by James Fahy
“So far this is all rather obvious conjecture,” Irene noted. “Have you been able to identify the book?”
“No,” the man replied flatly. “With this level of evidence to go on, I would think no-one could.” He held up a finger. “However, dating the paper, looking at the type and construction etc., I have been able to surmise that this particular stock dates to the 1900’s.”
“The book is from the turn of the last century?” Robin asked.
“Well, it was printed then at least, or rather, the book itself may have been older, but that was the date at which it was filed in a library.”
“Which library?” Irene pressed.
“The British Library,” Ffoulkes revealed, sounding rather pleased with himself. “You can just make it out in the corner of the smudge, that little inked semi-circle there. It’s almost completely faded of course, but you can still see a third of the design, if you tilt the card to the light. It’s a library stamp, an old one. They don’t use it anymore, but I would stake my reputation on it being the stamp used by the British Library in London around the turn of the twentieth century.”
“Well …” Irene removed her spectacles and cleaned them on a handkerchief. “That is something at least, although it does not narrow it down much. I understand the British Library carries rather a fair number of books. Anything else?”
“It was last checked out in nineteen twenty-six,” Ffoulkes elaborated. “This final smudge at the bottom. Your eyes are not as keen as mine. None are. But I can just about discern it. In those days, there were no computerised records. One signed a name on the book-plate here.”
Robin peered down at the card with great interest. He could still make out nothing but old and faded squiggles.
“Does it say who it was?” he asked. “Who last checked out the book, whatever it is, back in the twenties?”
Ffoulkes shook his head. “I’ve studied a great deal of handwriting in my time, young man. I cannot make out this signature. It is too damaged. I can however, from the shape and composition, tell you three things. It was more likely a man than a woman, a fully adult and well-educated man by the penmanship still visible. He also most likely had a military background of some kind. One can always read these things. And lastly, although the name itself is too poor to read, it is a fairly short one, and appears to begin with a ‘G’.”
Robin was actually a little impressed if Ffoulkes had truly been able to read all that just from studying this smudged bit of card. Of course, there was always the possibility that he was making the whole thing up just so Irene didn’t kick him out of Erlking.
“This is quite a great deal more information than I might have hoped for,” Irene said graciously.
“It is?” Robin sounded doubtful. “But we aren’t any closer to knowing what book it’s from.”
“True,” Irene allowed. “But we do now know that it is a book of some age, which was entered into the British Museum at the turn of the twentieth century, and that the last person to check the book out, before it found its way somehow to us, was an adult male of potentially military background in nineteen twenty-six, and that his name may have been ‘G’.” She shrugged. “It is more than we did know.”
Robin was frustrated. “But that just raises even more questions.”
“Yes,” Irene allowed. “One finds that is often the case, when the most interesting questions are asked.” She stood, and very formally offered her hand to Ffoulkes, who shook it genially like a perfect gentleman.
Robin thought he may never really understand Panthea. A moment ago, the two of them had been at each other's throats, and now here they were being completely convivial. Perhaps all adults were like that, he thought. Maybe that’s what adulting was, in the end.
“Thank you for the light you have shed, Mr Ffoulkes. It is most appreciated. I hope you enjoy the rest of your short stay with us.”
“Thank you, madam,” Ffoulkes responded. “For the light you have restrained. I may have spoken out of turn.”
“May have?” Irene raised her eyebrows. To Robin she said, “After our guests have left us, I shall travel to London. Make some further enquiries. You will be required here, Robin.”
Robin nodded. He hadn’t really expected to get a trip to London out of the proceedings anyway.
“I expect I shall return before Christmas,” Irene added reassuringly. “As I said. There are … other concerns in the Netherworlde at present which may be escalating. I will expect things here at Erlking to remain calm.”
No sooner had she spoken, than the door of the study burst open with a bang, making them all turn and stare.
This time, however, it was not a subtle flow of mana which had opened it. It was a faun. Woad stood in the doorframe, looking out of breath and pale, his eyes as wide as saucers.
“The faun!” Ffoulkes exclaimed in surprise. “The faun has returned!”
“Woad?” Robin stood, staring at the little blue boy, whose face was a mask of drama.
“Pinky! Quick! Come quick!” Woad said breathlessly. “It’s the old ladies! The ghostly creepers!”
Irene had also risen from her chair. “What on earth is the meaning of this?” she asked frowning.
“The sisters?” Robin asked.
Woad nodded frantically. “Upstairs!” he panted. “We found them! Karya and me! You have to come! They have discovered Jackalope in his bed, and they are eating his soul!”
RUDE AWAKENINGS
Robin hadn’t waited to see what Aunt Irene said. By the time he reached the sickroom at the other end of the house, following the scampering Woad, he was heavily out of breath.
Karya and Henry were already there, both standing in the doorway looking pale and concerned. Robin hadn’t even realised Henry had arrived at the house.
“What’s going on?” Robin panted. Henry held his hands up innocently. “Couldn’t find you when I got here, mate. Thought you might be up here with silver-top, but when I got here, those women were inside and they wouldn’t let me in. I found Karya.” He flicked a thumb in the girl’s direction.
Robin pushed past the two of them and stared into the room. It had started to rain outside, and the drops were hitting the long windows of the sickroom noisily, their shadows making the light ripple across the floorboard. The Eumenides sisters were gathered around the bed, grey and looming shadows, blocking Robin’s view of Jackalope.
“I’ve tried talking to them,” Karya said, sounding both exasperated and annoyed. “But they won’t tell me what’s going on.” Louder she said, rather pointedly into the room. “Although I’m fairly certain they shouldn’t be in here!”
One of the sisters waved a gnarled and wispy hand over her shoulder dismissively. “We do not speak to people who are not real,” she muttered from beneath her veil.
Robin closed in on the three haunting figures. “You leave him alone,” he said angrily.
“This one …” they rasped in a low voice, “… has been left alone too long. Alone is all he knows. Is all he has become.”
The irritation which had risen when Ffoulkes had insulted his parents down in Irene’s study was back, rising in Robin's chest like an angry and agitated bird, beating dark wings against the inside of his ribcage.
“I mean it!” he snapped, edging closer to the bed, undaunted by their grisly presence. “If you hurt him–”
“Or suck out his soul!” Woad added helpfully from the safety of the doorway.
Robin was aware he was gritting his teeth. He didn’t like these visitors, any of them, if he was honest. This was his house, and they were poking about in his business. He couldn’t remember feeling this angry. His mana stone beneath his t-shirt felt as though it were a hot and jittering stone, and the idea came into his mind, surprising himself, that he should just form a Waterwhip and lash the three ghoulish women out of the way, or form a Galestrike and blow them against the wall. That would teach them a lesson. Not to treat him like some insignificant buzzing insect. They hadn’t ev
en looked around at him. He was the Scion, by the gods.
Without realising fully what he was doing, his hands were already starting to move, to form the basic cantrip. He heard Karya call his name, a worried hitch in her voice, and ignored her.
“We are not trying to hurt the creature,” one of the sisters whispered, finally turning around to look at Robin. She noticed his hands, and her head beneath its veil tilted slightly to one side in a thoughtful and questioning manner. “We are trying to help it.”
“What are you doing, child?” another sister said, glancing up at Robin. “We feel your power flow. Are you so quick to strike? To rush in and ask no questions?”
Robin paused, the cantrip still half-formed in his hands, blinking. He felt furious still, but also confused. He stared down at his palms as though they belonged to someone else. The flickering mana dancing between his fingertips was his own, but it looked darker somehow, a flickering pulse of angry energy.
“Steady on, Rob,” Henry said carefully from the doorway.
Karya took another step into the room. “What do you mean, you’re trying to help him?” she asked.
The women glanced at her, then back to Robin, who had lowered his hands, shakily.
“Answer her,” he demanded.
“We do not speak to that one,” one of the sisters hissed, thought Robin could not tell which had spoken. “She is no-one and nothing. Speak into a void and you will only hear your own echo.”
Robin glared at them. “Then you will answer me,” he snapped. “I am the Scion.” His voice sounded odd, even to himself, as though it were coming unbidden from somewhere deep inside.
“I am the Puck.”
All three women turned at this, giving Robin their full attention, although it was impossible to see their faces.
“Ah, there it is,” said one. “That peppercorn of darkness in the light.”
“We are healing him,” another said. “In so much as he can be healed by the likes of us … or anyone.”
Robin shot a look across the room at Woad, who looked a little sheepish. To the women he asked. “How did you know he was even here?”
“He called out to us,” one of them replied simply. “He has been calling out for some time now, though he does not know it, of course. We heard him.” She tapped the side of her head with a bony finger. It clacked audibly. “We can bear it no more.”
The woman nearest to Robin raised her hands in supplication. “Dim your fires, young Scion,” she said softly. “There is no ill intent here.”
Reluctantly, Robin unclenched his hands, forcing himself to relax. He felt his mana, which had gathered around him like the low brooding rumble before a thunderclap, slowly dissipating. It raced out and away from him like static electricity, charging the air in agitation. He swallowed, feeling as though he had a golf ball lodged in his throat. That he was literally forcing the Puck down. In the see-saw within, as the Puck descended, Robin rose back to the surface.
“Okay,” he said, a little shakily. He was aware that his friends were still watching from the doorway, all three with worried expressions. Had he really looked that bad? Everyone lost their temper from time to time, right? It wasn’t a crime.
“Okay,” he repeated, when he was sure that his voice was his own again. He glanced down at the still and sleeping Fae in the bed. “Help him how? Wake him?”
“Simple as spit,” they replied.
“Hope it’s not true love’s kiss,” Henry mumbled. “He’ll be waitin’ a long time for that.”
“Henry, you’re not helping.” Karya jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow.
One of the women reached out her hand, hovering it over Jackalope’s chest, just above the neatly tucked bedsheets. The fingers shook slightly.
“It’s time to come back, little Fae,” she said. Before Robin could reach out or speak, she clenched her hand into a fist and brought it down hard, cracking it against the boy with surprising strength. His whole body shook and juddered, and then, to Robin’s wide-eyed astonishment, Jackalope coughed.
The women drew back as one, gliding away from the bed as the white-haired boy coughed and spluttered again. His eyes flickered, face deepening into a frown and he rolled first onto his side and then straight off the bed, falling to the floor in a tangle of sheets.
Henry, Woad and Karya rushed into the room as Robin pushed past the women, dropping to one knee by Jackalope’s side.
“He’s actually moving?” Henry sounded astonished.
“He’s choking,” Karya said. The coughing fit continued. Jackalope had struggled to his hands and knees, hands splayed out on the floorboards as he retched, his pale spine arching.
Not knowing what else to do, Robin slapped him hard on the back. He seemed to be choking.
Something flew out of the boy’s mouth and rolled across the floor. It looked as though he had just coughed up a small ball of dark, rumpled paper. Karya and Henry had both dropped to the floor with Robin, as their patient took several deep and shuddering breaths.
Woad scampered over to the small dark object and with a look on his face that was both revolted and fascinated, nudged it with his foot.
They watched, transfixed, as the object shivered, and unfurled itself. What they had taken for paper was wings, dark and glossy. A large black moth sat on the floorboards, experimentally beating its dusty wings slowly, as though it had just emerged from a chrysalis.
“Grimm magic,” Robin heard one of the women hiss. “This was buried deep.” They had retreated further, gathering around the doorway. “We have done as he asked. He is purged.”
The moth suddenly fluttered to life, lifting off from the floorboards into the air. With wings fully unfurled it was large, as wide as Robin's hand span. They watched it flit fitfully into the air and circle the room a few times, before it made a bee-line for the open fireplace.
“Stop it!” yelled Karya, and she, Robin and Woad all skittered across the floor, grasping for the insect in vain, Jackalope momentarily forgotten. It ducked and whirled between their outstretched hands, disappearing up the large chimney in a whoosh.
“Damn it!” Karya snapped.
“I will catch it!” Woad growled, and without a second thought, he leapt into the ashy grate and scampered up the chimney after it, dislodging soot and cold embers. He vanished in pursuit, a ferret up a drainpipe, forcing Karya and Robin to shield their eyes from the grimy debris that erupted from the hearth.
“That was one of Peryl’s moths,” Karya said, coughing a little as the dust cloud settled.
Robin turned away from the fireplace, meaning to ask the sisters how they had known what to do, but they were gone. They had slipped out of the room as silent as ghosts, leaving the door to the corridor open.
“Rob?”
Henry’s voice, sounding oddly muffled, snapped Robin's attention away from the door and back to the bedside. He froze.
Jackalope was awake. He stood facing Robin and Karya, who still knelt in the soot by the grate. His eyes were wide and wild, silver irises flashing from the boy to the girl and back in confusion and panic. He looked unsteady on his feet and sheened with a cold sweat. Of more immediate concern was the fact that he held Henry before him like a human shield, one arm pinning Henry's arms flat to his body, the other tightly around his neck in a headlock.
Henry's face was an odd shade of red which made the Fae’s pallid complexion look even more ghostly as he glared over the boy’s shoulder at Robin and Karya.
“Jackalope,” Robin said slowly, moving to rise from his knees.
“Don’t!” Jackalope shouted, his voice, unused for so long, cracking hoarsely. “Don’t you move! I’ll snap his neck.”
Robin froze in mid crouch, his heart pounding. Slowly, he raised his hands, showing the other boy he was unarmed.
“Just … wait a second,” he began.
“Where am I?” Jackalope demanded. His voice still raspy and a little shaky with disorientation. “What is this place? Who are you
people?”
“Just let Henry go,” Robin said. “Let’s talk. You’re confused, I can see that. Let's–”
“Shut up!” Jackalope was trying to watch both Robin and Karya at the same time. Henry struggled in his grip, but the older boy, though he looked unsteady on his feet, was clearly far stronger. “Stop talking. Where are my things?”
“How are we supposed to answer that without talking?” Karya asked calmly, standing up slowly. Jackalope flinched at her movement, stepping backwards, dragging Henry with him, until his heels met the edge of the bed.
“I said don’t move,” he growled, twisting Henry's neck in a jerk.
“Yeah,” Henry gurgled furiously. “Don’t move, eh?” he suggested.
“My clothes and weapons,” Jackalope said. “What have you done with them? These garments are strange to me. This place is strange.”
“Those are Henry’s pyjama bottoms,” Robin explained, arms still held up peacefully. “Your wolf-rags weren’t very practical. You’re at Erlking. Please calm down, it’s okay, just–”
“Why the hell is he wearing my stuff?” Henry managed to gurgle angrily.
“I know you,” the white-haired boy said, coughing. “I know all of you.”
“We’re friends,” Karya said. “You’re amongst friends. You’ve not been well.”
“Friends?” Henry choked. “Might be … a strong term.” He tried to wrench himself away again, lifting his foot to stamp on Jackalope’s bare toes, but the Fae, weakened and unsteady as he might be, had quick reflexes and dodged the move.
“I don’t have friends,” he growled at them. “And that’s not what you are. You brought trouble to my door. I was safe and secret until you came, out of the snow.”
“Technically, it was you who brought us to your door,” Karya pointed out.
Robin stood beside her, slowly. “You need to let Henry go. Right now,” he said. He knew the other boy was just scared and confused. He should be trying to reason with him, talk him down, but he was suddenly awfully impatient with that idea.