Faerie Tale by Nicola Rhodes Page A

occasionally allowed admission to these thoughts, and she had clearly picked up on it. 
    But she had not understood him.  He did not want to rule.  He did not want to be worshipped.  You could not treat people like that.  If you did, then you stopped thinking of them as people. Of course, she did not think of them as people in the first place.
    The needle on the record player of Denny’s mind skidded suddenly backwards.  ‘What stones?’ he asked.
    Queen Onagh looked sharply at him.  ‘What?’ she snapped.
    ‘You said, “the blood of a witch on the stones to bind us to the land …”.’ Then another thought struck him.  ‘What witch?’
    The Queen smiled.  ‘I shall enjoy being married to you,’ she said.  ‘I like a challenge.’ She ruffled his hair.  ‘And you’re cute too,’
    Denny shivered. ‘I knew I wasn’t going to like it,’ he thought.
    ‘Yes but what witch?’ he persisted.  ‘Too urgent,’ he thought.
    The Queen just laughed and snapped her fingers.  Several Faeries appeared, as if from nowhere, with expressions on their beautiful faces that went far beyond ordinary malevolence.  They surrounded him and regarded him with glowing eyes.  Some of them giggled.  They had a pent up excitement in their demeanour.  And long sharp knives in their hands. 
     “Uh oh,” thought Denny.  Maybe being married was not the worst thing that could happen to him after all. 
    ‘It is time to begin your re-education,’ she told him.  ‘When it is complete then you shall know everything.’
    As she closed the door of the cell behind her, the Faeries swarmed at Denny. 
    At the sound of the first shriek, a smile flitted over her face.  ‘I do enjoy this part,’ she murmured to herself.
    * * *
    Hecaté blew into Cindy’s room and marched confidently to the terrible tot on the bed.  Like Tamar before her, she swept the child up into her arms and held him up to the window in an iron grip.  A look of alarm spread over the little features at this unanticipated show of spirit. 
    ‘Ahh,’ began Hecaté carefully. ‘Ooh a coochie coochie coo.’
    * * *
    ‘We’re going in circles,’ said Stiles
    ‘How can you tell?’ said Tamar.  ‘It all looks the same.’
    ‘That’s how I can tell.’
    ‘Oh, well … you’re probably right.  Of course, it would help if we knew where we were supposed to be going.’
    ‘You can’t sense him at all?’
    ‘Nothing, I can’t even sense you, and you’re right next to me.  Something’s interfering with my powers.’
    ‘It’s her.’
    ‘I know – she’s set her will against me.  It’s like blundering about in a fog.’
    ‘So, where we want to go then, is wherever she doesn’t want us to go, can you tell where that is?’
    Tamar stopped and looked around her with her eyes closed – so to speak.  Then she pointed.  ‘There!’ she said.  ‘That’s where we keep getting turned back.
    ‘Sure?’
    ‘Oh yes, it’s like a strong wind blowing in my face now that I know what I’m looking for.’
    ‘North,’ said Stiles looking at his wrist. 
    ‘What’s that?’
    ‘Gadget that Hecaté got me for Christmas.  Watch with a compass in it.  Never thought I’d ever get to use the bloody thing, but it comes in handy now.  I’m leading from now on,’ he said firmly.  ‘I just keep going north, right?  Just follow me.’ 
    Tamar never wasted time arguing when something self-evidently made sense, and this did.  Stiles’s compass would not be subject to the strange forces that were interfering with her senses.  He would follow that compass to the end of the world if necessary, and nothing would distract him.  He was nothing if not dogged. 
     
    After only half an hour, they stopped because Stiles’s compass suddenly flew out of his hand and stuck to a rock that was rearing straight up out of the ground as if it had been planted there. 
    Stiles cursed.  ‘Magnetic,’ he said.  ‘We haven’t been going north at all.