Faerie Wars 01 - Faerie Wars (14 page)

'You have
nobles?'

'Shut it, Henry!' Fogarty growled.

With nothing better to do, Urticae managed to find the original island. He couldn't locate the basalt pillars either, but he did discover evidence of an ancient earthquake that might have toppled them. Before long he'd convinced himself that the portal had really existed and sensed that an entrance to another realm could have important political and military possibilities. He also decided that the portal must have had something to do with natural conditions on the island. To the amusement of his family and friends, he spent the next three years visiting active volcanic sites in the hope of finding another one. The day after his thirty-third birthday he did.

The new portal, only the second ever discovered in the Realm of Faerie, was on property owned -- but never visited -- by another noble, a Faerie of the Light named Iris. Urticae tried to buy the site, but Iris became suspicious and wouldn't sell. Urticae's House launched an attack on House Iris, thus beginning a conflict between Faeries of the Night and Faeries of the Light that was to cause trouble right to the present day.

House Iris won the war and it was only after Urticae's forces were defeated that Iris himself found out what the fuss was all about. He searched the disputed property and eventually stumbled on the natural portal. Although he didn't recognise it for what it was, investigation soon enlightened him. His discovery was to lay the foundations of the vast power and wealth that eventually accrued to his family.

Fogarty leaned forward. 'You mean there's just one portal between our two worlds now?'

Pyrgus shook his head. 'No, eighteen have been discovered altogether. But they don't stay open. Some of them get buried, like they think happened to the first one. Some of them just stop working, nobody really knows why. New ones are found from time to time. There are about five known now, including the Purp -- ' Pyrgus stopped himself, then went on, ' -- including the one Urticae lost to Iris.'

Fogarty's hard old features were expressionless, but there was a curious glint in his eyes. 'How come that one lasted so long?' he asked. 'Way you tell it, it must be thousands of years old.'

Pyrgus hesitated, then said, 'That one was... modified.'

Fogarty waited for him to go on and, when he didn't, asked, 'Modified how?'

'The Imp -- the, ah, some wizards made a study. I mean, this was before I was born. The portal was just an ordinary portal for, you know, centuries, but House Iris eventually built machines to stabilise it and change the way it worked. The other portals just lead to one place each and two of them aren't even useful. One opens underwater near the bed of some ocean and one opens inside an active volcano. That's the only place they go. They're sort of
just there
in both worlds. But you can aim the House Iris portal so it opens up anywhere you want it to.'

'That's the one you came through, isn't it?'

Pyrgus nodded. 'How did you know?'

'I think I'd have noticed a portal that was always
just there
at the bottom of my garden,' Fogarty said drily. 'It had to be one that opened up specially for the occasion. Why did you want to come here?'

Pyrgus hesitated. 'I didn't. I wasn't supposed to come here at all. Or shrink to this size. Or grow wings. There's a filter on the House Iris portal that stops you shrinking when you translate, but it didn't work for some reason.'

Fogarty sniffed. 'Sounds to me like you were sabotaged,' he said.

'How much of that did you believe?' asked Mr Fogarty.

Henry blinked. He'd believed it all. 'Don't you think he's telling the truth?'

'Not much,' Fogarty said. 'All that business about shrinking and growing wings...?'

'But he's small and he does have wings!' Henry protested.

'I know,' Fogarty said. 'But that doesn't mean he's shrunk or just grown them. He may have always been that way.'

They were together in Mr Fogarty's cluttered living room, having left the fairy Pyrgus Malvae in the kitchen eating a potato crisp that was nearly as big as he was.

'Why would he say he did if he didn't?'

'To keep us off our guard,' Fogarty told him soberly. 'What could be more innocent than a sweet little fairy with butterfly wings ... in trouble?'

'Keep us off guard about
what'}'
Henry asked.

Fogarty pursed his lips, leaned forward and dropped his voice. 'The alien invasion.'

'Alien
invasion?'
Henry echoed.
'Alien
invasion?'

'Well, you can drop that attitude for a start,' Fogarty said crossly. 'You know how many Americans got abducted by aliens last year? Six million!'

'Mr Fog -- '

'And that's just America. You think what it's like world-wide. Believe me, there's something going on and this may be a part of it. He's already admitted he comes from a parallel universe. What do you think that makes him -- a teddy bear? How far do you think you'd trust him if he was green with tentacles? Or that thing that came out of John Hurt's chest in
Alien?'

Henry hadn't seen
Alien,
but he imagined what came out of John Hurt's chest must have been pretty awful. He opened his mouth to say something, but Fogarty was in full flight.

'You wouldn't, would you? You'd be on your guard. Think about it. If you looked like hell and dripped slime, wouldn't it make sense to come on like something a lot more harmless? So you use advanced alien technology to change your shape -- molecular adjuster, I'd say. But what do you change it to? Fairy, that's what! A
fairy!'

'Why?' asked Henry. He'd seen Mr Fogarty like this before and the only way to stop it was to meet it head on.

'Why? Why what? Why a fairy? Because a fairy is familiar ...' he narrowed his eyes ' ... yet strangely unfamiliar. Every kid on the planet's seen fairies in a picture book, but how many've seen the real thing? Everybody loves a fairy -- tiptoes through the bluebells, butter wouldn't melt -- but at the same time, fairy says
Don't mess with me otherwise you don't get the gold at the end of the rainbow.
You heard that thing talking about gold, didn't you?'

'That's leprechauns,' Henry said.

It stopped him. 'What's leprechauns?'

'Gold at the end of the rainbow. Irish leprechauns. They promise you gold, but don't give it to you. Fairies just help plants grow.' Then, before Mr Fogarty could get his breath back, he went on, 'Anyway, if he
was
part of the alien invasion, why would he tell us he'd shrunk?'

'What?'

'Why would he
tell
us? Why wouldn't he just pretend he was a normal fairy?'

'To get our
sympathy --
'

'If we thought he was a real fairy, he wouldn't
need
our sympathy,' Henry said patiently. 'He'd have it already. Everybody loves fairies -- you just said so yourself.' He waited while Mr Fogarty considered it. The old boy might be batty, but he wasn't stupid.

Eventually Fogarty said, 'You think I should trust him?'

'Yes!' Henry said emphatically.

'You think we should help him?'

'Yes,' Henry said, but less emphatically this time. It was the 'we' that got to him. He wanted to help Pyrgus the fairy. In fact he wanted to help quite badly. But a little voice in his head muttered that maybe he wouldn't be able to do all that much. Henry had other problems in his life.

Fogarty shrugged. 'OK,' he said. 'Let's go back in.'

'We've had a discussion,' Fogarty said briskly, 'and we've decided -- '

'What was that thing?' Pyrgus asked, interrupting.

'What thing?'

'That thing you gave me to eat.'

'Potato crisp,' Fogarty told him. 'It wasn't poisoned, if that's what you think.'

Pyrgus looked at him in surprise. 'Didn't think it was -- I just thought it tasted nice.'

'Potato crisp,' Fogarty said again. 'Cheese and onion.'

'Haven't you ever eaten one before?' Henry asked.

Pyrgus shook his head. 'We don't have them in my realm.'

'Don't you?' Henry was fascinated. He couldn't really imagine a world where you couldn't buy yourself a packet of crisps. 'What do you do for snacks?'

'Brindles,' Pyrgus said. 'They'd be the most popular. Bubble smoke, I suppose. And nants, if you've got a sweet tooth. Slice of ordle. Then there's chaos horn, but that's a sex thing. In Cheapside they sell retinduculus from stalls.'

'This chaos horn -- ' Henry began.

'Can you talk about all that some other time?' Fogarty cut in. He glared at Henry, then at Pyrgus. 'As I was saying, we've had a discussion, young Henry and me, and we've decided to give you the benefit of the doubt -- '

'What doubt?' asked Pyrgus.

'What doubt?' asked Henry.

Fogarty ignored them. 'We've decided you might just be who you say you are, although you haven't really said yet, have you? But we need to ask you a few more questions.' He waited, then when Pyrgus said nothing, went on: 'This shape you're in, this fairy business -- little, wings, skinny -- you say that's not natural? That's just what happens to you when you come through a portal?'

'Unless it's got a filter,' Pyrgus said. He scowled. 'Or the filter doesn't work.'

'It's important how you answer this,' Fogarty said, 'so think carefully. Every country in the world -- our world -- has got folklore about fairies. Little stick-insect people like you with big wings. Every country.'

'What's your question?' Pyrgus asked.

Fogarty's eyes darkened. 'No smoke,' he said. 'No smoke -- that's what they say, don't they? Mean to tell me all those stories about fairy folk are just coincidence? Don't have anything to do with your people?'

Bewildered, Pyrgus said, 'No, I'm not trying to tell you that.'

'So an awful lot of your people -- your
alien
not-human-at-all people -- must be swarming through the portals. Without filters.'

'Mr Fogarty -- ' Henry began. He'd thought they'd cleared up the alien stuff.

But Pyrgus cut him off. 'I'm not trying to tell you that either. We don't have very many people using gates to your world. Why would we? It rains a lot here. And who wants to shrink and grow wings? You think it's fun getting eaten by cats and put in a jamjar? There's only one filtered gate and it's expensive to operate. My fa -- the people who have it are always complaining about the cost, so it's only used when you really, really have to. I told you there's only one other gate that gets you anywhere useful just now. Believe me, nobody's
swarming
through it.'

Fogarty had the look Hodge got when he was about to pounce on a mouse. 'So where do all our fairies come from?' he asked triumphantly.

'They're descendants of Landsman and the shipwrecked seeds people,' Pyrgus said.

Fogarty's jaw dropped. 'Oh.' But he recovered quickly. 'All right. Answer me this then. What do you look like when you don't look like a fairy?'

'Handsome,' Pyrgus said and grinned.

It went on like that for a while. Pyrgus answered Mr Fogarty's questions and gave reasonable explanations. By lunchtime, enough trust had been generated for Mr Fogarty to let Pyrgus out of the kitchen while they all ate lunch in the cluttered living room. Henry made them beans on toast, as he often did for Mr Fogarty and himself. He cut up a baked bean for Pyrgus, who ate each piece in his hands like watermelon. When he'd finished, he wiped his mouth on his sleeve and gave Henry a thumbs up. They tramped back into the kitchen with Pyrgus sitting on Henry's shoulder. He fluttered down to his microphone as Henry pulled up a chair.