Unpleasant Encounters with Fairies – Episode 1
Grimmon and I stared at the circle of toadstools sprouting from the centre of my desk.
“You know what this means, don’t you?” he said. The tips of his pointed ears drooped, and he shook his head slowly like a plumber about to give an estimate.
“That we have a mould problem?” I said.
“It’s a bit more than that. Look at them. Red-capped with white spots… Doesn’t that tell you anything?”
“Yes. Precisely…” I nodded wisely, not wanting him to know I wasn’t sure what he was getting at. Then it dawned on me and I smiled. “Ah. They’re poisonous. Which means we won’t be having them for supper.”
Grimmon sighed. “We wouldn’t be having them for supper even if they weren’t poisonous. No, it means the castle has been invaded by fairies.”
“Oh. Is that bad?”
“You are joking, aren’t you?” The goblin did that plumber’s head shake thing again. “We’ll be overrun before long. You won’t be able to sit down without checking your chair for bluebells, rose hips, or more poxy toadstools.”
I glanced around my studio, scanning the bookcases, the tops of the cupboards, the little table bearing a curiously carved bone candlestick I’d picked up from a bazaar in the last world we’d visited, and the stuffed basilisk hanging from a rafter.
“Everything looks normal,” I said. “Surely there would be other signs besides toadstools if there were fairies about? They’d be buzzing around like flies, wouldn’t they?”
“I can’t believe someone as ignorant as you has survived this long.” Grimmon rolled his eyes. “If fairies don’t want to be seen, then you don’t see them. Period.”
Out of the corner of my eye, a shadow shifted. I turned my head to look. A painted bamboo fan dangling from a nail in the wall swung from side to side, then settled to a stop.
Grimmon snorted. “You see? That’s what I’m talking about. They wanted to you to see that.”
“I suppose they came from there,” I said, nodding at the landscape beyond the studio window to conceal my disquiet.
One morning a week ago, I had woken to find the castle had moved again. The land on the other side of the moat was all dramatic snow-topped mountains, mist-filled valleys and dense forests. Quite pretty.
The thing that was adding to my unease was the fact that the viaduct hadn’t reappeared when the castle moved. That, more than any of Grimmon’s dire warnings, was a sign things out there might not be as nice as they looked.
Unlike regular castles with drawbridges that spanned their moats at ground level, my ancestors had seen fit to put the main gate at the top of the wall and connect it to the mainland with a high stone bridge. If the seven tall arches of the viaduct reappeared after the castle relocated, then the chances were the land we’d arrived in was safe to visit. Well, as long as one didn’t do anything stupid.
All that emptiness where the viaduct should be, the mysterious ring of toadstools, Grimmon’s gloomy predictions… I didn’t have a good feeling about it at all.
It was time for me to seize the initiative.
“We need to take action immediately. Nip the problem in the bud,” I said.
I stepped closer to my desk and swept my arm across it, sending toadstools flying. A strange chittering sound filled the air as I stood back and brushed fragments of fungus from my sleeve.
Grimmon’s eyes were wide.
“Oh dear. You shouldn’t have done that,” he said.
***
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