BUG WAGONS AND KILLER BEE FEY
The things I do to deliver a message.
My skin crawled as we approached the Tinkerer’s wagon. Maybe it was my own paranoia, but it felt like the wagon was watching me, patient and unmoving, like a spider ready to scuttle toward me as I got close. And it had legs. Creepy insect legs, when four nice normal wheels would have been just fine.
Squashing down my reluctance, I walked around the back of the cart and found the steps that led to a single, bright green door covered in brass cogs and wheels. A doorbell rested beside the frame, glinting bright copper in the wood, and I pressed it firmly. Something within buzzed, but there was no answer.
“Hellooooo?” Standing on tiptoes, I peered in the single frosted-glass window next to the door, but all I could see were blurry shapes against hazy orange light. “Anyone here? Are you open?”
The door clicked, then swung open a crack, and a trio of very long, very thin fingers curled from the opening. I peered into the gap and was met with a pale gray eye in an equally pale face.
“Hey.” I raised a hand as the eye blinked at me slowly. “Did anyone order a pizza with extra olives?”
“Robin Goodfellow.” The voice was soft and rusty, and the door creaked open a bit farther as a head emerged on a long, skinny neck. A nose like a beak narrowly missed my chin as the head rose to stare me in the face. A jewelry loupe, jutting from one pale eye, glinted as it fixed on me. I suddenly felt like I was being studied like an uncut diamond. “You are the one the first lieutenant told me about. Can I help you?”
“Yeah, actually, you can.” I leaned back from the giant honker before I was impaled. “I heard you were the faery to see about getting a certain trinket? Something small and stylish, that prevents your face from melting off if you go into the Iron Kingdom?”
“That is true. I am the crafter of the protection amulets used by the regular fey to survive the Iron Realm. However...” The withered head pulled back a few inches. “I have already crafted your amulet, Robin Goodfellow,” he said. “I remember each and every piece I create, and yours was commissioned by the Iron Queen herself. You do not need another amulet.” His open eye narrowed sharply. “Unless of course you have lost it.”
“What? Moi? Lose something so important? What gave you that idea?” I smirked at his unamused expression, then motioned behind me. “I don’t need one. This amulet is for my friend. She needs to get into the Iron Realm to see the queen and would like to do so without imploding from iron sickness. That would be very inconvenient. Also messy.”
The Tinkerer’s gaze slid past me to Nyx, hovering at the bottom of the step. Two extremely long fingers came up to twirl and adjust the loupe, before the faery drew in a slow breath.
“A Forgotten? Well, now, what an interesting request. So that is the reason the knight seemed rather agitated when he delivered the message.” He observed Nyx a moment longer, then frowned. “Her kind is not well received by some residents of the Iron Kingdom.”
“Yeah, we got that. So, can you make her one, or not?”
He sighed. “Come in and shut the door, and please do not touch anything.” He drew back, disappearing from sight, and the door creaked on its hinges as it swung open.
We stepped through the frame, shut the door behind us, then turned around.
I expected to see the interior of the wagon, cramped and crowded, with lots of items on shelves and barely enough room to stand up, much less move around. Instead, I stood in the doorway of a large room, soft orange light glowing from several lamps on the ceiling. Shelves lined three of the four walls, filled with all manner of doodads and thingamabobs, and heaps of what looked like junk lay piled in every corner. Gears, levers, springs, wires, and other metallic parts glittered under the lamps, and a faint hum filled the air from some machine in the back.
It looked part workshop, part storefront, and the faint smells of iron, copper, and various other metals were making my nose hairs tingle. Worriedly, I glanced at Nyx, knowing the presence of so much iron was probably making her insides squirm.
The Forgotten’s jaw was set, her twilight-gray skin looking a bit washed-out, and her eyes were hard.
“Nyx.” Stepping close, I put a hand on her elbow and felt her muscles contract under my fingers. “You okay? Hanging in there?”
The Forgotten gave a grim smile. “I will admit, I’ve felt better.”
“Hang on.” Reaching back, I pulled the protection amulet from around my neck and held it up, the metal raven glittering at it spun in a slow circle between us. Instantly, I could feel what Nyx was feeling, the nausea flooding my insides, the acidic burn in the back of my throat. “Ugh, wow, that is unpleasant, isn’t it? Here, take this. At least until you have your own.”
I went to drape it around her neck, but she placed a hand on my arm, stopping me. “I’m fine, Puck,” she said. “One of us has to endure this. Better that I know what I’m walking into. I assume it will be worse in the Iron Realm itself.”
“Besides, your amulet would not work on her, Robin Goodfellow.”
The Tinkerer’s voice, calm and matter-of-fact, drifted across the room. I turned to see him behind a counter, reaching a really long arm up to one of the shelves on the wall. And when I say a really long arm, it was twice the length of a normal arm and very thin, like a pool noodle with fingers. Also, now that I could see him clearly, he seemed to have four of them. Four creepy long arms, with four creepy spiderlike fingers on each hand, for maximum creep effect.
Okay, it was official. I really didn’t like this place.
“That amulet will not shield her from the iron sickness,” the Iron faery went on, pulling a box off the top shelf and peering into it. “It was crafted specifically for you, Robin Goodfellow, and only you can receive its protection. No one else. Now...” He put the box on the counter while simultaneously reaching up with two more arms to feel around the shelves. “Let us see what we can do for your friend.”
Reluctantly, I returned the amulet to its place under my shirt, feeling both relieved and guilty when the sickness faded to almost nothing. Nyx still looked miserable, but she gave me a reassuring nod, and I had no choice but to follow her across the room to where the Tinkerer was still feeling around the top shelves with his creepy long arms. As he moved a box aside, there was sudden a buzz of wings, and a swarm of small, glittery things flew out from the row of boxes, zipping into the air.
“Confounded sparks!” exclaimed the Tinkerer, as the tiny creatures swarmed frantically around him. “I keep telling you not to sleep in the supply boxes.”
The creatures buzzed back and forth, sounding irritated, before they seemed to notice the two strangers by the door and immediately zipped over to investigate.
I tensed. Up close, they looked like piskies with copper skin, though they were half the size of regular piskies, which was to say, really tiny. This did nothing for my wariness. Piskies were what humans typically thought of when they heard the word faery. Cute little Tinker Bells with gossamer wings and magic dust. Trust me, there was nothing cute about them. Don’t let their size fool you; piskies had incredibly sharp teeth and the swarming instincts of a school of piranhas. If they were hungry, a horde of them could strip a horse down to the bone in minutes.
The piskie swarm surrounded me, blips of frantic movement and glittering skin. The air around them buzzed with electricity, and each time they moved, there was a faint popping sound, like a static shock. If my hair didn’t already have that tousled, I just rolled out of bed but I still look good look, it would be standing straight up.
“Um...hi?” I attempted a smile, despite being more than slightly creeped out by their spindly little arms and huge, multifaceted eyes, like those of enormous bees or hornets. Did I mention that I had a thing about bugs? Don’t get me wrong, I’d seen a lot of scary things: living dolls and clowns with sharp teeth and all sorts of monsters from your worst nightmares. But everyone has that one thing that makes their skin crawl, makes them get up and flee the room if that thing pops in and says hi. If you haven’t guessed by now, mine happens to be bugs.
And an Iron faery with arms like a freaking giant cricket living in a giant spider wagon with a swarm of killer wasp fey was ticking all of my oh hell no boxes.
“Enough, sparks,” the Tinkerer called, making the swarm draw back slightly. “You are making the customers uncomfortable again. Please shoo for now.”
The piskie swarm drew back, rising up to buzz around the ceiling, as Nyx and I crossed the floor to the counter.
The Tinkerer waited for us, tapping long fingers against the glass. It made his hand look like a spider in its death throes, and I repressed a shudder. “I have never crafted an amulet for a Forgotten before,” he mused. “How very interesting. This could be tricky.”
“Why is that?” Nyx wondered.
“Because to assemble the amulet, I must take a bit of the bearer’s own glamour to craft it,” the Tinkerer explained. “That is why Robin Goodfellow’s amulet will not work on anyone but him—it has a piece of his essence inside it, and the amulet will not recognize anyone else.”
I remembered when Meghan first mentioned the amulet to me; she had asked for a lock of hair or something similar, and had rolled her eyes when I gleefully asked why she wanted it. After explaining it was for an experiment to help traditional faeries survive the Iron Realm, I’d given her a jet-black feather, and a few days later was presented with the amulet I was wearing now.
“So?” I shrugged. “I don’t see the problem here. It’s not like she doesn’t have hair. She has very nice hair, in fact.”
“You are missing the point, Robin Goodfellow.” That pale eye glared at me. “If I needed only hair, or blood, or feathers to craft the amulet, I could do so for any monkey that knocks on my door. That is not the issue.”
“It’s because the Forgotten have no glamour of our own,” Nyx guessed. “We have to steal it from other fey, or the Nevernever itself.”
“That is correct.” The Tinkerer nodded. “A faery’s personal glamour must be woven into the amulet for it to work properly. It is why I cannot simply mass produce these items. Each one must be specifically crafted for the bearer alone. I do not even know the final form the amulet will take—it all depends on the essence of the faery I am making it for.” He eyed Nyx shrewdly. “But you, like all Forgotten, have lost your glamour along with your name. I do not know if I can make you an amulet without that magic to anchor it in place.”
“Is there no other way?” Nyx wondered. “No other source of magic that can be used to craft an amulet for someone?”
“I do not know,” the Tinkerer mused. Steepling long, spiderlike fingers under his chin, he regarded Nyx intently. The jewelry loupe on his right eye gleamed as he turned it on her. “I can sense the emptiness inside you, my dear,” he said softly. “The struggle simply to exist, to not fade away. Even now, you are subconsciously siphoning a bit of glamour from everything around you, including Master Goodfellow.”
Nyx winced at that, and I straightened. I’d known about the Forgotten’s glamour draining abilities, of course, but I hadn’t realized it was something they couldn’t control. I thought back to the battle with the monster, remembering the exhaustion and sluggishness I’d felt when it was over. Had Nyx been draining my magic while we were fighting, using it to power those cool abilities of hers?
I looked at her, and she met my gaze apologetically. “I am sorry, Goodfellow,” she said. “I overextended myself in the last battle, and when that thing attacked...I reached for whatever magic I could.” A brief look of frustration crossed her face, and one fist clenched at her side. “I’m not used to this, to having no glamour of my own, but that’s not an excuse. I should have told you before.”
“Hey.” I shrugged. “I’ll take being tired over being dead any day of the week. Or being squished into magic paste by ugly monsters. You need my glamour, for anything, it’s yours.”
“Be that as it may,” the Tinkerer interrupted, reminding us of the present problem, “you cannot depend on Goodfellow’s magic if you want to safely travel to Mag Tuiredh. The effect of the Iron Realm is powerful, and without proper protection, you will die even faster than the traditional fey. You are going to need a very strong, continuous source of glamour if you want to survive past the border.”
“What about a Token?” I asked.
The jewelry loupe swiveled around to me. “A Token,” he repeated, and those spider fingers drummed against each other. “Hmm,” he mused. “That might work. Yes, I might be able to substitute a Token for the glamour essence of the bearer, provided I had something of hers to weave into it. I do not, unfortunately, have a Token with me, and they are relatively difficult to come by. If you know where you can find one—”
I drew the playing card from my pocket and flourished it dramatically. “Ta-daaah!” I announced loudly. “From Cricket’s Collectables, your one stop for the most interesting treasures and curios this side of the goblin market. Drop on by, and find the thing you never knew you needed.”
The words tumbled out of my mouth almost without thought; a side effect of the bargain I’d made with a cheerful, enterprising Iron faery. I sounded like a shifty used-car salesman, but as deals went, it wasn’t too bad. I just hoped Nyx wouldn’t have to announce the wonders of Cricket’s merchandise to every faery who noticed her amulet.
Wait... On second thought, that would be hilarious.
Both Nyx and the Tinkerer blinked as my “announcement” came to an end. I grinned and tossed the card onto the counter. “So, will this work or not?”
“Perhaps. Let us see what we have here.” The Tinkerer reached out, curling long fingers around the piece of cardboard, like a spider consuming an insect, before bringing it up to the jewelry loupe. “Fortune,” he murmured after a moment. “Luck and destiny. And a bit of a passion for playing the odds. Hmm.” He pulled the card away to stare at Nyx for a long moment, as if comparing the two in his mind. “I think I can make this work,” he finally said. “If the bearer can give me a small piece of herself? It doesn’t have to be a lot, a single strand of hair or drop of blood will work for this purpose.”
Nyx reached back and plucked a strand of her silvery white hair before holding it out to the Iron faery, whose long fingers curled around it in the same slow, spiderlike manner.
“Excellent,” he said, nodding. “This will do nicely.” Both items vanished in the folds of his apron before he turned back to us, clasping his long fingers together. “And now, all that is left is to discuss matters of payment.”
“Payment?” Though I wasn’t really surprised, part of me winced, anyway.
The Tinkerer glanced my way with a raised eyebrow. “Well, of course, Goodfellow. You did not think you were going to get it for free, did you?”
“I was kind of hoping, yeah.”
“Last time the queen herself commissioned the amulet. You do not have that luxury. However...” The Tinkerer paused, then sighed. “There is something wrong within Faery,” he went on in a grave voice. “Not just in the Iron Realm, but the entire Nevernever itself. I cannot say what it is, but I sense a malignance in my clients, in the fey passing me on the streets. I hear whispers that chill me to my bones.” He shivered, then turned his loupe on me fully, peering at me with an enormous, magnified eye. “Something is coming, Goodfellow. Something that might threaten us all. And the Iron Queen will need allies in the coming days, those she can trust with her life. I want your promise that you will aid her however you can, that when the time comes, you will be at her side. That is my price for the amulet. Swear this to me, and the talisman is yours.”
“What?” I frowned, going over the deal in my head, word for word. It didn’t sound nefarious or raise the usual red flags, but... “That’s all? Help Meghan if she needs it? I mean, I was planning to do that, anyway. What’s the catch?”
“You are Robin Goodfellow,” the Tinkerer said. “The Puck. The infamous trickster, and one of the most well-known faeries in existence. You, the cait sith, and the Winter prince are the guardians, the trio of power that surrounds the Iron Queen. I do not want you to forget. I want your promise that if the Iron Queen ever needs you, or if she ever calls on you for aid, you will be there.”
“I’ve known Meghan a long time,” I said. “I was looking out for her before she ever became the Iron Queen. You don’t have to wrestle a promise out of me. I swear that if she’s in trouble and needs my help, for any reason, I’d show up in Mag Tuiredh, talisman or no.”
The old faery bobbed his head. “That will have to be sufficient.” He drew back, one long arm moving to the door behind the counter and pushing it open with a creak. A couple sparks zipped out with high-pitched buzzes, making me wince, but the Tinkerer ignored them. “Give me a few minutes,” the faery told us. “I have not crafted an amulet using a Token before. I will have to experiment with how to make this work. But it will be an enjoyable challenge, I am certain. I will call for you when it is ready.”
He slipped out of the room, and the door closed behind him with a creak, leaving Nyx and me alone except for a few sparks buzzing around near the ceiling.
I glanced at the Forgotten and winced at how pale she looked. “I say we wait outside.”
“I second that,” Nyx agreed, and we fled the room, back to the stone bench beneath the willow tree, away from the stink of metal and the corruption of the Iron faery’s domain.
I leaned back on the bench, breathing in the clean, untainted air. Nyx perched beside me, a bit of color returning to her cheeks now that we were in the open. “That was...an experience,” she mused, gazing down at her hands as if she expected her skin to be peeling off. “Is this tingling sensation normal?”
“Yeah, don’t worry about it.” I shrugged. “That’s just the first physical sign of iron poisoning. The burning, sickness, and wanting to die comes later.”
“Oh good.” Nyx lowered her hands. “Something to look forward to.”
I chuckled. “Ah, it’s not so bad, really. Once you get past the sickness and the dying and the puking-your-guts-out part, some regions of the Iron Realm are actually quite nice. Mag Tuiredh is pretty impressive. And now that I can move through the realm freely, I get to really explore the place. Last time I was there, I stumbled onto this forest that had mirrors everywhere, growing right out of the ground or hanging from the trees, as far as the eye could see.” I snorted and wrinkled my nose. “Trust me, that was the most confusing place to get out of, and the locals were no help at all. You’d try to talk to one, and the second it noticed its reflection, it would forget all about you and preen.”
Nyx smiled, but the smile had a wistful edge to it. “Sounds like you’ve been a lot of places.”
“A few. I definitely have stories. What about you?” I asked, curious now. “With how long you’ve lived, I’m sure you’ve seen all the crazy the Nevernever has to offer.”
But the Forgotten shook her head. “I never left the wyldwood,” she said solemnly. “The Summer and Winter courts didn’t exist back then, and the mortal world was closer to Faery than it is today. There was no reason for me to venture beyond the Lady’s domain, and she didn’t like us to leave her unprotected, so I stayed.”
“What? You’ve never been out of the wyldwood?” The thought was mind-boggling. The wyldwood was huge, and you could certainly spend your whole life there without seeing it all, but who would want to? There were so many other places in the Nevernever, not to mention the human world, that begged you to visit and get into trouble. “Okay, we are going to fix that,” I told Nyx. “When this is over, I’m going to take you on a tour of the Nevernever. Keirran certainly doesn’t need you to hang around him twenty-four-seven. He’s a big boy, he can take care of himself. And after this many centuries, I say you’ve earned a vacation.”
A wry smile played over the Forgotten’s lips. “Just the two of us?”
I ignored the weird turning of my stomach and shrugged. “Well, I’d ask ice-boy to join us, but he’s so busy now, what with ruling the Iron Realm with Meghan. He rarely gets to go on adventures anymore. Pity, really. Those were the days.” For a second, I felt a twinge of nostalgia, regret, and the tiniest bit of resentment. Once upon a time, the Winter prince of the Unseelie Court and Robin Goodfellow were the dynamic duo of the Nevernever, seeking out adventure and getting into more trouble than we had a right to get out of alive. I’d even gone to the End of the World with him, helped him earn a soul so he could be with Meghan in the Iron Realm. Now, Ash had no time for anything but his queen. The queen he had stolen away from me.
Whoa, where’d that come from, Goodfellow? Obsessive much? It’s been years. We are way past that, remember?
Faeries don’t forget, a deeper, more malicious side of me whispered. Or forgive. Maybe we’re not.
I shuddered and pushed that voice away. “So, yeah.” I turned to Nyx. “Just the two of us. First up, we head to Arcadia. The politics are ugly, but if we stay away from the court and the queen, we should be fine. For some reason, Titania is always so cranky when I come home.”
“I can’t imagine why,” Nyx commented, still with that faint smile.
“It’s a mystery,” I agreed. “But this time of year, I think we should first pay a visit to the Orchard. Best apples in all the Nevernever, and I’m an expert on the subject. Totally worth the experience, if you don’t mind dodging a couple greedy giants that refuse to share. But if you go when the sun is directly overhead, they’re usually asleep...”
I trailed off. For just a moment, a flicker of alarm passed over Nyx’s face, making me stumble to a halt. “Or maybe not,” I said. “I guess not everyone likes apples. Or giants.”
“No, it’s not that.” The hint of alarm was replaced by confusion; her brows drew together, frustration coloring her voice. “Something you said,” she muttered, “something about that scene, it felt wrong. I didn’t want to be there. Not because of the giants or Titania or anything about the Seelie Court. But for just a moment, I felt deeply unsettled, and I don’t remember why.”
A buzzing sound interrupted us. I looked up and saw a trio of the Tinkerer’s killer bee piskies hovering a few feet away, their large black eyes and copper skin glittering in the moonlight as they stared at me.
Between them, something dangled from a silver chain, throwing off shimmers of light as it swayed and twisted in the air. Glamour pulsed from it, an aura of hazy color and emotion, throbbing like a real heartbeat.
“Huh, that was fast,” I commented. “You know, if you guys opened up a sandwich shop, you’d be the most popular place in the Nevernever.”
The piskies ignored me. Buzzing, they floated closer and dropped the amulet into Nyx’s hands, where it flickered like a lost firefly. Carefully, she rose and draped the amulet around her neck. It gleamed brightly against the darkness of her leather armor, a silver heart with a crescent moon-shaped hole in the center. Pretty fitting, I thought.
The third piskie zipped up, closer to my face than I was comfortable with, and thrust a folded bit of paper at me, shaking it rapidly. I snatched it from the air before I suffered a paper cut to my eyeballs and flipped it open.
It was, as far as I could tell, a receipt for services rendered, with a large Paid in Full message scrawled near the bottom in red ink. I didn’t know if I was supposed to keep it, or if it was simply a formality, but I crumpled it and stuck it in my hoodie pocket. I’d worry about what the Tinkerer had said, and what I’d promised him, later. For now, we had what we came for.
Finally.
“Well,” I said brightly, glancing at Nyx. “Now that that’s out of the way, and we don’t have to worry about your skin melting off in the Iron Realm, are you ready to meet the queen?”
Nyx smoothly tucked the pendant beneath her armor and drew her cloak around herself as she rose. A breeze tossed her hair, making it flutter in the wind, and the moon emerging from behind a cloud cast a hazy circle of light around her as she gazed at me with a smile. “I believe the correct expression for the times is yesterday.”
I chuckled, feeling that odd twisting sensation in my gut again. “You know, for someone as ancient as you are, you certainly don’t sound like any Wise Old One I ever met,” I said as we started walking toward the bridge once more. “Shouldn’t you have more thees and thous in your vocabulary?”
Nyx offered a smirk that was entirely too familiar and pulled up her hood. “I’m a fast learner.”