Faerie Wars

Eight

For a moment Henry Atherton just stood there, mouth open, eyes blinking furiously, as he tried to decide what he was looking at. Hodge had caught a butterfly, of course, but it wasn't a butterfly Henry was seeing. He was seeing a tiny winged figure. The wings were like butterfly wings, but the figure…

Henry shook his head. He was looking at a fairy!

The trouble was he didn't believe in fairies. He didn't even know anybody who believed in fairies. Except, a voice said in his head, Mr Fogarty. Mr Fogarty believes in fairies! For some reason it brought him up short. Mr Fogarty believed in fairies. Along with ghosts and flying saucers. Mr Fogarty believed the world was run by a secret conspiracy of bankers based in Zurich, Switzerland. Just because Mr Fogarty believed in something didn't make it real.

But Henry was looking at a fairy. In a lunatic moment he wondered if Mr Fogarty had somehow created it. Then his paralysis broke.

'Hodge, you idiot!' he screamed. He threw himself on the tomcat and grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, the way mother cats do with kittens. Hodge howled in protest and dropped the… dropped the… Hodge dropped whatever it was he'd had in his mouth.

Then Henry dropped him. He glared at Henry accusingly and stalked off no more than a yard or two before stopping to sit down. Henry snatched the fairy between cupped hands, taking care not to crush the wings.

As Hodge washed himself to regain his dignity, Henry cautiously opened his hands to take another peek. The creature looked dazed. Its head was twisted to one side, possibly as a result of being chewed by Hodge. There might have been blood on one shoulder, but it was difficult to tell.

Henry forced himself to consider what he was holding, even though he knew it was more or less impossible. It was a little winged man of sorts. Well, actually a little boy. Or not a little boy exactly – he looked somewhere around Henry's own age – more of a young man, but tiny. He was wearing clothes: a jacket and breeches that might be dark green – the actual colour was difficult to tell. The wings were dun, marked like a grizzled skipper butterfly.

Henry swallowed. 'Who are you?'

The fairy – it had to be a fairy – clapped his hands to his ears and tried to launch himself out of Henry's grasp. Henry slid his thumbs across quickly to block the exit. He opened them again a slit and asked again more softly, 'Who are you?'

It occurred to him suddenly that he was assuming an awful lot. In all the storybooks, fairies could talk. But what happened in real life? What was a fairy anyway? It looked like a little person, but since it clearly wasn't human, maybe it was some sort of animal. It was weird thinking of fairies as animals – or insects, an errant thought intruded: they had wings like insects – but maybe that's what they were. Just poor dumb creatures. Very rare poor dumb creatures…

And if they weren't, who said they spoke English?

It was kind of dark inside his cupped hands, but he thought he saw the fairy's mouth move. No sound came out. Henry decided to assume it understood English and said very softly this time, 'I'm not going to hurt you. I rescued you from the cat.' He had a sudden inspiration and added, 'Nod your head if you understand me.'

The fairy's head poked out between Henry's hands and nodded.

'Will you promise me you won't try to fly away if I open my hands?'

The fairy's head nodded again enthusiastically. Henry started to open his hands and the fairy tried to launch himself out again. Henry snapped them shut. 'Oh no you don't!' He carried the fairy into the shed and looked around until he found an empty jamjar. Carefully he dropped the creature inside and covered the mouth with one hand while he manoeuvred the lid. He screwed it tight and held the jar up for inspection. The fairy was gripping his throat and writhing in a pantomime of suffocation. 'Oh, all right,' Henry said. 'You keep well clear.' There was no way he was going to loosen the lid, but he did punch a few air-holes in it with his penknife. The fairy watched and kept well clear. Obviously he was no dumb animal.

What now? What did you do when you caught a fairy?

A thought occurred to him. He pushed it away, but it came right back. After a moment, feeling really stupid, he asked softly, 'Do you grant three wishes?'

The fairy cupped his hand around his ear.

Henry licked his lips. 'Do you grant three wishes?' he asked again, more loudly this time.

The fairy nodded vigorously, then pantomimed unscrewing a lid.

'Oh, no,' Henry said firmly. He had the feeling he was being got at. Only little kids believed in three wishes. But then only little kids believed in fairies. He scratched his head. What was he going to do?

Maybe Mr Fogarty would know. Mr Fogarty had one big advantage over Henry: he actually thought fairies existed. That probably meant he'd studied them. Maybe he'd never seen any, but if you read enough books, one of them usually told you what to do. The more Henry thought about it, the more it seemed sensible to show the fairy to Mr Fogarty. Before he could talk himself out of it, he grabbed the jamjar and dropped it into the pocket of his jacket.

He found Mr Fogarty in the kitchen, making a mug of instant coffee. 'You finished?'

Henry shook his head. -'Haven't really started yet.'

'You want coffee?'

'No. I – '

'Good,' Fogarty said, 'because this is the last. Goes on the supermarket list tomorrow. Instant Crap with Toxic Additives, one jar, large. Food stores? Should close those places down.'

Henry didn't want to get into that. He said, 'Can I show you something, Mr Fogarty?'

For some reason Fogarty became instantly alert. 'Did you find it in the shed?'

'No, not in the shed exactly. Outside actually.' The jar caught in his pocket as he tried to drag it out, but he freed it eventually.

Fogarty bent over, frowning, to look through the speckled glass. 'Some sort of kid's toy?' The fairy moved. 'Good God!' Fogarty exclaimed and jumped. Then he grinned. 'That's good. That really got me going for a minute. What is it – radio control?'

'It's a fairy,' Henry said.

They sat facing each other, the jarred fairy on the kitchen table between them.

'You think it can talk?'

'The lips move, but I can't hear anything,' Henry told him.

'Could be pitch,' Fogarty said. 'That thing's vocal cords must be really short. Any sound he makes has to be in the high register, like a bat. Can you still hear bats?'

'Squeaking?' Henry asked. 'Yes, I can.'

'You lose it when you get older. Something happens to your ears. I haven't been able to hear a bat in fifty years.' He looked back at the fairy. 'Or it could be volume, of course. Not much lung capacity there either.'

'He can hear me,' Henry volunteered. 'And understand.'

'Oh, he'll understand all right. They're intelligent little scrotes, by all accounts. Dangerous too.'

Henry frowned. 'How can something that size be dangerous?'

Fogarty looked at him soberly. 'Animal cunning,' he said. 'They lure you into Fairyland and then they have you.'

He couldn't mean what Henry thought he meant. 'Like… magic or something?'

'Weight of numbers,' Fogarty snorted. 'Some of them have poisoned stings, like African bees.'

'You really think there's such a place as Fairyland?' Henry asked. 'A sort of… magic place?'

'Why do you keep going on about magic?' Fogarty asked him sourly. 'I'm talking about another reality. Don't they teach you physics at school?'

'Actually – '

But Fogarty wasn't listening. 'Einstein – you know who Einstein was?' Henry nodded. 'Einstein figured there were about a billion universes next door to this one. Quantum boys say the same thing, some of them. You never hear Hoyle's Different Spouse Theory? Every morning you wake up beside a different spouse because you've moved into a whole new universe, only you don't know it because now you've got a whole new set of memories.' He caught Henry's expression and added, 'Never mind that. I'd say that thing's from a parallel universe. Any sign of UFOs?'

Bewildered, Henry shook his head.

The fairy was sitting cross-legged in the jamjar, staring out at them. If he could hear their conversation, he gave no sign.

Fogarty said, 'Take the top off.'

'What? What happens if he flies away?'

'Where's he going to go? The windows are shut and the back door's closed. Besides, if he tries that I'll get my fly swatter.' Fogarty grinned suddenly. 'Heard that, didn't he? Sneaky little scrote's listening to every word. Look at his expression. Fly swatter for you, my lad, if you try anything stupid. Got that? Comprendez?'

Inside the jar, the fairy nodded.

'Told you,' Fogarty said to Henry. 'Take the top off.'

Henry reluctantly unscrewed the lid and set it on the table beside the jamjar. After a moment, the fairy reached up to the rim of the jar and pulled himself out. Henry noticed he didn't use his wings much. He dropped down on to the table, watching Fogarty warily.

'Now, listen,' Fogarty said. 'I think you and me need a little talk, boyo. Trouble is, you can hear me but I can't hear you. But I can fix that. If it's pitch or volume I can rig something. Won't be pretty, but it'll do the job. Now you can do this the hard way or the easy way. You can try running off or flying off or whatever it is you do, but you aren't going to get far. I won't use a fly swatter. That was just a joke – you're far too valuable. But I can catch you, easy as pie, in a butterfly net and when I do, you're going back into that jar. So what's it to be? You going to be good?'

The fairy nodded.

'OK,' Fogarty said. 'This shouldn't take long.'

The fairy sat down with his back against the jamjar and watched while Fogarty took down an old shoebox from a top shelf. It was full of tangled wiring and dusty electrical components. Fogarty scrabbled through them, laying out bits and pieces on the kitchen table. Henry noticed they included a tiny speaker from an old transistor radio. He found a half-used tube of instant solder and unscrewed the top to inspect it. 'Nobody uses this stuff any more,' he remarked. 'All bloody microchips and circuit boards.'

Henry watched, fascinated, as Fogarty began to assemble something with the speaker at one end. His old hands were flecked with liver spots but amazingly deft, as if he was well used to intricate machinery.

Halfway through, the fairy got up and walked across to hand things to Fogarty as he needed them. The little creature appeared to have an instinctive grasp of how the contraption was going to work.

When the last piece was in place, Fogarty said to Henry, 'See if there's a battery in the drawer under the sink. Nine volt. Little square thing.'

The drawer seemed to hold nothing but string, but Henry eventually found a battery in the bottom. 'This do?'

Fogarty was making some finishing touches and barely glanced across. 'Yes, that's the ticket.' He took the battery from Henry and wrapped wires round the terminals. 'Talk into that,' he told the fairy, pointing to a button mike larger than its head.

The fairy crouched down at the mike, looked at Fogarty, then at Henry. Lips moved and a tinny voice crackled from the speaker. 'You were very rough on that cat.'

Henry blinked. 'That cat was trying to eat you!' he protested. 'That cat thought you were a butterfly.' All the same he grinned a little. He rather liked cats himself, even great podging cats like Hodge.

‘I could have handled it,' the tinny voice told him.

'Never mind the cat,' Fogarty cut in. 'We've got more important things to talk about. You can understand what I'm saying to you?'

'Certainly.'

'So you speak English?'

'If that's what you're speaking.'

'Of course it's what I'm speaking. Where did you learn it?'

'Didn't have to,' the fairy said.

Fogarty frowned. 'So it's your native language?'

'Wouldn't think so,' said the fairy.

'You trying to be clever with me?' Fogarty asked.

The fairy gave him a look that would have done justice to a sphinx. 'I don't know why you're going on about the language. You can understand me, I can understand you. I need you to help me.'

'We're not talking spying here, are we, because – '

Henry interrupted, 'Help you how?' Maybe the fairy would do something in return. He kept thinking about his parents. He kept thinking of the three wishes business. But he couldn't ask about three wishes in front of Mr Fogarty. Or talk about his parents.

'Get back to where I came from.'

Henry hesitated. 'Like… Fairyland?'

'If that's what you call it.'

'What do you call it?' Fogarty asked aggressively.

They both saw the fairy shrug. 'I don't call it anything much. The realm, I suppose. Or the world.'

'But it's not this world?'

'It's some sort of parallel dimension, right?'

'Yes.'

Fogarty looked at Henry. 'Told you. We're dealing with an alien.'

Henry said, 'What's your name?'

'Pyrgus,' said the fairy. 'Pyrgus Malvae.'

Mr Fogarty went back to the language business, which he seemed determined to worry like a bone. Pyrgus the fairy sighed audibly through the little speaker. 'Look,' he said, 'I don't understand the physics of it very well, but Tithonus once told me – '

'Who's Tithonus? Your leader?'

'He used to be my tutor when I was a child. He told me this world is an analogue of mine. Or mine is an analogue of this one. Or they're analogues of each other – it all amounts to much the same thing.'

'What's that mean?' Henry asked. 'Analogues of each other?'

'Connected,' Pyrgus said. Tithonus says it's like dreaming, except you don't leave your body behind. Dream worlds can be pretty weird, but you always know the language, don't you?'

It made no sense at all to Henry, but Mr Fogarty seemed satisfied. 'So you travelled here from this other world?'

'It's not exactly travelling,' Pyrgus said. 'We call it translating. You don't actually go anywhere. You just move into another state of being. But it feels as if you've gone somewhere,' he added helpfully.

'You people have been translating here for centuries, haven't you?' Fogarty asked casually.

'Some of us,' Pyrgus said. Even through the speaker his voice sounded guarded.

'You mean like not everybody can afford it?' Henry put in.

'Something like that.' Pyrgus moved position, but the mike continued to pick up his voice perfectly. 'Look, I don't know who you two are – '

'I'm Henry Atherton,' Henry told him promptly. He'd decided he liked Pyrgus. The little fellow was feisty.

Pyrgus ignored him. ' – but I don't think I'm going to answer any more questions until you promise to help me get back.'

'You can't get back to your own world?' Fogarty asked, frowning.

Pyrgus said nothing.

'How can we help you if you won't answer questions?'

Pyrgus folded his arms and studied the ceiling.

Fogarty gave in. 'All right, all right, we'll help you. But you're getting nothing for nothing.'

'What do you want – three wishes?'

'We'll work that out later,' Fogarty scowled. 'Just so you know there's no such thing as a free lunch.'

'How do I know I can trust you?' Pyrgus asked suspiciously.

'See anybody else round here who's going to help you?'

Pyrgus glared at him.

'Take my point?'

Pyrgus continued to glare for a long moment, then muttered something that sounded like, 'Can't be any worse than Brimstone.' More loudly he said, 'All right, we'll make a deal. You help me and I'll send you gold when I get back.'

'Hah!'

'Well, what do you want?' asked Pyrgus crossly. 'How much gold do you think I can carry when I'm this size?'

Something about the way he said it made Henry ask, 'Weren't you always this size?'

Pyrgus shook his head. 'Didn't have these stupid wings either.'

'I think you'd better tell us what's going on,' said Fogarty.

Once Pyrgus got started, it seemed as if he couldn't stop. There were details that didn't make much sense and gaps he glossed over. But the story was fascinating.

The Faeries of the Light first discovered the Analogue World nearly five thousand years ago when three families of seed merchants were shipwrecked on a remote volcanic island in the Land of Faerie. The place was barren and they might have starved to death if one of the children hadn't stumbled on something very odd – two basalt pillars that burned fiercely without giving off the slightest heat. The child – her name was Arana – walked between the pillars. Where she found herself wasn't barren like the rest of the island, but lush, well watered and packed with a jungle of enormous plants and flowers. Even more exciting, she'd been turned into a creature with wings who could fly from one giant flower to another.

Arana played for a time in this amazing world, then started to miss her family and plucked up enough courage to go through the fiery pillars again. She found herself back on the barren island. Her wings had disappeared.

When she told her family, they didn't believe it, but she talked her older brother, Landsman, into coming with her to see the fiery pillars. Before Landsman could stop her, Arana ran into the flames. Landsman lunged forward to try to save her and they both found themselves winged creatures in the green land. Landsman was old enough to realise he wasn't surrounded by giant flowers and plants, but had himself shrunk. When he led his sister back through the pillars, they lost their wings and returned to normal size.

The discovery of the portal saved the shipwrecked families, for while the barren island couldn't feed them, the world beyond the pillars certainly could. Since they were seedspeople, they already knew a lot about plants and even introduced a few new species from the Realm of Faerie, using seeds they'd managed to save from the shipwreck.

'Which ones?' Fogarty asked.

'Bluebells… foxgloves… most of the flowers with bells came from my realm.'

In the early months, Landsman made regular trips through the pillars in the hope of spotting a passing ship that would rescue them, but, as time went by, he did this less and less. Eventually he left a written record of their experience somewhere on the island where it would be safe from weather and painted a large notice on a rock near the pillars explaining where this record could be found. He hoped if anybody ever landed on the island, they'd find the diary and follow his family into the Analogue World to bring them home.

Nobody ever did. Landsman updated the record every six months at first, but this dropped to once a year, then every few years. Eventually he stopped updating altogether. By now he was middle aged and little Arana a full-grown woman. The younger members of the families were intermarrying and producing winged children of their own on the far side of the pillars. The new generations had never experienced the Realm of Faerie (beyond that tiny patch of barren island) and had little interest in it. Their home was among the plants and flowers of the Analogue World.

It was nearly four hundred years before anyone else landed on that remote little island. But it was eventually visited by a wizard named Arion, who was experiencing some problems with the engine of his fishing boat.

'You have wizards in the Realm of Faerie?' Henry asked eagerly.

Pyrgus blinked at him. 'They're just people who can make things work. Like Mr Fogarty here.'

'Get on with it,' growled Mr Fogarty.

Arion found the notice on the rock, faded but still readable. He followed the directions and rescued Landsman's record, which had survived rather well. But search as he might, he couldn't find the basalt pillars with the fire between them or any sign of the original shipwreck. He decided the record was a hoax, but since it was a centuries-old hoax it had curiosity value, and he donated the documents to the library of the Wizards' Guild.

'You have a Wizards' Guild?' Henry interrupted again, but Mr Fogarty shushed him.

Landsman's record lay unnoticed for a further sixty years before it was taken up by an adventurous nobleman named Urticae. Pyrgus called Urticae a Faerie of the Night without explaining what that meant.

'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.