Martin Millar - The Good Fairies of New York.html (6 page)

distilled by the MacKintosh fairies, and will never again see the bonnie wee churchyard of Inver.'

Dinnie gritted his teeth. 'Get on with it.'

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'I was just setting the atmosphere. Anyway, one night, dark, stormy and lashing with rain, Morag and I were

travelling in Skye, which is an island off the west coast of Scotland. We were on our way to the grand MacLeod fairy fiddling competition. Conditions were terrible, but being a MacKintosh I was not too bothered. Morag,

however, was whining and complaining even more than usual about being cold and wet. The MacPhersons never

did have any true mettle. She was about to lie down somewhere and give up when I took matters in hand and

found us a castle to shelter in.'

'You found a castle? Just like that?'

'Castles are not uncommon in Scotland. In fact, Scotland is full of castles. We found a room that was nice and dry.

There wasn't any sign of a bed but there was a comfy-looking casket on the floor so we climbed in. There was

nothing inside it except a large piece of green cloth.'

A cab crawled past, blaring its horn at the truck in front, which was blaring its horn at the car in front of it, which was temporarily blocked by another car which had stalled. The vehicles behind the cab joined in, sounding their horns in a huge impatient chorus, although there was nothing any of the drivers could do except wait. Dinnie

threaded his way across the street.

'Morag was still complaining about being cold of course, so to shut her up I got out my sword and cut a few

pieces of this material for some blankets. And very good blankets they were too. We had an excellent sleep. But guess what the cloth turned out to be?'

'I don't care.'

'It was the famous MacLeod Fairy Banner!'

Heather waited for a gasp of astonishment for Dinnie. None came.

'Aren't you amazed?'

'No.'

'Haven't you heard of the famous MacLeod Fairy Banner?'

'No.'

Heather was surprised. She assumed that everyone had heard of it.

'It is one of the most famous fairy artefacts in Scotland, as famous and important to Scottish fairies as the MacPherson Fiddle and the MacKintosh Sword.

'It was given to the human MacLeod clan by the fairies some time in the eleventh century and they keep it in their ancestral home, Dunvegan Castle. It saved the clan and must only be unfurled in an emergency. You can't play

around with the MacLeod Fairy Banner. No one is meant to even touch it. Cutting it up for blankets is completely out of the question.

'Anyway, next day, ignorant of what we'd done, we went on our way. We used the blankets to wrap our fiddles in, thinking that they might come in useful later. But when we reached the sight of the competition and unwrapped our fiddles, there was uproar. The MacLeod fairies were going to kill us there and then for mutilating the banner. I told them it was an accident and I hadn't even realised we were in Dunvegan Castle, let alone that I was cutting up the Fairy Banner, but they seemed to think we'd done it deliberately. MacLeod fairies are noted for their low intelligence. Unfortunately there are an awful lot of them and we had to flee back to the mainland on a porpoise.

'And after that they wouldn't let up. They chased us everywhere. Even the fact that we are good fairies and are known for never committing malicious deeds didn't make any difference. Hence Morag's and my flight from

Scotland. Now we can never go back and it's all because that dumb bitch Morag kept complaining about the cold.

She has ruined my life.'

'Well,' said Dinnie, sensing an opportunity to discomfort Heather. 'It was you who cut up the banner.'

'Only to help a weaker creature. And I wasn't to know it was the famous MacLeod Banner. What did they leave it lying around in a casket for?'

Dinnie by this time was tired. The walk from 4th Street to the supermarket had made him pant and he

concentrated on shopping quickly and returning home.

'You might at least express some sympathy,' said Heather, as he loaded up with cookies and tins of corned-beef hash.

'Why? I don't care about you being chased out of Scotland.'

'But it is a terrible thing to be homeless.'

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'Bah!'

Dinnie had a brief argument with the woman at the checkout when he mistakenly thought she had overcharged

him, then headed home.

'Just the man I was looking for,' said the caretaker, meeting Dinnie on the steps. 'I'm evicting you.'

Dinnie stamped his way up to his rooms and flung his shopping bag on the floor.

'I am sorry,' said Heather. 'It is a terrible thing— '

'Don't say it,' snarled Dinnie, and savagely opened a tin of corned-beef hash.

The albatross landed heavily on the shore of Cornwall. Magris was there to greet her. He was the King's Chief Wizard, although he now liked to be known as Chief Technician, and his wings were neatly folded under a long

grey cloak. 'Have you any news for me?' The albatross shook her head.

'There is no sign of them in any of the kingdoms we fly over. We have seen wars, famines and plagues, ships,

trains and cars, ants, camels and lizards, Spriggans, Church Grims and Mer-women, but we have not seen your two fairies, or their friends.'

Magris frowned. He was annoyed, but knew better than to criticise the albatrosses.

'Please continue your search.'

The bird nodded and flew off. Albatrosses are not given to idle chatter, as a rule. Nor was Magris. He was too furious about the rebel Aelric and his economic sabotage. Warehouses and factories were burning all over the

kingdom.

It was being whispered by the rebels that if Petal and Tulip were to rule instead of Tala, things would be well in the kingdom.

Petal and Tulip were resting in a peaceful little clearing surrounded by the thick undergrowth of Central Park, listening to Maeve and Padraig playing their tin whistles. They played 'Ballydesmond' and 'Maggie in the Woods', and Petal and Tulip tapped their feet to the cheerful polka rhythm.

'And when will we see Doolin again, I wonder? !' said Maeve. Doolin in Ireland was famous for its tin whistlers and the two fairies had spent much time there, listening and playing. They thought for a little while about the good times they had had in County Clare.

Magenta had never been keen on the twentieth century. When her father died, electrocuted by his word processor after washing his hands and not drying them properly, she had gone off it entirely. She was not too keen on

washing either.

The Xenophon fantasy she sank into was a pleasant escape and a good way of keeping her spirits up while hiding from Joshua. She and Joshua had been lovers once, before Magenta caught him with another bag lady and stole his cocktail recipe in retaliation, knowing that he could not live without it.

Now, however, prowling along the sidewalk, she considered giving it up. The fierce alcoholic potion was wearing off and she was blearily aware that she actually bore little resemblance to the legendary Greek hero.

A fairy shape flickered in the distance.

'Must still be hallucinating.'

Heather was looking sadly at another corpse, another old tramp who had died of illness, exhaustion and

hopelessness. That made three in three days. She hated the way these people just expired on the streets and stayed there. People would walk right past and not even look. This would never have happened in Cruickshank.

A fairy will put a flower on a corpse as a sign of respect, and Heather went to look for one. Inside the theatre, next to Cal's guitar, she found a glorious poppy with red, yellow and orange blooms and scooped it up to lay on the corpse.

She played a sad lament, then departed.

Magenta reached the corpse and was appalled to see that it was someone she knew well, a woman Magenta had

begged with and been friends with for fifteen years.

She sat down gloomily and took a long drink from her Fitzroy cocktail. The city seemed like an unpleasant place to be.

'To hell with this,' muttered Magenta's subconscious. She rose to her feet majestically.

'Cyrus is dead,' she announced to the waiting troops. 'My dear friend and benefactor, killed in battle. Now how file:///Users/lisa/Downloads/Martin%20Millar%20-%20The%20Good%20Fairies%20of%20New%20York.html

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will we Greeks ever find our way home across thousands of miles of hostile territory?'

She picked up the flower that Heather had left and marched away purposefully.

The albatross made a heavy landing on the Cornish beach.

'We have found them,' she told Magris.

'Where?'

'One of them was spotted by a sparrow in New York, talking to an old woman.'

'Thank you,' said Magris, and gave the albatross a golden reward.

The loss of Kerry's triple-headed Welsh poppy was a mind-numbing blow.

Kerry stared at the space where it should have been, trembling with shock and fury. Morag, perched on top of a speaker and listening to Suicide, flew over to ask her what was the matter.

'My poppy is gone.'

In Kerry's book of Celtic myths the Welsh poppy was the centre-piece of the mystic alphabet. Furthermore, it had to be one with three blooms and this was so rare as to be practically unobtainable.

'I found it after the police bulldozed a crack factory,' wailed Kerry. 'There isn't another one in America!'

How it could have vanished was a mystery.

Cal buzzed the apartment. When he came up he brightly thanked Kerry for the loan of her flower.

'My Titania was panicked by a strange bag lady who attacked the theatre. I had to get her something to calm her down. I let myself in with your key and took a flower. I knew you wouldn't mind. I'm afraid someone took it

though. Wasn't important, was it?'

The Chinese fairies were not at all happy that a restaurant in their area had been robbed by an interloper, but this was as nothing compared to their horror on discovering that their Bhat Gwa mirror was missing. A Bhat Gwa

mirror is specially designed to reflect bad Fung Shui, which means various forms of misfortune, and was most

precious to the Chinese fairies. This mirror, a small octagon, had been left in the shop of their human friend Hwui-Yin.

Without it to reflect away misfortune all sorts of calamities would occur, particularly as it was nearing the time of the Festival of Hungry Ghosts, when dissatisfied spirits roamed the earth.

They sniffed around the shop, scenting out clues as to where it had gone.

'The strange white fairy with multicoloured hair has been here,' they cried, picking up Morag's aura, as fairies can do. They assumed that she had stolen it — a reasonable assumption, although really it had been Kerry, and the mirror was now pinned to one of her Indian waistcoats as a pleasant decoration.

'That was a braw punch,' said Morag. 'Reminded me of the time I had to fight off the MacDougal clan single-

handedly.'

'Thank you,' said Kerry, nursing her bruised hand.

'Do you think Cal's nose was actually broken? He ran away so quickly I couldn't see.'

Kerry said she hoped it was, and muttered about the further dire revenge she would now take. She was deeply

depressed by the loss of her flower, and presumed that it was deliberate sabotage by Cal.

Right now she was busy untaping her colostomy bag before disposing of it. She hated the noises it sometimes

made.

Morag perched on her shoulder.

'How will we replace the flower?'

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'It can't be replaced.'

'Nonsense,' replied Morag. 'Am I not here to help you? I will scour the city.'

Kerry took her sterilised saline preparation and a swab to clean the hole in her side. Morag flitted down on to a pile of Velvet Underground bootlegs, peering briefly at a photo of a young and sad Nico.

'Would you like me to steal you some cocaine from the dealer on the next block? It might give you inspiration.'

Kerry laughed.

'How do you know that?'

'Another psychic insight.'

Kerry did not think stealing cocaine for her was a very good idea. She carefully taped a ring of cardboard on to her side for today's bag to fit on.

'Well, how can I cheer you up?' asked Morag, slightly frustrated. She never had these problems cheering up the unhappy women in Cruickshank.

'Tell me a story.'

Morag was pleased.

'What an excellent idea. I will tell you the story of the feud between the MacPhersons and the MacKintoshes, a tale which will enlighten you about the glories of Scottish culture and also help you understand how Heather

turned out to be the total bitch she is today.'

And she settled down comfortably on the Velvet Underground bootlegs to do just that.

'From around the twelfth century, there was a powerful confederation of clans in Scotland, the Clan Chattan. This was made up of the MacPhersons, with whom my tribe of fairies is associated, the MacGillivrays, the MacBeans

and the Davidsons. And the accursed MacKintoshes— '

'Please don't spit on the floor again,' said Kerry.

'Very well. Anyway, the MacPhersons were the natural leaders of this federation. For one thing they were braver and smarter than anyone else. They were also stronger and more beautiful than anyone else. And their pipers were the finest in the land, naturally enough, as my family was around to teach them, and we are famous pipers, as well as fiddlers.