The Chestnut King: Book 3 of the 100 Cupboards (30 page)

Henry looked at the beetle, and he looked at the soldiers, all of them perfectly still, glancing from the halved insect to Henry.

“Okay,” Henry said. “I need to go.” A bit nervously, he
sheathed the sword over his shoulder, and while the soldiers watched, unmoving, he ducked into a side street and again began to run.

He couldn’t afford a fight right now, and he didn’t want to draw the sword again. He wasn’t sure what exactly had happened. The blade had moved in his hands before he’d even noticed, jumping when life had passed in front of it. Henry heard more boots and then shouting and the sound of fighting. He turned into an alley away from the noise, straightening back toward the gate at the next street. He could see it ahead of him now. It was open, but more than a dozen soldiers stood around it.

Slowing down, evening out his breath, Henry pulled up his hood and ducked his head. He didn’t want to be recognized again. The raggant bellowed loudly, and the red-shirted gatekeepers all turned. They were as on edge as Henry was. How could they not be with one of their galleys on the bottom of the harbor?

“Name?” one asked.

Henry glanced up. “Ezekiel Johnson.”

“Johnson?” the man asked.

“John’s son,” Henry said slowly.

The soldiers all studied him—his shoes, his jeans, the hoodie, the sword, and the backpack full of raggant. “Your clothing is strange,” the soldier said.

“Yes.” Henry nodded. “Yes. My dad’s a tailor.” He wasn’t sure how that would help, but he stopped himself from saying more.

A few of the soldiers whispered to each other. The one
who had been doing the speaking, a thick-chested man with a black mustache, moved forward.

“What is this creature?” he asked.

“A raggant,” Henry said. “It’s, uh, sorta like a pig. I’m going to look for mushrooms. He’s good at it.”

The raggant bleated loudly and scuffled around inside the pack. Henry could feel the short legs thumping and pawing at his spine.

“The sword?” the soldier asked.

“For wolves,” Henry said quickly. “They like raggant.”

“Wolves,” the man said. It wasn’t a question. He stuck his thumbs in his belt and looked Henry up and down. Then, reaching out, he pulled back Henry’s hood.

Wheezing through its nostrils, the raggant lunged up and snapped at the soldier’s fingers. The soldier jumped back, yelping and shaking his hand.

Henry ducked his head and hurried forward, trying to ignore the eyes that were on him, trying to pretend like there was no reason in the world that the soldiers would want to stop him. He was in the gate. He was through, trying not to break into a run, straining his ears for any footsteps, but all he could hear was the raggant’s irritated breathing.

As soon as he could justify it, Henry slipped off the road and into the brush and trees that would grow quickly into the wood that climbed into the hills and mountains behind the city of Hylfing. He wasn’t far from the little faerie hall, he knew that, but spotting it was never easy. It wasn’t supposed to be, not even for a green man.

After one hundred yards or so of brush and pocket groves, Henry stopped and looked around himself. He thought he recognized some of the trees. After his first trip, he had carved a big
H
into a trunk to mark the spot, but the next time back, the faeren had healed the bark.

Henry whistled and then stood quietly, waiting. The raggant sneezed on the back of his neck.

Henry grimaced, wiping the moisture off. “Rags, c’mon now, be a help. Let me know if you see something.” He turned in place and whistled a tune his mother sang in her garden. Then he walked slowly forward and whistled again.

The raggant sputtered its lips, and Henry turned just in time to see a bush shift at the root. Henry hurried to it, grabbed the branches, and pulled it out of the hands of a round-faced faerie squatting in a low, arched door set in a mound of brush-covered earth.

The faerie’s cheeks were puffed out, and his face and neck were purple. The air shimmered around him and around the doorway.

“What’s your name?” Henry asked.

The faerie blinked, but was otherwise motionless.

“I can see you,” Henry said. “What’s your name?”

The faerie didn’t move. Henry leaned over and pinched his nostrils closed. “What’s your name?”

The little man slapped at Henry’s wrist and jumped back through the doorway. Henry shoved his leg through the shimmering, supposedly invisible opening before something physical, wooden or earthen, could be used to
close it. When nothing slammed on his shinbone, Henry sat on the ground and slid down inside.

The room had changed little. It was long, with its peaked earthen roof and walls covered with muddy sculpture. Committee proclamations and guidelines were pinned to the dirt wall on one side. A table—dotted with cards and dirty mugs—and barrel chairs were positioned in the center. It could hold a number of faeries, but right now, there was only one. He was on the far end of the room, rubbing a mixture of mud on the wall between some sticks that had been pressed into it in the shape of a door. One bucket of charmed water and one of charmed earth sat by his feet.

“Little faerie,” Henry said. “Do you know who I am?”

The faerie glanced back and then continued trying to make himself a doorway back to the Central Mound. Henry squeezed past the table and barrels, grabbed the faerie’s shoulders, and pulled him back to the table. Pushing the small, terrified faerie onto a barrel seat, Henry wedged himself down across from him.

“One more time,” Henry said. “What’s your name?”

“Thorn,” the faerie said. His fat face was smooth and hairless. The hair on his scalp was brown and fine, static clinging to his forehead in places.

“I’m Henry York Maccabee,” Henry said. The faeries always liked the full name. “I’m a green. My father is Mordecai.”

Thorn nodded.

“You knew that?” Henry asked.

Again, the faerie nodded.

Henry felt anger climb up inside him, but he pushed it down. “Well, then, Thorn,” he said. “Next time you hear me whistling and peek through your bushes, you holler and let me in.”

The faerie didn’t move.

“Okay,” Henry said. “How old are you? You look pretty young.”

“Thirty-two,” the faerie said. “Last moon.”

Henry scrunched his lips. “Right. So why don’t you tell me what’s happening? Why are you here alone? Why did you try to hide? Also, I’m going to need a pen. I have to write a message.”

“A pen?”

“Yes,” said Henry. “With ink. For writing on paper.”

The faerie’s eyes lit up. “Is the message official?”

“What? What do you mean?”

“Is it for official businessings?”

Henry thought about this. If any message of his was ever going to be official, this was it. He nodded. “It’s for your queen.”

Thorn’s mouth fell open. He seemed unable to catch his breath, inhaling in useless spurts like he’d been kicked in the stomach. He jumped off his barrel and rushed to a stack of shelves in the corner. He returned to the table, glowing, carrying what looked to be a box wrapped in a potato sack. He set it in front of Henry, pushed his plump cheeks up with a wide smile, raised his eyebrows, and whisked away the sack like an amateur magician.

Henry blinked and cocked his head. He was looking at a typewriter—a wooden typewriter.

“The design is my own,” Thorn said. “I started on smelting kits and repairings when I was young, but those horrible contraptions the district uses have no life, no flavoring. They are all hard grindings and clumsy hammers.”

Henry leaned to one side and then the other. The thing was truly amazing. Perfectly smooth, nearly black wood with a solid band of pale inlay, nearly white. And inside that, a band of glistening silver. The word
Thorningtons
had been engraved in the side. Polished black keys with sparkling white letters lay below an army of silver hammers and a wooden roller. He ran his hands gently over the keys.

“Are they stones?” he asked.

Thorn sighed happily. “Yes. Shaped by a mountain stream—I will not tell you which one under any torturings. It took me a heavy week to find enough of the proper body and heft. The letterings are needled pearl mother.” Thorn straightened, suddenly serious. “I must ask, beseech, and demand that you use this inscriptor for your message.”

“Um …,” Henry said.

Thorn raised a plump hand and nodded. “Inscriptage is hard learned, true, but I can assist in difficulties.”

“Thanks,” Henry said. “Really. You can watch, but I should be fine.” Thorn was now breathing in his ear. Henry leaned away and pointed back at the barrel seat. “You sit and tell me what’s going on. I’ll type.”

Thorn narrowed his eyes and slipped onto his seat. “Type?” he asked.

Henry fished one of Nimroth’s pages out from his pouch and shifted the raggant’s weight on his shoulders. “Type,” he said again. “In the world where these were invented, they’re called typewriters.”

“You have been? You have seen them?”

Henry nodded, smoothing the paper flat on the table, and then studied the wooden machine for a place to insert it.

“Are they …,” Thorn began. He cleared his throat nervously. “Are they more beautiful than this?”

Henry laughed. “Not that I’ve ever seen. Not even close. This is unbelievable.” He held up the paper. “Could you put this in?”

Thorn, glowing bright red with elation, carefully wound the page around the roller for Henry. The side he had to use was only partially blank. The other was covered with scrawl. When the faerie was content with the page’s positioning, he sat back down, put his elbows on the table, and propped up his chin.

“Go ahead,” Henry said, trying to think of how to start his letter. “Tell me why you’re the only one here and why you didn’t want me in.”

Thorn’s joy clattered to the floor around him. His skin reverted to pale, and even though he couldn’t take his eyes off his typewriter, the extreme sparkle of love was gone.

“It was all Franklin Fat’s fault,” he said. “Not that I was there to see, but I heard enough. As did we all.”

“What?” Henry asked, staring at the yellowed page in front of him. Smiling, he pressed down a key, and a silver
hammer swung forward—an actual hammer-shaped hammer. An
a
appeared in purple ink on the page. Henry spaced and punched on.

“The hearing,” Thorn said, watching Henry’s slow hammering with glazed eyes. “Fat Frank was unfaeried. No one wanted it, but if the rules don’t hold, then you may as well be human. No offense.”

“And?” Henry asked, more than a little distracted.

“And Mordecai Westmore, your father that is, bonded as he is to this district and others, stood against the rules. He made slighting remarks about the committee’s enforcement, and, well, rules is rules as the rules say someplace, or at least as all the oldies say they say. And even when the committee had banged the hammer, he still kept on calling Fat Franklin a faerie.” Thorn slipped off his seat and moved to Henry’s shoulder, examining his work.
“Queen
takes a third
e
at the tail.” He pointed at the page.

Henry looked up and pointed back at Thorn’s seat. “Well, why can’t he be? Frank, I mean. Why does his magic have to yellow?”

Thorn sat back down. “Is it yellowing already? Some faeren thought he’d be chalk by morning. Others said it’d be a moon.”

“Chalk?”

“The words were spoken,” Thorn said seriously. “I heard them. He is no longer of the mound, and its magic will run out of his blood, out of his body, until he has no spark and no color and no … life. His breath will leave, and he will harden.”

Henry paused and stared at the little faerie. “Really? You’re serious? Frank will turn into chalk? They’re killing him?”

“Oh, the oldies said there were charms. He could live a while bonded to a tree, so long as he stayed close to its roots. With the right wizarding, he could even live a year or two as a common dwarf.” Thorn shrugged. “Not Fat Franklin. He hubbubbed and name-called and swore he’d stay in Hylfing when the committee had district-banned him, and Mordecai, your father, called him a friend and invited him to stay as long as his pleasure kept him.”

“So?” Henry asked.

“Rules is rules,” Thorn said. “The committee reduced the Hylfing hall to token.”

Henry looked into the faerie’s eyes. “But they didn’t close it?”

“They call it closed and collapsed,” Thorn said. “But I’m here to keep an eye, sent on account of failure in other duties.”

Henry couldn’t hide his surprise. After everything the last committee had done, they wouldn’t give even a little on Frank?

“I can’t believe that,” Henry said.

“Well, it’s only for half a moon,” Thorn said. “Out of respect for rules and no slight to your father.”

The raggant snored on Henry’s shoulder. Henry shook his head. “I wasn’t talking about closing the hall. Faeren are ridiculous.”

Thorn sagged on his barrel.

“No offense,” Henry added. He looked down at his page. “And I have a job for you.”

“Can’t,” Thorn said. “Hall’s closed.”

“Can,” Henry said. “And it’s not really for me. It’s for the queene. I’m almost done.”

A few minutes later, Henry sat back. His purple message seemed passable.

“What kind of ink is this?” he asked.

“Ink?” Thorn asked. “The silk ribbon soaks in blackberry juice. I would like something darker but have found nothing.”

“Catch an octopus,” Henry said, pulling his page off the roller. “They’ll squirt ink at you when they’re mad.”

The little round faerie cocked his head. “Is this what the other world uses?”

“Honestly, no. I doubt it,” Henry said. “But their inscriptors aren’t so lovely as this.”

Thorn crossed his arms and grinned. “I shall gather octopi. I shall milk them for my ink.”

Henry smiled and read through his letter one final time. Unfortunately, all of it was lowercase, and he’d slipped up on a word or two, but the queene could overlook that. After all, it was in purple ink, and he’d managed to make it sound especially faerie-pompous.