Chains of Gaia

by James Fahy

  “Why are you stealing a mask?” Robin asked, shocked.

  “I … I’m not,” Ffoulkes said stutteringly, in the face of all evidence otherwise. “Your aunt gave me this, as payment. She must have forgotten to tell you before she left. That’s all this is.” He made a very unsuccessful attempt to cajole his features back into a charming smile. “Just a misunderstanding.”

  Karya, standing next to Hestia, was staring at the innocent looking mask with wide eyes. “Is that … what I think it is?” she gasped. The housekeeper nodded, looking utterly scandalised.

  Robin felt out of the loop. He had no idea what it was, other than an old mask. But looking at it tipped a memory. He stared back at Ffoulkes. “My aunt didn’t give this to you,” he accused. “She specifically said your payment was just being at Erlking, as agreed. I remember her saying it. And you’ve been looking for this mask since you first got here, haven’t you? Admit it? You even tried wheedling it out of me, asking me all about masks and masked balls and all that nonsense, fishing for information. You were trying to find out if I knew where it was.”

  Ffoulkes glowered at them all indignantly. “I deserve payment!” he snapped, pulling his coat tight around him once more. “No one else in the mortal world could have given that silly old woman as much information about that scrap of paper as I did! No-one! I demand that mask!”

  He gritted his teeth. “Do you, any of you … idiots … have any idea how much this is worth to the right people in the Netherworlde? How much money I could make from this? It’s the find of a lifetime!”

  “The treasures of Erlking are not yours to pawn!” Hestia snapped. “You have betrayed every sense of hospitality here, and you will leave! Now, sir!”

  Ffoulkes lip curled and he suddenly looked quite ugly, his face peevish and naked of affectation.

  “Years! Years I’ve been trying to get to Erlking,” he snapped. “Just for a chance! For a peek in all its corners! At all its treasures. And knowing … knowing … that this mask was here, somewhere! Of course, I agreed to help your aunt! That feeble minded old coot! I jumped at the chance to come here and help her with her ridiculous library card! For the prize of course!” he sneered at Robin and the others.

  “Honestly! Why else? Why else would I bother to come here? Out of the goodness of my heart?” His orange eyes blazed. “Leave London, willingly? To come up to the back end of beyond, where the only culture is in the tasteless cheese in the larder? To walk these draughty halls, to put up with squawking children underfoot? Draughty beds? Not a decent bottle of brandy in the whole sorry pile?” He pointed rudely at Hestia. “And having to put up with the terrible cooking of this sour faced, miserable old crone here?” he said savagely.

  Hestia looked shocked by this outburst. To Robin's surprise, Jackalope leapt to her defence. “Nobody,” he growled, glowering dangerously at Ffoulkes. “Nobody cooks more magnificently, than this sour faced, miserable old crone! I should cut out your tongue, you insolent dog!”

  From somewhere about his person, there was a flash, and to everyone’s shock, a knife was in Jackalope's hands. He must have lifted it from the kitchen at some point.

  “I should cut out your tongue,” the silver-haired Fae repeated, through gritted teeth. He looked quite feral. “Even if I must use this ill-crafted mortal dagger to do it with!” He glanced as Hestia. “Say the word and his tongue is on a plate!”

  Hestia, holding the mask to her bosom, actually looked for a second as though she were considering this.

  “Jackalope put down the knife!” Karya snapped. “You’re not helping. You can’t solve everything with stabbing! Honestly!” She snatched the knife swiftly out of his hands, like taking a toy from a naughty child. “This is a cheese-knife anyway, you moron, what are you going to do, pare him to death?”

  “What is that?” Robin demanded, nodding at the mask in the housekeeper's hands.

  “It is the Mask of Gaia, boy,” Ffoulkes spat. “Priceless! Lost for centuries. Forged by one the elementals themselves! Owned for time eternal by the dryads of the Elderhart! Rumoured to have been gifted to the Fae during the war and hidden here at Erlking.” He was eyeing the mask with a hungry, maniacal gleam. “It’s worth is … incalculable! And it has been here, unused and hidden in a mothballed box for time out of mind! No good to anyone!”

  “It … is … not … yours!” Hestia said firmly. “Leave Erlking now. You bring shame to your own name. Shame and disgrace, you peddlar of stolen goods.”

  Ffoulkes straightened up, pushing Robin roughly back into the corridor with the others. He took a step back into the house, his face very dark and serious.

  “You catch me off balance with a simple cantrip, but you think you can best me?” he said quietly.

  The air around him in the corridor grew darker, as he clenched his hands. Flames flickered into life across his fist with an audible ‘whoomph’, their shining tongues flickering over his fingers. His narrowed eyes seemed to glow, brimstones in the darkness of the doorway.

  “They probably cannot. But I can,” said a voice behind Hestia. From beyond the gathering at the doorway, a thick jet of water, stronger than a riot cannon, blasted past Hestia, causing Jackalope and Karya to duck as it roared overhead. Robin threw himself against the wall, as the deluge filled the corridor and hit Ffoulkes full force, knocking him off his feet and onto his backside against the wall, the impact making the lampshades shake.

  Spluttering and drenched to the bone, his flames extinguished in sooty damp clouds, the man coughed and glared furiously down the corridor.

  Calypso stood between the children and Hestia, her hand still outstretched. She didn’t look very impressed.

  “Would you like to take me on? Mr Ffoulkes?” she said calmly and quietly. “It would be the first time I’ve found your company entertaining since you arrived.” She blinked at him, looking archly bored. “I can wait for you to dry out if you like, though heavens knows, that may well take years.”

  “You … you witch!” Ffoulkes spluttered. He scrambled to his feet, bracing himself against the wall. His fur coat was saturated, clumped together, making him look like a drowned otter. “I’ll boil every molecule of your hateful, watery–”

  The man didn’t get to finish his threat. At that second, Inky, still struggling in Robin’s hands, exploded from his watery bubble with an enormous splash, drenching the boy as the cantrip collapsed.

  The kraken, no bigger than a house cat, leapt out of Robin’s arms as though on springs, and soared through the air towards the horrified face of Mr Ffoulkes, its tentacles flailing wildly.

  There followed a rather frantic struggle between man and beast, as the kraken, firmly attached, writhed and beat at the man mercilessly, delivering slap upon slap with its many leathery tentacles to his head and body, while intermittently sending out great cloudy jets of black ink, spraying the Panthea from head to foot.

  “Get it off me!” Ffoulkes screamed in a most high-pitched and undignified way. “Get it off! Get it off! It’s possessed! It’s insane!”

  “It's … trying to get the backpack,” Karya said, her face a mask of shock.

  Indeed, the furious crustacean was struggling to grab at the straps and to prise the sodden pack from the man’s back. It was only with dawning realisation that Robin saw what was going on.

  “Hey!” he yelled. “That’s my backpack!”

  It was indeed the Swedenborgian satchel which Aunt Irene had given him for his birthday in September. Robin lunged forward and grabbed at it. Inky already had several suckered tentacles wrapped around the strap and had managed to wriggle it from Ffoulkes' soaked, ink-black shoulder. Robin tore it away, slipping on the wet floorboards, and fell backwards onto the soaked and inked floor, clutching the backpack to his chest.

  Inky the kraken immediately left off its violent attack, detaching itself from the now bruised and bewildered Ffoulkes, giving one last jet of ichor-like ink directly to his face. Blinding him completely, it slid across the wet flo
orboards to Robin’s feet, tentacles slapping across the boards urgently.

  “You were taking my pack with you?” Robin was aghast and confused. Inky had wrapped several of its limbs around his ankle, starting to climb us his leg.

  Ffoulkes struggled, spluttering and dazed to his knees. He looked a terrible sight. His clothes were ruined, his face a mass of blotted ink and bright red circles where Inky's suckers had slapped at him. His usually perfect moustache and beard were sodden and as a wild as a hedge. Perhaps the most alarming thing was that his hair was gone, revealing a smooth bald dome, spotted with ink and covered in a pattern of kraken-whip marks.

  “He’s bald?” Hestia gasped, clutching the mask she held to her chest, as thought this was the most shocking development so far.

  Ffoulkes staggered, searched around on the floorboards before him with shaking hands, grabbing at what looked like a squashed and very drowned rat. With the last shreds of his dignity, he thrust the sodden toupee back onto his head.

  “Why were you taking my bag?” Robin cried indignantly, flipping open the straps. Inky gave a high, keening hiss, and as the satchel flopped open, all became clear. A thin blue arm flopped out of the dark mouth of the bag. Robin, too shocked to speak, grabbed it and pulled, and in a great ungainly heap, the figure of Woad, fast asleep and snoring, came tumbling impossibly from the Swedenborgian space, sliding out of the small backpack like a baby cow being born, straight into Robin's arms.

  Everyone stared at Woad, snoring and oblivious, one foot still inside the satchel. Inky leapt from Robin's leg to land on the faun's stomach, curling itself into a tight ball and snuggling against the boy's tummy. It made an odd happy noise, almost like a gurgling purr.

  Everyone present looked up slowly at Ffoulkes, who still knelt in the doorway, drenched and ruined. He grinned at their dark looks sheepishly.

  “You … stole … Woad?” Karya said, very quietly.

  Her expression, matching everyone else’s present, was murderous.

  Ffoulkes wrung his hands. “Be reasonable …” he stammered, ink dripping off his chin. “A-haha. The pelt you see … it would fetch such a good price …”

  “Erlking revokes its hospitality to you,” Calypso said. By her side, Hestia nodded. It was the only time Robin had ever seen the two women agree on anything before.

  “Now wait!” Ffoulkes struggled to his feet, wavering uncertainly. “I am not leaving here with nothing!”

  Karya, Robin saw, had a look of pure fury on her face. Through gritted teeth she hissed at the man. “Oh yes, you are.”

  She dropped to one knee, slapping her palm against the floorboards, her amber bracelet flashing like fire. The floorboards bucked underneath them, making them all stagger, and then they rolled towards Ffoulkes in a great undulating wave, gathering speed and force as the shockwave flew down the corridor. Boards flipping up one after another with great booms. It caught underneath him, catapulting him off his feet and sending him flying backwards into the air, through the doorway and empty-handed into the Netherworlde. He landed on the flagstones with a winded ‘oomph’.

  As the floorboards settled, the red door of Erlking shook a little, and then of its own accord, slammed firmly shut.

  There was a sigh in the air for several seconds. The floorboards settled. The walls ceased their creaking. The flickering lights became steady once more.

  The Janus Station had closed. Ffoulkes had been thoroughly expelled from Erlking.

  “Is your blue creature alive?” Jackalope knelt by Robin, peering curiously at the snoring faun. “It sounds in terrible pain.”

  “That’s just his snoring,” Robin said, struggling to extract himself from beneath the drowsing boy. “Woad always sounds like that.” There were smudges of jelly on the blue boy’s cheeks, and Robin remembered finding the half-eaten crusts that morning. “I think he was just drugged. Drowsing herbs, I’m guessing.”

  Calypso stared around at the corridor. It was drenched. The doorjamb was smeared with firey soot and ink stains covered everything. The floorboards looked buckled as from a recent earthquake, and several of the light fittings were askew. There was a cheese knife lying with its point sticking in the floor, still vibrating.

  She sighed. “Your aunt has been away for less than an hour, Robin Fellows," she said. “This is why I do not care to be left in charge of things.”

  “We must get the faun downstairs,” Hestia fussed. “I can bring him round. Though Hestia is tempted to leave him this way and have a little peace in the house for once!”

  Robin glanced at the mask the housekeeper still held. “What is that thing?” he wanted to know.

  “There is clearly much to discuss,” Calypso told him. “But one thing at a time, please. Someone detach the kraken from the faun …” Inky growled softly. “…If you can. Downstairs, and then we talk.” Her limpid, hazy eyes took them all in one by one. “We have a larger problem anyway.”

  “Larger problem?” Karya looked up at the nymph from Woad’s side, where she was stroking the sleeping boy's hair out of his eyes with uncharacteristic affection.

  Calypso nodded. “I was on my way to the lake,” she explained. “You think I returned to the house for no reason? I sensed a presence at the perimeter.” She looked to Robin.

  “I came to tell you all that there are redcaps at the gates.”

  UNDER GEAS

  The nymph would not be drawn any further until everyone was downstairs, decidedly calmer, and Woad had been attended to. Her only response to Robin's questioning as he and the others followed her gliding form down the grand staircase that the ‘creatures at the gate could wait’.

  Jackalope carried the limp form of Woad in his arms, with Karya at his side, still looking an odd mixture of furious and concerned. Hestia followed the whole troupe, still clutching the odd wooden mask she had reclaimed from the thief Ffoulkes, and complaining loudly about the wet and inky footprints they were all leaving on the floor.

  Woad was carried to the main entrance hall at the foot of the stairs, where he was set gently onto a decorative chaise longue. Robin’s tutor looked over him thoughtfully for a moment.

  “Is he okay?” Karya asked.

  The nymph nodded. “He is drunk on drowsers, that is all. Mixed with glam jam and butterwing seeds, by the smell of it.” She glanced up at the housekeeper. Robin saw Hestia was still shaking slightly, though whether from her earlier and uncharacteristic use of magic or at being called an old crone by the vile Ffoulkes, Robin couldn’t tell.

  “Keeper, you have the skills to revive the faun. Bring him to his senses?” Calypso asked her. Hestia nodded. The nymph held out a delicate, pale hand, and the housekeeper handed over the wooden mask, sniffing a little and straightening her apron fussily.

  “I didn’t like to do that,” she said, tremulously. “Hestia doesn’t like having to do the Towers. Terribly messy things. But what am I to do? When thieves attack the house? While the mistress’ back is turned? I have my duties.”

  “You did great, Hestia,” Robin said reassuringly, wanting nothing more than for her to stop flapping and attend to Woad.

  She shot him a withering stare. “And who is asking you opinions?” she fussed. “Trouble follows you. Always, I am left with messes to mop wherever you tread, Robin Fellows. You are not master of this house for five minutes once your aunt is out of it, and calamity! And am I thanked for it? No! Such a nice man he seemed.” She wrung her hands together. “So charming! So dashing.” Her lips pursed. “And Erlking has the finest brandy!”

  “A vile snake,” Jackalope said with feeling. “A true fox in furs. You should have let me take care of him.”

  “Robin’s aunt made it quite clear there were to be no impalings,” Caylpso said, her voice calm and reasonable in contrast to the other two. “I will at least keep that basic promise, if nothing else. Although if you are going to threaten worms like Ffoulkes, perhaps we should look into arming you with something rather more fitting than a butterknife.”


  Jackalope’s eyes narrowed, his face deadly serious. “It was a knife …” he said with grim feeling, “… for cheese.”

  The nymph's soft green eyes flicked to Robin. “Perhaps, for the time being, Phorbas would be advantageous in teaching the elder Fae a little control?” she suggested. She saw Robin’s immediate unspoken resistance to the idea of giving up his blade. “Phorbas is a trusty weapon,” she assured him. “He will steer a hand wisely, not rashly, Robin Fellows. A loan only. I feel it would be a wise preventative to anyone getting, as young master Henry would put it, ‘even a little bit stabbed’.”

  Hestia bent over Woad, fetching smelling salts from a pocket in her apron, and began to fuss about bringing him to his senses. While she was busy, Calypso drew Robin and the others to one side. She held out the mask for all to see. It was a rather pretty, if curious design.

  “All this trouble over a little trinket,” she said, her voice faraway and daydreamy. “From the moment that man set foot in this house, I knew he was after something.” She sighed lightly. “Lady Irene had no choice however. It is … unfortunately … true what he said. He is indeed an expert in rare things. Perhaps no one else could have pointed her to the London library.” She turned the mask over in her hands, shaking her head in soft wonder. Still, to try and bolt with it as soon as she leaves. The man is a cretin as well as a coward.”

  Karya couldn’t help but smirk a little. “Agreed,” she said. “But he did look in rather a wonderful state when we sent him packing. I rather enjoyed that, you know. Clothes maketh the man, do they?”

  “Henry is going to be livid that he missed this,” Robin said, wondering if it was lunchtime yet, in which case Henry would probably be having his school dinner and therefore free to receive an urgent hex-message.

  “What is the artefact?” Jackalope wanted to know, peering intently at the mask. “He said it was of great value.”