dance in the air at his fingertips like orange fire-flies. For a moment, his eyes shone with the reflection, making him look quite devilish with his waxed moustache and pointed beard. “Fire’s the ticket for me, not that I’m remotely the teaching kind anyway. But perhaps your aunt, Robin, would be wise to find you a tutor more … suited … to your current needs?” He smiled at Calypso. “No offense intended, my dear lady, I assure you, I mean in addition to your good self, and, well, in addition to the butter-knife who teaches wind.”
“Aunt Irene hasn’t mentioned looking for any new tutor,” Robin said, feeling that Ffoulkes was being wilfully rude. “I’m sure she will when she thinks it’s the right time. She knows what she’s doing.”
The Fire Panthea looked at him sidelong, then slid his eyes lazily over to Calypso.
“Does she? Does she indeed? Your aunt is a great many wonderful things, my boy, but omniscient is not one of them. If indeed she did know exactly what she was doing, she would not have requested my assistance.”
“That’s actually the message,” Karya cut in quickly, seeing Robin frown. He looked to her. The small girl shrugged. “She wants to see you, Scion, in her study.” She flicked her golden eyes up at the flame-haired man by her side. “And this one too.” She added with thinly-veiled disapproval.
“Splendid,” Ffoulkes clapped his hands, rubbing them together and looking very pleased with himself. “Then the men of the house shall go together. Come along, young master. Duty calls.” He smiled at Karya and Calypso. “You fine fillies stay here. Maybe tidy the place up a little, eh? Women are so much better at that sort of thing.”
Robin saw Calypso's eyebrows disappear into her hairline and felt Karya bristle. He tensed, half expecting a barrage of needlepoint icy darts to rain down on the man. Karya had indeed opened her mouth to speak, but Calypso cut in.
“Come, Karya,” she said in her lilting voice, as calm and treacherous as the still surface of a pond. “The air in here has grown rather stale. If the Scion is required, that takes precedent over my lessons. And if he is to take this gentleman with him, well …” She cast a sidelong look at Robin, who couldn’t tell if she was annoyed or faintly amused. “…Then that is the Scion's burden to bear.”
Robin was ushered out of the pool room by Ffoulkes, his face still burning with embarrassment at the insufferable man’s ridiculous remarks. The fop set a brisk pace along Erlking's corridors, forcing Robin to hurry. His boots clacked crisply on the floorboards and Robin noticed for the first time that they had rather a generous heel, making the man appear taller than he really was. He wondered if he was aware how very offensive he was to everyone.
“Women are such sensitive creatures,” Silas said affectionately as they walked, his voice filled with warm indulgence and an affectation of great knowledge. “As changeable as the weather, and just as unpredictable.”
Robin had never thought of either Karya or Calypso as being remotely sensitive, and was about to say so, but the man continued as they turned a corner. “And yet, for all their maddening whimsy, we chase them still, do we not? A-ha-ha-ha,” he chuckled, with a small and rather theatrical shake of his head. He looked to Robin. “Well, perhaps you do not. Not yet. But mark my words, my boy, the time is coming. They will rule your head and your heart if you let them. Troublesome creatures really to all mankind.” He glanced down rather vainly at his own perfectly manicured nails, the heavy gilt of his lacy cuff falling over his hand. “It is rather a burden you see, when one is fair of face. A curse we must bear though, and bear it nobly.” He inspected his own reflection in the shiny chest of a suit of armour they passed.
Robin thought that Silas had rather a higher opinion of himself than he deserved. The man had the most perfectly sculpted and plucked eyebrows he had ever seen. They must have taken him hours. There was enough wax in his carefully groomed moustache and beard to make a candle, and in all the time he had been with them at Erlking, Robin had never seen the man with a hair out of place, or wearing the same outfit more than once. Each costume seemed more ornate than the last. He truly was a preening peacock.
“Of course, you yourself are a blooming sprout of handsome, aren’t you?” the man said, clapping Robin on the back heartily. He looked down at him, as they passed through the shadows and light of a long, many-windowed gallery.
“Not truly handsome yet, of course, still rather pretty in that disagreeable way of boys, but give it time. Let a little more of the boy fall away and more of the man appear in that face of yours, and I promise you, young master. With those eyes of yours and all the power of the Arcania you hold, why, a-ha-ha, you’ll not get a moment's peace from the ladies of the world.”
“I’m not really sure that sounds like as much fun as you think,” Robin said, a little worriedly. “I don’t get a moment's peace from my studies anyway. I’d quite like some every now and again.” He was slightly put out at being called ‘pretty’.
The man gave not the remotest sign he was listening. In Robin's experience, he never did.
“I expect you’re hoping for a chin, yes? A strong jaw? Something with a cleft perhaps, or dimples. The fillies do rather like either in a chap. Both are deformities of course, strictly speaking, but who am I to justify the knotted and unfathomable minds of the fairer sex?’
They passed out of the corridor and crossed an inner hallway, whose circular wall was covered in a faded mural depicting some wild mountain hunt, figures on horseback circling the room forever, frozen in paint and faded to ghosts with age.
Ffoulkes stopped suddenly on his heel, clicking sharply on the black and white marble tiles so that Robin almost walked right into the back of the fop. He span and regarded Robin curiously, one eyebrow cocked and his fingers twirling thoughtfully in his car
efully waxed moustache.
“Tell me, boy,” he said, with a twinkle in his eye. “Living here at Erlking. Surrounded by all the magic of the long lost Fae court, basking in the …” He glanced around vaguely at the ornate room. “… treasures, of Oberon and Titania. You must know every inch of this fantastic place, yes?”
Robin frowned. Erlking wasn’t the kind of place anyone could ever know every inch of, as far as he was concerned. Indeed, it seemed to change around on a whim, feet at a time, never mind inches.
“Not really,” he said. “Why?”
The man spread his hands airily. “No reason, merely curious. You have to understand of course, to a … collector … such as myself, Erlking is rather a wonderland. One can only imagine all the things of interest and power hidden away here.” He peered at Robin again, smoothing down his embroidered lapels as he did so. “The kind of things which an inquisitive and resourceful boy such as yourself would be sure to sniff out. It must be a constant wonder to you. Such a voyage of discovery for a bright young mind.”
Robin shrugged. “There are lots of odd things here,” he admitted. The man was still staring at him intently, his eyes rather bright and expectant. Robin had never noticed before, but they were a dark orange, like glowing embers. “There’s a bathroom upstairs near the back of the house where the taps all shriek really loud when you get into the shower.” He scratched his head absently. “None of us use that anymore.”
The man didn’t seem impressed, he blinked at Robin, his smile still fixed beneath his moustache. Behind him, the painted figures on the circular hall chased one another silently around and around on horseback, like a mad carousel.
“Or … there’s the room with all the hatboxes, I suppose,” Robin continued hopefully. “That’s quite fun. Henry and I found out that the different hats make you talk with different accents if you put them on. You can’t really control it. Henry spent a whole day growling like a pirate a while back until Aunt Irene insisted we all stop dressing up for dinner.” Robin sniggered out loud at the memory.