Page 6

Crispin

I should run. I really should.

Crispin willed his limbs to move, yelled at them in his head, in fact, but they stayed rooted to the ground as the danger approached, the manic howls growing in intensity.

Thea flashed at him, the light like a kaleidoscope through the fractured screen. “Danger, Will Robinson!”

Leo was already halfway across the clearing, but his head snapped back at that. “I think your loopy little travel device drank some of that spiked Zima, too.”

“The Zima wasn’t spiked.” Or maybe it had been. His head felt weird. Instead of running from the howling, he felt a strange compulsion to run toward it.

Something hopped into the clearing. It was about the size and shape of an Earth rabbit, or maybe a westcat from Therrin (which as everyone knew were far nicer than the eastcats).

Crispin knelt to look at the little thing.

“Are you running too?” It stared at him with eyes almost as big as its head, trembling and shifting from foot to foot.

It had five of them, so it took a moment to complete the exercise.

Poor thing looks frightened.

He felt Leo staring over his shoulder. “Bad juju.”

“What?” He wasn’t sure what bad juju was, but whatever it might be, this thing didn’t seem to have any. “He’s adorable.” The rabbit-cat trilled, a sweet sound that put Crispin in mind of a choir of angels. Really tiny angels with teensy-weensy harps.

Then he noticed that the forest had gone absolutely quiet. No more howls. No birdsong. No rustling purple foliage. “Maybe whatever that was… decided to go away?”

“Bad juju, dude. We should go. You don’t mess with bad juju.”

Despite being sketchy on the details of bad juju, Crispin was inclined to agree. He reached down to grab the little critter. At least we can get you to safety.

It opened its mouth, and he jerked his hands back. If its eyes were almost as big as its fuzzy head, its jaws were three times as big and lined with razor-sharp teeth.

Then it howled.

Crispin stumbled back as the rab-cat leapt at him, missing him by a hair’s breadth. “What in the holy oerk of Greebals?” He scrambled backwards, knocking Leo to the ground.

The thing howled again, and suddenly Leo was in front of him holding a big stick. He swung it as the thing leapt again, and sent it flying through the purple trees with a yip and howl.

“Score!” Leo thrust his hand into the air and did a little dance. “Out of the park. I always wanted to do that.” He seemed to have recovered from his earlier round of grousing about the Zima.

“We should go.” Crispin’s body shook, and he felt ill. He was lucky he still had his hand. I was about to pick it up.

Leo grinned. “Why? I just sent that little toothy fur ball to hell.” He looked longingly at a patch of purple blades. “The grass here is really good. You should try it.”

“He wasn’t alone.” Crispin scrambled up as five more, no, ten, no, seventeen—he’d always been really good at counting things—hopped out of the under-foliage. Leo swung around just in time to see the grand entrance.

For half a second, the two parties—the desk fae and his collected vs. the rab-cats from hell—stared each other down. The forest was again absolutely quiet.

Then someone screamed like a baby—if Crispin was honest with himself, it was him—and he and his charge turned tail and ran on hooved feet into the purply-violet wood.

They stumbled over lavender shrubs that had little yellow flowers that rang like bells when disturbed, adding to the cacophony, and past plum fernlike things that reminded him of the fairy ferns back home, only these didn’t glow and were ten times larger.

They rustled ominously as he and Leo passed, and Crispin wondered briefly if they wanted to eat him too.

Consumed by a fern was not the legacy he wanted to be remembered by when he one day slipped into the Black Woods.

All the while, the howls and growls followed them, now coming from all sides, and even from the canopy above.

“Thea, what are those things?” The question came out in gaspy breaths as he stumbled over a mauve log that was half as high as he was.

Thank god his hooves gave him good purchase on the rough surface.

He prayed to the holy oerk that the rab-cats couldn’t fly.

“Doing an analysis now.”

That sounded like the old Thea he knew. He felt a sudden ray of hope. Thank the gods.

Then his little companion erupted in a stream of manic laughter.

Leopold grabbed his hand. “Come on! I think I see light ahead!”

They hadn’t known each other all that long, but the statement sounded uncharacteristically chipper for the morose human Crispin had collected—or tried to collect—in that dank apartment back on Earth.

One of the little rab-cats nipped at his ankle, and he gave a howl of his own, kicking it away and into the forest. Ignoring the ache, he hobbled after Leo toward the alleged light, looking up just in time to see Leopold’s legs fly up into the air—fortunately still attached to the rest of him—as his antlers caught on a low-hanging vine.

He came down hard on his back, the air forced out of him with an audible whoosh .

Crispin rushed to his side. “Leo! Are you all right?”

The howling once again drew closer. They were being surrounded, hunted. His human struggled to say something.

My human. He had no time to reflect on that thought. They had to get moving or they’d be rab-cat food. “It can wait. Breathe. We have to go!”

Leo scowled at him. He closed his eyes, as if he could concentrate his way through the whole mess, and at last air filled his lungs again. “It’s Leopold, you daft bastard. Not Leo.”

Crispin grinned, not even minding the insult. “Glad to have you back.” He put a furry arm under Leo’s and helped him get up. “Just a little further, I think.” They stumbled together through the thinning undergrowth, toward the light.

The howling suddenly stopped, cut off as if someone had just flicked a switch, or maybe waved an enchanted wand. The forest was again as quiet as a graveyard, an association Crispin wished he hadn’t just made. A mounting dread seized his heart. What’s scary enough to shut up a pack of rab-cats?

He said a prayer to the Mother of Fae, who also happened to be his own mother. Which always made things a bit awkward, her being a semi-deity and all, when he asked for a blessing in her name.

Cerillia Ailedrin Moss’caladin had not been happy when he’d chosen a desk job over being a hunter. But that was drama for another day. Right now he had more pressing issues.

They tumbled into a moonlit clearing. When had the sun set?

Not that he’d have been able to see it through all of the godsforsaken layers of forest canopy on this depressingly wild world.

Wild had always been more of his brother’s thing.

Give Aspin a bow and arrow and set him loose in a dark forest and he was in fae heaven.

Crispin much preferred a cozy armchair under a woolly blanket in front of a fireplace hearth, a mug of hot chocolate in hand.

“Why… did… they… stop?” Leo was laying on Crispin’s stomach, somehow managing to make his brown fur look pale and wan. Or maybe it was the blue moonlight.

“I don’t know.” Crispin pushed away from Leo, disentangling his arms and legs. He looked back over his shoulder, expecting the toothy little rab-cats to burst out of the shadows at any moment. “Thea, a little help here? Are you… working yet?”

His little assistant responded with a sputtering of sparks and a column of smoke.

“That can’t be good,” observed Leopold.

He shook his head. “I’ve never seen her smoke before….” His gaze fell upon a large foot. Two of them, actually, covered in shaggy brown fur. They seemed to be connected to a pair of legs as thick as tree boles.

“So is there a repair shop for… for whatever that device is called?” Leo continued.

Crispin didn’t reply. His eyes were too busy traveling up the thick expanse of those legs, past the heavy belly that overhung them like a mushroom cap, and up to the giant head that even now was tilting down to look at them.

“Crispy?” Leo sounded annoyed.

“It’s… there’s a….” He stared at the… huge thing that stood before him. Its mouth spread in a toothy grin, and he felt faint. It’s going to eat me.

He had never been eaten before and was sure he would find the whole thing quite disagreeable. All those years of work, and it was to end in the pit of a giant’s stomach. It didn’t seem fair.

Leo must finally have noticed it too, because he responded with a particularly Earthian stream of words. “Well, fuck me sideways. What the holy hell is that?”

The shaggy beast opened its mouth, and Crispin closed his eyes, not wanting to see his own end.

“Could I interest you gents in a spot of ripple bark tea?”

Crispin started to hyperventilate. “Could you… some tea?” was all he could manage, followed by a series of hiccups.

“Yes, of course. Follow me back to the hedging and I’ll get you right and refreshed.” He turned and lifted one of his huge feet, and when he set it back onto the ground, the whole clearing shook.

“I think he’s invited us back to his place.” Of course Leo seemed much less frightened than Crispin was.

Crispin nodded. “Back to his flat. A giant invited us for a cup of tea.” It was all way too much.

His eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed, managing to just miss the soft patch of velvety purple moss he’d been aiming for.