The Known/Unknown Quantity

Chapter 177: A Fairy Tale

Chapter 177: A Fairy Tale

A few things to note about the Queen's Court:

1)      She could hold it anywhere on earth, in her realm or ours. It could be the grandest Barrow there was. It could be a British drag show. It could be at the oldest American Fourth of July celebration in Pekin, IN: it didn't matter. She liked to move around with her grandeur, is what I'm saying.

2)      If she did hold Court in Elvin territory it was within a Barrow, and within each one was as distinct from the other as night is from day. Some brought to mind airy visions of Tolkien Forest realms in boughs among golden shafts of light. Others formed from a single tree, with roots and limbs entangled, holding up the vault of a world and forming its firmament. Others still were sliding dreamscapes. Or deserts in the sky, or caverns made of antimatter, or sunken isles in the ocean depths. Whatever was in the scope of the human imagination, there probably existed a fay kingdom in its image.

And today, Crowley was being led into one of them. A sort of enormous tunnel where the lands, fields, forests and villages swept up from the floor to the ceiling, twisting away as if someone had taken a flat world and rolled it outside-in, into a tube. Clouds hovered in between. It was quite astounding. Which is why he nearly forgot his apprehension about:

3)      The Seelie Court could, with scant advanced warning, turn into the Unseelie Court. This could be a problem the longer he stayed. For while Crowley claimed to get along with both, he could only predict the behavior of the former. The dark, fickle nature of the Unseelie Court might be better or worse than Hell, just with personality and imagination. It would have been a Hell he would have created; had he been asked. So, he hated it.

And a few things to mention about the Unseelie Court:

A)      They were ruled by the same queen, or one of her personalities. There were two main ones for each court. Unlike her moods, they were separate people.

B)      The Queen did not like one taking over the other. She rather preferred to have control, whoever was sitting in that day, so it was a right battle during the switch. She gave you as much warning as she had, but there was no telling when it might happen.

C)      The Seelie Queen very much liked Crowley. The Unseelie tolerated him. There's a big difference. Unlike the Seelie Queen, the other one could affect things on Crowley, and he her. That's how he ended up being thumped on the head and ending up nearly flattened somewhere on Jupiter.

So, to keep on his toes the demon held all this knowledge in his forebrain, while the pretty young woman before him grew more streamlined and sharper. Her Bantu knots twisted and grew like tree burls, dropping coils of fern-like hair. Her clothes tore away like rags to reform, on a tempest that was not there, into unfurling flax weave. Like a billowing standard, her ever-shifting gown became a banner that proclaimed her arrival, and she let go of the demon's hand and increased the space between them to accommodate the pageantry.

Her subjects lined their path forward, took a knee, and she graciously held out her fingers for them to kiss. There, Crowley saw how long her fingers grew, tapering like bramble thorns. The color of her skin shed its human sable and fell into a pallet of sage. Even her freckles now formed the shape of tiny leaves. Her blush was Autumn's Orange.

As she approached her throne, she proclaimed to Crowley," Do you know our story? The birth of the Elves?"

Her tone changed like her form. The voice reverberated from the land around, and came to her mouth like a homing beacon, a reverse echo. It sent shivers down your spine, and commanded attention.

"Uh, yes, but not particularly all the good bits, at the moment," the demon muttered lamely, trying to maintain his focus.

"The trees sleep," she intoned. "The trees sleep, and dream, and we are their dreaming. They made us, the Elves, to protect their slumber. Plants are not meant to wake; did you know that?"

Crowley swallowed, watching the shifting, strange eyes of the fay on him. "Can't say I recall."

"It's how they commune with one another, that glorious network of fungi and roots and bio signals, and chemicals, as your humans might say. The plants were here first, on the first day. But what exactly is a day for the Creator? Your God sets time in very odd ways."

"A day is like a thousand years," he found himself recounting.

"Or, in our case, millions. Millions of years, and nothing to pollinate the plants on a day as long as an eon. So curious. No butterflies or bees, or birds and their droppings. No fish. Microbes in abundance, but they have their own slumbers and guardians. We," she arrived at a grand set of marble like steps and swung around, spreading out her arms and fabrics in a whirling display, "We were the pollinators."

Crowley leaned away and pulled up his glasses, revealing slitted eyelids and a furrowed brow. He took in as much as he could of her and her court and her people before returning back to his wariness.

She was good at becoming part of the stage set. Tendrils from her gown played against imaginary currents, whipping and rising to form standards within her Court, to surround her people and fill the room with wall hangings drenched in pictographs of the old stories of lore. He tried not to get distracted, but one image did pull at his eyes. Lilith.

Said to be cast aside just because she wanted to ride reverse cowgirl.

"Lilith was the first," he whispered, playing his part in the narrative. "But not Adam's first wife. The first Fay to take on corporal form."

"And why did she do that?" the Queen piped, sitting down in an elaborate x chair that served as her throne.

"The Garden wanted to be extended over the world. She needed help to make it prosper. She took the form to communicate with humans."

"She pled to them her case, and it fell on death ears. In Adam's case. No one was to leave the Garden, especially the Garden itself. Eve was a tad brighter. Her heart was torn. She wept for the Garden, but she did not want to go against the Lord. All she wanted was to affect change."

Crowley let his glasses fall back across his eyes. "Then I came along."

"Then, you came along," the Queen beamed, "and showed her exactly how, showed them both. Meanwhile the angel broke them out of those prison walls, birthing the human race to its freedom. And they became our pollinators, so to speak, and our polluters, when we failed to keep tabs on them and just let them run amuck.

But that's on us.

Humans are not like Elves. Humans can manipulate the world. They can't hear the screams of torn root and rock, you see."

"The Music of man communing with Nature," Crowley grumbled.

"Thorn Tongue, my dear friend! We owe you both, demon and angel, an enormous favor, though it might be as mixed a blessing as you bestowed on us. It allowed us to survive."

"You're welcome, I think."

"But it is a favor of our own choosing and time, and paid once, and nevermore."

"Is this it, then?" his voice rose in agitation, trying to remain calm, trying not to sound disdainful the longer she willfully kept him here, and on edge. "Keeping me waiting only to at last hear me out, and then nothing more?"

"It depends," she smoothly told him as she waved her hand and her people sat down, "on whether you convince me to take action. And what that action may be. So, go on."

"Hear ye, hear ye..."

"Not that kind of Court, Thorn Tongue."

"M'nek. Says you."