“What the hell bit you?”
Mudge was trying to inspect his backside. “Somethin’ sure as ‘ell did. ‘Ere, Folly, be a good girl and see if I’m bleedin’?” He turned to her and bent slightly.
She examined the area dominated by the short, stubby tail and protected by leather shorts. “I don’t see anything.”
“ ‘Ave a close look.”
“You fuzzy pervert.” She gave him a look of disgust as she moved away.
“No, really. Not that I deny the accusation, luv, but somethin’ took a chunk out o’ me backside for sure,”
“Liar! What would I do with a chunk of you?”
The voice was high but firm and came from the vicinity of the flowerbed. Jon-Tom crawled over for a close look, searching for the source of the denial.
Tiny hands parted the stalks, which were as yellow as the thick-petaled flowers, and he found himself staring at something small, winged, feminine, and drastically overweight.
“I’ll be damned,” he murmured. “A fat fairy.”
“Watch your mouth, buster,” she said as she sort of lumbered out lightly until she was standing on a broken log. The log was brown with red longitudinal stripes running through the bark. “I know I’ve got a small personal problem, and I don’t need some big-mouthed human reminding me of the fact.”
“Sorry.” Jon-Tom tried to sound contrite. “You are a fairy, aren’t you? One of the enchanted folk?”
“Nah,” she snapped back, “I’m a stevedore from Snarken.”
Jon-Tom studied her closely. Her clothing resembled wisps of spun gossamer lavender candy. A miniature tiara gleamed on her head. Long hair trailed below her waist.
The tiara had been knocked askew and covered one eye.
She grunted as she struggled to straighten it. In her right hand she clutched a tiny gold wand. Her wings were shards of cellophane mottled with thin red stripes.
“We were told,” Folly said breathlessly, “that you could help us.”
“Now, why would I want to do that? We’ve got enough problems of our own.” She stared at Jon-Tom. “That’s a nice duar. You a musician, bright boy?”
“‘e’s a spellsinger, and a right powerful one, too,”
Mudge informed her. “Come all the way from across the Glittergeist to fetch back medicine for a sick sorcerer.”
“He’s a right powerful fool,” she snapped. She sat down heavily on the log, her legs spread wide in a most casual and unladylike manner. Jon-Tom estimated her to be about four inches high and almost as wide.
“I’m called Jon-Tom.” He introduced his companions.
An uneasy silence ensued and he finally asked, “What’s your name?”None of your business.”
“Come on,” he said coaxingly. “Whether you help us or not is up to you, but can’t we at least be polite to one another?”
“What’s this? A polite human? That doesn’t make any sense, bald-body.” She shrugged. “What the hell. My name’s Grelgen. Want to make something of it?”
“Uh, no.” Jon-Tom decided he was going to have to tread very carefully with this pint-size package of enchanted belligerence.
“Smart answer. You got anything to eat?”
Jalwar started to rummage through his pack. “I think we have some snake jerky, and there are a few hard rolls.”
“Ptui!” She spat to her right. “I mean real food. Fruit tarts, cream cups, nectar custard, whipped honey rolls.”
Jon-Tom said carefully, “I think I am beginning to see what your problem is.”
“Oh, you are, are you, fungus-foot? You think everything’s cut and dried, don’t you? It’s all so obvious to you.” She was pacing now, back and forth atop the log, waving her tiny hands to punctuate her words.
“Say, you can’t fly, can you?”
She turned to face him. “Of course I can fly, dumbutt.”
She wiggled her diaphanous wings. “What do you think these are for? Air-conditioning?”
“All right, then let’s see you fly. Come on, fly.”
“Feh! You’d think I didn’t have anything better to do than put on a show for a bunch of pituitary freaks.”
“You can’t fly!” Jon-Tom said triumphantly. “That’s your big problem. You’ve gotten so. . .”
“Watch it, jack,” she said wamingly.
“. . . so healthy that you can’t lift off anymore. I wouldn’t think it would make a difference. A bumblebee’s too heavy for flight, but it manages, and without enchantment.”
“I’m a fairy, one of the enchanted folk,” Grelgen informed him, speaking as one would to an idiot child. “Not a bumblebee. There are structural, aerodynamic, and metabolic differences you wouldn’t understand. As for problems, you’re the ones who are stuck with the biggie.”
She stabbed the wand at Mudge. “That turkey tried to assassinate me!”
Mudge gaped in surprise. “Wot, me? I did nothin’ o’ the kind, your shortness.”
“You sat on me, rat-breath.”
“Like ‘ell I did! You crawled underneath me. Anyways, ‘ow was I supposed to see you or anything else under all them flowers?”
Grelgen crossed her arm. “I was sitting there minding my own business, having a little afternoon snack of nectar and pollen, and you deliberately dropped your rat-butt right on top of me.”
“You expect me to inspect every patch o’ ground I sit down on?”
“In our lands, yes.”
“We didn’t know it were your lands.” Mudge was fast losing patience with this infinitesimal harridan.
“Ah-ha! So, a casual assassin. The worst kind.” She put two fingers to her lips and let out a sharp, piercing whistle. Jon-Tom listened admiringly. The sound was loud enough to attract an empty cab from two blocks down a Manhattan street.
What it did attract, from beneath mushrooms and flowers, from behind moss beds and tree roots, was a swarm of enchanted folk, several hundred of them. A few carried wands resembling Grelgen’s, but most hefted miniature bows and arrows, crossbows, and spears. Jon-Tom put a hand out to restrain Roseroar from picking up her swords, even though the tigress weighed more than all the enchanted folk combined.
“Magic,” he whispered warningly.
Roseroar yielded, but not to his admonition. “Magic or no, the tips of then: weapons are moistened. I suspect poison. An ungallant way to fight.”
“I guess if you’re four inches tall you have to use every advantage you can think of.”
Jalwar moved close, whispered to him. “Move carefully here, spellsinger, or we may vanish in an arrogant conjuration. These folk have a deserved reputation for powerful magic.”
“That’s how I figure it,” he replied. “Maybe they’re not all as obnoxious or combative as our friend there.”
“What’s that, what did you say?”
“I said,” he told Grelgen, “that it’s nice of you to invite us to meet all your friends and relatives.”
“When one of us is threatened, buster, all spring to the rescue.”
Jon-Tom noted that none of the fairies surrounding them were in any condition to fly. Every one of them waddled about with obvious difficulty, and the slimmest was a candidate for the enchanted branch of Weight Watchers.
“You’re our prisoners,” she finished.
“I see,” said Mudge. “And wot if we decide not to be your prisoners?”
“Then you’ll be dead,” she assured him unpleasantly.
. Mudge studied the array of glistening little weapons.
“ ‘Ospitable folk, wot?”
“Watch ‘em,” said Grelgen to her relations. She turned and sauntered to the end of the branch, hopped off, and landed with a wheeze in the grass below. There she entered into a mumbling conversation with several other wand-bearers. Most of them were clad only in rags and tatters.
Mudge would have to sit on someone of importance, thought Jon-Tom angrily. The conference broke up moments later.
“This way,” said one of the other arme
d fairies, gesturing upstream. Surrounded by miniuscule guards, they were marched off up the creek.
“You sure you didn’t see her, Mudge?” Jon-Tom asked the otter.
“Would I ‘ave been stupid enough to sit on ‘er if I ‘ad, mate? Use your ‘ead. It were those bloody flowers.”
“You weren’t looking, then,” Jon-Tom said accusingly.
“So I weren’t lookin’. Should I ‘ave been lookin’?”
“No, I guess not. It’s nobody’s fault.”
“Pity I didn’t flatten ‘er,” the otter murmured, careful to keep his voice down.
“It might not have mattered, sir,” Jalwar murmured.
“The fairy folk are known for their resilience.”
“I can see that,” said Mudge, studying their obese escort. “The one with the mouth looks like she could bounce.”
“Be quiet,” said Jon-Tom. “We’re in enough trouble already. She’ll hear you.”
“Damned if I care if she does, guv.” The otter had his hands shoved in his pockets and kicked disgustedly at pebbles as they walked along the side of the creek. “If she ain’t got common sense to see that—”
A paw the size of his head covered his mouth and, incidently, most of his face. “Watch yo mouth, ottah,”
Roseroar told him. “Yo heard Jon-Tom. Let’s not irritate these enchanted folk any moah than we already have.”
“I’d like to irritate ‘em,” said the otter when she’d removed her paw. But his voice had become a whisper.
The stream narrowed. Canyon walls closed in tight around the marchers, all but shutting out the sun. Trees and bushes grew into one another, forming a dense, hard-to-penetrate tangle. The captives had to fight their way through the thickening undergrowth.
Dusk brought them to the outskirts of the enchanted folk’s village. In appearance it was anything but enchanted.
Tiny huts and homes were scattered around a natural amphitheater. Evidence of disrepair and neglect abounded.
Some of the buildings were falling down, and even those cut into massive tree roots had piles of trash mounded up against the doorways. To Jon-Tom all this was clear proof of a loss of pride among the inhabitants.
Tiny lights flickered to life behind many of the miniature windows, and smoke started to curl from minute chimneys. Off to one side of the community a circular area was surrounded by a stone wall pierced by foot-high archways.
The six-inch high wall ended at both ends against a sheer cliff of gray granite.
The four captives filled this arena. Once they were inside the insignificant walls, Grelgen and two other fairies stood within the archways waving their wands and murmuring importantly. When the invocation was finished, she stepped back and retreated toward the village with her cronies.
Folly took a step toward the minuscule barrier and tried to step over. She gasped and drew back as if bitten, holding her right hand.
“What is it?” Jon-Tom asked anxiously.
“It’s hot. The air’s hot.”
Experimentally, Jon-Tom waved at the emptiness above the tiny stone wall. An invisible wall of flame now enclosed them. He shook his hand and blew on his fingers to cool them, deciding they weren’t going to blister.
Escape wouldn’t be easy.
Roseroar sighed and settled herself on the hard ground.
“An ironic conclusion to yoah expedition, Jon-Tom. Captured and imprisoned by a bunch of disgruntled, not to mention uncouth, enchanted folk.”
“Don’t be so quick to give up. They may decide to let us go yet. Besides,” he swung his duar around, “we have magic of our own.”
Mudge looked imploringly heavenward. “Why me, wot?”
“I do not know that spellsinging will work against the fairy folk, sir,” said Jalwar. “In my travels I have heard that they are immune to all forms of magic except their own. It may be that yours will have no effect on them, and may even be turned against you.”
“You don’t say.” Jon-Tom’s fingers fell from the duar’s strings, together with what remained of his confidence. “I didn’t know that.”
“It may not be so, but it is what I have heard many times.”
“We’ll hold it as a last resort, then.”
“Wot difference does it make, mate? ‘Alf the time it backfires on you anyhows. If it doubles back on us I wouldn’t want it to ‘appen while I’m stuck in this clearin’.”
“Neither would I, Mudge.” He looked out toward the winking lights of the village. “We may not have any choice. They don’t seem much inclined to listen to reason.”
“I think they’re all crazy,” commented Folly.
In the fading light she looked healthy and beautiful. The impermanent bruises and scars Corroboc had inflicted on her were healing fast. She was resilient, tough, and growing more feminine by the day. She was also making Jon-Tom increasingly uneasy.
He turned to Mudge, saw the otter standing as close as possible to the invisible barrier enclosing them.
“What’s up, Mudge?”
The otter screwed up his face, his whiskers twitching.
“Can’t you smell it, too, mate? Garbage.” He nodded toward the town. “It’s everywhere. Maybe they’re enchanted, but that’s not the word I’d use to describe their sewage system.”
“Ah saw their gardens when we came in,” said Roseroar thoughtfully. “They appeahed to be untended.”
“So fairy town’s gone to hell,” Jon-Tom murmured.
“Something’s very wrong here.”
“Wot difference do it make to us, mate? We ‘ave our own problems. Dealin’ with ‘Er Crossness, for one thing.”
“If we could figure out what’s wrong here,” Jon-Tom argued, “maybe we could ingratiate ourselves with our captors.”
“You ingratiate yourself, mate. Me, I’m for some sleep.”
Jon-Tom didn’t doubt that the otter could sleep on the bare rock. If Mudge were tossed out of a plane at twenty thousand feet, the otter could catch twenty winks before awakening to open his parachute. It was a talent he often envied.
“Sleeping won’t solve our problem.”
“It’ll solve me immediate one, mate. I’m pooped.”
“Perhaps yoah magic will work against the enchanted folk,” Roseroar said hopefully.
“I don’t know.” Jon-Tom tapped the wood of the duar, was rewarded with a melodious thumping sound. The moon was shining down into the narrow defile, illuminating the dense woods surrounding them. “I’m going to hold off till the last possible moment to find out.”
The tigress was slipping out of her armor and using it to make a crude pillow. “Ah don’t know.” She rested her massive head on black and white paws. “It seems to me that we’re already theah.”
Grelgen and the rest of the fairy council came for them in the morning. Their principal nemesis had changed into a flowing gown of orange chiffon. The bright pastel attire had not softened her disposition, however.
“We’ve been considering what to do with you bums most of the night,” she informed them brusquely.
Jon-Tom stretched, pushed at his tower back, and wished he’d had the sense to use Roseroar for a cushion. He was stiff and sore from spending the night on the hard ground.
“All I can tell you is that we’re innocent of any charges you discussed. So what are you going to do now?”
“Eat,” she informed him. “Talk more later.”
“Well now, I could do with a spot o’ breakfast!” Mudge tried to muster some enthusiasm. Maybe Jon-Tom was right after all, and these cute little enchanted bastards were finally going to act in a civilized manner. “Where do we eat?”
“Wrong pronoun,” Grelgen said. She turned to point with her wand.
Jon-Tom followed it into the brush. What the poor light of evening had kept hidden from view was now revealed by the bright light of day. Up the creek beyond the town, thick peeled branches spanned a shallow excavation. The firepit showed signs of recent use.
Mudge saw it,
too, and his initial enthusiasm vanished.
“Uh, wot’s on the menu, luv?”
“Fricasseed water rat,” she told him, with relish.
“Wot, me?” Mudge squeaked.
“Give the main course a bottle of elf dust. What better end for a guilty assassin?”
Up till now Jon-Tom had considered their predicament as nothing more than a matter of bad communication. This new vision of a bunch of carnivorous fairies feasting on Mudge’s well-done carcass shoved everything over the edge into the realm of the surreal.
“Listen, you can’t eat any of us.”
Grelgen rested pudgy hands on soft hips. “Why not?
Jon-Tom struggled for a sensible reply. “Well, for one thing, it just doesn’t fit your image.”
She squinted sideways at him. “You,” she said decisively, “are nuts. I’m going to have to consult with the Elders to make sure it’s okay to eat crazy people.”
“I mean, it just doesn’t seem right. What about your honey rolls and custards and like that?”
Grelgen hesitated. When she spoke again, she sounded slightly embarrassed.
“Actually, you’re right. It’s only that every once in a while we get this craving, see? Whoever’s unlucky enough to be in the neighborhood at the time ends up on the village menu.” She glanced over at Folly and tried to regain some of her former arrogance. “We also find it helpful now and then to bathe in the blood of a virgin.”
Folly digested this and collapsed, rolling about on the ground while laughing hysterically. Grelgen saw the tears pouring down the helpless girl’s cheeks, grunted, and looked back over a shoulder. Jon-Tom followed her gaze.
On the far side of fairy town a bunch of muscular, overweight enchanted folk were sliding an oversized wooden bowl down a slope. At the sound of Grelgen’s voice they halted.
“Right! Cancel the bathing ceremony!”
Cursing under their breath, the disappointed bowl movers reversed their efforts and began pushing their burden back into the bushes.
“So you think it’s funny, do you? Right then, you’re first on the fire instead of the water rat.”
That put a clamp on Folly’s laughter.
“Why her?” Jon-Tom demanded to know.