Wings

by E. D. Baker

  Whirling on her heel, Lurinda strode away, leaving Tamisin speechless. This was the woman who had stolen her from her mother only days before. She was also the woman who had talked her mother into sending the infant Tamisin to the human world.

  “Move it!” growled Nihlo, shoving Tamisin so that she stumbled toward the door.

  The den was in rolling countryside, forested except for the paths and clearings that the goblins had created over centuries of use. Nearby hills concealed other dens, also belonging to members of the cat clan. What was normally a quiet forest whose only sound was birdsong and the creaking of branches in the wind had become a battleground filled with goblins herding flocks of battering rams ready to knock down the enemies’ defenses, strategically placed goblins hefting spears as they waited for the fighting to begin, and goblins camouflaging themselves in the trees.

  Nihlo was prodding her toward a large group of goblins when the fairies began their attack. A platoon of tiny fairy warriors zoomed low to sprinkle yellow dust on the heads of the goblins herding the rams. Two of the goblins sneezed, and they all looked up as the last of the drifting dust settled on their heads and shoulders.

  “Fairy dust!” shrieked a goblin, slapping at his clothes. The first goblin to fall asleep settled to the ground with a sigh. The second fell in a boneless heap, snoring before he hit the dirt. With their shepherds asleep, the rams ran wild, butting everything in their way. By then the goblins were aware of what had happened, so when the fairy platoon approached another group of goblins, they were met with waving spears that swatted them aside like flies.

  Over on another hillside, a group of big fairy warriors was building a barricade of rocks. Spear-carrying goblins ran toward them, but a swarm of tiny warriors zoomed into the air, carrying heavy sacks from which they sprinkled dust on any goblin who came too close. This time it was blue dust that made the goblins’ feet grow so enormous that they slapped the ground like paddles, making walking almost impossible. Then there was purple dust that made their noses grow so long and heavy that the goblins had to struggle to hold up their heads. Some goblins were coated with dust of both colors.

  It wasn’t long before the fairies building the barricade were finished. Gathering behind it, they aimed their wands and shot bolts of icy air at the goblins. They were so intent on their larger targets that they didn’t notice a small rat goblin who, scurrying from stone to tree to shrub, stayed hidden until he reached the barricade. After placing his hand on the rock wall for only a moment, he squealed with delight when it turned into a clump of pointy-topped mushrooms, leaving the fairies exposed.

  The rat goblin was running back toward goblin lines when an angry fairy pointed a wand at him. A blast of cold air shot from the wand, turning the goblin into an ice-covered statue. He made a pitiful keening sound as he froze, drawing the attention of every goblin around. Hundreds of goblin eyes turned toward the fairies. A moment later, a flood of roaring, barking, snarling goblins descended on the fairies, who suddenly became small, making the air sparkle as they flew away. A few remained behind to freeze the oncoming goblins.

  When it looked as if these last few fairy warriors were about to be overwhelmed, a goblin with a horsey face howled, “Lamias!”

  Nihlo jerked his head toward the top of the hill where a group of older goblins were gathering and told Tamisin, “We’ll go up there. That’s probably where my father is anyway.”

  They had climbed partway up the hill when a goblin ran screaming past the spot where they’d been standing. Tamisin looked back as a lamia with long golden hair slithered after the goblin. Nihlo hustled Tamisin up the hillside, glancing back over his shoulder to make sure there weren’t any lamias following them, too.

  When they reached the top of the hill, they found a large group of goblins clustered at the edge of a clearing. Wulfrin was in front beside Targin, but Lurinda, still wearing her hooded cloak, was in the back behind the taller goblins. Titania stood on the opposite side of the clearing, the air sparkling around her as warriors of all sizes stood guard over their queen. Tamisin glimpsed the small, masked figure of Tobi peeking through the branches behind the fairy warriors, but she didn’t see Jak anywhere. She’d last seen him being dragged toward the fairies when the goblins recaptured her, but now that she didn’t see him with them she feared that he had been injured or worse.

  Targin and Wulfrin were busy arguing when a hush settled over the assembled fairies. They were all watching as Titania raised her hand, her fingers outstretched, her palm taut. At first nothing seemed to happen, but then Tamisin felt something move beneath her feet, forcing its way from the earth. She hopped onto a large rock as roots erupted through the grass, whipping the air as they reached for something, anything. Thick tendrils wrapped around Nihlo’s leg, making him swear and reach for his knife, but they tightened their grip and dragged him downward. Staggering, he stepped back into the clutches of another thick root that wound around his knees and yanked him off his feet completely. When the other goblins tried to run away, roots tripped them and wrapped themselves around their squirming bodies. The goblins who could still move their hands pulled at the roots with their fingers, or tried to cut them with knives, but only a few could free themselves.

  “Transmogrification!” bellowed Targin, and they all seemed to know what to do. One after the other the goblins bent down and closed their eyes, and when they opened them, the roots were roots no longer. The goblin in front of Tamisin turned them into morning glory vines, which he ripped out of the ground. Another changed the roots into hair that he clipped as neatly as a barber.

  Then tiny fairies descended on the goblins, flinging pink dust. Only a few goblins fell asleep before Targin again signaled to his warriors. They raised reeds to their mouths and shot thorns at the fairies, piercing the tiny bodies so that they fell to the ground, still and silent. As their fellow fairy warriors bellowed, Titania called up a breeze that whisked her fallen soldiers back to her side of the clearing. Nymphs emerged from the trees to tend to the injured warriors, while the few tiny fairies who had not been injured straggled back to await the orders of their queen.

  The wind grew stronger, blowing into the goblins’ faces, making their eyes tear and their noses stream, plucking the reeds from the goblins’ hands, rending the spears from their grips, and leaving them without any weapons but their wits. While the other goblins watched, Targin reached down and picked up a stone. His eyes were closed and his brow was furrowed as he turned the stone into a buzzing, straining wasp nest, sealed shut from the outside. Pulling back his arm, he hurled the nest into the midst of the fairies, where it hit the ground and exploded in a shower of dry powder, releasing the furious insects. Fairies shouted, slapping at their clothes, their hair, and their skin as other goblins followed his lead and threw wasp nests of their own. And then Titania’s lips moved and the wasps turned to fly straight back at the goblins who had sent them.

  At the wasps’ approach, Tamisin pulled her sleeves down and covered her face with her arms, but the insects seemed to shy away from her, attacking the goblins around her instead. The goblins were still flailing at the wasps when Titania spoke once more and the ground beneath them stirred as springs bubbled through the soil.

  Although the rock upon which Tamisin stood gave her firm footing, the goblins near her staggered as the ground turned mushy beneath them. Goblins sank into the soil up to their knees, crying out to their comrades for help, while Titania raised her voice, calling on a colder wind that circled the goblins and froze the ground, trapping their feet in the hardening, freezing mud.

  Targin picked up another stone, cupped it in his hands, and dropped a red-hot coal onto the ground. Steam rose from the soil, inspiring the other goblins, who found stones and bits of twig on the ground near them and turned them into glowing embers or flaming logs. But no matter how hard they tried, the ice refused to thaw, and they remained trapped.

  When it looked as if the goblins had nothing else they could do, Titania motioned
again. The ground rumbled and suddenly the air seemed to be tinged with gold. “Name yourself, goblin,” Titania said to Targin in a voice as clear as if she were standing only feet away.

  Although he was sunk in the frozen ground up to his knees, Targin kept his back ramrod straight and crossed his arms. “I am Targin, head of the cat clan,” he said. “I am ready to negotiate.”

  “And why would I negotiate with you?”

  “Because my goblins captured your daughter,” said Targin.

  “Yet you don’t seem able to grasp that you have lost.”

  “But I haven’t. You’ll get your daughter back as soon as we’ve reached an agreement. My people are unhappy with your rule,” Targin said. “They yearn to return to a time when goblins ruled goblins and answered to no one else.”

  “You and I both know that isn’t possible. I’m not parceling off my kingdom for anyone.”

  “Either you do what we want or we’ll give your halfling to the lamias.”

  “And do you really think I’d stand for that?” asked the queen.

  “What would you do, call lightning down on our heads?” asked Targin. “Make us half donkeys like the princess’s father? Wait! It was Oberon who perpetrated that travesty. You just fell in love with the man who mocked goblins.” The goblins behind him became restless, muttering to each other in lowered voices.

  Nihlo sneered at Tamisin. “Did you hear that? My father wants to feed you to the snake women.” Tamisin tried not to flinch when he pinched her arm hard enough to leave a bruise. These creatures were willing to let her die to get what they wanted; they didn’t know that Lamia Lou was her friend. If only there was something she could do…

  Titania was talking to Targin again, but Tamisin couldn’t hear her over Nihlo’s taunting. She held on to her anger, adding to it her memories of all the cruel things people had ever said or done to her. When she pictured Lurinda telling her how she’d talked Titania into sending Tamisin away, thunder rumbled over the forest, growing louder the angrier Tamisin became.

  Lurinda turned toward Nihlo and gave him a signal with her hand. Nihlo nodded and glanced at Tamisin. When she saw his knife, she suddenly understood. Everything Gammi had said about her sister came back to Tamisin—how she held on to grudges and how she was a bad person to cross. Keeping her eyes on Nihlo’s knife, Tamisin let her anger and fear grow, knowing it was the only way she was going to get out alive. Goblins shrieked as lightning struck a tree at the edge of the clearing and thunder crashed overhead.

  Targin pointed his finger at the queen. “Your theatrics won’t work with us. You can bring lighting down on our heads and we still won’t change our minds.”

  Titania glanced up at the sky and made a calming motion with her hand. When the thunder didn’t subside, she looked puzzled. Turning to the fairy warriors beside her, she said something that only they could hear. Then they, too, began to look confused.

  Nihlo was hauling Tamisin closer with one hand while brandishing his knife with the other when Jak pushed his way through the goblins. Tamisin gasped when Jak appeared at her side, but he didn’t look at her. Pulling back his fist, he struck his cousin with such force that Nihlo let go of Tamisin and fell against the goblin behind him.

  “Don’t ever touch her again,” Jak snarled.

  “And who’s going to stop me?” Nihlo asked, feeling his swollen lip.

  Jak pulled a knife out of a sheath on his belt and said, “Who do you think?”

  “Jak, are you—,” Tamisin began.

  “I’m fine,” he said, sparing her a quick glance. He must have noticed that she’d opened her wings partway, because he added, “Get out of here while you can.”

  Thunder boomed as lightning ripped the sky again. A fierce wind thrashed the branches of the forest; a soaking rain pelted everyone until hair, fur, and feathers were wet and bedraggled. Targin gestured for his goblins to bring Tamisin forward, but her wings were already spread wide behind her, and her feet were leaving the ground. Unlike that long-ago Halloween when the wind had slowed her down while she fled the goblins, this time it acted as her ally, enveloping her in a pocket of calm as it pushed the goblins away. Targin’s goblins fought to take hold of her, but Tamisin beat her wings once, twice, and then the wind carried her high above the ground, leaving the goblins, her mother, and everyone else watching her in astonishment. Full-blooded fairies couldn’t really fly when they were big because their wings weren’t strong enough, but then, she wasn’t really a fairy. Tamisin Warner was something much better. She was a halfling.

  It wasn’t hard to find Lamia Lou. All Tamisin had to do was wait until the screaming goblins ran past and see who was chasing them. When she found a lamia with long dark hair, she flew low enough to see her face, then landed on the ground beside her. “Hi!” Tamisin said. “I have a favor to ask of you, but before I tell you, can I ask why you’re chasing the goblins? I thought you didn’t like eating them anymore.”

  “I don’t,” said Lamia Lou. “They thay that goblins tathte like chicken, but they’re wrong. If you athk me, chicken tathte much better. But we aren’t chathing the goblinth becauthe we want to eat them. We jutht want them to thtop being tho noithy. Everyone in my family ith very thenthitive to noithe. It hurth our earth.”

  “You mean you come here to make them stop being noisy, then they see you and get even noisier, so you chase them?”

  “That’th it,” said Lamia Lou. “Now what about that favor?”

  “It’s really very simple…,” said Tamisin.

  When Tamisin returned to the top of the hill, she found Titania and Targin still arguing and everyone else looking wet and miserable. The ground had thawed, releasing the goblins. Lurinda and Nihlo were gone. To her relief, Jak was still on his feet.

  The storm had died down while Tamisin talked to Lamia Lou, leaving the ground so soggy that it squelched under her feet when she landed. Everyone seemed surprised to see her, but she couldn’t decide if it was because they had been unable to believe their eyes the first time or because they thought she had gone and wasn’t coming back.

  “Hello, Mother, Targin,” she said, nodding to each in turn. “I see you haven’t settled your differences yet.”

  Targin glared at her, obviously angry that she hadn’t been the bargaining tool he’d wanted. It was her mother who spoke up first, and even she sounded angry with Tamisin. “Why are you here? I was proud of you for escaping from this lout on your own, but I see no reason for you to return.”

  “I came for you, Mother. And for him,” Tamisin said, gesturing toward Targin. “I wanted to give you some advice. You need to stop threatening each other. You’ll never get anywhere that way. I want you two to sit down and work things out like responsible adults. I know you want to be a good queen, Mother, and do what’s best for your subjects. And you,” she said, turning to Targin, “want what you think is best for your people. It seems to me that you already have similar goals.”

  “We don’t need your advice,” said Targin.

  “That’s too bad,” said Tamisin. “Because my friends and I aren’t going anywhere and neither are you until you reach an agreement, no matter how long it takes.”

  “What friends?” Targin asked with a sneer. “If you mean my nephew, that boy’s a traitor and deserves to be whipped for letting you go.”

  “I think the princeth meanth uth,” lisped a voice from the woods as four lamias slithered into the clearing to the horror of everyone except Tamisin. “My name ith Lamia Lou and I’m a good friend of Princeth Tamithin. That maketh her a friend of my thithterth, too. Unh, unh,” she said, rattling her tail at a goblin who looked as if he were about to run away. “You heard the princeth. No one leaveth until we thay they can.”

  Tamisin was enjoying herself immensely. “Thank you, Lamia Lou.”

  “Your threat won’t work on me, Tamisin,” said Titania. “I could leave any time.”

  “That’s true,” said Tamisin. “But some of your fairies might get hurt and you w
ouldn’t want that.”

  Titania glanced at the nymphs who were still tending to the fallen fairies. She turned to Targin. “What exactly are your demands?”

  “We want to control what goes on in our territory. We’ll obey your laws when we’re elsewhere in your kingdom, but we want to make our own laws inside our forest. And we don’t want our children taken from us to serve at your court indefinitely. We want a set period of time and we want their service to be voluntary.”

  Titania frowned. “That’s ridiculous. There would be chaos if every group of fey made its own laws. I can’t possibly consider it!”

  “Isn’t there something you could do, Mother?” said Tamisin. “If the goblins are really so unhappy …”

  Titania sighed. “Perhaps you can write your own laws regarding some matters, but there are others that must stay the same throughout the kingdom. Travelers must be able to pass through your forest in safety, so the laws against killing and eating them cannot change.”

  Targin nodded. “And as to the children serving at the royal court?”