A Place Beyond The Map (21 page)

“Why not?” Phinnegan asked.

“Not the partying type for starters, and a bit on the poor side. They’re loners really, which makes it all the more convincing that you don’t talk much.”

“Well if they aren’t likely to be at a festival, then why am I here?”

“Easy,” Crimson said. “We’ll just say you’re a friend of ours that was visiting and we dragged you up here, against your better thinking of course. That should be convincing enough should anyone ask.”

“Look sharp, mates,” Periwinkle said, jerking his head in the direction of the castle. Phinnegan looked up and was startled to see that the castle was very close now. The gate was only some several dozen yards away. He felt a queasiness begin in his stomach, which soon spread to a slight warming over his body as the fear began to creep through his veins.

“All will be well,” Periwinkle said reassuringly. “Just stay quiet and follow our lead.”

“But I don’t even know what I am supposed to do. How I am supposed to…steal…this stone.”

“All in good time, mate. Just relax.”

Relax.
Easy for him to say
.

The trio stopped before two massive wooden doors that spanned the immense distance between two exceedingly massive stone towers. From a distance as the group approached, the stone of the towers looked a dull grey, but now being so close, it was apparent that the grey was only an illusion brought about by the distance. The stones themselves were colored in all manner of shades from a dirty white to a charcoal grey, yet never quite black. Each stone was easily eight or nine feet to a side and mostly square. The wood of the doors was a robust brown that was at the same time dark and lively. Thick bands of a dark metal served to bind the pieces of lumber together and provide strength and stability to the gates. Whoever built these gates was quite large, indeed.

The soft sound of a light breeze rustling the fabrics of the trio’s clothing was the only one that reached their ears. The silence pressed in upon them, driving Phinnegan to speak.

“Should we say something, you think?” he whispered.

“I told you
not
to speak,” Crimson hissed quietly. “Just wait half a moment. The guard will speak first, it is their custom.”

Several more moments passed in this eerie silence. Phinnegan strained to hear any sound, but even those that would normally be only background noise were not to be heard. No birds chirped, no bugs creaked; only the fabric of their clothing whispered in the breeze. That and his heart pounding in his ears.

When a voice called down from the ramparts, Phinnegan started, but the two Faë held him fast by the arms.

“State your business,
Faë
,” the voice rumbled from the top of the tower, spitting the final word as though it left a bad taste in the mouth.

“Why, to drink and be extraordinarily merry, of course!” Periwinkle shouted back.

“Sorry, we’re full,” the voice replied.  Periwinkle shared a quick glance with Crimson. This was obviously not the response that they had expected. Periwinkle did his best to appear jubilant, calling back up with a laugh.

“Full? How can a party be full? Surely I have come to the right place. Is this not the castle of Horace the Great, whose generosity and excellence as a host on this special day is renowned from here to the land of the pixies?”

A silence followed, and then the short reply.

“It is.”

“Splendid!” Periwinkle cried, a broad smile upon his face. “Then surely you cannot turn away three jubilant Faë such as us, so ready for revelry?”

Again, a silence. They exchanged looks, each of these three as puzzled as the others. Phinnegan, however, did relax, if only slightly. Perhaps he would not become a thief after all.

But then the voice answered.

“Enter.”

No other words were spoken or heard by the three at the foot of the tower, but some orders seemingly passed amongst the guards, for now the massive wooden gates grated inward, their hinges moaning beneath the load.

Once the gates were open only a few feet, sounds of celebration and gaiety flooded through. The doors were quite thick and had shielded the trio from these sounds as they stood outside. The laughter and voices that reached their ears now lifted even Phinnegan’s spirits. When the doors opened further, and he could get a good look at the courtyard of this immense castle, Phinnegan beheld a sight such as he had never seen.

Hundreds, no
thousands
, of Faë danced jollily in pairs, in trios, in fours and fives, and onwards into groups too large to count. The variety and vibrancy of their colors assailed him. Never had he seen so many different shades of purples and greens, blues and reds. There an orange like a sunset, there another like a sunrise. Yellows from canary to gold and back again. Before his eyes, this rainbow of Faë bounced and hopped, leapt and spun, and everything in between.

But even with this vision of splendor, something was quite amiss.

There was no music.

Not a note, not an air, not a waltz nor a jig. No sound other than the delighted voices of the Faë could be heard.

“Why are they dancing?” Phinnegan asked, keeping his voice in as low of a whisper as possible, though it was doubtful that anyone could hear him over this din. “I don’t hear any music.”

A wry smile spread across Periwinkle’s face.

“That, mate,” he said, deftly snatching three small cordial glasses from a tray just to their right, “is because you have yet to imbibe.”

Periwinkle handed one glass each to Phinnegan and Crimson, the latter greedily downing the contents in one gulp. Phinnegan was more skeptical. He eyed the caramel brown liquid warily. He brought the glass to his nose and inhaled.

“Smells like grapes. Is it wine?”

“From the host’s very own vineyards, I’d suspect,” Periwinkle answered. “But this isn’t like any wine in your world.”

“What does it do?” No sooner than Phinnegan had asked the question, Crimson let out a raucous yelp and jumped into the nearest group of dancing Faë and disappeared into their numbers.

“It just makes everything a little more…vibrant,” Periwinkle said, just before downing his own glass. He closed his eyes and sighed.

“Just stay close, mate. The effects wear off after a time and you must keep drinking. But we don’t want to continue. We just need to blend in for a spell; then we’ll make our move. Be looking for me, mate. I’ll come for you when the time is right. Now blend in and be quiet.”

The Faë has said all of this with his eyes closed, and now, having finished, he opened them and Phinnegan saw that Periwinkle’s light-purple irises had deepened in color while his pupil’s had dilated considerably. A broad grin split the Faë’s face and he leapt forward to latch onto a female Faë with bright yellow hair, who accepted him as though she had known him forever.

To say that Phinnegan felt uneasy about the cordial glass in his hand would only be telling the half of it. His fingers tightened on the stem of the glass as he watched Periwinkle disappear into a dizzying whirl of Faë as they danced to an unheard song. His eyes flicked to the glass and a debate raged inside him about whether he should drink it.

It was then that the feeling of being watched began to creep up his spine. Turning, he saw one of the giants that inhabited this castle, large and brutish, but with an intelligent eye pondering him warily, a grim frown upon its face.

Phinnegan feared the worst from the start, as anyone would who had just had their head filled with the dislike the giants have for humans, and Faë, and the somewhat questionable nature of his disguise. Could the giant have heard him whispering to Periwinkle and somehow discovered that he was not what he appeared?

When their eyes met, Phinnegan forcefully swallowed the lump in his throat. The giant gestured clumsily in Phinnegan’s direction, pretending to drink from an invisible glass. Phinnegan made no move, and the giant gestured again, more urgently emphasizing the entire motion with a throaty grunt.

Taking the giant’s meaning, Phinnegan raised the glass shakily to his lips and tilted his head back. The liquid trickled across his tongue to the back of his mouth and ran down his throat. It was thicker than he expected, not quite a syrup, but almost. It was sweet to the tongue, but bit sharply and left a lingering warmness in the back of his throat.

Phinnegan lowered his glass and looked to the giant, who nodded curtly and then simply walked away.

In the first moments after drinking the liquid, nothing appeared to happen to Phinnegan. The warm sensation in his throat lessened slightly and the sweet aftertaste lingered precipitously on his tongue. Around him the Faë still danced and hooted, but he heard no music. He blinked once, then twice, but his eyes opened each time upon the same scene. Peering into the empty glass, he assured himself that he had indeed drunk every last drop. Out of frustration, he sighed and released the glass, letting it fall towards the ground.

As he sighed, he noticed that his tongue was thick and heavy. His other senses soon followed suit; his eyes could not focus and the sounds of the Faë came to his ears as if through a thin wall. He stepped back in a moment of dizziness and nearly lost his balance.

Phinnegan tried to catch the eye of Periwinkle or Crimson, but to no avail. For one, he could not focus on any face well enough to recognize either Faë. But making the task even more difficult was the swimming room about him, where everything moved as if in slow motion. Fighting a nauseous feeling, he closed his eyes and breathed deeply.

The sounds remained muffled, growing fainter until all at once the world was quiet around him. He felt no breeze, but he was suddenly cold. A shiver raced up his spine and his teeth threatened to chatter.

Just as the voices of the Faë faded completely, he heard a new sound. Faintly at first, but growing in strength, a single fiddle sang a bewitching melody, beckoning him to follow.
Follow where?

He opened his eyes to total darkness save for a spot of warm, orange-tinted light, just visible in the distance. The sound of the fiddle was faint, but he guessed that it shared the same source as this small speck of light. The melody quickened its pace, belying the urgency with which it beckoned. The melody was not unlike the one he had heard in his bedroom some few nights past.

One step and then two, Phinnegan moved towards the source of the light. Yet, the light did not seem any closer. Several steps more, but the light still seemed just as distant. He looked down at his feet and took two more steps forward.

But his feet did not move.

Phinnegan felt that he should be afraid, but the melody calmed him. But how to get himself to the light was a tricky problem indeed. He felt drawn to it, as though the fiddle whispered his name, again and again. In a moment of inspiration, he thought to do a thing that would have made no sense a few days ago, but the strange ways of this world required a different perspective.

He called back. Not vocally, but with his mind, focusing on the melody of the fiddle, desiring that he should come nearer to it.

Suddenly, his eyes sensed that he had lurched forward, though he did not feel himself move. Peering at the light, he saw that it was indeed closer and the fiddle was louder. He kept his mind focused on the sound of the fiddle and watched as the spot of light grew and grew until he was almost to it – but something blocked his path.

A thick wall of nearly opaque glass stretched as far as the eye could see in any direction. Phinnegan noticed that he no longer felt chilled, and was in fact quite warm here in front of this glass wall. The light he had followed was bright and the sound of the fiddle filled the air around him, giving the impression that both were just on the other side.

Phinnegan stepped closer to the glass, placing his cheek against it. The glass was warm, almost hot. He looked for a door or any opening that would allow him to pass through, but he found none. When he rapped the glass with his knuckle, the resulting sound was high-pitched, indicating the solid thickness of the glass.