Unpleasant Encounters with Fairies – Episode 8
Like I said, spells are treacherous beasts.
The thing is, unless you speak the long dead language they’re written in, you don’t stand a marshmallow’s chance against a flamethrower of knowing exactly what’s going to happen when you cast one your subconscious drags from your memory and shoves into your mind.
What I’d hoped, as the words had tumbled from my lips, was that the spell was the backwards version of the one I’d used to shrink myself.
It wasn’t. The cloud of feathers gave that much away.
I dropped my gaze to my feet.
They were three-toed, red, and gnarled like clawed twigs.
“Squawk!” I yelled.
With a sinking feeling, I raised my arms, pretty sure what I was going to see.
I was right.
Wings.
But not the elegant, slim, great-for-soaring-out-of-the-window sort. No, mine were short and broad like a couple of stumpy feathered fans.
I’d turned myself into a chicken.
Grimmon told me later, in his less than endearing pedantic way, he reckons I’d turned myself into a Polish rooster. I’m not sure how he knew because he wasn’t there at the time. At any rate, at that moment I had more important things to worry about than working out what breed I’d transmogrified into.
My first thought, once I’d got over my shock, was to take advantage of what remained of those precious seconds of stupor affecting everyone else at my abrupt change, and dash to the crack in the wall I’d been heading for earlier.
Filled with hope, I flicked my gaze away from Trewla and at the gap I hoped to escape through.
My stomach sank to my knobbly toes. The crack was too narrow for my new fowl body.
A movement caught my eye and the feathers on my neck lifted. Trewla, noticing my distraction, had crouched and was creeping towards me with her arms spread.
I realised in an instant what was going on. I was no longer small enough to be stomped on. She was going to catch me and wring my scrawny neck.
With another squawk, I leaped into the air, spun around, and ran. A bunch of fairies blocking my way went tumbling like ninepins as I thundered into them.
I clucked in glee at their outraged yells. Maybe being a chicken had some advantages after all. Also, now that my legs were longer than they’d been only a minute ago, I might be able to outrun Trewla.
The corridor took a sharp turn to the left, and I shot around it, my feet scrabbling for purchase on the hard stone floor. Fairies buzzed and whizzed overhead, screeching in rage and swooping at my head to put me off my stride. A quick stab from my beak sent one of them spinning away, clutching his arm. The others backed off, wary of my wild eyes and slashing bill.
“Take that, you nasty little twerps!”, I shouted. Or at least, I tried to, but all that came out of my throat was a series of maddened cackles.
It didn’t matter that I couldn’t hurl abuse at the fairies. In my opinion, things had take a turn for the better. Sure, it would have been preferable if my spell had turned me into an eagle, a hawk, or even a starling, but at that moment I wasn’t complaining.
The hammering of Trewla’s feet, and the rasping of her breath was still uncomfortably close behind me. Another bend, this one to the right, took me into a corridor slightly less dusty than the last.
My heart lifted. With a flash of clarity, I knew where I was. I wasn’t heading to my studio, where my spell book lay, but to the kitchen. Although that was disappointing, on the other hand Cook would be in the kitchen. And quite likely Grimmon would be there too. The moment the moss had disappeared, that’s where he would have gone, greedy goblin that he is.
They would protect me from the fairies.
The kitchen door grew closer. I crowed in delight when I saw it was open.
I put on a spurt of speed and, wailing like a feathered banshee, burst into the kitchen.
As I’d expected, Grimmon was there. He was sitting by the window, stuffing his face with what appeared to be a roasted rat. His fingers were dripping in grease, and he was so engrossed in his meal, he didn’t notice me.
He’d be no help, then.
I swung my head around.
Cook? Where’s Cook?
There was no sign of her, but she isn’t always visible, so I wasn’t too worried at that point. I mean, she hardly ever left the kitchen as far as I knew. Even slept there, I think.
Not being able to see her wasn’t unusual. Between you and me, it was due to the unintended consequences of a spell I cast some years ago when I’d been searching for a lost magic spoon. I never found the spoon, but a side effect of the spell was that Cook ended up being two dimensional. A bit like a paper doll.
Front on, she looked like a normal person who spends all their time preparing food, what with her floury hands, apron, black hair tucked under a cap, sharp nose and chin. But sideways on she was really thin. I mean, like nonexistent thin. So thin she was invisible.
I knew I’d see her when she turned around.
What I hadn’t expected, though, was that when she did, she’d have a meat-cleaver in her hand.
“I’d been wondering what to make his lordship for dinner, and look what the fates sent me!” she yelled as she swung the cleaver at my neck.
I screamed, jumped out of the way, and flapped my stubby little wings.
When the dust cleared, I was standing on a table in the corner of the room. Cook was pacing towards me from my right. Trewla was stomping closer from my left, and swarm of angry fairies were zooming straight at me in front.
I was doomed.
***
Continued in Part 9 – Things Don’t Always Work Out How You Expect
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