Faerie Wars

by Herbie Brennan

  Arana played for a time in this amazing world, then started to miss her family and plucked up enough courage to go through the fiery pillars again. She found herself back on the barren island. Her wings had disappeared.

  When she told her family, they didn’t believe it, but she talked her older brother, Landsman, into coming with her to see the fiery pillars. Before Landsman could stop her, Arana ran into the flames. Landsman lunged forward to try to save her and they both found themselves winged creatures in the green land. Landsman was old enough to realise he wasn’t surrounded by giant flowers and plants, but had himself shrunk. When he led his sister back through the pillars, they lost their wings and returned to normal size.

  The discovery of the portal saved the shipwrecked families, for while the barren island couldn’t feed them, the world beyond the pillars certainly could. Since they were seedspeople, they already knew a lot about plants and even introduced a few new species from the Realm of Faerie, using seeds they’d managed to save from the shipwreck.

  ‘Which ones?’ Fogarty asked.

  ‘Bluebells ... foxgloves ... most of the flowers with bells came from my realm.’

  In the early months, Landsman made regular trips through the pillars in the hope of spotting a passing ship that would rescue them, but, as time went by, he did this less and less. Eventually he left a written record of their experience somewhere on the island where it would be safe from weather and painted a large notice on a rock near the pillars explaining where this record could be found. He hoped if anybody ever landed on the island, they’d find the diary and follow his family into the Analogue World to bring them home.

  Nobody ever did. Landsman updated the record every six months at first, but this dropped to once a year, then every few years. Eventually he stopped updating altogether. By now he was middle aged and little Arana a full-grown woman. The younger members of the families were intermarrying and producing winged children of their own on the far side of the pillars. The new generations had never experienced the Realm of Faerie (beyond that tiny patch of barren island) and had little interest in it. Their home was among the plants and flowers of the Analogue World.

  It was nearly four hundred years before anyone else landed on that remote little island. But it was eventually visited by a wizard named Arion, who was experiencing some problems with the engine of his fishing boat.

  ‘You have wizards in the Realm of Faerie?’ Henry asked eagerly.

  Pyrgus blinked at him. ‘They’re just people who can make things work. Like Mr Fogarty here.’

  ‘Get on with it,’ growled Mr Fogarty.

  Arion found the notice on the rock, faded but still readable. He followed the directions and rescued Landsman’s record, which had survived rather well. But search as he might, he couldn’t find the basalt pillars with the fire between them or any sign of the original shipwreck. He decided the record was a hoax, but since it was a centuries-old hoax it had curiosity value, and he donated the documents to the library of the Wizards’ Guild.

  ‘You have a Wizards’ Guild?’ Henry interrupted again, but Mr Fogarty shushed him.

  Landsman’s record lay unnoticed for a further sixty years before it was taken up by an adventurous nobleman named Urticae. Pyrgus called Urticae a Faerie of the Night without explaining what that meant.

  ‘You have nobles?’

  ‘Shut it, Henry!’ Fogarty growled.

  With nothing better to do, Urticae managed to find the original island. He couldn’t locate the basalt pillars either, but he did discover evidence of an ancient earthquake that might have toppled them. Before long he’d convinced himself that the portal had really existed and sensed that an entrance to another realm could have important political and military possibilities. He also decided that the portal must have had something to do with natural conditions on the island. To the amusement of his family and friends, he spent the next three years visiting active volcanic sites in the hope of finding another one. The day after his thirty-third birthday he did.

  The new portal, only the second ever discovered in the Realm of Faerie, was on property owned – but never visited – by another noble, a Faerie of the Light named Iris. Urticae tried to buy the site, but Iris became suspicious and wouldn’t sell. Urticae’s House launched an attack on House Iris, thus beginning a conflict between Faeries of the Night and Faeries of the Light that was to cause trouble right to the present day.

  House Iris won the war and it was only after Urticae’s forces were defeated that Iris himself found out what the fuss was all about. He searched the disputed property and eventually stumbled on the natural portal. Although he didn’t recognise it for what it was, investigation soon enlightened him. His discovery was to lay the foundations of the vast power and wealth that eventually accrued to his family.

  Fogarty leaned forward. ‘You mean there’s just one portal between our two worlds now?’

  Pyrgus shook his head. ‘No, eighteen have been discovered altogether. But they don’t stay open. Some of them get buried, like they think happened to the first one. Some of them just stop working, nobody really knows why. New ones are found from time to time. There are about five known now, including the Purp – ’ Pyrgus stopped himself, then went on, ‘– including the one Urticae lost to Iris.’

  Fogarty’s hard old features were expressionless, but there was a curious glint in his eyes. ‘How come that one lasted so long?’ he asked. ‘Way you tell it, it must be thousands of years old.’

  Pyrgus hesitated, then said, ‘That one was... modified.’

  Fogarty waited for him to go on and, when he didn’t, asked, ‘Modified how?’

  ‘The Imp – the, ah, some wizards made a study. I mean, this was before I was born. The portal was just an ordinary portal for, you know, centuries, but House Iris eventually built machines to stabilise it and change the way it worked. The other portals just lead to one place each and two of them aren’t even useful. One opens underwater near the bed of some ocean and one opens inside an active volcano. That’s the only place they go. They’re sort of just there in both worlds. But you can aim the House Iris portal so it opens up anywhere you want it to.’

  ‘That’s the one you came through, isn’t it?’

  Pyrgus nodded. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I think I’d have noticed a portal that was always just there at the bottom of my garden,’ Fogarty said drily. ‘It had to be one that opened up specially for the occasion. Why did you want to come here?’

  Pyrgus hesitated. ‘I didn’t. I wasn’t supposed to come here at all. Or shrink to this size. Or grow wings. There’s a filter on the House Iris portal that stops you shrinking when you translate, but it didn’t work for some reason.’

  Fogarty sniffed. ‘Sounds to me like you were sabotaged,’ he said.

  Nine

  ‘How much of that did you believe?’ asked Mr Fogarty.

  Henry blinked. He’d believed it all. ‘Don’t you think he’s telling the truth?’

  ‘Not much,’ Fogarty said. ‘All that business about shrinking and growing wings...?’

  ‘But he’s small and he does have wings!’ Henry protested.

  ‘I know,’ Fogarty said. ‘But that doesn’t mean he’s shrunk or just grown them. He may have always been that way.’

  They were together in Mr Fogarty’s cluttered living room, having left the fairy Pyrgus Malvae in the kitchen eating a potato crisp that was nearly as big as he was.

  ‘Why would he say he did if he didn’t?’

  ‘To keep us off our guard,’ Fogarty told him soberly. ‘What could be more innocent than a sweet little fairy with butterfly wings ... in trouble?’

  ‘Keep us off guard about what?’ Henry asked.

  Fogarty pursed his lips, leaned forward and dropped his voice. ‘The alien invasion.’

  ‘Alien invasion?’ Henry echoed. ‘Alien invasion?’

  ‘Well, you can drop that attitude for a start,’ Fogarty said crossly. ‘You know how many Americ
ans got abducted by aliens last year? Six million!’

  ‘Mr Fog –’

  ‘And that’s just America. You think what it’s like world-wide. Believe me, there’s something going on and this may be a part of it. He’s already admitted he comes from a parallel universe. What do you think that makes him – a teddy bear? How far do you think you’d trust him if he was green with tentacles? Or that thing that came out of John Hurt’s chest in Alien?’

  Henry hadn’t seen Alien, but he imagined what came out of John Hurt’s chest must have been pretty awful. He opened his mouth to say something, but Fogarty was in full flight.

  ‘You wouldn’t, would you? You’d be on your guard. Think about it. If you looked like hell and dripped slime, wouldn’t it make sense to come on like something a lot more harmless? So you use advanced alien technology to change your shape – molecular adjuster, I’d say. But what do you change it to? Fairy, that’s what! A fairy!’

  ‘Why?’ asked Henry. He’d seen Mr Fogarty like this before and the only way to stop it was to meet it head on.

  ‘Why? Why what? Why a fairy? Because a fairy is familiar ...’ he narrowed his eyes ‘ ... yet strangely unfamiliar. Every kid on the planet’s seen fairies in a picture book, but how many’ve seen the real thing? Everybody loves a fairy – tiptoes through the bluebells, butter wouldn’t melt – but at the same time, fairy says Don’t mess with me otherwise you don’t get the gold at the end of the rainbow. You heard that thing talking about gold, didn’t you?’

  ‘That’s leprechauns,’ Henry said.

  It stopped him. ‘What’s leprechauns?’

  ‘Gold at the end of the rainbow. Irish leprechauns. They promise you gold, but don’t give it to you. Fairies just help plants grow.’ Then, before Mr Fogarty could get his breath back, he went on, ‘Anyway, if he was part of the alien invasion, why would he tell us he’d shrunk?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why would he tell us? Why wouldn’t he just pretend he was a normal fairy?’

  ‘To get our sympathy – ’

  ‘If we thought he was a real fairy, he wouldn’t need our sympathy,’ Henry said patiently. ‘He’d have it already. Everybody loves fairies – you just said so yourself.’ He waited while Mr Fogarty considered it. The old boy might be batty, but he wasn’t stupid.

  Eventually Fogarty said, ‘You think I should trust him?’

  ‘Yes!’ Henry said emphatically.

  ‘You think we should help him?’

  ‘Yes,’ Henry said, but less emphatically this time. It was the ‘we’ that got to him. He wanted to help Pyrgus the fairy. In fact he wanted to help quite badly. But a little voice in his head muttered that maybe he wouldn’t be able to do all that much. Henry had other problems in his life.

  Fogarty shrugged. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Let’s go back in.’

  ‘We’ve had a discussion,’ Fogarty said briskly, ‘and we’ve decided –’

  ‘What was that thing?’ Pyrgus asked, interrupting.

  ‘What thing?’

  ‘That thing you gave me to eat.’

  ‘Potato crisp,’ Fogarty told him. ‘It wasn’t poisoned, if that’s what you think.’

  Pyrgus looked at him in surprise. ‘Didn’t think it was – I just thought it tasted nice.’

  ‘Potato crisp,’ Fogarty said again. ‘Cheese and onion.’

  ‘Haven’t you ever eaten one before?’ Henry asked.

  Pyrgus shook his head. ‘We don’t have them in my realm.’

  ‘Don’t you?’ Henry was fascinated. He couldn’t really imagine a world where you couldn’t buy yourself a packet of crisps. ‘What do you do for snacks?’

  ‘Brindles,’ Pyrgus said. ‘They’d be the most popular. Bubble smoke, I suppose. And nants, if you’ve got a sweet tooth. Slice of ordle. Then there’s chaos horn, but that’s a sex thing. In Cheapside they sell retinduculus from stalls.’

  ‘This chaos horn – ’ Henry began.

  ‘Can you talk about all that some other time?’ Fogarty cut in. He glared at Henry, then at Pyrgus. ‘As I was saying, we’ve had a discussion, young Henry and me, and we’ve decided to give you the benefit of the doubt –’

  ‘What doubt?’ asked Pyrgus.

  ‘What doubt?’ asked Henry.

  Fogarty ignored them. ‘We’ve decided you might just be who you say you are, although you haven’t really said yet, have you? But we need to ask you a few more questions.’ He waited, then when Pyrgus said nothing, went on: ‘This shape you’re in, this fairy business – little, wings, skinny – you say that’s not natural? That’s just what happens to you when you come through a portal?’

  ‘Unless it’s got a filter,’ Pyrgus said. He scowled. ‘Or the filter doesn’t work.’

  ‘It’s important how you answer this,’ Fogarty said, ‘so think carefully. Every country in the world – our world – has got folklore about fairies. Little stick-insect people like you with big wings. Every country.’

  ‘What’s your question?’ Pyrgus asked.

  Fogarty’s eyes darkened. ‘No smoke,’ he said. ‘No smoke – that’s what they say, don’t they? Mean to tell me all those stories about fairy folk are just coincidence? Don’t have anything to do with your people?’

  Bewildered, Pyrgus said, ‘No, I’m not trying to tell you that.’

  ‘So an awful lot of your people – your alien not-human-at-all people – must be swarming through the portals. Without filters.’

  ‘Mr Fogarty – ’ Henry began. He’d thought they’d cleared up the alien stuff.

  But Pyrgus cut him off. ‘I’m not trying to tell you that either. We don’t have very many people using gates to your world. Why would we? It rains a lot here. And who wants to shrink and grow wings? You think it’s fun getting eaten by cats and put in a jamjar? There’s only one filtered gate and it’s expensive to operate. My fa – the people who have it are always complaining about the cost, so it’s only used when you really, really have to. I told you there’s only one other gate that gets you anywhere useful just now. Believe me, nobody’s swarming through it.’

  Fogarty had the look Hodge got when he was about to pounce on a mouse. ‘So where do all our fairies come from?’ he asked triumphantly.

  ‘They’re descendants of Landsman and the ship wrecked seeds people,’ Pyrgus said.

  Fogarty’s jaw dropped. ‘Oh.’ But he recovered quickly. ‘All right. Answer me this then. What do you look like when you don’t look like a fairy?’

  ‘Handsome,’ Pyrgus said and grinned.

  It went on like that for a while. Pyrgus answered Mr Fogarty’s questions and gave reasonable explanations. By lunchtime, enough trust had been generated for Mr Fogarty to let Pyrgus out of the kitchen while they all ate lunch in the cluttered living room. Henry made them beans on toast, as he often did for Mr Fogarty and himself. He cut up a baked bean for Pyrgus, who ate each piece in his hands like watermelon. When he’d finished, he wiped his mouth on his sleeve and gave Henry a thumbs up. They tramped back into the kitchen with Pyrgus sitting on Henry’s shoulder. He fluttered down to his microphone as Henry pulled up a chair.

  ‘That was even better than your potato crisps. What was it?’

  ‘Baked beans,’ Henry said.

  ‘You’re a super cook, Henry,’ Pyrgus told him. ‘How did you make that brilliant sauce?’

  ‘Comes in a tin,’ Henry muttered, embarrassed.

  Fogarty said, ‘See if there’s a small box in the drawer, Henry. We need to make the speaker portable.’ He pushed himself to his feet. ‘Never mind, I’ll get it – I want to look for a different mike.’ He rummaged in the drawer and came up with a rusting tin box that had contained tobacco sometime around 1918. ‘This’ll do. Ah – ’ From the jumble of wiring and components, he picked out a throat mike even smaller than the button mike currently linked to the speaker. ‘Should make things easier.’

  While Henry and Pyrgus watched curiously, he packed the various bits of the speaker into the tin box and replaced th
e button mike with the smaller throat mike, extending the wire as he did so. ‘There,’ he said when he’d finished. ‘Portable. More or less.’ He went back to the drawer and returned with two rubber bands, which he attached to the throat mike. ‘OK, young Pyrgus, think you can carry something this size on your back?’

  Pyrgus examined the throat mike. ‘Think so,’ he said cautiously. He folded his wings and slipped his arms through the rubber bands, pulling on the microphone like a knapsack. When he spread his wings again experimentally, it sat comfortably between them.

  ‘Say something,’ Fogarty instructed.

  After a moment, Pyrgus said, ‘What do you want me to say?’ His voice emerged from the tin box, slightly muffled but still perfectly audible.

  ‘Right,’ Fogarty said briskly, ‘you carry Pyrgus and the box, Henry. We’ve got some investigating to do!’

  Henry held out his hand so Pyrgus could climb up his arm on to his shoulder. ‘Where are we going, Mr Fogarty?’

  ‘Just down to the end of the garden,’ Fogarty said. ‘If we’re to find a way to send this little fella back, I want to see the spot where he arrived.’

  Henry smiled to himself. It sounded as though Mr Fogarty had decided Pyrgus wasn’t an alien invasion after all.

  They walked together from the house. Pyrgus was seated on Henry’s shoulder, casually holding on to his ear. The wire from his backpack microphone trailed down to the tin box which Henry had strapped to his wrist. ‘Hope that cat’s not still there,’ came Pyrgus’s tinny voice.

  ‘Kick in the backside’ll soon sort him out,’ said Mr Fogarty, who liked to pretend he didn’t share Henry’s soft spot for animals.

  As they reached the shed, Fogarty said, ‘Somewhere round here, was it?’

  ‘Over by the buddleia, I think,’ Henry said.