by Tamsyn Muir
“What is ‘f---’?” she said eventually.
Cobweb, although reluctant, explained that it was what you said chiefly when you were angry. She was disappointed in herself that she knew this, but when a bottom-of-the-garden fairy has spent enough time around overly knowing children, this was the result. You may rest assured that no child who ever uttered f--- was taken to Fairyland; however, you may also be sure that no child who uttered f--- needed to, anyway.
“How strange,” said Floralinda. “And they were so unhappy and scared. How strange; I should have been so frightened, if I had been a prince.”
Then she exhaled, and Cobweb was sure that now Floralinda would break; her eyes were starry, and her lower lip trembled, and she was transfixed.
But all she said was:
“Oh, Cobweb, just think—now I can have their clothes!”
No girl was ever so excited over clothes; no young lady, upon being gifted a catalogue and told to order what she liked, or being taken to a very fashionable boutique, was as delighted as Floralinda right then. The unburnt men were wearing trousers and one even had a canvas vest with buttons, which she gloated over. Some of the dead men were also more guttering than burning, having had less gel fall on them, or not being wet enough for it to make them into the veritable Roman candles the other men had become. Princess Floralinda stripped those unfortunate men naked except for their underthings, and finally put them in a pile with the burning men, which set them all afire cheaply; then she took their clothes upstairs to count them up, and also to boil the water so that she could give them a wash, as it was not quite nice to wear the clothes of dead men before you washed them. Most people would think that it was not quite nice to wear the clothes of dead men afterwards too, but Floralinda was quite beyond thinking that.
She was quite beyond thinking of anything; it took her a long time to think enough to say—
“Cobweb, you used up all your precious powder, to save me.”
For of course Cobweb had, and her little haversack was quite empty. This quite staggered Floralinda.
“It wasn’t as good as I thought it would be, so I don’t care,” said Cobweb carelessly (for whom it had been quite as good as she’d thought it, and cared more than anything). “But as long as I’m out of pocket, I shall take their knives.”
Cobweb admitted to herself that she was very pleased with the assortment of knives, as with any more sharpening the bread-knife was going to become a chop-stick. But that night she lay awake, angry with herself, and sorry about the powder, and very confused thinking about Floralinda, easing trousers off those smoking corpses.
“Perhaps you shall be home for Christmas,” Cobweb ventured; which she had never imagined ever coming true.
“I hope so,” said Floralinda sleepily, under a pile of trousers, shirts and a vest; “only I wish I could write ahead and tell nobody to get me gloves; I can’t possibly be my old size in them, so it would be a waste, and I would be obliged to give them away. I think everyone should give me chocolates instead. This year I won’t say, ‘Oh, chocolates, but I shouldn’t’ and only take one; I will say ‘Thank you very much’ and eat them all.”
At this heresy, Cobweb was more discomfited than ever.
Flight Sixteen-Fifteen-Fourteen
The spider venom, which had been losing potency ever since the siren, stopped being much use at all. Floralinda and Cobweb were obliged to keep re-coating the spear mid-battle with the hippogriff, which was a dangerous stunt. The paralytic had kept better than anything else. It made the monsters easier to kill, but meant that Floralinda had to do the nasty job of killing them herself once they were paralyzed. She found that this became a great deal easier after a while. There were places on the body—even bodies so varied as all the creatures in that tower!—more vulnerable than others, and if the creature had a heart or brain, that was a good spot to aim for. She put one of Cobweb’s sharp new knives to good purpose. Happily, it was more often the case that the paralytic made the animal choke on its tongue, and die; this happened with one of the lion’s heads, but did not happen to the other, and Cobweb ended up treating Floralinda’s leg when the lion got it with its claws.
“More ugly than fatal, I think,” said Floralinda that evening, trying to be cheerful, which is difficult when your thigh has claw-marks, and is being washed with hot water while you sit in a blanket and try to bear it. “Cobweb, dear, you are becoming a very good nurse; I do think you’re wasted on the children who don’t know anything, and living in bottoms of gardens.”
Cobweb loved being flattered, but simply remarked gloomily that princesses had constitutions most horses would die for.
“I wish that the chimaera had not been part-lion, part-goat and part-snake,” said Floralinda pensively, “because you can only really eat one of those parts. If it had been part-cow, part-chicken and part-deer, that would have been wonderful. Don’t you think?”
“Sometimes I think you are enjoying this,” said Cobweb.
“Don’t be so horrid,” said Floralinda.
Flight Thirteen-Twelve-Eleven
The Strix was a great silvery owl as big as a man, with a wicked beak and crimson eyes unlike any owl who lives in the forest. It was an ugly, malign brand of that obscure bird, and had sat thinking vicious thoughts for all of late summer and autumn too. When Floralinda came down to flight eleven, it hid in a corner and closed its eyes, and for a moment she thought that the flight was empty.
“Perhaps whatever was in here has gone away,” she said wistfully; “I do wish more of them had done the useful thing and jumped out a window, or eaten themselves.”
“Be careful, and be cautious,” warned Cobweb, without even bothering to correct Floralinda on whether or not something could eat itself. “I don’t halfway like this; something’s in here with us.”
Floralinda held the lamp up higher. The eyes of the Strix flamed open, and she was dazzled by the flame, so for a moment she did not know what she was looking at. Then the Strix exploded out of its corner with a great flap of its grey wings—it extended its wicked talons out before it, striped yellow and black like a wasp—and Floralinda threw herself bodily out of the way. All that running up and down stairs had not been for naught. She rolled over and over on the cold stones of flight eleven, Cobweb rolling with her. Floralinda raised her spear up before her as the Strix swept down on her, trying to keep it at a distance, and the Strix hopped back and forth as Floralinda threatened it with that venomous spear-tip. It could see that the weapon was wet, and it was an intelligent creature, and thought that it was better safe than sorry.
This was Floralinda’s chance to press an attack. She got to her feet with Cobweb clinging to her rat-hide hood, not thinking of the fairy at all; she was only thinking about the beak and the talons and the staring scarlet eyes. The Strix snapped its beak at Floralinda; Floralinda jabbed with the spear—and quick as a wink, the Strix stretched out
And
Ate
Up
Cobweb!
The fairy was only able to utter one little shriek before she disappeared into that terrible beak, gold chains and rings and all. (It sounded a little bit like ‘F---!’ but could not have been; or perhaps it was the beginnings of ‘Floralinda’, but it could not have been that either.)
It was at that moment Floralinda stopped being a princess altogether.
She took the butt of her spear in one hand, and held on to the middle breadth of her spear with the other, so that it was very rigid. Floralinda ran screaming at the Strix, which beat its wings (golloping its fairy meal all the while) and hopped backwards. It buffeted Floralinda with one wing, and Floralinda staggered backwards, head ringing with the blow. Then the Strix launched itself into the air, and pounced on Floralinda talons-first—have you ever seen an owl dive on a mouse?—but she held her ground, and she thrust her poisoned spear so deep into the Strix’s belly that it went in right up to her hands.
Then Floralinda took the knife from her new belt, and she s
lashed at the Strix, which was still feebly flapping about. She clamped her strong hands around its beak and snapped its head back, and she sawed at its throat until it sprayed noxious blood over her face. She kept pulling and sawing; she knew what she was looking for, because she had been forced to do it with the rat. She got on top of that dying bird and sawed and gutted until she found the awful tubes behind its windpipe. And there was a bulge (for peristalsis takes quite a long time when you are a very long owl), and when she peeled open that bulge—saturated with blood—there was Cobweb.
She was curled up in a little ball, and blue in the face and red in the arms, rather than being her normal beautiful flower-petal self. Floralinda took her out gently and wept great, hysterical sobs, and tried to cry on her as much as possible, for she did not know what to do other than that. It was not as though Cobweb had been bitten in half, for owls like to do their chewing backwards; but she was such a tiny crammed tangle, and Floralinda did not like to try to untangle her. She sat on the stones, covered in all kinds of terrible liquids, and held Cobweb to her chest, and cried.
Cobweb opened her eyes, for she had fainted from fright. When she saw Floralinda weeping she closed her eyes again, obviously considering discretion the better part of valour; but Cobweb was not very good at play-acting.
When Floralinda saw Cobweb starting to stretch out, and that her chest was moving with each breath, she stopped crying and whispered—
“Oh, dearest, I truly thought you were dead.”
“I’m not; just humiliated,” said Cobweb faintly.
And Floralinda did not say any more.
She brought Cobweb back up to the fortieth flight instead, and was very tender with her, but also very preoccupied. She cleaned the Strix’s blood off herself when she realised that she was leaving sooty red fingerprints everywhere, and she warmed the cauldron of water so that Cobweb could bathe in it, and get all of the dreadful owl-spit off. The snow was falling down softly outside as Cobweb sat in the water with her smock off, careful not to get her wings wet, washing her hair; and every so often saying things like “Eugh,” and “Pfaugh” as she found more traces of owl saliva. Her greeny-gold hair went entirely green from the water, and the rings from her chain lay heavy at the bottom of the bowl. Floralinda turned away, and watched the snow fall; and it was soft and deadly silent.
“I will be covered in bruises tomorrow,” said Cobweb.
And Floralinda said nothing.
“There are only ten flights left, and I’m sure Christmas is still quite far away,” said Cobweb.
Floralinda still said nothing.
Cobweb said peevishly, “I wish you’d talk! I was just eaten up by an owl and on my way to being digested, and you just sit there, and look stupid.”
“I am thinking about five thoughts at once,” said Floralinda, “and my head aches.”
“That’s five more thoughts than you are capable of thinking, let’s be honest,” said the fairy.
Floralinda said faintly—
“Cobweb, it’s happened; I knew it had happened, when I saw you being swallowed by that owl.”
Cobweb sighed, and sank down into the bowl of hot water, which Floralinda had squeezed a little bit of orange into, to make it more aromatic. Unfortunately she, much like Floralinda, had grown thoroughly sick of oranges, and wished for any other sort of fruit, such as apple, or mango, or banana.
“I know, but I didn’t expect you to be clever enough to notice,” said Cobweb. She looked at her arm, where there was still a rough patch from the owl’s digestive tracts, despite having been cried on lavishly. “It is true. All of the Princess has leaked out of you somehow. I didn’t think it was possible, but there you have it; you oughtn’t to mind it anyway in my opinion. At times I think that a great deal of the bottom-of-the-garden has leaked out of me, but given that I never enjoyed the idea in the first place, it doesn’t grieve me so much. It is just irritating when you really do give something the old-school try, and put in the effort, and you’re still not good at it. I am just relieved that I can’t stop being a fairy; that’s not mutable, whereas princesses are meant to change into queens and stepmothers and things, so you’re much more in danger of that type of overhaul—”
Cobweb found herself taken from her bath and lifted up in Floralinda’s hands. Floralinda had the expression on which meant she had not been attending, or at least not attending very closely. She looked at Cobweb with eyes as blue and as empty and as hard as the sea.
“I love you; that’s what’s happened, not any of the other things you’re talking about,” she said. “I’ve always tried to, but now I do; I saw you slip down that owl’s throat and I knew. And it isn’t nice at all; it’s dreadful; like all the times I was ever ill, all at once.”
Cobweb was ecstatic, because she did not understand about mortal love. Most long-lived fairy things don’t. Every so often something in that category becomes interested in the idea, but it has never ever produced a desirable result.
“Then you are going to let me go,” said the fairy, and clapped her hands. “Oh, finally! If I never see a ring again it will be too soon.”
Floralinda put Cobweb down on the bed and put her hands to the clasp of the fine golden chain. She reached out with her thumbnail, but it was slippery, and besides she hadn’t much of a thumbnail any more; so she took a breath and dried the chain, and then she put her thumb to the catch again.
Cobweb held her breath; but nothing happened, so she was obliged to let the breath out.
“I can’t,” Floralinda said, finally. “I thought I could,—but I can’t.”
For once Cobweb did not know what to think. Floralinda took her hands away, and folded them helplessly in her lap.
“Do you love me, Cobweb,” she said pitifully, “even a little?”
“What does love feel like?” said Cobweb.
“Like you want to be ill, but can’t be, but know you might well be quite soon, so you can’t get comfortable at all,” said Floralinda.
“Then I don’t think you love me one bit; that sounds like a classic case of indigestion,” said Cobweb.
But Floralinda could not explain. She just went to bed sadder than she had ever been, sadder than since she had come to the tower, and sadder than any princess has ever been capable of being either: an ugly, dreadful sadness that real princesses cannot experience.
Flight Ten
Floralinda wouldn’t let Cobweb come with her to the tenth flight, not after she had nearly been made into a sort of massive owl pellet. Cobweb was a little annoyed about this, for both had peeked in, and seen that flight ten contained a unicorn.
Unicorns are very beautiful, but not like how they are in the storybooks; they have the graceful bodies of horses but goat-like cloven hooves, and snow-white tufts on their legs, and wise and shining beards. Their horn looks like an auger shell such as you’d find at the beach, but of course much longer and prettier, and golden in colour: a sort of mother-of-pearl gold with rainbows shining in it, and as sharp as an icicle. From a chemistry point of view, Cobweb was dying to get her hands on that horn; but Floralinda said they wouldn’t.
“I am a maiden; the unicorn oughtn’t to attack me,” said Floralinda.
Cobweb was not quite sure.
“‘Maiden’ has a lot of different possible connotations,” said Cobweb.
“I am a princess, no matter what you say,” said Floralinda.
“You have proved that they can be just as naughty as anyone,” said the fairy.
For a moment it looked as though Floralinda was going to lose her nerve; she sat on flight eleven sharpening the spear and the knife, and dousing both liberally in spider-venom, and in the end she thrust the knife into her belt and said—
“Watch if you like; but everyone says unicorns bow their heads for girls, and it’s been that way in all of my books, and they’re quite a holy creature, so I don’t see why I should have a problem.”
“A unicorn never met you,” said Cobweb.
&nbs
p; And she was quite worried.
It was true that when Floralinda came into the unicorn’s room with her spear and her knife, with Cobweb sitting on the stairs peeking over, the unicorn did not look concerned. She went very fearlessly to the lovely, delicate creature, with its intelligent eyes and golden horn; she shook away her hood from her hair (it had gone without washing so long that it had come all the way around again, and her curls looked quite nice after all, although not as butter-coloured as they once had) and came to meet it. It pawed the ground a little, and Cobweb held her breath; and Floralinda—poor dumb Floralinda—put her spear down on the ground, to show the unicorn that she was just a girl, and she took a few hesitant steps toward it.
And the unicorn let her. It shivered, and it whickered, but it let Floralinda approach. It danced from one hoof to the other in a hesitant way, and Cobweb had to let out her breath so that she could hold another; it squealed a little when Floralinda touched its flank, and then stroked it all the way up to its lovely neck. The unicorn rolled its eyes, but then it bowed its head.
Cobweb exhaled. There was a twitch of the rat-skin coat, and a flash of metal; and then Floralinda plunged her knife deep into the unicorn’s neck.
She cut all the way down its throat as the unicorn foamed, and screamed, and knelt down; but it died quite quickly, and its horn became dull, and—as happens with unicorns—its body looked like nothing more than an old grey donkey. Floralinda was wiping her knife on the unicorn’s old grey flank, and when she turned back to see Cobweb’s expression, she said passionately—
“I hate horses; they always bite you, and then you fall off, and everyone says that it would have been fine if you had just been confident. I wasn’t about to let it change its mind.”
