Don't Let the Fairies Eat You (6 page)

The dry season had come harsher and hotter this year than anyone could remember, and elephants have long memories, so it is said. One herd’s watering hole was nearly dry when they experienced the season’s first death, and the funeral at least eased the other elephants’ minds from their own plight. They laid stones over her, big and small, until her entire body was covered.

Another day went by and not a drop of rain had fallen. Thin clouds lingered overhead, taunting the land, but the elephants paid no mind. They waited patiently at the watering hole, each taking a tiny sip a day from the muddy water, and they prayed for rain.

Great Ash was the first who didn’t want to wait. He was larger than all the others, his skin the color of ash, and his enormous ears supposedly caught time itself in their flaps. He knew the dry season would go on longer at their hole, but he heard the patter of rain in the herd’s future if they traveled east.

His friend, Iron-Tusk, supported him, named for the men’s blades that decorated his tusks. Split-Tusk opposed the idea—the herd had remained at this hole for many decades. The herd was desperate though, and they followed Great Ash. They did not want the dry season to bring any more funerals.

Yet funerals they had, for the walk was perilous. Predators had lost much of their prey, growing hungry enough to attack young elephants even in sight of the herd, and the dry season did not waver. If anything, it worsened in traveling. The grass yellowed and thinned, the trees withered and died, and elephants followed with them as their skin grew as dusty and cracked as the earth.

Great Ash would leave no living elephant behind though. When one mother floundered, nearly falling over, he let her lean against his side and kept her walking. He helped her onward until she couldn’t walk, couldn’t stand, and then dropped lifeless onto the barren ground. The walk halted for a time and the herd held another funeral, covering the mother with rocks until she couldn’t be seen.

Each time an elephant grew weak, Great Ash lent himself as a crutch, keeping them going. At one time, two or three leaned on him together. Supposedly he could carry any elephant, and he did so, until each that he helped had to be buried under stones.

After five deaths, Split-Tusk could not stand the walk anymore. He wanted to head back to the watering hole and he needed Great Ash to lead the herd there, for they followed him now without question, as if he was their only hope. Great Ash would not be turned away. He heard the patter of rain in their future, so long as they remained on this path.

Split-Tusk saw no choice then. He feigned weakness, slid to Great Ash’s side as if he was one who needed support, and then gored the ash-colored elephant, jabbing Great Ash’s head with savage tusks and tearing one of his ears. Great Ash’s legs wobbled. He needed someone to lean on, but Split-Tusk only pushed him into the dust for all the herd to see.

Iron-Tusk fought him, enraged over the murder of his friend. He was a heavier elephant than Split-Tusk, and had endured many battles, while Split-Tusk was cowardly and thin. Their tusks clashed once, twice, three times, and then Split-Tusk’s tusks broke away entirely. Iron-Tusk ran him through beneath his jaw and dropped him into the dust, away from Great Ash. No stones would be laid upon him—the jackals could have his corpse.

Though the herd was tired, thirsty, and weak, the elephants began the funeral for Great Ash, piling stones on his body until he could not be seen. When they had finished the task, however, Iron-Tusk sought out another stone and laid it on the mound. Then he found another, and another, and the rest of the herd joined him, piling stones upon stones until the mound was the height of Great Ash himself, the elephant whose ears heard future rain, the elephant who could carry any other.

The mound needed to be higher, Iron-Tusk decided. He rolled boulders from a nearby hill, while others carried stones, pebbles, anything they could find, even blocks of building from the ruins of man’s ancient cities. As the mound heightened, Iron-Tusk ascended, climbing up and down from the top of the pile, finding, carrying, and laying more stones.

In time, he neared the taunting clouds, and in one last ascent, a mighty stone held in his trunk, Iron-Tusk vanished from the sight of the herd. A thunderous stomping echoed through the land, as if some great elephant had pounded the sky.

The clouds darkened, sinking lower, and then a torrent of rain broke free from beneath them, splashing down on the elephant herd and pattering over the dry earth. The elephants opened their mouths, shook the dust from their backs as it rolled into mud, and trumpeted triumphantly, for Great Ash had led them to rain after all.

The sky shook in answer with an elephant’s roar. Through the thickening rain, anyone looking up might have seen two elephants walking across the storm, one large and clear as mist, the other dark and made of flesh. Their heavy feet squeezed rain from their cloudy path as they marched onward over the sunset lands, and none could tell which one leaned on the other.

Duncard was the least favored page that the knight Ser Grund ever had. The boy was too slow at times in bringing a horse blanket or a sword, and his master was impatient. Often Grund sent him to work the stables on good days, for the horses never complained, and to clean Grund’s keep on bad days, as then he was close to Grund all the time, and the knight had a mean fist. Sometimes he didn’t bother to remove his gauntlet before chastising the boy, and while Duncard showed promise with a sword, Grund swore the boy would be polishing armor for all his days if he could not learn to be dependable.

One evening, as Duncard sat polishing his master’s armor, a tiny fairy came passing by the window of the armory and saw the bruises across the boy’s face. “Dear child,” the pixie said, her glow reflecting off the steel breastplate. “What ever have you done to deserve such a beating?”

“I am too slow with the master’s needs,” explained Duncard. “Be it his armor or food, or perhaps the stables need fresh straw, I need a fist to my face in order to learn haste.”

“Pain will not teach what you need,” the fairy said, fluttering close to Duncard’s face. “I am Kechaeli. I see no lack of urgency in your eyes, but only the lack of will and courage to make things right. I see this master is only restraining you, but we’ll teach him to help you in whatever way he might.” A magic staff appeared in the fairy’s tiny hands and she tapped it against the knight’s armor to cast a fairy-blooded spell. “This magic is a living curse that will morph and interpret the feelings and words in the air, and it knows arithmetic too. I will be watching. Have Ser Grund hold his armor and let him say what he likes, for a curse will arise to claim him.” A tiny kiss dotted Duncard’s cheek and Kechaeli fluttered out the window like a heavenly butterfly.

Excited with the prospect of revenge, Duncard hurriedly polished until the armor was clean, and then brought the breastplate to Grund. “See, master, the armor is clean,” he said, handing it up to the knight. “Armor fit to die in, wouldn’t you agree?”

He hoped that Grund would concede and so the curse would kill him, but Grund scoffed, boxed the boy’s ears, and said, “No one wishes to die in their armor. I will make my enemies die in theirs while mine protects my life, and so when I die, it will be in my bed where I belong.”

Not to be discouraged, Duncard looked at the armor and said. “But does it not look so clean you could eat from it?” he asked, hoping the armor would sprout a mouth and devour Grund.

“I suppose,” the knight said, reluctant to praise Duncard much. No sooner had the words left his lips than a bountiful feast sprang from the breastplate. Stuffed mushrooms and peppers, roast lamb, baked bread running with gravy, and many more dishes piled from the armor, onto its steel surface and onto Ser Grund. When the floor was covered in fine food, the knight reeled back a gauntleted fist and struck Duncard three times, leaving bloody cuts on the boy’s cheeks. “That’s for mischief, for foolishness, and for wasting my time!” Grund thrust the armor against the boy’s chest, his hand still on the breastplate. “You take this back to the armory and you polish it so fine that I can see my face in it. Off with you!”

Duncard trudged away with the armor in his arms and took his place on the armory bench, wiping away food and beginning to scrub the breastplate clean once more. “If you are watching, fairy, I feel I’ve been tricked by this curse,” he said. He scrubbed and scrubbed, and polished and polished, and slowly the breastplate began to gleam.

Yet just when Duncard thought he was done, he noticed a spot on one side of the chest that he could not rub out. It grew worse with every heavy stroke of his cloth. A similar spot appeared on the other side of the breastplate, and then a line that resembled a nose, and finally a longer line like a mouth emerged along the bottom of the plate. Duncard dropped the cleaned armor in horror when he recognized Ser Grund’s face in the breastplate.

“Release me, you witch-boy!” the master howled. “I’ll have your head for this!”

“You will never have his head,” said a deep, ominous voice that seemed to quake from within the armor. “You will remain in this breastplate, an observer, lest you wish to protect the boy and show yourself a true knight. When you have guarded Duncard from the same number of blows as you have struck upon him since he met you, then you shall be a man once more.”

With that, the voice of the living magic faded, and Duncard was left alone with the armor wearing a face. He bundled it up with whatever food he could carry and ran away from Grund’s keep, all the while listening to the curses and threats from his pack that no one else seemed to hear. As he gained some distance from the keep, he heard bells and shouts—people were searching for Ser Grund. He did not know what might become of the keep and the town, but he could not stay. He took his armor and found another castle, where a knight was in need of a page. The people there took him in, gave him room and board, and expected him to keep armor clean and bring what the knight needed. Duncard did all that he was asked, and in time his swordplay was noticed.

Years passed. Duncard became a squire in his adolescence and he wore Grund’s armor into battle alongside his new master. The kingdom was beset by barbarians from the northern hills, said to be half-trolls on their mothers’ sides, and while Duncard took his time reaching the front line, he was no less brave than any other man. His sword crossed with axes and hammers, blocked curved blades and wooden clubs. When the battle was done, he remembered the cure to Kechaeli’s fairy-blood curse, but there were two problems. One, the boy did not know how many times Grund had struck him, and two, not a single blow had connected with the boy’s armor. He had slain many barbarians though, half-troll or not at all, and was honored at the right hand of his new master.

Other battles passed and Duncard’s swordplay only grew finer, keeping his life safe before any weapon could find his armor. He rescued a woman from a village and married her. A healthy son was born and Duncard was called upon to be honored by the king, to become one of his knights. His life seemed perfect now, except for the face in his armor, which terrified his enemies, but had not been given the chance to guard him. On the evening before Duncard was to be knighted, he found tears running down the face of his armor and took pity on his old master. “Ser Grund, why do you weep?” he asked.

“Your swordplay is magnificent,” Grund said. “I never noticed before, but in the heat of battle, and seeing it before my steely eyes, I couldn’t ignore it any further. But for me, it is
too
good! If no enemy ever finds your armor, I will never be free. I wish to see my family again and to hold my wife in my arms, and to shake your hand and ask your forgiveness, as a man and not a piece of armor.”