by Jon Etter
“I don’t care how you feel! Because of you, I lost my home! My books! My . . . my . . . my everything! And all this time, you knew!”
“Well, I wanna tell all the time, but the Professor, he say ‘no.’”
The Professor’s jaw dropped, and he shoved Ginch off the rock they were sitting on. Ginch jumped up and shoved the Professor off the rock, and in no time at all, the two were wrestling around on the ground. Shade got up and grabbed her bag.
“’Ey, where you go, little Sprootshade?” Ginch asked as the Professor struggled to get out of the headlock Ginch had him in. “It’s-a dark and-a dangerous and-a—”
“I don’t care how dark and dangerous it is—I’m leaving!”
“Wait! We come-a with you!” Ginch and the Professor broke and scrambled to their feet.
“No, you don’t! We’re through!”
The Professor looked at the ground and scratched in the pebbles there with his foot. Ginch held up his hands. “Now, let’s-a just calm-a down and—”
“No! I will not calm down! And I will not spend one more second surrounded by a silly, stupid pixie—”
The Professor shook his head and pulled out a scroll that read “The University of Streüseldorff hereby bestows upon the Bearer of this Diploma the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.” Shade snatched it, crumpled it, and threw it in the fire.
“And a no-good—”
“I’m-a little bit good,” Ginch muttered.
“Two-bit—”
“I’m-a worth at least the four bits.”
“Lying—”
“I’m-a truth-challenged.”
“Cheating—”
“I play-a by the alternative rules.”
“Thieving—”
“That’s-a fair.”
“Slug-licking—”
“Just-a the one time . . .”
“Sorry excuse for a Brownie! I never want to see either of you ever again!” Shade roared. Shade spat on the ground. She stomped off. She turned her back on them and ran, tears streaming down her face. When she heard the two calling after her, she gave a mighty flap of her wings and soared into the ocean air, leaving them far behind, which is exactly where she hoped they would stay for the rest of her life.
In which a baby proves to be more
trouble than it’s worth (as they
usually do) . . .
Shade wanted to fly for days until any chance she had of ever seeing Ginch and the Professor would be long gone, but the cold ocean winds buffeted her so that she was forced to give up soon after she started. She landed, stumbling, near a cottage on a low cliff overlooking the sea. Taking shelter behind a barn, Shade cursed her luck, her inability to fly better, and, most of all, her former companions. I don’t need them! she thought. I’ll be much better off on my own, just like I’ve always been.
The feelings of loss and betrayal crashed over her like the white-capped waves of the sea on the nearby rocks, and she sobbed deeply, the sort of all-body, soul-emptying sob that comes when we fully give ourselves over to heartbreak.
When the tide of her sorrow finally ebbed, she was puzzled to still hear crying. She crept along and peered around the edge of the barn. A hyena-headed goblin, a tall wolf-headed wulver, and a leathery-skinned spriggan, all wearing red caps, were gathered around a squat, warty, green-skinned, pot-bellied little bald man with a pig’s snout and short horns poking out from his forehead. The little green man was clad in a diaper, held a smoldering cigar in his hand, and cried and fussed, sounding just like your baby sister Letitia does any time you’ve become really engrossed in a good book (as opposed to reading a book like this one, in which case a squalling infant should be a pleasant distraction).
“Das ist gut!” the wulver said, nodding approvingly.
“’Course it’s good, youse mooks!” the little man replied in a deep, raspy voice. “I know my bidness!”
“We just need to make sure you got your act down before we do this job,” the hyena-head goblin said. “So let’s see the baby body.”
The little man took a couple puffs of his cigar and then began to shudder and shake violently. Amidst the convulsions, his skin began to lighten, his features soften, his horns retract into his skull. When it was all done, there he stood, looking exactly like a human baby. “‘There ya go, pally,” the changeling said, chomping on his cigar with now-toothless gums. “Ya wanna a baby—bam!—ya gotta baby!”
“All right, let’s do this,” the goblin said, clapping his hands together. The sinister troop of fairies crept—or, in the case of the changeling, toddled—to the house and crouched under a shuttered window. As Shade watched, the spriggan began to inflate, its droopy, wrinkled skin filling up and drawing taut, until it towered over the others. The wulver picked up the changeling and handed him up to the spriggan, who lifted him up to the window, opened the shutters, and dropped him inside. After a moment, a tiny pair of hands handed a baby, completely identical to the changeling, out to the spriggan.
Watching all of this, Shade forgot her own problems and worried instead about the infant. They’re stealing that poor baby! Shade thought, covering her mouth to stifle a cry of horror. But Sir Justinian said that was completely outlawed! Somebody has to stop them!
Knowing that she must do something but with no idea what or how, Shade silently trailed the red-capped gang to a copse of trees further along the cliffs. She watched as they approached a campsite where a hyena-headed goblin identical to the first tended a fire. “You get it, brother?” he asked, picking his teeth with a small chicken bone.
“We got the little beastie, Laffer,” the identical goblin declared, holding up the baby who peered about and burbled.
The other goblin made a face. “Disgusting. Put it in the cage so it doesn’t crawl away, Gaffer.”
“Right.” The brother handed the baby to the wulver, who walked to the edge of the camp where a large metal cage, big enough to hold a couple hunting dogs, sat. He opened the hinged top panel and lowered the baby to the bottom. The baby immediately rolled over, sat up, and rattled the cage.
“Vy boss vant kinders?” the wulver asked, joining the others around the fire. “Very little meat on bones.”
“She’s not gonna eat the thing, Wolfgang,” Laffer explained as he handed out cups and filled them from a wineskin hanging around his neck. “She or somebody else is gonna take that thing, pay us very well for it, and then raise it up to be a warrior for the Sluagh.”
“’At little fing’s gonna be a warrior?” the spriggan sneered. “Oi could squish it ’tween me toes wivout ’alf tryin’.”
“Give it time, Struggs,” Gaffer replied. “Eventually that thing’ll be as big as Wolfgang over there, and it’ll be able to swing around iron weapons—”
“In the service of our noble Queen Modthryth,” Laffer interrupted. He held up his cup. “Long may she reign.”
“As long as the money’s good!” Gaffer added.
“And the drinks are strong!”
They all laughed and drained their cups, refilled them, and drained them again as Shade watched from a safe distance. If I wait a little and they drink enough, maybe I can sneak the baby away and back to his parents, she thought.
Drink enough they did. Cup after cup of wine gurgled down their throats until every one of them was loud and loopy and stumbly.
When she thought the gang suitably distracted (and wobbly), Shade crept over to the cage, stood on her tiptoes, and ever so quietly opened the top of the cage. She tried lifting it to see if she could tilt it onto its side, but with the baby inside (who cooed at her) it was too heavy. No sweat. I’m getting good at flying, Shade told herself as she fluttered up and dropped into the cage. I’ll just grab the baby and fly it on ho—ugh!
It was then that Shade realized that while flying may not be that hard, flying while carrying a sizable load is, and flying with a baby almost as big as you is impossible. Shade couldn’t even pick up the baby, let
alone airlift him out of the cage. She also learned (just as you did when you were three and they brought your little brother home from the hospital all red and wrinkly and wrapped up like a burrito) that if you grab a baby that doesn’t know you and start poking it and prodding it and try to yank it up by its clothes, it will scream and cry. Quite loudly.
“Shh! Quiet!” Shade whispered as the baby wailed. “I’m saving you, you stupid baby, so shut up!”
Babies, however, are notorious for not shutting up when you kindly ask them to, and this boy was no exception. In spite of Shade’s best efforts to calm him (which, let’s be frank here, were not very good and mostly consisted of her patting him roughly and muttering words under her breath that would make sailors blush), the baby’s cries were so shrill and piercing that Shade had no idea that the spriggan had come over to see what the trouble was until he slammed the top of the cage down.
In which things go from bad to
better to much, much worse . . .
“Larfer! Garfer! Come see what oi caught!” the spriggan called.
“Wuzzat?” Laffer shouted. The goblins and wulver stumbled over to the cage.
“Vas ist das?” Wolfgang the wulver asked, peering blearily at Shade. “Ein sprite?”
“Now what is a sprite doing in our cage?” Gaffer asked.
I’ve got to think of a story and quick, Shade thought. “Um, I was . . . just . . . uh . . .” Stupid brain! If Ginch were here he’d be on his third or fourth lie by now.
“She were troyin’ to steal our baby, she were,” the spriggan said before licking at something black and rotten-looking stuck between his teeth.
“What? No! I was just . . .” Think. What stupid reason could a sprite have for . . . “He’s . . . on my acorn . . . and I was trying to get him off!”
“What acorn?” Laffer asked as he and his brother both put their hands on their hips and cocked their heads back.
“The acorn I was tossing! Yes,” Shade continued, trying to sound like one of the more air-headed sprites she knew back in Pleasant Hollow. “I was practicing my acorn tossing. I mean, you can’t really expect to be great at acorn tossing if you only toss them when you’re playing acorn toss—you’ve got to toss all the time, giving a 111% tossing effort every time you toss even when it’s just tossing for funsies instead of a serious, league-level tossing, right? So I was tossing—111% tossing—and I missed, and it fell in the cage, and then your larval human rolled over on it and I was just trying to—”
“Vy toss in die nacht?” Wolfgang asked pointing to the sky.
“Um . . . I’m in a . . . acorn toss . . . night league? I mean, sure you can just play games in the day, but if you really want to take your acorn tossing to the next level, you need—”
“Oi!” The spriggan, who had circled around the cage, exclaimed. “You’ve got the bloody Owl’s markin’s, you ’ave!”
“Owl?” Gaffer asked.
“The Great Owl! The one what done the boss’s face, roight?”
Done the boss’s face? Shade’s blood ran cold. Oh, no! They work for—
“Well, Perchta will definitely want to get a look at you when she comes, owl-back,” Laffer said as he snapped a padlock on the top of the cage.
“But . . . but . . . I was just . . . tossing acorns,” Shade stammered.
“Yeah? Well, I don’t give an acorn toss what you were doing,” Gaffer laughed. “You’re ours until the boss shows up, at which point you’re hers if she wants you, and Struggs’s to eat if she don’t.”
The spriggan grinned and drooled a little. “Taste loik chicken, sproits do, wiv a noice buggy finish.”
Shade shook the bars of the cage and slammed herself against the top as the baby wailed. “Let me out!” she screamed.
Wolfgang tapped Gaffer’s shoulder. “Maybe ve get bonus for ein sprite, ja?”
Shade racked her brains for something she could do to save herself but could think of nothing. If only I had help. If only I had—“Sir Justinian! Sir Justinian! If you can hear me, help! Help!”
“Scream your head off if you want,” Laffer said. “Ain’t nobody around for miles to—”
“’Ey!” someone shouted from over by the campfire.
The goblin gang and Shade all turned. It’s him! It must be him! Shade exulted. He heard my calls for help!
A figure stepped out of the shadows and into the light of the campfire. It was a small figure in a too-tight brown suit with a red cap pulled over the top of his short-brimmed brown hat. In his hands, he shuffled a deck of cards. “Anybody wanna play-a the game or two?”
“Ginch?” Shade whispered under her breath. What the donkle is he doing here?
“What the donkle are you doing here in our camp?” Gaffer growled as he and his brother stumbled toward Ginch. “Who the dingle-dangle are you?”
“Me? I’m-a Antonio Chicolini. The boss, she send-a me,” he said, pointing at the red cap atop his hat.
“One of us, eh?” the spriggan said, stalking over and bending down low to look Ginch in the eyes. “Roight—’Oo exactly is our boss then?”
“The Doochess of-a the Sighs. About so tall, got-a the scar on-a the cheek, yells all of the time. Anyway, she tell-a me to tell-a you that the hunt, it run-a long so—’Ey! You got-a the sproot in there with-a the bambino!”
“Yeah, we caught her trying to—”
“Has she got-a the owl on the back?”
“Yeah! How do you—”
“The boss, she look-a for that sproot! And you catch-a her! Oh, the boss, she’s-a gonna give-a you the big, big bonus for this!”
The red-capped gang all looked pleased by the news. “I tell you ve get ein bonus!” Wolfgang said proudly.
“Yeah, you definitely get-a the bonus,” Ginch said. He gave his deck a quick shuffle. “So now, since we got-a the time, maybe we see who gets-a the . . . extra bonus? Who’s-a in, eh?”
There was general agreement that this was an excellent idea, so Ginch gathered them over by the fire and dealt a hand. Shade turned away and squinted into the darkness. If Ginch is here, she reasoned, then somewhere around here must be the—“Professor!” she whispered when the dandelion-headed pixie sprang on his grasshopper legs silently out of the dark and landed in front of her, grinning, with his arms held out to either side. “What are you two doing here?”
The Professor held a finger to his lips to silence her, then crouched down by the crying baby and stuck his tongue out and puffed out his cheeks. The baby stopped crying and looked at him. He did it again, and the baby giggled. The pixie reached in, gave him a tickle under the chin that made him coo, then reached deep into a pants pocket and pulled out a big ring covered in what looked like a hundred keys. He chose one, tried it in the padlock, and then tried another when that one failed.
Key after key the Professor tried, pausing occasionally to make a face or tickle the baby, while Shade kept glancing nervously toward the campfire, fearful that one of the Sluagh gang would look their way. Fortunately, Ginch kept the gang’s attention by telling stories and jokes and making sure that each player won a hand or two early on so that they focused all the more on the game as Ginch started to win more and more.
Eventually, after many, many tries and many, many card games, the lock snapped open. The Professor gave Shade a thumbs-up and silently lifted the top of the cage. Shade fluttered out. When she landed, the Professor grabbed her arm and tried to run, but Shade didn’t budge. “We can’t go yet!”
The Professor nodded and tried to go again but was again stopped by Shade. “We have to save the baby! We can’t just leave him here.”
The two looked over toward the card game to see a troubled looking Ginch looking back. He made a slight shooing motion with his hand in their direction.
“The baby,” Shade mouthed at him.
Ginch frowned and repeated his shooing motion.
“Vat are you doink?” the wulver asked. “Vit your hand—vat are
you doink?”
“Oh, this?” Ginch shook his hand more vigorously. “I just got-a the rummiatism. I give-a it a shake or two to work-a out the—”
A couple cards, both of them the Ace of Hearts, flew out of his sleeve and hit the spriggan on his long, crooked nose. All the gang members stood up and surrounded Ginch.
“That’s-a funny!” Ginch shook his head. “I wonder how-a those cards accidentally get in-a my sleeve . . .”
The spriggan reached down, grabbed the back of Ginch’s coat, and hauled him up to eye level. The little brownie’s legs dangled several feet above the ground.
“You can think about it while we accidentally peel you like a grape,” one of the goblins growled, pulling out a dagger.
“Or while oi accidently eat ya for me bedtoim snack,” the spriggan said, drool running down his chin.
Ginch gulped and, for the first time since Shade met him, seemed much like the Professor for a moment: completely speechless.
In which Shade sees the Professor
perform and gets menaced by a
mother . . .
As Shade and the Professor watched in horror, the spriggan lowered Ginch to the ground and held him in place with his arms pinned to his sides. The hyena-headed goblin stepped forward and placed the tip of his knife against Ginch’s throat. “Now let’s see . . . Where should we start?”
Shade grabbed the Professor by his lapels. “We’ve got to do something! They’ll kill him!”
But what? Shade wondered. I can’t pull the owl trick on them—they’re too big. Maybe we could distract them but—
“H-h-h-hey!” a sweet, high voice shouted. The Professor bounded over to the campfire. “St-st-stop!”
“The Professor can talk?” Shade whispered.
“You can-a talk?” Ginch gasped, as the Professor landed on nimble feet next to him. “Since when can-a you talk?”
“S-s-since always. B-b-b—”
