“Trickery,” said the puppet Jones. “Or more likely you’re bloody barking and you imagined the whole thing.”
“That’s quite clever,” said Cobweb, looking at Jones, who leaned against the stone. “I didn’t even see your mouth move.”
“I didn’t do it. Since I died this wooden-headed ninny has been babbling away on his own.”
“Then I’d have to agree with him,” said Cobweb. “You’re barking.”
She skipped to the edge of the clearing, where she began collecting leaves and branches and arranging them in a circle with practiced alacrity. She gamboled in the forest like a purposeful butterfly, barely stirring a stem or making a sound. In no time she had constructed a nest of soft ferns with pine boughs woven over it. “Here you go,” she said, patting a bed of silvery leaves. “Hop in and get your kit off. I’ll fetch some nuts and berries.”
I thought to argue, but it was an excellent nest, so I climbed defiantly under the entry boughs, plopped down, and removed my boots without another word. Cobweb was laying a fire not six feet away from the nest. I got a good glimpse of her ears again as she struck steel on flint. I rolled up one of my stockings and tossed it so it passed in front of her.
“What’s that?” she said, looking at me as if I might be daft.
“Nothing,” said I. “Thought you wanted my clothes. For washing.”
“Right,” she said.
I rolled up the other stocking and tossed it by her.
“No elves,” she said, without looking from her labors.
“Sorry?”
“There are no bloody elves here, so stop throwing your socks at me.”
“‘The stockings of the dead run far,’ we say in England.” I stripped off the rest of my kit and handed it through the arch of branches, keeping my sheath of daggers in my lap to cover my man bits, and I settled into the nest. The leaves lining the floor were as soft as lambs’ ears against my bare bottom.
“I’ll wager no one in England or anywhere else has ever said that. And you’re not bloody dead. Do I have to prove that again?” She made a pincher movement with her fingers and grinned malevolently.
“Translated from the French,” I added for flavor. “Smashing nest though.”
“They’re usually built up a tree, out of reach of bears, but I can’t have you falling on your head again, can I?” She gathered my kit into a bundle.
“Bears?” I inquired.
“I’m off to wash these and gather some food.” She unslung a water skin from her shoulder and tossed it into the nest. Drool had been arrested with the previous one she’d given me. “Do try not to be eaten while I’m gone.”
“Bears?” I inquired further.
“No, the fire will keep bears away.” And with that she was gone into the night.
“Bloody elfs,” said the puppet Jones.
I sat, I drank water, and being again among the quick, I had a wee at the edge of the firelight and contemplated my resurrection and responsibility. At some point I curled into a ball on the leaves and dozed off.
* * *
I awoke to a wet whisper in my ear and a warm body pressed to my back.
“There’s food, when it suits you,” she said.
I moaned, stubborn to stay drifting among my dreams. “In the morning,” I said.
She snuggled against me, her fingertips danced over my brow, down my back, over my ribs, as soft as a sigh. I felt I might melt into the touch, so long had it been since I’d been touched without anger or utility. A delicate hand slid over my hip and down over my manhood.
I rolled away, wide awake. Her eyes were black with orange specters in the dim firelight, surprised but not alarmed. “Friends?” she said, with a bit of a pout.
“Knackered,” I replied. “Perhaps just a cuddle, for warmth. And put your frock back on, love. A fresh young thing like yourself, defenseless before my wisdom and charm, well, I would not take advantage, it would be unseemly.”
“I am nine hundred years old, sprout.”
“You are not.”
“I am.”
“Elf!” cried the puppet Jones.
“You said there were no elves here,” said I.
“There are no elves,” she said.
“Liar!” said the puppet Jones.
“Fuckload of fairies,” she said, “but no elves.”
“You’re a fairy?”
“Aye, since the blossom first opened to reveal me curled inside it.”
“A fucking fairy?”
“Well no need to be a knob about it, one can’t control the calamity of birth. Do I disparage your people for their dribbling giants and twatty talking puppets?”
“And you’re nine hundred years old?”
“And thus well prepared for your wisdom and charm,” she said with a grin, reaching for my man tackle.
“Thou lecherous crone!” I rolled away from her, pointing my bits toward the night and fire. “I’ve barely a score and a half of summers on my back and yet you would use me like a public boot scraper by the church door.”
“That’s a completely shit metaphor. I shall use you like the cheese-stinking man-tart that you are.”
“I do not stink of cheese.”
“You are a cheese eater. All your people stink of cheese.”
“And your people don’t eat cheese?”
“My people are of the forest. Where in the forest would we get milk?”
“I don’t know, badgers?”
“Aye, that’d be why there are so few of us. We’ve been undone by milking accidents in pursuit of our insatiable taste for bloody badger cheese.”
“Possibly, fairies are not my milieu,” I said, thinking to baffle her with a bit of fucking French. “You are my first.”
“Second,” said she. “Or did you think you were invisible and your puppet is talking on his own because of your magical wisdom and charm?”
“The Puck?” I ventured.
“The Puck?” she mocked, making me sound simple and slow to grasp the obvious. “Go to sleep, fool.” She lifted her frock above her head and let it fall over her. “In the forest, it is only common courtesy, you know, to share a friendly tumble with a kind soul who brings you supper.”
I said, “Take heartfelt thanks from this fool true and humble, / But dinner free-given comes not with a tumble.”
“Did you just rhyme at me?”
“Did you like it?”
“No.”
She settled into a spot on her side of the nest. “Sodding cheese eater.”
What fresh curse was this fierce, feral creature of wit?
“Good night, sweet hag.”
Chapter 5
I Am Slain!
When I awoke Cobweb was gone. A pile of nut meats and berries big enough to fill a yeoman’s helmet waited by the opening of the nest on a trencher fashioned from a large leaf. I resisted the urge to curse the fickle fucking fairy for abandoning me, for she had left breakfast and I was ravenous. She’d left me another waterskin as well and I drank deeply until the chill shuddered down my belly and made a shy turtle of my willy. My boots and motley stood propped on sticks before the smoldering bones of the fire, the salt stains and much of the soil and grit washed away, no doubt in the same stream where she’d filled the waterskin.