They were in a wood. Trees reared overhead, dropping leaves onto their heads from time to time. The ground underfoot was bare, no grass, no low-lying bushes or flowers, just the bare earth with the occasional tree root rising out of the darkness to trip unwary visitors. The fairy perched on Art’s shoulder and held up a ball of light between her cupped hands.
‘I believe you said that they would be here, my lady?’ Mr. Sept gestured into the empty rustling gloom between the trees, indicating that there were obviously no other people but them here. There was a hint of a satisfied smirk on his face, which he was careful to show to Art.
‘I did,’ the lady replied, tossing her head lightly. She seemed to be agitated about something, and though she took pains to hide it, the agitation and anxiety rose off her like a palpable cloud. Art could feel the crackle and irritation from her, even though he wasn’t paying much attention to what she said or did.
‘Then when are they, my lady?’ The last two words were subtly emphasized, Art knew; Mr. Sept was big on subtlety but he was the kind of person who wanted you to know that he was being subtle. It was pretty condescending, Art thought, but then Mr. Sept had survived till now on his travels alone. Maybe people out there didn’t get subtlety. Or thinly-veiled, subtly-hinted at sarcasm.
‘They’re coming.’ The lady tightened her lips and strode off into the darkness, unafraid of the mysterious rustles and sounds of the wood at night.
Art jumped when he felt something swooped past him. The fairy grabbed his collar before she fell off.
‘That was just a bird!’ she complained. The ball of light had been accidentally extinguished when she nearly lost her balance.
‘I thought it was a bat,’ Art said nervously. ‘Or something.’
‘Quiet,’ the fairy said. She pointed to the lady, who had stopped a little way in front, in a clearing they had not noticed before.
‘Can you get a message to the glams, fairy?’ the lady asked. She ran a hand through her hair, messing up the tangled strands into a worse state than before. ‘I can sense something coming up very quickly.’
‘Maybe it’s just a bird – ‘ Mr. Sept began sardonically. He never finished that sentence.
Something certainly came towards them very quickly, as though it was on wings. Art was not too sure that it had wings, when he later recalled the events of that night. He remembered the blow on his head very clearly though, and several things happened vaguely after that, one following after the other in perfect sequence like a ball bouncing from shelf to shelf in a pinball machine. Perhaps there had been a sharp pain along his scalp when the fairy desperately grabbed and pulled at his hair when she was knocked off his shoulder. He remembered stumbling backwards blindly, because all light seemed to have been obscured by something huge, even the thin moonlight of the moon on the way to full – gibbous, as
And then there was a whoomph as though someone had lit a fuse and it had burst into gigantic flames within moments. Art felt the second blow on his head – he wasn’t too sure whether it was someone falling on his head or someone hitting him accidentally – and then blackout.
‘You stupid man,’ the lady said, very quietly.
‘I did what I had to do,’ Mr. Sept said harshly, rising to his feet. His coat was hanging halfway off his shoulder, grimy and tattered, but he pulled it back on as though the stains and tears had no effect on the coat’s rather pathetic appearance.
‘You brought them here.’ The lady walked over to the fallen boy and raised his head. She checked his pulse and eyes. ‘He’s fine, at least.’
‘I made sure he’d be,’ Mr. Sept said. He kicked at the burnt out fuse and swore under his breath.
‘But the fairy’s dead,’ the lady said, still in the same quiet tone of voice. She picked up the limp form of the fairy in both hands, her expression almost reverential. ‘Do you know what you have done?’
‘Queen’s Demand, I know.’ Mr. Sept sagged slightly in his coat. ‘I know.’
‘But you fetched the girl here,’ the lady continued, ‘with her friend. Well done, Mr. Sept.’
‘What?’
The lady motioned him over. Mr. Sept stared in surprise and suspicion at the two prone bodies lying beside Art.
‘Dead, are they?’ he asked shortly.
‘Alive. But they should have been accompanied by the glams who saved them.’ The lady sighed and smoothed the hair off the girl’s face. ‘You scared them off when you blew that fuse. And the fairy fell under Art when he tripped. The boy is not to be blamed.’
‘But what was – was that thing?’ Mr. Sept demanded. ‘What happened to the light and everything? I lit the fuse – first thing I could think of – and it went off. What was that eh?’
‘Something’s after us.’ The lady sighed again. ‘It is always so in stories. Something is always after someone, and usually another someone will get hurt while the something chases someone until they reach a place or a stage where the big showdown is necessary to end the story and thus produce more unlikely heroes and stories in the manner of stories everywhere.’ The lady stood up and walked back into the clearing. ‘I wish I knew where this story is going though. I’m in it too…but I can’t honestly say that I joined the party willingly. Or even knowingly, if you get what I mean.’
‘I think so.’ Mr. Sept shrugged and checked the pulse on Art’s wrist. ‘He’s doing fine.’
‘What would you do, Mr. Sept?’ the lady said. She sounded forlorn and slightly helpless. The man smirked – this time there was nothing subtle about it – and followed her into the clearing.
‘What anyone would do,’ he answered. ‘What I can.’
‘But what are we supposed to do?’
‘Look at it this way,’ Mr. Sept said, resorting to logic, ‘if someone needs help, I would help as much as I can. Sometimes it’s not whether I’m supposed to do it, but I’m doing it because I want to, because I think it’s my responsibility. And if there’s no plan to begin with, so be it. If we don’t know what we’re going to do next, we’ll find out in time. If we don’t even know what we’re up against, we’ll learn soon enough.’
‘Very logical,’ the lady said wryly, ‘but I think you missed my point completely.’
‘All right, you tell me.’ Mr. Sept held up both hands in mock surrender.
‘What I meant was,’ the lady continued, walking round and round the clearing now, ‘was that we don’t know what exactly is going on here; we’re not even sure that we’re up against anything, or that anything needs doing. First you took Art away from his adopted family because I told you to, and then I told the glams to send a message to Iris – that’s the girl there – that someone else would be taking her away from her miserable life in the circus. I meant it to be you and Art, don’t you see? But now everything’s messed up and I’m starting to think that that fairy who was traveling with Art had some valuable information about all these unexpected incidents. But should we do anything more, at the risk of causing more harm to other people? Do we even need to do anything when nothing needs to be done for events to unfold in the expected manner? Or should we do something anyway, do what we can, because we think we should to put things right?’ The lady blew at her hair and paused for thought. ‘You know,’ she said presently, ‘there were two men after Iris and her friend. Why?’
Mr. Sept paused for thought, digesting the questions the lady had raised. You never knew with women these days, getting their strange minds into business they shouldn’t even know about. He had met people like the lady during his travels, people who often went round asking ‘But sir, are you sure that would be ethical?’ He sometimes spent time arguing with them when he was in a good mood, and cussing at them when he wasn’t. Sometimes, most of the time, (he liked to say, firmly and convincingly); you just had to do it, whether it was ethical or not could be asked later. These people would argue against you, naturally, and tried to get you to their way of thinking. ‘But what if you wanted to do something that would hurt other people?’ they would ask, looking serious and wide-eyed. By this time, Mr. Sept would grin, pull out his notebook and start writing in it. The other party would be mystified and start prodding again. And Mr. Sept would say, ‘Did you think it was harmful of me to write, here and now, in front of you?’ And ‘No’ would come the answer. Then Mr. Sept would close his book with a snap, tap the pencil on the table and say, ‘That’s what I would ask myself too before I do anything I want to. Would it harm anyone else? I wouldn’t ask myself: would it be right or wrong? Because listen here, young man, everyone has a different idea of right and wrong, and what you would think of as unethical would probably be okay to someone else.’ And while the young man was pondering over this reply with a slightly dazed look on his face, Mr. Sept would sigh and say, in a long-suffering tone of voice, ‘Look, all these questions about whether something is ethical or not wouldn’t be practical in the long run. Say a man is in great pain and wants you to end his life. You know nothing can be done, but you still insist on telling him that he will survive and making sure that he does. It wouldn’t be ethical, according to you, to end his life, but would you have the heart to see him suffer till the end of his days, perhaps for years and years, or would you end his life now and grant him relief?’ And of course more arguments would follow that, with the young man becoming increasingly upset while Mr. Sept chuckled and wrote a bit more in his notebook to annoy the precocious brat…
And then something about what the lady had said about telling him to fetch Art clicked –
‘You mean you were the one who was pushing us around?’ he said, flushing with indignation. ‘I demand to know what you think you’re doing!’
‘Not pushing,’ the lady countered sadly, ‘but really, just tweaking events. Don’t you see?’
‘No.’ Mr. Sept went to sit on an exceptionally large root at the edge of the clearing. He turned his back on the lady and stared off through the trees, bitter with disappointment and anger.
The lady watched him for a few minutes, sighed, and then headed off into the trees.
Out of the edge of sight, a few pairs of bright eyes watched her go. Someone said, very softly, ‘Follow her.’
An owl rose out of the darkness nearby, silently drifting under the trees in the direction the lady had left. Mr. Sept continued staring at nothing, not realizing that he was alone in the clearing.
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