THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE MAN AND THE MICROWAVE
Fairyland begins to reveal its secrets ... unfortunately, this is not necessarily a good thing.
Chapter 3
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Sam felt like he'd been walking forever; traipsing mile after endless mile through nothing but dense forest and rippling grasslands. Around and about him bluebells and primroses painted tiny spots of colour, haphazardly dotting the green and brown palette of the ground beneath his determined footfalls. As he forged ahead, the fragrant blossoms of honeysuckle blinked like tiny yellow eyes watching his steadfast progress.
It all went unnoticed.
He pulled in a deep sigh. Sure, this place was all very pretty and nice to look at but right now he was frustrated, he was worried sick about Dean and his feet were aching like a bitch. On the whole, Fairyland so far had been one great big fat disappointment.
The mysteriously distant voices that Sam could hear had, by degree, been becoming louder, and eventually Sam's mission to follow them took him along a narrow, leafy path which wound lazily between the listing gnarled trunks of two great oaks. He stepped between them ...
And froze.
Okay, suddenly Fairyland didn't seem like such a disappointment any more.
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He found himself standing at the edge of a spacious, almost perfectly circular glade. Thickly carpeted with lush grass and heavily wooded all around, it appeared to be fortified on all sides by the trunks of horse chestnut and birch, with the sprawling green boughs of a massive Cedar tree forming a roof of sorts.
At one end of the glade, beneath the canopy of the giant Cedar, Sam observed two figures, magnificently garbed in cloth of gold and ermine and seated on ornately carved and bejewelled thrones; a man and a woman.
The man, broodingly dark, and with the kind of regally handsome features that speak of centuries' worth of noble breeding, sat draped casually over his throne staring across the glade through eyes like the midnight sky with an almost arrogant indifference.
The woman beside him, on the other hand, was almost as pale as her companion was dark. Her golden hair, shimmering like sunlight through a dawn mist, cascaded over her shoulders, framing a face so delicate and fair that it could have been carved of ivory. Unlike her companion she sat ramrod-straight, brightly intelligent sea-green eyes roving the glade with her hands clasped demurely across her lap, attentive and clearly absorbed in whatever was going on here.
An ethereal glow exuded from both of the figures, illuminating the deep shadows beneath the Cedar's broad canopy enough for Sam to see fine coronets of delicate filigree encircling their high, shapely brows, and he concluded that he must be in the presence of some kind of royalty; fairy royalty no less.
Alongside the two seated figures, three shimmering dots of various sizes and colours zipped and cavorted through the air, chattering and giggling excitedly as they loop-the-looped and gambolled around each other.
Sam immediately recognised them as the three fairies who had abducted Dean back at the motel, and instantly, his sense of wonder at the sights around him took a darker turn.
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It was at that moment that Sam caught sight of his brother, still barefoot and clad in the faded grey T-shirt and sweatpants he had been wearing at the time of his abduction. He was seated on a fallen tree trunk at the opposite end of the glade, hunched over and huddled, with cold or fear? Unable to see his brother's downturned face, Sam couldn't tell.
Dean was tightly restrained by a heavy gold chain. Circling his neck, it threaded down through golden handcuffs which secured his arms behind his back, while heavy gilt shackles hobbled his ankles together, leaving just enough slack to afford Dean some minimal degree of mobility. Beside him, holding the loose end of the golden chain, stood a relatively human sized fairy; a fairy who was standing guard judging by the long, savage looking pikestaff that he held in his free hand.
Wearing only a loincloth of leaves, the sinewy figure stood to attention alongside his prisoner. Two tiny horns protruded from his tightly curled green hairline and Sam shuddered as he stared into the figure's intensely dark eyes, taking in the small pointed ears and sharp features which gave him an air of cruel coldness.
Sam didn't quite know how but he recognised the creature instantly as Puck.
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Behind the pair of them stood one other figure; it was a figure that Sam had to look up at and in the brothers' experience that had never been a good thing.
Towering like a monolith over Puck and his huddled captive, the giant man's rheumy ice-blue eyes stared out from under massive shaggy brows, clinging, like two ginger ferrets, to his leathery face; a face which stared sternly across the glade, devoid of any expression whatsoever.
But Sam wasn't looking at his face.
Sam was looking at the object that he was holding in his two huge, shovel-like hands.
It was an axe.
But not just any axe; a giant axe. Its roughly-hewn handle was as thick as Sam's neck and longer than he was tall. The gleaming curved blade was equally mammoth; a viciously keen-edged iron crescent, exquisitely engraved with beautiful but unfamiliar sigils and easily the width of a large man's shoulders. It was an axe befitting of its creator, the one who wielded it with such pride and strength; Wayland Smith, the blacksmith of the fairy realm.
Sam's heart dropped into his guts when a dawning realisation crept over him. A realisation that he had only ever seen an axe like that once before; many years ago in school, in a picture book about King Henry the Eighth.
It was an axe that had one very specific purpose.
It was an executioner's axe.
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tbc