Story: Fellyans (part three)

Fellyans

(part three)

The monarch kicked the lamp that had gone out.

By accident…but if he could see it, he’d give another from spite. The cottage sat bowled by slopes; its departed owner had planted thorny bushes for a hedge…

The presence of which the companions knew of for a certainty, though only daylight could mark its malign breadth. Horsehair…or, what was his name? Marshhawk. Let the creature conjure after fairy lights. A place was hopeless when its creator had had unfriendliness to wanderers in mind.

Achieving the cellar door with his shins, the monarch lowered himself. He found the dampness of the wood softened none of its splinters. He cursed the brambles aloud.

A throat cleared.

From the cottage came a drone of, “Candle, candle, candle, candle…”

Alma’s voice remarked a muffled something. Which tended to account for the three of them. The throat belonged to a fourth.

A voice, in the same tenor, spoke: “It’s not sensible to curse good berry bushes. You ought to take that back and apologize, or you’ll pick only sour ones.”

“I will suffer them sour.”

“What, even if Jorinda baked the pies, and all you had to do was eat them?”

Thought occupied a space of time. The monarch muttered: “Seip eht dekab… Give me the rest again.”

“Can it be you’re trying a spell against a riddle?”

“Don’t trick me. I know how it’s done.”

“Every child knows how it’s done. But backwards talk is an old householder’s tale, surely. Have you ever met a troll?”

“Tricks and traps can come as soon from a gnome.”

“Gnomes are under charter to give only gifts.”

“Are they! And a pact put in writing gives you confidence it can’t be flouted? When gnomes invade the hinterlands, where the elves have been drawn off patrolling…? You think they won’t give piles of manure, and turn your corn into beans?”

“Hmm, well. Gnomes are particular about gardens. And, in fact, beans are an interesting crop…”

“Oh, get it over with! You’re going to stand there in the dark and tell me about gnomes, as though I were an utter simpleton, and couldn’t guess what you are yourself!”

“But, you know, beans…”

“I don’t. Not at all. The riddle, please.”

“I haven’t got one.”

A pause. “Isn’t it the rule, in such case, that you owe me a gift?”

“It would be best if you didn’t speak that way.”

Bede heard right-from-the-startness conveyed by a snort to rival Langham’s. He temporized. “I owe hospitality to any stranger. But I’m afraid that—I must warn you—if you and those others are Fellyans, I am expected to take you prisoner.”

“Bewitch me on the spot, Gnome! Turn me into a toadstool!”

3

Fellyans

Fellyans (part four)

(2021, Stephanie Foster)