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Chapter 9: "Young man, I think you're dyin'"—from "Barbara Allen," old Scots ballad

Ford stepped between them, his spear raised across his chest. "No. I forbid this. I issued the challenge. You must face me."

Ereachdaill glared at him, his eyes blazing an unearthly blue. "The choice is made, the deed is done. Step aside, man, or forfeit the girls." He grinned. "Lennan the Queen means to send one of them to Hell next season. The Dark One demands a tithe of blood once every seven years, and the Queen pays with human blood! Now, which one shall it be, do you think? Stand there, and perhaps when the deed is done one of the Fey shall bring you the answer."

"I got this, Grunkle Ford," Dipper said. "Let him pass."

Reluctantly, Ford stepped aside. "Dipper! Get your guard up!"

The Fey grinned. "I am Ereachdaill the dreadful foe! I bring your death!"

"Yeah, well, I'm Dipper Pines. Bring it on!"

The Fey's glowing sword arced, a blue semicircle cut out of the twilight, not in attack but in intimidating display. Dipper whipped up his spear, and the next instant it clanged—

Against the one that Grunkle Stan had hurled at Ereachdaill, sending it spinning into the twilight. "Ya knucklehead!" Stan bellowed. "That coulda taken him out!"

"No help," Dipper said, stepping backward as Ereachdaill took slow steps toward him. "No cheating. Wendy, that goes for you, too."

The blazing blue sword arced, and dipper got the spear up just in time—but held it crossways between his hands and caught the Fey blade as it rang down. It struck with surprisingly little force, but the iron glowed a smoking red-hot, sent of sparks, and made an angry hiss. After a heartbeat, Ereachdaill jerked back as if he'd received an electrical shock.

"C'mon, Dipper!" Wendy yelled, "Stab him!"

Dipper had backed up beside an old-growth black oak, its trunk about five feet in diameter. As Ereachdaill drew back his sword, Dipper ducked behind the tree, there was a flash of light, and the Fey warrior swung, the sword hissing right where Dipper's throat had been a moment before—

But the blade bit hard into the wood. "Where are you!" Ereachdaill bellowed in fury. "You cannot hide from me! That will forfeit the fight!"

"But I'm right here!" Another flash, and Dipper grew from only inches tall to his full size. The size-changing flashlight hung from his neck on a thong, and before Ereachdaill could wrest his sword from the oak, Dipper thrust his spear between the Fey's legs and tripped him up.

Ereachdaill fell backwards, spreading his wings, and lifted into the air—but now at six inches tall.

"No flying!" Dipper taunted.

The Fey settled to earth and grew back to human size as he did so. He stood unarmed, the Fey sword still vibrating, its blade caught in the tree. "Then kill me," he said. He touched his heart. "Strike here, and strike true."

But Dipper raised the spear and held its point a few inches from the Fey's throat. "But you're not down there," he said. "I can see you. Your human body is a trick, a glamour. You're fluttering right here."

"Kill him!" Stan yelled.

"None would blame me if I did," Dipper said softly. "Let them go. Let them go and you live."

"You don't understand!" Ereachdaill said fiercely. "Strike!"

"No. Bring back my sister and her friends."

"But I can't do that! The Queen—"

"The Queen," came an icy voice, "is here—traitor!"

Ford called out, "You named him your champion! You can't go back on your word!"

"Kill them," the Queen said carelessly.

Dipper heard the whirr of wings then, hundreds of them, and from the space above the trees Fey warriors dropped down, arrows nocked in their bows, drawing aim on the humans.

He dropped his spear and reached into his vest.

"And Ereachdaill, too!" the Queen screamed. Then she noticed Dipper. "What are you doing—"

Dipper squeezed the trigger. The alien magnet gun, for once, pulsed and registered a full charge—and then an expanding wave of magnetism burst from it, enveloping first Lennan, then the descending Fey army—

They tumbled from the sky, wings locked, unable to keep themselves aloft. Dipper pushed past Ereachdaill, who had turned to retrieve his sword from the oak. It was getting quite dark now, but he stumbled over what he needed, grabbed it up, and turned again.

Lennan was standing and trying to grow. Her body, its magic disrupted by the magnetism, would not fully obey her—now she was a tiny torso and chest on legs nearly adult size, now she was doll-sized but weighed down by one huge arm, now she was in between—

Dipper threw a loop around her and caught her by the waist. She screamed, a high, inhuman sound, and thrashed like a shark caught on hook and line too small for it. Suddenly her body was a mass of hot flame.

But to Dipper it felt only warm. He squinted his eyes. The desperate Fey Queen was strong—she jerked him off his feet, then swung him around, as she transformed into something hideously like a rabid wolf. Dipper threw another loop of chain over her head and tightened it.

Wendy was at his side now, her axe raised.

"No, grab the chain!" Dipper yelled. "Wrap her in it!"

Her hands helped. Loop after loop, and the fluid shape they contained was no longer even vaguely human, nor was it Fey, but something straight out of a bad dream, a shape that perhaps Bill Cipher woke up shrieking about after jerking out of one of his worst nightmares. Sounds poured from the writhing thing, but in no language.

Ford said over the din "Ereachdaill! We have your Queen hostage! A life for lives—return your captives, and we will free her!"

Ereachdaill now held his sword, freed from the oak at last. He walked to them and stared at the heaving, shifting thing wrapped in yards of chain. "That is not my decision to make," he said.

A new voice, a younger one, rang out: "No. It is mine!"

They stood back. From the dark sky a winged form, shining and silvery, floated down. "Fey Host, hear me!" she called—for it was a female, beautiful in the inhuman way of the Fey. "Behold, I claim the rule of Lennan's realm! I am Isbrea, banished to the human realm, now returned to reclaim what is mine!"

Throughout the woods, the tumbled and scattered forms of the fallen fairies now rose, flying unsteadily, not glowing brightly as she did, but flickering a dark orange as they traced jerky courses in the night. They did not attack, but hung all around, a hovering cloud of fiery sparks.

Wendy said, "Dudes, I know that voice. That's Mabel's new friend from town—Amy!"

"I never was Amy," the fairy said. "I hid with the family while Lennan searched for me—she wished to kill me, for she knew well that I was to become Queen after her. If she could have taken me in my right form, she would have killed me, for I was to be the tithe to Hell this year."

"Wait, what?" Dipper asked. "Where's Mabel?"

"My servants are bringing her and her two friends from our mound. In the morning, mortals will have lost all memory of the girl they called Amy, and your sister and the two others will recall this night only as a dream. When Amy's human parents return, there will be no sign that such a girl ever lived—because she didn't. I assumed this disguise only last year, and created a glamour in the minds of all who knew the Lowrances that they really had a daughter. But come the morning, there will be no memento of her on Earth—for all their memories of her are false, and they shall be cleared away."

Five brighter shapes came flying over the ferns. Dipper recognized one right away. "Mabel!"

That fairy, her colors pink and orange, dipped, flying unsteadily on wings not fully formed. "Boy? I—I know you."

"Give 'em back their right shapes!" Stan said.

"Then unwrap the former Queen," Isbrea said. "The girls will be restored after what must be done has been done."

"Are you going to kill her?" Dipper asked.

"Let her face the old Queen," Ereachdaill said softly. "That's how it must be."

"Else your sister will never return," Isbrea said. "Tomorrow's moon will seal her fate."

"Do it, Dipper," Ford said.

The seething mass of alien flesh within the circles of chain tried to bite him, but he found the creature weighed very little. He pulled coil after coil of chain off it, and at last it lay and heaved on the ground, still trying to regain its form, but managing only a horrible, creeping, lurching imitation of it.

"Lennan!" Isbrea shouted—when had she become human-sized—"you have lost your claim to your throne and your life. I overturn your rule and all your spells are now broken!"

With a hiss, the misshapen form became a striking serpent, but as it leapt, Isbrea yelled, "Leig e sin!"

The snake, caught in mid-strike, vanished. An eruption of white light blinded Dipper. He fell back from an outrush of heat that felt as if it were raising blisters on his face. His ears rang as he got unsteadily to his hands and knees. A hand reached down and pulled him up by the arm.

"Thanks," Dipper gasped. He turned on his flashlight. "Who are you?"

The old man who had pulled him up was nearly a living skeleton—he resembled nothing as much as one of the zombies Dipper had conjured to impress two Federal agents, and rags of skin clothing clung to his body. "I was Ereachdaill," the figure croaked. "But before that I was Abraham Hales, a woodsman. Now I am human again, and my years fall on me."

Someone moaned. Ereachdaill took a step toward the sound—and his leg shattered into fragments and dust. He plunged toward the ground, dissolving, leaving only a pale cloud hanging in the air.

"Dipper?" the voice sounded frightened and lost.

"Mabel!" Dipper yelled. "Where are you!"

"Right here—Aagggh! Why am I naked in the woods?"

"Yell again, Mabes," Wendy called. "I'll bring some clothes for you!"

"Here's the backpack!" Grunkle Stan yelled.

Leave it to Ford to light a flashlight. But he shone it upwards, not directly on the girls. Still, in the dim back-glow Dipper glimpsed them, Mabel, Candy, and Grenda, sitting up in just enough fern cover to partly conceal them. Then Wendy cut off his view, lugging a backpack. "Okay, Mabes, here's your sweater, underthings, skirt—Stan, didn't you think to bring shoes? Grenda, these must be yours—Turn your backs, guys! Give them a little privacy!"

In a few minutes they were as dressed as they were going to get. Dipper had pointed his own flashlight toward the ground. Where Ereachdaill had last stood there was a pile of dust and a few fragments of what could have been bone.

"Grunkle Ford," he called, "Could I borrow your knife, please?"

"What for?"

"You'll see."

On the trunk of the oak that had nipped Ereachdaill's sword, slowly and inexpertly Dipper carved the words "ABRAHAM HALES ?-July 7, 2013. RIP."

Grunkle Ford carried Candy, Stan carried Mabel, and Grenda said she preferred to walk barefoot because the briars felt good.

Back in the Shack the girls got cleaned up, had their scratches bandaged, and got fed—"They never gave us one bite to eat," complained Candy—and then went to bed, exhausted.

The others sat in the parlor and told Melody and Soos the whole story. "Man," Soos said, "I know these woods have got, like, bizarre stuff in them, but fairies? Though I did once kill a funny-lookin' bug."

"Are we safe from them now?" Melody asked.

"I think so," Ford told her. "The new Queen isn't vindictive. And they've given their tithe to the devil."

"What is that?" Stan asked.

Surprisingly, Soos's Abuelita spoke up: "The old people say the fairies began when some of the Angels of the Lord took no sides in the devil's rebellion. The bad angels, they revolted; the good angels, they stood by the side of the Lord and fought for him; but a third of the angels took no side, and in the end they were cast out of Heaven. They had no place. They could not return to Heaven. They could not live in the bad place with the devils. So the Diablo, he says he will not bother them if they stay on Earth, but once every seven years they must make a sacrifice to him."

"But—but Amy never really existed?" Dipper asked.

Melody looked blank. "Amy? Who's that?"

"Uh—Amy Lowrance? Her mom and dad own the pharmacy?"

Soos looked worried. "Dude, are you okay? The Lowrances don't have any children."

Dipper exchanged a look with Wendy, Ford, and Stan. It was clear they all remembered—but from what the girls had said on their way home, it was clear they did not.

The Stans and Wendy got ready to go, but for a moment they all stood in the parking lot. "Am I wrong?" Dipper asked. "Did we just get caught up in a political coup in Fairyland?"

"Something like that," Ford said. "My hunch is that Isbrea had to flee because Lennan's reign was getting shaky, and Lennan knew that Isbrea would be the next queen. I think Isbrea recruited Hales—or Ereachdaill, as the Fey knew him—to help her. In return she'd grant his wish."

"Which was what?" Stan asked.

"To die," Ford said. "Something inside him knew he was human—and yearned for his final fate, after all these long and empty years."

"So—they made me write the fairy-calling spell in my Journal?" Dipper asked. "They made Mabel and her friends take over the attic?"

"I don't think so," Ford told him. "They took advantage of what happened. Mabel told me a little of what went on. They didn't even perform the rite properly. It shouldn't have worked. But Isbrea had sensed that someone who knew fairy lore was in the Shack, so she mentally nudged Mabel and the others to stage the summoning. Isbrea herself probably mentally summoned Ereachdaill. That let her get back into the Fey palace without Lennan's realizing it. It's a good thing that the fairies didn't give the girls Fey food, by the way—that would have made it much harder for them to be returned to us."

"So were we supposed to, like, kill Ereachdaill?" Wendy asked.

"If we did, we would have won the contest, and Lennan would have to surrender the hostages—something she definitely would have refused to do, violating one of the most important laws of the Fey. I don't think Ereachdaill would have killed any of us," Ford said slowly. "I think the whole goal of this plot was to turn the Fey against Lennan when they realized she was breaking their traditions and rules. So the old Queen passed, and the new one will be crowned tomorrow night. The death of the old moon is the birth of the new, and life goes on."

"Yeah, but the little flyin' cockroaches still ought to be exterminated," Stan growled.

"No," Dipper disagreed. "No, they're really not our enemies. Not our friends, either. The scariest thing about them is that they just don't care about humans one way or the other. I'd rather they hated us than just have this . . . cold indifference, but they are what they are."

Wendy yawned. "Well, I gotta report for work tomorrow, so I'm gonna be on my way. Dipper, man, you did good. I'm proud of you."

"Thanks," Dipper said.

He stayed in the parking lot until Stan's car and Wendy's had rumbled down the gravel drive to the highway.

What do you know? She's proud of me! But I was so confused about everything. I didn't really know what I was doing.

Feeling a little like a fraud, he stood alone in the dark for a few moments listening to night sounds—crickets and cicadas, the nearly inaudible twitter of bats, the insistent "whooo" of an owl, and away off somewhere a coyote or wild dog forlornly howling.

He checked his phone: 11:55.

What was it that the Duke had said in the Shakespeare play his and Mabel's class had gone on a field trip to see? "The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve. 'Tis almost fairy time."

"Almost," he said, and shivered a little. Then he went inside to bed.

The End