Faerie Wars 01 - Faerie Wars

by Brennan, Herbie

  Henry watched, fascinated, as Fogarty began to assemble something with the speaker at one end. His old hands were flecked with liver spots but amazingly deft, as if he was well used to intricate machinery.

  Halfway through, the fairy got up and walked across to hand things to Fogarty as he needed them. The little creature appeared to have an instinctive grasp of how the contraption was going to work.

  When the last piece was in place, Fogarty said to Henry, 'See if there's a battery in the drawer under the sink. Nine volt. Little square thing.'

  The drawer seemed to hold nothing but string, but Henry eventually found a battery in the bottom. 'This do?'

  Fogarty was making some finishing touches and barely glanced across. 'Yes, that's the ticket.' He took the battery from Henry and wrapped wires round the terminals. 'Talk into that,' he told the fairy, pointing to a button mike larger than its head.

  The fairy crouched down at the mike, looked at Fogarty, then at Henry. Lips moved and a tinny voice crackled from the speaker. 'You were very rough on that cat.'

  Henry blinked. 'That cat was trying to eat you!' he protested. 'That cat thought you were a butterfly.' All the same he grinned a little. He rather liked cats himself, even great podging cats like Hodge.

  'I could have handled it,' the tinny voice told him.

  'Never mind the cat,' Fogarty cut in. 'We've got more important things to talk about. You can understand what I'm saying to you?'

  'Certainly.'

  'So you speak English?'

  'If that's what you're speaking.'

  'Of course it's what I'm speaking. Where did you learn it?'

  'Didn't have to,' the fairy said.

  Fogarty frowned. 'So it's your native language?'

  'Wouldn't think so,' said the fairy.

  'You trying to be clever with me?' Fogarty asked.

  The fairy gave him a look that would have done justice to a sphinx. 'I don't know why you're going on about the language. You can understand me, I can understand you. I need you to help me.'

  'We're not talking spying here, are we, because -- '

  Henry interrupted, 'Help you how?' Maybe the fairy would do something in return. He kept thinking about his parents. He kept thinking of the three wishes business. But he couldn't ask about three wishes in front of Mr Fogarty. Or talk about his parents.

  'Get back to where I came from.'

  Henry hesitated. 'Like ... Fairyland?'

  'If that's what you call it.'

  'What do you call it?' Fogarty asked aggressively.

  They both saw the fairy shrug. 'I don't call it anything much. The realm, I suppose. Or the world.'

  'But it's not this world?'

  'It's some sort of parallel dimension, right?'

  'Yes.'

  Fogarty looked at Henry. 'Told you. We're dealing with an alien.'

  Henry said, 'What's your name?'

  'Pyrgus,' said the fairy. 'Pyrgus Malvae.'

  Mr Fogarty went back to the language business, which he seemed determined to worry like a bone. Pyrgus the fairy sighed audibly through the little speaker. 'Look,' he said, 'I don't understand the physics of it very well, but Tithonus once told me -- '

  'Who's Tithonus? Your leader?'

  'He used to be my tutor when I was a child. He told me this world is an analogue of mine. Or mine is an analogue of this one. Or they're analogues of each other -- it all amounts to much the same thing.'

  'What's that mean?' Henry asked. 'Analogues of each other?'

  'Connected,' Pyrgus said. Tithonus says it's like dreaming, except you don't leave your body behind. Dream worlds can be pretty weird, but you always know the language, don't you?'

  It made no sense at all to Henry, but Mr Fogarty seemed satisfied. 'So you travelled here from this other world?'

  'It's not exactly travelling,' Pyrgus said. 'We call it translating. You don't actually go anywhere. You just move into another state of being. But it feels as if you've gone somewhere,' he added helpfully.

  'You people have been translating here for centuries, haven't you?' Fogarty asked casually.

  'Some of us,' Pyrgus said. Even through the speaker his voice sounded guarded.

  'You mean like not everybody can afford it?' Henry put in.

  'Something like that.' Pyrgus moved position, but the mike continued to pick up his voice perfectly. 'Look, I don't know who you two are -- '

  'I'm Henry Atherton,' Henry told him promptly. He'd decided he liked Pyrgus. The little fellow was feisty.

  Pyrgus ignored him. ' -- but I don't think I'm going to answer any more questions until you promise to help me get back.'

  'You can't get back to your own world?' Fogarty asked, frowning.

  Pyrgus said nothing.

  'How can we help you if you won't answer questions?'

  Pyrgus folded his arms and studied the ceiling.

  Fogarty gave in. 'All right, all right, we'll help you. But you're getting nothing for nothing.'

  'What do you want -- three wishes?'

  'We'll work that out later,' Fogarty scowled. 'Just so you know there's no such thing as a free lunch.'

  'How do I know I can trust you?' Pyrgus asked suspiciously.

  'See anybody else round here who's going to help you?'

  Pyrgus glared at him.

  'Take my point?'

  Pyrgus continued to glare for a long moment, then muttered something that sounded like, 'Can't be any worse than Brimstone.' More loudly he said, 'All right, we'll make a deal. You help me and I'll send you gold when I get back.'

  'Hah!'

  'Well, what do you want?' asked Pyrgus crossly. 'How much gold do you think I can carry when I'm this size?'

  Something about the way he said it made Henry ask, 'Weren't you always this size?'

  Pyrgus shook his head. 'Didn't have these stupid wings either.'

  'I think you'd better tell us what's going on,' said Fogarty.

  Once Pyrgus got started, it seemed as if he couldn't stop. There were details that didn't make much sense and gaps he glossed over. But the story was fascinating.

  The Faeries of the Light first discovered the Analogue World nearly five thousand years ago when three families of seed merchants were shipwrecked on a remote volcanic island in the Land of Faerie. The place was barren and they might have starved to death if one of the children hadn't stumbled on something very odd -- two basalt pillars that burned fiercely without giving off the slightest heat. The child -- her name was Arana -- walked between the pillars. Where she found herself wasn't barren like the rest of the island, but lush, well watered and packed with a jungle of enormous plants and flowers. Even more exciting, she'd been turned into a creature with wings who could fly from one giant flower to another.

  Arana played for a time in this amazing world, then started to miss her family and plucked up enough courage to go through the fiery pillars again. She found herself back on the barren island. Her wings had disappeared.

  When she told her family, they didn't believe it, but she talked her older brother, Landsman, into coming with her to see the fiery pillars. Before Landsman could stop her, Arana ran into the flames. Landsman lunged forward to try to save her and they both found themselves winged creatures in the green land. Landsman was old enough to realise he wasn't surrounded by giant flowers and plants, but had himself shrunk. When he led his sister back through the pillars, they lost their wings and returned to normal size.

  The discovery of the portal saved the shipwrecked families, for while the barren island couldn't feed them, the world beyond the pillars certainly could. Since they were seedspeople, they already knew a lot about plants and even introduced a few new species from the Realm of Faerie, using seeds they'd managed to save from the shipwreck.

  'Which ones?' Fogarty asked.

  'Bluebells ... foxgloves ... most of the flowers with bells came from my realm.'

  In the early months, Landsman made regular trips through the pillars in the hope of spotting a passi
ng ship that would rescue them, but, as time went by, he did this less and less. Eventually he left a written record of their experience somewhere on the island where it would be safe from weather and painted a large notice on a rock near the pillars explaining where this record could be found. He hoped if anybody ever landed on the island, they'd find the diary and follow his family into the Analogue World to bring them home.

  Nobody ever did. Landsman updated the record every six months at first, but this dropped to once a year, then every few years. Eventually he stopped updating altogether. By now he was middle aged and little Arana a full-grown woman. The younger members of the families were intermarrying and producing winged children of their own on the far side of the pillars. The new generations had never experienced the Realm of Faerie (beyond that tiny patch of barren island) and had little interest in it. Their home was among the plants and flowers of the Analogue World.

  It was nearly four hundred years before anyone else landed on that remote little island. But it was eventually visited by a wizard named Arion, who was experiencing some problems with the engine of his fishing boat.

  'You have wizards in the Realm of Faerie?' Henry asked eagerly.

  Pyrgus blinked at him. 'They're just people who can make things work. Like Mr Fogarty here.'

  'Get on with it,' growled Mr Fogarty.

  Arion found the notice on the rock, faded but still readable. He followed the directions and rescued Landsman's record, which had survived rather well. But search as he might, he couldn't find the basalt pillars with the fire between them or any sign of the original shipwreck. He decided the record was a hoax, but since it was a centuries-old hoax it had curiosity value, and he donated the documents to the library of the Wizards' Guild.

  'You have a Wizards' Guild?' Henry interrupted again, but Mr Fogarty shushed him.

  Landsman's record lay unnoticed for a further sixty years before it was taken up by an adventurous nobleman named Urticae. Pyrgus called Urticae a Faerie of the Night without explaining what that meant.

  'You have nobles?'

  'Shut it, Henry!' Fogarty growled.

  With nothing better to do, Urticae managed to find the original island. He couldn't locate the basalt pillars either, but he did discover evidence of an ancient earthquake that might have toppled them. Before long he'd convinced himself that the portal had really existed and sensed that an entrance to another realm could have important political and military possibilities. He also decided that the portal must have had something to do with natural conditions on the island. To the amusement of his family and friends, he spent the next three years visiting active volcanic sites in the hope of finding another one. The day after his thirty-third birthday he did.

  The new portal, only the second ever discovered in the Realm of Faerie, was on property owned -- but never visited -- by another noble, a Faerie of the Light named Iris. Urticae tried to buy the site, but Iris became suspicious and wouldn't sell. Urticae's House launched an attack on House Iris, thus beginning a conflict between Faeries of the Night and Faeries of the Light that was to cause trouble right to the present day.

  House Iris won the war and it was only after Urticae's forces were defeated that Iris himself found out what the fuss was all about. He searched the disputed property and eventually stumbled on the natural portal. Although he didn't recognise it for what it was, investigation soon enlightened him. His discovery was to lay the foundations of the vast power and wealth that eventually accrued to his family.

  Fogarty leaned forward. 'You mean there's just one portal between our two worlds now?'

  Pyrgus shook his head. 'No, eighteen have been discovered altogether. But they don't stay open. Some of them get buried, like they think happened to the first one. Some of them just stop working, nobody really knows why. New ones are found from time to time. There are about five known now, including the Purp -- ' Pyrgus stopped himself, then went on, ' -- including the one Urticae lost to Iris.'

  Fogarty's hard old features were expressionless, but there was a curious glint in his eyes. 'How come that one lasted so long?' he asked. 'Way you tell it, it must be thousands of years old.'

  Pyrgus hesitated, then said, 'That one was... modified.'

  Fogarty waited for him to go on and, when he didn't, asked, 'Modified how?'

  'The Imp -- the, ah, some wizards made a study. I mean, this was before I was born. The portal was just an ordinary portal for, you know, centuries, but House Iris eventually built machines to stabilise it and change the way it worked. The other portals just lead to one place each and two of them aren't even useful. One opens underwater near the bed of some ocean and one opens inside an active volcano. That's the only place they go. They're sort of just there in both worlds. But you can aim the House Iris portal so it opens up anywhere you want it to.'

  'That's the one you came through, isn't it?'

  Pyrgus nodded. 'How did you know?'

  'I think I'd have noticed a portal that was always just there at the bottom of my garden,' Fogarty said drily. 'It had to be one that opened up specially for the occasion. Why did you want to come here?'

  Pyrgus hesitated. 'I didn't. I wasn't supposed to come here at all. Or shrink to this size. Or grow wings. There's a filter on the House Iris portal that stops you shrinking when you translate, but it didn't work for some reason.'

  Fogarty sniffed. 'Sounds to me like you were sabotaged,' he said.

  Nine

  'How much of that did you believe?' asked Mr Fogarty.

  Henry blinked. He'd believed it all. 'Don't you think he's telling the truth?'

  'Not much,' Fogarty said. 'All that business about shrinking and growing wings...?'

  'But he's small and he does have wings!' Henry protested.

  'I know,' Fogarty said. 'But that doesn't mean he's shrunk or just grown them. He may have always been that way.'

  They were together in Mr Fogarty's cluttered living room, having left the fairy Pyrgus Malvae in the kitchen eating a potato crisp that was nearly as big as he was.

  'Why would he say he did if he didn't?'

  'To keep us off our guard,' Fogarty told him soberly. 'What could be more innocent than a sweet little fairy with butterfly wings ... in trouble?'

  'Keep us off guard about what'}' Henry asked.

  Fogarty pursed his lips, leaned forward and dropped his voice. 'The alien invasion.'

  'Alien invasion?' Henry echoed. 'Alien invasion?'

  'Well, you can drop that attitude for a start,' Fogarty said crossly. 'You know how many Americans got abducted by aliens last year? Six million!'

  'Mr Fog -- '

  'And that's just America. You think what it's like world-wide. Believe me, there's something going on and this may be a part of it. He's already admitted he comes from a parallel universe. What do you think that makes him -- a teddy bear? How far do you think you'd trust him if he was green with tentacles? Or that thing that came out of John Hurt's chest in Alien?'

  Henry hadn't seen Alien, but he imagined what came out of John Hurt's chest must have been pretty awful. He opened his mouth to say something, but Fogarty was in full flight.

  'You wouldn't, would you? You'd be on your guard. Think about it. If you looked like hell and dripped slime, wouldn't it make sense to come on like something a lot more harmless? So you use advanced alien technology to change your shape -- molecular adjuster, I'd say. But what do you change it to? Fairy, that's what! A fairy!'

  'Why?' asked Henry. He'd seen Mr Fogarty like this before and the only way to stop it was to meet it head on.

  'Why? Why what? Why a fairy? Because a fairy is familiar ...' he narrowed his eyes ' ... yet strangely unfamiliar. Every kid on the planet's seen fairies in a picture book, but how many've seen the real thing? Everybody loves a fairy -- tiptoes through the bluebells, butter wouldn't melt -- but at the same time, fairy says Don't mess with me otherwise you don't get the gold at the end of the rainbow. You heard that thing talking about gold, didn't you?'

&nb
sp; 'That's leprechauns,' Henry said.

  It stopped him. 'What's leprechauns?'

  'Gold at the end of the rainbow. Irish leprechauns. They promise you gold, but don't give it to you. Fairies just help plants grow.' Then, before Mr Fogarty could get his breath back, he went on, 'Anyway, if he was part of the alien invasion, why would he tell us he'd shrunk?'