The Many Adventures of Fay Fairburn - Pursuit
[This story is a continuation of Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, and Part VII. You may want to read those first.]
Fay knelt on the floor, scrubbing the wood with a cloth rag. Her knees and back ached from her crouched position. Fay wanted nothing more than to be able to stretch, but she wasn’t allowed to stand or straighten herself in anyway. She had remain on her knees until all the floors in all the many, many rooms of the tree housed were scrubbed and shinned. This was her punishment for making Vervain pack the stall up with only Bupkis for help.
Vervain had also taken away the tree root around Fay’s wrist, once again binding Fay to within a ten-foot perimeter of the tree. This loss of freedom hurt more than the bruise left when Vervain had ripped the tree root from her wrist. At least the water in the sudsy bucket was cool and it soothed her wrist every time she dunked the rag in.
Fay rolled her shoulders stiffly and sighed. For all of Vervain’s anger, though, she had not realized Fay was largely responsible for the chaos at the market that had forced them to flee. She crawled forward a foot, dragging the bucket with her, and resumed cleaning.
Bupkis walked by carrying armfuls of a musky plant that left a trail of yellow pollen along with his smudgy footprints.
Fay tossed the rag back into bucket in frustration. “Dang it, Bupkis, what’d you do that for?”
Bupkis stood in front of her, the branches on his head dry and leafless and the plants in his arms casting a halo of yellow about his feet. He tried for an expression of innocence that couldn’t hide the smirk on his face. “I don’t know what you mean. I’m just bringing Vervain ingredients like she asked.”
“But you can’t even get to the kitchen through here!”
Bupkis shrugged and began to stroll out of the room. “If you had just asked the soothsayer about my heart, as you should have,” he said, “you wouldn’t be in this predicament.”
Fay tried to thrust herself up, so she could throw the rag at him, but Vervain’s spell sent a spasm down her spine. It forced her down so hard, she knocked her forehead against the floor. Fay huffed and rubbed the bump on her head. Bupkis may have been her friend, but he was mean when he was mad. She thrust the rag in the bucket and began scrubbing away at the mess of pollen and footprints he had made.
* * *
The giant man was made entirely of cages, wood and iron bound together by magic. With long striding step, the metal and wood ground together reverberating throughout its body. The groaning of its movement resounded for a mile in all direction. An elfin woman in tattered dress was tossed back and forth, caged in the giant’s thigh. A lizard hung to the bars at its shoulder.
It had no eyes, no mouth, but each of the cages carried the residue of the creatures they had once held. The cages remembers and this memory made the giant hum anytime it came near one of its creature and it followed this vibrating hum to its source.
The leopard, its leopard, ran before the giant, body accordioning as it sprinted at full tilt. The man was patient. For each twenty bounding leaps of the leopard, the giant man took one long slow stride. The leopard would grow tired. It was only a matter of time.
The pair reached the edge of a forest and the giant paused mid-step. Each of the thirty or so locks, cut and useless, that hung from its bars began to rattle as they responded to memories of their own. The locks clattered for the person who had cut them.
The leopard fled across the field, slacking its pace but not stopping. The giant hesitated, preoccupied with the resonant clanging of its locks, torn between the need to catch the leopard and the need to catch the lock-cutter. It took a step forward, then another. The soft loam of the meadow gouged with great scars, as the man resumed its pursuit of the leopard.
* * *
It took Fay the rest of the afternoon and all of the night to finish scrubbing the floors of the many, many rooms of the house, though at one point she had fallen asleep, face down in the middle of a soapy, half-cleaned floor.
For all the scrubbing, it was mostly monotonous and left her more than enough time to think, enough time to realize that Bupkis was mostly right. She should have asked Granny Peg about the heart of the tree, instead of about her papa, her bright, smiling papa. For though she knew where he was, she had no way of getting there. She had done things out of order. She scrubbed and scrubbed through the night and filled up inside with an overwhelming sense of uselessness.
Still her mind churned over the mess she had caused at the market. She had not wanted anyone to get hurt; she wanted to just give the caged people a chance to be free. It had gone all bloody and messy and frightening and not at all like the fairy tales as her mama had read to her when she was little. But there was nothing she could do about it now, and Fay would not have put those people and creatures back in their cages even if she could.
The sun was casting slices of light through the trees when Fay finished the floors. She stood on wobbling legs and immediately fell over into a bench. Her back and neck were one great knot of muscles. She had to straighten her spin by degrees until she could finally arch it backward into a full stretch. Everything hurt.
But the floors were shinning in the morning light, and Fay couldn’t help but smile at her good work. She looked out a window to the bright green of leaves illuminated by the sun.
There had to be a way to get the heart back for Bupkis. They had both searched the tree-house from top to bottom and found no sign of it. So, it must mean Vervain kept it on herself, and neither Fay nor Bupkis could risk searching Vervain, no matter how deeply she was sleeping. But there had to be a way.
The thought of the excitement Vervain got when making deals at the market came to Fay’s mind. Vervain loved making deals. She was almost joyous when she made a good one. So, maybe… maybe, Fay thought, she would make a deal for the heart, provided there was something she wanted more.
“Fay!” the witch called from bellow.
In the kitchen, Fay found Vervain working with the mortar and pestle. The stones scrapped together as she ground some noxious substance into powder. Her red hair was knotted at the back of her neck to keep it from getting into the tincture, but strands fell out and cascaded around her face.
“Took you all night to finish the floors, I see,” she said without looking up. “I suppose they’re acceptable.”
Fay nodded and went to work, starting a fire, washing the dishes, tossing the rubbish from Vervain’s table when she was done with it.
Vervain hummed as she mixed yellow powders with blue liquids, blended black goop with tiny chartreuse leaves. Mixing potions almost made her as happy as making deals.
It was as good a time as any for Fay to speak to her. “Vervain?” Fay said softly.
“Hmm?” Vervain dropped some more stones into the mortar.
“If you could have anything you want, anything at all, what would it be?”
Vervain stopped humming. The pestle stilled in her hand, she looked up at Fay. “Why?”
Fay shrugged, tried to seem nonchalant. “Just curious.”
Vervain narrowed her eyes. “You know what curiosity did to the cat, don’t you.”
Fay dried a dish with a towel. “Yeah, but satisfaction brought it back.”
The beat of silence was broken by Vervain’s husky laughter.
Fay was stunned. It was the first time she’d heard the witch laugh.
“You’re too clever,” said Vervain, setting in to her work again.
Fay cleared her dry throat, unsure if she should go on. She caught the sight of Bupkis hidden in the corner, glaring at her. “So, there’s nothing you want?” Fay asked.
Vervain sighed. “I didn’t say that.”
“If you could have the thing you want most, what would you trade to get it?”
Vervain stopped again. When she looked up, she eyed Fay suspiciously. “What are you getting at?”
“I don’t know. Nothing really.” Fay turned her back to Vervain and washed dishes. She tried to hold herself steady, while inside she quavered. “I was just wondering.”
“Why?” Vervain’s voice was edged with granite.
A plate slipped in Fay’s hands, but she caught it before it broke. She licked her lips, trying to decide if it would be best to say nothing else. “Well…, I was just wondering what you would trade for, if you were to trade for the heart of the tree.”
As soon as the words went out of her mouth, Fay knew they were a mistake. She could feel the air thickening behind her and Bupkis went rigid in the corner. His mottled bark skin turned from brown to ashen grey. His entire being seemed to curl up on itself like the husk of a leaf. His eyes flicked back and forth from Vervain to Fay and back to Vervain.
What happened next, Bupkis couldn’t even register fully. One second Fay was standing by the sink, the next Vervain had her by the hair and was shoving a cobalt potion down her throat.
Fay fell to the floor, blue feathers sprouting along her arms, her face elongating painfully, her entire body shrinking, twisting up on itself, smaller, smaller, until she disappeared inside her own clothes. The bump under the cloth became smaller still until a blue bird hopped out from the fabric and raised its wings to take flight. Vervain caught it before it left the ground. “Go get a cage.”
Bupkis did as he was told and brought back a small brass wire cage. Vervain put the bird inside and placed the cage in the window. She watched Fay thrust her tiny bird breast against the bars in a flurry of feathers and chirping.
“I suppose you put her up to this,” said Vervain coldly.
Bupkis kept quiet, knowing better than to say anything at all.
“I suppose you thought to take my home from me.” Vervain turned from the cage and crossed the kitchen to a small door under the stairs. She removed a key and opened it. She pointed to the dark dank space underneath. “Get in.”
Bupkis lowered his head and walked slowly to the door. Vervain shoved him in with one hard push on the middle of his back and locked the door behind him.
Vervain returned to her mortar and pestle. She stared down at the yellow powder she had been grinding together. My home, she thought, plotting and planning in my own bleeding home.
Slowly, she lifted shaking hands to the bracelet on her wrist. A push of a button and whisk! opened a secret hatch. Inside she removed a small shining green pearl. Vervain sighed, pleased to know it was still there. It looked to small to be the heart of a tree, but she had learned long ago that size didn’t much matter.
Thump.
The bottled on the shelves and the dishes in the cupboards rattled.
Thump.
The entire tree shook. Vervain stowed the heart back in its hidden compartment.
Thump. Thump.
The vibrations resounded like slow plodding footsteps. Vervain ran to the door and peered outside and gapped at the sight of a giant form made entirely of cages. She stared in awe at the leopard that prowled in a cage within the giant’s chest.
“What do you want?” Vervain called up, trying to keep her voice from shaking. “Well?”
The giant, having no mouth, said nothing. It just stood there, staring it seemed -- though Vervain also noticed it had no eyes -- directly at her own tree, or rather, directly at the cage that held Fay. It stared and stared, but made no move. It seemed confused.
Vervain felt a great fear build within her. What did this great creature want?
A moment later, Vervain heard a great, high-pitched shriek. Both she and the beast looked up to the red-tailed hawk that sat perched at the top of Vervain's tree.
The hawk leaped into the air and dove for the giant. The giant made a great slow swiping gesture, as if to catch the hawk, which slammed into the top of the tree and sent a cascade of leaves and branches down upon Vervain's head. Vervain screamed and ducked inside.
The hawk arched back up and away from the giant, lighting out above the trees for the horizon. The giant pivoted, causing trees around it to topple and collapse, one slamming into the side of the treehouse, as the it tromped after in pursuit of the hawk.
* * * *
[To read more Fay Fairburn stories click here.]
Fay knelt on the floor, scrubbing the wood with a cloth rag. Her knees and back ached from her crouched position. Fay wanted nothing more than to be able to stretch, but she wasn’t allowed to stand or straighten herself in anyway. She had remain on her knees until all the floors in all the many, many rooms of the tree housed were scrubbed and shinned. This was her punishment for making Vervain pack the stall up with only Bupkis for help.
Vervain had also taken away the tree root around Fay’s wrist, once again binding Fay to within a ten-foot perimeter of the tree. This loss of freedom hurt more than the bruise left when Vervain had ripped the tree root from her wrist. At least the water in the sudsy bucket was cool and it soothed her wrist every time she dunked the rag in.
Fay rolled her shoulders stiffly and sighed. For all of Vervain’s anger, though, she had not realized Fay was largely responsible for the chaos at the market that had forced them to flee. She crawled forward a foot, dragging the bucket with her, and resumed cleaning.
Bupkis walked by carrying armfuls of a musky plant that left a trail of yellow pollen along with his smudgy footprints.
Fay tossed the rag back into bucket in frustration. “Dang it, Bupkis, what’d you do that for?”
Bupkis stood in front of her, the branches on his head dry and leafless and the plants in his arms casting a halo of yellow about his feet. He tried for an expression of innocence that couldn’t hide the smirk on his face. “I don’t know what you mean. I’m just bringing Vervain ingredients like she asked.”
“But you can’t even get to the kitchen through here!”
Bupkis shrugged and began to stroll out of the room. “If you had just asked the soothsayer about my heart, as you should have,” he said, “you wouldn’t be in this predicament.”
Fay tried to thrust herself up, so she could throw the rag at him, but Vervain’s spell sent a spasm down her spine. It forced her down so hard, she knocked her forehead against the floor. Fay huffed and rubbed the bump on her head. Bupkis may have been her friend, but he was mean when he was mad. She thrust the rag in the bucket and began scrubbing away at the mess of pollen and footprints he had made.
* * *
The giant man was made entirely of cages, wood and iron bound together by magic. With long striding step, the metal and wood ground together reverberating throughout its body. The groaning of its movement resounded for a mile in all direction. An elfin woman in tattered dress was tossed back and forth, caged in the giant’s thigh. A lizard hung to the bars at its shoulder.
It had no eyes, no mouth, but each of the cages carried the residue of the creatures they had once held. The cages remembers and this memory made the giant hum anytime it came near one of its creature and it followed this vibrating hum to its source.
The leopard, its leopard, ran before the giant, body accordioning as it sprinted at full tilt. The man was patient. For each twenty bounding leaps of the leopard, the giant man took one long slow stride. The leopard would grow tired. It was only a matter of time.
The pair reached the edge of a forest and the giant paused mid-step. Each of the thirty or so locks, cut and useless, that hung from its bars began to rattle as they responded to memories of their own. The locks clattered for the person who had cut them.
The leopard fled across the field, slacking its pace but not stopping. The giant hesitated, preoccupied with the resonant clanging of its locks, torn between the need to catch the leopard and the need to catch the lock-cutter. It took a step forward, then another. The soft loam of the meadow gouged with great scars, as the man resumed its pursuit of the leopard.
* * *
It took Fay the rest of the afternoon and all of the night to finish scrubbing the floors of the many, many rooms of the house, though at one point she had fallen asleep, face down in the middle of a soapy, half-cleaned floor.
For all the scrubbing, it was mostly monotonous and left her more than enough time to think, enough time to realize that Bupkis was mostly right. She should have asked Granny Peg about the heart of the tree, instead of about her papa, her bright, smiling papa. For though she knew where he was, she had no way of getting there. She had done things out of order. She scrubbed and scrubbed through the night and filled up inside with an overwhelming sense of uselessness.
Still her mind churned over the mess she had caused at the market. She had not wanted anyone to get hurt; she wanted to just give the caged people a chance to be free. It had gone all bloody and messy and frightening and not at all like the fairy tales as her mama had read to her when she was little. But there was nothing she could do about it now, and Fay would not have put those people and creatures back in their cages even if she could.
The sun was casting slices of light through the trees when Fay finished the floors. She stood on wobbling legs and immediately fell over into a bench. Her back and neck were one great knot of muscles. She had to straighten her spin by degrees until she could finally arch it backward into a full stretch. Everything hurt.
But the floors were shinning in the morning light, and Fay couldn’t help but smile at her good work. She looked out a window to the bright green of leaves illuminated by the sun.
There had to be a way to get the heart back for Bupkis. They had both searched the tree-house from top to bottom and found no sign of it. So, it must mean Vervain kept it on herself, and neither Fay nor Bupkis could risk searching Vervain, no matter how deeply she was sleeping. But there had to be a way.
The thought of the excitement Vervain got when making deals at the market came to Fay’s mind. Vervain loved making deals. She was almost joyous when she made a good one. So, maybe… maybe, Fay thought, she would make a deal for the heart, provided there was something she wanted more.
“Fay!” the witch called from bellow.
In the kitchen, Fay found Vervain working with the mortar and pestle. The stones scrapped together as she ground some noxious substance into powder. Her red hair was knotted at the back of her neck to keep it from getting into the tincture, but strands fell out and cascaded around her face.
“Took you all night to finish the floors, I see,” she said without looking up. “I suppose they’re acceptable.”
Fay nodded and went to work, starting a fire, washing the dishes, tossing the rubbish from Vervain’s table when she was done with it.
Vervain hummed as she mixed yellow powders with blue liquids, blended black goop with tiny chartreuse leaves. Mixing potions almost made her as happy as making deals.
It was as good a time as any for Fay to speak to her. “Vervain?” Fay said softly.
“Hmm?” Vervain dropped some more stones into the mortar.
“If you could have anything you want, anything at all, what would it be?”
Vervain stopped humming. The pestle stilled in her hand, she looked up at Fay. “Why?”
Fay shrugged, tried to seem nonchalant. “Just curious.”
Vervain narrowed her eyes. “You know what curiosity did to the cat, don’t you.”
Fay dried a dish with a towel. “Yeah, but satisfaction brought it back.”
The beat of silence was broken by Vervain’s husky laughter.
Fay was stunned. It was the first time she’d heard the witch laugh.
“You’re too clever,” said Vervain, setting in to her work again.
Fay cleared her dry throat, unsure if she should go on. She caught the sight of Bupkis hidden in the corner, glaring at her. “So, there’s nothing you want?” Fay asked.
Vervain sighed. “I didn’t say that.”
“If you could have the thing you want most, what would you trade to get it?”
Vervain stopped again. When she looked up, she eyed Fay suspiciously. “What are you getting at?”
“I don’t know. Nothing really.” Fay turned her back to Vervain and washed dishes. She tried to hold herself steady, while inside she quavered. “I was just wondering.”
“Why?” Vervain’s voice was edged with granite.
A plate slipped in Fay’s hands, but she caught it before it broke. She licked her lips, trying to decide if it would be best to say nothing else. “Well…, I was just wondering what you would trade for, if you were to trade for the heart of the tree.”
As soon as the words went out of her mouth, Fay knew they were a mistake. She could feel the air thickening behind her and Bupkis went rigid in the corner. His mottled bark skin turned from brown to ashen grey. His entire being seemed to curl up on itself like the husk of a leaf. His eyes flicked back and forth from Vervain to Fay and back to Vervain.
What happened next, Bupkis couldn’t even register fully. One second Fay was standing by the sink, the next Vervain had her by the hair and was shoving a cobalt potion down her throat.
Fay fell to the floor, blue feathers sprouting along her arms, her face elongating painfully, her entire body shrinking, twisting up on itself, smaller, smaller, until she disappeared inside her own clothes. The bump under the cloth became smaller still until a blue bird hopped out from the fabric and raised its wings to take flight. Vervain caught it before it left the ground. “Go get a cage.”
Bupkis did as he was told and brought back a small brass wire cage. Vervain put the bird inside and placed the cage in the window. She watched Fay thrust her tiny bird breast against the bars in a flurry of feathers and chirping.
“I suppose you put her up to this,” said Vervain coldly.
Bupkis kept quiet, knowing better than to say anything at all.
“I suppose you thought to take my home from me.” Vervain turned from the cage and crossed the kitchen to a small door under the stairs. She removed a key and opened it. She pointed to the dark dank space underneath. “Get in.”
Bupkis lowered his head and walked slowly to the door. Vervain shoved him in with one hard push on the middle of his back and locked the door behind him.
Vervain returned to her mortar and pestle. She stared down at the yellow powder she had been grinding together. My home, she thought, plotting and planning in my own bleeding home.
Slowly, she lifted shaking hands to the bracelet on her wrist. A push of a button and whisk! opened a secret hatch. Inside she removed a small shining green pearl. Vervain sighed, pleased to know it was still there. It looked to small to be the heart of a tree, but she had learned long ago that size didn’t much matter.
Thump.
The bottled on the shelves and the dishes in the cupboards rattled.
Thump.
The entire tree shook. Vervain stowed the heart back in its hidden compartment.
Thump. Thump.
The vibrations resounded like slow plodding footsteps. Vervain ran to the door and peered outside and gapped at the sight of a giant form made entirely of cages. She stared in awe at the leopard that prowled in a cage within the giant’s chest.
“What do you want?” Vervain called up, trying to keep her voice from shaking. “Well?”
The giant, having no mouth, said nothing. It just stood there, staring it seemed -- though Vervain also noticed it had no eyes -- directly at her own tree, or rather, directly at the cage that held Fay. It stared and stared, but made no move. It seemed confused.
Vervain felt a great fear build within her. What did this great creature want?
A moment later, Vervain heard a great, high-pitched shriek. Both she and the beast looked up to the red-tailed hawk that sat perched at the top of Vervain's tree.
The hawk leaped into the air and dove for the giant. The giant made a great slow swiping gesture, as if to catch the hawk, which slammed into the top of the tree and sent a cascade of leaves and branches down upon Vervain's head. Vervain screamed and ducked inside.
The hawk arched back up and away from the giant, lighting out above the trees for the horizon. The giant pivoted, causing trees around it to topple and collapse, one slamming into the side of the treehouse, as the it tromped after in pursuit of the hawk.
* * * *
[To read more Fay Fairburn stories click here.]