Last Stand in Lychford

by Paul Cornell

  “And neither do your people?”

  “Correct.”

  “Possibly because we exist because of a mistake made by your boss? Do you feel we’re your mess to clean up?”

  She was pleased and scared to see she’d made him angry again. “It’s more about the persecution. Those of us who’d been used to roaming freely around this new world, those of us who didn’t want to become your lap dogs, we found ourselves cast in the role of devils and evil spirits and whatever your current dominant religious paradigm thought was icky. Even the fairies could never quite be submissive enough to earn your trust.”

  “Most people these days don’t think any of you are real.”

  “Oh, of course, you’ve forgotten, and that makes it all right. You’re not responsible for what your ancestors did. That’s what they all say. Most of the time for us it has indeed been a choice between evil and imaginary. There have always been exceptions, humans who thought we were charming, dangerously attractive, forbidden. They’ve often been useful idiots for us. And from time to time, before the boss woke up, I can’t deny it, our leaders have negotiated, hence the handful of agreements that led to some of the borders around Lychford. Most of those borders, however, were forced on our worlds, shutting us off in our . . . reservations. But we’ve been watching from them, learning about all your little cultural vulnerabilities. Now, across the realms, there’s a consensus, led by the boss now naptime is over. Your world is going to embrace reality. Become again part of our realities. By force.”

  Lizzie was sure this was the same manifesto that Maitland Picton had talked about. Picton’s plan had been to pull the whole of the human world into the other realms at once. But Lizzie and Autumn had got the feeling that she was something of a rogue agent, completing her assigned mission, but in her own way. Still, despite being scared of Cummings, as well as deeply annoyed by him, Lizzie felt there was something she should say at this point. Because he had to hear this from at least one human. “Listen,” she said. “I agree about the historical wrongs done to your people.”

  “Oh! Thank you so much! That makes it all so much better! There’s a ‘but’ coming up, though, isn’t there? As in ‘but we’d like to keep all the land we shut you out of, please.’”

  “I agree we’ve done wrong. I want us to recognise that. I want us to do something about it. And I want you to remember that.”

  “That’s the most passive-aggressive threat I’ve ever heard. From a position of no strength at all. What, you think the cavalry is coming?”

  Lizzie made herself straighten up and look him in the eye. Accepting the truth about her own side gave her the strength to do that. “I know they are.”

  3

  ZOYA HAD ARRIVED AT the school gate, set in a low wall and still with its usual padlock. Visitors during the day couldn’t access the playground, they had to go around to the office. The school looked deserted. Where the hell was Jas? Now was not the time for niceties. She jogged up to the gate and vaulted it, then walked quickly over to the school buildings. “Hello?” she called. She could see movement inside. She went up to one of the classroom doors and it was quickly opened.

  Charlie, Jas’s teaching assistant, leapt out, grabbed her, and pulled her in. “Quickly!”

  Inside, Zoya found a bunch of adults, teachers, teaching assistants, and even school dinner ladies, hunkered down behind upturned tables. They were clutching various implements, from carving knives to hammers, and they looked very determined. “Oh,” she sighed. “They shall not pass. Whoever they are.”

  “You have to get down,” said Charlie, trying to lead her into cover. But Zoya shook off her grasp.

  “Where’s Jas?”

  “With the other children. Mrs. Williams has them in the main hall, behind some improvised defences. It’s in the middle of the building. We thought it’d be safest.”

  “What do you think you’re doing? What are you defending them from? You’re scaring them with all this rubbish.”

  Mrs. Cotton, the deputy head, poked her head up from behind one of the tables. She was wearing a teacher’s expression so fierce that Zoya immediately wanted to say she was sorry and wouldn’t do it again, whatever it was. “We have intruders on the grounds. Very strange intruders. Several members of staff have seen them. 999 doesn’t work. Shaun Mawson is on his way over. I assure you this is real. And you’re right, they shall not pass. Not while we have anything to say about it. Now get under cover.”

  Zoya folded her arms, a little perturbed by the woman’s certainty. “I didn’t see anything.”

  “And you can’t feel it?” said Charlie. The teaching assistant put a hand to her own head. “You can’t feel the . . . weird stuff that’s out there right now?”

  “With what, my psychic powers? What? What are you all looking at?” Zoya had suddenly become aware that all of them were looking past her to the window behind her. Their faces were pictures of shock and dismay. Okay. She’d play along.

  Zoya slowly turned to see what all the fuss was about.

  * * *

  Autumn was watching Trill, who’d put his fingers on the artery at Lizzie’s throat, a look of concentration on his face. Fairies didn’t seem to need all the words, gestures, and sacrifices that humans did in order to perform magic. He’d told them that if he could feel this infected blood doing anything weird to him, he’d stop. The blue liquid pulsed in Lizzie’s throat, then suddenly started to flow into the space between that throat and Trill’s fingers. Her skin remained unbroken. The blood was hissing from her pores, Autumn realised, pouring from her in a mist. As Autumn watched, the colour of her friend’s face started to return to normal.

  * * *

  Zoya couldn’t see what the teachers were gawping at.

  She turned and walked toward the window. “See?” she said. “Nothing.” She looked back over her shoulder at them. “You’re all bonkers mental.”

  Charlie got up with the obvious intention of trying to make her retreat, but one of the others pulled her back. “You really can’t see it?” she whispered.

  “No. What can you see?” Zoya turned back and put her hand up against the window. These ridiculous individuals. Still, it was weird that they were all having the same hallucination at once. Maybe some passing shadow out there had set them off? Was there anything out there at all?

  “No,” called Mrs. Cotton, as if to something outside the window. “Don’t!”

  Zoya felt something strike her. She put a hand to her chest. It was like she’d had a sudden cramp in a place she hadn’t been aware it was possible to have one. Pins and needles started to radiate out from her collarbone. Her mum had had a word for when you got a sudden ache you couldn’t account for, she remembered. She’d called it being “fairy struck.” She waved her hand in front of her. Was she touching something? Was there something sticking in her? She couldn’t see it. She could barely feel it. And yet . . . and yet she was feeling . . . very weird.

  She turned back to the classroom and pointed at the teachers angrily. “What is this fu—?”

  And then the darkness rushed into her head and she fell.

  * * *

  “Understand this, you hypocritical sack of shit, we’re going to be rid of you!” Cummings was shouting, advancing on Lizzie. She was slowly backing away, but now she was cornered against the front row of entranced fairies. She fell and he loomed over her, filling her vision with his snarling features. “Oh, are you thinking about running, maybe going to find the fairy king? Please do. The boss is right there with him. He’d barely notice you as his presence extinguished you. No, we’re finally going to be rid of all of you. And nobody is coming to save—”

  He suddenly stopped, an odd look on his face. There had, Lizzie realised, been a sound, a thump, like a piece of wood hitting something.

  Cummings fell aside, his eyes closing as he hit the forest floor, unconscious.

  Behind him stood a young woman with very short hair and very loud makeup. She held in her hands a
sturdy piece of wood. “As I was saying,” she yelled, in what sounded like a Russian accent, “what is this fuckwittery?” She seemed to reconsider in the moment as she saw Lizzie’s clerical collar. “Reverend?”

  Lizzie opened her mouth to answer. But she realised that she was feeling weird again. She started to form some sort of reply, but then—

  She woke up again.

  And she was back in Autumn’s shop and staring up at Autumn.

  Oh God. She had so much to say. “Thank you. You brought me back.”

  “Any time,” said Autumn. “Every time.”

  Lizzie had to bite her lip. She wanted to say more, but actually there was Luke, and . . . also a fairy in pyjamas and wellies. “Shit,” she said. “I’m still dreaming.”

  “No,” said Autumn, “he’s real. I have a lot to tell you.”

  Lizzie sat up. “I have a lot to tell you, and you need to hear mine first. Yes, you do. No, shut up. Does anyone here know any Russians?”

  And now Autumn was looking at her like she was mad. But then Autumn’s phone beeped with an incoming text. She looked at the screen. “The school say they’ve just had a fairy attack. With a . . . Ukrainian victim. Could that be—?”

  “Oh,” said Lizzie. “Can we not tell her I thought she was Russian?”

  * * *

  Autumn quickly packed a bag with everything she could think of that might help, while she, Luke, and Trill listened to Lizzie explain that David Cummings seemed to have the fairies and their king asleep in a dream world and was controlling their bodies here through infected fairy blood.

  Trill told her to stop, concentrated for a moment, then nodded, looking angry. “I can’t feel the presence of the king,” he said. “Not at all. Not like he’s dreaming. Nothing. What’s that about? Is that to do with why I’m not being controlled like these others?”

  “No idea,” said Autumn. “We need more information.”

  “We will have revenge,” said the fairy. “How dare another nation meddle in our affairs, to the point of leading us?”

  “You’re sounding less like me all the time,” noted Luke.

  “They grow up so quickly,” said Autumn.

  “That’s the mistake people make,” said Trill. “People and demons too. We enjoy being influenced. Just like humans do. But we are actually strong enough to assert ourselves.”

  “Unlike humans,” said Autumn.

  “Not all humans,” said Luke.

  “Influence and belief,” continued Trill, “are the underpinnings of all the worlds, all the realities, as you’d say. Except perhaps this one, which has this physics thing, which I agree is a terrible idea, if I may say so.”

  “That’s fascinating,” said Autumn. “After this is over, I want to hear all about that, with my notebooks handy. And probably a stiff drink. But. Moving on.”

  Lizzie finished her story, taking it up to the moment of the satisfying impact of wood on demon skull. “What does that woman knocking Cummings out even mean?” she said. “He was surprised I was awake, so I guess humans could do things in that dream world he didn’t expect. Though I don’t think he was lying about how impossible it would be to help the king. But is that woman’s mind safe there when Cummings wakes up? What does ‘waking up’ there involve?”

  “Let’s see if we can get her out of there before he does.” Autumn grabbed her keys and led them out of the door. She hoped her gait looked much more confident than she was feeling.

  * * *

  As the clock in the church tower struck noon, Autumn and her party marched toward the school. They could move with reasonable speed, given that Trill would be able to warn them of approaching fairies. But it occurred to Autumn that that was a two-edged sword. “If you can sense them, they can sense you,” she said.

  Trill looked uncertain. “I’m not so sure. I’m not getting any response back from them. I feel rather like I’ve put a glamour on myself, like I’m invisible.”

  “Also,” said Lizzie, “if they’re using that map I saw to navigate through the town, they’ll be a bit all over the place. If ‘post sender’ was what leapt out from the post office, that’s like they’re getting vague thoughts from people here and using them to navigate. ‘Post’ wouldn’t mean anything to fairies.” She looked to Trill. “Would it?”

  “Only so many people need posts,” said the fairy, “and where do they need to be sent?”

  “My case rests,” said Lizzie.

  Autumn was pleased that they were once again working together pretty well. But it worried her that they still hadn’t got to the heart of what the problem had been in the first place. Lizzie now seemed to be displaying a slightly exaggerated niceness to Luke, as if she was making up for an issue she still felt but didn’t want to express. But later for all that. (She hoped there would be a later for all that.) “Anyway,” she said, “if Trill senses a fairy nearby, and if they start moving toward us, we head in the other direction. Okay?”

  It took them another ten minutes to get to the end of the footpath that connected to the main road going past the school. “They must be able to come and go through this barrier themselves,” said Lizzie. “They wouldn’t have set up a wall the rest of their forces couldn’t pass through.”

  “But why have a wall at all?” said Autumn. “Doesn’t an invading army want people to run away and let them have the territory?”

  “They’re not invading,” said Lizzie. “That Picton woman talked about transforming the world, making it into a land like the magic one she came from. And Cummings’s boss seems to have similar plans. Cummings said they were going to rip up our reality.”

  As they approached the school, they slowed down, but Trill shook his head. “There aren’t any fairies nearby. They’ve gone.”

  “What were they after?” wondered Autumn as they climbed over the locked gate into the deserted playground. From the texts she was getting from inside the building, there had been only the one casualty, this Ukrainian woman. She texted back to tell the teachers that the enemy had departed.

  “Oh,” said Luke, the sound of realisation in his voice. “It’s about you.”

  “What?” said Lizzie.

  “These are commando attacks against individual targets. What? I read a lot of military history. They weren’t here to storm the school or terrorise it, they were just here to take out this Ukrainian woman. Mission accomplished, so then they left. But before coming here, they tried to take out you two.”

  “And there was another target,” said Trill, “they went toward this ‘not about magnets any more’ direction thing of yours first, and this is not that.”

  “So I reckon that’s what the wall is for, to stop you two getting away. Maybe this woman here too. The three of you, plus maybe this other target to the north, must be the ones who can stop whatever huge transforming magical shit they’re planning.”

  “Oh my God,” said Autumn, flattered and terrified at once. She could see the same emotions on Lizzie’s face too.

  “Don’t sound so surprised,” said Luke. “You’re pretty awesome.”

  “So how is the Ukrainian awesome?” said Autumn.

  “Awesome enough to thump Cummings around the head in dreamland,” said Lizzie.

  * * *

  The teachers thankfully let them inside, and they found the young woman with the short hair whom Lizzie recognised from the dream world still unconscious and being kept warm in the staff room. “Do you want me to do the thing again?” asked Trill.

  They watched as he drained the fairy blood from the young woman’s body. The teachers looked on in awe, although they were at the same time taking turns to make cups of hot soup. From the noise further inside the building, it became clear that a general evacuation of children had started. “We were telling parents to stay away,” said Mrs. Cotton, “but now they’re arriving to take the children home. We’ve got a lot of couples where one of them was caught outside this wall thing. They must be worried sick.”

  Lizzie just no
dded. She was very much feeling the responsibility now. Especially if this was all about the two . . . or three . . . of them.

  “So you’re going to do something about this, right?” That was another teacher, a thin man with a beard. “I mean, we don’t deserve this. It has to stop.”

  “Go and see to the evacuation, please, Mr. Moore,” said Mrs Cotton. After a moment’s hesitation, the man seemed to see the steel in the deputy head’s eyes and left. “You’ve met a few like that, I should think,” she said to Lizzie.

  “Thank you,” said Lizzie.

  The young woman, who they’d been told was called Zoya, coughed, opened her eyes, and immediately sat up. “Where’s Jas?”

  Mrs. Cotton told her she was safe with the other children and that Zoya could see her as soon as she wanted. Zoya nodded, closed her eyes in relief, then opened them again and pointed at Lizzie. “You. You were there. Oh fucksticks. All this bollocks is true, isn’t it?”

  “Depending on which bollocks, but yes, probably,” said Lizzie. “What happened after I left?”

  “I looked around. Rows of . . . those guys,” she said, pointing at Trill, startled all over again.

  Trill waved.

  “It was like the auditions for bloody Lord of the Rings. But no pyjamas. Then I heard that guy who was yelling at you start making little waking up noises, so I found the bit of wood and hit him again. I had to do that three more times. I got bored. I looked at my phone, but it was just a sort of prop phone, and I couldn’t get any reception because I was in Lord of the Rings, so I’d have only got I don’t know, Bugger Baggins anyway, but no, stop, just tell me what the fuck is going on!”

  Which had reached a sort of panicked existential yell by the end of it. As quickly as possible, with Autumn doing most of the talking and Lizzie making the odd interjection, they provided her with a Previously On Lychford.

  Zoya stared at them. “Holy shit.”

  “Sums it up in two words,” said Lizzie.