From Fairies and Creatures of the Night, Guard Me

by Emily de Courcy

  The queen had thought the lambs made Hrothgar look very handsome. This pronouncement had sent Unferth into quiet hysterics at the back of the Hall, and he’d had to be led out by Aeschere before he got them in trouble.

  “You could throw it in the mere. Say a mere-monster got to it,” Aeschere had offered doubtfully.

  Splash! Twitch. It was a good thing they couldn’t get in trouble for concussing a few mere-beasts.

  “I can’t. Father would kill me. Or worse – he’ll do the frown again.” It had been a fair point – Healfdene had had an unbelievably scary frown. He’d felt that if he had to wear his wife’s dubious creations, no one else was going to get out of it either.

  “Heorogar got a new battle horse on his birthday!” Hrothgar had then declared, watching his pebble skid angrily. Hroth had always been convinced that his elder brother was the favourite.

  Privately, Aeschere agreed with him – Heorogar got tunics embroidered in dragons and sea-monsters, which were much less likely to get him beaten up by the other young warriors. (In their parts, beating people up for stupid tunics was deemed a good recreational activity for young men.)

  Heorogar was also popular and good-looking… and smarmy. He did things like clean his closet for fun, while going into Hrothgar’s closet almost guaranteed that one would be impaled, eviscerated or brained by something.

  Aeschere was of the opinion that if they were ever invaded by any of their numerous enemies, all they had to do to win was let slip that all the treasure was hidden in Hrothgar’s closet. Then sit back and wait for the yelps to die down.

  Hrothgar’s one-sided sibling rivalry had guaranteed that Aeschere often found himself roped into whatever new inane scheme Hroth had managed to come up with to get one over his brother.

  There had been the time they had set out to defeat their own sea-monster, because Hroth had seen a picture of one on his father’s map. They’d spent the day cold and hungry, being judged derisively by passing seagulls. Hroth was also prone to finding cursed swords, devious potions and pretty witches that inevitably got one over him instead, and made off with any curse-free treasure while Aeschere ended up having to fish his best friend out of some swamp.

  Then there was the time they had tried to take on bandits, to prove how brave and capable they were. There had been a lot of confusion, a minor earthquake and a cave-in, and that was before they had discovered they were sharing the cave with something irate and prone to growling. The badger had not taken their intrusion kindly.

  The treasure hunt had been the worst, though. Hrothgar had been very enthusiastic about the whole thing – he’d been convinced they would enrich the hall by finding rare and valuable things. Hrothgar liked rare and valuable things, particularly if they were also shiny. Maybe, he had told them, as they trudged through the bleak landscape, lugging spades, they would even be able to afford to commission their very own longboat.

  Unferth, who also liked rare and shiny valuable things, and was notoriously unscrupulous, had invited himself along to that little adventure, by the simple expedient of threatening to tell Hrothgar’s mother. Aeschere did not like to remember the treasure hunt. The giant fish had had surprisingly strong jaws and, to their further unpleasant surprise, an unusually venomous bite.

  “Well, that was exciting!” Unferth had announced as they crawled, stumbled and hobbled their way home. Aeschere had seriously considered clobbering him with his sword, but his sword arm had been bleeding too much for him to bother trying to lift it.

  Grendel had been far worse than the venomous fish, though. You could have tracked every thought that artlessly crossed Hroth’s face as he considered his plans for making friends with Grendel.

  Aeschere had done his best not to look too closely and had even entertained plans of his own. He’d hoped to sneak away right after breakfast, hide out in a tall tree somewhere, finish his crossword and read The Blood-Splattered Chalice, which he’d only just found at a charity sale the previous week. It just went to show how enthusiastic and naïve he had been back then.

  One glance at Hrothgar’s face and he had known that his peaceful morning wasn’t going to happen.

  Hroth had then chosen to share his latest plan, while shovelling his favourite cereal (mead-flavoured and shaped like little battle-axes and dragons) into his mouth. They would prove how kind and un-cliquey they were by making friends with the weird greenish kid who hung around the mere, thereby unfailingly demonstrating Hroth’s maturity, and ability to make alliances, to his unappreciative father.

  “It can’t possibly go wrong,” he’d declared happily, while Aeschere winced and set off to pack the first-aid kit. After all their so-called adventures, blood loss, interesting stab wounds, and broken bones had practically become recreational for them.

  Now that Aeschere thought about it, with the wisdom of years firmly behind him, Hrothgar had been single-handedly responsible for a very considerable portion of the trauma and suffering in his life. All of it, in fact.

  The green kid’s name was Grendel, and in those days he had worn too much eyeliner and had little white skulls painted over his black nail polish. The effect had been rather spoiled by the fact that the skulls had been painted on by his mum. He had had a silly fringe that covered half his face, and he’d spent a lot of time writing something he’d called ‘dark poetry’. He hadn’t had any friends.

  Aeschere had tried telling Hrothgar that there was probably a reason why Grendel had never had any friends. The attempt had fallen flat, which had been unsurprising: it was what usually happened when he tried to reason with Hroth.

  Hroth had breezily told him that he needed to stop being such a downer, that they could use a fourth friend anyway, and went back to sneakily feeding his giant bear cub Scruffy bits of cheese under the table. Hroth wasn’t very good at being sneaky. Anyone could have seen the bit of bear sticking out from under the table, but luckily no one was paying them any attention.

  As Hrothgar had painstakingly outlined his plan for becoming friends with Grendel, Aeschere had drowned him out in favour of watching a sharp, furry bear claw appear on the table, blindly searching for more cheese.

  He’d known from experience that trying to whack it would only result in irate growling and maybe a bite somewhere sensitive, so he’d felt perfectly content to lean back and watch. Scruffy the bear had never really liked any of them, and Hrothgar had had the bandages to prove it.

  (Scruffy had been another one of those things Aeschere had failed to talk Hroth out of. It had been a grim day when Hroth decided that what he wanted almost as much as a longboat, was a pet bear. Healfdene, who hadn’t approved of pets in general, and pet bears in particular, had refused to listen. So, Hroth had decided to take matters into his own hands, and adopted Scruffy out of the woods with the aid of a giant net and some pilfered honey cakes.

  Scruffy hadn’t been very appreciative of the kind gesture – they had all sported enough bite marks to attest to that. Scruffy was to be kept a secret from Healfdene, of course, until they could get him to stop attacking on sight and chasing people around the forest. It had turned out that the bear cub also had a vengeful streak a mile wide, because he no longer tried to leave. Mostly, he just attacked when irritated. It didn’t help them at all that he was irritated more or less all the time.)

  After the claw had temporarily retreated, Aeschere had resumed his futile attempts at making his best friend see sense by suggesting that, quite possibly, Grendel didn’t want to have friends, but that hadn’t worked either.

  “Of course he does! Why wouldn’t he? Look at how much fun we always have! You’re being absurd. So, he’s a little…odd. So what? We’re friends with Unferth.”

  “Hey!” Unferth had looked offended.

  Hrothgar had seemed to think that bit of so-called logic settled matters, because he’d then bravely attempted to scratch Scruffy behind the ear. The answering growl was hard to miss, and they had all developed a simultaneous fit of coughing and forced, loud laught
er, ignoring the astonished looks from some nearby councillors.

  Aeschere hadn’t thought Hroth’s argument settled anything – they were only friends with Unferth because all the other young warriors hung out with Heorogar. There hadn’t been anyone else around. But this seemed to make no difference where Hroth was concerned.

  So Hrothgar had made them go to the swamp, where they’d spent a dreary day trying to become friends with the sulky, monosyllabic troll kid who’d glared at them from under his fringe. Grendel had seemed to be a kindred spirit to Scruffy, because he’d then taken to hanging out with them, as if out of pure spite.

  This hadn’t done anything for their popularity rating and they still didn’t get their longboat – but they did get Grendel, and Aeschere maintained that there was a lesson in there somewhere.

  *

  At least I don’t have to take Scruffy for walks anymore, the much older and wiser Aeschere thought, consoling himself as he waited for his friends. Or give him baths. Scruffy had never cared for baths, but things had been especially bad when Hroth had tried to wash him with some new bear shampoo. That had resulted in Scruffy losing most of his fur and resembling something truly (and, perhaps, fittingly) demonic for a good many weeks.

  In his rare good moods, Scruffy had liked to engage in a past-time that Hroth called ‘playing’, which involved chasing them all up a tree and then toying with them by sitting under it and glaring with angry, beady eyes, and flashing his considerable, sharp teeth. It had been obvious that Scruffy knew that they knew that he could climb up any time he wanted. Aeschere shuddered at the memory, dipping his spoon into more oatmeal.

  There was a gasp somewhere on the other side of the hall and then a resounding slap. Unferth. Aeschere had never met anyone so inept at picking up women. One would think, Aeschere reflected, that years of having mead upended over him (not to mention helpful tips from friends) would have got it through to Unferth that ‘Would you like to hold my sword?’ was not a good opening line. The stalking hadn’t helped his cause either.

  Wealhtheow, Hrothgar’s surprisingly sensible wife, had outright refused to introduce Unferth to any of her friends.

  Unferth slumped onto the bench opposite Aeschere and leaned his elbows on the table.

  “Oh, hello,” he said glumly, massaging the red hand-print on his face. He had obviously only just woken up. It was fairly clear from his droopy demeanour that Unferth hadn’t yet recovered from film night either.

  It was a good thing Grendel didn’t appear in the daytime any more. In the past few years, Grendel had evolved out of being what he’d called ‘emo’, and straight into something much worse. He had, with unnerving ease, become a ‘hipster’, which meant he did things like refuse to be awake during the day because it was what everyone else did.

  He called his house an anti-hall, despite the fact that everyone else went on calling it a cave. He had also taken to wearing v-neck sweaters, skinny-jeans that looked like he had nicked them from his little sister, and huge glasses that could have doubled as satellite dishes.

  It was the silent French noir film that had done it in the end. The lack of subtitles was enough to drive anyone around the bend, and that was before you considered the lack of plot, the bizarre balloon animals, the ballerinas jumping on trampolines and, worst of all, the clowns.

  Nobody liked the clowns (Grendel had huffily informed everyone that they were, in fact, mimes, but Hrothgar was of the opinion that if it looked like a clown and creeped like a clown, it was most definitely a clown). The king had had an unpleasant experience as a child, when he had been chased by one for the best part of an hour, much to the amusement of his father’s warrior band and his older brother. He had only got away by hiding in a closet, where he’d stayed for another two hours, just in case. There were few things that Hroth found as disturbing as he did clowns.

  They hadn’t wanted to go see the silent French film at all, because film night was supposed to be fun, but Grendel had made them, claiming that they could do with a bit of culture, and subtly hinting that the alternative would be an enjoyable night of listening to Grendel’s protest poetry.

  Even the clowns were better than Grendel’s poetry, which had not improved at all since its ‘dark emo’ days. Grendel had dressed especially for the outing, sporting a new pair of skinny jeans, which bore a strange pattern that he called ‘leopard print’ and that somehow managed to look completely tasteless. Even Hrothgar’s mum’s tunics looked more stylish.

  Unferth had selfishly tried to get out of the whole thing by pretending to be sick, but the dramatic sniffles had had no effect on the Lord of the Danes, who took after his father in certain respects and felt that, if he had to suffer through an evening of ‘culture’, so did his friends. The film had been three hours long.

  Afterwards, Hrothulf, who had the dubious honour of being Hrothgar’s most snobbish and entitled nephew, had pointed out that they could have watched an entire Lord of the Rings movie in that time. Or The Notebook, twice. Or six whole episodes of How I Met Your Mother. Grendel had responded with something snide about commercialism, the mainstream film industry, and tasteless people wanting films with plots.

  “You just don’t understand me!” he had declared, in the pretentious nasal voice he had adopted since spurning all things mainstream.

  Hrothgar had very particular ideas about plot: there had to be one. Ideally, it had to be heroic, and peppered with the occasional monster, lots of boating, and winsome ladies pouring mead. A bear-cub or two would not have gone amiss either.

  Grendel, of course, outright refused to drink mead because he felt it embodied conformity, and conformity was not for him. He drank wheatgrass juice and strange, murky flavourless teas.

  “Maybe he’ll start eating poisonous mushrooms or something, just because other people don’t,” Hrothulf had whispered hopefully, having made sure that Grendel was too busy being moved by the unpolluted beauty of noir camera angles to hear him.

  The thing was that they really hadn’t minded so much that Grendel was a troll who lived in the haunted mere, or that he always smelled vaguely like pond-weed, which was much better than Unferth’s so-called cologne, anyway. They could even have let the occasional bit of cannibalism slide – but there could be no ignoring a hipster in their midst.

  “Do you think he’ll make us listen to that weird obscure band that he likes? The one that sounds a bit like a washing machine on full spin?” Unferth asked Aeschere as he attempted to face his own breakfast. Unmistakable dread coloured his voice. “Because, I just bought this soundtrack…” He pulled something out of his bag.

  Aeschere couldn’t help a shiver of foreboding when Unferth produced what looked suspiciously like a Les Misérables CD, laying it on the table. It felt a bit like a threat. He had a grim vision of himself having to listen to ‘On My Own’, on repeat, for weeks, while Unferth told everyone who hadn’t managed to get away fast enough that the song was so totally about him.

  “No. Because we’re going to do something about it,” Aeschere said with slightly manic, desperate good cheer.

  He tried to think happy thoughts. Palm trees, he told himself firmly. He wondered if it was too early in the day to start drinking. It seemed unfair that, even when one lived in a mead-hall, people still frowned on drinking at breakfast.

  Hrothulf turned up shortly after Unferth, looking sulky and dishevelled. Aeschere didn’t really like Hrothulf, because aside from being obnoxiously entitled, Hrothulf was always sulky about something, obviously trying to look like a roguish anti-hero. Also, he had an annoyingly loud way of slurping soup that made Aeschere want to upend the whole thing over his head.

  Hrothgar was the last of the party to arrive because he believed in getting at least nine hours of sleep a night, in order to maintain a healthy nervous system and suitably shiny beard. He also believed in freely voicing his opinion of other people’s fashionable helmets by way of greeting, but years of friendship had taught Aeschere to tune out his best frien
d’s unsolicited advice.

  I will never get out of here, Aeschere thought with a sudden stab of glumness, as he watched Hrothgar sit down and begin to slowly stir his cereal.

  “Did you have a good sleep?” he asked pointedly.

  “Fine, thanks.” As usual, snide intonation sailed right over Hrothgar’s head. Hrothgar was particularly bad at hints, Aeschere remembered as he watched his friend eat. Or, at least, at hints that weren’t in some way to his advantage.

  One day, when they had been stuck up a tree, trying to keep their heels up so Scruffy couldn’t get at them, Aeschere had attempted to make the best of things by pulling The Bloodstained Chalice out of his pocket in another attempt at making it past the first page. He had thought that if he just started reading and pointedly ignored the others, they might take the hint and leave him alone.

  They didn’t.

  He had just triumphantly made it through a whole paragraph without being interrupted by any inanities, when Scruffy made a flying leap and Unferth panicked, snatched the book out of Aeschere’s hands and launched it at the bear. He had never been much good at throwing, so it had missed Scruffy, but it did land on the other side of a shrubbery, and elicit an outraged yelp.

  Heorogar, who had been striding merrily on his daily constitutional stroll through the woods, had emerged from the shrubbery, book in hand, and looking particularly unforgiving, just as Hrothgar was telling Unferth off for throwing things at Scruffy.

  It hadn’t taken Heorogar long to take in the scene around him, and then tattle to Healfdene. Scruffy had been confiscated and they had all spent the next month scrubbing barnacles off the longboats. Aeschere thought it had all been worth it, to get rid of Scruffy.

  The conclusion he’d come to was that his friends tended to ruin his every attempt at snatching even a moment of tranquillity. Now, when his holiday was practically within reach, he refused to let Grendel, or the rest of his friends, ruin it all.