by Kevin Hearne
“So now that we’ve established that this is Staph the pixie and that you, the king, have requested Staph the pixie, let’s talk about payment plans.” The elf pulled out a sheaf of parchment as tall as half a halfling. “Now that we’ve mutually agreed on fifty gold pieces, if you’ll just sign here—”
Grinda nodded and reached for the quill he held out. “Yes, that seems very reasonable.”
“No!” Gustave shouted, startling everyone. “I don’t know why you’re all suddenly stupid, but this nincompoop is trying to swindle me, and as the king, I don’t like that one bit. Guards, take him in hand. Bring me that cage and give the elf five boots or five gold pieces, his choice, and kick him out. And for the love of all that’s goaty, put up a No Soliciting sign. Whenever he opens his mouth, I feel a part of me die.”
Grinda shook herself, feeling the elf’s spell partially broken and realizing that Gustave was immune to the charm the elf had used to ensnare her. What they needed was some hearing-impaired guards mixed in with the rest to protect them from spoken spells—and rival bardic spells—in the future. Before the elf could talk again, she flicked her wand and shouted, “Swige!”
The elf’s mouth kept moving, but no sound came out. The phrases he shouted would’ve shocked anyone with the ability to read lips, and his hand gestures made his feelings clear to those without that skill. Gustave’s guards moved in, taking the elf in hand, and one guard brought the cage to Gustave as the pixie beat herself against the bars, trying to squeeze through and failing.
“You started all this,” Gustave marveled, staring at the nasty little creature. “If not for you, I’d probably be stew by now, and poorly seasoned, too, judging by the sorry herb garden Worstley’s mother kept. So thanks a lot for that, both for real and sarcastically. Now, I’m not really in favor of anyone’s execution—”
“What?” Grinda sputtered.
“—but I can’t set you free, either. You’ve caused too much trouble, and I can’t have you flying around, activating all sorts of Chosen Ones to come after me. What next, a talking shark? Just no.” He turned to Grinda. “Any nonlethal suggestions, chamberlain? I have a strict no-slaughter policy for captives.”
“You’ll have to open the cage first. The metal is ensorcelled. And then cut off her wings,” Grinda said. “That will nullify her magic. Since you’re feeling kind.”
King Gustave motioned Fia over. “Get your sword ready.”
“No!” Staph shrieked. “Don’t you dare!”
“On three,” Gustave said, holding the clasp on the cage. Grinda grinned in anticipation, anxious to see her old foe rendered helpless.
“One.”
Fia’s sword was ready.
“Two.”
Argabella closed her eyes.
“Three.”
Gustave opened the cage, and Fia reached inside, grabbing the pixie by the wings. Staph struggled and shrieked, kicking and screaming as she was tugged through the door.
But the moment she was outside, a thunderclap shook the room, filling it with noxious green gas.
As the gas cleared, Fia called out in dismay.
The pixie had disappeared.
Argabella choked on fairy gas and experienced a profound sense of incompletion. They’d come so far, and Staph had escaped. Even worse, Fia would blame herself for letting the pixie go even though it wasn’t her fault.
“I should’ve known,” Grinda said, examining the cage with her tiny possum hands. “Her wand wasn’t her only source of power. Witches and wizards require an artifact to focus our magic, but pixies are fairies and fairies have their own sort of filthy, disgusting magic they can let rip, so to speak.”
Beside her, the elf jumped up and down, shouting silently and pointing at his hand as if requesting the gold he’d come to claim. Argabella thought he looked more than a little ridiculous. It was funny how she’d once thought elves to be gracious, cultured, magical beings but had learned that they were all complete toerags.
“Drop him outside,” Grinda instructed the guards. As they dragged him out, she shouted, “Gold is for closers!”
“But he brought me Staph the pixie, so don’t I owe him five gold pieces?” Gustave asked, confused. “I mean, even if she got away by deploying a magical fart, he still did his job.”
“So you’re going to be that kind of king.” Grinda smoothed down her fur and sighed yet again before shouting after the guards. “Fine. Give him five gold pieces and tell him never to come back here again.” She turned to Gustave. “You’re setting a dangerous precedent with that, you know. If the people think you can be trusted, they’ll start asking for things. Living wages. Clean water. Proper health care.”
“Oh. But…that sounds pretty reasonable, doesn’t it? I mean, they’re paying taxes, right?”
Grinda threw her possum hands in the air and sounded vexed, but Argabella saw her smiling a wee possum smile out of Gustave’s vision. The witch was secretly pleased. “Benevolence. It had to be benevolence. You’re never going to make it as king with a soft heart like that.”
“I’m kind of worried about it, actually,” Gustave admitted. “I mean, what am I going to do when you’re gone? I don’t really trust anyone but you guys. I still feel like most people want to eat me. Even Hurlga sometimes looks at me like I’m made of meat.”
“You are still made of meat,” Argabella said gently.
“I know! And it’s terrifying!”
Grinda scampered up the throne and sat on the arm, patting Gustave’s shoulder. “Being king is like being anything. At first it’s scary, but then you get the hang of it. And then it gets boring and you want to spend a year on a boat, finding yourself. For now, you’re still in the scary bit. But you have Hurlga and your guards and a bunch of cooks and maids, and—”
“Please stay.”
Poor Gustave. As a goat, he could simply faint when he was frightened, but as a human, he had no choice but to hunch down in his throne and tremble. He looked around, meeting the eyes of each of his friends. Argabella found it a little disconcerting, considering it didn’t quite feel like both of his eyes were meeting hers. But she read the desperation there and felt terribly bad for him.
“What did you say?” Grinda asked.
“Stay. Please. All of you. I’ve grown so accustomed to you. I’m a herd animal at heart, and…well…you’re my herd. Beatrix and the nanny goats are still mad at me for tricking them and putting Blurt to sleep.”
Argabella went to his other side and scratched behind his ear the way he liked, and Fia came up and put her arm around Argabella’s waist.
“But there’s still work to do,” Argabella said gently. “My old castle is still enchanted.” As am I, she thought but didn’t say.
“And Worstley might still be saved,” Fia added, “which I’d really like to do.”
“And I’d like to not be a marsupial,” Grinda said, one little pink hand going unconsciously to her pouch. Gustave made a strangled bleat, and she graciously added, “But I will come back to act as your adviser once my business is done if you wish.”
Gustave sighed in relief. “Yes, please. Advise me. I’m starting to get the hang of forks, but I’m still clueless about how I’m supposed to rule. This nanny goat I was talking to said everyone’s saying I’m screwing it up on purpose. That nobility aren’t supposed to care about the people they’ve been entrusted to lead. I mean, what else am I supposed to do with taxes, hoard them? Sheesh.”
“That can wait until I return. Mondeux will help you with the day-to-day business in the meantime,” Grinda promised, “and Hurlga, of course, will help you with, uh—” Her eyes dropped to his diaper before she added, “Your other business. It will only be a few weeks if you lend us a coach. And then we can start cleaning up this mess of a kingdom.”
“What a strange idea,” Gustave said with a grin. “Me, cleaning
something up.”
* * *
They set out the next morning in the king’s most luxurious coach. Gustave had given them many gifts, although he hadn’t quite mastered gift giving yet on a human scale. They had a large bale of hay, five boots, several shoelaces, and a bouquet of thistles. Thankfully, Mondeux knew his way around a treasury, and he’d made sure they were truly well fortified for their journey. Argabella had a beautiful new lute carved of Morningwood birch and ensorcelled to always be in tune. Fia’s fine new helmet was fitted with an enormous pair of carved wood goat horns to mark her as a member of Gustave’s elite guard. Grinda had a bucket of wet cat food and a pashmina shawl to nest in. Together, they settled into the cushy seats and prepared to see the land in a new way: comfortably.
They were so accustomed to traveling as a party that there was little strife. They encountered neither trolls nor giants, and their horses had more sense than their old oxen. Four of the king’s guards traveled with them, ensuring they were unmolested. Grinda kept a small notebook and made a list of which roads required attention, and they stopped in each town to take note of the general attitudes surrounding happiness, government, and goats. Argabella had once thought Grinda to be very selfish and somewhat cruel, but it seemed like having a purpose suited the witch. Perhaps that was the way of people: they just needed to matter. And it was hard to be relevant when all one did was sit on fantastic beaches, surrounded by sparkling crabs.
“Why do you like those shiny crabs so much?” Argabella asked, pointing to the ring glittering on Grinda’s tail.
“They are tough and beautiful whether you are there to notice them or not. They’re like people that way. For example, those years you spent in the tower due to this awful curse? Nobody saw you. And still you were tough and beautiful.”
“What? No—” Argabella began, surprised that this was suddenly about her.
“Ask Fia.”
She blushed furiously and slid her eyes to Fia, who grinned at her from inside her helmet. “You were, honey bunny.”
“Anyway, they remind me of what I’m working for. The unseen people, folks from Qul and Teabring and Burdell and the Skyr, the denizens of the eastern provinces, the dwarfs and elves and the giants, too. They’re just like you and me, except they’re out of common sight—well, except perhaps the giants are a little more cannibalistic than we are. Still, working for them is working for myself.”
They rolled up to the thorny tower one afternoon on a properly sunny day, and Argabella was awed by how mysterious and sublime it looked from the outside. The sunlight slanted through glistening green leaves and beautiful magenta roses, the gray stone underneath forbidding and ancient. To think, for so long she’d been inside, letting the world pass by. And all because of one foul pixie, everything had changed. She didn’t feel ashamed of her soft rabbit fur and long ears now. When she saw the way Fia looked at her, she was simply glad to exist at all.
The carriage jingled to a stop, and Argabella held the door open for Grinda. The sand witch clambered out and waddled up and down the base of the thorn-covered wall.
“Where is it?” she muttered. “Ah. Here.”
She aimed her wand at a section of the wily thatch and thrust it forward, penetrating so deeply that the wand all but disappeared. The thorns rustled and shivered in response and then shuddered apart to reveal a wooden door with two gnarly old knockers hanging on it somewhat higher than a halfling’s reach.
Fia groaned. “You’ve got to be kidding me. I climbed up a hank of nasty hair and killed a kid, and there was a door here all along?”
Grinda raised a whiskery eyebrow. “There’s almost always a way in. You just have to know where to look. Or, you know, to have seen it originally, before you hid it. I can’t reach them, Fia, so I want you to grab hold of those knockers and twist them.”
Fia did so, and the door sighed and moaned as it swung open on the courtyard, a place Argabella knew well. When she saw Oxnard the guard, still asleep with his face buried in cherry pie, and then looked to the lady’s tower, she felt a thrum of guilt. As if sensing her feelings, Fia slid a hand into hers.
“It’s going to be fine,” she said.
And Argabella believed her.
“Now show me your dead pooboy.” Grinda stopped, mouth open, in shock at herself. “I mean, my dear nephew Worstley. My goodness, how that goat gets under one’s skin.”
“Don’t you want to wake up the castle first?” Argabella urged.
“Mm. No. Let’s do this first. Trust me: you don’t want someone to wake up next to a dead body.”
Fia led them to the tower and held Argabella’s hand all the way up the steps. The Lady Harkovrita still lay in her bed, beautiful if a little creepy, her beard lustrous and shining, but Worstley was…
“Oh, goodness, my darlings. Yes, he’s dead. Really, really dead. Way beyond my powers. Beyond anybody’s powers,” Grinda pronounced, tears slipping down her silver cheeks.
Argabella turned away and vomited carrots, and Fia silently wept. Although Argabella had seen many corpses recently and had almost become one herself on several occasions, she hadn’t yet seen someone so supremely dead as Worstley, and she felt horrible for Fia, who had fought past trolls and hooktongues and soldiers and so much more in the hope that he might be saved. The tower’s magic had done nothing to halt his…Deadfulness, and he was in fact in an advanced state of decay.
“What do we do with it? I mean him?” Argabella asked, wiping sour juice from her lips.
Grinda was panting, her little beady eyes bugging out. “Wrap him in something and stow him in that wardrobe over there. There will soon be brawnier people about to dig the grave, and we have business to attend to.”
Fia’s mouth gaped. “But…isn’t he your nephew?”
“We weren’t close,” Grinda said. “I am sorry he’s gone and very sorry for my sister’s grief. It was a senseless tragedy, and the blame for it rests squarely on the shoulders of Løcher and Staph. You should bear no guilt for this. Now, let’s all move past it and do some good in the world.” She had that firm resolve that comes from a life of tragedy, and Argabella and Fia immediately set to rolling what was left of Worstley up inside what they now recognized as a priceless tapestry from Pickelangelo’s Blue Period.
After visiting the washroom to clean up, Argabella strode out of the tower, gulped fresh air, and sucked in the scent of roses. She needed a break after that harrowing sight. Although she didn’t think it would be quite as easy for Fia to move on from the crushing disappointment of Worstley’s confirmed death, she felt a lift of hope as Grinda called her inside the castle to where the heart rose waited. Standing before it, she remembered the moment she’d first seen Fia and begged her not to hurt the leggy cultivar with its crumpled heart. But the possum had no such scruples about the tender flower.
“Fia, lift me up to the blossom, please,” she said. “There’s only one way to break this enchantment.”
Fia obligingly picked Grinda up, and the possum stretched out her neck, snapping up the rose blossom in three quick bites. Once the last petal was swallowed, the thorns fell away from every surface of the castle walls and turned to dust, creating quite a cleanup project in the process.
Argabella didn’t get to witness the castle waking up, however, as she was engulfed in a golden whirlwind of light and glitter. Her body lifted up in the center of a powerful vortex, and she went warm all over as if bathing in the summer sun. Spinning around, blinded by incandescent light, she could hear Fia shouting, “Hold on, love! I’m here!”
But then the warmth and light tore away from her as if someone had blown out the only candle in her bedroom and snatched away her blanket. Argabella shivered in the dark and cold and painfully banged her knees on the floor as she fell, seized by an epic fit of sneezing as the dust from all the enchanted thorns had been blown about in her own personal tornado. A hand landed
on her shoulder.
“Are you okay?” Fia asked between her own sneezes.
“I think so.”
But when she looked up, Fia gasped and touched her cheek.
“What is it? Am I a worse monster? Am I a goat? Or a marmoset? What happened?” Argabella wailed.
But Fia just helped her stand and turned her to face a mirror.
Argabella was human again. The fur and whiskers and long ears were gone, and when she reached around behind her, the fluffy tail was gone, too, leaving an awkward hole in her gown. She had never thought herself particularly pretty, yet she suddenly felt like herself, more like herself than she’d ever herselved.
“Am I…do I look okay?” she asked Fia. Because she was terrified that Fia might not like this version of who she was.
“You’re still perfect,” the fighter said, pulling her in for a kiss.
All around them, her friends and fellow castle denizens were waking up, shaking their heads in disbelief and yawning. And then fighting over privies. Argabella didn’t really care. She only had eyes for Fia.
The next hour was a rush of questions and answers, and they carefully steered clear of the earl and countess and Argabella’s pushy father to avoid any possible interrogation. Not that the gentry would know what questions to ask any better than the others. Mostly everyone asked everyone else, “What happened?” to which Argabella replied, “I don’t know, but aren’t you glad to be awake and alive?” What the castle denizens didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them—or make them attack the sand witch, who, Argabella believed, was going to do real good in the kingdom by Gustave’s side.
They were attempting to edge toward the tower to check on Lady Harkovrita when a screech rang out from the top.
“The lady is dead!” someone shouted.
Hurrying up the stairs, they found a maid standing over the Lady Harkovrita, who lay still and waxy on her bed. She wasn’t awake, but she was definitely breathing, Argabella noticed with great relief.
