[3] Old Dints of Deepe Wounds

Jay Waringcrane, originating from a world of cars, received a crash course in how long it took to actually walk anywhere. It took a long fucking time.

Whenever he stopped to rest Olliebollen would say, "Looks like a job for the Faerie of Rejuvenation," sprinkle pixie dust, and banish fatigue and muscle soreness. When Jay's stomach grumbled, more dust, and gone went all hunger—absent the satisfaction of actually eating. Only threats of extreme violence prevented Olliebollen from attempting to rectify his need to use the restroom.

In the interim periods, Olliebollen begged Jay to ask more questions. He didn't, so it asked its own: Who was the last hero to appear through the Door? What did he do? How did he do it? Who did the statues in the graveyard depict? Who were the members of the Whitecrosse royal family? Where were the other human nations? Where did fairies live? How many fairy courts were there? Which court was Olliebollen from? Who was the biggest enemy of the fairies? What made Archbishop Astrophicus so evil?

Irrelevant trivia or, at best, things he could worry about later. What he needed, if he wanted to transform this world into paradise, was power.

He asked: "How do I use magic."

The question knocked Olliebollen off its rhythm. Out of its incessant chatter it spoke only a single word, an uncertain repetition: "Magic?"

"Yes, magic. It clearly exists in this world. How do I use it."

"Um, wwwell..." The voice trailed into nothing.

Even pending an answer, the question was worth it if only for the moment of silence it bought him. But eventually Olliebollen cobbled together an answer: "Oh yeah, of course! If you have a magic relic, you can use that relic's magic!"

"Where do I find a relic."

"I, uh..." Olliebollen squished two forefingers together and shifted a glance at the horizon. "I dunno! There aren't a whole lotta relics. They're definitely not lying around any old place!"

"Liar."

"I would never lie!"

"Then how do I use the magic you use."

Olliebollen winced. "Uh, ah, hm, it's kinda, you see—you can't. Humans are, um, fundamentally incompatible with that type of magic. It can be used to do stuff to them, but they can't—they can't use it themselves. Yeah!"

"That twin used magic."

"And she wasn't human was she! Was she?!" Olliebollen whirled on Jay, machine-gun jabbing fingertips in his face. The fairy always zipped haphazardly, but now an uncontrolled edge crept in, something untamed; its beady eyes twitched glances all over, at his face, his bat, his shoes, like it expected him to suddenly strike. After it became clear Jay intended to do nothing but continue to walk down the road at the same brisk pace, Olliebollen settled to its usual freneticism. "Why don'tcha ask more about relics? I can tell you anything: how many there are, when they first appeared, who used them—"

"But not where they are."

"Er. No. Not that."

"Then relics don't matter right now. But the magic you use—"

"Look! Don't poke around that sorta thing, okay! It's not for humans, okay? Okay?"

"If I go to the monastery and beat this Astrophicus guy will you tell me."

The offer got Olliebollen to settle down and stroke its chin in dubious contemplation, but only for a moment. It soon reaffirmed its resolve and snapped: "I―I already told you humans can't do it! Everything I say is true! So stop asking!"

Interesting. It would've been easy for Olliebollen to say yes, tempt Jay to do the monastery quest, and afterward lie or withhold info despite its earlier promises. Jay wouldn't have fallen for it, but Olliebollen was apparently too guileless to try. Unlike with Perfidia, though, Jay lacked leverage to force it to talk. Maybe if he asked enough asinine personal questions like it seemed desperate to answer and pieced together what it really wanted from him—but even the thought was exhausting.

Instead he asked, "How much farther to the city."

Olliebollen sulked and said nothing.

Later, when twilight struck and a wan glow glazed the fluttering wildflowers, something emerged out of the unending meadow: a simple wooden building beside the road. The distant castle city had moved no closer from its position on the horizon.

Olliebollen stuck its tongue at him. "Bet you'll just keep walking huh! Won't even think to stop at the inn. An inn at night? That's like someone telling me to go there. Can't have that! Nope!"

"Shut up." Jay supposed the building wasn't too suspicious. In a carless world, inns made most sense a day's walk from the nearest village. Not that the graveyard constituted a village. But as the burial ground of kings it must possess enough ceremonial and/or historical importance to receive the occasional official or tourist.

He reached the inn when all went dark, even the last dregs of sunlight that briefly wreathed the white cross on the mountaintop in religious awe. Although the day passed without a single stretch of anything even approximating weather, suddenly a careful wind arose, and the waves of wildflowers whistled, and the tops of trees shook. Jay wrapped his fur-lined corduroy jacket around himself and turned up its collar. He placed a hand to keep down his hat and wondered if this weather intended to ensure he slept at the inn tonight. He wondered just how much control Perfidia exerted over the world. He wondered if he would drive himself insane imagining Perfidia's hand behind everything.

Because of the darkness he got only a poor glimpse of the inn itself. It consisted of two buildings adjacent one another: the main building with a high arched roof, and a long flat stable beside it. No lights, candle or otherwise, in any window. Jay bumped against a wall and fumbled for a door when suddenly he went still.

"Hear that?" he asked Olliebollen.

Frozen, they pressed to the wall and listened. But the sound didn't come from inside. In the stable a horse snorted; that wasn't it either. What Jay heard carried on the wind, traveling with wisps and loose leaves.

"Music!" said Olliebollen.

Jay never liked music. He only listened to video game soundtracks, and only occasionally. He preferred silence. But as the first sign of sentient life in hours the plaintive notes attracted a general interest.

"Careful," Olliebollen said. "We're near the forest of Flanz-le-Flore. That's faerie woods! So watch out—A sweet song might be a lure cast for wayfarers like yourself, hero."

Jay carefully rounded the inn's perimeter and stopped against its north wall, facing where the light of stars outlined ghostly treetops against a dark blue sky. The music came from that direction, and now that he moved closer, he detected the solemn sound of a woman's voice, singing words either unintelligible or un-English.

Immediately Olliebollen went rigid. Its fingers tightened like pincers against the fabric of the breast pocket it rode in. Its breath came as a hard, seething pulse against his chest. "Oh," it said. "Oh. Oh I see. Yes. I see—so they've already come this far. They're already here. Excellent―Excellent!"

It used that tone once before, in the graveyard.

"The twins," Jay said.

"Them? Those insignificant specks?" Olliebollen loosed a monosyllabic laugh. "Nonsense. That thing singing beyond those trees—that's something far worse. Far, far worse! Unadulterated, unconscionable, undeniable, every other ugly 'un' there is! Liquid villainy oozing out the pores of this world's anguished flesh. The essence of evil—its very soul!"

It began to quiver. Faster than something so small should've been able to. Jay half-expected it to explode, which would leave a huge mess in his pocket.

"Calm down."

"Yes, oh yes—The blood shall flow in rivers. Go, hero, go! Charge onward and—and—and crush it—clobber it—squeeze your thumbs into that so sweetly seeming singing throat—peel back its strips of meat and witness the dark taint of its interior—annihilate it so not even the slightest most insignificant speck remains! And kill it too, of course."

"I don't even know what it is."

"It's evil! What more do you need? You're a hero, and a hero's someone who vanquishes evil. Now go—gogogogogo!"

Olliebollen flew out of his pocket and bounced on his hat, kicking with surprising force given its virtually nonexistent weight until Jay couldn't see anymore due to the brim being pushed down over his eyes. Well past his tolerance limit for this fuckery, he balled one hand into a fist, noted the timing of the rapid jumps, and punched the underside of the brim at the exact moment Olliebollen came down. The whole hat popped up and Olliebollen howled, sailing skyward.

"If you don't calm down and shut up," Jay said, fixing his hat as Olliebollen floated back to eye level, "whatever it is will hear us coming and ambush us. Then it'll be a lot harder to kill it, won't it?"

The words took time to sink in, but eventually Olliebollen caught the logic. It wheezed a deep breath, clapped its hands against its face three times, and said: "R, right! Totally right, hero! Gotta keep our wits about us. That kinda thinking is why you're the hero. Yeah!" The cheeriness couldn't be more strained.

"Just hide inside my pocket and say nothing. Let me handle it unless I need you to heal me."

"Right!" A sharp salute. "Rightrightright!"

Doubtful of Olliebollen's level of compliance but too annoyed to waste more time caring, Jay half-walked, half-slid ankle-deep in flowers down an incline toward the cluster of trees where the music originated. Low-lying branches covered in springy nettles brushed against him and he beat them back with his bat, not caring to muffle his approach (despite what he told Olliebollen about ambushes) as the music grew louder. The words were definitely not English. The song sounded sorrowful; a quiet, nostalgic sorrow.

He pushed through a final barrier of branches and emerged into a clearing ringed by tall trees. Starlight, unobstructed, shone upon the surface of a pool, where long ripples rolled out dragging snatches of white with them. In the center of the ripples, in the center of the pool, stood a figure.

"Careful!" Olliebollen hissed from inside the jacket pocket. "That's not the one. To your right."

Jay's eyes flitted. A second figure, more conspicuously positioned but somehow less prominent, reclined with thin long legs dangling over the side of a boulder half-buried in the shore. Cloaked and hooded, they played an instrument Jay decided based on the movement of a thin bow was a violin. They were the one who sang, too.

Then the first figure, standing thigh-deep in the water, drew Jay's attention again. The figure was nude. And, as it turned to face Jay, unquestionably male.

The music stopped. Not abruptly. It came to a natural end, its final note swallowed within the shimmying trees.

"Superb," said the man, walking from the center to the shore, rising with white-shining water washing off his physique. "One of Mother's lovestruck knights stuck it in his silly skull to try and haul me back to the castle. Alone! Good sir, you've come upon me at an excellent time. Go on, draw whichever weapon you brought. You're about to be bested by a man naked as the day he was born."

"Ignore him. Kill the other one. Now!" said Olliebollen. Jay tapped his pocket with a fist to shut it up. At least it spoke quietly enough only he heard.

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"I'm not from the castle," he said to the man.

"Aha! Then a highwayman, terrorizing innocent pilgrims."

"What pilgrims." The road had been abandoned for miles.

The guy exited the water, went to a bundle of clothes tucked against a stone, and without bothering to dry himself started pulling on some pants, undermining his previous boast about nakedness. He spoke in a stage whisper: "Come now, work with me here. Give me a reason to brawl." He cocked a thumb at the hooded figure on the rock. "Can't you see I've a lady to impress?"

Said "lady" struck a match that briefly flared, lit a long pipe, and puffed.

Jay understood the character in front of him immediately. A classic archetype, one inescapable both in and out of fiction: The Douchebag. Buoyant, airy, empty. Like the guys Jay's sister brought home nights when Mother went out working, guys in polos with white visors, guys who employed "dude" and "bro" as standard punctuation. Guys vapid and substanceless well past reasonable expectations for the average human being.

"It'll be fun, my man. We'll give each other a few bruises to wince about in the morning. A dash of conflict to dispense our excess choler."

Jay remembered one guy, one Friday night, when he was thirteen. He wandered out of his room for a snack to find Shannon and the guy on the couch watching the most outrageous horror film. Amid horrific screams as a roomful of people were massacred by a lawnmower, the guy jumped up, called Jay "little buddy," and tried to get him to wrestle. The guy was on the wrestling team and five years older and Jay didn't have the option to say no. In seconds he was on the ground as part of a demonstration on the many ways to pin a person―a human pretzel. And Shannon, his sister, laughed.

"Or—you're not afraid, my man?" the current guy said. "Not given to cowardice are you?"

This time, Jay had a baseball bat.

"Not him," Olliebollen said. "The other one. The other one!"

The other one expressed zero interest in anything other than her pipe, and Jay already assumed Olliebollen's claims of execrable wickedness were trumped up past sound logic. This other guy, though—This other guy, Jay wouldn't mind knocking around. To use Olliebollen's words, it felt like the "right thing to do." It was too rare he felt that way not to act.

So during another appeal to Jay's machismo, Jay struck.

He swung the bat, his first instinct to go for the head, but since he didn't actually want to kill the guy he redirected for the ribs instead, assuming serious damage there Olliebollen could heal if necessary. The hesitation cost him. Before his bat got close the guy caught it and yanked hard to reel Jay into a gut punch. The hollow, nauseous pain made Jay regret delaying even a moment, so he didn't delay again and immediately brought up a knee aimed for the guy's crotch. He struck a thick thigh instead, but hard enough to knock the guy off balance, which Jay took advantage of by throwing his entire body forward and plowing them both into the sand.

They scrabbled. The bat went flying. Olliebollen yelped and tried to claw out of the pocket but got pinched between their bodies, the other guy's still wet, as they tumbled and rolled and kicked until Jay was on his back and the guy on top trying to pin him.

Arms pinned, legs pinned, the guy bigger and stronger and somehow so fast—fuck. But Jay refused to submit. Optionless, he flung his face forward to headbutt, except he still wore his shitty Cleveland Browns hat so the brim rammed the bridge of the guy's nose and the guy reeled back roaring, creating an opening. The lady on the rock started to play again, high-intensity spasms of the violin bow that accompanied Jay forcing every ounce of strength into his lower body to heave upward. His legs went up, the guy went up, the guy went over. Sand sprayed and some sprayed into Jay's face and he coughed sputtering but even blind, even breathless he hurled himself at a similarly blind and breathless guy and waved his fists like a windmill.

One fist clipped the guy in the face and the guy flung a fist back and Jay discovered immediately his opponent punched a lot harder than he did. He staggered, left eye sparking, hat spiraling into oblivion, red heat rising in a heavy head. No time to mull over the hurt. He screamed something wild and threw everything into a single maniac charge.

He got two steps when a sweeping foot took out his legs and he hit the sand hard. The guy got on top of him instantly. Jay tried to ram with his head—hatless he might do serious damage to them both—but the guy foresaw it and pressed a shoulder against his temple. Got a hold on one arm and pinned the other with weight alone. Jay kicked his feet, but ineffectually.

The guy lacked even the courtesy to smash Jay's face in. He went only for the pin, holding Jay down despite Jay's inert rage. Caving a skull wouldn't impress the lady, apparently. Too brutal. Not date night material.

"Hit me you pussy," Jay shouted. "Hit me you fucking bitch."

No hits came. The pin tightened.

The music stopped.

Eventually, Jay realized he lacked any options save settling down. Uncorking his skull and letting the hate seep out, leaving himself only a biting sense of shame. Why? Why did he do it? Brute strength was all these assholes had. Why play into it? If he'd turned away instead of fighting, the guy would've looked like a dipshit. Instead Jay gave him exactly what he wanted. Stupid. So fucking stupid.

When he fell completely still the guy laughed, a boisterous good-natured laugh that made Jay want to spit in his face. (His face was not in spitting range.) "Now that—that was something. Hwoo! Came at me like a tiger." He clapped Jay's chest. "Anywho, now that we've had the real introduction, I suppose we can swap names and all that dry affair. You've received the great honor of having your ass beat by none other than—eh? The devil's this?"

Jay felt the guy's hand push between their bodies, against Jay's jacket, and fish out something squeaking and squirming.

"Ohnonono," Olliebollen said.

"A—faerie? A faerie! Sansaime, a faerie's gotten in this good man's pocket."

Instantly the hooded woman from the rock was there. No sound whatsoever. She simply manifested kneeling beside them as she plucked Olliebollen away and handled its tiny body with long dexterous fingers. Even up close, nothing appeared out of her large hood above the tip of her nose.

"H—hero!" said Olliebollen. "Hero please! You have to kill her. You have to kill her now! Please!" Apparently it was oblivious to Jay's current position.

The woman, Sansaime, turned Olliebollen over and upside-down before pressing her nose forward and sniffing up a smattering of dust. Sniff, sniff. Snifffff. More twisting, turning, handling. Olliebollen spouting pleas all the while.

Sansaime's mouth scrunched into a frown. She sniffed again and frowned again. With extreme reluctance, she pried away the pipe wedged between her lips, lifted Olliebollen to her mouth—for a fraction of a second Jay expected another geeking—and dragged her tongue up the length of Olliebollen's body. "Ah—angh," Olliebollen groaned. Sansaime juggled the taste, tapping quickly and wetly between her lips.

"Wish I hadn't smoked beforehand." Her voice rasped so deeply Jay figured she should've avoided smoking for another reason. "But I'm certain this faerie's not from Flanz-le-Flore."

"Impossible," said the guy. "There's no other court east of Whitecrosse. I'm afraid that pipe truly has torn your senses to tatters, Sansy my girl." The way he said "my girl" crinkled Jay's soul.

"Even with my tongue ripped out my throat I'd know," said Sansaime. "She's from the west. Far west."

"Hero. Hero please. If you won't kill her, say something. Anything. Tell them we're friends. Please."

"Far west, the lady insists, and so I must bow to her judgment," said the guy. "Tell me then, is this particular sprite a most potent facilitator of sorcery?"

Sansaime tilted her head left, then right. "She's"―Jay felt her gaze settle on him―"nothing special."

"Hero, I—Nothing special? NOTHING SPECIAL?! So you're not just a stinking cunt like the rest of your barbarous kind, you've got rocks in your head! Well, I'll let you know. My name is Olliebollen Pandelirium—that's right! Pandelirium, let that name crash upon you—and I am the Faerie of Rejuvenation—"

"Nothing special," Sansaime repeated with more certainty. "Worth a couple quid—if the buyer's right."

"Still!" The guy patted Jay's shoulder. "My good man, you're lucky I found that thing. Must've snuck into your pocket while you were traveling. Bold little demon, striking right out on the road like that. Usually they keep to the woods."

Sansaime tugged Olliebollen's limbs to make it jerk as though dancing. Well, Sansaime called Olliebollen a she, so maybe it was a she. Sansaime also mentioned quid, which Jay vaguely recognized as English money. Given this world had Christianity, real world currency didn't surprise him, but he would've better understood how much she meant if she said "gold coins" instead.

"The fairy's worth something?" Jay asked.

Olliebollen ceased sputtering ire, processed what he said, and screeched even more frantically than before. "Oh, oh hero, hero please, please, don't, please don't, I know we haven't gotten off on the best start to our friendship, but please, you don't know what she'll do—"

"Worth something for me," Sansaime said. Suspiciously. "I caught it after all."

"I caught it actually," said the guy.

"But you've not much need of money, do you now Mack?"

"It's mine," said Jay. "But I might be willing to sell it."

"Hero. Hero. She'll kill me hero. She'll KILL ME, do you understand? Please. Oh please."

Two of Sansaime's fingers stroked Olliebollen's belly gently, like stroking a cat, and Olliebollen quieted in response. "It crept into your pocket to bewitch you while you slept," Sansaime said. "To lead you to its fae friends and use you for, hanhh, impious purposes let's say. Ought to pay me for saving you."

"I wasn't... wasn't gonna do anything bad to the hero. I was helping him... Hero, tell her... Nngh—! Ah..."

"You know, Hero is quite the odd name," the Mack guy cut in. Without warning he rolled off Jay and started doing snow angels in the sand. Jay's anger during their brawl remained as only a trace memory, so he didn't even hurl himself at Mack like he planned when he first got pinned. Although he did take one look at his juvenile antics and sympathize with the earlier Jay who irrationally attacked him.

Jay pushed himself off the ground and rubbed his neck. "You really plan to kill her?"

"Indeed," said Sansaime. "Fae blood, fae bones, fae organs, all potent and essential aids for practitioners of arcane arts. Need the right buyer though. You don't know the buyers. In fact, you'd probably blunder into the exact wrong sort and get yourself burnt at the stake for witchcraft. So she's worthless to you, hm?"

Oh. In one moment everything clicked. No wonder Charm ate those fairies before their fight. And no wonder Olliebollen got so dodgy when he asked how to cast magic. It wasn't that humans couldn't do it. It was that they needed fairy parts to help them.

"Twenty quid," he said.

"Hero. Hero, hero oh please. Oh please hero."

"You don't know the preparation process either," said Sansaime. "Not so simple as hawking the whole little tit at market. Proper faerie takes a delicate hand. First, you pin it—alive mind you, for freshness—to a board by both wings. Then you make an incision here—" Her fingernail demonstrated the location and Olliebollen whimpered. "And so on. You'd only butcher it."

"Twenty," said Jay.

"Tah! What fool carries that much. Plus she's hardly worth half ten."

"May we please cease the money talk," said Mack. "I know of no more banal subject."

"Stow it Mack," said Sansaime. "Five's all I'll offer."

In truth, Jay lacked any intention of selling Olliebollen. Sure, she annoyed him. And she probably acted as Perfidia's agent. But her healing was too valuable, and if her parts would help him cast magic—Actually, he decided he'd rather not eat Olliebollen, that sounded disgusting.

However, he did want to know what Olliebollen was actually worth. And whether Perfidia would intercede on her behalf in some obvious way. Mainly, though, he just liked to expose liars.

Sansaime was lowballing him. Definitely. First, she said Olliebollen was from far away. Far away meant rare, rare meant expensive. Second, she paused before initially claiming Olliebollen was "nothing special." Obvious tell. Last, while she appraised Olliebollen at only a couple quid before, she now subtly raised the amount to five. Olliebollen herself was confident she was worth more, and while she might be biased, she did heal Jay perfectly.

To reach the truth, he needed to—

"Oh for Christ!" With a hup, Mack hefted himself out of the sand and groaned to the sky. "I cannot bear another minute. I'll pay. Twenty you said?"

Of course. For a moment Jay had started to get interested in what information he might be able to squeeze out of a protracted negotiation with Sansaime. Couldn't have that! Mr. Douchebag, apparently swimming in cash—because of course—couldn't simply sit disinterested by. He had to make everything about him, so here he was to dispense frivolous amounts of British money that probably wasn't even worth the same as real British money due to weird inflationary crap—

Jay was getting riled up again. Thinking about pointless shit while he imagined pummeling Mack with his bat. He decided to learn from past errors and calm down. Telling himself to calm down didn't calm him down, but it did stop him from acting.

"Hero—Hero, please," said Olliebollen. "Please. I don't want to die. I didn't do anything to deserve to die... Did I?"

Under the starlight, Olliebollen's white fur shimmered and her dark eyes pleaded pathetically. Jay could only stomach a few seconds before he held out a hand to stop Mack crawling to the rest of his clothes. "I changed my mind. She's not for sale." He spoke with a hiss, although something did satisfy him about the absolute adoration that lit up in Olliebollen's eyes.

"I told you," Sansaime said. "She's not yours to sell. I caught her, I—"

"And I told you," said Mack. "I caught her. If my good man wants her back—Give her back."

His voice retained its brainless, douchey timbre. Yet all that douchebag energy condensed into a single sharp line that manifested within the final end stop of his statement to shoot out like the hand of god and stop the conversation dead. Authority. That such a voice could convey authority at all stunned Jay almost as much as the voice's intended effect, but nonetheless he sat as dumbfounded as Sansaime.

The moment cracked when out of the silence Mack devolved into something more easygoing: "Aw come now Sansy. We've a higher purpose here than coin anyway. Remember?"

"Sansy," whose expression existed in a perpetual state of unreadability due to her hood, clutched Olliebollen motionless a moment more. Then, with neither sigh nor any other signal, she opened her hands and let Olliebollen zip back to Jay.

During that time, Mack pulled on a shirt and gathered other vague bundles. He leaned over and offered something to Jay, which after some incomprehension Jay realized was his shitty Browns hat. He snatched it away, shook out some sand, and tugged it onto his head.

"Thank you thank you thank you, oh thank you thank you," Olliebollen said into his shoulder. Her body was one harsh and numbing vibration.

Would Perfidia have really let her die? Maybe she judged Olliebollen a negative influence on Jay's satisfaction. Gave him the chance to ditch her for good. Or maybe she knew he knew he needed Olliebollen too much to actually go through with it. Maybe she set up this situation to twist the shiv.

"Next time you'll kill her," Olliebollen whispered, before crawling into his pocket.

"Praise GOD that's finished," said Mack. "Now let's return to the inn and converse on subjects that don't make me so desirous of death. And we'll eat while we're at it, what say you?"

Sansaime shrugged, needing no expression to convey passive-aggressiveness. Her face remained riveted to Jay. Or to his pocket. Watching very carefully.

Jay only grimaced inwardly that he'd probably have to spend the night with these people.

Collecting the rest of their assorted things (for Jay, just his bat), they headed the direction of the inn. When they reached the edge of the clearing, Mack snapped his fingers and turned on his barefoot heel to face them. "Right! Forgot to properly introduce myself. Good Sir Hero, you stand in the presence of the one, the only, Makepeace John Gaheris Coke, Prince of Whitecrosse."

Flourish. Courtly half-bow. Pause for response. Clearly the title intended to impress. To flabbergast. It didn't. Jay said, "Oh."

"And perhaps," Mack or Prince Makepeace continued, his tone elevated to parodic pomposity, "the good sir would be so kind as to state his name and whence he comes?"

"Sure," said Jay. "I'm Jay Waringcrane. From Earth."

In a satisfying if petty piece of vengeance, Prince Makepeace turned out the one flabbergasted.