The Faeman Quest

Nine

Consolidated Magical Services had done quite a good job with their Body in a Box, but it lacked one obvious feature. There were no wheels built into the onyx cube and the delicate solid-state spell circuitry meant none could be attached once it was factory-sealed. As a result, when Lord Hairstreak wanted to go anywhere, the whole contraption had to be loaded on to a wheelbarrow and pushed to its destination with his head wobbling on top. The only servant he would trust with this task was an ancient family retainer called Battus Polydamas, who wheezed and complained incessantly, but knew how to keep secrets and would have given his life for his master.

‘Careful, Batty!’ Hairstreak screamed as the barrow hit a bump and the cube swayed alarmingly. If the thing ever toppled over, there was a risk that the connections would snap and his head roll off across the floor. It wouldn’t kill him, of course – the head was indestructible thanks to the safety spells – but the experience was always disorienting. Furthermore, reattachment was painful and could take anything up to a week, during which he was unable to communicate except by eye-blinks.

‘ Careful, is it? We want careful? ’ Batty muttered. ‘You mind your manners, young Master Hairstreak, and don’t try to teach your grampa how to suck slugs.’ He wheezed and tugged the barrow round in order to negotiate a corner. The cube began to sway in the other direction.

The violent weather spells that marked the approaches to Lord Hairstreak’s Keep stood in stark contrast to the weather spells located in the sky above the building’s central courtyard. When the Duke of Burgundy had owned the Keep, this vast area was paved with granite and used exclusively for military manoeuvers. One of Hairstreak’s first actions when he began to recover his fortune was to change all that. Teams of gnomes were called in to break up the stone, topsoil was imported by the ton and the fashionable Forest Faerie designer Celadon was hired to create a garden. Not one single specified plant (with the exception of grass) would grow naturally at the northerly latitude of the Keep, but Hairstreak was taken by the scheme and approved the cost of the weather spells that would make it possible. The result was an extraordinary – and in places extraordinarily challenging – creation unlike any other garden in the entire realm. His great-niece now lived there permanently and consequently only Hairstreak ever visited it. The magical securities around the perimeter were set to spectacularly lethal levels. Batty was the only servant who could pass them safely; and even then, only when he was barrowing the cube.

Hairstreak felt the hot, humid air on his face as they entered the approach corridor and experienced a pleasant tingle of anticipation in the centre of his cube. He enjoyed these little garden jaunts for more than one reason. His great-niece was quite delightful, of course, just at that age when children ceased to be children and formed entertainingly fatuous opinions of their own. But unlike most teenaged faeries – Lighters or Nighters – she was unfailingly polite to him and affectionate; one might even say loving. As he’d trained her to be, of course, but an unusual experience for Hairstreak just the same. He quite looked forward to these little visits, although he purposely limited them to once a week: it would never do if the girl became too familiar. At the moment she remained in awe of him, a useful reaction that could only be maintained by distance. In his experience, familiarity all too often led to the discovery of one’s weaknesses and at the moment he had all too many weaknesses waiting to be discovered, any one of which might prove fatal to his plans. The last thing he needed was to have to kill her. That would mean scrapping years of effort and starting afresh, something that scarcely bore thinking about.

As he bumped through the archway into the open air, the full, lush beauty of the gardens struck him like a physical blow. In some ways the loss of his natural body had proven a boon; and this was certainly one of them. The cube enhanced all his senses, except touch, so that when he happened upon something aesthetically pleasing, like a painting, concerto, olbonium or a natural wonder such as this garden, his appreciation was heightened several-fold. He often wondered what it would be like when he ruled the Realm and could order the wonders of the world transported to his doorstep. It was difficult to imagine the sheer delight he would experience, but it was something to which he looked forward enormously.

The spell-driven securities were, of course, invisible and randomised, but anyone venturing beyond the low perimeter hedge could confidently expect to be vapourised within ten to fifteen seconds. With some exceptions, of course. Hairstreak could come and go as he pleased, barrowed by Batty, but the girl could not. Although the spells would not kill her, she was absolutely confined to the inner gardens in order to ensure no one, servant or visitor, caught an accidental glimpse of her. But within those inner gardens, all her needs were met. She had her own home. She had a range of magical entertainments. She had two endolg pups for company: neither would develop speech for at least another year, by which time it would be too late to damage his plans. Her servants were all an advanced type of golem, programmed to self-destruct rather than reveal her existence.

Batty pushed the barrow on relentlessly. They were on grass now, following a path that led eventually through a screen of trees concealing the silver river that marked the boundary of the inner gardens. Here the path split, one branch following the river, the other leading to a hump-backed bridge. Since he didn’t trust Batty on the bridge, Hairstreak ordered him to follow the river. They reached an open gateway and the cube circuitry pinged audibly as it detected the spell field that stretched space, leaving the inner gardens substantially larger than the outer.

Here the real exotica began. Multicoloured fronds reached out to caress them as they passed. (‘Geroff me!’ Batty muttered.) Large, tubular danceflowers gyrated gently to attract their attention. Spiroform trubongs bounced sedately through the undergrowth. Tiny ground cover plants – Hairstreak couldn’t remember their names – burst into song as the barrow wheels passed over them. The pathways meandered kinetically to show as much of the environment as possible without trying a traveller’s patience: the very words Celadon had used when explaining his plan. And to be fair, they seldom tried Hairstreak’s patience, since the moving pathways meant every visit produced its quota of surprises. This one, for instance, revealed a heroic marble statue of Hairstreak himself (still equipped with his original body) half hidden in a stand of fanferns.

Hairstreak smiled benignly as the tropical plantings gradually gave way to the forest arboretum that concealed the home of his great-niece. While Celadon had been given full rein where the tropical exotica were concerned, this area was Hairstreak’s own little whimsy, worked out by him in some detail and specially commissioned as the centerpiece of the whole plan. The forest path, which followed a static meander so that the approach never varied, eventually opened out into a clearing; and in the precise centre of the clearing was the dearest, sweetest, rose-covered country cottage it was possible to imagine. A water butt stood by one corner, a pile of newly cut logs by another. There was a roofed well just yards from the front door, close by the endolg kennels. Around the back, Hairstreak knew, was a vegetable patch and herb garden. Woodsmoke curled lazily from the chimney while a delicate little spell ensured the welcome smell of home-baking wafted gently from the kitchen.

The building was an exact reconstruction, researched down to the smallest detail, of a cottage that featured in one of the most popular pieces of humorous folklore ever passed around the Faerie Realm. The story was that of Red Robina Hood, a young girl about his great-niece’s age, who had the misfortune to be descended from werewolves on her mother’s side. The gene was regressive and only showed up fully in Red Robina’s grandmother, who was banished by the family to the forest cottage for her own safety and that of others. Red Robina was quite fond of the old girl and called on her often. But – and this was the part of the story that always sent faerie listeners into paroxysms of laughter – one night Red Robina quite forgot there was a full moon and arrived at the cottage to find her grandmother’s bed occupied by a timber-wolf that promptly ate her.

What gave the story a special twist – and brought even more laughter from listeners – was that Red Robina’s boyfriend, a woodsman twice her age called Pieris, hunted down the wolf and killed it… only to discover after the fact that he’d really killed the poor old grandmother. The incident started a feud between the families of Pieris and Red Robina that resulted in several more deaths until survivors on both sides were wiped out by plague. Ah, the hilarity of it all.

When the gardens were laid out, Hairstreak had arranged for the original cottage to be demolished and transported, stone by stone, to be rebuilt as their centerpiece. And now, he thought, his own dear, sweet great-niece was enjoying the precise facilities of a famous piece of faerie history. She must have heard the trundle of the barrow, for she was emerging from the doorway of the cottage now.

‘Good morning, Mella!’ Hairstreak called cheerfully. ‘Come and give your uncle a kiss.’

Mella beamed and ran towards him.