‘And I,’ said Mustardseed resignedly, because, after all, what else could we do? Titania was our Queen.
‘Where shall we go?’ we chorused obediently, as we had done a hundred thousand times before.
Titania regarded us sternly. ‘Be kind and courteous to this gentleman; hop in his walks and gambol in his eyes. Feed him with apricots and dewberries, with purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries. The honey-bags steal from the humble-bees . . .’
It was Polchis all over again, I thought. Didn’t the Queen realise that humans didn’t just want sweets? How about an egg and lettuce sandwich? Or a pizza? Mushroom and haloumi maybe, or Gaela’s House Special?
I’d never eat another House Special pizza (with or without anchovies) again, I realised. Or smell the yeasty scent of Gaela’s kitchen.
‘And for night-tapers crop the bees’ waxen thighs,’ continued Her Majesty, all the while smiling dotingly at Bottom.
‘That’s going to take us months,’ muttered Cobweb. ‘Bees’ knees take forever to comb.’
‘And light the candles at the fiery glow-worm’s eyes.’
‘That glow-worm glow is phosphorescence,’ muttered Mustardseed, carefully low so Her Majesty didn’t hear. But she was too absorbed in Bottom to pay us much heed. ‘You can’t light a candle with phosphorescence.’
‘You can if you have a match too,’ offered Moth.
Cobweb glared at him. ‘If you have a match, you don’t need the glow-worms.’
‘But —’ began Moth.
‘Oh, be quiet,’ snapped Mustardseed.
Titania kept murmuring orders to us, snuggling her blonde head into the hairy donkey’s neck. ‘Pluck the wings from painted butterflies to fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes. Nod to him, elves, and do him courtesies.’
Well, we could do all that, though it was going to be hard on the butterflies, even with anaesthetic. Maybe I could find them some prosthetic wings in exchange. Had anyone invented prosthetics for butterflies? Perhaps Titania wouldn’t notice if we used painted cardboard wings instead of the real thing. I was pretty sure she wouldn’t, not when she was as besotted as this.
At least the courtesies were easy. In Fairyland you learned those from the day you were born.
I bowed low before Bottom, waving my hand in true courtier fashion. ‘Hail, mortal!’
‘Hail!’ echoed Cobweb gallantly.
Moth gave a double salute, then bowed too. ‘Hail!’ He really seemed to mean it.
‘Hail!’ sighed Mustardseed.
Bottom gave a donkey grin. I guessed no one had ever bowed to him before. ‘I cry your worship’s mercy, heartily,’ he said. ‘I beseech your worship’s name.’
‘Cobweb,’ said Cobweb.
‘I shall desire you of more acquaintance, good Master Cobweb. If I cut my finger, I shall use you to stop the bleeding.’ Bottom turned to me. ‘Your name, honest gentleman?’
I pulled up a dutiful smile from somewhere near my ankles. ‘Peaseblossom,’ I said, remembering how I’d told Gaela my name was Pete. What would my life have been like if I really was a Pete? I wondered. But no . . . Pete or Peaseblossom, it would have been just the same. I would still have been a fairy, bound to obey the King and Queen.
Bottom nodded to me solemnly. ‘I pray you, commend me to Mistress Squash, your mother, and to Master Peapod, your father. Good Master Peaseblossom, I shall desire you of more acquaintance too.’
He turned to Mustardseed, who was concentrating on fanning his wings quickly so he didn’t grin at the wrong time. ‘Your name, I beseech you, sir?’ Bottom enquired.
‘Mustardseed,’ said Mustardseed, with a flourish of his hand.
‘Good Master Mustardseed, I know your skills well,’ said Bottom. ‘That same cowardly, giant-like ox-beef has devoured many a gentleman of your house: I promise you your kindred made my eyes water ere now. I desire your more acquaintance, good Master Mustardseed.’
Did he realise he was offering to eat Mustardseed, or at least his friends and family? I sighed again, then pretended it was a yawn when Titania glared at me.
‘Come, wait upon him,’ she ordered me. ‘Lead him to my bower.’
Titania looked lovingly at Bottom again, then added to Moth, ‘Tie up my love’s tongue and bring him silently.’
Doting or not, Queen Titania was getting tired of Bottom’s attempts at declaiming too.
Moth took a tiny vial from his belt and dripped some of its contents into Bottom’s eyes. Then we each gathered an arm or leg and lugged the weaver across the glade to the mossy flowered bank we’d brought in for the Queen.
Titania had already stretched herself out on it. She held out her arms to Bottom. ‘Come, sit thee down upon this flowery bed,’ she ordered. ‘While I your amiable cheeks do coy, and stick musk-roses in thy sleek smooth head, and kiss your fair large ears, my gentle joy.’
Bottom lay back, his hairy donkey head in her lap. She kissed his long ears. He wriggled as though it tickled.
‘Where’s Peaseblossom?’ he demanded.
So much for a potion to make him silent. I glared at Moth.
‘Sorry,’ he whispered. ‘I think I gave him cough drops instead of silence.’
Titania was already raising an eyebrow at me, in the way an army might raise its weapons.
‘Ready,’ I sighed.
‘Scratch my head, Peaseblossom,’ ordered Bottom. ‘Where’s Monsieur Cobweb?’
‘Ready,’ said Cobweb, sounding resigned.
‘Monsieur Cobweb, good monsieur, get you your weapons in your hand, and kill me a red-hipped humble-bee on the top of a thistle. And, good monsieur, bring me the honey-bag. Do not fret yourself too much in the action, monsieur. And, good monsieur, have a care the honey-bag break not. I would not want to have you overflown with a honey-bag, signor. Where’s Monsieur Mustardseed?’
‘Ready.’ Mustardseed was trying not to giggle at the weaver attempting to sound like a king. Titania gave him a look that would make a plunging meteor head back up into space.
‘Give me your neaf, Monsieur Mustardseed. Pray you, leave your courtesy, good monsieur,’ said Bottom, making no sense at all.
Still, Mustardseed looked enthusiastically obedient. ‘What’s your will?’
Titania smiled and went back to threading roses into Bottom’s pelt.
‘Nothing, good monsieur,’ replied Bottom, ‘but to help Sir Cobweb to scratch.’ He raised a hand to touch his donkey chin, looking puzzled. ‘I must to the barber’s, monsieur, for I feel marvellous hairy about the face. And I am such a tender ass, if my hair tickles me, I must scratch.’
Cobweb and Moth fluttered above Bottom’s head so they could scratch his long ears.
‘Will you hear some music, my sweet love?’ murmured Titania adoringly.
Bottom nodded. ‘I have a reasonable good ear in music.’
Two very big ears, I thought. How long would Oberon let this go on? Puck should have said something, or even stopped it, as soon as Titania had seen Bottom. After ten thousand years in Oberon’s service, he must have some influence on the King.
‘Let’s have the tongs and the bones,’ suggested Bottom.
Titania blinked. It was obvious she had no idea what kind of music tongs and bones would make, nor did she want to find out.
‘Or say, sweet love, what you desire to eat,’ she added hurriedly.
‘Truly, a peck of provender,’ said Bottom, cheering up at the thought of food. ‘I could munch your good dry oats. I have a great desire to a bottle of hay too: good hay, sweet hay, there’s nothing like it.’
Titania beckoned Cobweb. ‘I have a venturous fairy that shall seek the squirrel’s hoard, and fetch thee new nuts,’ she told Bottom. It was as if she hadn’t heard the words ‘hay’ or ‘oats’.
Love is blind, I thought, and deaf. Or enchanted love is, at any rate.
‘I had rather have a handful or two of dried peas,’ said Bottom, yawning. ‘But, I pray you, let none of your people stir me. I have an expos
ition of sleep come upon me.’
Titania smiled and stroked his donkey nose. ‘Sleep, and I will wind you in my arms.’ She waved her hand at us. ‘Fairies, be gone.’
We vanished obediently, though I went only as far as the branch of an olive tree at the edge of the glade. I made myself as small as a bee again.
This has to be put right, I thought, listening to Titania murmuring to the sleeping Bottom, ‘O, how I love you! How I dote on you!’
She laid her blonde head on his dark hairy one. Her curls glowed like the beams of moonlight that had kissed Gaela’s wet hair.
I shoved the thought away.
At last Titania slept too. I took a deep breath. At least she couldn’t get into more trouble while she slept.
My first job was to find Puck, get more potion, then cure Lysander.
CHAPTER 12
I TAPed into Puck’s office glade in Fairyland. He wasn’t there. I TAPed again, this time to the ring of mushrooms where Puck lived. I glanced at the mushroom that I’d soon be moving into with Flossie. She’d already arranged a fence of long white teeth around it, and a shiny white path leading to the door.
But it was Puck’s mushroom I needed now. I hammered on the door in its stem.
It creaked open. An elderly fairy with a purple face wearing a tattered yellow and green dressing gown blinked at me. ‘What do you want?’
‘Fairy Daffodil?’ I stammered.
She wiped away a bit of what I now saw was a facemask. ‘Who do you think I am, Peaseblossom? Sir George and the dragon?’
Actually she looked a bit like a dragon, with a touch of St George too.
‘I’ve hardly had a wink of sleep since spring,’ she grumbled. ‘Do you think it’s easy painting every blinking flower as soon as it pokes up from the earth?’
‘Er, no.’
‘Thank goodness for snowdrops. Why can’t humans be content with white? But, no. They want yellow, pink, red, blue. If I see one more bluebell wood, I’m going to puke!’
‘I’m looking for Puck,’ I said.
Her sulky face glowed at the mention of her husband. See, love potion did make people happy. Even Fairy Daffodil.
‘He’s down in the workshop,’ she said, standing aside to let me in. ‘Good job with the Hippolyta and Theseus wedding, by the way,’ she added.
‘Thanks.’ I brushed past her and clattered down the steps to the cellar. ‘Puck, it’s all gone —’
‘To gryphon dung. I know!’ Puck looked up from the bench. Something vaguely pink bubbled in a jar in front of him. ‘I’ve got to put it right! Oberon was expecting a potion to undo the charm on the Queen ten seconds ago, and another for Lysander and Demetrius.’
‘But love potion is permanent!’ I said.
If it wasn’t, there’d be fairies experimenting with it every few days — in love here, infatuated there . . .
‘Oberon says it isn’t. That’s why he used it on Titania. He says that about a thousand years ago I found an antidote.’
‘Did you?’
‘Yes.’
I sagged in relief. ‘You take it to Oberon then, and I’ll find the lovers in the wood.’
‘But I can’t remember it!’ wailed Puck.
‘Oh.’
‘I’ve made potions by the hundreds in the last thousand years. Curing flatulence, turning doves grey —’
‘People still fart,’ I interrupted.
‘They weren’t all successful,’ Puck said sulkily. ‘But this one was. There was this prince riding to his wedding — charming bloke — but a girl called Snow White needed to be kissed to dislodge a piece of poisoned apple . . . Long story. Anyway, two drops of anti-love potion and he forgot all about his waiting bride. Then two drops of heartsease, and two more for Snow White, and nine months later the two kingdoms were united and she’d had triplets.’
‘What about the other bride?’ I asked. ‘The one waiting for the charming prince?’
‘That’s where the rest of the anti-love potion went. The jilted bride was really annoyed, what with all the wedding presents to send back and everything. She snatched the jar out of my hand. What was her name again . . .’
‘We have to go back and get it!’ I said.
‘But I can’t remember when all this happened.’
‘Okay, let’s calm down.’ I shoved him onto a stool. ‘Where did all this happen?’
‘Sarmatia, about a thousand years ago, give or take a hundred. Amaz — that was the jilted bride’s name.’
I sat down too. The pieces were coming together. A woman furious with the man who’d abandoned her . . . armed with a potion to make anyone fall out of love.
‘Amaz started the Amazons,’ I realised. ‘She used your anti-love potion to form an army of women who couldn’t fall in love.’
Puck’s two currant eyes stared at me from his wrinkled-apple face. ‘But Amazons fall in love — look at Hippolyta’s warriors. Half her army are marrying Athenians now.’
‘They don’t need the potion any more — their tradition is established. But it was necessary in the beginning.’ I stood. ‘Right. We head back to Sarmatia a thousand years ago. And we keep going back till we find Amaz. You can analyse the potion, and I’ll make some more.’ I took a deep breath. ‘And then we’ll split time like no one ever has before and get to Oberon ten seconds ago.’
‘But it takes me forty minutes to girdle the earth!’
I grinned. ‘I can do it in forty milliseconds, Great-Grandpa.’
Puck smiled. ‘That’s my boy.’
The air smelled of cocoa with a touch of cinnamon. Then it faded and horse dung and wildflowers took its place. Puck and I fluttered in the pollen-thick air above a world that was all grass. Long golden grasslands that reached to the horizon, dappled with white or yellow flowers, and with long-legged, tan-coloured horses grazing contentedly. The village huts nearby were made of grass too: long strands plaited together, then woven tightly over bent saplings. They were brown, not gold, but without the smoke from their cooking fires, they’d have been hard to see.
Two children ran past us. They had blonde hair, leather trousers, tiny bows slung over their backs and a quiver each full of miniature arrows. Amazons started training young. Both girls, of course. I didn’t want to think what happened to male children here.
The girls stopped and stared at the two small fairies hovering above the grass.
‘Bee time!’ hissed Puck.
The girls blinked as we appeared to vanish, looked at each other, shrugged and ran on.
Puck and I buzzed towards the village, where women sat on wooden stools sharpening their twin-bladed axes, fletching arrows, trimming feathers. There were young, middle-aged and old women, most with battle scars, and some with wooden legs or hooks for hands to replace limbs lost in battle.
A couple of cowed-looking young men fetched more wood for the fire from a big pile of logs that must have been dragged there by the horses — or maybe a team of men. A youth milked one of the two horses in a small fenced area, while another squeezed honey from a comb into a leather bucket. There were no old men to be seen. I wondered whether, just like in a beehive, old males were killed when they were of no more use. Or maybe they were sent home to their villages after a few years of servitude, taking any boy children with them. I hoped it was that.
Suddenly one of the women yelled triumphantly and pointed. Three horses galloped into the village, a dead goat draped over one, the other two carrying female hunters with blood on their hands. The women slid off their horses and held their hands out for the men to bring water for them to wash.
‘Is one of those women Amaz?’ I whispered to Puck as we hovered above them.
‘No. Though that second hunter has a look of her. Maybe we haven’t gone far enough back.’
‘We need to keep searching then,’ I hissed. ‘Come on!’
‘Wait!’ Puck flapped one of his bee’s wings at an old, old woman sitting on a throne-like chair outside the biggest hut. The only hair
left on her brown-spotted head were a few strands of grey, and her face was more wrinkled than a year-old rose petal. You could still see the strength in her face, but she was no young bride.
Puck hovered over the old woman’s head and waved one of his bee legs at me. I flew over to him.
‘This is Amaz,’ he buzzed softly.
‘Her?’ But of course she’d have got old, I thought, as the old were once young.
I gazed down at her almost bald head, at the prominent veins in her legs below her knee-length leather skirt, then looked around the village — at the strong and happy working women, the laughing female hunters, the girls already stripping the hide from the goat, the silent men now fixing up a spit to cook it on. Amaz had created all this, all because she’d been jilted on her wedding day because of Puck and his anti-love potion and Oberon’s fancy to see a charming prince waken an enchanted maiden.
Did Puck feel guilty? I wondered. But he was acting on Oberon’s order. And the Amazon women looked happy, strong, healthy and fulfilled. The men, not so much. ‘There it is!’ Puck’s squeak was almost loud enough for human ears.
The old woman tilted her head, as if hearing a sound almost forgotten, then smiled and looked back at the working women.
The flask sat in a position of honour on a tall wooden stand, the hut’s only furniture except for the fur-covered bed. I peered inside it.
‘It’s empty. The potion’s evaporated or been used up. There’s just a bit of a green stain in the bottom.’
‘Haven’t I taught you anything, boy? I can analyse the dregs once I get it back home. Grab it!’
‘How? I’m a bee.’
‘Then un-bee!’
To bee, or not to bee? I wouldn’t be at all if the Amazons saw a strange man in their queen’s hut. But there was no choice. I flicked to my full size and grabbed the flask.
‘Come on!’ I yelled to Puck.
‘I can’t!’ I could hardly hear his terrified buzzing. ‘There must be a beehive around here. The queen bee must have followed us in. She’s . . . attached herself to me . . .’
And a drone who mated with a queen bee would soon be very, very dead. That meant I’d be promoted to Puck’s job straight away — but family was family, and, nuisance that he could be at times, I loved old Puck.
My Name is Not Peaseblossom Page 9
