Parlock noticed it first while stirring his morning tea with the wrong end of a spoon. The Wychwood usually smelled of loam and mushrooms and the pleasant, peppery bite of foxglove. This morning it smelled, tired. Stalled, maybe. Like it just didn't have the energy to grow anything.
Pennyboy, who had been lining up beetles to race across a stump, noticed it too. He stopped and sniffed the air while his beetles seized the chance to scuttle away.
“It smells like... bread that doesn't want to rise,” he announced solemnly.
That was when they saw it. The blight, creeping into a bright corner of the copse, like a shadow come to life.
It did not rush. It seeped. It oozed. A gray-green dullness that slid along roots and bark, dimming the moss, souring the air. The trees leaned away from it like cats avoiding a bath.
From the other direction an irridescent orb floated into view and made its way over to Parlock. The orb shimmered softly, colors rippling across its surface like moonlight in water. Pennyboy stared at the orb in wonder. He had never seen anything quite so beautiful.
“Yes, yes, I see it,” Parlock muttered. “No need to panic. A measured response is—”
A tree actually coughed. The orb quivered and hummed at a higher frequency. Pennyboy grabbed Parlock’s sleeve.
“That tree is poorly,” he whispered. “Very poorly.”
The orb vibrated urgently, its humming growing louder. Parlock stared at the orb as if he understood it. After a while, he sighed and nodded.
"Yes, we'll come." The orb quivered again. "Yes, we'll come today."
The orb zipped away so quickly Pennyboy barely saw it, a rainbow-colored flash of light hurtling through the dappled woods. Parlock had gotten to his feet and was rolling his bedroll.
"Be quick, pack the cooking things. Leave anything we don't need as it will just slow us down."
"Will we be gone long? How much food should I bring?" Pennyboy had miscalculated this in the past and it made for a few long, miserable days eating some bitter berries that were sustaining if not tasty.
Parlock eyed the blight, oozing steadily on. He picked up his lantern and set it with the items to be left behind.
"At least a week. Might not take that long but you never know. Two days there, two days back, if we're lucky and the weather holds."
Weather in the Wychwood never really "held" but Pennyboy understood. He tried to picture what was within a two-day walk but he really didn't know. He could ask, but often Parlock wouldn't answer and he'd become grumpy. Better to just do as he was told.
"What was that... thing?" That seemed a safer question. Parlock felt strongly about educating him about what lived in the Wychwood so the question would likely be answered.
"Will-o-the-wisp," Parlock said shortly. He shook out a pair of underwear, then rolled them up and shoved them into his pack. Then he noticed the lantern had attached itself to his pack. With a grunt, he detached it and placed it back on top of the bags to be left behind. "Messenger of the fairies."
Fallsbury Grove. That had to be where they were going. He eyed the supplies while he thought this through. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the lantern tip toe back to Parlock's pack and climb inside.
The Fairies of Fallsbury Grove were old, clever, and historically uninterested in the problems of wizards, woodsmen, or anyone taller than a daffodil. They danced only when they wished, answered questions with riddles and once turned a lost magistrate into a teapot for asking directions. He had been rude.
He was still rude. Pennyboy wouldn't carry him with the other cookware because everything would come out chipped or twisted.
Parlock pulled the teapot out of the embers where it sat and dumped the last bit of leaves and liquid out before rolling it in a soft cloth. He always insisted there was no better tea than was made in that pot so he carried it himself. Worldlessly, he removed the lantern from his pack to make room for the teapot.
"Stay there!" he commanded as he put the lantern back again. The lantern pretended it was a normal lantern who couldn't hear anything.
The path to Fallsbury Grove wound through silver-barked birches and stones etched with runes so old not even the fairies knew what they meant. The orb reappeared and floated just ahead, lighting the way, sounding faint chimes whenever it brushed against leaves.
Pennyboy had not been a great student at Denbeck University but some things had stuck. He knew you couldn't get into Fallsbury Grove unless you were invited. Finding the Grove required a Will-o-the-Wisp to light the portal.
They trudged through the woods and across open fields for two days, stopping only when they were too tired to walk. The orb lit their path so bright and soft that it wasn't the darkness that stalled them, only exhaustion.
Near the end of the second day, the air changed. It thickened with a sweetness Pennyboy could almost taste and smell and even feel. Ahead, lights flitted between branches, not orbs but something sharper, quicker.
Fairies. They had arrived. The lights seemed to notice them as they paused, then changed direction.
The fairies surrounded them. They hovered in a ring around the two humans, wings whispering, eyes bright as dew on spider silk. About the size of birds, they moved like hummingbirds, with quick movements in any direction. Parlock went to one knee and dropped his head as a sign of respect and Pennyboy did the same, although clumsier as his pack threw off his balance.
They waited. The air displaced by the fairy wings created a slight breeze. Pennyboy could see a brighter glow moving towards them and he glanced up without moving his head. From a grove of trees nearby she floated towards them- the Queen of Fallsbury Grove- no taller than Pennyboy’s knee, crowned with woven thorns and blossoms. She was flanked by two Will-o-the-Wisps twice her size.
Parlock bowed deeply over his knee. Pennyboy attempted to lean forward and nearly fell over.
“As you know, the Wychwood is sick,” Parlock said. “I have come as you requested.”
The fairies murmured. The Queen studied them, then gestured to her her orbs to move away. That was the signal that the humans could stand. They did.
“Blight comes when balance is broken,” the Queen said in a low, musical voice that sounded like water rushing over stones. She tilted her head to one side as if trying to read Parlock's expression. “Something was has been broken and not corrected.”
Pennyboy thought about this for a moment, then his eyes widened.
“The old stone well!” he burst out. “The badgers have been stealing stones from it and the rest of it collapsed. We never fixed it.”
The fairies murmured, a sound like wind through distant bells.
“That well feeds the deep roots,” said the Queen, nodding slightly at Pennyboy. “Its songs are now silent.”
Parlock's face flushed red. Wizards were very good at solving grand mystical problems. Rebuilding a well was… dusty work. He had put it off. He had forgotten it. Now there was no choice. Even worse, the fairies knew that his procrastination had allowed blight into the Wychwood.
"My humble apologies, Queen."
"It is not I you have offended. Beg pardon of the Wychwood, if you must, but more importantly you must make this right. With haste."
The fairies went with them to the old stone well. Blight was strong here, a furry grey-green shadow grown thick and musty and it covered the tumbled stones where the well once stood. Several of the fairies were driven back by the smell but most stayed to help, even while holding their tiny noses.
They worked through the day and into twilight. Pennyboy hauled stones and hummed to the rhythm of the fairy wings. Parlock levered the fallen stones out of the depths placed them into tight alignment to prevent further theft. The orbs circled and hummed, lending light and exposing chinks in the walls, slipping into cracks to show Parlock where to guide stones into place.
When the final stone settled, the ground shuddered softly.
Water rose, clear and bright.
The blight recoiled as if embarrassed, then faded, color returning to bark and leaf. The Wychwood breathed in, long and grateful.
The fairies danced. Pennyboy knew this was a rare treat and he watched in amazement.
They spun and dipped, laughter ringing, weaving crowns of leaves and dropping them onto Parlock’s hat and Pennyboy’s hair. The Queen approached and tapped each orb in turn, leaving a brighter glow behind.
“Balance restored,” she said. “Remember this. Not every task requires magic. Sometimes you have to get dirty and do it right.”
As Parlock and Pennyboy walked home beneath bright shining stars, Pennyboy looked up and grinned. “Do you think the forest likes us again?”
Parlock adjusted his leaf-crowned hat. “I suspect that it always did. It just needed us to do our chores.”
Around them, the Wychwood rustled its approval and the orb guiding them shimmered in agreement. The lantern hanging from Parlocks' belt, unlit, gave what looked like a huff of annoyance.