Faerie Tale (19 page)

So now, when a human child is taken to the Faerie realm it can be replaced with a Faerie child that was born in the mortal realm and still leave room for another Faerie to cross over, leaving the Faerie children to grow up among the humans, and no one the wiser.

Infiltration is just a bonus.

So, when Tamar and Denny went into the Faerie realm they left a gap behind in
this
world, a sucking void that was calling out to be filled, a void that was, weight for weight, about the capacity of a smallish dragon.  

* * *

‘I’m
sure
this will create a paradox,’ complained Denny as they rode along.  He just could not leave this alone; it had been preying on his mind.  It may have had something to do with him having been trapped in a time paradox before.  This sort of thing made him nervous

‘If they – the other us-ess, are out there now doing the same things that we did before, then aren’t we just going to keep ending up back here?’ he added.

‘That’s right,’ said Tamar cheerfully. ‘But it isn’t a paradox, it’s a time loop.  We’ve probably had this conversation before.’

‘I don’t remember it,’

‘Well you won’t.  We’ll never know the difference.’

‘So we just keep going round and round in time forever?  That’s a
paradox
!’

‘No. A paradox is when you don’t
know
that you’re going round and round forever.  We can break the cycle anytime we like because we’re outside of it.’

 ‘Now would be a good time don’t you think?  Let’s just …’

‘No.  I’m going after her.  You don’t have to come.’

‘Look, how the hell do you know all this?’

Tamar stared at him as if he was daft.  ‘I know
everything
.’ she said eventually.

Denny had forgotten this.  He blinked.  ‘Everything?’ he said.  ‘
Really
everything?’ this was a worrying thought.

‘Everything I
want
to know, yes.’

Denny relaxed. There are some things a person does not
want
to know.

Tamar reined in the pony and jumped off.

‘Look,’ she said. ‘When we get back to the point in time that we left from, we’ll remember all this, we can remember the future now, can’t we?  It’s not a paradox when you can do that.  I’m not explaining this very well, but basically, we’re
visiting
this time, we are not part of it (nice job by the way.  You probably did it instinctively this way).  And we can go home again, and everything will be the same, except one thing.  I’m going to kill her.’

‘And if you do that, it’ll change things,’ pointed out Denny.

‘Not enough,’ she said.  ‘It’ll just save us the bother of doing it later.’

‘You’re crazy,’ said Denny.

‘No I’m not.  Listen to me.  The Faeries will still attack, Jack will still find the gauntlet and Cindy will still run away. It’s already
happened
.  We can’t change that unless we change what
they
do.’  She meant the other versions of themselves.

Then what’s the point?’

‘We can stop
her
.  This is the point in time when we can do it, when she’s vulnerable.  Can’t you just accept that?’

‘No, because if we stop her now, it
will
change things.  The Faeries attacked under her command.  If we stop her now …’  Denny stopped as his brain caught up with his ears. ‘Oh!’ he said.

‘It’s all already happened,’ said Tamar gently.

‘I see,’ said Denny.  ‘Well, what are we waiting for?’

* * *

Back in the present or the future or whatever Jack Stiles was having problems of his own. 

He had not told the others because they seemed nervous enough as it was, but the gauntlet was having a strange effect on him. At first, it seemed like a faint buzzing in his ears.  Then it upgraded to a ringing, and now he was certain.  He was hearing things.  Faeries to be exact, every Faerie in the world, he could hear what they were thinking.  It could be useful he realised, if he could only control it, separate out the sounds but all he was getting currently was a cacophony of thoughts and he could not shut it off. 

It was like having the worst migraine in the world.

* * *

The Faerie queen was currently searching for Tamar, just as Tamar had been searching for her and with the same amount of success i.e. none at all.

What this came down to in the final analysis, was a catfight over a man.  And the Faerie Queen intended to win it.  She had never lost her man before.

Of course, Tamar’s motives may have been a little more heroic, saving the world etc. But for the Queen of the Sidhe, it was all about getting what she wanted.  She was petty and proud of it.  She was a Faerie after all. 

That was where Stiles was going wrong.  The noise in his head was not the same as if he could hear the thoughts of
people
. They were just the janglings of a thousand empty minds. It was
all
background noise, and he would have done better to ignore it and concentrate on the one pure thought that streamed from every mind he was connected to. 
Kill, Kill, Kill. 

The Queen could sense Tamar’s power, and this, she believed, was the way to her mind, but suddenly she sat up and snapped her eyes open.  ‘
What
?’ she cried.  ‘Now
she’s
gone too?’

* * *

‘Will the others notice we’re gone?’ asked Denny suddenly

‘Oh yes,’ said Tamar.  ‘We’re on a little trip, that’s all.’

‘I don’t understand all this.’ moaned Denny.  ‘I thought we could go back to the point where we left, and it would be like nothing happened.’

‘That’s right, but until we get back, we’ll be gone … look can I give you some advice?’

‘Okay.’

‘Don’t try to understand it, just enjoy the ride.’

Denny huffed.  ‘
Enjoy
it!’

‘It helps if you think of things just happening one after another.  We are here, and this is now.’

~ Chapter Twenty Three ~

C
indy was in her room alone, having just put Jacky to sleep. She pulled her slip over her head and shook her hair out.  A long hot bath sounded good.  She was standing there completely naked, when her witch senses told her she was being watched. 

She froze and looked surreptitiously around the room for something that could be used as a weapon.  There was a conspicuous lack of hard or edged items in the room, which leaned toward the fluffy or at least feathery and downy elements of décor.  The fact that she was naked was of secondary consideration to Cindy; after all, she had nothing to be ashamed of.  Where most women would have grabbed a bathrobe, Cindy eventually lighted on a heavy looking jewellery box and headed towards the window with a determined look on her face. 

The intruder, who had been watching her with appreciation for some time, realised that he had been discovered and backed away suddenly forgetting that he was on the third floor.  He fell thirty feet with a loud yell and landed in the rose bushes with a scream.

All this noise might have attracted some attention, but there was only Stiles to hear it at the moment, and he had enough noises in his head to be going on with.

The infuriated Cindy lit over the balcony without stopping to think, landed lightly on the grass (still naked), and hauled her “visitor” roughly out of the rose patch.

‘What the hell …?’ then she saw who it was and backed away rapidly.  ‘
You
?’

Finvarra gave her a charming smile.  ‘My darling girl,’ he said.  ‘It’s been too long.’

Cindy suddenly became horribly aware that she was, in fact, naked. It may have been the way he was looking at her – as if she was a particularly appetising pastry.  Unable to manifest without a long chant and certain ingredients, she decided to become invisible instead. 

‘I can still see you,’ said Finvarra amusedly. ‘I think it’s only fair to tell you.’

Cindy did not believe him, and her face must have said as much because he added.  ‘And you can take that look off your face, I
can
see you, I exist in both worlds remember?’ * *[
Becoming invisible, for a witch at least, is simply a matter of letting yourself drift onto the astral plane where ordinary people cannot see you.
]

 ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Cindy far more bravely than she felt.  ‘How could I possibly remember anything about you, I don’t even know you.’

‘Oh yes you do,’ he told her.  ‘You’ve just forgotten.’

* * *

Night fell suddenly over the Faerie realm.  And I do mean suddenly.  It was like a light abruptly going out in a room with no windows.  Not a scrap of light was left, not a glimmer. It was eerie.

Denny did not like this development, even though he had excellent night vision this depended on there being at least a
little
ambient light and there really was none at all.

‘Wait,’ said Tamar.  A few seconds later, an overlarge moon popped into the sky like a searchlight coming on.  There were no stars, but Denny had a feeling that it was only a matter of time before they too were “switched on”

‘How do you do that?’ he asked her genuinely impressed.  ‘How did you know, I mean?’

‘You just have to think – crooked,’ she said dismissively.  ‘I’m good at that.’

‘Ain’t that the truth,’ muttered Denny.

‘This place isn’t real,’ she carried on as if he had said nothing, she was used to his acerbic little asides. ‘It’s been cobbled together using ideas of what
is
real, but it’s not quite
right
. The moon comes up at night, therefore – voila.’  She indicated the moon in the sky.  ‘There’s a moon. The fact that it looks more like a TV spotlight is neither here nor there.  At least not to us.’

‘Askphrit did better in the deleted file,’ said Denny.  ‘At least it
looked
real in there.

‘I think I’ve worked out why the Dwarfs hate the Faeries so much,’ said Tamar suddenly.’

‘What?  Why?’

‘Look around you,’ said Tamar. ‘It’s
fairyland
.  I mean, how are dwarfs perceived nowadays?  Fairy tale creatures, the Faeries did that to them.  They created an entire mythology based on
this
.’ she waved a hand disparagingly. ‘Ugh,’ she added.  ‘Hi-ho, indeed,’

‘Not just them,’ said Denny gloomily.  ‘The centaurs and fauns and everything too.’

‘So what do we do now – boss?’ he added after a pause.

‘I don’t know,’ she admitted.  ‘There still isn’t really enough light to see by … maybe …’

‘There!’ shouted Denny suddenly and pointed to a region of the sky that was lighting up in sections to fill in the shape of the Faerie castle.

‘Ah,’ said Tamar, ‘a trap.’

‘Oh definitely,’ agreed Denny.  ‘She might as well have just hung a large neon sign in the sky with an arrow pointing towards her.’

‘Yes, it could say, “Don’t Go Near the Castle”.’

They both laughed.

‘Well, said Denny.  ‘Since we
know
it’s a trap …?

‘Yeah, since we know that, if we go now she’ll have us right where we want her.  Let’s wait until morning.  Let her sweat a bit.  Wonder what we’re up to.  She’ll be nice and jittery then when we
do
get there.’

‘She could escape in the dark,’ pointed out Denny.

‘She won’t.  She’ll be waiting for us.  I
know
it.  This is between me and her now.  It’s got to be finished.’

‘What are you going to do?  Apart from kill her I mean, I mean
how
?’

Tamar looked puzzled.  ‘How?’ she repeated.

‘Yeah,’ he counted off on his fingers.  ‘No magic, no iron, no music …’

‘Maybe I’ll strangle her,’ said Tamar with an enigmatic look.

Denny took this to mean that she had not actually got as far as planning the “how” of this operation.  However, he was not too worried.  They often worked like this, off the cuff as it were.  Sometimes, plans just got in the way.  Something usually came up, and no one was better at improvising mayhem than Tamar.

If she had not been an evil megalomaniac, Denny could have felt sorry for the Faerie Queen.  She had no idea what was about to happen to her. The fact that Tamar, as yet, had no idea either was a mere detail.

He was completely wrong about this as it happened. Tamar
did
have a plan.  She just did not want to tell him, in case it did not work. 

They settled down, on a bank of mossy grass under the luminous moon to wait until morning.

* * *

‘Why don’t we go for dinner?’ said Finvarra, hopefully holding out an exquisite dress.  Cindy looked at it in distaste.

‘Please?’ he said.  ‘We have a lot to talk about.’

‘So talk,’ said Cindy without offering to move.

‘We can bring the boy with us, if that would make you more comfortable,’ he said, ‘although if I had wanted to take him from you, I could have done it before.’

‘Maybe you wouldn’t have wanted me to know it was you,’ she countered weakly. This was, at best, a spurious argument and Cindy knew it, but she was in no mood to make things easy for him.

Finvarra just stared at her, a mute plea in his eyes.  Eventually she muttered.  ‘Oh all
right
then,’ and took the dress ungraciously.

‘I want to go to Annabel’s,’ she told him. ‘And you’re paying.’

Finvarra nodded. ‘As you wish,’ he said.  ‘Do you want a limousine?’

It took Cindy a few moments to realise that this last was not, in fact, a piece of sarcasm at her expense. 

She shook her head. ‘I want to go on that,’ she said pointing mischievously at Denny’s muddy, scratched up motorbike.  And was immensely gratified to see the horror materialize on Finvarra’s face.

‘You’ll spoil your pretty dress,’ he said.

‘And ruin my hair,’ agreed Cindy. She was enjoying this.  This must be how Denny felt all the time.  He seemed to enjoy his “take me or leave me” attitude. As far as Cindy was concerned, she would not be a “trophy date” for this – person.  She had no intention of letting him think that just because he was handsome and charming, that she was going to make
any
effort for him at all.  That would seem as if she were –
grateful
or something.  And she was not – not at all.  If he wanted a piece of arm candy to show off, he was going to be disappointed.  She might have been talked into going along with it, but she was not going to let him have it all his own way.