THE MOUNTAIN WAS IMPOSING.

Mountains are rarely the opposite. Hills could be small and unimpressive, but a mountain is, by definition, large. They approached the town at its foot openly. Agatha didn’t see the point in hiding now that they were so close to their destination.

‘Are you sure we won’t be attacked by my brother’s lackeys?’

‘We’re in the fairy’s domain. I can feel it. They wouldn’t be able to hit you if you were standing still, unless she willed it.’

Bernard looked up, eyes resting on the mountain’s treeline. The morning light hung behind the peak, leaving this side in shadow. He couldn’t be completely sure, but he thought the treeline looked to be about the midpoint. The mark on his map would land somewhere around there. He felt better knowing that there was something solid he could use as a guide to tell him if he’d gone too high or low in his search for the fairy’s house. He had no idea what it would look like. A castle, a manor, a cottage… it could be anything. Maybe she lived in a cave.

The townsfolk of Hochenberg were odd. Not weird individually - but very weird as a group. There were far more elderly people than there should’ve been. A town this size, with so few young people to do necessary hard labour, simply couldn’t survive. Then there was the issue of health. Elderly people sicken and die. Sometimes because of cold or damp, and sometimes due to minor injuries that refused to heal. Sometimes they died for almost no reason at all. That’s what they do.

Bernard wondered if any of them remembered his father riding through town to the mountain. Probably. Most of them were probably old enough to remember the time before the fairy arrived, fifty-ish years ago.

He dismounted when they reached a tavern, and he went in. He approached an elderly woman busy wiping down one of the walls.

‘Excuse me, miss.’

‘Miss? Are you blind? There’s no use flirting with me, boy.’

‘I’m sorry?’

Another old woman in the corner by the fireplace said;

‘Ignore Gertie. What did you need, son?’

‘Is there any work you want done? I need some provisions for climbing the mountain, but I haven’t any money and don’t have much to trade; unless you can think of someone who might want some blank parchment.’

The woman looked him over. She seemed concerned.

‘No good will come of climbing that mountain. It’s cursed.’

‘Cursed?’

‘Yes. The fairy protector put a curse on it - you can’t speak up there or light any fires, or bad things will happen.’

‘Like what?’

‘Bad things.’

Bernard didn’t like that she wouldn’t be more specific. It had to be serious to make people refuse to discuss the consequences. The worse part was that he needed to speak while he was on the mountain. How else would he communicate with the fairy? He asked;

‘Can you speak if you’re spoken to?’

‘Of course. If the fairy speaks to you first, you can talk as much as you like.’

‘It’s just that my friend and I need to visit her.’

‘Visit her? Nobody’s done that in more than a decade.’

‘Did she move away?’

‘No, she’s still up there, but anyone who goes up finds her door locked, and she won’t answer.’

‘Do they bring her gifts?’

‘No, nobody’s ever really done that. There’s a winter festival where we burn dried flowers for her, but nobody goes up to give her things. It’s too hard to climb the mountain when it’s covered in snow.’

‘If it’s been a decade… was her last visitor King Luis?’

‘It was, though he was still a Prince then.’

Bernard sighed. His father seemed to be making everything more difficult wherever he went.

‘Can you tell me about what happened when he went to visit her?’

‘I didn’t go up with him - he and six of his men went up together. When they returned, that foolish King had his magic sword all tied shut with a rope, and they rode out of town like they were being chased by demons.’

‘Do you think he stole the sword? Is that why she won’t see any humans - she’s still angry at being betrayed?’

‘Maybe. May well be. But, if she hated humans so much, I don’t think we’d all be here.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s the water here. Ever since she moved into the mountain, it’s been good and clear, with plenty of fat fish. She protects us and makes sure our harvests are always enough. If she didn’t want us around she could just let us all die.’

Bernard took the map from his satchel, unfolding it. It was a lot harder to read now. The road hadn’t been kind to it. He held it out to the woman.

‘I really need to see the fairy, and I think she might still want to talk to people. She left a map behind for people seeking her to find.’

‘Is this old King Luis’ map?’

‘Sort of. She left it there for him, and it’s still there, along with the puzzle to locate her.’

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She held the page, looking over the hazy and smudged mess that represented a small fraction of the grand stone map back in the manor.

‘If you’ve got this, I think you might have a chance to see her.’ She looked up and held his gaze. ‘You said you had parchment for trade?’

‘Yes.’

He offered the bundle of parchment to her. She took it, but didn’t bother to inspect it.

‘Gertie, pack this boy some biscuits and beer.’

The old woman wiping the wall grumbled and went into a back room.

BERNARD WASN’T A MOUNTAINEER.

He was, however, fairly confident his abilities would be enough. The mountain was steep, but not so steep that it was hard for him to stand. Agatha didn’t seem to be having any trouble either. He couldn’t ride Agatha up; the canopy was too dense and low. He’d be constantly slapped in the face with leaves and branches. He was a lot slower than her, but she didn’t complain. She’d scout ahead and then wait for him to catch up. He wondered if she was glad to have her back to herself for once.

As they walked, Bernard grabbed the occasional trailing green twig and tied it into a loop to mark their route. He wasn’t a tracker, so he was pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to tell if they circled back on their own trail or did something else equally silly. He didn’t know how they could make an error like that - if they kept going uphill it’d be impossible. It was a fairy mountain, though, so you never knew.

They climbed for hours. Agatha dearly wanted to stop for a longer break, but she didn’t want to signal it before Bernard was ready. His stumpy little legs were painfully slow. She imagined he’d be hungry soon. The sun had crested the peak and shone harshly down on them.

Bernard took the time in forced silence to think about why he’d come at all. He felt like visiting the fairy was the right thing to do, but he couldn’t explain it. He wished he could talk to Agatha about it. She knew the fairy. She knew him. She might be able to suggest something he would never think of. The curse was frustrating.

They broke through the treeline onto open, grassy slopes. The change was abrupt. When he caught Agatha looking back at him, he signalled they should stop. From here, the view was magnificent. The stuffy old poem about this bountiful land of mountains and trees came to mind, and he smiled to himself. He could see small settlements nestled here and there, little farms and fields carved out of the forest. He couldn’t see the capital. Too many other mountains were in the way. He wondered if that brought the fairy comfort.

As Agatha snacked on mountain grasses, Bernard looked around. The tavern’s proprietress told him to look for purple flowers that seemed out of place. There were plenty of wildflowers - little things. Most of them were white, yellow or pink. He wandered slowly. He was too tired to go any faster, but too restless to actually stop. His legs ached a little less now that he wasn’t going up.

He stopped when he reached a tree, blanketed in a vine. At a distance, he thought it might be a wild grapevine, but as he got closer, the difference in the leaves became more apparent. It was a convolvulus. Large purple blooms peeked out at the sun. He raised his hands to his mouth to call out to Agatha, but stopped himself. Blasted curse. It was fine. She’d follow eventually.

Bernard circled the tree with the vine, and discovered it hadn’t been satisfied choking one tree to death, it had engulfed four. As he rounded the last one, he found a clear opening. The space inside was a cosy little grotto lit with dappled sunlight that broke through the leafy ceiling. He heard Agatha’s hoofbeats approaching and clapped his hands so she could find him. They stood together at the entrance to the tunnel, wary of entering. Finally, Bernard stepped inside. It was deeper than he thought, and widened into a much larger space than seemed possible. Before him stood the fairy’s door.

He reached up to knock with the brass door knocker. He struck the door thrice. Predictably, minutes passed with no response. Bernard wanted to call out and explain himself, but the curse prevented him. He sat down on the step.

The space under the vine seemed like a good place to sleep, if things came to that. It was well and truly out of the wind. They’d still freeze without a fire. He’d been able to make do without some nights because it was summer and warm, but that only really worked at lower altitudes. He did have a blanket, but it was thin. He put the thought of staying overnight out of his mind.

He started to examine the engraving on the door. It was pretty. Very nautical. Lots of fish, shells and boats. Little vignettes framed with ropes and wheels were lined up across the surface. They seemed to tell a story. What he could decipher implied a journey by sea, a shipwreck, a kind rescuer, and the traveller longing for home. It was a common enough tale type near the shore, but the sea was nowhere near here. It felt out of place, just as the convolvulus vine did.

He wondered how long he had to wait until it was polite to knock again. Was it different for fairies and humans?

He knocked again. Still nothing.

He pressed his ear to the door to see if he could hear something. He didn’t think the stone would be a good conductor of sound. He couldn’t detect anything. He sighed and stood. This could be a decoy door. He stepped back out past Agatha to look for other entrances, then stopped himself. The workmanship on that door was far too good for it to be a decoy. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to check. He held up his hands to let Agatha know she could stay where she was, and walked further along the treeline. He didn’t find anything of note.

The sun was getting lower in the sky, which bothered Bernard. If they wanted to get back to the town before nightfall, they’d need to go soon. He went back to the door. One more try.

He knocked.

The step beneath his feet vibrated almost imperceptibly, and the door swung open into darkness. He heard Agatha’s clopping steps as she hurried over. They entered together. Ahead of them, a light flared up, cold and blue, and they walked over to it. Beyond it, another light appeared. The trail of lights led them through a web of dark tunnels and grand halls, until they reached a room so large the echoes of their footsteps came back muted and distorted. They arrived at a railing and stopped.

A voice, as dark and mysterious as the stone palace itself;

‘What’s so urgent that you had to knock on my door three times? You’re not a local.’

Bernard bowed his head, suddenly worried he’d done something wrong.

‘My name is Bernard. I’m the son of the late King Luis. You gave him your sword.’

‘He's dead already? He was even more disappointing than I hoped.’

Bernard wasn’t sure how to respond. He ventured;

‘My brother, Lothar, holds the sword now.’

‘I see. Is that why you’re here?’

‘Originally… I meant to seek you out to help him. I wanted to ask about the contract the sword represented - Father said that if he drew it, you would appear and slay his enemies.’

‘Did he now?’

The voice was a lot closer. It made Bernard nervous.

‘Lothar thinks that, because he’s the King, he gets the same deal. It didn’t make sense to me. Not with the way Father always worded it. ‘If I draw the sword, my enemies…’ but I don’t care about getting that answer anymore. Lothar tried to have me killed, and Pepin stood by and watched. If Lothar is willing to risk everything on an unknown deal, that’s his problem.’

‘Do you want revenge?’

‘No. That would make me King. I don’t want that.’

‘What do you want?’

It was the question he’d been asking himself all day. Quietly, he said;

‘I don’t have much to offer, so I don’t know if I have the right to ask for anything.’

‘Asking is free.’

He looked up, suddenly feeling sure of himself.

‘If I serve you… can you give me purpose?’

Blue light shone down on the fairy, finally revealing her form.

‘That is an interesting proposition.’