Donkey Kong ordered the surviving marines to grab handfuls of mud from the bottom of the confluence. The chore wasn’t easy because of the rushing water, but they formed a line and soon began to make a pile. As they did so, the pixies grabbed tiny handfuls of the mud from the pile and flew them up to the wounds. They cried as they flew, the aura of the dryad having changed from one of regal confidence to one of fear and death. Once at the wounds, they packed them, attempting to staunch the flow of putrescent green blood, caressing the tree as they left, singing to it in forlorn voices, much like a nurse or a mother would a wounded loved one or patient.
The wounds the Marrow had managed to cause were terrible and might be enough to kill the dryad if they couldn’t staunch the bleeding. Still, even if they were able to save the great seelie, its ability to protect was surely diminished. In that, the Marrow had been successful. Now they had to worry about another attack. According to her unseelie, there were five in total. Now there were four. Preacher’s Daughter had no doubt that the Formori would send another Marrow to attack the Dryad of Glen Quoich. The task would be easier now because of its grave wounds.
By the time the dryad seemed as if she would survive, Barbie had called in for additional support. The first helicopter to land unloaded ten Royal Marines and uploaded those who had been in the battle, including the wounded and the dead. The sergeant leading the first crew insisted on staying so he might pass on the best TTPs—tactics, techniques, and procedures. Donkey Kong briefed them on their mission to guard the area. By that time, the magic he’d invoked to reveal the dryad was gone and all they saw was a glen and a confluence of water.
Preacher’s Daughter hid her grin. She could tell by the way the marines looked at each other that they had no idea why they were protecting some random spot in the middle of nowhere. But like the marines they were, they’d do what they were told.
She strode over to the Marrow and examined it. Its skin seemed to be made up of black and gray scales, much like that of a fish. It smelled of the sea with the rankness of something rotten, like something captured in sea kelp and floating for days. She hadn’t noticed before, but it had hooks on the heels of its webbed feet and hooks also at the knees. What she’d taken for dorsal hair was more than merely hair. Each strand was as stiff and deadly as wire and could be used to slice or impale. She couldn’t see the arm that was pinned under it, but she noted the tentacles—each one about eight feet long with suction cups containing circular rows of little sharpened teeth. She shuddered, remembering the marine who’d been plucked away and killed. Then there was the head. Its dead eyes stared openly from the ends of the hammerheads. Its pupils were blown red. So imaginatively strange seeing a hammerhead on a bipedal creature, albeit one that was twenty feet tall if it was an inch.
Next came a Chinook—an immense cargo helicopter.
It hovered over the Marrow. Ropes were lowered and along with them came the load master. With the help of the marines on the ground, they secured the dread beast and within twenty minutes it was in the air and heading towards an MI5 facility near Glasgow. She watched it as it hung dead, arm secured, but tentacles catching the wind. To think that this creature was purpose made to kill dryads made her sick to her stomach. The dryads were the essence of good— She corrected herself—they were good for the land. She doubted that the dryads cared much for the people.
Donkey Kong came up to her.
“Ugly mutt, don’t you think?”
“Ugly isn’t the word,” she said. “But it’ll do.”
“When’s the next inbound?” she asked.
“Five mikes. Then off to Killiehunty. We already have pixies and marines on site waiting for us.”
“Hold on. I’m not getting something. Why two dryads so close together?” she asked.
“What do you mean?” Donkey Kong replied.
“Tell me if what I’m saying sounds off.”
He nodded.
“The dryads add a certain magic to the land that makes it poisonous for the Formori to touch it.” She grabbed a stick and got down on the ground. She cleared away a patch revealing dirt and drew a rough outline of England and Scotland using a twig. “If this is the UK and these are the locations of the dryads that we know of, Cottingley Woods, Glen Quoich, Killiehunty, then where are the dryads to the south, southwest, and south east.”
“I’m not sure what you are getting at,” he said.
She pointed to each of the known dryad locations. “If these dryads protect central and north,” she said, drawing interlocking circles around them, “then what’s to keep the Formori from just taking the south right now. Brighton to London could be theirs.”
Donkey Kong knelt down beside her. “I see what you mean.” He snatched a twig for himself and marked as he spoke. “There are also younger dryads in Snowdonia in Wales. Dardmore for Cornwall and Exeter, North Wessex for the central south, Wakehurst Place, and the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew for London.” His concentric circles around those locations interlocked the whole of England and then some. “Additionally, there are even younger dryads along the coast in some areas that the Formori cannot know about.”
“Who’s protecting these others?” she asked.
“MI5 and the Home Office have contacted Marlborough Lines who are deploying several regiments using our newly developed TTPs to guard the better known dryads I mentioned. We don’t have pixies, but we do have night vision and infrared, so we’ll be able to see them coming.”
“And the glitter?” he asked.
“Will be deployed by micro-UAVs.”
“Looks like you have everything planned.”
He gave her a concerned look. “You don’t think so?”
“We don’t have a backup plan. We’re merely reacting to the situation as it unfolds. That’s always a reason to make me nervous.”
He looked at her in part exasperation. “We’re working with the information we have at hand,” he said.
“As an intelligence officer, I’d have more assets trying to get more information, like how is it that Maeve knew before all of us that this was going to happen? How was she able to create a hole in the world to transit through without us knowing about it?” She stood and tossed aside the twig. “If Windsor-Sykes is so tied in, then how did he not know what was going on? Or did he and has he been trying to ameliorate the situation on his own before it got completely out of hand?”
Donkey Kong stood as well. He stared into the distance. “That’s an excellent possibility, but we’ll never find out. This isn’t America. Lord Windsor-Sykes has the authority to do whatever he deems fit. But you do have a good point. We have an A Plan but no B Plan.” He flicked his wrist around. “Let’s reverse it. If the Formori’s A Plan is to take out the dryads and they are unable to do it, then what would be their B Plan?”
This was more like it. Preacher’s Daughter needed this kind of brain challenge. Like so many times before, she’d been in reaction mode. Wouldn’t it be nice to be in pro-action mode? She thought about what Donkey Kong said. What would be the Formori’s B Plan?
“Right now, they are attacking one at a time,” she began. “We’ve killed one of the five that we know about. If they don’t already know through their own magical zeitgeist, they will soon enough when they discover that their target is still alive, which is why we’ve surrounded her with Royal Marines. We’ve already venned out the maximum effective ranges of the major dryads. There might be a space or two uncovered, but you assured me that those are covered by younger dryads. So, then what? What do you think the Formori have planned? You can’t tell me they’ve been waiting a millennium and only have a simple plan.”
“Ever since I learned about Maeve and her hole in the world, I felt it was a bit pre-emptive,” he said. “Her fear seems unreasonable to the threat.”
“I was thinking the same. And she didn’t want me anywhere near the situation.”
He stared at her thoughtfully. “As an outsider, why do you think the Fae would want to leave?”
She twisted her lips. “Could it be the ownership?”
He looked at her with wide eyes. “Ownership?”
“The Queen owns some pretty obnoxious things.”
Donkey Kong visibly shuddered “Obnoxious?”
“Sure? I read somewhere where she owns all the swans on the Thames. All the sea beds. The Cliffs of Dover. Uh, all the dolphins around the UK and I think all the gold mines in Scotland. I get the gold mines and the sea beds. Those can easily be monetized. But the dolphins and the swans? Seriously?”
“It’s to protect them.”
“What’s not available on Google is the Queen’s ownership of the Fae. Sure, they’re a national treasure, but do you believe that they want to be owned?”
“Well, as I understand it from the records, it was either to be protected, or to be removed.”
“Protected. I think I read that term somewhere in my own history books about slaves in the American South. They were certainly protected.”
“Hey, that’s not fair. Our Fae are protected. Your slaves were monetized and, according to our history books, were the reason for America’s economic dominance in the 1800s without a major navy.”
“Not arguing with you, DK, but I just want to point out that one of the reasons people come to the UK is because they see it as the old world. And part of being the old world is the idea that magic still exists. If you think your Fae aren’t being monetized, then I think you’re being intentionally obtuse.”
He blinked at her, clearly not appreciating the term. Then he sighed. “Let’s just say you’re right. Let’s say that the Queen has been monetizing the idea of Fae. What is Maeve’s end game?”
She tapped the side of her head with a finger. “I don’t really think she wants the Fae to end up in America. The part of South Dakota that has been opened for the Fae is treeless and mostly barren except for plains of wheat. That doesn’t make much sense. I think she’s trying to renegotiate the terms of the contract.”
“You seem pretty sure.”
“I’ve been thinking about this. How come it’s taken so long for the Formori to attack? You mentioned that there was an aborted attack by a Marrow a hundred years ago. Why was it aborted? Why didn’t they all attack?” She glanced back at the invisible grove. “Here’s what I think. I believe that the seelie helped defeat them. From the selkie to the pixies, they were all involved. But now there’s no seelie to help. They’ve abandoned the United Kingdom or are in the process of doing so.”
“They sacrificed the dryads? All for political leverage?”
“Can you think of another reason?” she asked.
“It’s—it’s unimaginable,” he said. “What about the Centaur?”
“What about him? My guess is that he’s the go between? I don’t think he likes it but doesn’t have the power to stop it.”
“So, he’s their ambassador.”
Barbie came running up. “Come on, you two. We have to go. Killiehunty is under attack.”
They all looked to the sky as the sound of their helicopter came to them.
Would they even have time to save the dryad?