by Ron Miller
“You are very beautiful,” repeated that sultry whisper and Rykkla replied: “Princess Bronwyn told me all about this sort of thing, and I’ll thank you to stop it right now.”
The light seemed to dim: it greyed, fluttered, guttering like a candle consuming its last meager droplet of wax. The great cellophane wings folded and the faerie stepped back from the girl, crossing his arms and regarding her with an expression that was all at one and the same time quizzical, amused and angry.
“Who told you what?” he asked.
“The Princess Bronwyn, Bronwyn Tedeschiiy of Tamlaght,” Rykkla explained. “That whole long paragraph a minute ago is something I’ve heard before. She had once been nearly seduced by Spikenard and told me how easy it had almost been. It’s been pretty obvious that you’ve been trying to do the same thing to me that you tried to do to her.”
“Well, what do you want, anyway?” he said, not a little petulantly.
“Well,” replied the girl, finding a comfortable seat on the cap of a mushroom, her long legs collapsing beneath her like jackknives, “I’d like to find out more about this war between you and Spikenard.”
“What about it? What concern is it of yours?”
“It concerns me in two ways. First, the Kobolds are holding a friend of mine prisoner and won’t release him until I get you to abandon your ridiculous plan to drop the moon onto Spikenard. Second, if you are able to get the moon to fall to earth, it will do unimaginable damage, much more, I think, than you expect it to.”
“Oh, you think so, eh?”
“I know so.”
The faerie spread his wings suddenly and, with an angry buzz, shot straight into the air, leaving a luminous wake like a rocket. Pausing at the apex of his trajectory for a dramatic moment, he plummeted directly at her, flaming like a meteor. She tried not to flinch as he came to a halt scarce inches from where she sat, his great wings fanning her hair, but she was not entirely successful. He smelled like cinnamon.
“Just what do you think that you can do to stop me?” he laughed. “You’re part of my kingdom now, little more than an insect in your own world, less than a faerie in my own, as helpless and powerless as a naked slug. You have already succumbed to my power, almost succumbed completely, and that was only the merest trifle, a bagatelle, a whim. Can you do this?” he said as he raised himself on a whirlwind of flashing wings. “Or this?” as he drew arcane figures of colored light in the air, as though his fingertips were roman candles or white-hot irons that sizzled through the air as though it were paper. “Or this?” he said as he clutched at the atmosphere that sparkled between them and she felt something clench within her, something below her navel, something that huddled, something that writhed, something that was wrung like a sponge, something that heated within her as though the faerie had just fanned a smoldering coal.
“No, but I can do this!” she retorted, shocked, angry, and, shooting out a leg as long and straight as a pool cue, kicked the faerie in his stomach. The nearly weightless creature somersaulted, landing in the moss as a tangle of limbs and wings, sparking and fizzing like a damp firecracker. He clambered back to his feet, throwing his wings to the left and right like an impresario flamboyantly arranging his capes, but with less successful grace or dignity, and hissed at her: “Oh! you shall regret that, human!”
“I suppose you would think so. We’ll just have to see.” She hopped down from the mushroom, slapping spores from her buttocks, and took a step toward Hod Tawley who, she was gratified to see, flinched a little, though he bravely stood his ground. “Since we’re getting personal,” she continued, “you may as well know that as far as I’m concerned, you’re a miserably ignorant little insect that I’d swat without a moment’s thought or hesitation if I found you buzzing around my room. At the present, I admit that you have something of an advantage over me, but I’ll only go so far as to accept it as a momentary inconvenience.”
“Inconvenience! I’ll show you inconvenience!”
Rykkla had scarcely a moment to consider whether she had perhaps gone a bit too far when there was a flash of light, a thump to her chest that knocked the wind from it along with a dizzying rush of sound, she felt like a concertina that had just been stepped upon. Once her senses cleared, she realized that there had been a change in venue. She was no longer beneath the grassy arches but instead in a kind of amphitheater, a mossy hollow that, so far as she could tell, might have been only a few feet across. It was night and the sky was laced with meteors.
Rykkla was lying across a smooth, cool stone in the center of a grotto, -like a kind of altar. She raised herself to one elbow, but seemed to be powerless to do more; not that she lacked the strength, but there seemed to be an odd kind of resistance that pressed back the harder she tried to move against it, as though she were imbedded in aspic.
Surrounding her, occupying the slope of the bowl-like depression as though they were an audience overlooking an arena, which indeed they were, were woodland animals of every sort: possums, chipmunks, hedgehogs, ermines, bobcats, rabbits and hares; woodchucks, woodmice and wood rats; foxes arctic, white, red and grey; red squirrels, rock squirrels and tree squirrels; porcupines, stoats, skunks, shrews, gophers, brush wolves and brush deer; deer, field and meadow mice; dormice, ermines, chinchillas, marmots, pocket gophers, pocket rats and pocket mice; ordinary gophers and common rats; pikas, pack rats; lynxes, voals, weasels and herring hogs; as well as finches, goldfinches, gnatcatchers, wrentits, tits, titmice and titlarks; thrushes, starlings, pheasants, woodcocks, willets, larks, meadow larks, redbirds, yellowbirds, bluebirds and blackbirds; redshanks, partridges, hummingbirds, jackdaws, kingfishers, killdeer; owls hoot, horned and barn; barn swallows, turkeys, cedar waxwings, cliff swallows; crows, cuckoos, curlews, grackles, grouse, goatsuckers, darters, dippers, doves and ducks; to say nothing of anoles, box turtles, green turtles, snapping turtles, terrapins and tortoises; slow-worms, skinks, geckoes, chameleons; snakes glass, coral, garter, pine, black, green, rat and gopher; not to mention a smattering of ants, aphids, botflies, butterflies; pill bugs, hornets, horseflies, house flies, crane flies, robber flies, fruitflies and gadflies; dung beetles, sow bugs, stink bugs, buffalo bugs and bugs squash, tumble, potato and bill; locusts, thrips, lice, mealworms, midges, crickets, bluebottles, cicadas, punkies, ladybugs, firebrats, fireflies and cucumber flea beetles, just to name but a few. All of them, to Rykkla, looked surly and disaffected. They were silent but for a vague murmuring, rustling of programs and an occasional cough, sneeze or cleared throat.
Hod Tawley hovered over her, his wings flaming like gas jets, buzzing and hissing like an overcharged battery. His dark eyes glinted like polished iron, like hematite; they attracted her gaze as inexorably as lodestones. “What do you know?” he asked. Rykkla knew it was a rhetorical question and didn’t bother answering, which was just as well since it was clear that Hod Tawley was in no mood for sarcasm. “What do you know, you gross lump of meat, already rotting, decomposing, metabolizing, what do you know of the real nature of the world? You look around and think that you understand everything; but you’ve only glimpsed the cover of a million-page book and think that you have grasped its every word! You have no idea what war is like! Do you know what it is like? Do you want to know?”
She didn’t, but Hod Tawley, caught up in his rhetoric, ignored her indifference.
“Watch this!” he ordered. Without further warning, there was a brilliant flash of violet light and for a moment Rykkla thought that the faerie had exploded from his wrath, but was disappointed to discover that he remained, now as incandescent as a lamp filament, throwing off sparks that spattered around her like a welder. Suddenly, a translucent, electric blue globe of light drifted away from his upstretched arms; moving ever faster it rapidly disappeared into the indigo sky. There was a long silence, filled with anticlimax; Rykkla was at a loss as to what to say. Several minutes passed without either audience or the faerie moving or making a sound. Then she noticed that another vague sphere of light was dr
ifting across the meteor-streaked sky. She thought at first that it was the same globe that Hod Tawley had launched, but then saw that it was a different color: a chrome green. Acclerating rapidly as it approached the amphitheater, it burst just before touching the ground. There was a nearly soundless poof, a wave of warmth that barely ruffled Rykkla’s hair and a vaguely disquieting sense of disorientation. And that was all.
What in the world was that all about? she wondered.
Hod Tawley screeched, “See? See? See that? That’s all there is to it! That’s our war! That’s the only way we have of fighting one another! Can you believe it? Throwing bubbles! That’s all we’re doing, throwing soap bubbles, for Musrum’s sake!”
“That’s all there is to your war?” she asked, wanting to laugh, but thinking better of it.
“Don’t smirk like that, it’s not funny. I want more than anything else in this world to smash Spikenard, to eradicate him, to erase him, to obliterate him. I don’t want anyone to even remember him . . . and how am I supposed to do this with soap bubbles?”
“I have no idea. I thought that you had some considerable powers of magic. Bronwyn described some impressive demonstrations by Spikenard, and you’ve shown me yourself what you can do. What’s all of this about soap bubbles? Why don’t you just strike him down with a bolt of lightning? or change him into a, a bowl of okra or something?”
“It’s not that easy. Magic against humans and other animals is one thing. Magic against faeries is another. There are limitations,” he concluded, ruefully.
“Well, that’s too bad, but what can you do about it?”
“I did something all right. Faeries may not be able to hurt each other very much, but there are other things that can.”
“Meteors, I suppose?”
“Yes!”
“So you decided to drop the moon on Spikenard?”
“Yes!”
“It’s still a bad idea.”
“Oh, no, it’s not. It was far beyond my power, or the power of any faerie for that matter. But it was not beyond the power of science. I learned something before we were driven from Soccotara; I’m not your typical, ignorant, woodland faerie. Not like that rube Spikenard. I have sophistication, ambition, curiosity. I discovered that there was a human in Soccotara, in Londeac, in the city of Toth, to be specific, who did have it within his power to influence the heavens. We contacted him, through a complicated chain of intermediaries, and offered him more riches than any human had ever imagined. All he had to do in exchange was to cause the smaller moon to drop on top of Spikenard and his gang of degenerate, backwoods faeries, making room for progress and innovation. Of course he agreed.”
“There’s at least one thing that I think you have failed to take into consideration.”
“I think not.”
“I think so. Tell me what you think you know about the smaller moon.”
“What is there to know?”
“How big is it, for example? How far away?”
“That’s simple: it’s about the size of a human house and is about five or six miles above the highest treetops. It’s easy to figure that out. I’ve reasoned it very carefully. Listen to this: If you climb to the top of the highest tree, the horizon is ten or eleven miles away. Now, the sky is obviously dome-shaped, but not like an overturned hemisphere. It is more like a shallow bowl. That’s why clouds look further away at the horizon than they do overhead. Therefore the sky is shaped like a very flattened dome. So, allowing for that, I figure that either of the moons, which are in the dome of the sky, cannot be much more than five or six miles away when they are at the zenith.”
Hod finished by crossing his arms and smiling smugly, as though he had made an irrefutable point. Rykkla couldn’t follow all of his argument, but knew on the face of it that it was erroneous, whatever it was he was trying to say.
“Look here, Hod, I’m an educated woman,” she lied, “and I’m afraid that you have some fundamental misconceptions about astronomy.”
“Oh? Such as?”
“First of all, the moon is hundreds of thousands of miles away and is thousands of miles wide. If it ever fell down, it would destroy most of the earth, not just Spikenard.”
“Oh, really?”
“Absolutely. I read it in a book.”
“A book, you say?” The faerie looked thoughtful, cupping his pointed chin in his hand, in turn resting his elbow on his knee, all while sitting on an invisible chair level with Rykkla’s head.
“If what you say is true, then my plan to have the moon fall would be self-defeating.”
“To say the least.”
“All right. Assuming that everything you’ve been telling me is true, that leaves me right back where I started from, as far as the war with Spikenard is concerned. What am I supposed to do about that? Faerie wars have been known to go on for centuries.”
“Why are you at war at all?”
“Why not?”
“All right, let me ask you this, then: if your magic is so feeble, how is it that you’re able to affect the moon, which is, as I’ve just explained, thousands of times further away than your enemy and considerably more massive than one of those bubbles?”
“That’s exactly where I demonstrate how much more intelligent I am than Spikenard! I admit to having made the attempt to move it myself and, for some reason, perhaps because I underestimated size and distance, as you suggest, I failed. But, rather than continue fruitlesslly repeating the effort, or abandon such an excellent idea, I subcontracted the job.”
“Subcontracted? You mean you hired someone else to do it for you?”
“Exactly!”
“But who? I can believe that there is such a thing as faerie magic, but that there is magic in this world powerful enough to move minor planets? I think not.”
“No, no! not magic! Science!”
“Science?”
“Yes! Science and industry may have been what drove us out of Londeac, but that was only because it conflicted with our, oh, I don’t know what you’d call it . . . historical imperative? There was nothing preventing us from learning about science, even if there was no way we could employ it ourselves. In fact, it was such a pervasive influence in Londeacan society, it would have been almost impossible not to have absorbed some of the knowledge, if by osmosis if not by any other means.”
“So there’s a scientist behind what’s been happening to the moon?”
“Absolutely!”
“But why? I mean, why would a scientist do this for you?”
“Why would any human do anything? For gold, of course. We provided him with enough gold to make a project he had always wanted to attempt possible, and promised him even more if he was successful. I rather feel like a patron of the sciences,” he finished with modest pride.
“But surely any scientist would know that the fall of the moon would mean world-wide catastrophe?”
“If what you say about the moon is true, I suppose so.”
“This just doesn’t make any sense! Who is it you got to do this?”
“Doctor Tudela.”
“Tudela? Then I can well believe it. Bronwyn admired him, I think, but I never trusted him. I don’t think that I could possibly trust a man who could look at me as though he had just found me under a stone. That doesn’t matter, though. Finding out who it is just confirms that it is being done. He’s absolutely genius enough and mad enough to do it. Well, look here, you’ll just have to tell him to call it off. Withold his final payment, do whatever it takes.”
“That would be a problem. I have no idea where he is. There has been no contact between us for months.”
Rykkla thought about this, then realized that her mission was only to get the faeries to stop influencing the moon. Well, Hod had just agreed to that. Her directive from the Kobolds had said nothing about Tudela.
“Can you get me something to write on and with?” she asked and the faerie said that he thought so, flew off and returned a few moments later with curls of
white birch bark and a piece of hard charcoal. Taking these, Rykkla struggled to write a few sentences with the inadequate and fragile materials.
“All right,” she said at last, placing the bark between them. She indicated one of them. “This is a promise from you to stop doing whatever it was you were doing to make the moon fall . . . ”
“I haven’t done anything for months!”
“That doesn’t matter. Just sign this promise, if you will.”
“Whatever you say.” Using his forefinger, he traced a complicated pattern on the note that, when it stopped glowing, looked official enough that Rykkla thought it would impress King Slagelse.
“All right,” she continued, “now I’ll give you this.” And handed him the second piece of bark.
“What is this?” he asked, turning it over and around in his hands, obviously not making any sense out of it.
“That is a grant deeding to you all that part of the island of Guesclin east of the prime meridian.”
The faerie looked puzzled and before he could form a question, she explained. “That’s the entire eastern half and a little more, if I’m not mistaken. It’s all yours, lock, stock and barrel. It’s the better half, too.”
“Really?” he replied, impressed. “And it’s all mine?”
“Every bit. This deed makes it official. Ask anyone. Do you have an attorney? No need for your war now.”
“I suppose not,” he agreed, but not without a note of disappointment tingeing his voice.
“So. I’ve stopped your war for you and gotten you more territory than you would have gained in fifty wars. What do you say about letting me return to my own world?”
“I don’t know about that.”
“What do you mean? I’ve stopped your war for you and on top of that I’ve granted you more territory than you could possibly have gained on your own.”
