by E. Archer
Cecil dropped to Ralph’s side and boosted him to a bookshelf handhold. “We’re not out of this yet,” he said as he raised another gloved hand to push Ralph up to the door.
It hadn’t occurred to Ralph to determine Chessie’s whereabouts, and he realized his error as he emerged from the carriage and heard lightning bolts popping about his head. He rolled over the side, landing in a ravine. Cecil plopped next to him soon after, his knee landing on Ralph’s chest and knocking Ralph’s breath out for the third time in as many minutes.
There are some phenomena narrators consider difficult-to-near-impossible to describe for readers who haven’t already had direct experience: childbirth, for example, or being flayed by dragonbreath. Similar is an aerial battle in which the two forces are a telegenic lightning-spouting duchess and a gaggle of fairies. Chessie’s lightning didn’t move in streaks but rather in spheres, globes of sizzling energy that engulfed anything careless enough to be flying within a few yards of their trajectory, then impacted the ground in dramatic explosions of light and soil and fairy parts. The fairies had numbers on their side, yes, but the sum potency of their offensive power was akin to a box of matches igniting. No matter what their volume, when foot-tall creatures battle an angry superduchess, the battle can only have one outcome.
Cecil unsheathed a wooden sword. “Fight me, not them!” he shouted.
Chessie paused in her lightning hurling long enough to scrutinize Cecil. “You hope to take on a duchess, boy?” she screeched.
“Do you refuse?” Cecil called.
Chessie replied by yelling at Ralph. “You,” she howled, “are not supposed to be alive.” And with that she hurled a lightning dart at his face.
Ralph cringed before what quickly became a searing heat, until Cecil flashed out with his sword and parried the sphere of light.
Chessie conjured a flaming shield to sizzle the half-dozen fairies who had thought to take advantage of her distraction. Charred, winged husks raining about him, Cecil yelled out again, “Do you yield?”
Chessie laughed and continued to incinerate fairies.
Cecil ordered the retreat.
He, Ralph, and the handful of surviving fairies fled to the cover of the trees.
CHAPTER XIX
Maintaining decorum is essential to any royal’s self-respect. It’s one thing to engage in a little firefight on a country road, rising above the masses like a demigoddess, simultaneously showing off your figure and your magical talents. It’s quite another to scrounge through the forest grubbing for little boys and fairies.
So when Cecil and Ralph plunged headlong into the woods, they were unaware that Chessie had turned her energies to summoning a new magical coach, one that wouldn’t do anything so improper as be attacked and fall down a ravine.
That said, quivers of lightning bolts exploding around one’s head tend to elevate one’s fight-or-flight response. When Cecil and Ralph led the charge into the cover of the forest, it was with the gusto of children fleeing punishment.
“Run as fast as you can for two minutes,” was Cecil’s screamed order to his compatriots.
It wasn’t a terribly sensible command, for a number of reasons. Among others: The remaining fairies were flying, not running; at that precise moment Chessie was picking mud from beneath a French-manicured nail; fairy watches all ran at different speeds; and two minutes of fleeing would lead most of them out of Chumpy Wood and into the Water-Warlock Dragonhunter-Damselfly Coven.
Of course, Ralph wasn’t aware of any of these pitfalls. All he knew was that Cecil barked his command very forcefully, and having one’s life nearly taken by a unicorn stiletto, a fairy axe, and a ball of lightning in rapid succession makes one highly susceptible to the suggestions of anyone who isn’t confirmedly intent on one’s own death.
So Ralph ran like he hadn’t run since fleeing Johnny Keenes in fifth grade. He ran like he hadn’t run since the New Jersey GameCon Festival was giving away free Campaign Quixotica demos. In short, he ran like he was fleeing a witchy duchess.
Trees whizzed by. The ground was alternatingly firm, soft, wet, and dry, but he never felt it. He kept seeing pulsing lights, but was unsure whether they were from Chessie’s lightning, some local ambient magic, or the blood pounding through his veins. He burst through spiderwebs and giant lichen. He ran heedlessly through a nest of Invidious Centipedes (thankfully the non-electric kind), and easily outran the centipede guard dispatched to prevent him from squashing through the second nest, which he promptly did. He shook centipede juice from his shoes, then jumped a lava pit and splashed through a puddle of Gnomefreeze, which would definitely hurt later. He ran until he was a good hundred feet deep into the Water-Warlock Dragonhunter-Damselfly Coven.
He stopped short, not because he spotted a Water-Warlock or a Dragonhunter-Damselfly (though there were plenty about), but because his lungs felt gashed. He bent over and heaved in air. It was then that he noticed the ground. Or rather, noticed that there wasn’t really any. There were only wiggly larvae, each no bigger than a fingertip. The grubs blindly thrashed about each other, and about the soles of Ralph’s sneakers. He shook off the larvae that had climbed onto his socks, and started walking in place, listening to the squishing sounds until he could make up his mind what to do.
Paths led in two directions:
To the right, the larvae thickened in quantity, forming dunes and drifts to the side of the trail. Distantly he could spy the cheerful colors of damself ly wings.
To the left, the grubs gave way to clear, rocky ground. He could glimpse at the turn of the path, however, a loose length of dirty cloth flapping eerily at the entrance to a cave. From far down the path came muted howls and the snapping of bones.
He glanced back the way he came. Chessie was undoubtedly still hunting him down. What should Ralph do?
If he should head down the safer (if gross) Dragonhunter-Damselfly Path, click here.
If he should investigate the Cave of the Water-Warlocks, click here.
Ralph had never been particularly squeamish about bugs. And he figured a known danger was better than one ominous and unimaginable. So he decided to head down the Dragonhunter-Damselfly Path.
A potentially offensive note: Here you are, with a chance to finally find out what a Water-Warlock is, and you choose to read about damselflies.
Your cat catches damselflies.
But I’m being unkind. Especially since you’ll soon see that the path you chose for Ralph is actually far more perilous. Honestly, I’m not a prudish narrator — I hope you know that — but going into what happened to him would require more delicate use of language than I’m capable of. Bear in mind that Ralph wasn’t wearing a shirt or pants, and that his skin tone happened to be the same color as a damselfly female in estrus, and that the particular Dragonhunter-Damselflies you’ve decided to force Ralph to contend with are eight-foot-long males with poor vision, as I quote from National Geographic (April 2006):
88 to 100 percent of all females had holes in their heads, caused by a male’s iron hold. The aptly named dragonhunter (Hagenius brevistylus) earned the dubious distinction of inflicting more severe damage than any other dragonfly: The spines of his appendages gouged the female’s eyes, punctured and split her exoskeleton, and pierced her head, so that a “maximally damaged” female had as many as six holes of varying sizes punched in her head.
THE END
Ralph decided that increasing quantities of larvae could only mean bad news, and headed instead for the Cave of the Water-Warlocks. He figured he’d only get the chance to be in Cecil’s wish once, and who wouldn’t be curious to find out what a Water-Warlock looks like? Sure, he might brush with death, would probably end up strapped on some Warlock Gurney and experimented on, but he’d undoubtedly find a clever yet self-effacing means to outsmart his foes.
Ralph crept into the forbidding cave and surprised the Water-Warlocks precisely as they were sitting down for sausages and ale. Since it had been a rainy spring, they had plenty of gr
og to mix from their distillery (the distant howling he had heard at the crossroads was escaping steam, the crunching the settling of giant grog barrels), and were delighted to invite Ralph to join them. They were even more delighted, afterward, to point Ralph toward Cecil’s base camp with their watery, warlocky fingers.
CHAPTER XIX (CONTINUED)
It’s a very sensible decision for fairies to live in trees. Any creature who flies should consider it — you’re safe from land predators, you have a good view of the surrounding countryside, and don’t underestimate those consistently breezy evenings. For obscure reasons known only to the race, however, fairies prefer to live between trees. Their houses are constructed of four different varieties of lumber and carefully suspended between trunks by lengths of Invidious Centipede silk. These tree-homes are lovely to look at, but so intricate that fairies spend almost all of their waking hours building and maintaining and getting lost in them. Which is a shame, really, since that leaves them so much less time for gamboling about meadows, visiting wishing wells, leaving money in return for teeth, and such.
The fairy village, normally a setting of great cheer, was almost silent as Ralph passed through on his way to Cecil’s camp. The only sound he heard was the mewing of orphaned fairy young.
Ralph, for his part, couldn’t have been less concerned with the sociology of fairy tree houses, or, frankly, the horrible events that had led to the piteous crying. He shambled through the forest, willing himself to ignore the centipede juice that had dried on his ankles like lacquer. He was also, now that the adrenaline of his flight from Chessie was fading, concerned that this royal wish-quest was going to lead to his rapid demise.
He checked his phone again, and found he still had no reception. Though — yes — at some point there had been enough that his emergency message to Beatrice and Daphne had been sent.
Adventure was well and fine, he decided, when there was a way to break away at any time. Video games could be powered off, after all, which is why their errand missions were more pleasure than drudgery. He could think of nothing better, right then, than shutting this particular quest down and sitting at his New Jersey kitchen table, leafing through Sunday advertising inserts or peeling string cheese.
He wished he’d had a chance to talk more to Cecil before he’d gotten lost, or (ideally) never been separated from him at all. He knew he could count on Cecil to plot with him how to escape. They would build a device to send a signal to the outside world, perhaps. All it would take, Ralph decided, was a sufficient power source and a GSM-compliant device with a transmitter that could be jiggered for alternative power sources and could command enough bandwidth —
What he wanted most, he suddenly realized, was not to be alone anymore.
Ralph crept between the house-festooned trees, stopping every few feet to listen for friends or predators. For a long time there was nothing but his own footsteps on pine needles. As the day dipped toward twilight, his heart sank. He didn’t relish spending the night in an unfamiliar wood in an unfamiliar world, hunted by a now-unfortunately-unfamiliar duchess. Thankfully, though, he eventually heard a smattering of tinkling sopranos and one recognizable baritone.
He found Cecil conferring with the surviving fairies around a campfire. “Ralph!” Cecil said, extending a hand. “Thank God.”
Ralph said hello back, though it seemed a ridiculously normal thing to say before five ashen-faced fairies and a hero dressed in a fashion-forward leather jerkin. Ralph stood back, arms outstretched, and waited for Cecil’s flood of queries.
But Cecil seemed as calm as when he’d picked Ralph up at the train station. He introduced the fairies — among the survivors were Vermillion and Fuchsia, whose arm was in a sling, making it doubly hard for Ralph not to stare at her bosom. Inexorable Pulse, it turned out, had perished beneath a carriage wheel. He was mourned, and three other fairies were introduced, their names too rapidly announced for Ralph to catch. They were a size larger than Vermillion and Fuchsia, and significantly uglier.
“Wild fairies,” Cecil explained after seeing Ralph’s focus, “are natural stock, not bred into lines. They’re the domestic shorthairs of the fairy world.”
“Huh, fascinating,” Ralph said. “So you’re buying into all this?”
The fairies stared at the crazy human in boxer shorts.
Cecil laid a firm hand on Ralph’s back and guided him out of the clearing. They stood under a tree house in the next clearing over. Cecil accidentally bumped it, and set it spinning like a piñata. “What do you think you’re doing?” he asked, his meaty breath coming over Ralph in waves. (Cecil hadn’t, Ralph quickly realized, packed his toiletries after all.)
“You’re mad at me? You’re sitting in a forest with fairies.”
“Watch your tone. They have good ears.”
“They’re not real. All this is made up to fulfill your wish.”
“I hear what you’re saying, man, I do, but they seem plenty real to me. Tell me those tears they cry aren’t real. So leave off.”
“What’s gotten into you? Chessie tried to kill us, and you’re playing it off like ‘no big deal, all in a day’s work for a hero!’ We have to get out of here. We die, and we’re dead. And I’ve come across a good thirty ways to die so far.”
Ralph was shocked to see tears standing in Cecil’s eyes. “Look,” Cecil said, “if you’re not going to be into this, lie low and keep out of the way. This is my wish, the only one I’m ever going to get, and it’s extremely realistic, and I’m totally into it. So I don’t need you to go poking holes in the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“Oh,” Ralph said quietly.
Cecil leaned his sword against a tree, sniffed, and dabbed his eye with a leather sleeve. “Now I feel like a moron,” he said, his voice cracking.
“Don’t feel like a moron,” Ralph said. “You’re right, this is pretty fantastic.”
“Have you noticed my cool new threads?” Cecil asked.
“Yeah, it’s like Runway Robin Hood,” Ralph said. “And are you bigger? You look jacked, man.”
Cecil looked at his arm and shrugged. “Yeah, the fairies have some crazy ambrosia — it’s like the highest-protein drink you could imagine. And don’t worry about the clothes — I’ll hook you up with some in a minute.”
“Rescue any damsels?” Ralph asked.
“I would, if I came across any. But I haven’t met a single one. It’s like Chessie didn’t cast any hot women.”
Ralph laughed. “I guess she doesn’t want the competition.”
“Come on, let’s go,” Cecil said. “I’m going to properly introduce you to the fairies, and you’re going to stop being a jerk about all of this.”
CHAPTER XX
Once he was dressed and introduced and applauded, Ralph found a space of log next to Prestidigitator, a stout fairy clad in moon-emblazoned blue robes and a floppy hat. From nowhere she announced, in an almost inaudibly high-pitched voice, “Fairy husbandry has been going on for centuries. City-folk breed us.”
“It’s nothing more than fairy slavery,” Cecil spat.
“Even worse,” said Fuchsia. Ralph dutifully concentrated on her hairline as she spoke. “Because most of us are used as objects.”
“Ralph understands slavery, as an American,” Cecil said. “Maybe he can explain how people think they can do something like that. That can be your role in the team: You’ll explain things. We’ll call you Explainer.”
“Can we consider other options?” Ralph asked.
“Recently the city dwellers have developed fairy farms,” Cecil said darkly, “which have resulted in a massive burst of production. Fairies live off the morning dew, so they don’t have to be fed. There’s virtually no cost to raising them. So that means fairies are cheaper than any animals or building materials. In the cities there are houses built of fairies, fairy-wing writing tablets, easy-care fairy houseplants. It’s gotten outrageous. And do you know who’s behind it all?”
“Yes! It’s Ch �
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“Chessie,” Cecil continued unabated. “She pretends to care about the people, but she’s just another blue blood, siphoning everything she can from the powerless. She’s making money off fairy frailty!” Cecil paced around the campfire. “I’ve been trying to do what I can, but she’s put a bounty on my head. I’ve nearly been killed at least a dozen times.”
“I’m sorry.”
Cecil nodded proudly. “In only two weeks, I’ve become an underground hero. The peasantry has bestowed on me any number of magical items — ancient swords, fire wands, some really brilliant armor — but I still don’t stand a chance in open rebellion. So I’ve fled here to Chumpy Forest. The Dragonhunter-Damselflies keep the royal militia away, and this is also the largest surviving population of wild fairies.”
“Was the largest surviving population,” Forest Keeper added glumly, “until today.”
“I’m trying to raise an army. Admittedly, today we took a huge hit — though at least now we have you to aid us, Explainer.” He clasped Ralph’s hand. “Can we count on you?”
“Of course. Tell me what you need. But first — how long have you been here?”
“It hasn’t been more than a few hours since we ran from Chessie, if that’s what you mean.”
“No, I mean ‘here,’ here. In your wish.”
Cecil scratched his shoulder in irritation. “I don’t see why we need to get into all this inconsequential stuff while zillions of fairies are suffering.” The fairies nodded grimly.
“I … okay, fine.” Ralph crossed his arms.
Cecil shrugged. “Jolly good.” He clapped his hands and turned to the rest of the fairies. “Okay, let’s get on with the specifics. We’re down to five of us, since Fuchsia needs to stay here and care for the orphans. I’m going to take the bulk of the remaining fairies, and we’re going to do our best to band up any others we come across against the royal oppression. That leaves Explainer and Prestidigitator as our strike squad.”
