Roundtable redcap, p.6
Roundtable Redcap, page 6
He sang the line about how day and night divide each other with spot-on pitch, which surprised me. I stopped myself from wondering whether Fred had chosen magic over music, the inverse of my own decision. Instead, I listened to the reverb echoing off the giant wall in our way. After that, he gave me a smirk to shame Alan Rickman and tweaked some lyrics.
“Tried to eat, tried to climb,” Fred took a deep breath, then belted out the start of the chorus to Break On Through.
When he repeated the lyric, the ground shook as a thin black jagged line formed in the middle of the wall. The third time he sang it, the crack widened. We kept playing, our combined effort inspiring more zig-zag breaches in the barrier formerly known as rock-solid. I skipped the bridge because I never liked playing it, anyway. Fred took it in stride, recognizing the changes I’d made as easily as I adapted to his lyrical improv.
When Fred sang about how straight, deep, and wide the gate was, he held his arms at his sides, hands in fists. He stomped his right foot, then belted out “break on through to the other side!”
The section of wall blocking the path fell, but not in some kind of avalanche down and out toward us. Instead, the rubble rolled away, down to the last pebble. I felt a surge of skittering terror, alien and inanimate as though the broken bits of that barrier feared our combined efforts.
At the end of the song, Fred laughed. He turned around and gave me two thumbs up, smiling away with those jagged Redcap teeth. I raised the bow to my forehead, saluting with my instrument like Grandpa always said the trumpeter on the tower of Krakow in Poland did. I packed the violin back in its case, pausing to trace the seal of the Goblin King. It made me wonder something.
“Hey, Fred?” I closed and latched the case, keeping my back to him. “When you’re done getting your brother back, you’ll be in the middle of the queen’s territory.”
“Yeah, that’s right.” He cleared his throat. Not the way people do when they have more to say, but when they want to change the subject. I didn’t let him.
“And you said before that you won’t be able to get out of the Under again.” I tucked the case into my satchel. “So how are you going to get to the king's demesne in time to tithe to him?”
“Irina, look at me,” Fred whispered.
I stood before turning. Shouldn’t have. Fred was paler than he’d been before, especially around his lips. His eyes had the beginnings of dark circles under them. The hair at the top of his head looked even spikier and more cockeyed than it had when we came through the gate. I hadn’t had a fear of him for even a minute, but now, I feared for him. The drastic change in his appearance hurt my heart almost as much as seeing Grandpa at the hospital. If Fred looked that bad, how terrible did he feel?
“What do we do now?” I’d chickened out of asking how he was or actually doing anything remotely comforting.
“We go on.” He turned his back on the way we’d come and started walking through the gap in the wall.
“Thanks, Captain Obvious.” I trotted to catch up to him. “But you didn’t answer my question about the king.”
“I thought it was way too personal.” He stared straight ahead.
“Tough, because you’re implying you’ll be stuck here. And if that happens, what about Ed and me?”
“The queen’s good for her word. She’ll let Ed go if I meet her terms.” He finally glanced down at me. “And Margot knew what she was talking about. You’re carrying that case. Those two seals give you a get out of the Under free card on either side.”
“So, what are you going to do, then?”
“Dunno.” He shrugged. “Don’t care, as long as you guys get out. Probably live the rest of my life in the queen’s dungeon if I'm lucky.”
“But I thought all changelings have a choice about tithing. Why would you get locked up?”
“This.” Fred pointed at his hatless head. “If I don’t get my cap back, even my own mother would want me locked up.”
“You didn’t seem too worried about not having it before we came here.” I narrowed my eyes. “What changed?”
“I wasn’t sure it was gone. The rest of this talk will have to wait, Irina.” Fred stopped on a dime, dropping one of his massive hands on my right shoulder before I could step past him.
A path just big enough for us to walk side by side stretched out in front of us for about a hundred feet, ending in a fork. Along either side, towering above even Fred’s head, were more walls. The barrier appeared to be stalks of young, green bamboo, but appearances weren’t everything. Fred let go of me.
The wind blew gently from the southwest, and a hollow percussive sound rose musically up ahead. The walls rippled in the breeze. They weren’t walls at all. This was a field of bamboo. No, not bamboo. Not in the Under. These were brownies.
“Welcome to the queen’s maze.” The voice came from ahead and to the left. Before Fred could stop me, I headed to its source and stood, facing its general direction.
“Thanks. I’ve never been here before.” I knew better than to ask one pure faerie a direct question, let alone a whole crop of them.
“We know.” A ripple and that hollow wind sound came again, but this time, the air was still.
“You’re laughing at us.” Fred’s shadow merged with mine, then grew until it almost topped the wall. “Not a nice way to treat guests.”
“It tickles, having people in the maze,” said the voice. “It’s better than butterflies.”
“We won’t be long,” I grinned, singling out the brownie who’d spoken as a stalk with a peculiar vertical beige streak which set them apart from the others. “We’re on our way to the queen’s castle.”
“You won’t be long through this younger half of the maze where we still have roots. But the older side’s another story. I bet you want to ask how to get through their side.”
“It’s not up to me.” I shook my head. “This is Fred’s Quest.”
“Yeah,” Fred grumbled. “You don’t want to make me angry, especially since I lost my cap.”
“That’s right.” Stalks swayed and bent. “And we won’t. We’re just giving you a warning, so don’t eat the messengers.”
“Fine, I don’t much like string beans, anyway. And thanks for the heads up.” Fred’s shadow withdrew, leaving mine alone. “Come on, Irina. I know how to get through this maze.”
I turned to follow him, still intrigued by the brownie who’d spoken. I wasn’t sure why, if it was young, it had such a horrible scar. Who would maim a defenseless rooted brownie? I wasn’t a fan of faerie, but couldn’t deny my soft spot for anything in distress. It's part of Psychic Empathy, and one reason most of my performances got recorded and uploaded instead of gigged out in public.
Fred took a piece of chalk out of his bag, the kind he’d used to mark the walls back at Grandpa’s apartment and make the door to the Under. He couldn’t mark the path. It was coarse gravel all through here. Instead, he gently marked a brownie.
“Tickles!” The brownie’s voice sounded high-pitched and breathless. “Hee!”
“See?” Fred grinned. “Piece of cake.” He must have actually imagined eating cake because he blanched.
“You okay?” I put out an arm to steady him.
“Yeah, just gotta keep my head in the game and out of the bakery case,” Fred smirked. “I won’t hurl again. Nothing left in there anyway.” He patted his stomach. “Let’s try the right side first, okay?”
“Sure.” I reached out one bent arm, hoping he’d take the hint. He did, offering his. I looped mine through, and we walked together. Neither of us wanted to lose the other in there.
Every time we came to a fork, Fred marked another brownie. Every one of them giggled. Some of their neighbors begged to be tickled, too, and Fred did, just not with the chalk. Whenever we got to a dead end, retracing from the marks he’d left was easy. With the childlike brownie laughter and Fred taking his time and treating the maze like a puzzle, we almost had fun.
Eventually, we came to the middle the brownies had mentioned. Fred sat down on a stone bench to rest, facing toward a huge fountain shaped like a tree at the center. He put the chalk back in his bag and rummaged again, coming up with a thermos.
“What’s that?” I eyed the container warily, worried that whatever it was would only make Fred sick.
“Just water.” He opened it and poured some in the lid. “Want some?”
“Thanks.” I reached out and took a sip, then another. He refilled my cup before taking a swig himself.
“By the way, don’t drink any of that.” He pointed at the fountain with the container.
“No?” I peered at the fine spray coming from the undersides of the stone branches. “Looks safe enough, but something feels off about it.”
“Yeah. Look down there.” He gestured at the ground.
“Oh.” I saw that the path ran around the fountain, but didn’t go all the way up to it. A two-foot wide section of tall grass separated it from us. “If I stepped on that, I’d go off the path.”
“Right.” Fred leaned the thermos on his knee. “You’ve got a good instinct for this magic stuff, despite choosing music instead.”
“Thanks, I guess.” I couldn’t look at him all of a sudden. “I could say the same for you about music. You’ve got pipes and pitch.”
“Yeah. I chose magic.”
“Funny how we both ended up in the same place despite taking opposite paths. Life’s kind of like a maze sometimes, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, kind of like a giant labyrinth. Not really so funny, though.” His sigh weighed so much I turned to look at him again. “I told you, it’s coincidence. That Extramagus. And maybe something else.”
“What do you mean?”
“You asked about my cap earlier.” Fred shook his head. “Every faerie has a weakness. For a Redcap, it’s our red caps, of course. Without it, it’s only a matter of time before I lose all my marbles.”
“And there’s no way to stop it?”
“I could get my cap back. But there’s just about no chance of that happening. It'd take a miracle.”
“Why? Don’t you know how you lost it?”
“Yeah.” Fred looked down at the ground.
“So, you should be able to get it back then, eventually.” I shook out the now empty thermos lid.
“I lost it out there,” Fred waved his hand back to the north, “not here in the Under. And I can’t go back for a year and a day. By then, it’ll be too late, even if I tithe. My sanity will be gone forever.”
“There has to be something we can do.” I handed him the lid. “I can go get it for you. Margot mentioned I could travel with the seals in my violin case.”
“Yeah, you could. But you won’t be able to get my cap back.” Fred held the lid in his hand, then tilted the thermos back and killed its contents. “Someone took it, you see.”
“The Extramagus?” I shuddered.
“Worse.” Fred cleared his throat.
“What could be worse than that?”
“Someone I thought was a friend.” He spoke so quietly, I almost couldn’t hear him.
“Ah.”
“Look, I’m pretty much okay with being stuck here. I probably won’t know the difference once I go off the deep end, anyway. Whichever Monarch has me can either lock me up or sic me on their enemies for all I'd know.” Fred put the lid back on the thermos and stuffed it back in his bag. “But I need two things to happen. Will you help me?”
“I’m already helping you.” I reached out intending to pat his hand, but chickened out and flipped my hair over my shoulder instead. “But I’m jinxed, remember?”
“We both are as far as I’m concerned, so it’s a wash, anyway.” He shrugged.
“Fine.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “Tell me about these two things.”
“Okay, then.” Fred folded his hands together. I noticed how his left thumb sat on top of his right. “Ed. I need him out of here. And after that, I need you to go back and find my friends. Find Josh Dennison, or Bobby, or Blaine Harcourt. And you tell them not to trust Tony Gitano. Don’t tell them in front of Jeannie or Ismail because then they won’t believe you. Same goes for Henry Baxter.”
“I’ll do it.” I nodded.
“I need you to promise.” Fred lowered his head, staring into my eyes.
“I promise, Fred.” I stared back, unblinking. “If you lose it, I’ll make sure Ed’s safe. I’ll tell Josh, Bobby, or Blaine about Tony.”
“Thanks.” Fred took the chalk out of his bag again. “Let’s move on, then.”
We stood, following the path as it circled around the fountain. On the other side, opposite from the way we came, was another opening into a path lined with more brownies. These were tinted yellow-brown instead of green. I took a deep breath and followed Fred into the second half of the maze.
Chapter Seven
Fred
I side-eyed this new set of brownies. When the wind blew, they moved more, and the noise they made clacking against each other sounded louder, more like the bamboo wind chimes in our garden. Still, I chalk marked them just like the younger, green ones, even though they didn’t giggle until we’d passed them by. I stuck to my previous strategy, marking near corners so we’d be able to backtrack accurately.
Except it didn’t work.
I didn’t notice until we’d tried retracing our steps twice. Losing my cap had given my mind a keen-edged sort of focus, like tunnel vision. And getting through the maze was the one thing on my mind at that point. I noticed pretty quickly under the circumstances, but not soon enough to salvage the situation. I sat down in the middle of the path, hurling my chalk off into a stand of snickering brownies. Then, I almost got sick again because that reminded me of the Snickers brownies Mama made around Halloween.
“What’s up?” Irina stepped around in front of me after glancing back over her shoulder at the chalk. The brownies closed ranks. No way we’d get it back even if it would have helped.
“We’re lost. The marked ones keep moving, and I can’t remember how to get back to the middle or think of a different strategy to find a way through.”
“Time to phone a friend, maybe?”
“That’d be great and all, Irina, but we don’t get cell or satellite reception in the Under.” That wasn’t technically true, but I wasn’t about to explain how djinn magic worked since I wasn’t one and couldn’t use it anyway. I made a fist and punched the ground.
“Hall passes, Fred. The ones that vampiric cross between Lois Lane and Mary Jane Watson gave us.” She hunkered down, looking me in the face as though she was stupid, fearless, or had nothing to lose. Maybe all three. “We can call one of the creatures on those Psychic paper sticky notes.”
“Huh?” I blinked, shook my head. Mistake. That made my stomach churn even worse than before.
“These.” Irina reached out, under the Hawaiian shirt I wore over my tee. Her hand dipped into the pocket there, over my heart. I blinked at the sudden softening of my attitude. She brandished a thin stack of square yellow paper.
My mouth dropped open. I’d completely forgotten about Margot and our favor exchange in the maddening focus of trying to solve a rigged maze. I reached to take the papers from Irina but stopped. Maybe I wasn't quite right in the head already.
“Anything there look useful in this situation?”
“Let’s see.” She peered at the first one. “Pixie. Not helpful here.” She hummed, trying to peel the first sheet back to get a look at the second. “Hey, a Spite. That’d work.”
“Woah, that’s maybe not such a good idea.” I shuddered. Besides the magic drain, Spites were scary looking and reputedly ferocious. Any creature twisted and warped by faerie magic as a form of punishment should be.
“Why not?” Irina shrugged. “I mean, Spites are the queen’s hunting hounds. One of those could sniff their way through a maze like this, right?”
“Yeah, but they also eat magic.” I shuddered. “One of them tried hunting down some magical friends of mine. Took literal Luck for them to get away unscathed.
“Good thing I’m a Psychic, then.” She grinned.
“Well, but I’m not.” I gulped. “With my cap gone, my magic’s all over the place.”
“All over the place how, exactly?” Irina’s lips curved into a bemused little smile.
“I mean, that’s part of what’s making me sick. I’m getting severe magic surges, kind of like seizures in my energy field. It happens to changelings when it’s almost time for us to come here and tithe, but without my cap, it's even worse, and I can’t control it.”
“So, it’s like feedback from an amp and a microphone being too close together?” She actually smiled.
“Yeah, you got it.” I gulped, wondering what had the wheels in her head turning like that.
“Well, one way to get rid of feedback is to turn the volume down somewhere.” Irina chewed her lower lip, something I recognized as a habit of hers when she just about had something puzzled out. “I’m calling up the Spite. They're the best choice for more than one reason.”
“But what if a super ravenous one comes? It’ll leave me stuck here out cold.”
“Listen, lunkhead. I’m an Empath, and this is Psychic paper. I’ll put out vibes so the Spite grabs some magic grub on the way over if that’ll chill you out, okay?”
“You can do that?” I blinked, not sure how to process her idea or what to do about it if I could.
“Yeah, sure.” Irina turned her back elbows rising as she peeled off the sticky Psychic note that’d summon Margot's Spite.
For the first time, I wasn’t sure I believed her. She’d chosen music over magic after all. But it was too late to argue. I watched her shoulders rise and fall five times, some kind of deep breathing exercise, probably. Most Psychics used those. I waited, wondering whether Margot's Spite knew the one who’d hunted Henry and Maddie months ago, or whether they cared that I was a friend and packmate to people who freed one of their kind from the twisted horror of their punishment.
