WHO: Lyra, Little John, Fairytales WHEN: F̴̢̻̝̎̽͌ẹ̸͂͑̃̕b̵̹̟̜͚̆̽̈ȑ̵̙̣̕u̸̹͊̈́͜͝ả̸̲̖̦͜r̴̨̨̟̥̐̄̐̓y̴̰̍͑̌ ??? WHERE: West Virginia, to start with. WHAT: A detour on the way home goes wrong WARNINGS: None.
Lyra was aware that, when you looked at only the risks, hitchhiking was a terrible idea. But on the other, absolutely valid-no-matter-what-her-grandmother-said hand, what sort of person only looked at the risks in life, and not the people you could meet, the stories you could hear? What sort of person was never up for a little detour or two?
Especially if it put off getting home just a little longer?
There were a few things Lyra and her mom Jem had in common, and putting off hard work was one of them. Lyra liked the work itself – she’d been building houses, it felt amazing! – but selling herself to new employers? Writing cover letters and proving she knew her stuff in interviews? That was going to be annoying, and if she could put off being annoyed by the perfectly legitimate excuse of ‘not being in the right city yet’ then sure, she was going to take her time getting home.
Win win, win win win.
At least there were a few things about New York that Lyra was looking forward to seeing again. She missed Rosario, who knew her better than anyone. She missed Jocelyn, who she knew she could always rely on. And yeah, she even missed her mom, for reasons that were harder to specify, and was looking forward to seeing how much her half sister Jemma had grown – she’d be a three year old menace by now! (Lyra used ‘menace’ in the fondest of terms, but then, she hadn’t had to live with her for a year.)
Plus, Nagel’s Bagels. Tennessee just didn’t do bagels right. Not a one of them had been the size of a frisbee.
She’d had a great conversation about bagels with the man who’d picked her up, proving that sometimes randos did have good taste and weren’t psychos. She thought about messaging this learning to Rosario but… hmmm maybe Miss Common Sense didn’t need to know she was hitchhiking till after she was home.
Plus she might tell Jocelyn, and… yikes.
It wasn’t till they were past Lexington, Kentucky, that she started getting warning vibes. He didn’t get handsy or anything, she knew how to deal with handsy (pull their fingers back, base of your palm up into their nose and run!) but he had looked at her ass when she’d reached around to grab the jersey he’d wanted from the back. Lyra had a sixth sense for people looking at her ass. And that might have been fine, too, if the jersey she was grabbing didn’t reveal a telltale red cap in the back seat. Also a gun.
Red caps were terrible signs. Guns…. Eeeh well, a lot of reasonable people had guns? She guessed? But she wasn’t gonna give the guy the benefit of the doubt, not when he had one of those caps in the back seat.
Lyra handed his jersey over and pulled on her own hoodie, leaving her curls tucked into the neck. February was biting into them both, harder and colder. “Man oh man I could use a restroom,” she said brightly, launching into a serious of questions about the best and worst food he’d ever eaten at a truck stop, pretending like she’d seen nothing creepy at all back there.
And when he stopped to fuel up, she took off without a word, guitar case banging against her back, backpack strapped to her front, curls free and crisis fully averted. She could use the leg stretch anyway, she told herself, looking on the bright side as she jogged down the grassy verge at the side of the motorway. It was nice to run for a bit after sitting in a car several hours, and the running kept her warm, and you got to see more than you did from a car! Not... that there was a lot to see. The road was six lanes were separated in the middle by a squat concrete wall, cars and trucks and the occasional motor home rushed past her. The verge was just grass and rubbish, the occasional scar where a car had swerved off the road.
To be honest, looking at the bright side didn’t last very long at all. It was cold. She slipped her hands into her sleeves, pulled the red hood up over her head, shivered a bit and tried to keep her pace up. It wasn’t New York in February cold, but cold enough, and dark was a couple of hours away and yeah, okay, this was why people didn’t hitchhike, she got it.
“Message received, universe,” she said, tipping her face back to talk to the sky. “Now... help a girl out?”
Little John had his car set up just the way he liked it. Thermos in the cupholder full of hot water (tea was better brewed fresh), sandwiches he'd made himself at his last motel (he didn't mind them a few hours old, they were sliced beef and chutney - Elaine's - and the bread was grainy enough it stood no chance of going damp), music on the stereo (currently Queen, but he'd been singing along to the Bee Gees earlier) and the window open a crack, for proper fresh air, even though it was ruddy cold. He had a solar powered phone charger stuck to the window getting the last of the afternoons rays. His phone needed all the juice it could get because it had been blowing up with all the messages from the lads lately, draining the old thing dry.
Marian was found, after so many weeks of searching, finally she was back in Robin’s arms and the lads were bringing her home. And Little John was heading home too, after following dead end after dead end. According to Much, they’d be back in New York by Saturday, which meant that Little John was planning to beat them home by a day and a half.
It’d be so good. He was going to have the greatest shower, have a cuppa straight from the jug (thermos water, while perfectly adequate, never got as scaldingly hot as he liked it) and spend a few hours showing Elaine just how appreciative he was for her chutney. He missed her on the road. He missed all the guys too, of course, but he’d see them all when they returned with Marian tomorrow, and Elaine… well, she’d built herself a special little cottage in his heart, and as much as he wanted to wrestle with the lads again he kinda just wanted to park up on the porch with her and grow some tomatoes. He bet she could make tomatoes grow in the middle of winter.
Little John was thinking about bright red tomatoes when a bright red splash of colour caught his eye on the side of the road. Someone small, holding their thumb out, hoping for a ride. Sure, most people were small next to Little John, but this one looked small even for a normal person. He leaned over to wind the window down, slowing up as he pulled over onto the verge. “Allo,” he said. “You need a lift?”
The girl pushed her hoodie back off her face and looked at him like she was trying to read his intentions, and gave the car a once over, considered it against the gathering dark, and said “Yeah, that’s usually what the thumb means.”
Little John grinned at her cheek. “I’m heading for Charleston, that work?”
Charleston was a couple of hours drive away, and in the same direction as New York, and the car, while it was certainly no luxury, was a much better option than the road. “Sure does,” Lyra said, sliding her guitar strap off her shoulders and placing it gently in the back seat (free from red caps and guns) before climbing into the front and immediately pressing her hands toward the heater, backpack stuffed between her knees. “Thanks, man.”
“Name’s Johnny,” he said, turning up the heat a bit more, and winding the windows up. Fresh air was all well and good, but not as the risk of frozen passengers.
“Thanks, Johnny,” she said, her body bursting into shivers as her hands remembered what warmth felt like. “I’m Lyra.”
Both Lyra and Little John were usually blessed when it came to the art of hitting it off with people straight away, and today was no exception. Little John liked pretty much anyone so long as they weren’t on a campaign to hurt others and Lyra was taken by his accent and quizzed him hard about life in England. The story he told her was as close to the truth as he could get, leaving her with the impression that people who lived in rural England were still stuck in the 1700s but that it all sounded very romantic.
She was also incredibly taken by the combination of a car with manual wind down windows, cassette tapes, and a solar powered phone charger. When he offered her one of his sandwiches, she enjoyed it so much she banged her foot three times on the floor of the car, just to emphasize how good it was. “My girlfriend made the chutney,” he said proudly.
“She made chutney?” Lyra exclaimed. Occasionally her grandmother expressed a desire to make jams or things, but who had the time? What a luxury. “Is your girlfriend from the 1700s as well?” she asked, fully joking, of course, and Little John laughed and said she was off by a few hundred years.
When they rolled into Charleston a couple of hours later, it was fully dark and starting to sleet. It didn’t take a huge leap for Little John to figure out Lyra had no plans, and after a conversation about the great unknown world of tomorrow revealed that Lyra was actually trying to get back to New York, same as him, he offered to take her the rest of the way.
“Okay, but separate rooms at the motel,” Lyra said, sensibility showing through despite her thin, thin budget. She felt a bit proud of this; it would have been cheaper, warmer and more exciting to snuggle up. He was attractive, in an unusual sort of way – beards weren’t usually her thing – and she might have made a move, only… his girlfriend made chutney. And what if she coyly suggested snuggling up and what if he took her up on her offer? Somehow, over the course of two hours, Lyra had turned from someone who considered herself wise enough to know that true love was a thing for storybooks to someone who believed that a rando she’d met on the road had found it and his relationship with his girlfriend must be protected At All Costs.
To his credit, Johnny hadn’t looked at her ass once. And when they were eating dinner, despite the small table and lack of leg room, he’d made himself magically more compact and they didn’t bump knees or feet at all. Lyra couldn’t remember the last time she went to dinner with a man who didn’t try to spread out and take over the space and accidentally touch her. Points for Johnny.
She was a little sad she didn’t have someone to curl up with, though, when she pulled the covers up over herself and burrowed down into bed, thinking wistfully of Anastasia. Back in New York, Lyra had crushes on girls, and sometimes kissed them at parties, but Ana was the first girl she’d ever dated, definitely the first one she’d ever slept with. Ana was heading off to a building project in Dili though – one Lyra had applied for too but hadn’t been accepted into, and both of them knew they didn’t have the commitment to make anything long distance work.
No true love there. Fond memories, sure, but not true love. Lyra sighed, and wriggled herself as fast as she could to warm up the icy cold sheets.
Little John rose early, pulling open all the thin curtains in his room and heading out to get some fresh milk from the little office. He gave Lyra’s door a little rap as he went past, heard a small groan from inside and went back into his own room to brew a big pot of coffee. He liked it dark and thick as tar, paired with muesli (again, homemade, but by himself this time) and a can of fruit salad. Lyra, when she emerged, cut her coffee in half with milk and picked all the cherries out of the fruit salad, leaving them for him.
It was so hard not to like someone who’d treated you like you’d always been friends, Little John thought, accepting the cherries happily. He thought they tasted exactly the same as most other things in the canned fruit salad, but he wasn’t going to turn them down.
“How do you feel,” Lyra tested the waters as they packed their bags back into Little John’s car. “About roadside attractions…?”
“I think they’re one of the greatest thing this country’s roads have to offer,” Little John said, all full of positivity from the bright (but freezing) morning. “I have a photo of myself next to the words biggest ball of twine,” he added, proudly.
“Well then, do I have a deal for you,” Lyra said, and showed him the map on her phone. “If we go slightly south instead of slightly north we can visit the Mystery Hole. This guy’s dug a basement where water flows uphill and there’s all sorts of weird angles and no one’s allowed to take photos. Lots of reviews say it’s a crappy waste of time. We need to see it.”
“To decide for ourselves, of course.”
“Exactly! What if they’re just saying that to stop it getting overrun by tourists? What if the view from the carpark is such a revelation it changes our lives? What if the guy who runs it really is the rudest person Carlton786 has ever met in his life?”
“Guess we’re going then,” said Little John, and Lyra pulled her hoodie strings tight around her cold face in excitement and grinned.
It shouldn’t have made a lot of difference. The detour added less than an hour of driving time onto the eight hour drive back to New York, which would still mean getting home well before bedtime. Little John planned the route by meals; if they had morning tea at the Mystery Hole, they could stop and eat a packed lunch at one of the rest stops a few hours later, then stop for a hot dinner at another, and be crossing the Hudson by nine fifteen. Maybe nine thirty, he’d reassess along the way. Then it was a matter of dropping her off in Bushwick and making the final, very short leg to Elaine’s.
One little stop really shouldn’t have made much difference to their timing at all.
Especially because the Mystery Hole was closed. Off season. Empty and silent as a graveyard.
Lyra groaned deeply in disappointment and kicked at the tyre of a Volkswagen Beetle which had been sawn in half to make it look like it had crashed into the side of the building. “Stupid winter,” she muttered, frustrated at herself for not realising, not reading further. It was a tourist spot, though, it should be open all year round! What was capitalism up to? She didn’t want to look at Johnny, didn’t want to see if he thought she was stupid, if he was annoyed that she’d wasted his time, but she had to, didn’t she? They still had a long day of driving ahead of them, though Lyra wasn’t really looking forward to it now.
“Hey Lyra, come look,” his voice was loud in the quiet of the deserted carpark, but he didn’t sound annoyed. He was standing near the car, facing out, hands on his hips. “That review was right about the view from here,” he said. “What a revelation.”
Lyra joined him, looking out. The Mystery Hole sat on the side of a hill and beyond the fence around the carpark, the ground dropped, and the valley full of trees and rolling hills spread out in every direction. There was absolutely no one else around, no houses, no buildings in sight, just the road stretching off around the side of the hill one way, and the road stretching off around the side of the hill the other. The sky was a still, clear wintry blue, and everything was beautiful. “It’s no water flowing upwards,” she said, still too grumpy to properly appreciated it like he was doing. “But I guess it’s alright.”
Her sour mood slid of Little John like water off a duck. “Never mind,” he said. “I’ll brew some tea and we can have a sandwich and get moving again.”
“Yeah okay,” she agreed, grateful she wasn’t being blamed but still half expecting that to change. “I’m gonna go see if there’s any windows I can peek into, though.”
She did get her guitar out of the back of the car too, because few things made her feel less annoyed than composing a song about the frustrations of failed expectations. As Little John made tea and admired the view, she strummed and circled the building. It was pretty small, a corrugated iron bunker painted brightly with question marks, the words MYSTERY HOLE, and more question marks. There was a wooden gift shop tacked onto one side, with a little garden that featured a sculpture of a man getting sucked into the earth, his hands raking the dirt. There was not a soul around to hear her lyrics about how capitalism couldn’t win against the brutality of a quiet destination in the grip of winter, and the folly of a gift shop, its purpose unfulfilled behind locked doors.
And then the door clicked open. “What a beautiful voice,” said a creature with a beautiful voice of its own, standing in the shadows of the doorway. It was odd how Lyra thought creature not person, it not they – odd, until she laid eyes on skin the blueish gray of river rocks, and eyes a solid black, and ears pointed sharp as daggers, and smile sharper still.
“Oh holy fucking shit,” said Lyra. The creature’s grin widened, lips splitting its face almost all the way to its ears, and Lyra scrambled backward, guitar clutched in her hand.
“Play on,” said the creature. “I was enjoying that.”
“I wasn’t,” grumbled a deeper voice behind her, words coming out of what Lyra thought for sure had been rocks a minute ago. “All air, no depth.”
“Your head’s all air,” Lyra shot back, and a hyena laugh came out of the one with teeth from ear to ear.
“Come in and sing for us all,” they said. Shocked into rudeness, Lyra still felt that continuing to call it it in her head was taking her rudeness too far. Dangerously far. The angles of their face held a captivating sort of beauty that made her think the … person? was female, but it was impossible to say for certain. As they opened the door wider, Lyra could see their clothes, a russet coloured greatcoat, embroidered with leaves, disguising the shape of their body, and hiding their feet from view completely. The long silver hair moved like mercury. Their whole aura captivated her.
“Come, come,” they beckoned Lyra in, their movement as they stepped backward creating an odd sound, like hooves on the dusty wooden floor.
And Lyra couldn’t have said why she followed them into the dark and crowded giftshop, but that’s exactly what she did. Her fingers kept strumming, distracted and nervous, as she looked around – the place was filled with tacky things you might find in a joke shop, though it was too dark to see beyond the stand of named keyrings (there was never a Lyra, but she could see a John.) “Do you... work here?” she asked, doubtful that the answer was going to be yes, but trying to grab hold of some understanding of this weirdness. The person/creature/beauty was standing beside an even darker doorway now, above which she could make out the words ‘NO PHOTOGRAPHY!!!’ and down the wall a list of other rules had been hand painted, though she didn’t read any of them.
“I play here,” they said, with a luxurious shrug. “You can play too, in exchange for a song.”
They held out their hand. Despite the alarming smile, the ears, the eyes, Lyra felt no reluctance at all to take it. She started to make some quip about a good deal, music for free entrance to a closed roadside attraction, but the feeling of the person’s hand stole her attention away. It was so soft the skin could have been cat’s fur, and held absolutely no temperature – like she had wrapped her own cold hand around solid, soft air.
And then the solid, soft air twisted, and fingers as strong as steel looped around her wrist. “Wait-” she said, but was pulled too quickly through the dark doorway to finish her sentence.
Well this wasn’t good, Lyra thought, deciding that now was an appropriate moment to scream.
They were running – no, they were falling – no, they were flying – no –
A second later, they burst into a ballroom where the light was so bright Lyra’s scream cut off completely. It was absolutely massive, absolutely filled with dancers, and the air was so thick with sweetness that breathing was disorientating.
What the fuck-
Lyra turned as the door closed behind her, and sealed so perfectly she couldn’t see where the door had been at all. No frame, no handle, no nothing – she wanted to reach out and touch this marvel of engineering but one hand was wrapped around the neck of her guitar and the other was still trapped in the person’s grip. “I – how – what is –” she was cut off, again, as a pair of trolls waltzed between them.
Trolls?
Two tall creatures with skin as dark as wet earth, with bald lumpy heads and huge arms wrapped around each other – the only word that came to mind was trolls. They disappeared into the crowd and Lyra’s attention scattered across the rest of the figures – dancers of all shapes and sizes, some with antlers, some with wings, all dressed in silks and silvers and spiderwebs, in moss and leaves, or fur or naked skin, sharp collars rising as tall as fins, trains of impossibly delicate lace, everything shining, dazzling.
“Enjoy the dance, sweet singer,” said the one who had dragged her in, leaning so close Lyra could smell their earthen scent beneath the sickly sweetness that clogged their air. “We’ll call on you when its time to play for our master of revels. Enjoy the food! Enjoy the wine! Dance like tonight is your last!”
With that, they released her wrist, and spun off into the crowd. The trolls were waltzing back toward her, knocking over smaller dancers as they spun faster and faster, and Lyra darted backwards to get out of the way. She didn’t see the low wooden table until she stumbled into it, knocking a pile of chestnuts that had been sitting on a silver platter onto the floor. They rolled under the feet of the dancers and two skinny, green skinned creatures dove down onto the floor to pick them all up, stuffing chestnuts into their impossibly wide mouths.
The air was so sweet and nothing made sense. From all corners of the hall, music was playing, lively, exciting, gripping music.
Surprising herself, Lyra laughed in dazed delight, and turned to take the rest of the hall in. It stretched on so far she couldn’t see the end, it stretched up so far the ceiling was lost in shadows, though roots dangled out of the darkness, and up among the roots, she swore she saw something moving.
“What the fuuuuck,” she whispered, though all fear had left her. This felt like a dream – it could only be a dream. The scent of the moist squares of cake on the table drew her attention, and the beauty of the shining red apples, and the temptation of pomegranates ripped in half and half again, though nothing tempted her more than one of the many silver goblets. Some were lying on their side, others were still full of what looked like wine, and she picked one up and sipped it.
It tasted like no wine she’d ever had before, sweet as liquid honey, warm as sunlight, and she downed every drop and dug into the cup with her finger for the last of the sweetness. Every muscle in her body unknotted, ever ache was immediately soothed, and the wine worked its magic, and inspired a vivid need to dance.
Outside in the carpark, Little John heard Lyra’s scream cut off, and abandoned the tea to race toward the sound. She was nowhere to be seen, the door to the gift shop where she’d been standing a moment ago was locked. “Lyra?” he called loudly, pressing himself up against the dusty window, but there was no movement at all from inside. “Lyra!” he repeated, looping around the building looking for another way in, but there was nothing, and no sign of her. “Lyra, can you hear me?!”
“We can hear you,” said a high pitched voice, and Little John turned fast to see three figures stepping out of the trees. One of them, literally, stepped out of a tree.
“Hullo,” said Little John, carefully polite as he eyed the three of them up. The phooka who had spoken had dark fur and hare’s legs and was carrying a string bag full of loot liberated from the gift shop. The other two looked more like pixies, though one of them was so wrapped in solar powered fairy lights it was hard to see any other features. Little John blinked at them. “Pleased to meet you all.”
They circled him, the pixies came up to his elbows, the phooka a little shorter, fatter. The pixie who wasn’t covered in fairy lights reached out and up and touched his arm, stroking over the muscle. Little John stayed still, assessing. “Do you know where my friend has gone?” he asked. “I can offer you some tea in exchange.” He thought they might like Elaine’s chutney, too. Fairytale chutney for fairy creatures.
“You can offer me a swiving in exchange,” said the pixie, purring as she stroked his arm.
The phooka laughed. “So tall! He’ll split you open.”
“So tall” the pixie agreed. “I’d be happily split. Come down with us, come, the ball’s begun,” she offered her hand to Little John, who hesitated.
“Look, you’re very nice, but I just want to find my friend. Yay high, dark hair, red hood?”
There was a short muttering conference between the three. “Rathellion’s mortal?” the phooka raised two dark hairy brows, and the pixies chattered with laughter. “She sings like a lark. His consort presented your friend as a prize and he’s very pleased with her; he won’t let you have her back.”
None of this was good, but Little John was left with only the one option, and ‘abandoning a mortal girl to the fey’ was not it. “Let me try,” he said. “I’m very persuasive.”
The conference continued, louder this time: “Such a shame he’s not as pretty!”
“Oh but tall, he’s very tall.”
“Yes, yes, very tall, very tall.”
“Let the mortal try, Rathellion likes a fight.”
“Likes a game.”
“Likes a win!”
“Make it interesting, won’t you?” said the phooka, hopping forward on his hare’s legs and passing the string bag of goodies to Little John to carry. With his free hands, he opened a door in a tree, a door that grew wider than the tree that hosted it, till it was large enough for the three to bound inside, though only wide enough for Little John to slip through if he turned sideways.
He cast a look back toward his car as though it was an anchor to the real world – or the world he knew as real. He was quite sure the world he was about to step into was a reality all of its own, he knew Elaine’s stories, and her pocket dimension, and the quests Marian had gone on. He knew, too, that Lyra had vanished mere minutes ago, and these fey acted like they knew her already, as a prize, as a singer. Time was already misbehaving.
But it meant he had none to waste, so Little John turned, and stepped into the tree.
In the ballroom, Lyra was having the time of her life. Everything she sang was coming out of her mouth as pure gold, she’d never pulled lyrics from the air so quickly, she’d never been so funny or so clever or so talented. She’d never danced so hard, she’d never been so thirsty, she’d never been so satisfied as she was when Rathellion passed her a drink of the honey-sunshine wine and it slipped down her throat, as vital as air. He was lord of this hall, and her music pleased him, and when she threw her head back and cackled at – she couldn’t actually recall what she was laughing at – it amused him greatly, and this made everything better.
A commotion split the crowd that had gathered around her, where she stood on a table amongst crushed apples and spilled wine. Rathellion lifted his head at the intrusion, and Lyra followed his gaze and found… it took her a few long moments to recognise him. “Johnny?”
“Lyra! Are you alright?” She didn’t look alright. There were wet stains across her hoodie and she’d lost both her shoes, her feet and ankles swollen and filthy. But she held out her arms and beamed when he asked.
“I’m perfect,” she cried. Her voice was hoarse and broken, her lips chapped, and there were traces of dried blood on her fingers. But she sang on, and played on, as if none of these things bothered her. She danced, and slipped as her foot crushed a rotten-smelling apple, her butt hitting the table hard and making her laugh even harder. Little John pushed his way through the fey and took her hand – her fingers were very hot.
“That’s mine,” Rathellion stepped closer, parting the crowd with his presence. He was as tall as Little John and dressed handsomely in ceremonial leather armour, and Little John wished at once for his quarterstaff to knock his feet out from under him.
“Can’t own people, bud. She belongs to my world, not yours,” Little John said, releasing Lyra’s hand and stepping in front of her, shielding her from Rathellion with his own body. Lyra looked down at her fingers, Little John’s touch having worn away a little of the spell, as she noticed for the first time how sore they were, and how strange this was. There was something unpleasantly slimy oozing between her toes; she reached down and picked out a piece of rotting apple skin.
“You’re Rathellion, then?” Little John held his ground as Rathellion stepped close, and did what any self respecting Merry Man would have done; grinned widely and said: “I hear you like a fight. Or a game. I challenge you to either, and if I win, you let us both go.”
“A duel,” he said, a hungry delight behind the word. “The only fight worth having. The only game worth playing.”
“I dunno,” shrugged Little John, watching the way Rathellion moved, liquid and smooth and strong, like a snake. “I quite like badminton.”
Behind him, Lyra gave a hysterical little giggle, a sound echoed by several other fey. The space around Little John and Rathellion was getting wider as the revelers backed off, making a circle. Swords were presented, and Rathellion, as the challenged, as the lord of the hall, picked first. He moved as well with his sword as Little John expected, showing off to the crowd as more and more eyes gathered, as the music picked up and up into a fever pitch.
Little John lifted the sword he’d been offered and tested the weight. The balance was good, the grip was strong. A well made sword, that was a good start. He’d fought with worse. He’d won with worse. Rathellion had the air of an uppity aristocrat and Little John was itching to put him on his backside.
“When I win,” Rathellion declared, over the music. “I’m going to kill you both.”
Maybe a little darker than the usual uppity aristocrat.
Well, he was in it now. Little John tested the weight in his left hand as well, and found it just as good. “Guess I better not lose, then.” He didn’t raise his voice, but it was deep enough to be heard over the music anyway.
Lyra didn’t like how this dream was going. Her head still spun, though now that she’d noticed it she couldn’t stop feeling the ache in her hands and feet. As the crowd pulled back from the dueling circle, she was pushed into a table and there were more silver goblets there, brimming with wine, and that had worked to bring on the bliss before… She reached for one and a goblin knocked it out of her hand. “Watch the master with open eyes,” he hissed, and Lyra was grabbed by the two waltzing trolls – no longer spinning – and dragged to the front of the crowd.
Opposite her, another fey with a tangle of knotted, rootlike hair parted the audience and stepped into the open space, holding a velvet cushion upon which sat a bloody mass of fabric. Rathellion sheathed his sword and picked it up with both hands and Lyra realised it was a hat, its long pointed end encrusted with layer upon layer of blood.
With a flourish, Rathellion pulled the cap on over his head and dropped all trace of his glamour. He lost a lot of his graceful height, instead turning thickset, short and stocky. His smooth skin turned rough, his fingernails grew to points as sharp as eagle’s talons, and every finger on his hand developed another knuckle. His wide smile, ear to ear, did not change. His grace with a sword did not change.
The last traces of the dreamlike haze that had taken over Lyra evaporated; a red cap was a terrible sign.
“GET YOU GODFORSAKEN HANDS OFF ME!” Lyra screamed, thrashing under the grip of the trolls. She was rewarded by an elbow to the nose, the pain so shocking it blinded her for a moment. Gasping for breath with her head tilted forward, blood poured down her face onto the ground. It hurt as bad as the time she’d accidentally nailgunned her foot, but by god, this time was a lot scarier. She had to break out of her captor’s grip, but they were hard as rock, and across the hall, Rathellion was raising his sword, and Johnny was raising his in kind.
Not good not good not good.
Rathellion looked like a monster, Johnny just a man. And Lyra, blood running into her mouth from her nose, had never felt so small and powerless. “FUCK ALL OF YOU!” she screamed, and spat a mouthful of blood at the troll on her right arm.
He yowled like she’d burned him, and threw himself away from her. In shock, Lyra raised her hand to her mouth, and turned to look at the other, who was watching his dancing partner in alarm.
When Lyra slapped at the second troll’s rocky arm with her bloodied hand, he screamed just as loudly. And all of a sudden the circle around her was cast as wide as the one around the men with their swords.
“Explain yourselves!” Rathellion roared, turning on the trolls. The one she’d spat on was still reeling back, the one she’d slapped had upended a punchbowl over his wounded arm and was drying it off using the corner of someone’s cape.
“Her blood burns!” he exclaimed, pained. “Holy blood! Saint’s blood!”
Rathellion turned his eyes on Lyra. Under the glamour, his eyes were burning red, coals in the dark. “Saint’s blood?” he echoed, and Little John saw his moment and took it.
He raced forward, picked Rathellion bodily up, and threw him as hard as he could into the crowd. The redcap sailed over the heads of several audience members and landed unseen with a crash.
“RUN!” Little John yelled at Lyra, sprinting toward her.
“WHERE?”
“DOESN’T MATTER!” Little John caught up to her and she spun, running with him. Little John brandished his sword, and Lyra brandished her bloody hands, shrieking (almost as hysterically as her earlier laughter) “That’s right bitches! Holy blood! You wanna get burnt?!”
It didn’t matter that she didn’t know what it meant, or why it worked, it worked, and the fey scattered before them.
Little John was trying to find his way back to the tree, knowing that he’d entered the hall near a fountain. And indeed, they soon came to a stone fountain, the water dark and turbulent but beyond it, there was no door. To the left, to the right, no door. Just solid dirt, packed hard into a corner.
At a bit of a loss, Little John tried hitting it with his sword. A bit of dirt came loose, but not enough to expose any sort of exit.
“Um, Johnny,” Lyra panted, her back pressed up against the dirt and her bloody hands outstretched. Around them, they fey closed in. “Now what??”
Little John raised his sword, snarling at the nearest hob, who lunged at him and got a kick for his troubles. Heart beating frantically, Lyra wiped more of her nose blood onto her hands to freshen them up at weapons (crying faintly in her mind what the fuuuuck as she did) and held them out again.
Little John didn’t really have an answer. It didn’t look good, but he wasn’t going to admit that. “They don’t seem to like being kicked,” he said, then spotted her hands. “Or being bled on!” he added, with an enthusiasm Lyra was finding it increasingly difficult to share.
They may not have liked being kicked, or being bled on, but every fey in the hall had realised that Lyra and John, whatever their unusual strengths, were vastly outnumbered. And in their own ranks was their redcap general who was very, very displeased about being punted across his own ballroom. Lyra could hear him coming, could see the crowd parting before her, and yelled up at the ceiling: “Now would be a really good time, universe!!”