by Hal Bodner
When the sun rose and he still lived, Rum understood his mother still needed him. The plagues of man afflicted Toroia Wood yet she, unlike Bricka, might still be saved. Rum spent the day skittering through the forest on his backwards yellow legs, attending to Toroia’s every need. Here, he tended saplings snapped by horses. There, he drew human pestilence from a birthing pool. Through all the mending, Rum worked alone. So far as he knew, he was the last of his kind.
The diseases of men, the despair of fenced cows, and the blind fear of slaughtered pigs had sickened all those birthed by Toroia Wood. The men had savaged and opened her, sawing off her fingers and toes, tearing new wounds with each bite of their saws. Soon they had built a castle inside her, lodged in her great wet throat like a granite spike.
Rum had seen the terrible place only once. He had slipped inside to steal honey, hoping to soothe Bricka’s cough. The castle stood wide and stout, blocks of cut stone that weighed upon each other, built around the bones of a thousand screaming trees.
Glitta, his wife, had once told him humans were blind to the old world. She pitied them that loss, pitied them even as they cut her birthing tree with metal saws. She died with her tree, crumpled in his arms and clutching their daughter.
Rum was crawling on all fours, breathing life into a field of trampled clovers, when the crying assaulted his ears, a pure sound filled with longing and woe. Despite the night’s grief he needed to know the source, and he soon found a human girl weeping by the stream. She wore only a threadbare cloak and simple broken sandals, a poor match for a winter chill as this.
Rum considered leaving her—humans brought nothing but misery and trouble. Yet her sobbing reminded him of Bricka, so recently lost, and so he made himself air and slipped closer. What pain had left her so distraught?
She bore no injuries. Was she cold? Perhaps she had lost a child or a mother. The winter had taken humans along with fairies and their kin. Despite the way men brutalized his Toroia, Rum’s heart went out to her. He hurt for what suffered.
When he could stand her cries no longer, he took the form of a kindly old man. He could sustain this glamour for but a brief time, an aspect of his anima. He approached her in this guise.
“What ails you, dear child?”
Her head whipped about like a startled snake. Cold had reddened her pale skin and she showed teeth bright, but worn. Two wet pits made her eyes, right in the center of her puffy face, and her nose looked like a twig grown the wrong way.
“Who are you?” The girl spoke in suspicion and worry. “I warn you, I have a knife.”
It was always war with humans, always rage or sex or fear. “I mean you no ill, my lady.” He forced a kind, human gaze. “I heard you in mourning. Tell me, why do you cry?”
She rubbed her ruddy nose and sniffled. “King Harold has banished me from the castle.”
“Why?”
“Because of Rosella. Wicked Rosella.” Her blue eyes narrowed. “The princess gorged herself on apple pies, fresh as the sun and all the way from Darrow. They were for the king’s banquet. When the king asked her where they were, she said I stole them!”
The world of men. They took what they wanted, when they wanted, and when their crimes found them they sought others to blame. The lowest of them always bore the consequences.
“What is your name, my lady?”
“Ricka.” She sniffled again. “I’m no lady.”
Rum’s heart fluttered. Ricka. Bricka. So close were the names he suspected the girl was another fairy playing a cruel trick. Yet she looked human. Smelled human. Could his mother have twisted things so strangely, so soon?
Toroia Wood asked much of her children, but she had a generous spirit. Had she sent this discarded daughter to replace his own? She was a strange gift, nothing like he desired, yet already a warm place had opened in his heart.
“Where will you go now? Have you family to take you in?”
“Mum died last year.” She shook her head. “Pa died in the war. The castle was my home.” With that she began to weep once more. “I’m going to die, starving in this wood!”
Rum went to her without thinking, holding her fragile form in his odd man arms. “Hush. You will not die.” He found what he needed in memories from his time with Glitta. “There is a village at the edge of this wood. Ashmount.”
Ricka sniffled. “I have no family there.”
“There is an inn.”
She pushed away, eyes narrow once more. “Why do you tease me so? I have no gold, no coins to buy supper.”
“Gold.” Yes. The humans treasured the dead substance like his own anima, foolish and stupid, but foolishness was the way of their kind. “If you had gold, would you stay at the inn?”
She huffed. “Of course.”
“Then we must make gold for you.” Rum examined her threadbare cloak, her shorn sheep sweater, her dead cow pants and her rotting sandals. Nothing of the wood, nothing of the earth, nothing he could work with his anima except …
“Your hair.” The tangled brown nest wrapped around her head. “Give me a lock of your hair.”
Her hand went to her belt, to her knife. “What do you want with my hair?”
“I will buy it.” He smiled. “I will trade you gold.”
“You will?” Her eyes widened.
“Just a lock,” he assured her. “Nothing more.”
Indecision held her but a moment, a struggle between worry and hope. Then she pulled her knife from her belt, took her hair in a firm grip, and sawed. She worked hard and grimaced often, but the lock she handed him was half as heavy as Bricka when she died.
“Please, good sir.” She trembled. “I have little else.”
Rum showed her his back. He held the lock of hair in both wrinkled palms, easing his anima into and through it. Strand by strand, her plain brown hair turned to gold.
When he finished weaving his magic, he turned back to her and gave her the lock of golden stands. She almost dropped it. “This is gold!”
“It is yours. None can deny its value. Use it to buy a place at the inn.”
Ricka swallowed. “I could buy an inn with this!”
“Then save it.” This simple solution pleased Rum greatly. “Keep it hidden. Spend the gold only as you need food or lodging until you can find a new home, one that won’t accuse you of stealing pies.”
She nodded and clutched the hair to her shallow chest. “Thank you. Thank you so much. Please, tell me your name.”
Rum grimaced. “I cannot.”
“But why?” Her lips parted in dismay.
Rum dared not tell her that a fairy’s true name gave mortals power of them, no matter how innocent she might seem. “I would not trouble you with a hermit’s simple name.”
“Oh please. I must know you!” She beseeched him with joined hands outstretched. “Who will I thank when I sleep in a warm bed, eating a warm meal?”
Rum smiled. “Thank the forest. Thank Toroia.” Then he turned himself into butterflies.
Such a blatant demonstration was foolish, even reckless, but the artistry and theater reminded Rum of all the games he and Glitta had played together. This was a trick, a fairy trick like those of old, but a kind one. Ricka would tell her children of the kind old butterfly man when she was old and gray.
The forest called to him, anxious with pain, and he soon forgot the girl and her plaintive cries. So many wounds marred the wood. At nightfall he returned to the graves of his family and slept, his grief still fresh, his tears still real, but the thrill of a single life saved tempered the raw pain of their passing.
The girl did not return for many days. She came to the wood again the day Rum tended an injured fox, calling for him. The poor fox had gnawed its own leg off, desperate to escape a cruel metal trap, and it hurt. At Ricka’s call he worked more urgently, focusing his anima with more force than he intended. A new leg spat out of the bloody stump and the fox yelped.
Rum mumbled a dozen apologies as the fox darted off, bushy tail between
its legs, but he had returned its leg. How could it complain? He rushed toward the cries.
“Toroia!” Ricka called into the trees. “I must see you!”
Rum found her. He floated about her as air. Talking to her again was foolish—it would only encourage her—yet her name continued to tug at his heart. Ricka, like his Bricka. Against his better judgment, he showed himself once more.
“Toroia!” Her mouth opened wide as she ran to him. “You came!” She threw her arms around him and warmed him like the morning sun. Would his daughter have run to him like this if she had lived three more seasons? Joyous at his return?
“Ricka, I am here.” He brushed her brown hair almost without thinking. “What is it? What is so urgent?”
“The king!” she gushed. “He wants me back!”
Rum dared not believe that. “Rosella revealed her lie?”
“Oh no, not that!” Ricka hugged him tight. “It’s the hair! He saw the hair! He wants me to return to the castle!”
Rum’s anima grew chill as coldest winter. Greed filled the human king, as did avarice and spite. Ricka had run from him, exiled forever. He had never imagined she could go back.
“What did you tell him?”
She pulled away. “Nothing about you. I wouldn’t. I told him I made it.”
“The hair?”
“The gold.” She chewed her lower lip. “I told him I spun my hair into gold. I thought that if he saw it, if he believed I had done it out of devotion to him, he would welcome me back.”
“And he believed you?”
“Oh, yes!” Ricka recovered her earlier exuberance. “I’m headed to the castle now! He’s going to let me live in a tower!”
“No.” Rum stepped forward. “You cannot go to him.”
Ricka just frowned. “Why?”
“He will want more gold.” Rum put steel into his voice. “He will always want more gold.”
Ricka pondered that. “Then, why not make him more?”
More, of course. With these humans, it was always more.
“What I gave you was special,” Rum told her patiently, “a rare gift with a high price. I cannot make such gifts so often as your king will demand.”
Ricka trembled at that. “You can’t? But, Toroia—”
In the distance, frothing horses carried men. Rum sensed them closing. He hushed her with a raised hand. “Run.”
She glanced behind her. “Why? I don’t—”
Rum sensed the arrow before it flew from the trees. He turned himself to air. It thunked into the dirt as a king cursed from the woods, and then men and horses bore down on them. They surrounded Ricka, four of them, three wearing boiled cow. King Harold, the one who had fired the arrow, wore glittering steel. He was a thick, meaty human with a cruel, sharp face. His short brown hair clutched his silver crown like dead, twisted branches.
Ricka cowered from the frothing horses. King Harold forced his enslaved beast around. The weary horse cried as it chewed at the bit.
“Ricka.” Harold fixed her with hard wet pits of brown. “You are mine now.”
“Toroia?” Ricka looked this way and that. “Toroia, help me!”
Rum hated every moment he hid within the air, but he dared not reveal himself. King Harold knew of the fairies of Toroia Wood, as did his soldiers. Dozens had died before they learned that. The humans believed ground up fairy bones offered cures for dozens of ills, and so they did—for all but the fairy. A boiled cow man dragged Ricka onto his horse.
“Toroia!” she called again. “Please!”
Rum cursed himself as they rode away. He could not stop these men, but he could follow them. Soon the great pile of crushing stone rose ahead, dead rocks and tree bones. Rum watched them shove Ricka through the halls. He watched them drag her up the steps and into the tower. He watched King Harold grip her hair so hard he might twist her head off.
When he was done with her, threats made, he locked her in the tower with a dozen bushels of straw. Rum made himself seen again.
“Toroia!” She leapt up and hugged him tight. “The king. He asked me—”
“I heard.” Rum grimaced. “We must get you out of here.”
Rum knelt to open the manacle around her ankle. His hand erupted in fire. He fell into the straw, losing his hollow form and becoming himself. A shriveled body with backward legs.
Ricka gasped. “What is it?”
“Iron.” Rum pushed himself up and spit, angry as a nettled bear. King Harold had consulted the Witchmen of the Ranarok. He had learned the bane of fairies.
“What are you?” Ricka gazed at him with wide eyes.
“Am I hideous?” Rum grinned at her with long white teeth, still reeling from the sting of the iron. “Frightening?”
“No.” Ricka shook her head. “Of course not. But you are not the man you showed yourself to be.”
Rum settled his wrinkled legs beneath his quivering, hairless body. “No.” He sighed. “I suppose not.”
Ricka swallowed. “You heard him. All this straw, gold, all in one night. Or else—”
“Your head is his.” Rum repeated the king’s brutal threat. “A plaything for his daughter.”
“I’m sorry I showed him the hair. This is my fault.”
“I do not blame you.” Rum wiped his brow. “But I cannot free you.”
Her eyes grew wide and wet. “Then am I to die?”
“No.” He had lost Glitta, lost Bricka. He would not lose her. “You will not die.” He meant it before. He meant it now.
The tower held a massive amount of straw, more than he had ever seen. Spinning it all would consume a great deal of his anima, far more than healing a fox or mending a sapling. Yet what did he have to live for save her? Ricka? Bricka?
“Rest tonight, my child.” Rum turned his voice soft and soothing. He touched her lightly with his anima to muddle her mind and ease her fear. “Close your eyes.”
She did. It was easy. Just like that she was asleep.
Rum spent the rest of the night spinning straw into gold, throwing his anima into the work. The grueling task hurt him greatly, but on the morrow the tower swelled with human greed. The effort left him forever diminished, half what he had been before, and he would never recover—but Ricka would live.
Boots sounded on the tower stairs. Rum made himself air and stepped to the wall. The tower door crashed open.
“You did it.” King Harold gaped at the tower filled with gold. His steel had vanished. Now, he wore a dozen murdered wolves. “Up, you slattern!”
He shook Ricka. She stirred. She scrambled away from his clutching arms and greedy grin. “What do you want?”
Harold threw his arms out and spun, taking in the glory of his golden tower. “You did it! You made all this straw gold!”
Ricka looked about, mouth agape. “I did!”
Rum prayed his plan would work. Harold would never let Ricka go—he knew that—but once the king opened the iron manacle he could spirit them both away.
Ricka stood. “It’s done? I’m free?” She trembled and clutched herself.
Harold stared about the tower with a familiar gleam in his eye. The tower held enough wealth to buy King Harold’s subjects five hundred harvest festivals, but Rum knew the gold would not be spent for such. It would buy the king’s horses and Princess Rosella’s gilded toys.
Harold walked to the metal peg still locked into the floor. He produced a key. Rum readied himself and then choked on dismay. Harold simply turned the key, removed the peg, and picked up the iron chain. The manacle remained on Ricka’s ankle.
“You’re coming with me,” he said.
Ricka looked beaten. “To where?”
“The western tower.” Her brutally jerked on the iron chain.
Ricka followed him meekly and Rum thought no worse of her. Harold had trained her, abused her, broken her like all the other animals in his castle. Rum evaluated Harold and the manacle at every step. He would save his daughter, but how?
The next tower
held twice as much straw as the first. Harold locked the peg into the floor and then took Ricka’s chin in one thick hand. He squeezed her face hard enough to turn her red.
“All gold, by tomorrow.” He devoured her with his eyes. “Or I’ll let my guards have you, and then I’ll take your head.”
Rum almost cut him down right then and there. A single lick of anima would poison Harold’s blood or boil his skin, yet he restrained himself with a great effort. Toroia, his mother, taught that murder was sin. Disappointing her would be more painful than chewing off his own hand. He would die first.
After Harold left, Rum made himself seen again.
“I’ll never be free.” Ricka wept. “We’re doomed.”
“Don’t despair.” Rum marched around the straw-filled tower, backward legs bending slightly lower than usual. He felt sick. He had spent too much of himself in the prior night.
“If we spin this tower, he will only ask for more.” Rum grimaced. “I cannot spin forever.”
“What will happen to you?”
“I will end, as all things must end.”
Ricka scrambled toward him and then tripped at the length of her chain. “No. You can’t die.”
“I do not plan too,” he assured her, though he feared this an idle boast. “Test the manacle. Can you open it?”
Ricka sat, and tugged, and pulled with all her might. She shook her head and despaired.
Rum sighed. “Then I must spin this straw.”
“No! You cannot!”
“I will not let his guards have you.” A seething disgust filled Rum as he imagined men doing to Ricka as they lusted to do, always. Brutal, carnal, evil.
Ricka sniffled. “Why are you so concerned with me?”
“Because I had a daughter, days ago.” Rum’s muddy eyes grew wet. “Now she’s gone.”
Ricka cast about for any hope. “There must be another way.”
“There’s not.” Rum put her to sleep.
The night’s work taxed him even more than the last. By the morning Rum barely had enough anima to make himself air. His throat bled, his stomach churned, and his brittle bones swelled, hollow and sore. His skin peeled like bark on a dead tree.