Home Improvement: Undead Edition

“Worst knowe ever,” whispered May angrily. It sounded like she was hanging to my right, somewhere on the other side of Quentin. “I realize that your memory isn’t always totally reliable, but couldn’t you have at least tried to remember the giant spiders? That seems like the sort of thing you’d want to mention before you came for a visit.”

“They weren’t here before!” The puncture wounds at the back of my neck were a dull, distant throb. I could really get used to this whole accelerated healing thing. “Neither were the pixies.”

“Well, they’re here now,” replied May. “Quentin and Danny are still out.”

“Swell.” I heal fast; May’s functionally indestructible. In this case, that just meant we got to be awake when the giant spiders came back and decided to liquefy our insides for breakfast. I wasn’t sure either of us would survive that. “What did I miss?”

“The spider grabbed you, and then two more grabbed Danny, while the pixies herded Quentin and me into the first one. We never had a chance.”

“Hold on—the pixies are working with the spiders?”

“Maybe it’s a tribute thing? They feed us to the spiders, the spiders leave them alone.”

“No, really, hold on.” The spiders couldn’t be eating the pixies. Their fangs were too big for that. Any spider trying to eat a pixie would just wind up with a skewered pixie, and no breakfast to speak of. “They’re working together. They have to be.”

“What, we managed to blunder into the middle of the great pixie-spider alliance? Oh, that’s just fantastic. This place gets more entertaining by the minute.”

I tried squirming again. I still couldn’t get any real purchase against the silk, and I gave up after a few seconds, letting myself hang limp. The answer was obvious. It was all but staring me in the face the whole time. I’d just been distracted by its many, many teeth. “They’re not spiders.”

“Eight legs, fangs, wrapping us up in giant snack-pack cocoons—if they’re not spiders, what are they? Pretty pink ponies?”

“They’re bogies.”

There was a moment of silence as May considered my words. Then she groaned. “Oh, crud.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

Bogies, like pixies, bridge the gap between the intelligent and bestial fae. They’re shapeshifters. Shapeshifters are pretty common in Faerie, but most shapeshifting fae have a limit to the number of forms they can assume. Bogies don’t. They can take the shapes of a thousand types of creeping, crawling things: spiders and centipedes, scurrying beetles, and even, occasionally, really big frogs. They’re territorial, like their pixie cousins, and they tend to live in large family groups, defending each other to the death.

Danny made a grumbling sound, like rocks grinding together, and the cocoon to my left shifted. “Anybody get the number of that dump truck?” he asked, sounding woozy.

“We found a bogie nest,” I said, without preamble. Best to rip the bandage off cleanly.

Danny was still swearing when Quentin woke up a few minutes later. “Hello?”

“Hey, Quentin,” I said. “Don’t bother to struggle. We’re bogie-caught.”

“. . . Oh,” he said. “That’s new.”

“Yeah, I know.” A distant humming sound was filtering into the room, like the beating of a hundred tiny wings. “Danny, shush. I think the pixies are coming back.”

“Oh, that’s exactly what I wanted,” muttered Danny, and went silent.

The pixies brought light with them when they came pouring into the room, their tiny bodies glowing like low-watt Christmas lights. There were at least fifty of them. They swarmed to surround us, jabbing tiny spears and daggers at our faces—but not, I noticed, actually making contact. In fact, except for the bites from the bogies, we hadn’t taken nearly as much damage from the knowe’s inhabitants as we could have.

Maybe the Goldengreen’s new denizens were trying to play nicely. Sort of.

I cleared my throat. “Uh, hi,” I said, to the pixie that was flying back and forth in front of my nose. Pixies don’t hover well. It was a male, maybe four inches tall, glowing with a rich, royal blue tint that didn’t quite go with the scrap of buttercup-yellow sheeting that he was using as a loincloth. “I’m Toby Daye.”

“And now she’s talking to pixies,” said Danny, in a long-suffering tone. “We’re all gonna die here.”

“Danny, shush,” hissed May.

I did my best to ignore them, focusing instead on the pixie. “I think we may have managed to get off on the wrong foot.”

The pixie eyed me suspiciously, not saying anything. That made a certain amount of sense. The language barrier between the small folk and the human-sized fae meant that while he might have been able to understand me, I had no real way of understanding him.

“I’m starting to get an idea of what used to go on here, and I’m sorry. I had no idea. The things that Evening—”

That answered one question: the pixies definitely understood at least a little English. The flock went nuts when I said Evening’s name, shrieking in high-pitched voices as they all started flying wildly around us. Almost all. The blue pixie continued flitting back and forth, eyes narrowing with suspicion.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” I said, hurriedly. “It’s okay, really! We’re not here to do the things she did. Do you understand me? We’re not here for that at all!”

The blue pixie swooped a little closer, wings buzzing into a blur behind him as he aimed his spear at the tip of my nose. It was difficult to resist the urge to go cross-eyed looking at it.

“My name is October Daye. I’m supposed to be the new Countess here. The Queen sent me.” The pixie shook his spear. “Hey! It wasn’t my idea, okay? She didn’t ask me. But as far as she’s concerned, this knowe is my problem now, and she’s not going to take it well if we never come back out. Do you understand? If we disappear, more big ones will come looking for us.” There was something charmingly perverse about the idea that I was counting on the Queen of the Mists to avenge my potential death; she hates me, after all, and would probably be thrilled if I conveniently disappeared. But form would still insist she send someone into Goldengreen to look for us, and once whoever that was found our bones—and the homicidal local ecosystem—a mass extermination would follow.

“Sweet Maeve, I don’t believe I’m worried about the pixies getting in trouble for killing us,” I muttered. More loudly, I said, “Do you understand ? We aren’t here to hurt you, but if you hurt us, the people who come after us won’t be this nice.”

“What is she doin’?” whispered Danny. Hearing a Bridge Troll whisper was something like hearing a gravel truck trying to be quiet. It would have been funny under most circumstances.

“She’s trying to reason with the pixies,” said Quentin.

“Can she even do that?” asked Danny, abandoning his attempts at whispering. “Pixies aren’t that smart—hey! Ow!” Pixies swarmed around him, stabbing out with their tiny weapons. Bridge Trolls have thick skin, but even thick skin can be punctured if the attacker is dedicated enough.

May laughed. “Looks like they’re smart enough.”

“Guys, can we settle down? Please?” The blue pixie was still hanging in front of me, a wary, quizzical expression on his face. I sighed, focusing on him. “Sorry about my friends. All the blood’s going to their heads, and it’s probably messing with their brains.”

“Hey!” said May.

“So please. Let us down. We can talk about this rationally, once we have our feet on solid ground.” The pixie didn’t look convinced. I took a deep breath. “All right, you want me to swear? I’ll swear. I swear by oak and ash and rowan and thorn that we did not come here intending harm. I swear by root and branch and rose and tree that none will raise a hand against you, unless hands are raised against us.”

The pixie hesitated before turning and jabbing his spear at the rest of the flock. The pixies abandoned their swarming to come and circle around him, their various glows blending into a single off-white glow. A flurry of high-pitched exchanges followed. It seemed like every pixie had an opinion on the matter—that, or they just really enjoyed yelling at each other.

“Toby? What’s happening?” asked Quentin.

“The pixies are deciding whether to let us go,” I said. “I think.”

“Or maybe they’re getting ready to eat us,” said May dolefully.

“Oh, swell,” said Danny.