Authors: A.J. Aalto
Pods. Gold pods. And suddenly, helpfully, my brain remembered that besides copper and platinum, there was gold in the circuitry of Harry’s old iPhone. Gold for gold.
I pranced back inside and tapped the bar for another absinthe. This one wasn’t for a spell; this one was to fortify me against the cold and the wee monsters. I had bad memories of demanding that Batten pollinate me the last time I dealt with spriggans
“I take it back, Gareth Granger. You’re not crap and you don’t bite donkey balls. You’ve been a big help, sir,” I told the bartender. “A huge help. I will try to get two pods.” I shimmy-flung my way over to my bag again and retrieved the iPhone.
“Is there anything else I can do for you?
I thought about the yipping noise I’d heard earlier. “You wouldn’t happen to have a Do-It-Yourself Escape-A-Lycanthrope kit, would you?”
“What is a ly-can-?”
“A werewolf. Actually, in this case, a werefox.”
“Oh! Yeah, sure.” He reached under the bar and produced a whistle on a red, green, and black lanyard with a rooster print that I recognized as belonging to a soccer club: the Glentoran Colts. He showed it to me. I must have looked unimpressed, because he put it to his lips and gave it a little puff. I heard nothing. Then he placed it in the palm of my gloved hand.
I scratched the back of my neck with my other hand. “This is a whistle.”
“Yep.”
“This is a dog whistle.”
“Uh huh.”
“I saw these at Snarf Mart on sale for three dollars.”
“Aw, man,” Gareth said. “I paid full price.”
I looped the lanyard over my neck, doubting it would help, but figuring it probably couldn’t hurt. The clurichaun seemed pleased that I’d accepted it, which did cause me a moment’s concern. The stoned guys gurgled something that sounded like good luck. I didn’t bother muttering
look who screwed up
because neither of them would remember it when they sobered up. “It’s all good,” I told myself, thrumming with my protection spell. “Who needs them? Not Glenda. Glenda’s got this.”
I pranced back out into the garden.
THE THORNS WERE INTIMIDATING
, but not as much as the rustling noise coming from the frost-tipped high grass. “See, this is why I need a flamethrower and a robot army,” I muttered to an audience of zero. “But nooooobody listens to Marnie.” I took Harry’s old iPhone out of the back pocket of my jeans. Would I have to crack it open to show them the gold, or would they believe me? There before me was about two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of Lilith’s Heart; it made the witch in me want to weep at the plentiful bounty of it. It was one of the most powerful psychic boosters of all time; if you were iffy about performing a spell, adding even a single shaving of it nearly assured you success; the problem being that it tended to favor black magic over white or green.
Rescue-artifacts
, I remembered the Overlord saying. How was the herb harvest a rescue? Was I supposed to liberate this patch from the spriggans by claiming the pods? Or was I supposed to free the patrons inside by giving the clurichaun back his yard and his pub? I didn’t need the Lilith's Heart (
Well, not a lot of it,
my traitorous hedge-witch brain reminded me) and, thanks to Harry’s wealth, I didn’t need the money that would result in my selling it to my suppliers. I only needed one pod for the quest.
I crouched near the grass and waited, hoping the glamour spell currently drying to a tight sheen on my face would make me seem a like friendly, appealing creature to approach, instead of a dancing-legged DaySitter who reeked like a drunken anise salesman.
There was a rustle directly in front of me and a little green man strode out, puffed up self-importantly, chin up. He was about the size of my hand. I was not fooled by his size; his species was savage and had excellent reflexes. If I wasn’t careful, the spriggan’s razor-sharp teeth could tear a chunk off my face before I even saw him coming.
The other two came out curiously, wide black eyes darting between their leader and me. They were smaller than him, and happier in the background.
I showed the biggest one the old iPhone. “Hullo, Professor Pfaffenzeller. I come to make a trade. I have gold in here. And you have gold right there. Gold for gold.”
Pfaffenzeller squinted at me suspiciously, cocked his head, and studied the contraption in my gloved palm. I turned it over for him to see all sides, demonstrated putting an earbud to my ear. This excited him. His tiny butt wiggled as his stumpy legs brought him two steps closer to my bent knees, and he looked up, fascinated, as I slid the volume up a bit. I offered him the spongy earbud. He gave it a sniff, then a lick, then took it between his two green hands and propped it against the side of his face. I turned on a song, volume low. He vibrated, jerking with surprise, and chattered at the two others, who came forward eagerly, having decided I was safe enough.
I took a slow, deep breath and mentally thanked the Dark Lady for my prior experience with spriggans. The iPhone played some of Harry’s French classical chamber music. I stayed in a crouch, patient to let them explore the concept of music in the device. They’d played music it in the pub before, but they looked at the iPhone, patting it with happy hands, as though it were a magic box with prophetic voices. Out of curiosity, I tapped it a couple of times, skipping to Harry’s newest favorite music, Korean pop, and a band called Girls’ Generation, whose infectious but nearly incomprehensible “Run Devil Run” streamed from the earbuds. Most of the song was in Korean, but I wanted to see what would happen when the singer flipped to English. In the meantime, it made me smile to watch them shake their tiny booties to the beat.
When the band said “run, devil, devil, run, run,” I told them very seriously, “The devil is a woman wearing a black latex cat suit. She wants to steal my soul. That’s what devils do.”
Professor Pfaffenzeller nodded once, seeming to agree. I couldn’t read his black eyes, but he handed the iPhone over his shoulder to Captain Tuschoff and Doctor Von Nockelstein, and displayed the seed pods with a sweeping arm. Was this an invitation to take one?
I said respectfully, “Thank you for dealing with me, Professor Pfaffenzeller. I am pleased to make your acquaintance.” I eyed the seed pods. Now, how was I going to take one, and convince the spriggans to move to another living space? I had relocated a Stonecoat boggle from a pit mine, but had involved a lot of bonking and slobber and some impromptu cross-country rugby. This was apt to be sharper and pointier, if much tinier. Before I could broach the idea of convincing them to fuck off, politely or otherwise, the Blue Sense slammed into me from between my shoulder blades. Something angry was approaching, and fast.
A yipping bark. The back door thumped open and I didn’t even wait to face it; I bolted for the outhouse, pelting in an awkward, hurried step-dance across the frozen ground.
Damn prancing legs! Come on!
I whipped open the door, spun in, and slammed it behind me. The slide-lock was rusty and since the door didn’t line up with the frame, it barely fit. Heart thudding, I thumped the lock with the heel of my gloved hand several times to wedge it over securely.
“Shitspitter!” I gasped, pressing against the door when a thud rattled the lock. There was a sound like furry paws scrabbling against the wood.
I shook my gloved fist in the air, not that he could see it from my hidey-hole in the outhouse. “Folkenflik!” I shouted, and it sounded like a curse. Not tall enough to look out the little crescent moon cut-out in the door, I hopped several times before jumping up on the bench seat, avoiding the hole. I leaned over to press one eyeball up against the cut-out and peered at the activity outside. A familiar lithe shape in liquid-black latex cat suit stepped out of the back door of the Stout Ginger Prince.
Sayomi. She looked smug. She had my coat— Harry’s navy wool coat —over her shoulder like a cloak. Why hadn’t she gotten the same tricky clurichaun bullshit as I had?
Fickle fairies
. While her fox paced back and forth eagerly in front of the outhouse door, mouth open and huffing steamy canine breath, Sayomi produced a small metal can, popped the cap off, and started spurting liquid all over the gold pods. The stink of butane hit my sensitive nostrils over the smell of Folkenflik’s unwashed fur. She reached in my pocket and took out Harry’s cigarette pack, dumping out the engraved lighter inside. She flicked it with her thumb and set light to the closest grass, stepping back delicately as the patch caught fire with an impressive
foomph!
I grabbed at the door with my fingernails angrily, trapped by the threat of a lycanthrope bite, wanting badly to kick Sayomi Mochizuki in the throat. My go-bag was inside, under Batten’s head. So was his. My gun was in Batten’s waistband. That was probably really dumb, considering he was stoned off his ass. Where was the clurichaun? Where were the damn spriggans? If they were having a miniature rave while this bitch torched my quest pods, I was going to stomp on their itty-bitty asses.
A green missile, then another and another burst from the brush and attached to Sayomi’s knees and an ankle, wrapping bodily around her. She squawked and did a little dance backward, shaking her leg as if to dislodge a humping mutt. When the first one reared his head back to strike, I had a brief second to wonder if those pointy teeth would make it through the latex; her hair-raising shriek confirmed it. The other two began gnawing viciously. Sayomi’s hands started slapping at them, but she might as well been trying to pry off a great white with a Q-tip. Not thinking, she fled directly into the fiery bush. The spriggans climbed higher up her legs, leaving ragged little circles of pale skin, quickly welling with blood, showing through her leggings. The smell of melted plastic told me she’d better retreat the fuck up out of there before she was melted into her own pants. Her shriek rocked up through the octaves until only dogs and her stupid fucking were-Folkenflik could hear her, and she turned and ran to the edge of the snow to dive in. Folkenflik forgot his post and chased after her, his tail low, a feral growl trapped in the back of his throat as he nipped at the little green men. The spriggans were relentless in their territorial punishment, squeaking angrily as they nipped and chewed, little arms flailing for a better grip when they slid on her snow-slick latex, little feet kicking the air before latching around her again. Their attack was eye-blurring in its speed and fury. I’d been on the receiving end of a female spriggan’s wrath; these males were equally alarming. I was suddenly glad I’d tried negotiating.
Fighting off one of her three attackers, Sayomi regained her feet, her dark eyes full of fury. The spriggan in the uniform had crawled up to the nape of her neck and was enthusiastically chomping at her earlobe. As Harry’s singed coat fell off her shoulders, she set her sights on the outhouse. One of her big clunky black boots stomped the butane canister with a loud
crunk
, and a stream of lighter fluid shot across the small yard, spattering the outhouse door.
I yowled. “Don’t you dare, bitch.”
She ignored the gnawing, crunching her lovely face against the pain. She aimed a single punch at the back of her neck, but the spriggan was faster and zipped around to hang on her shoulder, striking at her collarbone with tiny needle teeth. She strode toward the outhouse, brandishing Harry’s JB-engraved lighter. She flicked it once more.
“Fuck!” I grabbed at my lanyard in a last ditch effort and blew into the dog whistle in three short bursts.
Folkenflik left the spriggan at Sayomi’s thigh and darted to the outhouse door.
Sayomi shouted, “Gunther, come!”
I blasted the whistle again and Folkenflik leaped up at the door.
“Come, Gunther!” Sayomi barked.
I blasted my whistle desperately and then yelled, “Get her, boy! Sic her!
BITE
!”
Folkenflik whipped around and launched at Sayomi’s chest, both front paws hitting solidly, knocking her back. The lighter flew out of her hand and slid across ice into the flaming bushes. In the light of the fire, Folkenflik’s shadow had, not one, but three tails. Last I saw the pair, Sayomi was running for her life with her own werefox on her heels and two spriggans abandoning ship, leaving her torn and bloody.
“Jiminy jaggoffs.” I pushed away from the door, back aching with tension, and stood on the bench seat for a second to catch my breath. I checked myself with gloved hands: not singed, not bitten by a lycanthrope, not nibbled by spriggans. My legs still throbbed weirdly with the need to gallop around. Outside, the fire crackled against wet snow. Maybe there would be a few seed pods left? I could see smoke billowing upward through the crescent cut-out.
Maybe not, Glenda.
But I was still alive, and come the next full moon, I wasn’t going to get furry. Well, not any more than my Lady Bic was used to handling.
I looked up at the sky to show Aradia proper gratitude for this blessed moment and my eyes caught a curled tangle of vines pushing into the space between two of the pieces of the outhouse's warped siding. I had to blink several times before I believed what I was seeing: two golden pods hanging from between the crevice. Lilith’s Heart. Maybe it wasn’t a
total
clusterfuck after all. I stood on my tiptoes and reached; it wasn’t enough. I took off my gloves, put them in the pockets of my jeans, and stood on the fractionally higher rim of the toilet seat. I stretched way, way up, my fingertips brushing the dangling pods. It just wasn’t the right angle. I leaned to the left slightly, felt my wet sneaker slipping, and tried to recover but my other foot slipped, and I felt myself falling. Into the shithole.
I jumped and flailed my arms in a last ditch effort, slapping at the pods on my descent. Half-grabbing them, I lost my grip as I fell. I threw my elbows out to catch myself, landing with the seat up to my armpits. I grunted, wincing as the old wood slammed under my arms. My feet dangled in empty space, and was obscurely if painfully grateful that three spriggans just don't poop that much. I was glad the hole was a snug fit, because I wasn’t going down into the old waste. However, when I tried to haul myself up, my hips did not want to cooperate. I wriggled, but to no avail. I wasn't going to fall in, but I wasn't going to lever myself out without some help, either.