Fay Tale - Chapter Twenty-Four

“One pot of jam. Two pots of jam. Three pots of jam,” Maidd called out loudly from where he stood, facing the long stone wall.

Occasionally a servant would pass by him, quickly skirting around the spot where he was counting. Maidd didn’t blame them. He would run from ogres counting pots of jam too.

“Twenty-five pots of jam,” he finally called out. “Ready or not here I come!”

He listened carefully but there wasn’t even a telltale giggle to guide him. Maidd set off down the left side of the corridor, peeking behind drapes and into doors. If it was a storage room, he entered and searched. If it was a personal room, he avoided it.

After a few early debacles with the game, he and Lily had established an inside run and cover code. No hiding in private rooms. No climbing out windows. He would count out twenty-five pots of jam very loudly and promise not to sniff for her. He’d said absolutely nothing about listening, though, which is why he started down the left side of the corridor. It was the direction tiny feet had dashed in.

After about a quarter of a mark with no princess, however, Maidd was tempted to give up. He’d checked all the storage rooms in the three halls he’d decided they would play in. Maidd thought about sniffing her out, but decided he’d check one more time just in case. If he cheated and she didn’t, she would never let him forget it.

Maybe he could make her give herself away?

He started to sing a song about an ogre pup’s first march. Normally he wouldn’t sing an ogre song in a castle of humans and small Folk since ogre songs often talked about bashing said humans and small Folk in the head, but this song was fairly blasé as ogre songs went. Instead, it focused on a young ogre who kept losing his spear or falling down cliffs or charging into the wrong cave full of trolls and vengeful spirits.

A lullaby really.

Maidd had checked the second to last curtain when a muffled giggle alerted him to another presence. He continued singing, pretending he hadn’t heard and continued to the last drape. But when he swept it aside grandly, there was no princess. Frowning, he tugged on the little seat built into the alcove but nothing moved. He even moved the decorative pillows but no Lily.

Frustrated, he stared out the leaded glass pane when a tiny body dropped on top of his head.

Maidd shrieked.

Lily was still roaring with laugher some time later as she rolled around on the floor. Maidd crouched beside her so no one, especially himself, would be tempted to step on her.

“It really wasn’t that funny,” he pouted.

“It was funny!”

“You did scare Maidd really good though,” he admitted.

“I know!” she howled, “Maidd jumped fifty spans!”

“I can’t jump that many spans,” he grumbled. “It was only two.”

Her giggles continued as he crossed over to the alcove again to look up at the top of the curtain.

“Where, exactly, were you hiding O mighty ogre scarer?”

Lily pointed a finger at the top of the curtain some 14 spans into the air.

“Lily climbed.”

“I’m the Guardian of a squirrel,” Maidd muttered, looking at the point above his head where the drapes hung over a bar.

The whole thing was bored carefully into the stone. A very good thing it was or the whole affair might have come tumbling down on her head while she climbed it.

“Not a squirrel!” Lily insisted.

“A cat then.”

“Bremen showed me,” she agreed.

Maidd snorted. Of course the little guano face had.

“Bremen says he likes to hide up there to surprise daddy and Grumps sometimes,” she explained. “Or hide from the cooks.”

“Well, please don’t jump on anyone that’s not Maidd, okay? If you jump from that high, you might hurt yourself or the other person.”

“I know that!”

Says the fragile human child climbing 14 span drapes and plummeting off them, Maidd sighed inwardly.

“Thank you, Princess.”

She grumped, sounding very like the king for a moment. Luckily for Maidd a small crowd of voices broke into her pout as a door down the corridor opened. Lily promptly grabbed Maidd’s hand and tried to tug him away.

“Lily what-”

“Shhhhhh! We gotta hide!”

Bewildered but willing to play along, Maidd let her tug him behind a nearby wall hanging. Her ability to guess how much room an ogre would require to hide behind it, however, was severely lacking. Half of his right shoulder stuck out in plain view.

“Lily I’m not-”

“Shush! Can’t say anything! I’m concentratin’!”

He sighed and stayed quiet. Maidd really hoped an ogre half sticking out of a hanging wouldn’t alarm people. Hopefully, everyone would assume he was playing with the princess and not lurking around to devour people’s bones.

I guess I can always apologize later. Or hide behind Lily if the guard is called for.

The thought of his tiny charge scolding the armored men and women of the guard almost made him snicker, but he bit down on the sound. He certainly didn’t want to be scolded after being told to hush.

Instead, he quietly listened to the sounds of the group approaching. It seemed to be comprised mainly of noble women who chattered about the upcoming ball to be held in Zara’s honor. Maidd wondered if Lily would have to go to that one. When she did go, she enjoyed dancing with both Angelis and Prince Seris while he tried and failed to blend in with the walls of the ballroom.

His most memorable dance thus far was when Bremen had asked the princess to dance. The resulting convulsions of a cat and a tiny human dancing their hearts out to an orchestra of their own imagining were both amusing and dangerous to bystanders. They’d secured a very large circle of space to themselves and seemed tired but extremely pleased at the spectacle they’d made. The king, as he so often did, choose not to notice the display.

A shriek brought Maidd’s attention back to the group of nobility approaching their hiding spot. Maidd sighed inwardly and readied himself to step out behind the tapestry and smile an apology at them.

“It’s a mouse! Somebody kill it!”

He was many things, but mouse had never been one of them.

“Get ahold of yourself, Jemaah. We all know you see mice everywhere for the attention of it,” drawled a bored voice.

Maidd recognized that voice as Lady Korela, a particularly hostile noblewoman who had made her dislike both of ogres and small children quite plain. No wonder Lily had run rather than suffer through a disheartening lecture on how atrociously she upheld the noble title of princess.

Maidd decided he would pretend he was hiding behind the drapes waiting for the princess to come find him...except the women never said a word as they passed the curtain. Boggled, Maidd gingerly peeked out the side to stare as they glided along the corridor.

Maidd watched until they had disappeared down a turn in the corridor. Only then did Lily clamber out from behind the tapestry. She stuck out her tongue in the direction they had gone then glanced up to see if her Guardian disapproved.

“I don’t like her either, but maybe don’t stick your tongue out where anyone can see okay? We might get scolded by Angel.”

“She makes me feel yucky, but I can’t kick her shins,” Lily grumbled.

“Maybe if you ask nicely, Bremen will claw her toes for you.”

The princess beamed at the thought.

“We’ll have to bribe him, though,” Maidd added.

The Royal Advisor had absolutely no shame but he did require a little coercion to be helpful. The ogre was convinced that Anand was Eirendyr’s greatest king simply due to the fact that he consistently persuaded Bremen to do useful tasks.  

“I know what to bribe him with,” Lily insisted.

“You do?”

“Yes! But it’s a secret.”

“Maybe we can work on that secret tomorrow. Right now Maidd wants to practice your cover skills.”

“I’m a good coverer!” she said indignantly.

“I meant I want your help in practicing my cover skills,” he corrected. “I’m so big that I can’t cover very well, but nobody saw me when I covered with you.” And how in Meziroth’s winged chariot she’d done that he had to know.

“Okay. I guess I could help,” she decided with a benevolent smile.

“Thanks Lily.”

She took his hand and tugged him down the corridor in the opposite direction Lady Korela and her cohorts had taken only to run smack into Lady Aisha at the first corner they came to. Or she would have if Maidd hadn’t reached out and snatched her back. It wouldn’t have mattered if he hadn’t since Lady Aisha spun neatly out of the way.

Both groups looked at each other.

“Sorry Judge Aisha,” Lily said after a nudge from her Guardian.

“No collision occurred so an apology is unnecessary. This is a fortunate meeting, however, since I was in the process of seeking you out.”

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” the princess announced, which made them both look guilty.

“I did not say that you did. Simply that I sought you out.”

“Oh.”

“It’s an honor,” Maidd said.

“I sensed your magic and so came to fetch you.”

“Magic?” Lily asked, excited now.

“The princess doesn’t have any magic,” Maidd said, suddenly wary.

“She does not have magic in the usual way of humans,” the Lady explained. “It is her magic as a result of Fay contamination.”

Maidd froze, unable to believe the sphinx had spouted the term for abomination so casually.

“I am here to take the princess,” Aisha continued when Maidd continued to stare at her. Fay-touched, even more than two-natured, were meant to die.

The ogre scooped up the princess and ran.

Maidd put about 20 spans of distance between them when he ran into a wall. Not of stone but of magic.

The ogre hit with a loud smack and went down.

“Ouch,” Lily muttered from her shelter in the large arms.

“Ouch,” Maidd agreed as he stared up at a ceiling that spun in lovely patterns of grey stone and colorful starbursts. That view was interrupted by a furred face peering down at him with confusion.

“Stay,” Lady Aisha said.

The ogre stayed.