‘Why I’m not madly in love with you?’
She nodded.
‘You said you’d explain,’ I waved a hand around, ‘all this.’
It still wasn’t making sense. Trolls and bunyips weren’t potion-pushers.
‘All right. But not in here.’ Gaela glanced at her customers, but everyone still had a plate full of pizza. Of course they had. Except for the banshees, they’d been too busy staring at her with lovesick eyes to eat.
‘Follow me. I’ve got a delivery to make,’ said Gaela shortly. She led the way over to the door into the kitchen.
Every person — and every werewolf or troll — except for the banshees watched me enviously as I followed her through the door and shut it behind me. It was quite a kitchen. Well-scrubbed wooden walls, tiled floor, stainless-steel table and benches, and a giant pizza oven with a neat stack of driftwood beside it. So that was what gave the pizzas their salty tang, I realised — the scent of the sea.
Ingredients were neatly lined up on one bench — slugs, road kill and so on in labelled and sealed containers; rocket, grated cheeses, three kinds of sliced mushrooms, sliced cooked potatoes and all the rest in their containers too. There was no sign of any illegal potion flasks.
On the other bench were small balls of pizza dough waiting to be stretched flat and loaded with toppings. I shut my eyes and imagined eating the House Special all over again, no anchovies.
‘Which is your favourite?’ I asked, my eyes still closed.
‘Anchovy, cheese and caramelised onion.’
I opened my eyes. ‘I don’t like anchovies.’
‘I guessed,’ said Gaela dryly.
I looked at the whiteboard that listed the various combinations. I hadn’t tried most of them yet.
‘Sweet potato, fetta and rocket,’ I read aloud. ‘Doesn’t the rocket shrivel in the oven?’
‘I scatter it on top as soon as the pizza comes out of the oven, and the fetta gives off enough steam to wilt it.’
‘Tomato, black olives, mozzarella . . .’
‘Classic but excellent,’ said Gaela. ‘I use half fresh skinned tomatoes and half homemade tomato sauce.’
‘Artichoke, eggplant, tomato and three cheeses?’
‘The artichoke has to be just firm enough to give some bite. That’s the secret of pizza — thin crust, thin topping, something soft, something firm, something sweet and something acidic, and all with a touch of salt. There are thousands of possible combinations.’
‘Why don’t you let your customers choose their toppings then?’
‘Because they’d probably choose wrong. And anyway, they don’t want to. Customers like a nice uncomplicated menu where they don’t have to do too much thinking. Like the customer you’re about to meet now.’
She picked up the largest pizza box I’d ever seen, wrapped it in a waterproof cloth, then opened the back door. A gust of ocean wind sent the fire flickering in the back of the oven.
‘Oh,’ I said, as everything became clear.
The kitchen door didn’t open onto sandhills as I’d expected. The café must have been built between them, because two steps down and my feet met a beach. White sand glowed as gold in the moonlight as the cheese on Gaela’s pizzas, smoothed by the retreating tide. Waves tumbling in neat rows of three, as if someone had crocheted their white tops. The scent of seaweed, and a horizon where the dark sea ruffled and met the star-dusted sky.
Gaela turned to me and laughed, the lacy waves already nibbling at her toes. She put the pizza down on the sand out of the waves’ reach and pulled her sack-like dress over her head. She wore nothing underneath it. She untied her ponytail, strode into the waves, then dived down. She came up, wet face glowing. And suddenly she wasn’t a sour-faced pizza chef. She wasn’t even human.
‘You’re a selkie,’ I said slowly.
Gaela laughed again, her true self here in the water.
No, I thought, Gaela is a pizza chef — no one could cook like that and not be a chef to the heart — but she was a selkie too, and that was why her customers adored her. There was no illegal potion racket going on here. Every mortal man — and also zombies, trolls and even bunyips, it seemed — had to love a selkie as soon as she took on a human shape.
Even as I looked, Gaela changed. She dived down and a shining black seal splashed up instead, plunging and leaping all around me. I didn’t need to hear her voice to know she was laughing again. Seal or human, she was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen. But I was not in love with her. Selkie magic didn’t work on fairies.
I wasn’t in love with her even when she took human form again, the water dripping off her silken skin that glowed in the moonlight.
She strode out of the water, still naked, and picked up the waterproofed pizza box. ‘I need to make that delivery. Coming in?’
‘I can’t swim,’ I said.
‘What!’ She made it sound as if I had to live within a shoebox. ‘Not at all?’
I shook my head and took off my hoodie. The sea breeze felt chilly on my wings as they unfolded. I shook them to get rid of the crumples and felt a tongue of moonlight stroke them. Wings were more sensitive than skin.
‘I see,’ she said slowly. ‘You’re a fairy. Magic doesn’t work on you.’
‘Not selkie magic. Or leprechaun tricks or vampire glamour or elf magic. Only our own kind.’
‘That’s why you’re not in love with me then, like all the other customers are.’
I nodded. ‘That’s why I can’t swim either. The wings get in the way. Plus, if your wings get sodden, you can’t fly till they dry out.’
Even if they were slightly damp, it would take me longer than the split microseconds allowed to get back to the Fairy Court when Their Majesties called me, though I didn’t tell Gaela that.
She grinned. ‘You haven’t lived till you’ve seen the world below the water. Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep, where the winds are all asleep. I saved a shipwrecked poet called Arnold once — he talked about it like that. “Wild white horses foam and fret” — that was in a storm. Down in the sea you can feel every creature near you move in the caress of the water on your skin. Air is so . . . so dull in comparison.’
‘But you run a pizza shop!’
‘Yep. I make pizza and I swim. And you can too. Anyone can swim with a selkie,’ she added as I began to protest again. ‘How else can we rescue shipwrecked sailors or lure fishermen into the waves?’
‘But my wings . . .’
‘They’ll dry! I can even lend you a hairdryer.’
She stretched her hand out to me. Such a firm hand, muscular from kneading dough, slightly webbed between the fingers. Her fingernails shone like pearls.
For a moment I was tempted. I looked at the moon’s gold highway across the water — what would it be like down there? Did moonbeams dance in water as sunbeams did in air? And if Her Majesty did call me, I could use the hairdryer on my wings and then cut time even finer. Titania would never notice.
I felt my hand reach for hers. Our fingers touched. Hers were cool from the water yet warm at the same time.
I quickly pulled my hand back and thrust it safely behind me, away from temptation. ‘Not tonight,’ I said.
Even a wet mist slowed a fairy down to the speed of sound. I needed to be able to flash back to the Fairy Court as soon as I was called. I couldn’t risk experimenting with hairdryers, not so close to the Midsummer’s Eve revels. Or that’s what I told myself.
Gaela stared at me for a long moment, her expression hard to read. Was that wistfulness? And was it for me, or for her?
She plunged into the water again. For a few seconds I saw her pale shape spearing through the ripples, then she dived, still holding the pizza. My gaze swept the ocean, all black and gold and starlight, but there was no sign of her.
Suddenly something reared up in the moonlight, first one great coil, and then another, and finally a head like a tyrannosaurus on steroids, with a tail lashing at least a hundred metres behind.
A sea serpent!
I knew they were immortal, like fairies and selkies, elves, leprechauns and vampires. The famous Loch Ness serpent must have been around for at least two million years. Selkie magic wouldn’t work on a sea serpent. In fact, a selkie might just be a crunchy snack for a sea serpent.
The massive mouth opened, showing fangs a sabre-toothed tiger would envy. And there was Gaela again, treading water just below it, her dark hair plastered to her back.
I had maybe three seconds to save her. Or less. But if I moved now, I could cut time. Once she’d been eaten, there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t change the past unless I’d already been there.
I spread my wings . . . then stopped as Gaela held up the pizza box, completely unfazed by the monstrous beast towering above her. She carefully opened the lid. The serpent bent its head so Gaela could feed it the first slice.
A strange shiver ran through the waves, as if they were flirting with the sand.
The sea serpent was purring.
CHAPTER 6
The serpent took its time eating. I supposed after a hundred millennia diet of fish and the odd human, pizza tasted incredible. Especially Gaela’s pizza. I wondered what sea serpents liked on their pizzas.
Gaela trod water patiently, lifting up each slice, sea serpents being lacking in the hands department. The big beast took each piece from her hand as neatly as a kitten licking from a bowl. Finally it finished. Its tongue came out, vast enough to carpet Theseus’s palace. It licked its lips, fossicking for every crumb or scent of cheese and tomato.
And then it dived, head first, followed by the massive ridges of its body. It reared up once more with what was probably a thank-you grin upon its giant face — it was hard to tell — and a bundle suspended from its teeth.
Gaela reached up and took the bundle, then plunged down into the ocean. The sea serpent did that ‘maybe it’s a grin’ again, and then it vanished too, causing more ripples than the sinking Titanic.
I knew Gaela would be back. Even now she might be swimming towards me, in seal shape perhaps, past those sand-strewn caverns she’d mentioned, below the white froth of waves.
I sat down on the sand, the stars glimmering above me, brighter than any I’d ever seen before, the wind tasting of salt and fresh bread and something new too. In all my four hundred years I had never seen anything as beautiful as Gaela feeding pizza to the serpent, her skin the colour of the moonlight, the serpent’s scales gleaming like the stars.
There was nothing wrong with admiring beauty, I told myself. This breathless feeling, like I’d been punched in the stomach, was because it had been so lovely. Plus admiration for anyone, human or selkie, who could make the best pizza in the world; pizza that could even entice a serpent near the shore.
‘And I’m getting married,’ I muttered to myself.
After Midsummer’s Eve, I’d be in love for the rest of my life with the most efficient Tooth Fairy who’d ever held a pair of pliers — according to Puck, who’d known a lot of them. I’d be happy forever.
Gaela emerged from the waves in front of me, human-shaped, laughing from the sheer joy of water, waves and the serpent’s delight in the best pizza in the universe, her body dappled with starlight reflected in the drops of sea water that clung to her bare skin. She held a dripping bag in one hand.
Selkie magic doesn’t work on fairies, I reminded myself as I tossed her the sack dress, and waited while she put the bag down and slipped the dress back on. Focus, Peaseblossom! You’re getting married!
Gaela stopped, the dress suspended above her head. ‘What did you just say?’ she demanded.
Had I said that aloud?
‘I’m . . . getting married on Midsummer’s Eve,’ I said firmly.
She carefully lowered her dress over her body and pushed her wet hair behind her ears. The laughter had left her. She didn’t look at me, and I tried not to look at her. I would probably never see a selkie again, and if I did, it wouldn’t be Gaela.
Finally she glanced at me again. ‘Aren’t you a bit young to be getting married?’ she asked.
I shrugged. ‘I’m four hundred and six. How old are you?’
‘Four hundred and one,’ she admitted.
‘You’re right, four hundred is a bit young to be married. But when Queen Titania says you’re getting married, you don’t argue.’
‘Your queen chose your bride for you?’
‘Of course. It’s . . . tidier that way. No distractions, like spending forever looking for your soul mate, or checking each other out over a cup of Dew Brew. Anyway, a few drops of heartsease potion and I’ll love whoever Her Majesty chose for me all my life.’
More silence.
Gaela strolled out of the shallows and sat on the sand next to me. I pulled my hoodie back on, glad I was in jeans and not a rose-petal kilt.
‘What’s her name?’ she asked finally. ‘The fairy you’re marrying?’
‘What?’ I’d been thinking how the moon somehow looked twice as bright tonight. And how Gaela had looked in the water, as if the waves were laughing with her. And how sitting so close to her I could smell her scent — seaweed, salt and warm pizza crust. ‘Her name’s Floosie. I mean Flossie. The Fairy Floss, First Assistant Tooth Fairy for the entire north-west region.’
‘North-west of where?’
‘Does it matter?’
Flossie and I would both be promoted after our wedding. I’d be Puck’s permanent assistant, first in line for his job when he retired. Flossie would be Chief Regional Tooth Fairy. In a hundred years or so we would be the most important fairies of the court, Chief Tooth Fairy and Chief Potion Fairy, reporting directly to King Oberon and Queen Titania.
‘No, it doesn’t matter at all,’ Gaela said slowly. Her expression was impossible to read. ‘I’m getting married too. Soon.’
Why did I suddenly feel like a wave had slapped my face?
‘That’s nice,’ I managed to say. ‘Especially as he’ll have to love you forever too, you being a selkie. It’s . . . it’s good to have these things sorted out in advance — to know you’ll never quarrel and there’s no chance of ever falling out of love. No messiness . . .’ My voice died away at the contempt in her face.
Gaela lifted her chin. Her seaweed tattoo glowed in the moonlight. ‘Magic!’ She almost spat the word. ‘I wouldn’t use enchantment on someone I love, especially to make them marry me. Guyye’s like you — selkie magic doesn’t affect him.’
‘He’s a fairy too?’
Impossible, I thought. No fairy would disobey Oberon and Titania, and they’d never give a fairy permission to marry a selkie. And if any fairy had even tried, I’d have heard the gossip.
‘Guyye’s not a fairy,’ she said.
‘A leprechaun?’ I asked incredulously.
Some of my best friends were leprechauns. Well, we’d been out partying a few times. But leprechauns were small and green, and Gaela was . . . Gaela, whether in human form or seal.
She laughed. ‘No.’
‘An elf?’ I kept my voice cautious. It was never a good idea to offend an elf and they took offence easily. Just say something offhand like, ‘Feeling a little down tonight, are we, short stuff?’ and you might find an elf punching your kneecap.
‘Not an elf.’ Gaela’s voice softened. ‘Guyye’s the most wonderful man I’ve ever met. He’s . . . powerful. Other men just moon about, living day after day all the same, never thinking that their lives might be different. Guyye does things. He makes things happen.’
Don’t let the curls and fairy wings fool you; I’d worked out since I was a hundred and four. But powerful wasn’t just about muscles. Not the way Gaela said it. Powerful meant charisma.
Fairies have many excellent attributes — beds made of foxgloves, and mushroom cottages, and fairy wands that can turn pumpkins into coaches and mice into confused coachmen, not to mention fairy dust as long as you aren’t allergic to it — but charisma isn’t one of them.
‘Was Guy at the café this after
noon or tonight?’ I asked.
I hadn’t noticed any particularly wonderful guys among the customers. Besides, every one of them, except a few affronted girlfriends, the banshees and the wombat, had been in enchanted love with Gaela. You couldn’t be assistant to Puck for almost fifty years without being able to sense enchantment.
‘His name is Guyye, not Guy. Two ys and an e. Guyye can only come out at night — that’s why I have the second sitting at midnight. But I don’t mind. Selkies love the moonlight.’ And suddenly I knew, even before she added, ‘Guyye’s a vampire.’
Gaela scrambled to her feet, then picked up the bag the sea serpent had given her. ‘He should be here by now. Something must have kept him. I’ll introduce you.’
I’d rather have ridden a slug through the city centre in my rose-petal kilt. Instead, I smiled politely and said, ‘Love to. What’s in the bag?’
‘Anchovies and sardines. I swap them for pizza.’
She opened the door into the kitchen. The oven fire still glowed just the same, and when we went back into the main room no one seemed to have eaten much pizza, great as it was. I suspected that time in the sea with a selkie could be folded just like fairy time.
But a little time must have passed, because the larger reserved table that had been empty now had a customer. And he wasn’t eating pizza.
Guyye was every vampire cliché you’ve ever seen: tall, dark, handsome, pale skin, black eyes that seemed to see into the heart of you and count each red corpuscle.
Gaela made her way between the tables. I followed her more slowly. The customers were staring as though they couldn’t work out who they were most drawn to, him or her.
Selkie magic doesn’t work on vampires. But vampire charisma works on everyone. Even I felt it, and I’d been inoculated by many years of love-potion fumes. Surely Gaela must know that Guyye’s charisma was working on her too?
I glanced at her. Gaela wasn’t thinking of anything but him.
‘Guyye,’ she said breathlessly.
Guyye smiled with just a hint of fang. ‘Sorry I didn’t get here earlier, babe. People to do, things to see, that kind of thing.’
My Name is Not Peaseblossom Page 4
