Caffeine, as it turned out, really could do amazing things.
The king made for a very peculiar sort of friend, to be sure, but variety being the spice of life, she didn’t much mind.
As he approached the table at last, coffee and blueberry muffin in hand, he cast an amused look at the violin case resting on the floor next to her brown messenger bag. She was dressed for a party, in a floaty black satin dress and excruciating heels. Her furry bat mask lay on the coffee table, but now she was considering going to join the music students down by the campus lawns instead of the fancy-dress do.
Wilhelm was lining up fresh pastries in a glass display and stealing curious glances as he did so. It was a very odd choice of company on both sides and he wasn’t quite certain what to make of it. Certainly, it was good for the Erlking to spend some time with people who were not part of his fluttering court or the rapacious Hunt. All that Unseelie plotting couldn’t be very healthy, he thought with the sageness of a troll who had an entire shelf devoted to pop-psychology books.
Wilhelm’s attention drifted to the cards in Penny’s hands, cat-like yellow eyes widening fractionally. It was an old 15th century deck, French, by the looks of it, and full of shimmery magic thick as sugar syrup. Wilhelm wondered where she’d managed to find it.
“You seem unusually quiet,” the Erlking said as he set down his mug, glancing intently at the tarot deck.
“You must not speak to goblin men, you must not eat their fruit...” Penny recited dryly, before raising her eyes and grinning at him, well pleased with herself.
The king snorted, sliding into the chair opposite. “Rossetti was always rather bleak. And I might add that you’ve yet to heed your own advice.”
He peered at the cards she’d laid down, raising a cool eyebrow. “La Mort. Hmm. That can’t be a very happy set, my dear. You know what Death means.”
She shrugged, amused and unconcerned. “Perhaps the cards saw you coming. Though I think, given the date, it doesn’t really count. But just in case…” The king looked mildly entertained as she made to throw some salt over her shoulder.
“From fairies and creatures of the night, guard me… and all that. I forget the rest.”
It was, after all, a very old charm, and hardly anyone remembered it anymore.
She didn’t mean a word of it, of course, and with his kind, meaning was everything. Besides, Penny knew better than to expect a handful of salt to be any use in that sort of crisis.
She brushed messy hair out of her eyes and swept up the cards, handing them to the king to shuffle, who instantly obliged her. Penny glanced around the room just in time to see hedgehog from earlier trying to perch on the very edge of his chair, so as not to ruin the spikes, and almost sliding off in the process.
“So what are you pretending to be today?” she asked the Erlking as she laid out some cards.
“Human, of course. It is my finest trick.”
Penny let the answer hang there a few seconds, looking into his strange eyes.
He looked quite serious, though his eyes crinkled with mirth as he waited for her reply. He was decidedly not human, Penny knew, and therefore decidedly impossible to understand.
“How very creative.”
“I rather thought so myself,” he preened. “Though the entertainment this night has rather lessened, down through the centuries. Tell me, didn’t you mortals used to sacrifice a king this festival? Fresh blood to ensure the spring, and such?” He pulled out a silver locket and played with it absently. It caught the light in a strange way.
Penny had seen the locket many times before – it was flat and round, engraved in a filigree pattern like snowflakes, with a black silk riband in place of a chain. He seemed to always carry it with him, though she had never seen him open it and he never told her what it did, if anything.
“That’s Yule, as well you know. And I’m willing to bet they used to do that your side too, so you needn’t look so patronising. You never did tell me, what does the locket do?”
Joplin’s The Entertainer came on over the radio, and Penny tapped her fingers along with the music.
“It’s my locket and my concern,” the king dismissed with studied casualness, savouring the smell of the black coffee and leaning back in his chair. “Now, the real question is, what will it take to have the violin back? A golden gown perhaps?”
“Goethe. Nice. But no,” Penny replied lightly, while adding more sugar to her hazelnut latte.
“A sunset in a cup? To view your life in?” came the response, perfectly on cue.
It was a conversation they’d had so many times before that it had long since lost any meaning, replaced by a strangely comforting sense of familiarity
“And what on Earth would I do with that?”
She stole a bit of his muffin and wondered why he really came to meet her every festival like clockwork, and some days in between festivals too, and why he never noticed the extra cards up her sleeves. Or perhaps why he pretended not to.
The Erlking was obviously enjoying the hustle and bustle of the little coffee shop. He’d once told her that his own minstrels sang of ghosts and battles this night, and the mortals were always such a fine distraction from all the austerity.
She suggested he look into getting an internet connection, then laughed at his appalled expression.
“I can think of nothing more odious,” the king declared. “They have a connection over in Asgard, and I don’t think it has done anyone any favours. Although, admittedly, that could be more to do with the somewhat questionable level of reason and sanity to be found over there.”
“You, sir, are an absolute Luddite,” said Penny, with the sort of irreverence none of his courtiers would ever dare voice.
Theirs was a strange camaraderie, if that was really what it was. She did not seem to mind the snidely vicious Huntsmen with which he betimes kept company, or the cruel fairy horses: at least so long as it was understood that they would not land on her roof and make a racket at ungodly hours.
She’d even offered to leave out a saucer of milk one night, which she thought endlessly amusing. He’d scowled at her, of course, and she’d told him primly that he shouldn’t take himself so seriously as he did. Disagreements over the respect, and breathless awe, automatically due a fairy king aside, it was amazing how much they had in common when there should have been nothing but difference.
At some point they’d started coming to Wilhelm’s, and the king never brought the rest of the Hunt along, even during festival. There wasn’t a spirit hound or bony, shadowy fairy-horse in sight, which was good because they had a nasty way of chewing on upholstery and Wilhelm’s squishy chairs wouldn’t have survived the night. There had been one particularly enterprising fairy-horse who’d eaten Penny’s sleeping bag the night she’d won the violin.
Wilhelm, however, did not believe in taking chances, and it was not long before he’d put up a ‘no animals’ sign on the door. The troll had always hated the Erlking’s pack, with their malevolent eyes.
Penny had an inkling that it was a lonely thing to be the Erlking, especially if everyone at court was either up to no good or completely insane. She was rather sorry when the night drew to a close and they had to part.
Something in his opaque eyes said that he was sorry too. It had been a stranger night than usual – and it wasn’t until he was gone in a swirl of grey mist that she realised that he hadn’t told her what his own cards had said.
She put away the deck and grabbed her warm coat, waving at Wilhelm. Penny was just about to leave when she glanced back at the table. Something shiny caught her eye and she walked back to see what it could possibly be, when the table had been empty just a second ago. The Erlking’s locket sat on the table, looking fairly ordinary – it almost seemed to be watching her smugly.
The king had claimed that it was magical, and he’d vaguely hinted that it had something to do with seasons, though Penny suspected he’d made that bit up. She picked it up, and it was colder th
an it should have been in her gloved hand. Peeling off one of her gloves, she opened it, holding her breath.
It was empty inside. There was no picture, no mysterious lock of hair or dried flowers. It made her skin tingle with cold just to hold it. She turned the locket this way and that. There was something niggling at the back of her mind, but it was too vague, evading her attempt to figure out what it might be.
With a sigh, she slipped the bauble in her pocket, and put her woollen glove back on before stepping out into the chilly street.
Violin in hand, she decided to drop the locket off at home before going to the lawn party –just in case it somehow slipped out of her pocket and got lost. Her shoes made tapping sounds on the pavement and pinched her feet with the sort of heartless brutality that had to mean that they were incredibly fashionable. She wondered if she ought to stop and change into her emergency flats.
Penny felt strangely touched that the Erlking wanted to drink coffee with her, when he had a kingdom full of who knew what sorts of magical things to command. Perhaps, she thought wistfully, it was because even the Erlking, whatever he may be, needed someone to drink coffee with.
Deciding to take a short cut to her flat, she turned left in front of the biology buildings and was rather surprised to find herself facing the peeling blue door of an old shed she’d never noticed before.
The first thought that struck her was how unremarkable it was. The second was that the locket was pulsing with cold in her coat pocket, and it was getting to be rather uncomfortable. Braving the cold, she took off her coat just to be able to keep the locket at some reasonable distance from herself.
Penny wondered if, by some chance, this happened to be the door: the one that was meant to be in a mysterious oak tree somewhere. Looking at it, she felt a bit disappointed. It didn’t even scintillate with magic.
She stood staring at the old door for a moment, wondering what she ought to do.
From fairies and creatures of the night, guard me, she thought again, smiling wryly and stashing her bloodthirsty shoes into her bag. Penny put on her scuffed flats, beginning to feel the locket pulsing with cold even at a distance.
Then, she reached for the handle.
There was no time like the present to return a visit, after all. She just hoped it wasn’t raining in the Hinterlands.
The bridge
There was a troll under the bridge that spanned the campus lake, situated right in the middle of Aldgard University.
Penny didn’t know his name, though she had heard that he was Wilhelm’s cousin. It was no secret that the two trolls did not get on. Wilhelm felt that Wulf was reticent, stuck up, and generally quite insufferably obnoxious. Wulf felt that Wilhelm had abandoned the traditional ways of good, honest trollhood by opening a tavern, and then, worst of all, a coffee shop, on the mortal side.
It was, Wulf thought, laughable for a troll to serve coffee to students – and not even the fairy kind of coffee that would have made them grow antlers or sent them to sleep for a hundred years. Oh, no – this coffee was vanilla lattes, mochas and espressos. Surely no relation of Wulf’s could fly so blithely into the face of tradition. The whole situation had been utterly unconscionable from the start.
To make matters worse, Wilhelm also indulged in a bit of historic hobby cooking, and was working on his very own indispensable guide to the culinary arts. Quite possibly, the very last straw had been discovering that Wilhelm had gone so far as to bake his own muffins. Blueberry, choc chip and poppy seed! The mind boggled.
For a whole week, Wulf had taken out his feelings regarding this blatant breach of troll decorum on anyone foolish enough to linger on the old bridge. He had taken things like laughing and having the gall to blithely walk across the bridge at all as a sheer personal affront to his family name: did no one respect time-honoured trollish tradition anymore?
Bridge-making, and by extension bridge-guarding, had always been a sacral, magical task, after all. A good, solid bridge could span between two banks of a running river or two different worlds. Why, even the word for high priest, pontifex, can from the Latin for ‘bridge maker’!
So Wulf really didn’t see why people couldn’t show the least bit of courtesy when crossing his. They didn’t even say hello, plead ancient laws of hospitality or offer to appease him – and that was just common good breeding.
Which was why Wulf reacted as he did to a girl humming right there, on the old stone bridge. It wasn’t exactly happy humming. In fact, it was possibly the most aggravated humming he had ever heard. It was punctuated by the sound of furious scribbling.
It did not take Wulf long to realise that the girl knew he was there from the way she protested when a scaly claw reached over the edge of the bridge and tried to snatch her cheese toastie. She’d foolishly rested it on the railing while rearranging her bag and trying not to drop her over-full music file, which in Wulf’s opinion made the toastie fair game.
It was, all in all, a strange encounter for both parties.
As slowly as the claw had appeared, it disappeared back under the walkway.
Wulf watched, and waited for an appropriate reaction. Screaming would have been ideal. Fleeing and crying – acceptable. Investigating the source of the claw – foolhardy, fatalistic, but none the less commendable. In his long life, he had witnessed many eminently satisfying combinations of the three.
Instead, the human girl took another bite of her sandwich, opened the file and rested her elbows on the broad railing. It seemed that she hadn’t the least intention of fleeing the locale like any sensible person ought to have done the minute a claw appeared next to them on the railing. Hers was an altogether unhealthy reaction to discovering a hungry monster waiting just under the bridge.
Deciding that she had to be an escapee from that fine new establishment of Bedlam, the troll decided to speak to her in person. It had been a long time since he’s actually spoken to a mortal: never mind a mortal that was clearly not running on all cylinders. It seemed a terrible faux pas. So he swung himself over and landed with a soft thump.
By then it was nearly dusk and there was almost no one around, which was perhaps for the best. Not that it would have made a difference, he thought grimly. Of late, it had started to dawn on Wulf, in the slow, creeping way of all unpleasant realisations, that most human eyes could not see him at all. As if to prove his point, a pair of students cycled past without giving him so much as a second glance.
Wulf ground his teeth a moment before speaking.
“Hello, little miss,” he said in his most threatening voice, as his bright yellow eyes glowered at her.
He casually flexed a claw, displaying five impressively sharp talons. His swift steps across the cobbled bridge were accompanied by the clicking of these same claws, which was, admittedly, not as intimidating as it might have been.
The girl looked over at him darkly.
“Don’t call me that. It’s patronising. What do you want? And before you say anything, I must warn you that I missed breakfast and half of my composition workshop, I’m having an altogether lousy day and, no, you can’t have my lunch. Go get your own.”
The troll stared, momentarily taken aback at this obvious want of delicacy, before bravely making a recovery.
“That,” he said patiently, “is exactly what I am trying to do.”
She stared at him, raising her eyebrows impatiently.
Wulf thought it might be prudent, at that point, to show her his splendid row of razor-sharp teeth by smiling widely, just in case she’d somehow missed them up to that point.
Wulf was very proud of his teeth. They were the spitting image of his father’s, which had once rendered three kings and a knight-errant quite completely speechless. Wulf took very good care of his teeth, purchasing only the finest tooth powders for yellowing and sharpening. It was Wulf’s one concession to non-traditionalism – he was a firm believer in hygiene and presentation.
The girl frowned.
The troll sighed in exaspera
tion.
“I am here to claim a boon, as is my right, of a mortal who dares to cross my bridge. And I am very hungry.”
She appeared to give this statement a fair bit of consideration, seemingly glad of an excuse to ignore her file.
“Lots of mortals cross your bridge,” she pointed out reasonably enough, indicating a tall man ambling along with his Yorkie.
The troll threw a derisive look at the passer-by.
“That’s the problem – no one pays it any attention anymore. The ceremony is all gone. Bridges used to be important once. This bridge was built by Romans! You can tell by the shape.”
The girl obligingly took a closer look.
“It is a very nice bridge,” she agreed politely. “I’m sure lots of people think so.”
“No they don’t. And they don’t notice me,” he gritted out bitterly, that morning’s indignity of having to suffer a mortal accidentally spilling a carbonated beverage on him still fresh in his mind. “Last week, I was taking the air just over there under the arch, and indulging in a little light reading, when a mortal child dropped an ice cream right onto my novel. It was Persuasion, too. I didn’t get to read the end because the ice cream soaked right through and now the pages are stuck together. They smell like strawberries. I’m allergic to strawberries.”
“Oh dear. I see how that’s annoying.”
The troll nodded, looking deeply suspicious of this sudden show of sympathy.
“You can see me.” The way he said it, it was almost an accusation.
The girl shrugged. “Yes. You could say I’m very perceptive when it comes to clawed appendages making a go at my lunch.”
She noticed the troll’s sagging shoulders and looked a little guilty.
“Look, if you like, I can pretend to be frightened of you. Only, I’m rather tired so I’m not sure I’ll be very convincing. And I don’t think I’m quite your target audience. You mentioned a boon: what sort of boon?”
From Fairies and Creatures of the Night, Guard Me Page 3