by HL Fullerton
In the Erlking’s experience, negotiating went best when both parties assumed they were agreeing to the same thing. The best part of deal-making was the collecting, and the best part of collecting was when the other signatory realized what they thought they agreed to wasn’t what they actually agreed to. There was a particular delight that came then, one not even German philosophers had yet ascribed a name to. It was the delayed gemütlich of the schadenfreude, but better, more pleasing, as if there were an umlaut atop every vowel and a squiggle of delight accompanying every consonant, and one day there would be a German word that described the moment perfectly. Until then, the Erlking had the feeling—and he wasn’t about to share it.
“And the gremlins,” the Erkling said, flaunting his wicked teeth. “Let’s not forget the gremlins.”
Carl had a sinking feeling his metaphorical ship was about to be torpedoed, and he was already listing badly. He felt it wouldn’t be an overreach to say they were already singing on his symbolic, iceberg-colliding Titanic.
“What about the gremlins?” Carl said, knowing full well he’d insisted the gremlins fizzit the Jeep. But he hadn’t offered them anything. Technically, he’d threatened them. The Erlking, though, probably wouldn’t categorize it that way.
“You offered them an invitation to a future Hunt. In exchange for car repairs. Did you not?”
Carl had. There was something he should say here. Some defense to be made. This was a deal he had done, and, while he’d no intention of calling any hunt and wasn’t the sort to revel in the pursuit of death to begin with, he did promise the gremlins if he called one, they’d be invited. Carl’s mind scrambled for some logic, but it had, as they say, left the cranium. His muscles bunched, fight or flight, while his mouth remained closed. At least he didn’t nod. He was lucky enough to not indict himself further.
“And you cannot call a Hunt.” The Erlking stamped his foot and snorted. “A Hunt may only be called by the Erlking.” Steam curled from his nostrils and coiled about his antlers. “WHICH YOU ARE NOT.”
…release my hounds…
One moment Evangeline was standing behind Carl, ready to push past him and swing at the thing pretending to be Carl, and the next she was dancing with Myla and Trevor—who apparently hadn’t left the building. “Where’s Carl?” she said and craned her neck trying to locate him. More importantly, where was not-Carl?
Find him, find Carl. She really needed to find Carl. “Have either of you seen Carl?”
“He’s in the courtyard,” Myla yelled, despite the music not being loud enough to justify it.
Evangeline turned to the courtyard. It was empty except for the abandoned picnic table. “No, he’s not,” she yelled back. The yelling felt good. Maybe that was why Myla had done it.
Myla and Trevor faced each other and kept on dancing. Without answering her. She tapped Trevor on his closest shoulder. “I thought you left.”
His dancing slowed; he appeared confused. “Huh. Yeah, I thought I did too.”
“But you’re here.”
“Yeah,” he nodded. “Weird.”
His dancing picked up.
“Where did you go?”
He paused, as if thinking required all his attention. “I was heading to my truck, but I ended up here. Guess I got lost.”
“Did you make it outside? Was Carl there?”
Myla giggled. “Silly, we are outside,” she said. “Trev babe, I think Chase’s wasted-er than you.”
“We’re not outside.” Evangeline’s voice got louder, her gesturing wilder. “We’re—” She looked up. Around. At stars and trees and walls that were no longer there. At the parking lot beneath her feet. “—outside.”
“See?” Myla said. “Way-sted.”
“Why are we dancing in the parking lot? What happened to the cafeteria? I was just there, I swear.” She’d looked into the courtyard. It’d been empty. And it wasn’t possible to see the courtyard from the front of the school because the courtyard was surrounded by the school; hence the whole courtyard thing. She’d been next to Carl, then she was not. She’d been in the cafeteria-that-hadn’t-looked-like-a-cafeteria, then she was not. Where the hell was Carl?
“Who cares?” Myla yelled, throwing her arms up toward the night sky.
I care, Evangeline thought. I care very much.
Run, some tree screamed at him. Run! So Carl ran. “Why am I running?” he asked, thrilled that he could hear the timber again. The answers came in a cacophonic jumble of King! Hunt! Hounds! Flee! which was overlaid by the sound of baying.
It took mere seconds for him to deduce he was the white stag in this scenario. Where was a Picea glauca when you needed it? All around him were napping maples and snoozing oaks. He passed a strand of beleaguered beeches and asked, “Are the gremlins near?”
Gremlins always near. Gremlins not allowed to Hunt. Gremlins can’t hurt you. Fairy mutts can. Hurry, hurry.
“Can the Erl-thing hear you too?” He gasped and the titter of the birches—who’d woken those dicks?—was all he needed to know the answer was Yes.
“Troll!” a far-off pine called out. “Troll coming!”
…bye, bye bunting
Erlking’s gone a-hunting
Gonna get a Carl-skin
to wrap the baby rabbits in…
Evangeline Chase marched down the hill and across the football field to where she’d parked. Thankfully, her car was just where she’d left it (unlike Carl). She popped the trunk, and her weapons cache was still tucked away where she and Carl had hidden them. She shrugged out of her suit jacket and into a fleece-lined hunting one which gave her arms more room to maneuver. She wasn’t going to be caught freezing in the moonlit woods this time (also unlike Carl).
She tucked essentials into her pockets—a Leatherman multi-tool, a flashlight hefty enough to double as a baton, venison jerky, gloves, and whatever else would comfortably fit. She unearthed a bow and slung her arrow purse over one shoulder. Her father insisted she call it a quiver, but Evangeline liked handing him the nylon sling and saying, “Here’s your purse, Dad.” She liked it even better since he’d started saying, “Hand me my purse, would you, Evie?” when they went out, no matter who else was with them. For Christmas, she planned to get him a new arrow holder that had Dad’s Purse embroidered across it in camo-colored floss. Now she wasn’t sure she’d have the chance to order it let alone watch him open it.
She was ready to save Carl, but she wasn’t sure where to look for him or the best way to flush out an Erlking. It would’ve been better, she thought, had the Erlking whisked her away because then Carl could simply ask the trees for directions. She slammed her car’s trunk shut and eyed the terrain. Which was when she remembered her family had an expert on cryptozoological lore who she could call for help: Uncle Ivers.
“Uncle Ivers, how do I kill an Erlking?”
“Evangeline. You don’t. Get in your car and come home.”
“I can’t. It’s got Carl. Uncle Ivers, please. Help me.”
“Has Carl or is hunting Carl?” When she didn’t answer, he said, “It’s too late then, Evie girl. C’mon home. You don’t want to mess around in a fairy hunt.”
Except Evangeline did want to. “Bye, Uncle Ivers.”
“Evie! You can’t kill an Erlking and you can’t stop a Hunt. No one can.”
Evie hung up the phone and texted her parents her love. Then she picked up her crossbow and went to chase an Erlking. She stalked to the edge of the woods, smacked the nearest tree upon its trunk, and demanded, “Where’s Carl?”
She waited, breath held for an answer. In the distance, something bayed at the moon. There was a series of yaps as if coyotes were herding their prey. Evangeline suspected, correctly, that they weren’t really coyotes. “Find Carl.”
From down the dark path came a rustling. Evangeline headed that way until she came across a bristling evergreen. Carl was nowhere in sight—not that she had great visibility; it was dark, the moon was hidden behind clouds, she didn�
��t have night vision goggles (which if she lived were going on her Christmas list). She waited, listened. The not-coyote sounds seemed farther off now, as if they were chasing Carl away from civilization. Again, the evergreen bristled, but this close, she saw only the branches pointing west dipped and swayed. “Tell Carl, I’m coming,” she said.
Evangeline, armed and determined, headed west, hoping the tree didn’t lie.
…as the winds blow, as the boughs break
hounds on boy’s heels await his mistake…
Carl couldn’t trust the trees. Twice, they’d led him almost into the clutches of the Erlking’s hounds. Close enough so that he could see that hounds was more pareidolic than accurate. They behaved as hounds, sounded like them too, but they did not look anything like dogs, no more than he resembled a cow about to be rustled or, perhaps more aptly, an ungulate about to be wolved—and yet that’s essentially what he was.
If only the forest didn’t keep changing on him.
Evangeline came across a hatch of gremlins in a thicket of wild raspberries. They seemed as surprised to see her as she was to find them. She counted seven, but may have over or undercounted by as many as three. “I’m looking for Carl,” she said. “Have you seen him?”
A glint of eyes, about shin height, inquired, “Hunter-girl hunt?”
“I’m hunting the Hunt.” She aimed an arrow at the closest gremlin’s eye. They hadn’t attacked so she wouldn’t either. Yet. “Are you part of the Hunt?”
He screeched. “Gremlins no Hunt. Tinkers, tailors, soldiers, gaolers!”
“But you know where the Hunters are?”
From the right, one whispered, “We know. Gremlins always know.” It was a creepy growl of a whisper.
“Will gremlins scout?” Evangeline asked, lowering her bow. The gremlins gabbled among themselves until they reached some consensus.
One of the gremlins stepped toward Evangeline. “We show. We show Hunter-girl. We watch. But we not help hunt. Hunting not allowed.”
“Deal,” Evangeline said, and the gremlins chittered and shook with glee before crouching and crawling deeper into the forest to lead the way.
The Erlking stalked the boy-who-was-King through the slumbering trees; however, he let his hounds and hunters do the harrying. If one knew where fault lines were and how to twist the pieces to fit, one could recreate the world—for a fraction of a second, but that was long enough to confound one’s prey and/or speed one’s journey. And when it came to flexibility, trees had vastly more than one might suspect—it was the dryad in them. So he twisted and turned until the boy had no idea which way was up, and his young heart beat thumped in time to a hummingbird’s wings.
He could’ve ended the usurper at the sad, little celebration in front of his mad, badly-dressed queen, but where was the fun in that? The best part of a hunt was not the kill. The best part was the chase, and the Erlking liked to draw it out, for his own amusement and that of his coterie. Better yet, it reminded his people what would happen to them if they challenged his crown.
He didn’t want to miss the boy being torn into sevenths, so he took the scenic route. It was always quicker to step through places rather than traverse them. A hop to the Hoia-Baciu, a skip through Sherwood, and a jump to the clouds in Mindo-Nambillo, and the Erlking closed the gap between him and his usurper.
The Erlking strolled slow enough to be seen, using birch copses and other magic places to speed his journey. “A-tisket, a-tasket,” he sang to the winds, “a-Carl in his casket.”
If ever there was an unequal fight, it was this, but then all hunts were. Of all the ridiculous things humans invented, in the Erlking’s mind, the most ridiculous was the level playing field. A stacked deck was more his style—everyone’s, really.
Carl didn’t want to enter the circle of birch—not just because birch have always been his least favorite trees: gossipy rather than friendly, snide instead of helpful, vainglorious and cliquetatorial—but because the Erlking’s minions seemed to want him inside. Perhaps the copse was a prison of sorts or a one-way door through which he could not return. Regardless, he ended up within the papery white confines, peering out between slender, curving trunks; trapped.
“What now?” he said and, for once, the birch were tight-lipped. He moved to slip back into the forest and was brought up short by a menacing growl. A furred lump cracked twigs threateningly under its clawed paws, and Carl stayed where he was.
A shaft of moonlight broke through the gray-layered night and spotlit his cage. The white of the trunks, the white of his antlers; the colored leaves trapped within the birches’ clutches and his green suit—why, he almost appeared birch himself. The moon’s light also revealed the eyeshine of his many predators. He turned his head, first left, then right, and saw nothing but glowing eyes everywhere he looked. It was enough to make him want to cry—until the Erlking, his chief tormentor, walked up to the copse and grinned with feral teeth. Then Carl found his fury.
The Erlking nodded at prisoner-Carl, then called for his troll. “Look at him,” he instructed the troll, “then look at me. Tell me, which is your King.”
The homeless troll Carl had met upon a once in the doctor’s office—Brigham Trow—looked much healthier now, but perhaps that was the dark, disguising his maladies. Poor Brigham squinted at Carl, then the Erlking, then Carl again, almost as if a tennis game were underway and he was keeping his eye on the ball. Carl refrained from telling the troll to visit an optometrist. Carl was in trouble enough already. The troll, too, by looks of it.
“Um…you?” the troll said, hunching his shoulders until he resembled a boulder. When the Erlking’s attention switched to Carl, the troll mouthed ‘sorry’ and rolled away into the dark.
“Who’s going to guard my waterways with him living in the woods?” the Erlking monologued. “I have dryads living in wood, what need do I have for a troll there too? What need does a troll have for a house? A troll is his own house.”
Feeling contrary, Carl said, “I thought they lived under bridges and taxed goats.”
“Bridges,” the Erlking said, fury gritting his jaw, “are a fairy trick you humans stole. A troll is lucky if he has a bridge to shelter under. Who are you to give away cabins? No one. You are no one.”
They stared at each other, long and hard—decades might have ticked by for all they’d have noticed. Then the Erlking moved to raise his hand and open his mouth, but before he could utter one sound, another voice boomed into the stillness. “Evangeline comes!”
The words echoed. Not just echoed, Carl realized. They were being repeated by smaller trees, bushes even. The original announcement had the intonation of aged conifer, but Carl doubted it was a tree he’d previously met. His friends were miles from here, too far for him to still be within earshot. He didn’t know exactly what the shouting distance of Spruce Catkins and his ilk was, but he knew he’d never heard a familiar tree this far from home before. He both rejoiced and despaired at the words. Joy because his heart always leapt at thoughts of Evangeline, but despair because what could she do against an army of fairies? There weren’t arrows enough in the world for her to overcome these odds.
“Well, well,” the Erlking said. “Looks like we’ll have a vixen and a kit for our seventhing.”
The gremlins led Evangeline right to the midst of the fairy hunt, then slinked into shadows to watch. Evangeline nocked an arrow, sighted the Erlking, doublechecked that she wasn’t about to bull’s eye Carl, and fired.
Thwock. Thwock.
She hit the Erlking once in the chest where his heart would be, if he had one, and once in his right eye. She had a third arrow at the ready for his other eye, but ended up firing it into a hound that leapt her way.
The hound yipped and went down, its tremendous body slamming into her. She fell to the ground and scrambled back up, checking her gear for damage and grabbing her next arrow.
The Erlking faced her and pushed the arrows into his body. His eye and chest swallowed her arrows whole, l
eaving nothing but a glittering dampness behind.
Perhaps Uncle Ivers had been right: No one could kill an Erlking.
Very well, Evangeline thought. She’d take as many of his hunters as she could. Using the shine of their eyes against them, Evangeline aimed for tapetum lucidum and began loosing arrows.
Carl thrashed his way from his birch prison the moment the Erlking turned toward Evangeline. His antlers caught in twigs and low hanging branches, so he shook himself free. He stumbled from the light into the dark and couldn’t see a damn thing. His foot caught on an exposed root and he faceplanted, conveniently a second before a rushing hound near took off his head. His antlers caught the hound’s stomach and then it wasn’t just the dark in his eyes that made it hard to see. Carl frantically shook his head; both heard and felt things tear. He took off like a runner hearing the starting pistol, not sure where he was heading, his sole purpose to get away.
Fortunately, before he could desert his girlfriend in an attempt to keep his own skin, he tripped over a gremlin and found himself sprawled on the forest floor once more. “King-boy?” the gremlin said, sticking his masked, furry face into Carl’s. Carl squeaked like a mouse under a cat’s paw.
“What? What?” Carl gasped.
“We bring Hunter-girl to hunt Hunt. She kill Erlking’s beasties good. You watch?” The gremlin tried to turn Carl’s head one hundred and eighty degrees so the King-boy could see the moonlit destruction behind him.
“You’re not going to join?” Carl said, removing the gremlin’s tiny but strong hands.
“Gremlins no Hunt.” The gremlin sounded despondent. Which was when Carl remembered the Erlking’s complaints against him. The Erlking wanted Carl dead because Carl had promised the gremlins an invitation to hunt. The Erlking also said Carl couldn’t call a Hunt, but well, maybe the gremlins didn’t know that. Or the Erlking could be wrong. Or lying. Carl bet the Erlking did a great deal of lying.
