The children leaped back with a cry, and Puck howled, " 'Ware!" A torch suddenly flared in his hand, thrusting up at the troll's nose. It squalled and leaped back, swatting at a burn spot on its loincloth. Puck stepped away, the torch disappear-ing, watching the troll warily.
It finished dousing the spark and looked back at him with huge, witless eyes, drooling and grinning as its glance flickered from child to child. It took a tentative step forward, then hesitated. "What if troll do? Children flee!" It pulled its foot back, shaking its head. "No, no! Mustn't go! Stay on bridge! Children have to cross, soon or late!" It relaxed, gazing from one child to another with a toothy grin. "Children have to cross!" Then it fell silent, totally at ease, watching, waiting.
After a little time, Cordelia asked, "Must we cross, Puck?"
"Assuredly we must!" Geoffrey answered. "And if the foul monster will not step aside for us, then we must needs remove it!" He stepped forward, hand on his dagger.
"Hold thy blade!" Puck's hand clamped on his. "I have told thee once I do not wish to fight! He who fights when he need not is either a fool or a knave!"
Geoffrey reddened, but held his place.
"Puck hath the right of it," Magnus acknowledged.
"But why dost thou speak of it?" Gregory asked, puzzled. "How can there be a question? Wherefore ought we fight for the bridge, when we need but fly over it?"
Geoffrey stared at Magnus, astonished. Magnus stared back, then grinned sheepishly. "What fools were we not to see it!"
"Aye," Cordelia agreed. "What banty roosters art thou, so intent on the challenge mat thou couldst not see a foot into the air?"
"And where were thy words, whilst we did debate it?" Geoffrey demanded. "Naetheless, the laddie hath the right of it. Up, folk, and fly!"
"But what of Fess?" Magnus said.
"Don't concern yourself with me," the great beast replied. "This creature would not find me a tasty morsel."
They drifted up into the night air, wafting across the stream. The troll howled in frustration. Geoffrey laughed and swooped low, taunting. The troll leaped, snatching at the boy's ankle. Geoffrey howled with dismay as the troll yanked him down with a chuckle, straight toward its great maw. The boy yanked his dagger free and bent to stab, while his siblings cried, "Geoffrey!"
"Be brave—we come!" And they all swooped back for him.
But a diminutive figure leaped up onto the troll's hand just as it was about to bite, a green-clad figure that howled, "Ye foul Sassenach! Would ye gobble up babes, then?" And it
struck with a small hammer, right on the blob of a nose. The troll howled and clapped a huge hand over its proboscis—and Geoffrey yanked his foot free, soaring upward, pale and trembling. Kelly hopped down off the troll's hand, a bit pale himself, and darted for the end of the bridge. The troll roared and stamped at him, but the elf was too quick, and vanished into the night.
"Bless thee, Kelly," Geoffrey cried.
"Aye, and bless thy stars, too," Puck snapped, right next to him in midair. "What possessed thee to taunt him so? Foolish boy, now get hence!"
Geoffrey's jaw tightened, but he obeyed without an argument for once, and swooped away after his brothers and sister.
Below, the troll watched him go, rubbing its nose and muttering to itself. Then a slow grin spread over its face, and it swaggered bandy-legged toward the far side of the bridge, chuckling deep in its throat, sniffing the night breeze and following the scent of the children.
As the trees closed behind them, Cordelia looked back. "Puck! The troll hath come off the bridge! It doth scent the night air… it doth follow our trace!"
Puck frowned, darting a quick look back. '"'Tis not the way of that kind. Then again, they're seldom so thwarted. Summer and Fall! These are thy woods; thou dost know them better than I. Where shall we find safe hiding?"
"Come!" Summer cried; and "Follow!" echoed Fall.
Fess, who had followed them, crossing the bridge after the troll, blundered off in the wood with a great crash, hoping to distract the monster.
The children for their part tried to follow Fall and Summer, but it was slow going—the fairies failed to remember that the children couldn't dodge through a net of brambles, or dive through a twelve-inch hole beneath a shrub. "Hold!" Puck cried to them. "These great folk cannot follow wheresoe'er thou dost lead!"
"Eh! We regret!" Summer bit her lip, glancing back at die sounds of rending and thrashing, and the booming "Ho! Ho!" far behind. "We'll seek to lead thee through ways large enough," Fall promised.
And they did, though they still tended to underestimate what "large enough" meant. The children grew sore from stooping through three-foot gaps in the underbrush and weary from pushing aside springy branches. But they kept at it, for
the crashing and booming "Ho! Ho!" was growing louder behind them. Festoons of vines glided by them, silvered by moonlight; spider webs two-feet across netted the sides of their way, glistening with dewdrops. Cordelia looked about her, enthralled, and would have stopped to gaze, enchanted, if her brothers had not hurried her on, darting glances back over their shoulders.
"Where dost thou lead us?" Magnus panted.
"To a secret place that only fairies know of," Fall answered.
"Courage—'tis not far now," Summer urged.
It wasn't; in fact, it was only a few more steps. Gregory was following along in Cordelia's wake when suddenly he tripped and lurched against a screen of vines twined together. But the screen gave beneath his weight, and he went bumping and mumping down a hillside with a single yelp of dismay.
"Gregory!" Cordelia cried, and leaped after him.
The boy landed at the bottom with a thud and a thump, and a sister right behind him, who caught him up in a hug almost before he'd stopped sliding. "Oh, poor babe! Art thou hurted, Gregory?"
"Nay, 'Delia," Gregory answered, rubbing at a sore spot on his hip. " 'Tis naught; I'm no longer a babe… Oh, 'Delia!"
He looked about him in rapture. She followed his gaze and stared, too, entranced.
It was a faerie grotto, only a dozen yards across, like a deep bowl in the midst of the woods, lit by a thousand fireflies and walled by flowering creepers and blossoming shrubs, roofed by blooming tree branches and floored with soft mosses. An arc of water sprang out of one wall in a burbling fountain, to fall plashing into a little pool and run tinkling and chiming across the floor of the grotto as a tiny brook.
" 'Tis enchanted," Cordelia breathed.
"In truth, it is," Fall said beside her. "Long years ago, an ancient witch did fall and sprain her ankle here. The Wee Folk aided her, sin that she had always been kind to mem; we bound her hurt with sweet herbs and a compress of simples, and murmured words of power o'er it, so that the grasses took the hurt from out her, and healed her. In thanks, she made this dell for us and, though she is long gone, her gift yet endures."
With a crash and a skid, her two brothers shot down the side of the grotto. Their heels hit the moss and shot out from under them, landing them hard on their bottoms. Magnus
yelped, and Geoffrey snarled a word that made Cordelia clap her hands over Fall's ears.
"I thank thee, lass," the fairy said, gently prying Cordelia's fingers away, "but I misdoubt me an thy brother could know a word I've not heard. Still, 'tis most ungentlemanly of him to say it!" She stalked over to glare up at the seated boy, fists on her hips. "Hast thou no consideration for a gentle lady, thou great lob?"
Geoffrey opened his mouth for a hot answer, but Magnus caught his eye, and he swallowed whatever he'd been about to say.
"I prithee, forgive him," Big Brother said. "He is young yet, and 'tis hard for him to be mindful of manners when he is hurted." That earned him a murderous glare which he blithely ignored, and turned back to his sister. "I take it from these presents that thou art not greatly hurted, nor our brother neither."
"Thou hast it aright," she confirmed. "Yet never have I so rejoiced in a mishap. Hast thou ever seen so lovely a covert?"