Dead Heat, Part 9

Rose followed the two glowing fairies as they zipped at head-height through the gardens. They’d consented to lead her via human walkways, but their pace required her to jog. Not her favorite activity. “Can we slow down, please?”

Pansy’s response really wasn’t worth repeating, so she ignored him and slipped both pumps off her feet. She’d ruin her hose, but at least she wouldn’t fall and break something. She did flip him off. She wasn’t proud of it, but she did it anyway. He was really pissing her off, and she’d been having a crap day before he started in on her.

“There! It’s just on the other side of this bridge!” called out Poppy, his red glow zipping under an impeccably-painted bridge. Pansy’s purple glow followed him without hesitation. Her stone-paved walking path did not continue under the bridge. Instead, it wound its way upward through a patch of fragrant yellow roses and cheerful black-eyed susans before crossing over the bridge.

Rose stopped for a moment to catch her breath. She looked at the path wistfully, wishing she was going over it instead of under it. Granted, the bare trickle of water that remained of the stream it must have been built to bypass was at it’s weakest in this summer heat, but it was still going to be a marshy mess, dotted with water-rounded stones.

Worse than that, it smelled.

The moment she noticed the odor, the scent burst into full, choking life. Mud and rotting leaves and fish and frogs and darkness … and something else. Something dry and dusty, like old paper, with just a hint of carnival candy threaded through it. Too sweet, that cotton candy smell, and completely out of place. The spanish-influenced pristine white adobe of the bridge wavered faintly, as if she were looking at it through a heat-mirage.

She frowned at that spot. It was hot out, but only that portion of the bridge flickered. She gave a long, deliberate blink, as if the visual artifact were caused by something being stuck in her eye.

When she opened her eye, the world burst into fae glory, the sunlight sparking off of the yellow roses to send unnatural prisms of pale peach and dusky wine on the petals. The black-eyed susans glowed faintly. A bee, fat and businesslike, buzzed noisily past and landed on one of the daisy-like blooms. The petals immediately slapped shut and pulled inwards, dragging the bee partially into the stem and leaving the petals looking like a flower that hadn’t quite bloomed.

The bee struggled, causing the flower head to bounce heavily, and Rose gulped.

The bridge was no longer pristine. Something not entirely unlike spray paint in appearance (though she was certain it was completely unlike spray paint in composition) decorated the entire surface.

“KEEP OUT!” it shouted. “TROLL BRIDGE. NONE MAY ENTER HERE.”

The usual.

“Hey Pansy? Poppy? That’s a troll bridge!” she shouted.

Half a breath later, and Pansy reappeared from beneath the bridge. “Those lumbering idiots can’t hurt us! Help or don’t help, Big! It’s all the same to me!”

“You’re not paying–” she started, but he wasn’t listening. Of course he wasn’t. He was gone already, clearly having written her off as worse than useless.

And while she might agree with him some of the time, but just now? Just now she was getting awfully tired of his crap.

Part of her wondered briefly why she hadn’t seen the troll warning signs immediately. Come to think of it, she hadn’t seen the guard’s aura, either. She’d never been able to turn it off and on before.

She blinked, willing the fairy view away. When she opened her eyes again, one of the roses bloomed visibly, petals spilling out to form a multi-tiered skirt for a fairy who looked at her, sniffed disdainfully, and flew off.

So apparently she STILL couldn’t turn it on and off at will. A headache-inducing power she had no control over. Par for the fricking course today.

She walked up to the bridge, pumps in one hand and carryall strap across her chest, then she bowed deeply. Clearing her throat, she began at a louder-than-normal speaking voice, “Good Sir or Ms. Troll, I apologize deeply for this intrusion on your territory. Please accept this gift.”

She dug into her carryall. Something, something, there had to be — ah! There! The sandwich and chips she’d planned on eating during lunch break at work. They weren’t much, as far as tributes go, but you didn’t just waltz through troll territory without being polite.

She placed the sandwich and chips on a wide, flat rock in the shallow shadows just under the bridge, then hesitated only a moment before adding her soda to the pile. It was the very best she could do.

Then? She ran. Thankful that she wasn’t wearing the heels any more, she hopped from rock to rock through the too-dark shadows that lurked under the bridge, trying very hard not to breathe in the awful smell and even harder not to peer too closely at the shadows themselves. Maybe the troll was sleeping.

The way her day was going? The troll was totally not sleeping.

Feeling the icy trickle of Something Watching shiver down her back, she burst into the sunlight on the other side of the bridge, gasping. overhead, the bridge itself was only two, maybe three people wide. It had taken her almost five minutes to pass beneath it.

She really hated the fae realm.

A green clearing, bounded on one side by a bald cypress whose roots thrust up like knobbled knees all along the banks of the weak stream nearby and on the other by a magnolia tree whose blooms should have been finished months ago, but whose pale pink flowers spilled their heady scent into the air regardless.

Only magic could do that, but Rose didn’t have time to investigate. In the center of the clearing, a small army of glowing lights struggled. They heaved and the overwhelming scent of magnolia was tinged with something else. Something darker and too-sweet, rounded by bitterness.

Fear. Poppy had smelled like that when reporting to Pansy. Below that, roiling with a slow darkness like molasses, was something else.

“Just let us die!” called out a tiny, weak voice. The call was echoed by a dozen other throats, all sobbing or wailing.

Despair, Rose thought. Despair smells like blackstrap molasses and I wish I did not know that.

And through it all, the scent of rotted candy pervaded the entire clearing. A troll net, just like Poppy described.

She ran forward, careful to watch her step. The net that encased the fairy troop was invisible.

Rose blinked and her vision warped gently, like tweaking the focus on a computer monitor. Not invisble, but almost. It was like … well, if someone took jellyfish tentacles and wove them into a net, it would look rather a lot like this. She couldn’t see the net so much as see the light reflect oddly through it.

Poppy hovered at the edge of the clearing, sobbing. “My lord Pansy, no!” Rose followed his gaze and found Pansy’s purple glow. It flickered erratically, like a light with a bad short in it, and she saw that his toothpick-sized blade was out, sawing frantically at the sticky strands of net nearest another fairy. Even as he struggled, the net clung to him, wrapping itself around one of his legs and trailing towards his torso like the tendrils of a climbing plant.

The fairy he attempted to save called out weakly. “No, Lord Pansy! Save the others! They need you.” Her voice rang like tiny bells, a comparison Rose had never actually heard make sense before. This new fairy was predictably beautiful, her gown made of pure white petals edged in a mottled wine pattern. Her ankle-length hair matched the wine color perfectly, and would have been a jealousy-inducing sheet of glossy glory if it had not been snagged and yanked into a snarled mess by at least four strands of sticky, clinging net.

No need to ask which of the fairies was the Queen, then.

“Nobody’s dying here today, not if I can help it your Majesty,” Rose said as calmly as she could, moving forward and kneeling beside the net.

“You shall address her as Your Royal Highness!” shouted Pansy.

“Don’t you have enough to do without wasting time correcting my grammar?” she snapped.

“I heard that, Big! When I get out of this, I shall personally court martial you for your impudence!” The tendril snaked up his leg and snagged one of his wings, causing him to crash to the ground in a way Rose was absolutely certain he would not like for her to have noticed.

That molasses-thick smell spilled outward from him, nearly masking his floral scent. His voice rose in a morose wail, “My Queen! I have failed you!” he called out. She could hear the hopelessness in his voice and smell it from him like a wave of darkness. He sobbed, and suddenly Rose was even angrier.

She didn’t like Pansy, but rude and argumentative seemed to be his personality. Taking that away from him using magic was wrong. Period.

He wouldn’t appreciate her pity, though. Rose called out to him, keeping her tone sharp and businesslike. “None of that, Pansy! Don’t give up on me yet. I’m sure you’ve got all kinds of lectures you need to give me before you kick the bucket. Don’t let that net get the best of you.”

His molasses smell faded, just slightly. “You shall address me as LORD Pansy!”

“See, already found something new to fuss at me about. Keep trying, I’m sure you can find more,” Rose muttered, barely paying attention. If he responded, she didn’t hear it. By now, she had her bag at her side and open, the wide alligator mouth spread so she had easy access to all of her essential oils and perfumes.

Rose needed to neutralize that net. She bit her lip and tried to clear her mind.