The Pirate Fairy (5 page)

Denny’s spirits lifted a little when Ebba approached him. She’d changed into a red and white floral dress. Denny couldn’t believe it. He’d seen men dressed as women before but she looked worse than any of them. She was a man. He was certain of it. She also wore a hat covered in what looked like fresh strawberries. And she was barefoot. Ebba spotted Denny, smiled and gave him a wave.

“Howdy do,” she said to Denny as though they were meeting at some barn dance and not for his date with bloody destiny.

“Yeah. Howdy,” he griped.

“Unshackle him,” the green-winged man said.

“Yes, sir.” Ebba fumbled in her pocket for a set of keys. Once she’d produced it, she worked the lock on his collar. Her hands were shaking.

“You’re my public defender?” he asked.

Her hands stopped moving. “Yes.” She turned the key again.

The lock was rusty but it eventually gave way and the collar loosened around his neck. The release of pressure put him in a better mood within seconds. As the rest of his restraints fell away, Denny believed for one small moment that he could escape all of this.

But where would I go? How do I get away?

Ebba removed his coat and everyone stared as his slightly bent, gossamer fairy wings came into view.

“Okay, show me what you can do.” The green-winged man poked at his chest. Now that Denny no longer wore the cloak, his wings pained him more than ever. He let out a gasp.

“What’s the matter with you?” Ebba asked.

“They hurt. No. Hurt’s not enough. They’re bloody agony.” Tears sparked in Denny’s eyes.

Both Ebba and the green-winged man stared at him, then at each other.

“You’ve got a crybaby for a client,” the green-winged man said. “He’s full of it.” He stared at Denny. “Make them flap or I’ll do it for you.”

“I don’t know how,” Denny whined. Boy, he was sure doing a lot of that lately.

“Try.”

“How do I do it? Do I speak to them? Do I move my shoulders or something?” Denny’s desperate gaze flicked from side to side.

“You just do it.” The green-winged man reached over and grabbed one of the wings. Denny’s ear-piercing shrieks made several people drop to the ground, ducking for cover, as though somebody was shooting indiscriminately in the crowd.

“Blimey!” the green-winged man said. “You weren’t kidding. Your wings are stuck!”

Denny had dropped to his knees and panted in pain. Tears streaked down his face. “Thank you. This happened to me five months ago and I’ve had nobody to talk to. They hurt every day.”

The green-winged man moved behind Denny and knelt, studying the wings a little closer. He poked at the feathers and slid his hand underneath Denny’s slitted shirt. He touched a particularly tender spot on Denny’s right shoulder blade. It hurt, but Denny found that the man’s prodding sent a mixture of pleasure and pain down his back, so he just breathed through the worst moments. “This one’s atrophied a bit. It’s clear you haven’t used them, which contravenes our rules for judgment here. You might have to be sent to a different court.”

A harsh gasp shot out throughout the assembled throng. Denny looked up to see Ebba’s horrified expression. She shook her head at him then uttered an emphatic, “No. He’s still one of us. He still counts. He was cursed and it’s clear that something went wrong. Can you imagine how much pain he’s been in?”

The green-winged man didn’t respond.

“She said she’d turned the fairy into a fairy,” Denny said, desperation pouring from his very soul.

A hushed silence fell over them all.

“Who did this to you?” The green-winged man got to his feet once more.

Denny fought the urge to purge all over the ground. He gulped in air and was about to mutter her name but caught Ebba’s slight shake of her head. “I don’t know her name.”

The green-winged man looked suspicious. “So this woman cursed you for no good reason?”

“I rejected her.” Denny didn’t look at Ebba in case she was shaking her head again.

“She wanted you for a lover?” The green-winged man looked surprised.

“I’m an attractive man, or I was.” Denny hung his head. He had mad urges to barf and cry. Never in his life had he felt so helpless or ashamed. Not since he’d been a kid.

“Whatever helps you sleep nights,” Ebba murmured. Now why did she keep saying that to him? First it was his belief that his porridge had fruit in it. Now it was his looks.

What the hell did that bitch Fortunata do to me?
His hands flew to his face. He was hairier than he remembered but everything else seemed to be the same. No hooked nose or hair-sprouting moles from what he could tell.

For the first time in weeks, he allowed himself to think about Prince Merritt and Princess Fortunata. How could two siblings be so very different? One so good and loving, the other so diabolical? It struck him for the first time that they were so much like Denny and his sister, Polly, that it was almost frightening.

“Get up,” Ebba said, hauling Denny to his feet. His face mashed into her boobies. Boobies. She
was
a girl. He had a sudden hunch that she, like he, had been cursed. He looked at her as he wobbled on his broken boot heel.

“Why are you looking at me that way?” she snapped. “Stop crying. Nobody likes a sniveling pirate.”

“Under the circumstances, he can be tried in the fairy court,” the green-winged man muttered. “He is a fairy, even though his wings are buggered up.” He wrote something in his notebook. “I will refrain from making an official notification about your handicap. I’ll give you time to work on your wings.” He pointed to his left. “I’m doing this for Ebba, so do not waste this opportunity. She knows the way.”

Indeed she did. She led Denny to a path away from the shoreline. Things smelled a bit better here. Denny took a deep breath.

“It’s okay here now,” Ebba said. “The holding cells are quite pleasant. They’ll bring you something to eat and you can wash. I’ll see what I can do about your boots. You’re falling all over the place. We don’t want them thinking you’re the sad old drunk we both know you really are.”

“Hey! I’m not old. I’m twenty-five!”

“Okay. You’re a sad drunk then.”

“Hey! I’m not sad, or a drunk.”

“Hey, yourself. Have you looked in a mirror lately? You look like crap. Alcohol has aged you and don’t tell me you’re not a drunk. You don’t even remember what happened to me, do you?”

He gulped. “Nope.”

“I tried to protect you when Fortunata cursed you.”

“You did?” It was all so hazy. He’d been so horrified when the pretty princess had turned herself into an ugly old crone he recalled nothing else.

“I stood right in front of you. Because I protected you, she got mad. I protected a fairy so she turned me into a…a…girly man.”

“Oh, my God. I am so sorry.” Denny clutched Ebba’s arms.

She shrugged him off. “No big thing. I like being both. I have my male parts and my female parts. I’m officially recognized as a woman, but there are men who like both.” She suddenly smiled. “I give them the best of both worlds. My two husbands can testify to that.” She pushed him through the side entrance of a black and white marble building.

“This is the court?” Denny looked around.

“Yes. The Supernatural Superior Court. You are not on the Code Red list. Yet. You won’t face the judge or jury until tomorrow. In the meantime, get some rest. I’ll see if I can’t get someone in here to give you a shave. You look like a crazy hermit right now.” She left him at a check-in counter where a man who looked like a human bumblebee with huge, thick glasses waited for him.

“And practice using your feathers,” Ebba muttered in Denny’s ears. “There are two fairies on the jury. They won’t take kindly to you weeping about your wings. I’ll be back tonight. We need to prepare your defense.”

Denny hated to see her leave, but the bumblebee was talking to him. Denny strained to hear him. It wasn’t easy since every word out of the man’s mouth was accompanied by some serious buzzing. Denny listened as the man told him he would be held pending his piracy trial. “You’ll be in Cell Block D. That’s a nice one. They give you blankets in there.”

“Okay, thanks.” Denny kept hoping he was having a bad dream, but soon he was heading to his cell, a few men ahead of him. One guy was half eagle, half man. He had only one wing. His jealous glance in Denny’s direction made Denny feel ashamed for having made such a fuss about
two
wings. With two wings he could do something. With one wing, oh, boy. That would have been cruel. And here was a man living with it.

Denny followed the bumblebee man into a bare-walled cell that had a window protected by frosted glass and tiny, thick bars. He couldn’t see out, but light streamed in. He had a narrow bed with a pillow and blankets piled on one end. A small table and chair had been pushed against the wall. The bumblebee man hung a mirror on a hook nailed into the wall above it. Denny needed to get a look at himself. How bad was he? But the chamber pot beckoned and as soon as the cell door locked behind the bumblebee man, Denny made use of the pot, covering it with a cloth tucked into the handle.

A man without wings but the head of a fox and tail to match came in with a large pot of steaming water. He wore ordinary clothes, his tail protruding from the back of his pants. “I understand you have a wing problem.”

Denny nodded.

“Take everything off.”

Denny didn’t mind if he did. He stood naked as the fox man looked him over then placed the basin on the table. He beckoned Denny over to him. Using a gigantic sea sponge, he cleaned Denny’s face. Denny inhaled the fragrance of the scented water. Roses and lavender. He almost swooned. The fox man went over Denny’s entire feathers.

“You have to keep these clean. Your feathers have been stuck for some time. Looks and feels like candle wax. Did you fall into a lit candle or something?”

Denny was about to say no, but from somewhere deep in his memory banks, he recalled a late-night brawl. He seemed to remember being pushed against a wall beneath a candle sconce. When had that happened? Had he been injured? “Maybe,” he admitted.

The man gave him a kind smile. “Unless you use your wings, you’ll forget your human life. You’ll remember things from long ago but not recent activities. Your body is rejecting the fairy experience, but you belong to both worlds now.”

“What happened to you?” Denny asked.

The fox man stopped sponging Denny’s wings. “I was cursed.” He sighed and began dabbing again. “I rejected the crown princess.”

Denny’s heart sank. “What was her name?”

The fox man’s hand shook. “Fortunata.”

Denny stiffened.

The fox man put a steadying hand on Denny’s very sore wing. His voice dropped to a whisper. “Don’t you know that’s why you’re here?”

“No. I know nothing. My crew mutinied against me and here I am.”

“Lucky for you. I read your case notes. Ebba paid gold for your recovery.”

“But I thought my crew gave her gold to take me.”

“Ha! They did. But she paid gold to informants to find your ship. We’ve been tracking you for weeks. If she gives a good defense of you, she can have her curse reversed.”

“Can I?”

“Don’t be stupid. You’ll be lucky if you’re sentenced to slavery. Most pirates are sentenced to death.”

“I still don’t understand why I’m here.” It hurt to think that Ebba had been looking out for herself all this time. He’d wanted to believe that he had a chance to make it out alive.

“Keep your voice down.” The fox man squeezed the sponge into the now very black water and patted Denny’s bad wing again. “Princess Fortunata is being held captive on a ship. Nobody knows where. But in her absence, the prince—”

“Merritt?” Denny asked excitedly.

“Yes, Prince Merritt. Do you know him?”

“Very well.”
Intimately. You might say biblically.

The fox man frowned. “I wouldn’t admit that to anybody else if I were you. I’m telling you all of this in confidence. Shall I continue?”

“Yes. Please do.”

“He’s holding these trials, trying to figure out where she is. It was always rumored that you were the one who took her captive, though it’s obvious since you haven’t harnessed your magical powers that it’s impossible that you have her. I hear the prince is not happy.”

“I have magical powers?”

“Of course. Were you always this stupid or is it only since you became a fairy?”

“What sort of magical powers?” Denny was incensed that he’d known none of this and that he’d wallowed in self-pity all this time.

“You can fly. You can’t die from a gunshot wound. You can see things humans can’t. When you harness your power, you have acute hearing and vision. And for a male fairy, your dick gets huge. I mean really huge.”

This day was suddenly getting better. Denny absorbed all of this. He recalled letting the prince go because Merritt had confessed that their mutual love would affect his kingdom and his ability to rule. He was supposed to marry a woman and had been promised to a rival royal family’s daughter. Fortunata had refused to leave the ship, not suspecting her brother’s relationship with Denny. Well, that’s what she’d said at first, but Denny had been honest and it turned out she had known all along and blamed Denny for her brother’s sexual deviation.