Then they all started to chirp and clamor and scrabble about on the wet glass.
Baffled, I moved to the door and carefully opened it. They remained hanging in the air, plastered to whatever force field Barrons had erected around the store that kept Fae out with the exception of Cruce, when he was permitted. All were slender, velvety-skinned, some had spots in every shade of green with mossy hair, others with gray and white stripes and silvery hair. There were sunny yellow ones with lemon curls, dark brown ones with short muddy shocks of hair, pale blue with cerulean manes, rose beauties with pale pink braids. It was a veritable rainbow of fairies, with varying patterns and designs on their skin.
I waved my hand in a shooing gesture and they peeled away to permit my exit. As I moved out into the alcove, thousands of fairies the size of my hand began to drop from the sky in flashes of brilliant color. I poked my head out past the column and glanced into the street. Fae were plastered to the sides of every building, falling away, landing in the puddle-dotted street where they instantly sank to their knees, bowed their heads and crossed their arms over their chests in an unmistakable gesture of…
Fealty?
Abruptly their chirping was no longer unintelligible.
“Our queen! Our queen! Isn’t she lovely? Oooh, she’s so beautiful!” Trills of excitement rippled through them.
“What are you?” I asked the crowd of tiny beings. “I mean, what caste and why have I never seen you before?”
A slender gray-spotted fairy sloshed forward through a puddle and bowed low. “O Austere and Beneficent Queen, the Spyrssidhe have long been forbidden at court.”
“Why?”
“We were deemed unacceptable and banished, exalted liege,” she said.
“She speaks to us! She speaks to us!” rippled through the crowded, rainy street. “She may hear our petition!”
“By the prior queen?” I asked.
She nodded sadly. “Cast out into the world of Man, to make our homes in trees and streams, among rocks and flowers and the gardens of Man. We felt the rising of a new and different queen and came to petition you, gracious and wise Queen, in hopes you would hear our plea and reconsider our fate.”
All this “queen” stuff was a bit much but I knew better than to downplay my status. I’d learned my lesson the day I told the Hunter I wasn’t the king. He’d said I couldn’t fly anymore if I wasn’t. Until I got a better handle on things, I’d do my best to incur and keep the respect and cooperation of the Fae. “Why were you banished?”
A male fairy with copper and tan spots pushed through, knelt in a puddle before me, put one hand to his breast and bowed deeply. “O Munificent Queen, unlike the others of our race, our hearts failed to ice.”
I cocked my head, startled. Was he telling me they felt emotion? I was just about to ask when he continued, “Nor did our loins. From jealousy and spite they drove us out, stupendous, all-powerful Queen. She who rules no more decreed we were not Fae enough for Faery once we began siring young on this world.”
I gasped. “You can have children?” I’d thought it impossible for Fae to reproduce!
“Few, but yes, O Fair and Radiant Liege. It didn’t begin happening until we came to this world. The other castes were patient for a time, waiting to see if the same would occur for them. When it did not, they turned the queen’s icy heart against us. She stripped us of our place in Faery.”
He gestured to someone behind him and a young, light purple and green fairy, the perfect coloring to hide in a hydrangea bush, came forward holding a tiny bundle in her arms, cradling it beneath a shiny leaf to keep it dry. She peeled back the misted leaf to show me a naked, translucent, infant fairy the size of a fingernail.
“Oh!” I exclaimed, smiling. It was adorable. And so tiny! “She’s lovely.”
Blushing, the fairy exclaimed, “I am honored by your kindness, great Queen! Our young are void of color at birth and grow slowly into their patterns, painted by whatever element of Nature they favor. Some are drawn to waterfalls.” She waved a hand at a young female fairy, marked with vertical stripes of white and pale gray. “Others to rocks or forests or tall grassy meadows or flowers. Some part of Nature calls to each of us and she patterns us accordingly.” She blushed again. “I live among the gorse and heather, great Queen. If I am blessed, so will my child be.”
“Why would you wish to return to court? It sounds as if you like this world.”
The male fairy said, “My Queen, we but seek the freedom to come and go as we wish, as do the others of our kind. We desire our seat upon the council back. We are Fae. We have always been Fae. They had no right to cast us out. Faery is our home, too, and we would have a say in the matters of our race.”
As I stared out at the thousands of diminutive Fae gathered in the rainy street, it finally, fully sunk in.