Geek Fantasy Novel (12 page)

He wished he’d had a chance to talk more to Cecil before he’d gotten lost, or (ideally) never been separated from him at all. He knew he could count on Cecil to plot with him how to escape. They would build a device to send a signal to the outside world, perhaps. All it would take, Ralph decided, was a sufficient power source and a GSM-compliant device with a transmitter that could be jiggered for alternative power sources and could command enough bandwidth —

What he wanted most, he suddenly realized, was not to be alone anymore.

Ralph crept between the house-festooned trees, stopping every few feet to listen for friends or predators. For a long time there was nothing but his own footsteps on pine needles. As the day dipped toward twilight, his heart sank. He didn’t relish spending the night in an unfamiliar wood in an unfamiliar world, hunted by a now-unfortunately-unfamiliar duchess. Thankfully, though, he eventually heard a smattering of tinkling sopranos and one recognizable baritone.

He found Cecil conferring with the surviving fairies around a campfire. “Ralph!” Cecil said, extending a hand. “Thank God.”

Ralph said hello back, though it seemed a ridiculously normal thing to say before five ashen-faced fairies and a hero dressed in a fashion-forward leather jerkin. Ralph stood back, arms outstretched, and waited for Cecil’s flood of queries.

But Cecil seemed as calm as when he’d picked Ralph up at the train station. He introduced the fairies — among the survivors were Vermillion and Fuchsia, whose arm was in a sling, making it doubly hard for Ralph not to stare at her bosom. Inexorable Pulse, it turned out, had perished beneath a carriage wheel. He was mourned, and three other fairies were introduced, their names too rapidly announced for Ralph to catch. They were a size larger than Vermillion and Fuchsia, and significantly uglier.

“Wild fairies,” Cecil explained after seeing Ralph’s focus, “are natural stock, not bred into lines. They’re the domestic shorthairs of the fairy world.”

“Huh, fascinating,” Ralph said. “So you’re buying into all this?”

The fairies stared at the crazy human in boxer shorts.

Cecil laid a firm hand on Ralph’s back and guided him out of the clearing. They stood under a tree house in the next clearing over. Cecil accidentally bumped it, and set it spinning like a piñata. “What do you think you’re doing?” he asked, his meaty breath coming over Ralph in waves. (Cecil hadn’t, Ralph quickly realized, packed his toiletries after all.)

“You’re mad at
me?
You’re sitting in a forest with
fairies.”

“Watch your tone. They have good ears.”

“They’re not real. All this is made up to fulfill your wish.”

“I hear what you’re saying, man, I do, but they seem plenty real to me. Tell me those tears they cry aren’t
real.
So leave off.”

“What’s gotten into you? Chessie tried to kill us, and you’re playing it off like ‘no big deal, all in a day’s work for a hero!’ We have to get out of here. We die, and we’re
dead.
And I’ve come across a good thirty ways to die so far.”

Ralph was shocked to see tears standing in Cecil’s eyes. “Look,” Cecil said, “if you’re not going to be into this, lie low and keep out of the way. This is my wish, the only one I’m ever going to get, and it’s
extremely realistic,
and I’m totally into it. So I don’t need you to go poking holes in the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“Oh,” Ralph said quietly.

Cecil leaned his sword against a tree, sniffed, and dabbed his eye with a leather sleeve. “Now I feel like a moron,” he said, his voice cracking.

“Don’t feel like a moron,” Ralph said. “You’re right, this is pretty fantastic.”

“Have you noticed my cool new threads?” Cecil asked.

“Yeah, it’s like Runway Robin Hood,” Ralph said. “And are you bigger? You look jacked, man.”

Cecil looked at his arm and shrugged. “Yeah, the fairies have some crazy ambrosia — it’s like the highest-protein drink you could imagine. And don’t worry about the clothes — I’ll hook you up with some in a minute.”

“Rescue any damsels?” Ralph asked.

“I would, if I came across any. But I haven’t met a single one. It’s like Chessie didn’t cast any hot women.”

Ralph laughed. “I guess she doesn’t want the competition.”

“Come on, let’s go,” Cecil said. “I’m going to properly introduce you to the fairies, and you’re going to stop being a jerk about all of this.”

Once he was dressed and introduced and applauded, Ralph found a space of log next to Prestidigitator, a stout fairy clad in moon-emblazoned blue robes and a floppy hat. From nowhere she announced, in an almost inaudibly high-pitched voice, “Fairy husbandry has been going on for centuries. City-folk
breed
us.”

“It’s nothing more than fairy slavery,” Cecil spat.

“Even worse,” said Fuchsia. Ralph dutifully concentrated on her hairline as she spoke. “Because most of us are used as objects.”

“Ralph understands slavery, as an American,” Cecil said. “Maybe he can explain how people think they can do something like that. That can be your role in the team: You’ll explain things. We’ll call you Explainer.”

“Can we consider other options?” Ralph asked.

“Recently the city dwellers have developed fairy farms,” Cecil said darkly, “which have resulted in a massive burst of production. Fairies live off the morning dew, so they don’t have to be fed. There’s virtually no cost to raising them. So that means fairies are cheaper than any animals or building materials. In the cities there are houses built of fairies, fairy-wing writing tablets, easy-care fairy houseplants. It’s gotten outrageous. And do you know who’s behind it all?”

“Yes! It’s Ch —”

“Chessie,” Cecil continued unabated. “She pretends to care about the people, but she’s just another blue blood, siphoning everything she can from the powerless. She’s making money off fairy frailty!” Cecil paced around the campfire. “I’ve been trying to do what I can, but she’s put a bounty on my head. I’ve nearly been killed at least a dozen times.”

“I’m sorry.”

Cecil nodded proudly. “In only two weeks, I’ve become an underground hero. The peasantry has bestowed on me any number of magical items — ancient swords, fire wands, some really brilliant armor — but I still don’t stand a chance in open rebellion. So I’ve fled here to Chumpy Forest. The Dragonhunter-Damselflies keep the royal militia away, and this is also the largest surviving population of wild fairies.”

“Was
the largest surviving population,” Forest Keeper added glumly, “until today.”

“I’m trying to raise an army. Admittedly, today we took a huge hit — though at least now we have you to aid us, Explainer.” He clasped Ralph’s hand. “Can we count on you?”

“Of course. Tell me what you need. But first — how long have you been here?”

“It hasn’t been more than a few hours since we ran from Chessie, if that’s what you mean.”

“No, I mean ‘here,’ here. In your wish.”

Cecil scratched his shoulder in irritation. “I don’t see why we need to get into all this inconsequential stuff while zillions of fairies are suffering.” The fairies nodded grimly.

“I … okay, fine.” Ralph crossed his arms.

Cecil shrugged. “Jolly good.” He clapped his hands and turned to the rest of the fairies. “Okay, let’s get on with the specifics. We’re down to five of us,
since Fuchsia needs to stay here and care for the orphans. I’m going to take the bulk of the remaining fairies, and we’re going to do our best to band up any others we come across against the royal oppression. That leaves Explainer and Prestidigitator as our strike squad.”

“I can make sparkles,” Prestidigitator offered.

Cecil unrolled a map that had been silk-screened on a fairy wing. The fairies blanched, but Cecil blithely pointed to various locations printed on the veined membrane. “Now, here’s the capital, where the river divides. I’ll be approaching by the most direct route, along the path that skirts the Water-Warlocks’ cave.”

Ralph nodded sagely. “Try the grog.”

Cecil gestured to a distant point on the wing-map, at the crest of one of the fairy sinews. “Now, I need you and Prestidigitator to go here. It’s the largest fairy farm in the realm. Tens of thousands of them. If you can find some way to release the poor souls and lead them to us, we have a decent chance of taking the capital. Now, I see you still have a watch. Does it work?”

Ralph looked down at his calculator watch, a birthday present from his mother (he had already lost his second watch, which he had kept set to random time zones for the learning opportunity). Shockingly, the LCDs were still displaying. He nodded.

“Okay, good. I’ve got one, too.”

Gasps from the fairies. This was indeed a divine turn of events.

“Chessie addresses the people at noon every fourth morning in front of her castle balcony. Which means that we need to have everything in place by tomorrow at eleven.”

The fairies cheered. As there were only five of them, it was a sad, squeaky business.

Ralph thought for a moment. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to have it all in place five mornings from now?” he proposed. “Then I’d have more time to get my part of the mission done.”

The fairies’ cheering stopped. They stared balefully at Ralph. Lame.

Cecil grimaced, stood, and addressed him. “As we have seen this afternoon, the perilous path we walk is not without peril. But that peril comes with great value. When the lives of an entire people have been devalued, only great loss of life can return that value. In summary, danger is not easy.”

Ralph, trying to tie together the pieces of Cecil’s speech, found the high-pitched fairy cheer was over long before he thought to join in. He watched Cecil as he prattled on. What fascinated Ralph was not that Cecil had matured much, but that he had managed to maintain his hipness in a fantastic land. His five different sweatshirts had been switched for five different doublets, a V-neck wool jerkin, and a leather shirt. His warrior sandals were carefully worn and frayed. His multiple silver necklaces had been replaced by an equal quantity of rawhide lengths. The crossbow and quiver on his back had brand names emblazoned on them. As the fairies cheered him and reached out to caress the fringes of his leather pants, he looked like he had finally become a reality show star. Even so, his weeks without drugstores and showers hadn’t done wonders for his skin — his face was covered in acne of an almost volcanic intensity.

Cecil finished his speech on a suitably rousing note, climaxing with “Tomorrow, the capital!” When the fairies leaped into the air to cheer, Ralph leaped convincingly along with them. Then Cecil and his crew bid their farewells, with Fuchsia leaving to tend to the fairylings. Prestidigitator stood at Ralph’s side, waiting for him to herald the commencement of the Great Fairy Rebellion.

“Um,” Ralph said, his voice cracking, “gee. Okay!”

As she had noted, Prestidigitator’s greatest gift was for sparkling. Her array was more ferocious than what six-year-olds produce on Independence Day, but only slightly so.

As Ralph and Prestidigitator had to travel through the night to get to the fairy farm, her gift was more helpful than one might first imagine. Ralph held on to her ankles and brandished her like a torch, sparkles emerging from the roots of her teased hair. They passed out of the Chumpy Forest, through the Forty Streams, and around the circumference of the Cast-Iron Tower Jungle. At each segment, Prestidigitator’s pyrotechnics cast a thin sphere of illumination over the near landscape.

Fairies make journeying very easy for their traveling companions. Prestidigitator was an adept scout, consumed no food, made an amiable (if dim-witted) conversation partner, and attracted all predatory attention away from Ralph. Indeed, she found herself very sought-after by the monsters they passed during the night.

Within a few paces of their starting out, she lost a toe to the chomp of a carnivorous fern. Then it was on to the onslaught of the Forty Streams, whose spherical, conical, and ellipsoid blasts of water regularly extinguished
Prestidigitator and left them sputtering in the dark. The Cast-Iron Tower Jungle would have been a respite if it weren’t for the abnormally large (even by magical wish standards) bats roosting in the eaves. Prestidigitator lost a necklace and a good deal of self-respect within one of their slurpy mouths before Ralph could extract her. Regardless of the danger, she insisted on continuing to serve as torch.

By dawn they had reached the Arcadian Fields, which are famously serene, if one overlooks the mass subjugation of fairies occurring within. Ralph checked his watch as he and Prestidigitator approached: six o’clock. Since, per Cecil’s advice, it would take at least four hours to reach the capital, that left one hour to free a few thousand fairies.

Once, when Ralph was much younger, a wanderlusting miniature schnauzer had jumped into his arms in a mall parking lot. Immediately, he had begged his parents to get him a dog. Mary had said “we’ll see” in that tone she always took on when she had already made up her mind in the affirmative, and Steve had checked out an armful of pet care books from the library, bookmarked the pages about the pitfalls of dog ownership, and left them on Ralph’s bed.

The next Sunday morning they piled into the family station wagon to visit one of the biggest breeders in the country, out on Long Island. Mrs. Shirley Wilbefore operated Schnauzer Ranch, an estate they approached along a winding road shaded by rows of manicured maples. After they got out of the car, Ralph rode his dad’s shoulders to the white picket fence of the ranch’s border. Fenced into its rolling meadows were hundreds of schnauzers. They were of all sizes, from the equine giant schnauzers to the rodent-class mini-minis. A dog sergeant barked, and twenty puppies leaped a hurdle in unison. Another pack of puppies growled and chewed one another’s
ears, closely tended by Shirley Wilbefore herself, who sported a crew cut and a nanny uniform.

The fairy farm was much the same way — except, of course, that there were no dogs, only fairies. And instead of cavorting merrily, they were penned up, one atop the other, in cages stacked thirty feet high and topped by spurts of black fire.