Faerie Tale (22 page)

Then the arguing began. 

* * *

The Faerie world was vanishing. Behind them, the castle crumbled like month old wedding cake.  Very like it actually, the castle had had a distinctly wedding-cake look about it to begin with.  And as they looked up … 

‘Oh
no
,’ shouted Denny.  ‘The
sky
is falling.’ 

It was – literally.

All around them, the Faerie realm was fading away leaving in its place a vast howling wilderness.

‘It’s her,’ shouted Denny above the thundering wind.  ‘She was what held this place together.  And now she’s gone …’

Tamar stopped running. ‘No,’ she realised, ‘this is just another “Dontgonearthecastle”. It’s just meant to scare us.’

Time to stop and
think
.

Denny skidded to a halt.  ‘What are you doing?’ he yelled.  ‘We have to get out of here.’

‘Why?’

‘Why? 
Why
?  Because the place is coming down around our ears. That is traditionally the time when you
leave
!  Preferably as fast as you can, and … Why the hell am I explaining this to you?  We don’t have
time
for this. Come
on
!’ and he tried to drag her with him.  He might as well have tried to drag her from a black hole, a phenomenon that the Faerie world was increasingly resembling.

Here and there the remnants of the Faerie’s bright world could still be seen, but it was full of holes through which could be seen – nothing.  Vast swathes of nothing as far as the eye could see.  It was blue.

‘Wait,’ said Tamar.

They waited; there really was no arguing with Tamar in this mood.  In any mood really, if he was honest, but he still tried.

The wind slowed, the howling decreased to a dull roar.  ‘Don’t buy into it,’ said Tamar.  ‘It’s not real, remember?’

Then suddenly, as if it was giving up, the whole world went dark.  There was a smell of damp earth.

A faint greenish light filtered through from above them; the air was cool, water trickled in the distance.

‘We’re underground,’ said Denny in surprise.

‘And the Sidhe fled underground,’ quoted Tamar inaccurately.  ‘We should have known.’

‘Well, let’s get out of here,’ said Denny.

‘No, let’s find whatever it was that this elaborate illusion was set up to hide,’ said Tamar.  ‘
Then
we’ll get out of here.’

‘You don’t know that it was set up to hide something,’ said Denny reasonably. 

‘I do,’ she said shortly.

‘She might not have set it up to hide anything,’  he repeated hopelessly. (Sometimes he tried to argue even, no
especially
, when there was no point.)

‘
I
would have,’ said Tamar.

‘Oh right.’  There really was no arguing with this logic.  

‘What are we looking for then?’

‘Whatever she didn’t want us to find.’

‘What’s that then?’

Tamar glared at him.  ‘Are you doing this on purpose?’ she said.

‘Just admit it,’ he said.  ‘You have no idea, have you?’

‘I’ll know it when I see it,’ she said mulishly.

‘See what?’

‘Shut up.’

* * *

The argument came to an abrupt end when Stiles said in a loud, booming voice that he had never used before. ‘The Faerie Queen is Dead,’ and added in his normal voice when he had their attention. ‘It’s almost time.’ He also added as if to himself.  ‘I
knew
she could do it.’

‘Time for what?’ asked Cindy, who was used to being in the dark about events and always asked.  Cindy was invaluable to the group in this respect as it was often a relief to others who wanted to know but did not like to admit that they did not already know.  Tamar was particularly guilty of this.

Three pairs of expectant eyes bored into Stiles.

He held up the lamp. ‘This’ he said.  ‘She can’t protect them anymore.  Tamar has killed her. It was all we were waiting for.  Now we strike.’

This was news to the rest of them.  ‘We
were
?’ said Cindy.  ‘No one told me.  I didn’t know we were waiting for anything in particular.’

Strike how?’ asked Hecaté.

‘What
I
want to know, begging your pardon my lord, is how you know she is dead indeed?’ said Finvarra.

Stiles took the last question first.  ‘I feel their confusion,’ he said, ‘in my head. 
They
know it, a strong influence has been removed, and they are in disarray, frightened.  Would not your own subjects feel the same if
you
were to die?’

‘No, they are self-reliant.  I do not crave such power.  But … they
would
know,’ he conceded.

Stiles nodded and turned to Hecaté. ‘We strike,’ he said, ‘by trapping them in the lamp.  They have no defence against it now. Only the will of the Queen held them back from the fulfilment of the Oath.’

 ‘Oath?’ said two voices. 

Only Finvarra nodded to himself.

‘I was not here when the Oath was made,’ said Stiles (as Leir).  ‘Finvarra knows more about the details I expect.’

‘I made no Oath,’ said Finvarra. ‘All I know is that she made a deal with someone – a human I think – to keep her subjects safe when the slaughter began.  But she broke her part of the bargain, which was to be expected.  The lamp, I think was originally designed as a safe haven for her people. The human transported them inside it to a prepared sanctuary under the stones, if she promised never to trouble the mortal world again.  But within the year she was back, and the lamp was mysteriously lost.  That’s all I know.’

‘Why would he do all that?’ asked Cindy, ‘If the Faeries were being killed anyway?’

‘Who knows why people do things?’ said Finvarra.  ‘She probably promised him power or something.’

‘She did,’ said Stiles.  ‘He turned menacingly to Finvarra.  ‘You are not telling the whole story.  But I can see into your mind.  I have it now.’

He smiled at Cindy.  ‘A good question,’ he said.  ‘And you shall have an answer. The Queen promised this man the power of the Faeries.  He didn’t use the lamp out of the goodness of his heart. He did it to trap the Faeries like a genie in a bottle.  All the power of the Faeries at his command, but the Faerie Queen tricked him, and I must say, in this particular case, I do not blame her. 
She
made the lamp, as a part of the deal. 
He
had no such power.  In return, he would take them to safety until the war between the humans and the Sidhe was concluded.  But she knew he would not let them go. Indeed, she had bargained their freedom for their lives.’

‘But she had no intention of giving up her freedom?’ put in Cindy, who was keeping up admirably with this convoluted tale.

‘So,’ said Hecaté, summing up, ‘the Queen built the lamp to hide her clan from the humans and made a deal with a greedy human that, if he would take the lamp and deliver it safely, he could come and claim it later and use the power of the Faeries inside for himself?’

 ‘That’s what I just said,’ said Stiles impatiently

‘I was just checking that I was following you correctly,’ said Hecaté.

‘What went wrong?’ asked Cindy.  Something kicked her brain for her attention.  Finvarra was looking … sceptical?  Puzzled?

‘Quite simply, he should never have let her out,’ said Stiles.  ‘She killed him.’

‘And hid the lamp?’ said Cindy.  Something about the lamp, something Leir had said.  What
was
it?

Finvarra laughed suddenly.  ‘She gave it to
me
, the fool,’ he said.

‘Why didn’t you ever use it?’ she asked him curiously.

‘I told you, I can’t.  Besides, even if I could, it’s not that simple. There would be … consequences. She has seen to that.’

Whatever it was, it was now screaming for Cindy’s attention.  Something did not
fit
.  Something Leir had said earlier…

‘When the lamp is lighted, all  the Faeries under the oath, at least the Faeries within a certain range, will be drawn inside and cannot escape from within, unless the lamp is lighted again,’ said Stiles.  He was determined to get this in at any cost and nobody had asked, to his chagrin. 

‘Thousands of Faeries inside this small lamp?’ said Cindy looking dubiously at it.  ‘How did she do that?’

‘It’s all relative,’ said Stiles.  ‘After all she managed to create an entire realm inside a rather small underground cave.’

‘How wide a range?’ asked Hecaté.

‘Don’t worry about that,’ said Stiles. ‘We’ll get them all.  Now that she’s not here to stop us.

‘How could she have stopped us?’ asked Cindy. 

‘Well, because she has been substituting human children for Faerie children for a long time now, most of the Faeries here
belong
here in this world.  To remove them would create a vacuum, we couldn’t do it without serious consequences, as Finvarra has said.  But soon, because of what Tamar has done, that won’t be a problem anymore.’

* * *

‘Here!’ shouted Tamar. ‘You’ll never guess what I’ve found.’

Denny came to look. There in the back of the cave, where they had been hidden from the world by the illusion of the Faerie realm were rows upon rows of sleeping children.

‘Jackpot!’ said Tamar.

* * *

‘Won’t the Faeries just be sucked back into the Faerie realm anyway, when Tamar brings the children back?’ asked Cindy with commendable acuity. This was unnerving Stiles; Cindy was not supposed to be this quick.

‘Not all of them,’ said Stiles. ‘Some of them were born here. In any case, there no longer
is
a Faerie realm. Tamar has destroyed it. It was never much more than an illusion anyway.’

Cindy picked up her lamp. ‘You know this thing hasn’t got a wick?’ she said. ‘How are we supposed to light it?’

The thought in Cindy’s head finally lit a torch and waved it at her.  ‘Wait a minute,’ she said.  ‘I thought you said that
you
had built the lamp.’

Stiles hesitated.  ‘Yes,’ he said eventually.  ‘I did say that, didn’t I?’

‘She couldn’t have made it on her own,’ said Finvarra shrewdly.  ‘I
thought
it was odd.  You helped her, didn’t you? 
You
made it for her,’ he theorised, ‘if she promised to behave herself in future?’

‘Oh, all right then, yes, yes I did. She tricked me too.  I, fool that I was,
believed
her. Her power over the mind is quite remarkable.’ He sighed.  ‘The oath she took was to
me
, that is, the avatar at the time. 
He
wanted the power of the faeries (an unworthy avatar and no doubt the reason why the plan failed) and I, from within, just wanted her … restrained.  She broke the oath as soon as she became free.’  He sighed.  ‘I no longer had the power to enforce the oath, and she knew it, she knew it when she made the oath.  But I didn’t realise that she knew it.  She fooled me.  And the lamp was gone.  Forever, I thought.’

‘And is that the
truth
this time?’ said Cindy sternly.

Stiles was prevented from answering this question by the sudden and unexpected advent of an extremely infuriated dragon bursting through the windows and landing with a clatter on the tiles where it lay flapping it’s wings feebly and gasping for breath.  No one moved.

* * *

There were thousands of them, and it was obvious that many of them had been here for many years, even though they had not grown any older in that time.  This was a problem indeed.

Tamar concentrated.  This was going to be difficult even for her. To return these children not only to their place in the world, but also to their place in time.

‘I need your help,’ she admitted to Denny. 

And even with the best intentions, it was  surely not going to be possible that some of these children would not have been missed. But each child that she held briefly in her arms seemed to show her the way back to where he or she had once belonged.  And it was but the work of a moment to place the child back in the cradle it had been taken from as if it had never been gone. 

The changelings were “removed” a euphemism that surely needs no further explanation.  And, in their guise as innocent children, this part of the operation was not always easy for Tamar and Denny.

‘I’ve never seen so many different nurseries in my life,’ said Denny when they had finished.  ‘I never thought I ever would.  Life’s a funny thing isn’t it?’

‘I’ll never know how we did that,’ Tamar said.

‘Not without a TARDIS anyway,’ said Denny laughing.  But Tamar did not know what a TARDIS was.*

*[
Although she could have if she had wanted to – being currently omniscient.
]

 ‘I don’t think I want to know,’ she continued, therefore, ignoring this. ‘We’ve been messing about in time too much lately.’

At this admission, Denny was temporarily speechless.

‘It’s a good job you’re omnipotent then,’ he said eventually.

‘This would never have worked otherwise,’ she said.  ‘Not without causing a hideous paradox anyway.’

By which Denny understood that Tamar was now running parallel timelines, as he had done when they went to the Faerie realm, in order to keep recent history in its proper place.

‘So, it’s as if it never happened then?’ he asked – ‘In a manner of speaking.’

Tamar just smiled. Denny was smart, but he was never able to get his head around this kind of thing.

‘You just don’t want to know,’ she told him.  And to this, at least, Denny was forced to heartily acquiesce.

‘It all happened and now it’s all been put right – people will remember, I can’t help that, but …’

‘You know what,’ said Denny.  ‘Never mind.’

It was strange, Denny thought, from the inside, it had looked like an ordinary, slightly damp cave.  But from the outside … he nudged Tamar. 

‘Now, don’t say it’s just wishful thinking or anything,’ he said, ‘but doesn’t that look rather like a spaceship to you?’

‘Yes,’ said Tamar to Denny’s everlasting shock and delight, ‘I’d say that’s exactly what it looks like.  And it explains a lot too.’

‘It does?’

‘Like the portal.  I kept wondering about that.  Other realms don’t usually have portals, what would be the point?  But it’s obvious now.  It was a transportation device into the ship.  And the stones disrupted the magnetic field.’