I stared at the pizza wordlessly, then looked back at Flossie. ‘I used to like pizza, long, long ago.’ For that’s what it seemed like now.
I could have said, ‘I loved a girl who was a selkie, and whose hands smelled of yeasty pizza dough.’ But I had never told Gaela that I loved her. A fairy wasn’t free to say words like that.
Yet somehow I found myself standing.
‘I loved a girl once,’ I said to the assorted onlookers, and took a bite of pizza.
And suddenly, as I tasted the cheese and tomato, still hot, almost bubbling, it was as if Gaela was there, and all the patrons of the Leaning Tower of Pizza too, and the crusts were browning to exactly the right crisp in the oven, and the tomato sauce had chunks of fresh tomato in it, as well as basil and a hint of oregano, and there was laughter and happiness because the customers were eating the best pizza in the world. Even when they got home and the selkie charm had vanished, they would remember the taste of that pizza.
The banshee began to sing.
A quiet wail came from the Fairy Godmothers. They were a staunch lot, but they knew what a banshee’s song meant. Some of the Tooth Fairies fainted. So did Elvis.
‘Peaseblossom,’ said Flossie faintly.
I kissed her cheek. ‘It’s all right. The banshee hasn’t come for you, I’m fairly sure.’
And then the song took over. There was no way to describe a banshee melody. It was loss and it was joy, the saddest and most wonderful music in the world, for life was always the other side of death, just as loss was part of love.
But there was no death in Fairyland. Fairies just faded till they were almost too faint to see and were mostly forgotten. No one could die tonight, nor any time here. Unless . . .
I stared up at the banshee as its song ended. It had almost vanished too, till it was just a black shape blocking out the stars. And then the stars shone bright again and the banshee was gone.
I might have dreamed it, were it not for the mutters all around me and the pizza in my hand.
Titania gestured to Cobweb, and Oberon glanced at Puck. Puck nodded. He and Cobweb hauled Elvis to his feet. Puck poured a little potion down his throat. I didn’t know what kind, but it was purple and bubbled.
Elvis began to sing ‘Love Me Tender’ again.
‘Peaseblossom?’ Flossie said again, under the cover of the music. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I love you,’ I said.
She smiled. ‘I love you too.’
‘But I shouldn’t love you. It’s like mixing . . . anchovies and ice cream. You shouldn’t put anchovies on ice cream, and you shouldn’t put one love onto another.’
‘But . . . but you do love me,’ she stammered, anguish shafting her eyes. For of course she loved me, and would love me till she died.
Unless the banshee had been right.
I took another bite of pizza.
‘Yes, I love you,’ I said. ‘But I must still do this.’
I took the flask of anti-love potion out of the pouch on my belt. There were four drops left.
Something could die in Fairyland. It would die tonight. My love for Flossie and hers for me — the love that never should have been, or it would have been there all along.
‘Flossie, please forgive me.’
I didn’t want to hurt her. Not just because I loved her right now, but because I liked and respected her, and this would be painful for her, for a few seconds at least. It might embarrass her too. I hoped desperately that Their Majesties would blame me, not her.
Flossie looked at me lovingly and I could see she understood. Because she did love me, she loved me enough to want my happiness.
She leaned forward so I could put the drops into her eyes.
I smiled at her with love and joy one last time, because I loved her and because she deserved it, then put the last two drops into my own eyes.
And it was done.
‘You idiot, Peaseblossom,’ muttered Puck. He was the only one who understood what I’d done.
Except for Flossie of course, who was looking at me sympathetically. Her love for me had gone, but she still cared. She truly was a nice girl, but not the one for me. Nor was I the one for her.
No one else in the court knew an anti-love potion existed; except for Oberon, and he wasn’t going to confess any of that to Titania.
‘You can still fix this, boy!’ Puck whispered urgently. ‘Put more love drops in her eyes now, then drip them in yours. There’s still time. If you’re quick, Their Majesties will never guess what you’ve just done. Say you had a gnat in your eye or something.’
I looked around the glade. Oberon and Titania were discussing what the banshee’s appearance meant. They weren’t looking at us at all. Moth sat at Titania’s feet giving her a foot rub. The fireflies were dancing, their glow adding to the enchantment of the moonlight. Everything was impeccable again. The moon was as round as a cheese, and it gave off so much light I could see a whole spectrum of colours . . .
‘And that’s what love is,’ I murmured. ‘A million different colours, constantly changing.’
‘Peaseblossom!’ hissed Puck.
‘Do what you must,’ Flossie whispered to me. She really was quite pretty. I was glad children’s teeth were in such good hands.
‘Love is seeing colours for the first time,’ I announced to anyone who might be listening. ‘It’s feeling as if your soul has been washed clean so it can join with another’s. Their happiness makes you happy, and yours makes them smile. Love is the stars singing, and the waves crooning deep below the sand-strewn ocean . . .’
Elvis stopped singing.
Titania rose to her feet. ‘What is going on here, Peaseblossom?’ she demanded.
I bowed to her. ‘I apologise, Your Majesty. But I’d rather be known as Pete.’
‘Pete?’ She frowned. ‘That’s no name for a fairy.’
‘No, it isn’t,’ I said, meeting her eyes.
The Queen’s eyes were smouldering charcoal now. ‘You are mine. You have always been mine. You always will be! Admit it, Peaseblossom. Say, “Your Majesty, I am yours, forever.”’
‘No, Your Majesty. You may kill me or enchant me — but I belong to myself, and to the love that I choose freely.’
‘You will love who I wish,’ commanded Titania. Her eyes turned golden, the colour of bewitchment. ‘You will be happy, Peaseblossom.’
It wasn’t just a command. It was magic. Titania didn’t need heartsease potion to make one fairy love another. I had never guessed at even half her power.
I felt love seeping back into me. Love for Flossie; an even greater love for Queen Titania. The enchantment froze my toes, my ankles, warming as it reached my knees.
I took another bite of pizza. The cheese was cold and soggy now, but it didn’t matter. I felt Titania’s enchantment slide away.
There was no magic in Gaela’s pizza. Gaela wouldn’t do that to her customers. Besides, good pizza didn’t need magic. No, this was reality keeping the Fairy Queen’s enchantment at bay.
Titania sensed her power over me drifting away, like the shattered debris of a shipwreck. She seemed puzzled. ‘Peaseblossom, whatever you are doing, stop it! This is for your own good. The Fairy Floss will be the perfect wife for you.’
‘Will she ever smell of seaweed?’
The Queen frowned. ‘Of course not.’
‘Then she can’t be the perfect wife. Not for me.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. Put more love potion into your eyes,’ Titania ordered, her voice as cold as an iceberg, ‘and in the Fairy Floss’s eyes. You will love her forever, and she you. You will be happy, Peaseblossom, and not just in your marriage. I can give you all your heart desires.’ It was a threat as much as a promise.
Queen Titania’s eyes met mine. They were like sapphires now, if sapphires had learned to smile. Titania was the most beautiful woman in existence, with her golden hair, her skin like pearls, a glow to her every movement so her very essence seemed to carry through the air.
Except she wasn’t. The most beautiful woman in existence had dark hair that drifted in the sea, and a tattoo of seaweed on her neck.
‘You could have everything, Peaseblossom,’ Titania murmured. ‘I can give you the sun to play netball with, or the stars to juggle.’
She could too. But who wanted to juggle stars?
I bowed. ‘Thank you, Your Majesty. But from now on I answer to the name of Pete.’
I turned to Flossie. She was a perfectly nice fairy and we’d have been happy together. But an enchanted love wasn’t the kind I wanted.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said simply.
She smiled. A good smile, with straight white teeth and excellent gums. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said kindly. And it didn’t for her, not any more.
Titania gave me a look that could have shrivelled a volcano. I clutched what remained of my slice of pizza and thought of Gaela.
‘Moth!’ commanded the Queen. ‘Change into bridal petals, now! We must have a wedding!’ She gave me another withering glare. ‘We will not let this fool spoil our revels.’
‘I’m to marry the Fairy Floss?’ squeaked Moth, looking both terrified and overjoyed.
‘And you are promoted to Fairy Class 1, assistant to Puck.’ Titania turned to me. ‘As for you —’
‘Get out of here fast, boy,’ muttered Puck. ‘Or you’re going to be a toad for all eternity.’
‘I’m going,’ I said. And vanished.
CHAPTER 16
The world smelled vaguely of chocolate milkshake as I appeared in Oberon’s main glade. My magic was fading; I only had a few minutes left at most. Maybe even seconds — though hopefully Titania would wait till Moth and Flossie were married, and everyone had sung and danced and given Moth the presents meant for me, before she decided what to do with me.
Would she let me live? Or make me vanish as if I had never been?
No, that would mean too much work, as she would need to clean up all traces of my actions.
Perhaps she would turn me into a beetle? That would be more like her. Or maybe an oyster, stuck to a rock, doomed to create the biggest, most uncomfortable pearl possible over the next few hundred years.
But while a shred of magic was left to me, I had a duty to do.
I gazed around the glade. Oberon’s retinue were all at the revels of course, but I’d hoped he’d left Polchis here. Yet there was no sign of him; not a scent of sugarplum nor the cushion Titania had given him to sit upon.
I panicked, worrying I’d never find him in whatever time I had left. I had to calm down and think.
Of course! Titania had forgotten all about the boy while she was enchanted with Bottom, but Oberon would have wanted to make sure that if she did remember Polchis once the enchantment was lifted, she wouldn’t be able to find him. Or glimpse him accidentally if she came to Oberon’s glade. But where would Oberon have taken him? It could be anywhere in time and space.
I thought about it some more. It was unlikely Oberon would have gone to too much bother for a mere human boy. There was a hardly used glade behind the main one, used to store parchment and flasks and to recharge glow-worms. I flickered around a little in time and space, checking the glade in the present, the near past and almost future. By now my magic was barely strong enough to evoke even a whiff of milky cocoa.
Half the glow-worms in the back-room glade had lost their glimmer entirely, and there were even a few thistles among the clover flowers. Housekeeping probably hadn’t even trimmed the honeysuckle for fifty years. But Polchis was there, sitting on a mossy log. (Moss doesn’t need much maintenance if it is growing in the right spot.)
He’d cut a branch from a cherry tree, and was using his teeth to make a ridge in it so he could tie on the string he’d plaited from soft inner tree bark.
‘Making a bow?’ I asked, flying down and landing next to him. ‘What will you do for arrows?’
Polchis jumped guiltily. ‘I’m sorry, Sir Fairy. I won’t do it again.’
‘Make all the bows you want,’ I said. ‘The King and Queen have forgotten all about you.’
‘Both of them? You’re sure?’
I nodded. Titania would find a new pet — she always did. She loved anything new and glittery. And now Oberon had succeeded in taking Polchis from her, it was unlikely he’d ever think of him again. If either of them did remember him, they’d assume he was being trained to be an attendant somewhere. Or, as a short-lived human, he’d already died.
Polchis looked at the branch in his hand. ‘It’s not going to be a good bow. I’ve never been taught how to make one properly.’
‘How about you learn today?’
‘What do you mean?’ he asked cautiously.
‘I can take you home. To the exact moment you left. No one will even know you were gone.’
A hundred years had passed in his world in the few months he’d been in Fairyland, but I still had some time to play with time. I hoped.
‘Or you can go anywhere else,’ I offered. ‘You could . . .’ I tried to think what a human boy might want from life. ‘You could be an astronaut and go to the Moon. Or be a fisherman. Or make pizza.’
‘What’s pizza?’
I realised I was still holding the remnant of the slice in my hand. It was cold by now, and the cheese was gluggy. I hesitated, then handed it to him.
The kid took a tentative bite, then wrinkled his nose.
‘It’s better hot,’ I said.
‘No, thank you.’ He handed it back to me. ‘I’d like to go home. Can I really?’
‘I promise,’ I said, then wondered if I could carry it out. What if Titania’s revenge caught up with us between times? We might be lost in chocolate fumes forever, or even just cease to be. Should I tell him the risk and scare him? Or . . .
Suddenly I could smell salt and seaweed. I even seemed to hear waves lapping at the pebbles.
I took Polchis’s small hand in mine. ‘It might be dangerous,’ I said.
‘I don’t care!’ He was only young, but he meant it.
And what did life offer him here? Happiness and sugarplums. Fairy gold with no substance.
I pulled the possibilities into place . . . and smelled caramel chocolate, and cold, then suddenly warmth, and a strong scent of unfamiliar smoke and roasting meat.
I looked around. We had landed in the middle of a field of corn. No one could have seen us suddenly appear for the fat green stalks were half as tall again as me.
Polchis no longer wore his rose petals or flower garland, but a brown leather loincloth, soft leather shoes and a belt twisted around his waist. They must have been the clothes he was wearing when Titania snatched him up.
I nudged him. ‘Off you go. I’ll wait here to make sure it’s all right.’
I expected him to run off straight away. Instead, he grabbed me around the legs and hugged me hard.
‘Thank you, Mr Peaseblossom.’
I bent down in the soft dirt among the corn, muddying my white rose petals. ‘Don’t tell anyone what happened,’ I warned him. ‘Just think of the last few months as a dream. Go on with your life.’ I smiled. ‘Make it a good one.’
‘Yes,’ he said, just as a man’s voice called, ‘Polchis! Where are you?’
The kid grinned. It was as if the sun shone directly on his face. ‘Here!’ he yelled, and raced through the corn.
I peered out and saw a tall man wearing a leather skirt and feathered headdress swing the boy up onto his shoulders. Polchis yelled in delight, and the man trotted off towards the big fire in the middle of a circle of long leather-and-bark-covered houses. I saw women laughing together as they ground corn on big stones, or plucked ducks.
All this would vanish one day, I knew: this entire Native American kingdom gone, as if it had never been here. I saw too much sometimes, flying through time. Even the earth itself was only temporary: a small blue planet spinning in the darkness till its sun engorged and ate it, then faded to black too. Only the enchanted were unchanging.
But this was now, and it was real. Polchis was home.
My wings twitched. For a moment I thought they were caught in a spider’s web, but then the tingle became a wrench, and then agony as each wing was slowly ripped from the skin and muscles of my back.
Titania had finally remembered me.
I only had seconds.
I bit my lip to stop myself screaming in agony, closed my eyes and thought of the Leaning Tower of Pizza. But it had gone, I remembered. There was no use even remembering it.
I thought instead of Gaela and her smile, and the smell of pizza with melted cheese, no anchovies. Tomato sauce, artichoke hearts, cubes of sautéed potato, basil leaves. Real ingredients. I gathered all my strength — it wasn’t much — and felt time and place wobble about me, and then speed past.
I glimpsed a court where the women wore wide skirts . . . a plague town with bodies piled high, and the few living hurrying by in strange masks . . . a battlefield of mud and trenches and more rats than men . . .
I tried to focus as my wings finally ripped from my body and were hurled somewhere beyond reality. I tumbled through time and space, too dazed to hope I might still be going in the right direction.
I could faintly smell white chocolate fudge. I thought of seaweed instead . . . how the scent of a wave changed as it curled then crashed down . . . the spray as white as the cheese on a fetta, spinach and pinenut pizza . . .
And suddenly I was lying on a wooden pier, the blood from my back flowing cold onto the weathered planks.
Two cats watched me as they cleaned their paws. ‘Miaow,’ one greeted me.
I had no strength to move. Waves crashed and sucked on either side and under me. I could smell seaweed. And hot crusts, and anchovies too.
But that was impossible. Gaela had left the Leaning Tower of Pizza. There could be no scent of perfect pizza. They weren’t even the same-coloured cats.
I managed to turn my head slightly. A shop stood at the end of the pier, and beyond it blue sea melted into the sky, like crushed tomato merged with melting cheese. The shop’s sign just said ‘Pizza’.
Something moved in front of me. I wondered if Titania had sent a dragon to swallow me as if I’d never been. But then I saw two lengths of swirling fog, as black as midnight cats. The banshees. Were they going to chant my death song now?
My Name is Not Peaseblossom Page 12
