Lessoc Fountain - a fairy-creature tale

Ch. 37 Truth

Daniel. She wants to hurt Daniel.

He was hiding, though, he had promised. Cocot had to put this right, before she found him.

I have the key, Cocot thought. The witch believed she had answers, but she didn't. She had her mother's keys and her mother's unspoken secrets, but no answers.

The king used the fairy tongue to tell Cocot that she had the key, but the fairy tongue was full of tricks; one word could mean another depending on where it was placed in a sentence. Not have the key—I am the key. Part fairy, part field flower, we are one, we are the same, like the brambles said.

"Such a shame your black horse is not here. I would enjoy having a horse like him for myself," the witch said, taunting.

"He is past your reach."

"None is past my reach should I call—as you will soon see," the witch said. "Did the hand fairy tell you the horse's story? Did he tell you what he did the first night he drank the evil from the fountain?"

"Soufflé told me enough" Cocot replied, staring at the cracked cobblestones. They reminded her of Hector's hooves. Blue-grey and broken.

"Are you sure?"

Hissing laughter slithered about Cocot's feet and the girl flicked her gaze up to see the witch's mocking smile.

"Well, Soufflé, does she know the story or not?" the witch called.

Soufflé appeared from behind the basin. "I told her what she needed to know."

"And that is exactly why I tasked Soufflé to befriend you. He has such a talent for handing out crumbs of truth to make himself believable, that you swallow lies and omissions without noticing. Now listen!" The witch grabbed Cocot's jaw painfully. "The first creature your sweet horse killed, his first act after drinking up as much evil as he could, was to trample a lost Bounet Rodzo girl. He crushed all eight inches of her under his hooves."

Cocot twisted her head free in spite of the stinging path the witch's fingernails made on her cheeks. She already knew the truth. The evil had destroyed what he loved most; his fine heart that wanted to protect creatures smaller than himself.

"What do you want by telling me these things?"

"I want what should have been mine for all these long, withering years," the witch said. "I am done with watching. I will call for Jean-Baptist to come."

Cocot shook her head. Free Jean-Baptist from the chalet and bring him here? Her cheek and neck ached where he had touched her. "I can't do help you. Let me go, please." She hated the useless words, and hated that she was scared enough to say them, to beg for freedom, but she said the words anyway.

"Let you go? But he is coming for you. Interloper, invader, filthy squatter who used his home as your own. He comes for you especially."

"No." Her body trembled, she couldn't control it. "No!" She thrashed helplessly against the clawed hands that held her down. She screamed and struggled to free herself as the fairies laughed. They were the village children holding her in place and taunting her again, only this time it was worse. So much worse that her mind could not comprehend, although her body did. She flailed at her captors like a wild animal hurls itself at the metal bars of a cage.

"Soufflé! Soufflé, help me!" she cried. Soufflé flitted forward a fraction of an inch then stopped. The witch devoured his every movement.

"Child, open the seal in the fountain and tell us where the other bottles are hidden and no one will hurt you," he said.