Faerie Tale (12 page)

‘Hmm,’ said Tamar.

‘Anyway I reckon some of the lads ud like to try,’ he added hopefully.

‘Well okay, you ask them then,’ said Tamar. She leaned over to Stiles and whispered. ‘It can’t hurt to try,’

‘Here we are then,’ boomed Hogswill, suddenly.

* * *

The tavern did not look any better from the inside than it had from the outside, and from the outside it had looked like a shack. 

‘Little brothers are in the far corner,’ said Hogswill helpfully pointing to a gloomy, shadow filled rats nest at the back of the tavern.

‘Thank you,’ said Tamar stiffly.  ‘You go and ask them,’ she said to Stiles, ‘I’d better keep out of the way.’ But it was too late.

‘Snow White S’welp me,’ came a voice from the region of her knees, but it was said without rancour, apparently as a matter of form. It was Florid.

Florid Underdrawers the King of the Dwarfs bowed ironically to Tamar; so low that his nose was touching the floor. 

‘And what can we do for you
this
time?’ he asked acerbically. ‘World need saving again?’

‘Yes,’ said Stiles, thinking he had better take a hand.

‘Jack Stiles?’ said the Dwarf delightedly. ‘Is that you?’

Stiles knelt down. ‘Hello Florid,’ he said. ‘How’s the afterlife treating you?’

Tamar sighed. Jack had a rapport with the Dwarfs that was entirely beyond her comprehension.  To her, they were smelly, bad tempered drunken little buggers. To him, they were
compadrés
, buddies, just some of the lads – only smaller and with a much larger drinking capacity.

Florid was herding Stiles enthusiastically towards the other Dwarfs, leaving Tamar standing alone and feeling terribly exposed. She was drawing curious looks from the drinkers to which she reacted with her famous thousand kilowatt stare.  Stiles looked back anxiously at her, but she smiled reassuringly at him. The mission was all that mattered. 

She heard the shouts of greeting from the dwarf table, and above the ruckus she heard Stiles say. ‘What’s everybody drinking then?’

It was that sort of thing, she thought, that made him popular. He seemed to know, instinctively, just the right thing to say.  Good old Jack, everybody’s best mate. Even she liked him, and, apart from Denny, she hardly liked anybody.

A Viking came up behind her and said something muffled in which she could just make out the words “comely wench”

‘Oh, no!’ she thought. ‘I’m not being “comely wenched” by anyone.’

This was, after all, only the dark ages by default. She moved slightly and somehow the Viking ended up on the floor bubbling in agony.  Tamar folded her arms and pursed her lips in a pose universally recognized by men as “I’m not in the mood”. Several formerly interested Vikings averted their eyes and shuffled round in their chairs back to their drinks. 

There was a chorus of exclamations from the corner and then a muffled argument started.

‘He’s told them,’ she thought. ‘Now they’ll argue about it for two hours until Florid tells them they’ve got to do it.’

She was painfully familiar with the Dwarf version of democracy. Florid was only supposed to be nominally in charge; that is, he ruled with the helpful suggestions of at least thirty Dwarfs, all with opposing opinions, and then he told them what they had to do, and they did it. Which made him
actually
in charge, in Tamar’s book. But Dwarfs like to have their say, it made them feel better apparently. It was a democratically run dictatorship. 

This time it was different. Tamar was surprised when Florid presented himself to her after only ten minutes, bowed (this time without a trace of irony) and said. ‘We will help,’

And that, apparently, was that. Within twenty minutes Florid had gathered an impressive army of five hundred grim faced Dwarfs.

‘They hardly argued about it at all,’ Stiles told her. ‘And when Florid pointed out that even if they died, they could still come back here, it was pretty much settled.’ 

‘He didn’t have to order them or
anything
?’

‘Oh I think he
would
have, but he didn’t have to. They really
hate
Faeries.’

‘Doesn’t everybody?’

‘Not like this.’ said Stiles somberly. ‘This is something different.’

‘Good,’ said Tamar. ‘Then I made the right call.’

A tentative hand tapped Tamar on the shoulder. She turned round.

‘Er, are you the Djinn?’ said a rather fresh faced youth with bulging muscles that would have made Cindy swoon, and a worried expression.

‘That’s me,’ said Tamar wondering what on earth he wanted.  He did not seem the “comely wench” type. For one thing, she was sure he would not even know what to do with a comely wench if he had one.

‘Only we were wondering where you wanted the army,’ he said.

‘You were saying,’ said Stiles.

Tamar recovered fast. ‘Fall in with the dwarfs,’ she said. ‘Shoulder to shoulder – everyone must be touching. ‘I’ll handle the transportation.

‘Will they all fit in the living room?’ said Stiles.

‘They’d better,’ said Tamar. ‘EVERYBODY READY?’ she bellowed.  ‘Close file.’

~ Chapter Fifteen ~

D
enny was sitting stretched out in an armchair; eyes half closed, pondering things. So he was not very pleased to be interrupted, but as it was a young woman who looked extremely nervous, he forced himself to be courteous. 

‘I was just wondering …’ she began.

‘Yes?’

‘Um …’ 

She twisted her hands around each other, and her eyes swivelled nervously around the room.

‘Well?’ he said as kindly as possible.

‘Do you think I’m pretty?’

Oh no, not
this
again, ‘
CINDY!’

Cindy hurried into the room.  Denny wearily indicated the young woman who was gazing at Denny with embarrassing adoration. 

‘She’s been “Faeried”,’ he said.  ‘Sort her out will you?  Thanks.’

Cindy bustled the young woman unwillingly from the room.  ‘You’ll thank me later,’ she told her.  ‘Besides he’s attached and you don’t want to mess with
her
, believe me!’

It had happened to all of them in the past few weeks. In fact, it seemed to be happening all over the house.  But it was happening to Denny an awful lot.  Women all over the house seemed to be making a beeline for him.  He had occasionally wondered what it was like to be a chick magnet.  As it turned out, it was horribly unsettling.  Denny had no illusions about himself; women tended to look past him to see if he had a better-looking friend.  He suspected the Queen was behind it, but he could not think of a single reason, sheer malice apart, why she would be doing this to him.

It was not just the lovey dovey stuff of course. They were also dealing with random fights every day and people who believed they could fly or that they were a rabbit or something.  It was like running a rehab centre, with electro shock therapy as a mandatory treatment.*

*[
It had been discovered, after much experimentation and several instances of second-degree burns, that an actual bolt of lighting was not necessary to lift the Faerie enchantment.  A fairly mild electric shock would do the trick
]
. 

Just when it seemed to be settling down, a fresh influx of people would arrive, and it seemed that they brought the Faeries enchantment in with them – like a virus – and it would start all over again.

And every day more people turned up. Word had got around; it was safe here, at least safer than anywhere else. At least the Faeries themselves could not get in.  It occurred to Denny that the Faeries were sending people here who were enchanted, just to disrupt things.  The sensible thing would be to just close the doors for good, but how could they turn them away when they had nowhere else to go? Another problem was that they were running out of space.  Soon it would be standing room only.

Very soon, in fact.

It was very lucky for Denny really that when five hundred heavily armed dwarfs and two thousand, three hundred and seventy seven Viking warriors landed in his living room that he was not actually there. Only a few minutes earlier and he would most definitely have been human sushi.

They did just about fit, mainly because dwarfs are … well, dwarf sized, and the Viking warriors, as Hogswill had predicted, turned up as ghosts, and ghosts do not take up any room at all in a physical sense.  But it was still a tight squeeze and frankly, in their current surroundings, they made a fearsome sight. 

Tamar acted fast. Before they even had time to catch their breath she managed to teleport all the dwarfs into the grounds.  The Vikings, as spirits, could not be moved in this way since teleportation relies on the astral plane and they were already there in a manner of speaking (although they were on the physical plane as well, at least visually) and they just had to drift through the walls after them as best they could. 

Denny, who was in the garden at the time got a front row view of possibly the weirdest sight he had ever seen; and that, in his case, was really saying something. 

First, he saw the aforementioned five hundred dwarfs appear suddenly on the lawn, in the flowerbeds, in the pond and one in a tree.  They were all bickering loudly and waving their axes menacingly.  ‘’Ere, give us some room.’  ‘Watch what you’re doin’ with that axe,’ etc.  

As incredible as this sight was, it was nothing to what came next, as spectral Viking warriors began drifting slowly through the walls in ones and twos, until all the available space between the Dwarfs was filled.

‘Bloody hell!’ said Denny, impressed. ‘An army of the dead.’

* * *

Once Tamar got going, generally speaking, there was no stopping her.  The last time she had built an army she had made it from golems – any three dimensional image of a human being with life breathed into it magically can be a golem – and she had made the golems from anything and everything she could think of.  Scarecrows, shop dummies, even cigar store Indians had been pressed into service alongside the more conventional statues and terracotta warriors. 

Now she was talking excitedly about enlarging this army. ‘Trolls,’ she said.  ‘Trolls are pretty vicious and too stupid to be enthralled by Faerie magic.  You need to
have
a mind before it can be controlled.’

‘No trolls,’ said Denny patiently. ‘Too dangerous to the general population.’

‘Gnomes?’

‘Too small to be any use,’ said Denny firmly. ‘Besides, aren’t they just a form of Faerie?  Could we really trust them?’

‘Well.  Witches then,’ she tried.  ‘Witches aren’t susceptible to Faerie magic.’

Denny guardedly conceded that actually witches might not be a bad idea.  ‘They were the ones who sorted the Faeries out the last time weren’t they?’ he said thoughtfully. 

Tamar, as was her wont, took this qualified and cautious agreement as a full acquiescence to her whole plan.  Trolls, gnomes and anything else that came to mind included.

She was smart enough not to tell Denny this, however.  This time she didn’t want talking out of it. 

* * *

The ghostly warriors proved to have an unexpected and highly gratifying effect on the Faeries that Tamar tried them out on.  Everyone had been wondering exactly what use a ghost would be at fighting, since they tended to go right through things at the drop of a horned thing that you wear on your head.  So Tamar decided on a trial run, and the results were incredible. 

The Faeries, one and all, fainted dead away.  Not at the
sight
of the ghosts (Faeries deal out fear they do not suffer from it). The mere presence of a spirit seemed to make any Faeries within a certain radius just pass out even if they had not seen it. 

The only problem was that the moment a ghost made a Faerie faint it also disappeared. Presumably, and it was certainly hoped anyway, back to Valhalla.

No one knew why it was happening although Denny theorised that it was because the ghosts were on another plane of existence and the Faeries were
from
another plane of existence, neither of which was real in
this
plane of existence, and they were effectively cancelling each other out when their auras came too close.  No one knew if he was right about this and it all sounded very complicated and mystical.  But it
was
true that none of the Faeries affected in this way ever woke up again.  It was as if their spirit had been drained away leaving only an empty shell.  Killing them would have been kinder.  But Tamar was not interested in being kind to Faeries. Besides, enough of them
would
die.

They had no idea what was about to hit them.

* * *

Tamar surveyed her army with satisfaction.  They were pretty frightening although Denny had voiced the opinion that what they really needed was the
Salvation
Army. 

‘Big brass band,’ he had explained to the blank faces turned to him. 

‘Right,’ said Tamar, never one to dismiss a good idea when it was handed to her on a platter.  ‘We need a marching song then.’  She looked at Denny sideways.  ‘That should help, shouldn’t it?’

‘Enormously I would have thought,’ he said.

They had been unable to add any witches to the ranks. For some reason, there were none to be found even when Tamar cheated and asked Hecaté to use her powers to find some. 

However, in addition to the Dwarfs, Vikings, Trolls (only indistinguishable from the Vikings by their size – the Vikings were slightly larger) and Gnomes, they also had battalions of Minotaur, Centaur, Satyr, Faun, and Unicorns, all of whom Tamar had rounded up from Hank’s Mythological Wildlife Preserve in the hidden forest just behind the swing park near Denny’s old flat.

Tamar had them all lined up in a large field behind the house. It looked like the casting session for a rather overambitious fantasy movie. 

What all these creatures had in common (in common with each other and with human beings) was that they had all suffered at the hands of the Faeries.

Payback’s a bitch.