Martin Millar - The Good Fairies of New York.html (21 page)

bloom.

'I couldn't have blamed you if you' d decided never to see him again,' she said happily, and gave Kerry her

presents.

'It's nothing,' replied Kerry. 'I promised to help you get the fiddle back, didn't I?'

Kerry was tired, and not very strong, so Morag went about the business of preserving the forsythia and fitting it into the alphabet. The flower alphabet, laid out on the floor surrounded by Kerry's favourite possessions, now looked so beautiful that it was bound to win the prize if it could only be completed.

THIRTY-ONE

Cesare, Luigi, Mario, Pierro and Benito sat with Heather in her favourite bar, perched on top of the TV. There was not a lot of room for six fairies even on a large television set, but the Italians were happy at being close to Heather, although each wished that he were the only one. As each suitor for Heather was as keen as the next,

finding a moment alone with her was proving to be impossible.

They drank whisky, which the Italians did not really like but tolerated because Heather promised they would soon acquire a taste for it. And when she apologised that the bar did not have a bottle of good Scottish malt, they said that they would see to it the next day, because their fairy family was good friends with the family who delivered drinks to this bar.

'Where have they gone on their date?' asked Mario, a pleasant, dark fairy who liked to show off his well-defined arm muscles.

'To a gallery in the West Village, then Kerry wants to do some shopping. They're going to eat at whatever

restaurant takes their fancy, then on to a gig at the 13th Street Squat.'

'Sounds like a nice day.'

Heather nodded. She was full of expectations for this day. If at the end of it Kerry were to throw her arms around Dinnie and declare love for him, or at least give him an appropriately passionate kiss, she would not be at all surprised.

It had been, she told her friends, a not inconsiderable feat.

'Of course he is a MacKintosh, which is a good start, but even so, if you'd seen that slob when I first took him in hand you would not have believed it was possible to make him attractive. But once we thistle fairies get on the case, the job's as good as done.'

She bragged on happily like this for a while, and her suitors listened with intense interest, as suitors will.

Almost exactly paralleling this scene, at another bar a few blocks along 4th Street, Morag sat with five young Chinese, drinking, laughing and awaiting the outcome of the day.

'As soon as that fool of a MacKintosh thinks Kerry's fallen in love with him, the MacPherson Fiddle will be mine by right.'

They drank merrily in celebration, and the Chinese fairies told Morag that as well as being most beautiful she was extremely intelligent, as suitors also will.

The MacLeod sisters sniffed the air as they walked along 17th. Even here, with traffic fumes all around, it was clear to them all that there was a strange breeze blowing from the west. Mairi's second sight was clearing as she grew used to the city, but she could still not tell what it foretold.

She led them with a purpose none the less. She had a clear impression that at the end of this street they would find something interesting.

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The four jagged-haired warriors arrived at Union Square.

'Well, Mairi,' said Ailsa, 'we've been here before and it looks no more interesting than last time.'

She grimaced at the terrible roar from the far side of the square where a group of men seemed to be attacking the ground, pounding it with strange machines.

An enormous furniture delivery truck crawled its way down Broadway and inched its way painfully round the

road-works. Sitting on its roof were a group of twenty black fairies.

'Now that is interesting.'

'Yes,' agreed Kerry, sitting beside Dinnie in the cab home. 'Hair dye can make a terrible mess. I once dyed my bath bright orange by accident and nothing would clean it off. Eventually I tried pissing on it at least once a day and after about a month it began to fade. Strong stuff, uric acid; you can break out of prison with it.'

Kerry was a little drunk. It had been an enjoyable day. She had confidently led a dubious Dinnie into various expensive art galleries for a good look round, bought a yellow plastic necklace from a man selling junk from a suitcase just down from St Mark's Place, had a not very successful attempt at eating a vegetarian meal in a

Chinese restaurant, and been highly pleased at the massed guitar noise at the gig.

Dinnie had got quite into the spirit of things, and had danced to the music without making a fool of himself. It was, he thought, the best day he had ever had.

The cab driver, a silent, morose man who did not abuse other drivers but stared fearfully out at them through his windscreen, dropped them on East 4th and grunted unhappily at Dinnie's large tip.

'Well, Dinnie, that was a good day. I am going to go to bed now because I'm very drunk and sleepy. Come round tomorrow.'

Kerry took hold of Dinnie's head, drew it down a little, and kissed him quite passionately, for quite a long time.

She wandered off leaving Dinnie dazed on the sidewalk.

Up the road, perched on the sign above the bar, Heather and the Italians cheered.

'That's it,' declared Heather, and swooped down to Dinnie's shoulder. 'A passionate kiss, and she wants to see you tomorrow. The fiddle is mine.'

'Take it,' said Dinnie, his eyes still glazed from the kiss. Heather and her friends flew and scrambled up the fire escape.

Further up the road the kiss had also been observed by Morag and the Chinese.

'It worked,' cried Morag, and the Chinese whooped with joy. Morag swept from her vantage point to clump down

on Dinnie's shoulder.

She informed him that she had kept her promise and the fiddle now belonged to her.

'Fine,' mumbled Dinnie, and Morag and her friends advanced up the steps of the theatre.

Johnny Thunders sat on top of the theatre building, musing on existence. Ostensibly, everything should be fine.

After all, he had no more drug problems, he had Heaven to go back to ... But his friends the Chinese fairies had told him that his Gibson Tiger Top was in the possession of a particularly demented bag lady and this spoiled everything. He felt the same dissatisfaction as he had once felt over the terrible mixes he seemed to be prone to on his records. Both New York Dolls albums and also the Heartbreakers album had been notorious for their poor

sound quality. None of them was the magnificent work it should have been, given the great songs and his superb guitar technique.

Across the street lived Kerry, he knew. Should he ever get the chance he would show her a few things, although as he was now a spirit and inhabited a different domain, this would be difficult.

Okailey glanced up at the street sign.

'4th street. We'll be in the territory of the Italians soon. Thank the Goddess. I will never ride down Broadway on a furniture truck again.'

'Okailey,' said one of her companions as they waited at the traffic lights.

'Yes?'

'There would seem to be fairies brawling in the street, just along the block.'

Okailey and her companions looked on in astonishment.

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'It's mine!' screamed Morag, and tugged at the fiddle.

'You stupid bitch of a MacPherson, it's mine,' screamed Heather back at her. She was clutching the other end of the fiddle, which, as neither of them had yet had time to shrink it down to fairy size, was much too heavy for either of them to make off with.

'I fulfilled the bargain!'

'What the hell d'you mean you fulfilled the bargain? You didn't have any bargain.'

'Yes I did,' roared Morag. 'I made Kerry fall in love with Dinnie.'

'What?'

Heather, aware for the first time of the arrangement between her human companion and the foul MacPherson, was outraged.

'You disgusting backstabber, you've been interfering in my business again. How dare you sneak in and bargain

with Dinnie. And anyway, it does not matter because I made the first bargain and it was me who made Kerry fall in love with him.'

'What?' Morag was even more outraged on learning that Heather had dared to bargain the fiddle against the

emotional well-being of her dear friend Kerry.

'How dare you bargain to make that nice Kerry fall in love with that scunner of a MacKintosh. It's monstrous. But it doesn't matter anyway because it was me who did it.'

Morag was tempted here to announce that Kerry was only kidding anyway, but wisely refrained.

'It's mine!'

'It's mine!'

This was not a resolvable argument. Whoever's bargain had been the valid one, each of them was convinced that she had been responsible for its success. As their friends watched, the two thistle fairies shouted and raged at each other. After drinking all day they were both most excitable. Finally Heather, unable to control herself, slapped Morag's face.

Morag immediately let go of the fiddle and began trading punches with her opponent. They grappled with each

other and rolled from the sidewalk into the gutter.

The Italians were alarmed. When Morag successfully landed a powerful kick in Heather's midriff, Mario felt he had to do something, and tried to restrain Morag's legs. The Chinese felt that this was hardly fair. Just as Heather managed to get her hands round Morag's throat, they rushed to their friend's aid. It then took no time at all for everyone to start fighting each other furiously.

And thus began the first street brawl of the New York fairies.

Aelis conjured up her mist and the rebels retreated in good order through a magic fairy space into the depths of Tintagel Castle. Once there, a furious argument broke out.

'How did they ambush us?' demanded Aelric's followers. 'You personally went to scout out the ground and you

assured us it was safe. What use is it burning Tala's warehouses and stealing his cattle if we all get killed?'

Aelric was hard pushed to find a reaspnable explanation. The real reason he had failed to scout properly was that he had in fact been scouring the Cornish landscape for a triple-bloomed Welsh poppy to give Marion. His spy at the court had told him that she needed this to complete her flower alphabet and would be so grateful to receive it that she would inevitably fall into his arms.

His mumbled apologies for the bungled mission were not well received, especially by the fairies who had almost been killed in yet another futile effort to drop propaganda leaflets from the air.

Among any group of fairies there will be some with at least limited telepathic powers, and in the fierce struggle cries for help went out so that in a very short time reinforcements from Chinatown and Little Italy were streaming into 4th Street to join in the mêlée.

'I can't believe it,' said Okailey, striding regally along 4th Street. 'Fairies do not behave in this manner.'

She strode up to Heather, still engaged in close combat with Morag.

'Stop this at once.'

Heather unfortunately assumed that the hand on her shoulder was of hostile origin and struck out wildly. Okailey's companions were stunned. They had never even imagined before that anyone could punch their revered sage in the file:///Users/lisa/Downloads/Martin%20Millar%20-%20The%20Good%20Fairies%20of%20New%20York.html

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face.

Dinnie eventually wandered back towards his room. His constant association with Heather had rendered him able to see all fairies, but he crossed the street in such a dream-like state that he did not notice the three tribes battling under his feet and around his head. The Chinese, Italians and Ghanaians were fighting on the ground and in the air, fluttering with swords and clubs from sidewalk to fire escape to lamp-post, screaming war cries and shouting for help.

Ailsa MacLeod watched from above in total incomprehension.

'You have brought us to something interesting, Mairi, but what?'

'Whatever it is, the MacKintosh and the MacPherson are right in the middle,' said Rhona, pointing.

'And they are sore pressed,' said Seonaid, slipping her dirk from its small sheath on her leg.

This posed a quandary for Ailsa. She did not want to see them killed before returning the pieces of the banner.

'And they are Scots,' said Mairi, reading her mind.

It took only a few seconds' thought. The MacLeod fairies could not stand by and let fellow Scots clanswomen be destroyed by strangers, although among humans, clans had done much worse.

The sisters drew their weapons and swooped into the fray.

Kerry awoke, stretched lazily, and noticed that Morag was curled up beside her in bed. This was as normal, but today Morag was covered in cuts and bruises and her hair was sticky with blood.

Morag woke up, moaned, and burst into tears.

'Tell me all about it,' said Kerry soothingly, as she dangled the fairy over the sink to try to clean her cuts.

Morag, in deepest misery, told Kerry all about it. To Kerry it was a very surprising story. She could hardly believe that her pleasant friend had started a full-scale race war on the streets outside, and had a terrible picture of fairy police arriving with CS gas and riot shields to break things up.

'It was dreadful,' said Morag. 'Fighting everywhere, and me and Heather trying to kill each other, and strange fairies screaming and shouting and— ' She broke off to shudder.

'—and the MacLeods. Right in the middle of it, Ailsa MacLeod brandishing her claymore at me like the savage

she is and screaming that once she'd saved me from the foreigners she was personally going to cut me into little pieces.'