8.4 The Pooka’s Wife
The door fell apart in a flight of splintering wood, heavy chunks falling, lighter pieces soaring through space. Glad that I was protected from the fall-out, I still covered my head, closed my eyes, and tried not to breathe in the fragments of sawdust, if there was such a thing, mingling with the dusty air inside the palace. All around me I heard lots of shouting and hollering. The queen was screaming, mainly cursing, I’m pretty sure, although I couldn’t understand her words since they weren’t flowing out in English, but in some high-pitched, almost musical yodeling. The guards were busy adding in their grunts and snorts, all three of them in bass cleft. And scores of black boots were charging forward — shiny, leather boots. That was what I could see when I finally opened my eyes to peek out from under the table. It was like a dance of boots, all of them shuffling forward and back, sideways and around in circles. The clatter of weapons meeting, like children banging tin cans together, except higher pitched, made me feel like covering my ears. The table where I was hiding was up against a wall, so the fight was all in front of me, which I appreciated greatly. That meant my back was protected, and I had only to worry that someone might crawl underneath the table and seize the excess fabric of my dress, which was so abundantly splayed out all about me. But no one seemed aware of my presence or where I was hiding, and the battle continued. I wondered how it was possible that it went on and on. Three men and one half-crazed queen against an army of men? It sounded like at least twenty soldiers had thundered inside the chamber after breaking down the door. What were the spares doing while the battle raged? Perhaps, it was the whole politeness thing going on, with soldier against soldier and no one wanting to gang up on their advisory. After all, what did I know about Fae politics? At one point, I heard the voice of Queen Moragana insisting that her men find “the Pooka’s human.” That irritated me – the fact that the queen didn’t remember my name and that she’d referred to me merely as a human and not as Timothy’s wife . . . (or the wife of Prince Nardon of Donic, as some of the Fae had called him) . . . Even so, I guess I should have called out to let someone know where I was, but who should I trust? The queen who had kidnapped me or the queen who had trapped me into wearing a Fae necklace that I didn’t want and which had made me sick? Uncertain and not hearing the voice of anyone else that I knew, like my beloved husband and his guards, I wiggled more tightly up against the wall and kept mum.
8.3 The Pooka’s Wife
I was doomed. I feared that not eating some of the scone would make the queen irate, but to even nibble at it might cause me to become a permanent citizen of Faeryland. Glancing up into the queen’s face, I saw the muscles in her cheeks clench as if she were already taking note of my rejection of her food. Her eyes turned hard. Yes, a strange expression, I agree, but if you’d been standing where I was, seeing her eyes narrow into two big balls of glaring green fire, you’d have said the same thing. Her eyes grew into twin golf balls of suppressed rage that . . . I brought the biscuit towards my mouth and started to take a bite. One little bite. Surely that wouldn’t hurt, would it? What was that noise? I stopped and turned to face the door that I presumed led out into the gardens. One of the windows, blurry with dead flies, dust, smoke, and who knows what else gave a hint that there was an outside that once upon a time could be viewed through its glass pane. Behind me, the queen started yelling: “Are those the soldiers I sent for? Has my court come back? Have my servants, nobles, and other riffraff folk returned?” The three guards exchanged a look with each other. Not one of them seemed to want to respond to the queen’s query. It wasn’t until the favored one was called by his name to answer her, that words came, words that turned the queen’s complexion into stroke territory: blotchy red with patches of pale. “What do you mean no one sent notice that I needed my troops? Of course I need my army. The girl’s owner will soon be knocking at my door with her rallied forces. Do I not deserve a fair fleet of my own? Get them here, at once!” “There are no troops, Your Majesty. You dismissed them. Remember?” the favored one said. The queen was no longer sitting in her fancy chair of velvet, cranberry red. Well, it once must have been cranberry red. It now looked stained and dust-riddled from a lack of cleaning, and spider webs dangled down from the legs. I saw that the spiders had weaved a whitish nest underneath the chair; future spiders who would no doubt drape and decorate the rest of the palace. Meanwhile, the noise from the outside sounded like at least fifty men were clamoring about, knocking on doors and windows and issuing threats with voluminous bellows and grunts. The queen had forgotten about me and whether I should be eating her pomegranate scones or not, so I carefully put my untasted biscuit back on the tray and took two steps away from the table. Neither the queen nor the guards took note. I thought about running to the window and yelling for help, but I remembered the spear-weapons the guards were carrying and decided that invisibility would be smarter than flight. Thus, I sidled sideways very, very slowly and then, as quickly as possible, I slipped under the food-laden table. It was awkward walking-crawling toward the underneath middle section since the food was making the table sag lower to the ground than it should be, but I continued forward, cutting a path through a spider-web forest as my gown did its best to trip me in its cascades of heavy fabric.
8.2 The Pooka’s Wife
Penelope: I was escorted back to the queen’s banquet room. That made me wonder about the servants I wasn’t seeing. Who was cooking the meals, baking the bread, tending the chimneys, and doing other odd jobs like washing the queen’s clothing? But again as I entered the huge room, I saw no one but the three guards and the queen, herself. Earlier I’d noticed a scraggly=looking dog scavenging among the items beneath the table. Were food scraps being tossed under the table, rather than disposing of them more hygienically? Based on the dust all about the palace I doubted that cleanliness was one of the the queen’s virtues. But then, perhaps when the Court was here, things were kept sparkly clean. It would certainly be easier to waltz about without pieces of potato or bones under foot. When the queen glanced in my direction, she clapped her hands and let out an exclamation of joy. “Oh, good, the entertainment is here.” Wonderful to be lumped into a group with clowns and mimes. Not that I was knocking them, only, I had no ability in that direction, which is why I would prefer that the queen didn’t get so excited about my arrival as “entertainment.” It meant that she was going to call on me to come up with something new and exciting. I supposed I could do the tongue twister about seashells, but I certainly didn’t want to sing again. And to have to dance with the nasty guard . . . yick. “I approve. You look halfway decent now,” the queen added with another questionable compliment that I could have done without. Personally, I thought the yellow dress I was wearing was designed with the absolute worst taste and wished I could have kept my jeans and tee shirt on. But, I curtseyed and thanked the queen anyway. Polite and well-mannered was probably mandatory in captive situations. Head chopping and dungeons might be on the agenda otherwise. “Now, I command you to eat something,” the queen said in a voice that ended all debate about whether doing such a thing in Faeryland was a wise decision or not. Poor Persephone, had she been under the same compulsory directive in Hades? I took two steps closer to the table and eyed the offerings. No pomegranate seeds, but I did see a couple of apples and a huge bowl of grapes. There was also a platter towering with some kind of flat bread biscuits. They looked like they might have fruit in them, so scones? I took in a deep breath, giving myself one more pause for courage, heard the queen hiss at me for dawdling, and reached out to take one of the biscuits. “Yes,” the queen said. “Good choice. Those are my favorites. They have pomegranate seeds in them, which makes them sweet yet slightly tangy.”
8.1 The Pooka’s Wife
Timothy: The Queen herself did not reappear, but the grouchy guard, the one who’d leveled his weapon at me, popped back into the suite’s main salon. The man still looked surly and immediately addressed Ben, not me, as if I weren’t substantial (or Fae) enough to be worthy. “Queen Moragana has been informed of the whereabouts of the human,” he said. “The Queen is marshalling forces as I speak in order to revenge the deviant’s intrusion and this show of contempt to the rights of our Queen,” the guard continued, his voice gruff and as emotionless as if he were merely giving us a weather report, noting it was to be another full day of sunshine for the tenth time in a row. I stiffened my spine, forcing my body to grow several inches in height, a sometimes useful tool when dealing with bullies who thought themselves better than those they were addressing. “I will not permit my wife to be harmed because your Queen desires payback for an insult to her reign,” I thundered, my anger firing up at the robotic delivery of the man and his failure to address the information to me instead of Ben. And then there was the concept of a bloody battle being waged around my sweet lady. Weren’t the Queen and her Court aware that my wife wouldn’t survive an injury that would merely inconvenience a Fae? With my words, the guard turned to eye me, as if he’d just noticed a fly that needed swatting. “Pooka, mind your tongue or I will cut it off.” My crew all leapt into combat mode with that affront. I waved them back. Any retaliation for the guard’s rudeness should come directly from me. Being a Pooka, there were ways that I could provide an ample reckoning, but this was the Queen’s officer. Should I seek justice? Yet, the man had just threatened to cut off my tongue, not to mention dishing out insults that even a lesser man would be unable to ignore. Let the deed equal the threat, I vowed to myself. Avoiding the eyes of Daniel, my spiritual advisor, who would have counseled differently, I tapped into my magic and conjured the illusion of a tongue expanding wider — like a blowfish manipulating its body to frighten an adversary. The result was obviously effective. The guard gagged, choked back a snarl, and then started puffing up his cheeks as if that would give his mouth adequate space for the growth of a tongue too large to fit inside his mouth. Daniel, as I had known he would, stepped forward to caution me. Then Ben did so, also, a worried look on his face. No problems with the werewolves. They were both chuckling as the guard grunted and groaned, clutching at his jaw and opening and closing his mouth like a man deprived of oxygen. Oxygen? Was I cutting off the man’s air? Suddenly alarmed, I undid the magic, freeing the guard once again. As he gasped and drew in air with sharp, rapid breaths, the Fae flashed a look at me, neither angry nor retaliatory, but more respectful, as if he’d indeed learned his lesson about dealing with Pookas. Then as suddenly as he’d arrived, he flashed out, disappearing, I supposed, back to Faeryland and to his Queen where he would probably complain about my nasty behavior. Frankly I hoped he did, as long as he included my concerns about bringing war down on the shoulders of my dear, sweet wife.