by Jill Nojack
Queen of the Fae
Book Two in the Fae Unbound Series
Jill Nojack
Indieheart Press
KENT, OHIO
Copyright © 2013 by Jill Nojack.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the author at [email protected].
Cover designed by Peter Dahl-Collins.
Visit the series website for series related content:
www.faeunbound.com
Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
Queen of the Fae / Jill Nojack. -- 1st ed.
PROLOGUE
Different Drum
For a few weeks after Fae Day, people didn’t know how to react to what they'd seen over and over on their TV screens, online, and on the front page of every newspaper. Despite the evidence of their own eyes, some even wrote off the return of the fae as a hoax.
Yet they had all seen the girl bend down, cut the medallion from the young man's neck, and then slice her own fingers with a jeweled knife. They had all seen her raise the golden cup to the skies after she'd shed her blood. They had all seen the lightning strike the cup and hundreds of fae materialize around her in that instant. They had all watched wings sprout from the girl's back just before the green, living light from the tree reached out to envelop and protect her.
So many things were different afterward.
When the fae remerged into the human world from their shadow realm, some of the sundered fae rejoined with their reincarnated counterparts, changing forever their features, their abilities, and their relationships within human society.
Dragons once again flew the skies above Germany, France, and the Scottish Highlands; they were smaller but more beautiful than anyone in modern times had imagined. Some of the early, bravest observers attempted to approach them when they came to ground. They survived, but only barely.
Faery castles appeared in an instant, high in the mountains, away from human cities. Strange beings were spotted there on long range cameras. The elves enchanted the fences around their forest compounds to keep the humans out.
Gnomes and pixies were everywhere. They had somehow managed to thrive and increase their numbers while sentenced to the shadow realm.
In the end, people reacted in the usual ways: with fear, with joy, with anger, with intolerance, with whimsy, with denial, with curiosity.
Others reacted with business plans.
CHAPTER ONE
Don't Bother Me
Tanji poured another glass of iced tea and offered some to Lizbet across the picnic table. "Did I tell you my dad’s new business is really getting off the ground? I guess a lot of people are upset about their gardens being overrun with gnomes, and ‘Ron Ross's Humane Gnome Removal and Magical Pest Control’ is a really good idea," Tanji said, grinning as she drew broad air quotes around the name, "He's building this giant garden out in the boonies by my grandfather's old fishing cabin. He put this hu-u-uge ceramic gnome in the middle. It even has little gnome-size houses in the garden and everything. I think he's going to try to civilize them."
"Good luck with that!” Lizbet said, “Gnomes are gross. I mean capital-G gross. Even my mom tried to remove her ceramic gnomes from the back garden, and you know how committed she was to them before Fae Day. She hoped the real ones would leave if she did. But the gnomes have them fastened down somehow. She can't budge them."
Lizbet cocked her head toward the end of the garden where her little brother was joyfully running after a group of gnomes, "Of course, Bobby thinks the gnomes are uber-cool. He's an eight year old boy. He wants to marry anything that farts and burps every couple of minutes." Lizbet rubbed her temples. "Me? Not so much. Their constant squealing just makes my head hurt."
"Your head always hurts. It's been a month since Fae Day. You should feel better by now—I know you don't want to believe it, but I think there's more going on inside your brain than you think there is."
"Tanj, I know that the fae half of Morgan remerged with me. I'm not saying she didn't. The wings are kind of a big tip-off on that, but she settled in just fine. Just like all the past lives that came with my amulet. When you and Langoureth remerged on Fae Day it was weird for you for a while, but you're all back to normal now, right?"
"Sure. We play nice together. But Langoureth and I are a lot alike personality-wise. No real battles to fight out in there. But your fae side..."
"You're making too much of it," Lizbet said as she gave Tanji a half-smile. "My doctor says I should do yoga or something because the headaches are probably just stress from all of the attention. I mean, let's face it—the press and bloggers only stopped camping out outside of the house like a week ago. And I’m still getting lots of messages every day from haters who blame me because they don’t want to have the fae around.”
Lizbet leaned forward onto her elbows, looking thoughtful. “Then I get it on the other side from half-fae who hate me even more because they joined with their fae sides when the shadow realm remerged. And then there are the other ones who want me to put on Morgan’s crown and lead the fae to world domination, which is just nuts! I’m not even going to check my social sites anymore, because there’s nothing there that has anything to do with me.
“What? You mean ‘MichiganSatyr’ has nothing meaningful to say to you? I’m stunned. Really.”
Lizbet ignored Tanji’s I’m-so-innocent face and continued, “Plus, Tanj, I just think everyone is discounting the whole getting-hit-by-lightning thing. I mean, really...I got hit by lightning. Big, crashy lightning. Anyway, I actually feel pretty good today. I just wish the gnomes would keep it down."
"Look, if everything's normal, then why don't you have Morgan's memories and magic like I’ve got Langoureth’s? Why do you only have the wings and a giganto headache?"
"Can't you just leave it alone for a while? Because I don’t know—maybe because I had the human side of Morgan in there already? I don't want the wings, I don't want the magic, and I definitely don't want a bunch of fae forcing me to take Morgan's place as queen, so I'm glad I don't have her memories. Maybe I don’t have Morgan’s memories or magic because I just don’t want them. Now, could we just have a conversation as Tanji and Lizbet and not so much chicks with past lives?"
"Sure…” Tanji nodded her head and then leaned in closer with a grin, “…let's talk fun stuff. So, James?"
Lizbet smiled at that. "Same old, same old. He and Thomas are getting along fine. Thomas is learning to use his magic really quickly, and James is trying to keep Thomas pointed in a positive direction by teaching him mostly healing stuff. James still doesn’t really accept Myrddin’s memories, but I guess it’s only been a month…”
Lizbet drifted away into her own thoughts: she had changed the world forever, and a lot of people weren't happy about it. It was difficult for people to adjust to having magic and fairies hanging around doing magical-fairy things when t
he fae hadn't been around for over a millennium. She knew she wouldn't do anything differently if Eamon showed up in her garden asking for help again, but she felt like she owed a lot of people for the negatives of having the fae around—especially the half-fae like Tanji who didn’t sign up for suddenly having their lives completely blown off course. She owed her boyfriend even more for being a part of forcing the memories of a long-dead wizard into his brain and not being able to remove them without removing the memories of his own life.
She must have drifted too long because Tanji brought her back to reality, "Penny for your thoughts..."
"You've been hanging around your dad too much, again, Tanj."
"No kidding, I'm full to the brim with his clichés lately,” Tanji paused and rolled her eyes, “See how I did that? There’s another one!” Tanji shook her head and rolled her eyes. “I'm just glad he's going to be off to work every day again. He's been so down since he got laid off, but now he’s major excited about this new company...oh…would you be up for being in a TV commercial? I mean, if the ‘girl with wings’ recommends the service, the business would get a nice boost. You'd get paid, obviously. My dad is real class."
"My face on TV even one more time? Really? You know I just want things to go back to normal. I want to hang out with my friends and family, go back to school, not have everyone staring at me, and I want to get rid of these freaking wings. So, no—not going to be doing commercials for gnome control any time soon."
Tanji looked over admiringly at the colorful, bright blue, iridescent wings folded across her best friend's back. "Girl, I get that you have no interest in being famous or being a queen, but the wings? The wings are fierce. You should keep the wings."
Bobby called out, "Ready or not, here I come," and uncovered his eyes. He moved quickly around the back garden, trying to spot the hidden gnomes and tag them before they could get back to the tree that served as home base, or, as they often did when they were cheating, disappear down a burrow hole.
Gurrdenn, the huddle’s chief, darted out from under a fern and ran behind Bobby, heading swiftly for the home tree. Bobby trailed after him and tripped, landing on his hands and knees. He had no time to recover. Four gnomes crawled quickly onto his back, trying to knock each other off. Hide and seek had turned into king of the mountain, and the gnomes who made it to the top started shrieking, "Won, won, won."
Bobby wished they could get the rules straight just once, but they never did. Plus, they almost always forgot what they were playing in the middle and ran off to investigate a glimmer of light through the trees or an interesting sound. They were fun to play with, but it wasn't that much fun when they suddenly ran off toward the woods in the middle of a game shouting, "Shiny, shiny, shiny!"
"Gurrdenn, we're playing hide and seek, not king of the mountain! You guys didn't win. I won. I used my back to tag all of you."
As Bobby got up, the gnomes slid down his back, still chanting, "won, won, won."
"Lost, lost, lost!" shouted Bobby loudly, the effort reddening his face to a shade that nearly matched his unkempt, curly red hair.
Gurrdenn ran in a circle around Bobby's legs, still chanting, and punctuating every rendition of the word "won" with a loud burp. The other gnomes followed suit. Bobby couldn't help but laugh. Soon, he was jumping, laughing, and chanting with them and feeling the tiniest bit left out that he couldn't manage to burp on cue.
He'd rather have his mom, dad, and sister pay attention to him, but Lizzie always had a headache, and his parents paid way more attention to her since she came home from Scotland. His father stopped by a lot now, but it was to check on Lizzie, mostly about whether or not she had managed to "get rid of the wings yet". From the way his daddy said it, he didn't think daddy liked the wings much.
Bobby didn't think the wings were all that special, either. They were pretty, but Lizbet couldn't even fly, so why have them? Everybody always made a big deal about her wings one way or the other except the gnomes. They stayed far away from her.
The very best thing he liked about the gnomes was they didn't want anything to do with his sister. They only liked Bobby, and Bobby thought that was just fine.
"The thing is...there may be other magical creatures that turn out to be pests besides the gnomes and pixies," said Tanji, “And we've talked about opening a store for real magic—potions or spell ingredients...only the non-dangerous stuff—for people who want to try their hand with it now that it exists. He's like, cranked up to make it a family business. I would have to be in charge of all the stock, and while I think it would be really interesting and a cool way to get some work experience before college, I don't know if I have enough time."
"Sure you do...you can go to school, do your homework, date, and run a retail empire. No problem. You're the Tanjinator. Nothin' you can't do, right?" The girls laughed, and Lizbet continued, "Your father should look into how to keep ghouls away. I know I wouldn't want one hanging around my loved ones right after they were buried. Nobody wants to find out Aunt Gertie got eaten."
"Eww, really?"
"Yep. According to Eamon, ghouls are fae. Your dad should ask him about it. There's got to be some kind of magical pest control thing he could do. It might be worth it to look into some American Indian legends to see which magical creatures are most likely to be native to Ohio. If they've got a mythical creature that sounds ghoulish, then chances are pretty good it's a ghoul, and since ghouls don't die, it'll be back now."
Both of the girls looked out to the back garden when Bobby shrieked, and they laughed when they saw him on his knees, covered with gnomes. Tanji poked her friend's arm, "You have to admit, the little guys are kind of cute from a distance. Bobby always seems to have fun with them."
"Dad's talking about getting him a dog, but Mom says Dad doesn't live here anymore, and she's not going to be the one who ends up taking care of it. But he just keeps saying, 'a really big dog.' He thinks the gnomes might move on if he sticks a dog in the yard, but I'm thinking they'd just eat it."
"Whoa girl, that’s grim!"
"Just being realistic. Do you know how awful my mom felt when she had to return the neighbor cat's pretty little jeweled collar and explain what happened? Bobby says that he told the gnomes they aren't allowed to eat any cats or dogs and to definitely not make any clothes out of the cat's fur, but I don't think they'll listen. Really, what's the point of gnomes?"
"To make more gnomes?"
"Exactly." Lizbet glared down the garden at the gnomes as their high, piercing voices grew louder while they chanted. Their shrill calls were so annoying—every time she heard them, it aggravated the pain in her head.
Lizbet's voice hardened in a way Tanji had never heard her speak before. "I cannot stand gnomes." She stood up and walked rapidly to where Bobby and the gnomes were playing. They were so engaged in their dance they didn't see her coming.
Lizbet seized a gnome roughly in each hand and then pulled them up in the air, each of them dangling by one leg. "I cannot stand gnomes."
Tanji watched, shocked, as the other gnomes ran off and scrambled into their burrow, squealing in gnomish, "Hide, hide, the queen, the queen!" The part of her that was a fifteen hundred year old fae understood what the gnomes said, and she didn't like what she heard. It wasn't Lizbet out there. It was Lizbet's fae side, Morgan.
Lizbet/Morgan was raging around the garden now, calling out threats to the gnomes whose heads popped out of burrow holes and then vanished again as quickly as they'd appeared.
She swung the terrified gnomes back and forth as she stomped. Then she pulled one arm back, obviously preparing to swing the head of the unfortunate gnome against the trunk of a nearby tree, when Bobby ran in front of her, his freckles standing out against a face drained of color by fear. He yelled "Lizzie, don't! What are you doing? You don't hurt people! Please, Lizzie. Please, don’t!"
Lizbet suddenly stood still and looked blankly at Bobby; then she looked at the gnomes in each of her hands and gently set them down on the
ground. The other gnomes began to come cautiously back out of the burrow. Lizbet continued to stand there silently, looking unsure about what had just happened. The gnomes whispered to each other, "Just the girl now, just the girl."
Gurrdenn tugged on Bobby's pant leg, and when Bobby looked down, Gurrdenn winked, "Won the queen. Bobby won the queen."
Bobby didn't understand the gnomish word for queen that Gurrdenn used instead of the simple English the gnomes were learning, but Tanji did. She bustled Lizbet toward the porch as the gnomes began to dance around Bobby again, chanting, "Won the queen, won the queen, won the queen."
"What just happened there, Lizzie?"
"I don't know."
"Yeah, that's the problem. You never do...but I think Morgan finally made her intentions known," Tanji said, laying a hand gently on her friend’s shoulder.
CHAPTER TWO
Close To You
James texted, "have the wisps been following u 2?"
In a few minutes, he got Lizbet's reply, "no, they ignore me"
"i thnk they feel myrddin in here and know he is mssing his fae hlf"
There was no reply. After several minutes, he tapped out, "Bad tme?"
"hdache i m napping"
"i worry abt u. skype l8er?"
"if i cn first day of school tmorrw"
James shoved his phone into his back pocket and looked back to the spiral notebook where he’d been recording Myrrdin's spell knowledge as it surfaced. Most of what he was willing to write down for Thomas would have been really helpful in a time when there weren't hospitals, doctors, or safe living conditions.
Myrrdin had been a man of peace, and James was glad of that. Even though he didn't like having memories that didn't belong to him, he could at least live with the kind of man Myrrdin had been. He couldn't imagine what Lizbet must go through dealing with memories of the eight other lives that had been thrust on her when Eamon slapped Morgan le Fae's amulet around her neck. She hadn’t had a choice any more than he had.
