Martin Millar - The Good Fairies of New York.html (16 page)

'This Johnny Thunders is a splendid person, or ghost. He told me some funny stories about a place called Queens where he was born and showed me his tattoos. Even said he would keep a lookout for your poppy. In return I will help him look for his 1958 Gibson Tiger Top, which apparently was a wonderful guitar. It is called a Tiger Top because it has stripes.' Kerry burst out laughing.

'It's true,' protested the fairy. 'You can't see him because he's a spirit, but I can. He is very handsome. I can see now why he was such a hit with women.'

Kerry laughed some more. She still did not believe Morag, but it was a good story.

She threaded a few more daisies in her hair, checking the arrangement against her poster of
Primavera.
She was pleased with the way the yellow and white of the daisies stood out against her blue hair. To please Morag and advance her plan, she was going to visit Dinnie and apologise for hitting him.

Dinnie pulled at the back of his hair. Heather was making him grow a pony-tail.

'A pony-tail? Are you completely out of your mind? Why the hell would I want to grow a pony-tail?'

'Because Kerry likes boys with radical hairstyles,' explained the fairy. 'The last man she liked was Cal. Cal has a pony-tail. I am sure you can grow an excellent one. I will dye it green for you.'

Dinnie almost choked. The thought of him, Dinnie Mac-Kintosh, parading round the streets with a green pony-tail file:///Users/lisa/Downloads/Martin%20Millar%20-%20The%20Good%20Fairies%20of%20New%20York.html

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was so bizarre he could barely comprehend it.

'You stupid fairy. Just because she liked some jerk with a pony-tail doesn't mean she's going to fall for anyone else who has one, does it?'

'Well, no, I suppose not. But it will help. I tell you, an unusual hairstyle is a must. That's the sort of boy she likes.

And me and Morag, for that matter.'

Dinnie, seeing that she was quite serious, became desperate.

'It will take years to grow.'

'No, it won't.' Heather was smug. 'Because it just so happens that growing hair is one of the magics available to a thistle fairy. You can have a braw pony-tail in no time.'

She flew up behind him and touched the back of his head.

Dinnie waved his hands angrily in the air.

'Are you forgetting that this woman punched me in the eye only yesterday?'

'A mere lovers' tiff,' said Heather, and departed for her mid-morning dram.

On Bodmin Moor Aelric and his band carried out a daring raid, setting fire to Tala's main cloth factory, the one which manufactured clothing for export to European fairies.

'This'll upset his balance of trade,' mused Aelric, hurling his torch into the building.

But when Aelis tried to drop her propaganda leaflets she was chased off by the strong flyers posted as guards.

Aelis, who was Magris's daughter, and very clever with her hands, had made the printing press, the first one ever in the land of British fairies. The propaganda leaflets had seemed like a master stroke and it was enormously frustrating that they could not be distributed.

They were then nearly trapped by the mercenary band sent out to hunt them down. They made their getaway only

by the hand of Aelis, who magicked up a thunderstorm to cover their retreat.

Afterwards there was some criticism of Aelric, and it was murmured among the band that he had not planned the raid carefully enough due to being distracted by his love for Marion. It was even whispered that he was wasting his time hunting for rare flowers to send her as gifts.

Dinnie picked up his fiddle. He could now play seven Scottish tunes fairly well. He would go and busk. He'd show Heather that she was not the only one round here who could get hold of money.

At the bottom of the stairs he was assailed by actors' voices.

'Stay, gentle Helena; hear my excuse

My love, my life, my soul, fair Helena!'

Before Dinnie could shout any abuse, Cal appeared wearing a gold crown and holding a copy of
A Midsummer

Night's Dream.
Dinnie ignored his greeting.

'Busking again?' said Cal, spying the violin.

Dinnie knew that Cal was laughing at him.

'I'll show him,' thought Dinnie, and unslung the fiddle.

'Yes,' replied Dinnie. 'I have been perfecting my technique with the help of a famous teacher. Listen to this.'

He burst into what was meant to be a fierce rendition of 'The Miller of Drone'. Unfortunately under Cal's gaze his fingers would not seem to work properly. They felt like sausages, too big and clumsy to hold down a string. He ground to a painful halt on the fourth bar.

'You must introduce me to your teacher,' said Cal.

'Music, ho, music, such as charmeth sleep,' came an actress's voice from the next room.

'Shut the fuck up ! ' screamed Dinnie, assuming he was being made fun of, although it was in fact a line from the play. Humiliated by his performance in front of Cal he stormed blindly out of the building.

Immediately outside the door he crashed into another pedestrian and they both tumbled down the steps into the street.

Dinnie, enraged beyond endurance, picked up his fiddle and prepared to physically abuse whoever it was.

'Why can't you watch where you're going, you ignorant bitch,' he screamed.

He paused. He recognised that jewelled waistcoat.

A bruised and distressed Kerry struggled to her feet, having come off much the worse in the collision.

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Dinnie felt faint. He had just bowled his heart-throb into the gutter.

'I guess he was still mad about the punch in the face,' Kerry told Morag, checking to see that her colostomy bag had not suffered any damage.

She felt unwell after this collision and slept for the rest of the day.

Morag studied her sleeping form carefully. In her opinion Kerry's disease was getting worse. Morag had no great healing skills, apart from the normal run-of-the-mill ones possessed by all fairies, but she was sure that Kerry's health aura was starting to dim, and wondered if another major attack was on the way.

TWENTY-ONE

It was midnight in Central Park and the fairies were lying around smoking their pipes and drinking whisky.

Brannoc sat with Petal, teaching her 'The Liverpool Hornpipe', which he had learned long ago from a travelling Northern piper fairy. Petal struggled to get her fingers round the notes. So did Tulip, though Brannoc was not teaching him.

'That is not a bad tune at all,' said Maeve from behind her tree, and ran through it gently on her whistle. She had entirely forgotten her argument with Brannoc, although he had not.

Padraig took up the tune on his whistle. Both he and Maeve had quick ears and could play anything after the

briefest of hearings. Petal and Tulip were slower, but it did not take them too long to learn, and soon the jaunty sound of 'The Liverpool Hornpipe' was filling their grove. When they had played it through a few times Maeve

started in with another hornpipe they all knew, 'The Boys of Bluehill', and the nocturnal animals danced their way around the clearing as they went about their business.

'Now, what is that?' said Spiro, looking upwards. A curve of grey in seven shades was descending from the sky to the ground.

'You ever seen any thing like that?'

'Of course,' said Brannoc. 'It's a moonbow. From the rain at night.' i

'Well, what's it doing here? It hasn't been raining.'

Brannoc shrugged.

'Oh, no,' said sharp-eyed Tulip. 'They're coming down the moonbow.'

Out of the sky came twenty-one Cornish mercenaries, marching in good order.

The black fairies lived, unseen by any humans apart from a few old wise women, in a small park on 114th Street.

The park was in disrepair, uncared for by the city authorities, but it was well known for its air of peace and very rarely did anything unpleasant happen there.

They were holding a council meeting after learning that there had been a further incursion into their territory, presumably hostile.

'They both had swords. We pursued them but they escaped on a bike.'

The piece of news prompted a stormy discussion. Some were in favour of marching down through the city and

teaching the Italian fairies a lesson. Others felt they should let the matter pass in the interests of peace.

Their sage took note of their counsel and considered the matter. Her name was Okailey, and she was a direct

descendant of the fairies who flourished in the powerful African empire of Ghana, as long ago as the fourth

century.

A troop of young girls wound their way through the park, all in blue uniforms on an outing from school. They

caught the fairies' aura and laughed as they passed.

'These happy school children would have more sense than to march off and wage war,' said their sage. 'And so

should we. But I don't think we should ignore the matter entirely. I will lead a delegation down south to visit the Italians— '

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'They might have been agents of the Chinese.'

'—Or Chinese. And we will sort things out in a reasonable manner.'

This decided, they made ready to leave. For the community of Ghanaian fairies this was a major event. They had never in living memory been south of Central Park.

'Who are they?' hissed Padraig, shrinking back into the arms of his lover Maeve.

'English mercenaries,' whimpered Tulip, who recognised several of the band from Cornwall. 'Paid by Tala the

King.'

The five stared in alarm as the mercenaries strode down the moonbow. So accurate was Magris's conjuring that

they were coming to ground less than a hundred yards away and had already spotted the fugitives.

'Right,' said Maeve, standing up and drawing her sword. 'I'll teach them to come chasing me over the water.'

'Are you mad?' protested Tulip. 'They'll cut us to pieces. We'll have to flee.'

'An O'Brien fairy does not flee from anything,' said the Irish piper. 'Particularly Maeve O'Brien, finest sword in Galway.'

Tulip burst into tears. She was far from being the finest sword in Cornwall and she did not want to be cut into pieces.

Brannoc was of a mind to fight himself, being generally so depressed about his futile passion for Tulip that going down in a last desperate battle did not seem to be a bad thing. The sight of Tulip in tears changed his mind.

'We are too outnumbered,' he said. 'We'll have to run.'

Padraig agreed, to the extreme displeasure of Maeve.

'No O'Brien fairy has ever fled from danger before. Padraig, I am ashamed of you.'

This brief disagreement almost lost the fairies their chance to flee. The Cu Sidth dogs were loosed from their chains and bounded towards them. Maeve stepped forward and killed two of them with two thrusts of her sword.

The third fled in confusion.

How about that, thought Brannoc. She really can use her sword.

They fled through the undergrowth, running, hopping, climbing and fluttering their way south as far down the park as they could go before stumbling to an exhausted halt near the exit at East 59th. There they collapsed on the ground, unable to go any further.

Some way behind the mercenaries on the moonbow had been the MacLeod sisters. When the warriors in front of

them had marched down to the ground the MacLeods had leapt from the moonbow high in the air and floated to

the ground, unseen by anyone.

They had been aware of events below them, and had seen Maeve killing the dogs, but hurried on to the far edge of the park, for there they had seen something far more interesting to them — Heather and Morag, their prey, busy escaping from an angry mob of black fairies by riding on the back of a bike.

The MacLeods had almost caught them by following suit. Had it not been for the intervention of their strange ally with the shopping bag they would have succeeded. They sat now in Union Square, acclimatising themselves to this bizarre new city and preparing to continue the hunt.

Back in Central Park the mercenaries, prepared only to face a few fugitives, were surprised to find themselves completely surrounded by a large tribe of black fairies.

Too outnumbered to fight, they were taken prisoner by their equally puzzled adversaries, who could not quite

understand who these interlopers were.

TWENTY-TWO

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The day quickly grew hot and damp. Morag, awake as usual hours before Kerry, mopped her brow and wondered

if she could reasonably remove several thousand dollars from a bank to buy Kerry air-conditioning.

Feeling just too hot to lie around she went out to see what she could find. She found Heather in the corner deli, eyeing up a bottle of whisky, unsure how to open it.

'Your drinking is getting out of control,' said Morag.

'A MacKintosh's drinking is never out of control,' replied Heather, stiffly. 'Not that it is any of your damned business. No doubt you are here for the same reason.'

'I am not. I am here to get some bagels.'

'What are bagels?'

'Bready things. I rip bits off them for breakfast sometimes and then the people in the delis think they're damaged and they give them to tramps outside. Have you noticed how many people here just live on the streets?'

'Of course. I spend half my time finding food and change for them. Have you noticed how they keep dying on 4th Street?7