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In Which I Ask for Something
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In some ways, Faerie contains all the classic elements mentioned in fairy tales, with many of its denizens matching storybook descriptions. But there are other fragments, too, such as the flying monkeys and the Wild Hunt, which derive from other types of stories. It’s as if human imagination were smashed into pieces and reassembled like Frankenstein’s monster. Which I shall no doubt encounternext.
~Big Book of Fairyland, “GeneralObservations”
By morning, Ihad a raging fever.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. The last I’d seen, the claws had torn my fingers apart. I doubted they could heal much without further attention. Likely the open wounds had become infected and festered. I really needed to inspect my hands, but with both bandaged, I couldn’t do it by myself.
Oh wait—yes, I could, with some judicious magic and some time alone, so I could make the assessment first, before worrying the others unnecessarily. Which might be hoping for a bit much, as the odds were that my prognosis would not be promising.
Still, neither Rogue nor any of the others seemed to have noticed anything amiss with me and I disliked being the whiner enough that I didn’t say anything. But when Fergus came galloping up, for a moment I feared I’d started hallucinating.
“Top o’ the morning to ye all!” he called out, sweeping off a battered felt cap. He swayed a little in the saddle, clearly already drunk. Where he’d managed to find alcohol in this forsaken landscape, I didn’t know. Maybe he had a portable version of his magic drink-cart, forever refilled with his favorite poison. He was in squidgy mode, complete with stubbled chin and bloodshot eyes. Perched atop his prancing hero’s battle horse with a sword reminiscent of Excalibur strapped to the pommel, he made an incongruous sight.
“Daddy?” Starling sounded surprised to see him too. We’d last seen him—in full Prince Charming mode—battling the Wild Hunt in Titania’s courtyard. Another human immigrant from my old world, he couldn’t work magic like I could. Instead, the magic worked him, transforming him into the undefeatable hero of the old tales. However, as with my wishes, it seemed to function in a situation-specific way. When heroics weren’t needed, he reverted to drunken Irishman.
“No kiss for your old da, Little Bit?” The question was apparently rhetorical, given that they were both on horseback and Fergus had his gaze fixed on me and Rogue. “So, there’s himself, the recently rescued Lord Rogue.”
“Fergus,” Rogue greeted him in a cool tone.
Starling rode closer, a frown line between her brows. “I thought you were staying back to look for Baby Brody.”
Fergus had been on a quest since his son, Brody, disappeared as a baby. Another half-human, half-fae firstborn child. Another cautionary tale for me.
“We-ell.” Fergus drew out the word, digging at his ear with a gnarled finger. In a nonmagical world, I would have put him in his early sixties, but I estimated he’d come through the Veil from the 1700s or thereabouts. Some people did, just as in the old stories. Fergus, consistently cliché, had fallen asleep drunk on a mound and woke up in Faerie. Nobody, so far as I could tell, managed to go back the other direction. I’d tried. “I’ve it in mind to go after your mother,” he finally said, surprising us all.
“You mean,” I inserted, “that you think Blackbird’s journey sailing over the Endless Sea will be more likely to get you to Brody than searching the Queen Bitch’s palace.”
Far from offended, Fergus grinned at me. “That may be true. Besides, I don’t know what you did to that one, but the place is in quite the uproar. Lots o’ folks being called into her presence and not coming back. I thought it best to make meself scarcelike.”
I shivered, not wanting to contemplate what Titania might be doing to heal herself, my hallucination-inclined brain all too willing to embroider on some horrific images. “So why bother to find us now?”
Starling gave me an unhappy look, but she knew as well as I that Fergus had been a terrible father. Paternal love hadn’t sent him our way and I had no patience for him glomming on to us.
“I recalled how you used yon scepter to scry. Thought mebbe you could tell me where Blackbird might be. Save me a bit of trouble. And since you owe me for helping rescue himself.”
“Scrying?” Rogue asked.
“You didn’t wonder how I found you? Athena, give me the scepter, please.” I didn’t owe Fergus a damn thing since he’d attached himself to us out of self-interest, but Blackbird and I had a history, not just because she was Starling’s mother.
Athena, however, narrowed her eyes at me, the stubborn skepticism in them belying their doelike lavender prettiness. “No. I don’t think I will.”
“Dammit, Athena. Just for a minute—it won’t take much.”
“Your liege lady gave you an order, girl,” Rogue said, at his most imperious.
Athena seemed far from impressed. “That liege lady nearly killed herself using the scepter before. You’re an idiot if you think I’ll let her have it in her current condition.”
Rogue gave her his most disdainful cobalt glare. “You may have come up in the world since last we met—”
“And you may owe me the same debt as you avowed Starling,” Athena interrupted.
He frowned at her, taken aback. She looked like the simpleminded fairy she’d been when Rogue and I first encountered her, with her girlish frame, violet eyes and powder-blue hair. Unlike the ringlets most of her kind sported, she’d hacked at hers with a knife, so it stood up in short spikes. The boots and brown leather fighter’s gear, with the short dagger strapped to her waist, made her look like a punk pixie.
“She’s more than what she was,” I told him, raising my eyebrows meaningfully. I didn’t know how much Athena understood that I had “tweaked” her brain during one of his lessons for me. Playing God scared me on a visceral level and I’d wanted to at least help her instead of harming her. But I’d still yanked her from a fairly blissful existence of playful ignorance, awaking a restless and fiercely intelligent spirit in her. Blessing or curse remained to be seen. “That said, I feel like I owe Blackbird the favor of sending Fergus her way, since I can.”
