Fairies sometimes turn cannibal. Unlike cannibal human beings, however, a cannibal fairy is not necessarily insane or protein-deprived. They're usually annoyed. Very, very annoyed.
After watching Lord Roxton and Marguerite for just a week, Lady Gabrena would happily have eaten every Avie fairy ever hatched, given a proper sauce. If they'd minded their own magic, she wouldn't be here watching this … this spectacle.
Bored? The word didn't begin to describe Lady Gabrena. She was as stiff, sleepy and cranky as a, as a, well, as a rusty nail. Yes, a rusty nail. And disgusted? "Appalled" might be closer to the truth. Lord Roxton and Marguerite fought constantly. For a fairy to watch the endless warring without trying to help ... well, it went against every bit of proper fairy upbringing. But because of the Queen's orders, all Lady Gabrena could do was take wing notes. She'd already sent a dozen or so flying home for transcription as well as a footnote galloping after to tell Feathersmee, the court scribe, to hold the files open for eighty years or until Lady Gabrena returned.
Milady wrote down the whole gruesome circus in careful, meticulous detail. How for the first few days Lord Roxton had carried Marguerite everywhere she wanted to go, even to the privacy chamber when she had the need, how he'd introduced her to Cammie and let the dinosaur lick Marguerite so it would know her anywhere and how Marguerite had squealed but permitted it, and how dashing Roxton had looked -- in a naked, primeval sort of way -- when he rode on Cammie's back bringing home something to eat and how Marguerite's eyes had glowed when she saw him. At first Roxton and Marguerite had got along so well -- until they began fighting.
Marguerite and Roxton's first fight had started innocuously enough. Lord Roxton had been tallying his calendar, a series of marks on the cave wall. Finishing the count, he wiped a section of floor sand smooth and wrote with a stick, "June 29, 1922."
"You've been here too long, John. That's wrong. Years wrong," Marguerite had said cleaning under her nails with the point of the steel knife. By that time she could comfortably hobble about the cave but spent most of her time sitting up in the bed. Roxton apparently had totally relinquished title to that piece of furniture. He slept in the storage chamber or outside with Cammie.
"Oh? And just what date do you fancy, Miss Smith?" Despite an invitation to call her Marguerite, Lord Roxton continued using "Miss Smith". And he had yet to tell Marguerite his own patronymic, or for that matter anything about himself or the Summerlee expedition. He'd told her only the basics: that she was on an inaccessible plateau in the Venezuelan jungle and that it was filled with dinosaurs and other fantastic creatures.
On the other wing, Marguerite had out-and-out lied to Roxton, telling him that she was a museum curator spirited out of the Louvre by the magical medallion she'd been cleaning. Needless to say, he hadn't believed her. He'd grunted a skeptical, "Oh?"
Using a piece of leather to protect herself, Marguerite had leaned over and picked up the medallion in question from the litter by her bed and gestured for Roxton to take it. "Here it is, John," she'd said. "Why don't you take it and see where you poof off to?"
(Oh great twinkle toes! Lady Gabrena had exclaimed to herself. It's the Trion! She'd heard of the Protector's emblem of office and it's mystical powers, but she'd never thought to see it.)
While Marguerite watched, her arms crossed, her chin thrust out, and somehow looking dangerous even though she was flat on her back and unarmed, Roxton had held the triangular pendant and waited for his maiden flight into magic. Nothing had happened.
Roxton had stayed silent for quite a while, probably unable to think of words that wouldn't escalate their embryonic argument. Finally he'd grunted, "Doesn't seem magical to me." Marguerite's scowl had deepened. Rolling toward the wall and pulling the furs closer about her (even on the hottest Plateau day the cave was a bee's whisker cool), Marguerite had tossed back over her shoulder, "You take it then. Just keep it away from me."
Roxton wore the Trion on a leather cord around his neck. Sometimes Lady Gabrena saw him fingering it, a sad, unfathomable expression on his face. He often looked at Marguerite the same way.
Expertly flipping Roxton's steel knife into the air, Marguerite caught it by the haft and drove it point down into the bed frame. "Hmm. Let's see. I've almost lost track of the date myself. How long was I unconscious? Three days? That makes this … January 17th 1925."
Roxton had called Marguerite crazy. There was no way he'd lost two and a half years, he'd said.
Marguerite, owning a more varied vocabulary, had called Roxton Neanderthal, stupid and brutal, adding synonyms in various dialects of Swahili, Tagalog and Chinese.
Roxton, who'd spent a fair number of years in Africa and China, had caught a profanity here and there and offered to wash out Marguerite's mouth with soap. In answer, she'd struggled out of bed and limped outside.
With a swing of her long dinosaur neck Cammie had herded Marguerite back in. It had been dark outside and Cammie didn't want her humans out and about, especially the one that couldn't properly walk. Cammie had taken a definite shine to Marguerite.
"Get your damned dragon off me, John!" Marguerite had yelled.
"Cammie's a dinosaur, not a dragon, Miss Smith. Specifically, an adolescent specimen of summerlesis., a chameleon-skinned bi-pedal omnivore weighing about a ton." Marguerite's face had continued to gather thunderclouds. "She's capable of forty on a dry track. We've out run horses." Still no smile. "And she's a really good ratter, at least she was until she grew too big for the cave."
The argument had been the first of many. As Marguerite's health had improved, they'd had almost daily confrontations about venturing away from the safety of the cave. Roxton had told her to stay inside while Marguerite had demanded her freedom. So far Roxton was winning. After all Marguerite had nothing to wear … literally.
But amidst all the argument, confrontation and one-upmanship, something became clear: Marguerite intended to leave the Plateau and she wanted Roxton's help. He refused to give it. He didn't explain about the Amazons or Queen Veronica's decree.
Marguerite offered to buy Roxton's assistance with her escape, although she didn't say what with. She sobbed, she postured, she mended and patched all of Roxton's tattered clothes, and finally in desperation she tried to cook a meal and burned a perfectly good brace of spotted hares so thoroughly that even Cammie wouldn't eat them. None of her had manipulations worked, especially the rabbits.
Then Marguerite sank to her very lowest level and for Lady Gabrena things started looking up … or rather down.