The Accidental Highwayman

by Ben Tripp

  We made our way northwest by short stages, stopping wherever our little Spectacular might draw a crowd. We were sometimes in the company of other troupes, and sometimes by ourselves; many a stimulating adventure was had, and many a triumph won, all within the compass of our show. I don’t think Lily or I had ever enjoyed such success—I had enough gold to keep us all, but in the end we earned enough copper to pay for our fare, without the slightest touch on my pocket.

  The wagon was the sun, and we its satellites. Along we went, through rain and shine. There were good roads and bad. Midnight seemed happy in his new role: He would condescend to pull the wagon if he could later canter around the ring to cries of admiration. The friendships between us all were cemented (all but one, which I shall explain shortly).

  Uncle Cornelius was the happiest man alive, returned to his glory before senescence* took him, and mingling daily with imaginary kings. He delighted in the company of Lily, whom he often said reminded him uncommonly much of his niece; but Lily herself—whom he called Julie, or Meg, or Emma, or Saphira, or a host of other people’s names—was always found wanting, for she had not all the excellent qualities of the Lily he carried with him in his mind.

  Willum and Gruntle continued to argue, but found great joy in their theatrical partnership, and Gruntle’s wing knit back together with the help of daily healing comprimaunts performed by Willum. Morgana and Lily, meanwhile, as different a pair as nature could devise, their friendship strengthened by adversity, grew fonder of each other by the day. Lily taught Morgana everything there was to know about human strengths and weaknesses, which she was adept at mixing in perfect proportion. I think Morgana, for her part, showed Lily how to be more confident in herself, lending her a little royal dignity.

  The only friendship that seemed to gain no strength from experience was that between Morgana and myself. It was always thus: We would enjoy some mutual occasion that ought to have thrown us closer together, and then something would occur that seemed to widen the gulf even more. It put me in a terrible state of agitation, at times; I knew not why, unless it was a desire to be popular with princesses, or to have pretty Faerie halfsies think me admirable. The worst of these occasions began as a harmless mistake, and burgeoned into a tempest.

  * * *

  We had a day without any performances to do, wending our way between two towns, and upon our halt happened to camp somewhere in the vicinity of a beehive. Consequently, there were many of the industrious little creatures about. Morgana was constantly occupied with them.

  “Cannot bees be intercepted by spies?” I asked while one such creature spelled out its message on the back of her hand.

  “No, for they will reveal their messages to none but the recipient.”

  “Even on pain of death?”

  “Bees live in numbers, not alone. They care little for their own lives, if the rest live.”

  “Admirable quality,” said I, and sat upon a stone. A lance of pain shot up the part of me that doesn’t light up, and I sprang to my feet.

  “Pixies!” I cried.

  Willum soared into view, casting caprizels in all directions.

  “Into the wagon!” Morgana cried, and Lily and Uncle Cornelius, at least, complied. Fred bared his teeth, crouched on the roof of the wagon. We waited for the onslaught of arrows, Morgana with her hands up to ward them off with magic.

  Nothing happened. The air hummed with drowsy bees, not pixie arrows.

  Willum alighted on the stone I’d recently vacated, and examined its surface.

  “Not pixies,” said he. “You sat upon a bee.”

  “By the Six Sisters!” Morgana shouted at me. “Thou manling blunderoon!”

  She wouldn’t speak to me, nor accept my apologies. I’d not only slain the bee, but erased its message, which was part of some fey negotiation.

  * * *

  Disgraced, I retreated to the far side of the wagon and told my troubles to Midnight. Willum took pity on me, I suspect, for he took up a post between the horse’s ears and began to describe his ongoing efforts to recruit local feyín to our cause. According to him, the wee people, feyín and pixies, were the only Faeries who lived most of the time in the First Realm. Could we but recruit enough of them to the revolutionary cause, King Elgeron would be isolated in the Middle Kingdom and his human alliances made moot.

  Since our adventures began, he had been flitting about, always far from our route, to pass word to his relatives about the cause. He had thousands of relatives, and word spread quickly. But few would commit to it, fearing raids by the royalist pixie bands such as had slain Violets. As we spoke of these matters, a bee alighted in a flower not far from us.

  “How do I send someone a bee?” I asked, watching the insect at its work.

  Willum rolled his eyes at my simplicity. “It’s simple. First get its attention, and then tell it your message. Then tell it who the message is for. Off it goes,” he said, as if to a child.

  “So I could tell this bee,” I said, pointing to a bee, “‘Dear Princess Morgana, you enchant me,’ and then say, ‘Take this to Princess Morgana,’ and it would do so? Simple as that?”

  I composed this message ironically, for Morgana and I were not speaking.

  “Yes, but that’s not the right sort of bee,” Willum said.

  “How do I know the right kind of bee?”

  “By its accent,” he said, and, bored with my ignorance, flew away.

  * * *

  Not an hour later, having practiced some riding tricks with Midnight and Lily, I returned to the wagon for some tea, and found Morgana sitting alone inside, her eyes downcast.

  “You and Lily,” said she, “get along so very well.”

  “Yes,” said I, defensively. “It’s because she’s predictable, and I’m not very bright. It’s the formula for happiness.”

  “You’re far more clever than you believe,” she said. “Twisting a princess up in knots is no easy feat.”

  Well, I thought I was in for another argument, and filled my chest with air to expend upon my defense, but the sharp words didn’t come. Instead, she looked up at me and smiled her radiant, secret smile, the one that bewitched me. I thought to myself, This must be what warm toast feels like when butter melts into it.

  Her smile turned quizzical. “Toast?” she said.

  Once again I turned red with such force my face felt as if it might burst.

  “Can you read my mind?” I fairly shouted. “I’ve been meaning to ask, but I was afraid of the answer.”

  Morgana looked surprised, and a little hurt. “I don’t read your mind, I receive things from it. You just sent me a picture of buttered toast. I love buttered toast the best of all manling food.”

  “Oh curse my britches!” I said. “I was just admiring your smile, and an image of buttered toast came into my head, that’s all.”

  She laughed outright at my indignation, slapping her knees in an unprincesslike manner she had learned from Lily. “Well, I think it’s lovely,” she said. “Thank you. And thanks for the bee.”

  “The bee?” I said. My veins filled up with icy water.

  “Yes. I wonder about you, Kit. Sometimes I think you hate me, and other times you send me pictures of buttered toast. You’re just the most delightful bundle of contradictions.”

  In rapid succession, my insides turned into snow, and then feathers, and then they fell into the ocean and sank. I realized what must have happened—another bee, adjacent to the one I had addressed, and of the correct type, had heard my message, presumed I was speaking to it, and delivered the message to the party named. I searched for words to say, but my mouth was so dry, my tongue was like a mummified baboon in the middle of the Sahara Desert.

  Morgana couldn’t look me in the eye, luckily. She was studiously examining the ground at her feet, her cheeks blushing prettily like copper pennies. “That bee came as quite a surprise, to be honest,” she said.

  “W-w-w-w-well,” I croaked, “I apologize.”

  Now s
he looked up, and transfixed me with those leaf-green eyes. “Don’t apologize. I said it was lovely. I’m not only a princess anymore. I’m trying to learn how to be a young woman. I’ve never had a proper love letter like that. It’s not permitted, unless a Faerie prince wished to do it. And Faerie princes don’t. They’re unromantic.”

  “Love letter!” I blurted out. “Romantic! Good lord!”

  Naturally, Morgana took this outburst in precisely the wrong way. She sprang to her feet with her brows bent down in angry strokes.

  “Was it just some kind of jest to thee? Didst I amuse thee with my confession? How dast thou! I have relinquished my crown, but within this bosom yet beats the heart of a princess, and I will not have anyone mock my heart’s generosity! Get out of my sight.”

  And, just to make doubly sure, she got out of my sight. She stomped into the sleeping compartment and threw the curtain across. I stumbled outside and clung to the wheel of the wagon for support. There I must have stood for ten minutes at least, entirely thunderstruck.

  Morgana had gone from warm to cold, thrice, in such a very short time, and I had done the same in alternating sequence, that I hardly knew what to think. So I thought nothing, but listened to the swarm of tale-telling bees in my head.

  I understood little about women, and less about Morgana, but I’d learned something after all. The Faerie Princess might have lived half a century in years, but she was no older, nor much wiser, than I.

  Chapter 27

  TOASTING THE STEWARD

  SO IT was that the days and leagues alike went by the way, and although there were many incidents, none went so badly as to be included in this history, except to record that Morgana remained both Scylla and Charybdis, and I the most inept Odysseus imaginable.*

  After another week or so, we were less than three day’s journey from Liverpool, Lily’s place of birth. There she had an ex-suitor in the fishing trade; his boat could take us across the Irish Sea to Cork, where there was an independent Faerie council to which Morgana could address her plight. The Faeries, one and all, spent their entire waking hours dreading that sea passage.

  Even as Morgana let fall her cool Faerie nobility and became increasingly human in her behavior—picking up a wealth of insights from her fortune-telling, besides the feminine mannerisms she learned from Lily—she also became more commanding. One night, she and Willum went out into the darkness and did not return until dawn. I doubt Lily slept for worry. I know I did not. But when they returned with the pink of dawn, she wore a garland of flowers woven about her brow, and the jaguundi was not the travel-stained homespun of her disguise, but white and silken, shimmering in the pale light. Her true features, not the subtle living mask, were upon her face.

  “There has been a council,” said she. “I am Steward now, caretaker to the Faerie people in this region. It is a lesser role than king, but these folk believe the King has gone mad. So I am now the highest authority here.”

  “Congratulations,” I said, for I knew not the correct thing to say.

  Willum told me that our traveling subterfuge was working very well—the Faerie people thereabouts knew not how their princess traveled. But they did know she was abroad in the land, against King Elgeron’s wishes, that the planned marriage was in disarray, and that she would defy her father to the end. There was a tremendous uproar among the magical folk, but to the humans in our party it seemed nothing at all was happening. We saw only pleasant summer days and heard no more than birds and insects.

  When the sun had set on that same day, I was composing myself for sleep on the seat of the wagon when Willum appeared at my elbow and tugged on my sleeve.

  “You awake?” he inquired. I assured him I was.

  “Thing is, me and some lads, we’re celebrating Morgana’s stewardship. And they don’t believe I’m mates with a manling. So I was wondering if you might like to come along. There will be refreshments.” Such yearning was in his voice that I could not refuse.

  * * *

  It seemed as if I walked for miles in the dark, with Willum fluttering from branch to twig and twig to stone, telling me which way to go. He was keenly excited, I think. We were in a wood of very old trees. At length we came to an open space among them in which stood a “Faerie ring,” a rough circle of toadstools. I didn’t see any evidence of an entertainment going on. It was perfectly still, except for the distant cry of a fox.

  “Right. This is him,” Willum said.

  Of a sudden, there were lights all around me. Some were feyín bottoms, but most were flowers that had been enchanted to glow like candles, so that they cast their color over the scene. The ring of toadstools was populated with a dozen little winged people—pixies among them—all regarding me with wide eyes. Gruntle stood at the fore, flexing his mended wing.

  “Look what the cat drug in!” he shouted. “Old Leather-End!*”

  “The Eldritch Law—” one of the others said.

  “Not tonight, Bunkle,” said another. “Tonight we’re rebels.”

  “Greetings,” said I. “I am Kit. Thank you for the invitation.”

  It took a while for them to grow accustomed to a human being in their midst, with rather a lot of ruckinses if I moved too suddenly, but eventually they wee behaving as I suppose the feyín do—at parties, in any case. These wee country folk had simple fare laid out on leaves, and ample drink scooped from a hollowed-out melon. I didn’t partake of the food, which tended toward roasted larvae, but the drink, called glump, was quite pleasant, and there were countless toasts to Morgana’s health. I could have consumed the entire supply of glump in a few swallows, but sipped it as they did, from the caps of acorns.

  “Glump’s made from the melon its own self,” said Willum. He’d had so much of the stuff his nose had begun to light up, too. “Caprizel on the inside, leave the outside alone, and a week later it’s melon brandy. Stand back, Granny!”

  I paid particular attention to the pixies, which were so elusive but influential in faerie matters. They were various shades of green, and smaller than the feyín, with feathered hummingbird wings; they were clad only in fur loin-clouts, and carried bows and arrows. I saw that they had very sharp teeth and eyes tilted almost upright, like a cat’s.

  There were some speeches made toward the middle of the event. They were in the feyín’s own tongue, but I heard Morgana’s name repeated many times, always with great gravity, insofar as those present were capable of it in their melon-fueled condition. These concluded with a song of which her name formed part of the refrain, and some of the little people about me wept to hear it. Then, to lift the mood, there was a backside-lighting contest.

  “We’re all takin’ turns seein’ who can wish Princess Morgana the best luck,” Gruntle said, his bottom-light winking slyly. “Mine was rather good—wished her a endless supply of the juiciest beetles with the tenderest shells. She’s Steward now, you know. Got to earn that one, cain’t be a-born to it.”

  Although the gathering was a merry one, with many cheerful songs sung and much clapping, I detected fear among these people, and not just fear of me. There were a few posted outside the light, I saw, and they neither ate nor drank, but watched the shadows. And once, when a badger waddled past, all the lights went out and I was alone in the dark, surrounded by toadstools. The wee people didn’t return until the animal was well out of sight.

  “Badger,” Willum explained. “Can’t be too careful. They’re moody beasts. Do you know,” he went on, trying to throw his tiny arm around my shoulders, “don’t tell the Princess, but did you see the white in her hair?”

  “I did,” said I. “It must have been from the shock of that accursed phantolorum thing.”

  “It’s not that at all. Badgers, mate. Like I told you, I used a reverse badger comprimaunt on her hair. Well! It came in with a badger stripe. Don’t mention it to her. Lucky she’s not vain—I think I can sort it out before she discovers it.”

  * * *

  I awoke the next morn refreshed, my head full of
Faerie songs. Willum seemed somewhat ill; I suspect he was overhung from the glump. Gruntle could not rise at all, but remained abed inside a woolen mitten.

  The party had revealed to me that there was a busy world of magic beneath our very noses. From some of the conversations among the feyín at the event, I learned that Faerie villages had been raided by pixie bands. The pixies who had attended the party were of a different sort from the ones that swarmed. They were a solitary breed, each keeping to itself much of the time, and were known to play little tricks on manlings to amuse themselves, but also to pay them kindnesses. They were appalled by the behavior of their more collaborative and violent cousins.

  The raids, according to pixies, had not the effect the Faerie King desired—instead of frightening his people, it infuriated them. Among those present there had been talk of a general strike. If the wedding went forward, there would scarcely be a flower that bloomed in all England, except by luck—apparently the feyín had considerable influence in that area.

  Chapter 28

  THE SIGILANTUM

  IN ONE place, a day or two later, we saw cruel evidence of a pixie raid. We passed through a grove of fine horse chestnut trees and the air beneath the leafy canopy was thick with smoke. There was an uncommon number of moths flitting about, winking like stars in the strips of sunlight that came down through the foliage.

  “By the whiskers of the Sleeping Mountain,” Willum said, and bid us stop the wagon.

  The feyín flew up among the branches overhead and for some minutes searched all about; for what, I did not know. Morgana stood a little way apart from the rest of us, leaning against the bole of a mighty tree. Then Gruntle flew down to her feet and cast an armful of tiny arrows upon the leaf mold.

  “Not a soul left alive,” said he, and walked back to the caravan with his wings drooping.