The Woodcutter (11 page)

But the King would not be pleased having land annexed to the fae.

The innkeeper brought the Woodcutter an earthen cup filled with tea, which he took gratefully. Her redheaded daughter with her twisted limbs played quietly with a kitten, dragging a bit of straw across the floor and laughing thickly as the kitten stalked it.

The fragrance of the tea filled the Woodcutter’s nose.

It was a familiar smell – black leaves and elderberry.

He could almost feel his wife’s hand upon his shoulder, her gentle touch resting on the back of his neck. He closed his eyes and allowed the warmth and the darkness to lull him to sleep.

He opened his eyes to the dim glow of the dying embers.

The crippled, red-haired girl was standing over him with a knife made of elk bone, poised to plunge it into his heart.

She whispered, “Please stop me.”

And then the blade flashed downward.

Chapter 31

The Woodcutter turned quickly to the right and the bone cut his upper arm. He cried out in pain. The girl ripped the jagged shard from his body and readied herself to bring it down again. He knew she would not miss this time.

But her eyes.

There was such pleading in her eyes.

“Please,” she begged.

He fell to the ground and the knife penetrated his chair. He watched as she fought her very own hands, watched as her hands tried to rip the knife from the cushioned back.

He tried to stand, but the room kept swimming.

She was focused solely upon the blade. Her hands bled blue, cut upon the edge of the knife as she fought herself, “Please run. Please. I cannot hold much longer.”

The Woodcutter stumbled behind her and pinned her arms to her sides. He held her as she sobbed, as she strained towards the knife. He held as she screamed with rage.

The door opened.

The innkeeper pounded out of the other room, a mother grizzly protecting her cub.

“What are you doing to my child?” she roared.

The Woodcutter shouted as he struggled with her daughter, “She is bewitched.”

The mother grabbed onto the Woodcutter’s arm and dug her sharp fingers into his wound.

He cried out as he let go of the redheaded girl. The child dashed to the knife. This time, she was able to free it. She turned and raised it to bring it down again.

The Woodcutter grabbed the girl up again as the mother shrank back in fear.

“What have you done to her?” she wept.

“The blade!” he shouted. “Free her of the blade!”

And then the young girl screamed, “Believe him!”

The mother grabbed a broom from the corner. As she got closer to her daughter, the young girl lunged. The mother pulled back but the girl screamed at her, “Help me!”

This time, her mother did not hesitate.

She struck her daughter’s wrist with such force the knife flew across the room and landed upon the floor.

And then the knife began to draw back towards the girl.

The girl’s right hand hung broken, but her left hand reached.

“Help me!” she cried.

The mother tried to grab the knife, but it spun away and scurried faster towards the girl.

“Mother!”

And then the Woodcutter felt something stir within his jacket.

Something wriggled and forced its way out. The pixie, injured and unwell, flew weakly into the air. It eyed the dancing blade and the blade slowed its progress, almost warily.

Skittering across the ground, the knife circled the fae and then the two magical beings threw themselves at one another.

The blade twitched as it rose into the air and blue blood fell from the faerie.

But the pixie held on.

It held on as the knife bit into it. It held on as its blood wept from the tip. It held on until the blade stopped jerking, and the redheaded girl stilled and the wildness left her eyes.

Finally, the pixie let the blade drop. The knife clanged upon the floor and remained motionless.

The pixie hovered as the Woodcutter released the girl and she slumped to the floor.

The pixie looked at the Woodcutter.

And the Woodcutter knew.

He knew.

The pixie’s eyes became dark as night and they began to close.

The pixie fell so quietly as the whole world screamed.

The Woodcutter ran, dodging the innkeeper, who rushed to her daughter’s side, whose red blood could not hear the pixie fall’s towards the earth.

The Woodcutter ran and he held out his hand.

He held out his hand and as the pixie dropped, the Woodcutter felt time stop.

And then.

He felt the pixie, felt it heavy upon his palm, heavy with the sadness of the whole world, bleeding blue blood upon his hand.

The Woodcutter turned to the innkeeper, “I need your tree.”

She shook her head, “We have no trees here.”

He felt the pixie fading.

It was beyond his power.

“Do you have any dust?”

She shook her head, “We don’t use such…” Her eyes shifted nervously with the lies that would rather destroy than admit the truth of her shame.

“Your dust,” he demanded. “It’s dying…”

The mother looked at the pixie and looked at the Woodcutter.

She was silent as she struggled. Silent as she fought truth with pride, as the forces waged battle within her head.

“In the back of the cupboard.”

The Woodcutter ran as if the pixie’s wings were attached to his feet. He ripped open the cupboard and there in the back was a small tin.

He fumbled with the cover, his fingers slippery with the blue blood, but he was able to open the tin. He bathed the pixie in the sparkling powder.

The faerie’s light pulsed, slow as a sleeping heartbeat.

Pulsing.

Pulsing.

The pixie opened its eyes and swallowed.

Its small mouth gasped.

The light did not fade, but the pixie just barely shone and all the dust was gone.

The mother sat, her daughter cradled within her arms. She rocked back and forth as she begged, “Forgive me…forgive me…I did not mean…”

The Woodcutter stared at her, the pieces fitting together.

The Woodcutter took the pixie and placed it upon her daughter’s heart. The pixie snuggled within the divot of the girl’s neck, the nook in between her clavicles where the pulse of her heart gently beat.

“What are you doing to her?” the mother gasped.

The pixie’s glow began to beat in rhythm to the girl’s heart.

The Woodcutter said nothing and just smoothed the girl’s red hair.

Her legs were the first to straighten. They stretched out like caterpillars and smoothed out her clawed feet. Her back uncurled.

As the pixie’s light became brighter, the girl’s neck aligned, holding her head tall. The blue blood upon her hands turned red.

Iron was everywhere in this land, ingested in the food, ingested in the water. The girl stooped because the iron in her body fought with the dust, fought with her blood as it ran artificially blue.

The Woodcutter looked at the mother, understanding to what length she had gone to have her child spin gold from straw, to what length she had gone to make a duchess of her child.

To what length she had hungered for the power of the fae.

She had fed her own child dust.

The mother’s eyes were full of tears, “Please, don’t tell anyone. I promise… I just wanted her to have a better life…”

But the words rang hollow.

The Woodcutter took the tiny pixie and tucked it gently within his breast pocket.

He turned to the mother as she held her daughter tight and he whispered, “No more.”

But he knew she did not understand.

Chapter 32

The stalk rose high up into the air. So high, its top disappeared into the clouds.

The Woodcutter stood at the base, shielding his eyes with his hands.

The farm was quiet. A few chickens scratched in the yard. A skinny cat slept in the dust.

“That brat came home swearing they were magic beans. I’ll be damned.”

A cagey woman had come up behind him. She was so close he could smell her rotting teeth. “All I can say is that this thing had better start blooming. I don’t have time to take care of something that don’t give back.”

She shuffled up to the fifteen-foot wide plant and stingily watered it with her little can.

The stalk responded by unfurling a leaf sixty feet above the Woodcutter’s head.

The woman shook her fist, “Is that the best you can do? We were better off with that fool cow!”

She shuffled back to the house, scattering the hungry chickens in her path.

The Woodcutter stood for a moment, contemplating the stalk.

He then placed his hand upon its body and began to climb.

Chapter 33

The clouds were solid.

They should not have been.

The Woodcutter stepped tentatively onto the hardened mist and was disturbed that it held his weight. He reached down and broke off a piece, lifting it to his nose. He dropped it like a burning coal.

Dust.

Vaporized dust held in the atmosphere, a massive storage shed in the sky.

The Woodcutter swayed as the rush of free magic coursed through his veins. A sense of wellbeing and a desire to lie down and rest his weary eyes overwhelmed him. The sky seemed bluer and the sun friendly. The light fractured into rainbows that hid in the nooks and crevasses of the fluffy goodness.

He retched and he bent over to vomit.

His eyes blurred, but he caught the shape of a gray stone path bisecting the clouds. He forced himself to stumble towards them.

His feet hit the stones and the disorientation lifted. His hands shook as he held them up. He clenched and unclenched his fingers. Still they shook.

The dust was powerful.

He looked around. The dust clouds stretched for miles before touching the solid land found in the Kingdom of the Clouds.

The harvest…

The number of pixies that had been destroyed to gather such dust…

He bent over to vomit again.

As he stood, the pixie tugged at his pocket. He reached in and carefully brought the blinking creature out into the light. The fae’s pupils constricted and dilated to the rhythm of the heart he could feel beating within its breast, but then it fixated upon the Woodcutter and held out its hand towards his temple.

He could feel the power transfer, could feel as the last of the dust left him. The pixie’s throbbing glow steadied for just a moment as it absorbed the magic.

The Woodcutter looked at the clouds that surrounded them. Careful to keep his feet upon the path, the Woodcutter lowered the faerie to the dust.

The pixie’s eyes became clear and it seemed to wake. The cloud began to shift. It seemed to be drawn to the faerie like smoke to an open window.

The Woodcutter could feel the transfer of wild magic to the creature of air. The pixie began to levitate, its strength returning.

And then the Woodcutter heard an awful roar.

“Fee, fi, fo, fum…”

The words rumbled low and dangerously. The path began to shake. The Woodcutter looked over his shoulder to see the head of a giant crest over a cumulus formation.

He looked back at the pixie and whispered, “Faster, little one.”

It jerked slightly, like a hiccup. Then it jerked again and was out of his hands. It flipped in the air in joy and tore through the cloud, absorbing the dust as it flew, leaving a hole that looked down upon the boggy farmland below.

“Who steals from my crop?”

The monster was drawing closer.

The Woodcutter looked for a place to hide, but the fields of dust would kill him. So he stood still, hoping the Giant was near sighted and would pass.

But he didn’t.

He fixed the Woodcutter with a terrible gaze.

“I smell a tree.”

The Woodcutter shrugged.

The Giant swept out a terrible paw and picked up the Woodcutter, “My fire needs fuel and you shall do just fine.”

Chapter 34

The kitchen stretched as far as the eye could see.

A woman with a shelf-like rump the size of two large pigs stood stirring a boiling cauldron. Her hair was pulled back beneath a dust rag. Her peasant smock covered her boulder-like bosoms. She turned, yellow teeth snarling, “What took you so long?”