Don't Let the Fairies Eat You (3 page)

The dragon dropped Wendell in the ivory hall and the pipe flew out of his hand. A fair-haired young woman clad in steel plate caught the Lady-call in mid-air. “This belongs to me,” she said. “I am Agatha the Mighty. An old hag pilfered it from my treasure room. I would call maidens to the mountains to feed my dragon in peace. What would you do with it?”

Wendell saw no point in lying—he told the whole sorry tale to Agatha. She listened thoughtfully, and then cracked the ivory pipe between her fingers. “If you want to be had by a lady so much, I will make it so,” Agatha told the harper. “You will clean my castle, cook my meals, groom my dragon, and lay in my bed. You will be fed and clothed, and enjoy the riches of my home, for I have many servants, but would enjoy having a passive man to call my own. You will do these things without complaint or mistake; else I’ll feed you to the dragon.”

Wendell saw little choice in the matter—he consented.

Agatha pulled him close then. “You will play no more pipes, but only the harp, and you will do it well. Now follow me, and I’d best be pleased.”

And so Wendell lived in the ivory castle, cleaning up after a dragon, tending to Agatha the Mighty, and he did enjoy fineries and passion, and he found his harping did improve when threatened with a fiery mouth. He enjoyed all these things, and did his best to please Agatha, for the rest of his life—however long or short that was.

One day in late summer, Hazel’s grandmother sent her from their small cottage on the far side of the forest, along the long road, into the walled city. The girl led an ox carrying sewn dresses, britches, shirts, fur-lined boots and hats, gloves for the coming winter, and a few knit scarves, and after a couple of hours travel in the pre-dawn gloom, she reached the city by morning, when the drawbridge lowered and the gates opened.

Market day was busy for Hazel. Many people were looking for quality clothes and most of them did not make their own, for this was a rich city, and Hazel’s grandmother knew what would please the skilled workers and less-pompous lords’ children. She also knew which of her granddaughters to send, for Hazel could think quickly, turning a wandering eye into a sale and a loss into a gain.

As the market day dwindled like the sun easing into the west, Hazel noticed two men watching her from across the crowded street. They smoked from crooked pipes and their filthy clothing didn’t appear to have been mended in months, yet they didn’t look the type to have the money for Hazel’s grandmother’s goods. Besides, she was almost sold out by then, which had never happened before, and her attention was soon taken by a lord’s baking woman who needed three little girls’ dresses for her daughters, but didn’t have the time to make them herself when there was some feast or another every other week.

Out of goods and full of coins, Hazel tied her bags across the ox’s back and led him from the stall, through the market. It was then she noticed the two men again, following in their filthy clothes. They followed her with grim faces, showing teeth as crooked as their pipes and eyes as harsh as the sun.

Hazel tried to ignore them, leading the ox onward toward the city gate, but each time she turned, they followed on. After a few more steps, she pulled out her only weapon, a small knife used for cutting cloth and thread, and waved it in their direction. They didn’t seem to care, only staring and baring their awful smiles.

At the gate, Hazel pulled her grandmother’s ox to the side and spoke to one of the city guards. “Sir, I’m afraid those two men are following me.”

The guard looked past Hazel, but the two men were leaning on the wall, smoking again. “Have they said or done anything to offend?”

“No, sir.”

“Let me know if they do,” the guard said, and then returned his attention to the droves of people leaving the city.

Hazel needed to leave soon herself. If she waited for dusk, the gates would close, the drawbridge would raise, and she’d be stuck until morning, with nowhere to stay and bags of money sitting vulnerably on the ox’s back. She paused for a while, glancing at the men, looking away, and then glancing back again. Finally, she looked to find the wall bare where they’d been and saw no one around her, so she took the chance to lead the ox out through the city gates. The crowd exiting the city had practically vanished now and Hazel was alone on the road.

When the gates slammed shut with the waning sunlight, she took another look behind the ox, and sighed with relief not to see the men. Two horses trotted from the gate, probably having just left the city in time, but there were no men anywhere.

“But there should be men,” Hazel said softly to herself. “There should be riders, not two horses alone.” She looked back again. The horses wore no saddles, no bridles, nothing to indicate they had ever had masters. They walked slowly, watching her with their wide horse eyes, and each one’s lips flapped loose, baring crooked teeth.

Hazel led the ox off the road, hoping the horses would pass. She watched them swerve deliberately, setting hooves on the grass. She looked away once more, unsure what to do, and when she glanced back again, she knew to run, for two wolves now padded after her. The ox bristled, bucking on the road and rushing away from Hazel. She turned to the forest that ran along the road and scrambled up the branches of the nearest tall tree, hoping to outwait the wolves that chased her, slavering and grinning with crooked teeth.

When Hazel had climbed halfway up the tree and thick sweat moistened most of her body, she looked down to see if the wolves had chased the ox. Instead she saw two enormous serpents twining their way up the tree trunk, each baring crooked fangs. Screaming now, Hazel hurried onto one of the thick branches pointing deeper into the forest and leaped from the limb to a bigger branch of the nearest tree. The branch wobbled under her, but she hurried toward the trunk, hopping onto another branch, and then another, putting trees between her and the snakes.

Sharp talons raked from behind her and she glanced up. Two hawks cawed and screeched with crooked beaks, and each swept down with pointed talons, grasping for her hair and flesh. Hazel dropped a branch, and then another. Swiftly she lost control of her descent, rolling from tree limb to tree limb, and for a moment she fell freely, fearing she’d break her back on the forest floor and become easy prey for these shape-shifting hunters.

Instead she broke the surface of a river, rushing through the forest. Hazel choked and sputtered, struggling to control her direction in the sweeping current, and then she heard two more splashes upstream where she’d landed in the water. Grim scales stretched over the water, shining with four yellow eyes and two wide, stretching snouts filled with crooked teeth. The creatures gasped for her, snapping in the water, and Hazel vaulted onto the river bank as the sweltering heat from their mouths brushed past her legs.

She was tired and overheating, and she had nothing on her but a knife. Her pursuers seemed to change, suiting themselves to wherever she was, and now she heard the thunderous pounding of two heavy bears, shaking the water from their fur before they charged from the river.

“I have one other thing on me but this knife,” she said, holding the blade. The dress she wore had been cut from her grandmother’s cloth, but Hazel handled it more, for her grandmother wanted her to learn sewing and stitching. Hazel had made the dress herself and worn it many times.

Catching her knife on its highest thread, near her neck, she cut down over her chest and belly, shredding the dress’s front and leaving one wide piece flapping wildly from her naked arms. She quickly yanked her arms from the sleeves, running with nothing on but her boots, and then twirled around a tree to give the bears a moment’s false direction. It was just enough time for her to lay the dress flat on the forest ground, full of pines and ferns and animal hair, and stand on it, clutching her knife in one hand.

The bears circled the tree, froth brimming around crooked teeth and dribbling down their quivering bear jowls, and they stomped onto the spread-out dress. Hazel stood her ground.

For a blink, her hunters became shapeless shadows, merely curtains of flailing darkness that hung confused in the air without moving closer. Then Hazel found herself face-to-face-to-face with herself—two of herself, each more naked than she was, lacking her boots. They grinned, baring teeth much more crooked than Hazel’s had ever been, and charged after her, but Hazel knew her body better than anyone. When their hands flew after her to swipe her face or choke her, she knew when to duck, when to dodge, and when she would be open to a stabbing in the back. One of her hunters dropped onto the dress, a heavy gash running across her back from where the knife had pierced the spine. The other tried dodging, before Hazel had even attacked again, and with the hunter’s face ducked down, Hazel shoved her knifing arm forward, plunging the blade into a copy of her own face. The second pursuer dropped on top of the other, both bleeding into her hand-sewn dress.

Putting the knife on the ground, Hazel rolled the hunters off of her clothing, and they shifted into bear shape the moment they left the surface of the dress. Hazel wrapped the dirty, bloody dress around her torso again, tucked her knife into a loop in the fabric, and headed back through the forest to the road. The ox waited where she’d left him, and while he became startled at the scent of blood, she was able to keep him still long enough to wrap a cord around her chest, tying what remained of her dress tightly around her. Then she took the ox’s reins and led him up the road again, toward her grandmother’s house.

“I’ll tell her there are two dead bears in the forest whose fur would make fine clothing,” Hazel said to the ox. “I only hope the skins do not become those of toothy lizards if carried over water. Or of horses when brought on the road. Or of men when sold in a city. And certainly not skins of
me
when grandmother and I stitch the clothing.” On second thought, Hazel decided not to tell her grandmother anything, except that she’d had a rough time getting out of the city, but she’d sold everything and had plenty of coins to show for it.

Chael never knew her parents, but she knew the woman who she worked for, Peloga, and she knew the woods beyond Peloga’s garden. She knew there shouldn’t have been thorn bushes curling from within the trees, spreading into Peloga’s flower patches like dens of spiny snakes. Peloga knew it too. She stormed through the garden in her bulky boots and her dress that was too nice for their rural home, an isolated house hugging the corner of the forest, up to the garden’s edge. Chael was a thin, small thing, standing up only to Peloga’s hips as they examined the thorn bushes together.

Peloga then handed Chael a stubby shovel. “Those thorns are ruining my garden and you’re going to dig them out,” she said, and Chael was obedient, as always.

She began patting the shovel at the thorn bushes, searching for where they met the ground, but the moment Peloga went inside the house, another woman appeared from the woods and Chael stopped digging. The woman was tall and long in the limb, stretching up against a tree like it was her blood relative. Blond hair perforated with green leaves slid down her back, thorns seemed to dress her body as thickly as they dressed the garden’s edge, and bright green eyes glittered down at Chael.

“What are you doing to my thorns, dear?” the tall woman asked.

“Pulling them up, as Peloga told me to,” Chael said. “They’ve moved into her garden.”

“Then move them farther in if you’re going to pull them up.”

Chael squirmed. “I’m not supposed to.”

“She never said to do otherwise.” The woman stood taller somehow. “I command you. I’m practically a queen where I come from and you’d be wise to obey me. Move the thorn bushes deeper inside.”

Chael obeyed, as was her nature when confronted with authority. She dug one thorn bush out and planted it in the center of the garden. The tall woman was gone by the time she returned to the woods to dig out a second bush, but she carried out her orders anyway, bringing two more thorn bushes to Peloga’s garden. Peloga emerged from the house when all was done, her face puffed up in anger.

“You took too long!” she shouted. “The cursed thorns have already sprouted this far in. You’ll have to upend the whole garden. Then we’ll plant new seeds.”

Chael was obedient, as always. From noon to nightfall, she ran the shovel through the garden, digging up the chunks of thorn bush before they could take root, and the flowers that had already been growing. She dumped everything in a pile near the woods, shovel load by shovel load, until the garden was gone and a wide patch of ground-up soil lay in its place.