Yet Another Dreadful Fairy Book Read online

  Readers, Be Warned!

  This Is Yet Another Dreadful Fairy Book!

  Shade, Ginch, and the Professor have one final battle ahead of them. Nefarious individuals are plotting to destroy the truce between the Seelie Court and the Sluagh Horde. Can Shade uncover who is behind the villainous scheme? Likely. Will Ginch and the Professor’s forged court invitations land them in a dungeon? Probably. Will Quentin Q. Quacksworth finally stop grumping and actually enjoy narrating this book? History suggests otherwise, but the only way to be sure is to read Yet Another Fairy Book!

  Praise for A Dreadful Fairy Book

  “This chubby brown protagonist full of flaws and wit and heart is quite welcome.” —Kirkus

  “This isn’t just any fairy book: it’s dreadful … A charming read with a quirky narrator, a brazen heroine, and eccentric characters.” —Booklist

  “A charming addition to middle grade shelves.” —School Library Journal

  “An unexpectedly funny ode to books and the knowledge that they bring.” —Children’s Book Review

  Copyright © 2021 by Jon Etter

  All rights reserved

  Published by Amberjack Publishing

  An imprint of Chicago Review Press Incorporated

  814 North Franklin Street

  Chicago, Illinois 60610

  ISBN 978-1-948705-72-1

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to real places are used ficticiously. Names, characters, ficticious places, and events are the products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, places, or events is purely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2020948640

  Printed in the United States of America

  5 4 3 2 1

  “May we never see another War! for in my Opinion there never was a good War, or a bad Peace.”

  —BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, LETTER TO JOSIAH QUINCY SR., SEPTEMBER 11, 1783

  “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.”

  —MATTHEW 5:9, KING JAMES BIBLE

  “This would be a better world for children if the parents had to eat the spinach.”

  —GROUCHO MARX, ANIMAL CRACKERS

  FROM JON:

  For everyone who works for peace, freedom, and equality for all. And for our children—in everything we do, may they always be foremost in our thoughts.

  FROM QUACKSWORTH:

  For once I must concur with Mr. Etter—I couldn’t have said it better myself. (Well, actually I could have, but I do completely agree with his sentiments.)

  • PREFACE •

  A Note of Resigned Acceptance from the Narrator

  Good Reader, I give up. In spite of my pleas to you and countless conversations with parents, grandparents, teachers, librarians, ministers, law enforcement officials, and sock-knitting aunts both regular and great, I have been unable to keep Mr. Etter’s woefully improper and thoroughly dreadful fairy books from your hands. Why, even my own home has been infested by the dratted tomes! I suspect it was my son Quimbey—the most wayward of all my children—who smuggled them into the Quacksworthery, after which they swept like a plague throughout the Quacksworth ranks. Quentin Jr., Quigley, Quinn, Quentin III, Quentin IV, Quella, Quinten—all were caught in some nook or cranny of the ancestral manse reading them. And then the cruelest cut of all: last week I found my darling wife, Quintessa, with our youngest, Becky, sitting on her lap, the two chuckling heartily at the misadventures of that malapert Shade, the gregarious Ginch, and the kleptomaniacal Professor. Dreadful, dear Reader. Truly, truly dreadful!

  Thus having failed to dissuade you, and my narrator’s union shop steward, MacKenzie “Blinky” Blinkerton, having failed to free me from my contract, I must with a heavy sigh recount this final dreadful tale of our dreadful little fairies. Before I begin, however, I must admit that I did find the last book to be a bit less objectionable than the first and do have a faint hope (a very faint one!) that this will be even less objectionable than that. Perhaps in our time together I have been a morally improving influence on that old reprobate Mr. Etter, although just this morning over toast and tea he claimed that it was he who was having an influence on me and that I was becoming slightly less of a “stuffed shirt,” as it were. Perish the thought, good Reader!

  And so, I must be for one final time,

  Your Reluctant

  Narrator,

  Quentin Q. Quacksworth, Esq.

  UNITED FEDERATION OF NARRATORS, RACONTEURS, ANECDOTISTS, AND GENERAL TELLERS OF TALES, LOCAL 42

  In which the password is indeed “swordfish” …

  Shade’s black, curly hair whipped about in the steamy summer night as she streaked through the countryside on the back of Glatis, the Questing Beast. “How much farther?” she called.

  Glatis raised her serpentine head and squinted her slitted eyes. “I can see the town lights from here.”

  In just a minute, for a Questing Beast at full gallop in its gigantic serpent-leopard-oxen form is perhaps the fastest creature in the world, Glatis came to a stop just outside the bustling goblin market town of Gypsum-upon-Swathmud. Beyond and between the black silhouettes of buildings, the glow of lanterns and torches held the nighttime darkness at bay; instead of the silence of midnight, the air was filled with laughter and haggling and cries of “Come buy, come buy! Orchard fruits all ripe together in summer weather—sweet to the tongue and sound to the eye! Come buy, come buy!” And there waiting for them was a bald, pudgy old fairy with cow ears holding a lantern in one hand and a pocket watch in the other.

  “Midnight on the nose.” Poor Richard snapped the pocket watch shut and tucked it into his vest as Shade leaped down next to him. “Well done, Glatis! Thank you ever so much.”

  “You’re welcome.” Glatis swung her head back and forth nervously. “Now if I could just, well, pop out into the country again while you do … whatever it is you’re here to do. Places like this tend to attract questers and all and—”

  “And you don’t want to be chased, you sweet, gentle thing.” The cowlug gave Glatis a sympathetic pat. “Please go. If you could come back in about an hour that would be lovely.”

  As a relieved Glatis vanished into the night, Shade looked to the little cowlug. “Is everything all right? The note you sent with Glatis said there was something extremely important that you had to show me.”

  “Everything is more than all right, my dear. And what I have to show you is right here.” Poor Richard pointed at the run-down building behind them. Above its entrance hung a sign, one end sagging significantly lower than the other, on which a black bird wearing an eye patch peered down at them.

  “The Crooked Rook?” Shade frowned. “This stinking cesspit of an inn?”

  “‘Stinking cesspit’? Oh, so you know the place.”

  “Yeah.” Shade frowned as she thought of how its bartender had cheated her the first time she came to Gypsum. “And I know there is nothing important—and nothing that isn’t filthy and stinking—in it.”

  “Tonight there is.” Poor Richard pushed open the Crooked Rook’s swinging doors and was greeted with the noxious stench of onion stew, stale pipe smoke, and sweaty feet. He turned back to Shade, his eyes watering. “By that I mean there’s something important here. It’s still quite pungent, and I would not recommend touching anything with bare flesh if you can avoid it.”

  In the history of Elfame, it’s unlikely there had ever been a darker, filthier, smellier inn than the Crooked Rook. If there were, no doubt the Rook’s owner would have taken measures to make things worse, its horrendous grubbiness being both an immense source of pride for him and a way to ensure the right kind of clientele, namely the wors
t of the worst. That night the tavern was filled (as it usually was) with shifty-looking fairies, some playing cards at rickety tables by the dim light of guttering candles, others whispering in the impenetrable shadows at the edges of the great common room.

  Being two of the shorter fairies in the Crooked Rook, Poor Richard and Shade had to climb up onto stools to see over the top of the bar, where they found Snarlful, the Rottweiler-headed goblin bartender, pouring something thick and sour-smelling into a mug for a skinny kobold in raggedy clothes who looked on the verge of falling asleep. Shade scowled at him.

  “Gotta problem there, bug-girl?” Snarful asked indifferently.

  “Don’t remember me?”

  “Nope.”

  “Last time I was in here, you cheated me out of two silver.”

  The bartender shrugged. “That don’t narrow things down much. Now, if we’re done reminiscin’, you got three choices: beat it, order somethin’, or go clean the outhouse, although I gotta warn you that the last fairy that went in there ain’t come out yet, and that was three weeks ago.”

  “Actually, I believe there’s a fourth choice, good barkeep.” Several fairies nearby snorted at Snarlful being called a good anything. Poor Richard leaned forward and whispered. “We’re here for the secret meeting.”

  Snarlful looked to his right and left, and then cocked an eyebrow. “No idea what you’re talkin’ about.”

  Poor Richard looked confused for a second. “Oh, that’s right—there’s a password I’m supposed to tell you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Um. Let me think …” Poor Richard stroked his chin. “Oh, what was it now? Hmmm …”

  Shade slapped him on the arm. “How could you forget the password?”

  “Well, once you’re five hundred seasons old, little things start to slip your mind.”

  “Little things slip—so you’re telling me that instead of being asleep in my very comfortable bed, I am standing here in the dingle-dangle grimiest crudhole in all of Elfame—”

  “I’ll pass the compliment along to the owner,” Snarlful interjected.

  “—to go to a secret meeting that we can’t get into because you forgot the password?”

  The cowlug grinned sheepishly. “That does appear to be the case.”

  Shade slapped her forehead. “Of all the dingle-dangle—!”

  “’Ey, little Sprootshade!” Shade turned to see Rigoletto Ginch walking her way, a big grin on his golden face. Behind him the Professor waved enthusiastically. “Whatta you do here, eh? I know—you miss-a you good friends and come to have the night out onna the town with them!”

  “No. And if I did, I wouldn’t come here to do it.” Shade glared at Snarlful. “Cowslug here wants to take me to some sort of secret meeting but he can’t remember the password.”

  “Did you try ‘swordfish’?” Ginch asked. “The password’s always ‘swordfish.’”

  “You always say that,’” Shade sighed. “It’s never ‘swordfish.’”

  Poor Richard scratched his head. “I don’t know. It might be …”

  The Professor hopped forward on his grasshoppery legs, whistled, and slapped the bar. As an annoyed Snarlful stepped forward, the Professor reached into the pockets of his baggy green jacket and pulled out a short sword and a large fish. Snarlful scanned the room warily then nodded to a mean-looking spriggan standing in front of a doorway at the far end of the bar. “Through there. In the back.”

  “Ha ha!” Ginch slapped Shade and Poor Richard on the back and then walked toward the door. “Like I say—the password’s always ‘swordfish.’ C’mon!”

  Shade rolled her eyes and reluctantly followed.

  In which the author risks getting sued by the estates of Abbott & Costello …

  Behind the Crooked Rook was a courtyard, enclosed by the walls of neighboring buildings and shielded from the alley by a graying fence. The grass there had been all but choked out by dandelions and weeds—not that Shade could see the grass, for that night the space was filled with fairies. To avoid being bumped and jostled and so that she could better survey the scene, Shade flitted to the top of a stack of wooden crates and helped Poor Richard climb up. Ginch and the Professor stayed on the ground to better pick the pockets of the fairies surrounding them. Gathered in the flickering torchlight was a great and varied crowd: dwarven blacksmiths and leprechaun tailors, elven merchants and kobold miners, wulver fishermen and trow scullery maids, and many, many others. The space buzzed with expectant chatter:

  “I hear at least two of them will be here tonight.”

  “I heard all five.”

  “I think it’s all a load of puckernuts, but I gotta see it for myself.”

  “Can’t you hold it, Bill? You might miss something.”

  As Shade scanned the crowd, she spotted a pair of hooded figures in the back corner whispering to each other. There was something familiar about them, but before Shade could figure out what, a yelp from the far end of the yard made her turn. A rat-headed goblin was being dragged by long purple tentacles into a shabby little shack with a half-moon carved on the door. Once he was inside, the door slammed, the outhouse shook, and there was a loud, muffled belch. A hobgoblin standing next to it shrugged. “I told Bill he should try to hold it.”

  “What is this?” Shade asked. “Why’s everybody here?”

  Poor Richard smiled proudly. “Because of you.”

  “Me?”

  “Well, us, I suppose. But mostly you.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Poor Richard opened his mouth to speak when something behind her caught his eye. He pointed toward the doorway they had come through. “It looks like you’re about to find out.”

  Into the courtyard stepped Baba Ingas, the pech crime boss of Gypsum who pretended to be a fortune teller. She wore the same crimson dress and jingling coin-covered gold sash she had worn when Shade met her on her first visit to Gypsum, but this time no fake wrinkles masked her face and no white wig hid her chin-length black hair. Following her onto a small stage were four cloaked fairies. Baba Ingas stepped to the edge, muttered something Shade couldn’t quite hear while waving about her thin, elegant hands, then blew on her palm. Blue sparkles flew out and drifted up into the air above the crowd. Ingas then drew a circle on the stage with her toe, mumbled, and spat into it.

  “There, that will keep anyone outside of here from hearing us and make sure that you can all hear what our guests have to say,” she said, her voice unnaturally loud. The crowd grew quiet as the fairies on stage pushed back their hoods. “Since you’re here at this meeting, you’ve probably heard of all four of the fairies you see up here, but odds are you’ve never laid eyes on any of them, so introductions are in order. Here on the end we’ve got Wat the Tiler from Boltcrossing—”

  A terrier-headed goblin wearing a shabby tweed vest and work shirt, his sleeves rolled up to the elbows and a fierce look on his fuzzy gold and black head, nodded at the crowd. He looked rather like your Uncle Ivan, only a bit doggier.

  “Julia Howe, servant in the house of Lord Snifflington of the Seelie Court—”

  A wizened old brownie in a plain brown dress, white lace shawl, and bonnet pursed her lips.

  “Fielden Hoo of Haymarket—”

  A burly, brown-skinned dwarf farmer with a great curly beard held up a hand.

  “—and finally, Lady Speranza Wylde, Marchioness of the Confluence and member of the Sluagh Horde.”

  A tall, stout, green-skinned, elegantly dressed fairy with black eyes, a wide, thick-lipped mouth, and red fins on the sides and top of her head gave a slight bow. She looked a good deal like your Aunt Lusitania—only, oddly enough, slightly less fishy somehow. “Please, we are all equals and, I hope, friends here. Call me Wy.”

  Baba Ingas walked to the side of the stage. “All right, then—who’s going to start?”

  The dwarf’s eyebrows shot up. “That right? First I’ve heard of it.”

  “What?” Baba Ingas asked.

>   The goblin pointed to his own chest. “Ya want me to go instead?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Wat the Tiler watched her for a moment as if waiting for her to say more. “Oi am talkin’ about … ? Well, if yer not gonna finish that sentence, suppose oi’ll just go then. Evenin’, moi friends and fellow sufferers under the yolk o’ royal oppression—no offense, Wy.”

  The merrow noblewoman nodded benevolently. “None taken, my dear fellow.”

  Wat smiled and winked. “Yer one o’ the good ones, Wy. As oi were sayin’, all us ’ere have suffered under the repressive rule o’ both the Seelie and the Sluagh. Sometimes the one, sometimes the other, but always we been ruled by them gits.”

  “Or so we thought,” the old brownie Howe piped up, drawing a small book bound in blue cloth from the folds of her gown and holding it up.

  Shade turned to Poor Richard. “Is that—?”

  He smiled. “It is indeed.”

  “The Fairy Chronicle by Ælfrëd the Pretty Good! Long lost but now found, printed, and distributed in secret by those champions of free thought, B.L.A.H.: Book Lovers, Active and Hush-hush. In fact—” Howe paused to scan the crowd then pointed to Shade and Poor Richard, “—we have two of those very champions of truth here with us tonight!”

  There were gasps and murmurs as the crowd turned to look. Poor Richard gave an indulgent smile and bowed to them. Shade, hating being the center of attention, squirmed and gave a little wave.

  “Since the last great war, the four of us up here,” Wy the merrow noblewoman said from the stage, “have been quietly spreading the word that the time of monarchy and the privileged nobility must end.”

  “And more and more of thou’s been willin’ to join the cause thanks to that book,” Hoo said. “Because now thou knows them royal Seelie and Sluagh toffs—no offense, Wy—been lyin’ to us for generations to keep us from risin’ up. But truth’s out. Once upon a time, we ruled ourselves.”

  “And that’s what we must do again!” Howe cried.