Fairy Debt

by Gail Carriger

  Fairy Debt

  Gail Carriger

  Text Copyright © 2013 Gail Carriger

  All Rights Reserved

  Book Design by Ryvenna Lewis

  Art edited and used with permission from ClipArtOf.com

  This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, events, and locations are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons or events, living or dead, are entirely coincidental.

  This file is licensed for private individual entertainment only. The story contained herein constitutes a copyrighted work and may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into an information retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means (electrical, mechanical, photographic, audio recording, or otherwise) for any reason (excepting the uses permitted to the licensee by copyright law under terms of fair use) without the specific written permission of the author.

  Fairy Debt

  Gail Carriger

  "I won't do it, I tell you!" I was mad, and I had a right to be.

  Aunt Twill sighed dramatically and swished about where she sat in the lake shallows. Aunt Twill did most things dramatically. She was the naiad of the Woodle River, and it was a bit of a dramatic river, full of small but excitable waterfalls.

  "Unfortunately, it's your debt to pay."

  I crossed my arms and glared at her.

  She explained as though to a child, "Your mother was rescued from certain death by a human King. That's a great debt of honor for a fairy to endure."

  "Yes but these things are easily taken care of," I insisted. "All Mamma had to do was show up at the christening of the King's firstborn and grant it something humans care about." I tried to come up with examples. "You know – beauty, boxing, bee keeping. That sort of thing."

  My aunt fluttered her webbed fingers about her face in exasperation. "Yes, but your mother missed the christening and, most inconveniently, died."

  I sighed. I was only a nestling when she died, so I didn't remember. They say it had to do with a golden barbell and a frog with a steroid addiction but it was all kept very hush-hush.

  Aunt Twill reached down and gathered a few water lilies about her. "So the princess has no fairy godmother and you can't grow wings." She began braiding the lilies into a chain with her magic. "An honor debt warps wings, especially in the young."

  I fluttered my four stubby wings angrily in reply. They weren't of any use to me, but I liked to flap them for effect.

  "Debts carry forward to the next generation." My Aunt draped the water lilies about her neck. "You owe the princess."

  "But I've no working magic without working wings. Nothing to pay her with."

  "You have your Child Wishes."

  I snorted. A fairy's Child Wishes had power over only one thing, usually to do with human domestic life. Evolutionarily speaking, this ensured that mankind would always find value in sheltering fairy offspring. My cousin, Effernshimerlon, could manufacture safety pins as needed. My Wishes improved baked goods. For a fairy potluck I once made banana puff cupcakes so delicious they caused a visiting earth dragon to cry. Earth dragons are fond of cupcakes. They have notorious (and very large pointy) sweet-tooths.

  "What could I do with my Wishes?" I asked Aunt Twill. "Ensure that the castle's bread rises perfectly for the next one-hundred years?"

  I was being facetious, but my aunt took me seriously. She bobbed about in the lake and the lily chain fell from her neck.

  "No, I don't think that's enough. Not unless the castle's bread is cursed."

  I raised my eyebrows at her. "What do you suggest, then? I can't be fairy godmother to the princess, she's my age, that would be ridiculous." I felt as though everywhere I looked there was a troll with a club pointed at me, and no troll-pacifying porridge in sight. Was there no way to pay off Mamma's debt? "What do I do?"

  Aunt Twill shut her damp old eyes. I could practically hear her thoughts sliding about in her head, like water over pebbles. Very slow water over very large pebbles.

  "You'll have to pay it back the hard way."

  "Oh and what's that?"

  "Old fashioned servitude."

  I packed up and trekked west, away from the Woodle River, toward the Small Principality of Smickled-on-Twee. There lived a king who'd once rescued my mother from certain death.

  What else was I to do? I wanted wings. What good is a fairy without wings?

  I'm tall for a fairy (all that naiad blood) but really very short for a human. I come up to the knees of the average adult male. With stunted wings tucked under a tunic I looked like a hunchback. There's only one role at a royal court for a short hunchback — jester.

  I knew it would all end in tears the moment I saw the hat.

  "Do I have to wear it?" I asked the Most Jester in shock, staring at the ghastly thing.

  He jiggled his own at me. A four-pronged confection of red, blue, and green plaid tipped with silver bells. "Required uniform, I'm afraid," he replied. Clearly he'd gone into the profession out of physical necessity as well. He was extremely tall and decidedly skinny with a great beaked nose and a very deep voice.

  His hat was elegant compared to the one presented to me. Mine had only three prongs and was worn so that one always fell directly in front of the eyes. One of the prongs was yellow with pink spots and the other two were purple with white stripes. Mankind may have made uglier hats but I doubt it. Don't even get me started on the subject of the bells. The darn thing was covered in them.

  I put it on, and the accompanying checked green pumpkin pants and doublet (which, next to the hat seemed quite somber), and slouched after the Most Jester toward the Throne Room.

  "Your Majesty," the Most Jester bowed low to the king. Too low for he toppled forward, stumbled and sprawled flat on the floor. The assembled courtiers laughed appreciatively. "May I introduce our new Least Jester?" He waved a spade-like hand in my direction from his prone position.

  I had fairy grace at my disposal even if I didn't have working wings. I did a flip and two somersaults to end in a bow at the king's feet.

  The king nodded at me happily, and the princess clapped. Not every court was lucky enough to have a tumbling jester.

  "Why," said the princess, looking at me closely, "you can't be much older than me."

  I looked up at the human who held my fate in her hands. She didn't seem all that bad — a little chubby for a princess and rather graceless. Hadn't she been given any fairy gifts at all? I know my mother fell down on the job, as it were, but this poor thing was practically ordinary! She seemed to know it, too. She slid off her throne in the most humble manner, and bent down in order to properly introduce herself to me.

  "Princess Anastasia Clementina Lanagoob. How do you do?"

  I came out of my bow. Standing upright my head ended just below her waist. I reached up and shook her pudgy hand with my tiny one. "Bella Fugglecups," I replied. I couldn't give her my fairy name, of course, too recognizable. Aunt Twill had invented this one as an alternative. It was silly, but so was my hat.

  "I shall call you Cups," announced the princess.

  "Only if I can call you Goob," I retorted.

  The king seemed appalled by this impertinence, but the princess was clearly delighted. The statement made her laugh. Which is, after all, a jester's job.

  "Done," she said, letting go of my hand. "Will you teach me how to tumble?"

  I looked dubiously at her full white skirts covered in gold beads and silver embroidery.

  "Now? If you insist, but I hope your under-things are as attractive as your outer ones."

  The princess laughed again. The rest of the court gasped in shock. The Most Jester made a frantic sawing motion across his neck. I had no idea what he was on about.

  "Anastasia Clementina, I forbid such
an undertaking!" The king rose from his throne and glowered down at the two of us. He was a large sort of human, full of hair, and prone to some kind of disease that made his face go all red and splotchy. It was doing so now.

  "Please Daddy," the princess turned big muddy brown eyes on her father. Cow eyes. "I'll change my outfit."

  The king sighed.

  What I didn't know then was that the princess rarely took an interest in, or asked for, anything. When she did, her requests carried more power. It's a good approach to life, generally gets one what one wants. (So long as one doesn't "want" too often.) I would come to appreciate this character trait over the course of my association with Princess Goob, for all too often we fairies are on the receiving end of demanding humans. Take Cinderella for example – with her gown, and her coach, and her glass slippers, and on and on. I mean, really! But, I digress.

  "Very well." The king ceded defeat. He looked at me. "You don't mind?"

  I tilted my head way back. "It is my honor to serve Your Majesty." What else could I have said?

  I did a back bend, kicked my heels up, and walked away from the two royals on my hands until I'd rejoined the Most Jester. Then I flipped to standing.

  The princess clapped delightedly.

  I bowed to them both.

  "Tomorrow at noon, Cups," she ordered.

  "Noon, Princess Goob," I agreed, and followed the Most Jester out of the audience chamber.

  "Do you think it's enough of a service?" I asked Aunt Twill that evening through a small cup of tea.

  Her image wiggled in the brown liquid. Normally tea talking is a delicate spell requiring both parties use bone china, Earl Grey, and silver stirring spoons. But Aunt Twill had a contract with the tea daemons that allowed her conversational access (between the afternoon hours of half-past three and five o'clock, of course) to any cup in the kingdom. It's a naiad gossip thing.

  My aunt extracted a small gudgeon fish from her hair and ruminated. "I doubt teaching a princess acrobatics constitutes proper repayment of an honor debt. Though it is a nice thing to do. Why would she want to learn, do you think? It certainly isn't normal princess-y behavior."

  I shrugged. "She isn't a normal princess. More like a normal dairymaid. Poor thing."

  Aunt Twill nodded. "Plain ones happen sometimes. I'll do a little research and get back to you on the tumbling. Until then, I'd proceed as though this were not the answer."

  I sighed. "Very well, Aunt Twill."

  "Oh, and niece," I looked up, "that's a hideous hat."

  I stuck my tongue out at her and lifted up the bone china cup. Her face wavered in the brown liquid as I drank down the tea.

  Fairies invented tea, did you know that? It was one of our best collective spells, until the daemons stole it, and humans got in on the idea. Still, it explains my Child Wishes: baked goods go very well with tea.

  There wasn't much for the jester contingent to do during the daytime at court. Most of our entertaining work was done at night, or at feasts, or at festivals. The rest of the time we were left pretty much to our own devices.

  I spent the first few weeks poking about looking for spells or curses I could break – princes disguised as dung beetles or the odd evil loom weight. Nothing. Not a single enchanted sausage. Smickled-on-Twee had to be the most boring principality in the entire province of fairy-kind. The princess was painfully average. The queen had died a perfectly respectable death (by plague). The only thing out of the ordinary the king had done, in his long and uninteresting career as ruler, was rescue my mother. And he didn't seem to remember doing that.

  Princess Goob and I became fast friends. She was hopeless at tumbling – far, far too clumsy. But I soon realized that the lessons were only an excuse. What she really wanted was the company of someone her own age, and to get out of the castle once in awhile. In keeping with these two desires, I announced that we really must practice on a mossy lawn every afternoon, so took her through the castle gates and over the drawbridge to a sheep pasture near the moat. There I pretended to show her handstands, cartwheels, and flips. She pretended to try and learn them. Mostly we lounged about and chatted.

  "I always wanted to be a shepherdess," she confided in me one afternoon. "I think I'd be better suited to that kind of life."

  I looked at her from my supine pose on the grass. She wore a very plain dress, borrowed from one of her maids, and long brown bloomers underneath, which were supposed to be for riding. She'd tucked the skirt of the dress up on each side and tied a kerchief about her hair. She looked very like a shepherdess.

  "I think the role would suit you."

  "That's what I like about you, Cups. No silly pandering or hedging. Everyone else secretly agrees when I say such things, but they all pretend to be shocked. Or worse, tell me what a perfect princess I am."

  She flipped onto her stomach and began picking at the grass. "I never had a fairy godmother, you heard by now I suppose? Shocking thing. Dad spent a good deal of time trying to find and rescue fairies in his youth, hoping to gather honor debt, but it didn't work. So I got nothing."

  "You're probably better off that way. I always felt that princesses with all those boosts in looks and manners had no idea how real people felt. How can anyone be a good ruler if they have no understanding of those they rule?"

  The princess looked at me and nodded. "You're absolutely right, and I want you to arrange it for me."

  I sat up, wondering what I'd gotten myself into – small fairy, big mouth.

  "What?" I asked, nervous.

  "This 'understanding.' Since I can't learn acrobatics during our afternoons together, I should learn something useful. What better thing is there to learn than the lives of my people?"

  I squinted at her. She may look nothing like a princess, but she certainly spoke like one. If she kept her mouth shut, we should do alright. It was a bit like the enchanted leading the enchanted though. The only person less likely to understand the lives of the common folk than a princess was a fairy. But an order was an order.

  So our afternoon tumbling sessions turned into afternoon field trips. First we visited the shepherdesses (because she really was interested) and then the dairymaids. Then we called on the stable-hands and the goose-girls, the portrait painters and the gatekeepers. I learned a lot on these journeys. I found the lower class humans far more interesting than the nobility.

  Eventually, we ended up in the castle kitchens.

  My Child Wishes made us quite the popular visitors there. The princess liked it too. Even without my, help she seemed to have a natural talent for cooking. She invented a roasted peacock dish stuffed with dates and sage, slathered in a thick gravy with wild mushrooms and cubed ham, that caused the king to give the entire kitchen staff a raise.

  Of course, the staff all knew she was the princess, but they pretended not to, and that seemed to work well for everyone.

  Me, on the other hand, they called their Lucky Least. Whenever I was around pastries and breads seemed to turn out moister, chewier, fluffier, and more delicious than when I was away.

  "Why is that, Cups?" the princess asked me, dusting flour-covered hands on pure silk petticoats.

  "I like baking, so I'm good at it."

  "But you don't actually touch anything. You're too short to reach."

  I shrugged, a movement made very odd by my hump of hidden wings. "I keep an eye on things. Make sure they don't mess up."

  Princess Goob looked at me skeptically, but she left it at that. She'd learned if she questioned me closely I got all philosophical so it was better to stop before things got epistemologically out of hand.

  I'd been there nearly a year, and was no closer to repaying my debt, when the peace of Smickled-on-Twee was finally disturbed by something terrible.

  It was festival day and everyone was sitting down for high tea. We jesters were gallivanting about jestering, when an earth dragon waddled into the main banquet hall.

  He was a smallish, fat sort of dragon, only about two horses lo
ng and probably that many wide, with muddy bronze scales, six sad little horns, lots of sharp teeth, and a sour expression.

  Still he was an earth dragon, and as such, terrifying to humans. Earth dragons take food seriously, you see. They collect interesting recipes and bags of fizzy lemon candies to stash deep in the recesses of their muddy caves. They also consider humans crunchy little treats of meaty goodness. Other dragons don't care a jot for such things. Air dragons eat birds and collect kites as a general rule, while water dragons eat algae and collect fishing tackle. Fire dragons are the ones who hoard gold. No one is quite sure what they eat, though they have a nasty reputation. Difficult to get close enough to find out.

  As a fairy, I don't mind earth dragons all that much, but then I'm a fairy. Magic in the blood makes us far too spicy for consumption.

  This particular dragon headed straight for the high table. There he squatted across from the royals and gave Princess Goob a very toothy grin. Princesses tend to be succulent – well fed and soft skinned. It was earth dragons that started the whole "kidnapping of princesses" policy. They like to steal them away and keep them around for late night attacks of the munchies. Princess tartare.

  The king knew this and panicked. His face went redder than I'd ever seen it, and he began to sputter like an over-filled teakettle.

  I snuck under the table to sit at the princess's feet. I could touch the dragon's baby toe from there. It was about the size of my head.

  I touched the princess's toe instead. She twitched slightly. I touched it again. She lifted the edge of the tablecloth up and looked down at me.

  "Tell your father," I said, "that the only way to get out of being eaten by an earth dragon is to serve it a high tea far better than the one you would be."

  The princess nodded and her head vanished.

  A moment later, I heard the king bang hard on the table and call for service.