Tag: stories

Unpleasant Encounters with Fairies – Episode 5

People nowadays have a sugar-coated idea of what fairies are like. You know, all those images of pretty little fairy folk in skimpy outfits skipping and laughing, sipping morning-mist-tea from acorn cups and so on. Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but fairies aren’t like that. Not one little bit.

For example, take the one prodding me in the back with her spear as she ushered me along a maze of tunnels through the moss. Her auburn hair was a spiky tangle of split-ends, her face, beneath its layers of grime, would have sent shivers down an ogre’s spine, her blue-green dress had an unwashed-since-time-began look, her ankle-high boots might once have belonged to a boggart with a yeast infection, and her wings had all the appeal of a bluebottle’s. Even her bangles and the fancy beadwork on her belt, were stained with reddish dirt. At least, I hoped it was dirt.

I’d like to say that beneath her unsavoury exterior there beat a heart of gold, but that would be stretching the truth. She hadn’t even had the decency to introduce herself. I decided to call her Bangles because of the thick bundle of them decorating her arm.

“Where are you taking me?” I said, arching my back to avoid the worst of the jabbing.

“Shut up and keep walking.”

I clenched my jaw. Clearly, Bangles wasn’t in the mood for conversation.

Trudging along the eerily lit mossy tunnels, I wished I’d made more of an effort to memorise my spell book. Whenever I’m in a fix, half remembered spells pop into my head and I’m tempted to cast them – or the fragments I remember – but I never do. What happened to dear old uncle Oswald when he miscast, makes me bite my tongue every time. It took us weeks to scrape the greasy stains, which were all that remained of him, off of the castle’s walls.

In my haste to get away from Grimmon, I hadn’t thought to bring something I could use to defend myself with. I patted my dressing gown’s pockets, hoping to find a dagger I’d forgotten about, or even a butter knife I’d absentmindedly dropped in there, but all I had was a stale, half-eaten crumpet.

To make matters worse, my bare feet were complaining. To a full-sized human, moss is soft and comfortable to walk on. But if you’re only three inches tall, it’s coarse and scratchy on the soles. I was limping when the tunnel opened out into a grotto.

“We’re here,” snapped Bangles. “Straighten your shoulders. Try not to look so pathetic. And be on your best behaviour. You’re about to meet Queen Amabilis.”

“Who?” I said, gazing around the grotto. Dozens of fairies stood around the sides, some with expectant expressions on their grubby faces, others frowning, and more than a few glaring at me with undisguised hatred. I guessed about half their number were female, the rest male, and most were in grubby clothes like Bangles’, though there were one or two who seemed to have access to a washtub. But it was the figure in the centre of the floor that grabbed my attention.

Beneath a flower-covered bower, stood a fairy like no other. Tall and regal in a neck to toe spider-silk gown, her midnight-black tresses topped by a tiara of gold, she stared down her nose at me from hard, tawny eyes. Her crimson lips cut a straight line across her waxen face. Rainbows rippled across the delicate membranes of her wings when she moved.

As Bangles pushed me over to her, I lifted my chin as though speaking to royalty was something I did every day, all the while trying to brush the stains and week-old crumbs from my dressing gown. Without being asked, I fell to my knees at her feet. In my experience, it pays to grovel in situations like this.

But not this time.

“It’s a bit late for humility, don’t you think?” said the queen.

“What do you mean?”

“You attempted to destroy my new realm. Fawning won’t help you.”

I was quite taken aback. “Destroy?” I clambered to my feet. “All I did was pull down a few strands of moss.”

Her eyes flashed. “Yes. And you tore apart my fairy ring! Smashed my beautiful toadstools into tiny pieces! Scattered their shredded corpses to the wind!”

I thought that was an exaggeration, and told her so. Then, as her face darkened, I added, “Anyway, I’m the lord of this castle, and it’s mine! Not your ‘new realm’! How dare you? I must say, I’m rather put out.”

If I’d thought she was angry before, it was nothing to what followed. After a minute of arm waving and ranting on her part, I raised my hand, palm towards her.

She sputtered to a stop, her mouth open and her tawny eyes wide in disbelief.

“The thing is,” I said, casually brushing a speck of dirt off of my sleeve. “You’re in danger of being stranded. You see, the castle will soon leave your world and go to another.”

“What are you talking about?”

“There’s a curse over this castle and everyone in it. It keeps moving from one world to the next, and we never know when it will move, or where it will go.” I let that sink in, then added, “It could move tomorrow, or next week, but when it does, you’ll never see your land again.”

“Lies! You’re trying to trick me!”

“No. You must have noticed this castle appear out of nowhere a couple of days ago? Surely?”

That got to her. She narrowed her eyes and stared at me while she considered my words.

“I admit we thought it odd we hadn’t noticed this castle before,” she said, eventually. “We decided it must have been there all along, but hidden by a magic hedge of thorns that must have faded away…” She trailed to stop.

I raised my eyebrows. “I see. Do you remember there being a magic hedge here? And that it suddenly vanished? No, of course you don’t.”

I could see she didn’t like it, but the evidence I had pointed out was as plain as day.

She thought for a moment, then her eyes lit up. “You mentioned a curse.” She put a finger under my chin and lifted my face so I was looking straight into her eyes. “You claim to be the lord of this castle, so is the curse on you, or the castle itself?”

“Oh… um, I… Look, it started centuries ago when one of my ancestors accidentally cast the spell that moves the castle about. Every single one of his descendants has been affected, so technically, I suppose it’s me who’s cursed. But that doesn’t change anything. If you don’t leave soon, you’ll be carried along with the castle to wherever its going next.”

I smiled triumphantly.

“It seems to me it won’t go anywhere if you’re dead.” Queen Amabilis stroked a long, red fingernail over my cheek.“

My throat thickened, and I swallowed hard.

***

Continued in Part 6 – The Punishment Begins

Unpleasant Encounters with Fairies – Index of Episodes

Unpleasant Encounters with Fairies – Episode 4

The moment the last word of power left my lips, I dropped the spell book back on the desk and darkness clamped around me, squeezing and twisting my body like an ogre wringing every last drop of water out of the washing.

Then the light rushed back, and I opened my eyes.

I was standing next to an enormous buckled shoe stuffed with an oversized stockinged foot attached to an elephant-sized leg. My desk was the size of a double-storey house. The whole studio was vast, like a cathedral for giants.

I always experience a rush of giddy pleasure when my spells work, and I felt it this time too, but it quickly vanished when I looked around. Although I was about three inches tall, as intended, I realised the enormous buckled shoe and stockinged leg belonged to Grimmon, who hadn’t shrunk at all.

“Grimmon?” I said.

The shoe shifted, scraping along the floor and banging into me. I jumped aside to avoid being squashed.

“Where are you? And why is your voice so squeaky?” said Grimmon.

I tipped back my head and shouted, “I’m down here!”

Grimmon bent and peered at me. “Ah, there you are. Why are you so tiny? I thought you were going to cast a spell to take us out of here.”

“I did cast a spell! That’s why I’m tiny! Why haven’t you shrunk as well?”

“Another one of your spells misfired, eh?” The goblin went down on his haunches, wheezing like a deflating balloon. “Hang on… Are you saying this isn’t an accident? That you meant to make yourself that small?”

“Yes! But the spell was supposed to shrink both of us.”

“Let me get this straight.” Grimmon rubbed his forehead. “Instead of casting a spell to, let’s say, produce a magic sword we can use to cut our way out, you cast one that reduced you to the size of a mouse. And, you imply, it was supposed to do the same to me.” He huffed and a great waft of his rancid breath washed over me. “I’m rather glad it didn’t. What possessed you to think being tiny is a good idea?”

I tried to keep my face from showing my annoyance – and, yes, my embarrassment – that a magic sword hadn’t even occurred to me.

But there was no way I was going to give Grimmon ammunition for future arguments. I puffed out my chest and put my hands on my hips. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? At this size, I can walk through the gaps in the moss. The fairies must have left them there so they can do the same thing.”

“I see. So, once you’re in those gaps of yours, where do you suppose you’ll go? How are you going to get out of the castle? You’re way too small to open the doors.”

He had me again. I cursed under my breath, then pulled myself together and stood as tall as my three inches allowed. “I have no intention of leaving the castle,” I lied. “My plan all along has been to go to the kitchen and have breakfast. I’m starving.”

“What about me?”

“Oh, I’ll bring something back for you to eat.”

“How do you propose to do that? You’re too titchy to carry more than a crumb! You really didn’t think this through, did you?”

I didn’t like the turn the conversation had taken, and I’m not fond of being on the defensive. There was only one thing I could do.

“Goodbye! See you later!” I yelled and scurried away across the floor. Before he could stop me, I dodged out of the door and dived through a gap in the moss.

It didn’t stop him yelling after me, though. “It will take you half a day to walk to the kitchen on those matchstick legs!”

Another thing I hadn’t thought of.

“That’s even if you manage to get down the stairs! It’ll be like climbing down a mountain!”

Ignoring him, I pelted along a mossy tunnel, which I hoped would lead to the stairs. He shouted some other things too, but they were too rude for me to pay attention to. In any case, I had far more important things to deal with.

Like the fairy who stepped out of a side tunnel and pointed her spear at me.

I skidded to a halt and her face split in a mean smile, revealing teeth like a row of yellow needles.

“Where do you think you’re going?” she said.

***

Continued in Part 5 – The Fairy Queen and Me

Unpleasant Encounters with Fairies – Index of Episodes

Unpleasant Encounters with Fairies – Episode 2

That night, I locked the door to my sleeping chamber. Not that it would have made any difference as far as the fairies were concerned, but it made me feel better.

I’d spent the afternoon looking over my shoulder, while walking the castle’s battlements, which, Grimmon Darkly had assured me, was safer than being indoors. As long as I kept moving, he’d said, the fairies would leave me alone.

(I should briefly interject to clarify that Darkly is Grimmon’s last name, and not that I’m implying he’d spoken in a sombre tone. He insists Darkly is a common name amongst goblins).

He’d also told me it would be better to sleep out in the open, which was a bit rich seeing as he’d gone inside as soon as the rain had started, saying it wasn’t him who’d upset the fairies, so he had nothing to fear.

Standing alone in the dark, miserable and soaked, I’d decided enough was enough and stalked to my bedroom shortly after he’d left.

I’d fallen asleep unmolested by fairies, secure in my four-poster bed. Or, at least, feeling secure because, as I said, I’d locked the door.

It seemed like only minutes had passed when I was woken by the vigorous shaking of a small, bony hand on my shoulder.

“Get up,” said Grimmon.

“What?” I tried to sound fresh and alert, while, in reality, my brain was as active as a boiled turnip. Sleep swam away, and I reluctantly raised my head and glared at the goblin who’d so rudely interrupted my slumber. He’d already opened the curtains and bright morning sunlight was pouring in through the window.

“It’s bad,” he said.

“Why? No toast for breakfast? Have we run out of bread again?” I said, sitting up and turning my face away so he wouldn’t see me wiping the drool off my cheek.

“No. It’s the fairies.” The tip of one pointed ear wobbled as he wiggled a finger in its recesses. “We need to do something, quickly.”

I was in no mood to be hurried. He shuffled his feet impatiently while I pulled a dressing gown over my pyjamas, and groaned like Great Aunt Clarence’s settee when I couldn’t find my slippers.

I can’t remember how many years ago Grimmon came to live in Castle Silverhill, but I do recall it took months for him to get used to navigating around the ancient pile. You see, some places in the castle aren’t where you’d expect them to be. Take my studio, for instance. If you’re outside, you’ll see it perched at the very top of the tallest tower. If you stand inside it and gaze out of the windows, you’ll have a bird’s-eye view of the slate roofs of the castle’s other buildings, and the walkways and battlements of the curtain wall.

Despite that, to get to my studio from some parts of the castle, you have to go downstairs.

Which is the way Grimmon led me upon leaving my sleeping chamber.

By the time we got there, my stomach was rumbling and I wondered aloud whether we couldn’t go to the dining room instead, but Grimmon grabbed my arm, pulled me into my studio, and pointed.

Loops and coils of dark, stringy moss dangled from the rafters, some nearly touching the floor. The air reeked of the earthy scent of a forest.

“The fairies did this?” I said, rubbing my eyes.

“Of course they did! Who else?”

“It might have been you… or the cook.”

A loud snort escaped the goblin’s nostrils. “You forgot to mention the ghost.”

Apart from me and Grimmon, the only other occupants of Castle Silverhill are a person who claims she used to be a chef for some royal or other, and a poltergeist. As far as I’m aware, anyway.

“There’s no need to be sarcastic.” I folded my arms. Then a thought entered my sleep-befuddled brain. “How did you get into my room? The door was locked.”

“No, it wasn’t.” Grimmon’s pupils slid to the side. “We’re wasting time. You need to sort this out.”

“All right.” I yanked on a strand of moss. It fell to the floor. 

“Well, it’s a start. But what about all that?” The goblin pointed at the open door behind us.

I turned around. Curtains of moss choked the stairway we had used only minutes earlier.

We were trapped.

***

Continued in Part 3 – Unintended Consequences of Magic

Unpleasant Encounters with Fairies – Index of Episodes

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.

***

Continued in Part 2 – A Malignancy of Moss

Unpleasant Encounters with Fairies – Index of Episodes