The sound of someone speaking from out of nowhere made him jump. Staggering backwards he let go of the door causing it to smash back against the wall. The chain and letterbox jangled.
Looking down, he saw the most astonishing sight in all his life. He was lost for words. All he could do was stand flat against the wall while the visitor stepped inside.
Walking back into the lounge in a trance, he faced Monty, Chester, Cordelia and Alex who had all risen to their feet in expectation of the arrival. Like him, they too stood and gaped silently.
‘So, which one of you is Jebediah?’ the newcomer asked.
Jebediah mutely raised his hand.
He, like everyone else in the room with the exception of Alex, had come into contact with Fairies before but never like the one stood in the lounge of his house now.
Dressed from head to toe in camouflage, a pair of dainty translucent wings protruded out of the back of her jacket. That was the only dainty thing about her. Shiny metal toecaps were fixed to the tips of her boots which glinted in the harsh fluorescent light. The sleeves of her jacket were rolled up revealing well-developed muscles. Earrings hung from her ears, one with a chain attached to her nose with a small skull and crossbones motif at the end.
‘Is there a bathroom around here? I’ve been flying for some time and I’m pretty desperate.’
His voice still somewhere far away, Jebediah pointed up the stairs.
‘Great. Back in a mo,’ she said happily and trotted off up the stairs.
Monty was the first one to speak.
‘What do you think?’ he asked, blowing out hard and running a hand through his hair.
Jebediah was still too confused to answer and slumped onto the sofa.
‘At least all her tattoos are spelt correctly,’ Chester said, scratching the side of his face. ‘Who would have thought “dead hard” could look so attractive on the knuckles of a Fairy,’ he added.
Cordelia looked like she was ready to burst into tears again.
‘So,’ Primrose said coming back into the lounge, ‘what does a Fairy have to do to get a drink around here?’
Monty stepped forward and put his hand out, offering her his chair. ‘Would tea be all right? I don’t think there’s anything stronger in the house’
‘Nothing that dirty Kobold hasn’t drunk,’ Chester sniped.
While Monty went into the kitchen to make Primrose a cuppa the others sat down on the sofa, each one jammed against the other as they continued to gawp in amazement.
Primrose looked back, feeling like she was in a freak show.
‘BOO!’ she shouted.
This startled Alex and Jebediah and caused another flood of tears from Cordelia as fresh waves of what the Gnomes were going to do to them deluged her brain.
Monty brought in the tea and handed her the cup, which was almost the entire size of her face. Gulping down the hot fluid she belched, let out a loud, ‘Aaahhh’ and wiped the back of her hand across her face.
‘That’s better. Right, to business,’ she said. ‘I got your message so what’s the problem?’
Jebediah only spoke after Chester had nudged him painfully in the ribs.
‘Well … err … you see, what it is … we have the Gnomes after us and …’
‘You’re involved with the Mafia?’ Primrose cried, her hands gripping the arms of the chair as she let out a long, low whistle. ‘What have you done to upset them?’
‘Well, you see, we …’ Jebediah began.
Jebediah couldn’t actually bring himself to say that they had robbed the Gnomes of their money. If he did that he would have to admit it to himself which was something he wasn’t ready to do. At the moment he could pretend the last forty-eight hours had not occurred and what they had done was not actually wrong.
He needn’t have feared because Chester cut in, ‘We stole their money.’
Primrose’s eyes widened in disbelief. ‘You did what?’
‘It’s not like you think,’ Jebediah said in a strained voice. ‘We’re not really thieves or anything.’
‘No, course you’re not and I’m a Sprite,’ she snorted.
Chester squeezed himself from between Jebediah and Alex. Sitting forward he looked the Fairy square on.
‘Listen, I know it sounds bad and probably looks even worse but there is a very good reason why we did it. You see Jebediah’s parents have been kidnapped by Ogres and unless we pay them the ransom tomorrow they’ll kill them.’
‘Well...’ Primrose said, slowly running her finger over her chin, ‘I don’t normally get involved with anything like this, but as you know my old friend Seamus I’ll make an exception this once, for a price.’ As she mentioned the Leprechaun’s name a faraway look entered her eyes.
Chester was still dubious about the Fairy and her ability to protect them against a chill, let alone the Gnomes.
‘What do you mean a price?’ he asked, narrowing his eyes.
‘I don’t give my services for free. I’m not a charity you know. If that’s what you want then tell someone who cares.’
Chester bristled at being spoken to in such a way, especially by a twelve-inch Fairy who looked like she had escaped from prison.
‘What do we get for our money? I’m not being rude,’ he said but his tone was sarcastic as he spoke, ‘but my mother has garden ornaments bigger than you.’
Primrose leaned forward in the chair and cracked her knuckles menacingly.
‘If you want my help then you pay. As for you,’ she pointed directly as Chester, ‘if you think you’re hard enough let’s go for it right now - right here,’ she challenged.
‘Ha,’ Chester scoffed and stood up.
Before anyone knew what was happening Primrose had flown straight at Chester. A swift punch to his stomach had him doubling up. With his head down she held on to his hair and socked him in the eye, her fist the perfect size.
Jebediah and Alex frantically tried to restrain the Fairy while Cordelia sat and looked on in horror and Monty guffawed loudly.
‘Don’t just sit there,’ Jebediah yelled, ‘help.’
Monty had no intention of halting the sideshow and instead began to sing, ‘Go Primrose, you can do it’, while his hands moved round in a circular motion as though stirring a pot.
The fighting and struggling continued until Alex grappled Primrose to the floor and with his entire body weight pinned her to the ground where she continued to kick and struggle madly.
‘She’s a psycho!’ Chester exclaimed falling back onto the sofa clutching his eye.
This situation was not what Jebediah needed. Lifting his wand he sent out a shower of golden sparks and shouted loudly, ‘That’s enough.’ Primrose ceased wriggling and Alex slowly climbed to his knees.
Jebediah was panting heavily now.
‘I don’t have a problem paying you,’ he said to Primrose as she too climbed to her feet, ‘but I do have a problem with you attacking my friends without just cause or reason. If that’s the way you’re going to behave then you’re doing the Gnome’s job for them.’
Primrose glared. Her eyes held a look of malice as she heaved herself back onto the chair and sat with her arms folded mutinously.
Alex brushed himself down and sat on the arm of the sofa. He, like everyone else, was not merely frightened but fed up and extremely tired.
‘This,’ he said to the Fairy, ‘is ridiculous. So far I’ve been run off the road while riding my little sister’s bike, which was embarrassing enough in itself. My hair has been burnt off by a Dragon,’ he pointed to the large bald patch at the back of his head, ‘who was also very hungry and tried to eat me. Now if you want to get paid then save your anger for the Gnomes.’
‘Fine,’ said Primrose, still with her gaze firmly fixed on Chester, ‘but I want my mo
ney first.’
Jebediah got to his feet and went into the kitchen. He picked up the money and placed it in a carrier bag, leaving three thousand Groobles out which he took back and gave to Primrose.
She took the money and counted it before stuffing it down the back of her combat trousers.
‘Right, so what’s the plan?’ she asked.
Plan? There hadn’t been a plan. So far it had all been ‘seat of the pants stuff’. If any of them had actually taken the time to think about what they were doing and the consequences, none of them would be sat with Jebediah in his house at this moment.
‘We...’ Jebediah began and then paused. ‘We have the handover tomorrow in March Wood with the Ogres’, he added. ‘I rang you because I saw someone lurking outside the house and we weren’t sure if the Gnomes had found out where we were hiding.’
Primrose sat quietly and listened to him while he spoke. When he had finished she slid off the chair. Chester flinched and pushed himself back further into the sofa for fear of another attack.
‘I need to collect a few things,’ she announced and took from her pocket a small silver hip flask. Unscrewing the top, she drank some of the contents and said, ‘I will be back shortly.’
Without saying where she was going, her wings began to flap until they were a blur and she sped off out of the house, straight through a closed window.
‘Well that’s the last we’ll see of her,’ Chester snarled. ‘Now you’ve paid her she’ll be off.’
‘Don’t be so negative there old chap,’ Monty said as he lounged in the chair. ‘You’re only bitter because she kicked your backside.’
‘I’d like to see you defend yourself against something so small,’ Chester countered sulkily.
‘I don’t need to because she didn’t attack me,’ he smiled. ‘It must be that animal magnetism of yours,’ he finished.
Jebediah sat quietly. Chester could be right. What if now she had the money she didn’t bother to come back? She might even be on her way now to the Gnomes to tell them exactly where they were for all he knew. Never in his life had things been so complicated and never had he wished so much that his parents were here to extricate him from the mess he had caused.
Alex stared at his friend.
‘It’ll be all right,’ he said in an assuring manner. ‘Once your mum and dad are back they’ll sort everything out - you’ll see.’
Would it be though? Jebediah thought. Would his parents really be able to straighten everything? They had not only run away from summer camp but had also stolen money from the Gnomes, not to mention their own disastrous foray into kidnapping a Leprechaun. If all that wasn’t bad enough they had engaged the services of a hit man; or should that be a hit Fairy? Even Jebediah doubted their ability to sort out this mess.
Despite the assurances of his friend he couldn’t rid himself of the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.
Nobody could sleep. Adrenalin was pumping through them all, making sure their eyes stayed wide open and alert for any sound.
Cordelia had at least stopped weeping but her nose was very red, making her look like a clown and her eyes remained puffy.
CRASH! BANG! A chair toppled over in the kitchen followed by another. Jebediah’s heart leapt into his mouth and his legs felt weak as he jumped up.
Monty and Alex stood behind Jebediah as they inched closer to the door.
From within the kitchen they could hear faint mutterings and then Primrose stepped forward holding in her hand a crossbow. At her waist was a belt holding two pistols and on her back a holster containing a shotgun.
‘Cripes,’ Monty said.
‘It’s Rambo,’ Alex added.
Primrose was straightening her jacket.
‘Stupid place to leave a damn chair,’ she said angrily. ‘Could have broken my neck back there I could.’
‘Pity you didn’t,’ Chester said under his breath.
The comment didn’t go unheard by the sharp Fairy who narrowed her bright green eyes.
Jebediah’s heart was just settling down to a normal rhythm as he sat back down.
Primrose hopped onto a chair and stared at them, their faces still white.
‘What are you all looking at me like that for? I said I wouldn’t be long.’
‘W-We t-thought y-you w-weren’t c-coming b-back,’ Jebediah stuttered.
Primrose bristled.
‘The word of a Fairy can be trusted. We’re not like you Wizards who say one thing then do another.’
‘I’m sorry …’ Jebediah began.
‘Yes, well I needed to get some of my gear,’ Primrose muttered.
‘Yeah we can see,’ Alex commented as he stared in awe at the array of weapons.
Primrose placed the crossbow down by the side of the seat cushion and took from her back the shotgun and checked that it was loaded before laying it across her knee.
‘What time are we supposed to meet them tomorrow?’ she asked, checking the two pistols in the holsters.
‘Err - midday,’ Jebediah replied.
Click, click. She cocked the shotgun.
‘Well, you lot get some sleep and I’ll keep an eye out for any disturbances.’
Monty, Chester, Alex, Jebediah and Cordelia all looked at one another. The idea of sleeping had not crossed their minds.
Getting to their feet they followed Jebediah upstairs.
He allowed Cordelia to use his room and the rest of them huddled together like sardines packed in a tin in his parents’ room.
Jebediah lay squashed between Alex and Chester whose elbow dug into his back as he tried unsuccessfully to turn over. Monty lay snoring, oblivious to anyone else’s discomfort.
It took some time for sleep to come to Jebediah and when it did it was fitful and plagued with strange dreams.
He was falling through the air and voices from below were shouting all at once while a hand as big as a house curled round him, plucking him from the sky. Crushing the very essence of life from his body, it squeezed, the fingers growing ever tighter until he feared it was his last breath, and then blackness. Opening his eyes Seamus was stood above him laughing. Raising himself up on his elbows he looked round to see he was on a patch of grass in the middle of nowhere. Looking round for Seamus his head twisted this way and that only to find that he was alone. A laugh, cold and merciless, rang out before …
‘What on earth are you doing?’ Alex hissed.
Jebediah opened his eyes to see that he had been fighting against Alex’s arm which was raised as if to in protect himself.
‘Sorry I …’
‘I know. You were dreaming,’ Alex whispered as he settled back down, turning on his side so his back was to Jebediah.
Lying awake Jebidiah watched the lamps outside his window cast their shadows along the room. It was, or perhaps it merely seemed like, hours before he finally slipped into a peaceful sleep.
The Puzzle Deepens
Icarus Llewellyn-Aspen sat at his desk in the headquarters of the Magical Investigation Branch of the Sorcery Police.
His short silver-grey hair was bent forward over a sheet of paper, his misty grey eyes scanning the words written.
His age was indeterminable by merely looking at his worn and haggard face, as years of fighting Trolls, Giants and Hobgoblins had naturally taken their toll.
Wearily he searched the laden desk for a quill which he found under a batch of confiscated horn of Unicorn, an essential ingredient in flying spells. A flourishing black market had sprung up for those who had lost their broom licences. The potions were powerful but also illegal. Unicorns had become an endangered species and, despite the preservation order that had been placed on them all, it didn’t stop poachers.
Heaving a deep sigh, he dipped the end of his quill into the bottle
of fire-red ink.
Hephzibah Hollowood, a plump little witch in her mid-thirties with brown curly hair, staggered through the doorway, her face obscured by the paperwork in her arms and puffing hard from the effort of carrying such a weight.
‘I’ve got everything appertaining to all Ogre organisations since 1321,’ she panted and tipped the bundle onto her desk with a resounding thump.
‘Good,’ Icarus replied, still surveying his notes.
‘Are there any Ogres in prison who could be connected with the Humphries’ abduction then?’ Hephzibah asked, shifting her chair closer to the desk before reaching out for the first sheaf of parchment.
‘Hmm, not really,’ he replied. ‘There are only two Ogres in prison at the moment; one for biting off the hand of a Wizard from Guildford during a brawl and the other for streaking during the official visit by the Queen of the Nymphs when she opened the new hospital wing.’
Hephzibah stopped reading and lowered the parchment back onto the desk.
‘I never heard about that,’ she said, shocked at the thought of a naked Ogre running through the Ptolemy General Infirmary for the Incurably Accident Prone.
‘Oh, he didn’t get very far,’ he informed her dryly. ‘He tried running through what he thought were the front doors only to find that it was in actual fact a wall painting depicting the occasion. Knocked himself clean out and missed the Queen completely. We managed to keep it pretty much under wraps and the two humans that did see it were mind wiped.’
‘Still - could have been embarrassing though,’ she mumbled.
Looking back at the sheet of paper she asked, ‘So - nobody in prison who could be behind this?’
‘Not that I can see,’ replied Icarus.
Throwing the quill down onto the desk he rubbed his tired eyes.
‘You never know, there could be something among all of this,’ Hephzibah said, flicking the corners of the parchments on her desk.
Icarus was facing her but a faraway look in his eyes told her that he was only with her in body, not in mind.
There was something about this case that just didn’t seem to be right and it nagged at him like an itch he couldn’t scratch. Apart from a telephone call there had been no contact with the press and no outrageous demands. This, in all his years as a detective, he had never come across before. What was even more puzzling was their choice of hostages.
S.N.O.T. Page 12
