Fairy Tale

Fred spring cleaned the room she shared with Dawn, Giles did some research on were-demons in the library, Spike and Xander went out on a practice run in the Fifth Ranking dininghall and throughout all this, Dawn scanned the Demony book. When the night deepened, plunging the air temperature to freezing, she moved from the picnic bench to the porch, lit the logs in the fireplace and carried on scanning. When a frigid breeze quenched the warmth from the fire, she brought a blanket down from the War Room, wrapped up and scanned the pages. She was pouting by the halfway point and close to tears by the three-quarter point.

 

Fred brought a few more blankets and sat on the porch with her. Giles came by to ask how she was getting on and when she huffed, “what do you care?” he went away and brought her a pot of hot chocolate from the terrace restaurant. Xander fetched wood from the furnace room and stoked the fire, and Spike wheeled his bike to the porch, taking a buffing cloth to it.

 

“Found it yet?” Spike asked by and by.

 

“No,” grouchy response.

 

Spike sat on the last available floor cushion and twiddled his thumbs. “I’m cold. How come no-one thought to bring me a blanket?”

 

Xander unwrapped his blanket from around his shoulders and held one end out to Spike. “Share mine,” he said.

 

“I think I will,” Spike stood, picked up his cushion and crossed the short distance to Xander, bending to tap Xander’s drawn-up knees. Xander splayed his knees apart and placed Spike’s cushion between his legs.

 

“That won’t be necessary. Here, have mine,” Giles hurriedly offered his blanket.

 

“Ta Giles, but I’m good,” Spike sat on the cushion, smirking at Giles as Xander enclosed him in arms and blanket.

 

Fred glanced over the cozied up pair. “No hanky-panky under there,” she said with a head-nudge in Dawn’s direction.

 

“Hear, hear,” Giles said, upper lip unmistakably stiff.

 

After long moments of rapid page flicking, Dawn heaved a hearty sigh. “Right near the end, would you believe?”

 

“Who’d you find, Indigo or Jude?” Xander asked, sneaking a stealthy hand up Spike’s T-shirt.

 

“Both,” Dawn made a show of getting comfy on her cushion. She took a swig of hot chocolate, wiped her mouth and cleared her throat once, twice, another swig of hot chocolate.

 

Fred was first to crack. “Come on Dawnie.”

 

“Are you all sitting comfortably?” Dawn asked.

 

“Yes!”

 

“Alright,” She giggled, “Long, long ago…”

 

…in Dyulin’s Western Trail lived two little girls. The first was born when the morning sky had not yet thrown off the dying night’s cloak of indigo and the second born a few hours later as the clouds captured the sun’s rays of ruby. Their mother, her being of unimaginative nature, named the twins Indigo and Ruby.

 

All of Dyulin celebrated their birth with seven days and seven nights of feasting, for their parents were well liked; in addition, it would have been a political faux pas to not rejoice with the ambassadors. Sir and Lady Ambassador represented the interests of travel on the Congress of Dyulin. They were great at persuading Travelers into this Traveler’s realm and threw the most memorable parties to keep tourism alive in Dyulin. So if there was an occasion to curry favor with the famed entertainers, the twins’ birth week was it.

 

Gifts were an important part of currying favor and from that week on, gifts would be the way guests ensured a welcome to the Ambassadors’ ceaseless round of stay and play parties. Indeed, with the ingenious and unique gift, a Traveler could ensure an inexhaustible welcome in the Ambassadors’ home.

 

One day, a pair of Demon Gypsies wandered into Dyulin. Mated for life, they played all the time, exchanging magic gifts and thinking up ways to surprise and stay new to each other. Forever was a long time and many were the Demon Gypsies that bemoaned their stolid unions, begging the swift hand of death to end their misery.

 

“That will never happen to us, My Only,” Jude assured his mate. “We will join the Dyulinians at play and when that grows tiresome, we will search out other parties in other dimensions to while eternity away.”

 

Ela, Jude’s mate, cooed at the twins toddling though the party guests’ legs and sighed at her man…

 

“It says that, Dawn? It says she sighed at her man?” Fred asked. “That doesn’t sound like something a Demony writer would write.”

 

“Can you read Demony? No. So it says ‘her man’ if I say it says ‘her man’.” Dawn plugged on. “Ela sighed lovingly up at her man…”

 

“Was she sitting? Jude’s not all that tall and if Ela sighed lovingly up at him, she must have been sitting or…”

 

“You win, Fred,” Dawn threw her hand up. “Ela looked down at Jude, patted his head and said, ‘I kinda like it here, and did you ever see anything so adorable as sweetie pie and sweetie pie over there?’”

 

No, Jude had never seen anything more adorable than the twins with their ruby red lips, black cork-screw curls and deep blue eyes that glinted indigo at a certain turn of the head. He’d never met people who played as hard as Dyulinians, and the twins played harder than anyone, pulling pranks and blaming each other when they got caught. Dyulin was the perfect playing destination for Jude and Ela, the twins were the nieces they’d never had. The Demon Gypsies hang up their walking boots for a while and co-authored a book. They wrote easy portal opening spells to other dimensions in the book, bound it in black leather and gave it to the Ambassadors as a ‘thank you for having us’ gift.

 

The Ambassadors were delighted. Attending parties in other dimensions was part of their job and Jude’s book would cut traveling time to almost nothing. They accepted the ingenious and unique book into their travel cases, and Jude and Ela into their home and family. The Ambassadors didn’t worry so much anymore when they had to go away on their weeks’ long travels because the trusted Demon Gypsies took charge of the girls.

 

The years passed, the twins grew up surrounded by Jude and Ela’s magicks, learning how to do more and more until they’d learnt all the kids’ stuff and wanted to learn grown up tricks.

 

“Teach them,” Sir Ambassador pleaded. “Magic is more fitting a pre-occupation for my daughters than is flattering their eyelashes at the procession of cads that attend court.” He tugged gently on the twins’ curls, “Papa should like you to perform a few tricks for the guests at your next birthday party.”

 

With this incentive, the twins embarked on an earnest appeal. “We cannot show papa a floating foot stool, Monsieur Jude. It would be too shameful,” Indigo said.

 

“We will swoon away, never to be woken if you make us shame ourselves with floating foot stools,” said Ruby.

 

Jude and Ela went away to discuss it and the next day, they gifted Indigo with fire and Ruby with wind. And the twins were a fiery, stormy sensation at their birthday party.

 

Sir Ambassador lead the applause for his darlings, “Come my fine plumed friends,” he told the guests, “stand up for the Wind Charmer and the Fire Conjuror.”

 

Unimaginative names perhaps, but Sir Ambassador was at that moment choked with pride. How grown up Ruby and Indigo were becoming. “They seem less like children every time we come home from travel,” he remarked to his wife.

 

“We stay away longer, Louis. They seem less like children because they are so.”

 

During one of the Ambassadors’ long trips away, a knee-high marble statuette arrived at the door. Nobody knew who had left the present, but when Indigo brought it in with the morning’s milk delivery, she knew she was smitten.

 

“What lovely gnashers” she said.

 

“Yes and what a fine-looking grin to go with the lovely gnashers,” Ruby said, besotted.

 

Jude and Ela, going mushy at the twins’ blushes of puppy love, imbued the statuette with temporary life. Tresten unfurled from his slumber, all big and manly and that laugh so contagious…the twins nearly swooned away like floating footstools.

 

How were they to know that the very evil jester had been cut down to size, shackled in rock and banished from his own king’s court for his love of black jestery? Jude, Ela, Indigo and Ruby didn’t know that Tresten drove courtiers to suicide and not laughter and that he had been passed on to be someone else’s heartache. Lady Ambassador had an inkling. She came home, took one look at the jester clowning in the great hall and ordered Jude to send Tresten to sleep and to deposit him in a corner with his face to the walls.

 

“But maman,” Ruby cried, “it is dreary without him.”

 

“He juggles seven balls all at once,” Indigo found this simple juggling trick not to be shameful. “Tresten is a vast improvement on the klutz papa employed.”

 

“Tresten smiles as a devil to a saint and I forbid you from waking him again,” said Lady Ambassador.

 

Tresten funked in his corner…

 

“Funked?” Giles interjected, frowning. “What on earth is funked?”

 

“It’s to funk,” Dawn explained.

 

“Enlighten me,” he glanced at Xander.

 

“Funk, you know? To be in deep funk?”

 

None the wiser, Giles asked, “Could you put funk into a sentence for illustrative purposes?”

 

“Yeah. Giles was in a funk because he got handed his P45,” Spike illustrated.

 

“Ah, funk; a murderously foul mood,” Giles nodded comprehension.

 

“What’s a P45?” Fred asked.

 

“It’s too shameful,” Spike said.

 

“However,” Dawn called order, “There were no P45s. There was a corner and Tresten was in a murderously foul mood in it.”

 

The twins were brokenhearted, but Lady Ambassador would not budge. She cancelled all her travel arrangements and took up painting lessons from Ela. “I will stay home and paint portraits for all my guests. They will have portraits and you, my dears, will relinquish your desires for Tresten. You will overcome him or I will paint into my dotage.”

 

Ruby and Indigo made like they’d forgotten about cobwebby Tresten in the corner and when Lady Ambassador at last put on her traveling cloak seven years later, they carried her bags to the blue portal.

 

“You will stay away from Tresten, no?” She said.

 

“Tresten who?” They asked. But the portal hadn’t even closed behind the ambassadors before the twins were banging on Jude’s door. “Monsieur Jude! Please, one last time, you must awaken him one more time!”

 

Deciding one more time couldn’t hurt, Jude animated Tresten. One more time became first thing every morning. Jude realized that it was becoming harder to de-animate Tresten at the end of each day and soon, days would go by with Tresten not sleeping. The jester held court in the great hall, sauntered around the house in Sir Ambassador’s party coat, sat at the head of the dinner table with Ruby on one knee, Indigo on the other and his hands on bosoms no man had touched before.

 

Ela was scandalized. When the twins next came to ask her to animate Tresten, she refused and prohibited Jude from gifting the loathsome statuette with life.  

 

“We will do it ourselves,” Indigo laughed and together with Ruby zapped Tresten awake because Tresten could do no evil.

 

But he was doing evil. He dug a pit in the Trail and introduced gory games, attracting the kind of species that gave non-humans a bad name. The Ambassadors’ guests left, their friends dropped by less often and stopped visiting altogether when Ruby told them where to insert their concerns.

 

Also concerned, Jude and Ela tried de-animating Tresten, but the big, unfriendly giant was now immune to their magical lullabies. There was still hope though, because as often happens, the pupils had surpassed the teachers. Indigo and Ruby were performing greater feats of magic than the Demon Gypsies and were doing it with greater ease and far more panache. Indigo was somewhat more talented than Ruby and it was to her that Jude and Ela took their concerns.

 

“Look around you Indigo, see what has become of your home,” Jude petitioned.

 

Indigo slipped the rose-tinted Raybans off and saw the Grang’als and Tomb Robbers, unfamiliar faces among other unfamiliar faces. She saw Tresten take down another of her mother’s guests’ portraits and replace it with another of his own.

 

“I will speak with Ruby,” she promised.

 

Ruby rent her garments at the very suggestion. “He means no harm, Indi. Please do not shroud him in sleep, please. I should die without him.”

 

The Fire Conjuror caved under her sister’s histrionic beseeching. “Okay, okay. Now please rise up off the floor or the flagstones will chafe the skin off your knees.”

 

Jude prayed for the Ambassadors’ return.

 

The Ambassadors were in the human dimension, hauled up before the Watchers’ Council for using the spell book to, “give free range to all manner of demon into our dimension. We already have a hellmouth and will thank you not to sprout anymore of these demon highways,” Mr Pryce, Senior Watcher said, impounding the black book.

 

It became a family heirloom, passed onto his great, great, great, great, great grandson Wesley Wyndham-Pryce who lent it to one Winifred Burkle…”What’s with the tsk-tsking, Giles?”

 

“Either the book prophesied its eventual return to Dyulin, or you’re indulging in sheer speculation. I suspect the latter,” Giles said.

 

“Do you want to hear the rest of the story? Because I suspect I’m going to leave you hanging if you don’t quit butting in.”

 

“Please carry on,” Giles placated.

 

Without the book and its easy dimensional accessing spells, The Ambassadors had to take the long way home and were bushed by the time they unlocked the front door.

 

Tresten was waiting for them.

 

He threw them into the pit together with a gang of bloodthirsty Succubae and challenged them to a game of dodge-demon. The ambassadors were politicians, didn’t know which side of a sword was up. They died and Tresten crowned himself king of the hill.

 

Jude and Ela watched it all.

 

Indigo and Ruby slept through it all and woke up to Ela crying in their bedchamber.

 

“I’m sorry, we couldn’t stop him.”

 

“Stop who – what are you talking about?” Indigo asked.

 

Ela told her.

 

“Did you try to stop him, Ela?”

 

“We…Jude and I, we…”

 

“You repaid my parents’ kindness with cowardice,” Indigo pushed Ela away and pulled on a kimono over her night gown, her ringlets bouncing all over her head as she tramped in search of Tresten.

 

Ruby took a moment to cover her sleep tousled hair with a veil before running after her sister. “There must be some mistake. Tresten would not do so terrible a thing,” she said.

 

“Do shut up Ruby. This is not the time for your infatuated driveling.”

 

As Tresten was not in the great hall, Indigo sped to the only other place he could be and there he was, larger than life, clapping as more blood was added to the Ambassadors’ in the pit’s dirt floor.

 

“You deign to laugh, Tresten?”

 

“Leave, if my delight curdles your humor.”

 

“You are the intruder and the one who ought to leave. Moreover, I will not go without my sister.”

 

“Yet your likeness will not go without me, Jude and Ela will not leave the Trail without you…such a conundrum Indigo. What ever are we to do?”

 

“Bad jester,” Indigo cartwheeled into the arena. “Get in here and pit your smiles against my bonfires.”

 

Tresten pitched his smiles at Ruby standing beside him. “Smite her and you will stand at Tresten’s side for always,” he said.

 

Not believing for a second that Ruby would smite her, Indigo limbered up for the chargrilling of Tresten.

 

Ruby had just heard Tresten propose marriage to her and it wasn’t everyday that a fly guy like him proposed to an ordinary girl like her. Indigo got smote, but managed to escape…

 

“Dawn, to smite means to hew, to cut down, to end one’s life,” Giles cautiously butted in. “Indigo can’t have escaped if she…”

 

She got smote dammit, and escaped to the Void, throwing a fireball as Ruby opened her mouth to blow again. Wind made the fireball massive and Indigo’s magic made it stick to Ruby’s mouth, melting her lips into a mess in order that she would, “Feel the burn of your perfidy every time you speak,” Indigo yelled.

 

Jude and Ela watched it all and became Tresten’s self-appointed biographers.

 

They made another book, bound it in black leather and wrote in it all Tresten’s games through the years, his macabre rules, and clues on how he might be defeated. They did not know for certain how to kill Tresten because he seldom fought and never lost any of his infrequent forays into the pit. Another place Tresten rarely forayed into – in fact, he never ventured there – was the Void. Why he stayed away was anyone’s guess, however, inferences could be made from Tresten’s off-hand comments about the Void being, “an infertile no-man’s land that is not worth inhabiting much less conquering.” From these comments Ela inferred that Tresten had no jurisdiction over the Void and that he was perhaps a little apprehensive of the baleful mutterings of the spirits he had consigned to its depths. 

 

Having had no hand in the horrible deaths of the departed and hence fearless of their mutterings, Ela frequented the Void, her purpose being to give Indigo solace. But the deposed princess could find no solace in eking out an existence in no-man’s land, “surrounded as I am by walls that belong to the dead,” she moaned.

 

Terribly guilty about Indigo’s decline, Ela resolved to remedy it. She worked on Jude saying, “Will you not reason with Tresten’s good nature, dearest?”

 

Centuries of nagging eventually wear a man down and Jude, heartily sick of the ructions Tresten was causing in his marriage, stood up from among the audience one night after a game in the pit and tried to reason with the jester’s good nature. It landed the lovebirds in the pit. Jude and Ela might have had a chance against the Gangr’als that swarmed in after them had they spent more time training and less time body painting.

 

The Gangr’als pulverized them, leaving Jude badly injured and Ela dying in the dust. It destroyed Jude. He lay alongside her, held her hand and together they cursed Tresten. Jude gave his everything to that curse. He cursed Tresten with all the grief those who are being left behind know. Ela’s sorrow peaked with not wanting to leave Jude on his own and she put the frightening strength of her sorrow into the curses.

 

Your games shall have rules and the rules shall govern you. You shall accede to all who challenge you in play, for to decline is to forfeit and forfeit shall cause you to slumber. This Trail will be your castle and your prison for no thing shall ever depart here without that the curse of sleep finds you.

 

You will never again know the respite found in dreams for when you lay your head down, the chains of stone will return to tether you. Play Tresten, play; for when play sleeps so too will your ill-gained prize.

 

Tresten ordered his new buddies the shady sorcerers to lock the exits so no-one could trigger the curse of sleep by leaving and so he would always have someone to play with. This way play would never sleep. While the warlocks were locking, Jude watched Ela’s life drain away and he wept his plight to the walls.

 

“Stand as my witnesses for walls are impartial and cannot be weakened with promises of glory.” And he revealed Tresten’s deeds, left no stone unturned, no secret uncovered. He went for full exposure as Ela recited her last will:

 

Tresten’s castle walls, those standing and those yet to be born, shall be a canvas for my charm of automatic painting. From my grave will I paint on the walls the lamentations of my Seulement and what is more, will I draw on them Tresten’s sport; each game, rule and law, new as well as old shall be depicted for eternity.

 

True to Ela’s word, the walls in the amphitheatre flowered with bright and telling pictures. Furious, Tresten sailed into the pit and stood over the turtle doves, right foot aiming a kick at Ela. Hissing to send shivers through the bravest of warriors, Ela averted Tresten’s kick, gripping his ankle with both hands, body bucking as though seated on a bronco as Tresten shook then flailed his leg. Ela held on, warts flattened with spite, lips moving in a silent chant.

 

Tresten smashed her face in with his other foot and Ela died, her hands a death hold on his ankle. He broke her fingers from around his ankle and cocked his marble hard fists at Jude.

 

“Please,” Jude sobbed, “Please take my life. It would be a mercy.”

 

Tresten laughed, uncurling his fists. “You would bid your life to Tresten? Very well, Tresten consents to being your Amo.” He shouted up at the rowdy Travelers watching from pit-side, “Tresten has earned a life and being a fair leader, urges you to cast bids to earn your own Earned.”

 

Thus, bidding became a way of Trail life and Jude became the Trail’s first Earned being. His number one chore was to “erase the paintings, white wash the walls, do what you must. Tresten will not have them show the way.”

 

It was no use. The sleep-curse and wall-charm were impregnable; living oaths bonded to Ela’s death. To overturn them, Tresten would have to resuscitate Ela and make her take back the curses, but she was way past mouth-to-mouth. Jude couldn’t rub the paintings off or find white-wash that didn’t turn into water when applied to the drawings, or cloth that didn’t become transparent when draped over the pictures. Ruby couldn’t do it, Indigo couldn’t and if these three couldn’t then no-one could.