SciFi and Fantasy Stories: Saving Moktolkienia!!1

Philippe Phelops was a shoemaker’s son, and a dreamer. He didn’t have a special birthmark, or a magic sword, but since he was small he had felt himself destined for Great Things.
Needless to say, his peers didn’t much agree with this and would tease him mercilessly. This time they’d caught him playing at slaying dragons with the byre broom and had chased him roaring down the street. Philippe wiped his nose against his hand and stumbled deeper into the woods. He was beginning to suspect he was severely lost, but he needed time to think, and plot revenge against the other rowdy apprentices. Why didn’t they understand that he wasn’t like them, destined for the hard work and muck of a small town? His soul was too sensitive to be constantly bound up in the everyday. Philippe puffed up his chest and clenched his fists, making a resolution. He’d show them. He would wage war on the very essences of their prosaic, blockheaded beings. Yes, Philippe was going to compose some really angry poetry.

He was stomping through the undergrowth thinking up a particularly acid verse about young men who thought a perfect complexion made them gods’ gift to women when a glint of metal amongst the leaves caught his eye. He bent and picked it up, brushing earth off the incised, corroded bronze. It was an amulet. Thinking this interesting, Philippe carried on in a slightly better mood, the object swinging from his hand.
Suddenly he was blinded by bright sunlight.
“Ho there, traveller!”
Philippe lowered the hand, amulet swinging. “I beg your pardon? Who are you calling a- Aagrh!” A wiry old man who seemed to be mostly beard and bushy eyebrows was scuttling towards him brandishing what looked like an obscure instrument of torture and a ruler. Philippe stepped backwards and fell over a log. “Aargh! I’ve gone blind!”
The old man tutted and moved the youth’s fringe out of the way, measuring the ill-dyed black tangle of hair against his ruler and measuring the rest of Philippe’s proportions with his calliper machine. Philippe struggled to get up. “Aaargh! Get off me, you perv! What are you doing, by Virtog’s toe clippings?”
“..and he shall come, dresséd in the colour of night unlike the common folk, bearing aloft the Amulet of Mil’keba…” the old man muttered, and siezed the amulet to look at it, then stared deep into Philippe’s eyes.
Philippe held his breath, not just because the old man smelled like a dead goat that someone had stuffed with Roquefort in arcane sacrifice to Phaw, the deity of cheesemaking.
“It is the prophecy!” The old man declared.
“The prophecy?” Philippe queried wonderingly, hope long half-buried suddenly surging in his heart.
“The prophecy!” The sage (for such he must surely be) repeated. “You are he!”
Philippe sat up and shook his fringe aside “He who?”
“He Who Is Destined! You are surely descended of the line of Mil of Keba, the great hero who in time long before your grandsires’ gave his life to seal away the Evil Which Lurks…ah, but men grow forgetful, the Evil is gathering power again, and soon it will choose its champion…”
“I-I haven’t seen any Lurking Evil around,” Philippe stammered nervously.
“See! It is Lurking!” The old man flailed his ruler around. (it stuck in his beard, but he didn‘t notice) “Look around you: the leaves are falling from the trees, the earth withers, the trees produce unnatural spiky fruit!”
“Um. It‘s autumn. Those are conkers.” Philippe leaned back as the old hermit seized up a conker and waved it in his face, his aspect terrible to behold.
“UNNATURAL!” The old man stabbed a finger at Philippe. “You, child of Destiny, were born because the world is out of shape. Of course you don’t remember how things used to be. There used to be furry chestnuts, good for eating, and elves, nay, even in these very woods…and giant rabbits with glowy eyes that told you to burn things…”
“Are you sure…?”
“ELVES, I say!” the hermit roared, his breath terrible to endure. Philippe cowered. The ancient went on. “But even now, you can see the changes. There is great evil in men‘s hearts, is there not? They don‘t recognise you as a hero, do they?”
Philippe‘s look darkened. “No, they don‘t.”
“Ah-ha! And young people aren’t polite these days, and you can‘t get those brightly-coloured sweets that make your mouth crackle and are probably slightly toxic any more, can you?”
“By gosh, you‘re right! But what can I do about it? I mean, I’m fifteen years old - well, just - but surely there‘s someone who, well, knows what they‘re doing who can go and put things right?”
“DESTINY, I say! You‘re the Hero, the child of Mil‘Keba, you are the only one in the world shown in the Prophesy of the Ancients as being able to do it. The world is at stake, boy, how can you refuse?”
“I…er…what do I have to do?”
“Come with me,” the hermit said, and scuttled up a pile of rocks and down a hole. Philippe followed warily, putting the amulet around his neck for safekeeping. Down the hole, it was warm and rank. “See here now ah!” The hermit pulled out a dusty old scroll and rolled it out on a table. “The prophecy says the great threat will come from the South Westish, so that’s about here, and to have the best chances against unimaginable ancient evil you should collect the Sword of Destiny from the Cave of Doom that’s over the Mountains of Pointiness and the Lake of Great, here. Quest companions should find you on the way.”
Philippe peered at the map, holding his fringe aside. “But there‘s nothing on this map but mountains, where the forests were 1,000 years ago and a few principal rivers and cities…”
“Well, you can‘t read, can you?”
“No. No-one in the village can, ‘cept my uncle Ivan, a bit, but he doesn‘t visit often.”
“And you don‘t know where the towns are, do you?”
“No…”
The hermit threw his hands up in the air. “Well then what‘s the point in putting down writing you can’t read about places you haven’t been on the map?”
Philippe was defeated by this logic. “Er…”
A wooden bowl was thrust under his nose. “You can take the red mushroom, or the blue mushroom. Not the green mushroom, the green mushroom is my special.”
“My mum said I should never…”
“TAKE ONE.”
"All right.” Philippe reached out…

Philippe wandered back to the village feeling invincible and slightly dazed. This may have been because he kept walking into trees, but he apologised politely and they didn’t seem to mind. He never noticed the outhouse made of rotting old boards reading KEBA AND SINGH’S @@@ SUPER FERTILITY TALISMANS!!! Neither did he hear the old man’s cry of “Ho traveller!” to the next lost hiker stumbling around the woods, but he was filled with Purpose for the first time in his life, and ready to give everything to make the world as it once had been. His tender teenage heart swelled as he imagined the woods once again echoing to the beautiful unearthly singing of the elves, and his dilated teenage pupils reflected the brightness of his mystic inner visions. Philippe Phelops was a man of Destiny.

“Mum, Dad! I just found out I’m the chosen saviour of the world so I‘m going to have to go away for a bit,” Philippe explained, hastily shoving his few possessions into a bag and making for the door.
“Clean smallclothes!” His mother said, as he reached for the handle. The Man of Destiny went back and packed more underwear.
“It‘ll be a great Quest, I’m sure bards will sing songs about it…if I don’t return, put a statue in the village square to say I tried…” Philippe reached for the door.
“Toothbrush! And make sure you‘ve got thick socks, too, if you‘re going to be camping out all night.”
The Man of Destiny went back for some socks. “I‘m not going camping, mum, I‘m going to save the world. It‘s really important.” Philippe made to go.
“Kiss!” Philippe sighed and went to kiss his mum on the cheek. His mum gave him three kisses and handed him a parcel. “For when things get tough, all right?”
Philippe hugged her. “Thanks, mum.” His parents might not understand him at all, he mused, but they didn’t deserve to be overcome by the Lurking Evil. Philippe finally left.
And so, on that day, our Hero did sette forth…
Philippe’s dad, Francoise Phelops, came out of the back room. “What was that?”
Mrs. Phelops shrugged. “At least he’s out of the house.”

Four hours later and eight miles down the road saw Philippe trying to huddle himself miserably into a doorway to keep out of the rain. He’d been into the tiny village inn and all the locals had stared at him, making him very selfconscious. The distinctly cheerless sound of the banjo player had been the only sound in the room, save for the slow scrunch of a labourer chewing an onion, watching him with cold incurious eyes. Then a crooked old man had asked if he was male or female and the younger lads had started to leer at him, whether because they thought he was queer or because they thought he was a girl and the village hadn’t seen fresh females in a while he couldn’t tell, so he’d made his excuses and left. Only there was nowhere else to go. Philippe huddled further into his doorway, rain dripping off the front of the hood that came to what his mother called a “darling pixie-point” at the back. It was stay out here all night, go back to the unwelcome inn or go on in the rain in the dark. Knowing his luck, Philippe thought gloomily, he’d get waylaid by bandits. Or eaten by a bear. Or chased by elves. Or taken away by one of those great shiny saucer things that Crazy Old Pete said kept coming out of the sky and turning all his cows round in the night. Philippe blew at a drip from his hood. No, knowing his luck he’d get waylaid by bandits, chased by elves in a flying silver saucer dropping cows then eaten by a bear.
It was with such thoughts in mind Philippe tensed when the inn door banged open to spill out all sorts of drunken men in various states of cheerfulness and homicidal rage. Philippe set his shoulders to the door and tried to look invisible, but it was no good.
“’Allo, lookit thish, lads, ish the guy-gel from the inn!”
Philippe tried to ignore him, but the lads did come to look at him. One reached for his face.
“C’mon, pretty thing, shing for us, eh? Girls‘re good at that…”
“An‘ other shtuff.” Laughter.
Philippe could stand it no longer. “I am a man, you drunken idiots! I am a Man of Destiny!”
The drunk youths laughed the harder. “Prove it! C’mon, lads, lesh get ‘er shirt off.”
“I’m warning you…” Philippe raised his fists. He was at least a foot smaller than the shortest of them. Two seized him, throwing down his pack, and loosening his tunic, meaning to strip him and leave him in the rain. The amulet swung free of his shirt with the tugging. The youths paused for a moment to look at it, drink-hazed brains trying to come up with some witty remark about the jewellery.
“Heh, Kitty‘s got a blasted bell round ‘er neck. Ding-ding!”
Philippe lashed out. The youth was lifted off his feet and went skidding along the cobbles three feet away. Philippe blinked and stared at his fist, because he hadn’t actually hit anything.
His mystery comrade lumbered into view and struck the other boys, who veered away swearing. Shutters banged overhead.
“You let the boy wear ding if he wants, you drunken inbreds.” Someone pulled a knife.
“You’re gonna pay for that, stranger. ‘m gonna cut his ding right off…” The youth was interrupted by the traditional battlecry of the approaching Night Watch:
“NEEnawNEEnawNEEnaw…” Booted feet struck the cobbles.
“Quick!” Philippe felt himself seized by the pixie hood and snatched up his pack, following the shape of his rescuer in the dark as the other youths cut and ran. The man ran around the back of the inn to the meagre stables, stunned a groom with a single blow, vaulted onto a horse that just happened to be saddled there despite the animal being too small for him and signalled that Philippe should do likewise with the other horse in the courtyard. The Watch drew closer. NEEnawNEEnawNEEnaw… “Get on!”
Philippe, who had never ridden a horse in his life save for the pony rides at the village fete, stared up at the 12-hand destrier and looked around for a ladder. “Hurry up!” The horse looked at him with bridled malevolence. Philippe shrugged, snatched up a stable broom and backed off. The pale horse watched him, bemused. NEEnawNEEnawNEEnaw…
“Yeeeeeeeeaaargh!” Philippe ran up, used the broom for leverage, and pole-vaulted onto the animal’s back, landing hard and bruising his middle against the pommel. “Oof.”
The horse took off of its own accord, following the palfrey ridden by the stranger. It seemed there was a donkey tethered to the palfrey’s saddle and a man ran shouting out of the inn, but Philippe barely noticed, attempting to stay on the back of a creature who seemed intent on shaking him to bits and somehow get hold of the reins. Soon the village dropped far behind and they thundered on into the woods.

“Stop! Stop, I said!” Having ignored Philippe’s tugging on the reins for the last ten minutes, the great warhorse decided to obey his companion’s voice and obediently stopped dead, sending Philippe flying over its neck. Fortunately a holly bush broke his fall.
“Argh!” Philippe fought his way free. “Oh, blasted bush! Why is life so cruel to me?”
“You alright, lad?”
Philippe looked up through his drenched fringe. Now that he had time to think, the voice sounded familiar. He opened his mouth to reply but the other had dismounted and come over to look at him. “Uncle Ivan!”
Uncle Ivan beamed. “Aye lad.”
“You res- You helped me out with those louts!” Philippe grinned and hugged him, bruises all over momentarily forgotten, at least until mid-hug. Uncle Ivan bear-hugged back. “Arg!”
Uncle Ivan carried on regardless. “Oh yes, I was coming to see your mother when I saw some Blackwool Farthing lads having a lark with a kid who never had sense to cut his fringe. ‘Who would get beaten up by a bunch of pissed Blackwool Farthing lads with one webbed brain between them?’ thinks I, ‘Why Philippe,‘ thinks I, and there you are, my little nephew, all alone in the countryside.”
Philippe rubbed his arm sorely. “Lucky you had your horse just there, with a spare about.”
“Oh, it‘s not my horse. And I think you were pretty bold to steal the destrier, what with the donkey ready and all. Fine fellow, he is.” Uncle Ivan went over to look at the warhorse, which eyed the big man with distrust and shuffled a hoof over a handspan across. “Pure white, too…we’ll have to leave him in the woods or paint him up a bit or whatever lord he belongs to will have you hanged on the spot.”
“H-hanged?” Philippe fingered his neck gingerly. Hanged for horse-thievery was not the way for a Man of Destiny to go. It must be the Lurking Evil, he decided, tricking him into getting the wrong side of the law.
Uncle Ivan clapped him on the back. “And all this time I thought you were a pansy,” he laughed.
“Ouch,” said Philippe, wondering if his shoulderblade had been broken before.
“What a daring escape. There may be hope for you yet.”
Philippe massaged his collarbone gingerly, reflecting that he was too soaked to bother putting up his hood. “Why do watchmen make all that noise, anyway? If we hadn‘t heard them coming, they‘d have arrested us easily.”
“Ah lad, y’see there’s two kinds of criminals: the petty ones, and the vicious bastards. A petty criminal, he hears the watchmen yelling like that, he gets scared and runs away and never troubles anyone.”
“And the vicious bastards?”
“The watchmen make that noise so the bastards have time to go away. Watchmen’re men like you or I, lad. You wouldn‘t want to run full-tilt into an axe murderer, now, would you?”
“No, but…” So the Lurking Evil made watchmen timid, Philippe thought, before a woman’s hysterical screams split the night.
Uncle Ivan mounted the destrier. Philippe managed to hop onto the palfrey at the third try and tried to copy the series of kicks to make it go.

Moments later he pounded into a clearing. The woman was struggling on the ground under an oak, two burly men leaning over her and tearing at her clothing. Philippe drove the horse towards them, or at least attempted to. The horse brushed him off against the tree and he fell on one of the bandits. There was a strange flat squeak as he landed but he ignored that. With great presence of mind Philippe locked his arms around the man’s neck and cried: “Get off her, you brute!”
The man stood up. Philippe‘s feet dangled off the ground. “’Ere, what are you d-” there was a nasty solid noise as Uncle Ivan leaned over and struck the man hard with a branch. He crumpled. The other man lay stretched out on the ground, out cold from a blow of the destrier’s hoof.
Philippe struggled out from under the bandit and stood up, pushing his fringe out of his eyes. The donkey, whose rope had come loose, trotted down into the clearing, seeking its friends.
“You‘re safe now, young lady,” Uncle Ivan said. Philippe offered her a hand up just as the moon came out from behind the clouds. The girl stood up.
Long deep golden tresses spilled down around a dazzlingly pretty face, sticking to the elegant line of her neck in the rain, her pale skin unmarred by spot or blemish. Her large, long-lashed eyes were the clearest, deepest emerald Philippe had ever seen.
Uncle Ivan cuffed him round the head. “Stop staring at her chest, boy!”
“Ow! I was looking at her…” Philippe looked at the girl in her ragged rain-soaked dress and suddenly felt very strange. The material was very wet. “…I was looking at her face…” The girl’s rosebud lips quirked into a smile, and Philippe realised he was still holding her hand and shook it in a bout of uncertainty. “Um. Philippe…”
Amusement danced in those gorgeous viridian depths. “Loretta. Though you can call me Lottie, if you like. There‘s an abandoned cottage down the path there where I meant to spend the night - my pack’s back there, I was looking for food and dry wood when I got into trouble…” she looked up at Uncle Ivan on his white horse. “Oh, you‘re so dashing!” Lottie looked at Philippe and gave him a smile that made his stomach turn over. “And you saved me! Come on, we can go have something to eat around a cheery fire now.”
Philippe went and collected the palfrey and followed after her, the destrier doing its best to tread on his heels and nip the other horse, the donkey trotting behind. “I didn‘t do all that much…”
“Oh, but you killed it! You saved me!”
Philippe frowned. “It?”
“That crazy squirrel those charcoal-burners were trying to get out of my dress! What did you think I meant?” Lottie giggled. Philippe and Ivan exchanged looks. Philippe remembered falling hard on something that squashed and a small flat squeak.
“Oh. Right. Squirrel. Charcoal-burners, yes.”

“They‘re particularly vicious squirrels in this wood, I think,” Lottie was going on a little later, then caught sight of something ahead. “Oh, bothersome animals, they‘ve tugged all my dry sticks around…”
Philippe looked down at the sticks. They were neatly arranged in pentagrams and other occult symbols. Philippe swallowed. “Um…Lottie?”
Uncle Ivan interrupted him: “You were very lucky to find any dry wood after all this rain.”
Lottie beamed. “I seem to have a knack for bushcraft. I found a few bits and bobs for supper lying about, too: wild rosemary, wild thyme, wild garlic, wild boar…”
Philippe and Ivan gaped. “You killed a wild boar on your own?!”
Loretta gave a shy smile. “It‘s just a knack, really. You dig a pit and stab them enough times and they just fall over. Oh, and I found some trifles, too.”
Ivan frowned. “Surely you mean truffles?”
Loretta went around to a mound in the shadows of the ruined cottage and bent to pick something up. Philippe shut his eyes and tried to concentrate on how cold the rainwater dripping down his neck from his hair was.
Lottie straightened up triumphantly, holding aloft a small trifle. “I came across this abandoned marketplace, I think it must have been at a fey crossover portal because of all the sugar and the bits of foreign clothing. All that was left on the stalls were small bowls of various cake, custard, cream and jelly.”
Uncle Ivan shook his head, tethering the animals. “How very strange.”
“Yes,” Lottie agreed, frowning in bemusement. “It was a trifle bazaar. Anyway, it was lucky you came along, I‘m useless at cooking.” She beamed at her rescuers. Uncle Ivan looked at Philippe.
“I am a Man of Destiny!” Philippe protested. “Not a cook!”
“Oh, come on,” Lottie smiled winningly “use a little of that French expertise…”
“I am not French!”
Lottie blinked. “But you have a French name, a that’s definitely a stripy shirt under your tunic and you have a faint but noticeable French accent…”
Philippe scowled. “You‘re just discriminating! I‘m Moktolkienian by birth, and the chosen saviour of the land!” Uncle Ivan handed him a pan from the donkey’s pack and Philippe took it automatically, gesturing angrily. “I will not have my nationality thrown into doubt!” Ivan lit a fire. Philippe put the pan down and rolled up his sleeves just as automatically.
Lottie tilted her head. “The chosen saviour of Moktolkienia? From what?”
“The Lurking Evil.” Philippe took out his knife and brandished it in a heroic fashion. Uncle Ivan held up the herbs on a flat log as he did so. “It’s getting stronger, you know. That’s why I was Chosen, marked from my very birth to be the finder of the amulet.” Ivan tipped the expertly chopped herbs into the pan.
Lottie’s sparkling emerald eyes roved over the Amulet of Mil‘Keba. “What does it do?”
“I don‘t know, but it doesn‘t matter, the Lurking Evil is corrupting everything and I know I’m not going to stand around and let it.” Philippe reached into the bush beside him and pulled out a thrush’s egg, garnishing his righteous ire by breaking the fragile thing against the rim of the pan held up by his uncle and giving the first thing to hand - which happened to be strips of wild boar helpfully put there by Uncle Ivan - a good basting. “Soon it‘ll choose its champion, to wreak havoc on first Moktolkienia then the world,” he said, frowning as he distractedly seasoned the meat and turned it early so it would brown evenly.
“Oh! We must stop it!” Lottie exclaimed, raising her hands to her mouth and also admiring the way in which Philippe flipped and tested the cuts and prepared a light side salad without looking.
“Who told you all this?” Uncle Ivan raised a bushy eyebrow.
“Some weird old geezer who lived deep in the forest,” Philippe said with disarming honesty.
“A Sage! Oh, Philippe, I think you must be the fortune I left my third foster-family to seek! Look, this strangely-shaped birthmark in an obvious and non-embarrassing place matches the sigil on the Amulet if you hold it upside-down and slightly tilted away from the light…” Lottie tossed back her gorgeous brazen waves of hair and rolled her sleeve up to her elbow to show a pale blotching of pink that might, with some imagination, match part of the engraving on the Amulet.
“Wow,” said Philippe, holding the Amulet close and turning the meat with his spare hand. “It must be Destiny - you‘re a Quest Companion! Just like the Sage said! …hm.” Philippe paused and sniffed curiously. “Something smells good…”

Philippe had just settled himself under a blanket and was dozing off, so he wasn’t sure that he wasn’t dreaming when a girl’s voice asked: “Do you mind if I shove my ripening melons up by your head?”
“Muh?” Philippe turned over and blinked up at Lottie‘s radiant smile. “I beg your pardon?”
“Melons,” Lottie held them up. “Do you mind if I shove them up by your head? I tried wedging them up by your ass, but I was afraid they‘d get squashed in the night.”
“What?” Philippe sat up with the expression of a man offered mousetrap cheesecake.
“Your ass tends to fidget about a lot.” Lottie pointed. The donkey stared blankly back at Philippe, messily chewing a mouthful of trifle, and flicked an ear.
“Oh. Right..” There was a pause. “Where did you get those, anyway?”
“Oh, they were just lying about,” Lottie said airly. “I found a few bits of fruit at the trifle bazaar too, thought it‘d be good to save them for the journey. They’re far too hard for…”
“By Alantreta’s knees, those tits are vast!” came Uncle Ivan’s voice from the other side of the campfire. Lottie turned, clutching her firm melons. “Oh my!”
Philippe peered around her. “What‘s so exciting about ti-” Philippe caught sight of the dark-headed birds picking over the bones of their meal in the gloom, pale markings on face and chest just visible beyond the firelight‘s reach. They had to be at least six inches high. “Oh, gosh…are you sure they‘re not mutant blackbirds or something?”
“I think they‘ve noti-” Lottie began, before the abnormally-sized birds were gone in a whirr of wings. The companions looked at each other. Philippe noticed once again the way firelight turned Lottie’s hair the colour of polished brass.
“What was that about, do you think?” he hissed edgily. “Could the Lurking Evil be harassing us?”
Uncle Ivan snorted. “What, sending oversized hedge birds to intimidate us by clearing up after us?”
Philippe frowned under his fringe, put down. “Well it is lurking…” That was the thing about Uncle Ivan, he remembered: whilst he was a very fine fellow, straight down the line, he didn’t understand about things.
“I‘m not entirely sure they were tits,” Lottie mused. “They didn‘t quite move like birds…”
Philippe, however, was on a roll: “It could be just the beginning! If the Lurking Evil is about to create a Dark Champion, then maybe it‘s making practice minions! Dark hordes will ride out on the backs of mutant hedgehogs and rabbits with massive blackbirds and tits the size of boulders…”
“Ssh,” Lottie hissed. Philippe lapsed into sulky silence. Lottie held up a hand. “Listen.”
Husfur-di-nah husfur-di-nah… “What is that?” Philippe hissed back, grabbing the melon Lottie was neglecting in her gestures before it rolled off and staring into the darkness with wide eyes.
Uncle Ivan shifted and stood up, scuffing earth into the fire. “Pixies. Come on, let‘s get out of here. Those ‘tits’ must have been scouts in warpaint.” Uncle Ivan began hurriedly saddling up the horses.
Small things whirred through the treetops. Gunna-eacha-gunna-eacha… “They’re on both sides!” Philippe squeaked. The animals were shifting nervously.
“Calm down, lad. Stay quiet, they might just go for the dead meat and we‘ll outrun them…help Lottie with the palfrey there.” Uncle Ivan secured the warhorse’s girth.
“It‘s fine,” Lottie swung effortlessly into the saddle. “I used to be a stable girl - they’d whip us if we didn‘t tack up triple-quick. Yah!” She rode off. Philippe looked round for his uncle and found himself suddenly very alone, and the pixies’ tribal chants very close. He backed away towards the ass, slinging his pack onto one shoulder so he could use it as a weapon, reaching down quickly for the frying-pan with the other hand.
Godsum-kedge-ub-godsum-kedge-up gunna-eacha-gunna-eacha. They were all around now.
“Looks like it‘s just you and me, mon âne.” Philippe got his back against the animal’s shoulder and hefted the pan. The ass swung its head round to look at him.
The scrub exploded with whirring wings and eerie white-masked faces. Gunna eacha! Gunna eacha!
The donkey flattened its ears and ran as hard as it could after the horses. Philippe nearly fell over.
“Fine! Be like that!” He yelled after it, and shook his fringe out of his eyes, trying to ready himself for the onslaught of little teeth and little flinty daggers, pan held ready to swing. The lead pixie came at him like a small flappy thing out of Hell, mouth open and tiny hands crooked like claws…and vanished in a blur, taking a few behind with it. A gloop of melon and pixies splattered on the nearest tree.
“Hiii-yah!” Philippe dared a glance back to see Lottie wheeling her horse about again, holding the reins and the donkey’s rope in one hand and some sort of sling in the other. He hit a pixie with the frying-pan as it came at him from the side.
“Lottie!”
“Get on!” Lottie called back, slinging a couple of trifles with more than trifling results. Philippe dashed over and scrambled up on the donkey. Lottie threw him the rope, plucked a pixie out of the air that had been going for her eyeballs and fired it back at the rest. The animals needed no persuading to run, so Philippe hung on as best he could as the donkey plunged under every low branch it could find, wondering where Lottie had found a large white double-slingshot and hoping his ass was better at saving itself than he was. Glancing over at Lottie as the warcries began to fade he saw that she was riding strangely with an arm held tight across her body as they pounded through the woods.
“Are you wounded?” he called over, concerned.
“I just need some support!” Lottie called back. “I‘ll sort myself out once we‘re back on the highway!”
Philippe prided himself on being there in his friends’ time of need. “Ride, Lottie! You can do it!”
He thought she gave him a look of grateful encouragement, but in the dark and getting whipped by twigs it\was hard to tell. Lottie’s hair streamed out like a pale gold flag in the moonlight. They reached the road where Uncle Ivan was waiting and Lottie told them to turn away. Philippe quite understood, since the local priests were always doing thing in secret too, and wondered where she had been trained in mystic self-healing rites. There was a fierce rumpling noise and a couple of dull twangs and a slap before Lottie rode calmly up between them, not a hair out of place.
“Come on,” she smiled. “We‘ve got a land to save.”

“Philippe…”
“I know. We‘ve been through enough puddles by now and none of it‘s come off.” Philippe sat straight on the destrier, which was about as much as he could do. Uncle Ivan had gone on ahead with the donkey and the baggage to sort out stabling and find an inn in the town ahead whilst the young people stopped to find some way to disguise the stolen warhorse. Philippe had suggested mud, but Lottie had had experience as a stablehand and said that a muddy white horse just looks like a muddy white horse. Everything was too damp to make paint from charcoal. Fortunately, they’d come across a large can of paint beside a roadside shrine, obviously for redecorating it. It had looked grey in the moonlight. However, as Lottie pointed out around dawn, most things did. Admittedly the horse was no longer the colour it had been, but Philippe felt that he would have just as much difficulty convincing the town watch that the stallion was a natural coral pink.

Fortunately, the first guard they encountered at the gate was none too bright.
“Who goes there?”
“Philippe Phelops.”
The guard frowned at the sound of Philippe‘s voice. “Oh. Do you want an interpreter?”
“Why would he need an interpreter?” Lottie cut in, leaning forward on the palfrey and causing a cart crash as a driver was distracted by the molten honey swing of her hair.
The plump watchman scratched at his beard. “Well, he‘s French, isn‘t he?”
“Well if he’s French, and you understood him without an interpreter, then you must be French too - what are you doing guarding a Moktolkienian gate?”
The guard’s frown deepened. “I’m not French,” he protested.
“I‘m not French either,” put in Philippe, throwing back his fringe. (which swung straight back again)
The guard raised his chin triumphantly at Lottie. “See, he says he‘s not French.”
“Ah, but if you understand him claiming not to be French and if he needs an interpreter on account of being French it must be a French thing to claim to understand other Frenchmen and also not to be French at all, this being a cultural quirk or in-joke incomprehensible to Moktolkienians, therefore only if you claimed to be French and didn’t understand the language he’s speaking now would we believe that you’re not a French impostor manning a Moktolkienian gate for devious purposes.” Lottie gave him a hard look.
The guard stood to attention in defence of his reputation. “I‘m French! I‘m French!”
Philippe grinned. “Eh ben, pourquoi gardez-vous ce porte Moktolkienienne?”
“Je ne sais pas!” The guard threw down his spear in confusion.
“Easy there, Jenkins.” The captain of the guard came up and laid a calloused hand on the man’s shoulder, steering him away. He looked up at Lottie with a scarred countenance that said that in the manner of chief coppers everywhere he was having a Bad Day and this had better be damn good. Lottie treated him to her most winning smile. He gave her a twitch of the lips as he took off his plumed helmet and turned to Philippe. “Right, what are you, one bedraggled-looking peasant boy, doing with such a fine-quality warhorse, and why is it…pink?” The stallion snorted. “And no funny business.”
Philippe thought fast. “Well, see, I‘m a squire and, uh, my master has been off with a party of nobles to hunt lions and bandits and bears -”
“Oh my,” the captain put in dryly. “Get to the point.”
“Well, um, you know how after a battle all these horses are running loose, right? And if you‘re fighting bandits and get unhorsed it‘d be really bad to lose your horse, because the bandits don‘t treat theirs very well and they wouldn‘t be able to take a man in armour, and if you got some other lord‘s the horse might be too low, or too big, or you might steal some higher noble‘s by mistake. Drapes and stuff can always just get taken off or get muddy, so my master always paints his bright pink before a battle: if you lose, you‘re too dead to worry about it, if you‘re wounded or unhorsed no-one will want to steal it and you know exactly which horse is yours.”
“Clever,” the captain conceded. “And where is your master?”
“He‘s behind us on another horse,” Philippe invented. “I mean, a great knight like him riding in on a pink horse, it‘d be…embarrassing. That‘s why me and his, er,”
“Maidservant,” Lottie put in brightly.
“…maidservant went on to get his warhorse stabled and prepare his chambers. Yes.”
The captain nodded with an amused half-smile. “I see. And what is your master‘s name?”
“Sir….Robert?” Philippe picked a likely name.
“Which Sir Robert?”
Philippe tried not to show that he was sweating under his fringe. “The taller one.”
The captain smiled. “Nice try, but Sir Bob the Pincushion has been hanging on an elvish totem-rope since last Thursday, and it takes more than a botched paint job and a phoney French accent to fool me. Take them down to the watchouse, lads,” the captain motioned to some other gate-guards. “Start checking through the records of stolen horses. The lord might be generous and not hang the pretty wench.”
“Wench, is it?” Lottie kicked the watchman that tried to take hold of her horse’s bridle and urged the beast into a sudden canter. Philippe kicked the destrier hard and hoped it would do something similar.
“Stop them,” the captain sighed. A squad of six rushed off in pursuit with the traditional warcry of the day watch:
WEEEEeeeeeoooowwWEEEEeeeeoooowwWEEEEeeeeooowwww….!!!
It was impossible to ride into the town for all the people and carts. “Do what I do!” Lottie yelled, pulling her horse to a sudden stop so that its body was across a narrow alleyway before the marketplace, dismounting and running off into the shadows. Philippe yanked on the reins and was thrown by the sudden stop, just managing to grab the horse’s neck and swing to the ground. Shaky-legged, he ducked under the palfrey and ran after Lottie.
Within sight of daylight, the ground vanished.

“Where am I? Why‘s it so dark?”
Lottie moved Philippe’s fringe out of his eyes. “You hit your head on the end of the chute. Apparently they leave that alley as an obvious escape route because everyone runs down it…and ends up here.”
Philippe sat up and looked around. Bars, tally marks on the walls, dirty straw. The room was occupied by a couple of glowering dirty youths, a beggar, a drunkard passed out and snoring, a very unhappy-looking hooker and a lean, scarred elf with tattoos covering most of his exposed flesh who was cleaning his nails methodically with a long bronze dirk. “We‘re in gaol?”
“I‘m sure it‘s all a misunderstanding really…” Lottie smiled, throwing her hair back over her shoulder. “Come on, let‘s go talk to that elf while we wait for a guard to show up and explain everything to, he must be terribly lonely with everyone huddled in the opposite corner of the cell to him like that. I don‘t know why people discriminate so, I‘ve always wanted to meet one of the Fair Folk up close.”
Philippe trailed her nervously, aware of the stares and the sort of slow wince the prostitute was developing. The elf looked up at them when they were standing over him.
He had elegantly slanted eyes the shade of a clear winter sky and a nick out of one tapered ear. His straight pale hair was almost as well-groomed as Lottie’s, and his expression one of blank enquiry.
“Oh!” Lottie exclaimed. “There‘s a guard! Excuse me, I‘ll go talk to him.” She skipped over to the bars across the cell, leaving Philippe standing there. Philippe thought he’d better become less obvious and sat down next to the tall, tattooed prisoner, avoiding a puddle of best-not-thought-about. The elf went back to paring his thumbnail, and for a few moments Philippe watched the knotted scars and tattoos move over lean muscles, rather awed to be in the presence of one of the fey, and more importantly, still breathing.
“Um…I’m Philippe,” he tried cautiously, not knowing even whether the Fair One knew his language. No reaction. “What...what‘s your name?”
The elf dextrously trimmed the edge of his nail with a scrape of bronze and blew away the parings. “TinkerBell.”