Nettle Blackthorn and the Three Wicked Sisters (34 page)

“This
lot, we’re gonna have to.” Quary glowered darkly. “I said lay down
yer swords.”

The spriggans
looked at one another in bewilderment, but one after the other they
tucked their weapons back into their belts or slipped into boots or
through leather loops hanging from packs and withdrew reluctantly
from the children and gathered upon the table near Quary. Nettle
hurried over to Bram and Jazz huddled behind them.

“
Now,” said Quary, pleased to be back in charge of his band.
“We’re gonna be staying here for a bit of respite. Look after the
young’uns while their father is away.”

His band
didn’t look convinced.

“
There better be a bit o’ gold in it,” growled Roq.

“Don’t
you worry, Roq me fellow,” said Quary with a good-natured pat on
his brother’s broad back. He made his way to the end of the table
where the children had earlier eaten breakfast. An empty plate
scattered with toast crumbs and a honey-smeared knife was still on
the table. Quary gave the rooster a good kick as he passed by. The
bird squawked and hopped out of reach, a quiver of angry
feathers.

“They
got something better than gold,” Quary said to his companions. His
pitch-black eyes shone with greed. He rubbed his hands lovingly
upon the jar of chocolate spread. “They call it...
Nuteeellllaaaa...,” he drooled.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Making
Friends with Spriggans

It was late morning and a misty drizzle cast a bleak shadow
over the day. Downstairs
, the fire was stocked well with wood, and the
chimney, with its stone walls that rose through all the upper
floors, radiated a pleasant warmth throughout the library. Nettle
was sitting cross-legged in her dad’s leather armchair wearing a
grey and white striped turtleneck with leggings. Her feet were
snugly tucked into booted slippers, and her hair was piled up in a
topknot, secured with several pencils.

She’d spent the morning with her head in the journal that
her father had slipped to her before disappearing with the
Woodstock Twins. The journal was a notebook of sorts, filled with
sketches of all manner of faerie and fauna and flora, and notes
outlining everything her father knew about the creatures and
pitfalls within the Forgotten Wilds. Fred had copied some
information from the books contained within the library, but most
were drawn from his own experiences. He’d even
roughly sketched a map of the
immediate area and indicated where he knew faerie were located. It
had surprised Nettle to learn several boggarts dwelt in the
marshlands surrounding the Forgotten Wilds, and nearby in the brook
that encircled the cottage was a family of water
sprites.

In his hurried penmanship
, her father had scribbled things to watch
out for, and more importantly, how to combat them. She learnt about
spriggans, treenawts, pixies and imps - their prickly nature easy
to offend, and aversion to iron, rosebushes and sour milk;
grenick-vines and toadstool sinques – her father wrote her a note
about a time when he was ten and should have been cleaning the
chook-house but to her grandfather’s ire had to be liberated from a
sinque with a scattering of salt and pepper; brownies and sylphs –
who, interestingly, could be diverted with song - sprites and
gnomes and silver tongued salamanders. She was finishing up with
bhangers, a distant relative of the gnome that could be distracted
with shiny things: bottle caps and cascading chandelier earrings or
tin foil, when she discovered to her great disappointment her
father’s notations had come to an abrupt end. Double-checking she
flicked through the diary and the remaining blank pages. Nothing.
She felt a sudden sense of loss that often accompanied the closure
of a good read, and softly sighed.

But wait…

Nettle came across a page near the back. Her father had
written one name just once in the middle of the page and nothing
else.
And
maybe written in anger,
she concluded by the pressure he’d pressed upon
the pencil. It was a curious name and meant nothing to her, but she
suspected it meant a great deal to her father.

Solstace
Wittle.

Such an
unusual name, she rolled it around on her tongue finding it a
little cumbersome. Solstace Wittle.

It came back
to her like a heavy book thumping shut.

Solstace
Wittle!

It was the name her father hastily spoke to the
twins,
what
did he say?
Her brow creased in concentration. That was it! Aunt
Thistle had been captured and her father had feared it was by
Solstace Wittle. And here was the name in the diary. Whatever could
it all mean?

Her stomach
suddenly grumbled. Nettle gave a wry smile and decided to return to
her research after lunch. Whoever, or whatever Solstace Wittle was,
could wait.

Jazz sat
on the floor in the middle of the living room, hunched over,
painting her big toenail a sheer coral in wobbly brush strokes that
bled over her cuticles. Jazz was proud of her work, even though she
would have been cross with anyone else doing such a clumsy job on
her nails.

The tip of Jazz’s phone poked out of the back pocket of her
St. Miriam’s tracksuit pants. Bram didn’t know why she bothered
carrying it around since the cottage was completely out of
cellphone range. Perhaps she carried the phone out of habit or
comfort, he wondered. He was crouched behind her, and parallel to
him, perched on a bookcase, was Spix. The young spriggan glared at
Bram with bright black eyes
.
Yes,
a
lright,
Bram silently responded to the little fellow,
I’m
hurrying!
He
nervously fiddled with his glasses, trying to build up the
courage.
If
this goes wrong and I get caught, she’s going to flay me.
Spix pointedly
jutted his prominent chin at the phone.
Oh well, I guess it’s now or
never,
Bram
thought.
Holding his breath, he leaned forward
and pinched the tip of Jazz’s
Blackberry. He very gently slid it out of her pocket and waited for
her reaction.

Nothing happened. Jazz carried on painting her toenails.
She obviously felt nothing amiss. A surge of triumph rushed through
him.
I did
it! I did it!
Grinning manically he punched the cellphone upward and
mouthed
“Yeeeah!”
Unfortunately for him, he lost his balance and tumbled into
Jazz pushing her forward. The bottle of nail polish was knocked
over and spilled all over the magazine she’d sat it on.

“
Oh my God!” Jazz shrieked, shoving Bram from her. She righted
the bottle. The cover of the magazine was ruined and she’d lost
half of the varnish but at least the brat of a cousin hadn’t ruined
her coat of nail polish. She whirled around. “You are so
annoying!”

“
Sorry,” Bram responded contritely. He had righted himself but
was still sitting on his bottom. Unease flared through him. He
didn’t like the way she was looking at him. She was glowering. Her
eyes narrowing into slits, and when she spotted what he clutched in
his hand, her blue eyes flashed wide and shone with a brilliant
intensity. “What do you think are you doing with my
PHONE?!”

“
Nothing…” It came out weakly. The colour drained from his
cheeks. He anxiously looked over to Spix for help, but the little
spriggan was gone. He’d hidden behind the first volume of War and
Peace.

Jazz snatched
her phone from him, her nails scratching his fingers. Bram
scrambled to his feet, backing fearfully away as his cousin rose
and stomped toward him. “Trying to steal from me now, are you?”

Bram shook his
head. “No Jazz… I was just…” She loomed over top of him.

“
Just what?!”

Bram briefly
considered simply bolting from the room. But his cousin was bigger
and faster. “It slipped out of your pocket, I picked it up,” he
lied.

Jazz squinted
at him suspiciously, wondering if he was telling the truth. Most of
the time she couldn’t quite tell with him. It was a long tense
moment for Bram, until she relaxed her sullen mouth. “Whatever,”
she threw at him as she padded over to her manicure bag and tossed
in the nail polish. And without even looking his way, said, “I’m
off. I’ve got a dress fitting to get to. So, see you later.”

Ordinarily, Bram would have wanted to go to Olde Town too,
but he knew he was pushing his luck with his cousin. Quary
sauntered in with his odd rolling gait, his thumbs tucked under his
arms, hearing the last bit. “Well then,
baldy
-”

Jazz lashed out with a foot. “Stop calling me that,
pipsqueak
!”

Quary nimbly jumped out of harm’s way, laughing and
cackling. “You’d better return with some more of what
puckered-poo
promised
us.”

“
Bramble,” corrected Bram scowling, the truce they’d had
between them had proven to be short-lived. He noted the eye-patch
had shifted back to the other eye.

Quary ignored him. “Promised us chocolate gold. Said, only
you could procure it.” He readjusted his hat that had come askew.
“Maybe
rat-droppings
was lying,” Quary accused with a cursory glance
the lad’s way. “And if he was, then I guess me and the lads would
have to-”

“
What?” interrupted Jazz sarcastically. “Cut my hair off?
Already done that.” She tapped her lips pretending to think as she
stalked toward him. “Or what about drawing stupid pictures of me on
the walls? Or ruining all my clothes?” She leaned down fixing him
with a powerful glare.

Quary’s fat
lips twitched. He stood his ground. “Maybe I might say to me
brother Roq, to skin you, like he wants.”

Jazz stood back up. She lazily crossed her arms and rolled
her eyes in that way that said,
as-if
.

Quary’s
one beady eye fixated on Bram. “I might start with the lad here.
Skin `im like a rabbit, nice and thorough-like, there’s enough of
him to make a few jackets and some hats, perhaps.”

“
Go ahead,” defied Jazz feeling she was in a win-win
scenario.

“
Jazz!” Bram squawked, fearing she was going to goad them into
doing it.

Jazz
rolled her eyes at her cousin. “OK, OK, calm down. I was just
kidding,” she said in an annoyed tone that expressed she thought he
was being such a whiny baby. “I’ll bring back a couple of
jars.”

“
One for each of us.” Quary grinned while rubbing his stubby
hands. “Maybe one more for me, being as I’m the Captain and
all.”

“
Whatever,” she griped, giving Quary a filthy look before
striding off.

Spix ventured out from behind the book. For a spriggan, he
was slight of frame and due to his young age, his hair had not
grown much length. Someone had given him a really bad fringe,
bluntly hacking at the front, it reminded Bram of one of Nettle’s
earliest hair-cuts she’d given him. “Has she gone?” the spriggan
asked. Bram nodded, giving his friend a
thanks-for-nothing
look. Spix said
sheepishly, “
Oooo
, but she right scares me so.”

“
Don’t she just.” Quary agreed a little wistfully. He
pensively gazed at Jazz’s retreating figure, and then said to no
one in particular. “She’s a mean one, in’t she?”

Spix and Bram
exchanged an amazed look: Quary Gravel spoke of Jazz with more than
a pinch of admiration.

“Come
on,” Bram urged Spix, “lets go have some lunch.”

Nettle
found Bram at the kitchen table heavily laden with food. Just about
everything they owned had been dragged out of the pantry. The
spriggans were eating with a ferocious appetite and Egnatius was in
the middle of explaining to Bram the finer details of lifting a
wallet. He was a shrivelled old spriggan, his lips dry and set
permanently in a dour expression but that was because, as they’d
soon learnt, he often sat puffing on a pipe. He wore a simple shirt
with a brown woollen vest and pants cut off below the knee. He was
not dressed colourfully, like his companions - the colour of his
clothes matched his skin tone so evenly, and the still way that he
sat or stood meant Nettle often mistook him for a misplaced
rock.

Nettle slid
into an empty seat and lay her father’s journal down on the table
beside her.

“
What’s that?” Bram reached over to pick up the
book.

“
Something Dad made up for me. He’s written everything he
knows about the Wilds.” Nettle nudged Roq out of her way. He was
sitting on the table chomping down a dehydrated cicada, while
busily stacking crackers together between layers of ham and
mushroom and dead ants. He gave her a fearsome look, but Nettle’s
was more formidable.

Bram flicked
through the pages. “You know,” he said, “since the spriggans are
here… I’m pretty sure we can learn a lot more about what goes on
the Wilds from them.”

“The
lad’s right about that,” Sandee agreed, stabbing a hunk of cheese
with her flint sword. Just about all the spriggans weapons were
made out of flint and Sandee in particular always kept hers sharply
honed.

Over lunch and into the afternoon the siblings
learn
t about
all sorts of faerie they’d never heard of before, nor were
mentioned in the journal Fred made for Nettle. Bram busily added
his own notes to Fred’s journal as the spriggans elaborated on -
often arguing minor points or talking over-top of one another -
acid spitting hyppogossmers; krokker gremmels who vomited up big
pools of a sticky tar like substance to trap their victims in;
hobben-gnomes a shy faerie who came out only at night to lick
nectar from the gloamshade flower with long tapered tongues; and
how to avoid the seven-toed spratte who liked nothing better to
chew on than the gristle of an ear.