Nettle Blackthorn and the Three Wicked Sisters

by Winter Woodlark

  “They got something better than gold,” Quary said to his companions. His pitch-black eyes shone with greed. He rubbed his hands lovingly upon the jar of chocolate spread. “They call it... Nuteeellllaaaa...,” he drooled.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Making Friends with Spriggans

  It was late morning and a misty drizzle cast a bleak shadow over the day. Downstairs, the fire was stocked well with wood, and the chimney, with its stone walls that rose through all the upper floors, radiated a pleasant warmth throughout the library. Nettle was sitting cross-legged in her dad’s leather armchair wearing a grey and white striped turtleneck with leggings. Her feet were snugly tucked into booted slippers, and her hair was piled up in a topknot, secured with several pencils.

  She’d spent the morning with her head in the journal that her father had slipped to her before disappearing with the Woodstock Twins. The journal was a notebook of sorts, filled with sketches of all manner of faerie and fauna and flora, and notes outlining everything her father knew about the creatures and pitfalls within the Forgotten Wilds. Fred had copied some information from the books contained within the library, but most were drawn from his own experiences. He’d even roughly sketched a map of the immediate area and indicated where he knew faerie were located. It had surprised Nettle to learn several boggarts dwelt in the marshlands surrounding the Forgotten Wilds, and nearby in the brook that encircled the cottage was a family of water sprites.

  In his hurried penmanship, her father had scribbled things to watch out for, and more importantly, how to combat them. She learnt about spriggans, treenawts, pixies and imps - their prickly nature easy to offend, and aversion to iron, rosebushes and sour milk; grenick-vines and toadstool sinques – her father wrote her a note about a time when he was ten and should have been cleaning the chook-house but to her grandfather’s ire had to be liberated from a sinque with a scattering of salt and pepper; brownies and sylphs – who, interestingly, could be diverted with song - sprites and gnomes and silver tongued salamanders. She was finishing up with bhangers, a distant relative of the gnome that could be distracted with shiny things: bottle caps and cascading chandelier earrings or tin foil, when she discovered to her great disappointment her father’s notations had come to an abrupt end. Double-checking she flicked through the diary and the remaining blank pages. Nothing. She felt a sudden sense of loss that often accompanied the closure of a good read, and softly sighed.

  But wait…

  Nettle came across a page near the back. Her father had written one name just once in the middle of the page and nothing else. And maybe written in anger, she concluded by the pressure he’d pressed upon the pencil. It was a curious name and meant nothing to her, but she suspected it meant a great deal to her father.

  Solstace Wittle.

  Such an unusual name, she rolled it around on her tongue finding it a little cumbersome. Solstace Wittle.

  It came back to her like a heavy book thumping shut.

  Solstace Wittle!

  It was the name her father hastily spoke to the twins, what did he say? Her brow creased in concentration. That was it! Aunt Thistle had been captured and her father had feared it was by Solstace Wittle. And here was the name in the diary. Whatever could it all mean?

  Her stomach suddenly grumbled. Nettle gave a wry smile and decided to return to her research after lunch. Whoever, or whatever Solstace Wittle was, could wait.

  Jazz sat on the floor in the middle of the living room, hunched over, painting her big toenail a sheer coral in wobbly brush strokes that bled over her cuticles. Jazz was proud of her work, even though she would have been cross with anyone else doing such a clumsy job on her nails.

  The tip of Jazz’s phone poked out of the back pocket of her St. Miriam’s tracksuit pants. Bram didn’t know why she bothered carrying it around since the cottage was completely out of cellphone range. Perhaps she carried the phone out of habit or comfort, he wondered. He was crouched behind her, and parallel to him, perched on a bookcase, was Spix. The young spriggan glared at Bram with bright black eyes. Yes, alright, Bram silently responded to the little fellow, I’m hurrying! He nervously fiddled with his glasses, trying to build up the courage. If this goes wrong and I get caught, she’s going to flay me. Spix pointedly jutted his prominent chin at the phone. Oh well, I guess it’s now or never, Bram thought. Holding his breath, he leaned forward and pinched the tip of Jazz’s Blackberry. He very gently slid it out of her pocket and waited for her reaction.

  Nothing happened. Jazz carried on painting her toenails. She obviously felt nothing amiss. A surge of triumph rushed through him. I did it! I did it! Grinning manically he punched the cellphone upward and mouthed “Yeeeah!” Unfortunately for him, he lost his balance and tumbled into Jazz pushing her forward. The bottle of nail polish was knocked over and spilled all over the magazine she’d sat it on.

  “Oh my God!” Jazz shrieked, shoving Bram from her. She righted the bottle. The cover of the magazine was ruined and she’d lost half of the varnish but at least the brat of a cousin hadn’t ruined her coat of nail polish. She whirled around. “You are so annoying!”

  “Sorry,” Bram responded contritely. He had righted himself but was still sitting on his bottom. Unease flared through him. He didn’t like the way she was looking at him. She was glowering. Her eyes narrowing into slits, and when she spotted what he clutched in his hand, her blue eyes flashed wide and shone with a brilliant intensity. “What do you think are you doing with my PHONE?!”

  “Nothing…” It came out weakly. The colour drained from his cheeks. He anxiously looked over to Spix for help, but the little spriggan was gone. He’d hidden behind the first volume of War and Peace.

  Jazz snatched her phone from him, her nails scratching his fingers. Bram scrambled to his feet, backing fearfully away as his cousin rose and stomped toward him. “Trying to steal from me now, are you?”

  Bram shook his head. “No Jazz… I was just…” She loomed over top of him.

  “Just what?!”

  Bram briefly considered simply bolting from the room. But his cousin was bigger and faster. “It slipped out of your pocket, I picked it up,” he lied.

  Jazz squinted at him suspiciously, wondering if he was telling the truth. Most of the time she couldn’t quite tell with him. It was a long tense moment for Bram, until she relaxed her sullen mouth. “Whatever,” she threw at him as she padded over to her manicure bag and tossed in the nail polish. And without even looking his way, said, “I’m off. I’ve got a dress fitting to get to. So, see you later.”

  Ordinarily, Bram would have wanted to go to Olde Town too, but he knew he was pushing his luck with his cousin. Quary sauntered in with his odd rolling gait, his thumbs tucked under his arms, hearing the last bit. “Well then, baldy-”

  Jazz lashed out with a foot. “Stop calling me that, pipsqueak!”

  Quary nimbly jumped out of harm’s way, laughing and cackling. “You’d better return with some more of what puckered-poo promised us.”

  “Bramble,” corrected Bram scowling, the truce they’d had between them had proven to be short-lived. He noted the eye-patch had shifted back to the other eye.

  Quary ignored him. “Promised us chocolate gold. Said, only you could procure it.” He readjusted his hat that had come askew. “Maybe rat-droppings was lying,” Quary accused with a cursory glance the lad’s way. “And if he was, then I guess me and the lads would have to-”

  “What?” interrupted Jazz sarcastically. “Cut my hair off? Already done that.” She tapped her lips pretending to think as she stalked toward him. “Or what about drawing stupid pictures of me on the walls? Or ruining all my clothes?” She leaned down fixing him with a powerful glare.

  Quary’s fat lips twitched. He stood his ground. “Maybe I might say to me brother Roq, to skin you, like he wants.”

  Jazz stood back up. She lazily crossed her arms and rolled her eyes in that way that said, as-if.

  Quary’s one beady eye fixated on B
ram. “I might start with the lad here. Skin `im like a rabbit, nice and thorough-like, there’s enough of him to make a few jackets and some hats, perhaps.”

  “Go ahead,” defied Jazz feeling she was in a win-win scenario.

  “Jazz!” Bram squawked, fearing she was going to goad them into doing it.

  Jazz rolled her eyes at her cousin. “OK, OK, calm down. I was just kidding,” she said in an annoyed tone that expressed she thought he was being such a whiny baby. “I’ll bring back a couple of jars.”

  “One for each of us.” Quary grinned while rubbing his stubby hands. “Maybe one more for me, being as I’m the Captain and all.”

  “Whatever,” she griped, giving Quary a filthy look before striding off.

  Spix ventured out from behind the book. For a spriggan, he was slight of frame and due to his young age, his hair had not grown much length. Someone had given him a really bad fringe, bluntly hacking at the front, it reminded Bram of one of Nettle’s earliest hair-cuts she’d given him. “Has she gone?” the spriggan asked. Bram nodded, giving his friend a thanks-for-nothing look. Spix said sheepishly, “Oooo, but she right scares me so.”

  “Don’t she just.” Quary agreed a little wistfully. He pensively gazed at Jazz’s retreating figure, and then said to no one in particular. “She’s a mean one, in’t she?”

  Spix and Bram exchanged an amazed look: Quary Gravel spoke of Jazz with more than a pinch of admiration.

  “Come on,” Bram urged Spix, “lets go have some lunch.”

  Nettle found Bram at the kitchen table heavily laden with food. Just about everything they owned had been dragged out of the pantry. The spriggans were eating with a ferocious appetite and Egnatius was in the middle of explaining to Bram the finer details of lifting a wallet. He was a shrivelled old spriggan, his lips dry and set permanently in a dour expression but that was because, as they’d soon learnt, he often sat puffing on a pipe. He wore a simple shirt with a brown woollen vest and pants cut off below the knee. He was not dressed colourfully, like his companions - the colour of his clothes matched his skin tone so evenly, and the still way that he sat or stood meant Nettle often mistook him for a misplaced rock.

  Nettle slid into an empty seat and lay her father’s journal down on the table beside her.

  “What’s that?” Bram reached over to pick up the book.

  “Something Dad made up for me. He’s written everything he knows about the Wilds.” Nettle nudged Roq out of her way. He was sitting on the table chomping down a dehydrated cicada, while busily stacking crackers together between layers of ham and mushroom and dead ants. He gave her a fearsome look, but Nettle’s was more formidable.

  Bram flicked through the pages. “You know,” he said, “since the spriggans are here… I’m pretty sure we can learn a lot more about what goes on the Wilds from them.”

  “The lad’s right about that,” Sandee agreed, stabbing a hunk of cheese with her flint sword. Just about all the spriggans weapons were made out of flint and Sandee in particular always kept hers sharply honed.

  Over lunch and into the afternoon the siblings learnt about all sorts of faerie they’d never heard of before, nor were mentioned in the journal Fred made for Nettle. Bram busily added his own notes to Fred’s journal as the spriggans elaborated on - often arguing minor points or talking over-top of one another - acid spitting hyppogossmers; krokker gremmels who vomited up big pools of a sticky tar like substance to trap their victims in; hobben-gnomes a shy faerie who came out only at night to lick nectar from the gloamshade flower with long tapered tongues; and how to avoid the seven-toed spratte who liked nothing better to chew on than the gristle of an ear.

  There were numerous faerie and folk who lived in the Forgotten Wilds but Egnatius, the oldest of the spriggans, was only a lad when the Thicket sprung up, separating him from his family. And though he had a wealth of knowledge about the immediate area he grew up in, he had not travelled far to learn of the wider community.

  The afternoon took on a dreary quality. The mist hadn’t lifted, but had grown thicker with the hour. They’d scattered pillows and cushions around the floor of the living room creating a semi circle around Egnatius. The fire cast an amber glow in the room and they lounged, sprawled out like cats, basking in its warmth listening to Egnatius spinning tales of his youth.

  The old spriggan loved it, Nettle could tell; there was a spark of exhilaration that shone in his black eyes. His stubby fingers cradled the pipe-bowl as he pressed a finely shredded leaf inside. “Since Quary and Roq grew of age, we’ve been travelling around the Thicket, trying to find a way back into the Wilds,” explained Egnatius, eyeing her with small rheumy eyes, heavily hooded. The spriggans had quickly adopted Nettle’s moniker for what they’ve always referred to as the wall or blimmin’-beastly-barrier, in Quary’s case.

  Bram looked up from the journal in surprise. “It’s taken you all that time to circumnavigate it?”

  Nettle blinked, astounded at just how large the scope of the Forgotten Wilds was. She glanced at Roq and Quary. They looked maybe as old as their father, and that would have meant they’d been travelling for years, decades even. “It must be enormous.”

  “We’ve stopped and started many a time,” said Sandee, sharing a cushion with Roq who lay on his back flicking dead flies into the air, trying to catch them in his mouth. “Especially moving slowly or backtracking when Quary here, has one of his fandangle ideas to make us rich.” Sandee chortled and Roq gave a sniggering snort.

  Quary puffed a little, riled at being mocked. But he didn’t argue the point.

  Something else Nettle was curious about was briefly mentioned in regards to Bram’s new friend Spix. “You mentioned – Catcher – yesterday, what did you mean?”

  “Oh, the Wilds are rife with those `round here. Trolls and other black-hearted brutes catching Folk like us, bagging us up and dragging us down to their burrows, for who knows what. Probably to truss us up and spit-roast, no doubt,” Sandee said.

  Nettle gave a little shiver and shared a horrified look with her brother. It sounded horrible, and another reason to honour her promise to her father and keep out of the Wilds.

  “So the Thicket just sprung up out of nowhere?” Bram asked next. He was tapping his pencil against his lips. Nearby, Spix sat cross-legged sharpening Bram’s pencils with a star-shaped pencil sharpener. He was fascinated by the process, making endless ribbons of fine shavings that were piling up around his bare feet. It reminded Nettle of her father and his wood-carving, and a wretched twinge coursed through her.

  “Aye, it did.” Egnatius lit his pipe and drew in a smoky breath. His weary glance slid over Bram and fixed upon the fire and when he next spoke his voice had lowered, becoming retrospect. “The noise, it were horrendous. A rumbling in the ground. It had me shaking off me feet, rattling me teeth.”

  Nettle thought back to the earthquakes up in Olde Town, and a shiver ran through her. The noise of it had made her think the whole hill was going to come apart around her.

  The old spriggan took another puff on his pipe, watching the smoke drift apart. “It had me bouncing around, bumping me sideways. Then the earth tore open, and dirt and rock and anything in its way was ripped in two, as these stems and stalks arose from under the ground, knocking aside tree and root, churning through rock as if it were butter. Hills became rubble and river and stream were gone another way.” He heaved a heavy sigh his gaze dropping. “Split the den in two. It broke me ma’s heart to hear me wailin’ on the other side. Roq and Quary were wee’uns, playing out in the rock-rivers, while their Da worked, and ended up on the wrong side of the Thicket too.”

  “Aye,” said Quary miserably, and he rubbed at his good eye with the back of his hand. His voice sounded oddly strained and Bram glanced up to wonder if he might actually be weeping. “Both of us too young to even remember our Da.” Bram’s throat pinched. He knew that feeling only too well himself.

  Egnatius’s tone lightened a little as he looked up and over to
the two brothers. “I found you both and raised you as well as I could. Little good it did either of us.” He gave Quary and Roq and stern look that Nettle could see was all bluster. “All grown up and not listening to a word I say.”

  “How long ago did the Thicket arise?” Bram asked, his pencil poised to write.

  “Oh, it were a long while ago.” He tapped out the pipe’s ash and repacked the bowl with the leafy rub and lit it drawing long breaths of a smoke that he blew out in fluffy white clouds, as he gave it some thought. “Maybe a few hundred years at least.”

  “A few hundred years?!” blurted Nettle without thinking. “How old are you?” A few hundred years? And they’d been travelling most of that time around the Thicket. How big could the Thicket possibly be? It looked enormous on the map, but maybe the map drawn by humans wasn’t accurate at all.

  She cringed as Egnatius’s crinkled face spat at her, “Don’t got no manners have you? Askin’ me age? Pah. Next you be askin’ if I’ve a wife...”

  Nettle felt crushed, it was the type of comment Jazz wouldn’t have thought twice about making. “I didn’t mean any disrespect.”

  He gave her a good-natured wink, to which Nettle felt a great deal better about herself and her thoughtless blunder. He squinted at her. “Yer a bit tall for my likin’ but I suppose you might do for a wife.”

  Nettle shared a grin with her brother before asking, “And can no one cross over it?” She knew she could cross the Thicket, but for now wanted to keep it to herself. She hadn’t even shared that knowledge with Bram.

  “Aye.” It was Quary who answered. “There’s rumours of rare folk who can. As to why and how, no one knows. But if I ever found myself in company of such a fine fellow I’d be sure to get back home to me Ma and Da.”

  Nettle had to bite down on the inside of her mouth to stop herself from a sharp gasp of surprise and the immediate grin of satisfaction that threatened to follow. She was glad to have kept her secret to herself, for if she ever had need to convince the spriggans of a venture, she had just the right kind of persuasion.