Faerie's Champion

by M. H. Johnson

  “That’s right!” affirmed their leader. “It was gone. But left behind was that same brackish scent. Which makes no sense, as there is neither swamp nor estuary nor trace of the sea to be found in these parts.”

  The wronged brother nodded. “Indeed. No trace of the girl who had captured my heart, and no trace of the mirror that had captured my incredibly handsome good looks. Both vanished, as if they had never been.” The wolf sighed. “But that’s not the end of it. Oh no. For when we followed the scent of the trail, it led us right to Crabapple Cave, in the heart of Applegrove lands!” All the wolves nodded in unison at this. “Therefore, it is the Applegroves’ responsibility to get our mirror back!”

  Jess blinked at this. “So you are saying it is the sheep’s, I mean the Applegrove’s responsibility to return to you a mirror they never stole?”

  The loquacious wolf paused to consider this. “Well, we don’t know that they didn’t take it, and since it's on their lands, their lands profit from our possession, so we have the right to redress.” His brethren nodded in unison at this logic.

  "But we have nothing to do with your missing mirror, you dunderheads!" declared one of the sheep farmers hotly. "We have problems of our own to deal with. A monster has taken up residence in Crabapple Cave, and if that's where your mirror is, then you are welcome to it!"

  The lead wolf’s nose twitched. “A likely story. A monster, ha! How about you just return our mirror to us, and we’ll call the issue resolved, unless you want us blowing more of your homes down?”

  Jess blinked. “You’ve been blowing their houses down?”

  The wolf in question shrugged. “Well, yes. We have pretty good lungs. Howling does that for one.” The six wolves nodded in agreement.

  The head sheep was so irate he threw down his hat, baaing in frustration. “We have nothing to do with your missing mirror! If you want it, by all means, go into that cave and get it for yourselves. I hereby give you permission to do just that!”

  The head wolf's eyes widened with alarm. “Are you crazy? There might be a monster down there!”

  “But you just said it was just an excuse!” an exasperated Jess noted.

  The wolf shrugged. “Well, yes. But what if I'm wrong?”

  “Well, if you are wrong, and indeed it was a monster that stole your mirror and not these sheep, I mean, the Applegroves, then shouldn’t you stop blaming them for the theft?”

  The six wolves looked at each other and murmured before their leader turned once again to face Jess. “Well, perhaps it's not a monster. Perhaps it’s a trick.” Multiple nods. “That’s right, it could be a trick. So we are going to assume it’s a trick, but of course we’re not stupid enough to actually go down there and risk getting eaten by a monster. So until the sheep get us our mirror back, we will continue blowing their houses down.”

  One of the wolves grinned. “It is rather easy, you know. For some reason, they’re all made of straw.”

  "Well of course we make them out of straw!" one of the sheep bleated angrily. "We can put them up in less than a day! What's the point of getting all hog-fancy, if your neighbors are just going to come by and blow them down again?"

  The wolf shrugged.

  Twilight looked at Jess. “There are so many things wrong with this conversation that it boggles the mind.”

  Jess smirked even as she gazed at the plaintive sheep and grumbling wolves, both groups lacking something significant in the spine department.

  Jess stroked to her grinning cat. “Are you thinking what I'm thinking?”

  Twilight nodded. “I think we’ve hit our next fork.”

  “Fork? Are we having lunch already?” one of the sheep inquired hungrily, their irate cousins nodding in unison.

  “Oh yes indeed. Let us celebrate the solution over a shared lunch!” declared the most vocal of the wolves.

  One of the sheep laughed. “Indeed, dear Roundacre. 'Tis time we got past our differences, is it not?”

  The wolf nodded, and as sudden as it was unexpected, the sheep and wolves were talking and joking amicably amongst themselves, as if there had never been a row between their two families.

  Twilight blinked. “What just happened?”

  Jess looked slightly peeved. “I think they just assumed we’re going to explore the cave in question, and uncover the mystery for ourselves.”

  “Oh yes, thank you ever so much!” the representatives from both families declared in unison, patting Jess on the back warmly, leading her and her familiar into the nearby woods, pointing to a rather grim looking cave at the bottom of a shadowy ravine that did indeed smell brackish as they approached, even to Jess’s quite human nose. “We’ll be back at the Roundacre cabin, come by when you have it all sorted out, there’s a good knight for you!”

  With a final wave, both groups of farmers left Jess and Twilight by the eerie cave, the surrounding forest strangely still as the afternoon light waned, the ravine sinking into a deep, pervasive gloom.

  Twilight gave his ear an irritated scratch, flicking an irate glance at the departing animals. “What just happened again?”

  Jess chuckled softly. “Somehow, we got roped into clearing a cave. Come, Twilight. Who knows? Perhaps we shall uncover something interesting besides their mirror. Hmm. That’s two mirrors we’ve been asked to find.”

  Twilight nodded. “Indeed. And both seem to show the viewers idealized versions of themselves, assuming they aren't all simply wrapped up in their own strange delusions, of course.”

  Jess nodded. “Yet another piece of the puzzle, or at least an interesting bit of glamour like one reads about in storybooks or adventurer's tales. Yet I've never heard of any wizard or artifact back home being able to change the looks or perceptions of others. So anything else we find of interest, I’m keeping, just to see the look on Alex and Malek's faces when I show them how handsome they could be in Faerie! Adventurer’s prerogative, and all that.”

  Her familiar chuckled. “Considering that you were roped into this little venture, I don’t see how anyone could object.”

  Jess took a deep breath, centering her focus, taking the first step into the brooding cave from which the faint echoes of a lingering scream could still be heard.

  44

  The brackish smell of standing water grew in intensity as Jess made her way within the deep cavern, her vision quickly adjusting to the luminescent glow of various moss and lichens growing upon the walls and ceiling, water dripping slowly but steadily from the myriad stalactites overhead.

  Jess found herself grinning despite the dank smell and her slime covered boots, reveling in the chance to experience a new adventure, to lose herself in the intensity of the moment, leaving the helpless ache of a pining heart far behind. “Here we are, once again Delving into the unknown,” she whispered happily to her familiar.

  “Frankly, I would be just as happy with a nicely poached mackerel,” Twilight quipped, sapphire eyes alert and ready, focusing on anything and everything within sight, comfortably perched upon Jess’s right shoulder, well away from the foul smelling water flooding the cavern floor.

  Cautiously Jess made her way forward, stepping carefully through the stagnant water, unsheathed longsword leading the way, the huge cavern mouth slowly narrowing into a wide tunnel as they made their way deeper within. Bad as the stink of the sour water was, the stench was soon compounded by a reptilian musk as they strode ever deeper into the gloom. It was then that Jess heard a series of oddly echoing sobs and cries resonating through the vast tunnel.

  “Twilight!”

  “Yes, I know. Let us proceed cautiously, though. We know not what lies ahead.”

  Jess nodded. “Malek?” One word. Her familiar understood instantly.

  “No. We are in Faerie, not the Shadowlands as we know them. I know not what effect trying to pull him through would or would not have. This realm is alien to our kind. Remember, only by the light of the moon could you and Rulia even enter, and never have you been so restricted before.
>
  Jess sighed. “You’re right, of course. It is just you and me then, my beloved friend.”

  Quietly they proceeded, the tunnel slowly turning rightwards before opening into a vast chamber filled with such an intensity of glowing moss that all was bathed brilliantly in a sickly green light. Sparkling like a myriad of flashing diamonds just under the surface of the water were countless hand mirrors. Some were plain, many fancy, some shattered, yet most of the hand mirrors were in pristine condition.

  And within the very center of the chamber, glowing eerily in the reflected light of the moss, was a creature straight out of nightmare.

  Jess gasped, overwhelmed by the sudden awful stench of decay as the monstrous apparition sitting upon a nest of pulsating coils turned its grotesque countenance to gaze upon the intruders that had dared to enter its chambers, and so hideous was the slime covered figure, so knotted and distorted was its body and face, that Jess had to fight to keep her gourd, refusing to take her eyes off her foe, however dearly she wanted to run and puke.

  “By the gods!” Jess hissed, even as Twilight uttered a low unearthly growl, unlike anything Jess had ever heard before. She felt her familiar flow off her shoulder like darkest shadow, could sense the terrible tendrils of oblivion flowing in his wake, knowing on some primal level that her dear familiar was about to embrace a far more savage side to his nature than she could recall having witnessed in a very long time.

  Jess felt the heady rush of battlefrenzy begin to take hold, her heart racing with an intoxicating mix of exhilaration and terror.

  And then the horrific entity before them opened its hideously distorted mouth and began to weep, and Jess suddenly understood where the panicked cries of a young girl were coming from.

  "Help me!"

  The hideous apparition begged in the voice of a frightened girl, one that was chillingly familiar. Jess shuddered in horror and revulsion so great she could barely contain it, blinking away hot tears of terrible pity. Jess slowly resheathed her blade as she gazed upon the awful thing before her. A creature which did perhaps look like a young woman, if one had been stretched, twisted, covered with filth, maggots, pustules and gaping sores, eyes stretched out and splayed, mouth warped into a grotesque maw, limbs broken and flayed into a dozen squirming tentacles by some unspeakably cruel deity. Only then could Jess reconcile this hideous travesty with the childlike voice she heard emanating from its throat.

  “Please.” Its cry was agonized. Terrible.

  “By the gods… who, what are you?” Jess whispered.

  “Please!” It sobbed, howling in its horrific sorrow.

  Hilt still clamped to her lead hand, Jess nonetheless raised her gauntlets to ears to block out the more hideous shrieks. “By Justice, stop! What is it you would have of me?”

  The creature abruptly stopped its piteous wailing, again transfixing Jess with the horror of its grotesquely twisted face, its bloated, pleading eyes. "Kill me!"

  Jess blinked. “What?”

  “Kill me!” The poor creature sobbed. “There is no escape for me. No end to this curse! I cannot stand what I have become. I beg of you, end it for me, please!”

  Jess sensed no malice from the horror before her. Just the soul of a being seared by regret and self-loathing so great that death itself seemed preferable. "Why don't you tell me your tale first?" Jess asked. "Perhaps, perhaps there is some way I can help you. But first, what should I call you? You may call me Jess."

  For some reason Jess couldn’t comprehend, sharing her name had sent the creature into hideous paroxysms of wheezing. A wheezing that sounded suspiciously like laughter, under the harsh ragged breathing.

  “Jess! Jessica de Calenbry, the arrogant girl who thought she was better than all of us! Flaunting her eccentricities and her bloodline, making the rest of us feel like small wallflowers while she came to steal the show. Oh, that the fates would bring you to mock my curse now! How cruelly the world turns!” The creature's twisted laughter quickly turned to bitter sobs once more, and the cave shuddered, the creature methodically attempting to hammer its own skull into the wall in what seemed a fit of bitterest fury and despair.

  Jess had been rendered speechless, to be instantly recognized and hated by a creature she had never met, in a place she had only just stumbled across, even as numb horror washed through her.

  By the gods. She recognized that voice. “Angelica.”

  Flashes of a certain girl who had taken such grim satisfaction in mocking Jess in every class they had shared, her snide comments heard whenever they had supped at adjoining tables back at the Academy. A beautiful girl, if nasty in temperament, and one Jess had known she had no hope of ever connecting with. But Angelica was little more than a child, younger even than Jess, and now in the greatest distress Jess had ever been forced to witness, outside the hot cauldron of combat.

  Yet this was no battlefield. This was watching a girl hopelessly enmeshed in what seemed the vilest of curses. And however much Jess had disliked Angelica personally, seeing her mutated by the most depraved of magics into the wretched thing before her caused Jess’s heart to ache anew for the poor girl so cruelly transformed.

  “Angelica.” Jess did little more than whisper the name, but it was sufficient to stop the creature from attempting to hammer her grotesque skull into the wall any further.

  “Yes!” The creature shrieked. “It's me, Angelica! The girl you hate so very much, the one you never even cared to acknowledge, those very first days of semester! Too good to even come to class! Nose stuck so high in the air, so far above the rest of us… of course half the class hated you! How could we not? Go ahead! Gloat, Jess. You’ve won, okay? You’ve won!” The poor creature began to writhe and sob with such despair Jess felt the hot prickle of tears in the corner of her own eyes.

  Angelica's bitterness was soon overwhelmed by the desperation of her plight. Her gaze, though hideous, was now recognizably that of a terrified woman who had experienced horrors enough to break the strongest of men. Her voice, once more, was pleading. "Please! If you know what magics were cast here, if you had anything to do with it… please forgive me, Jess. I am so sorry! So very sorry! You have me beat, okay Jessica? I'm nothing compared to you. Nothing! Please, just lift this horrible curse, I beg of you. Or kill me and stop this horror! Please!"

  Jess was struck speechless. "By the gods, how could you think I would ever? Could ever? No. I swear to you, Angelica, this fell magic is not of my doing. But if there is something I can do to help you, by Justice I will!"

  The creature blinked its grotesque milky eyes, still showing traces of the cornflower blue the girl had possessed before her hideous transformation. “Can you?” Her voice was little more than a pleading whisper. “Can you possibly help me? Oh what I would do to sunder myself of this curse!”

  “Please, Angelica, just tell me what happened,” Jessica urged.

  The huge creature gave a massive sigh, Jess working hard not to show disgust at the horrific stench of its breath. “It all happened so long ago. I forget when. Time slides so strangely here.” Angelica's coils writhed restlessly in the water she rested in. “A door opened, you see, as I think it did for a lot of us at the school. It was like, it was a brilliant door opening in our mind's eye. Somehow stories had gone around. That there was a magical kingdom rich in glory and wonder, far away from the confines of that horrid academy, and any of us could escape our dreary fates if we but dreamed up the doorway that could take us there. Oh for the love of Heaven, if only I could take back that day!" she sobbed, Jess nodding sympathetically for Angelica to continue.

  “Yes. That’s right. A door opened in my mind’s eye. A grand, magnificent door, unlike any door I've ever seen before! It glowed with such a welcoming light,” she sighed. “It led to a winding path through the woods. Strange woods, quite beautiful, but… odd, somehow, too.”

  Jess nodded, well aware of the otherworldly beauty that permeated that ancient forest. Utterly majestic and pristine, yet somehow alien to any woo
d she had come across in her journeys beforehand.

  "I walked along the path, just me in my nightshirt, my feet bare, but the ground was neither cold nor hard when I came across a pathway in the wood. And waiting for me by that path was a knight with his full retinue." Immediately Angelica's features lit up in a hideous travesty of a smile. "Oh Jess, it was wonderful! There were singers, performers, food being prepared on skillets. It was like his entire entourage had stopped for an impromptu grand picnic!" The creature sighed even as Jess felt her blood run cold. She began to shake, clenching her fists, unable to help herself.

  “Easy, Jess. We don’t know for sure,” Twilight soothed, and Jess nodded slowly, grimly clamping down on the horror, hurt, and betrayal she felt begin to roil up inside her.

  “Tell me the name of this knight,” Jess heard herself ask in a very strange voice, listening to herself as if from a far off distance. Even the creature before her sensed something was amiss, tilting its massive travesty of a skull, blinking curiously at Jess.

  “His name was Soren,” she said at last. “Hair like winter frost, eyes like silver. He was the most beautiful knight I had ever seen.”

  Jess let out a shuddering breath she hadn’t even realized she had been holding. “Soren. I see. Tell me what happened then.”

  Hideous eyes haunted by regret locked upon Jess's own. "He said he liked me. He said he admired me and thought I was an elegant young lady. He said he would have no problem courting one such as I, assuring me that he did not care that my father had only modest holdings for a lord, and would consider it an honor to raise my station in life, should the purity of love shine his arrows into our hearts."

  Her voice held the bitter regret of one who knew they had been played for a fool. Jess winced in sympathy. "I lapped up his honeyed words like mother's milk. By the gods, I was so naïve," Angelica sighed. "Before I knew it, day had turned to dusk, the air had grown slightly chill, and he invited me to stay at his pavilion. To allow me to rest and keep me warm, he said."