The Lady Gwen
Wellnut and his entourage had gone out to frolic in the new spring blossoms.
Really, that’s all they had intended to do.
It wasn’t like everyone else wasn’t out running around in the field this week. The winter snows had finally melted away for good, the buds were beginning to open, the colors were intoxicating, and it was the height of frolicking season.
But somehow, in between leaving the Fae realm through the portal in the woods and coming back in, Wellnut and his companions had acquired a pet mortal.
They hadn’t really thought this whole thing through, Wellnut had to admit, as they headed back toward the Fae portal in the heart of the forest. He was a little worried about what Queen Mab would say when they walked into her Court with a mortal woman in tow.
“We’re gonna get in trouble,” said Lillyroot, as the woman—Gwen, her name was—trod heavily along the path, flattening the new grass as she followed the Fae. She was still in quite a daze from the strange turn her afternoon had taken. Still stunned from that head wound, too, Wellnut figured. At least they had stopped the bleeding.
“Shush, you,” said Wellnut. He was trying to think.
“What are we gonna do with a mortal?” asked Hollytrope.
“Don’t know yet,” said Wellnut.
“Mab’s gonna be mad,” said Sweetbutter.
“Pfah,” said Wellnut. “Wait til we tell the Queen all about how clever we were. Mab’s gonna love it.”
“What is this doing here?” Mab did not love it. “Your beauteous majesty,” said Wellnut, cringing a little, as they stood with Gwen in the center of the Court, with Mab and her advisors looking down upon them from the woody circle. “We can’t send her back.” “You can, and you will. What are we going to do with a mortal? She’s not a changeling child; she’s not even a Dreamer. Grown humans cannot live in the Fae realm. Take it back.” “But,” said Wellnut. “TAKE IT BACK.” Lillyroot, Hollytrope, Sweetbutter, and even some of Mab’s Council shrank backwards, but Wellnut gulped and stood firm. “BUT HE’LL GET HER!” Wellnut said. “And besides...I made a promise.” A Fae promise was not to be taken lightly. Mab’s eyes narrowed, but her delicate, luminous shoulders relaxed a tad, and she sat back on her throne of moonlight and primrose blossoms. “Tell us what happened,” said Mab. “Ok, so we went out to do some frolicking, you see, and—” Mab raised a hand. “Tell it properly,” she said. So Wellnut gulped again, drew a deep breath, and began the Tale of Lady Gwen.
“So, your Moonlit Majesty, you see how it is,” said Wellnut. “Can we keep her?” “Does this place get wi-fi?” asked the Lady Gwen, shaking her phone at the trees. “We’ll see about that last part,” said Queen Mab, as the Seelie Court sighed with satisfaction and sat back to absorb the tale. “But for now, she can stay. You made her a promise. We’ll honor it.” The Court nodded in approval, and Wellnut threw his cap into the air with a whoop of joy. “But,” said Mab, “you also made a deal with Death.” Wellnut’s whoop cut off short and his cap came back down and hit him in the face. “That always comes with baggage,” Mab continued. “And the Shadow has never been our enemy before, but neither is he our ally.” “D’ya think he’s mad at us?” asked Hollytrope. “As I said, we’ll see,” said Mab. “Now take your new pet somewhere, make her comfortable, get her something to eat. And maybe a bath. We have other business to attend to.” Wellnut and his company led the Lady Gwen into the forest, toward the pond. “Are you hungry?” he asked her. “I could go for a double-bacon-urp-deluxe with cheese,” she said, still waving her phone around. “Seriously, do you not get signal out here? I need to call my kids. Where are we?” There was much about the Fae Realm that the Lady Gwen didn’t know yet, but at least she would have plenty of time to work it out.
“What is this doing here?” Mab did not love it. “Your beauteous majesty,” said Wellnut, cringing a little, as they stood with Gwen in the center of the Court, with Mab and her advisors looking down upon them from the woody circle. “We can’t send her back.” “You can, and you will. What are we going to do with a mortal? She’s not a changeling child; she’s not even a Dreamer. Grown humans cannot live in the Fae realm. Take it back.” “But,” said Wellnut. “TAKE IT BACK.” Lillyroot, Hollytrope, Sweetbutter, and even some of Mab’s Council shrank backwards, but Wellnut gulped and stood firm. “BUT HE’LL GET HER!” Wellnut said. “And besides...I made a promise.” A Fae promise was not to be taken lightly. Mab’s eyes narrowed, but her delicate, luminous shoulders relaxed a tad, and she sat back on her throne of moonlight and primrose blossoms. “Tell us what happened,” said Mab. “Ok, so we went out to do some frolicking, you see, and—” Mab raised a hand. “Tell it properly,” she said. So Wellnut gulped again, drew a deep breath, and began the Tale of Lady Gwen.
Once upon a time in the village, there was a lady.
She was not a Fine Lady. She didn’t live in the castle, for there was no castle in this village. She didn’t even live in one of the very nice houses up on the hill. (The people in those houses thought they were very fine indeed, as they looked down on the rest of the villagers through their big bay windows.)
No, this lady, whose name was Gwen, lived with her husband Fred and their two children in a hovel at the lower edge of town, where everything is covered in dirt and the people spend most of their time glaring at one another and wishing they could live somewhere else.
Gwen’s family was always hungry, even though she worked all day in the kitchens at the local BurgerUrp. Fred did not work unless he had to, and the children had to go to school, so it fell to Gwen to bring home as much money as she could and then hide it from Fred, who wanted to spend it on cheap whiskey.
Gwen and Fred had loved each other, once, but now Gwen wondered if she had been imagining that, for they never laughed or smiled or shared gentle kisses any more. They barely spoke to each other at all, and when they did, it was only to disagree about money, or the children, or the state of their hovel, or pretty much anything else they could think of.
Gwen and her family were all very unhappy.
One morning, after a particularly disagreeable disagreement the night before, Gwen decided that she would not go to work at the BurgerUrp that day.
“I don’t care if it’s the Two for One Burger Bargain Bonanza and Scott needs all-hands-on-deck,” she thought to herself, as she watched Fred drive away to the temporary job she had insisted that he take before the city turned their water off. “I’ve worked ten hours a day for eight days in a row, and if I don’t take some time off, I will surely die.”
“That’s not quite exactly how the Lady Gwen put it,” said Wellnut, “but Your Majesty and this esteemed Court may not appreciate some of the words she actually used.”
“Yes, yes, fine. Thank you. Go on,” said Mab.
And so Gwen took some of the money she had hidden, and went to the SnappyShop, where the doors are open through the whole day and night, and bought her own bottle of cheap whiskey.
A great, big bottle.
And she began to walk.
If she had seen the Shadow that was following her, she may have walked faster, or she may have walked straight to the BurgerUrp and donned her apron, or she may have walked across Notham’s Bridge and never come back.
But she didn’t see the Shadow, and so she walked to the park, where she drank, and the fine people of the town scowled at her because they thought they knew all about her.
She walked to the beach, where she drank some more, and the early-season tourists scowled at her, because they hadn’t paid all that money and come all the way up here just to watch the locals being sloppy.
Eventually, Gwen grew tired of seeing only scowling faces, so she walked to the edge of the field where almost no one goes. As she came through the woods into the field, she saw the flowers blooming: Yellow dandelions! Red poppies! Blue bellflowers! Hollyhocks of every hue!
And not a one of them was scowling at anything or anyone!
“Look at all the beautiful colors,” Gwen said to herself. “I’ll sit here a while. Fred can just...”
Gwen did not care what Fred did or thought, so she stopped talking about him, and made her way toward the big oaken log across the path, which would make a fine place to sit and watch as the sunset painted even more colors across the field.
The Shadow was waiting for her.
But!
The Shadow didn’t know that there were Fae in the field, too, who had come to frolic and dance among the flowers in the twilight. The Fae saw the Shadow, though, and they knew that such a Dark Thing, with its stillness and its endings, didn’t belong here in the field with all the new life and new beginnings.
The brave Fae approached the Shadow and said,
“Listen, you! You don’t belong here! Not in the springtime! Not among the new buds and the green shoots! Go on, git!”
But the Shadow did not move. It turned to the Fae and said,
“I have an appointment.”
The Fae knew that an appointment is an important thing, like a promise—and promises must be kept. But spring is the time of life and light, and even the Shadow must obey the laws of Nature, and in that field, the Fae who protect those laws.
“We’ll make you a deal,” said the Fae. “You can stay if—”
“I do not bargain with Fae,” said the Shadow.
The Shadow is very rude! I mean, really! Standing there in the Fae’s own land, being all aloof and pleased with himself and brushing us off like so much—
“Get on with it,” said Mab.
“Sorry,” said Wellnut, and got on with it.
The Fae turned to the Lady Gwen, who could see neither them nor the Shadow, and was only making her way toward the log, where she intended to sit and admire the beauty of the field.
“I wish I could live here,” said Gwen.
The clever Fae heard her wish.
“Ah ha!” said one. “The Shadow cannot be bargained with, but perhaps it can be tricked.”
“And we might get a sip of that drink she has,” said another. “It smells dark and sweet and magical, like aged wood.”
As one, the brave Fae approached the Shadow as he made his way toward Gwen, who was even then making her way toward the oaken log, closer and closer and closer.
“Dark Lord,” the Fae said, ever so politely. “We apologize for our hastiness. Though it is the time of new life and beginnings, we forgot that you, too, are, in your own way, are also in the business of new beginnings. Even in nature, the old must make way for the new, and without you, nothing could end, so nothing could begin. We beg your forgiveness, and ask a boon.”
“Speak,” the Shadow said, eager to get on with his job.
“Will you allow us to convince her to make us her beneficiaries, and to secure her agreement that anything she’s brought into our field, in whole or in part, will be the undisputed property of the Fae?”
“Yes, yes, I suppose,” said the Shadow. “Mortals’ possessions are not my concern.”
“Then we won’t detain you a moment longer!” The Fae laughed and bowed to the Shadow. They flitted toward Gwen, who still had not noticed anything besides the colors of the field and the log on which she planned to sit.
And maybe the inside of her bottle, which was nearly empty now.
It’s easy for the Fae to hide from mortals, if they want, when they want, but to make themselves seen can be a challenge. The mortal has to be in the right frame of mind, and they have to be—
“We know all this,” said Mab.
“Well, you wanted it told properly,” huffed Wellnut, “but all right, I’ll hurry it along. The Fae approached the Lady Gwen, and lucky for them she was in the right frame of mind—”
“A right proper state of mind!” giggled Sweetbutter, earning a sour look from Wellnut.
“...ahem. And so they spoke to her.”
“The Shadow is coming for you, but we can help. If you will give us your spirits, we can keep you safe from his cold grasp. You can dwell with us in the Fae realms forever, where neither Death nor...whatshisname, Fred, can touch you.”
“Ooh, look, fairies!” said the Lady Gwen, and belched with delight.
“FAE,” they corrected her. “Quickly, will you accept our terms?”
“Sure! Here, little guys, have a drink with me!”
With that, the Lady Gwen stumbled in the brambles, fell, and struck her head sharply on the log.
And then she lay still.
The Shadow approached. “Gwen,” he said, “It’s time. Come with me.”
Gwen sat up and looked down at her body, lying there on the ground, the remnants of the bottle soaking into the dirt, mixing with the blood around her hair.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“You’re not going anywhere with him!” said the Fae.
The Shadow was enraged. “She is mine!” he growled. “She is mine, and it’s her time. You may keep what she leaves behind, but I have to take her now.”
“I had the funniest dream,” said Lady Gwen. “I dreamed there were fairies...”
“FAE,” said the Fae.
“...and they said they could make me immortal. That would really piss Fred off, I bet.” She craned her head up, where the Fae were dancing in the air between her and the Shadow. “Am I immortal?”
“No,” said the Shadow.
“Yes!” said the Fae. “She agreed to share her spirits with us. Spirits. Plural. She accepted our terms, and paid for our protection. You’ve lost this one, Lord Death. A deal’s a deal. Now stand aside and let us attend to our ward.”
The Shadow knew it had been outwitted by the clever Fae, and with a final grumble, it disappeared as the last rays of the setting sun turned the flowers of the field into a twilight rainbow fog.
The Fae, who never break their promises or back out of their deals, took Lady Gwen to their kingdom in the forest, where she dwelt with them happily ever after.
The End
“So, your Moonlit Majesty, you see how it is,” said Wellnut. “Can we keep her?” “Does this place get wi-fi?” asked the Lady Gwen, shaking her phone at the trees. “We’ll see about that last part,” said Queen Mab, as the Seelie Court sighed with satisfaction and sat back to absorb the tale. “But for now, she can stay. You made her a promise. We’ll honor it.” The Court nodded in approval, and Wellnut threw his cap into the air with a whoop of joy. “But,” said Mab, “you also made a deal with Death.” Wellnut’s whoop cut off short and his cap came back down and hit him in the face. “That always comes with baggage,” Mab continued. “And the Shadow has never been our enemy before, but neither is he our ally.” “D’ya think he’s mad at us?” asked Hollytrope. “As I said, we’ll see,” said Mab. “Now take your new pet somewhere, make her comfortable, get her something to eat. And maybe a bath. We have other business to attend to.” Wellnut and his company led the Lady Gwen into the forest, toward the pond. “Are you hungry?” he asked her. “I could go for a double-bacon-urp-deluxe with cheese,” she said, still waving her phone around. “Seriously, do you not get signal out here? I need to call my kids. Where are we?” There was much about the Fae Realm that the Lady Gwen didn’t know yet, but at least she would have plenty of time to work it out.
The End
This is a companion piece to Bourbon and Blossoms, my entry for the Whiskey and Wildflowers challenge. Thought it would be fun to tell the same tale from a different perspective. It's also a supplementary short story that goes with my upcoming novel, Milton's Field.
Man, *** Fred. All my homies hate Fred. Love the Fae!
Too low they build who build beneath the stars - Edward Young
LOL! You'll get many more opportunities to hate on Fred in the novel...