Faerie Lord

Three

‘You’re old!’ Henry blurted. It was stupid, but he couldn’t think of anything else to say. They were sitting round the table in Mr Fogarty’s kitchen. Hodge had jumped onto Nymph’s lap and was curled purring while he had his ears tickled. Close up, Pyrgus still looked in his thirties, maybe even late thirties. Henry found himself wondering if this was some sort of spell thing, set up as a disguise.

‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that,’ Pyrgus said. ‘But I know what you mean.’

‘What are you doing here?’ Henry asked. What he really wanted to ask was why they were wearing ordinary clothes, Pyrgus in particular: his suit could have come from Marks and Sparks. Henry had never seen them wearing gear like that before. Clothes in the Realm were generally a bit medieval-looking and Forest Faeries like Nymph wore Grecian-style tunics, nearly always in green. ‘Why are you dressed in – ’ he pulled the word out of two-year-old depths ’ – Analogue clothes?’

‘I have to live here,’ Pyrgus said, as if that answered everything. He caught Henry’s expression and grinned again, a little sheepishly this time. ‘Nymph came with me because we got married.’

For a long beat Henry gaped in stunned amazement; then he exploded, ‘Married?’ He looked at Nymph, who smiled a little. ‘The two of you are married?’

She nodded. ‘Yes. Very shortly after you last saw us actually.’

‘You can’t be married,’ Henry said. ‘Not really.’ But he was grinning all over his face. He liked Nymph and she was perfect for Pyrgus. The way Pyrgus looked had to be a spell thing. He glanced at Nymph. ‘Don’t you miss the forest?’

‘There are forests in this world,’ Nymph said calmly. ‘A wife must be at her husband’s side.’

Charlie mightn’t go along with that one, Henry thought. She’d taken to feminism in a big way over the last six months and kept talking about independence and equality and the way women were oppressed by traditional values. Which Henry sort of agreed with really, although to be honest it wasn’t on his mind much of the time. ‘Is the age business… like, some sort of magic thing?’ he asked, returning to an earlier thought.

The smile on Pyrgus’s face disappeared as if he’d thrown a switch. ‘It’s an illness, Henry,’ he said softly. ‘That’s why we’re here.’