The Monsters of Stephen Enchanter (26 page)

The Jolly Executioner pretended not to have heard Youngster.  “Because of this,” he said, “and to further the purpose of our good King Erich III—may he rule long and prosper greatly, and may all his enemies fall before him—”

“Do you have to say that every time?” Letitia interrupted.  “Can you just call him ‘King Erich’ or ‘the king?’“

“As you should know,” the Jolly Executioner answered severely, “the correct way to refer to our esteemed monarch traditionally includes a benediction.”

“Yes,” said Letitia, “I’m sure it does—but it takes forever and sounds silly.  Anyway, I don’t see why he should prosper all that much.  If you ask me, the only way he thinks he can prosper is by raising taxes or invading a foreign nation, and while that may make him richer, it certainly doesn’t help the rest of us.”

“Do you pay taxes?” Youngster wondered.  “I mean, you were living with a witch in the middle of the Fairwoods.  Even if witchcraft were legal and you weren’t in hiding, I somehow doubt—”

“Maybe I just want to lessen the burden of taxes upon the rest of you.”

“I would certainly like to be spared that burden,” Stephen said.  “Enchanters have to pay through the nose.”

“And quite a nose yours is, too,” said Letitia.  “With a nose like that, it should be no problem to pull out coins.”

“And with a nose held as high as yours—” Stephen began, but the Jolly Executioner cut him off midsentence—which was just as well, because he had yet to come up with a witty finish for his comeback, and it would have fallen decidedly flat.

“You two are not in this company to bicker,” the Jolly Executioner rebuked them.  “Do you want to hear the rest of my explanation, or not?”

Stephen and Letitia fell silent, nodding.  Youngster stifled his laughter.

“As I was saying, our good King Erich III—may he rule long and prosper greatly, and may all his enemies fall before him—”

Letitia sighed, but did not otherwise object.

“—realized in his enormous wisdom that more stringent measures were needed to protect our borders.  If Faerie were an ordinary kingdom, he would have simply rallied his troops and marched upon it, or perhaps challenged its monarch to a contest of wits or duel of champions, in order to decide the matter.  But fairies are tricky and untrustworthy sorts—and much inclined to cheat by using their glamours and other evil magic—even when they do agree to such competitions—competitions which they are much inclined to call ‘games’ and treat with contempt and humor instead of with the dignified seriousness which they deserve—”

The Jolly Executioner hesitated, apparently having lost his train of thought in this rambling digression.  Then he rallied, and continued. 

“Thus, our good King Erich III—may he rule long and prosper greatly, and may all his enemies fall before him—decided upon another scheme, designed to mirror the deviousness of the fairies and thus win back our land and avenge his honor—or, at the very least, prevent Faerie from eating up any more of Locklost.”

“Please,” said Letitia, “get to the point.”

“We must be silent,” said Stephen, “and allow our great leader to speak.  How can he grant us the information we so dearly need if we are constantly interrupting him like the rude ruffians we are?”

“Truly,” said Youngster, “it’s a mystery.”

“Hush,” said the final member of the company, in a voice so intense and certain that they unthinkingly obeyed. 

“Pure iron is, as you know,” the Jolly Executioner went on, just as if there hadn’t been any interlude, “inimical to all fairy creatures.  In the forges of the Royal Blacksmiths was created specifically for me this battleax.  It is, as the enchanter will no doubt agree, of the very purest iron—or as pure as any iron can be, when molded.  I am assured that it will burn cold against all magic, and that with a single swipe, I will be able to slay any fairy as easily as if he were mortal man; furthermore, I am assured that no enchantment or glamour can touch me while I hold it, nor betray me, nor sway my hand from the killing blow.”  He looked to Stephen and then, somewhat reluctantly, to Letitia.  “This is true?”

“Yes,” said Stephen immediately.  He could feel the unnatural, warping cold of the iron from here.  Letitia did not answer; her face had gone completely blank.  “No magic could alter that much iron.”  Then, “You plan to kill fairies?  You’re going to start a war with Faerie?  I don’t care how much iron you have; Locklost could never stand its own against all of Faerie—or against the Fairy Queen.”

“Not kill fairies,” said Youngster.  “You’ve missed the point—it’s much wilder than that—much more incredible and insane.”

The Jolly Executioner harrumphed.  “How do you know all this?” he demanded.  “You were never debriefed.”

“No, but Tinkerfingers told me,” said Youngster.  “He hears—heard—things.  He was around the castle a lot, in the last months before our departure.  And I always could wheedle anything out of him.”  Youngster’s voice ended quietly, regretfully, and he fell silent.

“I don’t understand,” said Stephen, “or I hope I don’t.  What, exactly, are you planning?”

“I think it’s perfectly clear,” snapped Letitia.  “He’s going to try to kill the Fairy Queen!”

“What!” cried Stephen, and the last of his companions exclaimed along with him, blanching.

“I’ll offer her one last chance, naturally,” the Jolly Executioner corrected, distaste at this forced diplomacy wrinkling his mood.  “We are civilized citizens of Locklost, not backstabbing treacherous fairies.”

“No, you’re not backstabbing,” said Letitia.  “You stab from the front, so you can see the light fading from your victims’ eyes.”

“There is that, yes.  Now, we’d better walk a little farther today; I want to put a few miles between these woods and us—I don’t trust that Robin character.  Once we’ve made some headway we can rest, and tomorrow start into Faerie.  Distances are variable within that land, but I have a talisman that should allow us to reach the Fairy Queen within a day or two, regardless of her location.”

“And what are we supposed to do?” Stephen asked faintly.  Forget being in over his head; he was in so deep that his feet were poking out the end of Trouble, just waiting for someone to come along and chop them off.  “I’m not holding any of your iron, not even for a life debt.”

“You?  Hold iron?  You’d be a disaster trying to wield my axe—even if you are able to lift it, which I sincerely doubt.  No; I’ll find other work for you.  You can be a prop or a distraction or something equally easy.  You can make a monster to eat the guards (or at least lead them on a merry chase) or you can bedazzle them—or, there’s an idea, you could bedazzle the Fairy Queen long enough for me to—”

He was cut off by Letitia’s bark of laughter.  “Bedazzle the Fairy Queen!  That enchanter couldn’t bedazzle a horse, let alone a person, and no one in Locklost or Faerie or this earth could bedazzle the Fairy Queen!”

“Not a horse,” said Stephen; “you’re right on that.  Horses don’t have enough brainpower to be bedazzleable.  Besides, bedazzlement’s illegal.”

“That didn’t stop you before.”

“Before?  Nonsense.  I’ve never bedazzled anyone—nor would I, even if I had considerable talent in such an area that, as you so bluntly pointed out, I do not.”

“You,” the Jolly Executioner told Letitia, “can stop criticizing and remember that I am your leader, and that you are here under my command.  You are not to challenge my authority or mock my enchanter.  Keep your unproductive ideas to yourself, and expend your effort upon thinking what you can do to help—instead of hurt—this mission.”

“I already know what Craggy and I can do,” said Youngster.  “We can stand armed and ready to attack, guarding your flanks.”  He laughed and shook his head.  “I’ve always wanted to see what fairies look like—not to mention Faerie!”

“You’re going to kill their queen,” Stephen pointed out.

“I never said the situation was perfect.  I’m trying to look on the bright side.  Sometimes, these things have to be done, whether we like them or not.”

The five remaining members of the company walked on into the night, still speaking intermittently.  Not one of them noticed the decrease in their numbers, or remembered ever having had a sixth companion.

“The flowers that bloom in the spring, tra la!

Have nothing to do with the case.”

—W.S.  Gilbert, The Mikado

The next day, the company began early.  They ate a light breakfast from what Letitia had been able to salvage, then walked.  They walked all that day and long into the evening, but did not reach the low stone wall that the Jolly Executioner had claimed marked the boundary to Faerie.  The next day they marched again, and the next, and the next.

“My estimate did not take into account our detour through Robin’s Woods,” said the Jolly Executioner.  “This is most unfortunate; it skews my calculations.”

“And whose idea was that ‘detour,’ I wonder?” Stephen muttered, but not loudly enough for the Jolly Executioner to hear.

“Can’t you use that talisman?” Letitia asked.  “You were so proud of it yesterday.”

“It will only work in Faerie.”

“How useless—only in Faerie?  Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that it doesn’t work at all.  I wouldn’t trust anything made by enchanters, if I were you.  Or was it the fairies who made it?”

“We are in Faerie,” grunted Craggy.  He spoke so seldom these days—since Chubblewooble—that Stephen had almost forgotten he could speak.  Certainly, his voice was pained and hesitant.  “This isn’t Locklost.”

The members of the company turned their heads this way and that, but not one of them understood what Craggy meant.  “It looks like Locklost to me,” said Youngster with a sigh.  “Same old everything.”

“Besides,” said Letitia, “we haven’t passed the wall yet.”

Craggy shrugged, and did not reply. 

“I wonder what Faerie does look like,” Youngster mused.  “I’ve heard so much about it, but everyone seems to have a different idea—or none at all.  Most agree that it’s beautiful, and I think it must be.  One thing is certain, it must be strange.  We can hope for beauty and excitement and wonder and awe, but strangeness is sure.  We’ll know the instant we step inside.”

“Even if we do somehow miss the wall,” added Letitia.

Stephen had never been in Faerie, nor previously within fifty miles of it, but he was inclined to agree with Youngster and Letitia.  Whatever Faerie was like, it wouldn’t be this—this ordinary.

Stephen squelched across the slushy snow and sighed to himself—and then his sigh turned gasp, as he spotted something ahead.  “Do you see that?” he asked the others, but the Jolly Executioner, Youngster, and Letitia were already racing forward, sprinting toward the low stone wall.

In some unspoken synchrony, the company stopped on the Locklost side of the wall and gazed over.

“It looks the same,” said Youngster, confused.

“From this side it does,” said Letitia.  “There’s no telling what it looks like on the other side.”

“Let’s step over, then,” said Stephen.  The Jolly Executioner nodded and, together, the company did just that.  Then they stopped again, staring.

“It’s beautiful,” Youngster breathed.  “It’s just like I imagined.”

Faerie was nothing like Locklost.  Oh, it was still winter, and snow lay thick upon the ground—except that while in Locklost such descriptions as ‘soft as cotton’ and ‘glittered under the sun like a million stars’ were mere fanciful poetry, in Faerie they were true.  The snow was brilliantly bright and startlingly soft and deliciously cold.  Where it lay untouched upon the ground it was pure and innocent, a balm to the broken heart and weary soul.  However, where feet had trod upon it, it was marred and sinister.  But there were few marks upon the snow; everywhere it was unnaturally smooth and perfect, beyond the dreams of mortal man.

Stephen had once heard that Faerie was a mesh of the most extreme conditions found in the human world.  In some places, it was stunningly beautiful; in others, it was terrible and baleful and malevolent, filled with monsters so hideous they burned the eyes and rotted the brain.  It was also said that the fairies too were a mix of these opposites: they were as achingly beautiful as monsters were achingly horrible, but while monsters loved beauty and respected bravery, fairies could be boundlessly cruel.

“Beautiful,” Youngster said again, gazing awestruck.  “It’s like stepping through a veil and seeing the world as it ought to be—like it is in stories and poems and (hah!) fairytales.  Everything is brighter, more real.  I can practically feel magic crackling through the air—and what are those glittery flying things?”

“Flying things?” Stephen asked, trying to follow Youngster’s pointing finger.  “Like ladybugs?”

“No!”

“Fireflies?”

“No, they’re—”

“Good; I’d have thought you mad if you’d claimed to see fireflies in winter.”

“Here, I’d almost believe there could be.  I imagine the Fairy Queen makes the season whatever she wants, in whatever combination pleases her.  She can make it eternal spring or midsummer or the depths of unfathomable winter.”

Stephen considered this.  “I think winter is fairly easy to fathom,” he ventured.  “It’s generally very cold and snowy.”

“Ruin the mood, will you?” said Youngster, but his rebuke was lighthearted; he was far too star-struck to be angry.  This was a blessing, for Stephen’s comment had originated more in habit than deep thought, and he had already forgotten it.

They stood looking at the view a few minutes longer.  The Jolly Executioner adjusted his hood, so to better peep through his eyeholes.

“What do you see?” Craggy asked.

“Paradise,” Youngster sighed.  “Pristine winter.  Perfection.  The winter that one dreams about, and thinks one remembers from one’s childhood, although one’s adult mind knows it was never so.”

“This looks different to you than before?”

“Don’t be absurd,” Youngster snapped, much offended at this slight to Faerie.  “This land is nothing like Locklost!”

“Don’t trust to appearances,” Letitia told Craggy.  “It’s possible that what you’re seeing is a glamour; the fairies are famous for it—and famous for tricking unwary travelers.  There’s no cause to be ashamed; glamours can affect even the most prepared.  Now that we’ve crossed the wall, we must all be careful.  Find something iron and hold onto it, if you can.  The enchanter and I can rely on our magic, but you three have no such protection.”

Craggy did not meet her eyes.  He kept his head down and his mouth closed.

“Which way?” Letitia asked, looking to the Jolly Executioner.  “Pull out that famous talisman of yours and show us.”

The Jolly Executioner gave her a long, slow, hooded look, and dug one hand inside his pocket, shuffling.  He frowned, and shuffled inside the other pocket.  “You stole it!”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The talisman!  It’s not here—you’ve taken it.”

“I have done no such thing.  Check your other pockets; you’ve just put it in the wrong one.”

“I have not!” the Jolly Executioner bellowed, but checked all his pockets anyway—and then demanded that the rest of the company do the same.

It was no good; the talisman was gone.

“We’ll just have to walk and hope for the best,” the Jolly Executioner fumed.  “And when I find out who took the talisman—”

“Or find the hole in your own pocket.”

“You, be quiet.  Follow me.”  The Jolly Executioner strode out into Faerie, not looking back to see if the rest of the company was following.

After about forty-five minutes of trudging through and over the perfect fairy snow (and leaving it marred and wretched behind them), the company came upon a very curious town.

The town was, first of all, incredibly beautiful and, second of all, incredibly fragile.  Where it began, it was a miniature sculpture, only about as high as Stephen’s knees.  The farther away it went, however, the bigger it became, until the houses were larger than normal sized.  This was done to such clever scale and perspective, that it seemed that no matter how distant the houses in the town were, they were always precisely the same height as the ones in front—but also blocked any view into the distance, for anything smaller than mountains.

The town was built entirely of glass and rose petals.  The glass was not formed like a window or wall of glass—that is, it was not clear and flat—but made up of billions upon billions of tiny shards, all balancing one atop the next with no apparent means of support, not even—and Stephen checked—magic.

Stephen knelt on the edge of the town and prodded the nearest building with his finger.  When he drew back his hand, his glove was stained with blood, and his finger stung.  Stephen pulled off the glove and examined the long, thin slice on the end of his finger.  “I didn’t feel it cut me,” he said.  “That’s sharp!  And I can feel it now.”  He stuck his finger in his mouth.

“We’ll have to find a way around,” said Youngster.  “I shouldn’t like to go through this—we’d be cut to shreds if we so much as tripped.  Besides, this place looks like it goes on forever.  But no matter; since we don’t know where we’re going, we might turn right or left or continue straight . . . unless . . . you don’t suppose the Fairy Queen lives here?”

“I don’t see how she could,” said Stephen, taking his finger out of his mouth.  “She’d get cut up too.”

“The town might not really go on all that long,” Letitia offered dubiously.  “Faerie is often said to have distorted distances and perspectives—and time and everything else.  Or this could be a glamour . . . the distance, I mean, not the glass; glamours don’t cut, and glamoured cuts don’t hurt.”

“We could scout,” Youngster suggested.  “Split up into two groups and see if there’s an easy way around.”

“No,” said the Jolly Executioner.

“No?” repeated Letitia.  “Just like that—no?  No explanation?”

“Enough time has been wasted,” said the Jolly Executioner.  “Our supplies are low; our horses lost.”

“We can hunt for more—” Youngster began, then checked himself as he understood.  “Faerie food,” he said.  “We need to get in and out without eating Faerie food.”

“And Robin confiscated most of our belongings,” said Stephen.  “Maybe we should go back and hunt outside Faerie before continuing.  Locklost is not yet far away, and it’ll be worth it, if we have to spend very long in Faerie.

“No,” said the Jolly Executioner, as unyieldingly as before.  “The Fairy Queen no doubt already knows of our presence.  We must press on—and this is the direction I choose.  Do not question me.  Enchanter!  Enchant our robes to protect us against the glass.  Work quickly, and then we will continue on our way.”

“I’ll try,” said Stephen, “but I can’t promise my enchantments will work; I’ve never gone against fairy magic before—or fairy workmanship of any kind.  This glass may not be glass at all, but some other, unfamiliar substance.  Even if I can provide some protection, it may be incomplete.”

“Do your best,” said the Jolly Executioner, “and hurry.”

Stephen did hurry, but the Jolly Executioner insisted that he enchant every bit of clothing they wore—a fact about which Letitia was not pleased.

“My attire is perfectly acceptable,” said she, “and does not need your magic.  Enchant my boots and gloves and be done with it.”

“You may be thankful for more protection later,” said Stephen, “even if it was provided by me.”

Letitia crossed her arms and glared, but she did allow Stephen to infuse her dress and cloak with magic, and didn’t make more than one or two dozen snide comments as she did so.  “If you wanted to save time,” she told the Jolly Executioner, “scouting would have been faster than waiting for your pet enchanter.”

The Jolly Executioner snorted and tapped his foot impatiently.  The moment Stephen was finished, he hefted his axe meaningfully.  “I go first,” he announced.  “If we run into trouble, my axe will cut through any fairy magic.”